and mother had no sign of any morbid diathesis, but I will not conceal from you that my grandfather was afflicted with podagra.”
Mrs. O’James looked startled.
“Is that very serious?” she asked.
“It is gout,” said the Professor.
“Oh, is that all? It sounded much worse than that.”
“It is a grave taint, but I trust that I shall not be a victim to atavism. I have laid these facts before you because they are factors which cannot be overlooked in forming your decision. May I ask now whether you see your way to accepting my proposal?”
He paused in his walk, and looked earnestly and expectantly down at her.
A struggle was evidently going on in her mind. Her eyes were cast down, her little slipper tapped the lawn, and her fingers played nervously with her chatelain. Suddenly, with a sharp, quick gesture which had in it something of ABANDON and recklessness, she held out her hand to her companion.
“I accept,” she said.
They were standing under the shadow of the hawthorn. He stooped gravely down, and kissed her glove-covered fingers.
“I trust that you may never have cause to regret your decision,” he said.
“I trust that you never may,” she cried, with a heaving breast.
There were tears in her eyes, and her lips twitched with some strong emotion.
“Come into the sunshine again,” said he. “It is the great restorative. Your nerves are shaken. Some little congestion of the medulla and pons. It is always instructive to reduce psychic or
emotional conditions to their physical equivalents. You feel that your anchor is still firm in a bottom of ascertained fact.”
“But it is so dreadfully unromantic,” said Mrs. O’James, with her old twinkle.
“Romance is the offspring of imagination and of ignorance. Where science throws her calm, clear light there is happily no room for romance.”
“But is not love romance?” she asked.
“Not at all. Love has been taken away from the poets, and has been brought within the domain of true science. It may prove to be one of the great cosmic elementary forces. When the atom of hydrogen draws the atom of chlorine towards it to form the perfected molecule of hydrochloric acid, the force which it exerts may be intrinsically similar to that which draws me to you. Attraction and repulsion appear to be the primary forces. This is attraction.”
“And here is repulsion,” said Mrs. O’James, as a stout, florid lady came sweeping across the lawn in their direction. “So glad you have come out, Mrs. Esdaile! Here is Professor Grey.”
“How do you do, Professor?” said the lady, with some little pomposity of manner. “You were very wise to stay out here on so lovely a day. Is it not heavenly?”
“It is certainly very fine weather,” the Professor answered.
“Listen to the wind sighing in the trees!” cried Mrs. Esdaile, holding up one finger. “it is Nature’s lullaby. Could you not imagine it, Professor Grey, to be the whisperings of angels?”
“The idea had not occurred to me, madam.”
“Ah, Professor, I have always the same complaint against you. A want of rapport with the deeper meanings of nature. Shall I say a want of imagination. You do not feel an emotional thrill at the singing of that thrush?”
“I confess that I am not conscious of one, Mrs. Esdaile.”
“Or at the delicate tint of that background of leaves? See the rich greens!”
“Chlorophyll,” murmured the Professor.
“Science is so hopelessly prosaic. It dissects and labels, and loses sight of the great things in its attention to the little ones. You have a poor opinion of woman’s intellect, Professor Grey. I think that I have heard you say so.”
“It is a question of avoirdupois,” said the Professor, closing his eyes and shrugging his shoulders. “The female cerebrum averages two ounces less in weight than the male. No doubt there are exceptions. Nature is always elastic.”
“But the heaviest thing is not always the strongest,” said Mrs. O’James, laughing. “Isn’t there a law of compensation in science? May we not hope to make up in quality for what we lack in quantity?”
“I think not,” remarked the Professor, gravely. “But there is your luncheon-gong. No, thank you, Mrs. Esdaile, I cannot stay. My carriage is waiting. Good-bye. Good-bye, Mrs. O’James.”
He raised his hat and stalked slowly away among the laurel bushes.
“He has no taste,” said Mrs. Esdaile–” no eye for beauty.”
“On the contrary,” Mrs. O’James answered, with a saucy little jerk of the chin. “He has just asked me to be his wife.”
As Professor Ainslie Grey ascended the steps of his house, the hall-door opened and a dapper gentleman stepped briskly out. He was somewhat sallow in the face, with dark, beady eyes, and a short, black beard with an aggressive bristle. Thought and work had left their traces upon his face, but he moved with the brisk activity of a man who had not yet bade good-bye to his youth.
“I’m in luck’s way,” he cried. “I wanted to see you.”
“Then come back into the library,” said the Professor; “you must stay and have lunch with us.”
The two men entered the hall, and the Professor led the way into his private sanctum. He motioned his companion into an arm-chair.
“I trust that you have been successful, O’Brien,” said he. “I should be loath to exercise any undue pressure upon my sister Ada; but I have given her to understand that there is no one whom I should prefer for a brother-in-law to my most brilliant scholar, the author of Some Remarks upon the Bile-Pigments, with special reference to Urobilin.”
“You are very kind, Professor Grey–you have always been very kind,” said the other. “I approached Miss Grey upon the subject; she did not say No.”
“She said Yes, then?”
“No; she proposed to leave the matter open until my return from Edinburgh. I go to-day, as you know, and I hope to commence my research to-morrow.”
“On the comparative anatomy of the vermiform appendix, by James M`Murdo O’Brien,” said the Professor, sonorously. “It is a glorious subject–a subject which lies at the very root of evolutionary philosophy.”
“Ah! she is the dearest girl,” cried O’Brien, with a sudden little spurt of Celtic enthusiasm–“she is the soul of truth and of honour.”
“The vermiform appendix—-” began the Professor.
“She is an angel from heaven,” interrupted the other. “I fear that it is my advocacy of scientific freedom in religious thought which stands in my way with her.”
“You must not truckle upon that point. You must be true to your convictions; let there be no compromise there.”
“My reason is true to agnosticism, and yet I am conscious of a void–a vacuum. I had feelings at the old church at home between the scent of the incense and the roll of the organ, such as I have never experienced in the laboratory or the lecture-room.”
“Sensuous-purely sensuous,” said the Professor, rubbing his chin. “Vague hereditary tendencies stirred into life by the stimulation of the nasal and auditory nerves.”
“Maybe so, maybe so,” the younger man answered thoughtfully. “But this was not what I wished to speak to you about. Before I enter your family, your sister and you have a claim to know all that I can tell you about my career. Of my worldly prospects I have already spoken to you. There is only one point which I have omitted to mention. I am a widower.”
The Professor raised his eyebrows.
“This is news indeed,” said he.
“I married shortly after my arrival in Australia. Miss Thurston was her name. I met her in society. It was a most unhappy match.”
Some painful emotion possessed him. His quick, expressive features quivered, and his white hands tightened upon the arms of the chair. The Professor turned away towards the window.
“You are the best judge,” he remarked “but I should not think that it was necessary to go into details.”
“You have a right to know everything–you and Miss Grey. It is not a matter on which I can well speak to her direct. Poor Jinny was the best of women, but she was open to flattery, and liable to be misled by designing persons. She was untrue to me, Grey. It is a hard thing to say of the dead, but she was untrue to me. She fled to Auckland with a man whom she had known before her marriage. The brig which carried them foundered, and not a soul was saved.”
“This is very painful, O’Brien,” said the Professor, with a deprecatory motion of his hand. “I cannot see, however, how it affects your relation to my sister.”
