第19章

I returned to the Inn at eight o'clock, purposely abstaining from waking Arthur, who was sleeping off the past night's excitement on one of my friend's sofas.A suspicion had occurred to me as soon as I was alone in my bedroom, which made me resolve that Holliday and the stranger whose life he had saved should not meet again, if I could prevent it.I have already alluded to certain reports, or scandals, which I knew of, relating to the early life of Arthur's father.While I was thinking, in my bed, of what had passed at the Inn - of the change in the student's pulse when he heard the name of Holliday; of the resemblance of expression that I had discovered between his face and Arthur's; of the emphasis he had laid on those three words, 'my own brother;' and of his incomprehensible acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy - while I was thinking of these things, the reports I have mentioned suddenly flew into my mind, and linked themselves fast to the chain of my previous reflections.Something within me whispered, 'It is best that those two young men should not meet again.' I felt it before I slept; I felt it when I woke; and I went, as I told you, alone to the Inn the next morning.

I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my nameless patient again.He had been gone nearly an hour when I inquired for him.

I have now told you everything that I know for certain, in relation to the man whom I brought back to life in the double-bedded room of the Inn at Doncaster.What I have next to add is matter for inference and surmise, and is not, strictly speaking, matter of fact.

I have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned out to be strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it as more than probable that Arthur Holliday would marry the young lady who had given him the water-colour drawing of the landscape.That marriage took place a little more than a year after the events occurred which I have just been relating.The young couple came to live in the neighbourhood in which I was then established in practice.I was present at the wedding, and was rather surprised to find that Arthur was singularly reserved with me, both beforeand after his marriage, on the subject of the young lady's prior engagement.He only referred to it once, when we were alone, merely telling me, on that occasion, that his wife had done all that honour and duty required of her in the matter, and that the engagement had been broken off with the full approval of her parents.I never heard more from him than this.For three years he and his wife lived together happily. At the expiration of that time, the symptoms of a serious illness first declared themselves in Mrs.Arthur Holliday.It turned out to be a long, lingering, hopeless malady.I attended her throughout.We had been great friends when she was well, and we became more attached to each other than ever when she was ill.I had many long and interesting conversations with her in the intervals when she suffered least.The result of one of these conversations I may briefly relate, leaving you to draw any inferences from it that you please.

The interview to which I refer, occurred shortly before her death.I called one evening, as usual, and found her alone, with a look in her eyes which told me that she had been crying.She only informed me at first, that she had been depressed in spirits; but, by little and little, she became more communicative, and confessed to me that she had been looking over some old letters, which had been addressed to her, before she had seen Arthur, by a man to whom she had been engaged to be married.I asked her how the engagement came to be broken off.She replied that it had not been broken off, but that it had died out in a very mysterious way.The person to whom she was engaged - her first love, she called him - was very poor, and there was no immediate prospect of their being married.He followed my profession, and went abroad to study.They had corresponded regularly, until the time when, as she believed, he had returned to England.From that period she heard no more of him.He was of a fretful, sensitive temperament; and she feared that she might have inadvertently done or said something that offended him.However that might be, he had never written to her again; and, after waiting a year, she had married Arthur.I asked when the first estrangement had begun, and found that the time at which she ceased to hear anything of her first lover exactly corresponded with the time at which I had been called in to mymysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn.

A fortnight after that conversation, she died.In course of time, Arthur married again.Of late years, he has lived principally in London, and I have seen little or nothing of him.

I have many years to pass over before I can approach to anything like a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative.And even when that later period is reached, the little that I have to say will not occupy your attention for more than a few minutes.Between six and seven years ago, the gentleman to whom I introduced you in this room, came to me, with good professional recommendations, to fill the position of my assistant.We met, not like strangers, but like friends - the only difference between us being, that I was very much surprised to see him, and that he did not appear to be at all surprised to see me.If he was my son or my brother, I believe he could not be fonder of me than he is; but he has never volunteered any confidences since he has been here, on the subject of his past life.I saw something that was familiar to me in his face when we first met; and yet it was also something that suggested the idea of change.I had a notion once that my patient at the Inn might be a natural son of Mr.Holliday's; I had another idea that he might also have been the man who was engaged to Arthur's first wife; and I have a third idea, still clinging to me, that Mr.Lorn is the only man in England who could really enlighten me, if he chose, on both those doubtful points.His hair is not black, now, and his eyes are dimmer than the piercing eyes that I remember, but, for all that, he is very like the nameless medical student of my young days - very like him.And, sometimes, when I come home late at night, and find him asleep, and wake him, he looks, in coming to, wonderfully like the stranger at Doncaster, as he raised himself in the bed on that memorable night!

The Doctor paused.Mr.Goodchild, who had been following every word that fell from his lips up to this time, leaned forward eagerly to ask a question.Before he could say a word, the latch of the door was raised, without any warning sound of footsteps in the passage outside.A long, white, bony hand appeared through the opening, gently pushing the door, which was prevented from working freely on its hinges by a fold in thecarpet under it.

'That hand!Look at that hand, Doctor!' said Mr.Goodchild, touching him.

At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr.Goodchild, and whispered to him, significantly:

'Hush! he has come back.'