Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Mr. Jardine looked about the room thoughtfully. It was the one apartment in which the patient could hardly be intruded upon by his attendant. Here he could be sure of privacy.

  ‘Did you examine the case of the bath,’ he inquired presently, his mathematical eye quick to take in the difference between the inner shell of copper and the outer husk of mahogany.

  ‘No, sir,’ answered Towler, briskly. ‘Is it ‘oller?’

  ‘Of course it’s hollow. Surely your eye tells you that.’

  ‘Yes, sir; but there’s the hot-water pipes inside — and there’s no getting at it, except for a plumber.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mr. Jardine, kneeling down at one end of the bath, where there was a convenient mahogany door for the accommodation of the plumber, a door which lay somewhat in shadow, and had escaped Towler’s observation.

  ‘Bring me a candle,’ said Mr. Jardine, unconsciously imitating the brotherhood of plumbers, whose consumption of candles is a household terror.

  Towler returned to fetch a candle, while Mr. Jardine with cautious hand explored the cavern-like recesses between the bath and its outer shell, recesses in which lurked serpent-like convolutions of hot-water pipes and cold-water pipes, waste and overflow.

  Yes, before Towler could arrive with the candle, he had fathomed the mystery. Three or four full bottles, and a large number of empties, were stowed away in this dusty receptacle. He drew one of the full bottles out into the light. ‘Hennessy’s Fine Old Cognac,’ said the label. This had been the secret source of fever and delirium — here had lurked the evil which had made all remedial measures vain.

  Mr. Fosbroke was announced while John Jardine was washing the dust and the stains of rusty iron from his hands. Brian was in too low a condition to be rude to the country practitioner, much as he had protested against his interference. He suffered the apothecary to sit by his bed and feel his pulse, without a word of remonstrance.

  ‘How do you find him?’ asked Mr. Jardine, when Mr. Fosbroke had left the bedside.

  ‘Very bad; pulse small and thready — a hundred and forty in the minute; violent throbbing in the temporal and carotid arteries; profuse perspiration — all bad signs. What medicines has he been taking?’

  He was shown the prescriptions.

  ‘Hum — hum — digitalis — bromide of potassium. I should like to inject chloral; but as the case is in Dr. Mallison’s hands—’

  ‘If you think there is danger I will telegraph for Mallison.’

  ‘There is always danger in this stage of the malady, especially in the case of a patient of Mr. Wendover’s age. The season, too, is unfavourable — the mortality in this complaint is nearly double in summer. If we can get him into a sound sleep of some hours he may wake with a decided turn for the better — the delirium subjugated; but in his low state, even sleep may be fatal — there is so little vital power. Yes, I should certainly telegraph for Dr. Mallison; and in the meantime I’ll try what can be done with chloral.’

  ‘You must do the utmost you can. Mrs. Wendover has implicit faith in you.’

  ‘I’ll drive back and get the chloral.’

  When the apothecary was gone, Mr. Jardine’s first act was to telegraph to the London physician, his next, to put the unused bottles of cognac under lock and key, and, with Towler’s help, to clear away the empty bottles without the knowledge of the servants. No doubt every member of the household knew the nature of Mr. Wendover’s illness; but it was well to spare him the exposure of these degrading details.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  AN ENGLISHMAN’S HOUSE IS HIS CASTLE.

  Ida felt a strange relief to her spirits, despite the absolute blackness of her domestic horizon, when the carriage drove away from Wimperfield. She had left the house very seldom of late, feeling that duty chained her to the joyless scene of home; and there was an infinite relief in turning her back upon that stately white building in which was embodied all the misery of her blighted life. No charnel-house could be fuller of ghastly, unspeakable horrors than Wimperfield had become to her since that long, never-to-be-forgotten night when she had listened to her husband’s ravings, and when all the loathsome objects his distracted fancy had conjured into being, and his never-resting tongue had described, had been only a little less real to her mind than they had been to his. Could she ever again know peace and rest in those rooms; ever tread those corridors without shuddering and dread, ever know happiness again in all the days of her life? She leaned back in the carriage as they drove along the avenue, and rested with half-closed eyes, her soul heavy within her, her body weighed down by the soreness and weariness of her mind. If life could but end now! She felt that she could be of no more use in the world. She could do nothing to help her wretched husband. He had chosen to go his own way to destruction, and he was too near the edge of the pit now to be snatched back by any friendly hand. She felt that his fate had passed beyond the regions of hope. God might pity the self-destroyer, and deal lightly with him at the great audit; but on this earth there was no hope of cure. Brian Wendover was going down to the pit.

