Doctor's Love

by Jane Arbor

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  But again Lysbet was silent. Richard repeated his question: “What was it?”

  She looked up at him then and broke desperately from his hold. “I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you! It’s not my secret—it never has been!”

  “Lysbet, my dear—” Richard’s voice was very gentle. “You’ve already said too much to be able to retreat now! Supposing I tell you that I know, or can make a very shrewd guess at whose secret it is that you are defending so loyally—so foolishly loyally, my darling!”

  Then Lysbet turned back to him, her eyes filled darkly with pain and agony in her voice. “Oh, Richard, Richard, help me! I love you so much, but I had to promise Eliot! I daren’t face a future with him, but I didn’t know what else I could do and Aunt Alicia was too terrified to let me defy him—”

  Richard’s arms went about her then, surely and protectively.

  “It’s all right, my sweet,” he murmured. “There’ll be no future for you with Eliot Bradd—even if there’s any future of promise for him at all!” he added grimly. He waited for Lysbet to speak, but she only clung to him and he went on: “You see, the pattern of the jigsaw is nearly complete—but not quite. You haven’t told me yet what it was you were buying with this promise to Bradd?”

  “His silence,” whispered Lysbet.

  “Yes—it usually is. But his silence with regard to what?”

  “He—he knew the details of my father’s will. He knew that Aunt Alicia had cheated me of my inheritance since I came of age. At first he demanded money from Aunt Alicia for keeping the knowledge from me, and later he demanded marriage with me. That was when I had to be told, of course. That was before you and I—oh, about Caroline, Richard—you know! And I wouldn’t consent. I would have died sooner. But then we quarrelled and you—you didn’t come back. And because Aunt Alicia was so frightened and because, without you, I scarcely cared—I gave my promise.”

  “And you announced your new engagement to me through the medium of the social columns of the newspapers!” put in Richard, not without bitterness.

  “No, Richard—no! Eliot did that, utterly without my knowledge. And I had to allow it to stand—without it he would never have believed in my good faith.”

  Richard nodded understandingly. “I know, sweetheart. You’ve been so incredibly foolish up to date that Eliot must have known that he could put on one more intimidating screw and the chances were that he would get away with it.”

  “It was Aunt Alicia. She frightened me with her terror of what Eliot might do—”

  “And you never thought of telling me?” reproached Richard.

  “Again—Aunt Alicia wouldn’t let me. And afterwards—I was too proud to call you back just to help me!”

  “And I was too proud to come to you to ask you to explain your engagement to another man! What criminal mistakes we made in the name of pride, my darling! But there is one thing I want to know—did Eliot ever pretend—to himself or to you—that he was really in love with you, that he wanted to marry you for yourself, as I did—as I do, more than ever?”

  Then Lysbet said something which came, not from her reason, but from her instinctive wisdom as a woman. “I don’t think,” she said slowly, “that Eliot has ever known about love as you and I understand it. He knows about possession and he knows about power. And—he would have used them both against me in the name of something he called ‘love’.”

  “He has—made love to you?” It was something which the eternal jealousy of the man in Richard had to know.

  Lysbet’s voice was very low as she answered: “Once—no, twice. He wanted to force me to wear his ring—after having worn yours!”

  For answer Richard lifted her left hand, kissed the third slim finger and slipped back the eternity circle of diamonds and emeralds which had once lived there and had awaited this moment, even though it might never have come.

  Then he held out both his hands to her in invitation. “Will you take me now to Mrs. Tempest? If she is well enough to talk to me I think we shall find that the pattern is really complete.”

  But Lysbet, though she put her hands confidingly in his, shivered suddenly as at an ominous thought. “Richard—do you realize that all this time we have been speaking of Eliot in the past tense? As if all his evil were over—as if there were no harm he could still do, as if it weren’t that, as soon as he is warned, he could still lay information against Aunt Alicia, still ruin her reputation, if nothing worse?”

