The Great Impersonation

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  “Always gibing at me,” Dominey grumbled.

  “Not always,” she answered quietly, raising her eyes for a moment. “There was a time, Everard, before that terrible tragedy—the last time you stayed at Dunratter—when I didn’t gibe.”

  “When, on the contrary, you were sweetness itself,” he reflected.

  She sighed reminiscently.

  “That was a wonderful month,” she murmured. “I think it was then for the first time that I saw traces of something in you which I suppose accounts for your being what you are today.”

  “You think that I have changed, then?”

  She looked him in the eyes.

  “I sometimes find it difficult to believe,” she admitted, “that you are the same man.”

  He turned away to reach for his whisky and soda.

  “As a matter of curiosity,” he asked, “why?”

  “To begin with, then,” she commented, “you have become almost a precisian in your speech. You used to be rather slangy at times.”

  “What else?”

  “You used always to clip your final g’s.”

  “Shocking habit,” he murmured. “I cured myself of that by reading aloud in the bush.—Go on, please?”

  “You carry yourself so much more stiffly. Sometimes you have the air of being surprised that you are not in uniform.”

  “Trifles, all these things,” he declared. “Now for something serious?”

  “The serious things are pretty good,” she admitted. “You used to drink whiskies and sodas at all hours of the day, and quite as much wine as was good for you at dinner time. Now, although you are a wonderful host, you scarcely take anything yourself.”

  “You should see me at the port,” he told her, “when you ladies are well out of the way! Some more of the good, please?”

  “All your best qualities seem to have come to the surface,” she went on, “and I think that the way you have come back and faced it all is simply wonderful. Tell me, if that man’s body should be discovered after all these years, would you be charged with manslaughter?”

  He shook his head. “I do not think so, Caroline.”

  “Everard.”

  “Well?”

  “Did you kill Roger Unthank?”

  A portion of the burning log fell onto the hearth. Then there was silence. They heard the click of the billiard balls in the adjoining room. Dominey leaned forward and with a pair of small tongs replaced the burning wood upon the fire. Suddenly he felt his hands clasped by his companion’s.

  “Everard dear,” she said, “I am so sorry. You came to me a little tired tonight, didn’t you? I think that you needed sympathy, and here I am asking you once more that horrible question. Forget it, please. Talk to me like your old dear self. Tell me about Rosamund’s return? Is she really recovered, do you think?”

  “I saw her only for a few minutes,” Dominey replied, “but she seemed to me absolutely better. I must say that the weekly reports I have received from the nursing home quite prepared me for a great improvement. She is very frail, and her eyes still have that restless look, but she talks quite coherently.”

  “What about that horrible woman?”

  “I have pensioned Mrs. Unthank. To my surprise I hear that she is still living in the village.”

  “And your ghost?”

  “Not a single howl all the time that Rosamund has been away.”

  “There is one thing more,” Caroline began hesitatingly.

  That one thing lacked forever the clothing of words. There came a curious, almost a dramatic interruption. Through the silence of the hall there pealed the summons of the great bell which hung over the front door. Dominey glanced at the clock in amazement.

  “Midnight!” he exclaimed. “Who on earth can be coming here at this time of night!”

  Instinctively they both rose to their feet. A manservant had turned the great key, drawn the bolts, and opened the door with difficulty. Little flakes of snow and a gust of icy wind swept into the hall, and following them the figure of a man, white from head to foot, his hair tossed with the wind, almost unrecognisable after his struggle.

  “Why, Doctor Harrison!” Dominey cried, taking a quick step forward. “What brings you here at this time of night!”

  The doctor leaned upon his stick for a moment. He was out of breath, and the melting snow was pouring from his clothes on to the oak floor. They relieved him of his coat and dragged him towards the fire.

  “I must apologise for disturbing you at such an hour,” he said, as he took the tumbler which Dominey pressed into his hand. “I have only just received Lady Dominey’s telegram. I had to see you—at once.”

  Chapter XVIII

  The doctor, with his usual bluntness, did not hesitate to make it known that this unusual visit was of a private nature. Caroline promptly withdrew, and the two men were left alone in the great hall. The lights in the billiard-room and drawing-room were extinguished. Every one in the house except a few servants had retired.

  “Sir Everard,” the doctor began, “this return of Lady Dominey’s has taken me altogether by surprise. I had intended tomorrow morning to discuss the situation with you.”

  “I am most anxious to hear your report,” Dominey said.

  “My report is good,” was the confident answer. “Although I would not have allowed her to have left the nursing home so suddenly had I known, there was nothing to keep her there. Lady Dominey, except for one hallucination, is in perfect health, mentally and physically.”

  “And this one hallucination?”

  “That you are not her husband.”

  Dominey was silent for a moment. Then he laughed a little unnaturally.

  “Can a person be perfectly sane,” he asked, “and yet be subject to an hallucination which must make the whole of her surroundings seem unreal?”

  “Lady Dominey is perfectly sane,” the doctor answered bluntly, “and as for that hallucination, it is up to you to dispel it.”