“I have eased my conscience,” said O’Brien, rising from his chair; “I have told you all that there is to tell. I should not like the story to reach you through any lips but my own.”
“You are right, O’Brien. Your action has been most honourable and considerate. But you are not to blame in the matter, save that perhaps you showed a little precipitancy in choosing a life- partner without due care and inquiry.”
O’Brien drew his hand across his eyes.
“Poor girl!” he cried. “God help me, I love her still! But I must go.”
“You will lunch with us?”
“No, Professor; I have my packing still to do. I have already bade Miss Grey adieu. In two months I shall see you again.”
“You will probably find me a married man.”
“Married!”
“Yes, I have been thinking of it.”
“My dear Professor, let me congratulate you with all my heart. I had no idea. Who is the lady?”
“Mrs. O’James is her name–a widow of the same nationality as yourself. But to return to matters of importance, I should be very happy to see the proofs of your paper upon the vermiform appendix. I may be able to furnish you with material for a footnote or two.”
“Your assistance will be invaluable to me,” said O’Brien, with enthusiasm, and the two men parted in the hall. The Professor walked back into the dining- room, where his sister was already seated at the luncheon-table.
“I shall be married at the registrar’s,” he remarked; “I should strongly recommend you to do the same.”
Professor Ainslie Grey was as good as his word. A fortnight’s cessation of his classes gave him an opportunity which was too good to let pass. Mrs. O’James was an orphan, without relations and almost without friends in the country. There was no obstacle in the way of a speedy wedding. They were married, accordingly, in the quietest manner possible, and went off to Cambridge together, where the Professor and his charming wife were present at several academic observances, and varied the routine of their honeymoon by incursions into biological laboratories and medical libraries. Scientific friends were loud in their congratulations, not only upon Mrs. Grey’s beauty, but upon the unusual quickness and intelligence which she displayed in discussing physiological questions. The Professor was himself astonished at the accuracy of her information. “You have a remarkable range of knowledge for a woman, Jeannette,” he remarked upon more than one occasion. He was even prepared to admit that her cerebrum might be of the normal weight.
One foggy, drizzling morning they returned to Birchespool, for the next day would re-open the session, and Professor Ainslie Grey prided himself upon having never once in his life failed to appear in his lecture-room at the very stroke of the hour. Miss Ada Grey welcomed them with a constrained cordiality, and handed over the keys of office to the new mistress. Mrs. Grey pressed her warmly to remain, but she explained that she had already accepted an invitation which would engage her for some months. The same evening she departed for the south of England.
A couple of days later the maid carried a card just after breakfast into the library where the Professor sat revising his morning lecture. It announced the re-arrival of Dr. James M`Murdo O’Brien. Their meeting was effusively genial on the part of the younger man, and coldly precise on that of his former teacher.
“You see there have been changes,” said the Professor.
“So I heard. Miss Grey told me in her letters, and I read the notice in the British Medical Journal. So it’s really married you are. How quickly and quietly you have managed it all!”
“I am constitutionally averse to anything in the nature of show or ceremony. My wife is a sensible woman–I may even go the length of saying that, for a woman, she is abnormally sensible. She quite agreed with me in the course which I have adopted.”
“And your research on Vallisneria?”
“This matrimonial incident has interrupted it, but I have resumed my classes, and we shall soon be quite in harness again.”
“I must see Miss Grey before I leave England. We have corresponded, and I think that all will be well. She must come out with me. I don’t think I could go without her.”
The Professor shook his head.
“Your nature is not so weak as you pretend,” he said. “Questions of this sort are, after all, quite subordinate to the great duties of life.”
O’Brien smiled.
“You would have me take out my Celtic soul and put in a Saxon one,” he said. “Either my brain is too small or my heart is too big. But when may I call and pay my respects to Mrs. Grey? Will she be at home this afternoon?”
“She is at home now. Come into the morning-room. She will be glad to make your acquaintance.”
They walked across the linoleum-paved hall. The Professor opened the door of the room, and walked in, followed by his friend. Mrs. Grey was sitting in a basket-chair by the window, light and fairy-like in a loose-flowing, pink morning-gown. Seeing a visitor, she rose and swept towards them. The Professor heard a dull thud behind him. O’Brien had fallen back into a chair, with his hand pressed tight to his side.
“Jinny!” he gasped–“Jinny!”
Mrs. Grey stopped dead in her advance, and stared at him with a face from which every expression had been struck out, save one of astonishment and horror. Then with a sharp intaking of the breath she reeled, and would have fallen had the Professor not thrown his long, nervous arm round her.
“Try this sofa,” said he.
She sank back among the cushions with the same white, cold, dead look upon her face. The Professor stood with his back to the empty fireplace and glanced from the one to the other.
“So, O’Brien,” he said at last, “you have already made the acquaintance of my wife!”
“Your wife, ” cried his friend hoarsely. “She is no wife of yours. God help me, she is MY wife.”
The Professor stood rigidly upon the hearthrug. His long, thin fingers were intertwined, and his head sunk a little forward. His two companions had eyes only for each other.
“Jinny!” said he.
“James!”
“How could you leave me so, Jinny? How could you have the heart to do it? I thought you were dead. I mourned for your death–ay, and you have made me mourn for you living. You have withered my life.”
She made no answer, but lay back among her cushions with her eyes still fixed upon him.
“Why do you not speak?”
“Because you are right, James. I HAVE treated you cruelly–shamefully. But it is not as bad as you think.”
“You fled with De Horta.”
“No, I did not. At the last moment my better nature prevailed. He went alone. But I was ashamed to come back after what I had written to you. I could not face you. I took passage alone to England under a new name, and here I have lived ever since. It seemed to me that I was beginning life again. I knew that you thought I was drowned. Who could have dreamed that fate would throw us together again! When the Professor asked me—-“
She stopped and gave a gasp for breath.
“You are faint,” said the Professor–“keep the head low; it aids the cerebral circulation.” He flattened down the cushion. “I am sorry to leave you, O’Brien; but I have my class duties to look to. Possibly I may find you here when I return.”
With a grim and rigid face he strode out of the room. Not one of the three hundred students who listened to his lecture saw any change in his manner and appearance, or could have guessed that the austere gentleman in front of them had found out at last how hard it is to rise above one’s humanity. The lecture over, he performed his routine duties in the laboratory, and then drove back to his own house. He did not enter by the front door, but passed through the garden to the folding glass casement which led out of the morning-room. As he approached he heard his wife’s voice and O’Brien’s in loud and animated talk. He paused among the rose-bushes, uncertain whether to interrupt them or no. Nothing was further from his nature than play the eavesdropper; but as he stood, still hesitating, words fell upon his ear which struck him rigid and motionless.
“You are still my wife, Jinny,” said O’Brien; “I forgive you from the bottom of my heart. I love you, and I have never ceased to love you, though you had forgotten me.”
“No, James, my heart was always in Melbourne. I have always been yours. I thought that it was better for you that I should seem to be dead.”
“You must choose between us now, Jinny. If you determine to remain here, I shall not open my lips. There shall be no scandal. If, on the other hand, you come with me, it’s little I care about the world’s opinion. Perhaps I am as much to blame as you. I thought too much of my work and too little of my wife.”
The Professor heard the cooing, caressing laugh which he knew so well.
“I shall go with you, James,” she said.
“And the Professor—-?”
