The Seven Secrets
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“I tell you plainly that I fear Ethelwynn may expose us,” his wife went on slowly, a distinctly anxious look upon her countenance. “As you know, there is a coolness between us, and rather than risk losing the doctor altogether she may make a clean breast of the affair.”
“No, no, my dear. Rest assured that she will never betray us,” answered Courtenay, with a light reassuring laugh. “True, you are not very friendly, yet you must recollect that she and I are friends. Her interests are identical with our own; therefore to expose us would be to expose herself at the same time.”
“A woman sometimes acts without forethought.”
“Quite true; but Ethelwynn is not one of those. She’s careful to preserve her own position in the eyes of her lover, knowing quite well that to tell the truth would be to expose her own baseness. A man may overlook many offences in the woman he loves, but this particular one of which she is guilty a man never forgives.”
His words went deep into my heart. Was not this further proof that the crime – for undoubtedly a crime had been accomplished in that house at Kew – had been committed by the hand of the woman I so fondly loved? All was so amazing, so utterly bewildering, that I stood there concealed by the tree, motionless as though turned to stone.
There was a motive wanting in it all. Yet I ask you who read this narrative of mine if, like myself, you would not have been staggered into dumbness at seeing and hearing a man whom you had certified to be dead, moving and speaking, and, moreover, in his usual health?
“He loves her!” his wife exclaimed, speaking of me. “He would forgive her anything. My own opinion is that if we would be absolutely secure it is for us to heal the breach between them.”
He remained thoughtful for a few moments, apparently in doubt as to the wisdom of acting upon her suggestion. Surely in the situation was an element of humor, for, happily, I was being forearmed.
“It might possibly be good policy,” he remarked at last. “If we could only bring them together again he would cease his constant striving to solve the enigma. We know well that he can never do that; nevertheless his constant efforts are as annoying as they are dangerous.”
“That’s just my opinion. There is danger to us in his constant inquiries, which are much more ingenious and careful than we imagine.”
“Well, my child,” he said, “you’ve stuck to me in this in a manner that few women would have dared. If you really think it necessary to bring Boyd and Ethelwynn together again you must do it entirely alone, for I could not possibly appear on the scene. He must never meet me, or the whole thing would be revealed.”
“For your sake I am prepared to make the attempt,” she said. “The fact of being Ethelwynn’s sister gives me freedom to speak my mind to him.”
“And to tell him some pretty little fiction about her?” he added, laughing.
“Yes. It will certainly be necessary to put an entirely innocent face on recent events in order to smooth matters over,” she admitted, joining in his laughter.
“Rather a difficult task to make the affair at Kew appear innocent,” he observed. “But you’re really a wonderful woman, Mary. The way you’ve acted your part in this affair is simply marvellous. You’ve deceived everyone – even that old potterer, Sir Bernard himself.”
“I’ve done it for your sake,” was her response. “I made a promise, and I’ve kept it. Up to the present we are safe, but we cannot take too many precautions. We have enemies and scandal-seekers on every side.”
“I admit that,” he replied, rather impatiently, I thought. “If you think it a wise course you had better lose no time in placing Ethelwynn’s innocence before her lover. You will see him in the morning, I suppose?”
“Probably not. He leaves by the eight o’clock train,” she said. “When my plans are matured I will call upon him in London.”
“And if any woman can deceive him, you can, Mary,” he laughed. “In those widow’s weeds of yours you could deceive the very devil himself!”
Mrs. Courtenay’s airy talk of deception threw an entirely fresh light upon her character. Hitherto I had held her in considerable esteem as a woman who, being bored to death by the eccentricities of her invalid husband, had sought distraction with her friends in town, but nevertheless honest and devoted to the man she had wedded. But these words of hers caused doubt to arise within my mind. That she had been devoted to her husband’s interest was proved by the clever imposture she was practising; indeed it seemed to me very much as if those frequent visits to town had been at the “dead” man’s suggestion and with his entire consent. But the more I reflected upon the extraordinary details of the tragedy and its astounding dénouement, the more hopeless and maddening became the problem.
“I shall probably go to town to-morrow,” she exclaimed, after smiling at his declaration. “Where are you in hiding just now?”
