The Key (Morley Roberts)/Chapter 6

As soon as Lady Anne found herself alone in the bedroom, she took off her hat and looked at herself in the glass. The color had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes, with their widely dilated pupils, looked extraordinarily brilliant. She put her hand against her bosom; her heart beat fast and violently. But her hands still trembled.

“He knows nothing yet,” she said; “nothing, and he loves me still. Oh, that I'd never been a fool and so ignorant!”

She bathed her face and touched her hair lightly with her fingers. Then she stood motionless, as if she were listening.

“I wonder if I have the courage,” she murmured, Outside she heard the distant rumor of the streets, the sounds of the busy world. Inside a door shut. There was the sound of a man's footsteps in the corridor.

“If I go now there will be no one in the library,” she said. She knew that if she waited a little longer Lady Hale would come in, and, begin once more the endless talk which could only amuse the careless and those who had nothing at stake.

“I must try, I must,” she said.

For a moment she bowed her head. It seemed almost as if she prayed. Then she moved to the door, opened and closed it quietly, and went down-stairs. Her right hand was in the folds of her frock. She passed Benton and another maid in the passage and came to the library. Some of the lights had been turned out. A window had been opened a little; the wind moved a curtain. She stopped and looked about her. Overhead she heard a man's footsteps. Hector occupied the room in which Sir George had died.

She looked up at the portrait. In the dim light it was barely visible.

“Oh, you,” she said, “you!”

She remembered when she had last seen him. But clearly and more definitely she remembered their first meeting in the burning tropic sunlight by the azure seas of his far island. She recalled his youthful and alert figure; his bonny smile (aye, bonny was the word for it), his bright blue eyes, and his air of domination which was visible to all men and all women. And then his voice. She adored music, and her own voice was music. His was strong, admirably modulated, full of laughter, and yet master of tears. He could sing, aye! and had sung for her and her brother that very night, and had made her tremble.

“Oh, you, you!” she cried. There was the strangest bitterness in her tone, and yet there was sorrow.

“So wonderful, and I was so young! What did I know of you or of men?”

Truly, she had known nothing for all her twenty years.

“And yet you loved me in your way!”

Aye! but his way was light, and his soul light till death came. Even that she knew he had accepted very bravely. Certainly he was a wonderful man.

“And all the time, as God is my judge, I loved Hector,” she murmured. She turned again to the portrait.

“As you lay dying you remembered you had my letters, that I asked you for in vain, and were sorry. If you could have got them then you would have given them to me; I know that. And perhaps you did your best, though through it the doctor knows about me. What does he know?”

She shook her head impatiently, and, brushing away a tear, went straight to the cabinet. She waited by it, and felt her knees tremble. Overhead she heard Hector's footsteps.

“He must not know, and yet, I believe he would forgive me.”

She trembled violently, and was afraid.

“If any one comes; I must be quick.”

She drew a key from her pocket and tried it in the cabinet, but could not get it to enter the lock. And Hector's footsteps overhead ceased. She saw things blindly. Again he moved, and she got the key in at last and turned it. As the door opened the footsteps ceased again. The cabinet was full of papers done up in packets.

“Oh, which is it, which is it?” she cried in an agony.

She heard a door open overhead, and heard steps come down-stairs. Blindly she closed the cabinet again, and locked it desperately and stood reeling.

“I've failed,” she said. She felt consciousness leaving her, saw the room turn round, saw the electric light break into a hundred, and then she fell. But, as she fell, by one last effort she threw the key into the corner of the room, and knew no more. She lay very quietly, as if she were dead, and Hector came into the room whistling almost happily.

He stood by the fire for a full minute and then bent down and stirred the coals. His heart was full of her. He knew that he would speak to her that very night if the chance came to him. Even if it did not, there were full days coming, days of work, work that he loved, even work about Sir George, concerning whom he was so curious. He left the fire and walked over to the desk, and almost stumbled over Anne's body.

“Good God!” he cried, as his heart stood still. In a moment he was on his knees beside her, calling to her in vain.

“Anne, dear Anne!”

She did not answer. He sprang to the bell and rang a loud and hasty peal upon it. In a moment Benton came.

“Quick, call Lady Hale, Lady Anne has fainted,” he cried.

As the maid went he ran back to Anne, and clasped her hands and called to her and even bent over her and kissed her pallid forehead.

“My dear, my dear!”

And Lady Hale came in, crying out in great alarm. But her obsession about Doctor Courtney served her then.

“Go for the doctor, Benton, quick, quick!” she cried.

“No,” said Hector, “I shall be quicker.”

And he ran, while Lady Hale lamented loudly and demanded water and brandy and smelling-salts, and everything else that was supposed to be useful in such a crisis. And between her demands she sat down and wrung her hands. But then Felicia came in, and, being, on the whole, when certain likes and dislikes were set apart, a wise and reasonable woman, she did what the others failed to do, and presently Anne showed signs of consciousness.

