Chapter Three.The Doctor at home.“Yes, my father is at home, Mr Poynter,” said Richmond, speaking calmly, and drawing back for the visitor to enter.Then to Janet, in a whisper.“Can you stay with me a few minutes?”“I daren’t, dear; I am late now, and— Yes, I understand. I will.”It was Richmond’s turn to display her firmness, and mastering a nervous trepidation which she felt, she bent down, kissed her friend, and, with a meaning pressure of the hand, said “good-bye,” and ushered the fresh visitor, who was busily turning a crimson silk handkerchief round a painfully glossy hat, into the dining-room.“Thankye,” he said, sitting down, but jumping up again, and placing another chair, “beg pardon, won’t you sit down? I’m in no hurry if the doctor’s engaged.”He nervously seized a very thick gold chain, and dragged a great gold watch from his pocket to consult.“Eleven,” he said; “thought I’d come and see him as I went into the City. Nothing the matter, much, but it’s as well to see your medical man.”“I’ll tell my father you are here, Mr Poynter.”“No, don’t hurry. I’m very busy at my place, but plenty of time. How’s Hendon?”“My brother is quite well.”“Is he, now? That’s right. Fine thing, good health, ain’t it?”“Of course,” said Richmond quietly.“Yes, of course; so it is, Miss Chartley. Hendon always seems to be a fine strong fellow. I always liked him since I met him at a fellow’s rooms. Not at home now?”“Oh, no; he has gone on to the hospital.”“Ah, yes. Feel sometimes as if I should go to the hospital.”The visitor appeared to be a florid, strongly-built man, in the most robust health, save that probably a love of too many of the good things of this life had made its mark upon him.“I will tell my father you are here,” said Richmond again; and this time she escaped from the room, to come suddenly upon Bob outside, striking an attitude indictive of a determination to crush the glossy hat left upon the table in the hall; and so sudden was Richmond’s appearance that the boy stood fast, as if struck with catalepsy, for a few seconds before he bethought himself of a way out of his difficulty, when, pretending to catch a fly which did not exist, he turned upon his heel, and beat an ignominious retreat to the lower regions.Dr Chartley’s patient was no sooner left alone than he started up, and began smoothing his short, carefully-parted hair, took off a second glove to display half a dozen jewelled rings, and wetting fingers and thumbs, he twirled the begummed points of his moustache, and fell into a state of agitation about the cut of his ultra-fashionably made clothes.He looked round in vain, for there was no looking-glass; still, he had some satisfaction, for he was able to see that his tightly-fitting patent-leather boots were spotless, and that the drab gaiters with pearl buttons were exactly in their places; though the largely-checked trousers he wore did give him trouble as to the exact direction the outer seams should take, whilst his sealskin vest would look spotty in certain lights.He was in the act of re-smoothing his hair when Richmond returned, and, hard City man as he was, he could not avoid an increase of depth in his colour as he saw that the handsome woman before him was watching him intently.“My father will come to you directly, Mr Poynter,” she said quietly.“Oh, all right; but don’t let me drive you away, Miss Chartley. I don’t see much society, and chat’s pleasant sometimes, ain’t it?”“Of course,” said Richmond quietly; “but I thought my brother said you were fond of society.”“Fond of it? yes, of course,” said Poynter hastily; and he smoothed his double fringe over his forehead again, where the hairdresser had cut it into a pattern which he had assured him was in the height of fashion, but only with the result of making him look like butcher turned betting-man. “Yes, fond of it,” he said again, “and of course I can get plenty with fellows, but—er—ladies’ society is what I like.”James Poynter directed at Richmond a smiling leer, one which had proved very successful at more than one metropolitan bar, where he had paved the way for its success with gifts of flowers and a cheap ring or two; but it was utterly lost here, for its intended recipient was looking another way, and as it faded from its inventor’s face there was a blank, inane expression left, bordering upon the grotesque.