by Grant Allen
Sir Anthony Wraxall shook his head ominously.
‘Not for three months certainly,’ he said, ‘if you still continue to ply it with opium.’
‘But I’ve left off opium,’ Dumaresq answered with perfect confidence.
‘Since when?’ Sir Anthony asked, peering deeply once more into his patient’s widely dilated pupils, which still bore evidence of a recent overdose.
‘Since yesterday,’ Dumaresq replied in his coldest tone and with consummate gravity.
If any other man had said such a thing to him, Sir Anthony Wraxall would have laughed outright, and been amply justified in so laughing. But the voice in which Dumaresq uttered those simple words, with all the earnestness of his stoical nature, meant a great deal; and Sir Anthony understood it.
‘I see,’ the great consultant answered with a very grave face. ‘You have promised, no doubt?’
And Dumaresq, nodding his gray head solemnly, made answer with infinite weight:
‘I have promised.’
‘In that case,’ Sir Anthony said more cheerfully, taking it for granted at once from the man’s mere look that the resolve was enough, and that Dumaresq would do exactly as he intended, ‘I think I can guarantee you, with moderate care and a change of climate, from eighteen months’ to three years’ respite.’
Dumaresq’s face was statuesque in its repose; he never changed colour or moved a muscle. If sentence of death had been pronounced for that day, he would never have betrayed it in his facial expression. But his heart was very sore for poor Psyche, for all that. If he must die so soon — and leave Psyche unmarried — he would feel he had indeed thrown his life away for nothing. But still, three years is a very long time. Much may be done, with energy, in three years. Psyche had still the world to choose from. How many men would be pleased and proud to wed Haviland Dumaresq’s daughter — his guileless Psyche!
‘What climate?’ he asked with Spartan brevity, sparing his emotions, to economize the great doctor’s rigid quarter-hour.
Sir Anthony rubbed his hands together reflectively, as if grinding out wisdom from his palms between them.
‘What you want,’ he said with oracular calm, ’is rest, change, variety, an open-air life, sun, sea, and freedom. “The palms and temples of the South,” you know, and all that sort of thing; you languish for the purple seas, as our other great man has somewhere phrased it. The Riviera’s not exactly the place for you — overdone, overdone; too much noise and bustle and vulgarity. What you want, with your highly-strung nervous temperament, and your wide delight in natural contemplation, is Egypt or Algiers; quiet, solitude, novelty. The Oriental world will perhaps be new to you — though you seem to have exhausted universal nature.’
‘I have never been in the East in my life,’ Dumaresq answered gloomily; for how he was to raise the money to go, without trenching on his tiny reserve for Psyche, he hadn’t at that moment the remotest notion.
Sir Anthony’s face brightened up.
‘That’s well,’ he said, with professional cheeriness. Your great doctor makes a point of putting the best face on everything. ‘The newer the scene, the more likely to suit you. Novelty and stir of Oriental life — camels and Arabs and sands and date-palms — pyramids and temples and sphinxes and Memnons — the bustle of the bazaars, the calm of the desert — that’s the kind of thing to rouse and stimulate you. Hire a dahabeeah and go up the Nile; or rent a villa at Mustapha Supérieur. Don’t work, don’t think, don’t write, don’t philosophize. Let that teeming brain of yours lie fallow for awhile. Ride, drive, play whist, talk gossip, drink tea, skim the Saturday Review, or the last new novel — I can recommend Ouida — and don’t bother yourself in any way about anything or anybody. A good French cook, generous diet, sound champagne, and a comfortable carriage, will give the machine a new lease of life for an extra twelve months or two years at any rate. You’ve been living too sparingly of late, I feel sure. Pulse is low and circulation feeble. Change all that; make yourself comfortable wherever you go, and treat yourself to every luxury you’ve a mind to.’
He snapped his mouth to and looked very wise. ’Tis a professional way of announcing to your patient in polite pantomime that (with a little formality of cash transfer) this interview may now terminate.
