The Seven Secrets Part 28

"Her fresh lover?" she cried in surprise. "I don't understand you. Who is he, pray?"

"I'm in ignorance of his name."

"But how do you know of his existence? I have heard nothing of him, and surely she would have told me. All her correspondence, all her poignant grief, and all her regrets have been of you."

"Mrs. Henniker gave me to understand that my place in your sister's heart has been filled by another man," I said, in a hard voice.

"Mrs. Henniker!" she cried in disgust. "Just like that evil-tongued mischief-maker! I've told you already that I detest her. She was my friend once--it was she who allured me from my husband's side. Why she exercises such an influence over poor Ethelwynn, I can't tell. I do hope she'll leave their house and come back home. You must try and persuade her to do so."

"Do you think, then, that the woman has lied?" I asked.

"I'm certain of it. Ethelwynn has never a thought for any man save yourself. I'll vouch for that."

"But what object can she have in telling me an untruth?"

The widow smiled.

"A very deep one, probably. You don't know her as well as I do, or you would suspect all her actions of ulterior motive."

"Well," I said, after a pause, "to tell the truth, I wrote to Ethelwynn last night with a view to reconciliation."

"You did!" she cried joyously. "Then you have antic.i.p.ated me, and my appeal to you has been forestalled by your own conscience--eh?"

"Exactly," I laughed. "She has my letter by this time, and I am expecting a wire in reply. I have asked her to meet me at the earliest possible moment."

"Then you have all my felicitations, Ralph," she said, in a voice that seemed to quiver with emotion. "She loves you--loves you with a fiercer and even more pa.s.sionate affection than that I entertained towards my poor dead husband. Of your happiness I have no doubt, for I have seen how you idolised her, and how supreme was your mutual content when in each other's society. Destiny, that unknown influence that shapes our ends, has placed you together and forged a bond between you that is unbreakable--the bond of perfect love."

There seemed such a genuine ring in her voice, and she spoke with such solicitude for our welfare, that in the conversation I entirely forgot that after all she was only trying to bring us together again in order to prevent her own secret from being exposed.

At some moments she seemed the perfection of honesty and integrity, without the slightest affectation of interest or artificiality of manner, and it was this fresh complexity of her character that utterly baffled me. I could not determine whether, or not, she was in earnest.

"If it is really destiny I suppose that to try and resist it is quite futile," I remarked mechanically.

"Absolutely. Ethelwynn will become your wife, and you have all my good wishes for prosperity and happiness."

I thanked her, but pointed out that the matrimonial project was, as yet, immature.

"How foolish you are, Ralph!" she said. "You know very well that you'd marry her to-morrow if you could."

"Ah! if I could," I repeated wistfully. "Unfortunately my position is not yet sufficiently well a.s.sured to justify my marrying. Wedded poverty is never a pleasing prospect."

"But you have the world before you. I've heard Sir Bernard say so, times without number. He believes implicitly in you as a man who will rise to the head of your profession."

I laughed dubiously, shaking my head.

"I only hope that his antic.i.p.ations may be realized," I said. "But I fear I'm no more brilliant than a hundred other men in the hospitals.

It takes a smart man nowadays to boom himself into notoriety. As in literature and law, so in the medical profession, it isn't the clever man who rises to the top of the tree. More often it is a second-rate man, who has private influence, and has gauged the exact worth of self-advertis.e.m.e.nt. This is an age of reputations quickly made, and just as rapidly lost. In the professional world a new man rises with every moon."

"But that need not be so in your case," she pointed out. "With Sir Bernard as your chief, you are surely in an a.s.sured position."

Taking her into my confidence, I told her of my ideal of a snug country practice--one of those in which the a.s.sistant does the night-work and attends to the club people, while there is a circle of county people as patients. There are hundreds of such practices in England, where a doctor, although scarcely known outside his own district, is in a position which Harley Street, with all its turmoil of fashionable fads and fancies, envies as the elysium of what life should be. The village doctor of Little Perkington may be an ignorant old buffer; but his life, with its three days' hunting a week, its constant invitations to shoot over the best preserves, and its free fishing whenever in the humour, is a thousand times preferable to the silk-hatted, frock-coated existence of the fashionable physician.

I had long ago talked it all over with Ethelwynn, and she entirely agreed with me. I had not the slightest desire to have a consulting-room of my own in Harley Street. All I longed for was a life in open air and rural tranquillity; a life far from the tinkle of the cab-bell and the milkman's strident cry; a life of ease and bliss, with my well-beloved ever at my side. The unfortunate man compelled to live in London is deprived of half of G.o.d's generous gifts.

"Though this unaccountable coldness has fallen between you," Mary said, looking straight at me, "you surely cannot have doubted the strength of her affection?"

"But Mrs. Henniker's insinuation puzzles me. Besides, her recent movements have been rather erratic, and almost seem to bear out the suggestion."

