The House Opposite: A Mystery

Having given our names to the butler, we were ushered into a large drawing-room, redolent with flowers. So this was May’s home.

I glanced eagerly about. These chairs had held her slight form; at that desk she had written, and these rugs had felt the impress of her little feet. A book lay near me on a small table. I passed my fingers lovingly over it. This contact with an object she must often have touched gave me an extraordinary pleasure,—a pleasure so great as to make me forget everything else,—and I started guiltily, and tried to lay the book down unobserved, when a tall, grey-haired lady stepped from the veranda into the room.

Mrs. Derwent greeted Miss Cowper affectionately, and welcomed me with quiet grace.

“Fred has told me so much about you, Dr. Fortescue, that I am very glad to meet you at last.”

Then, turning to Alice Cowper, she said: “May wants very much to see you. She is lying in a hammock on the piazza, where it is much cooler than here. Dr. Fortescue and I will join you girls later.”

“You have been told of my daughter’s condition?” she inquired, as soon as we were alone.

“Yes. I hear, however, that there has been a marked improvement since Sunday.”

“There was a great improvement. She seemed much less nervous yesterday, but to-day she has had another of her attacks.”

“I am sorry to hear that. Do you know what brought this one on?”

“Yes. It was reading in the paper of the Frenchman’s assault on you!”

“But I don’t understand why that should have affected her.”

“You will forgive my saying so, Doctor—neither do I, although I am extremely glad that you escaped from that madman unhurt.”

She looked at me for a moment in silence, then said: “When Fred advised me to consult you about my daughter’s health, I knew immediately that I had heard your name before, but could not remember in what connection I had heard it mentioned. In fact, it was not until I read in the Bugle that the man who was supposed to have committed the Rosemere murder had, last night, attempted to kill you that I realized that you were the young doctor whom my daughter had told me about. You were present when she was made to give an account of herself to the coroner, were you not?”

“Yes, but I trust that my slight association with that affair will make no difference.”

She again interrupted me: “It makes the greatest difference, I assure you. As you are aware of the exact nature of the shock she has sustained, I am spared the painful necessity of informing a stranger of her escapade. We are naturally anxious that the fact of her having been in the building at the time of the murder should be known to as few people as possible. I am, therefore, very grateful to you for not mentioning the matter, even to Fred. Although I have been obliged to confide in him myself, I think that your not having done so indicates rare discretion on your part.”

I bowed.

“You may rely on me,” I said. “I have the greatest respect and admiration for Miss Derwent, and would be most unwilling to say anything which might lay her open to misconstruction.”

“Thank you. Now, Doctor, you know exactly what occurred. You are consequently better able than any one else to judge whether what she has been through is in itself enough to account for her present illness.”

“She is still very nervous?”

“Incredibly so. She cannot bear to be left alone a minute.”

“And you know of no reason for this nervousness other than her experience at the Rosemere?”

“None.”

“May I ask how the news of the butler’s attack on me affected her?” How sweet to think that she had cared at all!

“Very strangely,” replied Mrs. Derwent. “After reading the account of it she fainted, and it was quite an hour before she recovered consciousness. Since then she has expressed the greatest desire to go to New York, but will give no reason for this absurd whim. Mr. Norman was also much upset by the thought of the danger you had incurred.”

“Mr. Norman! But I don’t know him!”

“So he told me. To be able to feel so keenly for a stranger shows an extraordinary sensibility, does it not?”

She looked at me keenly.

“It does, indeed! It is most inexplicable!”

“I don’t know whether Fred has told you that since my daughter was taken ill on Sunday she cannot bear to have Mr. Norman out of her sight. He has been here all day, and now she insists on his leaving the Cowpers and staying with us altogether. Her behaviour is incomprehensible.”

This was pleasant news for me!

“Surely this desire for his society can mean but one thing?”

“Of course, you think that she must care for him, but I am quite sure that she does not.”

“Really?” I could hardly keep the note of pleasure out of my voice.

“If she were in love with him I should consider her conduct quite normal. But it is the fact of her indifference that makes it so very curious.”

“You are sure this indifference is real and not assumed?”

“Quite sure,” replied Mrs. Derwent. “She tries to hide it, but I can see that his attentions are most unwelcome to her. If he happens, in handing her something, to touch her accidentally, she visibly shrinks from him. Oh, Mr. Norman has noticed this as well as I have, and it hurts him.”

“And yet she cannot bear him out of her sight, you say?”

“Exactly. As long as he is within call she is quiet and contented, and in his absence she fidgets. And yet she does not care to talk to him, and does so with an effort that is perfectly apparent to me. The poor fellow is pathetically in love, and I can see that he suffers keenly from her indifference.”

“I suppose he expects his patient devotion to win the day in the end.”

“I don’t think he does. I felt it my duty in the face of May’s behaviour—which is unusual, to say the least—to tell him that I didn’t believe she cared for him or meant to marry him. ’I quite understand that,’ was all he answered. But why he does not expect her to do so, is what I should like to know. As she evidently can’t live without him, I don’t see why she won’t live with him.

“But now, Dr. Fortescue,” added Mrs. Derwent, rising to leave the room, “let us go to my daughter. She is prepared to see you. But your visit is purely social, remember.”

A curtain of honeysuckle and roses protected one end of the piazza from the rays of an August sun, and it was in this scented nook, amid surroundings whose peace and beauty contrasted strangely with those of our first meeting, that I at last saw May Derwent again. She lay in a hammock, her golden head supported by a pile of be-ruffled cushions, and with one small slipper peeping from under her voluminous skirts. At our approach, however, she sprang to her feet, and came forward to meet us. I had thought and dreamt of her for six long weary days and nights, and yet, now that she stood before me, dressed in a trailing, white gown of some soft material, slightly opened at the neck and revealing her strong, white, young throat, her firm, rounded arms bare to the elbow, and with one superb rose (I devoutly hoped it was one of those I had sent her) as her only ornament, she made a picture of such surpassing loveliness as fairly to take my breath away. I had been doubtful as to how she would receive me, so that when she smilingly held out her hand, I felt a great weight roll off my heart. Her manner was perfectly composed, much more so than mine in fact. A beautiful blush alone betrayed her embarrassment at meeting me.

“Why, Dr. Fortescue,” exclaimed Alice Cowper, “you never told me that you knew May.”

“Our previous acquaintance was so slight that I did not expect Miss Derwent to remember me.” I answered evasively, wondering, as I did so, whether May had confided to her friend where and when it was that we had met.

“I want to congratulate you, Doctor,” said Miss Derwent, changing the conversation abruptly, “on your recent escape.”

“From the madman, you mean? It was a close shave, I assure you. For several minutes I was within nodding distance of St. Peter.”

“How dreadful! But why was the fellow not locked up long before this?”

“I did all I could to have him put under restraint. Several days ago I told a detective that I was sure not only that Argot was insane, but that he had committed the Rosemere murder. But he wouldn’t listen to me, and I came very near having to pay with my life for his pig-headedness. Every one has now come round to my way of thinking except this same detective, who still insists that the butler is innocent.”

Now that the blush had faded from her cheek, I realised that she was indeed looking wretchedly pale and thin, and as she leaned eagerly forward I was shocked to see how her lips twitched and her hands trembled.

“So it was you who first put the police on the Frenchman’s tracks?” she demanded.