“No,” he said determinedly, so that he seemed to bay like a dog from his chest, “certainly not. If I am to cure him, I must have him under my own close personal attention. There’s nothing to be done but to wait.”
He rose upon the points of his toes, and then brought his heels sharply down upon the floor.
“You understand, we know nothing yet. Your friend doesn’t speak a word. He’s no doubt aware that he’s watched. He has a companion whom I have personally instructed, and who will report to me. Get him to take as much exercise as he can. Keep him fairly quiet, but have him in the room when cheerful people are about. I will drop in at every moment of the day that I can spare.”
He paused to glare at Robert Grimshaw.
“I’m a very busy man, but I’ll pay special attention to your friend’s case. I will try to be always in and out of Mr. Leicester’s house. More I can’t do.”
Backed up as he was by Katya Lascarides’ suggestion that Sir William was a good man, Grimshaw felt an intense satisfaction—even a gratitude—to Sir William; and whilst he slipped his five-pound note carefully wrapped round five shillings under the specialist’s paper-weight, which was made of one huge aqua-marine, he uttered a formal speech of thanks.
“Mind,” Sir William shouted at him as he reached the door, “I don’t promise you a cure. I’m not one of those quacks. But you know my position, and you know my reputation. I work from ascertained facts, not from theories. If it were possible to communicate with your friend—if he’d speak, or if it were possible to manipulate him—we might get at something. If, for instance, we could get him to stand with his heels together, his hands at his sides, and his eyes shut; but we can’t get him to speak, and he doesn’t listen when he’s spoken to. There’s nothing to do but wait until he does.”
A period of strain, enhanced by the continual droppings in of Sir William Wells, ensued for the house in Curzon Street, and nothing happened, save that they all became personally acquainted with Sir William’s idiosyncrasies. They discovered that he had a singular prejudice against the eating of fish; that he was exceedingly insolent to the servants; that he read the Daily Telegraph; that he liked the singing of Scotch comedians, and considered all ballet-dancers to be physically abnormal. They also had the perpetual company of a gentle and black-haired youth called Held. This young man, with a singular slimness and taciturnity, had been put in by Sir William as if he were a bailiff in possession of Dudley Leicester. Dudley Leicester never spoke, the young man hardly ever; but he was exceedingly nice in his table manners, and eventually Pauline made the discovery at dinner that he very much disliked cats, and was a Christian Scientist. And with these additions the household continued its way.
To Robert Grimshaw the bright spot in this tenebrous affair was the inflexible tranquillity of Pauline Leicester. Looking back upon it afterwards he seemed to see her upon the background of his own terrible pain—to see her as a golden and vibrating spot of light. She spoke about the weather, about some improvements that were being made in the village of Icking, about the forthcoming General Election, about her clothes. She went everywhere that she could go without her husband. She went to “at homes,” to private views, she was “at home.” She had Dudley himself in her drawing-room where in the farther comers young Mr. Held and Ellida Langham held animated conversations so close to his passive form that it might appear that, monosyllabic as he always was, he was at least attentive to the conversation. She drove regularly in the Park with Dudley beside her, and most often with Robert Grimshaw sitting opposite them; but she never mentioned her husband’s condition to Grimshaw, and her face wore always its little, tender smile. He was aware that in her there was a certain determination, almost a fierceness. It wasn’t that in her deep black her face was more pallid, or that her features hardened. It wasn’t that she chattered less. Her little tongue was going perpetually, with its infantile gaiety, if her eyes were for ever on the watch.
There was, moreover, a feeling of a General Election in the air—of that General Election in which Dudley, as a foregone conclusion, was to replace the member sitting for his division of the county; and one afternoon Robert Grimshaw came in to one of Pauline’s “at homes.” The little encampment round Dudley Leicester had its place usually in the small, back drawing-room which Dudley’s great chair and Ellida’s enormous hat and Mr. Held’s slim figure almost contrived to fill. Dudley sprawled back, his complexion perfectly clear, his eyes gazing abstractedly before him, perfectly normal, perfectly healthy, on show for anyone who chose to look at him; and Ellida and Mr. Held joined in an unceasing and animated discussion on Christian Science. Robert Grimshaw, having addressed a word or two to Madame de Bogota, and having nodded to Mr. Balestier, who sat for a Midland county, and having shaken hands with Mrs. Jimtort, the wife of a Recorder of a south-western city, was moving slowly up to close in the little group in the background. And suddenly, with an extraordinary running step, Dudley Leicester shot past him straight at the member for the Midland county. He had brought out the words: “Are you the man ...” when already shooting, as it were sideways, between the people, Mr. Held had very lightly touched his wrist.