In White Raiment

Chapter Twenty One

Two Hearts

The truth was plain. Bob Raymond, the man whom I had believed to be my friend, had endeavoured to dissuade me from following up the clue I had obtained, fearing lest I should discover the whole of the strange conspiracy.

I pressed him for an explanation of how he had been able to recognise her, but with marvellous tact he answered —

“Oh, I recognised her from your descriptions, you know.”

Frankly I did not believe it. Whether he had a personal acquaintance with her or not, it was nevertheless manifest that she was actually in London at a time when she was believed to be at Atworth; and further, that not knowing of my change of address, had been in search of me.

Why had she not rung the bell and inquired? There seemed but a single answer to that question; because she feared to meet Bob!

I scented suspicion. In our conversation that followed I detected, on his part, a strenuous determination to evade any explanation. That he was actually acquainted with Beryl was apparent. Perhaps, even, he knew the truth regarding my strange marriage, and, from motives of his own, refused to tell me.

Anger arose within me, but I preserved a diplomatic calm, striving to worm his secret from him. Either he would not or could not tell me anything. In that hour of affluence, after all the penury of past years, I was perhaps a trifle egotistical, as men who suddenly receive an unexpected legacy are apt to be. Money has a greater influence upon our temperament or disposition than even love. A few paltry pounds can transform this earth of ours from a hell into a paradise.

I drained my glass, flung my cigarette end into the empty grate, and left my friend with a rather abrupt farewell.

“You’ll let me know if you elicit anything further?” he urged.

“Of course,” I answered, although such was not my intention. Then I went forth walking out to the Hammersmith Road.

The noon was stifling – one of those hot, close, oven-cast days of the London summer – when I was shown into the drawing-room of Gloucester Square, and, after the lapse of a few minutes, my love came forward gladly to meet me.

“It’s awfully kind of you to call, Doctor,” she exclaimed, offering her thin little hand – that hand that on the previous night had been so stiff and cold. “Nora is out, but I expect her in again every moment. She’s gone to the Stores to order things to be sent up to Atworth.”

“And how do you feel?” I inquired, as she seated herself upon a low silken lounge-chair and stretched out her tiny foot, neat in its patent leather slipper with large steel buckle.

She looked cool and fresh in a gown of white muslin relieved with a dash of Nile-green silk at the throat and waist.

“Oh, I am so much better,” she declared. “Except for a slight headache, I feel no ill effects of last night’s extraordinary attack.”

I asked permission to feel her pulse, and found it beating with the regularity of a person in normal health.

As I held her white wrist, her deep clear eyes met mine. In her pure white clinging drapery, with her gold-brown hair making the half-darkened room bright, with her red lips parted in a tender and solemn smile, with something like a halo about her of youth and ardour, she was a vision so entrancing that, as I gazed at her, my heart grew heavy with an aching consciousness of her perfection. And yet she was actually my wife!

I stammered satisfaction that she had recovered so entirely from the strange seizure, and her eyes opened widely, as though in wonder at my inarticulate words.

“Yes,” she said, “the affair was most extraordinary. I cannot imagine what horrid mystery is concealed within that room.”

“Nor I,” I responded. “Has Doctor Hoefer been here yet?”

“Oh yes,” she laughed; “he came at nine o’clock, opened the room, entered, and was seized again, but only slightly. He used the same drug as last night, and quickly recovered. For about an hour he remained, and then left. He’s such a queer old fellow,” she added, with a laugh; “I don’t think he uttered a dozen words during the whole time.”

“No,” I said; “his habit is to give vent to those expressive grunts. When interested his mind seems always so actively centred upon the matter under investigation that to speak is an effort. But tell me,” I urged, glancing into those pure, honest eyes, “have you ever experienced before such a seizure as that last night?”

She turned rather pale, I thought: this direct question seemed not easy to answer.

“I was ill once,” she responded, with hesitation, yet with sweet, simple, girlish tenderness. “One day, some little time ago, I suddenly fell unconscious, and seemed to dream all sorts of absurd and grotesque things.”

Did she refer to the fateful day of our marriage?

“Were you quite unconscious on that occasion?” I asked quickly, “or were you aware, in a hazy manner, of what was going on around you, as you were last night?”

A wild hope sprang up in my heart. Was it possible that she would reveal to me her secret?

“I think,” she answered, “that my condition then was very similar to that of last night; I recollect quite well being unable to move my limbs or to lift a finger. Every muscle seemed paralysed, while, at the same time, I went as cold as ice, just as though I were frozen to death. Indeed, a horrible dread took possession of me lest my friends should allow me to be buried alive.”