“The poor Professor! But he will not mind much, James; he has no heart.”
“We must tell him our resolution.”
“There is no need,” said Professor Ainslie Grey, stepping in through the open casement. “I have overheard the latter part of your conversation. I hesitated to interrupt you before you came to a conclusion.”
O’Brien stretched out his hand and took that of the woman. They stood together with the sunshine on their faces. The Professor paused at the casement with his hands behind his back, and his long black shadow fell between them.
“You have come to a wise decision,” said he. “Go back to Australia together, and let what has passed be blotted out of your lives.”
“But you–you—-” stammered O’Brien.
The Professor waved his hand.
“Never trouble about me,” he said.
The woman gave a gasping cry.
“What can I do or say?” she wailed. “How could I have foreseen this? I thought my old life was dead. But it has come back again, with all its hopes and its desires. What can I say to you, Ainslie? I have brought shame and disgrace upon a worthy man. I have blasted your life. How you must hate and loathe me! I wish to God that I had never been born!”
“I neither hate nor loathe you, Jeannette,” said the Professor, quietly. “You are wrong in regretting your birth, for you have a worthy mission before you in aiding the life-work of a man who has shown himself capable of the highest order of scientific research. I cannot with justice blame you personally for what has occurred. How far the individual monad is to be held responsible for hereditary and engrained tendencies, is a question upon which science has not yet said her last word.”
He stood with his finger-tips touching, and his body inclined as one who is gravely expounding a difficult and impersonal subject. O’Brien had stepped forward to say something, but the other’s attitude and manner froze the words upon his lips. Condolence or sympathy would be an impertinence to one who could so easily merge his private griefs in broad questions of abstract philosophy.
“It is needless to prolong the situation,” the Professor continued, in the same measured tones. “My brougham stands at the door. I beg that you will use it as your own. Perhaps it would be as well that you should leave the town without unnecessary delay. Your things, Jeannette, shall be forwarded.”
O’Brien hesitated with a hanging head.
“I hardly dare offer you my hand,” he said.
“On the contrary. I think that of the three of us you come best out of the affair. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Your sister—-“
“I shall see that the matter is put to her in its true light. Good-bye! Let me have a copy of your recent research. Good-bye, Jeannette!”
“Good-bye!”
Their hands met, and for one short moment their eyes also. It was only a glance, but for the first and last time the woman’s intuition cast a light for itself into the dark places of a strong man’s soul. She gave a little gasp, and her other hand rested for an instant, as white and as light as thistle-down, upon his shoulder.
“James, James!” she cried. “Don’t you see that he is stricken to the heart?”
He turned her quietly away from him.
“I am not an emotional man,” he said. “I have my duties–my research on Vallisneria. The brougham is there. Your cloak is in the hall. Tell John where you wish to be driven. He will bring you anything you need. Now go.”
His last two words were so sudden, so volcanic, in such contrast to his measured voice and mask- like face, that they swept the two away from him. He closed the door behind them and paced slowly up and down the room. Then he passed into the library and looked out over the wire blind. The carriage was rolling away. He caught a last glimpse of the woman who had been his wife. He saw the feminine droop of her head, and the curve of her beautiful throat.
Under some foolish, aimless impulse, he took a few quick steps towards the door. Then he turned, and throwing himself into his study-chair he plunged back into his work.
There was little scandal about this singular domestic incident. The Professor had few personal friends, and seldom went into society. His marriage had been so quiet that most of his colleagues had never ceased to regard him as a bachelor. Mrs. Esdaile and a few others might talk, but their field for gossip was limited, for they could only guess vaguely at the cause of this sudden separation.
The Professor was as punctual as ever at his classes, and as zealous in directing the laboratory work of those who studied under him. His own private researches were pushed on with feverish energy. It was no uncommon thing for his servants, when they came down of a morning, to hear the shrill scratchings of his tireless pen, or to meet him on the staircase as he ascended, grey and silent, to his room. In vain his friends assured him that such a life must undermine his health. He lengthened his hours until day and night were one long, ceaseless task.
Gradually under this discipline a change came over his appearance. His features, always inclined to gauntness, became even sharper and more pronounced. There were deep lines about his temples and across his brow. His cheek was sunken and his complexion bloodless. His knees gave under him when he walked; and once when passing out of his lecture- room he fell and had to be assisted to his carriage.
This was just before the end of the session and soon after the holidays commenced the professors who still remained in Birchespool were shocked to hear that their brother of the chair of physiology had sunk so low that no hopes could be entertained of his recovery. Two eminent physicians had consulted over his case without being able to give a name to the affection from which he suffered. A steadily decreasing vitality appeared to be the only symptom– a bodily weakness which left the mind unclouded. He was much interested himself in his own case, and made notes of his subjective sensations as an aid to diagnosis. Of his approaching end he spoke in his usual unemotional and somewhat pedantic fashion. “It is the assertion,” he said, “of the liberty of the individual cell as opposed to the cell-commune. It is the dissolution of a co-operative society. The process is one of great interest.”
And so one grey morning his co-operative society dissolved. Very quietly and softly he sank into his eternal sleep. His two physicians felt some slight embarrassment when called upon to fill in his certificate.
“It is difficult to give it a name,” said one.
“Very,” said the other.
“If he were not such an unemotional man, I should have said that he had died from some sudden nervous shock–from, in fact, what the vulgar would call a broken heart.”
“I don’t think poor Grey was that sort of a man at all.”
“Let us call it cardiac, anyhow,” said the older physician.
So they did so.
THE CASE OF LADY SANNOX.
The relations between Douglas Stone and the notorious Lady Sannox were very well known both among the fashionable circles of which she was a brilliant member, and the scientific bodies which numbered him among their most illustrious confreres. There was naturally, therefore, a very widespread interest when it was announced one morning that the lady had absolutely and for ever taken the veil, and that the world would see her no more. When, at the very tail of this rumour, there came the assurance that the celebrated operating surgeon, the man of steel nerves, had been found in the morning by his valet, seated on one side of his bed, smiling pleasantly upon the universe, with both legs jammed into one side of his breeches and his great brain about as valuable as a cap full of porridge, the matter was strong enough to give quite a little thrill of interest to folk who had never hoped that their jaded nerves were capable of such a sensation.
Douglas Stone in his prime was one of the most remarkable men in England. Indeed, he could hardly be said to have ever reached his prime, for he was but nine-and-thirty at the time of this little incident. Those who knew him best were aware that, famous as he was as a surgeon, he might have succeeded with even greater rapidity in any of a dozen lines of life. He could have cut his way to fame as a soldier, struggled to it as an explorer, bullied for it in the courts, or built it out of stone and iron as an engineer. He was born to be great, for he could plan what another man dare not do, and he could do what another man dare not plan. In surgery none could follow him. His nerve, his judgment, his intuition, were things apart. Again and again his knife cut away death, but grazed the very springs of life in doing it, until his assistants were as white as the patient. His energy, his audacity, his full-blooded self-confidence–does not the memory of them still linger to the south of Marylebone Road and the north of Oxford Street?
