Charlotte's Inheritance by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .TXT) 📕

the medical treatment your stepdaughter has received in this house, Mr. Sheldon, and I want to be satisfied. Miss Halliday is something more than your, stepdaughter, remember: she is my promised wife. Dr. Jedd's opinion will be more assuring to me than the opinion of Dr. Doddleson."

At the sound of Dr. Jedd's name Mr. Sheldon started slightly. It was a name he knew only too well--a name he had seen among the medical witnesses in the great Fryar trial, the record of which had for him possessed a hideous fascination. He had fancied himself in the poisoner Fryar's place; and the fancy had sent an icy chill through his veins. But in the next minute he had said to himself, "I am not such a reckless fool as that man Fryar was; and have run no such risks as he ran."

At the name of Jedd the same icy shiver ran through his veins again. His tone of suppressed anger changed to a tone of civility which was almost sycophantic.

"I have the honour to know Dr. Jedd by repute very well indeed, and I withdraw my objection to your course of proceeding, my dear Hawkehurst; though I am sure Dr. Jedd will agree with me that such a course is completely against all professional etiquette, and that Dr. Doddleson will have the right to consider himself aggrieved."

"There are cases in which one hardly considers professional etiquette. I shall be very happy to meet Dr. Doddleson to-morrow morning. But as Mr. Hawkehurst was very anxious that I should see Miss Halliday to-night, I consented to waive all ceremony, and come with him on the spot."

"I cannot blame his anxiety to secure so valuable an opinion. I only wonder what lucky star guided him to so excellent an adviser."

Mr. Sheldon looked from Dr. Jedd to Valentine Hawkehurst as he said this. The physician's face told him no more than he might have learnt from a blank sheet of paper. Valentine's face was dark and gloomy; but that gloomy darkness might mean no more than natural grief.

"I will take you to my stepdaughter's room at once," he said to the physician.

"I think it will be better for me to see the young lady alone," the doctor answered coolly: "that is to say, in the presence of her nurse only."

"As you please," Mr. Sheldon replied.

He went back to his study. Georgy was sitting there, whimpering in a feeble way at intervals; and near her sat Diana, silent and gloomy. A settled gloom, as of the grave itself, brooded over the house. Mr. Sheldon flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He had sneered at the inconvenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was beginning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two women in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as if there was no room in the house in which he could be alone; and just now he had bitter need of solitary meditation.

"Let them arrange the dining-room somehow, carpet or no carpet," he said to his wife. "We must have some room to dine in; and I can't have you here, Georgy; I have letters to write."

Mrs. Sheldon and Diana were not slow to take the hint.

"I'm sure I don't want to be here, or anywhere," exclaimed Georgy in piteous accents; "I feel so miserable about Charlotte, that if I could lie down and die, it would be a comfort to me. And it really seems a mockery having dinner at such a time. It's just as it was during poor Tom's illness; there were fowls and all sorts of things cooked, and no one ever ate them."

"For God's sake go away!" cried Mr. Sheldon passionately; "your perpetual clack is torture to me."

Georgy hurried from the room, followed closely by Diana.

"Did you ever see any one more anxious?" Mrs. Sheldon asked, with something like pride.

"I would rather see Mr. Sheldon less anxious!" Diana answered gravely.


CHAPTER II.


DR. JEDD'S OPINION.

Alone, Philip Sheldon breathed more freely. He paced the room, waiting for the appearance of the doctor; and with almost every turn he looked at the clock upon the chimneypiece.

How intolerable seemed the slow progress of the moments! How long that man Jedd was staying in the sick-room! And yet not long; it was he, Philip Sheldon, who was losing count of time. Where was Valentine? He opened the door of the room, and looked out. Yes, there was a figure on the stairs. The lover was waiting the physician's verdict.

A door on the landing above opened, and the step of the Doctor sounded on the upper flight. Mr. Sheldon waited for Dr. Jedd's appearance.

"I shall be glad to hear your opinion," he said quietly; and the Doctor followed him into the study. Valentine followed the Doctor, to Mr. Sheldon's evident surprise.

"Mr. Hawkehurst is very anxious to hear what I have to say," said Dr. Jedd; "and I really see no objection to his hearing it."

"If you have no objection, I can have none," Mr. Sheldon answered. "I must confess, your course of proceeding appears to me altogether exceptional, and--"

"Yes, Mr. Sheldon; but then, you see, the case is altogether an exceptional case," said the physician, gravely.

"You think so?"

"Decidedly. The young lady is in extreme danger. Yes, Mr. Sheldon, in extreme danger. The mistake involved in her removal to-day is a mistake which I cannot denounce too strongly. If you had wanted to kill your stepdaughter, you could scarcely have pursued a more likely course for the attainment of your object. No doubt you were actuated by the most amiable motives. I can only regret that you should have acted without competent advice."

