Studies in Wives

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

The question struck Wingfield as unseemly. How had this young man, whom he took to be one of Hinton's dissipated friends, learnt even this one fact concerning poor Dering's affairs?

"Yes," he said shortly, as he walked through into the hall, "that was the case. But, of course—well, perhaps, you will kindly inform me where I can see Mr. Hinton?" he repeated impatiently. "I suppose he is with Mrs. Dering, at No. 9?" and the other noticed that he left the door open behind him, evidently intending to leave Hinton's house as soon as he had obtained a reply to his question.

For a moment the two men looked at one another in exasperated silence. Then, very suddenly, Johnstone did that of which he was afterward sorry and self-reproachful. But his nerve was completely gone; for hours he had been engaged in what had proved both a terrible and a futile task, that of attempting to relieve the physical agony of a man for whose state he partly held himself to be responsible. He wished to avoid, at any rate for the present, the repetition to this stranger of what had happened the night before.

And so, "Please come this way," he muttered hoarsely. "I ought perhaps to warn you—to prepare you for something of a shock." And, turning round, beckoning to the other to follow him, he opened the door of the studio, stepping aside to allow Wingfield to pass in before him.

But once through the doorway the lawyer suddenly recoiled and stopped short, so dreadful and so unexpected was the sight which met his eyes.

What Wingfield saw remained with him for weeks, and even for months, an ever-present, torturing vision, full of mingled horror and mystery, a mystery to which he was destined never to find the solution.

Focussed against a blurred background made up of distempered light green walls, a curtainless, open window, and various plain deal studio properties pushed back against the wall, lay, stretched out on some kind of low couch brought forward into the middle of the room, a rigid, motionless figure.

The lower half of the figure, including the feet, which rested on a chair placed at the bottom of the couch, was entirely covered by a blanket; but the chest and head, slightly raised by pillows, seemed swathed and bound up in broad strips of white linen, which concealed chin and forehead, hair and ears, while the head was oddly supported by a broad band or sling fastened with safety-pins—Wingfield's eyes took note of every detail—to the side of the couch. Under the blanket, which was stretched tightly across the man's breast, could be seen the feeble twitching of fingers, but even so, the only sense of life and feeling seemed to the onlooker centred in the eyes, whose glance Wingfield found himself fearing yet longing to meet.

To the right of the couch a large Japanese screen had been so placed as to hide some object spread out on the floor. To the left, watching every movement of the still, recumbent figure, stood a powerful-looking woman in nursing dress. Wingfield's gaze, after wandering round the large, bare room, returned and again clung to the sinister immobile form which he longed to be told was that of Hinton, and as he gazed he forced himself to feel a fierce gladness and relief in the knowledge that Dering was dead,—that in his pocket lay the telegram which proved it.

At last, to gain courage and to stifle a horrible doubt, he compelled himself to meet those at once indifferent and appealing eyes, which seemed to stare fixedly beyond the group of men by the door; and suddenly the lawyer became aware that just behind him hurried whispered words were being uttered.