The Great Impersonation

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  There was another somewhat awkward pause, which the younger man endeavoured to bridge over.

  “Fishing, shooting, golf,” he said. “I really don’t know what we poor medical practitioners would do in the country without sport.”

  “I shall remind you of that later,” Dominey observed. “I am told that the shooting is one of the only glories which has not passed away from Dominey.”

  “I shall look forward to the reminder,” was the prompt response.

  His uncle, who had been bending once more over the case of flies, turned abruptly around.

  “Arthur,” he said, addressing his nephew, “you had better start on your round. I dare say Sir Everard would like to speak to me privately.”

  “I wish to speak to you certainly,” Dominey admitted, “but only professionally. There is no necessity—”

  “I am late already, if you will excuse me,” Doctor Stillwell interrupted. “I will be getting on. You must excuse my uncle, Sir Everard,” he added in a lower tone, drawing him a little towards the door, “if his manners are a little gruff. He is devoted to Lady Dominey, and I sometimes think that he broods over her case too much.”

  Dominey nodded and turned back into the room to find the doctor, his hands in his old-fashioned breeches pockets, eying him steadfastly.

  “I find it very hard to believe,” he said a little curtly, “that you are really Everard Dominey.”

  “I am afraid you will have to accept me as a fact, nevertheless.”

  “Your present appearance,” the old man continued, eying him appraisingly, “does not in any way bear out the description I had of you some years ago. I was told that you had become a broken-down drunkard.”

  “The world is full of liars,” Dominey said equably. “You appear to have met with one, at least.”

  “You have not even,” the doctor persisted, “the appearance of a man who has been used to excesses of any sort.”

  “Good old stock, ours,” his visitor observed carelessly. “Plenty of two-bottle men behind my generation.”

  “You have also gained courage since the days when you fled from England. You slept at the Hall last night?”

  “Where else? I also, if you want to know, occupied my own bedchamber—with results,” Dominey added, throwing his head a little back, to display the scar on his throat, “altogether insignificant.”

  “That’s just your luck,” the doctor declared. “You’ve no right to have gone there without seeing me; no right, after all that has passed, to have even approached your wife.”

  “You seem rather a martinet as regards my domestic affairs,” Dominey observed.

  “That’s because I know your history,” was the blunt reply.

  Uninvited, Dominey seated himself in an easy-chair.

  “You were never my friend, Doctor,” he said. “Let me suggest that we conduct this conversation on a purely professional basis.”

  “I was never your friend,” came the retort, “because I have known you always as a selfish brute; because you were married to the sweetest woman on God’s earth, gave up none of your bad habits, frightened her into insanity by reeling home with another man’s blood on your hands, and then stayed away for over ten years instead of making an effort to repair the mischief you had done.”

  “This,” observed Dominey, “is history, dished up in a somewhat partial fashion. I repeat my suggestion that we confine our conversation to the professional.”

  “This is my house,” the other rejoined, “and you came to see me. I shall say exactly what I like to you, and if you don’t like it you can get out. If it weren’t for Lady Dominey’s sake, you shouldn’t have passed this threshold.”

  “Then for her sake,” Dominey suggested in a softer tone, “can’t you forget how thoroughly you disapprove of me? I am here now with only one object: I want you to point out to me any way in which we can work together for the improvement of my wife’s health.”

  “There can be no question of a partnership between us.”

  “You refuse to help?”

  “My help isn’t worth a snap of the fingers. I have done all I can for her physically. She is a perfectly sound woman. The rest depends upon you, and you alone, and I am not very hopeful about it.”

  “Upon me?” Dominey repeated, a little taken aback.

  “Fidelity,” the doctor grunted, “is second nature with all good women. Lady Dominey is a good woman, and she is no exception to the rule. Her brain is starved because her heart is aching for love. If she could believe in your repentance and reform, if any atonement for the past were possible and were generously offered, I cannot tell what the result might be. They tell me that you are a rich man now, although heaven knows, when one considers what a lazy, selfish fellow you were, that sounds like a miracle. You could have the great specialists down. They couldn’t help, but it might salve your conscience to pay them a few hundred guineas.”