As for poor Haviland Dumaresq, in his Spartan poverty, he fingered in his pocket those hard-earned guineas he was to pay so soon for this sapient advice, and wondered to himself where Sir Anthony thought the money was to come from for the dahabeeah and the villa and the comfortable carriage, the champagne and the cook and the generous diet. Did he really believe the ‘Encyclopædic Philosophy’ was a modern Golconda, or was it a part of his stereotyped professional humbug to treat every patient as a potential Midas? Dumaresq and Psyche had come up to town that morning by third class from Petherton; and by third class they would go down again to their home to-morrow. A dahabeeah was to them as practically unattainable as a royal yacht; a villa at Algiers as far beyond their means as Windsor Castle or the Winter Palace.
Sir Anthony glanced at him once more with inquiring eyes as he stood there doubtful. ‘But mind, no opium!’ he added sharply in a sudden afterthought.
The old stoic stared back at him with profound majesty.
‘I have spoken,’ he said, and made no farther answer.
Sir Anthony saw his mistake at once, and with practised tact bowed a hasty apology.
Dumaresq laid down the guineas on the table, and went out again to Psyche in the bare little ante-room with his heart very sad and his spirits sinking. He knew, of course, it couldn’t possibly be Egypt; but somehow or other he must manage Algiers. He had only three years left to settle Psyche in! That one thought alone monopolized his soul. No time to waste upon foolish flirtations with penniless painters now! He must find some rich man to make his darling happy.
‘What did he recommend, papa?’ Psyche asked, all tremulous, as they went sadly down the steps together.
‘Ten thousand a year and a brand-new constitution,’ her father answered, with an unwonted touch of cynical bitterness. ‘These great doctors are all alike, Psyche. They could cure us at once, if only we’d be millionaires of twenty-five to please them.’ And in deference to his medical attendant’s advice he hailed a hansom — an unheard-of luxury — and drove off at once to the famous oculist’s.
The famous oculist, in his turn, after examining Psyche’s eyes from every possible point of view, dismissed the poor girl herself to the waiting-room, and held back her father with a courteous wave for a moment’s consultation.
‘Mr. Dumaresq,’ he said in a very respectful tone, ‘of course you know as well as I myself do what’s the matter with this poor young lady. It isn’t her eyes themselves, properly speaking; they are not at fault at all. It’s mere functional disuse of the optic centres. The retina and lenses are as right as ninepence. All she needs is to rouse herself — to rouse herself. Internal causes — I call it that. With an effort of will, she could see as well as ever she saw in her life again, I assure you.’
‘So I thought,’ Haviland Dumaresq answered, still unmoved, but trembling inwardly in every nerve. ‘As this is professional, I won’t hesitate to mention to you, in strict confidence, that my daughter’s affections have been very severely strained of late.’
‘I guessed as much,’ Dr. Godichau replied, letting his pince-nez drop with a sudden movement from his eyes gracefully. ‘Well, we all know the two best prescriptions medical science can propose for that. First, change of air; next, change of affections. A new scene, in fact — and a new lover.’
Haviland Dumaresq drew himself up stiffly. He approved the advice, but not the expression.
‘I propose to take my daughter abroad,’ he answered somewhat curtly, with his grand air. ‘I wish to give her change of scene and fresh ideas. I shall take her out into an unaccustomed society, where she may have opportunities of forgetting her unfortunate fancies, whatever they may have been, and of forming perhaps new friends and new attachmen
ts.’
‘One nail knocks out another,’ Dr. Godichau answered with French sententiousness.
Haviland Dumaresq wondered in his own soul why all oculists have invariably a distinct want of sensitiveness. Could it be, he asked himself, because they have so often to operate painfully on the eye, and the eye is the most delicate of human organs?
‘Well, I’ll try to throw her into fresh surroundings,’ he went on coldly, unheeding the specialist’s ill-timed remark. ‘Sir Anthony Wraxall, whom I’ve just been consulting on my own account, advises me to spend the winter in Algiers. Would Algiers, do you think, suit my daughter?’
‘The very thing!’ Dr. Godichau exclaimed with the common medical air of profound conviction. ‘What the young lady wants is rousing — taking out of herself: engaging in the concerns of humanity generally. If once you can persuade her to use her eyes — to look about her and feel an interest in things — it’ll be all right. Her sight’ll come back again. Nothing’s more likely to have that result than a totally new Oriental society. At Algiers she’ll be compelled, against her will almost, to look at the Arabs and the mosques and the fresh forms of life that unfold themselves like a panorama before her. The young lady’s never been out of Europe, perhaps? No; I thought not. Then nothing could be so good. I was going to advise a trip to Italy or Spain; but Africa’s better, Africa’s better! Take her there by all means. And if you can find a new nail to knock out the other, so much the luckier, of course — so much the luckier.’