"That woman is utterly unscrupulous!" she cried angrily. "Depend upon it that she has some deep motive in making that slanderous statement.

On one occasion she almost caused a breach between myself and my poor husband. Had he not possessed the most perfect confidence in me, the consequences might have been most serious for both of us. The outcome of a mere word, uttered half in jest, it came near ruining my happiness for ever. I did not know her true character in those days."

"I had no idea that she was a dangerous woman," I remarked, rather surprised at this statement. Hitherto I had regarded her as quite a harmless person, who, by making a strenuous effort to obtain a footing in good society, often rendered herself ridiculous in the eyes of her friends.

"Her character!" she echoed fiercely. "She's one of the most evil-tongued women in London. Here is an ill.u.s.tration. While posing as Ethelwynn's friend, and entertaining her beneath her roof, she actually insinuates to you the probability of a secret lover! Is it fair? Is it the action of an honest, trustworthy woman?"

I was compelled to admit that it was not. Yet, was this action of her own, in coming to me in those circ.u.mstances, in any way more straightforward? Had she known that I was well aware of the secret existence of her husband, she would a.s.suredly never have dared to speak in the manner she had. Indeed, as I sat there facing her, I could scarcely believe it possible that she could act the imposture so perfectly. Her manner was flawless; her self-possession marvellous.

But the motive of it all--what could it be? The problem had been a maddening one from first to last.

I longed to speak out my mind then and there; to tell her of what I knew, and of what I had witnessed with my own eyes. Yet such a course was useless. I was proceeding carefully, watching and noting everything, determined not to blunder.

Had you been in my place, my reader, what would you have done?

Recollect, I had witnessed a scene on the river-bank that was absolutely without explanation, and which surpa.s.sed all human credence. I am a matter-of-fact man, not given to exaggerate or to recount incidents that have not occurred, but I confess openly and freely that since I had walked along that path I hourly debated within myself whether I was actually awake and in the full possession of my faculties, or whether I had dreamt the whole thing.

Yet it was no dream. Certain solid facts convinced me of its stern, astounding reality. The man upon whose body I had helped to make an autopsy was actually alive.

In reply to my questions my visitor told me that she was staying at Martin's, in Cork Street--a small private hotel which the Mivarts had patronised for many years--and that on the following morning she intended returning again to Neneford.

Then, after she had again urged me to lose no time in seeing Ethelwynn, and had imposed upon me silence as to what had pa.s.sed between us, I a.s.sisted her into a hansom, and she drove away, waving her hand in farewell.

The interview had been a curious one, and I could not in the least understand its import. Regarded in the light of the knowledge I had gained when down at Neneford, it was, of course, plain that both she and her "dead" husband were anxious to secure Ethelwynn's silence, and believed they could effect this by inducing us to marry. The conspiracy was deeply-laid and ingenious, as indeed was the whole of the amazing plot. Yet, some how, when I reflected upon it on my return from the club, I could not help sitting till far into the night trying to solve the remarkable enigma.

A telegram from Ethelwynn had reached me at the Savage at nine o'clock, stating that she had received my letter, and was returning to town the day after to-morrow. She had, she said, replied to me by that night's post.

I felt anxious to see her, to question her, and to try, if possible, to gather from her some fact which would lead me to discern a motive in the feigned death of Henry Courtenay. But I could only wait in patience for the explanation. Mary's declaration that her sister possessed no other lover besides myself rea.s.sured me. I had not believed it of her from the first; yet it was pa.s.sing strange that such an insinuation should have fallen from the lips of a woman who now posed as her dearest friend.

Next day, Sir Bernard came to town to see two unusual cases at the hospital, and afterwards drove me back with him to Harley Street, where he had an appointment with a German Princess, who had come to London to consult him as a specialist. As usual, he made his lunch off two ham sandwiches, which he had brought with him from Victoria Station refreshment-room and carried in a paper bag. I suggested that we should eat together at a restaurant; but the old man declined, declaring that if he ate more than his usual sandwiches for luncheon when in town he never had any appet.i.te for dinner.

So I left him alone in his consulting-room, munching bread and ham, and sipping his winegla.s.sful of dry sherry.

About half-past three, just before he returned to Brighton, I saw him again as usual to hear any instructions he wished to give, for sometimes he saw patients once, and then left them in my hands. He seemed wearied, and was sitting resting his brow upon his thin bony hands. During the day he certainly had been fully occupied, and I had noticed that of late he was unable to resist the strain as he once could.

"Aren't you well?" I asked, when seated before him.

"Oh, yes," he answered, with a sigh. "There's not much the matter with me. I'm tired, I suppose, that's all. The eternal chatter of those confounded women bores me to death. They can't tell their symptoms without going into all the details of family history and domestic infelicity," he snapped. "They think me doctor, lawyer, and parson rolled into one."

I laughed at his criticism. What he said was, indeed, quite true.

Women often grew confidential towards me, at my age; therefore I could quite realize how they laid bare all their troubles to him.