Читать книгу The Case of Mrs. Ruhmkorff's Will - Percy Andreae - Страница 5

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The next morning, when I had had time to reflect more calmly upon the situation in which I was placed, I deeded to take no steps towards my recall until I had seen Dr. Crackenthorpe, and heard his version of Mr. Cunninghame's case. No doubt I was influenced in this decision by the agreeable impression which the household of Glen Elc and its surroundings produced upon me by daylight. The house was a large one, built in regular country-house style, and of somewhat rambling architecture. The grounds were extensive, and to all appearances well cared for. A magnificent lawn sloped down from the rear of the house to a distance of at least a couple of hundred yards, and was bordered at its lower end by a handsome piece of ornamental water. The front of the mansion was hidden from the roadway by clusters of trees, through which the carriage sweep led up in winding fashion from the lodge gates to the portico at which I had alighted the night before. Everything was well ordered, and generally indicative of wealth, if not of actual affluence, on the part of the occupiers. As for the family circle itself, I soon learned it was a very limited one; besides Clive Cunninghame and his mother it consisted merely of a young girl of about 19 or 20, Belle Staunton by name. She was a ward of Mrs. Cunninghame, and heiress to a considerable estate—at least, so I understood from the talkative chambermaid who brought me my breakfast, and who, in response to a few necessary questions of mine regarding the house and its surroundings, volunteered a heap of additional information about its inmates, of the correctness of which I was unable to judge.

I should find it difficult to describe exactly what kind of on impression Miss Staunton produced upon me when I first met her. She was a strikingly handsome girl, tall and queen-like in figure, and with a certain haughtiness in her speech and bearing that kept one at a distance, though it by no means detracted from her undoubted charms. Our mutual introduction was a curious one. I had ordered Mr. Cunninghame's breakfast to be brought up at half-past eight, and being uncustomed to superintend the meals of my patients, I was in readiness to receive the tray from the maid at the door and take it into the sick room; but to my surprise the preparations for the meal proved far more elaborate than I had anticipated. Instead of the chambermaid with a tray, the old butler appeared to lay a table with covers for two, and I learned that Miss Staunton had announced her intention of breakfasting with the invalid.

I was just occupied in propping up Mr. Cunninghame's pillows to enable him to assume a more comfortable position, when Miss Staunton entered. Whether she had not been prepared to find a stranger there, or had been left in ignorance of my arrival, it is certain that she looked surprised and not altogether pleased at seeing me. Mr. Cunninghame greeted her with a cheery "Good-morning."

"Awfully good of you, Belle, to come and take pity on me," he said, in his bright, careless way. "This is Nurse Forsyth, you know, my newly-engaged keeper."

I gave an involuntary start at hearing this ominous description, and glanced quickly at Miss Staunton to see what effect it produced upon her. But she seemed to take it in the spirit in which it was uttered—namely, as a jest, and answered it accordingly with some remark about the necessity of there being some one on the premises capable of keeping him out of mischief. She then turned to me, and I fancied she was going to shake hands with me. But if her intention had been such she quickly altered it, and merely signified her recognition of my presence by a slight inclination of her head and a smile which was as cold and distant as a smile can possibly be.

Whatever the reason might be, I could not but feel that I had not impressed her favourably; and during the conversation that followed, though Clive Cunninghame made several ineffectual efforts to draw me into it, she all but ignored me, and showed plainly that my presence was distasteful so to her that I sought a pretext after a while to retire and leave the two to themselves.

As I closed the door behind me, I heard Mr. Cunninghame remark:—

"Well, Belle, you don't seem to be yourself this morning. What do you say to my nurse? She's a deuced good-looking girl, isn't she?"

What answer he received I cannot say, for I did not hear it.

I would wish the reader to understand that in relating this history nothing is further from my desire than to obtrude my own personality unnecessarily upon his notice. Writing as I do in the first person, I am naturally debarred from entering upon a description of my personal appearance, nor does it possess any bearing upon the events I am about to relate; but since my youth has more than once, both directly and indirectly, been referred to in the foregoing pages, I may, perhaps, be permitted to state that I was at that time barely three-and-twenty, that my experience as a nurse did not extend over three years, that I was of gentle birth, more or less alone in the world, and that I had chosen the profession in which I present myself to the reader partly from predilection and partly from a conviction that it offered my ambition a scope that was denied it in any other direction. As for any personal attractions that I may have possessed or still possess, I am, as I have said, the last person in the world qualified to satisfy public curiosity on that score. All I may say is that over the sofa in the Matron's room at Guy Hospital there is still hanging a portrait of my humble self executed in water-colours by a well-known Royal Academician, whom I once nursed through a severe illness, and to this picture I beg to refer anyone who may desire further information on the subject. From the fact that my friends consider it 'a striking likeness, but rather a poor painting,' while my enemies think it 'a sweet painting, but such a wretched portrait,' I have arrived at the conclusion that my own estimate of my looks is a fairly correct one. What that estimate is, of course, does not concern the reader.

