Master of His Fate Part 6

"Yes, sir," said Jenkins; "he do sometimes have 'em black. He don't seem to take no pride in himself, as he do usual--don't seem to care somehow if he look a gentleman or a common man."

"But your master, Jenkins," said Lefevre, "can never look a common man."

"No, sir," said Jenkins; "he cannot, whatever he do."

"He is gone into the country, then?" asked Lefevre.

"Yes, sir; I packed his small port-mantew for him four days ago."

"And where is he gone? He told you, I suppose?"

"No, sir; he do not usual tell me when he is like that."

It did not seem possible to learn anything from Jenkins, in spite of the apparent intimacy of his conversation, so Lefevre left him, and returned to his own house. He had sat but a little while in his laboratory (where he had been occupying his small intervals of leisure lately in electrical studies and experiments) when, as chance would have it, the last post brought him a note from Dr Rippon. Its purport was curious.

"_I think_," the letter ran, "_you were sufficiently interested in the story I told you some week or two ago about one Hernando Courtney, not to be bored by a note on the same subject. Last night I accompanied my daughter and son-in-law to the Lyceum Theatre. On coming out we had to walk down Wellington Street into the Strand to find our carriage, and in the surging crowd about there I am almost sure I saw the Hernando Courtney whom I believed to be dead_. Aut Courtney aut Diabolus. _I have never heard satisfactory evidence of his death, and I should very much like to know if he is really still alive and in London. It has occurred to me that, considering the intimacy of yourself and your family with the gentleman who was made known to me at your mother's house by the name of Courtney, you may have heard by now the rights of the case. If you have any news, I shall be glad to share it with you."_

Considering this in a.s.sociation with the absence of Julius, Lefevre found his wits becoming involved in a puzzle. He could not settle to work, so he put on overcoat and hat, and sallied out again. He had no fixed purpose: he only felt the necessity of motion to resolve himself back into his normal calm. The air was keen from the east. May, which had opened with such wanton warmth and seductiveness, turned a cold shoulder on the world as she took herself off. It was long since he had indulged in an evening walk in the lamp-lit streets, so he stepped out eastward against the shrewd wind. Insensibly his attention forsook the busy and anxious present, and slipped back to the days of golden and romantic youth, when the crowded nocturnal streets were full of the mystery of life. He recalled the sensations of those days--the sharp doubts of self, the frequent strong desires to drink deep of all that life had to offer, and the painful recoils from temptation, which he felt would ruin, if yielded to, his hope of himself, and his ambition of filling a worthy place among men.

Thus musing, he walked on, taking, without noting it, the most frequented turnings, and soon he found himself in the Strand. It was that middle time of evening, after the theatres and restaurants have sucked in their crowds, when the frequenters of the streets have some reserve in their vivacity, before reckless roisterers have begun to taste the lees of pleasure, and to shout and jostle on the pavements. He was walking on the side of the way next the river, when, near the Adelphi, he became aware of a man before him, wearing a slouch-hat and a greatcoat--a man who appeared to choose the densest part of the throng, to prefer to be rubbed against and hustled rather than not. There was something about the man which held Lefevre's attention and roused his curiosity--something in the swing of his gait and the set of his shoulders. The man, too, seemed urged on by a singular haste, which permitted him to be the slowest and easiest of pa.s.sengers in the thick of the crowd, but carried him swiftly over the less frequented parts of the pavement. The doctor began to wonder if he was a pickpocket, and to look about for the watchful eye of a policeman. He kept close behind him past the door of the Strand Theatre, when the throng became slacker, and the man turned quickly about and returned the way he had come. Then Lefevre had a glimpse of his face,--the merest pa.s.sing glimpse, but it made him pause and ask himself where he had seen it before. A dark, foreign-looking man, with a haggard appeal in his eye: he tried to find the place of such a figure in his memory, but for the time he tried in vain.

Before the doctor recovered himself the man was well past, and disappearing in the throng. He hurried after, determined to overtake him, and to make a full and satisfying perusal of his face and figure.

He found that difficult, however, because of the man's singular style of progression. To maintain an even pace for himself, moreover, Lefevre had to walk very much in the roadway, the dangers of which, from pa.s.sing cabs and omnibuses, forbade his fixing his attention on the man alone.

Yet he was more and more piqued to look him in the face; for the longer he followed him the more he was struck with the oddity of his conduct.

He had already noted how he hurried over the empty s.p.a.ces of pavement and lingered sinuously in the thronged parts; he now remarked further that those who came into immediate contact with him (and they were mostly young people who were to be met with at that season of the night) glanced sharply at him, as if they had experienced some suspicious sensation, and seemed inclined to remonstrate, till they looked in his face.

