Chapter 23

I made my first call upon Foster the next evening. Mrs. Foster had been to Brook Street every day since her return, to inquire for me, and to leave an urgent message that I should go to Bellringer Street as soon as I was again in town. The lodging-house looked almost as wretched as the forsaken dwelling down at Noireau, where Olivia had perhaps been living; and the stifling, musty air inside it almost made me gasp for breath.

"So you are come back!" was Foster's greeting, as I entered the dingy room.

"Yes." I replied.

"I need not ask what success you've had," he said, sneering, 'Why so pale and wan, fond lover?' Your trip has not agreed with you, that is plain enough. It did not agree with Carry, either, for she came back swearing she would never go on such a wild-goose chase again. You know I was quite opposed to her going?"

"No," I said, incredulously. The diamond ring had disappeared from his finger, and it was easy to guess how the funds had been raised for the journey.

"Altogether opposed," he repeated. "I believe Olivia is dead. I am quite sure she has never been under this roof with me, as Miss Ellen Martineau has been. I should have known it as surely as ever a tiger scented its prey. Do you suppose I have no sense keen enough to tell me she was in the very house where I was?"

"Nonsense!" I answered. His eyes glistened cruelly, and made me almost ready to spring upon him. I could have seized him by the throat and shaken him to death, in my sudden passion of loathing against him; but I sat quiet, and ejaculated "Nonsense!" Such power has the spirit of the nineteenth century among civilized classes.

"Olivia is dead," he said, in a solemn tone. "I am convinced of that from another reason: through all the misery of our marriage, I never knew her guilty of an untruth, not the smallest. She was as true as the Gospel. Do you think you or Carry could make me believe that she would trifle with such an awful subject as her own death? No. I would take my oath that Olivia would never have had that letter sent, or write to me those few lines of farewell, but to let me know that she was really dead."

His voice faltered a little, as though even he were moved by the thought of her early death. Mrs. Foster glanced at him jealously, and he looked back at her with a provoking curve about his lips. For the moment there was more hatred than love in the regards exchanged between them. I saw it was useless to pursue the subject.

"Well," I said, "I came to arrange a time for Dr. Lowry to visit you with me, for the purpose of a thorough examination. It is possible that Dr. Senior may be induced to join us, though he has retired from practice. I am anxious for his opinion as well as Lowry's." "You really wish to cure me?" he answered, raising his eyebrows.

"To be sure," I replied. "I can have no other object in undertaking your case. Do you imagine it is a pleasure to me? It is possible that your death would be a greater benefit to the world than your life, but that is no question for me to decide. Neither is it for me to consider whether you are my friend or my enemy. There is simply a life to be saved if possible; whose, is not my business. Do you understand me?"

"I think so," he said. "I am nothing except material for you to exercise your craft upon."

"Precisely," I answered; "that and nothing more. As some writer says, 'It is a mere matter of instinct with me. I attend you just as a Newfoundland dog saves a drowning man.'"

I went from him to Hanover Street, where I found Captain Carey, who met me with the embarrassment and shamefacedness of a young girl. I had not yet seen them since my return from Normandy. There was much to tell them, though they already knew that my expedition had failed, and that it was still doubtful whether Ellen Martineau and Olivia were the same person.

Captain Carey walked along the street with me toward home. He had taken my arm in his most confidential manner, but he did not open his lips till we reached Brook Street.

"Martin," he said, "I've turned it over in my own mind, and I agree with Tardif. Olivia is no more dead than you or me. We shall find out all about it in August, if not before. Cheer up, my boy! I tell you what: Julia and I will wait till we are sure about Olivia."

"No, no," I interrupted; "you and Julia have nothing to do with it. When is your wedding to be?"

"If you have no objection," he answered--"have you the least shadow of an objection?"

"Not a shadow of a shadow," I said.

"Well, then," he resumed, bashfully, "what do you think of August? It is a pleasant month, and would give us time for that trip to Switzerland, you know. Not any sooner, because of your poor mother; and later, if you like that better."

"Not a day later," I said; "my father has been married again these four months."

Yet I felt a little sore for my mother's memory. How quickly it was fading away from every heart but mine! If I could but go to her now, and pour out all my troubled thoughts into her listening, indulgent ear! Not even Olivia herself, who could never be to me more than she was at this moment, could fill her place.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH.

FULFILLING THE PLEDGE.

We--that is, Dr. Senior, Lowry, and I--made our examination of Foster, and held our consultation, three days from that time.

There was no doubt whatever that he was suffering from the same disease as that which had been the death of my mother--a disease almost invariably fatal, sooner or later. A few cases of cure, under most favorable circumstances, had been reported during the last half-century; but the chances were dead against Foster's recovery. In all probability, a long and painful illness, terminating in inevitable death, lay before him. In the opinion of my two senior physicians, all that I could do would be to alleviate the worst pangs of it.