At 10 o'clock the doctor arrived, and, after remaining for some time in private consultation with Mrs. Cunninghame, paid his visit to the patient. He was a short, fussy little man of over sixty, very different from the Dr. Crackenthorpe of my dreams, and evidently no favourite of Mr. Cunninghame's. Indeed, the latter showed so much irritability at the multifarious questions the doctor put to him while he examined and readjusted the bandages on the injured limb that I grew quite uneasy, and felt not a little relieved when the examining process was over.

"There, there," the doctor said, as he covered the leg and took off his spectacles, "that's over. You must have a little patience my dear boy. It's no use fretting and fuming. Such things heat the blood and affect the brain, and we must avoid all that just now. What we are in need of is rest and repose, and no foolish worrying about things we cannot alter."

The only answer Clive gave to this admonition was a scowl and the half-smothered ejaculation "Oh, damn!" for which later he apologised to me forthwith in a side-whisper, explaining that he couldn't help himself; the old fellow always gave him fits.

I followed the doctor out of the room, and he took me into the library, where Mrs. Cunninghame had received me the night before.

"We have a very ticklish case here, nurse," he began with a pompous air, "a case that requires a vast deal of patient watching. Mrs. Cunninghame, I understand, has informed you of the main facts."

"Mrs. Cunninghame has told me a very strange story," I said, "from which I gather that her son is a victim of suicidal mania."

"Precisely," rejoined the doctor. "The unhappy young man has made three distinct attempts to do away with himself. It is the usual outcome of melancholia of the acute type."

"It seems almost incomprehensible," I remarked, "in one so young and apparently so full of life and vigour."

Possibly he detected a note of incredulity in what I said, for he raised his eyebrows reprovingly.

"My dear young lady," he said, "do not be misled by appearances. Nothing is more deceptive in cases of this kind. Mr. Cunninghame is young, it is true. But there are certain influences which affect the young even more than they do the old, and we have here, I fear, an instance in point. Now I am about to impart to you certain information of a—hem—delicate nature, which may serve for your guidance. You will, of course, be good enough to receive it in the strictest confidence."

"Before you proceed, Dr. Crackenthorpe," I said, "I would like to say that I fear my services in this case will be of little value. To be quite plain, I do not think I possess the physical courage requisite for the duties I may be called upon to perform. It seems to me, if you will excuse my saying so, that Mr. Cunninghame is more in need of a male attendant than a nurse."

"Perhaps so, perhaps so," the doctor replied. "But there are difficulties which—er—in short, Mrs. Cunninghame positively refuses to listen to any such proposal. Of course, if you entertain any fears——"

"I fear nothing," I broke in, "beyond the responsibility of a duty which I may prove incompetent to fulfil. I am merely a trained sick-nurse, remember, Dr. Crackenthorpe. I have absolutely no experience of mental cases, and in an emergency should be utterly at a loss how to act."

"You are worrying yourself without cause, my dear young lady," the doctor said, "though it is very much to your credit that you do, very much so indeed. There is, however, for the present, I think, no danger of a repetition of the unhappy occurrences of which Mrs. Cunninghame has made mention to you. This injury of the foolish lad's has come as a godsend, inasmuch as it renders him for the time being incapable of doing himself further harm, provided only a proper watch is kept upon him. Whether with his physical recovery his mind will once more regain its normal condition depends, in my opinion, chiefly upon the influences with which he is in the meantime surrounded. The boy is of a highly impulsive nature, easily influenced for the good as well as for the bad, and his ultimate rehabilitation is, I venture to assert, merely a question of judicious treatment. Indeed, if his poor mother would follow my advice and take steps to remove the irritant cause—if I may so call it—of all this folly, I would undertake to guarantee the successful result."

"There is, then, some known cause for this strange mania?" I remarked.

"There is," he replied. "The foolish boy has formed a certain attachment, which is unhappily quite hopeless. It is desirable, as I intimated before, that you should be fully warned of this fact, as the young lady in question is, I am sorry to say, an inmate of this house, and were you left in ignorance of the true state of affairs you might unwittingly foster the very folly which is at the root of all the evil."

"Indeed!" I said, growing interested. "I presume it is Miss Staunton to whom you are referring?"

The doctor nodded his head gravely.

"And this attachment is quite hopeless?"

