Fred was a little better during the day, and even seemed in a dull sort of way to recognise his sister, who brought him flowers in the afternoon. Towards evening his temperature sank to [email protected], and he fell into a kind of stupor. As it happened, Dr. Porter came in about supper-time, and I asked him if he would step up and have a look at my patient. He did so, and we found him dozing peacefully. You would hardly think that that small incident may have been one of the most momentous in my life. It was the merest chance in the world that Porter went up at all.
Fred was taking medicine with a little chloral in it at this time. I gave him his usual dose last thing at night; and then, as he seemed to be sleeping peacefully, I went to my own room for the rest which I badly needed. I did not wake until eight in the morning, when I was roused by the jingling of a spoon in a saucer, and the step of Miss Williams pa.s.sing my door. She was taking him the arrowroot which I had ordered over-night. I heard her open the door, and the next moment my heart sprang into my mouth as she gave a hoa.r.s.e scream, and her cup and saucer crashed upon the floor. An instant later she had burst into my room, with her face convulsed with terror.
"My G.o.d!" she cried, "he"s gone!"
I caught up my dressing-gown and rushed into the next room.
Poor little Fred was stretched sideways across his bed, quite dead. He looked as if he had been rising and had fallen backwards. His face was so peaceful and smiling that I could hardly have recognised the worried, fever-worn features of yesterday. There is great promise, I think, on the faces of the dead. They say it is but the post-mortem relaxation of the muscles, but it is one of the points on which I should like to see science wrong.
Miss Williams and I stood for five minutes without a word, hushed by the presence of that supreme fact. Then we laid him straight, and drew the sheet over him. She knelt down and prayed and sobbed, while I sat on the bed, with the cold hand in mine. Then my heart turned to lead as I remembered that it lay for me to break the news to the mother.
However, she took it most admirably. They were all three at breakfast when I came round, the general, Mrs. La Force, and the daughter. Somehow they seemed to know all that I had to say at the very sight of me; and in their womanly unselfishness their sympathy was all for me, for the shock I had suffered, and the disturbance of my household. I found myself turned from the consoler into the consoled. For an hour or more we talked it over, I explaining what I hope needed no explanation, that as the poor boy could not tell me his symptoms it was hard for me to know how immediate was his danger. There can be no doubt that the fall of temperature and the quietness which both Porter and I had looked upon as a hopeful sign, were really the beginning to the end.
Mrs. La Force asked me to see to everything, the formalities, register, and funeral. It was on a Wednesday, and we thought it best that the burial should be on the Friday. Back I hurried, therefore, not knowing what to do first, and found old Whitehall waiting for me in my consulting room, looking very jaunty with a camelia in his b.u.t.ton-hole.
Not an organ in its right place, and a camelia in his b.u.t.ton-hole!
Between ourselves, I was sorry to see him, for I was in no humour for his company; but he had heard all about it from Miss Williams, and had come to stop. Only then did I fully realise how much of the kindly, delicate-minded gentleman remained behind that veil of profanity and obscenity which he so often held before him.
"I"ll trot along with you, Dr. Munro, sir. A man"s none the worse for a companion at such times. I"ll not open my mouth unless you wish it, sir; but I am an idle man, and would take it as a kindness if you would let me come round with you."
Round he came, and very helpful he was. He seemed to know all about the procedure--"Buried two wives, Dr. Munro, sir!" I signed the certificate myself, conveyed it to the registrar, got the order for burial, took it round to the parish clerk, arranged an hour, then off to the undertaker"s, and back to my practice. It was a kind of nightmare morning to look back upon, relieved only by the figure of my old Bohemian, with his pea jacket, his black thorn, his puffy, crinkly face, and his camelia.
To make a long story short, then, the funeral came off as arranged, General Wainwright, Whitehall, and I being the sole mourners. The captain had never seen poor Fred in the flesh, but he "liked to be in at the finish, sir," and so he gave me his company. It was at eight in the morning, and it was ten before we found ourselves at Oakley Villa. A burly man with bushy whiskers was waiting for us at the door.
"Are you Dr. Munro, sir?" he asked.
"I am."
"I am a detective from the local office. I was ordered to inquire into the death of the young man in your house lately."
Here was a thunderbolt! If looking upset is a sign of guilt, I must have stood confessed as a villain. It was so absolutely unexpected. I hope, however, that I had command of myself instantly.
"Pray step in!" said I. Any information I can give you is entirely at your service. Have you any objection to my friend Captain Whitehall being present?
"Not in the least." So in we both went, taking this bird of ill-omen.
He was, however, a man of tact and with a pleasant manner.
"Of course, Dr. Munro," said he, "you are much too well known in the town for any one to take this matter seriously. But the fact is that we had an anonymous letter this morning saying that the young man had died yesterday and was to be buried at an unusual hour to-day, and that the circ.u.mstances were suspicious."
"He died the day before yesterday. He was buried at eight to-day," I explained; and then I told him the whole story from the beginning. He listened attentively and took a note or two.
"Who signed the certificate?" he asked.
"I did," said I.
He raised his eyebrows slightly. "There is really no one to check your statement then?" said he.
"Oh yes, Dr. Porter saw him the night before he died. He knew all about the case."
The detective shut his note-book with a snap. "That is final, Dr.
Munro," said he. "Of course I must see Dr. Porter as a matter of form, but if his opinion agrees with yours I can only apologise to you for this intrusion."
"And there is one more thing, Mr. Detective, sir," said Whitehall explosively. "I"m not a rich man, sir, only the ---- half-pay skipper of an armed transport; but by ----, sir, I"d give you this hat full of dollars to know the name of the ---- rascal who wrote that anonymous letter, sir. By ---- sir, you"d have a real case to look after then."