Haviland Dumaresq went back to his shabby little hotel in the Strand that day fully determined in his own mind upon two things: to go to Algiers, though the trip should cost him the savings of a lifetime; and to find that rich husband for Psyche within the next eighteen months, before he himself should be finally incapacitated for providing for her future.
And all this time the senior partner in the firm of Burchell and Dobbs, family solicitors, was going about London chuckling silently to himself at the untold wealth already potentially possessed, under the will of the late C. A. Linnell, deceased, by that lucky young woman, Miss Psyche Dumaresq.
But as for Psyche herself, she felt almost happy when her father told her they were to go to Algiers, for then she wouldn’t be separated for the winter from Geraldine; and Geraldine was now her only confidential and sympathetic friend in her great sorrow.
VOLUME III.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
QUESTIONS OF INHERITANCE.
About the same time, Reginald Mansel, Esquire, of Petherton Episcopi, happening to be up in town on private business, had occasion to call on his father’s old friend, that distinguished sailor, Admiral John Antony Rolt, of the Senior United Service.
‘So the heiress lives down your way?’ Admiral Rolt observed, puckering up his small eyes at the end of some desultory conversation — and always eager, after his kind, to improve every possible source of information. ‘Miss Psyche Dumaresq, I mean; precious odd name, Psyche; rather pride myself, as an old salt, on knowing how to pronounce it. There was a Psyche in the Navy List once, I remember, a wooden gunboat, on the Pacific station, when I commanded the Skylark; though she went to pieces at last in the China seas — poor M’Nab sank down to Davy Jones’s locker in her — and was never put together again. Smart craft, very; and this Miss Psyche’s a tidy young lady, too, I’m told; taut, neat, and clipper-rigged. Well, she comes into all Charlie Linnell’s money.’
‘Impossible!’ Mansel answered with promptitude. ‘I’ve never heard a word of it. She’s a great friend of my wife’s, and a very nice girl in her way, no doubt; and Linnell fell in love with her: but she wouldn’t accept him. He’s left her nothing. If he had, I’m sure we’d have been the first to hear of it.’
‘Well, it’s a very odd case,’ the Admiral continued, pursing up his little pig’s eyes even smaller than before— ‘a very odd case as ever I heard of. She isn’t to know of it for another year, but I’m sure I’m right. I’ve been talking it over to-day with Linnell’s half-brother Frank — the parson in Northumberland; and Frank doesn’t quite see his way out of it. Precious awkward for the parson, there’s no denying it.’
Reginald Mansel started.
‘Why, I thought the half-brother was dead!’ he exclaimed in surprise. ‘Killed in a railway accident. My wife certainly told me so.’
‘Ah! that’s just where it is,’ the Admiral answered, rubbing his fat hands with profound gusto. ‘As fine a muddle as ever you saw in your life. A perfect godsend for the Court of Chancery. Killed sure enough: so he was — in the newspapers: smashed to atoms in the Doncaster collision, they reported at first. You remember the accident — pig-iron and so forth. But, you see, when they pick out a lot of bodies, pell-mell, from a jolly good smash, and stack ’em along in the hospital, they’re not so very particular, just at the first beginning, whether any one fellow among ’em happens to be still breathing, or whether he doesn’t. So they telegraphed up to London post haste, in the list of killed, “Reverend Francis Austen Linnell, Vicar of Thingumbobcum-Whatyoumaycallit, Northumberland.” Correspondents are in such a precious hurry nowadays to supply the very latest news to their particular print, that you can’t expect them to hang dawdling about in a ward, on the watch till the breath’s well out of a man’s body,’ And the Admiral chuckled low to himself musically.
‘Then you mean to say the fellow isn’t dead, after all?’ Mansel exclaimed, astonished. ‘It was a mistaken rumour!’
