A Duel Part 4

"Take her and put her to bed in the best bedroom. Remember that she's now the mistress of this house."

Nannie moved towards Isabel. For a woman, she was tall and brawny, but she was probably well past fifty, and Isabel certainly had not credited her with the capacity to do what she immediately did. She eyed the stranger for a moment in silence, then she asked, in the broadest Scotch:--

"Can't you walk by your own self?"

Isabel resented both the tone and the scrutiny.

"You know I can't."

Without more ado the woman, stooping, put her arms about her and lifted her bodily from the chair as if she were some great child. Isabel was taken by surprise, and a little alarmed.

"You'll drop me!" she cried.

"I'll not drop you; you're nothing of a weight."

As if to prove it, the old woman bore her from the room, across the landing, to another room on the other side, one which was in darkness. But Nannie seemed to know its geography by instinct.

She deposited her burden on what Isabel realised was a bed.

Striking a match on a box which she took from her pocket, she lit some candles which stood on the mantelshelf. Isabel, remaining where she had been placed, eyed her as she moved about.

"You're very strong."

"I'm not so strong as once I was. There was a time when I'd have carried four of you, and thought nothing of it either. Now can you undress yourself, or will you be needing me to do it for you?"

"Thank you, I think I can undress myself; but if you would help me take the boot off my bad foot."

Nannie bent over the foot which the other extended. She regarded it in silence, then, still without a word, she left the room. So soon as she was gone Isabel dragged the glove which contained her wedding-ring out of her belt, and the canvas bag which had come out of Mrs. Macconichie's tobacco jar from her bodice, and thrust them as far as possible under the bolster which was beneath the pillow on which she was reclining. Scarcely had she done this when Nannie reappeared, in her hands a pair of large scissors. With their aid she proceeded, still speechless, to cut, first, the laces of Isabel's boot, and then the boot itself, till it came away from her foot. As it came away she did what she boasted she had never before done in her life--she fainted. When she came to herself again she found that Nannie, who had apparently remained indifferent to the fact that her senses had left her, having bathed her foot and ankle, was putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the bandages in which she had swathed it. When the bandage was completed the old woman, still without vouchsafing a word, began to undress her, and did it with a deftness and neatness which would have done her credit had she played the part of lady's-maid her whole life long.

Almost before she knew it, she was ready for the sheets, and so soon as she was ready she was placed between them.

"You're very good to me," she murmured, with a luxurious sigh, as she recognised what a delicious feeling it was to be between them.

"I'm not good to you--anyway I'm not wanting to be good to you."

Isabel looked up with surprise; the tone was almost savage.

"Why not? Don't you think that you will like me?"

"Like you!--like you!"

The emphasis with which the words were repeated was unmistakable. It would have been difficult for scorn to have been more eloquent. Without condescending to further speech, as if everything had been said which could be said, Nannie moved towards the door. Isabel put a question to her as she reached it.

"Is my husband dead?"

Nannie turned swiftly round to her.

"Your--what?"

"My husband."

"Your husband!--your husband!"

Again the repet.i.tion was marked by the same wealth of scorn.

Isabel was moved to some show of resentment.

"He is my husband--you know he's my husband."

"Oh, he's your husband, Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame. I'm not doubting it, ma'am, or that you're a fit and proper wife for him. I'm ready to tell to any one that you're a well-matched pair."

"Is he dead?"

As she repeated her inquiry Isabel's manner was a trifle more subdued; she was finding Nannie a difficult person to contend with.

"You'd better be asking Dr. Twelves if your husband's dead, ma'am; he's a surer judge of dead folk than I am. You'll be feeling anxious till you know, and so I'll tell the doctor. When a woman's been acquainted with a man so long as you've been acquainted with your man, so that you've come to know all the secrets of his heart, and the very shape and fas.h.i.+on of the soul which G.o.d has lent him, to be sure all her nature stirs within her when she begins to fear he's near to dying. It's hard to lose the husband to whom you've only been married a couple of minutes, so I'll tell the doctor to hurry and let you know if you're a widow before you're a wife."

Without giving Isabel a chance to retort, Nannie opened the door with a swis.h.i.+ng movement, which was in harmony with her state of mind, and vanished from the chamber.

CHAPTER IV

A SECOND HONEYMOON

She had slept well; Isabel admitted so much. She suspected something else, that the morning was far advanced. There was that in the atmosphere which conveyed that impression.

Apparently some one had been in while she still slept and put the room in order. The blinds were up, the curtains drawn back, the sun streamed in through the small square windows which were set deep in the thickness of the wall. As she looked about her, from her vantage place on the pillow, she felt that this was the queerest place she ever had been in. Everything, including the room itself, seemed to her to be hundreds of years old. The paper on the walls was like nothing she had ever seen before.

The furniture was of the oddest shapes; indeed, what some of the articles might be intended for was beyond her comprehension. As she gradually absorbed it all, she began to be conscious of an almost eerie feeling that she had woke up in some ancient habitation and in some bygone age of which she had no knowledge.