Lefevre could not arrive at a clear front view till, by Charing Cross Station, the man turned on the kerb to look after a handsome youth who crossed before him, and pa.s.sed over the road. Then the doctor saw the face in the light of a street-lamp, and the sight sent the blood in a gush from his heart. It was a dark hairless face, terribly blanched and emaciated, as if by years of darkness and prison, with the impress of age and death, but yet with a wistful light in the eyes, and a firm sensuousness about the mouth that betrayed a considerable interest in life. He turned his eyes away an instant, to bring memory and a.s.sociation to bear. When he looked again the man was moving away. At once recognition rushed upon him like a wave of light. The terribly worn, ghastly features resolved themselves into a kind of death-mask of Julius! The wave recoiled and smote him again. Who could the man be, therefore, who was so like Julius, and yet was not Julius?--who could he be but Julius's father,--that Hernando Courtney whom Dr Rippon believed he had seen the evening before?

Here was a coil to unravel! Julius's father--the Spanish marquis that was--supposed to be dead, but yet wandering in singular fas.h.i.+on about the London streets, clearly not desiring, much less courting, opportunities of being recognised; Julius not caring to speak of his father, apparently ignoring his continued existence, and yet apparently knowing enough of his movements to avoid him when he came to London by suddenly removing "into the country" without leaving his address. What was the meaning of so much mystery? Crime? debt? political intrigue? or, what?

The mysterious Hernando went on his way, by the southern sweep of Trafalgar Square and c.o.c.kspur Street, to the Haymarket, and Lefevre followed with attention and curiosity bent on him, but yet with so little thought of playing spy that, if Hernando had gone any other way or had returned along the Strand, he would probably have let him go. And as they went on, the doctor could not but note, as before, how the object of his curiosity lingered wherever there was a press of people, whether on the pavement or on a refuge at a crossing, and hurried on wherever the pavement was spa.r.s.ely peopled or whenever the persons encountered were at all advanced in years. Indeed, the farther he followed the more was his attention compelled to remark that Hernando sharply avoided contact with the weakly, the old, and the decrepit, and wonder why the young people of either s.e.x whom he brushed against should turn as if the touch of him waked suspicion and a something hostile.

Thus they traversed the Haymarket, the Criterion pavement, and, flitting across to the Quadrant, the more popular side of Regent Street, among pus.h.i.+ng groups, weary stragglers, and steady pedestrians. Lefevre had a mind to turn aside and go home when he was opposite Vigo Street, but he was drawn on by the hope of observing something that might give him a clue to the Courtney mystery. When Oxford Circus was reached, however, Hernando jumped into a cab and drove rapidly off, and Lefevre returned to his own fireside.

He sat for some time over a cigar and a grog, walking in imagination round and round the mystery, which steadfastly refused to dissolve or to be set aside. His own honour, and perhaps the peace of his mother and sister, were involved in it. He was resolved to ask Julius for an explanation as soon as he could come to speech with him; but yet, in spite of that a.s.surance which he gave himself, he returned to the mystery again and again, and beset and bewildered himself with questions: Why was Julius estranged from his father? What was the secret of the old man's life which had left such an awful impress on his face?

And why was he nightly haunting the busiest pavements of London, in the crowd, but not of it, urged on as by some desire or agony?

He went to bed, but not to sleep. In the quiet and the darkness his imagination ranged without constraint over the whole field of his questionings. He went back upon Dr Rippon's story of the Spanish marquis, and fixed on the mention of his occult studies. He saw him, in fancy, without wife or son, cut off from the position and activities in his native country which his proper rank would have given him, sequester himself from society altogether, and give himself up to the study of those Arabian sages and alchemists in whom he had delighted when he was a young man. He saw him shun the daylight, and sleep its hours away, and then by night abandon himself like another Cagliostro to strange experiments with alembic and crucible, breathing acrid and poisonous vapours, seeking to extort from Nature her yet undiscovered secrets,--the Philosophers Stone, and the Elixir of Life. He saw him turn for a little from his strange and deadly experiments, and venture forth to show his blanched and worn face among the throngs of men; but even there he still pursued his anxious quest of life in the midst of death. He saw him wander up and down, in and out, among the evening crowd, delighting in contact with such of his fellow-creatures as had health and youth, and seeking, seeking--he knew not what. From this phantasmagoria he dozed off into the dark plains of sleep; but even there the terribly blanched and emaciated face was with him, bending wistful worn eyes upon him and melting him to pity. And still again the vision of the streets would arise about the face, and the sleeper would be aware of the man to whom the face belonged walking quickly and sinuously, seeking and enjoying contact with the throng, and strangely causing many to resent his touch as if they had been p.r.i.c.ked or stung, and yet urged onward in some further quest,--an anxious quest it sometimes resolved itself into for Julius, who ever evaded him.