‘Dead! my dear sir; why, I tell you, he was lunching with me at the Pothouse — you know the Pothouse? my other club: not its official name — only this very morning. And a prettier muddle than those papers made of it you never heard. It was three whole days before they plucked up courage to announce their little error, and state that the Reverend Frank was not quite gone, only seriously wounded. Meanwhile, Sir Austen and the painter man went off in a hurry to Khartoum without seeing the correction, and to the day of their death never heard at all that the parson had turned up well and alive again. It was really most unfortunate. Frank Linnell believes those papers have done him out of all the Linnell money — Sir Austen’s and the other man’s. Only, you see, he doesn’t quite know how he can go to work to get it all back again. It’s a ticklish job, I admit; but I wouldn’t give much, all the same — with a parson against her — for Miss Psyche Dumaresq’s chances of the property.’
‘Surely, though, if Linnell left his money by will to Miss Dumaresq, she’d get it, in any case,’ Mansel objected incredulously.
The Admiral stared hard at him, and smiled a knowing smile.
‘You don’t understand the glorious uncertainty of the law,’ he answered, enchanted. Then, with all the intense enjoyment of the male old woman, he proceeded to detail to his country acquaintance the whole long story of the Linnell family, and their various complications — Bellerophon, Cockatrice, Sally Withers, the Dean’s daughter, and the rest of it — exactly as it all envisaged itself in full to his own lively and by no means too scrupulous imagination. Mansel listened with profound attention; but when the Admiral had finished he ventured to put in cautiously:
‘Still, I don’t quite understand how all this can interfere with Psyche’s inheritance of Charles Linnell’s money — if, as you say, he’s really left it to her.’
‘Why, here’s the point, don’t you see,’ the Admiral answered cheerily, buttonholing his listener and enforcing his argument with one fat uplifted forefinger. ‘Charles Linnell, as I understand, came up to town from your place, Petherton, on the very day after his half-brother Frank was declared dead in the morning papers. So far, so good. But that same night, as I learn from one of the witnesses to the deed, he made his will, and Sir Austen signed it — said will leaving everything he died possessed of to the young lady, unknown, of the name of Psyche. Now, Frank Linnell’s contention is that Sir Austen and Charles arrived at an understanding, under the impression,’ and the Admiral brought down his fat forefinger on his knee, to enforce his point— ‘under the impression
that he, Frank, was dead and done for; which of course, in actual fact, he wasn’t. Therefore, he argues, the will is accordingly null and void, and he himself ought to come into the money.’
‘But how can he,’ Mansel inquired, smiling, ‘if he’s really illegitimate? By law, if I’m rightly informed, he and Charles Linnell are not considered to be even related.’
The Admiral shrugged his shoulders and pursed his mouth firmly.
‘Well, I haven’t quite mastered all the ins and the outs of it,’ he answered with candour. ‘It’s a trifle confused for an old salt like me; but I believe the learned counsel who understand the law get at it something like this, d’ye see. It all depends upon which of the two, Sir Austen or Charles Linnell, was killed first at Khartoum. If Charles was killed first, then the Reverend Frank asserts — you understand — this will being null and void, owing to unsound mind, errors of fact, want of proper disposing intent, and other causes — that Sir Austen, as next-of-kin and sole heir-at-law, inherited the pill-money. For that, he relies upon Charles Linnell’s legitimacy. But on the other hand, Charles Linnell being now well out of the way, and unable to prove or disprove anything, the Reverend Frank also goes in, as an alternative, for claiming that he’s actually legitimate himself, and denying proof of Miss Sally Violet’s marriage. On that point, there’s nobody now who can bring up good evidence. So he stands to win either way. If he’s legitimate himself, he’s a baronet anyhow, and he comes into the reversion of Thorpe Manor. If he’s not legitimate, he’s no baronet, to be sure, and the entail fails; but the fun of it is, he gets Sir Austen’s personal estate, for all that, through his mother, the Dean’s daughter, who was Sir Austen’s second cousin, twice removed, or something of the sort, and whose case is covered by Sir Austen’s settlements. The old father did that — the Peninsular man, you know — after the bigamy came out. He insisted upon putting in Frank Linnell by name in the settlements, as heir to the personalty, irrespective of the question of his birth altogether. And in the personalty, the Reverend Frank now asserts, he reckons in Charles Linnell’s pill-money.’
