A Double Knot

Volume Three – Chapter Eleven.

Ruth’s Work Undone

The Continental trip extended to months, after which there were a few visits, so that it was well into the next season before they were back at the house in Saint James’s, and after their return Marie devoted herself to Ruth, hoping that Montaigne would not show himself again, though they both trembled at the thought of his coming.

Still, he did not show himself, and matters went on so happily and well that Ruth began to hope that Marie’s love for Glen was dead, when, in an evil hour, and, as Marie said, to fulfil a social duty, they called upon Lady Anna Maria Morton, meeting Lady Littletown there; when that lady insisted upon their dining with her at her town house, and it was next to impossible to refuse.

Lady Littletown was a match-maker at heart, and she always looked upon her conservatory, with its brilliant flowers, as her greatest aid in such matters. Hence it was that her ladyship took care to have a conservatory wherever she lived.

She had taken a handsome house in South Kensington for a short season, one that was admirably furnished in this respect, though far from being equal to Mr Elbraham’s glass palace. Still, it was enough.

Lord Henry frowned slightly on finding that Captain Glen was among the guests, and deputed by Lady Littletown to take Marie in to dinner; but his brow cleared directly, and he smiled at his wife as she went by him and gave him an appealing look that seemed to say, “Don’t blame me.”

Hardly had they passed on to the staircase before Glen said in a quick, agitated voice: “I thought I was never to see you again. I must have a few words with you before you go.”

Five minutes before, Marie had told herself that she was brave and strong, and that the past fancy was dead; but on hearing these words her hand trembled, her heart beat fast, and she knew that she was as weak as ever, and that she could only falter: “It is impossible!”

“It is not impossible!” he said angrily. “I must – I will see you.”

They entered the dining-room, and for the next two hours everything seemed to Marie like a dream. Lord Henry was at the bottom of the table, taking his old place of host, and the flower-filled vases completely shaded his wife from sight: still, Ruth was exactly opposite, apparently listening to the conversation of Glen; but Marie knew that she was watching them narrowly.

She went upstairs in a dream, just as she had come down, and answered questions, talked and entered into the various themes of conversation as if she were quite collected; but all the time there had been a restless throbbing of her pulses, and she trembled, and felt that she would have given the world to be away!

At last!

Marie heard the dining-room door open, and the sound of ascending voices. Lord Henry would be there directly, and she would ask him to take her back.

That was Marcus Glen’s voice speaking loudly, and every fibre of her body seemed to thrill as she listened to its tones.

Marie’s back was to the door as he entered, and she could not see him; but she seemed to feel his approach, and all was a dream once more, as he seated himself on the ottoman by her, and began to talk about some current topic.

She answered him, took the opposite side, talking freely and well, and Lord Henry chided himself for his uneasy feeling, and felt that he ought to be proud of such a wife. She was devoted to him, and he trusted her with all his heart.

The conversation was very animated for the time that Glen stood by her; but all the while Marie’s pulses kept up that quick, feverish throb, and there was the hidden sense of danger still within her heart.

May had come round again, the Academy pictures were once more drawing their crowds, and directly after an early breakfast one morning Marie and Ruth walked up into Piccadilly to spend a couple of hours while the rooms were empty and cool.

How it happened Marie afterwards hardly realised, but she had become separated from her cousin, who had wandered on into the next room, leaving her gazing listlessly about, when suddenly her heart seemed to stand still, for close beside her there was a low sigh, and she felt more than saw that Glen was at her elbow.

Mastering her emotion, she turned quickly to reproach him for following her there, when she saw that he had his back to her, and was gazing intently at a portrait. She did not speak. It was a kind of gasp or catching of the breath; but he heard it, and turned sharply round to face her.

“Marie!” he exclaimed.

“Hush! Don’t speak to me, for God’s sake!”

She said no more, but reeled, and would have fallen had he not caught her arm, and led her through the next opening and downstairs to the refreshment-room, quite empty at that early hour, the waiters not being ready for visitors.

There were a couple of the attendants at hand, ready to bring water and ice, and at the end of a few minutes Marie gazed wildly about her – starting violently, though, as she heard the deep voice at her side.

“That will do,” he said quietly. “A few minutes’ rest and she will be quite recovered.” Then they were alone, with Glen whispering to her eagerly, and she listening with her eyes half-closed and a strange dazed look in her pallid face.

“No, no!” she said at last feebly.

“You shall,” he cried, and his strong will prevailed over her more and more. “You must leave him, Marie. I do not ask it: I know you love me. You always have loved me. Come to me, my darling, or I must die.”

“Die!” she moaned. “No, no; not you. O God, forgive me! Would that I were dead!”

