CHAPTER XX

But as Alice went up the many steps towards the gloomy entrance, she felt unaccountably somewhat less assured. There was no mistaking the house, because a policeman had directed her to the very steps; and with some surprise she noticed there was no plate explaining the doctor’s whereabouts.

“Let’s see,” said Alice to herself. “A doctor writes ‘doctor’ before his name. And what are those other men--‘surgeons’? They’ve less about them, I believe, because they’re plain Mister. Perhaps he’s a surgeon, and so doesn’t trouble about putting it outside. Private means, maybe.”

With the assurance, therefore, of ignorance, she advanced and rang the bell.

The door was opened swiftly, noiselessly, and inside stood one--not Everard, but one trained to a silent perfection, even as he.

“Can I see the doctor?”

It was well or ill for Alice that at this moment she remembered the card--Timothy’s card that Marigold had given her when she should have come to Marble House before, on Timothy’s pathetic little message. It was still in her pocket, neatly wrapped in white paper just as then, and, with the instinct that she wasn’t going to get in, and with the firm determination that she would do so, she produced it.

It had the decided effect, when he had looked at it back and front, of admitting her into the large hall with which you are already well acquainted. And he went off to the west wing, leaving her sitting on an uncomfortably high chair, and everything around quite dark and gloomy.

“Poor man!” said she, with that ignorant pity we so often feel for our neighbours. “No wife, therefore no taste! Now, who in their right senses would furnish a house like this? Plenty of money--piles, I should say, from the look of things--but nothing homely. Rather have the cottage than this! Now, if only the Princess would take a fancy to him--make love to _him_ instead of to his holiness--all this would be kicked out of the door in a month’s time, or--or made to look different. A very good idea! I’ll work upon it. He’s taken an interest in her ever since the first--I know, because I’ve seen him looking at her--but she was so taken up with Patches she never saw; and, besides, a sensible man never did interest her--never any one, unless she could be mimicking about like them.”

Here the doorkeeper re-entered the hall.

“The Master is busy. He cannot see you.”

The tone was as brusque and decided as possible, but Alice, being in earnest, paid no heed to it.

“I _must_ see him. It’s very important. Something very serious has happened.”

“It is no use, I’m afraid. He cannot see you.”

“But he must--I really must see him. It is about something that happened this morning, and he knows nothing about it at all.”

“I should advise you to go.”

“I won’t go,” she said stubbornly.

“If you won’t go,” said he politely, “the only thing I can do is to go back and get orders to put you out forcibly.”

“All right, go!” said Alice, the spirit of the lower orders beginning to assert itself, and a sharp suspicion rising in her about the morning’s thief.

For one minute he stood waiting her decision, but it did not alter, and he went away.

And Alice, suspicion being roused in her, found it very quickly followed by dislike. Why should an honest man be too busy to see an honest woman? Her mind could not perceive such limitations to the path of honesty.

Then again the door to the west wing opened, and out came Mr Barringcourt, followed by the servant.

“What is it?”

The shadowy eyes were bent on her--steel shining through the shadow.

“Timothy’s dead--and my--my niece has collapsed altogether. She’s--dangerously ill.”

“Hysterical, you mean. Leave her alone--she’ll be all right in the morning.”

“Look here, sir, I know my niece. She isn’t hysterical, though she may be flighty. And she’s got a nasty wound on her neck--nails, sir--human nails, I call them.”

“You are very melodramatic, you beggar-folk!” he said, turning to leave her.

“We’re not beggar-folk. I’ll tell you what, she’s a better born woman than you are a man--now!”

“Very possibly--very possibly. Is this all you’ve come to tell me?”

“No; I came, honestly believing you an honest doctor, to ask you to come and see her.”

“I don’t understand women’s ailments--never studied them. A douche of cold water is all I can think of to recommend.”

“You big brute!” said Alice, and such a healthily untrained voice had never, never been heard in Marble House before.