Thus his brain laboured through the dead hours of the night, viewing and reviewing these scenes and figures, to extract a meaning from them; but he was no nearer the heart of the mystery when the morning broke and he was waked by the shrill chatter of the sparrows. The day, however, brought an event which shed a lurid light upon the Courtney difficulty, and revealed a vital connection between facts which Lefevre had not guessed were related.

Chapter V.

The Remarkable Case of Lady Mary Fane.

It was the kind of day that is called seasonable. If the sun had been obscured, the air would have been felt to be wintry; but the suns.h.i.+ne was full and warm, and so the world rejoiced, and declared it was a perfectly lovely May day,--just as a man who is charmed with the smiles and beauty of a woman, thinks her complete though she may have a heart of ice. Lefevre, as he went his hospital round that afternoon, found his patients revelling in the sunlight like flies. He himself was in excellent spirits, and he said a cheery or facetious word here and there as he pa.s.sed, which gave infinite delight to the thin and bloodless atomies under his care; for a joke from so serious and awful a being as the doctor is to a desponding patient better than all the drugs of the pharmacopoeia: it is as exquisite and sustaining as a divine text of promise to a religious enthusiast.

Dr Lefevre was thus pa.s.sing round his female ward, with a train of attentive students at his heels, when the door was swung open and two attendants entered, bearing a stretcher between them, and accompanied by the house-physician and a policeman.

"What is this?" asked Lefevre, with a touch of severity; for it was irregular to intrude a fresh case into a ward while the physician was going his round.

"I thought, sir," said the house-physician, "you would like to see her at once: it seems to me a case similar to that of the man found in the Brighton train."

"Where was this lady found?" asked Lefevre of the policeman. He used the word "lady" advisedly, for though the dress was that of a hospital nurse or probationer, the unconscious face was that of an educated gentlewoman. "Why, bless my soul!" he cried, upon more particular scrutiny of her features--"it seems to me I know her! Surely I do! Where did you say she was found?"

The policeman explained that he was on his beat outside St James's Park, when a park-keeper called him in and showed him, in one of the shady walks, the lady set on a bench as if she had fainted. The keeper said he had taken particular notice of her, because he saw from her dress and her veil she was a hospital lady. When he first set eyes on her, an old gentleman was sitting talking to her--a strange, dark, foreign-looking gentleman, in a soft hat and a big Inverness cape.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed the doctor. "The very man! That's the meaning of it. And I did not guess!"

His a.s.sistant and the policeman gazed at him in surprise; but he recovered himself and asked, with a serious and determined knitting of the brows, if the policeman had seen the old gentleman. The policeman replied he had not; the gentleman was nowhere to be seen when he was called in. The keeper saw him only once; when he returned that way again, in about a quarter of an hour, he found the lady alone and apparently asleep. She had a very handsome umbrella by her side, and therefore he kept within eye-shot of her on this side and on that, lest some park-loafer should seize so good a chance of thieving. He thus pa.s.sed her two or three times. The last time, he remarked that she had slipped a little to one side, and that her umbrella had fallen to the ground. He went to pick it up, and it struck him as he bent that she looked strangely quiet and pale. He spoke to her; she made no reply. He touched her--he even in his fear ventured to shake her--but she made no sign; and he ran to call the policeman. They then brought her straight to the hospital, because they could see she was a hospital lady of some sort.

"It must--it must be the same!" said Lefevre.

"I thought, when I first heard of it below," said the house-physician, "that it must be the same man as was the cause of the other case, in the Brighton train."

"No doubt it is the same. But I was thinking of it in another--a far more serious sense!" Then turning to the waiting policeman, he said, "Of course, you must report this to your inspector?"

"Yes, sir," said the policeman.

"Give him my compliments, then, and say I shall see him presently."

Yet, he thought, how could he speak to the official, with all that he suspected, all that he feared, in his heart? With his attention on the _qui vive_ with his experiences and speculations of the night, he was seized, as we have seen, by the conclusion that the "strange, dark, foreign-looking gentleman" of the park-keeper's story was the same whose steps he had followed the evening before, without guessing that the man was perambulating the pavement and pa.s.sing among the crowd in search, doubtless, of a fresh victim for occult experiment or outrage! That conclusion once determined, shock after shock smote upon his sense. What if the mysterious person were really proved to be Julius's father? What if he had entered upon a course of experiment or outrage (he pa.s.sed in rapid review the mysteries of the Paris pavement and the Brighton train, and this of the Park)--outrage yet unnamable because unknown, but which would amaze and confound society, and bring signal punishment upon the offender? And what--what if Julius knew all that, and therefore sought to keep his parentage hidden?