His case haunted me day and night. In that deep under-current of consciousness which lurks beneath our surface sensations and impressions, there was always present the image of Foster, with his pale, cynical face, and pitiless eyes. With this, was the perpetual remembrance that a subtile malady, beyond the reach of our skill, was slowly eating away his life. The man I abhorred; but the sufferer, mysteriously linked with the memories which clung about my mother, aroused her most urgent, instinctive compassion. Only once before had I watched the conflict between disease and its remedy with so intense an interest.

It was a day or two after our consultation that I came accidentally upon the little note-book which I had kept in Guernsey--a private note-book, accessible only to myself. It was night; Jack, as usual, was gone out, and I was alone. I turned over the leaves merely for listless want of occupation. All at once I came upon an entry, made in connection with my mother's illness, which recalled to me the discovery I believed I had made of a remedy for her disease, had it only been applied in its earlier stages. It had slipped out of my mind, but now my memory leaped upon it with irresistible force.

I must tell the whole truth, however terrible and humiliating it may be. Whether I had been true or false to myself up to that moment I cannot say. I had taken upon myself the care, and, if possible, the cure of this man, who was my enemy, if I had an enemy in the world. His life and mine could not run parallel without great grief and hurt to me, and to one dearer than myself. Now that a better chance was thrust upon me in his favor, I shrank from seizing it with unutterable reluctance. I turned heart-sick at the thought of it. I tried my utmost to shake off the grip of my memory. Was it possible that, in the core of my heart, I wished this man to die?

Yes, I wished him to die. Conscience flashed the answer across the inner depths of my soul, as a glare of lightning over the sharp crags and cruel waves of our island in a midnight storm. I saw with terrible distinctness that there had been lurking within a sure sense of satisfaction in the certainty that he must die. I had suspected nothing of it till that moment. When I told him it was the instinct of a physician to save his patient, I spoke the truth. But I found something within me deeper than instinct, that was wailing and watching for the fatal issue of his malady, with a tranquil security so profound that it never stirred the surface of my consciousness, or lifted up its ghostly face to the light of conscience.

I took up my note-book, and went away to my room, lest Jack should come in suddenly, and read my secret on my face. I thrust the book into a drawer in my desk, and locked it away out of my sight. What need had I to trouble myself with it or its contents? I found a book, one of Charles Dickens's most amusing stories, and set myself resolutely to read it; laughing aloud at its drolleries, and reading faster and faster; while all the time thoughts came crowding into my mind of my mother's pale, worn face, and the pains she suffered, and the remedy found out too late. These images grew so strong at last that my eyes ran over the sentences mechanically, but my brain refused to take in the meaning of them. I threw the book from me; and, leaning my head on my hands, I let all the waves of that sorrowful memory flow over me.

How strong they were! how persistent! I could hear the tones of her languid voice, and see the light lingering to the last in her dim eyes, whenever they met mine. A shudder crept through me as I recollected how she travelled that dolorous road, slowly, day by day, down to the grave. Other feet were beginning to tread the same painful journey; but there was yet time to stay them, and the power to do it was intrusted to me. What was I to do with my power?

It seemed cruel that this power should come to me from my mother's death. If she were living still, or if she had died from any other cause, the discovery of this remedy would never have been made by me. And I was to take it as a sort of miraculous gift, purchased by her pangs, and bestow it upon the only man I hated. For I hated him; I said so to myself, muttering the words between my teeth.

What was the value of his life, that I should ransom it by such a sacrifice? A mean, selfish, dissipated life--a life that would be Olivia's curse as long as it lasted. For an instant a vision stood out clear before me, and made my heart beat fast, of Olivia free, as she must be in the space of a few months, should I leave the disease to take its course; free and happy, disenthralled from the most galling of all bondage. Could I not win her then? She knew already that I loved her; would she not soon learn to love me in return? If Olivia were living, what an irreparable injury it would be to her for this man to recover!

That seemed to settle the question. I could not be the one to doom her to a continuation of the misery she was enduring. It was irrational and over-scrupulous of my conscience to demand such a thing from me. I would use all the means practised in the ordinary course of treatment to render the recovery of my patient possible, and so fulfil my duty. I would carefully follow all Dr. Senior's suggestions. He was an experienced and very skilful physician; I could not do better than submit my judgment to his.

Besides, how did I know that this fancied discovery of mine was of the least value? I had never had a chance of making experiment of it, and no doubt it was an idle chimera of my brain, when it was overwrought by anxiety for my mother's sake. I had not hitherto thought enough of it to ask the opinion of any of my medical friends and colleagues. Why should I attach any importance to it now? Let it rest. Not a soul knew of it but myself. I had a perfect right to keep or destroy my own notes. Suppose I destroyed that one at once?

