"Yes," said Mrs. Wordingham submissively.
"I couldn"t get him out of my head and when I returned to London a couple of days ago, I saw in a bookseller"s this book."
Caston picked the volume up from the floor.
"It seems that Twiddy was no end of a swell with his knife, so some one of his devoted descendants has had a life written of him, with all his letters included. He kept up an extensive correspondence, as people did in those days. He had a shrewd eye and a knack of telling a story. There"s one here which I wish you to read if you will. No, not now--when I have gone. I have put a slip of paper in at the page. I think it will interest you."
Harry Caston went away. Mrs. Wordingham had her curtains closed and her lamps lit. She drew her chair up to the fire, and she opened "The Life and Letters of Mr. Edmund Twiddy, Surgeon, of Norwich," with a shrug of the shoulders and a little grimace of discontent. But the grimace soon left her face, and when her maid came with a warning that she had accepted an invitation for that night to dinner, she found her mistress with the book still open upon her knees, and her eyes staring with a look of wonder into the fire. For this is what she had read in "The Life and Letters of Mr. Edmund Twiddy."
"I have lately had a curious case under my charge, which has given me more trouble than I care to confess. For sentiment is no part of the equipment of a surgeon. It perplexed as well as troubled me, and some clue to the explanation was only afforded me yesterday. Three months ago my servant brought me word one evening that there was a lady very urgent to see me, of the name of Mrs. Braxfield. I replied that my work was done, and she must return at a more seasonable time. But while I was giving this message the door was pushed open, and already she stood in front of me. She was a slip of a girl, very pretty to look at, and shrinking with alarm at her own audacity. Yet she held her ground.
""Mrs. Braxfield," I cried, "you have no right to be married--you are much too young! Young girls hooked at your age ought to be put back."
""I am ill," she said, and I nodded to the servant to leave us.
""Very well," I said. "What"s the matter?"
""My throat," said she.
"I looked at it. There was trouble, but the trouble was not so very serious, though I recognised that at some time treatment would be advisable.
""There"s no hurry at all about it," I said, when my examination was concluded, "but, on the whole, you are right to get it looked to soon." I spoke roughly, for I shrank a little from having this tender bit of a girl under my knife. "Where"s your husband?"
""He is in Spain," she replied.
""Oh, indeed!" said I with some surprise. "Well, when he returns, we can talk about it."
"Mrs. Braxfield shook her head.
""No, I want it done now, while he"s away," she said, and nothing that I could say would shake her from her purpose. I fathered her, and bullied her, and lectured her, but she stood her ground. Her lips trembled; she was afraid of me, and still more desperately afraid of what waited for her. I could see her catch her breath and turn pale as she thought upon the ordeal. But the same sort of timid courage which had made her push into my room before I could refuse to see her, sustained her now. I raised my hands at last in despair.
""Very well," I said. "Give me your husband"s address. I will send a letter to him, and if he consents, we will not wait for his return."
""No," she insisted stubbornly, "I do not want him to know anything about it. But if you will not attend me, no doubt someone else will."
"That was my trouble. The throat, look at it how you will, is a ticklish affair. If she went away from me, Heaven knows into whose hands she might fall. She had some money and was well dressed. Some quack would have used his blundering knife. I could have shaken her for her obstinacy, and would have, if I had had a hope that I would shake it out of her. But she had screwed herself up to a pitch of determination almost unbelievable in her. I could make her cry; I could not make her draw back from her resolve. Nor, on the other hand, could I allow her to go out of my house and hand herself over to be butchered by any Tom, d.i.c.k, or Harry of a barber on the look-out for a fat fee. So I gave in.
"I got her a lodging in this town, and a woman to look after her, and I did what needed to be done with as little pain as might be.
""You won"t hurt me more than you can help," she said in a sort of childish wail. And then she shut her eyes and bore it with an extraordinary fort.i.tude; while, for my part, I never worked more neatly or more quickly in my life, and in a few days she was quite comfortable again.
"But here she began to perplex me. For though the wound healed, and there was no fever, she did not mend. She lay from day to day in an increasing weakness, for which I could not account. I drew a chair up to her bed one morning and took my seat.
