A Duel Part 37

When the three men found themselves in the street Winton said to Harry--

"Miss Wallace's idea does not seem to have been altogether a success".

Harry did not reply at once; when he did his tone was a little grim.

"I'm not so sure. My own impression is--though if you were to ask me I could not tell you in so many set terms on what it's founded--that we're well rid of the lady, and that we are rid of her I think there's very little doubt."

Frank Staines remarked--

"If the lady's mad, or if she's subject to fits of madness--and if she isn't I don't know what she is--it's just as well that you've discovered it before it was too late".

Judging from their silence that seemed to be the opinion of the others also.

The next morning Miss Wallace was distinctly in an uncommunicative mood, as Miss Johnson, who paid her a very matutinal call, found, whereupon the young lady expressed herself with characteristic frankness.

"Really, Meg, I've known you for quite a time, and I was just beginning to think that you were a really Christian person, but now it's actually bursting on me that you can be nothing of the kind. You sit there, mumchance, looking all sorts of things and saying nothing; and if there can be anything more exasperating than that, I should like to know what, it is. You promised, last night, before you went to Mrs. Lamb, that you would tell me everything that happened--I'm sure something did happen, by the looks of you--yet the more I ask you questions, the more you won't answer them. Do you call that being as good as your word?

I don't--so that's plain. I'm disappointed in you, Margaret Wallace."

Margaret smiled, a little wanly.

"I hope you'll forgive me, Dollie, please! but I can't talk to you just now, and especially about last night. Ask Harry, or Mr.

Staines, they'll tell you everything, and perhaps a little later I will myself, but just now I really and truly can't."

Dollie, eyeing her shrewdly, perceiving she was in earnest, bowed to the inevitable.

"Very well; I shouldn't dream of asking anything of Mr. Frank Staines, he might treat me even worse than you are doing. But it's possible that I may put a few questions to your Harry. The fact is that if some one doesn't tell me something soon I shall simply burst with curiosity. I have never concealed from any one that curiosity's my ruling pa.s.sion--it's the case with all literary persons, my dear! Meg!"--she went and put her arm about the girl's neck, and the tone of her voice was changed--"if anything horrid happened at that woman's, never mind; after all, horrid things don't really matter, they generally turn out much better than they seem. I once had thirteen MSS. rejected in one week, and yet I bore up, and I planted them all before I'd done with them. I've never seen you look like this before, and I don't half like it. I always make you the heroine of all my stories, because you're the best plucked girl I ever met; so buck up, and stop it as soon as you conveniently can."

Miss Johnson had not departed very long before Margaret had another visitor--Dr. Twelves. He found her much more talkative than Dollie had done.

CHAPTER XXIII

MARGARET RESOLVES TO FIGHT

So soon as the doctor appeared in the doorway Margaret ran to him with outstretched hands, in her voice a curious, eager note.

"I knew you'd come!--I knew it!"

The doctor took her soft hands in his well-worn ones, regarding her from under the pent-house of his overhanging brows with his keen hawk's eyes, which age had not perceptibly dimmed, as if he sought for something which he fancied might be hidden in some corner of her face.

"Did you? How did you know it?"

"I don't know; but I did--I was sure."

"Maybe you've the gift of second sight. I've heard it said it was in your father's family."

"I wish I had; it would be the most useful gift I could have just now."

"Would it? How's that? Maybe you knew I'd come because you wanted me."

"Wanted you! Doctor, don't you feel unduly flattered! But there's no one in the world I wanted half so much as you."

"Is that so? Then it's queer, because I just happen to be wanting you nearly as much. But before we fall to talking come to the light, and let me see your face. There's something there which puzzles me, which I've never seen on it before; it's sure I am it wasn't there the other day."

Taking her by the arm he would have led her to the window, but she placed her hand against his chest and stopped him.

"No, no, doctor, you mustn't take me to the light, and you mustn't look at my face either. I'd rather you turned right round and look at the wall. There's quite a pretty paper on the wall, and some drawings of mine which you'll find deserve your very closest attention. I just want to talk to you, and I want you to talk to me, and answer some questions which I'm going to ask--and that's all."

"And that's all? I see. And I'm not to look at your face? Good.

It's prettier than the paper, and far more deserving of attention than the drawings, but far be it from me to quiz a lady when she'd rather I didn't. Yet before you start the talking--perhaps when you've started you'll be slow to finish--let me say a word. You remember what you told me about that visit you paid to Cuthbert Grahame--that last visit when they wouldn't let you in?"

"It's exactly about that I wish to speak to you."

"Then that's queerer still, because it's about that I've come to talk. You told me that it was Nannie Foreshaw who refused you admission, and that she poured some water on you; and I told you that I didn't see how she could have very well done that, since, at that very time, she was lying, with her leg broken, in bed.

