The doctor, a benevolent, grey-whiskered, cherub-eyed old man, who had cared for every patient at Dorby Towers since the Farlows came into occupation, was at the bedside talking gently but firmly to his patient.
"It is useless, my dear young lady," he said, with, for him, an almost peevish complaint. "I have done all that a man can do. I have pulled you clear of that wretched brain-fever which threatened you. Your poor, poor arm will soon be out of its plaster, and covered with nothing more disfiguring than a sling, which can at all times be made to match your costume, and yet you will do nothing to help _me_. It is really distressing. You should have been on that couch two weeks ago. A week ago you should have been moving about getting your bodily strength back. I really can"t understand such obstinacy. Eight weeks in this bed, and you will not, simply will not, pull yourself up sufficiently to allow your being moved. You know it"s a case of that woman, Mrs.
Somebody, in one of Charles d.i.c.kens"s books. I don"t remember the name.
All I know is she died, or did something equally silly, because she wouldn"t make an effort."
Vita gazed back languidly into the fresh, wholesome face of the smiling old man. She was so tired. She was weary with thought. She knew that the doctor was making a just complaint. But she knew something more.
She knew, half by instinct, the real cause of the trouble of which he was complaining.
She smiled up at him in a wan fashion.
"I am not as much to blame as you think, doctor dear. You have done, oh, so much for me that I feel I can never be grateful enough. May I sit up?"
The doctor summoned the nurse, and Vita was tenderly propped up against a perfect nest of pillows.
"That"s better. Thank you ever so much. Now I can talk, and--I want to talk."
Vita remained silent for some moments in spite of her expressed desire.
The medical man watched her closely. She was a mere shadow of what she ought to be. There was a troubled look in her eyes. He felt, somehow he knew, what was coming. It was a request such as he had been forced to deny her so many times before.
His smile died out. But Vita"s eyes, when she finally turned them on him, were bright with an emotion which seemed at first unwarranted.
"Do you know why I can"t get well?" she enquired wistfully. "It is not obstinacy. It is not lack of effort. It is because _you_ won"t let me.
Doctor dear, the time has surely gone by when I may not talk of--that night. You see, you don"t understand it--all. My father is dead. I know that. The thought is always with me. But that--that is not all.
Everybody here is kindness, kindness itself. Mr. Farlow--Ruxton, all of them. They come here. But they are never allowed to stay. They send me everything which--kindness can dictate. But, under your orders, no one will tell me those things I must know, and I am not permitted to say a word of that which I must tell. Doctor dear, it is _you_ who are to blame. Oh, the worry of it all. It seems to take the very life out of me. I must talk," she went on, with growing excitement. "I must tell him all which he can never learn so long as you keep me silent. Send Ruxton to me, doctor dear, and give us leave to talk as much as we want to, and I promise you you shall not regret it. I--I simply must talk or--or----"
But the growing excitement proved too much for her. In her weak state Vita suddenly fell to weeping hysterically. The nurse and doctor leant their energies to calming her, and, by degrees, their efforts were rewarded.
But the little man"s face was troubled. This was what he feared, dreaded.
The moment Vita had calmed again he chided her as he might chide some helpless child, but he registered a mental resolve. Somehow Vita must obtain strength or---- Well, he had done all he knew. He must leave medicine and look to the psychological side. Experiment--he hated experiment at his time of life. But there seemed to be nothing else for it. So he rea.s.sured her and gave her the promise she asked.
The result was magical. The sick woman"s face lit radiantly. Her beautiful grey eyes were filled with such a light as the little man had never seen in them before. He wondered. He was puzzled. It was something which he could not understand.
He left the room, taking the nurse with him, and as he went he shook his head and warned himself that the nervous troubles of modern times were amazing. He felt that he was professionally old--very old.
Nor was it without serious misgivings that he sought Ruxton Farlow.
For an hour Vita endured the efforts of the nurse. She endured them uncomplainingly. She felt like some small child being prepared for a party. There was the pleasant excitement of it, but, unlike the small child, there was also a dread which all the delight could not banish.
Her troubles were very real, and in the long days and nights of illness which had seriously threatened her mental balance, and the dull bodily suffering from her crushed arm, they had become exaggerated, as only acute suffering can distort such things.
With the first return to reason she had hugged to herself the one outstanding fact that the responsibility of her father"s death lay at her door. It stood out startlingly from every other thought in the tangle of her poor brain. She had urged him to his death, unwittingly it is true, but due solely to the childish credulity she had displayed.
Even now the unforgettable picture of that grey, lean figure falling forward in response to Von Berger"s merciless gun-shot haunted her every waking moment. The horror of it, the dreadful cruelty. And all her--her doing.
At the bottom of it all lay her cowardice, her miserable cowardice. Her life--her wretched life had been threatened, and to escape death she had dragged him forth and left him at the mercy of their enemies. To her dying day the memory of it would haunt her. She knew it could never be otherwise.
But later, as slowly some strength had begun to return, an added trouble came to her. It was the natural result of convalescence. The legitimate selfish interest in life inspired it. It came at the moment when Ruxton had been permitted to pay his first brief visit. It was the sight of him which had filled her with dismay. She had suddenly remembered that to save her own life she had not only dragged her father to his death, but she had sacrificed this man"s love and promised to become the wife of the detestable Von Salzinger. From that moment the little troubled doctor had noted the check against which he had been fighting ever since.
