Master of His Fate

by J. Maclaren Cobban

Next day Lefevre learned that the police had been again baffled in their part of the inquiry. The detective had contrived to trace his man—though not till the morning after the event—to the St Pancras Hotel, where he had dined in private, and gone to bed early, and whence he had departed on foot before any one was astir, to catch, it was surmised, the first train. But wherever he had gone, it was just as in the former case: from the time the hotel door had closed on his cloaked figure, all trace of him was lost.

Nor could Lady Mary Fane add anything of moment to what Lefevre already knew or guessed. Her account of her adventure (which she gave him in her father's house, whither she had been removed on the third day) was as follows: She was returning home from St Thomas's Hospital, dressed according to her habit when she went there; she had crossed Westminster Bridge, and was proceeding straight into St James's Park, when she became aware of a man walking in the same direction as herself, and at the same pace. She casually noted that he looked like a distinguished foreigner, and that he had about him an indefinable suggestion of death clinging with an eager, haggard hope to life,—a suggestion which melted the heart of the beholder, as if it were the mute appeal of a drowning sailor. She was stirred to pity; and when he suddenly appeared to reel from weakness, she stepped out to him on an overwhelming impulse, laid a steadying hand on his arm, and asked what ailed him. He turned on her a pair of wonderful dark eyes, which were animal-like in their simple, direct appeal, and their moist softness. He begged her to lead him aside into a path by which few would pass: he disliked being stared at. Thinking only of him as a creature in sickness and distress, she obeyed without a thought for herself. She helped him to sit down upon a bench, and sat down by him and felt his pulse. He looked at her with an open, kindly eye, with a simple-seeming gratitude, which held her strangely (though she only perceived that clearly on looking back). He said to her suddenly,—

"There was a deep, mystical truth in the teaching of the Church to its children—that they should prefer in their moments of human weakness to pray to the Virgin-mother; for woman is always man's best friend."

She looked in his face, wondering at him, still with her finger on his pulse, when she felt an unconsciousness come over her, not unlike "the thick, sweet mystery of chloroform;" and she knew no more till she opened her eyes in the hospital bed. "Revived by you," she said to Lefevre.

He inquired further, as to her sensations before unconsciousness, and she replied in these striking words: "I felt as if I were strung upon a complicated system of threads, and as if they tingled and tingled, and grew tighter to numbness." That answer, he saw, was kindred to the description given by the young officer of his condition. It was clear that in both cases the nerves had been seriously played upon; but for what purpose? What was the secret of the stranger's endeavour? What did he seek?—and what find? To these questions no satisfactory answer would come for the asking, so that in his impatience he was tempted to break through the severe self-restraint of science, and let unfettered fancy find an answer.

But, most of all, he longed to see close to him the man whom the police sought for in and out, to judge for himself what might be the method and the purpose of his strange outrages. He scarcely desired his capture, for he thought of the possible results to Julius, and yet—— Day after day passed, and still the man was unfound, and very soon a change came over Lefevre's life, which lifted it so far above the plane of his daily professional experience, that all speculation about the mysterious "M. Dolaro," and his probable relation to Julius, fell for a time into the dim background. The doctor had been calling daily in Carlton Terrace to see his patient, when, on a certain memorable day, he intimated to her father that she was so completely recovered that there was no need of his calling on her professionally again. The old lord, looking a little flustered, asked him if he could spare a few minutes' conversation, and led him into his study.

"My dear Lefevre," said he, "I am at a loss how to make you any adequate return for what you have done for my daughter. Money can't do it; no, nor my friendship either, though you are so kind as to say so. But I have an idea, which I think it best to set before you frankly. You are a bachelor: it is not good to be a bachelor," he went on, laying his hand affectionately on the doctor's arm, and flushing—old man of the world though he was—flushing to the eyes. "What—what do you think of my daughter? I mean, not as a doctor, but as a man?"

Lefevre was not in his first youth, and he had had his admirations for women in his time, as all healthy men must have, but yet he was made as deliriously dizzy as if he were a boy by his guess at what Lord Rivercourt meant.

"Why," he stammered, "I think her the most beautiful, intelligent, and—and attractive woman I know."

"Yes," said her father, "I believe she is pretty well in all these ways. But—and you see I frankly expose my whole position to you—what would you think of her for a wife?"