  “Perhaps you can give me some advice?” Dominey suggested.

  “I can, and I am going to be perfectly frank with you,” the doctor replied. “To begin with then, there are certain obvious changes in you which might well minister to Lady Dominey’s hallucination. For instance, you have been in England now some eight months, during which time you have revealed an entirely new personality. You seem to have got rid of every one of your bad habits, you drink moderately, as a gentleman should, you have subdued your violent temper, and you have collected around you, where your personality could be the only inducement, friends of distinction and interest. This is not at all what one expected from the Everard Dominey who scuttled out of England a dozen years ago.”

  “You are excusing my wife,” Dominey remarked.

  “She needs no excuses,” was the brusque reply. “She has been a long-enduring and faithful woman, suffering from a cruel illness, brought on, to take the kindest view of it, through your clumsiness and lack of discretion. Like all good women, forgiveness is second nature to her. It has now become her wish to take her proper place in life.”

  “But if her hallucination continues,” Dominey asked, “if she seriously doubts that I am indeed her husband, how can she do that?”

  “That is the problem you and I have to face,” the doctor said sternly. “The fact that your wife has been willing to return here to you, whilst still subject to that hallucination, is a view of the matter which I can neither discuss nor understand. I am here tonight, though, to lay a charge upon you. You have to remember that your wife needs still one step towards a perfect recovery, and until that step has been surmounted you have a very difficult but imperative task.”

  Dominey set his teeth for a moment. He felt the doctor’s keen grey eyes glowering from under his shaggy eyebrows as he leaned forward, his hands upon his knees.

  “You mean,
” Dominey suggested quietly, “that until that hallucination has passed we must remain upon the same terms as we have done since my arrival home.”

  “You’ve got it,” the doctor assented. “It’s a tangled-up position, but we’ve got to deal with it—or rather you have. I can assure you,” he went on, “that all her other delusions have gone. She speaks of the ghost of Roger Unthank, of the cries at night, of his mysterious death, as parts of a painful past. She is quite conscious of her several attempts upon your life and bitterly regrets them. Now we come to the real danger. She appears to be possessed of a passionate devotion towards you, whilst still believing that you are not her husband.”

  Dominey pushed his chair back from the fire as though he felt the heat. His eyes seemed glued upon the doctor’s.

  “I do not pretend,” the latter continued gravely, “to account for that, but it is my duty to warn you, Sir Everard, that that devotion may lead her to great lengths. Lady Dominey is naturally of an exceedingly affectionate disposition, and this return to a stronger condition of physical health and a fuller share of human feelings has probably reawakened all those tendencies which her growing fondness for you and your position as her reputed husband make perfectly natural. I warn you, Sir Everard, that you may find your position an exceedingly difficult one, but, difficult though it may be, there is a plain duty before you. Keep and encourage your wife’s affection if you can, but let it be a charge upon you that whilst the hallucination remains that affection must never pass certain bounds. Lady Dominey is a good and a sweet woman. If she woke up one morning with that hallucination still in her mind, and any sense of guilt on her conscience, all our labours for these last months might well be wasted, and she herself might very possibly end her days in a madhouse.”

  “Doctor,” Dominey said firmly. “I appreciate every word you say. You can rely upon me.”

  The doctor looked at him.

  “I believe I can,” he admitted, with a sigh of relief. “I am glad of it.”

  “There is just one more phase of the position,” Dominey went on, after a pause. “Supposing this hallucination of hers should pass? Supposing she should suddenly become convinced that I am her husband?”

  “In that case,” the doctor replied earnestly, “the position would be exactly reversed, and it would be just as important for you not to check the affection which she might offer to you as it would be in the other case for you to accept it. The moment she realises, with her present predispositions, that you really are her lawful husband, that moment will be the beginning of a new life for her.”

  Somehow they both seemed to feel that the last words had been spoken. After a brief pause, the doctor helped himself to a farewell drink, filled his pipe and stood up. The car which Dominey had ordered from the garage was already standing at the door. It was curious how both of them seemed disinclined to refer again even indirectly to the subject which they had been discussing.

  “Very good of you to send me back,” the doctor said gruffly. “I started out all right, but it was a drear walk across the marshes.”

  “I am very grateful to you for coming,” Dominey replied, with obvious sincerity. “You will come and have a look at the patient in a day or two?”

  “I’ll stroll across as soon as you’ve got rid of some of this houseful,” the doctor promised. “Good night!”

  The two men parted, and curiously enough Dominey was conscious that with those few awkward words of farewell some part of the incipient antagonism between them had been buried. Left to himself, he wandered for some moments up and down the great, dimly lit hall. A strange restlessness seemed to have fastened itself upon him. He stood for a time by the dying fire, watching the grey ashes, stirred uneasily by the wind which howled down the chimney. Then he strolled to a different part of the hall, and one by one he turned on, by means of the electric switches, the newly installed lights which hung above the sombre oil pictures upon the wall. He looked into the faces of some of these dead Domineys, trying to recall what he had heard of their history, and dwelling longest upon a gallant of the Stuart epoch, whose misdeeds had supplied material for every intimate chronicler of those days. When at last the sight of a sleepy manservant hovering in the background forced his steps upstairs, he still lingered for a few moments in the corridor and turned the handle of his bedroom door with almost reluctant fingers. His heart gave a great jump as he realised that there was some one there. He stood for a moment upon the threshold, then laughed shortly to himself at his foolish imagining. It was his servant who was patiently awaiting his arrival.

