Blind Policy Part 12

"Terrible indeed, sir, when my nephew stoops to lie to me like that. A friend--at his club! Do you think me such a baby that I do not know you have been with that abandoned woman?"

"Hus.h.!.+ Silence!" he whispered angrily. "For your dear, dead father's and mother's sake, sir, I will not be silenced."

"But you will arouse Laura."

"She wants no arousing. She is lying ill in bed, sleepless in her misery, sir, with her wretched brother staying out like this."

"Confound you for a silly old woman!" he cried angrily. "Is a man to live the life of a hermit? If I had been away to a patient till breakfast-time n.o.body would have said a word. Poor little Laury! But how absurd!"

"Absurd, sir!" cried the old lady, who was scarlet with indignation.

"Then I suppose it was absurd for poor Isabel Lee to have gone home broken-hearted because of your conduct."

"What!" he cried, springing up, with a glimmer of memory coming back.

"Why, surely you two did not canva.s.s my being out one night till the poor girl was so upset that she--that she--went back--yes, she was stopping here. Oh, aunt, your foolish, suspicious ways are disgraceful.

What have you done?"

"I done, you wretched boy? It's what have you done? She was with us for a whole week after you had gone, fighting against me, and insisting that there was a reason for your being away, or that you had had an accident."

"Here, aunt, are you going to be ill?" he cried, catching at her wrist; but she s.n.a.t.c.hed it away.

"Don't touch me, sir!" she cried. "Oh, Fred, Fred! I'd have given the world not to know that you were so wicked. And just when you were about to marry her, poor girl, to go away as you did."

"_Go_ away--as I did?" he faltered, gazing at her blankly.

"Yes, I knew something was wrong when I saw that wretched woman's face.

I felt it; but I could not have believed you would be so base. A whole fortnight too; and to think that this was to have been your wedding-day!"

He caught her by the shoulders, and she uttered a faint cry and dropped the candlestick, as he stood swaying to and fro, staring at the doorway, through which his sister hesitatingly pa.s.sed, and came slowly toward him.

"A fortnight!" he stammered--"Isabel gone!"

"Yes, gone--gone for ever," said Laura, sadly. "Oh, Fred, how could you?"

"Stop! Don't touch me," he cried angrily. "Don't speak to me. Let me try to think."

He threw his head back and shook it violently in his effort to clear it, but the confusion and mental darkness began to close in once more, while the throbbing in his brain grew agonising. It was as if his head were opening and shutting--letting the light in a little and then blotting it out; till he felt his senses reeling--the present mingling with the darkness of the past he strove so vainly to grasp.

"I can't think. Am I going mad?" he groaned, as he staggered to a chair.

"Mad, indeed," said his aunt, bitterly. "Come away, Laura, and leave him to his conscience. Better if it had been as you and poor Isabel thought--that he had met with some accident, and was dead."

She caught her niece by the arm, but Laura shook herself free and took a step or two towards where, in his utter despair, Chester sat bent down with his head resting in his hands. But he made no movement, and with a bitter sob she turned and followed her aunt from the room.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"WHITHER?"

It was a good forty-eight hours before Chester could think clearly. His aunt had sternly avoided his room, and he had been dependent upon Laura, who attended him as he lay quite prostrated by the agonising pains in his head. She hardly spoke, but saw to his wants as a sisterly duty, and felt that silent reproach was better than words to one who had proved himself such a profligate.

"I can't understand it," she said to herself again and again. "It is so unlike him. If he would only repent, poor Bel might forgive him--in time. No; I cannot speak to him yet."

She little thought how her brother blessed her for her silence, as he lay struggling to get behind that black curtain; but all in vain.

He was sleeping heavily on the third night, when he suddenly woke up with the mental congestion gone. The pain had pa.s.sed away, and his brain felt clear and bright once more.

He remembered perfectly now. The scene with Marion after his triumphant declaration of all danger being past. Their embrace. The interruption by the coming of the saturnine head of the house, and the struggle, all came back vividly clear, and with photographic minuteness. He recalled, too, how in the encounter when he had forced his adversary back over the edge of the table, he felt that an effort was being made to get at some weapon.

Then the great athletic brother came and separated them, remonstrating on the folly of the encounter at such a time.