“You should go more into ladies’ society, then, Mr Poynter, as soon as your health permits,” said Richmond, with provoking coolness.“Oh, I’m not ill,” he said hastily; and his forehead grew damp as he floundered about, looking fishy now about the eyes and mouth, which opened and shut at intervals, as if to give passage to words which never came. “Felt I was—er—little out of sorts, you know, and thought I’d see the doctor. Let’s see, I said so before, didn’t I?”“Yes, I think you did, Mr Poynter. Here is my father.”There was a slight cough just then, the door opened, and the doctor entered, his bland, aristocratic presence contrasting broadly with that of his patient.“Ah, Poynter,” he said, “good-morning. Don’t go, my dear; Mr Poynter will come into my consulting-room, I daresay.”“Yes, of course,” cried the patient, shaking hands, and forgetting to leave off. “I shall—shall you?—good-morning, Miss Chartley.”He released the doctor’s hand, to turn and shake Richmond’s which he pressed desperately, and then followed the bland, calm, stately doctor out of the room, when he caught up his hat savagely and ground his teeth in the dark passage.“I feel just like a fool when I’m with her!” he said to himself. “I never feel so anywhere else. And I ain’t a fool. I should just like to see the man who would say I was.”The doctor led the way through the glazed door into the dim surgery, with its rows of bottles, and stoppered glass jars containing unpleasant looking specimens preserved in spirits, all carefully labelled and inscribed in the doctor’s own neat hand, but grown yellow with time; and as he closed the door after his patient, the latter’s nostrils distended slightly, and an air of disgust chased the inane look as he breathed the unpleasant medicinal druggy air.“I was just busy over my discovery,” continued the doctor blandly, “and I thought as a friend you would not mind coming here—it is the consulting-room, my dear Poynter; and I could go on, and we could chat over your ailment the while.”“Oh, it’s all the same to me,” said Poynter; and, once out of Richmond’s presence, he seemed another being. Instead of carrying his glossy hat in his hand, he had resumed it, and wore it with a vulgar cock; he walked with the swagger of the low-class City man; and his face shone as he whisked out a second crimson silk handkerchief redolent of perfume, and blew his nose with a loud blast, which sounded defiant.“Here we are,” said the doctor, smiling at his patient, as if after a long search he had found the ill which troubled him, and pulled it up by the roots. “Take that chair, my dear Poynter,” he continued, pointing to one by the fire, where a bright copper kettle was on the hob, and closing the door, while his patient took off his hat, glanced round the room, and blew the dust off the top of a side table before depositing thereon his new head-covering.There was a litter on the table, a chemist’s set of weights and scales, divers papers, a spatula, pestle and mortar of glass, toy-like in size, and a book with memoranda, and pen and ink.“Very busy, you see, Poynter; I’ve nearly completed my task, and in a few months, perhaps weeks, the medical world will be startled by my discovery.”“What are you going to do with it when you’ve done?”“Do with it?”“Yes. Now, if I was you, I should say to a friend, ‘Lend me a thou.,’ and then take a little shop, put it up in bottles, with three-halfpenny stamps, and advertise it well as the new patent medicine.”“My dear Mr Poynter!”“Hold hard, doctor, I haven’t done,” he cried, speaking in a hard, browbeating manner, as if he were giving orders. “Give it a spanking name, ‘Heal-all,’ or ‘Cure all;’ won’t do to say Kill-all eh? Haw, haw, haw!”He burst into a coarse, loud laugh, and the doctor sank back in his chair, with his brows twitching slightly.“Hold hard, I have it. Nothing like a good name for the fools who swallow everything. Get something out of one of your Greek and Latin physic-books—one of those words like hippocaustus or allegorus, or something they can’t understand.”“I do not quite see the force of your argument, my dear Mr Poynter,” said the doctor blandly.“Not see? Why, man, it would be patent medicine then, and no one could take it from you. Look at Hannodyne—good stuff, too, when you’ve got a headache in the morning—Government stamp, to imitate which is forgery!”“But still, I—”“Don’t see? Nonsense! Make a fortune. You want it. Patients pretty scarce, eh?”He laughed again offensively, and the doctor winced, but kept up his bland smooth smile.