The Great Impersonation, E. Phillips Oppenheim [finding audrey TXT] 📗

said, “to the doctor who has been in attendance upon her since her marriage. He agrees with me that there is no reason why Lady Dominey should not, in course of time, be restored to perfect health.”

“I take the liberty of finishing my glass to that hope, Sir Everard,” the lawyer murmured.

Both glasses were set down empty, only the stem of Dominey’s was snapped in two. Mr. Mangan expressed his polite regrets.

“This old glass,” he murmured, looking at his own admiringly, “becomes very fragile.”

Dominey did not answer. His brain had served him a strange trick. In the shadows of the room he had fancied that he could see Stephanie Eiderstrom holding out her arms, calling to him to fulfill the pledges of long ago, and behind her⁠—

“Have you ever been in love, Mangan?” Dominey asked his companion.

“I, sir? Well, I’m not sure,” the man of the world replied, a little startled by the abruptness of the question. “It’s an old-fashioned way of looking at things now, isn’t it?”

Dominey relapsed into thoughtfulness.

“I suppose so,” he admitted.

That night a storm rolled up from somewhere across that grey waste of waters, a storm heralded by a wind which came booming over the marshes, shaking the latticed windows of Dominey Place, shrieking and wailing amongst its chimneys and around its many corners. Black clouds leaned over the land, and drenching streams of rain dashed against the loose-framed sashes of the windows. Dominey lit the tall candles in his bedroom, fastened a dressing-gown around him, threw himself into an easy-chair, and, fixing an electric reading lamp by his side, tried to read. Very soon the book slipped from his fingers. He became suddenly tense and watchful. His eyes counted one by one the panels in the wall by the left-hand side of the bed. The familiar click was twice repeated. For a moment a dark space appeared. Then a woman, stooping low, glided into the room. She came slowly towards him, drawn like a moth towards that semicircle of candle. Her hair hung down her back like a girl’s, and the white dressing-gown which floated diaphanously about her was unexpectedly reminiscent of Bond Street.

“You are not afraid?” she asked anxiously. “See, I have nothing in my hands. I almost think that the desire has gone. You remember the little stiletto I had last night? Today I threw it into the well. Mrs. Unthank was very angry with me.”

“I am not afraid,” he assured her, “but⁠—”

“Ah, but you will not scold me?” she begged. “It is the storm which terrifies me.”

He drew a low chair for her into the little circle of light and arranged some cushions. As she sank into it, she suddenly looked up at him and smiled, a smile of rare and wonderful beauty. Dominey felt for a moment something like the stab of a knife at his heart.

“Sit here and rest,” he invited. “There is nothing to fear.”

“In my heart I know that,” she answered simply. “These storms are part of our lives. They come with birth, and they shake the world when death seizes us. One should not be afraid, but I have been so ill, Everard. Shall I call you Everard still?”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because you are not like Everard to me any more,” she told him, “because something has gone from you, and something has come to you. You are not the same man. What is it? Had you troubles in Africa? Did you learn what life was like out there?”

He sat looking at her for a moment, leaning back in his chair, which he had pushed a few feet into the shadows. Her hair was glossy and splendid, and against it her skin seemed whiter and more delicate than ever. Her eyes were lustrous but plaintive, and with something of the child’s fear of harm in them. She looked very young and very fragile to have been swayed through the years by an evil passion.

“I learnt many things there, Rosamund,” he told her quietly. “I learnt a little of the difference between right doing and wrongdoing. I learnt, too, that all the passions of life burn themselves out, save one alone.”

She twisted the girdle of her dressing-gown in her fingers for a moment. His last speech seemed to have been outside the orbit of her comprehension or interest.

“You need not be afraid of me any more, Everard,” she said, a little pathetically.

“I have no fear of you,” he answered.

“Then why don’t you bring your chair forward and come and sit a little nearer to me?” she asked, raising her eyes. “Do you hear the wind, how it shrieks at us? Oh, I am afraid!”

He moved forward to her side, and took her hand gently in his. Her fingers responded at once to his pressure. When he spoke, he scarcely recognised his own voice. It seemed to him thick and choked.

“The wind shall not hurt you, or anything else,” he promised. “I have come back to take care of you.”

She sighed, smiled like a tired child, and her eyes closed as her head fell farther back amongst the cushions.

“Stay just like that, please,” she begged. “Something quite new is coming to me. I am resting. It is the sweetest rest I ever felt. Don’t move, Everard. Let my fingers stay in yours⁠—so.”

The candles burned down in their sockets, the wind rose to greater furies, and died away only as the dawn broke through the storm clouds. A pale light stole into the room. Still the woman slept, and still her fingers seemed to keep their clutch upon his hand. Her breathing was all the time soft and regular. Her silky black eyelashes lay motionless upon her pale cheeks. Her mouth⁠—a very perfectly shaped mouth⁠—rested in quiet lines. Somehow he realised that about this slumber there was a new thing. With hot eyes and aching limbs he sat through the night. Dream after dream rose up and passed away before that little background of tapestried wall. When she opened her eyes and