“Dead, when there is a life of happiness before us?” he whispered. “Marie dearest, at last! You understand?” he said, after whispering for some time.

“Yes, yes,” she said slowly; and he spoke again very quickly, but in low, distinct tones.

“Yes,” she repeated heavily, “I understand.”

“Marie!”

“Lady Henry was taken suddenly ill in one of the rooms, Miss Allerton,” said Glen hurriedly. “Fortunately I was there.”

“Ill,” said Ruth slowly, as she ran to Marie’s side. “Fortunately you were there. Captain Glen, I will see to my cousin now. Will you have the goodness to go?”

He raised his hat and slowly walked away.

“Marie, Marie!” cried Ruth piteously. “How could you deceive me so?”

“No, no!” cried Marie excitedly. “I did not know he was here. It was an unexpected meeting. Take me – ”

She was about to say “home,” but she could not utter the word, and as they walked back Ruth thought of this, and a hand seemed to compress her heart as she said to herself:

“The work of months undone!”

Volume Three – Chapter Twelve.

John Huish Gets Back Part of his Brains

More than once during the severe attack of brain-fever from which John Huish lay prostrate at Highgate, Dr Stonor compressed his lips and asked himself whether he would save his young friend’s life. At such times, as he sat by the bedside and gazed in his patient’s face, the lineaments brought back the scene by the pit and his father’s agony, as Captain Millet lay apparently dying.

“How time has gone!” the doctor would mutter, “and how like he looks to his father now!”

But a change for the better came at last, and after a long and weary convalescence he was once more about, month after month gliding by, and the brain refusing to accompany the body on its way to health.

He was very quiet and gentle, but he seemed to have no recollection of what had gone by, neither did he evince any desire, but passed his time mostly in the doctor’s study, where an unrolled mummy had apparently so great an attraction for him that he would sit near and watch it hour after hour when no one was by.

“Must get him better first,” the doctor would say. “I can’t run the risk of bringing on a relapse.”

So John Huish remained in utter ignorance of the fact that his young wife had been confined to her bed at the gloomy house in Wimpole Street, so prostrated by all she had had to pass through, that the doctors called in advised total rest and quiet, combined with careful nursing. Nothing calculated to excite her was to reach her ears. Hence, when in his turn Dr Stonor called, his lips were sealed respecting John Huish’s state; and poor Gertrude never mentioned his name.

After leaving Renée by her sister’s side, the doctor had a long chat with his old friend, whose white hand trembled as he thrust it forth to be taken by the visitor.

“How is she?” said the latter. “Ah, poor girl, she is very ill!”

“But she will get better? Oh, Stonor, don’t flatter me: tell me the truth!”

“Tell you the truth? – of course I shall! Well, she’ll be better when she gets back to her husband.”

“And how is John Huish?” and the white hand trembled inside the panel, like some leaf agitated by the wind.

“He is bad – very bad,” said the doctor. “I’ve had a hard fight with him, for his brain has had some serious shock. Poor fellow! he has been a little queer in the head for some time past, and consulted me at intervals, but I could make nothing of it. It’s a very obscure case, and I would not – I could not believe that there was anything more than fancy in his symptoms. But he was right, and it seems like a lesson to me not to be too conceited. His mind has been very impressionable, and from what I can gather he has not been carrying on as he should.”

“No, no, I’m afraid not!”

“There was some sad scene with his young wife, I suppose.”

(Text on pages 164 and 165 missing.)

“Well, I always think that it was a very insane, morbid proceeding, tinged with vanity, to shut yourself up as you have done these thirty years.”

“I took an oath, when I found to what I was reduced, that I would never look upon the face of man again, and I have kept it.”

“I should think that you were more likely to be forgiven for breaking such an oath than for keeping it,” said the doctor drily.

“But I have kept it!” said Robert Millet sternly. “In a few short hours I found that I had lost all worth living for, and I retired here to die.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, in his bluff, dry way; “but when you found that you were so long dying, I think you might have done something useful.”

There was no reply to this, and the doctor loosed the thin white hand, and began to tap the little ledge by the panel.

“I wrote down to Huish about his son’s illness,” he said at last.

“Yes: well?” said the recluse eagerly.

“He begged me to do all I could. He never leaves his room now. Gout or rheumatism has crippled him. Strange how things come about with the young people.”

“Yes: I’m getting old now, and I wanted to feel full of forgiveness towards Huish, and that is why I took to his boy. It is hard that matters have turned out as they have.”

“Very,” said the doctor. “Well, I’m not going to advise, but I should like to know that you had broken your oath at last, and let light into your brain as well as into your house. Good-bye; I’ll let you know how John Huish gets on.”

