Chapter XI: Behind the Scenes

When Mrs. Stothard said, "Oh yes, you will!" as comment upon Annette Derinzy's outspoken declaration that she would not go down to dinner, she probably knew that she had grounds for the assertion. At all events, the result proved her to be right. The dinner-bell clanged out, pealing through the crazy tumble-down Tower, and awaking all the echoes lying in wait in that ramshackle building; and ere the reverberation of the noise had ceased, the door of Miss Derinzy's bedroom was wide open. Annette's back had been turned to it, and when she wheeled round, her attention attracted by the current of air which rushed in and disarranged a muslin scarf which she wore round her shoulders, she saw that Mrs. Stothard was busily engaged at a chest of drawers standing in a somewhat remote corner of the room. Annette was silent, but she glanced stealthily and shiftily out of the corners of her eyes. Mrs. Stothard still remained immersed in her occupation. The girl shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, hesitating, dallying; then shook herself together, as it were, and seeing she was still unnoticed, with a low chuckle silently and swiftly passed through the doorway and descended the stairs.

In seaside places such as Beachborough the evenings in late summer are chilly. There was a handful of fire in the dining-room grate, and while Miss Annette was sulking upstairs, and deliberating whether she should or should not come down, Captain Derinzy was standing on the rug with his back to the grate, and from that post of vantage was haranguing his wife and his guest--Dr. Wainwright--in his own peculiar way. When he was alone with his wife the Captain was silent and submissive; when a third person was present, and he knew that a curtain-lecture was the worst he had to dread, he was loquacious and imperative.

"And again I say to you, Wainwright," said he, in continuance of some previous conversation, "she's got to that pitch now that she isn't to be borne. I can stand a good deal--no man more so; they used to say, when I was on the Committee of the Windham, that I had a--a--what was it?--judicial mind; that was what they called it, a judicial mind--but I can't stand this girl and her tempers, and so something must be done; and there's an end of it, Wainwright!"

There are some men who are never called by any but their christian-names, and those often familiarly abbreviated, by their most promiscuous acquaintance. There are others in whose appearance and manners something forbids their interlocutors ever dispensing with their courtesy titles. Dr. Wainwright, one would have said, undoubtedly belonged to the latter class. He was a tall man, standing over six feet in height, with a high bald forehead, large features, square jaw, and deep piercing gray eyes. His manners were placidly courtly, his naturally sonorous voice was skilfully modulated, and there was an unmistakable air of latent strength about him, a sort of consciousness of the possession of certain power, you could not tell what. He might have been a duke, or a philosopher in easy circumstances, or a "man in authority, having servants under him." Quiet, dignified, and bland, he held his own amongst all sorts and conditions of men, and with the exception of two or three intimates of a quarter of a century's standing, Captain Derinzy was probably the only person living who would have thought of calling him "Wainwright." The Doctor winced a little at the repetition of the familiarity, but beyond that took no notice of it.

"My dear Captain Derinzy," said he, after a moment's pause, "I can perfectly appreciate your feelings. I have not the least doubt that Miss Derinzy's unfortunate illness is the source of great annoyance to you. Still, if you are indisposed to run certain risks, which, as I have explained to Mrs. Derinzy----"

"I thought by this time, Dr. Wainwright," interrupted the lady, "you would have seen the utter futility of paying the least attention to anything which Captain Derinzy may say!"

"My love!" murmured the Captain.

"He is as fully impressed as any of us," continued Mrs. Derinzy, without taking the least notice of her husband, "with the necessity of our pursuing the course we have agreed upon; but he has a passion for hearing his own voice; and as he knows that I never listen to him, he is only too glad to find someone who will."

"No, no! Look here, Wainwright," said the Captain. "It's all very well, you know, but Mrs. Derinzy don't put the thing quite fairly. She's a woman, you know, and it's natural for women to be dull and left alone, and all that; but a man's a different thing. He requires----"

Captain Derinzy did not finish his sentence as to a man's requirements, for Dr. Wainwright's quick ear had caught the sound of an approaching footstep, and he held up his hand and raised his eyebrows in warning, only in time to stop his voluble host as the door opened and Annette appeared.

As she entered the room Dr. Wainwright immediately faced her. There was no mistaking his figure and presence, even if she had not expected to find him there. Nevertheless, her first idea was to close the door and run away. But she would scarcely have had the opportunity of doing this, however much she might have wished it; for the Doctor at once stepped across the room, and had taken her hand in his, and was bowing over it in his old-fashioned courtly way, almost before she was aware of it.

