you at such an hour,” he said, as he took the tumbler which Dominey pressed into his hand. “I have only just received Lady Dominey’s telegram. I had to see you—at once.”
CHAPTER XVIII
The doctor, with his usual bluntness, did not hesitate to make it known that this unusual visit was of a private nature. Caroline promptly withdrew, and the two men were left alone in the great hall. The lights in the billiard- room and drawing-room were extinguished. Every one in the house except a few servants had retired.
“Sir Everard,” the doctor began, “this return of Lady Dominey’s has taken me altogether by surprise. I had intended to-morrow morning to discuss the situation with you.”
“I am most anxious to hear your report,” Dominey said.
“My report is good,” was the confident answer. “Although I would not have allowed her to have left the nursing home so suddenly had I known, there was nothing to keep her there. Lady Dominey, except for one hallucination, is in perfect health, mentally and physically.”
“And this one hallucination?”
“That you are not her husband.”
Dominey was silent for a moment. Then he laughed a little unnaturally.
“Can a person be perfectly sane,” he asked, “and yet be subject to an hallucination which must make the whole of her surroundings seem unreal?”
“Lady Dominey is perfectly sane,” the doctor answered bluntly, “and as for that hallucination, it is up to you to dispel it.”
“Perhaps you can give me some advice?” Dominey suggested.
“I can, and I am going to be perfectly frank with you,” the doctor replied. “To begin with then, there are certain obvious changes in you which might well minister to Lady Dominey’s hallucination. For instance, you have been in England now some eight months, during which time you have revealed an entirely new personality. You seem to have got rid of every one of your bad habits, you drink moderately, as a gentleman should, you have subdued your violent temper, and you have collected around you, where your personality could be the only inducement, friends of distinction and interest. This is not at all what one expected from the Everard Dominey who scuttled out of England a dozen years ago.”
“You are excusing my wife,” Dominey remarked.
“She needs no excuses,” was the brusque reply. “She has been a long- enduring and faithful woman, suffering from a cruel illness, brought on, to take the kindest view if it, through your clumsiness and lack of discretion. Like all good women, forgiveness is second nature to her. It has now become her wish to take her proper place in life.”
“But if her hallucination continues,” Dominey asked, “if she seriously doubts that I am indeed her husband, how can she do that?”
“That is the problem you and I have to face,” the doctor said sternly. “The fact that your wife has been willing to return here to you, whilst still subject to that hallucination, is a view of the matter which I can neither discuss nor understand. I am here to-night, 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