CHAPTER IX.
"A VERY BEAUTIFUL LADY."
The doctor's consulting-room was as uninteresting as the rest of the house, inside and out; and whilst Christina looked at the orthodox red walls, the few conventional engravings, the closely-curtained windows, and the severely correct chairs and tables, a feeling of depression stole over her. Almost unconsciously she had hoped that the doctor of whom she had come in search, would prove to be an individual of no ordinary description; she had an odd fancy that the situation with which he would have to deal, would be one that was out of the common, and the bare thought of sending a commonplace, country doctor to help the beautiful lady with the anguished face, was intolerable to her. More than once, whilst she sat and waited in the dreary room, whose outlook into the depths of the pine woods was as depressing as everything else about it, she half-rose, with a determination to go elsewhere and seek another doctor. Remembering, however, the urgency of her message, and the uncertainty of finding another medical man within any reasonable distance, she was deterred from acting upon this impulse, though her heart sank with apprehension when the door at last opened. But the man who entered was in no sense the kind of man she had dreaded to see; there was nothing ordinary or commonplace, either in his own personality or in his greeting of her, and Christina could only feel devoutly thankful that she had not been misled by the mere externals of house and furniture.
"Now will you tell me what I can do for you?" The voice was cheery and kind; it gave her a sense of helpfulness, and the man's personality, like his voice, brought into the room an atmosphere of power and strength.
He was a short man, with very bright brown eyes, a clean-shaven face, and a mouth in which humour and determination struggled for the mastery. But beyond and above everything else, it was a reliable face: Christina knew, with a subtle and sure instinct, that whatever this man undertook, would be carried through, if heaven and earth had to be moved to bring about the carrying.
"Doctor Stokes?" she said enquiringly.
"No, I am not Doctor Stokes," he answered. "Doctor Stokes is away; he was summoned away suddenly. My name is Fergusson, and I am doing Doctor Stokes's work."
"I am very glad," Christina exclaimed naïvely, with a fervour of which she was not aware, until she saw the twinkle of amusement in the brown eyes watching her.
"Oh!—I—beg your pardon," she stammered. "I ought not——"
"It is not my pardon you must beg," the doctor answered, laughing a spontaneous, and very boyish laugh, "and I will promise not to tell Doctor Stokes what you said," he added, his eyes still twinkling as he saw the girl's confusion.
"But indeed—please—oh! do understand," she faltered; "I don't know Doctor Stokes. I am a stranger here, and I never saw him in my life, but——"
"Then why were you so glad to find I was not he?" asked Fergusson, his amused look turning to one of puzzled enquiry.
"It sounds so silly," Christina said with seeming irrelevance, "but—I didn't think the person who lived in—this kind of room—was the sort of doctor I wanted to find."
Fergusson threw back his head and laughed.
"Do you judge all humanity by the rooms in which it lives?" he asked.
"Nobody but a commonplace person could live contentedly in a room like this," Christina answered vehemently, "or call his house Pinewood Lodge, or have a house just like this house."
"I rather agree with you, but Doctor Stokes is a total stranger to me too; we may be libelling him entirely; and—meanwhile, what can I do for you?
"I have come to ask you to go somewhere, on a matter of life and death," she answered, "but——"
"Life and death?"—the doctor's smiling face grew grave—"then we must not delay. Where am I wanted?" He touched a bell by the fireplace. "I will order the car at once. Tell me all details as briefly as possible."
His humorous accent had dropped; he spoke in terse, business-like tones, his brown eyes looked searchingly at her.
"Bring the car round immediately," he said to a man who answered his bell. "Now, tell me everything quickly," he went on, turning back to Christina.
"Before you go, I have to ask you to promise not to tell any living soul where you have been; and you must swear to tell nobody what you see and hear when you get to the house."
Fergusson stared at her blankly.
"Swear secrecy about where I go, and what I find there?" he said.
"Yes—swear it," she answered, quailing a little before the sudden sternness of his eyes.
"But why?—in heaven's name, why?" he questioned, his voice growing imperious. "What reason can you have for making such extraordinary conditions?"
"Oh!—I have nothing to do with the conditions," Christina cried, "and please—please don't look doubtful, and as if you didn't mean to do what I ask. I have only come here as a messenger. There was nobody else to send, and the poor, beautiful lady seemed nearly distracted with grief."
