Iris entered the farm-house; leaving Fanny Mere, after what the doctor had said on the subject of visitors, to wait for her in the carriage.
After an absence of barely ten minutes Miss Henley returned; personally changed, not at all to her own advantage, by the introduction of a novelty in her dress. She had gone into the farmhouse, wearing a handsome mantle of sealskin. When she came out again, the mantle had vanished, and there appeared in its place a common cloak of drab-coloured cloth. Noticing the expression of blank amazement in the maid's face, Iris burst out laughing.
"How do you think I look in my new cloak?" she asked.
Fanny saw nothing to laugh at in the sacrifice of a sealskin mantle. "I must not presume, Miss, to give an opinion," she said gravely.
"At any rate," Iris continued, "you must be more than mortal if my change of costume doesn't excite your curiosity. I found Rhoda Bennet in the garden, exposed to the cold wind in this ugly flimsy thing. After what the doctor had told me, it was high time to assert my authority. I insisted on changing cloaks with Rhoda. She made an attempt, poor dear, to resist; but she knows me of old—and I had my way. I am sorry you have been prevented from seeing her; you shall not miss the opportunity when she is well again. Do you admire a fine view? Very well; we will vary the drive on our return. Go back," she said to the coachman, "by Highgate and Hampstead."
Fanny's eyes rested on the shabby cloak with a well-founded distrust of it as a protection against the autumn weather. She ventured to suggest that her mistress might feel the loss (in an open carriage) of the warm mantle which she had left on Rhoda's shoulders.
Iris made light of the doubt expressed by her maid. But by the time they had passed Highgate, and had approached the beginning of the straight road which crosses the high ridge of Hampstead Heath, she was obliged to acknowledge that she did indeed feel the cold. "You ought to be a good walker," she said, looking at her maid's firm well-knit figure. "Exercise is all I want to warm me. What do you say to going home on foot?" Fanny was ready and willing to accompany her mistress. The carriage was dismissed, and they set forth on their walk.
As they passed the inn called "The Spaniards," two women who were standing at the garden gate stared at Iris, and smiled. A few paces further on, they were met by an errand-boy. He too looked at the young lady, and put his hand derisively to his head, with a shrill whistle expressive of malicious enjoyment. "I appear to amuse these people," Iris said. "What do they see in me?"
Fanny answered with an effort to preserve her gravity, which was not quite successfully disguised: "I beg your pardon, Miss; I think they notice the curious contrast between your beautiful bonnet and your shabby cloak."
Persons of excitable temperament have a sense of ridicule, and a dread of it, unintelligible to their fellow-creatures who are made of coarser material. For the moment, Iris was angry. "Why didn't you tell me of it," she asked sharply, "before I sent away the carriage? How can I walk back, with everybody laughing at me?"
She paused—reflected a little—and led the way off the high road, on the right, to the fine clump of fir-trees which commands the famous view in that part of the Heath.
"There's but one thing to be done," she said, recovering her good temper; "we must make my grand bonnet suit itself to my miserable cloak. You will pull out the feather and rip off the lace (and keep them for yourself, if you like), and then I ought to look shabby enough from head to foot, I am sure! No; not here; they may notice us from the road—and what may the fools not do when they see you tearing the ornaments off my bonnet! Come down below the trees, where the ground will hide us."
They had nearly descended the steep slope which leads to the valley, below the clump of firs, when they were stopped by a terrible discovery.
Close at their feet, in a hollow of the ground, was stretched the insensible body of a man. He lay on his side, with his face turned away from them. An open razor had dropped close by him. Iris stooped over the prostate man, to examine his face. Blood flowing from a frightful wound in his throat, was the first thing that she saw. Her eyes closed instinctively, recoiling from that ghastly sight. The next instant she opened them again, and saw his face.
Dying or dead, it was the face of Lord Harry.
The shriek that burst from her, on making that horrible discovery, was heard by two men who were crossing the lower heath at some distance. They saw the women, and ran to them. One of the men was a labourer; the other, better dressed, looked like a foreman of works. He was the first who arrived on the spot.
