The Seven Secrets Part 25

She pulled a wry face, in order to emphasise her dissatisfaction at my explanation, and said:

"And I suppose you are prepared to receive castigation? Ethelwynn has begun to complain because people are saying that your engagement is broken off."

"Who says so?" I inquired rather angrily, for I hated all the t.i.ttle-tattle of that little circle of gossips who dawdle over the tea-cups of Redcliffe Square and its neighbourhood. I had attended a good many of them professionally at various times, and was well acquainted with all their ways and all their exaggerations. The gossiping circle in flat-land about Earl's Court was bad enough, but the Redcliffe Square set, being slightly higher in the social scale, was infinitely worse.

"Oh! all the ill-natured people are commenting upon your apparent coolness. Once, not long ago, you used to be seen everywhere with Ethelwynn, and now no one ever sees you. People form a natural conclusion, of course," said the fair-haired, fussy little woman, whose married state gave her the right to censure me on my neglect.

"Ethelwynn is, of course, still with you?" I asked, in anger that outsiders should seek to interfere in my private affairs.

"She still makes our house her home, not caring to go back to the dulness of Neneford," was her reply. "But at present she's away visiting one of her old schoolfellows--a girl who married a country banker and lives near Hereford."

"Then she's in the country?"

"Yes, she went three days ago. I thought she had written to you. She told me she intended doing so."

I had received no letter from her. Indeed, our recent correspondence had been of a very infrequent and formal character. With a woman's quick perception she had noted my coldness and had sought to show equal callousness. With the knowledge of Courtenay's continued existence now in my mind, I was beside myself with grief and anger at having doubted her. But how could I act at that moment, save in obedience to my friend Jevons' instructions? He had urged me to go and find out some details regarding her recent life with the Hennikers; and with that object I remarked:

"She hasn't been very well of late, I fear. The change of air should do her good."

"That's true, poor girl. She's seemed very unwell, and I've often told her that only one doctor in the world could cure her malady--yourself."

I smiled. The malady was, I knew too well, the grief of a disappointed love, and a perfect cure for that could only be accomplished by reconciliation. I was filled with regret that she was absent, for I longed there and then to take her to my breast and whisper into her ear my heart's outpourings. Yes; we men are very foolish in our impetuosity.

"How long will she be away?"

"Why?" inquired the smartly-dressed little woman, mischievously. "What can it matter to you?"

"I have her welfare at heart, Mrs. Henniker," I answered seriously.

"Then you have a curious way of showing your solicitude on her behalf," she said bluntly, smiling again. "Poor Ethelwynn has been pining day after day for a word from you; but you seldom, if ever, write, and when you do the coldness of your letters adds to her burden of grief. I knew always when she had received one by the traces of secret tears upon her cheeks. Forgive me for saying so, Doctor, but you men, either in order to test the strength of a woman's affection, or perhaps out of mere caprice, often try her patience until the strained thread snaps, and she who was a good and pure woman becomes reckless of everything--her name, her family pride, and even her own honour."

Her words aroused my curiosity.

"And you believe that Ethelwynn's patience is exhausted?" I asked, anxiously.

Her eyes met mine, and I saw a mysterious expression in them. There is always something strange in the eyes of a pretty woman who is hiding a secret.

"Well, Doctor," she answered, in a voice quite calm and deliberate, "you've already shown yourself so openly as being disinclined to further a.s.sociate yourself publicly with poor Ethelwynn, because of the tragedy that befell the household, that you surely cannot complain if you find your place usurped by a new and more devoted lover."

"What!" I cried, starting up, fiercely. "What is this you tell me?

Ethelwynn has a lover?"

"I have nothing whatever to do with her affairs, Doctor," said the tantalising woman, who affected all the foibles of the smarter set.

"Now that you have forsaken her she is, of course, entirely mistress of her own actions."

"But I haven't forsaken her!" I blurted forth.

She only smiled superciliously, with the same mysterious look--an expression that I cannot define, but by which I knew that she had told me the crushing truth. Ethelwynn, believing that I had cast her aside, had allowed herself to be loved by another!

Who was the man who had usurped my place? I deserved it all, without a doubt. You, reader, have already in your heart condemned me as being hard and indifferent towards the woman I once loved so truly and so well. But, in extenuation, I would ask you to recollect how grave were the suspicions against her--how every fact seemed to prove conclusively that her sister's husband had died by her hand.

I saw plainly in Mrs. Henniker's veiled words a statement of the truth; and, after obtaining from her Ethelwynn's address near Hereford, bade her farewell and blindly left the house.

CHAPTER XX.

MY NEW PATIENT.

In the feverish restlessness of the London night, with its rumbling market-wagons and the constant tinkling of cab-bells, so different to the calm, moonlit stillness of the previous night in rural England, I wrote a long explanatory letter to my love.