  Richard’s only answer was to draw her gently but inexorably towards the door. He said: “I told you, my sweet. The pattern is nearly complete—and I hold the last pieces in my hands! And there’s nothing—nothing in the world that Eliot Bradd can do to spoil it now—or ever!”

  Wonderingly she followed him as, in the spirit of the courage of her belief in him, she would follow and trust him all her life.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mrs. Tempest was no longer asleep when they entered her room. She lay staring in front of her while her fingers plucked nervously at the silk of the coverlet. At sight of Lysbet and at startled recognition of Richard her ravaged face suddenly puckered.

  But Lysbet hurried forward, knelt down at the bedside and took the restless hands in both her own.

  “Richard has come, Aunt Alicia! Do you understand? Richard has come back—to help us!”

  “He can’t help me. It’s already too late.”

  “But he can I He knows all about you and me—and Eliot. He knows everything there is to know, and he says there is nothing Eliot can do to harm us—nothing at all!” The woman in the bed did not answer but turned dumbly questioning eyes towards, Richard. He stood forward and, as Lysbet moved aside he approached the bed and stood looking down at the patient on whom he had so unprofessionally forced himself.

  “I’m going to take your pulse,” he said in a reassuringly matter-of-fact way. “Then I may ask you to talk to me for a little while.” He picked up one fluttering wrist and turned to Lysbet. “Has she been running a temperature at all?” he asked.

  Strangely enough, the very ordinary nature of the sickroom question seemed to bring a note of calm sanity into the charged atmosphere. Richard sensed at once the faintest relaxation of the sick woman’s taut nerves. She lay more quietly and when he put her hand gently back beneath the sheet and turned to Lysbet to give directions for her care, she closed her eyes momentarily as if, having reached some dreadful depth of nervous tension, though she was utterly spent, she had found a measure of relief at last.

  But the murmur of voices beyond the bed suddenly ceased and she opened her eyes as if in protest at the silence. Lysbet and Richard were both looking at her, believing that she might be falling asleep.

  She said urgently: “I’m not asleep. Don’t go! Richard—” she put out a hand in pleading to him, “did Lysbet mean what she said about Eliot? That—that he can’t hurt us any more?”

  Richard took her hand. “Yes, my dear. She meant it. There’s nothing that Eliot can do to either of you—nor ever could have done!”

  “But he could! He knew about—me!”

  For a moment Richard stood looking at her and then he drew up a chair to the bedside. “I’m going to talk to you. And I don’t think it will do you any harm to talk to me, if you don’t get too tired. Come, Lysbet!”

  He held out a hand and Lysbet came to take it and to continue to hold on to it as she sat lightly on the edge of her aunt’s bed.

  Richard asked: “When did Bradd begin this blackmail of you, Mrs. Tempest?”

  She frowned in concentration. “Almost as soon as you and Lysbet got engaged, I think.”

  “He told you that he knew what you had been doing, that it was criminal and he threatened to tell Lysbet? And you admitted to it?”

  “Yes. I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was guilty. I had done just what he said. And I didn’t want Lysbet to know.”

  “I see. An
d when he decided that he wanted to marry Lysbet instead of going on wringing money out of you, what threat did he use then?”

  “That he would give information to the police and that the news would be spread all over Fallsbridge. I dared not face it.”

  “So you gave in and then Lysbet had to help to shield you?” For the first time Richard’s voice was stern and at the sight of a new fear in her aunt’s eyes Lysbet pressed his hand urgently. “Darling—please!” she said.

  Richard returned the pressure reassuringly and said kindly to Mrs. Tempest: “It’s all right. But I had to know how things went. Because there’s something—though I think only one thing now—that I don’t understand. You say you had to agree to the man’s terms, both about money and about Lysbet’s marriage to him because you knew you were guilty of what he accused you? How did you know?”