His vices were as magnificent as his virtues, and infinitely more picturesque. Large as was his income, and it was the third largest of all professional men in London, it was far beneath the luxury of his living. Deep in his complex nature lay a rich vein of sensualism, at the sport of which he placed all the prizes of his life. The eye, the ear, the touch, the palate–all were his masters. The bouquet of old vintages, the scent of rare exotics, the curves and tints of the daintiest potteries of Europe–it was to these that the quick- running stream of gold was transformed. And then there came his sudden mad passion for Lady Sannox, when a single interview with two challenging glances and a whispered word set him ablaze. She was the loveliest woman in London, and the only one to him. He was one of the handsomest men in London, but not the only one to her. She had a liking for new experiences, and was gracious to most men who wooed her. It may have been cause or it may have been effect that Lord Sannox looked fifty, though he was but six-and-thirty.
He was a quiet, silent, neutral-tinted man, this lord, with thin lips and heavy eyelids, much given to gardening, and full of home-like habits. He had at one time been fond of acting, had even rented a theatre in London, and on its boards had first seen Miss Marion Dawson, to whom he had offered his hand, his title, and the third of a county. Since his marriage this early hobby had become distasteful to him. Even in private theatricals it was no longer possible to persuade him to exercise the talent which he had often shown that he possessed. He was happier with a spud and a watering-can among his orchids and chrysanthemums.
It was quite an interesting problem whether he was absolutely devoid of sense, or miserably wanting in spirit. Did he know his lady’s ways and condone them, or was he a mere blind, doting fool? It was a point to be discussed over the teacups in snug little drawing-rooms, or with the aid of a cigar in the bow windows of clubs. Bitter and plain were the comments among men upon his conduct. There was but one who had a good word to say for him, and he was the most silent member in the smoking-room. He had seen him break in a horse at the university, and it seemed to have left an impression upon his mind.
But when Douglas Stone became the favourite, all doubts as to Lord Sannox’s knowledge or ignorance were set for ever at rest. There, was no subterfuge about Stone. In his high-handed, impetuous fashion, he set all caution and discretion at defiance. The scandal became notorious. A learned body intimated that his name had been struck from the list of its vice-presidents. Two friends implored him to consider his professional credit. He cursed them all three, and spent forty guineas on a bangle to take with him to the lady. He was at her house every evening, and she drove in his carriage in the afternoons. There was not an attempt on either side to conceal their relations; but there came at last a little incident to interrupt them.
It was a dismal winter’s night, very cold and gusty, with the wind whooping in the chimneys and blustering against the window-panes. A thin spatter of rain tinkled on the glass with each fresh sough of the gale, drowning for the instant the dull gurgle and drip from the eves. Douglas Stone had finished his dinner, and sat by his fire in the study, a glass of rich port upon the malachite table at his elbow. As he raised it to his lips, he held it up against the lamplight, and watched with the eye of a connoisseur the tiny scales of beeswing which floated in its rich ruby depths. The fire, as it spurted up, threw fitful lights upon his bold, clear-cut face, with its widely-opened grey eyes, its thick and yet firm lips, and the deep, square jaw, which had something Roman in its strength and its animalism. He smiled from time to time as he nestled back in his luxurious chair. Indeed, he had a right to feel well pleased, for, against the advice of six colleagues, he had performed an operation that day of which only two cases were on record, and the result had been brilliant beyond all expectation. No other man in London would have had the daring to plan, or the skill to execute, such a heroic measure.
But he had promised Lady Sannox to see her that evening and it was already half-past eight. His hand was outstretched to the bell to order the carriage when he heard the dull thud of the knocker. An instant later there was the shuffling of feet in the hall, and the sharp closing of a door.
“A patient to see you, sir, in the consulting- room, said the butler.
“About himself?”
“No, sir; I think he wants you to go out.”
“It is too late, cried Douglas Stone peevishly. “I won’t go.”
“This is his card, sir.”
The butler presented it upon the gold salver which had been given to his master by the wife of a Prime Minister.
“`Hamil Ali, Smyrna.’ Hum! The fellow is a Turk, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir. He seems as if he came from abroad, sir. And he’s in a terrible way.”
“Tut, tut! I have an engagement. I must go somewhere else. But I’ll see him. Show him in here, Pim.”
A few moments later the butler swung open the door and ushered in a small and decrepit man, who walked with a bent back and with the forward push of the face and blink of the eyes which goes with extreme short sight. His face was swarthy, and his hair and beard of the deepest black. In one hand he held a turban of white muslin striped with red, in the other a small chamois leather bag.
“Good-evening,” said Douglas Stone, when the butler had closed the door. “You speak English, I presume?”
“Yes, sir. I am from Asia Minor, but I speak English when I speak slow.”
“You wanted me to go out, I understand?”
“Yes, sir. I wanted very much that you should see my wife.”
“I could come in the morning, but I have an engagement which prevents me from seeing your wife to-night.”
The Turk’s answer was a singular one. He pulled the string which closed the mouth of the chamois leather bag, and poured a flood of gold on to the table.
“There are one hundred pounds there,” said he, “and I promise you that it will not take you an hour. I have a cab ready at the door.”
Douglas Stone glanced at his watch. An hour would not make it too late to visit Lady Sannox. He had been there later. And the fee was an extraordinarily high one. He had been pressed by his creditors lately, and he could not afford to let such a chance pass. He would go.
“What is the case?” he asked.
“Oh, it is so sad a one! So sad a one! You have not, perhaps, heard of the daggers of the Almohades?”
“Never.”
“Ah, they are Eastern daggers of a great age and of a singular shape, with the hilt like what you call a stirrup. I am a curiosity dealer, you understand, and that is why I have come to England from Smyrna, but next week I go back once more. Many things I brought with me, and I have a few things left, but among them, to my sorrow, is one of these daggers.”
“You will remember that I have an appointment, sir,” said the surgeon, with some irritation. “Pray confine yourself to the necessary details.”
“You will see that it is necessary. To-day my wife fell down in a faint in the room in which I keep my wares, and she cut her lower lip upon this cursed dagger of Almohades.”
“I see,” said Douglas Stone, rising. “And you wish me to dress the wound? “
“No, no, it is worse than that.”
“What then?”
“These daggers are poisoned.”
“Poisoned!”
“Yes, and there is no man, East or West, who can tell now what is the poison or what the cure. But all that is known I know, for my father was in this trade before me, and we have had much to do with these poisoned weapons.”
“What are the symptoms?”
“Deep sleep, and death in thirty hours.”
“And you say there is no cure. Why then should you pay me this considerable fee?”
“No drug can cure, but the knife may.”
“And how?”
“The poison is slow of absorption. It remains for hours in the wound.”
“Washing, then, might cleanse it?”
“No more than in a snake-bite. It is too subtle and too deadly.”
“Excision of the wound, then?”
“That is it. If it be on the finger, take the finger off. So said my father always. But think of where this wound is, and that it is my wife. It is dreadful!”
But familiarity with such grim matters may take the finer edge from a man’s sympathy. To Douglas Stone this was already an interesting case, and he brushed aside as irrelevant the feeble objections of the husband.
“It appears to be that or nothing,” said he brusquely. It is better to lose a lip than a life.”
“Ah, yes, I know that you are right. Well, well, it is kismet, and must be faced. I have the cab, and you will come with me and do this thing.”
Douglas Stone took his case of bistouries from a drawer, and placed it with a roll of bandage and a compress of lint in his pocket. He must waste no more time if he were to see Lady Sannox.
“I am ready,” said he, pulling on his overcoat. Will you take a glass of wine before you go out into this cold air?”