"What poor, beautiful lady? You are talking in riddles. Try to tell me quietly where I have to go, and what is the name of the lady who needs me."
"I—don't know," Christina faltered, conscious of how strangely her words must fall upon his ears, when she saw the bewilderment deepen on his face.
"I was passing a house," she said quickly, before he could speak, "and a lady came running out—a very beautiful lady. She asked me to fetch a doctor. She said it was a matter of life and death, and she made me promise to ask the doctor to swear secrecy—absolute secrecy. That is all I know—really all I know. But I am sure she is urgently in need of help."
"What an extraordinary story!" the doctor said in a low voice, "and you don't know who is ill? or what is the matter?"
"Not in the least. I conclude the patient is a man, because the lady spoke of 'him' and 'he,' but I know nothing more than I have told you. You will go to her? You will make the promise she asks? I can't bear to think of her sad, beautiful face, and her wonderful eyes."
"I will go—yes, certainly I will go," Fergusson exclaimed, after a moment's pause; "if it is really a matter of life and death, I have no choice but to go."
"And—you will promise?"
He looked into her face with a curiously grave and questioning glance.
"You know of no reason why I should refuse to take such an unprecedented oath?" he asked.
"I know nothing!" she answered emphatically. "I know of no reason, either for or against your doing it. Only—when I think of her beautiful face, and of her eyes that seemed to hold all the sorrow in the world, I feel as if you could only do what she asked you."
"And if I refuse to swear?"
"Then I shall refuse to tell you where the lady lives," she answered with spirit, "and I shall go and find another doctor. But—oh! please do what she asks."
A smile broke over Fergusson's grave face.
"I don't half like the business," he said; "I am not fond of swearing in the dark, so to speak, and what guarantee have I that I am not going to mix myself up in some discreditable affair?"
"The lady I saw could not do anything discreditable," Christina exclaimed warmly; "it is unthinkable."
Fergusson's smile deepened.
"She has a warm advocate in you; you are not a friend of hers?"
"I never saw her before," Christina answered. "I am staying near Graystone. I am nurse to Lady Cicely Redesdale's little girl, and it was only by chance that we were passing the beautiful lady's house to-day."
"There comes the car," Fergusson said, as the crunching of wheels on gravel became audible; "now I will drive you as far as our ways go together, and you shall tell me where I am to go. I will not take my man, lest there should be any risk of my destination being discovered. And—I will take the required oath. Mind—I do it much against my will, but, if it is a matter of life and death, I—can't refuse it. Come—your beautiful lady's secrets will be absolutely safe with me."
As well as she was able, Christina gave a minute description of the lonely house in the valley, where she had received the strange message, and Fergusson, having deposited her safely within a very few hundred yards of Mrs. Nairne's farm, raced on across the moor and down the steep lane, which the little cart had traversed so short a time before.
"Never knew there was any house down here," he mused, as he drove further and further along the lane; "uncanny sort of place." The short December day was drawing to a close. No ray of the sunshine that still shone on the moorland above, penetrated into this valley, whose steep, thickly-wooded sides threw deep shadows across it. "What on earth possessed anybody to build a house in this gloomy hole, when all the uplands were there to be built upon?" So Fergusson's musings ran on, whilst the shadows thickened round him, the gloom of the place beginning to oppress him like a nightmare. The roughness and steepness of the road obliged him to proceed slowly and with great caution, and the fast-fading light made his progress a difficult one. It was a relief to him, therefore, when, through the semi-darkness, he became aware of a high stone wall on his right, and descried, above the wall, the dim outline of a chimney, from which smoke issued.
"This, presumably, is the place," he muttered, stopping the car before a door in the wall; "and now, how does one get into such a very prison-like abode?"
He had by this time alighted, and was standing in the lane, looking first at the closed green door, then at the frowning wall, and finally up the steep way by which he had come—a way which, in the fast-falling darkness, was beginning to resemble a long black tunnel.
Now that the sound of his car's machinery had ceased, the silence around him was very eerie, and Fergusson found that some words of the burial service were beating backwards and forwards in his brain—
"The grave and gate of death ... The grave and gate of death."