When I left I wrote and asked her what she had to say. I've had an answer from her, and here it is." He took an envelope from his pocket, and from the envelope a letter, speaking all the time. "You'll bear in mind that Nannie's not so young as she was, and that, of late, things have fared ill with her, as they have a trick of doing when one grows old. She's had a broken leg, and that's no trifle when the marrow's getting dry in the bone; and her master--whom she'd had in her arms even before he'd lain in his mother's--had come to his death in a way that wasn't so plain as it might have been. She's never quite got the better of that broken leg; she walks with a stick, and she'll never walk without one; and she'll never be rid of the thought that, when Cuthbert Grahame died, though she was only just above, she couldn't get down to him, or shut his eyes, or see him before he was put in his coffin, or stand by his grave when he was buried. That thought troubles her more than the other.

Between the one and the other, and the stress of advancing years, she's not so good a penwoman as she used to be. And so it comes about that this letter which I have here was not written by her own hand, though I have no doubt that they're just her own words which are set down in it."

Unfolding the sheet of paper he proceeded to read aloud.

"'Dear Mr. David'--she's called me that these forty years, and before that it was Master David, and it doesn't seem as if she could break herself of the habit, though, mind you, I'm an M.D.

of Edinburgh University, and legally ent.i.tled to the prefix 'Doctor,' which is more than can be said for a good many that's called it. 'It's beyond my thinking'--it's very colloquially written is this letter, which makes me the more sure that it's just her words which are set down in it--'It's beyond my thinking how you could have supposed that I could ever have turned my darling away from the door?--I never supposed anything of the kind, but that's by the way--'and refuse to let her in?

My dear Miss Margaret! Mr. David, if I were dying I'd open the door if I knew that she was there--ay, I believe I would climb out of my grave to do it.' You observe what exaggerated language the woman uses? That's her all over. 'And to think that it should have been her on the day of which you speak--that awful day! I'll never forgive myself now that I know it.' That's her again. 'And, Mr. David, I'll find it hard to forgive you either.' That's the woman to a T--logical. 'If you'd never brought the creature to the house none of it would ever have happened, and my darling would never have been denied the door.

And hot water thrown on her sweet head! How slow is the judgment of G.o.d!' Observe how she flies off at a tangent. 'Now I'll tell you the whole story. That day as I was lying in my bed, where she had laid me, I heard a great clatter in the house. When, after it was over, she came up to see me, I asked her what it was about. She said that a strange man had come begging to the house, and had tried to force himself into it, but that she had had to imitate my voice, to make him think it was me that was talking to him, before he would go. The insolence of her, that she should try to imitate her betters, and tell me of it to my face. And now it seems that it was no strange man at all, but just my darling who had come begging to be let into her own home. That wicked woman! Tell my sweet, when you see her, Mr.

David, just how it was. And tell her if I had known it was she I would have crawled down, if it had been on my hands and knees, to undo the door, and bid her welcome. And say to her that there's none dearer to me in all the world than she is, and well she ought to know it. There is one prayer I offer constantly, that I may be spared to see her sweet face again, and hold her in my arms, and listen to her dear, soft voice. There is much more that I would say, but it cannot be written; it is only for her and for me.' Then the old woman goes off rambling; there is more, but nothing to the point. Here is her letter; you may read it for yourself if you like; there are tender messages by the yard. You'll see that that is not the epistle of a woman who would drive you from her door."

"But I don't understand. Who does she mean imitated her voice?"

"The woman who called herself Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame."

"Who called herself Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame? I've heard something about some woman, but nothing that was at all plain. Tell me who she was, and how she came to call herself by his name."

The doctor told, as succinctly as he could, the story of the woman he had picked up by the wayside; how, though he had found her helpless, she had proved herself to be more than a match for them all. Margaret listened with eyes which grew wider and wider open. When he had finished she broke into exclamation.

"Then Nannie is right; it was through you that it all happened."

He resorted to his favourite trick--he stroked his bristly chin, as if the action a.s.sisted him in the search for an appropriate answer.

"In a measure, young lady--in a measure. My original intention was to perform an act of mercy. You would not have had me leave the creature there in the night to perish. The whole business is but an ill.u.s.tration of the truth of how great events from little causes spring."

"To give her a.s.sistance, shelter--that was right enough; but, according to your own statement, you were responsible for that mockery of marriage."

The rubbing of the bristles went on with redoubled energy.

"I might say something on that point, but I'll not; I'll just admit I'm guilty. And I'll do it the more willingly because there hasn't been a day on which I haven't told myself that if there's a creature on G.o.d's earth that needed well and regular hiding that creature's me, because of what I did that night. I did a great wrong, a great folly, and a great sin. Margaret, though I am old and you are young, I am ready, if you wish it--and you'll be right to wish it--to humble myself in the dust at your feet. My only consolation is that in His infinite mercy, ultimately, there may be forgiveness even for me." He paused, then added, with in his voice and manner a suggestion of utter self-abas.e.m.e.nt which was in itself pathetic, "And the worst I've still to add".

"The worst?"