“In Birmingham. A large town is safer than a village. I return by the six o’clock train, and go again into close concealment.”
“But you know people in Birmingham, don’t you? We stayed there once with some people called Tremlett, I recollect.”
“Ah, yes,” he laughed. “But I am careful to avoid them. The district in which I live is far removed from them. Besides, I never by any chance go out by day. I’m essentially a nocturnal roamer.”
“And when shall we meet again?”
“By appointment, in the usual way.”
“At the usual place?” she asked.
“There can be no better, I think. It does not take you from home, and I am quite unknown down here.”
“If any of the villagers ever discovered us they might talk, and declare that I met a secret lover,” she laughed.
“If you are ever recognised, which I don’t anticipate is probable, we can at once change our place of meeting. At present there is no necessity for changing it.”
“Then, in the meantime, I will exercise my woman’s diplomacy to effect peace between Ethelwynn and the doctor,” she said. “It is the only way by which we can obtain security.”
“For the life of me I can’t discern the reason of his coolness towards her,” remarked my “dead” patient.
“He suspects her.”
“Of what?”
“Suspects the truth. She has told me so.”
Old Henry Courtenay grunted in dissatisfaction.
“Hasn’t she tried to convince him to the contrary?” he asked. “I was always under the impression that she could twist him round her finger – so hopelessly was he in love with her.”
“So she could before this unfortunate affair.”
“And now that he suspects the truth he’s disinclined to have any more to do with her – eh? Well,” he added, “after all, it’s only natural. She’s not so devilish clever as you, Mary, otherwise she would never have allowed herself to fall beneath suspicion. She must have somehow blundered.”
“To-morrow I shall go to town,” she said in a reflective voice. “No time should be lost in effecting the reconciliation between them.”
“You are right,” he declared. “You should commence at once. Call and talk with him. He believes so entirely in you. But promise me one thing; that you will not go to Ethelwynn,” he urged.
“Why not?”
“Because it is quite unnecessary,” he answered. “You are not good friends; therefore your influence upon the doctor should be a hidden one. She will believe that he has returned to her of his own free will; hence our position will be rendered the stronger. Act diplomatically. If she believes that you are interesting yourself in her affairs it may anger her.”
“Then you suggest that I should call upon the doctor in secret, and try and influence him in her favour without her being aware of it?”
“Exactly. After the reconciliation is effected you may tell her. At present, however, it is not wise to show our hand. By your visit to the doctor you may be able to obtain from him how much he knows, and what are his suspicions. One thing is certain, that with all his shrewdness he doesn’t dream the truth.”
“Who would?” she asked with a smile. “If the story were told, nobody would believe it.”
“That’s just it! The incredibility of the whole affair is what places us in such a position of security; for as long as I lie low and you continue to act the part of the interesting widow, nobody can possibly get at the truth.”
“I think I’ve acted my part well, up to the present,” she said, “and I hope to continue to do so. To influence the doctor will be a difficult task, I fear. But I’ll do my utmost, because I see that by the reconciliation Ethelwynn’s lips would be sealed.”
“Act with discretion, my dear,” urged the old man. “But remember that Boyd is not a man to be trifled with – and as for that accursed friend of his, Ambler Jevons, he seems second cousin to the very King of Darkness himself.”
“Never fear,” she laughed confidently. “Leave it to me – leave all to me.”
And then, agreeing that it was time they went back, they turned, retraced their steps, and passing through the small gate into the meadow, were soon afterwards lost to sight.
Truly my night’s adventure had been as strange and startling as any that has happened to living man, for what I had seen and heard opened up a hundred theories, each more remarkable and tragic than the other, until I stood utterly dumfounded and aghast.
CHAPTER XIX.
JEVONS GROWS MYSTERIOUS
On coming down to breakfast on the following morning I found Mrs. Mivart awaiting me alone. The old lady apologised for Mary’s non-appearance, saying that it was her habit to have her tea in her room, but that she sent me a message of farewell.
Had it been at all possible I would have left by a later train, for I was extremely anxious to watch her demeanour after last night’s clandestine meeting, but with such a crowd of patients awaiting me it was imperative to leave by the first train. Even that would not bring me to King’s Cross before nearly eleven o’clock.
