“I am going to tell you nothing of the kind,” answered Dr. Westbrook.
“I can find no symptoms of disease. You have a very fair lease of life,
Mr. Dale, and may enjoy a green old age, if other people would allow
you to enjoy it.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that if I can trust my own judgment in a matter which is sometimes almost beyond the reach of science, the symptoms from which you suffer are those of slow poisoning.”
“Slow poisoning!” replied Douglas, in almost inaudible accents. “It is impossible!” he exclaimed, after a pause, during which the physician waited quietly until his patient should have in some manner recovered his calmness of mind. “It is quite impossible. I have every confidence in your skill, your science; but in this instance, Dr. Westbrook, I feel assured that you are mistaken.”
“I would gladly think so, Mr. Dale,” replied the doctor, gravely; “but I cannot. I have given my best thought to your case. I can only form one conclusion — namely, that you are labouring under the effects of poison.”
“Do you know what the poison is?”
“I do not; but I do know that it must have been administered with a caution that is almost diabolical in its ingenuity — so slowly, by such imperceptible degrees, that you have scarcely been aware of the change which it has worked in your system. It was a most providential circumstance that you came to me when you did, as I have been able to discover the treachery to which you are subject while there is yet ample time for you to act against it. Forewarned is forearmed, you know, Mr. Dale. The hidden hand of the secret poisoner is about its fatal work; it is for you and me to discover to whom the hand belongs. Is there any one about you whom you can suspect of such hideous guilt?”
“No one — no one. I repeat that such a thing is impossible.”
“Who is the person most interested in your death?” asked Dr. Westbrook, calmly.
“My first cousin, Sir Reginald Eversleigh, who would succeed to a very handsome income in that event. But I have not met him, or, at any rate, broke bread with him, for the last two months. Nor can I for a moment believe him capable of such infamy.”
“If you have not been in intimate association with him for the last two months, you may absolve him from all suspicion,” answered Dr. Westbrook. “You spoke to me the other day of dining very frequently with one particular friend; forgive me if I ask an unpleasant question. Is that friend a person whom you can trust?”
“That friend I could trust with a hundred lives, if I had them to lose,” Douglas replied, warmly.
The doctor looked at his patient thoughtfully. He was a man of the world, and the warmth of Mr. Dale’s manner told him that the friend in question was a woman.
“Has the person whom you trust so implicitly any beneficial interest in your death?” he asked.
“To some amount; but that person would gain much more by my continuing to live.”
“Indeed; then we must needs fall back upon my original idea and painful as it may be to you, the old servant must become the object of your suspicion.”
“I cannot believe him capable—”
“Come, come, Mr. Dale,” interrupted the physician. “We must look at things as men of the world. It is your duty to ascertain by whom this poison has been administered, in order to protect yourself from the attacks of your insidious destroyer. If you will follow my advice, you will do this; if, on the other hand, you elect to shut your eyes to the danger that assails you, I can only tell you that you will most assuredly pay for your folly by the forfeit of your life.”
“What am I to do?” asked Douglas.
“You say that your habits of life are almost rigid in their regularity. You always breakfast in your own chambers; you always dine and take your after-dinner coffee in the house of one particular friend. With the exception of a biscuit and a glass of sherry taken sometimes at your club, these two meals are all you take during the day. It is, therefore, an indisputable fact, that poison has bee a administered at one or other of these two meals. Your old butler serves one — the servants of your friend prepare the other. Either in your own chambers, or in your friend’s house, you have a hidden foe. It is for you to find out where that foe lurks.”
“Not in her house,” gasped Douglas, unconsciously betraying the depth of his feeling and the sex of his friend; “not in hers. It must be Jarvis whom I have to fear — and yet, no, I cannot believe it. My father’s old servant — a man who used to carry me in his arms when I was a boy!”
“You may easily set the question of his guilt or innocence at rest, Mr. Dale,” answered Dr. Westbrook. “Contrive to separate yourself from him for a time. If during that time you find your symptoms cease, you will have the strongest evidence of his guilt; if they still continue, you must look elsewhere.”
“I will take your advice,” replied Douglas, with a weary sigh; “anything is better than suspense.”
Little more was said.
As Douglas walked slowly from the physician’s house to the Phoenix
Club, he meditated profoundly on the subject of his interview with Dr.
Westbrook.
“Who is the traitor?” he asked himself. “Who? Unhappily there can be no doubt about it. Jarvis is the guilty wretch.”
It was with unspeakable pain that Douglas Dale contemplated the idea of his old servant’s guilt: his old servant, who had seemed a model of fidelity and devotion!
This very man had attended the deathbed of the rector — Douglas Dale’s father — had been recommended by that father to the care of his two sons, had exhibited every appearance of intense grief at the loss of his master.
What could he think, except that Jarvis was guilty? There was but one other direction in which he could look for guilt, and there surely it could not be found.
Who in Hilton House had any interest in his death, except that one person who was above the possibility of suspicion?
He sat by his solitary breakfast-table on the morning after his interview with the physician, and watched Jarvis as he moved to and fro, waiting on his master with what seemed affectionate attention.