"There is no occasion to ask after your health, Miss Annette," he said in his soft pleasant tone. "One has only to look at you to have one's pleasantest hopes confirmed. You and the Dorsetshire air do credit to each other."

"I am quite well," said Annette shortly, taking her hand from his.

"Here's dinner!" said the Captain. "You see, we don't make a stranger of you, Wainwright--at least, Mrs. Derinzy doesn't. There's a dam prejudice in this house against using the drawing-room; so we sit stiving in this infernal place, 'parlour, and kitchen, and all,' and---- Where will you sit?"

Sentence abruptly concluded in consequence of unmistakable manifestations of his wife's being unable to put up with him any longer.

"Thank you, Captain Derinzy, I'll sit over here, if you please," said the Doctor, with an extra dash of stiffness in his manner; "opposite Miss Annette; and, if you'll permit me, I will move these flowers a little on one side, that I may get a better view of her."

"Why do you always stare at me?" said Annette, with a defiant air.

"Do I stare?" asked Dr. Wainwright. "If I do, I am exceedingly rude, and ought to know better. But haven't you used the wrong word, my dear young lady? I look at you, perhaps; but I hope I don't stare."

"Looking and staring are all the same. I hate to be looked at!"

"You are the very first girl I ever heard give utterance to that sentiment," said the Doctor cheerily; "and you'll soon outgrow such ideas."

"I daresay we shall hear no more of them after her cousin Paul has been staying with us," said Mrs. Derinzy. "We expect Paul soon now, Doctor."

"I have heard a good deal of Mr. Paul from my son, who is in the same office with him. They seem to be great allies, and George speaks in the highest terms of Mr. Paul."

"Is your son's name George?" asked Annette.

"Yes."

"Your own name is not George?"

"No; mine is Philip."

"I'm glad it is not the same as your son's."

The Doctor and Mrs. Derinzy exchanged glances, and were silent; but Captain Derinzy, who all his life had been notorious for his obtuseness in taking a hint, said:

"Why, what a ridick'lous thing you are sayin', Annette! Why are you glad the Doctor's son's name's not the same as his? What on earth difference could it make to you?"

"It could not make any difference to me," said the girl quietly; "only, I don't know why, I think I should wish to like Dr. Wainwright's son, and--and----"

"And the less he is like his father the greater the chance of your doing so; isn't that it, Miss Annette?" asked the Doctor, with his pleasant smile.

"Yes," said Annette, looking him straight in the face, "you're quite right; that is it."

This blunt communication was received by those who heard it after very different fashions. Mrs. Derinzy knit her brows, and, after looking savagely at her niece, shrugged her shoulders at the Doctor, as much as to say, "What could you expect?" Captain Derinzy laid down his knife and fork, and muttered, "Oh, dam!" apparently in confidence to his plate. The Doctor alone maintained his equanimity unimpaired. There was a pause--considering the tremendous character of the last remark--a very short pause--and then he said:

"Now, there's an instance of the injustice which is done by your sex, Mrs. Derinzy, to ours. Miss Netty--with an honesty which is _impayable_, and which, if there were a little more of it in polite society, would go far to the explosion of what Mr. Carlyle calls 'shams and wind-bags'--says she doesn't like me. She gives no reason, you observe; so that I am relegated to the same position as another member of our profession--Dr. Fell--who also was misliked, and equally without reason alleged."

"I could tell you the reasons for my disliking you," said Annette.

It was extraordinary, the change which had come over her face. The cheeks were full-blooded, the eyes suffused and starting from her head, the hair pushed back, the whole look fierce and defiant.

"Could you?" said the Doctor; then, after looking up at her, adding very quickly, "Ah, but you must not. I don't want to hear a list of my shortcomings, or a catalogue of my faults. I'm too old to make up for the one or get rid of the other; and---- Mrs. Derinzy, I must congratulate you on your cook. It is rare indeed, in what I may be pardoned in calling these out-of-the-way regions, that one comes across anything like this _filet de sole_."

He turned his face towards his hostess as he said these words, and spoke in her direction, but he scarcely moved his eyes from direct contemplation of Annette. The girl's face, with the same flush on it, was looking down, and she seemed to be working nervously with her hands, rapidly intertwining and then separating them, under the table.

Captain Derinzy, at the Doctor's last remark, had given vent to a very curious sound, half-sigh of self-commiseration, half a grunt of contempt. He had not learned much in the half-century during which he had adorned life--his natural gifts had been small, and he had not taken much trouble to improve upon them--but one thing he had arrived at, and that was an appreciation of good cooking. He not merely knew the difference between good and bad dishes--in itself by no means a common acquirement--but he had a knowledge of the arcana of the art, and great high-priests whose temples were the kitchens of London clubs had taken his opinion on the merits of various _plats_.