Dr Stonor went straight to Highgate and found what seemed an improvement in his patient, for Huish was sitting up; but he seemed strangely reticent and thoughtful, and never asked any questions as to his wife or his relatives, but seemed to be dreaming over something with which his mind was filled.

Time passed, and with closely cut hair, and a strange sallowness in his complexion, John Huish was up, and had been out times enough in the extensive garden, but there was a something in his manner that troubled the doctor a great deal, and was looked upon by him as a bad symptom. He was always dreaming over something, and what that was he never said.

Miss Stonor conversed with him, and he was gentle and talked rationally. He answered the doctor’s questions reasonably enough, and yet, as soon as his attention was released, he was back again, dreaming over the one thing that seemed to trouble his mind.

“Will he get well?” said Miss Selina to the doctor one morning.

“I’d give something to be able to say,” was the reply. “At times I think not, for I fear the impression upon his mind is that he is insane, and if a man believes that of himself, how can we get him to act like one who is sane?”

This was at breakfast-time, and the doctor soon after went out, leaving an assistant in charge.

It was a glorious afternoon, and Huish and the three patients were out in the garden, where Captain Lawdor was practising throwing biscuit, as he called it, at a stone balanced on the end of a stick. Mr Rawlinson had a table out and was writing a series of minutes on railway mismanagement; and Mr Roberts was following John Huish about as he walked up and down beneath the old red-brick wall which separated the garden from the road.

This went on for a time, and then Mr Roberts crept softly up to Huish, to whom he had not spoken since the night of the dinner, and said:

“I told you not to look at that Egyptian sorcerer. I knew it would send you mad.”

“Mad!” exclaimed Huish, smiling. “I am not mad.”

“Oh yes,” said Mr Roberts. “You came here and asked the doctor to cure you. No man could do that if he were not mad.”

“Oh, nonsense!” said Huish, looking at him strangely. “I am quite well.”

Mr Roberts shook his head.

“No, you are not; I know how you feel, just like a man I knew used to feel. He always felt as if he were two; and sometimes he was one, sometimes the other. The other was the one the lawyer said was dead. It was so sad, too, for her. What have you done with your wife?”

At last!

John Huish started as if he had been stung. That was the something he had, in a strange secretive way, tried to think of for days past – his wife; and now the mention of her sent a shock like that of electricity through his brain.

He hurried away, and began to walk up and down, growing more and more excited. His wife! Where was she? Yes, he remembered now; the mist that had shrouded his brain was dispelled, and he could think. That something like him had been and taken her away, and he was doing nothing here.

With all the cunning of an insane person he became very calm all at once, for the doctor’s assistant strolled out in the garden just then, walked up to and spoke to him, and not seeing any change, went back to the house, while, glancing sharply round him, John Huish waited for an opportunity to put a plan that he had instantly matured into operation.

He had sense enough to know that he should be refused if he asked leave to go outside, so walking up and down for a few minutes, he suddenly made a run and a bound, caught the top of the wall and scrambled up, and dropped into the lane.

The captain raised a shout, and the assistant came running out, but by the time he reached the gate Huish had disappeared, taking as he did a short cut across the fields, while the assistant searched the road, and then, after fruitless efforts, hurried off to the nearest station, and made his way to Finsbury Circus. Here he broke the news to the doctor, who left him to finish his cases, and, calling Daniel, set off as fast as they could go to Westbourne Road, as being the most likely point for Huish to make for now he was free.

As soon as he had run sharply across the fields, John Huish subsided into a walk, and going along at a pretty good pace, made straight for his home.

To all appearances he was perfectly sane and in his right mind; but there was only one dominant idea there, and to fulfil this he was hurrying on. Still there was a certain amount of strange caution developed in his acts. He seemed to know that there was something wrong with him, and that he must be cautious how he spoke to people; and to this end he carefully avoided everyone who appeared to take the slightest notice of him, till he reached Westbourne Road. There he rang the bell, and the door was answered by his domestic.

The servant looked at him strangely, but said nothing, and he hurried up to his room to try and remove any traces that might strike a stranger of his having been lately ill. His mind was clear enough for that, and as he hastily bathed his face, the cold water refreshed him and he felt more himself.

He was terribly confused, though, at times, and had to ask himself why he was there.

That acted as a touchstone – Gertrude – he had come to seek his wife; he had escaped so that he might find her, for the doctor would not let him go. He told him – yes, he told him his wife was well, and he should see her soon; but it was a lie to quiet him. That devil had got her – his other self. Of course – the servant and the cabman told him so; but he must be quiet, or they would stop him. Perhaps the doctor had sent after him now.

He shuddered and gazed about him for a moment as if his mind were going beyond his control. Then, mastering himself once more, he took up his hat, opened the door, and passed out into the road.