  “How did I know? Why—why, because I was Lysbet’s guardian until she came of age, of course! And when she was twenty-one I did nothing about handing over the estate to her!”

  “You knew that?” persisted Richard. “You held a copy of her father’s will which made you her guardian until she was twenty-one?”

  “No—I—” Mrs. Tempest looked appealingly at Lysbet. “I’ve explained it to you, haven’t I?” she pleaded.

  “Only last night!”

  “Yes. Aunt Alicia knows she ought to have held a copy of the will,” Lysbet told Richard. “But the copy Uncle Everard had was destroyed and as the money continued to come in smoothly she did nothing about getting another copy from South Africa. She had admitted to me that she has never even seen a copy of it. Uncle Everard—”

  She broke off as Richard leaned back suddenly in his chair and breathed a sigh of utter astonishment. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  But Richard was again holding Mrs. Tempest’s fascinated eyes with his. “You really mean,” he asked, “that for a period of years you were administering a will of which you did not know, had never known, the terms?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “Well, my dear,” Richard seemed to be savouring the effect his words would have, “you may have been guilty of a culpable ignorance of which I shouldn’t have thought you were capable. But as to cheating Lysbet of her rights—of that you’ve never been guilty! By every legal right you are still her guardian and trustee;”

  “Richard!” exclaimed Lysbet while Mrs. Tempest said pitifully: “I—I don’t understand.” It was left to Lysbet to add: “How do you know this? What do you mean?”

  Richard looked up at her to say: “I told you about the girl Elsa Geraint. She cabled the details to Bradd but, thinking it was only a technical document in which he was interested, she didn’t take much notice of them. When she heard your name mentioned over here she was able to connect you with the will. But by that time she wasn’t able to tell me what conditions were attached to your inheritance, though she knew that there were some. So I took the liberty of doing as Bradd had done. I got in touch with South Africa; I telephoned for details of the will.

  He turned back to Mrs. Tempest. “Did you really not know,” he asked gently, “that it gave you trusteeship until Lysbet should be twenty-five, or until she should be married?”

  Alicia Tempest stared at him incredulously but with a dawning understanding in her eyes. Again it was left to Lysbet to pour out a flood of excited words.

  “Then Aunt Alicia did nothing wrong? In fact, she is still entitled to the money because I’m still only twenty-three and I’m not married—”

  “Though you wouldn’t believe, my sweet,” put in Richard dryly, “how very soon you’re going to be!”

  Lysbet’s answering smile was eloquent but she hurried on: “Anyhow, it explains something I haven’t been able to understand—why the Bank in Cape Town which sent the money regularly to Aunt Alicia had never questioned the fact that when I was twenty-one the management of it wasn’t handed over to me. Of course I wasn’t entitled to it then! But Richard, how did Eliot dare? He knew what the will said, so he knew all along that he was blackmailing us for something Aunt Alicia had never done.”

  “I think,” said Richard thoughtfully, “that you can know how he ‘dared’ if you know anything at all of Bradd’s character as I judge it. He is simply a gambler. At first he probably couldn’t credit—any more than I can yet!—that Mrs. Tempest could possibly believe herself guilty. I dare say she can tell us that has first questions to her were put very, very delicately and carefully, while he probed to find out just how much she did know.” He paused and looked at the older woman for confirmation.

  She nodded and Lysbet noted gratefully how the color was beginning to flow back into her cheeks and life was showing in her eyes.

  “You see,” went on Richard, “as long as he uttered no threats until he found out that she thought herself guilty he had nothing to lose. If she had defied him or laughed at him he had only to drop the subject, go away from Falcons and look for some other questionable means of making a livelihood! It was the longest gambling shot he ever took, I should think. And it very nearly came off!”

  “ ‘Twenty-five or married,” quoted Lysbet musingly. “I suppose he wasn’t content to wait and go on blackmailing you. It would have meant nearly two years of it and then when the truth came out he would have had to decamp pretty quickly. So he demanded marriage to me instead—!”