“Well now, doctor,” Mrs. Mivart commenced rather anxiously when we were seated, and she had handed me my coffee. “You saw Mary last night, and had an opportunity of speaking with her. What is your opinion? Don’t hesitate to tell me frankly, for I consider that it is my duty to face the worst.”
“Really!” I exclaimed, looking straight at her after a moment’s reflection. “To speak candidly I failed to detect anything radically wrong in your daughter’s demeanour.”
“But didn’t you notice, doctor, how extremely nervous she is; how in her eyes there is a haunting, suspicious look, and how blank is her mind upon every other subject but the great calamity that has befallen her?”
“I must really confess that these things were not apparent to me,” I answered. “I watched her carefully, but beyond the facts that she is greatly unnerved by the sad affair and that she is mourning deeply for her dead husband, I can discover nothing abnormal.”
“You are not of opinion, then, that her mind is growing unbalanced by the strain?”
“Not in the least,” I reassured her. “The symptoms she betrays are but natural in a woman of her nervous, highly-strung temperament.”
“But she unfortunately grieves too much,” remarked the old lady with a sigh. “His name is upon her lips at every hour. I’ve tried to distract her and urged her to accompany me abroad for a time, but all to no purpose. She won’t hear of it.”
I alone knew the reason of her refusal. In conspiracy with her “dead” husband it was impossible to be apart from him for long together. The undue accentuation of her daughter’s feigned grief had alarmed the old lady – and justly so. Now that I recollected, her conduct at table on the previous night was remarkable, having regard to the true facts of the case. I confess I had myself been entirely deceived into believing that her sorrow at Henry Courtenay’s death was unbounded. In every detail her acting was perfect, and bound to attract sympathy among her friends and arouse interest among strangers. I longed to explain to the quiet, charming old lady what I had seen during my midnight ramble; but such a course was, as yet, impossible. Indeed, if I made a plain statement, such as I have given in the foregoing pages, surely no one would believe me. But every man has his romance, and this was mine.
Unable to reveal Mary’s secret, I was compelled reluctantly to take leave of her mother, who accompanied me out to where the dog-cart was in waiting.
“I scarcely know, doctor, how to thank you sufficiently,” the dear old lady said as I took her hand. “What you have told me reassures me. Of late I have been extremely anxious, as you may imagine.”
“You need feel no anxiety,” I declared. “She’s nervous and run down – that’s all. Take her away for a change, if possible. But if she refuses, don’t force her. Quiet is the chief medicine in her case. Good-bye.”
She pressed my hand again in grateful acknowledgment, and then I mounted into the conveyance and was driven to the station.
On the journey back to town I pondered long and deeply. Of a verity my short visit to Mrs. Mivart had been fraught with good results, and I was contemplating seeking Ambler Jevons at the earliest possible moment and relating to him my astounding discovery. The fact that old Courtenay was still living was absolutely beyond my comprehension. To endeavour to form any theory, or to try and account for the bewildering phenomenon, was utterly useless. I had seen him, and had overheard his words. I could surely believe my eyes and ears. And there it ended. The why and wherefore I put aside for the present, remembering Mary’s promise to him to come to town and have an interview with me.
Surely that meeting ought to be most interesting. I awaited it with the most intense anxiety, and yet in fear lest I might be led by her clever imposture to blurt out what I knew. I felt myself on the eve of a startling revelation; and my expectations were realized to the full, as the further portion of this strange romance will show.
I know that many narratives have been written detailing the remarkable and almost inconceivable machinations of those who have stained their hands with crime, but I honestly believe that the extraordinary features of my own life-romance are as strange as, if not stranger than, any hitherto recorded. Even my worst enemy could not dub me egotistical, I think; and surely the facts I have set down here are plain and unvarnished, without any attempt at misleading the reader into believing that which is untrue. Mine is a plain chronicle of a chain of extraordinary circumstances which led to an amazing dénouement.
From King’s Cross to Guy’s is a considerable distance, and when I alighted from the cab in the courtyard of the hospital it was nearly mid-day. Until two o’clock I was kept busy in the wards, and after a sandwich and a glass of sherry I drove to Harley Street, where I found Sir Bernard in his consulting-room for the first time for a month.