And he waved his black thorn ferociously.
So the wretched business ended, Bertie. But on what trifling chances do our fortunes depend! If Porter had not seen him that night, it is more than likely that there would have been an exhumation. And then,--well, there would be chloral in the body; some money interests _DID_ depend upon the death of the lad--a sharp lawyer might have made much of the case.
Anyway, the first breath of suspicion would have blown my little rising practice to wind. What awful things lurk at the corners of Life"s highway, ready to pounce upon us as we pa.s.s!
And so you really are going a-voyaging! Well, I won"t write again until I hear that you are back from the Islands, and then I hope to have something a little more cheery to talk about.
XVI. OAKLEY VILLAS, BIRCHESPOOL, 4th November, 1884.
I face my study window as I write, Bertie. Slate-coloured clouds with ragged fringes are drifting slowly overhead. Between them one has a glimpse of higher clouds of a lighter gray. I can hear the gentle swish of the rain striking a clearer note on the gravel path and a duller among the leaves. Sometimes it falls straight and heavy, till the air is full of the delicate gray shading, and for half a foot above the ground there is a haze from the rebound of a million tiny globules. Then without any change in the clouds it cases off again. Pools line my walk, and lie thick upon the roadway, their surface pocked by the falling drops. As I sit I can smell the heavy perfume of the wet earth, and the laurel bushes gleam where the light strikes sideways upon them. The gate outside shines above as though it were new varnished, and along the lower edge of the upper bar there hangs a fringe of great clear drops.
That is the best that November can do for us in our dripping little island. You, I suppose, sitting among the dying glories of an American fall, think that this must needs be depressing. Don"t make any mistake about that, my dear boy. You may take the States, from Detroit to the Gulf, and you won"t find a happier man than this one. What do you suppose I"ve got att his{sic-- at this} moment in my consulting room? A bureau? A bookcase? No, I know you"ve guessed my secret already. She is sitting in my big armchair; and she is the best, the kindest, the sweetest little woman in England.
Yes, I"ve been married six months now--the almanack says months, though I should have thought weeks. I should, of course, have sent cake and cards, but had an idea that you were not home from the Islands yet.
It is a good year since I wrote to you; but when you give an amorphous address of that sort, what can you expect? I"ve thought of you, and talked of you often enough.
Well, I daresay, with the ac.u.men of an old married man, you have guessed who the lady is as well. We surely know by some nameless instinct more about our futures than we think we know. I can remember, for example, that years ago the name of Bradfield used to strike with a causeless familiarity upon my ear; and since then, as you know, the course of my life has flowed through it. And so when I first saw Winnie La Force in the railway carriage, before I had spoken to her or knew her name, I felt an inexplicable sympathy for and interest in her. Have you had no experience of the sort in your life? Or was it merely that she was obviously gentle and retiring, and so made a silent claim upon all that was helpful and manly in me? At any rate, I was conscious of it; and again and again every time that I met her. How good is that saying of some Russian writer that he who loves one woman knows more of the whole s.e.x than he who has had pa.s.sing relations with a thousand! I thought I knew something of women. I suppose every medical student does. But now I can see that I really knew nothing. My knowledge was all external. I did not know the woman soul, that crowning gift of Providence to man, which, if we do not ourselves degrade it, will set an edge to all that is good in us. I did not know how the love of a woman will tinge a man"s whole life and every action with unselfishness. I did not know how easy it is to be n.o.ble when some one else takes it for granted that one will be so; or how wide and interesting life becomes when viewed by four eyes instead of two. I had much to learn, you see; but I think I have learned it.
It was natural that the death of poor Fred La Force should make me intimate with the family. It was really that cold hand which I grasped that morning as I sat by his bed which drew me towards my happiness. I visited them frequently, and we often went little excursions together.
Then my dear mother came down to stay with me for a spell, and turned Miss Williams gray by looking for dust in all sorts of improbable corners; or advancing with a terrible silence, a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other, to the attack of a spider"s web which she had marked down in the beer cellar. Her presence enabled me to return some of the hospitality which I had received from the La Forces, and brought us still nearer together.
I had never yet reminded them of our previous meeting. One evening, however, the talk turned upon clairvoyance, and Mrs. La Force was expressing the utmost disbelief in it. I borrowed her ring, and holding it to my forehead, I pretended to be peering into her past.
"I see you in a railway carriage," said I. "You are wearing a red feather in your bonnet. Miss La Force is dressed in something dark.
There is a young man there. He is rude enough to address your daughter as Winnie before he has ever been----"
"Oh, mother," she cried, "of course it is he! The face haunted me, and I could not think where we had met it."
Well, there are some things that we don"t talk about to another man, even when we know each other as well as I know you. Why should we, when that which is most engrossing to us consists in those gradual shades of advance from friendship to intimacy, and from intimacy to something more sacred still, which can scarcely be written at all, far less made interesting to another? The time came at last when they were to leave Birchespool, and my mother and I went round the night before to say goodbye. Winnie and I were thrown together for an instant.
"When will you come back to Birchespool?" I asked.
"Mother does not know."
"Will you come soon, and be my wife?"
I had been turning over in my head all the evening how prettily I could lead up to it, and how neatly I could say it--and behold the melancholy result! Well, perhaps the feeling of my heart managed to make itself clear even through those bald words. There was but one to judge, and she was of that opinion.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I walked as far as Oakley Villa with my mother before I opened my mouth. "Mam," said I at last, "I have proposed to Winnie La Force, and she has accepted me."