"Well," he said, after a moment, "that's a funny thing! I know you, Wainwright. You're not the kind of fellow to go in for politeness, and all that kind of thing--I mean, of course, flummery, you know, and all that--and yet you say we've got a good cook, and this is nice _filet de sole_! Why, there are fellows used to tell you about doctors, you know--'Oh yes, it's all very fine,' they used to say, 'for doctors to tell you not to eat this, and not to drink that, and all the time they're regular _gourmets_, don't you know!' Well, I think that's all stuff, for my part. They may know all very well about broth and beef-tea, and all that sort of beastliness that they give people when they're getting better; but I only knew one of 'em that ever knew anything really about cooking, and he was an old fellow who'd been out in India, and was a C.B., or something of that sort; and he told the cook at Windham how to make a curry--peculiar kind of thing, quite different from what you get mostly--that was delicious, by Jove! As for this stuff," continued the Captain, taking up a portion of the lauded filet on the end of his fork, and eyeing it with great disgust, "it's dry and tough and leathery, and tastes like badly-baked flannel-waistcoat, by Jove!"

During this speech Dr. Wainwright, although his polite attention to it had been obvious, had scarcely removed his glance from Annette. It remained on her as he said, turning his face in the Captain's direction, and laughing heartily:

"I never tasted badly-baked flannel-waistcoat, Captain Derinzy, and I still stand up for the excellence of the _filet_. However, I'm not going to be led into giving any opinion whether we're good judges of good living, or rather whether we exemplify the well-known exceptions which prove rules by not practising what we preach. But one thing can't be denied--that we hear of very curious stories about fancies in eating and drinking. I heard of one only the other day, of an old gentleman who had had the same breakfast for thirty years; and what do you think, Mrs. Derinzy, were its component parts?"

Mrs. Derinzy, also curiously observant of Annette, roused from her quiet watchfulness, and gave herself up to guessing. Tea, coffee, milk, cream, porridge, toast, ham, eggs, she suggested; while claret, brandy-and-soda, anchovy, devilled anything, and bitter beer in a tankard, were proposed by her husband. The Doctor shook his head at all these items, grimly saying:

"What should you say to Irish stew and hot whisky-and-water?"

"Heavens!" cried Mrs. Derinzy.

"For breakfast?" asked the Captain.

"For breakfast; and eaten in bed every day for thirty years!"

"Oh, dam!" said the Captain. "If you hadn't told the story, Wainwright, I shouldn't have believed it. Of course, if you say so, it is so; but the fellow must have been off his head--mad!"

Before he had uttered the last word Mrs. Derinzy, who seemed to have an idea of what was coming, had stretched out her hand towards her husband in warning, while even Dr. Wainwright moved uncomfortably on his chair. Had Annette heard it? Little doubt of that. She looked up slyly, very slyly, with a half-stealthy, half-searching glance at the Doctor; then raising her head, glared defiantly at her aunt, as though marking whether she were affected by the suggestion. She looked long and earnestly, then finding that Mrs. Derinzy's attention was concentrated on her, she withdrew her glance, and relapsed into her former stolid condition.

So the dinner progressed--pleasantly to Captain Derinzy, as a break in the monotony of his life. Not merely did Mrs. Derinzy, who, in her capacity of housekeeper, kept the keys of the cellar and exercised a rigorous economy in that department--not merely did she increase both the quality and quantity of the wine supplied to the table, but she refrained from joining in the conversation more than was absolutely demanded of her by politeness, and consequently the Captain was able to direct it into those channels which most delighted him. It is needless to say that those channels ran with small-talk and fashionable gossip, and petty details of that London life which he had once so thoroughly enjoyed, and from which he was now so unwillingly exiled. The Captain found his interlocutor perfectly able to converse on these his favourite topics. One might have thought that Dr. Wainwright had nothing better to do than to flutter from club to mess-room, and from mess-room to boudoir, so well was he up in the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the day, adapting his phraseology, his voice, and manner to the fashion of the times. The Captain was delighted; great names, once familiar in his mouth as household words, but the mention of which he had not heard for ages, were once more ringing in his ears; the conversation seemed to possess the old smoking-room and barrack flavour so dear to him once, so dead to him of late; and while under its spell, his manner renewed its ancient swagger and his voice its old roll. He yet asked himself how the man whom he had hitherto only known as the sober sedate physician could have recalled such sentiments or borne so essential a part in their discussion.