I unlocked the desk, and took out my book again. The leaf on which these special notes were written was already loose, and might have been easily lost at any time, I thought. I burned it by the flame of the gas, and threw the brown ashes into the grate. For a few minutes I felt elated, as if set free from an oppressive burden; and I returned to the story I had been reading, and laughed more heartily than before at the grotesque turn of the incidents. But before long the tormenting question came up again. The notes were not lost. They seemed now to be burned in upon my brain.

The power has been put into your hands to save life, said my conscience, and you are resolving to let it perish. What have you to do with the fact that the nature is mean, selfish, cruel? It is the physical life simply that you have to deal with. What is beyond that rests in the hands of God. What He is about to do with this soul is no question for you. Your office pledges you to cure him if you can, and the fulfilment of this duty is required of you. If you let this man die, you are a murderer.

But, I said in answer to myself, consider what trivial chances the whole thing has hung upon. Besides the accident that this was my mother's malady, there was the chance of Lowry not being called from home. The man was his patient, not mine. After that there was the chance of Jack going to see him, instead of me; or of him refusing my attendance. If the chain had broken at one of these links, no responsibility could have fallen upon me. He would have died, and all the good results of his death would have followed naturally. Let it rest at that.

But it could not rest at that. I fought a battle with myself all through the quiet night, motionless and in silence, lest Jack should become aware that I was not sleeping. How should I ever face him, or grasp his hearty hand again, with such a secret weight upon my soul? Yet how could I resolve to save Foster at the cost of dooming Olivia to a life-long bondage should he discover where she was, or to life-long poverty should she remain concealed? If I were only sure that she was alive! But if she were dead--why, then all motive for keeping back this chance of saving him would be taken away. It was for her sake merely that I hesitated.

For her sake, but for my own as well, said my conscience; for the subtle hope, which had taken deeper root day by day, that by-and-by the only obstacle between us would be removed. Suppose then that he was dead, and Olivia was free to love me, to become my wife. Would not her very closeness to me be a reproving presence forever at my side? Could I ever recall the days before our marriage, as men recall them when they are growing gray and wrinkled, as a happy golden time? Would there not always be a haunting sense of perfidy, and disloyalty to duty, standing between me and her clear truth and singleness of heart? There could be no happiness for me, even with Olivia, my cherished and honored wife, if I had this weight and cloud resting upon my conscience.

The morning dawned before I could decide. The decision, when made, brought no feeling of relief or triumph to me. As soon as it was probable that Dr. Senior could see me; I was at his house at Fulham; and in rapid, almost incoherent words laid what I believed to be my important discovery before him. He sat thinking for some time, running over in his own mind such cases as had come under his own observation. After a while a gleam of pleasure passed over his face, and his eyes brightened as he looked at me.

"I congratulate you, Martin," he said, "though I wish Jack had hit upon this. I believe it will prove a real benefit to our science. Let me turn it over a little longer, and consult some of my colleagues about it. But I think you are right. You are about to try it on poor Foster?"

"Yes," I answered, with a chilly sensation in my veins, the natural reaction upon the excitement of the past night.

"It can do him no harm," he said, "and in my opinion it will prolong his life to old age, if he is careful of himself. I will write a paper on the subject for the _Lancet_, if you will allow me."

"With all my heart," I said sadly.

The old physician regarded me for a minute with his keen eyes, which had looked through the window of disease into many a human soul. I shrank from the scrutiny, but I need not have done so. He grasped my hand firmly and closely in his own.

"God bless you, Martin!" he said, "God bless you!"

CHAPTER THE FORTY-SIXTH.

A DEED OF SEPARATION.

That keen, benevolent glance of Dr. Senior's was like a gleam of sunlight piercing through the deepest recesses of my troubled spirit. I felt that I was no longer fighting my fight out alone. A friendly eye was upon me; a friendly voice was cheering me on. "The dead shall look me through and through," says Tennyson. For my part I should wish for a good, wise man to look me through and through; feel the pulse of my soul from time to time, when it was ailing, and detect what was there contrary to reason and to right. Dr. Senior's hearty "God bless you!" brought strength and blessing with it.

I went straight from Fulham to Bellringer Street. A healthy impulse to fulfil all my duty, however difficult, was in its first fervid moment of action. Nevertheless there was a subtle hope within me founded upon one chance that was left--it was just possible that Foster might refuse to be made the subject of an experiment; for an experiment it was.

I found him not yet out of bed. Mrs. Foster was busy at her task of engrossing in the sitting-room--- a task she performed so well that I could not believe but that she had been long accustomed to it. I followed her to Foster's bedroom, a small close attic at the back, with a cheerless view of chimneys and the roofs of houses. There was no means of ventilation, except by opening a window near the head of the bed, when the draught of cold air would blow full upon him. He looked exceedingly worn and wan. The doubt crossed me, whether the disease had not made more progress than we supposed. His face fell as he saw the expression upon mine.