“You were in a kind of cataleptic state,” I remarked. “Who were these friends?”

Her great eyes were lifted. They were full of depths unfathomable even to my intense love.

“I was practically unconscious, therefore I do not know who was present; I only heard voices.”

“Of whom?”

“Of men talking.”

“Could you not recognise them?”

“No,” she answered, in a low tone; “they were dream-voices, strange and weird – sounding afar off.”

“What did they say?”

“I cannot tell, only I recollect that I thought I was in church; I had a curious dream.”

Again she hesitated. Her voice had suddenly fallen so that I could scarcely make out the sound of the last word.

“What did you dream? The vagaries of the brain sometimes give us a clue to the nature of such seizures.”

“I dreamed that I was wedded,” she responded, in a low, unnatural voice.

The next instant she seemed to realise what she had said. With a start of terror she drew herself away from me.

“Wedded? To whom?”

“I do not know,” she replied, with a queer laugh. “Of course, it was a mere dream; I saw no one.”

“But you heard voices?”

“They were so distorted as to be indistinguishable,” she replied readily.

“Are you absolutely certain that the marriage was only a dream?” I asked, looking her straight in the face.

A flash of indignant surprise passed across her features, now pale as marble; her lips were slightly parted, her large full eyes were fixed upon me steadfastly, and her fingers pressed themselves into the palms of her hands.

“I don’t understand you, Doctor!” she said at length, after a pause of the most awkward duration. “Of course I am not married?”

“I regret if you take my words as an insinuation,” I said hastily.

“It was a kind of dream,” she declared. “Indeed, I think that I was in a sort of delirium and imagined it all, for when I recovered completely I found myself here, in my own room, with Nora at my side.”

“And where were you when you were taken ill?”

“In the house of a friend.”

“May I not know the name?” I inquired.

“It is a name with which you are not acquainted,” she assured me. “The house at which I was visiting was in Queen’s-gate Gardens.”

Queen’s-gate Gardens! Then she was telling the truth!

“And you have no knowledge of how you came to be back here in your cousin’s house?”

“None whatever. I tell you that I was entirely unconscious.”

“And you are certain that the symptoms on that day were the same as those which we all experienced last night? You felt frozen to death?”

“Yes,” she responded, lying back in her chair, sighing rather wearily and passing her hand across her aching brow.

There was a deep silence. We could hear the throbbing of each other’s heart. At last she looked up tremblingly, with an expression of undissembled pain, saying —

“The truth is, Doctor, it was an absolute mystery, just as were the events of last night – a mystery which is driving me to desperation.”

“It’s not the mystery that troubles you,” I said, in a low earnest voice, “but the recollection of that dream-marriage, is it not?”

“Exactly,” she faltered.

“You do not recollect the name announced by the clergyman, as that of your husband?” I inquired, eagerly.

“I heard it but once, and it was strange and unusual; the droning voice stumbled over it indistinctly, therefore I could not catch it.”

She was in ignorance that she was my bride. Her heart was beating rapidly, the lace on her bosom trembled as she slowly lifted her eyes to mine. Could she ever love me?

A thought of young Chetwode stung me to the quick. He was my rival, yet I was already her husband.

“I have been foolish to tell you all this,” she said presently, with a nervous laugh. “It was only a dream – a dream so vivid that I have sometimes thought it was actual truth.”

Her speech was the softest murmur, and the beautiful face, nearer to mine than it had been before, was looking at me with beseeching tenderness. Then her eyes dropped, a martyr pain passed over her face, her small hands sought each other as though they must hold something, the fingers clasped themselves, and her head drooped.

“I am glad you have told me,” I said. “The incident is certainly curious, judged in connexion with the unusual phenomena of last night.”

“Yes, but I ought not to have told you,” she said slowly. “Nora will be very angry.”

“Why?”

“Because she made me promise to tell absolutely no one,” she answered, with a faint sharpness in her voice. There were loss and woe in those words of hers.

“What motive had she in preserving your secret?” I asked, surprised. “Surely she is – ”

My love interrupted me.

“No, do not let us discuss her motives or her actions; she is my friend. Let us not talk of the affair any more, I beg of you.”

She was pale as death, and it seemed as though a tremor ran through all her limbs.

“But am I not also your friend, Miss Wynd?” I asked in deep seriousness.

“I – I hope you are.”

Her voice was timid, troubled; but her sincere eyes again lifted themselves to mine.

“I assure you that I am,” I declared. “If you will but give me your permission I will continue, with Hoefer, to seek a solution of this puzzling problem.”

“It is so uncanny,” she said. “To me it surpasses belief.”