"She is ready, doctor," said the Sister of the ward at his elbow, adding with a touch of excitement in her manner as he turned to her, "do you know who she is? Look at this card; we noticed the name first on her linen."

Dr Lefevre looked at the card and read, "Lady Mary Fane, Carlton Gardens, S.W."

"I suspected as much," said he. "Lord Rivercourt's daughter. It's a bad business. She has been learning at St Thomas's the duties of nurse and dresser, which accounts for her being in that uniform."

He went to the bed on which his new patient had been laid, and very soon satisfied himself that her case was similar to that of the young officer, though graver much than it. He wrote a telegram to Lord Rivercourt, sent the house-physician for his electrical apparatus, and returned to the bedside. He looked at his patient. He had not remarked her hitherto more than other women of his acquaintance, though he had sometimes sat at her father's table; but now he was moved by a beauty which was enhanced by helplessness--a beauty stamped with a calm disregard of itself--the manifest expression of a n.o.ble and loving soul, which had lived above the plane of doubt and fear and gusty pa.s.sion. Her wealth of l.u.s.trous black hair lay abroad upon her pillow, and made an admirable setting for her finely-modelled head and neck. As he looked at this excellent presentment, and thought of the intelligence and activity which had been wont to animate it, resentment rose in him against the man who, for whatever end, had subdued the n.o.ble woman to that condition, and a deep impatience penetrated him that he had not discovered--had even scarcely guessed--the purpose or the method of the subjugation!

It was, however, not speculation but action that was needed then. The apparatus described in the case of the young officer was ready, and the house-physician was waiting to give his a.s.sistance. The stimulation of Will and Electricity was applied to resuscitate the patient--but with the smallest success: there was only a faint flutter, a pa.s.sing slight rigidity of the muscles, and all seemed again as it had been. The exhausting nature of the operation or experiment forbade its immediate repet.i.tion. Disappointment pervaded the doctor's being, though it did not appear in the doctor's manner.

"We'll try again in half an hour," said he to his a.s.sistant, and turned away to complete his round of the ward.

At the end of the half-hour, Lefevre and the house-physician were again by Lady Mary's bedside. Again, with fine but firm touch, Lefevre stroked nerves and muscles to stimulate them into normal action; again he and his a.s.sistant put out their electrical force through the electrode; and again the result was nothing but a pa.s.sing galvanic quiver. The doctor, though he maintained his professional calm, was smitten with alarm,--as a man is who, walking through darkness and danger to the rescue of a friend, finds himself stopped by an unscalable wall. While he sought fresh means of help, his patient might pa.s.s beyond his reach. He did not think she would--he hoped she would not; but her condition, so obstinately resistant to his restoratives, was so peculiar, that he could not in the least determine the issue. Imagination and speculation were excited, and he asked himself whether, after all, the explanation of his failure might not be of the simplest--a difference of s.e.x! The secrets of nature, so far as he had discovered, were of such amazing simplicity, that it would not surprise him now to find that the electrical force of a man varied vitally from that of a woman. He explained this suspicion to his a.s.sistant.

"I think," said he, "we must make another attempt, for her condition may become the more serious the longer it is left. We'll set the Sister and the nurse to try this time, and we'll turn her bed north and south, in the line of the earth's magnetism." But just then the lady's father, the old Lord Rivercourt, appeared in response to the doctor's telegram, and the experiment with the women had to wait. The old lord was naturally filled with wonder and anxiety when he saw his apparently lifeless daughter. He was amazed that she should have been overcome by such influence as, he understood, the old gentleman must wield. She had always, he said, enjoyed the finest health, and was as little inclined to hysteria as woman well could be. Lefevre told the father that this was something other than hystero-hypnotism, which, while it rea.s.sured him as to his daughter's former health, made him the more anxious regarding her present condition.

"It is very extraordinary," said the old lord; "but whatever it is,--and you say it is like the young man's case that we have all read about,--whatever it is,"--and he laid his hand emphatically on the doctor's arm,--"she could not be in more capable hands than yours."

That a.s.surance, though soothing to the doctor's self-esteem, added gravely to his sense of responsibility.

While they were yet speaking, Lefevre was further troubled by the announcement that a detective-inspector desired to speak with him!

Should he tell the inspector all that he had seen the night before, and all that he suspected now, or should he hold his peace? His duty as a citizen, as a doctor, and as, in a sense, the protector of his patient, seemed to demand the one course, while his consideration for Julius and for his own family suggested the other. Surely, never was a simple, upright doctor involved in a more bewildering _imbroglio_!