“Ah! Boyd,” he cried merrily, when I entered. “Thought I’d surprise you to-day. I felt quite well this morning, so resolved to come up and see Lady Twickenham and one or two others. I’m not at home to patients, and have left them to you.”
“Delighted to see you better,” I declared, wringing his hand. “They were asking after you at the hospital to-day. Vernon said he intended going down to see you to-morrow.”
“Kind of him,” the old man laughed, placing his thin hands together, after rubbing and readjusting his glasses. “You were away last night; out of town, they said.”
“Yes, I wanted a breath of fresh air,” I answered, laughing. I did not care to tell him where I had been, knowing that he held my love for Ethelwynn as the possible ruin of my career.
His curiosity seemed aroused; but, although he put to me an ingenious question, I steadfastly refused to satisfy him. I recollected too well his open condemnation of my love on previous occasions. Now that the “murdered” man was proved to be still alive, I surely had no further grounds for my suspicion of Ethelwynn. That she had, by her silence, deceived me regarding her engagement to Mr. Courtenay was plain, but the theory that it was her hand that had assassinated him was certainly disproved. Thus, although the discovery of the “dead” man’s continued existence deepened the mystery a thousandfold, it nevertheless dispelled from my heart a good deal of the suspicion regarding my well-beloved; and, in consequence, I was not desirous that any further hostile word should be uttered against her.
While Sir Bernard went out to visit her ladyship and two or three other nervous women living in the same neighbourhood, I seated myself in his chair and saw the afternoon callers one after another. I fear that the advice I gave during those couple of hours was not very notable for its shrewdness or brilliancy. As in other professions, so in medicine, when one’s brain is overflowing with private affairs, one cannot attend properly to patients. On such occasions one is apt to ask the usual questions mechanically, hear the replies and scribble a prescription of some harmless formula. On the afternoon in question I certainly believe myself guilty of such lapse of professional attention. Yet even we doctors are human, although our patients frequently forget that fact. The medico is a long-suffering person, even in these days of scarcity of properly-qualified men – the first person called on emergency, and the very last to be paid!
It was past five o’clock before I was able to return to my rooms, and on arrival I found upon my table a note from Jevons. It was dated from the Yorick Club, a small but exceedingly comfortable Bohemian centre in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and had evidently been written hurriedly on the previous night: —
“I hear you are absent in the country. That is unfortunate. But as soon as you receive this, lose no time in calling at the Hennikers’ and making casual inquiries regarding Miss Mivart. Something has happened, but what it is I have failed to discover. You stand a better chance. Go at once. I must leave for Bath to-night. Address me at the Royal Hotel, G. W. Station.
“Ambler Jevons.”What could have transpired? And why had my friend’s movements been so exceedingly erratic of late, if he had not been following some clue? Would that clue lead him to the truth, I wondered? Or was he still suspicious of Ethelwynn’s guilt?
Puzzled by this vague note, and wondering what had occurred, and whether the trip to Bath was in connection with it, I made a hasty toilet and drove in a hansom to the Hennikers’.
Mrs. Henniker met me in the drawing-room, just as gushing and charming as ever. She was one of those many women in London who seek to hang on to the skirts of polite society by reason of a distant connexion being a countess – a fact of which she never failed to remind the stranger before half-an-hour’s acquaintance. She found it always a pleasant manner in which to open a conversation at dinner, dance, or soirée: “Oh! do you happen to know my cousin, Lady Nassington?” She never sufficiently realised it as bad form, and therefore in her own circle was known among the women, who jeered at her behind her back, as “The Cousin of Lady Nassington.” She was daintily dressed, and evidently just come in from visiting, for she still had her hat on when she entered.
“Ah!” she cried, with her usual buoyant air. “You truant! We’ve all been wondering what had become of you. Busy, of course! Always the same excuse! Find something fresh. You used it a fortnight ago to refuse my invitation to take pot-luck with us.”
I laughed at her unconventional greeting, replying, “If I say something fresh it must be a lie. You know, Mrs. Henniker, how hard I’m kept at it, with hospital work and private practice.”