“And suppose I took your advice, my dear Poynter, where is the friend to lend me a thousand pounds?”“Ah! where’s the friend!” said Poynter, with a meaning look. “P’r’aps I know the friend, if things went as he wanted.”The doctor’s face changed slightly, but his visitor was too obtuse to see it.“And would you suggest that I should—er—preside in the little shop and sell the allegorus?”“Ah, that ain’t a bad name, is it?” said Poynter, giving his head a shake in the stiff collar in which it rested as an egg does in a cup. “No, not you; not businesslike enough. Make Hendon do that.”“Ah,” said the doctor slowly, as he took up the bottle, removed the stopper, and smelled the contents before moistening one finger and tasting it.“You’ll end by poisoning yourself with that stuff, doctor,” said Poynter, chuckling.“No,” he said blandly, “no, my dear James Poynter, no; it is a life-giver, not a destroyer. Now, if you were to take, say, twenty drops in water—”“With sugar?” said Poynter, grinning.“Yes, with sugar, if you liked. There’s no objection to flavouring the vehicle—water.”“Vehicle—water? Why, I never heard of water being called a vehicle! Thought vehicle meant a carriage or trap.”“In this case the water would be the vehicle, Poynter, and, as I was saying, if you were to take twenty drops of this extract, or rather, compound, you would feel as if a new lease of life were beginning—that everything looked brighter; that nerve and muscle were being strung up; your power of thought greater, and—try a little, my dear sir.”“No, thankye, doctor; but if you’ve got a drop of brandy in the place and a bottle of soda, you may make it more than twenty drops of that.”“I have some brandy,” said the doctor, rising, “but no soda-water. I can mix you a little soda and tartaric acid, though, in a glass of water, and it will have all the effect.”James Poynter showed his great white teeth in a broad grin, threw himself back in the patients’ chair, and unhooking his watch-chain, began to swing round the big seal, pencil-case, and sovereign-purse which hung at the end.“No, thankye, doctor,” he said. “Let’s have the brandy-and-water, and sugar purissima, as you folks call it now, and you can mix me up a tonic and send it on.”“Certainly, my dear Poynter, certainly,” said the doctor, going to a closet, and taking out a spirit decanter, tumbler, and sugar, which he placed upon the stained green-baize table-cover, smilingly looking on afterwards with a little bright copper kettle in his hand as his visitor poured out liberally into his glass.“All right, eh, doctor?” said the young man, looking up in the bland, smooth face, with a good many wrinkles about his right eye.“I—er—do not understand you.”“Brandy all right? No pilly-coshy or anything of that sort in it? Fill right up.”“No,” said the doctor, smiling. “It’s the best brandy, and I’ll take a little with you.”He filled up his guest’s glass, and then smilingly took a second tumbler from the cupboard, and mixed himself a draught.“Yes, not bad brandy, doctor, but wants age,” said Poynter, rinsing his mouth with the hot spirit and water, as if he had been cleaning his teeth. “Now, I have a few dozen of a fine old cognac in my cellar that would give this fifty in a hundred, and lick it hollow.”Perhaps to be expressive, Mr James Poynter shuffled his shoulders against the cushion of the chair and licked his lips, ending with a fish-like smack.“Let me send you a dozen, doctor.”“No, no, my dear sir. I did not know you were in the wine and spirit trade.”“Stuff and nonsense!”“And I could not afford—”“Yah! Who asked you to? I meant as a present. Wine and spirit trade, indeed! Hang it! Do I look like a publican?”Dr Chartley told an abominable lie, for if ever man, from the crown of his pomatumed head, down over his prominent nubbey forehead, small eyes, prominent cheekbones, unpleasant nose, and heavy jaw, to the toes of his boots, looked like a fast, race-attending licenced victualler, it was James Poynter.Dr Chartley said, in answer to the indignant question, “No.”“Humph!” ejaculated the visitor, mollifying himself with a large draught of brandy-and-water. “I should think not, indeed. I shall send you a dozen of that brandy.”“No, no, I beg!” said the doctor earnestly; and his white forehead puckered up.“Yes, I shall. May I smoke?”