  Her aunt put out a hand to her. “No,” she said quietly. “I fought out that battle with myself last night. He should never have married you—for my sake. I knew by morning that I could never have let you go through with it. But the fear of what might happen to me put me in the state in which you found me. I was frightened and I—I suppose I cracked!”

  “Darling, you’ve been under a terrible strain for months!” Lysbet looked towards Richard. “She ought to rest now, oughtn’t she?”

  “She certainly ought,” he agreed. He stood up and looked down at the sick woman. “Happy now?” he queried.

  “Very, very happy,” she replied from her heart. “Thank you, Richard—for everything.” She gestured towards Lysbet. “You—you’ll marry her soon, won’t you?”

  He smiled at that. “You mean—your permission still stands?”

  “You know it was never mine to give! She is of age!” she protested.

  “Not,” he smiled again, “according to her father’s will. You are her guardian—until I take over! May I?”

  At that they all laughed, knowing a real accord between them for the first time. This day’s work had swept aside every barrier of prejudice and of secret reservations; it was as if light had been let suddenly into a long-closed house.

  Lysbet and Richard went downstairs hand in hand. In the library she said wonderingly: “I still can’t understand how Aunt Alicia could not have known about the will. Do you suppose that Uncle Everard and she never talked about their guardianship of me, of what the terms of it were?”

  Richard shook his head. “It’s something I shall never understand either. But it’s possible that your uncle was one of the school of thought which says in effect Business matters of any sort are not for pretty ears’—and kept the whole thing to himself. And he died suddenly, remember.”

  “I suppose it is possible,” agreed Lysbet. “And Uncle Everard was a bit like that, I should think—pompous and important, you know. Though I loved him dearly,” she added. “But there’s something else I wanted to ask you. Supposing Eliot had been right, and Aunt Alicia had been guilty—was there anything he could have done? If I, as the injured party, had refused to prosecute her, could he have carried out any of the threats of criminal procedure he was holding over us?”

  “I’m not sure,” Richard told her. “I think he might have become what is known as a ‘common informer’. The police might have had to act on his information. But she would never allow you to get advice about that, would she?”

  “Never. It was utter deadlock. And now—we’re free!”

  Richard took her in his arms. “Free to fall in love
again—and to marry—and to raise a family. You’re free to feed me and cherish me and dam my socks, and I’m free to work for you and to forget that you are really a rich wench who doesn’t really need to be kept by the sweat of my brow. You’ll be kept,” he added threateningly, “and like it!”

  She nestled more closely into his arms. “I shall like it,” she promised. “More—and more—and more!”

  He held her back from him and remarked quizzically. “I forgot one of our freedoms. We can start another quarrel any time. We never really finished the one about my alleged philanderings with my secretary—”

  “Caroline—oh!” Lysbet blushed and shook forward the curtain of her dark hair so that he could scarcely see her face. “Richard—don’t!”

  “Did you believe it?” he urged.

  “No. Yes—I don’t know! I was shocked because she was in your arms when I came into the surgery, and you didn’t offer any explanation. It looked as if there was something to hide and I think I worked myself into believing it. And Eliot hinted that you had every opportunity—”

  “Oh, did he? Well, I didn’t offer to explain, because I didn’t think you could have seen anything of the whole idiotic incident. Look—if you want a physical demonstration, you’d say you were ‘in my arms’ now, wouldn’t you?”

  ‘Yes,” assented Lysbet.

  “But if I were feeling particularly irate with you and you saw fit to fling yourself upon my bosom with a soulful appeal to my better nature—that wouldn’t be the same thing at all, would it?”

  “No, I suppose not. Was Caroline appealing soulfully?”

  “I think she was embracing me with a view to making me forget that, possibly through her negligence, though possibly not, I had just lost a patient. And if you saw anything at all you saw me rejecting the advance in no mean fashion,” said Richard grimly.