CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST.
MARTIN DOBRÉE'S PLEDGE.
I followed Simmons's cab up Bellringer Street, and watched Johanna alight and enter the house. The door was scarcely closed upon her when I rang, and asked the slatternly drudge of a servant if I could see Mr. Foster. She asked me to go up to the parlor on the second floor, and I went alone, with little expectation of finding Mrs. Foster there, unless Johanna was there also, in which case I was to appear as a stranger to her.
The parlor looked poorer and shabbier by daylight than at night. There was not a single element of comfort in it. The curtains hung in rags about a window begrimed with soot and smoke. The only easy-chair was the one occupied by Foster, who himself looked as shabby and worn as the room. The cuffs and collar of his shirt were yellow and tattered; his hair hung long and lank; and his skin had a sallow, unwholesome tint. The diamond ring upon his finger was altogether out of keeping with his threadbare coat, buttoned up to the chin, as if there were no waistcoat beneath it. From head to foot he looked a broken-down, seedy fellow, yet still preserving some lingering traces of the gentleman. This was Olivia's husband!
A good deal to my surprise, I saw Mrs. Foster seated quietly at a table drawn close to the window, very busily writing—engrossing, as I could see, for some miserable pittance a page. She must have had some considerable practice in the work, for it was done well, and her pen ran quickly over the paper. A second chair left empty opposite to her showed that Foster had been engaged at the same task, before he heard my step on the stairs. He looked weary, and I could not help feeling something akin to pity for him. I did not know that they had come down as low as that.
"I did not expect you to come before night," he said, testily; "I like to have some idea when my medical attendant is coming."
"I was obliged to come now," I answered, offering no other apology. The man irritated me more than any other person that had ever come across me. There was something perverse and splenetic in every word he uttered, and every expression upon his face.
"I do not like your partner," he said; "don't send him again. He knows nothing about his business."
He spoke with all the haughtiness of a millionnaire to a country practitioner. I could hardly refrain from smiling as I thought of Jack's disgust and indignation.
"As for that," I replied, "most probably neither of us will visit you again. Dr. Lowry will return to-morrow, and you will be in his hands once more."
"No!" he cried, with a passionate urgency in his tone—"no, Martin Dobrée; you said if any man in London could cure me, it was yourself. I cannot leave myself in any other hands. I demand from you the fulfilment of your words. If what you said is true, you can no more leave me to the care of another physician, than you could leave a fellow-creature to drown without doing your utmost to save him. I refuse to be given up to Dr. Lowry."
"But it is by no means a parallel ease," I argued; "you were under his treatment before, and I have no reason whatever to doubt his skill. Why should you feel safer in my hands than in his?"
"Well!" he said, with a sneer, "if Olivia were alive, I dare scarcely have trusted you, could I? But you have nothing to gain by my death, you know; and I have so much faith in you, in your skill, and your honor, and your conscientiousness—if there be any such qualities in the world—that I place myself unfalteringly under your professional care. Shake hands upon it, Martin Dobrée."
In spite of my repugnance, I could not resist taking his offered hand. His eyes were fastened upon me with something of the fabled fascination of a serpent's. I knew instinctively that he would have the power, and use it, of probing every wound he might suspect in me to the quick. Yet he interested me; and there was something not entirely repellent to me about him. Above all for Olivia's sake, should we find her still living, I was anxious to study his character. It might happen, as it does sometimes, that my honor and straight-forwardness might prove a match for his crafty shrewdness.
"There," he said, exultantly, "Martin Dobrée pledges himself to cure me.—Carry, you are the witness of it. If I die, he has been my assassin as surely as if he had plunged a stiletto into me."
"Nonsense!" I answered; "it is not in my power to heal or destroy. I simply pledge myself to use every means I know of for your recovery."
"Which comes to the same thing," he replied; "for, mark you, I will be the most careful patient you ever had. There should be no chance for you, even if Olivia were alive."
Always harping on that one string. Was it nothing more than a lore of torturing some one that made him reiterate those words? Or did he wish to drive home more deeply the conviction that she was indeed dead?
"Have you communicated the intelligence of her death to her trustee in Australia?" I asked.
"No; why should I?" he said, "no good would come of it to me. Why should I trouble myself about it?"
