"Some friend of yours?" she asked.
He persisted in an assumption of good-humour, which betrayed itself as mere artifice in the clumsiest manner: "I declare I feel as if I were in a court of justice, being cross-examined by a lawyer of skill and dexterity! Well, my sweet counsellor, no--not exactly a friend of mine."
She reflected for a moment. "You don't surely mean one of Mr. Vimpany's friends?" she said.
He pretended not to have heard her, and pointed to the view of the garden from the window. "Isn't it a lovely day? Let's go and look at the flowers," he suggested.
"Did you not hear what I said to you just now?" she persisted.
"I beg your pardon, dear; I was thinking of something else. Suppose we go into the garden?"
When women have a point to gain in which they are interested, how many of them are capable of deferring it to a better opportunity? One in a thousand, perhaps. Iris kept her place at the window, resolved on getting an answer.
"I asked you, Harry, whether the person who is to occupy our spare bedroom, to-night, was one of Mr. Vimpany's friends?"
"Say one of Mr. Vimpany's patients--and you will be nearer the truth," he answered, with an outburst of impatience.
She could hardly believe him. "Do you mean a person who is really ill?" she said.
"Of course I mean it," he said; irritated into speaking out, at last.
"A man? or a woman?"
"A man."
"May I ask if he comes from England?"
"He comes from one of the French hospitals. Anything more?"
Iris left her husband to recover his good-humour, and went back to her chair. The extraordinary disclosure which she had extracted from him had produced a stupefying effect on her mind. Her customary sympathy with him, her subtle womanly observation of his character, her intimate knowledge of his merits and his defects, failed to find the rational motive which might have explained his conduct. She looked round at him with mingled feelings of perplexity and distrust.
He was still at the window, but he had turned his back on the view of the garden; his eyes were fixed, in furtive expectation, on his wife. Was he waiting to hear her say something more? She ran the risk and said it.
"I don't quite understand the sacrifice you seem to be making to Mr. Vimpany," she confessed. "Will you tell me, dear, what it means?"
Here was the opportunity offered of following the doctor's advice, and putting his wife's credulity to the test. With her knowledge of Vimpany, would she really believe the story which had imposed on the strangers who managed the hospital? Lord Harry made up his mind, to try the experiment. No matter what the result might be, it would bring the responsibilities that were crushing him to an end. He need say no more, if the deception succeeded. He could do no more, if it failed. Under the influence of this cheering reflection, he recovered his temper; his handsome face brightened again with its genial boyish smile.
"What a wonderful woman you are!" he cried. "Isn't it just the thing that I am here for, to tell you what I mean--and my clever wife sees through and through me, and reminds me of what I must do! Pay my fee beforehand, Iris! Give me a kiss--and my poor meaning shall be offered in return. It will help me if you remember one thing. Vimpany and I are old friends, and there's nothing we won't do to accommodate each other. Mind that!"
Tried fairly on its own merits, the stupid fiction invented by the doctor produced an effect for which Lord Harry was not prepared. The longer Iris listened, the more strangely Iris looked at him. Not a word fell from her lips when he had done. He noticed that she had turned pale: it seemed to be almost possible that he had frightened her!
If his bird-witted brains could have coupled cause and effect, this was exactly the result which he might have anticipated.
She was asked to believe that a new system of medical practice had been invented by such a person as Mr. Vimpany. She was asked to believe that an invalid from a foreign hospital, who was a perfect stranger to Lord Harry, had been willingly made welcome to a bedroom at the cottage. She was asked to believe that this astounding concession had been offered to the doctor as a tribute of friendship, after her husband had himself told her that he regretted having invited Vimpany, for the second time, to become his guest. Here was one improbable circumstance accumulated on another, and a clever woman was expected to accept the monstrous excuses, thus produced, as a trustworthy statement of facts. Irresistibly, the dread of some evil deed in secret contemplation cast its darkening presence on the wife's mind. Lord Harry's observation had not misled him, when he saw Iris turn pale, and when the doubt was forced on him whether he might not have frightened her.
"If my explanation of this little matter has satisfied you," he ventured to resume, "we need say no more about it."
"I agree with you," she answered, "let us say no more about it." Conscious, in spite of the effort to resist it, of a feeling of oppression while she was in the same room with a man who had deliberately lied to her, and that man her husband, she reminded Lord Harry that he had proposed to take a walk in the garden. Out in the pure air, under the bright sky, she might breathe more freely. "Come to the flowers," she said.
They went to the garden together--the wife fearing the deceitful husband, the husband fearing the quick-witted wife.
Watching each other like two strangers, they walked silently side by side, and looked now and then at the collection of flowers and plants. Iris noticed a delicate fern which had fallen away from the support to which it had been attached. She stopped, and occupied herself in restoring it to its place. When she looked round again, after attending to the plant, her husband had disappeared, and Mr. Vimpany was waiting in his place.
CHAPTER XLIV
FICTION: IMPROVED BY THE DOCTOR
"WHERE is Lord Harry?" Iris asked.
The reply startled her: "Lord Harry leaves me to say to your ladyship, what he has not had resolution enough to say for himself."
"I don't understand you, Mr. Vimpany."
The doctor pointed to the fern which had just been the object of Lady Harry's care.
"You have been helping that sickly plant there to live and thrive," he said, "and I have felt some curiosity in watching you. There is another sickly plant, which I have undertaken to rear if the thing can be done. My gardening is of the medical kind--I can only carry it on indoors--and whatever else it may be, I tell you plainly, like the outspoken sort of fellow I am, it's not likely to prove agreeable to a lady. No offence, I hope? Your humble servant is only trying to produce the right sort of impression--and takes leave to doubt his lordship in one particular."
"In what particular, sir?"
"I'll put it in the form of a question, ma'am. Has my friend persuaded you to make arrangements for leaving the cottage?"
Iris looked at Lord Harry's friend without attempting to conceal her opinion of him.