Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1105 page)

“May I go upstairs to Mistress?” Jack asked humbly. “I’ve said my prayers, sir, and I’ve had a good cry — and my head’s easier now.”

Mr. Keller spoke to him more gently than usual. “You had better not disturb your mistress before the doctor comes.”

“May I wait outside her door, sir? I promise to be very quiet.”

Mr. Keller consented by a sign. Jack took off his shoes, and noiselessly ascended the stairs. Before he reached the first landing, he turned and looked back into the hall. “Mind this!” he announced very earnestly; “I say she won’t die —
I
say that!”

He went on up the stairs. For the first time Mr. Keller began to pity the harmless little man whom he had hitherto disliked. “Poor wretch!” he said to himself, as he paced up and down the hall, “what will become of him, if she does die?”

In ten minutes more, Doctor Dormann arrived at the house.

His face showed that he thought badly of the case, as soon as he looked at Mrs. Wagner. He examined her, and made all the necessary inquiries, with the unremitting attention to details which was part of his professional character. One of his questions could only be answered generally. Having declared his opinion that the malady was paralysis, and that some of the symptoms were far from being common in his medical experience, he inquired if Mrs. Wagner had suffered from any previous attack of the disease. Mr. Keller could only reply that he had known her from the time of her marriage, and that he had never (in the course of a long and intimate correspondence with her husband) heard of her having suffered from serious illness of any kind. Doctor Dormann looked at his patient narrowly, and looked back again at Mr. Keller with unconcealed surprise.

“At her age,” he said, “I have never seen any first attack of paralysis so complicated and so serious as this.”

“Is there danger?” Mr. Keller asked in a whisper.

“She is not an old woman,” the doctor answered; “there is always hope. The practice in these cases generally is to bleed. In this case, the surface of the body is cold; the heart’s action is feeble — I don’t like to try bleeding, if I can possibly avoid it.”

After some further consideration, he directed a system of treatment which, in some respects, anticipated the practice of a later and wiser time. Having looked at the women assembled round the bed — and especially at Madame Fontaine — he said he would provide a competent nurse, and would return to see the effect of the remedies in two hours.

Looking at Madame Fontaine, after the doctor had gone away, Mr. Keller felt more perplexed than ever. She presented the appearance of a woman who was completely unnerved. “I am afraid you are far from well yourself,” he said.

“I have not felt well, sir, for some time past,” she answered, without looking at him.

“You had better try what rest and quiet will do for you,” he suggested.

“Yes, I think so.” With that reply — not even offering, for the sake of appearances, to attend on Mrs. Wagner until the nurse arrived — she took her daughter’s arm, and went out.

The woman-servant was fortunately a discreet person. She remembered the medical instructions, and she undertook all needful duties, until the nurse relieved her. Jack (who had followed the doctor into the room, and had watched him attentively) was sent away again for the time. He would go no farther than the outer side of the door. Mr. Keller passed him, crouched up on the mat, biting his nails. He was apparently thinking of the doctor. He said to himself, “That man looked puzzled; that man knows nothing about it.”

In the meantime, Madame Fontaine reached her room.

“Where is Fritz?” she asked, dropping her daughter’s arm.

“He has gone out, mamma. Don’t send me away! You seem to be almost as ill as poor Mrs. Wagner — I want to be with you.”

Madame Fontaine hesitated. “Do you love me with all your heart and soul?” she asked suddenly. “Are you worthy of any sacrifice that a mother can make for her child?”

Before the girl could answer, she spoke more strangely still.

“Are you just as fond of Fritz as ever? would it break your heart if you lost him?”

Minna placed her mother’s hand on her bosom.

“Feel it, mamma,” she said quietly. Madame Fontaine took her chair by the fire-side — seating herself with her back to the light. She beckoned to her daughter to sit by her. After an interval, Minna ventured to break the silence.

“I am very sorry for Mrs. Wagner, mamma; she has always been so kind to me. Do you think she will die?” Resting her elbows on her knees, staring into the fire, the widow lifted her head — looked round — and looked back again at the fire.

“Ask the doctor,” she said. “Don’t ask me.”

There was another long interval of silence. Minna’s eyes were fixed anxiously on her mother. Madame Fontaine remained immovable, still looking into the fire.

Afraid to speak again, Minna sought refuge from the oppressive stillness in a little act of attention. She took a fire-screen from the chimney-piece, and tried to place it gently in her mother’s hand.

At that light touch, Madame Fontaine sprang to her feet as if she had felt the point of a knife. Had she seen some frightful thing? had she heard some dreadful sound? “I can’t bear it!” she cried — ”I can’t bear it any longer!”

“Are you in pain, mamma? Will you lie down on the bed?” Her mother only looked at her. She drew back trembling, and said no more.

Madame Fontaine crossed the room to the wardrobe. When she spoke next, she was outwardly quite calm again. “I am going out for a walk,” she said.

“A walk, mamma? It’s getting dark already.”

“Dark or light, my nerves are all on edge — I must have air and exercise.”

“Let me go with you?”

She paced backwards and forwards restlessly, before she answered. “The room isn’t half large enough!” she burst out. “I feel suffocated in these four walls. Space! space! I must have space to breathe in! Did you say you wished to go out with me? I want a companion, Minna. Don’t you mind the cold?”