He made a great effort to shake off his uncanny sensations, but they were only heightened by the gloom about him, and by the death-like silence which brooded over the valley. The lane, as he could faintly see, ended only a few yards beyond the gate at which he stood, and merged itself into a grassy track amongst the densest woodland; and the house, with its surrounding wall, was so enclosed by woods, that they seemed to be on the point of swallowing it up altogether.
"What a place for a crime—for any number of crimes," Fergusson reflected, with a shudder, as he peered about the green door, trying to discover any means of making his presence known to the inmates of the house beyond the wall. But neither bell nor knocker was visible, and the doctor, after banging vainly on the wood of the door, moved away, and walked slowly round the wall, seeking for another entrance. A narrow, grass-grown path, evidently rarely used, ran close under the wall, but Fergusson made the whole circuit of the place without finding any other means of entrance, excepting an old iron gate, rusty with age, choked up with weeds and rank grass. It was obvious that the gate had not been opened for years, and that it was certainly not reckoned by the inhabitants of the house as one of the entrances. Fergusson peered through the bars, but the light was so dim, and the grass and undergrowth so thick and high, that beyond getting an impression of a neglected garden, he saw nothing. He fancied, however, that he could catch a distant murmur of voices, and he called out loudly:
"Is there any means of getting in here? I am the doctor." Total silence answered him, a silence only broken by the sharp clang of a closing door inside the house. When the echoes of the sharply clanging door died away, silence settled down more deeply than ever upon the place; and Fergusson, as he completed his circuit of the walls, and found himself once more at the green door, felt strongly tempted to climb into his car again and drive away.
But the remembrance of the girl who had so lately stood in his consulting-room, looking at him with wistful eyes, speaking in so appealing a voice, determined him to make one more attempt to gain access to the inaccessible house, and, lifting up his hands, he battered on the green door with heavy thuds that reverberated loudly in the silence.
"They must be all deaf or dead, if that fails to bring them out," he exclaimed grimly, pausing for a moment to take breath; then, when no one responded to his efforts, he was beginning again to hammer at the door, when the sound of a footstep fell on his ears, and a woman's voice from within the gate cried—
"Who is there?"
"The doctor—Dr. Fergusson," he answered impatiently; and upon that, he heard the grinding of a key in the lock, bolts were shot back, and the door was opened. A woman stood in the aperture, a woman whom Fergusson took to be a servant, and she stood aside, a little, as though inviting him to enter.
"I was asked to come here," he said. "Is there someone ill? Am I wanted?"
"Yes, sir," the woman answered quietly. "Will you come in? I am sorry there was any delay in answering the door, but—I—couldn't get away."
Her voice was low and shaken, and Fergusson now observed that she was trembling violently.
"Come—in—quickly, sir," she jerked out. "I am afraid what may happen—come quickly!" Whilst she spoke, she was locking and bolting the green door again; then, without uttering another syllable, she led the way up a flagged path, across a bare and deserted garden, to a white stone house, through whose open front door a stream of light fell across an unkempt, overgrown lawn.
"This way, sir," the woman said, when, having entered the door, she turned across a wide hall; "this way—quickly!" As she uttered the last word, a little cry broke the stillness of the house—a woman's cry, sharp with fear, and the doctor's guide, her face suddenly grown livid and pinched, broke into a run. They were passing along a corridor, which intersected the hall at one end, and even in his hurry Fergusson noticed the thickness of the carpet beneath his feet, and the heavy curtains that shrouded the windows on his right; noticed, too, that after that one short sharp cry, a silence had fallen over the house again—a silence as sinister and uncanny as that in the valley outside.
His guide paused before a door on their left, and as she turned her plain but kindly face towards him, he saw how strained and ashen it had grown, and what a great fear looked out of her eyes.
"It is so quiet," she whispered in low, horror-stricken accents, "so quiet—I—am—afraid!"
Pushing her aside, Fergusson opened the door, ashamed of feeling how hard his own heart was knocking against his ribs, ashamed of that momentary shrinking from what he might find inside the room; but his involuntary shrinking did not bring with it even a second of hesitation. He opened the door widely, and stepped straight into the apartment. Excepting for a night-light burning on a chest of drawers, the room was in darkness, and he could make out nothing of his surroundings. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he uttered a short exclamation of horror, and moved hurriedly forwards, calling to the woman behind him to bring a light, and to bring it quickly.