His visitor shrank away, with a protesting hand upraised.
“You forget that I am a Mussulman, and a true follower of the Prophet,” said he. “But tell me what is the bottle of green glass which you have placed in your pocket?”
“It is chloroform.”
“Ah, that also is forbidden to us. It is a spirit, and we make no use of such things.”
“What! You would allow your wife to go through an operation without an anaesthetic?”
“Ah! she will feel nothing, poor soul. The deep sleep has already come on, which is the first working of the poison. And then I have given her of our Smyrna opium. Come, sir, for already an hour has passed.”
As they stepped out into the darkness, a sheet of rain was driven in upon their faces, and the hall lamp, which dangled from the arm of a marble caryatid, went out with a fluff. Pim, the butler, pushed the heavy door to, straining hard with his shoulder against the wind, while the two men groped their way towards the yellow glare which showed where the cab was waiting. An instant later they were rattling upon their journey.
“Is it far?” asked Douglas Stone.
“Oh, no. We have a very little quiet place off the Euston Road.”
The surgeon pressed the spring of his repeater and listened to the little tings which told him the hour. It was a quarter past nine. He calculated the distances, and the short time which it would take him to perform so trivial an operation. He ought to reach Lady Sannox by ten o’clock. Through the fogged windows he saw the blurred gas-lamps dancing past, with occasionally the broader glare of a shop front. The rain was pelting and rattling upon the leathern top of the carriage and the wheels swashed as they rolled through puddle and mud. Opposite to him the white headgear of his companion gleamed faintly through the obscurity. The surgeon felt in his pockets and arranged his needles, his ligatures and his safety-pins, that no time might be wasted when they arrived. He chafed with impatience and drummed his foot upon the floor.
But the cab slowed down at last and pulled up. In an instant Douglas Stone was out, and the Smyrna merchant’s toe was at his very heel.
“You can wait,” said he to the driver.
It was a mean-looking house in a narrow and sordid street. The surgeon, who knew his London well, cast a swift glance into the shadows, but there was nothing distinctive–no shop, no movement, nothing but a double line of dull, flat-faced houses, a double stretch of wet flagstones which gleamed in the lamplight, and a double rush of water in the gutters which swirled and gurgled towards the sewer gratings. The door which faced them was blotched and discoloured, and a faint light in the fan pane above it served to show the dust and the grime which covered it. Above, in one of the bedroom windows, there was a dull yellow glimmer. The merchant knocked loudly, and, as he turned his dark face towards the light, Douglas Stone could see that it was contracted with anxiety. A bolt was drawn, and an elderly woman with a taper stood in the doorway, shielding the thin flame with her gnarled hand.
“Is all well?” gasped the merchant.
“She is as you left her, sir.”
“She has not spoken?”
“No; she is in a deep sleep.”
The merchant closed the door, and Douglas Stone walked down the narrow passage, glancing about him in some surprise as he did so. There was no oilcloth, no mat, no hat-rack. Deep grey dust and heavy festoons of cobwebs met his eyes everywhere. Following the old woman up the winding stair, his firm footfall echoed harshly through the silent house. There was no carpet.
The bedroom was on the second landing. Douglas Stone followed the old nurse into it, with the merchant at his heels. Here, at least, there was furniture and to spare. The floor was littered and the corners piled with Turkish cabinets, inlaid tables, coats of chain mail, strange pipes, and grotesque weapons. A single small lamp stood upon a bracket on the wall. Douglas Stone took it down, and picking his way among the lumber, walked over to a couch in the corner, on which lay a woman dressed in the Turkish fashion, with yashmak and veil. The lower part of the face was exposed, and the surgeon saw a jagged cut which zigzagged along the border of the under lip.
“You will forgive the yashmak,” said the Turk. “You know our views about woman in the East.”
But the surgeon was not thinking about the yashmak. This was no longer a woman to him. It was a case. He stooped and examined the wound carefully.
“There are no signs of irritation,” said he. “We might delay the operation until local symptoms develop.”
The husband wrung his hands in incontrollable agitation.
“Oh! sir, sir!” he cried. “Do not trifle. You do not know. It is deadly. I know, and I give you my assurance that an operation is absolutely necessary. Only the knife can save her.”
“And yet I am inclined to wait,” said Douglas Stone.
“That is enough!” the Turk cried, angrily. “Every minute is of importance, and I cannot stand here and see my wife allowed to sink. It only remains for me to give you my thanks for having come, and to call in some other surgeon before it is too late.”
Douglas Stone hesitated. To refund that hundred pounds was no pleasant matter. But of course if he left the case he must return the money. And if the Turk were right and the woman died, his position before a coroner might be an embarrassing one.
“You have had personal experience of this poison?” he asked.
“I have.”
“And you assure me that an operation is needful.”
“I swear it by all that I hold sacred.”
“The disfigurement will be frightful.”
“I can understand that the mouth will not be a pretty one to kiss.”
Douglas Stone turned fiercely upon the man. The speech was a brutal one. But the Turk has his own fashion of talk and of thought, and there was no time for wrangling. Douglas Stone drew a bistoury from his case, opened it and felt the keen straight edge with his forefinger. Then he held the lamp closer to the bed. Two dark eyes were gazing up at him through the slit in the yashmak. They were all iris, and the pupil was hardly to be seen.
“You have given her a very heavy dose of opium.”
“Yes, she has had a good dose.”
He glanced again at the dark eyes which looked straight at his own. They were dull and lustreless, but, even as he gazed, a little shifting sparkle came into them, and the lips quivered.
“She is not absolutely unconscious,” said he.
“Would it not be well to use the knife while it would be painless?”
The same thought had crossed the surgeon’s mind. He grasped the wounded lip with his forceps, and with two swift cuts he took out a broad V-shaped piece. The woman sprang up on the couch with a dreadful gurgling scream. Her covering was torn from her face. It was a face that he knew. In spite of that protruding upper lip and that slobber of blood, it was a face that he knew. She kept on putting her hand up to the gap and screaming. Douglas Stone sat down at the foot of the couch with his knife and his forceps. The room was whirling round, and he had felt something go like a ripping seam behind his ear. A bystander would have said that his face was the more ghastly of the two. As in a dream, or as if he had been looking at something at the play, he was conscious that the Turk’s hair and beard lay upon the table, and that Lord Sannox was leaning against the wall with his hand to his side, laughing silently. The screams had died away now, and the dreadful head had dropped back again upon the pillow, but Douglas Stone still sat motionless, and Lord Sannox still chuckled quietly to himself.
“It was really very necessary for Marion, this operation,” said he, “not physically, but morally, you know, morally.”
Douglas Stone stooped forwards and began to play with the fringe of the coverlet. His knife tinkled down upon the ground, but he still held the forceps and something more.
“I had long intended to make a little example,” said Lord Sannox, suavely. “Your note of Wednesday miscarried, and I have it here in my pocket-book. I took some pains in carrying out my idea. The wound, by the way, was from nothing more dangerous than my signet ring.”
He glanced keenly at his silent companion, and cocked the small revolver which he held in his coat pocket. But Douglas Stone was still picking at the coverlet.
“You see you have kept your appointment after all,” said Lord Sannox.
And at that Douglas Stone began to laugh. He laughed long and loudly. But Lord Sannox did not laugh now. Something like fear sharpened and hardened his features. He walked from the room, and he walked on tiptoe. The old woman was waiting outside.
