The Ghost by Arnold Bennett (best ereader for students txt) 📖

fun of his idea of a mysterious complaint, and I asked him for a catalogue of his symptoms. I perceived that he and Rosa must have previously arranged that I should be requested to become his doctor.

"There are no symptoms," he replied, "except a gradual loss of vitality. But examine me."

I did so most carefully, testing the main organs, and subjecting him to a severe cross-examination.

"Well?" he said, as, after I had finished, I sat down to cogitate.

"Well, Monsieur Alresca, all I can say is that your fancy is too lively. That is what you suffer from, an excitable fan--"

"Stay, my friend," he interrupted me with a firm gesture. "Before you go any further, let me entreat you to be frank. Without absolute candor nothing can be done. I think I am a tolerable judge of faces, and I can read in yours the fact that my condition has puzzled you."

I paused, taken aback. It had puzzled me. I thought of all that Rosetta Rosa had said, and I hesitated. Then I made up my mind.

"I yield," I responded. "You are not an ordinary man, and it was absurd of me to treat you as one. Absolute candor is, as you say, essential, and so I'll confess that your case does puzzle me. There is no organic disease, but there is a quite unaccountable organic weakness--a weakness which fifty broken thighs would not explain. I must observe, and endeavor to discover the cause. In the meantime I have only one piece of advice. You know that in certain cases we have to tell women patients that a successful issue depends on their own willpower: I say the same thing to you."

"Receive my thanks," he said. "You have acted as I hoped. As for the willpower, that is another matter," and a faint smile crossed his handsome, melancholy face.

I rose to leave. It was nearly three o'clock.

"Give me a few moments longer. I have a favor to ask."

After speaking these words he closed his eyes, as though to recall the opening sentences of a carefully prepared speech.

"I am entirely at your service," I murmured.

"Mr. Foster," he began, "you are a young man of brilliant accomplishments, at the commencement of your career. Doubtless you have made your plans for the immediate future, and I feel quite sure that those plans do not include any special attendance upon myself, whom until the other day you had never met. I am a stranger to you, and on the part of a stranger it would be presumptuous to ask you to alter your plans. Nevertheless, I am at this moment capable of that presumption. In my life I have not often made requests, but such requests as I have made have never been refused. I hope that my good fortune in this respect may continue. Mr. Foster, I wish to leave England. I wish to die in my own place--"

I shrugged my shoulders in protest against the word "die."

"If you prefer it, I wish to live in my own place. Will you accompany me as companion? I am convinced that we should suit each other--that I should derive benefit from your skill and pleasure from your society, while you--you would tolerate the whims and eccentricities of my middle age. We need not discuss terms; you would merely name your fee."

There was, as a matter of fact, no reason in the world why I should have agreed to this suggestion of Alresca's. As he himself had said, we were strangers, and I was under no obligation to him of any kind.

Yet at once I felt an impulse to accept his proposal. Whence that impulse sprang I cannot say. Perhaps from the aspect of an adventure that the affair had. Perhaps from the vague idea that by attaching myself to Alresca I should be brought again into contact with Rosetta Rosa. Certainly I admired him immensely. None who knew him could avoid doing so. Already, indeed, I had for him a feeling akin to affection.

"I see by your face," he said, "that you are not altogether unwilling. You accept?"

"With pleasure;" and I smiled with the pleasure I felt.

But it seemed to me that I gave the answer independently of my own volition. The words were uttered almost before I knew.

"It is very good of you."

"Not at all," I said. "I have made no plans, and therefore nothing will be disarranged. Further, I count it an honor; and, moreover, your 'case'--pardon the word--interests me deeply. Where do you wish to go?"

"To Bruges, of course."

He seemed a little surprised that I should ask the question.

"Bruges," he went on, "that dear and wonderful old city of Flanders, is the place of my birth. You have visited it?"

"No," I said, "but I have often heard that it is the most picturesque city in Europe, and I should like to see it awfully."

"There is nothing in the world like Bruges," he said. "Bruges the Dead they call it; a fit spot in which to die."

"If you talk like that I shall reconsider my decision."

"Pardon, pardon!" he laughed, suddenly wearing an appearance of gaiety. "I am happier now. When can we go? To-morrow? Let it be to-morrow."

"Impossible," I said. "The idea of a man whose thigh was broken less than a fortnight since taking a sea voyage to-morrow! Do you know that under the most favorable circumstances it will be another five or six weeks before the bone unites, and that even then the greatest care will be necessary?"

His gaiety passed.

"Five more weeks here?"

"I fear so."

"But our agreement shall come into operation at once. You will visit me daily? Rather, you will live here?"