""My dear," I said, "a good many of us are father-confessors as well as doctors. We needs must be at times if our patients are to get well and do us credit. You are lying here surely with a great trouble on your mind. It shall be sacred to me, but I must know it if I am to cure you."
"The girl looked at me with a poor little smile.
""No, there"s nothing at all," she said; and even while she spoke she lifted her head from the pillow, and a light dawned in her eyes.
""Listen!" she said.
"I heard a step coming nearer and nearer along the pavement outside.
As it grew louder, she raised herself upon her elbow, and when the footsteps ceased outside the door, her whole soul leapt into her face.
""There will be a letter for me!" she cried, with a joyous clapping of her hands.
"The footsteps moved on and became fainter and more faint. The girl remained propped up, with her eyes fixed upon the door. But no one came.
""It has been left in the hall," she said, turning wistfully to me.
""I will send it up if it is there," said I.
"I went downstairs rather heavy at heart. Here was the reason why she did not mend. Here it was, and I saw no cure for it. There was no letter in the hall, nor did I expect to find one. I sent for the woman who waited upon her. "Does she always expect a letter?"
"The woman nodded.
""She knows the postman"s step, sir, even when he is a long way off.
She singles it out from all other sounds. If he stops at the door, I must run down upon the instant. But whether he stops or not, it is always the same thing--there is no letter for her."
"I went upstairs again and into her room. The girl was lying upon her side, with her faced pressed into the pillow, and crying. I patted her shoulder.
""Come, Mrs. Braxfield, you must tell me what the trouble is, and we will put our heads together and discover a remedy."
"But she drew away from me. "There is nothing," she repeated. "I am weak--that is all."
"I could get no more from her, and the next day I besought her to tell me where I might find her husband. But upon that point, too, she was silent. Then came a night, about a week later, when she fell into a delirium, and I sat by her side and wrestled with death for her. I fought hard with what resources I had, for there was no reason why she should die but the extreme weakness into which she had fallen.
"I sat by the bed, thinking that now at last I should learn the secret which ravaged her. But there was no coherency in what she said. She talked chiefly, I remember, of a work-table and of something hidden there which she must destroy. She was continually, in her delirium, searching its drawers, opening the lid and diving amongst her embroidery and beads, as though she could not die and let the thing be found.
"So till the grey of the morning, when she came out of her delirium, turned very wistfully to me with a feeble motion of her hands, and said:
""You have been very good to me, doctor."
"She lay thus for a few moments, and then she cried in a low sad voice: "Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" And with that name upon her lips she died.
"She carried her secret with her, leaving me in the dark as to who she was and how I was to lay my hands upon one of her relations. I buried the poor girl here, and I advertised for her husband in _The London Newsletter_, and I made inquiries of our amba.s.sador in Spain. A week ago Mr. Braxfield appeared at my house. He was a man of sixty years of age, and his Christian name was Robert.
"He gave me some few details about his marriage, and from them I am able to put together the rest of the story. Mr. Braxfield is a Spanish merchant of means, and the girl, a Trimingham of that branch of the family which moved a long while since into Hampshire, was, no doubt, pressed into marriage with him owing to the straitened position of her parents. Mr. Braxfield and his young wife took up their residence in Soho Square, in London, until, at the beginning of this year, business called him once more to Spain for some months.
"His wife thereupon elected to return to her home, and there Mr.
Braxfield believed her to be, until chance threw one of my advertis.e.m.e.nts in his way. Her own parents, for their part, understood that she had returned to her house in Soho Square. To me, then, the story is clear. Having married without love, she had given her heart to someone, probably after her return to her own home--someone called Arthur. Whether he had treated her ill, I cannot say. But I take it that he had grown cold, and she had looked upon this trouble with her throat as her opportunity to hold him. The risk, the suffering--these things, one can imagine her believing, must make their appeal. She had pretended to return to London. She had travelled, instead, to Norwich, letting him and him alone know what she was about. The great experiment failed. She looked for some letter; no fetter came. But had letters pa.s.sed? Are these letters locked up amongst the embroidery and the beads in that work-table, I wonder? Let us hope that, if they are, they trouble her no longer."
PEIFFER