The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

queer feeling in his throat, almost a mist before his eyes. She seemed so fragile, so utterly, sweetly pathetic. And all the time there was the strange light, or was it want of light, in those haunting eyes. His speech of greeting was never spoken.

“So you have come to see me, Everard,” she said, in a broken tone. “You are very brave.”

He possessed himself of her hand, the hand which a few hours ago had held a dagger to his throat, and kissed the waxenlike fingers. It fell to her side like a lifeless thing. Then she raised it and began rubbing softly at the place where his lips had fallen.

“I have come to see you at your bidding,” he replied, “and for my pleasure.”

“Pleasure!” she murmured, with a ghastly little smile. “You have learnt to control your words, Everard. You have slept here and you live. I have broken my word. I wonder why?”

“Because,” he pleaded, “I have not deserved that you should seek my life.”

“That sounds strangely,” she reflected. “Doesn’t it say somewhere in the Bible⁠—‘A life for a life’? You killed Roger Unthank.”

“I have killed other men since in self-defence,” Dominey told her. “Sometimes it comes to a man that he must slay or be slain. It was Roger Unthank⁠—”

“I shall not talk about him any longer,” she decided quite calmly. “The night before last, his spirit was calling to me below my window. He wants me to go down into Hell and live with him. The very thought is horrible.”

“Come,” Dominey said, “we shall speak of other things. You must tell me what presents I can buy you. I have come back from Africa rich.”

“Presents?”

For a single wonderful moment, hers was the face of a child who had been offered toys. Her smile of anticipation was delightful, her eyes had lost that strange vacancy. Then, before he could say another word, it all came back again.

“Listen to me,” she said. “This is important. I have sent for you because I do not understand why, quite suddenly last night, after I had made up my mind, I lost the desire to kill you. It is gone now. I am not sure about myself any longer. Draw your chair nearer to mine. Or no, come to my side, here at the other end of the sofa.”

She moved her skirts to make room for him. When he sat down, he felt a strange trembling through all his limbs.

“Perhaps,” she went on, “I shall break my oath. Indeed, I have already broken it. Let me look at you, my husband. It is a strange thing to own after all these years⁠—a husband.”

Dominey felt as though he were breathing an atmosphere of turgid and poisoned sweetness. There was a flavour of unreality about the whole situation⁠—the room, this child woman, her beauty, her deliberate, halting speech and the strange things she said.

“You find me changed?” he asked.

“You are very wonderfully changed. You look stronger, you are perhaps better-looking, yet there is something gone from your face which I thought one never lost.”

“You,” he said cautiously, “are more beautiful than ever, Rosamund.”

She laughed a little drearily.

“Of what use has my beauty been to me, Everard, since you came to my little cottage and loved me and made me love you, and took me away from Dour Roger? Do you remember the school chidden used to call him Dour Roger?⁠—But that does not matter. Do you know, Everard, that since you left me my feet have not passed outside these gardens?”

“That can be altered when you wish,” he said quickly. “You can visit where you will. You can have a motorcar, even a house in town. I shall bring some wonderful doctors here, and they will make you quite strong again.”

Her large eyes were lifted almost piteously to his.

“But how can I leave here?” she asked plaintively. “Every week, sometimes oftener, he calls to me. If I went away, his spirit would break loose and follow me. I must be here to wave my hand; then he goes away.”

Dominey was conscious once more of that strange and most unexpected fit of emotion. He was unrecognisable even to himself. Never before in his life had his heart beaten as it was beating now. His eyes, too, were hot. He had travelled around the word in search of new things, only to find them in this strange, faded chamber, side by side with this suffering woman. Nevertheless, he said quietly:

“We must send you some place where the people are kinder and where life is pleasanter. Perhaps you love music and to see beautiful pictures. I think that we must try and keep you from thinking.”

She sighed in a perplexed fashion.

“I wish that I could get it out of my blood that I want to kill you. Then you could take me right away. Other married people have lived together and hated each other. Why shouldn’t we? We may forget even to hate.”

Dominey staggered to his feet, walked to a window, threw it open and leaned out for a moment. Then he closed it and came back. This new element in the situation had been a shock to him. All the time she was watching him composedly.

“Well?” she asked, with a strange little smile. “What do you say? Would you like to hold as a wife’s the hand which frightened you so last night?”

She held it out to him, soft and warm. Her fingers even returned the pressure of his. She looked at him pleasantly, and once more he felt like a man who has wandered into a strange country and has lost his bearings.

“I want you so much to be happy,” he said hoarsely, “but you are not strong yet, Rosamund. We cannot decide anything in a hurry.”

“How surprised you are to find that I am willing to be nice to you!” she murmured. “But why not? You cannot know why I have so suddenly changed my mind about you⁠—and I have changed it. I