Douglas ate little. A failing appetite had been one of the symptoms that accompanied the low fever from which he had lately suffered.
This morning, depression of spirits rendered him still less inclined to eat.
He was thinking of Jarvis and of the past — those careless, happy, childish days, in which this man had been second only to his own kindred in his boyish affection.
While he meditated gravely upon this most painful subject, deliberating as to the manner in which he should commence a conversation that was likely to be a very serious one, he happened to look up, and perceived that he was watched by the man he had been lately watching. His eyes met the gaze of his old servant, and he beheld a strange earnestness in that gaze.
The old man did not flinch on meeting his master’s glance.
“I beg your pardon for looking at you so hard, Mr. Douglas,” he said; “but I was thinking about you very serious, sir, when you looked up.”
“Indeed, Jarvis, and why?”
“Why you see, sir, it was about your appetite as I was thinking. It’s fallen off dreadful within the last few weeks. The poor breakfastes as you eats is enough to break a man’s heart. And you don’t know the pains as I take, sir, to tempt you in the way of breakfastes. That fish, sir, I fetched from Grove’s this morning with my own hands. They comes up in a salt-water tank in the bottom of their own boat, sir, as lively as if they was still in their natural eleming, Grove’s fish do. But they might be red herrings for any notice as you take of ‘em. You’re not yourself, Mr. Douglas, that’s what it is. You’re ill, Mr. Douglas, and you ought to see a doctor. Excuse my presumption, sir, in making these remarks; but if an old family servant that has nursed you on his knees can’t speak free, who can?”
“True,” Douglas answered with a sigh; “I was a very small boy when you carried me on your
shoulders to many a country fair, and you were very good to me, Jarvis.”
“Only my dooty, sir,” muttered the old man.
“You are right, Jarvis, as to my health — I am ill.”
“Then you’ll send for a doctor, surely, Mr. Douglas.”
“I have already seen a doctor.”
“And what do he say, sir?”
“He says my case is very serious.”
“Oh, Mr. Douglas, don’t ‘ee say that, don’t ‘ee say that,” cried the old man, in extreme distress.
“I can only tell you the truth, Jarvis,” answered Douglas: “but there is no occasion for despair. The physician tells me that my case is a grave one, but he does not say that it is hopeless.”
“Why don’t ‘ee consult another doctor, Mr. Douglas,” said Jarvis; “perhaps that one ain’t up to his work. If it’s such a difficult case, you ought to go to all the best doctors in London, till you find the one that can cure you. A fine, well-grown young gentleman like you oughtn’t to have much the matter with him. I don’t see as it can be very serious.”
“I don’t know about that, Jarvis; but in any case I have resolved upon doing something for you.”
“For me, sir! Lor’ bless your generous heart, I don’t want nothing in this mortal world.”
“But you may, Jarvis,” replied Douglas. “You have already been told that I have provided for you in case of my death.”
“Yes, sir, you was so good as to say you had left me an annuity, and it was very kind of you to think of such a thing, and I’m duly thankful. But still you see, sir, I can’t help looking at it in the light of a kind of joke, sir; for it ain’t in human nature that an old chap like me is going to outlive a young gentleman like you; and Lord forbid that it should be in human nature for such a thing to happen.”
“We never know what may happen, Jarvis. At any rate, I have provided against the worst. But as you are getting old, and have worked hard all your life, I think you must want rest; so, instead of putting you off till my death, I shall give you your annuity at once, and you may retire into a comfortable little house of your own, and live the life of an elderly gentleman, with a decent little income, as soon as you please.”
To the surprise of Douglas Dale, the old man’s countenance expressed only grief and mortification on hearing an announcement which his master had supposed would have been delightful to him.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” he faltered; “but have you seen a younger servant as you like better and as could serve you better, than poor old Jarvis?”
“No, indeed,” answered Douglas, “I have seen no such person. Nor do I believe that any one in the world could serve me as well as you.”
“Then why do you want to change, sir?”
“I don’t want to change. I only want to make you happy, Jarvis.”
“Then make me happy by letting me stay with you,” pleaded the old servant. “Let me stay, sir. Don’t talk about annuities. I want nothing from you but the pleasure of waiting on my dear old master’s son. It’s as much delight to me to wait upon you now as it was to me twenty years ago to carry you to the country fairs on my shoulder. Ah, we did have rare times of it then, didn’t we, sir? Let me stay, and when I die give me a grave somewhere hard by where you live; and if, once in a way, when you pass the churchyard where I lay, you should give a sigh, and say, ‘Poor old Jarvis!’ that will be a full reward to me for having loved you so dear ever since you was a baby.”
Was this acting? Was this the perfect simulation of an accomplished hypocrite? No, no, no; Douglas Dale could not believe it.
The tears came into his eyes; he extended his hand, and grasped that of his old servant.
“You shall stay with me, Jarvis,” he said; “and I will trust you with all my heart.”
Douglas Dale left his chambers soon after that conversation, and went straight to Dr. Westbrook, to whom he gave a fall account of the interview.
“I have tested the old man thoroughly,” he said, in conclusion; “and I believe him to be fidelity itself.”
