Round The Red Lamp, Arthur Conan Doyle [electronic book reader .txt] 📗

is a place of extraordinary interest. Catherine of Braganza and Colonel Kirke will occur to your memory. Burton has written well upon Northern Africa. I dine at Windsor, so I am sure that you will excuse my leaving you. I trust that Lord Charles will be better. He can hardly fail to be so with such a nurse.”

He bowed, waved, and was off down the steps to his brougham. As he drove away, Lady Clara could see that he was already deeply absorbed in a paper-covered novel.

She pushed back the velvet curtains, and returned into the drawing-room. Her daughter stood in the sunlight by the window, tall, fragile, and exquisite, her features and outline not unlike her mother’s, but frailer, softer, more delicate. The golden light struck one half of her high-bred, sensitive face, and glimmered upon her thickly-coiled flaxen hair, striking a pinkish tint from her closely-cut costume of fawn-coloured cloth with its dainty cinnamon ruchings. One little soft frill of chiffon nestled round her throat, from which the white, graceful neck and well-poised head shot up like a lily amid moss. Her thin white hands were pressed together, and her blue eyes turned beseechingly upon her mother.

“Silly girl! Silly girl!” said the matron, answering that imploring look. She put her hands upon her daughter’s sloping shoulders and drew her towards her. “It is a very nice place for a short time. It will be a stepping stone.”

“But oh! mamma, in a week! Poor Arthur!”

“He will be happy.”

“What! happy to part?”

“He need not part. You shall go with him.”

“Oh! mamma!”

“Yes, I say it.”

“Oh! mamma, in a week?”

“Yes indeed. A great deal may be done in a week. I shall order your trousseau to-day.”

“Oh! you dear, sweet angel! But I am so frightened! And papa? Oh! dear, I am so frightened!”

“Your papa is a diplomatist, dear.”

“Yes, ma.”

“But, between ourselves, he married a diplomatist too. If he can manage the British Empire, I think that I can manage him, Ida. How long have you been engaged, child?”

“Ten weeks, mamma.”

“Then it is quite time it came to a head. Lord Arthur cannot leave England without you. You must go to Tangier as the Minister’s wife. Now, you will sit there on the settee, dear, and let me manage entirely. There is Sir William’s carriage! I do think that I know how to manage Sir William. James, just ask the doctor to step in this way!”

A heavy, two-horsed carriage had drawn up at the door, and there came a single stately thud upon the knocker. An instant afterwards the drawing-room door flew open and the footman ushered in the famous physician. He was a small man, clean-shaven, with the old-fashioned black dress and white cravat with high-standing collar. He swung his golden pince-nez in his right hand as he walked, and bent forward with a peering, blinking expression, which was somehow suggestive of the dark and complex cases through which he had seen.

“Ah” said he, as he entered. “My young patient! I am glad of the opportunity.”

“Yes, I wish to speak to you about her, Sir William. Pray take this armchair.”

“Thank you, I will sit beside her,” said he, taking his place upon the settee. “She is looking better, less anaemic unquestionably, and a fuller pulse. Quite a little tinge of colour, and yet not hectic.”

“I feel stronger, Sir William.”

“But she still has the pain in the side.”

“Ah, that pain!” He tapped lightly under the collar-bones, and then bent forward with his biaural stethoscope in either ear. “Still a trace of dulness—still a slight crepitation,” he murmured.

“You spoke of a change, doctor.”

“Yes, certainly a judicious change might be advisable.”

“You said a dry climate. I wish to do to the letter what you recommend.”

“You have always been model patients.”

“We wish to be. You said a dry climate.”

“Did I? I rather forget the particulars of our conversation. But a dry climate is certainly indicated.”

“Which one?”

“Well, I think really that a patient should be allowed some latitude. I must not exact too rigid discipline. There is room for individual choice—the Engadine, Central Europe, Egypt, Algiers, which you like.”

“I hear that Tangier is also recommended.”

“Oh, yes, certainly; it is very dry.”

“You hear, Ida? Sir William says that you are to go to Tangier.”

“Or any–-”

“No, no, Sir William! We feel safest when we are most obedient. You have said Tangier, and we shall certainly try Tangier.”

“Really, Lady Clara, your implicit faith is most flattering. It is not everyone who would sacrifice their own plans and inclinations so readily.”

“We know your skill and your experience, Sir William. Ida shall try Tangier. I am convinced that she will be benefited.”

“I have no doubt of it.”

“But you know Lord Charles. He is just a little inclined to decide medical matters as he would an affair of State. I hope that you will be firm with him.”

“As long as Lord Charles honours me so far as to ask my advice I am sure that he would not place me in the false position of having that advice disregarded.”

The medical baronet whirled round the cord of his pince-nez and pushed out a protesting hand.

“No, no, but you must be firm on the point of Tangier.”

“Having deliberately formed the opinion that Tangier is the best place for our young patient, I do not think that I shall readily change my conviction.”

“Of course not.”

“I shall speak to Lord Charles upon the subject now when I go upstairs.”

“Pray do.”