Meanwhile Hector ran to Green Street and nearly banged Courtney's door in. The doctor, who was having his own dinner, actually came out into the hall to learn the cause of such an uproar, and Hector got him by the lapel of his coat as if he was going to drag him out.

“Steady, old chap, what is it?” asked Courtney.

“Lady Anne has fainted; she looks nearly dead,” panted Hector, “Come, Tom, come!”

“All right, let go, man,” said Courtney, and, pushing Hector away, he went into his consulting room to put something into his pocket. When he came out again Hector, by way of expediting matters, thrust the doctor's hat on and nearly bonneted him with the hind-side in front. Courtney remonstrated in vain, and was dragged out on the pavement.

“Can't you run?” asked Hector.

“If a bull were behind me, perhaps I might,” said Courtney, gasping, “but it's hard lines asking a fourteen-stone man to run at the age of thirty-five, and I won't do it, Hector. What good shall I be if I get there and have to rest for ten minutes before I can see? Steady, old chap, tell me all about it.”

So Hector told him.

“Down in the library, eh? No one else with her?”

“Don't I tell you I came down and found her myself?”

Courtney put his hand on Hector's shoulder.

“Old chap, you're very fond of her!”

Hector snapped out at him:

“Yes, I am; of course I am.”

“You're ambitious, an earl's daughter!”

“I don't care if she's a king's daughter,” said Hector. “But can't you hurry more? She might be dead.”

“Not a chance of it, so don't be silly. Have you a show with her?”

“I believe so.”

“Why didn't you try long ago?”

“Oh, there were reasons.”

“You'd be pretty bad if she refused you now?”

Hector swore aloud.

“Damn it all, come along!”

And Courtney did his best.

“He's devilish hard hit, poor chap,” he said to himself, “and it's no business of mine, after all.”

The next minute they were in the house, and Felicia came into the hall to meet them.

“How is she?” Hector demanded.

Felicia replied coldly enough:

“Better, I think; she only fainted.”

Hector pushed Courtney into the library, Where he found Lady Anne on the couch and Lady Hale, armed with a bottle and a large fan, which she wielded vigorously, sitting close beside her.

“Ah, my dear, here's the doctor. Now you'll be all right,” she exclaimed. “The doctor puts every one all right. Perhaps you'd like me to leave you with him for a minute?”

“Yes,” said Anne faintly. She looked up at the doctor, and then dropped her eyes.

“Call me when you want me, doctor,” said Lady Hale. “There's brandy on the table and ether and sal volatile, and anything else you want Benton can run out for. I'll put dinner off for half an hour, and I dare say by that time she'll be all right.”

She bustled away, and left the two alone. Courtney sat down by Anne's side and took her wrist in his finger and thumb.

“You've had a bad time lately, Lady Anne,” he said very gravely.

“Oh, yes.”

Her voice was faint.

He put his hand into his waistcoat pocket and produced a phonendoscope.

“Don't disturb your dress. I want to listen to your heart with this.”

He listened for a moment, and then wound the tubes about the instrument and returned it to his pocket.

“There's nothing organically wrong with you, Lady Anne.”

“I never thought there was,” she murmured.

“But you're in a very bad nervous condition. Have you any trouble in which you could be helped?”

He spoke with infinite kindness, and he saw tears tremble on her eyelids.

“Yes, you know I have!”

“I know?”

“Oh, yes, you know,” she said bitterly.

He looked at her very steadily.

“How do you know that I know anything, Lady Anne?” he asked. “Let me assure you that if I know, or imagine I know, anything, I am, if you will permit me to say so, your friend.”

She began to cry quietly.

“I—I believe it. Can you help me?”

“I do not know.”

“Listen,” said Lady Anne, “months ago, when I was in the East, a letter was sent to me addressed in a handwriting I had never seen. I only opened it last night. It had lain at my flat ever since. Do you know anything of it?”

He did not answer by words.

“This evening I saw your handwriting. Lady Hale showed it to me. I couldn't mistake it. You addressed the letter to me?”

Courtney nodded gravely.

“Yes, Sir George asked me to do it on his death-bed. He seemed greatly disturbed about some—papers.”

“Yes, papers,” said Lady Anne. “But why did he not ask you to get them?”

“I cannot tell; perhaps there was some reason.”

“What did he say? Tell me.”

She was greatly agitated.

“He was almost at his last gasp,” said Courtney. “Till that morning he never thought he was dying. Indeed, till then I hoped to pull him through, He had a magnificent constitution. But I had to tell him at last, and Lady Hale went out weeping, and he asked me for a pencil and piece of paper. Could you read what he wrote?”

“Oh, yes, with difficulty,” she murmured.

“And he told me where his keys were. I sent the nurse into the other room. He asked me to do so. I took a key off the ring and put it in the envelope for him. What did he think you would do with it?”