  “You can go to bed, Dickens,” he directed. “I shall not want you again tonight. We shoot in the morning.”

  The man silently took his leave, and Dominey commenced his preparations for bed. He was in no humour for sleep, however, and, still attired in his shirt and trousers, he wrapped a dressing-gown around him, drew a reading lamp to his side, and threw himself into an easy-chair, a book in his hand. It was some time before he realised that the volume was upside down, and even when he had righted it, the words he saw had no meaning for him. All the time a queer procession of women’s faces was passing before his eyes—Caroline, with her half-flirtatious, wholly sentimental bon camaraderie; Stephanie, with her voluptuous figure and passion-lit eyes; and then, blotting the others utterly out of his thoughts and memory, Rosamund, with all the sweetness of life shining out of her eager face. He saw her as she had come to him last, with that little unspoken cry upon her tremulous lips, and the haunting appeal in her soft eyes. All other memories faded away. They were as though they had never been. Those dreary years of exile in Africa, the day by day tension of his precarious life, were absolutely forgotten. His heart was calling all the time for an unknown boon. He felt himself immeshed in a world of cobwebs, of weakness more potent than all his boasted strength. Then he suddenly felt that the madness which he had begun to fear had really come. It was the thing for which he longed yet dreaded most—the faint click, the soft withdrawal of the panel, actually pushed back by a pair of white hands. Rosamund herself was there. Her eyes shone at him, mystically, wonderfully. Her lips were parted in a delightful smile, a smile in which there was a spice of girlish mischief. She turned for a moment to close the panel. Then she came towards him with her finger upraised.

  “I cannot sleep,” she said softly. “Do you mind my coming for a few minutes?”

  “Of course not,” he answered. “Come and sit down.”

  She curled up in his easy-chair.

  “Just for a moment,” she murmured contentedly. “Give me your hands, dear. But how cold! You must come nearer to the fire yourself.”

  He sat on the arm of her chair, and she stroked his head with her hands.

  “You were not afraid, then,” she asked, “when you saw me come through the panel?”

  “I should never be afraid of any harm that you might bring me, dear,” he assured her.

  “Because all that foolishness is really gone,” she continued eagerly. “I know that whatever happened to poor Roger, it was not you who killed him. Even if I heard his ghost calling again tonight, I should have no fear. I can’t think why I ever wanted to hurt you, Everard. I am sure that I always loved you.”

  His arm went very softly around her. She responded to his embrace without hesitation. Her cheek rested upon his shoulder, he felt the warmth of her arm through her white, fur-lined dressing-gown.

  “Why do you doubt any longer then,” he asked hoarsely, “that I am your husband?”

  She sighed.

  “Ah, but I know you are not,” she answered. “Is it wrong of me to feel what I do for you, I wonder? You are so like yet so unlike him. He is dead. He died in Africa. Isn’t it strange that I should know it? But I do!”

  “But who am I then?” he whispered.

  She looked at him pitifully.

  “I do not know,” she confessed, “but you are kind to me, and
when I feel you are near I am happy. It is because I wanted to see you that I would not stay any longer at the nursing home. That must mean that I am very fond of you.”

  “You are not afraid,” he asked, “to be here alone with me?”

  She put her other arm around his neck and drew his face down.

  “I am not afraid,” she assured him. “I am happy.—But, dear, what is the matter? A moment ago you were cold. Now your head is wet, your hands are burning. Are you not happy because I am here?”

  Her lips were seeking his. His own touched them for a moment. Then he kissed her on both cheeks. She made a little grimace.

  “I am afraid,” she said, “that you are not really fond of me.”

  “Can’t you believe,” he asked hoarsely, “that I am really Everard—your husband? Look at me. Can’t you feel that you have loved me before?”

  She shook her head a little sadly.

  “No, you are not Everard,” she sighed; “but,” she added, her eyes lighting up, “you bring me love and happiness and life, and—”

  A few seconds before, Dominey felt from his soul that he would have welcomed an earthquake, a thunderbolt, the crumbling of the floor beneath his feet to have been spared the torture of her sweet importunities. Yet nothing so horrible as this interruption which really came could ever have presented itself before his mind. Half in his arms, with her head thrown back, listening—he, too, horrified, convulsed for a moment even with real physical fear—they heard the silence of the night broken by that one awful cry, the cry of a man’s soul in torment, imprisoned in the jaws of a beast. They listened to it together until its echoes died away. Then what was, perhaps, the most astonishing thing of all, she nodded her head slowly, unperturbed, unterrified.

  “You see,” she said, “I must go back. He will not let me stay here. He must think that you are Everard. It is only I who know that you are not.”