  “Would you meet them?” Dominey asked anxiously. “Tell me whom to send for?”

  “Pooh! Those days are finished with me,” was the curt reply. “I would meet none of them. I am a doctor no longer. I have become a villager. I go to see Lady Dominey as an old friend.”

  “Give me your advice,” Dominey begged. “Is it of any use sending for specialists?”

  “Just for the present, none at all.”

  “And what about that horrible woman, Mrs. Unthank?”

  “Part of your task, if you are really going to take it up. She stands between your wife and the sun.”

  “Then why have you suffered her to remain there all those years?” Dominey demanded.

  “For one thing, because there has been no one to replace her,” the doctor replied, “and for another, because Lady Dominey, believing that you slew her son, has some fantastic idea of giving her a home and shelter as a kind of expiation.”

  “You think there is no affection between the two?” Dominey asked.

  “Not a scrap,” was the blunt reply, “except that Lady Dominey is of so sweet and gentle a nature—”

  The doctor paused abruptly. His visitor’s fingers had strayed across his throat.

  “That’s a different matter,” the former continued fiercely. “That’s just where the weak spot in her brain remains. If you ask me, I believe it’s pandered to by Mrs. Unthank. Come to think of it,” he went on, “the Domineys were never cowards. If you’ve got your courage back, send Mrs. Unthank away, sleep with your doors wide open. If a single night passes without Lady Dominey coming to your room with a knife in her hand, she will be cured in time of that mania at any rate. Dare you do that?”

  Dominey’s hesitation was palpable,—also his agitation. The doctor grinned contemptuously.

  “Still afraid!” he scoffed.

  “Not in the way you imagine,” his visitor replied. “My wife has already promised to make no further attempt upon my life.”

  “Well, you can cure her if you want to,” the doctor declared, “and if you do, you will have the sweetest companion for life any man could have. But you’ll have to give up the idea of town houses and racing and yachting, and grouse moors in Scotland, and all those sort of things I suppose you’ve been looking forward to. You’ll have for some time, at any rate, to give every moment of your time to your wife.”

  Dominey moved uneasily in his chair.

  “For the next few months,” he said, “that would be impossible.”

  “Impossible!”

  The doctor repeated the word, seemed to roll it round in his mouth with a sort of wondering scorn.

  “I am not quite the idler I used to be,” Dominey explained, frowning. “Nowadays, you cannot make money without assuming responsibilities. I am clearing off the whole of the mortgages upon the Dominey estates within the next few months.”

  “How you spend your time is your affair, not mine,” the d
octor muttered. “All that I say about the matter is that your wife’s cure, if ever it comes to pass, is in your hands. And now—come over to me here, in the light of this window. I want to look at you.”

  Dominey obeyed with a little shrug of the shoulders. There was no sunshine, but the white north light was in its way searching. It showed the sprinkling of grey in his ruddy-brown hair, the suspicion of it in his closely trimmed moustache, but it could find no weak spot in his steady eyes, in the tan of his hard, manly complexion, or even in the set of his somewhat arrogant lips. The old doctor took up his box of flies again and jerked his head towards the door.

  “You are a miracle,” he said, “and I hate miracles. I’ll come and see Lady Dominey in a day or so.”

  Chapter XII

  Dominey spent a curiously placid, and, to those with whom he was brought into contact, an entirely satisfactory afternoon. With Mr. Mangan by his side, murmuring amiable platitudes, and Mr. Johnson, his agent, opposite, revelling in the unusual situation of a satisfied landlord and delighted tenants, he made practically the entire round of the Dominey estates. They reached home late, but Dominey, although he seemed to be living in another world, was not neglectful of the claims of hospitality. Probably for the first time in their lives, Mr. Johnson and Lees, the bailiff, watched the opening of a magnum of champagne. Mr. Johnson cleared his throat as he raised his glass.