“I admit that. At present, to leave that room is to invite death. We must, therefore, make active researches to ascertain the truth. We must find your strange visitor in black.”

“Find her?” she gasped. “You could never do that.”

“Why not? She is not supernatural; she lives and is in hiding somewhere, that’s evident.”

“And you would find her, and seek from her the truth?”

“Certainly.”

She shut her lips tight and sat motionless, looking at me. Then at last she said, shuddering —

“No. Not that.”

“Then you know this woman – or at least you guess her identity,” I said in a low voice.

She gazed at me with parted lips.

“I have already told you that I do not know her,” was her firm response.

“Then what do you fear?” I demanded.

Again she was silent. Whatever potential complicity had lurked in her heart, my words brought her only immeasurable dismay.

“I dread such an action for your own sake,” she faltered.

“Then I will remain till your cousin comes, and ask her what it is.”

“Ask her?”

Chapter Twenty Two

A Savant at Home

“Why should I not ask your cousin?” I inquired earnestly. “I see by your manner that you are in sore need of a friend, and yet you will not allow me to act as such.”

“Not allow you!” she echoed. “You are my friend. Were it not for you I should have died last night.”

“Your recovery was due to Hoefer, not to myself,” I declared.

I longed to speak to her of her visit to Whitton and of her relations with the Major, but dare not. By so doing I should only expose myself as an eavesdropper and a spy. Therefore, I was held to silence.

My thoughts wandered back to that fateful night when I was called to the house with the grey front in Queen’s-gate Gardens. That house, she had told me, was the home of “a friend.” I remembered how, after our marriage, I had seen her lying there as one dead, and knew that she had fallen the victim of some foul and deep conspiracy. Who was that man who had called himself Wyndham Wynd? An associate of the Major’s, who was careful in the concealment of his identity. The manner in which the plot had been arranged was both amazing in its ingenuity and bewildering in its complications.

And lounging before me there in the low silken chair, her small mouth slightly parted, displaying an even set of pearly teeth, sat the victim – the woman who was unconsciously my wedded wife.

Her attitude towards me was plainly one of fear lest I should discover her secret. It was evident that she now regretted having told me of that strange, dreamlike scene which was photographed so indelibly upon her memory, that incident so vivid that she vaguely believed she had been actually wedded.

“So you are returning to Atworth again?” I asked, for want of something better to say.

“I believe that is Nora’s intention,” she responded quickly, with a slight sigh of relief at the change in our conversation.

“Have you many visitors there?”

“Oh, about fifteen – all rather jolly people. It’s such a charming place. Nora must ask you down there.”

“I should be delighted,” I said.

Now that I had money in my pocket, and was no longer compelled to toil for the bare necessities of life, I was eager to get away from the heat and dust of the London August. This suggestion of hers was to me doubly welcome too, for as a visitor at Atworth I should be always beside her. That she was in peril was evident, and my place was near her.

On the other hand, however, I distrusted her ladyship. She had, at the first moment of our meeting, shown herself to be artificial and an admirable actress. Indeed, had she not, for purposes known best to herself, endeavoured to start a flirtation with me? Her character everywhere was that of a smart woman – popular in society, and noted for the success of her various entertainments during the season; but women of her stamp never commended themselves to me. Doctors, truth to tell, see rather too much of the reverse of the medal – especially in social London.

“When did you return from Wiltshire?” I inquired, determined to clear up one point.

“The day before yesterday,” she responded.

“In the evening?”

“No, in the morning.”

Then her ladyship had lied to me, for she had said they had arrived in London on the morning of the day when the unknown woman in black had called. Beryl had told the truth, and her words were proved by the statement of Bob Raymond that he had seen her pass along Rowan Road.

Were they acquaintances? As I reflected upon that problem one fact alone stood out above all others. If I had been unknown to Wynd and that scoundrel Tattersett, how was it that they were enabled to give every detail regarding myself in their application for the marriage licence? How, indeed, did they know that I was acting as Bob’s locum tenens? Or how was the Tempter so well aware of my penury?

No. Now that my friend had betrayed himself, I felt convinced that he knew something of the extraordinary plot in which I had become so hopelessly involved.

“The day before yesterday,” I said, looking her straight in the face, “you came to Hammersmith to try to find me.”

She started quickly, but in an instant recovered herself.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I walked through Rowan Road, expecting to find your plate on one of the doors, but could not.”

“I have no plate,” I answered. “When I lived there I was assistant to my friend. Doctor Raymond.”

“Raymond!” she exclaimed. “Oh yes, I remember I saw his name; but I was looking for yours.”

“You wished to see me?”

“Yes; I was not well,” she faltered.

