Swirling Waters Part 34

"Well?" he asked smilingly. "Am I the devil tempting you to run crooked?"

"I must apologize, sir--apologize sincerely! I didn't know of all this.

I thought----I thought----"

"That's all over now. We'll forget it. You've proved to me you're sound and straight. You've carried out orders well. Carry out future orders in the same way, and I'll do everything I've promised for you. You know that I never break a promise to my staff?"

"Yes, indeed, sir. That's well known."

"Well, my next order is this: take a fortnight's holiday and get strong again.... Do you fish?"

"I'd like to."

"I'll put you in the way of some splendid fis.h.i.+ng. Tarpon! After that you'll return to England with me. Sound good to you?"

"You're too generous, sir!" answered the young fellow with deep feeling.

He was Larssen's man once again.

CHAPTER XXIV

CONFESSION

Riviere was at his gla.s.s-topped, bevel-edged bench in the private biological laboratory at Wiesbaden, surrounded by his apparatus of experiment. At the moment he was looking down with one eye through the high-power immersion lens of his microscope at two tiny blobs of life in a drop of water. From day to day the salinity of the water was being slowly altered, and this was only one of thousands of experiments he had planned on the effect of changing conditions of life on the elemental organisms.

Every day he was pa.s.sing in review scores of slides on which the elemental reaction to abnormal conditions was unfolding itself for his observation. Each drop of water was a world where the vital spark was struggling against the harshness of nature. Each drop of water embodied a fight of primitive protoplasm against disease. Each drop of water was contributing its tiny quota to the new book of knowledge he hoped one day to give to his fellow-men.

Like all trained microscopists, Riviere worked with both eyes open. The amateur observer has to screw one eye tight in order to avoid a confusion of impressions, and quickly tires himself. The trained man keeps both eyes open, and schools his brain to concentrate on the one vision and ignore the other. He sees only the miniature world at the further end of his complex of lenses.

But Riviere, self-controlled as he was, could not keep attention on his experimental slide. The vision of the miniature world faded out, and through the other eye came the impression of the outside of the polished bra.s.s tube of the microscope; the gla.s.s slide beyond, lit up by the reflector as though with a searchlight; and the plate-gla.s.s bench mirroring the cases of specimens and the shelves of chemical reagents.

And then the material vision of both eyes faded away, and he saw only the inner vision of Elaine lying with bandaged eyes in the darkened room of the Dr Hegelmann's surgical home. The great specialist, pulling at his beard with his long, delicately-chiselled fingers, so out of keeping with the shapelessness of his bulky, untidy figure, had taken Riviere aside and had given him orders in that wonderfully musical voice of his.

"Fraulein is worrying--that is bad for the recovery. I will not have her worried. You must tell her that everything will come right--you must make her smile again."

"But I'm only a casual acquaintance. We met by mere chance a few days before the attack at Nimes," Riviere had said.

"Nevertheless, you can do much for her. She will listen to you gladly.

You are no longer casual acquaintances. I am an observer of human nature as well as a surgeon, and I know that the mind is the key to the bodily health. I know that _you_ can influence her. Talk to her freely--it will not tire her. That is my order."

But Riviere had not been able to carry out the spirit of the old man's shrewd command. When he was by her bedside, a great constraint had come upon him. What had been easy to embody in a letter, was terribly difficult to frame in spoken speech. Several times he had tried to open the way to a confession. He knew it must scarify Elaine, and he shrank from it. But yet it was plain her mind was not at rest, and that was worse for her than the knowledge of the truth.

He, too, must act the surgeon.

With sudden resolution, Riviere put away his microscope and placed his experimental slides in their air-tight incubating chamber. He changed from his laboratory coat to his outdoor coat, and made his way rapidly towards the surgical home.

As he crossed the Wilhelmstra.s.se--gay with its alluring shops and its crowd of well-dressed, leisured saunterers--a man came up with outstretched hand to Riviere and then hesitated visibly.

"Excuse me, sir, but I thought for the moment you were a friend of mine, a Mr Clifford Matheson. I see now that I was mistaken by a very striking resemblance."

"My half-brother."

"Ah, that's it!" said the man, visibly relieved. "Well, remember me to him when you see him. Warren is my name--Major Warren."

"I'll certainly do so."

"Thanks--good afternoon."

It was not the first proof Riviere had had of the safety of his new ident.i.ty. Though Larssen and Olive had penetrated the disguise, others who knew him well, even his own clerks, had been perfectly satisfied with the explanation of the "half-brother."

When he was ushered into the darkened room at the surgical home, Elaine smiled greeting to him, and the smile stabbed him with self-reproach. He had come to wound her. There must be no further delay. He must act the surgeon _now_.

Elaine half-sat, half-lay in a _chaise longue_. His white lilac and fuchsia--those were her favourite flowers he had discovered--were on a small table by her side, scenting the room faintly but definitely. She had a letter in her hands, which she asked him to open and read to her.

"The nurse doesn't read English well," she explained.

Riviere looked first at the signature. "It's from your friend Madge in Paris."

"Then it will be good reading."

As he read it out to her, he kept glancing now and again at her face to note the effect of the words. The letter was mostly a gay account of the girl's doings in Paris--the amus.e.m.e.nts of the past week, little sc.r.a.ps about mutual friends, theatrical gossip, and so on. It was meant to cheer, but it did not cheer. Riviere could see that Elaine was reading into every sentence the might-have-been of her own wrecked life. He hurried through it as quickly as possible, and then they chatted for some time of impersonal matters.

His words began to come from him with a curious husky abruptness.

Elaine felt the tension, and knew that he had something important to tell her. She sought to help him to it.

"Your journey to London," she said. "Did it effect your purpose? You haven't told me much."

"I had the hardest fight of my life," he replied, taking up her opening with relief. This would lead him to what he had come to tell her.

"And you won?"

"I was beaten to my knees."

"That doesn't sound like you as I knew you at Arles."

"The fight's not over yet. I managed to stumble up again for a final round."

"May I know what the fight was about?"

"I want you to know every detail of it," he answered swiftly. "I want your advice--your help."

"My help?" There was a faint flush in her cheeks below the bandages.

"What can _I_ do?"

He paused a moment before replying, seeking the right beginning to his story.