“He said he couldn't get the papers, and was sorry, but that I was to go to Mr. Durant and say—what a clever woman could. I didn't know what to say, and”

He understood.

“He didn't know you were abroad?” he asked.

“I don't think so. Perhaps.”

“At any rate, he was dying then, and was a little wild.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Courtney looked at her.

“He said: 'I loved her best of the lot.'”

Though she did not love him now, and perhaps never had done so, she was wounded, and yet touched.

“Perhaps he did his best. He didn't know I couldn't go to Mr. Durant and ask for them. If he had not been in America he would have opened the cabinet before now and would have found them.”

“You don't wish him to see them?”

She wept bitterly.

“Oh, no, no!”

“Poor child!” said Courtney. “Ah, you've had a bad time, I know. You were very young when you first met Sir George?”

“I was barely twenty. Yes, I was young.”

“He was a strange man. Did any one know anything?”

“No one knew, but I never”

“Never what?”

She looked at him piteously.

“I never loved him. He broke me down, he was so wonderful.”

Courtney understood. Yes, certainly Sir George Hale had been a wonderful man. When he died he was as strong as a man of thirty, and looked twenty years less than his age.

“Yes, he was wonderful,” said the doctor. “Now I begin to understand him. Felicia has often talked to me about him, and she knew very little of him.”

“We were in Barbados at the same time. Poor Lady Hale was in England. And she adores him.” She spoke with bitter self-reproach. “If she knew”

“She mustn't, of course. And Hector”

“He's your friend,” she sighed, looking at him appealingly.

He understood. “And I am yours, too.”

“Is it—it wrong, Doctor Courtney?” she murmured.

“What, Lady Anne?”

“For me to—to love him”

Courtney rose, and stood rubbing his chin.

“I'm a physician,” he said at last, “and I have to know the world to treat my patients. People are both better and worse than you think, Lady Anne. We all deceive everybody, and in our turn are deceived. It can't be helped, it is the very nature of things that it should be so. If I believed you were a vicious woman, which is the last thing which could enter my mind, I ought to try to prevent Hector marrying you. That is if I were not a doctor, and now for the time your doctor. If I did try I should lose your friendship and Hector's. And Hector is one of the best, by God, he is! I beg your pardon, but I feel it. I hope you'll marry him. He loves you dearly. He told me so to-night when he came to call me here.”

He looked up at Sir George's portrait.

“As for him, why, I understand. He had a magic tongue, and bar his morality, which appears to have been somewhat peculiar even nowadays, he was the most remarkable man I ever knew. Try and put it aside, all of it. And now, about these letters, papers, I mean. Where are they? In the desk?”

They were in the cabinet, but Anne knew only too well that other papers might be there. This young fool Felicia, whom the doctor loved, had narrowly escaped Sir George at the very time that Lady Anne first knew him. Though she had no proof of it beyond the furious jealousy the girl had shown one day in Barbados, she suspected more than she knew. She felt, indeed, that but for her Felicia would have been in the like position. And from things the girl had said and from certain things dropped by Sir George she felt sure Felicia had written to him.

It was, perhaps, possible now to ask Doctor Courtney to find the key and open the cabinet. But suppose he found Felicia's letters, if there were any? After what he had said and what he could do for her, it would be a dreadful thing to expose him to that. She might be young still, but Anne knew that what he did not object to for others might prove terrible and insuperable to himself. His very voice when speaking of Felicia showed that she was a dear child to him, something young, fragrant, innocent. So the dear world deceives itself.

Anne looked up at him.

“I know where they are. If I can stay here to-night”

“You have the courage?”

“I must have.”

He rubbed his chin again.

“Very well, you shall stay. Is there anything I can do for you, anything else?”

“Nothing, I think. You are very good to me, far too good.”

But Courtney said “Nonsense,” and, lifting her hand, he kissed it.

“You're a brave woman, and one of the best, too. I'll fix you up to-night and give you something to make you feel strong. Now I'll call Lady Hale.”

And when Lady Hale came in, she found Anne able to smile, while the doctor was very cheerful.

“I'm going to give her something that will put her all right in no time,” said Courtney, “but the most important part of the prescription depends on you, Lady Hale.”

“Dear me!” said Lady Hale. “And what is it? You may command me, doctor, of course you may.”

“Then I order you, in my most severe professional manner, to let Lady Anne sleep here to-night. And I'll come in to see her in the morning. On no account disturb her after she goes to bed.”

“How delightful!” said Lady Hale. “Now, could anything be more pleasant? Out of evil comes good, and you shall have the nicest room in the house, Anne, and I'll bring you some dinner here. But isn't she to have some strong medicine, doctor?”

“I'm just going to write a prescription,” said Courtney. “It will make Lady Anne as strong as a lion.”

“In no time,” said Lady Hale.