“Attend to your mistress when she awakes,” said Lord Sannox.
Then he went down to the street. The cab was at the door, and the driver raised his hand to his hat.
“John,” said Lord Sannox, “you will take the doctor home first. He will want leading downstairs, I think. Tell his butler that he has been taken ill at a case.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Then you can take Lady Sannox home.”
“And how about yourself, sir?”
“Oh, my address for the next few months will be Hotel di Roma, Venice. Just see that the letters are sent on. And tell Stevens to exhibit all the purple chrysanthemums next Monday and to wire me the result.”
A QUESTION OF DIPLOMACY.
The Foreign Minister was down with the gout. For a week he had been confined to the house, and he had missed two Cabinet Councils at a time when the pressure upon his department was severe. It is true that he had an excellent undersecretary and an admirable staff, but the Minister was a man of such ripe experience and of such proven sagacity that things halted in his absence. When his firm hand was at the wheel the great ship of State rode easily and smoothly upon her way; when it was removed she yawed and staggered until twelve British editors rose up in their omniscience and traced out twelve several courses, each of which was the sole and only path to safety. Then it was that the Opposition said vain things, and that the harassed Prime Minister prayed for his absent colleague.
The Foreign Minister sat in his dressing-room in the great house in Cavendish Square. It was May, and the square garden shot up like a veil of green in front of his window, but, in spite of the sunshine, a fire crackled and sputtered in the grate of the sick-room. In a deep-red plush armchair sat the great statesman, his head leaning back upon a silken pillow, one foot stretched forward and supported upon a padded rest. His deeply-lined, finely-chiselled face and slow-moving, heavily- pouched eyes were turned upwards towards the carved and painted ceiling, with that inscrutable expression which had been the despair and the admiration of his Continental colleagues upon the occasion of the famous Congress when he had made his first appearance in the arena of European diplomacy. Yet at the present moment his capacity for hiding his emotions had for the instant failed him, for about the lines of his strong, straight mouth and the puckers of his broad, overhanging forehead, there were sufficient indications of the restlessness and impatience which consumed him.
And indeed there was enough to make a man chafe, for he had much to think of and yet was bereft of the power of thought. There was, for example, that question of the Dobrutscha and the navigation of the mouths of the Danube which was ripe for settlement. The Russian Chancellor had sent a masterly statement upon the subject, and it was the pet ambition of our Minister to answer it in a worthy fashion. Then there was the blockade of Crete, and the British fleet lying off Cape Matapan, waiting for instructions which might change the course of European history. And there were those three unfortunate Macedonian tourists, whose friends were momentarily expecting to receive their ears or their fingers in default of the exorbitant ransom which had been demanded. They must be plucked out of those mountains, by force or by diplomacy, or an outraged public would vent its wrath upon Downing Street. All these questions pressed for a solution, and yet here was the Foreign Minister of England, planted in an arm-chair, with his whole thoughts and attention riveted upon the ball of his right toe! It was humiliating–horribly humiliating! His reason revolted at it. He had been a respecter of himself, a respecter of his own will; but what sort of a machine was it which could be utterly thrown out of gear by a little piece of inflamed gristle? He groaned and writhed among his cushions.
But, after all, was it quite impossible that he should go down to the House? Perhaps the doctor was exaggerating the situation. There was a Cabinet Council that day. He glanced at his watch. It must be nearly over by now. But at least he might perhaps venture to drive down as far as Westminster. He pushed back the little round table with its bristle of medicine-bottles, and levering himself up with a hand upon either arm of the chair, he clutched a thick oak stick and hobbled slowly across the room. For a moment as he moved, his energy of mind and body seemed to return to him. The British fleet should sail from Matapan. Pressure should be brought to bear upon the Turks. The Greeks should be shown–Ow! In an instant the Mediterranean was blotted out, and nothing remained but that huge, undeniable, intrusive, red-hot toe. He staggered to the window and rested his left hand upon the ledge, while he propped himself upon his stick with his right. Outside lay the bright, cool, square garden, a few well-dressed passers-by, and a single, neatly- appointed carriage, which was driving away from his own door. His quick eye caught the coat-of-arms on the panel, and his lips set for a moment and his bushy eyebrows gathered ominously with a deep furrow between them. He hobbled back to his seat and struck the gong which stood upon the table.
“Your mistress!” said he as the serving-man entered.
It was clear that it was impossible to think of going to the House. The shooting up his leg warned him that his doctor had not overestimated the situation. But he had a little mental worry now which had for the moment eclipsed his physical ailments. He tapped the ground impatiently with his stick until the door of the dressing-room swung open, and a tall, elegant lady of rather more than middle age swept into the chamber. Her hair was touched with grey, but her calm, sweet face had all the freshness of youth, and her gown of green shot plush, with a sparkle of gold passementerie at her bosom and shoulders, showed off the lines of her fine figure to their best advantage.
“You sent for me, Charles?”
“Whose carriage was that which drove away just now?”
“Oh, you’ve been up!” she cried, shaking an admonitory forefinger. “What an old dear it is! How can you be so rash? What am I to say to Sir William when he comes? You know that he gives up his cases when they are insubordinate.”
“In this instance the case may give him up,” said the Minister, peevishly; “but I must beg, Clara, that you will answer my question.”
“Oh! the carriage! It must have been Lord Arthur Sibthorpe’s.”
“I saw the three chevrons upon the panel,” muttered the invalid.
His lady had pulled herself a little straighter and opened her large blue eyes.
“Then why ask?” she said. “One might almost think, Charles, that you were laying a trap! Did you expect that I should deceive you? You have not had your lithia powder.”
“For Heaven’s sake, leave it alone! I asked because I was surprised that Lord Arthur should call here. I should have fancied, Clara, that I had made myself sufficiently clear on that point. Who received him?”
“I did. That is, I and Ida.”
“I will not have him brought into contact with Ida. I do not approve of it. The matter has gone too far already.”
Lady Clara seated herself on a velvet-topped footstool, and bent her stately figure over the Minister’s hand, which she patted softly between her own.
“Now you have said it, Charles,” said she. “It has gone too far–I give you my word, dear, that I never suspected it until it was past all mending. I may be to blame–no doubt I am; but it was all so sudden. The tail end of the season and a week at Lord Donnythorne’s. That was all. But oh! Charlie, she loves him so, and she is our only one! How can we make her miserable?”
“Tut, tut!” cried the Minister impatiently, slapping on the plush arm of his chair. “This is too much. I tell you, Clara, I give you my word, that all my official duties, all the affairs of this great empire, do not give me the trouble that Ida does.”
“But she is our only one, Charles.”
“The more reason that she should not make a mesalliance.”
“Mesalliance, Charles! Lord Arthur
Sibthorpe, son of the Duke of Tavistock, with a pedigree from the Heptarchy. Debrett takes them right back to Morcar, Earl of Northumberland.”
The Minister shrugged his shoulders.
“Lord Arthur is the fourth son of the poorest duke in England,” said he. “He has neither prospects nor profession.”
“But, oh! Charlie, you could find him both.”
“I do not like him. I do not care for the connection.”
“But consider Ida! You know how frail her health is. Her whole soul is set upon him. You would not have the heart, Charles, to separate them?”
There was a tap at the door. Lady Clara swept towards it and threw it open.