“You have tested him, Mr. Dale! stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed the practical physician. “You surely don’t call that sentimental conversation a test? If the man is capable of being a slow poisoner, he is, of course, capable of acting a part, and shedding crocodile’s tears in evidence of his devoted affection for the master whose biliary organs he is deranging by the administration of antimony, or aconite. If you want to test the man thoroughly, test him in my way. Contrive to eat your breakfast elsewhere for a week or two; touch nothing, not so much as a glass of water, in your own chambers; and if at the end of that time the symptoms have ceased, you will know what to think of that pattern of fidelity — Mr. Jarvis.”
Douglas promised to take the doctor’s advice. He was convinced of his servant’s innocence; but he wanted to put that question beyond doubt.
But if Jarvis was indeed innocent, where was the guilty wretch to be found?
Douglas Dale dined at Hilton House upon the evening after his interview with Dr. Westbrook, as he had done without intermission for several weeks. He found Paulina tender and affectionate, as she had ever been of late, since respect and esteem for her lover’s goodness had developed into a warmer feeling.
“Douglas,” she said, on this particular evening, when they were alone together for a few minutes after dinner, “your health has not improved as much as I had hoped it would under the treatment of your doctor. I wish you would consult some one else.”
She spoke lightly, for she feared to alarm the patient by any appearance of fear on her part. She knew how physical disease may be augmented by mental agitation. Her tone, therefore, was one of assumed carelessness.
To-night Douglas Dale’s mind was peculiarly sensitive to every impression. Something in that assumed tone struck strangely upon his ear. For the first time since he had known her, the voice of the woman he loved, seemed to him to have a false sound in its clear, ringing tones.
An icy terror suddenly took possession of his mind.
What if this woman — this woman, whom he loved with such intense affection — what if she were something other than she seemed! What if her heart had never been his — her love never withdrawn from the reprobate upon whom she had once bestowed it! What if her tender glances, her affectionate words, her graceful, caressing manner, were all a comedy, of which he was the dupe! What if —
“I am the victim of treachery,” he thought to himself; “but the traitor cannot be here. Oh, no, no! let me find the traitor anywhere rather than here.”
Paulina watched her lover as he sat with his eyes fixed on the ground, absorbed in gloomy meditation.
Presently he looked up suddenly, and addressed her.
“I am going on a journey, Paulina, on business,” he said; “business, which I can only transact myself. I shall, therefore, be compelled to be absent from you for a week; it may be even more. Perhaps we shall never meet again. Will that be very distressing to you?”
“Douglas,” exclaimed Paulina, “how strangely you speak to me to-night!
If this is a jest, it is a very cruel one.”
“It is no jest, Paulina,” answered her lover. “Life is very precarious, and within the last week I have learnt to consider my existence in imminent peril.”
“You are ill, Douglas,” said Paulina; “and illness has unnerved you. Pray do not give way to these depressing thoughts. Consult some other physician than the man who is now your adviser.”
“Yes, yes; I will do so,” answered Douglas, with, a sudden change of tone; “you are right, Paulina. I will not be so weak as to become the prey of these distressing fancies, these dark forebodings. What have I to fear? Death is no terrible evil. It is but the common fate of all. I can face that common doom as calmly as a Christian should face it. But deceit, treachery, falsehood from those we love — those are evils far more terrible than death. Oh, Paulina! tell me that I have no need to fear those?”
“From whom should you f
ear them, Douglas!”
“Aye, from whom, that is the question! Not from you, Paulina?”
“From me!” she echoed, with a look of wonder. “Are you mad?”
“Swear — swear to me that there is no falsehood in your heart, Paulina; that you love me as truly as you have taught me to believe; that you have not beguiled me with false words, as false as they are sweet!” cried the young man, in wild excitement.
“My dear Douglas, this is madness!” exclaimed Madame Durski; “folly too wild for reproof. This passionate excitement must be surely the effect of fever. What can I say to you except that I love you truly and dearly; that my heart has been purified, my mind elevated by your influence; that I have now no thought which is not known to you — no hope that does not rest itself upon your love. You ought to believe this, Douglas, for my every word, my every look, should speak the truth, which I do not care to reiterate in protestations such as these. It is too painful to me to be doubted by you.”
“And if I have wronged you, I am a base wretch,” said Douglas, in a low voice.
Early the following morning he paid another visit to Dr. Westbrook.
“I will not trespass on your time this morning,” he said, after shaking hands with the physician. “I have only come here in order to ask one question. If the poison were discontinued for a week, would there be any cessation of the symptoms?”
“There would,” replied the doctor. “Nature is quick to reassert herself. But if you are about to test your butler, I should recommend you to remain away longer than a week — say a fortnight.”
But it was not to test his old servant that Douglas Dale absented himself from London, though he had allowed the physician to believe that such was his intention. He started for Paris that night; but he took Jarvis with him.
His health improved day by day, hour by hour, from the day of his parting from Paulina Durski. The low fever had left him before he had been ten days in Paris; the perpetual thirst, the wearisome debility, left him also. He began to be his old self again; and to him this recovery was far more terrible than the worst possible symptoms of disease could have been, for it told him that the hidden foe who had robbed him of health and strength, was to be found at Hilton House.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 472