Blind Love

'So soon? In these eases of advanced pulmonary disease the sooner the better. The French custom of speedy interment may be defended as more wholesome than our own. On the other hand, I admit that it has its weak points. Cremation is, perhaps, the best and only method of removing the dead which is open to no objections except one. I mean, of course, the chance that the deceased may have met with his death by means of poison. But such cases are rare, and, in most instances, would be detected by the medical man in attendance before or at the time of death. I think we need not——My dear friend, you look ill. Are you upset by such a simple thing as the death of a sick man? Let me prescribe for you. A glass of brandy neat. So,' he went into the salle 'a manger and returned with his medicine. 'Take that. Now let us talk.' The doctor continued his conversation in a cheerfully scientific strain, never alluding to the conspiracy or to the consequences which might follow. He told hospital stories bearing on deaths sudden and unexpected; some of them he treated in a jocular vein. The dead man in the next room was a Case: he knew of many similar and equally interesting Cases. When one has arrived at looking upon a dead man as a Case, there is little fear of the ordinary human weakness which makes us tremble in the awful presence of death.

Presently steps were heard outside. The doctor rose and left the room—but returned in a few minutes.

'The croque-morts have come,' he said. 'They are with the nurse engaged upon their business. It seems revolting to the outside world. To them it is nothing but the daily routine of work. By-the-way, I took a photograph of his lordship in the presence of the nurse. Unfortunately—but look at it——'

'It is the face of the dead man'—Lord Harry turned away. 'I don't want to see it. I cannot bear to see it. You forget—I was actually present when—'

'Not when he died. Come, don't be a fool. What I was going to say was this: The face is no longer in the least like you. Nobody who ever saw you once even would believe that this is your face. The creature—he has given us an unconscionable quantity of trouble—was a little like you when he first came. I was wrong in supposing that this likeness was permanent. Now he is dead, he is not in the least like you. I ought to have remembered that the resemblance would fade away and disappear in death. Come and look at him.'

'No, no.'

'Weakness! Death restores to every man his individuality. No two men are like in death, though they may be like in life. Well. It comes to this. We are going to bury Lord Harry Norland to-morrow, and we must have a photograph of him as he lay on his deathbed.'

'Well?'

'Well, my friend, go upstairs to your own room, and I will follow with the camera.'

In a quarter of an hour he was holding the glass against his sleeve.

'Admirable!' he said. 'The cheek a little sunken—that was the effect of the chalk and the adjustment of the shadows—the eyes closed, the face white, the hands composed. It is admirable! Who says that we cannot make the sun tell lies?'

As soon as he could get a print of the portrait, he gave it to Lord Harry.

'There,' he said, 'we shall get a better print to-morrow. This is the first copy.'

He had mounted it on a frame of card, and had written under it the name once borne by the dead man, with the date of his death. The picture seemed indeed that of a dead man. Lord Harry shuddered.

'There,' he said, 'everything else has been of no use to us—the presence of the sick man—the suspicions of the nurse—his death—even his death—has been of no use to us. We might have been spared the memory—the awful memory—of this death!'

'You forget, my English friend, that a dead body was necessary for us. We had to bury somebody. Why not the man Oxbye?'

CHAPTER LIII

THE WIFE'S RETURN

OF course Mrs. Vimpany was quite right. Iris had gone back to her husband. She arrived, in fact, at the cottage in the evening just before dark—in the falling day, when some people are more than commonly sensitive to sights and sounds, and when the eyes are more apt than at other times to be deceived by strange appearances. Iris walked into the garden, finding no one there. She opened the door with her own key and let herself in. The house struck her as strangely empty and silent. She opened the dining-room door: no one was there. Like all French dining-rooms, it was used for no other purpose than for eating, and furnished with little more than the barest necessaries. She closed the door and opened that of the salon: that also was empty. She called her husband: there was no answer. She called the name of the cook: there was no answer. It was fortunate that she did not open the door of the spare room, for there lay the body of the dead man. She went upstairs to her husband's room. That too was empty. But there was something lying on the table—a photograph. She took it up. Her face became white suddenly and swiftly. She shrieked aloud, then drooped the picture and fell fainting to the ground. For the photograph was nothing less than that of her husband, dead in his white graveclothes, his hands composed, his eyes closed, his cheek waxen.

The cry fell upon the ears of Lord Harry, who was in the garden below. He rushed into the house and lifted his wife upon the bed. The photograph showed him plainly what had happened.

She came to her senses again, but seeing her husband alive before her, and remembering what she had seen, she shrieked again, and fell into another swoon.

'What is to be done now?' asked the husband. 'What shall I tell her? How shall I make her understand? What can I do for her?'

As for help, there was none: the nurse was gone on some errand; the doctor was arranging for the funeral of Oxbye under the name of Lord Harry Norland; the cottage was empty.

Such a fainting fit does not last for ever. Iris came round, and sat up, looking wildly around.

'What is it?' she cried. 'What does it mean?'

'It means, my love, that you have returned to your husband.' He laid an arm round her, and kissed her again and again.

'You are my Harry!—living!—my own Harry?'

'Your own Harry, my darling. What else should I be?'

'Tell me then, what does it mean—that picture—that horrid photograph?'