"If it pleases you. I am sure I shall be charmed to live here."

"Let the time go quickly--let it fly! Ah, Mr. Foster, you will like Bruges. It is the most dignified of cities. It has the picturesqueness of Nuremburg, the waterways of Amsterdam, the squares of Turin, the monuments of Perugia, the cafes of Florence, and the smells of Cologne. I have an old house there of the seventeenth century; it is on the Quai des Augustins."

"A family affair?" I questioned.

"No; I bought it only a few years ago from a friend. I fear I cannot boast of much family. My mother made lace, my father was a schoolmaster. They are both dead, and I have no relatives."

Somewhere in the building a clock struck three, and at that instant there was a tap at the door, and Alresca's valet discreetly entered.

"Monsieur rang?"

"No, Alexis. Leave us."

Comprehending that it was at last Alresca's hour for retiring, I rose to leave, and called the man back.

"Good night, dear friend," said Alresca, pressing my hand. "I shall expect you to-morrow, and in the meantime a room shall be prepared for you. Au revoir."

Alexis conducted me to the door. As he opened it he made a civil remark about the beauty of the night. I glanced at his face.

"You are English, aren't you?" I asked him.

"Yes, sir."

"I only ask because Alexis is such a peculiar name for an Englishman."

"It is merely a name given to me by Monsieur Alresca when I entered his service several years ago. My name is John Smedley."

"Well, Mr. Smedley," I said, putting half a sovereign into his hand, "I perceive that you are a man of intelligence."

"Hope so, sir."

"I am a doctor, and to-morrow, as I dare say you heard, I am coming to live here with your master in order to attend him medically."

"Yes, sir."

"He says he is suffering from some mysterious complaint, Smedley."

"He told me as much, sir."

"Do you know what that complaint is?"

"Haven't the least idea, sir. But he always seems low like, and he gets lower, especially during the nights. What might the complaint be, sir?"

"I wish I could tell you. By the way, haven't you had trained nurses there?"

"Yes, sir. The other doctor sent two. But the governor dismissed 'em yesterday. He told me they worried him. Me and the butler does what's necessary."

"You say he is more depressed during the nights--you mean he shows the effects of that depression in the mornings?"

"Just so, sir."

"I am going to be confidential, Smedley. Are you aware if your master has any secret trouble on his mind, any worry that he reveals to no one?"

"No, sir, I am not."

"Thank you, Smedley. Good night."

"Good night, sir, and thank you."

I had obtained no light from Alexis, and I sought in vain for an explanation of my patient's condition. Of course, it was plausible enough to argue that his passion for Rosa was at the root of the evil; but I remembered Rosa's words to me in the carriage, and I was disposed to agree with them. To me, as to her, it seemed that, though Alresca was the sort of man to love deeply, he was not the sort of man to allow an attachment, however profound or unfortunate, to make a wreck of his existence. No. If Alresca was dying, he was not dying of love.

As Alexis had remarked, it was a lovely summer night, and after quitting the Devonshire I stood idly on the pavement, and gazed about me in simple enjoyment of the scene.

The finest trees in Hyde Park towered darkly in front of me, and above them was spread the star-strewn sky, with a gibbous moon just showing over the housetops to the left. I could not see a soul, but faintly from the distance came the tramp of a policeman on his beat. The hour, to my busy fancy, seemed full of fate. But it was favorable to meditation, and I thought, and thought, and thought. Was I at the beginning of an adventure, or would the business, so strangely initiated, resolve itself into something prosaic and mediocre? I had a suspicion--indeed, I had a hope--that adventures were in store for me. Perhaps peril also. For the sinister impression originally made upon me by that ridiculous crystal-gazing scene into which I had been entrapped by Emmeline had returned, and do what I would I could not dismiss it.

My cousin's wife was sincere, with all her vulgarity and inborn snobbishness. And that being assumed, how did I stand with regard to Rosetta Rosa? Was the thing a coincidence, or had I indeed crossed her path pursuant to some strange decree of Fate--a decree which Emmeline had divined or guessed or presaged? There was a certain weirdness about Emmeline that was rather puzzling.

I had seen Rosa but twice, and her image, to use the old phrase, was stamped on my heart. True! Yet the heart of any young man who had talked with Rosa twice would in all probability have been similarly affected. Rosa was not the ordinary pretty and clever girl. She was such a creature as grows in this world not often in a century. She was an angel out of Paradise--an angel who might pass across Europe and leave behind her a trail of broken hearts to mark the transit. And if angels could sing as she did, then no wonder that the heavenly choirs were happy in nothing but song. (You are to remember that it was three o'clock in the morning.) No, the