  “It isn’t only on my own account, Sir Everard,” he said, “that I drink your hearty good health. I have your tenants too in my mind. They’ve had a rough time, some of them, and they’ve stood it like white men. So here’s from them and me to you, sir, and may we see plenty of you in these parts.”

  Mr. Lees associated himself with these sentiments, and the glasses were speedily emptied and filled again.

  “I suppose you know, Sir Everard,” the agent observed, “that what you’ve promised to do today will cost a matter of ten to fifteen thousand pounds.”

  Dominey nodded.

  “Before I go to bed tonight,” he said, “I shall send a cheque for twenty thousand pounds to the estate account at your bank at Wells. The money is there waiting, put aside for just that one purpose and—well, you may just as well have it.”

  Agent and bailiff leaned back in the tonneau of their motor-car, half an hour later, with immense cigars in their mouths and a pleasant, rippling warmth in their veins. They had the sense of having drifted into fairyland. Their philosophy, however, met the situation.

  “It’s a fair miracle,” Mr. Lees declared.

  “A modern romance,” Mr. Johnson, who reads novels, murmured. “Hello, here’s a visitor for the Hall,” he added, as a car swept by them.

  “Comfortable-looking gent, too,” Mr. Lees remarked.

  The “comfortable-looking gent” was Otto Seaman, who presented himself at the Hall with a small dressing-bag and a great many apologies.

  “Found myself in Norwich, Sir Everard,” he explained. “I have done business there all my life, and one of my customers needed looking after. I finished early, and when I found that I was only thirty miles off you, I couldn’t resist having a run across. If it is in any way inconvenient to put me up for the night, say so—”

  “My dear fellow!” Dominey interrupted. “There are a score of rooms ready. All that we need is to light a fire, and an old-fashioned bed-warmer will do the rest. You remember Mr. Mangan?”

  The two men shook hands, and Seaman accepted a little refreshment after his drive. He lingered behind for a moment after the dressing bell had rung.

  “What time is that fellow going?” he asked.

  “Nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” Dominey replied.

  “Not a word until then,” Seaman whispered back. “I must not seem to be hanging after you too much—I really did not want to come—but the matter is urgent.”

  “We can send Mangan to bed early,” Dominey suggested.

  “I am the early bird myself,” was the weary reply. “I was up all last night. Tomorrow morning will do.”

  Dinner that night was a pleasant and social meal. Mr. Mangan especially was uplifted. Everything to do with the Domineys for the last fifteen years had reeked of poverty. He had really had a hard struggle to make both ends meet. There had been disagreeable interviews with angry tenants, formal interviews with dissatisfied mortgagees, and remarkably little profit at the end of the year to set against these disagreeable episodes. The new situation was almost beatific. The concluding touch, perhaps, was in Parkins’ congratulatory whisper as he set a couple of decanters upon the table.

  “I have found a bin of Cockburn’s fifty-one, sir,” he announced, including the lawyer in his confidential whisper. “I thought you might like to try a couple of bottles, as Mr. Mangan seems rather a connoisseur, sir. The corks appear to be in excellent condition.”

  “After this,” Mr. Mangan sighed, “it will be hard to get back to the austere life of a Pall Mall club!”

  Seaman, very early in the evening, pleaded an extraordinary sleepiness and retired, leaving his host and Mangan alone over the port. Dominey, although an attentive host, seemed still a little abstracted. Even Mr. Mangan, who was not an observant man, was conscious that a certain hardness, almost arrogance of speech and manner, seemed temporarily to have left his patron.

  “I can’t tell you, Sir Everard,” he said, as he sipped his first glass of wine, “what a pleasure it is to me to see, as it were, this recrudescence of an old family. If I might be allowed to say so, there’s only one thing necessary to round the whole business off, as it were.”