I admitted that I had wronged her by my apparent coldness and indifference, but sought to excuse myself on the ground of the pressure of work upon me. She knew well that I was not a rich man, and in that slavery to which I was now tied I had an object--the object I had placed before her in the dawning days of our affection--namely, the snug country practice with an old-fashioned comfortable house in one of the quiet villages or smaller towns in the Midlands. In those days she had been just as enthusiastic about it as I had been. She hated town life, I knew; and even if the wife of a country doctor is allowed few diversions, she can always form a select little tea-and-tennis circle of friends.

The fashion nowadays is for girls of middle-cla.s.s to regard the prospect of becoming a country doctor's wife with considerable hesitation--"too slow," they term it; and declare that to live in the country and drive in a governess-cart is synonymous with being buried.

Many girls marry just as servants change their places--in order "to better themselves;" and alas! that parents encourage this latter-day craze for artificiality and glitter of town life that so often fascinates and spoils a bride ere the honeymoon is over. The majority of girls to-day are not content to marry the hard-working professional man whose lot is cast in the country, but prefer to marry a man in town, so that they may take part in the pleasures of theatres, variety and otherwise, suppers at restaurants, and the thousand and one attractions provided for the reveller in London. They have obtained their knowledge of "life" from the society papers, and they see no reason why they should not taste of those pleasures enjoyed by their wealthier sisters, whose goings and comings are so carefully chronicled. The majority of girls have a desire to shine beyond their own sphere; and the attempt, alas! is accountable for very many of the unhappy marriages. This may sound prosy, I know, but the reader will forgive when he reflects upon the cases in point which arise to his memory--cases of personal friends, perhaps even of relations, to whom marriage was a failure owing to this uncontrollable desire on the part of the woman to a.s.sume a position to which neither birth nor wealth ent.i.tled her.

To the general rule, however, my love was an exception. Times without number had she declared her anxiety to settle in the country; for, being country born and bred, she was an excellent horsewoman, and in every essential a thorough English girl of the Gra.s.s Country, fond of a run with either fox or otter hounds; therefore, in suburban life at Kew, she had been entirely out of her element.

In that letter I wrote, composing it slowly and carefully--for like most medical men I am a bad hand at literary composition--I sought her forgiveness, and asked for an immediate interview. The wisdom of being so precipitous never occurred to me. I only know that in those night hours over my pipe I resolved to forget once and for all that letter I had discovered among the "dead" man's effects, and determined that, while I sought reconciliation with Ethelwynn, I would keep an open and watchful eye upon Mary and her fellow conspirator.

The suggestion that Ethelwynn, believing herself forsaken, had accepted the declarations of a man she considered more worthy than myself, lashed me to a frenzy of madness. He should never have her, whoever he might be. She had been mine, and should remain so, come what might. I added a postscript, asking her to wire me permission to travel down to Hereford to see her; then, sealing up the letter, I went out along the Marylebone Road and posted it in the pillar-box, which I knew was cleared at five o'clock in the morning.

It was then about three o'clock, calm, but rather overcast. The Marylebone Road had at last become hushed in silence. Wagons and cabs had both ceased, and save for a solitary policeman here and there the long thoroughfare, so full of traffic by day, was utterly deserted. I retraced my steps slowly towards the corner of Harley Street, and was about to open the door of the house wherein I had "diggings" when I heard a light, hurried footstep behind me, and turning, confronted the figure of a slim woman of middle height wearing a golf cape, the hood of which had been thrown over her head in lieu of a hat.

"Excuse me, sir," she cried, in a breathless voice, "but are you Doctor Boyd?"

I replied that such was my name.

"Oh, I'm in such distress," she said, in the tone of one whose heart is full of anguish. "My poor father!"

"Is your father ill?" I inquired, turning from the door and looking full at her. I was standing on the step, and she was on the pavement, having evidently approached from the opposite direction. She stood with her back to the street lamp, so I could discern nothing of her features. Only her voice told me that she was young.

"Oh, he's very ill," she replied anxiously. "He was taken queer at eleven o'clock, but he wouldn't hear of me coming to you. He's one of those men who don't like doctors."

"Ah!" I remarked; "there are many of his sort about. But they are compelled to seek our aid now and then. Well, what can I do for you? I suppose you want me to see him--eh?"

"Yes, sir, if you'd be so kind. I know its awfully late; but, as you've been out, perhaps you wouldn't mind running round to our house.

It's quite close, and I'll take you there." She spoke with the peculiar drawl and dropped her "h's" in the manner of the true London-bred girl.

"I'll come if you'll wait a minute," I said, and then, leaving her outside, I entered the house and obtained my thermometer and stethoscope.

When I rejoined her and closed the door I made some inquiries about the sufferer's symptoms, but the description she gave me was so utterly vague and contradictory that I could make nothing out of it.

Her muddled idea of his illness I put down to her fear and anxiety for his welfare.

She had no mother, she told me; and her father had, of late, given way just a little to drink. He "used" the Hayc.o.c.k, in Edgware Road; and she feared that he had fallen among a hard-drinking set. He was a pianoforte-maker, and had been employed at Brinsmead's for eighteen years. Since her mother died, six years ago, however, he had never been the same.

"It was then that he took to drink?" I hazarded.