“Yes, Thomas?”
“If you please, my lady, the Prime Minister is below.”
“Show him up, Thomas.”
“Now, Charlie, you must not excite yourself over public matters. Be very good and cool and reasonable, like a darling. I am sure that I may trust you.”
She threw her light shawl round the invalid’s shoulders, and slipped away into the bed-room as the great man was ushered in at the door of the dressing-room.
“My dear Charles,” said he cordially, stepping into the room with all the boyish briskness for which he was famous, “I trust that you find yourself a little better. Almost ready for harness, eh? We miss you sadly, both in the House and in the Council. Quite a storm brewing over this Grecian business. The Times took a nasty line this morning.”
“So I saw,” said the invalid, smiling up at his chief. “Well, well, we must let them see that the country is not entirely ruled from Printing House Square yet. We must keep our own course without faltering.”
“Certainly, Charles, most undoubtedly,” assented the Prime Minister, with his hands in his pockets.
“It was so kind of you to call. I am all impatience to know what was done in the Council.”
“Pure formalities, nothing more. By-the-way, the Macedonian prisoners are all right.”
“Thank Goodness for that! “
“We adjourned all other business until we should have you with us next week. The question of a dissolution begins to press. The reports from the provinces are excellent.”
The Foreign Minister moved impatiently and groaned.
“We must really straighten up our foreign business a little,” said he. “I must get Novikoff’s Note answered. It is clever, but the fallacies are obvious. I wish, too, we could clear up the Afghan frontier. This illness is most exasperating. There is so much to be done, but my brain is clouded. Sometimes I think it is the gout, and sometimes I put it down to the colchicum.”
“What will our medical autocrat say?” laughed the Prime Minister. “You are so irreverent, Charles. With a bishop one may feel at one’s ease. They are not beyond the reach of argument. But a doctor with his stethoscope and thermometer is a thing apart. Your reading does not impinge upon him. He is serenely above you. And then, of course, he takes you at a disadvantage. With health and strength one might cope with him. Have you read Hahnemann? What are your views upon Hahnemann?”
The invalid knew his illustrious colleague too well to follow him down any of those by-paths of knowledge in which he delighted to wander. To his intensely shrewd and practical mind there was something repellent in the waste of energy involved in a discussion upon the Early Church or the twenty- seven principles of Mesmer. It was his custom to slip past such conversational openings with a quick step and an averted face.
“I have hardly glanced at his writings,” said he. “By-the-way, I suppose that there was no special departmental news?”
“Ah! I had almost forgotten. Yes, it was one of the things which I had called to tell you. Sir Algernon Jones has resigned at Tangier. There is a vacancy there.”
“It had better be filled at once. The longer delay the more applicants.”
“Ah, patronage, patronage!” sighed the Prime Minister. “Every vacancy makes one doubtful friend and a dozen very positive enemies. Who so bitter as the disappointed place-seeker? But you are right, Charles. Better fill it at once, especially as there is some little trouble in Morocco. I understand that the Duke of Tavistock would like the place for his fourth son, Lord Arthur Sibthorpe. We are under some obligation to the Duke.”
The Foreign Minister sat up eagerly.
“My dear friend,” he said, “it is the very appointment which I should have suggested. Lord Arthur would be very much better in Tangier at present than in–in—-“
“Cavendish Square?” hazarded his chief, with a little arch query of his eyebrows.
“Well, let us say London. He has manner and tact. He was at Constantinople in Norton’s time.”
“Then he talks Arabic?”
“A smattering. But his French is good.”
“Speaking of Arabic, Charles, have you dipped into Averroes?”
“No, I have not. But the appointment would be an excellent one in every way. Would you have the great goodness to arrange the matter in my absence?”
“Certainly, Charles, certainly. Is there anything else that I can do?”
“No. I hope to be in the House by Monday.”
“I trust so. We miss you at every turn. The Times will try to make mischief over that Grecian business. A leader-writer is a terribly
irresponsible thing, Charles. There is no method by which he may be confuted, however preposterous his assertions. Good-bye! Read Porson! Goodbye!”
He shook the invalid’s hand, gave a jaunty wave of his broad-brimmed hat, and darted out of the room with the same elasticity and energy with which he had entered it.
The footman had already opened the great folding door to usher the illustrious visitor to his carriage, when a lady stepped from the drawing-room and touched him on the sleeve. From behind the half- closed portiere of stamped velvet a little pale face peeped out, half-curious, half-frightened.
“May I have one word?”
“Surely, Lady Clara.”
“I hope it is not intrusive. I would not for the world overstep the limits—-“
“My dear Lady Clara!” interrupted the Prime Minister, with a youthful bow and wave.
“Pray do not answer me if I go too far. But I know that Lord Arthur Sibthorpe has applied for Tangier. Would it be a liberty if I asked you what chance he has?”
“The post is filled up.”
“Oh!”
In the foreground and background there was a disappointed face.
“And Lord Arthur has it.”
The Prime Minister chuckled over his little piece of roguery.
“We have just decided it,” he continued.
“Lord Arthur must go in a week. I am delighted to perceive, Lady Clara, that the appointment has your approval. Tangier is a place of extraordinary interest. Catherine of Braganza and Colonel Kirke will occur to your memory. Burton has written well upon Northern Africa. I dine at Windsor, so I am sure that you will excuse my leaving you. I trust that Lord Charles will be better. He can hardly fail to be so with such a nurse.”
He bowed, waved, and was off down the steps to his brougham. As he drove away, Lady Clara could see that he was already deeply absorbed in a paper-covered novel.
She pushed back the velvet curtains, and returned into the drawing-room. Her daughter stood in the sunlight by the window, tall, fragile, and exquisite, her features and outline not unlike her mother’s, but frailer, softer, more delicate. The golden light struck one half of her high-bred, sensitive face, and glimmered upon her thickly-coiled flaxen hair, striking a pinkish tint from her closely-cut costume of fawn-coloured cloth with its dainty cinnamon ruchings. One little soft frill of chiffon nestled round her throat, from which the white, graceful neck and well-poised head shot up like a lily amid moss. Her thin white hands were pressed together, and her blue eyes turned beseechingly upon her mother.
“Silly girl! Silly girl!” said the matron, answering that imploring look. She put her hands upon her daughter’s sloping shoulders and drew her towards her. “It is a very nice place for a short time. It will be a stepping stone.”
“But oh! mamma, in a week! Poor Arthur!”
“He will be happy.”
“What! happy to part?”
“He need not part. You shall go with him.”
“Oh! mamma!”
“Yes, I say it.”
“Oh! mamma, in a week?”
“Yes indeed. A great deal may be done in a week. I shall order your trousseau to-day.”
“Oh! you dear, sweet angel! But I am so frightened! And papa? Oh! dear, I am so
frightened!”
“Your papa is a diplomatist, dear.”
“Yes, ma.”
“But, between ourselves, he married a diplomatist too. If he can manage the British Empire, I think that I can manage him, Ida. How long have you been engaged, child?”
“Ten weeks, mamma.”
“Then it is quite time it came to a head. Lord Arthur cannot leave England without you. You must go to Tangier as the Minister’s wife. Now, you will sit there on the settee, dear, and let me manage entirely. There is Sir William’s carriage! I do think that I know how to manage Sir William. James, just ask the doctor to step in this way!”
