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

These were days, to all dwellers in London, of vivid impressions, of poignant memories, reasserting themselves afterwards with a curious sense of unreality, as though belonging to another set of days and another world. Dominey long remembered his dinner that evening in the sombre, handsomely furnished dining-room of his town house in Berkeley Square. Although it lacked the splendid proportions of the banqueting hall at Dominey, it was still a fine apartment, furnished in the Georgian period, with some notable pictures upon the walls, and with a wonderful ceiling and fireplace. Dominey and Rosamund dined alone, and though the table had been reduced to its smallest proportions, the space between them was yet considerable. As soon as Parkins had gravely put the port upon the table, Rosamund rose to her feet and, instead of leaving the room, pointed for the servant to place a chair for her by Dominey’s side.

“I shall be like your men friends, Everard,” she declared, “when the ladies have left, and draw up to your side. Now what do we do? Tell stories? I promise you that I will be a wonderful listener.”

“First of all you drink half a glass of this port,” he declared, filling her glass, “then you peel me one of those peaches, and we divide it. After which we listen for a ring at the bell. Tonight I expect a visitor.”

“A visitor?”

“Not a social one,” he assured her. “A matter of business which I fear will take me from you for the rest of the evening. So let us make the most of the time until he comes.”

She commenced her task with the peach, talking to him all the time a little gravely, a sweet and picturesque picture of a graceful and very desirable woman, her delicate shape and artistic fragility more than ever accentuated by the sombreness of the background.

“Do you know, Everard,” she said, “I am so happy in London here with you, and I feel all the time so strong and well. I can read and understand the books which were a maze of print to me before. I can see the things in the pictures, and feel the thrill of the music, which seemed to come to me, somehow, before, all dislocated and discordant. You understand, dear?”

“Of course,” he answered gravely.

“I do not wonder,” she went on, “that Doctor Harrison is proud of me for a patient, but there are many times when I feel a dull pain in my heart, because I know that, whatever he or anybody else might say, I am not quite cured.”

“Rosamund dear,” he protested.

“Ah, but don’t interrupt,” she insisted, depositing his share of the peach upon his plate. “How can I be cured when all the time there is the problem of you, the problem which I am just as far off solving as ever I was? Often I find myself comparing you with the Everard whom I married.”

“Do I fail so often to come up to his standard?” he asked.

“You never fail,” she answered, looking at him with brimming eyes. “Of course, he was very much more affectionate,” she went on, after a moment’s pause. “His kisses were not like yours. And he was far fonder of having me with him. Then, on the other hand, often when I wanted him he was not there, he did wild things, mad things; he seemed to forget me altogether. It was that,” she went on, “that was so terrible. It was that which made me so nervous. I think that I should even have been able to stand those awful moments when he came back to me, covered with blood and reeling, if it had not been that I was already almost a wreck. You know, he killed Roger Unthank that night. That is why he was never able to come back.”

“Why do you talk of these things tonight, Rosamund,” Dominey begged.

“I must, dear,” she insisted, laying her fingers upon his hand and looking at him curiously. “I must, even though I see how they distress you. It is wonderful that you should mind so much, Everard, but you do, and I love you for it.”

“Mind?” he groaned. “Mind!”

“You are so like him and yet so different,” she went on meditatively. “You drink so little wine, you are always so self-controlled, so serious. You live as though you had a life around you of which others knew nothing. The Everard I remember would never have cared about being a magistrate or going into Parliament. He would have spent his time racing or yachting, hunting or shooting, as the fancy took him. And yet⁠—”

“And yet what?” Dominey asked, a little hoarsely.

“I think he loved me better than you,” she said very sadly.

“Why?” he demanded.

“I cannot tell you,” she answered, with her eyes upon her plate, “but I think that he did.”

Dominey walked suddenly to the window and leaned out. There were drops of moisture upon his forehead, he felt the fierce need of air. When he came back she was still sitting there, still looking down.

“I have spoken to Doctor Harrison about it,” she went on, her voice scarcely audible. “He told me that you probably loved more than you dared to show, because someday the real Everard might come back.”

“That is quite true,” he reminded her softly. “He may come back at any moment.”

She gripped his hand, her voice shook with passion. She leaned towards him, her other arm stole around his neck.

“But I don’t want him to come back!” she cried. “I want you!”

Dominey sat for a moment motionless, like a figure of stone. Through the wide-flung, blind-shielded windows came the raucous cry of a newsboy, breaking the stillness of the summer evening. And then another and sharper interruption⁠—the stopping of a taxicab outside, the firm, insistent ringing of the front doorbell. Recollection came to Dominey, and a great strength. The fire which had leaped up within him was thrust back. His response to her wave