"Yes, sir, I think he did--I think they came back together."
There was a knock at the door, and then the murmur of words outside.
"Who"s there?" called out Richard Maule in a strong voice. "What"s all that whispering about?" He spoke querulously, as he sometimes did in the morning.
"It"s only I--Mallet!"
The doctor came in. He and Richard Maule were old friends--in fact, contemporaries. But there was a great difference between the two men--the one was broad, ruddy, and did not look his years; the other was the wreck we know.
"I"m sorry to say Mrs. Maule is very ill." The doctor plunged at once into the business which had brought him. Long experience had taught him the futility, the cruelty, of "breaking" bad news.
"What"s the matter with her? She"s always enjoyed remarkably good health." Richard Maule moved a little in his bed.
"Yes, I should have taken her to be a remarkably healthy woman, though of course as you know--we both know--she has always been very sleepless.
Almost as if she caught insomnia from you, eh?"
The doctor"s courage was beginning to fail him, curiously. It was strange, it--it was horrible, the hatred, the contempt Richard Maule felt for his wife.
"Mallet--come here, closer. I believe you are concealing something from me. If there"s bad news I"d rather hear whatever it is from you than from d.i.c.k." Mr. Maule spoke in a hard, rather breathless tone.
"There is something to hear. Your wife last night took an overdose of chloral----"
The doctor said no word of sympathy. The words would have stuck in his throat. He knew too well the real relationship of the husband and wife.
Richard Maule would receive plenty of condolences from others. But even so, to learn suddenly of the death of a human being with whom one has been a.s.sociated over long years is always a shock, is always painful.
Richard Maule straightened himself in bed. "An overdose of chloral," he repeated, "then she"s--she"s----"
The other bent his head.
"She thought she would outlive me many years."
The doctor looked thoughtfully at his patient. He knew that illness of a certain type atrophies the memory and the affections, while leaving unaffected the mind and a certain fierce instinct of self-preservation.
Dr. Mallet was not so much shocked or so much surprised by Richard Maule"s remark as a layman would have been.
Again the bereaved husband spoke, and this time questioningly. "A peaceful death, Mallet? A happy death?"
"Yes--yes, certainly." Something impelled him to add, "But a terrible thing when it comes to one so young, so beautiful, as was your wife!"
He compared the stillness, the equanimity, of the man lying before him, with the awful agitation of d.i.c.k Wantele--an agitation so terrible, a horror so overwhelming, that it had confirmed Dr. Mallet in a theory of his, a theory formed a good many years ago, and of which he had sometimes felt ashamed.
But the mind of an intelligent medical man who has enjoyed for many years a large family practice becomes like one of those old manuals for the use of confessors. His mind perforce becomes a store-house of strange sins, of troubled, abnormal happenings, which belong, from the point of view of the happy and the sane, to a fifth dimension, unimagined, unimaginable. The wise physician, like the wise confessor, does not allow his mind to dwell on these things, but he does not make the mistake of telling himself--as so many of us do--that they are not there. The doctor had formed a suspicion, which had now become a certainty. Yet he was surprised by Richard Maule"s next words.
"It must have been an awful shock to d.i.c.k, Mallet. He was thrown so much more with Athena than I could be of late years, though to be sure she was a great deal away."
He waited a moment, and as the doctor made no comment, "Although they didn"t pull it off well together, still for my sake they both kept up a kind of armed truce, eh, Mallet?" He looked searchingly at the other man. "I am telling you nothing you do not know."
The other nodded gravely.
"Where"s d.i.c.k now?" Mr. Maule asked abruptly; and the doctor saw that the thin hand holding the coverlet shook a little.
"I sent him off to get Ricketts. I thought it better to give him something to do; for as you say, as you have guessed, he was very much over-wrought and upset. Of course Ricketts can do nothing, but I thought he had better be sent for. And to tell you the truth, I wanted to give d.i.c.k a job."
"Has anyone told General Lingard, Mallet?"
"No. He went out for a walk before breakfast--an odd thing to do, but it seems he generally does go out every morning. They"re expecting him in in a few minutes. Would you like me to tell him?"
"I should be grateful if you would. And after you"ve told him, Mallet, I should like to see him--just for a few moments. My poor wife was very fond of him. You know he"s engaged to Jane Oglander?"
"Yes. d.i.c.k told me. But I understood it was a secret?"
"Yes--yes, so it is."
"Mrs. Maule? Dead? An overdose of chloral?"
Lingard repeated what the doctor had just said very quietly, but he stammered out the words, and his face had gone an ashen grey colour.
They were in the dining-room. Breakfast had only been laid for two.
Dr. Mallet was surprised, that is as far as anything of this kind could surprise him.
Here was a man used to facing death, and to seeing death dealt out to others--nay, he had doubtless in his time dealt out death to many. And yet now this famous soldier was unmanned--yes, unmanned was the word, by what was, after all, not a very unusual accident.
"Yes, it"s a terrible thing," the doctor said briefly, "a terrible thing!"
Lingard walked over to the sideboard. He poured himself out some brandy, and drank it.
"You must forgive me. I had a touch of fever yesterday--jungle fever,"
he said. "Your news has given me a great shock."
"Yes, yes. Naturally."
"Will you tell me again? I don"t quite understand."
He had come back and now stood facing Dr. Mallet. His face was set, expressionless, but he kept on opening and closing his right hand with a nervous movement.
"It happened, as these things always do, in the most simple way in the world. I had a similar case six months ago. Poor Mrs. Maule took an overdose of chloral last night. When her husband first became ill in Italy many years ago, she had a very anxious time, and had to supervise, so I understand, very inadequate nurses. Her anxiety, and the strain generally, brought on insomnia, and the doctors there--very wrongly from my point of view--gave her chloral. It is a most insidious drug, as you probably know, General Lingard. She and Mr. Maule have both taken it for years."
"Then there is no doubt as to its having been an accident?" Lingard"s voice sank in a whisper.
"No doubt at all," said the doctor emphatically, "I never saw a woman who, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed life more than did Mrs. Maule. The thought of suicide is out of the question. The maid who saw her the last thing tells me that she hadn"t seen her so well or happy--gay was the word the Frenchwoman used--for many months. Before she went to bed, she wrote a letter addressed to Miss Oglander at the Small Farm which she gave orders should be taken over there this morning. It went by hand nearly a couple of hours before the sad truth was discovered."
"And then they sent for you at once?"
Lingard felt as if he was in an evil dream. He could not bring himself to believe, to face the fact that Athena was dead--gone, for ever, out of his life, out of all their lives.
"Yes. Mr. Wantele came and fetched me without losing a moment," said the doctor gravely. "But of course I saw at once that there was nothing to be done. I have, however, sent for a colleague of mine. Mr. Wantele, who, as you can easily imagine, is very much--well, upset, went off to fetch him. I wonder they"re not back yet."