"Enough to frighten you out of your senses, ladies," he said civilly. "It's a case of suicide, I should say, by the look of it."
"For God's sake, let us do something to help him!" Iris burst out. "I know him! I know him!"
Fanny, equal to the emergency, asked Miss Henley for her handkerchief, joined her own handkerchief to it, and began to bandage the wound. "Try if his pulse is beating," she said quietly to her mistress. The foreman made himself useful by examining the suicide's pockets. Iris thought she could detect a faint fluttering in the pulse. "Is there no doctor living near?" she cried. "Is there no carriage to be found in this horrible place?"
The foreman had discovered two letters. Iris read her own name on one of them. The other was addressed "To the person who may find my body." She tore the envelope open. It contained one of Mr. Vimpany's cards, with these desperate words written on it in pencil: "Take me to the doctor's address, and let him bury me, or dissect me, whichever he pleases." Iris showed the card to the foreman. "Is it near here?" she asked. "Yes, Miss; we might get him to that place in no time, if there was a conveyance of any kind to be found." Still preserving her presence of mind, Fanny pointed in the direction of "The Spaniards" inn. "We might get what we want there," she said. "Shall I go?"
Iris signed to her to attend to the wounded man, and ascended the sloping ground. She ran on towards the road. The men, directed by Fanny, raised the body and slowly followed her, diverging to an easier ascent. As Iris reached the road, a four-wheel cab passed her. Without an instant's hesitation, she called to the driver to stop. He pulled up his horse. She confronted a solitary gentleman, staring out of the window of the cab, and looking as if he thought that a lady had taken a liberty with him. Iris allowed the outraged stranger no opportunity of expressing his sentiments. Breathless as she was, she spoke first.
"Pray forgive me—you are alone in the cab—there is room for a gentleman, dangerously wounded—he will bleed to death if we don't find help for him—the place is close by—oh, don't refuse me!" She looked back, holding fast by the cab door, and saw Fanny and the men slowly approaching. "Bring him here!" she cried.
"Do nothing of the sort!" shouted the gentleman in possession of the cab.
But Fanny obeyed her mistress; and the men obeyed Fanny. Iris turned indignantly to the merciless stranger. "I ask you to do an act of Christian kindness," she said. "How can you, how dare you, hesitate?"
"Drive on!" cried the stranger.
"Drive on, at your peril," Iris added, on her side.
The cabman sat, silent and stolid, on the box, waiting for events.
Slowly the men came in view, bearing Lord Harry, still insensible. The handkerchiefs on his throat were saturated with blood. At that sight, the cowardly instincts of the stranger completely mastered him. "Let me out!" he clamoured; "let me out!"
Finding the cab left at her disposal, Iris actually thanked him! He looked at her with an evil eye. "I have my suspicions, I can tell you," he muttered. "If this comes to a trial in a court of law, I'm not going to be mixed up with it. Innocent people have been hanged before now, when appearances were against them."
He walked off; and, by way of completing the revelation of his own meanness, forgot to pay his fare.
On the point of starting the horse to pursue him, the cabman was effectually stopped. Iris showed him a sovereign. Upon this hint (like Othello) he spoke.
"All right, Miss. I see your poor gentleman is a-bleeding. You'll take
care—won't you?—that he doesn't spoil my cushions." The driver was not a ill-conditioned man; he put the case of his property indulgently, with a persuasive smile. Iris turned to the two worthy fellows, who had so readily given her their help, and bade them good-bye, with a solid expression of her gratitude which they both remembered for many a long day to come. Fanny was already in the cab supporting Lord Harry's body. Iris joined her. The cabman drove carefully to Mr. Vimpany's new house.
CHAPTER XVIII
PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE
NUMBER Five was near the centre of the row of little suburban houses called Redburn Road.