Then something else forced itself on her attention, she felt that she was helpless. As she tried to turn in bed, the better to enable her to see what was to be seen, a spasm of pain pa.s.sed over her, which was so acute that she had to shut her eyes and bite her lips to prevent herself from crying out. For some moments she lay quite still, waiting for the pain to go. It was some time before it diminished; even when it was easier she learnt, to her dismay, that she would have to be very careful in her movements if she did not wish it to return with probably increasing violence. Her foot seemed, from the feel of it, to be about as bad as it could be. It was not only useless, it held her prisoner. The slightest attempt to move it in any direction resulted in the keenest anguish. It seemed that relief from almost unendurable torment could only be obtained by remaining entirely quiescent. That meant, in effect, that she was chained, possibly for an indefinite period, to the bed in which she was lying. An agreeable prospect!

As the true inwardness of the position began to dawn on her, in phantasmagoric procession the events of the previous night flashed across her mind. The letter to her husband--to Gregory Lamb--which she had opened and read, the letter with the Islington post-mark, containing the curt refusal to accord him further help; the resolution to leave him, which she had instantly arrived at after its perusal; her visit to Mrs.

Macconichie's sitting-room; her forcible entry into the china cupboard; her abstraction of the canvas bag from the tobacco jar.

At this point, her thoughts branching off in another direction, she felt, gingerly enough, for it seemed that movement of any sort meant pain, under the bolster, and produced from it the bag in question and the glove in which she had secreted the wedding-ring. The sight of the ring started her thoughts travelling again.

To her flight through the darkness, with the leather handbag. By the way, what had become of that bag? She had no recollection of having done anything with it. Possibly she had put it down when she had sprained her ankle, and, in her trouble, had forgotten its existence; in which case it might be still upon the moor. If it were found, and nothing could be learned of her, what deductions would be drawn? She wondered. One thing was certain, it contained all her worldly possessions. Without it she had not so much as a pocket-handkerchief, not to speak of such a necessity of existence as a brush and comb.

Then the trap had come through the night, and borne her to the house in which she lay. There she had been married to a man upon his death-bed. Such a man and such a death-bed! Could it be possible? She clenched her fists, and asked herself if the whole business had not been the wild imaginings of some disordered dream. Even to herself she could not furnish a satisfactory answer.

Why had she suffered herself to be dragged through such a farce?--to play a part in such an odious scene? Because that old man who called himself a doctor had told her that the creature would be dead within two hours, and that then she would be richer by twenty thousand pounds. Twenty thousand pounds! Could that part of the tale be possible? Why, in that case, this house, the very room in which she was, the queer furniture which filled it, all might be hers. She would be a wealthy woman, who had won her wealth so easily without incurring risk worth mention. Because, even in the storm and stress of the moment, she had understood that bigamy was bigamy, even though one of the marriages into which she had entered was a Scotch one. Of course, nothing could make that marriage of the night before a real one, since she was a wife already. But, as the man was dead, and she was supposed to be his widow, if fortune favoured her the truth never need come out. She believed that she was clever enough to conceal it--at any rate from whom it was worth her while to do so. Only let her get hold of the twenty thousand pounds, or so much of it as could be turned into ready cash--let them find out afterwards what they chose--they would find it hard to get the money back from her. Twenty thousand pounds! She fancied herself letting go of such a sum as that if she once had it in her grip!

The first thing she had to do was to inform herself as fully as possible as to the actual situation. If she was a widow, and her husband had died without a will--he had certainly not made one after marrying her, while the doctor had a.s.sured her that marriage had rendered nugatory any he might have made before--then this house, and all that it contained, if it had been his property, was now hers. At least she hoped it was, because, after a little muddled consideration, it began to occur to her that, by English law, a wife did not necessarily inherit all that a husband who had died intestate left behind him.

Exactly what share was hers she was not sure, but she had a more or less dim conviction that it was less than the whole. The same objectionable law might obtain in Scotland, or even a worse one.

The sooner she ascertained exactly how the ground lay the better it would be for her peace of mind. So she began to call attention to the fact that she was wide awake. Since there was apparently no bell within reach, she had to make the best use of her voice.

"Nannie!" she called. "Nannie! Nannie!" And she kept on calling, because there was none that answered. Her voice was a strong one--she exerted it to the utmost--but it seemed that it was not strong enough to reach any one outside that room. She shouted till she was hoa.r.s.e, and angry too, quite in vain; nothing resulted.

"If there's any one in the house they must hear me, and I expect they do, only they don't choose to come. Oh, if it weren't for this foot of mine! That Nannie's an insolent hag. She knows perfectly well that I can't move, and thinks she can treat me as she likes. If I could move I'd soon show her. Nannie! Nannie!"

She shouted till she could really shout no longer. No one came; nor was there anything to show that she was heard. She began to be possessed by a fresh alarm. "I wonder if the house is empty?