She posted these letters on Tuesday, and waited for the answers.
Mrs. Vimpany wrote back by return post.
"My dear Fanny," she said, "I have read your letter with the greatest interest. I am not only afraid that some villainy is afloat, but I am perfectly sure of it. One can only hope and pray that her ladyship may be kept out of its influence. You will be pleased to hear that Mr. Mountjoy is better. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered to stand the shock of violent emotion, I put Lady Harry's letter into his hands. It was well that I had kept it from him, for he fell into such a violence of grief and indignation that I thought he would have had a serious relapse. 'Can any woman,' he cried, 'be justified in going back to an utterly unworthy husband until he has proved a complete change? What if she had received a thousand letters of penitence? Penitence should be shown by acts, not words: she should have waited.' He wrote her a letter, which he showed me. 'Is there,' he asked, 'anything in the letter which could justly offend her?' I could find nothing. He told her, but I fear too late, that she risks degradation—perhaps worse, if there is anything worse—if she persists in returning to her unworthy husband. If she refuses to be guided by his advice, on the last occasion on which he would presume to offer any device, he begged that she would not answer. Let her silence say—No. That was the substance of his letter. Up to the present moment no answer has been received from Lady Harry. Nor has he received so much as an acknowledgment of the letter. What can be understood by this silence? Clearly, refusal.
"You must return by way of Paris, though it is longer than by Basle and Laon. Mr. Mountjoy, I know, will send you the money you want. He has told me as much. 'I have done with Lady Harry,' he said. 'Her movements no longer concern me, though I can never want interest in what she does. But since the girl is right to stick to her mistress, I will send her the money—not as a loan to be paid back by Iris, but as a gift from myself.'
"Therefore, my dear Fanny, stop in Paris for one night at least, and learn what has been done if you can. Find out the nurse, and ask her what really happened. With the knowledge that you already possess, it will be hard, indeed, if we cannot arrive at the truth. There must be people who supplied things to the cottage—the restaurant, the pharmacien, the laundress. See them all—you know them already, and we will put the facts together. As for finding her ladyship, that will depend entirely upon herself. I shall expect you back in about a week. If anything happens here I shall be able to tell you when you arrive.
"Yours affectionately,
L. Vimpany."
This letter exactly coincided with Fanny's own views. The doctor was now gone. She was pretty certain that he was not going to remain alone in the cottage; and the suburb of Passy, though charming in many ways, is not exactly the place for a man of Dr. Vimpany's temperament. She would stay a day, or even two days or more, if necessary, at Passy. She would make those inquiries.
The second letter, which reached her the same day, was from Mr. Mountjoy. He told her what he had told Mrs. Vimpany: he would give her the money, because he recognised the spirit of fidelity which caused Fanny to go first to Paris and then to Berne.
But he could not pretend to any right to interference in the affairs of Lord and Lady Harry Norland. He enclosed a mandat postal for a hundred and twenty-five francs, which he hoped would be sufficient for her immediate wants.
She started on her return-journey on the same day—namely, Saturday. On Sunday evening she was in a pension at Passy, ready to make those inquiries. The first person whom she sought out was the rentier—the landlord of the cottage. He was a retired tradesman—one who had made his modest fortune in a charcuterie and had invested it in house property. Fanny told him that she had been lady's-maid to Lady Harry Norland, in the recent occupancy of the cottage, and that she was anxious to know her present address.
"Merci, mon Dieu! que sais-je? What do I know about it?" he replied. "The wife of the English milord is so much attached to her husband that she leaves him in his long illness—"
"His long illness?"
"Certainly—Mademoiselle is not, perhaps, acquainted with the circumstances—his long illness; and does not come even to see his dead body after he is dead. There is a wife for you—a wife of the English fashion!"
Fanny gasped.
"After he is dead! Is Lord Harry dead? When did he die?"
"But, assuredly, Mademoiselle has not heard? The English milord died on Thursday morning, a week and more ago, of consumption, and was buried in the cemetery of Auteuil last Saturday. Mademoiselle appears astonished."
"En effet, Monsieur, I am astonished."
"Already the tombstone is erected to the memory of the unhappy young man, who is said to belong to a most distinguished family of Ireland. Mademoiselle can see it with her own eyes in the cemetery."
"One word more, Monsieur. If Monsieur would have the kindness to tell her who was the nurse of milord in his last seizure?"
"But certainly. All the world knows the widow La Chaise. It was the widow La Chaise who was called in by the doctor. Ah! there is a man—what a man! What a miracle of science! What devotion to his friend! What admirable sentiments! Truly, the English are great in sentiments when their insular coldness allows them to speak. This widow can be found—easily found."
He gave Fanny, in fact, the nurse's address. Armed with this, and having got out of the landlord the cardinal fact of Lord Harry's alleged death, the lady's-maid went in search of this respectable widow.
She found her, in her own apartments, a respectable woman indeed, perfectly ready to tell everything that she knew, and evidently quite unsuspicious of anything wrong. She was invited to take charge of a sick man on the morning of Thursday: she was told that he was a young Irish lord, dangerously ill of a pulmonary disorder; the doctor, in fact, informed her that his life hung by a thread, and might drop at any moment, though on the other hand he had known such cases linger on for many months. She arrived as she had been ordered, at midday: she was taken into the sick-room by the doctor, who showed her the patient placidly sleeping on a sofa: the bed had been slept in, and was not yet made. After explaining the medicines which she was to administer, and the times when they were to be given, and telling her something about his diet, the doctor left her alone with the patient.
"He was still sleeping profoundly," said the nurse.
"You are sure that he was sleeping, and not dead?" asked Fanny, sharply.
"Mademoiselle, I have been a nurse for many years. I know my duties. The moment the doctor left me I verified his statements. I proved that the patient was sleeping by feeling his pulse and observing his breath."
Fanny made no reply. She could hardly remind this respectable person that after the doctor left her she employed herself first in examining the cupboards, drawers, armoire, and other things; that she then found a book with pictures, in which she read for a quarter of an hour or so; that she then grew sleepy and dropped the book—
"I then," continued the widow, "made arrangements against his waking—that is to say, I drew back the curtains and turned over the sheet to air the bed"—O Madame! Madame! Surely this was needless!—"shook up the pillows, and occupied myself in the cares of a conscientious nurse until the time came to administer the first dose of medicine. Then I proceeded to awaken my patient. Figure to yourself! He whom I had left tranquilly breathing, with the regularity of a convalescent rather than a dying man, was dead! He was dead!"
"You are sure he was dead?"
"As if I had never seen a dead body before! I called the doctor, but it was for duty only, for I knew that he was dead."