“And meanwhile she will continue her present course of treatment. I trust that the warm African air may send her back in a few months with all her energy restored.”

He bowed in the courteous, sweeping, old-world fashion which had done so much to build up his ten thousand a year, and, with the stealthy gait of a man whose life is spent in sick-rooms, he followed the footman upstairs.

As the red velvet curtains swept back into position, the Lady Ida threw her arms round her mother’s neck and sank her face on to her bosom.

“Oh! mamma, you ARE a diplomatist!” she cried.

But her mother’s expression was rather that of the general who looked upon the first smoke of the guns than of one who had won the victory.

“All will be right, dear,” said she, glancing down at the fluffy yellow curls and tiny ear. “There is still much to be done, but I think we may venture to order the trousseau.”

“Oh I how brave you are!”

“Of course, it will in any case be a very quiet affair. Arthur must get the license. I do not approve of hole-and-corner marriages, but where the gentleman has to take up an official position some allowance must be made. We can have Lady Hilda Edgecombe, and the Trevors, and the Grevilles, and I am sure that the Prime Minister would run down if he could.”

“And papa?”

“Oh, yes; he will come too, if he is well enough. We must wait until Sir William goes, and, meanwhile, I shall write to Lord Arthur.”

Half an hour had passed, and quite a number of notes had been dashed off in the fine, bold, park-paling handwriting of the Lady Clara, when the door clashed, and the wheels of the doctor’s carriage were heard grating outside against the kerb. The Lady Clara laid down her pen, kissed her daughter, and started off for the sick-room. The Foreign Minister was lying back in his chair, with a red silk handkerchief over his forehead, and his bulbous, cotton-wadded foot still protruding upon its rest.

“I think it is almost liniment time,” said Lady Clara, shaking a blue crinkled bottle. “Shall I put on a little?”

“Oh! this pestilent toe!” groaned the sufferer. “Sir William won’t hear of my moving yet. I do think he is the most completely obstinate and pig-headed man that I have ever met. I tell him that he has mistaken his profession, and that I could find him a post at Constantinople. We need a mule out there.”

“Poor Sir William!” laughed Lady Clara. But how has he roused your wrath?”

“He is so persistent-so dogmatic.”

“Upon what point? “

“Well, he has been laying down the law about Ida. He has decreed, it seems, that she is to go to Tangier.”

“He said something to that effect before he went up to you.”

“Oh, he did, did he?”

The slow-moving, inscrutable eye came sliding round to her.

Lady Clara’s face had assumed an expression of transparent obvious innocence, an intrusive candour which is never seen in nature save when a woman is bent upon deception.

“He examined her lungs, Charles. He did not say much, but his expression was very grave.”

“Not to say owlish,” interrupted the Minister.

“No, no, Charles; it is no laughing matter. He said that she must have a change. I am sure that he thought more than he said. He spoke of dulness and crepitation. and the effects of the African air. Then the talk turned upon dry, bracing health resorts, and he agreed that Tangier was the place. He said that even a few months there would work a change.”

“And that was all?”

“Yes, that was all.”

Lord Charles shrugged his shoulders with the air of a man who is but half convinced.

“But of course,” said Lady Clara, serenely, if you think it better that Ida should not go she shall not. The only thing is that if she should get worse we might feel a little uncomfortable afterwards. In a weakness of that sort a very short time may make a difference. Sir William evidently thought the matter critical. Still, there is no reason why he should influence you. It is a little responsibility, however. If you take it all upon yourself and free me from any of it, so that afterwards–-”

“My dear Clara, how you do croak!”

“Oh! I don’t wish to do that, Charles. But you remember what happened to Lord Bellamy’s child. She was just Ida’s age. That was another case in which Sir William’s advice was disregarded.”

Lord Charles groaned impatiently.

“I have not disregarded it,” said he.

“No, no, of course not. I know your strong sense, and your good heart too well, dear. You were very wisely looking at both sides of the question. That is what we poor women cannot do. It is emotion against reason, as I have often heard you say. We are swayed this way and that, but you men are persistent, and so you gain your way with us. But I am so pleased that you have decided for Tangier.”

“Have I?”

“Well, dear, you said that you would not disregard Sir William.”

“Well, Clara, admitting that Ida is to go to Tangier, you will allow that it is impossible for me to escort her?

“Utterly.”

“And for you?

“While you are ill my place is by your side.”

“There is your sister?”

“She is going to Florida.”

“Lady Dumbarton, then?”

“She is nursing her father. It is out of the question.”

“Well, then, whom can we possibly ask? Especially just as the season is commencing. You see, Clara, the fates fight against Sir William.”

His wife rested her elbows against the back of the great red chair, and passed her fingers through the statesman’s grizzled curls, stooping down as she did so until her lips were close to his ear.

“There is Lord Arthur Sibthorpe,” said she softly.

Lord Charles bounded in his chair, and muttered a word or two such as were more frequently heard from Cabinet Ministers in Lord Melbourne’s time than now.

“Are you mad, Clara!” he cried. “What can have put such a thought into your head?”

“The Prime Minister.”