When the cab drew up at the door Mr. Vimpany himself was visible, looking out of the window on the ground floor—and yawning as he looked. Iris beckoned to him impatiently. "Anything wrong?" he asked, as he approached the door of the cab. She drew back, and silently showed him what was wrong. The doctor received the shock with composure. When he happened to be sober and sad, looking for patients and failing to find them, Mr. Vimpany's capacity for feeling sympathy began and ended with himself.
"This is a new scrape, even for Lord Harry," he remarked. "Let's get him into the house."
The insensible man was carried into the nearest room on the ground floor. Pale and trembling, Iris related what had happened, and asked if there was no hope of saving him.
"Patience!" Mr. Vimpany answered; "I'll tell you directly."
He removed the bandages, and examined the wound. "There's been a deal of blood lost," he said; "I'll try and pull him through. While I am about it, Miss, go upstairs, if you please, and find your way to the drawing-room." Iris hesitated. The doctor opened a neat mahogany box. "The tools of my trade," he continued; "I'm going to sew up his lordship's throat." Shuddering as she heard those words, Iris hurried out of the room. Fanny followed her mistress up the stairs. In her own very different way, the maid was as impenetrably composed as Mr. Vimpany himself. "There was a second letter found in the gentleman's pocket, Miss," she said. "Will you excuse my reminding you that you have not read it yet."
Iris read the lines that follow:
"Forgive me, my dear, for the last time. My letter is to say that I shall trouble you no more in this world—and, as for the other world, who knows? I brought some money back with me, from the goldfields. It was not enough to be called a fortune—I mean the sort of fortune which might persuade your father to let you marry me. Well! here in England, I had an opportunity of making ten times more of it on the turf; and, let me add, with private information of the horses which I might certainly count on to win. I don't stop to ask by what cruel roguery I was tempted to my ruin. My money is lost; and, with it, my last hope of a happy and harmless life with you comes to an end. I die, Iris dear, with the death of that hope. Something in me seems to shrink from suicide in the ugly gloom of great overgrown London. I prefer to make away with myself among the fields, where the green will remind me of dear old Ireland. When you think of me sometimes, say to yourself the poor wretch loved me—and perhaps the earth will lie lighter on Harry for those kind words, and the flowers (if you favour me by planting a few) may grow prettier on my grave."
There it ended.
The heart of Iris sank as she read that melancholy farewell, expressed in language at once wild and childish. If he survived his desperate attempt at self-destruction, to what end would it lead? In silence, the woman who loved him put his letter back in her bosom. Watching her attentively—affected, it was impossible to say how, by that mute distress—Fanny Mere proposed to go downstairs, and ask once more what hope there might be for the wounded man. Iris knew the doctor too well to let the maid leave her on a useless errand.
"Some men might be kindly ready to relieve my suspense," she said; "the man downstairs is not one of them. I must wait till he comes to me, or sends for me. But there is something I wish to say to you, while we are alone. You have been but a short time in my service, Fanny. Is it too soon to ask if you feel some interest in me?"
"If I can comfort you or help you, Miss, be pleased to tell me how." She made that reply respectfully, in her usual quiet manner; her pale cheeks showing no change of colour, her faint blue eyes resting steadily on her mistress's face. Iris went on:
"If I ask you to keep what has happened, on this dreadful day, a secret from everybody, may I trust you—little as you know of me—as I might have trusted Rhoda Bennet?"
"I promise it, Miss." In saying those few words, the undemonstrative woman seemed to think that she had said enough.
Iris had no alternative but to ask another favour.
"And whatever curiosity you may feel, will you be content to do me a kindness—without wanting an explanation?"
"It is my duty to respect my mistress's secrets; I will do my duty." No sentiment, no offer of respectful sympathy; a positive declaration of fidelity, left impenetrably to speak for itself. Was the girl's heart hardened by the disaster which had darkened her life? Or was she the submissive victim of that inbred reserve, which shrinks from the frank expression of feeling, and lives and dies self-imprisoned in its own secrecy? A third explanation, founded probably on a steadier basis, was suggested by Miss Henley's remembrance of their first interview. Fanny's nature had revealed a sensitive side, when she was first encouraged to hope for a refuge from ruin followed perhaps by starvation and death. Judging so far from experience, a sound conclusion seemed to follow. When circumstances strongly excited the girl, there was a dormant vitality in her that revived. At other times when events failed to agitate her by a direct appeal to personal interests, her constitutional reserve held the rule. She could be impenetrably honest, steadily industrious, truly grateful—but the intuitive expression of feeling, on ordinary occasions, was beyond her reach.