"Worse, eh?" he said; "don't say I am worse."

I sat down beside him, and told him what I believed to be his chance of life; not concealing from him that I proposed to try, if he gave his consent, a mode of treatment which had never been practised before. His eye, keen and sharp as that of a lynx, seemed to read my thoughts as Dr. Senior's had done.

"Martin Dobrée," he said, in a voice so different from his ordinary caustic tone that it almost startled me, "I can trust you. I put myself with implicit confidence into your hands."

The last chance--dare I say the last hope?--was gone. I stood pledged on my honor as a physician, to employ this discovery, which had been laid open to me by my mother's fatal illness, for the benefit of the man whose life was most harmful to Olivia and myself. I felt suffocated, stifled. I opened the window for a minute or two, and leaned through it to catch the fresh breath of the outer air.

"I must tell you," I said, when I drew my head in again, "that you must not expect to regain your health and strength so completely as to be able to return to your old dissipations. You must make up your mind to lead a regular, quiet, abstemious life, avoiding all excitement. Nine months out of the twelve at least, if not the whole year, you must spend in the country for the sake of fresh air. A life in town would kill you in six months. But if you are careful of yourself you may live to sixty or seventy."

"Life at any price!" he answered, in his old accents, "yet you put it in a dreary light before me. It hardly seems worth while to buy such an existence, especially with that wife of mine downstairs, who cannot endure the country, and is only a companion for a town-life. Now, if it had been Olivia--you could imagine life in the country endurable with Olivia?"

What could I answer to such a question, which ran through me like an electric shock? A brilliant phantasmagoria flashed across my brain--a house in Guernsey with Olivia in it--sunshine--flowers--the singing of birds--the music of the sea--the pure, exhilarating atmosphere. It had vanished into a dead blank before I opened my mouth, though probably a moment's silence had not intervened. Foster's lips were curled into a mocking smile.

"There would be more chance for you now," I said, "if you could have better air than this."

"How can I?" he asked.

"Be frank with me," I answered, "and tell me what your means are. It would be worth your while to spend your last farthing upon this chance."

"Is it not enough to make a man mad," he said, "to know there are thousands lying in the bank in his wife's name, and he cannot touch a penny of it? It is life itself to me; yet I may die like a dog in this hole for the want of it. My death will lie at Olivia's door, curse her!"

He fell back upon his pillows, with a groan as heavy and deep as ever came from the heart of a wretch perishing from sheer want. I could not choose but feel some pity for him; but this was an opportunity I must not miss.

"It is of no use to curse her," I said; "come, Foster, let us talk over this matter quietly and reasonably. If Olivia be alive, as I cannot help hoping she is, your wisest course would be to come to some mutual agreement, which-would release you both from your present difficulties; for you must recollect she is as penniless as yourself. Let me speak to you as if I were her brother. Of this one thing you may be quite certain, she will never consent to return to you; and in that I will aid her to the utmost of my power. But there is no reason why you should not have a good share of the property, which she would gladly relinquish on condition that you left her alone. Now just listen carefully. I think there would be small difficulty, if we set about it, in proving that you were guilty against her with your present wife; and in that case she could claim a divorce absolutely, and her property would remain her own. Your second marriage with the same person would set her free from you altogether."

"You could prove nothing." he replied, fiercely, "and my second marriage is covered by the documents I could produce."

"Which are forged," I said, calmly; "we will find out by whom. You are in a net of your own making. But we do not wish to push this question to a legal issue. Let us come to some arrangement. Olivia will consent to any terms I agree to."

Unconsciously I was speaking as if I knew where Olivia was, and could communicate with her when I chose. I was merely anticipating the time when Tardif felt sure of hearing from her. Foster lay still, watching me with his cold, keen eyes.

"If those letters are forged," he said, uneasily, "it is Olivia who has forged them. But I must consult my lawyers. I will let you know the result in a few days."

But the same evening I received a note, desiring me to go and see him immediately. I was myself in a fever of impatience, and glad at the prospect of any settlement "of this subject, in the hope of setting Olivia free, as far as she could be free during his lifetime. He was looking brighter and better than in the morning, and an odd smile played now and then about his face as he talked to me, after having desired Mrs. Foster to leave us alone together.

"Mark!" he said, "I have not the slightest reason to doubt Olivia's death, except your own opinion to the contrary, which is founded upon reasons of which I know nothing. But, acting on the supposition that she may be still alive, I am quite willing to enter into negotiations with her, I suppose it must be through you."

"It must," I answered, "and it cannot be at present. You will have to wait for some months, perhaps, while I pursue my search for her. I do not know where she is any more than you do."

A vivid gleam crossed his face at these words, but whether of incredulity or satisfaction I could not tell.

"But suppose I die in the mean time?" he objected.