A Duel. Richard Marsh
had she done this when Nannie reappeared, in her hands a pair of large scissors. With their aid she proceeded, still speechless, to cut, first, the laces of Isabel's boot, and then the boot itself, till it came away from her foot. As it came away she did what she boasted she had never before done in her life--she fainted. When she came to herself again she found that Nannie, who had apparently remained indifferent to the fact that her senses had left her, having bathed her foot and ankle, was putting the finishing touches to the bandages in which she had swathed it. When the bandage was completed the old woman, still without vouchsafing a word, began to undress her, and did it with a deftness and neatness which would have done her credit had she played the part of lady's-maid her whole life long. Almost before she knew it, she was ready for the sheets, and so soon as she was ready she was placed between them.
"You're very good to me," she murmured, with a luxurious sigh, as she recognised what a delicious feeling it was to be between them.
"I'm not good to you--anyway I'm not wanting to be good to you."
Isabel looked up with surprise; the tone was almost savage.
"Why not? Don't you think that you will like me?"
"Like you!--like you!"
The emphasis with which the words were repeated was unmistakable. It would have been difficult for scorn to have been more eloquent. Without condescending to further speech, as if everything had been said which could be said, Nannie moved towards the door. Isabel put a question to her as she reached it.
"Is my husband dead?"
Nannie turned swiftly round to her.
"Your--what?"
"My husband."
"Your husband!--your husband!"
Again the repetition was marked by the same wealth of scorn. Isabel was moved to some show of resentment.
"He is my husband--you know he's my husband."
"Oh, he's your husband, Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame. I'm not doubting it, ma'am, or that you're a fit and proper wife for him. I'm ready to tell to any one that you're a well-matched pair."
"Is he dead?"
As she repeated her inquiry Isabel's manner was a trifle more subdued; she was finding Nannie a difficult person to contend with.
"You'd better be asking Dr. Twelves if your husband's dead, ma'am; he's a surer judge of dead folk than I am. You'll be feeling anxious till you know, and so I'll tell the doctor. When a woman's been acquainted with a man so long as you've been acquainted with your man, so that you've come to know all the secrets of his heart, and the very shape and fashion of the soul which God has lent him, to be sure all her nature stirs within her when she begins to fear he's near to dying. It's hard to lose the husband to whom you've only been married a couple of minutes, so I'll tell the doctor to hurry and let you know if you're a widow before you're a wife."
Without giving Isabel a chance to retort, Nannie opened the door with a swishing movement, which was in harmony with her state of mind, and vanished from the chamber.
CHAPTER IV
A SECOND HONEYMOON
She had slept well; Isabel admitted so much. She suspected something else, that the morning was far advanced. There was that in the atmosphere which conveyed that impression. Apparently some one had been in while she still slept and put the room in order. The blinds were up, the curtains drawn back, the sun streamed in through the small square windows which were set deep in the thickness of the wall. As she looked about her, from her vantage place on the pillow, she felt that this was the queerest place she ever had been in. Everything, including the room itself, seemed to her to be hundreds of years old. The paper on the walls was like nothing she had ever seen before. The furniture was of the oddest shapes; indeed, what some of the articles might be intended for was beyond her comprehension. As she gradually absorbed it all, she began to be conscious of an almost eerie feeling that she had woke up in some ancient habitation and in some bygone age of which she had no knowledge.
Then something else forced itself on her attention, she felt that she was helpless. As she tried to turn in bed, the better to enable her to see what was to be seen, a spasm of pain passed over her, which was so acute that she had to shut her eyes and bite her lips to prevent herself from crying out. For some moments she lay quite still, waiting for the pain to go. It was some time before it diminished; even when it was easier she learnt, to her dismay, that she would have to be very careful in her movements if she did not wish it to return with probably increasing violence. Her foot seemed, from the feel of it, to be about as bad as it could be. It was not only useless, it held her prisoner. The slightest attempt to move it in any direction resulted in the keenest anguish. It seemed that relief from almost unendurable torment could only be obtained by remaining entirely quiescent. That meant, in effect, that she was chained, possibly for an indefinite period, to the bed in which she was lying. An agreeable prospect!
As the true inwardness of the position began to dawn on her, in phantasmagoric procession the events of the previous night flashed across her mind. The letter to her husband--to Gregory Lamb--which she had opened and read, the letter with the Islington post-mark, containing the curt refusal to accord him further help; the resolution to leave him, which she had instantly arrived at after its perusal; her visit to Mrs. Macconichie's sitting-room; her forcible entry into the china cupboard; her abstraction of the canvas bag from the tobacco jar.
At this point, her thoughts branching off in another direction, she felt, gingerly enough, for it seemed that movement of any sort meant pain, under the bolster, and produced from it the bag in question and the glove in which she had secreted the wedding-ring. The sight of the ring started her thoughts travelling again.
To her flight through the darkness, with the leather handbag. By the way, what had become of that bag? She had no recollection of having done anything with it. Possibly she had put it down when she had sprained her ankle, and, in her trouble, had forgotten its existence; in which case it might be still upon the moor. If it were found, and nothing could be learned of her, what deductions would be drawn? She wondered. One thing was certain, it contained all her worldly possessions. Without it she had not so much as a pocket-handkerchief, not to speak of such a necessity of existence as a brush and comb.
Then the trap had come through the night, and borne her to the house in which she lay. There she had been married to a man upon his death-bed. Such a man and such a death-bed! Could it be possible? She clenched her fists, and asked herself if the whole business had not been the wild imaginings of some disordered dream. Even to herself she could not furnish a satisfactory answer.
Why had she suffered herself to be dragged through such a farce?--to play a part in such an odious scene? Because that old man who called himself a doctor had told her that the creature would be dead within two hours, and that then she would be richer by twenty thousand pounds. Twenty thousand pounds! Could that part of the tale be possible? Why, in that case, this house, the very room in which she was, the queer furniture which filled it, all might be hers. She would be a wealthy woman, who had won her wealth so easily without incurring risk worth mention. Because, even in the storm and stress of the moment, she had understood that bigamy was bigamy, even though one of the marriages into which she had entered was a Scotch one. Of course, nothing could make that marriage of the night before a real one, since she was a wife already. But, as the man was dead, and she was supposed to be his widow, if fortune favoured her the truth never need come out. She believed that she was clever enough to conceal it--at any rate from whom it was worth her while to do so. Only let her get hold of the twenty thousand pounds, or so much of it as could be turned into ready cash--let them find out afterwards