After an interval of nearly half an hour, Mr. Vimpany made his appearance. Pausing in the doorway, he consulted his watch, and entered on a calculation which presented him favourably from a professional point of view.
"Allow for time lost in reviving my lord when he fainted, and stringing him up with a drop of brandy, and washing my hands (look how clean they are!), I haven't been more than twenty minutes in mending his throat. Not bad surgery, Miss Henley."
"Is his life safe, Mr. Vimpany?"
"Thanks to his luck—yes."
"His luck?"
"To be sure! In the first place, he owes his life to your finding him when you did; a little later, and it would have been all over with Lord Harry. Second piece of luck: catching the doctor at home, just when he was most wanted. Third piece of luck: our friend didn't know how to cut his own throat properly. You needn't look black at me, Miss; I'm not joking. A suicide with a razor in his hand has generally one chance in his favour—he is ignorant of anatomy. That is my lord's case. He has only cut through the upper fleshy part of his throat, and has missed the larger blood vessels. Take my word for it, he will do well enough now; thanks to you, thanks to me, and thanks to his own ignorance. What do you say to that way of putting it? Ha! my brains are in good working order to-day; I haven't been drinking any of Mr. Mountjoy's claret—do you take the joke, Miss Henley?"
Chuckling over the recollection of his own drunken audacity, he happened to notice Fanny Mere.
"Hullo! is this another injured person in want of me? You're as white as a sheet, Miss. If you're going to faint, do me a favour—wait till I can get the brandy-bottle. Oh! it's natural to you, is it? I see. A thick skin and a slow circulation; you will live to be an old woman. A friend of yours, Miss Henley?"
Fanny answered composedly for herself: "I am Miss Henley's maid, sir."
"What's become of the other one?" Mr. Vimpany asked. "Aye? aye? Staying at a farm-house for the benefit of her health, is she? If I had been allowed time enough, I would have made a cure of Rhoda Bennet. There isn't a medical man in England who knows more than I do of the nervous maladies of women—and what is my reward? Is my waiting-room crammed with rich people coming to consult me? Do I live in a fashionable Square? Have I even been made a Baronet
? Damn it—I beg your pardon, Miss Henley—but it is irritating, to a man of my capacity, to be completely neglected. For the last three days not a creature has darkened the doors of this house. Could I say a word to you?"
He led Iris mysteriously into a corner of the room. "About our friend downstairs?" he began.
"When may we hope that he will be well again, Mr. Vimpany?"
"Maybe in three weeks. In a month at most. I have nobody here but a stupid servant girl. We ought to have a competent nurse. I can get a thoroughly trained person from the hospital; but there's a little difficulty. I am an outspoken man. When I am poor, I own I am poor. My lord must be well fed; the nurse must be well fed. Would you mind advancing a small loan, to provide beforehand for the payment of expenses?"
Iris handed her purse to him, sick of the sight of Mr. Vimpany. "Is that all?" she asked, making for the door.
"Much obliged. That's all."
As they approached the room on the ground floor, Iris stopped: her eyes rested on the doctor. Even to that coarse creature, the eloquent look spoke for her. Fanny noticed it, and suddenly turned her head aside. Over the maid's white face there passed darkly an expression of unutterable contempt. Her mistress's weakness had revealed itself—weakness for one of the betrayers of women; weakness for a man! In the meantime, Mr. Vimpany (having got the money) was ready to humour the enviable young lady with a well-filled purse.
"Do you want to see my lord before you go?" he asked, amused at the idea. "Mind! you mustn't disturb him! No talking, and no crying. Ready? Now look at him."
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