"I believed myself to be acting for the best," replied Philip Sheldon, in a strange mechanical way.

He was trying to estimate the true meaning of the Doctor's address. Was he merely expressing anger against an error of ignorance or stupidity, or was there a more fatal significance in his words?

"You overwhelm me," the stockbroker said presently; "you positively overwhelm me by your view of my daughter's condition. Dr. Doddleson apprehended no danger. He saw our dear girl on Sunday morning--yesterday morning," added Mr. Sheldon, wonder-stricken to find that the interval was so brief between the time in which he had walked with Valentine and Dr. Doddleson in the garden at Harold's Hill and the present moment. To Valentine it seemed still more wonderful. What a bridgeless gulf between yesterday morning and to-night! All his knowledge of this man Sheldon, all the horror involved in Tom Halliday's death, had come upon him in that brief span.

"I should like to see Dr. Doddleson's prescriptions," said Dr. Jedd, with grave politeness.

Mr. Sheldon produced them from his pocket-book with an unshaken hand. No change of countenance, no tremulous hand, no broken voice, betrayed his apprehension. The one distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent, half-mechanical tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than in the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, he was at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. "The chances of defeat, so much; the chances of detection--?"

A rapid survey of his position told him what those chances were. Detection by Dr. Jedd? Yes. That had come to him already perhaps. But would any actual harm to him come of such detection?

He calculated the chances for and against this--and the result was in his favour. That Dr. Jedd should form certain opinions of Miss Halliday's case was one thing; that he should give public utterance to those opinions was another thing.

"What can his opinion matter to me?" Mr. Sheldon asked himself; "opinion cannot touch me in a case where there is no such thing as certainty. He has seen the dilatation of the pupil--even that old fool Doddleson saw it--and has taken fright. But no jury in England would hang a man on such evidence as that; or if a jury could be found to put the rope round a man's neck, the British public and the British press would be pretty sure to get the rope taken off again."

"Chloric aether, spirits of ammonia--hum, ha, hum--yes," muttered Dr. Jedd, looking at one prescription. "Quinine, yes; aqua pura," he murmured, looking at another.

He threw them aside with a half-contemptuous gesture, and then took up a pen and began to write.

"My mode of treatment will be quite different from that adopted by Dr. Doddleson," he said; "but I apprehend no difficulty in bringing that gentleman round to my view of the case when we meet."

As he wrote his prescription Philip Sheldon rose and looked over his shoulder.

The form of the prescription told him that Dr. Jedd knew--all! He had suspected this from the first, and the confirmation of this suspicion did not shake him. He grew firmer, indeed; for now he knew on what ground he was standing, and what forces were arrayed against him.

"I really do not understand the basis of your treatment," he said, still looking over the physician's shoulder.

Dr. Jedd turned his chair with a sudden movement, and faced him.

"Am I talking to Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker, or Mr. Sheldon the surgeon-dentist?" he asked.

_This_ was a blow. This allusion to the past was a sharper stroke than any that Philip Sheldon had before received. He looked at Valentine; from Valentine to the physician. What did it mean, this mention of the past? That blabbing fool George had talked to his friend of the days in Fitzgeorge Street, no doubt; and Valentine had blabbed Mr. Sheldon's antecedents to the physician.

Was this what it all meant? Or did it mean more than this? Whatever it might mean, he faced the hidden danger, and met the uncertainties of his position as calmly as he met its certainties.

"I have no desire to interfere with your treatment," he said, very quietly; "but I have some knowledge of the Pharmacopoeia, and I confess myself quite at a loss to understand your prescription."

"Dr. Doddleson will understand it when he has heard my opinion. There is no time to be lost--Mr. Hawkehurst, will you take this to the chemist, and wait for the medicine? Miss Halliday cannot take it too soon. I shall be here to-morrow at nine o'clock.--If you wish me to see Dr. Doddleson, Mr. Sheldon, you will perhaps arrange an appointment with him for that hour."

"It is rather an early hour."

"No hour is too early in a case attended with so much danger. Perhaps it will be as well for me to call on Dr. Doddleson as I drive home. I shall make a point of seeing Miss Halliday twice a day. I find your housekeeper a very sensible person. She will remain in close attendance upon the sick-room; and I must beg that there is no quackery--no home-made remedies. I have given your housekeeper all directions as to treatment and diet, and she has my orders to allow no one but herself in the invalid's room. There is a marked tendency to delirium, and quiet is indispensable."

"I have said as much myself," answered Mr. Sheldon.

"Mr. Hawkehurst will undertake to see to the making-up of my prescriptions," continued Dr. Jedd, as he drew on his gloves. "He is very anxious about the young lady, and it will afford him some relief of mind to be employed in her service. No, thanks," he said, putting aside Mr. Sheldon's hand as