“That’s all very well,” she said, with a slight pout of her well-shaped mouth – for she was really a pretty woman, even though full of airs and caprices. “But it doesn’t excuse you for keeping away from us altogether.”
“I don’t keep away altogether,” I protested. “I’ve called now.”
She pulled a wry face, in order to emphasise her dissatisfaction at my explanation, and said:
“And I suppose you are prepared to receive castigation? Ethelwynn has begun to complain because people are saying that your engagement is broken off.”
“Who says so?” I inquired rather angrily, for I hated all the tittle-tattle of that little circle of gossips who dawdle over the tea-cups of Redcliffe Square and its neighbourhood. I had attended a good many of them professionally at various times, and was well acquainted with all their ways and all their exaggerations. The gossiping circle in flat-land about Earl’s Court was bad enough, but the Redcliffe Square set, being slightly higher in the social scale, was infinitely worse.
“Oh! all the ill-natured people are commenting upon your apparent coolness. Once, not long ago, you used to be seen everywhere with Ethelwynn, and now no one ever sees you. People form a natural conclusion, of course,” said the fair-haired, fussy little woman, whose married state gave her the right to censure me on my neglect.
“Ethelwynn is, of course, still with you?” I asked, in anger that outsiders should seek to interfere in my private affairs.
“She still makes our house her home, not caring to go back to the dulness of Neneford,” was her reply. “But at present she’s away visiting one of her old schoolfellows – a girl who married a country banker and lives near Hereford.”
“Then she’s in the country?”
“Yes, she went three days ago. I thought she had written to you. She told me she intended doing so.”
I had received no letter from her. Indeed, our recent correspondence had been of a very infrequent and formal character. With a woman’s quick perception she had noted my coldness and had sought to show equal callousness. With the knowledge of Courtenay’s continued existence now in my mind, I was beside myself with grief and anger at having doubted her. But how could I act at that moment, save in obedience to my friend Jevons’ instructions? He had urged me to go and find out some details regarding her recent life with the Hennikers; and with that object I remarked:
“She hasn’t been very well of late, I fear. The change of air should do her good.”
“That’s true, poor girl. She’s seemed very unwell, and I’ve often told her that only one doctor in the world could cure her malady – yourself.”
I smiled. The malady was, I knew too well, the grief of a disappointed love, and a perfect cure for that could only be accomplished by reconciliation. I was filled with regret that she was absent, for I longed there and then to take her to my breast and whisper into her ear my heart’s outpourings. Yes; we men are very foolish in our impetuosity.
“How long will she be away?”
“Why?” inquired the smartly-dressed little woman, mischievously. “What can it matter to you?”
“I have her welfare at heart, Mrs. Henniker,” I answered seriously.
“Then you have a curious way of showing your solicitude on her behalf,” she said bluntly, smiling again. “Poor Ethelwynn has been pining day after day for a word from you; but you seldom, if ever, write, and when you do the coldness of your letters adds to her burden of grief. I knew always when she had received one by the traces of secret tears upon her cheeks. Forgive me for saying so, Doctor, but you men, either in order to test the strength of a woman’s affection, or perhaps out of mere caprice, often try her patience until the strained thread snaps, and she who was a good and pure woman becomes reckless of everything – her name, her family pride, and even her own honour.”
Her words aroused my curiosity.
“And you believe that Ethelwynn’s patience is exhausted?” I asked, anxiously.
Her eyes met mine, and I saw a mysterious expression in them. There is always something strange in the eyes of a pretty woman who is hiding a secret.
“Well, Doctor,” she answered, in a voice quite calm and deliberate, “you’ve already shown yourself so openly as being disinclined to further associate yourself publicly with poor Ethelwynn, because of the tragedy that befell the household, that you surely cannot complain if you find your place usurped by a new and more devoted lover.”
“What!” I cried, starting up, fiercely. “What is this you tell me? Ethelwynn has a lover?”
“I have nothing whatever to do with her affairs, Doctor,” said the tantalising woman, who affected all the foibles of the smarter set. “Now that you have forsaken her she is, of course, entirely mistress of her own actions.”