“Certainly—certainly.”A very large, well-filled cigar case was already in the visitor’s hands.“Take one.”“No, thanks. I never smoke.”“Never mind, Hendon does. Here, I shall leave those six for him.”“I really would rather you did not, Poynter; indeed I would.”“Get out? What’s the good of having these things if some one else don’t enjoy ’em too? Make Hendon a bit more civil to me. He is so jolly—so jolly—what do you call it?—soopercilious with me. Because I’m not a doctor, I suppose. There’s half a dozen good ones for him when he comes in. Now then, doctor, go ahead. Want to see my tongue?”“No—no,” said the doctor; “the look of your eye is sufficient, Mr Poynter. It is much clearer. Felt any more of the chest symptoms?”“No, not so much of them; but I don’t sleep as I should: feverish and tossy—spend half my nights punching my pillow.”“Have you given up the suppers?”“Well, not quite. You see a man can’t drop everything. I know a lot of men, and one’s obliged, you see, to do as they do. But now look here; doctor. You’ve been treating me these three months.”“Dear me! is it so long as that?”“More. You’ve poked my chest about, and listened to my works, and given me all sorts of stuff to take, and told me to eat this and drink that, and now I suppose you think I’m sound, wind and limb?”“Certainly, my dear sir, certainly. I told you so at the first, and that no treatment was necessary.”“Yes, yes, all right; but I’d got to be a bit nervous doctor, and now, as I say, you think me sound, wind and limb?”“Quite.”“Then you’ll agree, won’t you?”“Agree?” said the doctor, looking over the glasses he had put on when commencing to be professional.“Yes. I’m as good a man as there is at Mincing Lane over a tea bargain; but a job like this knocks the wind out of me, makes me feel a damaged lot where the sea-water’s got in, or a Maloo mixture. Can’t do it: but you understand.”“Really, Mr Poynter, I—”“Now don’t run away, doctor; don’t, please. I’m a warm man, and I’m getting warmer. My house is tip-top. I gave two-fifty for the piano, I did, ’pon my soul, and fifty apiece for the cut-glass chandies in the drawing-room. There ain’t a better garden in Sydenham. You’re willing, ain’t you?”“Do you mean—”“Yes, that’s it. Say the word. There, I’ve loved her ever since I first saw her. And situated as you are, doctor—”“Mr Poynter.”“No offence meant—far from it; but of course I can’t help seeing how things are. Come, you’ll give your consent, and get hers, and I’ll make settlements—anything you like. You shall come and have a bit o’ dinner with us every Sunday, and a glass o’ real port wine; and if you’d rather have a cab to come home, why, there you are. Come, there’s my hand. Where’s yours?”“Do I understand—”“Stop a moment, doctor. Of course you’ll attend us, whether we’re ill or whether we ain’t. Keep us in order, like; and as to your fees, why, I ask you now, as a man, what is a fee to me?”“Mr Poynter!”“One moment, doctor. I don’t say anything about a brougham. If Miss Richmond—I say, doctor, what made you call her Richmond and him Hendon?”“A foolish whim—eccentricity,” said the doctor coldly. “One child was born on the North Road, the other at the pretty old place on the south west.”“I see. Well, as I was saying, if Miss Richmond likes it to be a brougham, either the real thing, or on the job, she has only got to speak, and it’s lies.”“Am I to understand, Mr Poynter, that this is a formal proposal for my daughter’s hand?”“That’s it. How you can put it, doctor! You’re right; it is, and there’s my hand.”“Mr Poynter,” said the doctor, drawing himself up in his chair, and without taking the extended hand, “that is a matter upon which I am not prepared to speak.”“Why, you’re her father, ain’t you?”“Does my daughter sanction this?”“Well—er—yes—no—hardly, because I’ve never put it to her plump. But you know what women are—sealskins, a carriage, bit o’ jewellery,andtheir own way. Why, of course she does; did you ever know a woman as didn’t want to marry? They often say so, but—you know. There, say the word: I’ll just go in and see her, and it’ll be a good job for all of us, and I shall go away with the day fixed.”“No, Mr Poynter,” said the doctor gravely; “I have been a medical man for thirty years—a great student, but I must frankly confess that I donotknow what women are. As to my daughter, she is of an age to judge for herself, and when she accepts a man for her husband—”“I say, hold hard; there’s nothing on, is there?”