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

“How you spend your time is your affair, not mine,” the doctor muttered. “All I say about the matter is that your wife’s cure, if ever it comes to pass, is in your hands. And now⁠—come over to me here, in the light of this window. I want to look at you.”

Dominey obeyed with a little shrug of the shoulders. There was no sunshine, but the white north light was in its way searching. It showed the sprinkling of grey in his ruddy-brown hair, the suspicion of it in his closely trimmed moustache, but it could find no weak spot in his steady eyes, in the tan of his hard, manly complexion, or even in the set of his somewhat arrogant lips. The old doctor took up his box of flies again and jerked his head towards the door.

“You are a miracle,” he said, “and I hate miracles. I’ll come and see Lady Dominey in a day or so.”

Dominey spent a curiously placid, and, to those with whom he was brought into contact, an entirely satisfactory afternoon. With Mr. Mangan by his side, murmuring amiable platitudes, and Mr. Johnson, his agent, opposite, revelling in the unusual situation of a satisfied landlord and delighted tenants, he made practically the entire round of the Dominey estates. They reached home late, but Dominey, although he seemed to be living in another world, was not neglectful of the claims of hospitality. Probably for the first time in their lives, Mr. Johnson and Lees, the bailiff, watched the opening of a magnum of champagne. Mr. Johnson cleared his throat as he raised his glass.

“It isn’t only on my own account, Sir Everard,” he said, “that I drink your hearty good health. I have your tenants too in my mind. They’ve had a rough time, some of them, and they’ve stood it like white men. So here’s from them and me to you, sir, and may we see plenty of you in these parts.”

Mr. Lees associated himself with these sentiments, and the glasses were speedily emptied and filled again.

“I suppose you know, Sir Everard,” the agent observed, “that what you’ve promised to do today will cost a matter of ten to fifteen thousand pounds.”

Dominey nodded.

“Before I go to bed tonight,” he said, “I shall send a cheque for twenty thousand pounds to the estate account at your bank at Wells. The money is there waiting, put aside for just that one purpose and⁠—well, you may just as well have it.”

Agent and bailiff leaned back in the tonneau of their motorcar, half an hour later, with immense cigars in their mouths and a pleasant, rippling warmth in their veins. They had the sense of having drifted into fairyland. Their philosophy, however, met the situation.

“It’s a fair miracle,” Mr. Lees declared.

“A modern romance,” Mr. Johnson, who read novels, murmured. “Hello, here’s a visitor for the Hall,” he added, as a car swept by them.

“Comfortable-looking gent, too,” Mr. Lees remarked.

The “comfortable-looking gent” was Otto Seaman, who presented himself at the Hall with a small dressing-bag and a great many apologies.

“Found myself in Norwich, Sir Everard,” he explained. “I have done business there all my life, and one of my customers needed looking after. I finished early, and when I found that I was only thirty miles off you, I couldn’t resist having a run across. If it is in any way inconvenient to put me up for the night, say so⁠—”

“My dear fellow!” Dominey interrupted. “There are a score of rooms ready. All that we need is to light a fire, and an old-fashioned bed-warmer will do the rest. You remember Mr. Mangan?”

The two men shook hands, and Seaman accepted a little refreshment after his drive. He lingered behind for a moment after the dressing bell had rung.

“What time is that fellow going?” he asked.

“Nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” Dominey replied.

“Not a word until then,” Seaman whispered back. “I must not seem to be hanging after you too much⁠—I really did not want to come⁠—but the matter is urgent.”

“We can send Mangan to bed early,” Dominey suggested.

“I am the early bird myself,” was the weary reply. “I was up all last night. Tomorrow morning will do.”

Dinner that night was a pleasant and social meal. Mr. Mangan especially was uplifted. Everything to do with the Domineys for the last fifteen years had reeked of poverty. He had really had a hard struggle to make both ends meet. There had been disagreeable interviews with angry tenants, formal interviews with dissatisfied mortgagees, and remarkably little profit at the end of the year to set against these disagreeable episodes. The new situation was almost beatific. The concluding touch, perhaps, was in Parkins’ congratulatory whisper as he set a couple of decanters upon the table.

“I have found a bin of Cockburn’s fifty-one, sir,” he announced, including the lawyer in his confidential whisper. “I thought you might like to try a couple of bottles, as Mr. Mangan seems rather a connoisseur, sir. The corks appear to be in excellent condition.”

“After this,” Mr. Mangan sighed, “it will be hard to get back to the austere life of a Pall Mall club!”

Seaman, very early in the evening, pleaded an extraordinary sleepiness and retired, leaving his host and Mangan alone over the port. Dominey, although an attentive host, seemed a little abstracted. Even Mr. Mangan, who was not an observant man, was conscious that a certain hardness, almost arrogance of speech and manner, seemed temporarily to have left his patron.

“I can’t tell you, Sir Everard,” he said, as he sipped his first glass of wine, “what a pleasure it is to me to see, as it were, this recrudescence of an old family. If I might be allowed to say so, there’s only one thing necessary to round the whole business off, as it were.”

“And that?” Dominey asked unthinkingly.

“The return of Lady Dominey to health. I was one of the few, you may remember, privileged to make her acquaintance at the time of your marriage.”

“I paid a visit this morning,” Dominey