At length the Doctor's anecdotes commenced to flag, and the Doctor himself was obviously seeking for an opportunity of breaking off the conversation. Mrs. Derinzy, who had been apparently dropping off to sleep, roused up with the declining voices, and catching a peculiar expression in the Doctor's face, was on the alert in an instant. That peculiar expression was a glance towards Annette, accompanied by a significant elevation of the eyebrows, following immediately upon which Dr. Wainwright said:

"And now I must drop this charming conversation which we have had, my dear Captain Derinzy, and, falling back into my professional character, must declare that it is time for us to adjourn.--Beauty sleep, my dear Miss Netty"--walking quickly round and laying his hand lightly on her shoulder--lightly, though she quivered under the touch, and rose at once from her seat--"beauty sleep is not to be had after twelve, they tell us; and though you don't require it, and though you said you didn't like to be looked at--oh, Miss Netty!--yet I think we're all of us sufficiently tired to wish for it to-night. So goodnight! You don't mind shaking hands with me, though you were cruel enough to say you disliked me; goodnight.--Goodnight, Mrs. Derinzy; you feel stronger to-night? Let me feel your pulse for one moment." Then in a rapid undertone to her, "Do you go with her, while I speak a word to Mrs. Stothard. Don't leave till she returns." Again aloud, "Goodnight."

The Captain was making a final foray among the decanters as Mrs. Derinzy and Annette, closely followed by Dr. Wainwright, passed out of the door, immediately on the other side of which Mrs. Stothard was standing. She was about to follow the ladies, but a sign from the Doctor arrested her, and she let them pass on, remaining behind with him. He said but very few words to her, and those in a muttered undertone, but she understood them apparently, nodded her reply, and hurried away upstairs.

"Now, Miss Derinzy, get to bed; do you hear? This is the last time I shall speak to you; next time I shall _make_ you."

The tone in which these words are said is very unlike Mrs. Stothard's usual tone; but it is Mrs. Stothard's voice and it is Mrs. Stothard herself--equipped in a tight linen jacket fitting her closely and without any superfluity of material, and a short clinging petticoat--who is standing by the bed on which Annette is seated.

"Come, do you hear me?" she repeats, taking the girl by the shoulder; "undress now, and get into bed. We're ever so late as it is."

But the girl sits stolidly gazing before her, and never moving a muscle.

Then Mrs. Stothard bends down and looks into her face--looks long and earnestly, the girl never flinching the while--and comes back to her upright position, with her cheeks a little paler and her mouth a little more set.

"The doctor was right," she mutters between her teeth; "there's one coming on to-night, and a bad one, too, I fancy."

She goes to a drawer, takes out some article, and lays it on the bed hard by. The girl shoots a stealthy glance out from under her eyelids, sees what is done, sees what is fetched, and drops her eyes again on to the floor.

"You won't! you've heard me, you know, Annette! You won't undress! Come, then, you shall!"

Mrs. Stothard, bending over the girl, undoes the top button of her dress, the second button, the third. The fourth is not so easily undone, and Mrs. Stothard shifts her position, comes round, and kneels in front of her. Then, with a low long howl, more like that of a beast at bay than a human creature, the girl dashes at her throat and bears her to the ground. A bad time for the nurse, this. The attack is so sudden, that for one moment she is overpowered; the next her presence of mind returns, and with it her strength of wrist. Her hands are wound in the girl's long hair then floating down her back; she tears at it with all her force, until the distorted face, which had been glaring into hers, is wrenched backward, and under torture the hand-grip on her throat is relaxed. Then she slips herself from underneath her foe and closes with her. They are both on the ground, locked in each other's arms, and struggling furiously, what is more wonderful silently, for, save their deep breathing, neither emits a sound, when the door opens softly and Dr. Wainwright enters. Annette's face is towards him: her eyes meet his, and the wild rage dies out of them, to be succeeded by a glance of fear and horror; and her grasp relaxes and her arms fall helplessly by her sides, and she moans in a low voice.

"It is here again! Oh my God, it is here again!"

"And only here just in time, apparently, Mrs. Stothard," says the doctor, helping the nurse to rise. "This is a very bad attack. Just assist me to put this on her," he added, taking the _camisole de force_ from off the bed, and putting it over Annette's head as she sat rigid on the floor; "and keep it on all night, please. A very bad attack indeed."

"Bad attack!" said Mrs. Stothard; "I'm glad you've seen it, Dr. Wainwright. You never would believe me before. But I've often told you, in all your practice you've got no worse case than that she-devil there. And yet these fools here think she will be cured!"

"Strong language, strong language, Mrs. Stothard," said the doctor deprecatingly. "But I don't think you're far out in what you say; I don't, indeed!"