  Bessie sat by Ida’s side tenderly watching her worn white face, while Lady Palliser was entirely absorbed by the delight of administering fussily to her boy, who was well enough to laugh her shawls and comforters and motherly precautions to scorn, and to jump about in the carriage, as at each break in the wood some new object of interest caught his eye — a rabbit, a squirrel, a hawk high up in the blue, invisible to any gaze less eager than his own. He was in wild spirits at being out of doors again, a restless eager soul, not to be restrained by any medical ordinances or maternal anxieties.

  They went for a long drive, the horses, very fresh after the little exercise of the last month, devouring the ground under them — the summer breeze brisk and inspiring — the country beautiful beyond measure — an ever-varying landscape of hill and wood and valley, green pastures and golden grain.

  Bessie chatted gaily in her desire to distract Ida’s mind, and the boy’s vivacity never flagged; but Ida sat silent, feeling the blessedness of this brief respite from the horror of home, but quite unable to talk of indifferent subjects. She was haunted by the image of her husband as she had seen him that morning — his ashen countenance, the perpetual movement of his eyes, those nervous attenuated hands, almost transparent in their bloodlessness, for ever pushing aside the formless horrors that crowded round him — pictures painted on the empty air, pictures for ever changing, yet hideously real to that disorganised brain, pictures that spoke and gibbered at him, shadows with which he carried on conversations.

  With this awful image fresh in her mind, Ida could not even pretend to be cheerful, or interested in common things.

  ‘Don’t be unhappy about me, dear,’ she said once when Bessie squeezed her hand, and looked at her with tender anxiety; ‘I must bear my burden. Nobody can help me.’

  ‘Except God,’ whispered the Vicar’s faithful wife. ‘He lightens all burdens, in His good time.’

  On the homeward road they wound near the base of Blackman’s Hanger, and at this point Vernon got up and ordered the coachman to drive as near as he could to the old gamekeeper’s cottage.

  ‘We can walk the rest of the way,’ said the boy.

  ‘Walk!’ shrieked Lady Palliser. ‘Oh, Vernie, what are you dreaming about?

  Mr. Fosbroke never said you might walk.’

  ‘Very likely not,’ retorted the boy; ‘but you don’t suppose I’m going to ask old Fosbroke’s leave before I use my legs. Look here, mother dear, I’m as well as ever I was, and I’m not going to be mollicoddled any more.’

  ‘But Vernie—’

  ‘I am not going to be mollicoddled any more, and I’m going to see old

  Jack.’

  ‘Nonsense, Vernie.’

  ‘He came to see me, and I’m going to see him,’ said Vernon, resolutely. ‘Remember what your favourite author, the Countess of Seven Stars, says about the necessity of returning a call—”and if the person calling happ
en to be your inferior in social status, the obligation to return the visit within a reasonable time will be so much the stronger.” There, mother; there are the very words of your “Crême de la Crême” for you.’

  ‘But, Vernon, the countess would never have imagined such a person as a

  Cheap Jack calling upon anyone for whom her book was intended.’

  ‘The book was intended for a parcel of stuck-up cads,’ said Vernon. ‘Get on, Jackson.’

  This to the coachman, who was driving slowly, perfectly conscious of the squabble going on behind him, and anticipating the reversal of Sir Vernon’s order. But Lady Palliser said nothing, so Jackson quickened his pace a little, and drove along the rough winding road which skirted the base of the hill.

  Directly he drew up his horses Vernon leapt out, and the three women followed him. After all, the mother inwardly argued, it were a pity to thwart her darling. He was in such high spirits, and seemed so thoroughly himself again. His very wilfulness was delightful, for it told of renewed vigour.

  They all climbed the hill together, by a cork-screw track which was not too distressing. The atmosphere was cool and fresh at this altitude, the odour of the pines ambrosial.

