No Name - Wilkie Collins (free e books to read online .TXT) 📗

“Dr. Merrick,” said the landlady, placing a chair for him.

“Mr. Merrick,” said the visitor, smiling quietly as he took the chair. “I am not a physician⁠—I am a surgeon in general practice.”

Physician or surgeon, there was something in his face and manner which told Kirke at a glance that he was a man to be relied on.

After a few preliminary words on either side, Mr. Merrick sent the landlady into the bedroom to see if his patient was awake or asleep. The woman returned, and said she was “betwixt the two, light in the head again, and burning hot.” The doctor went at once into the bedroom, telling the landlady to follow him, and to close the door behind her.

A weary time passed before he came back into the front room. When he reappeared, his face spoke for him, before any question could be asked.

“Is it a serious illness?” said Kirke his voice sinking low, his eyes anxiously fixed on the doctor’s face.

“It is a dangerous illness,” said Mr. Merrick, with an emphasis on the word.

He drew his chair nearer to Kirke and looked at him attentively.

“May I ask you some questions which are not strictly medical?” he inquired.

Kirke bowed.

“Can you tell me what her life has been before she came into this house, and before she fell ill?”

“I have no means of knowing. I have just returned to England after a long absence.”

“Did you know of her coming here?”

“I only discovered it by accident.”

“Has she no female relations? No mother? no sister? no one to take care of her but yourself?”

“No one⁠—unless I can succeed in tracing her relations. No one but myself.”

Mr. Merrick was silent. He looked at Kirke more attentively than ever. “Strange!” thought the doctor. “He is here, in sole charge of her⁠—and is this all he knows?”

Kirke saw the doubt in his face; and addressed himself straight to that doubt, before another word passed between them.

“I see my position here surprises you,” he said, simply. “Will you consider it the position of a relation⁠—the position of her brother or her father⁠—until her friends can be found?” His voice faltered, and he laid his hand earnestly on the doctor’s arm. “I have taken this trust on myself,” he said; “and as God shall judge me, I will not be unworthy of it!”

The poor weary head lay on his breast again, the poor fevered fingers clasped his hand once more, as he spoke those words.

“I believe you,” said the doctor, warmly. “I believe you are an honest man.⁠—Pardon me if I have seemed to intrude myself on your confidence. I respect your reserve⁠—from this moment it is sacred to me. In justice to both of us, let me say that the questions I have asked were not prompted by mere curiosity. No common cause will account for the illness which has laid my patient on that bed. She has suffered some long-continued mental trial, some wearing and terrible suspense⁠—and she has broken down under it. It might have helped me if I could have known what the nature of the trial was, and how long or how short a time elapsed before she sank under it. In that hope I spoke.”

“When you told me she was dangerously ill,” said Kirke, “did you mean danger to her reason or to her life?”

“To both,” replied Mr. Merrick. “Her whole nervous system has given way; all the ordinary functions of her brain are in a state of collapse. I can give you no plainer explanation than that of the nature of the malady. The fever which frightens the people of the house is merely the effect. The cause is what I have told you. She may lie on that bed for weeks to come; passing alternately, without a gleam of consciousness, from a state of delirium to a state of repose. You must not be alarmed if you find her sleep lasting far beyond the natural time. That sleep is a better remedy than any I can give, and nothing must disturb it. All our art can accomplish is to watch her, to help her with stimulants from time to time, and to wait for what Nature will do.”

“Must she remain here? Is there no hope of our being able to remove her to a better place?”

“No hope whatever, for the present. She has already been disturbed, as I understand, and she is seriously the worse for it. Even if she gets better, even if she comes to herself again, it would still be a dangerous experiment to move her too soon⁠—the least excitement or alarm would be fatal to her. You must make the best of this place as it is. The landlady has my directions; and I will send a good nurse to help her. There is nothing more to be done. So far as her life can be said to be in any human hands, it is as much in your hands now as in mine. Everything depends on the care that is taken of her, under your direction, in this house.” With those farewell words he rose and quitted the room.

Left by himself, Kirke walked to the door of communication, and, knocking at it softly, told the landlady he wished to speak with her.

He was far more composed, far more like his own resolute self, after his interview with the doctor, than he had been before it. A man living in the artificial social atmosphere which this man had never breathed would have felt painfully the worldly side of the situation⁠—its novelty and strangeness; the serious present difficulty in which it placed him; the numberless misinterpretations in the future to which it might lead. Kirke never gave the situation a thought. He saw nothing but the duty it claimed from him⁠—a duty which the doctor’s farewell words had put plainly before his mind. Everything depended on the care taken of her, under his direction, in that house. There was his responsibility, and he unconsciously acted