“You have told me that you love my child.”“Like all that, doctor. But you know what I mean: old lover, prior attachment, and that sort of thing.”“As far as I know, there has never been any attachment. Richmond is not like most girls.”“Right doctor. She isn’t. That fetched me. Why, in her plain shabby things—”The doctor winced. “She knocks my sister into fits, and Lyddy spends two-fifty a year in dressmaking and millinery, without counting jewellery and scent.”“I may say,” continued the doctor, “that my daughter has always devoted herself to her brother and me.”“Oh, yes, doctor, I’ve spotted that,” said the visitor, smoking furiously.“And I have never seen any sign of an attachment. I once thought that there was a liking between her and young Mark Heath.”“What, brother to that Miss Janet who comes here?” cried Poynter eagerly.“The same; but that was years ago.”“And he’s abroad, isn’t he?”“He went to the Cape—to seek his fortune,” said the doctor gravely; “but he has not been heard of now for two years.”“Dead, safe!” said Poynter, drawing a breath full of relief.“I’m afraid so.”“Afraid?”“It would be sad if the young man had ended his career like that.”“Of course. But they weren’t engaged?”“Certainly not, Mr Poynter.”“And you’ve no objection to me, doctor?”“N–no—I—that is, Mr Poynter, I look upon this as a matter for my daughter to decide.”“Of course, doctor. Well, I’ll just finish my cigar and grog, and then I’ll go and put it to her, plump and plain; and, as I said before, it’ll be a fine day’s work for us all.”The doctor sighed.“I say, you know,” continued his visitor, with the wrinkles coming about his eyes, “it was all a dodge of mine.”“I beg your pardon.”“There wasn’t anything the matter with me when I came.”“Nothing whatever,” said the doctor, nodding acquiescence.“What! you knew that?”“Of course I did. I looked upon it as all imaginary.”“But you took the fees, doctor?” said the young man, laughing.“You took up my time.”“But I say, doctor, isn’t that too bad?”“Not at all. My dear sir, the medical profession. Won’t I be a poor one if we had no patients with imaginary ills. We treat them; they think we do them good; and they grow better. Surely we earn our fees.”“Oh, but, doctor,” said the young man jocularly, “why not honestly tell them they are all right, instead of taking their coin?”“Because if we did they would not believe us, and would go to some other medical man.”“Then you knew I was all right?”“Certainly I did.”“And made me up that wretched physic to take.”“You would not have been satisfied without.”“Ah, well,” said the young man, with a chuckle which resulted in his wiping his eyes with his highly scented handkerchief, “I never took a drop.”“I know that too,” said the doctor.“Ah, well; we understand one another now, and I’d better go.”James Poynter, however, seemed to be in no hurry to go, but sipped his brandy-and-water, smoked his cigar down to the throwing-away length, and then brought out from his vest-pocket an amber and meerschaum mouthpiece, tipped with gold, into which he fitted the wet end of the cigar, and smoked till he could smoke no longer, when he rose, flush-faced, and with the dew upon his forehead.“I suppose I must go and get it done, doctor,” he said; “but it’s rather a—well, it makes a man feel—I say, doctor, what is there in a pretty woman that makes a man feel half afraid of her, like?”“I told you, Mr Poynter, a short time back, that I did not understand women,” said the doctor gravelly. “I cannot tell. Say Nature’s heaven-gift for her defence.”“Humph!” said Poynter, staring. “I say, doctor—cigar, you know. Could you give a fellow a mouthful of something that would take the taste out of one’s mouth? Going to see a lady.”“Try cold water,” said the doctor, in a tone of voice which sounded like throwing that fluid upon he young man’s hopes; but he had so much faith in himself that the verbal water glanced from his fine feathers, and after rinsing his mouth, he shook hands clumsily, intending to leave the doctor’s fee within his palm, but managed to drop the more valuable of the two coins on the edge of the fender, when it flew beneath the grate, and had to be fished out with the tongs.“Dodgy stuff, money, doctor,” said Poynter, setting down the fire-iron, and blowing the coin.“Don’t take all that trouble, pray.”