  ‘I suppose we had better wait a little way off, Vernie,’ said Ida, when they were within a dozen yards of the hut. ‘Your friend is so very uncivil to ladies.’

  ‘Yes, you’d better rest yourselves on that fir tree,’ answered Vernon, pointing to a prostrate giant of the grove which had been lately felled, ‘while I run on and see him.’

  They obeyed, but in less than five minutes Vernon came back.

  ‘Jack is out, but his house is open,’ he said, eagerly, ‘and I want you all to come and see it. I want you to see the house that my Jack built.’

  ‘But would it be right to go into his cottage when he is away?’ asked

  Ida.

  ‘Of course it would,’ cried her brother, dancing along before them. ‘You must come — there’s nothing to be ashamed of, I can tell you. Mother will see that my Jack isn’t a vulgar person, that he can read and write, and has the ways of a gentleman.’

  ‘I should certainly like to see what kind of person my son associates with,’ said Lady Palliser, who, in common with the non-studious class of mankind, was a keen inquirer into the details of daily life.

  She liked to know where her acquaintance had their gowns made, and what wages they gave their cooks, and to be the first to hear of matrimonial engagements and dangerous illnesses.

  The cottage door stood wide open, and as there was neither hall nor passage, the moment the three Fatimas had crossed the threshold they were standing in the innermost sanctuary of Mr. Cheap Jack’s private life, and the character of the man stood revealed to them, so far as surroundings can reveal a man’s character.

  He was a smoker, for the room, albeit the lattice stood wide open, smelt strongly of tobacco, and over the narrow wooden mantelpiece were slung three pipes, one a long cherry-wood tube of decidedly Oriental appearance.

  ‘Quite gentlemanly looking pipes,’ said Lady Palliser.

  The room was in perfect order, everything arranged with an exquisite neatness. The floor was covered with a coarse, substantial matting, spotlessly clean. The furniture consisted of a clumsy old walnut-wood table, evidently picked up at some farmhouse or cottage in the neighbourhood, a heavy piece of cabinet work of the same order, half secretaire half bookcase, a couple of substantial arm-chairs, and a ponderous old oak chest — also the relic of some dismantled homestead. There was a brass clock on the chimney-piece, and there were a number of rather dingy-looking volumes in the bookcase, while the floor under the table was piled with quartos and thick octavos, which looked like books of reference. An old leathern despatch box, much the worse for wear, stood on the table. Ornaments, pictures, or photographs there were none.

  ‘It really looks like a gentleman’s room,’ said Lady Palliser, after her eyes had devoured every detail.

  ‘It is a gentleman’s room,’ answered Vernon, decisively. ‘Didn’t I tell you my friend Jack is a gentleman?’

  ‘Vernie dear, a man who goes about the country in a cart selling things can’t be a gentleman!’ said his mother.

  ‘I don’t quite see that, Lady Palliser,’ exclaimed Bessie, who was inspecting the book-shelves. ‘A gentleman may fall upon evil days, and have to earn his living somehow, don’t you know; and why shouldn’t he have a cart, and go about selling things? There’s nothing disreputable in it, though he could hardly go into society, perhaps, while he was driving the cart, because the mass of mankind are such fools. Why shouldn’t Vernie’s instinct be right, and this Cheap Jack be a reduced gentleman? Froude says that in the colonies Oxford men may be seen mending the roads. Why shouldn’t one man in the world have the courage to do humble work in his own country? This Jack is a University man.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Lady Palliser, eagerly. She was ready to bow down before a University man as a necessarily superior being. There had never been such a person of her own blood.

  ‘Here is a volume of Æschylus — the Clarendon Press — with his college arms. He is a Balliol man, the same college as my cousin Brian’s.’

  ‘That proves nothing,’ said Lady Palliser, contemptuously. ‘He may have bought the book at a stall. All his furniture is second-hand, why not his books?’

  ‘Oh, but here are more books with the Balliol arms — Pindar, Theocritus,

  Catullus, Horace, Virgil.’

  ‘Can’t you find his name in any of them?’

  ‘No; that has been erased in some of the books, and has never been written in the others. Poor fellow! I daresay he would not like his real name to be known.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you he was a gentleman, mother?’ exclaimed Vernon, triumphantly.