Volume Three – Chapter Thirteen.

Lord Henry Receives a Telegram

“I shall be waiting for you this evening at the Channel Hotel. It is an easy walk from the square. Ask to be shown to Number 99. If you are not there by ten o’clock, good-bye! There will be the report of a pistol heard. Without you I can bear my life no longer.”

Every word burned into her mind, and she seemed to be mentally repeating it constantly, even as some familiar tune will keep on humming in the brain.

“If you are not there by ten o’clock there will be the report of a pistol heard.”

Marie felt that he would keep his word.

Over and over and over again, with dreary reiteration, those words kept recurring, and then, as the day wore on and she went to her room, she found herself repeating them aloud.

She bathed her burning temples, but found no relief. She threw herself upon a couch, and tried to obtain rest, but those words kept on, and she repeated them as if they were a lesson, till everything seemed dreamlike and strange, and she wondered whether she had really met Glen that morning.

At last she dropped into a feverish, uneasy sleep, the result of her weariness, but the words kept on, and she felt that she was repeating them as she went straight on towards a thick darkness, whose meaning she could not penetrate. All she knew was that she was irresistibly impelled towards that darkness, and it made her shudder as she drew nearer and nearer, till she felt that her next step would be into this strange mystery, when she found herself confronted by Ruth.

“Are you ill, dear?”

“No, not ill; only weary in spirit, dear. There, I am better now. But tell me about yourself. Have you seen Montaigne lately?”

“Yes,” said Ruth with a shiver. “He seems to watch and follow us. He was in Piccadilly this morning as we came back from the Academy.”

“The insolent!” said Marie calmly. “Is it time to dress?”

“Oh no,” cried Ruth, looking curiously at her cousins ashy face. “You have been to sleep, and forgotten how time goes.”

“Have I? Yes, I suppose I have. Let me see, there is no one coming to dinner to-night?”

“No, not to-night,” said Ruth, gazing with wondering eyes at her cousin.

“No, no, of course not! My brain feels hot and confused to-day. I shall be better soon!”

She rose, and then descended with Ruth to the drawing-room, chatting calmly with her over the five o’clock tea, and seemed as if she had forgotten the morning’s incident. This went on till the dressing-bell rang, when, placing her arm round her cousin, she went with her upstairs to their several rooms, kissing her affectionately, and bidding her not be late.

Marie looked perfectly calm when they met again in the drawing-room, where Lord Henry was awaiting their descent, and as Ruth entered she saw her cousin half seated upon one of the arms of a lounge, resting her soft white arm upon her husband’s shoulder as she bent down and kissed him tenderly upon the forehead.

She did not start away, but rose gravely, and directly after, dinner was announced, and Lord Henry took Ruth down.

The dinner passed off much as usual. The conversation was carried on in the quiet, calm way customary at that house, and Lord Henry smiled gravely and pleasantly first at one, then at the other, as he retailed to them, in his simple, placid manner, some piece of news that he had heard at the club, to which Marie listened with her quiet deference to her husband, whose slightest word seemed always to rouse her to listen.

When they rose Lord Henry left his chair in the most courtly way to open the door for them, Marie drawing back for Ruth to pass out first, while she hesitated, before placing her arms round her husband’s neck. She kissed him on his forehead, holding him tightly to her for a moment or two, and then she passed into the hall and began to ascend the stairs, looking handsomer than she had ever looked to him before, as she went up with the soft glow of the lamp shining down upon her pale face.

As she reached the first landing she smiled back at him in a strange way, hesitating for a moment or two before passing out of his sight.

“God bless her,” said the old man, with tears in his eyes. “I wish I was years younger – for her sake.”

He returned to his chair, poured out his customary glass of port-wine, and sat sipping it in a calm, satisfied spirit. So happy and at rest did he feel, that, for a wonder, he finished that glass and poured out another, which he held up to the light and examined with all the air of a connoisseur.

Then sip after sip followed, with the dark ancestral paintings seeming to look down warningly at him from the wall, till he finished that second glass and began to doze. Then the doze came to an abrupt conclusion, and his lordship started up, for he thought he heard the closing of a door, but his eyelids dropped lower and lower till they were shut, and this time he slept deeply – so deeply that he did not hear the butler enter with his cup of coffee, which the old servitor placed softly upon the table, and then went out.

“Eh? What?” exclaimed Lord Henry, starting up.

“Beg pardon for waking your lordship,” said the butler, holding out a silver salver, upon which was a reddish – brown envelope; “but here is a telegram.”

“Telegram? Bless me!” exclaimed the old man, fumbling in rather a confused way for his glasses. “I hope – nothing wrong!”