A heavy, two-horsed carriage had drawn up at the door, and there came a single stately thud upon the knocker. An instant afterwards the drawing-room door flew open and the footman ushered in the famous physician. He was a small man, clean-shaven, with the old-fashioned black dress and white cravat with high-standing collar. He swung his golden pince- nez in his right hand as he walked, and bent forward with a peering, blinking expression, which was somehow suggestive of the dark and complex cases through which he had seen.
“Ah” said he, as he entered. “My young patient! I am glad of the opportunity.”
“Yes, I wish to speak to you about her, Sir William. Pray take this arm-chair.”
“Thank you, I will sit beside her,” said he, taking his place upon the settee. “She is looking better, less anaemic unquestionably, and a fuller pulse. Quite a little tinge of colour, and yet not hectic.”
“I feel stronger, Sir William.”
“But she still has the pain in the side.”
“Ah, that pain!” He tapped lightly under the collar-bones, and then bent forward with his biaural stethoscope in either ear. “Still a trace of dulness–still a slight crepitation,” he murmured.
“You spoke of a change, doctor.”
“Yes, certainly a judicious change might be advisable.”
“You said a dry climate. I wish to do to the letter what you recommend.”
“You have always been model patients.”
“We wish to be. You said a dry climate.”
“Did I? I rather forget the particulars of our conversation. But a dry climate is certainly indicated.”
“Which one?”
“Well, I think really that a patient should be allowed some latitude. I must not exact too rigid discipline. There is room for individual choice–the Engadine, Central Europe, Egypt, Algiers, which you like.”
“I hear that Tangier is also recommended.”
“Oh, yes, certainly; it is very dry.”
“You hear, Ida? Sir William says that you are to go to Tangier.”
“Or any—-“
“No, no, Sir William! We feel safest when we are most obedient. You have said Tangier, and we shall certainly try Tangier.”
“Really, Lady Clara, your implicit faith is most flattering. It is not everyone who would sacrifice their own plans and inclinations so readily.”
“We know your skill and your experience, Sir William. Ida shall try Tangier. I am convinced that she will be benefited.”
“I have no doubt of it.”
“But you know Lord Charles. He is just a little inclined to decide medical matters as he would an affair of State. I hope that you will be firm with him.”
“As long as Lord Charles honours me so far as to ask my advice I am sure that he would not place me in the false position of having that advice disregarded.”
The medical baronet whirled round the cord of his pince-nez and pushed out a protesting hand.
“No, no, but you must be firm on the point of Tangier.”
“Having deliberately formed the opinion that Tangier is the best place for our young patient, I do not think that I shall readily change my conviction.”
“Of course not.”
“I shall speak to Lord Charles upon the subject now when I go upstairs.”
“Pray do.”
“And meanwhile she will continue her present course of treatment. I trust that the warm African air may send her back in a few months with all her energy restored.”
He bowed in the courteous, sweeping, old-world fashion which had done so much to build up his ten thousand a year, and, with the stealthy gait of a man whose life is spent in sick-rooms, he followed the footman upstairs.
As the red velvet curtains swept back into position, the Lady Ida threw her arms round her mother’s neck and sank her face on to her bosom.
“Oh! mamma, you ARE a diplomatist!” she cried.
But her mother’s expression was rather that of the general who looked upon the first smoke of the guns than of one who had won the victory.
“All will be right, dear,” said she, glancing down at the fluffy yellow curls and tiny ear. “There is still much to be done, but I think we may venture to order the trousseau.”
“Oh I how brave you are!”
“Of course, it will in any case be a very quiet affair. Arthur must get the license. I do not approve of hole-and-corner marriages, but where the gentleman has to take up an official position some allowance must be made. We can have Lady Hilda Edgecombe, and the Trevors, and the Grevilles, and I am sure that the Prime Minister would run down if he could.”
“And papa?”
“Oh, yes; he will come too, if he is well enough. We must wait until Sir William goes, and, meanwhile, I shall write to Lord Arthur.”
Half an hour had passed, and quite a number of notes had been dashed off in the fine, bold, park- paling handwriting of the Lady Clara, when the door clashed, and the wheels of the doctor’s carriage were heard grating outside against the kerb. The Lady Clara laid down her pen, kissed her daughter, and started off for the sick-room. The Foreign Minister was lying back in his chair, with a red silk handkerchief over his forehead, and his bulbous, cotton-wadded foot still protruding upon its rest.
“I think it is almost liniment time,” said Lady Clara, shaking a blue crinkled bottle. “Shall I put on a little?”
“Oh! this pestilent toe!” groaned the sufferer. “Sir William won’t hear of my moving yet. I do think he is the most completely obstinate and pig- headed man that I have ever met. I tell him that he has mistaken his profession, and that I could find him a post at Constantinople. We need a mule out there.”
“Poor Sir William!” laughed Lady Clara. But how has he roused your wrath?”
“He is so persistent-so dogmatic.”
“Upon what point? “
“Well, he has been laying down the law about Ida. He has decreed, it seems, that she is to go to Tangier.”
“He said something to that effect before he went up to you.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
The slow-moving, inscrutable eye came sliding round to her.
Lady Clara’s face had assumed an expression of transparent obvious innocence, an intrusive candour which is never seen in nature save when a woman is bent upon deception.
“He examined her lungs, Charles. He did not say much, but his expression was very grave.”
“Not to say owlish,” interrupted the Minister.
“No, no, Charles; it is no laughing matter. He said that she must have a change. I am sure that he thought more than he said. He spoke of dulness and crepitation. and the effects of the African air. Then the talk turned upon dry, bracing health resorts, and he agreed that Tangier was the place. He said that even a few months there would work a change.”
“And that was all?”
“Yes, that was all.”
Lord Charles shrugged his shoulders with the air of a man who is but half convinced.
“But of course,” said Lady Clara, serenely, if you think it better that Ida should not go she shall not. The only thing is that if she should get worse we might feel a little uncomfortable afterwards. In a weakness of that sort a very short time may make a difference. Sir William evidently thought the matter critical. Still, there is no reason why he should influence you. It is a little responsibility, however. If you take it all upon yourself and free me from any of it, so that afterwards—-“
“My dear Clara, how you do croak!”
“Oh! I don’t wish to do that, Charles. But you remember what happened to Lord Bellamy’s child. She was just Ida’s age. That was another case in which Sir William’s advice was disregarded.”
Lord Charles groaned impatiently.
“I have not disregarded it,” said he.
“No, no, of course not. I know your strong sense, and your good heart too well, dear. You were very wisely looking at both sides of the question. That is what we poor women cannot do. It is emotion against reason, as I have often heard you say. We are swayed this way and that, but you men are persistent, and so you gain your way with us. But I am so pleased that you have decided for Tangier.”
“Have I?”
“Well, dear, you said that you would not disregard Sir William.”
“Well, Clara, admitting that Ida is to go to Tangier, you will allow that it is impossible for me to escort her?
“Utterly.”
“And for you?
“While you are ill my place is by your side.”
“There is your sister?”
“She is going to Florida.”
“Lady Dumbarton, then?”
“She is nursing her father. It is out of the question.”
“Well, then, whom can we possibly ask? Especially just as the season is commencing. You see, Clara, the fates fight against Sir William.”
His wife rested her elbows against the back of the great red chair, and passed her fingers through the statesman’s grizzled curls, stooping down as she