“Oh, it’s no trouble, doctor. I was never above picking up a sov. There, don’t you come. I know my way;” and he left the consulting-room to go into the house and learn his fate.“Brute!” said the doctor, with a look of disgust, as he sank into his chair. “Why is Fate so unfair with her gold! I thought as much, but Richmond will sayno.”“Old lunatic!” said James Poynter, with his fat upper lip curling in disgust, as his eyes lit on the row of glass jars with their ghastly contents. “Once I get my lady home, I don’t mean to see much of him. Here, boy,” he said, as he reached the hall, and so suddenly that there was nearly a serious accident, for Bob was coming down the balustrade from the first floor, gliding upon the central part of his person with arms and legs extended—taking hold having grown common.The sharp “Here, boy!” so startled him that he overbalanced himself, went right over, but caught at the upright spindly bars, and so far saved himself that he came down upon his feet in a couple of somersaults, recovering himself directly, and coming forward with a grin upon his bloodless face, as if the feat had been intended.“Ah, you’ll break your neck some day. Here’s a shilling for you. Take me into Miss Chartley at once.”Bob bit the coin, and slipped it into his pocket before he replied, “Gone out.”“Gone out? Will she be long?”“Dessay she’ll be hours, sir.”James Poynter stamped with his foot, and muttered something unparliamentary.“Tell Miss Chartley,” he said. “No, don’t tell her anything. Here, let me out.”Bob ran to the ponderous old door, and stood holding it open with his eyes glittering as he stared at the visitor, till he had hurried out with his hat set very much on one side, and walked sharply away.“Thought he’d want the bob again,” said the boy. “Just do for the old gal. Well, I’m blessed!”This last consequent upon his catching sight of a shabby-looking figure in black, with a damaged bonnet, and a weirdly dissipated look, rising slowly into sight up the area-steps, and then coming out of the creaking gate to the boy, who grew more serious the nearer the figure came.It was not a pleasant face to look upon, for it was not over-clean; the black and grey hair was ill-arranged, and the eyes that shone above the flushed cheeks belied the woman sadly if they did not tell the truth about potations.“Why, Bob, my darling,” she said, with an exaggerated fawning smile, “and how is my bonny boy?”“Here stow that, mother,” cried the lad, struggling from an embrace. “Don’t! Can’t yer see I’ve been brushing my hair?”“Yes, and it looks beautiful, ducky. I’ve been knocking ever so long at the hairy door, and that fine madam saw me, and wouldn’t let me in.”“No; she says I ain’t never to let you in no more.”“Not let me in no more to see my own boy?”“No; she says you took some fresh butter last time you was here, and you sha’n’t come.”“Then you sha’n’t stay, Bob; I’ll take you away, my darling. Oh, it’s a wicked, cruel world!”“Here, I say, mother, stow that. Whatcher want?”“What, my darling? Yes, that’s it: want—staring want; but you sha’n’t stay here.”“Get out. I shall.”“No, you sha’n’t, you ungrateful boy. I won’t be separated from my own child. Bob dear, have you got any money?”“Eh?”“Anybody give you anything?” whined the woman. “There ain’t been nothing pass my lips this blessed day.”“Oho! what a wunner!” cried the boy. “Why, I can smell yer.”“No, no, my dear; that’s Mrs Billson as you can smell. I’ve been talking to her, and she drink ’orrid. Ain’tcher got a few pence for your poor lone mother, who’s ready to break her heart sometimes because she’s parted from her boy?”“Will you go away if I give you something?”“Go away? Oho!” whined the woman, wiping off a maudlin tear with the end of her shawl.“Here, I say, don’t cry on the front-doorsteps. Come down in the hairy, where nobody can’t see you.”“Driven away by my own boy! Oho, oho!”“’Tain’t my fault. Doctor said you wasn’t to come, and if you did he’d send me away.”“Then come home, Bob, to your poor heartbroken mother.”“Walker!” cried the boy. “Why yer ain’t got no home to give a chap.”“No home?”“Well, I don’t call that a home, living up in a hattic along o’ old Mother Billson.”“Oh, you ungrateful boy! Ain’t it enough for me to have come down so that I’m obliged to see my own son in liveries, without him turning against me.”“Who’s a-turning again you? Don’t cry, I tell yer,” he said, angrily stamping a foot.“Then you shall come home.”