"How strange that I can remember it all so clearly now," muttered Chester. "Yes, he said that it was over a dispute. He would not acknowledge the real cause, and she did not speak. The scoundrel; he had been persecuting her with his addresses. I see now; that must have been the cause of the first trouble. Her brother was defending her from him."

Then he recalled how the pair went away, and that the old housekeeper stayed, while Marion sat by the patient's side, avoiding his gaze, and as if repenting that she had given way to her feelings.

A tray was brought in by Paddy, so that the housekeeper should not leave the room; and he stopped, talking good-temperedly enough, for some little time, and almost playing the part of servant to them, till they had all partaken scantily of the excellent meal; but he did not have another opportunity of speaking to Marion alone.

Chester lay for some minutes trembling then, for he had been growing excited by the recollections, and a strange dread had come over him that he was about to lose his memory again; but the adventures of that night came back, and he recalled the coming of Paddy once more. This time he brought in a tray with coffee and four cups, which he filled and handed to each of those present. Yes, Chester remembered how the housekeeper refused, and Paddy spoke--

"Nonsense, old lady! take it; we can't stand on ceremony now, you may have to be up for hours."

Then the old housekeeper took the cup, and the young man sugared his own coffee very liberally, and added plenty of cream.

"Bad taste, doctor," he said good-humouredly, "but I like it sweet. So you feel now that poor Bob will be all right?"

"Yes, I have no doubt of it."

"Thanks to you," said the young man, and he advanced and took Chester's emptied cup, and then Marion's, soon after leaving the room with the tray.

Chester recalled feeling a little drowsy after this, and then in a dreamy way seeing Marion with her brow resting upon the patient's pillow.

No more--try how he would, Chester could recollect nothing else, but consideration filled up the gap. The elder brother, satisfied that the patient's life was saved, was desirous of ridding the house of the doctor's presence, the more so now that he had discovered the relations which had sprung up between him and Marion.

"The scoundrel!" thought Chester. "That must have been it: he was pursuing her, and the brother was shot down in defending his sister."

Chester s.h.i.+vered now, and his brain grew hot, as he saw clearly enough all that remained. The cups had been prepared, two of them containing a drug, and Paddy had taken care that they should go to those for whom they were intended. It was all plain enough. Paddy was working in his brother's interest, and he was the big friend who had taken him first to the Circus, and then placed him in another cab, with instructions to the man.

"Well," muttered Chester, "I see my way now, and I am not going to sit down calmly over the matter. I must--I will see her again."

Then he trembled, and the hot burning sensation came once more. But it pa.s.sed off, and he felt that he must be calm and wait till he had another long sleep, when he hoped to be quite restored.

He lay trying now to forget all that had pa.s.sed, so as to rest for a while; but sleep would not come, and he could do nothing but dwell upon his adventures at that mysterious house. It was so strange. The servants had evidently been sent away, so that they might know nothing of what threatened for long enough to prove a murder. He wanted to know of none other cause for the quarrel. His patient must have been shot down while defending his sister from some insult offered by the clever, overbearing, unprincipled scoundrel who seemed to lord it over all.

And as Chester lay thinking, an intense desire came over him to learn more of the family who had literally imprisoned him, and kept him there all those days. When there, it had seemed for the most part like some romantic dream; and as he lay now at home thinking, the vague intangibility of those nights and days appeared to him more fanciful and strange than ever; so much so, that there were moments when he was ready to ask himself whether, after all, it was not the result of imagination.

He recalled all the actors in the little social drama--the men whom he had seen on the first night, and who dropped out of sight afterwards; the two ladies--the wives of the brothers--both quiet, startled-looking women, of the type that would be seen exhibiting the latest fas.h.i.+ons at some race, at Lord's, or at a meeting of the Four-in-Hand Club, and evidently slaves of their husbands--and he recalled now how the wife of the elder brother seemed to hold her lord in dread.

"There's something more about that place than one knows," Chester thought to himself as he turned from side to side, "and I cannot--I will not, sit down and patiently bear such treatment. To-morrow I'll go and demand an explanation. I have a good excuse," he said half aloud and with a bitter laugh; "there is my promised fee, and--Pis.h.!.+" he exclaimed savagely. "If I am to prove a scoundrel, I will be an honest one. I will ferret out who and what they are. I behaved like a child in not having some explanation earlier--in yielding pa.s.sively as I did without reason--no, not without reason. I could not help it. Heaven help me!

I will--I must see her again. It is fate!"