FICTION: ATTEMPTED BY MY LORD
THE day on which the doctor took his newly-appointed nurse with him to
the hospital became an occasion associated with distressing
recollections in the memory of Iris.
In the morning, Fanny Mere had asked for leave to go out. For some time
past this request had been so frequently granted, with such poor
results so far as the maid's own designs were concerned, that Lady
Harry decided on administering a tacit reproof, by means of a refusal.
Fanny made no attempt at remonstrance; she left the room in silence.
Half an hour later, Iris had occasion to ring for her attendant. The
bell was answered by the cook--who announced, in explanation of her
appearance, that Fanny Mere had gone out. More distressed than
displeased by this reckless disregard of her authority, on the part of
a woman who had hitherto expressed the most grateful sense of her
kindness, Iris only said: "Send Fanny to me as soon as she comes back."
Two hours passed before the truant maid returned.
"I refused to let you go out this morning," Lady Harry said; "and you
have taken the liberty of leaving the house for two hours. You might
have made me understand, in a more becoming manner, that you intended
to leave my service."
Steadily respectful, Fanny answered: "I don't wish to leave your
ladyship's service."
"Then what does your conduct mean?"
"It means, if you please, that I had a duty to do--and did it."
"A duty to yourself?" Iris asked.
"No, my lady; a duty to you."
As she made that strange reply the door was opened, and Lord Harry
entered the room. When he saw Fanny Mere he turned away again, in a
hurry, to go out. "I didn't know your maid was with you," he said.
"Another time will do."
His permitting a servant to be an obstacle in his way, when he wished
to speak to his wife, was a concession so entirely unbecoming in the
master of the house, and so strangely contrary to his customary sense
of what was due to himself, that Iris called him back in astonishment.
She looked at her maid, who at once understood her, and withdrew. "What
can you possibly be thinking of?" she said to her husband, when they
were alone. Putting that question, she noticed an embarrassment in his
manner, and an appearance of confusion in his face, which alarmed her.
"Has something happened?" she asked; "and is it so serious that you
hesitate to mention it to me?"
He sat down by her and took her hand. The loving look in his eyes,
which she knew so well, was not in them now; they expressed doubt, and
something with it which suggested an effort at conciliation.
"I am fearing I shall surprise you," he said.
"Don't keep me in suspense!" she returned. "What is it?"
He smiled uneasily: "It's something about Vimpany."
Having got as far as that, he stopped. She drew her hand away from him.
"I understand now," she said; "I must endeavour to control myself--you
have something to tell me which will try my temper."
He held up his hands in humorous protest: "Ah, my darling, here's your
vivid imagination again, making mountains out of molehills, as they
say! It's nothing half so serious as you seem to think; I have only to
tell you of a little change."
"A little change?" she repeated. "What change?"
"Well, my dear, you see--" He hesitated and recovered himself. "I mean,
you must know that Vimpany's plans are altered. He won't any longer
occupy his bedroom in the cottage here."
Iris looked inexpressibly relieved. "Going away, at last!" she
exclaimed. "Oh, Harry, if you have been mystifying me, I hope you will
never do it again. It isn't like you; it's cruel to alarm me about
nothing. Mr. Vimpany's empty bedroom will be the most interesting room
in the house, when I look into it to-night."
Lord Harry got up, and walked to the window. As a sign of trouble in
his mind, and of an instinctive effort to relieve it, the object of
this movement was well-known to Iris. She followed him and stood by his
side. It was now plain to her that there was something more to be
told--and that he was hesitating how to confide it to his wife.
"Go on," she said resignedly.
He had expected her to take his arm, or perhaps to caress him, or at
least to encourage him by her gentlest words and her prettiest smiles.
The steady self-restraint which she now manifested was a sign, as he
interpreted it, of suppressed resentment. Shrinking, honestly
shrinking, from the bare possibility of another quarrel, he confronted
the hard necessities of further confession.
"Well, now," he said, "it's only this--you mustn't look into the empty
bedroom to-night."
"Why not?"
"Ah, for the best of all good reasons! Because you might find somebody
in there."
This reply excited her curiosity: her eyes rested on him eagerly. "Some
friend of yours?" she asked.
He persisted in an assumption of good-humour, which betrayed itself as
mere artifice in the clumsiest manner: "I declare I feel as if I were
in a court of justice, being cross-examined by a lawyer of skill and
dexterity! Well, my sweet counsellor, no--not exactly a friend of
mine."
She reflected for a moment. "You don't surely mean one of Mr. Vimpany's
friends?" she said.
