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

some years ago. I was told that you had become a broken-down drunkard.”

“The world is full of liars,” Dominey said equably. “You appear to have met with one, at least.”

“You have not even,” the doctor persisted, “the appearance of a man who has been used to excesses of any sort.”

“Good old stock, ours,” his visitor observed carelessly. “Plenty of two-bottle men behind my generation.”

“You have also gained courage since the days when you fled from England. You slept at the Hall last night?”

“Where else? I also, if you want to know, occupied my own bedchamber⁠—with results,” Dominey added, throwing his head a little back, to display the scar on his throat, “altogether insignificant.”

“That’s just your luck,” the doctor declared. “You’ve no right to have gone there without seeing me; no right, after all that has passed, to have even approached your wife.”

“You seem rather a martinet as regards my domestic affairs,” Dominey observed.

“That’s because I know your history,” was the blunt reply.

Uninvited Dominey seated himself in an easy-chair.

“You were never my friend, Doctor,” he said. “Let me suggest that we conduct this conversation on a purely professional basis.”

“I was never your friend,” came the retort, “because I have known you always as a selfish brute; because you were married to the sweetest woman on God’s earth, gave up none of your bad habits, frightened her into insanity by reeling home with another man’s blood on your hands, and then stayed away for over ten years instead of making an effort to repair the mischief you had done.”

“This,” observed Dominey, “is history, dished up in a somewhat partial fashion. I repeat my suggestion that we confine our conversation to the professional.”

“This is my house,” the other rejoined, “and you came to see me. I shall say exactly what I like to you, and if you don’t like it you can get out. If it weren’t for Lady Dominey’s sake, you shouldn’t have passed this threshold.”

“Then for her sake,” Dominey suggested in a softer tone, “can’t you forget how thoroughly you disapprove of me? I am here now with only one object: I want you to point out to me any way in which we can work together for the improvement of my wife’s health.”

“There can be no question of a partnership between us.”

“You refuse to help?”

“My help isn’t worth a snap of the fingers. I have done all I can for her physically. She is a perfectly sound woman. The rest depends upon you, and you alone, and I am not very hopeful about it.”

“Upon me?” Dominey repeated, a little taken aback.

“Fidelity,” the doctor grunted, “is second nature with all good women. Lady Dominey is a good woman, and she is no exception to the rule. Her brain is starved because her heart is aching for love. If she could believe in your repentance and reform, if any atonement for the past were possible and were generously offered, I cannot tell what the result might be. They tell me that you are a rich man now, although heaven knows, when one considers what a lazy, selfish fellow you were, that sounds like a miracle. You could have the great specialists down. They couldn’t help, but it might salve your conscience to pay them a few hundred guineas.”

“Would you meet them?” Dominey asked anxiously. “Tell me whom to send for?”

“Pooh! Those days are finished with me,” was the curt reply. “I would meet none of them. I am a doctor no longer. I have become a villager. I go to see Lady Dominey as an old friend.”

“Give me your advice,” Dominey begged. “Is it of any use sending for specialists?”

“Just for the present, none at all.”

“And what about that horrible woman, Mrs. Unthank?”

“Part of your task, if you are really going to take it up. She stands between your wife and the sun.”

“Then why have you suffered her to remain there all those years?” Dominey demanded.

“For one thing, because there has been no one to replace her,” the doctor replied, “and for another, because Lady Dominey, believing that you slew her son, has some fantastic idea of giving her a home and shelter as a kind of expiation.”

“You think there is no affection between the two?” Dominey asked.

“Not a scrap,” was the blunt reply, “except that Lady Dominey is of so sweet and gentle a nature⁠—”

The doctor paused abruptly. His visitor’s fingers had strayed across his throat.

“That’s a different matter,” the former continued fiercely. “That’s just where the weak spot in her brain remains. If you ask me, I believe it’s pandered to by Mrs. Unthank. Come to think of it,” he went on, “the Domineys were never cowards. If you’ve got your courage back, send Mrs. Unthank away, sleep with your doors wide open. If a single night passes without Lady Dominey coming to your room with a knife in her hand, she will be cured in time of that mania at any rate. Dare you do that?”

Dominey’s hesitation was palpable⁠—also his agitation. The doctor grinned contemptuously.

“Still afraid!” he scoffed.

“Not in the way you imagine,” his visitor replied. “My wife has already promised to make no further attempt upon my life.”

“Well, you can cure her if you want to,” the doctor declared, “and if you do, you will have the sweetest companion for life any man could have. But you’ll have to give up the idea of town houses and racing and yachting, and grouse moors in Scotland, and all those sort of things I suppose you’ve been looking forward to. You’ll have for some time, at any rate, to give every moment of your time to your wife.”

Dominey moved uneasily in his chair.

“For the next few months,” he said, “that would be impossible.”

“Impossible!”

The doctor repeated the word, seemed to roll it round in his mouth with a sort of wondering scorn.

“I am not quite the idler I used to be,” Dominey explained, frowning. “Nowadays, you cannot make money without assuming responsibilities. I am clearing off the whole of the mortgages upon the Dominey