“Sha’n’t. I ain’t going to leave the doctor and Miss Rich for nobody, so there.”“Ugh, you viper!”“Here, stow that. Who’s a viper? See what they’ve done for me when I was runned over. Why, if it hadn’t been for Miss Rich a-nussing of me when you was allus tipsy, you wouldn’t have had no boy at all, only a dead ’un berrid out at Finchley along o’ the old man.”“Ah, you wicked ungrateful little serpent! They’ve been setting you again’ your poor suffering mother.”“Stow that, I say. You’ll have the doctor hear you if you don’t be quiet.”“I won’t be quiet, you wicked, wicked—”“Look here! If you don’t hold your row, I won’t give you the bob and two coppers I’ve got for you.”“Have you got some money for your poor mother, then?”“I’ve got a bob a gent give me, and twopence, my half of what we got for the bones me and ’Lisbeth sold.”“Ah? I’m a poor suffering woman, and I do say things sometimes as I don’t mean,” whined the wretched creature. “Give me the money, dear, and let me go.”“If I give it to yer, you won’t say no more about my coming away?”“No, dear; I only want to see you happy.”“Well, there, then,” he said, giving her the coins; “and, I say—”“Yes, my precious.”“You ain’t to spend none of it in gin.”“Gin? Oh, no, my dear.”“Get some pudding out of Holborn, and a saveloy; and, I say, mother, get yourself a bit o’ tea.”“Yes, my darling.”“And don’t let Mrs Billson gammon you into lending her none of it.”“No, my dear. And there, good-bye, Bob; be a good boy. I won’t come wherriting of you no more’n I can help.”The miserable object, from whom out of compassion Richmond Chartley had rescued the boy, shuffled along the street to the nearest public-house, to buy more plus spirit with which to attack her miserable minus spirit, with the result that, as a mathematical problem, one would kill the other as sure as Fate.Meanwhile Bob stood on the step watching her.“Wonder whether the old gal does like me? Somehow she allus goes as soon as she gets all a chap’s got. Now she’ll go and have a drop. She allus does when she says she won’t.”“Bob! you Bob!” came in a shrill voice from the kitchen stairs.“Can’t you see I’m a-coming?” cried the boy; and hurriedly closing the door, he returned to his work.
“Yes, my father is at home, Mr Poynter,” said Richmond, speaking calmly, and drawing back for the visitor to enter.
Then to Janet, in a whisper.
“Can you stay with me a few minutes?”
“I daren’t, dear; I am late now, and— Yes, I understand. I will.”
It was Richmond’s turn to display her firmness, and mastering a nervous trepidation which she felt, she bent down, kissed her friend, and, with a meaning pressure of the hand, said “good-bye,” and ushered the fresh visitor, who was busily turning a crimson silk handkerchief round a painfully glossy hat, into the dining-room.
“Thankye,” he said, sitting down, but jumping up again, and placing another chair, “beg pardon, won’t you sit down? I’m in no hurry if the doctor’s engaged.”
He nervously seized a very thick gold chain, and dragged a great gold watch from his pocket to consult.
“Eleven,” he said; “thought I’d come and see him as I went into the City. Nothing the matter, much, but it’s as well to see your medical man.”
“I’ll tell my father you are here, Mr Poynter.”
“No, don’t hurry. I’m very busy at my place, but plenty of time. How’s Hendon?”
“My brother is quite well.”
“Is he, now? That’s right. Fine thing, good health, ain’t it?”
“Of course,” said Richmond quietly.
“Yes, of course; so it is, Miss Chartley. Hendon always seems to be a fine strong fellow. I always liked him since I met him at a fellow’s rooms. Not at home now?”
“Oh, no; he has gone on to the hospital.”
“Ah, yes. Feel sometimes as if I should go to the hospital.”
The visitor appeared to be a florid, strongly-built man, in the most robust health, save that probably a love of too many of the good things of this life had made its mark upon him.
“I will tell my father you are here,” said Richmond again; and this time she escaped from the room, to come suddenly upon Bob outside, striking an attitude indictive of a determination to crush the glossy hat left upon the table in the hall; and so sudden was Richmond’s appearance that the boy stood fast, as if struck with catalepsy, for a few seconds before he bethought himself of a way out of his difficulty, when, pretending to catch a fly which did not exist, he turned upon his heel, and beat an ignominious retreat to the lower regions.