He pretended not to have heard her, and pointed to the view of the
garden from the window. "Isn't it a lovely day? Let's go and look at
the flowers," he suggested.
"Did you not hear what I said to you just now?" she persisted.
"I beg your pardon, dear; I was thinking of something else. Suppose we
go into the garden?"
When women have a point to gain in which they are interested, how many
of them are capable of deferring it to a better opportunity? One in a
thousand, perhaps. Iris kept her place at the window, resolved on
getting an answer.
"I asked you, Harry, whether the person who is to occupy our spare
bedroom, to-night, was one of Mr. Vimpany's friends?"
"Say one of Mr. Vimpany's patients--and you will be nearer the truth,"
he answered, with an outburst of impatience.
She could hardly believe him. "Do you mean a person who is really ill?"
she said.
"Of course I mean it," he said; irritated into speaking out, at last.
"A man? or a woman?"
"A man."
"May I ask if he comes from England?"
"He comes from one of the French hospitals. Anything more?"
Iris left her husband to recover his good-humour, and went back to her
chair. The extraordinary disclosure which she had extracted from him
had produced a stupefying effect on her mind. Her customary sympathy
with him, her subtle womanly observation of his character, her intimate
knowledge of his merits and his defects, failed to find the rational
motive which might have explained his conduct. She looked round at him
with mingled feelings of perplexity and distrust.
He was still at the window, but he had turned his back on the view of
the garden; his eyes were fixed, in furtive expectation, on his wife.
Was he waiting to hear her say something more? She ran the risk and
said it.
"I don't quite understand the sacrifice you seem to be making to Mr.
Vimpany," she confessed. "Will you tell me, dear, what it means?"
Here was the opportunity offered of following the doctor's advice, and
putting his wife's credulity to the test. With her knowledge of
Vimpany, would she really believe the story which had imposed on the
strangers who managed the hospital? Lord Harry made up his mind, to try
the experiment. No matter what the result might be, it would bring the
responsibilities that were crushing him to an end. He need say no more,
if the deception succeeded. He could do no more, if it failed. Under
the influence of this cheering reflection, he recovered his temper; his
handsome face brightened again with its genial boyish smile.
"What a wonderful woman you are!" he cried. "Isn't it just the thing
that I am here for, to tell you what I mean--and my clever wife sees
through and through me, and reminds me of what I must do! Pay my fee
beforehand, Iris! Give me a kiss--and my poor meaning shall be offered
in return. It will help me if you remember one thing. Vimpany and I are
old friends, and there's nothing we won't do to accommodate each other.
Mind that!"
Tried fairly on its own merits, the stupid fiction invented by the
doctor produced an effect for which Lord Harry was not prepared. The
longer Iris listened, the more strangely Iris looked at him. Not a word
fell from her lips when he had done. He noticed that she had turned
pale: it seemed to be almost possible that he had frightened her!
If his bird-witted brains could have coupled cause and effect, this was
exactly the result which he might have anticipated.
She was asked to believe that a new system of medical practice had been
invented by such a person as Mr. Vimpany. She was asked to believe that
an invalid from a foreign hospital, who was a perfect stranger to Lord
Harry, had been willingly made welcome to a bedroom at the cottage. She
was asked to believe that this astounding concession had been offered
to the doctor as a tribute of friendship, after her husband had himself
told her that he regretted having invited Vimpany, for the second time,
to become his guest. Here was one improbable circumstance accumulated
on another, and a clever woman was expected to accept the monstrous
excuses, thus produced, as a trustworthy statement of facts.
Irresistibly, the dread of some evil deed in secret contemplation cast
its darkening presence on the wife's mind. Lord Harry's observation had
not misled him, when he saw Iris turn pale, and when the doubt was
forced on him whether he might not have frightened her.
"If my explanation of this little matter has satisfied you," he
ventured to resume, "we need say no more about it."
"I agree with you," she answered, "let us say no more about it."
Conscious, in spite of the effort to resist it, of a feeling of
oppression while she was in the same room with a man who had
deliberately lied to her, and that man her husband, she reminded Lord
Harry that he had proposed to take a walk in the garden. Out in the
pure air, under the bright sky, she might breathe more freely. "Come to
the flowers," she said.
They went to the garden together--the wife fearing the deceitful
husband, the husband fearing the quick-witted wife.
Watching each other like two strangers, they walked silently side by
side, and looked now and then at the collection of flowers and plants.
Iris noticed a delicate fern which had fallen away from the support to
which it had been attached. She stopped, and occupied herself in
restoring it to its place. When she looked round again, after attending
to the plant, her husband had disappeared, and Mr. Vimpany was waiting
in his place.