  “And that?” Dominey asked unthinkingly.

  “The return of Lady Dominey to health. I was one of the few, you may remember, privileged to make her acquaintance at the time of your marriage.”

  “I paid a visit this morning,” Dominey said, “to the doctor who has been in attendance upon her since her marriage. He agrees with me that there is no reason why Lady Dominey should not, in course of time, be restored to perfect health.”

  “I take the liberty of finishing my glass to that hope, Sir Everard,” the lawyer murmured.

  Both glasses were set down empty, only the stem of Dominey’s was snapped in two. Mr. Mangan expressed his polite regrets.

  “This old glass,” he murmured, looking at his own admiringly, “becomes very fragile.”

  Dominey did not answer. His brain had served him a strange trick. In the shadows of the room he had fancied that he could see Stephanie Eiderstrom holding out her arms, calling to him to fulfill the pledges of long ago, and behind her—

  “Have you ever been in love, Mangan?” Dominey asked his companion.

  “I, sir? Well, I’m not sure,” the man of the world replied, a little startled by the abruptness of the question. “It’s an old-fashioned way of looking at things now, isn’t it?”

  Dominey relapsed into thoughtfulness.

  “I suppose so,” he admitted.

  ***

  That night a storm rolled up from somewhere across that grey waste of waters, a storm heralded by a wind which came booming over the marshes, shaking the latticed windows of Dominey Hall, shrieking and wailing amongst its chimneys and around its many corners. Black clouds leaned over the land, and drenching streams of rain dashed against the loose-framed sashes of the windows. Dominey lit the tall candles in his bedroom, fastened a dressing-gown around him, threw himself into an easy-chair, and, fixing an electric reading lamp by his side, tried to read. Very soon the book slipped from his fingers. He became suddenly tense and watchful. His eyes counted one by one the panels in the wall by the left-hand side of the bed. The familiar click was twice repeated. For a moment a dark space appeared. Then a woman, stooping low, glided into the room. She came slowly towards him, drawn like a moth towards that semicircle of candle. Her hair hung down her back like a girl’s, and the white dressing-gown which floated diaphanously about her was unexpec
tedly reminiscent of Bond Street.

  “You are not afraid?” she asked anxiously. “See, I have nothing in my hands. I almost think that the desire has gone. You remember the little stiletto I had last night? Today I threw it into the well. Mrs. Unthank was very angry with me.”

  “I am not afraid,” he assured her, “but—”

  “Ah, but you will not scold me?” she begged. “It is the storm which terrifies me.”

  He drew a low chair for her into the little circle of light and arranged some cushions. As she sank into it, she suddenly looked up at him and smiled, a smile of rare and wonderful beauty. Dominey felt for a moment something like the stab of a knife at his heart.

  “Sit here and rest,” he invited. “There is nothing to fear.”

  “In my heart I know that,” she answered simply. “These storms are part of our lives. They come with birth, and they shake the world when death seizes us. One should not be afraid, but I have been so ill, Everard. Shall I call you Everard still?”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because you are not like Everard to me any more,” she told him, “because something has gone from you, and something has come to you. You are not the same man. What is it? Had you troubles in Africa? Did you learn what life was like out there?”

  He sat looking at her for a moment, leaning back in his chair, which he had pushed a few feet into the shadows. Her hair was glossy and splendid, and against it her skin seemed whiter and more delicate than ever. Her eyes were lustrous but plaintive, and with something of the child’s fear of harm in them. She looked very young and very fragile to have been swayed through the years by an evil passion.

  “I learned many things there, Rosamund,” he told her quietly. “I learned a little of the difference between right doing and wrongdoing. I learned, too, that all the passions of life burn themselves out, save one alone.”

  She twisted the girdle of her dressing-gown in her fingers for a moment. His last speech seemed to have been outside the orbit of her comprehension or interest.

  “You need not be afraid of me any more, Everard,” she said, a little pathetically.