“But your cousin knew that I had lived with Raymond. Did you not ask her?”

“No,” she answered, “it never occurred to me to do so.”

Rather a lame response, I thought.

“But last night she found me quite easily. She called upon Doctor Raymond, who gave her my new address.” And, continuing, I told her of my temporary abode.

“I know,” she replied.

“Have you ever met my friend Raymond?” I inquired with an air of affected carelessness.

“Not to my knowledge,” she answered quite frankly.

“How long ago did Hoefer leave?” I asked.

“About an hour, I think. He has locked the door of the morning-room and taken the key with him,” she added, laughing.

She presented a pretty picture, indeed, in that half-darkened room, leaning back gracefully and smiling upon me.

“He announced no fresh discovery?”

“He spoke scarcely a dozen words.”

“But this mystery is a very disagreeable one for you who live here. I presume that you live with your cousin always?”

“Yes,” she responded. “After my father’s death, some years ago, I came here to live with her.”

So her father was dead! The Tempter was not, as I had all along suspected, her father.

I longed to take her in my arms and tell her the truth, that I was actually her husband and that I loved her. Yet, how could I? The mystery was so complicated, and so full of inscrutable points, that to make any such declaration must only fill her with fear of myself.

We chatted on while I feasted my eyes upon her wondrous beauty. Had she, I asked myself, ever seen young Chetwode since her return to London? Did she really love him, or was he merely the harmless but necessary admirer which every girl attracts towards herself as a sort of natural instinct? The thought of him caused a vivid recollection of that night in Whitton Park to arise within me.

Where was Tattersett – the man who had laughed at her when she had declared her intention of escaping him by suicide? Who was he? What was he?

It occurred to me, now that I had learned some potent facts from her own lips, that my next course should be to find this man and investigate his past. By doing so I might elucidate the problem.

Her ladyship, with a cry of welcome upon her lips, entered the room and sank, hot and fatigued, into a cosy armchair.

“London is simply unbearable!” she declared. “It’s ever so many degrees hotter than at Atworth, and in the Stores it is awfully stuffy. In the provision department butter, bacon, and things seem all melting away.”

“You’ll be glad to get back again to Wiltshire,” I laughed.

“Very. We shall go by the night-mail to-morrow,” she answered. “Why don’t you come up and visit us, Doctor? My husband would be charmed to meet you I’m sure.”

“That’s just what I’ve been saying, dear,” exclaimed Beryl. “Do persuade Doctor Colkirk to come.”

“I am sure you are both very kind,” I replied, “but at present I am in practice.”

“You can surely take a holiday,” urged Beryl. “Do come. We would try to make it pleasant for you.”

Her persuasion decided me, and, after some further pressing on the part of her ladyship, I accepted the invitation with secret satisfaction, promising to leave in the course of a week or ten days.

Then we fell to discussing the curious phenomena of the previous night, until, having again exhausted the subject, I rose to take my leave.

“Good-bye, Doctor Colkirk,” Beryl said, looking into my eyes as I held her small hand. “I hope we shall soon meet down in Wiltshire, and, when we do, let us forget all the mystery of yesterday.”

“I suppose you have given Hoefer permission to visit, the room when he wishes to pursue his investigations?” I said, turning to her ladyship.

“Of course. The house is entirely at his disposal. One does not care to have a death-trap in one’s own house.”

“He will do his best – of that I feel quite sure,” I said.

And then again promising to visit her soon, I shook her hand, bade them both adieu, and with a last look at the frail, graceful woman I loved, went out into the hot, dusty street.

In order to celebrate my sudden accession to wealth I lunched well at Simpson’s, and then took a hansom to old Hoefer’s dismal rooms in. Bloomsbury. To me, so gloomy and severe is that once-aristocratic district that, in my hospital days, I called it Gloomsbury.

Hoefer occupied a dingy flat in Museum Mansions, and, as I entered the small room which served him as laboratory, I was almost knocked back by the choking fumes of some acid with which he was experimenting. A dense blue smoke hung over everything, and through it loomed the German’s great fleshy face and gold-rimmed spectacles. He was in his shirt-sleeves, seated at a table, watching some liquid boiling in a big glass retort. Around his mouth and nose a damp towel was tied, and as I entered he motioned me back.

“Ach! don’t come in here, my tear Colkirk! I vill come to you. Ze air is not good just now. Wait for me there in my room.”

Heedless of his warning, however, I went forward to the table, coughing and choking the while. I took out my handkerchief, when suddenly he snatched it from me, and steeped it in some pale yellow solution. Then, when I placed it before my mouth, inhaling it, I experienced no further difficulty in respiration.