  Lady Palliser was almost convinced. The neat, substantially furnished room — so free from frippery or foppishness — the queer Oriental pipes — the well-used books in sober calf bindings, which had once been splendid — the college arms on almost every volume — these details impressed her in spite of herself.

  ‘Poor young man! I should like to send him some money,’ she said.

  ‘He would not take it; he would scorn your money,’ said Vernon. ‘What does he want with pounds, shillings, and pence? He told me that so long as he has his books to read, his pipe to smoke, and a fine country to roam about, he cares for nothing else. Your money wouldn’t buy him anything.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Vernie dear. We might do something substantial for him — set him up in a nice little shop at Petersfield, perhaps a stationer’s, or,’ with a glance at the rack of pipes, ‘a tobacconist’s.’

  ‘My Jack keeping a shop! my Jack behind a counter!’ cried Vernon: ‘if you knew anything about him you would never talk of such a thing. Why he likes to be as free as the birds of the air — to roam about all day — and sit up reading half the night.’

  They were all clustered in front of the bookcase, Bessie and Ida looking at the books, Lady Palliser and her boy intent on their own talk, when the door was flung open, and the master of the house suddenly appeared amidst them — a tall, broad-shouldered figure, roughly clad in shooting jacket, corduroy, and leather, like a gamekeeper — a dark bearded face under a slouched hat. But the intruders had only the briefest time in which to observe his appearance. At sight of the group by the bookcase, Jack tilted his felt hat further over his brows, and strode across the room to that corner whence a cork-screw stair led to the upper story. He went up these stairs in three or four bounds, banged and bolted the door of the upper chamber; and his unbidden guests were left looking at each other in bewildered silence.

  Lady Palliser, after a gasp or two, was the first to speak.

  ‘Did you ever see such manner?’ she exclaimed; ‘such a perfect brute? Vernie, you must never speak to that horrid creature again. I never want to have anything more to do with University men if this is a specimen of their manners! Never so much as to take
off his hat to us!’

  ‘We had no right to come crowding into his room,’ said Bessie, who could seldom find it in her heart to be angry with anyone. ‘I daresay the poor thing feels the change in his position. When Brian, of the Abbey, comes home — if ever he does come home — I’ll ask him to hunt this poor fellow out, and help him in some way. One Balliol man ought to help another.’

  ‘Let us go back to the carriage instantly,’ said Lady Palliser, almost shouting the substantive, in order that Jack might be reminded what kind of people he had insulted by his ruffianly bearing. ‘I feel that I am bemeaning myself every moment I stay in this house.’

  They hurried down the sandy hill path to the road where they had left the carriage, and Lady Palliser hustled them into it, breathless, with the combined effect of the rapid descent and her indignation.

  ‘Why, Ida, how deadly pale you are!’ exclaimed Bessie. ‘I hope you are not ill. Have we walked too fast for you?’

  ‘No, dear — only — that man’s face reminded me—’

  ‘Of Brian’s when he first came home from Norway, and was so dreadfully sunburnt?’ said Bessie; ‘so it did me. The idea flashed upon me, as the rude wretch rushed past us, that he had a sort of look of Brian. Just the way he carried his head, you know, and something in the shape of his shoulders — not a real resemblance.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  ‘AS ONE DEAD IN THE BOTTOM OF A TOMB.’

  Dr. Mallison came to Wimperfield at the same hour as on the occasion of his first visit. He was with the patient for nearly half-an-hour, and he confabulated with Mr. Fosbroke for at least another half hour, so it could not be said that he performed the physician’s duty in a careless or perfunctory manner. But his opinion was not hopeful; and there was a gravity in his manner when he talked to Ida and her stepmother which was evidently intended to prepare them for the worst. He gave a peremptory order for a second nurse, an able-bodied experienced woman, who could relieve Towler in his now most onerous duties — duties growing hourly more painful, since the last development of the patient’s delirium was a violent hatred of his attendant, who, as he believed, was always lying in wait to do him some injury. Dr. Mallison also advised that Mrs. Wendover should no longer occupy the bedroom adjoining her husband’s. Upon this point he was very firm, when Ida urged her anxiety to forego no duty which she owed to her husband.