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

a view of the matter which I can neither discuss nor understand. I am here tonight, though, to lay a charge upon you. You have to remember that your wife needs still one step towards a perfect recovery, and until that step has been surmounted you have a very difficult but imperative task.”

Dominey set his teeth for a moment. He felt the doctor’s keen grey eyes glowing from under his shaggy eyebrows as he leaned forward, his hands upon his knees.

“You mean,” Dominey suggested quietly, “that until that hallucination has passed we must remain upon the same terms as we have done since my arrival home.”

“You’ve got it,” the doctor assented. “It’s a tangled-up position, but we’ve got to deal with it⁠—or rather you have. I can assure you,” he went on, “that all her other delusions have gone. She speaks of the ghost of Roger Unthank, of the cries in the night, of his mysterious death, as parts of a painful past. She is quite conscious of her several attempts upon your life and bitterly regrets them. Now we come to the real danger. She appears to be possessed of a passionate devotion towards you, whilst still believing that you are not her husband.”

Dominey pushed his chair back from the fire as though he felt the heat. His eyes seemed glued upon the doctor’s.

“I do not pretend,” the latter continued gravely, “to account for that, but it is my duty to warn you, Sir Everard, that that devotion may lead her to great lengths. Lady Dominey is naturally of an exceedingly affectionate disposition, and this return to a stronger condition of physical health and a fuller share of human feelings has probably reawakened all those tendencies which her growing fondness for you and your position as her reputed husband make perfectly natural. I warn you, Sir Everard, that you may find your position an exceedingly difficult one, but, difficult though it may be, there is a plain duty before you. Keep and encourage your wife’s affection if you can, but let it be a charge upon you that whilst the hallucination remains that affection must never pass certain bounds. Lady Dominey is a good and sweet woman. If she woke up one morning with that hallucination still in her mind, and any sense of guilt on her conscience, all our labours for these last months might well be wasted, and she herself might very possibly end her days in a madhouse.”

“Doctor,” Dominey said firmly. “I appreciate every word you say. You can rely upon me.”

The doctor looked at him.

“I believe I can,” he admitted, with a sigh of relief. “I am glad of it.”

“There is just one more phase of the position,” Dominey went on, after a pause. “Supposing this hallucination of hers should pass? Supposing she should suddenly become convinced that I am her husband?”

“In that case,” the doctor replied earnestly, “the position would be exactly reversed, and it would be just as important for you not to check the affection which she might offer to you as it would be in the other case for you not to accept it. The moment she realises, with her present predispositions, that you really are her lawful husband, that moment will be the beginning of a new life for her.”

Somehow they both seemed to feel that the last words had been spoken. After a brief pause, the doctor helped himself to a farewell drink, filled his pipe and stood up. The car which Dominey had ordered from the garage was already standing at the door. It was curious how both of them seemed disinclined to refer again even indirectly to the subject which they had been discussing.

“Very good of you to send me back,” the doctor said gruffly. “I started out all right, but it was a drear walk across the marshes.”

“I am very grateful to you for coming,” Dominey replied, with obvious sincerity. “You will come and have a look at the patient in a day or two?”

“I’ll stroll across as soon as you’ve got rid of some of this houseful,” the doctor promised. “Good night!”

The two men parted, and curiously enough Dominey was conscious that with those few awkward words of farewell some part of the incipient antagonism between them had been buried. Left to himself, he wandered for some moments up and down the great, dimly lit hall. A strange restlessness seemed to have fastened itself upon him. He stood for a time by the dying fire, watching the grey ashes, stirred uneasily by the wind which howled down the chimney. Then he strolled to a different part of the hall, and one by one he turned on, by means of the electric switches, the newly installed lights which hung above the sombre oil pictures upon the wall. He looked into the faces of some of these dead Domineys, trying to recall what he had heard of their history, and dwelling longest upon a gallant of the Stuart epoch, whose misdeeds had supplied material for every intimate chronicler of those days. When at last the sight of a sleepy manservant hovering in the background forced his steps upstairs, he still lingered for a few moments in the corridor and turned the handle of his bedroom door with almost reluctant fingers. His heart gave a great jump as he realised that there was someone there. He stood for a moment upon the threshold, then laughed shortly to himself at his foolish imagining. It was his servant who was patiently awaiting his arrival.

“You can go to bed, Dickens,” he directed. “I shall not want you again tonight. We shoot in the morning.”

The man silently took his leave, and Dominey commenced his preparations for bed. He was in no humour for sleep, however, and, still attired in his shirt and trousers, he wrapped a dressing-gown around him, drew a reading lamp to his side, and threw himself into an easy-chair, a book in his hand. It was some time before