All these things were in Vita"s mind now as she submitted to the attentions of her nurse. The blending of excitement and dread had been with her at first, but quickly all excitement had given way to the single emotion which grew almost to a panic, when, finally, the nurse withdrew, leaving her ready to receive the man she loved.
Vita leant against her cushions waiting breathlessly. Her courage was drawn up to an almost breaking point. She longed to re-summon the nurse, and once even her uninjured arm was outstretched towards the electric bell. But she did not ring. She had asked, nay begged for Ruxton"s visit. She resolutely determined to face him and tell him all the miserable truth. He would despise her. He would turn from her. She closed her eyes to escape the picture she had conjured up of the cold look she knew his handsome dark eyes were so capable of. But he must know--he must know. She told herself this, and she told herself that she must accept her fate at his hands without murmur. It was a just punishment for her----
The sound of the door-catch moving startled her. Her eager, frightened eyes turned swiftly in the direction. In a moment Ruxton was standing in the room, his deep eyes smiling down at her from his great height.
"Vita! My Vita!"
Just for one moment the woman"s head swam. Her eyes closed and it seemed that she was about to faint. But the sensation pa.s.sed, and when the beautiful grey depths gazed out once more the man was seated on the edge of the bed, holding her hand clasped under the tender pressure of both his.
"My poor little Vita! My poor darling!"
The tones of his voice were tenderly caressing. They were full of a deep, pa.s.sionate sympathy and love. Vita thrilled under their echo in her own soul. But there was no return of pressure in her hand. Her eyes gazed back into his full of yearning, but they seemed to have lost their power of smiling.
"Ruxton, dear----" she began. Then she broke off as though powerless to bring herself to tell him all that lay ready marshalled for him to hear.
"Don"t distress yourself, dear. Don"t bother to talk. It"s enough for me to be here, with you, and know you are getting well."
It was his final words which spurred her courage. She began to speak rapidly, and almost it was as if complaint were in her tone.
"But I am not getting well--yet. That is what Doctor Mellish says, and that is why I must talk. Oh, Ruxton, can"t you understand? I can never get well until I have told you--told you all that is on my mind.
Dearest, dearest, I have wronged you, oh, how I have wronged you, and all because I am a coward, a miserable wretched coward who dared not face the death which they had marked out for me. It is that--that which brought about poor father"s death. It is that which made me throw aside the love which was all the world to me, and promise to marry the man who pretended that he was about to save my wretched life."
"Von Salzinger?"
The question came with unerring instinct, but the coldness for herself Vita had dreaded was lacking.
"Yes," she said, in a childlike, frightened way.
"Tell it me. Tell it me all. I have been waiting all these weeks to learn the truth of all that happened to you--of all you have been made to suffer by those devils. Tell me everything, from the moment I left you to come up here to await your father"s arrival."
His manner was so gentle, yet so firm. His eyes still held the warm smile with which he had greeted her. Vita"s courage stole back into her veins, and her poor, hammering heart slackened its beatings, and her thoughts became less chaotic.
Ruxton waited with infinite patience. Time was for them alone just now.
He had no desire to lose one moment of it.
Presently in a low hurried voice Vita began her story. She made no attempt to convey to him the terror through which she had pa.s.sed. Yet it was all there. It lay under every word she uttered. It found expression in the brilliancy of her eyes, and the heated color which leapt to her thin cheeks. Ruxton read it all as if he were witnessing the whole action of the scenes she was describing. He not only read it, but something of a sympathetic dread swept through him, and his heart set him wondering how his poor troubled love had managed to survive the horror of all she must have endured.
Vita told him of Von Berger"s coming, silently, secretly to Redwithy, and the way in which he had forced her to embark on that journey over the wild moorlands into the heart of Somersetshire. Then she told him of the imprisonment in the dreadful valley. She hurried on to the scene when Von Berger had warned her of her condemnation to death. After that she paused, gathering her courage for what was next to come. Her eyes gazed yearningly into her lover"s now serious face. Her courage was ebbing fast. Then came the heartening tones of his voice.
"Tell it all, dearest. You have nothing to fear. Perhaps I can guess it."
Instantly her courage rose, and she poured out the story of her renunciation of his love, that she might be permitted to live. And in her renunciation she warned him that she had been resolved to carry it out to the hideous completion of marriage with Von Salzinger.
And while she leant back on her cushions pouring out her pa.s.sionate story, Ruxton"s thoughts were less on her words than on the wonder at the loyalty and honesty which made it necessary for her to lay bare her very soul to him now, revealing every weakness which she believed to be hers. Its effect upon him was deep and lasting. Blame? Where could there be blame? The thought became the maddest thing in the world to him. His whole soul went out to her in her suffering. All he felt he longed to do was to place his strong arms about her and defend her from all the world; to drive off even the vaguest shadow of memory which might disturb her.
But he did nothing. Her hand lay pa.s.sive in his, and he waited while she recounted the details of the night journey from Somersetshire to the North. Then, when she came to the final scene of her father"s death, pa.s.sion surged through his veins, and he rose from his seat on the bed and paced the limits of the room.
"The treacherous devils!" he muttered. "The hounds! Gad! they could not beat him, so they played upon a woman, a defenseless woman. It was German. But they have paid--both of them. But the old man! The pity--the pity of it. If I could only have saved him."