“I told your niece, or your daughter, or whatever she is,” he said, suddenly turning again to her and bending his dark eyes to hers; “I told her she was not to nurse Timothy. She persisted in the teeth of everything--first snubs, then, I may say, insults. She has nursed him--and incidentally she fell in love with me. I tell you all the phases of her disease, so that in nursing her you may understand the symptoms. She lost him, he was bound to die from the beginning. I told her so. And now she has lost me, I suppose, and sent you to bring me back. But I am not coming, Aunt Alice. She will die of consumption--slowly--very slowly. You’ll have plenty of time to get used to it, so don’t look so pale. And she has no one but herself to thank for it. It used to irritate me to see her in the room.”

“You’re a liar! You loved her more than she loved you.”

“Oh! has she told you of--of this morning?”

“No, but I guessed. You’re a thief, too.”

Alice was thinking of the picture, for she had not heard of its history.

“I’m everything that’s bad. You can tell your niece so--it may cure her of her infatuation.”

“I’ll tell her nothing. She isn’t the one to break her heart over any man, though it pleases you to think so. But just you wait, sir, and one of these nice days you’ll jump finely. Just you wait, and even a douche of cold water won’t cure _you_.”

And so Alice, strung to the fine pitch of irony, turned her back and trudged away through the echoing hall, and the door closed behind her.

Then from there, pulling herself together, for the interview, short as it was, had terribly upset her, she went on to Crescent Park. Mrs Wiggs received the news as most of her class, and was sent home in a cab loudly bemoaning.

And Marigold heard her get out of the conveyance and sob loudly as she entered the house, where a neighbour was now awaiting. And Marigold shivered.

But Alice walked home in the dusk, and crossing the large deserted space before the Temple, she met St Armand. He knew her, though only having seen her once; and not only that, he must have known her name.

“Good-evening, Alice. Is anything wrong at your place?”

Oh! balm on wounds, to be spoken to with such sympathetic interest by one gentleman when so rudely snubbed by another.

“Wrong?” she cried, breaking down despite her efforts. “Mistress is ill. The little boy she was nursing died this morning, and she’s quite broken down.”

“Ah! and the little boy had a doctor, I believe--a quack doctor?”

“Yes, indeed; a hateful man--a hypocrite who took everybody in.”

“What’s the matter with your mistress?”

“Why, he says she’s got consumption. But I can’t bear to think of it--indeed I can’t.”

“He knows nothing. He makes as many mistakes as a fashionable doctor.”

“How do you know she hasn’t?” said Alice, longing to be assured.

“Well, I’m not quite sure. But if I saw her I could easily tell.”

“Are you a doctor too, then?”

“No; but I know as much about it as he does--perhaps more. He hasn’t the sympathy with women that I have. He hasn’t got a wife, you see.”

Alice, remembering the Master’s words, felt what an admirable thing a wife must be.

“Come and see her, will you?” she asked bluntly.

“When did the little boy die?”

“This morning.”

“Oh! bless me, the symptoms haven’t had time to develop yet. When did she last see the doctor?”

“This morning, too.”

“Ah! he has probably an excellent reason for thinking she has consumption then. It will enable him to still come to see her.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Alice. “He spoke to-night as no godly gentleman ever would have done, and he’ll never cross our threshold again. But wait!” she went on triumphantly; “wait! When he finds out who he’s been insulting and flinging impudence at, he may alter his tone. The hignoramus!”

“Can it really be true he took your mistress for nothing better than a beggar girl?”

“Of course. And he was too proud to fall in love with her. Too proud! He! with an old hull of a house, furnished with nothing else but odds and ends of furniture meant for a musty museum. If he’d known she was a Princess, he’d have jumped at her--though, no doubt, when it came to the test, she’d have been too proud to marry him. Hignoramus!”

“He or she?”

“Oh, he! calling her my ‘niece’ or my ‘daughter’.” (Alice minced the words as it is only fair to Mr Barringcourt to say he never did do.) “But that is the worst of being trained like me in the best houses. You get out of the way of giving cheek when it’s needed.”

“Any one could see you have been most admirably trained.”

“My word! the old housekeeper at Ellel Palace was a terror to the worst of us.”

“Oh! ah! the Princess Marigold has very well disguised herself.”

“Holy Serpent! what have I told you?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all, my good woman. And, if you have, I am not likely to repeat it. Now I must go. But see--here’s my address. If your mistress is no better to-morrow, send for me, and I’ll provide the very best physicians.”