"Totally," he replied. "Miss Staunton is practically betrothed to another."

"Practically?" I said, struck by the strangeness of the term.

"In the most literal sense of the word," the doctor replied, with a benignant smile. "It is a somewhat complicated history," he went on, "and one into which I need not enter into detail here. Suffice it to say that Miss Staunton is the legal heiress of a very large fortune, which she will forfeit in toto unless she marries the man designated for her by the person whose wealth she thus conditionally inherits. That man is not Mr. Clive Cunninghame, ergo Mr. Clive Cunninghame's attainment is hopeless."

He spoke in the uncompromising tone of a man reciting a pet article of faith. For my part, I was not yet sufficiently well acquainted with the parties concerned in this peculiar history to experience more than a passing sense of interest in the romantic side of it, and I pursued the matter no further.

Dr. Crackenthorpe's remarks, however, regarding the improbability of Mr. Cunninghame making any further attempt upon his life while in his present helpless condition reassured me to some extent. What he said was indeed plausible enough. Moreover, I could not get over the sense of incredulity with which the whole history of this strange case inspired me, and, taking all things into consideration, I consented at last to remain with the patient pending his recovery from his accident, reserving my future course for later deliberation.

The more I now saw of Mr. Cunninghame the more fully I became persuaded that some extraordinary misapprehension must prevail in the minds of his friends regarding his mental condition. If he was suffering from melancholia, it could only be a melancholia of a strangely intermittent type, for I never saw him otherwise than cheerful, talkative, and disposed to all kinds of fun and raillery. If he was a lover, he certainly appeared to be anything but a despondent one. His whole manner was natural and unaffected, and he had that peculiarly careless, offhand air which characterises the majority of young Englishmen of the present day, particularly that large section of them whose interest centres more or less exclusively in matters of sport and athletic exercises. His favourite topics of conversation were cricket and the latest achievements in the prize ring, and his interest in these and all kindred matters was so intense and absorbing that it appeared simply impossible to believe it could be feigned. In short, if there existed anybody in the household of Glen Elc upon whom, to all appearances, the cares of life weighed lightly, it was Mr. Clive Cunninghame himself.

It would be idle to pretend that the information conveyed to me by Dr. Crackenthorpe regarding the alleged attachment of Clive Cunninghame to Miss Staunton had left me quite indifferent. I own without a blush to the natural female curiosity which such a communication made under such circumstances awakened in me. But if I were to say that I saw anything during the first few days of my sojourn at Glen Elc that in the slightest degree confirmed the worthy doctor's statement, I should certainly be committing myself to a falsehood. That young Mr. Cunninghame liked Belle Staunton, and took pleasure in her society, of that there could be no doubt. But there, so far as appearances went, everything ended. Clive's tone and manner towards this beautiful girl were those of an intimate comrade, nothing more.

As for Belle herself, her position, so far as I was then acquainted with it, can be summed up in a few words. She was an orphan, and of the two guardians in whose charge she had been left, Clive's mother was the only one surviving. She was barely 6 years old when her parents died; and until the age of 18 she had lived under the immediate care of a Mrs. Ruhmkorff, who was her mother's eldest sister, and Mrs. Cunninghame's co-guardian. It was from this lady, the widow of a wealthy stockbroker, that Miss Staunton had inherited the large fortune alluded to by Dr. Crackenthorpe.

The proviso attaching to this inheritance was, I confess, the subject of much curious speculation on my part, for I cannot conceive of anything more cruel than a benefit conferred upon such tyrannical terms. All I could learn in reference to it, however, was that the person who was destined to become Belle Staunton's husband was a nephew of Mrs. Ruhmkorff's husband, and a college friend of Clive Cunninghame. In the ordinary course of events this young man would have inherited his uncle's fortune, but Mr. Ruhmkorff, it appeared, had strongly disapproved of his sister's marriage, and had carried his anger so far as to leave every penny he possessed to his widow. It was natural, perhaps, under these circumstances, that the latter, being absolute mistress of her wealth, should in disposing of it have preferred her own kith and kin to that of her husband. By stipulating that poor Belle should marry the nephew whom her husband had disinherited, Mrs. Ruhmkorff, it was supposed, had merely effected a kind of compromise with her own conscience.

Such were the meagre details concerning this strange will and its consequences, which I was able, during the first two or three days of my sojourn at Glen Elc, to glean from the various members of the household. Of their accuracy I was, of course, unable to judge. One thing, however, there could be no doubt of, and that was that Miss Belle Staunton, by accepting a fortune on the terms indicated, had foregone her right to choose a husband after her own heart, and I felt not a little curious to see the man she was destined to marry.

It was a curiosity which I was soon to see satisfied.