“I don’t even feel it, in my fur cloak.”

“Get ready, then, directly.”

In ten minutes more, the mother and daughter were out of the house.

CHAPTER XIV

Doctor Dormann was punctual to his appointment. He was accompanied by a stranger, whom he introduced as a surgeon. As before, Jack slipped into the room, and waited in a corner, listening and watching attentively.

Instead of improving under the administration of the remedies, the state of the patient had sensibly deteriorated. On the rare occasions when she attempted to speak, it was almost impossible to understand her. The sense of touch seemed to be completely lost — the poor woman could no longer feel the pressure of a friendly hand. And more ominous still, a new symptom had appeared; it was with evident difficulty that she performed the act of swallowing. Doctor Dormann turned resignedly to the surgeon.

“There is no other alternative,” he said; “you must bleed her.”

At the sight of the lancet and the bandage, Jack started out of his corner. His teeth were fast set; his eyes glared with rage. Before he could approach the surgeon Mr. Keller took him sternly by the arm and pointed to the door. He shook himself free — he saw the point of the lancet touch the vein. As the blood followed the incision, a cry of horror burst from him: he ran out of the room.

“Wretches! Tigers! How dare they take her blood from her! Oh, why am I only a little man? why am I not strong enough to fling the brutes out of the window? Mistress! Mistress! is there nothing I can do to help you?”

These wild words poured from his lips in the solitude of his little bedchamber. In the agony that he suffered, as the sense of Mrs. Wagner’s danger now forced itself on him, he rolled on the floor, and struck himself with his clenched fists. And, again and again, he cried out to her, “Mistress! Mistress! is there nothing I can do to help you?”

The strap that secured his keys became loosened, as his frantic movements beat the leather bag, now on one side, and now on the other, upon the floor. The jingling of the keys rang in his ears. For a moment, he lay quite still. Then, he sat up on the floor. He tried to think calmly. There was no candle in the room. The nearest light came from a lamp on the landing below. He got up, and went softly down the stairs. Alone on the landing, he held up the bag and looked at it. “There’s something in my mind, trying to speak to me,” he said to himself. “Perhaps, I shall find it in here?”

He knelt down under the light, and shook out the keys on the landing.

One by one he ranged them in a row, with a single exception. The key of the desk happened to be the first that he took up. He kissed it — it was
her
key — and put it back in the bag. Placing the others before him, the duplicate key was the last in the line. The inscription caught his eye. He held it to the light and read “Pink-Room Cupboard.”

The lost recollection now came back to him in intelligible form. The “remedy” that Madame Fontaine had locked up — the precious “remedy” made by the wonderful master who knew everything — was at his disposal. He had only to open the cupboard, and to have it in his own possession.

He threw the other keys back into the bag. They rattled as he ran down the lower flight of stairs. Opposite to the offices, he stopped and buckled them tight with the strap. No noise! Nothing to alarm Mrs. Housekeeper! He ascended the stairs in the other wing of the house, and paused again when he approached Madame Fontaine’s room. By this time, he was in the perilous fever of excitement, which was still well remembered among the authorities of Bedlam. Suppose the widow happened to be in her room? Suppose she refused to let him have the “remedy”?

He looked at the outstretched fingers of his right hand. “I am strong enough to throttle a woman,” he said, “and I’ll do it.”

He opened the door without knocking, without stopping to listen outside. Not a creature was in the room.

In another moment the fatal dose of “Alexander’s Wine,” which he innocently believed to be a beneficent remedy, was in his possession.

As he put it into the breast-pocket of his coat, the wooden chest caught his eye. He reached it down and tried the lid. The lid opened in his hand, and disclosed the compartments and the bottles placed in them. One of the bottles rose higher by an inch or two than any of the others. He drew that one out first to look at it, and discovered — the “blue-glass bottle.”

From that moment all idea of trying the effect on Mrs. Wagner of the treacherous “remedy” in his pocket vanished from his mind. He had secured the inestimable treasure, known to him by his own experience. Here was the heavenly bottle that had poured life down his throat, when he lay dying at Wurzburg! This was the true and only doctor who had saved Mr. Keller’s life, when the poor helpless fools about his bed had given him up for lost! The Mistress, the dear Mistress, was as good as cured already. Not a drop more of her precious blood should be shed by the miscreant, who had opened his knife and wounded her. Oh, of all the colours in the world, there’s no colour like blue! Of all the friends in the world, there never was such a good friend as this! He kissed and hugged the bottle as if it had been a living thing. He jumped up and danced about the room with it in his arms. Ha! what music there was in the inner gurgling and splashing of the shaken liquid, which told him that there was still some left for the Mistress! The striking of the clock on the mantelpiece sobered him at the height of his ecstasy. It told him that time was passing. Minute by minute, Death might be getting nearer and nearer to her; and there he was, with Life in his possession, wasting the time, far from her bedside.

On his way to the door, he stopped. His eyes turned slowly towards the inner part of the room. They rested on the open cupboard — and then they looked at the wooden chest, left on the floor.

Suppose the housekeeper should return, and see the key in the cupboard, and the chest with one of the bottles missing?