"You are anxious about your husband, Lady Herbert?" he said.
Laura sighed, and opened her white hands to the warmth, as she sat on the other side of the fireplace. But she said nothing. She could not deny what he had told her, for she was in mortal anxiety by day and night.
"It is very natural," said Ghisleri, trying to speak more cheerfully.
"But I do not think there is any very serious reason for antic.i.p.ating danger. I have known Arden many years, and I have often known him to be ill before now."
Laura glanced nervously at Pietro, and looked away again almost instantly. There was a frightened look in her face as though she feared something unexpected. Perhaps she was afraid of believing too readily in Ghisleri"s comforting view.
"All the same," he continued, "there is no denying that he is in very bad health. Forgive me if I seem officious. I do not love him as you do, of course, but we have been more or less good friends these many years--since very long before you knew him."
"More or less good friends!" repeated Laura, in a disappointed tone.
"Herbert calls you his best friend."
"I dare say he has many better than I am," answered Ghisleri, quietly.
"But I have certainly never liked any man as much as I like him. That is why I come to you to-day. Do you not think that he should be taken care of, or, at least thoroughly examined by the best specialist to be found?"
"I have thought of it," said Laura, after a short pause. "Of course the doctor comes regularly, but I do not think he is a really great authority. I am afraid that anything like a consultation might alarm Herbert. I see how determined he is to be cheerful, but I cannot help seeing also that he is despondent about himself."
"There need be nothing like a consultation. Will you trust me in this matter?"
Laura looked at him. She felt, on a sudden, the old, almost inexplicable, timid dislike of him with which she had long been familiar, and she hesitated before she answered.
"Could I not manage it myself?" she asked abruptly. "It would seem more natural."
Ghisleri"s face grew slowly cold, and his eyes fixed themselves on the fire.
"I thought I might be able to help you," he said. "Have you any particular reason for distrusting me as you do, Lady Herbert?"
Laura"s face contracted. She was not angry, but she was sorry that she had shown him what she thought, and it was hard to answer the question truthfully, for she was not really sure whether she had any excuse for doubting his frankness or not. In the present instance she a.s.suredly had none.
"I should certainly never distrust you where Herbert is concerned," she said, after a short pause. "It is only that it seems more natural, as I said, that I should be the one to speak to him and to arrange about the specialist"s visit."
"Very well. Forgive me, as I begged you to at first, if I have seemed officious. I will come and see your husband this afternoon."
The consequence of this conversation was that Laura, being even more seriously alarmed than before, since she realised that Ghisleri himself was anxious, spoke to Arden about the necessity for seeing a better doctor, breaking it to him with all the loving gentleness she knew how to use with him, and Arden consented without much apparent reluctance to being examined by a man who had a great reputation. The latter took a long time before he gave an opinion, and ultimately declared to Laura that her husband was consumptive and would probably not live a year.
Laura suffered in that moment as she would not have believed it possible to suffer, and it was long before she could compose herself enough to go to Arden. It was of course impossible to tell him all the doctor had said. She told him that his lungs were delicate, and that he must be very careful.
"It seems to me I am always very careful," said Lord Herbert, patiently.
She looked at him and saw for the hundredth time how ill he seemed. She tried to turn quickly and leave the room, but she could not. Suddenly the pa.s.sionate tears broke out, and she fell on her knees beside his chair and clasped the poor little body in her arms.
"Oh, Herbert, my love,--my love!" she sobbed.
Then he felt that he was doomed. Had she loved him less, she could have kept the secret better. But he was brave still.
"Hush, darling, hush!" he said, gently stroking her coal-black hair with his transparent hand. "You must not believe these foolish doctors. I have been just as ill before."
But the mischief was done, and she felt that she had done it, and her remorse knew no bounds. In spite of his courage, Arden lost heart. The next time Ghisleri saw him he was much worse. Laura went out and left the two together.
"Has anything worried you?" asked Ghisleri. "You look tired."
Arden was silent for a long time, and his friend knew that he was carefully weighing his answer.
"Yes," he said at last, "something has worried me very much. I can trust you not to speak--never to speak, even to my wife, of what I am going to say--especially if anything should happen," he added, as though with a painful afterthought.
"I will never speak of it," replied Pietro, gravely.
"I know you will not. We had a consultation the other day. Of course they were very careful not to tell me what they thought, but I could not help guessing it. You know how truthful my wife is--she could not deny it when I put the question directly. It is all up with me, my dear fellow, and I know it. I am consumptive. It will last a year at the most."
"I do not believe a word of it!" exclaimed Ghisleri, with unusual heat.
"You are not in the least like a consumptive man!"
"The doctor is a good specialist," said Arden, quietly. "But that is not all. I have been so happy--I am so happy in many ways still--that I am weak enough to cling to my life, such as it is. But there is something else, Ghisleri. I knew I was ill, and I knew there was danger--but this is different. I had hoped to see my child, even if I were to die. I do not hope to see it now--you understand? Those things are always inherited."
A deadly paleness came over Arden"s face, and his clear brown eyes seemed unsteady for a moment. His face twitched nervously, and his hands were strained as they grasped the arms of his chair. Ghisleri looked very grave.
"I repeat that I believe the doctor to be wholly mistaken. It would hardly be the first time that doctors have made such mistakes.
Consumptive people do not behave as you do. They always feel that they are getting well, until the very last, and they have a regular cough, not to be mistaken, and they eat a great deal. You are quite different."
"But he examined, me so carefully," objected Arden, though he could not help seeing a ray of hope.
"I cannot help that. He was mistaken."
That afternoon Ghisleri telegraphed to a great European celebrity whom he knew in Paris, to come if possible at once, no matter at what sacrifice of money. Forty-eight hours later the man of genius was breakfasting with Pietro in his rooms.
"I will ask leave to bring you as a friend," said the latter. "I have begged you to come on my own responsibility."
He wrote a note to Laura, explaining that an old acquaintance, a man of world-wide fame, was spending a couple of days with him, and begged permission to introduce him. He might amuse Arden, he said. He did not mention the doctor"s profession. It was just possible that neither Arden nor Laura had ever heard of the man who was so great in a world not theirs. Laura asked them both to tea by way of answer.
As it turned out, the Ardens had a very vague idea that the Frenchman was a man of science. In the course of conversation he admitted that he had studied medicine, and then went on to talk about the latest news from Paris, social, artistic, and literary. Arden was charmed with him, and Laura was really grateful to Ghisleri for helping to amuse her husband.
Would they both come to luncheon the next day? They would, with pleasure, and they went away together.
"Well?" asked Ghisleri, as they walked towards the Pincio in the early dusk, just to breathe the air.
"I think he may live," answered the great man. "I believe it is a trouble of the heart with an almost exhausted vitality."
Laura was left alone with her husband. Whether it was the doctor"s personal influence, or whether Arden was really momentarily better, she could not tell, but he looked as he had not looked for two months.
"That man delights me," he said dreamily. "I do not know what there is about him, and it is very foolish--but I fancy that if he were a doctor, he might cure me--or keep me alive longer," he added, with a sort of reluctant sadness.
Laura looked at him in surprise.
"He said he had studied medicine," she answered. "Shall I ask Signor Ghisleri, if, as a friend, he would come and give his opinion?"
"It is too much to ask of a stranger."
"Nothing is too much to ask," she said quietly. In her own room she wrote a note to Pietro.