"Nor to your step-sister?" I added.
"To Mrs. Dobrée?" he rejoined; "no, it does not signify a straw to her either. She holds herself aloof from me now, confound her! You are not on very good terms with her yourself, I believe?"
"The cab was still standing at the door, and I could not leave before it drove away, or I should have made my visit a short one. Mrs. Foster was glancing through the window from time to time, evidently on the watch to see the visitor depart. Would she recognize Johanna? She had stayed some weeks in Guernsey; and Johanna was a fine, stately-looking woman, noticeable among strangers. I must do something to get her away from her post of observation.
"Mrs. Foster," I said, and her eyes sparkled at the sound of her name, "I should be exceedingly obliged to you if you will give me another sight of those papers you showed to me the last time I was here."
She was away for a few minutes, and I heard the cab drive off before she returned. That was the chief point gained. When the papers were in my hand, I just glanced at them, and that was all.
"Have you any idea where they came from?" I asked.
"There is the London post-mark on the envelop," answered Foster.—"Show it to him, Carry. There is nothing to be learned from that."
"No," I said, comparing the handwriting on the envelop with the letter, and finding them the same. "Well, good-by! I cannot often pay you as long a visit as this."
I hurried off quickly to the corner of Dawson Street, where Johanna was waiting for me. She looked exceedingly contented when I took my seat beside her in the cab.
"Well, Martin," she said, "you need suffer no more anxiety. Olivia has gone as English teacher in an excellent French school, where the lady is thoroughly acquainted with English ways and comforts. This is the prospectus of the establishment. You see there are 'extensive grounds for recreation, and the comforts of a cheerfully happy home, the domestic arrangements being on a thoroughly liberal scale.' Here is also a photographic view of the place: a charming villa, you see, in the best French style. The lady's husband is an avocat; and every thing is taught by professors—cosmography and pedagogy, and other studies of which we never heard when I was a girl. Olivia is to stay there twelve months, and in return for her services will take lessons from any professors attending the establishment. Your mind may be quite at ease now."
"But where is the place?" I inquired.
"Oh! it is in Normandy—Noireau," she said—"quite out of the range of railways and tourists. There will be no danger of any one finding her out there; and you know she has changed her name altogether this time."
"Did you discover that Olivia and Ellen Martineau are the same persons?" I asked.
An expression of bewilderment and consternation came across her contented face.
"No, I did not," she answered; "I thought you were sure of that."
But I was not sure of it; neither could Jack be sure. He puzzled himself in trying to give a satisfactory description of his Ellen Martineau; but every answer he gave to my eager questions plunged us into greater uncertainty. He was not sure of the color either of her hair or eyes, and made blundering guesses at her height. The chief proof we had of Olivia's identity was the drunken claim made upon Ellen Martineau by Foster, a month after he had received convincing proof that she was dead. What was I to believe?
It was running too great a risk to make any further inquiries at No. 19 Bellringer Street. Mrs. Wilkinson was the landlady of the lodging-house, and she had told Johanna that Madame Perrier boarded with her when she was in London. But she might begin to talk to her other lodgers, if her own curiosity were excited; and once more my desire to fathom the mystery hanging about Olivia might plunge her into fresh difficulties, should they reach the ears of Foster or his wife.
"I must satisfy myself about her safety now," I said. "Only put yourself in my place, Jack. How can I rest till I know more about Olivia?"
"I do put myself in your place," he answered. "What do you say to having a run down to this place in Basse-Normandie, and seeing for yourself whether Miss Ellen Martineau is your Olivia?"
"How can I?" I asked, attempting to hang back from the suggestion. It was a busy time with us. The season was in full roll, and our most aristocratic patients were in town. The easterly winds were bringing in their usual harvest of bronchitis and diphtheria. If I went, Jack's hands would be more than full. Had these things come to perplex us only two months earlier, I could have taken a holiday with a clear conscience.
"Dad will jump at the chance of coming back for a week," replied Jack; "he is bored to death down at Fulham. Go you must, for my sake, old fellow. You are good for nothing as long as you're so down in the mouth. I shall be glad to be rid of you."
We shook hands upon that, as warmly as if he had paid me the most flattering compliments.