Dr Chartley’s patient was no sooner left alone than he started up, and began smoothing his short, carefully-parted hair, took off a second glove to display half a dozen jewelled rings, and wetting fingers and thumbs, he twirled the begummed points of his moustache, and fell into a state of agitation about the cut of his ultra-fashionably made clothes.
He looked round in vain, for there was no looking-glass; still, he had some satisfaction, for he was able to see that his tightly-fitting patent-leather boots were spotless, and that the drab gaiters with pearl buttons were exactly in their places; though the largely-checked trousers he wore did give him trouble as to the exact direction the outer seams should take, whilst his sealskin vest would look spotty in certain lights.
He was in the act of re-smoothing his hair when Richmond returned, and, hard City man as he was, he could not avoid an increase of depth in his colour as he saw that the handsome woman before him was watching him intently.
“My father will come to you directly, Mr Poynter,” she said quietly.
“Oh, all right; but don’t let me drive you away, Miss Chartley. I don’t see much society, and chat’s pleasant sometimes, ain’t it?”
“Of course,” said Richmond quietly; “but I thought my brother said you were fond of society.”
“Fond of it? yes, of course,” said Poynter hastily; and he smoothed his double fringe over his forehead again, where the hairdresser had cut it into a pattern which he had assured him was in the height of fashion, but only with the result of making him look like butcher turned betting-man. “Yes, fond of it,” he said again, “and of course I can get plenty with fellows, but—er—ladies’ society is what I like.”
James Poynter directed at Richmond a smiling leer, one which had proved very successful at more than one metropolitan bar, where he had paved the way for its success with gifts of flowers and a cheap ring or two; but it was utterly lost here, for its intended recipient was looking another way, and as it faded from its inventor’s face there was a blank, inane expression left, bordering upon the grotesque.
“You should go more into ladies’ society, then, Mr Poynter, as soon as your health permits,” said Richmond, with provoking coolness.
“Oh, I’m not ill,” he said hastily; and his forehead grew damp as he floundered about, looking fishy now about the eyes and mouth, which opened and shut at intervals, as if to give passage to words which never came. “Felt I was—er—little out of sorts, you know, and thought I’d see the doctor. Let’s see, I said so before, didn’t I?”
“Yes, I think you did, Mr Poynter. Here is my father.”
There was a slight cough just then, the door opened, and the doctor entered, his bland, aristocratic presence contrasting broadly with that of his patient.
“Ah, Poynter,” he said, “good-morning. Don’t go, my dear; Mr Poynter will come into my consulting-room, I daresay.”
“Yes, of course,” cried the patient, shaking hands, and forgetting to leave off. “I shall—shall you?—good-morning, Miss Chartley.”
He released the doctor’s hand, to turn and shake Richmond’s which he pressed desperately, and then followed the bland, calm, stately doctor out of the room, when he caught up his hat savagely and ground his teeth in the dark passage.
“I feel just like a fool when I’m with her!” he said to himself. “I never feel so anywhere else. And I ain’t a fool. I should just like to see the man who would say I was.”
The doctor led the way through the glazed door into the dim surgery, with its rows of bottles, and stoppered glass jars containing unpleasant looking specimens preserved in spirits, all carefully labelled and inscribed in the doctor’s own neat hand, but grown yellow with time; and as he closed the door after his patient, the latter’s nostrils distended slightly, and an air of disgust chased the inane look as he breathed the unpleasant medicinal druggy air.
“I was just busy over my discovery,” continued the doctor blandly, “and I thought as a friend you would not mind coming here—it is the consulting-room, my dear Poynter; and I could go on, and we could chat over your ailment the while.”
“Oh, it’s all the same to me,” said Poynter; and, once out of Richmond’s presence, he seemed another being. Instead of carrying his glossy hat in his hand, he had resumed it, and wore it with a vulgar cock; he walked with the swagger of the low-class City man; and his face shone as he whisked out a second crimson silk handkerchief redolent of perfume, and blew his nose with a loud blast, which sounded defiant.
“Here we are,” said the doctor, smiling at his patient, as if after a long search he had found the ill which troubled him, and pulled it up by the roots. “Take that chair, my dear Poynter,” he continued, pointing to one by the fire, where a bright copper kettle was on the hob, and closing the door, while his patient took off his hat, glanced round the room, and blew the dust off the top of a side table before depositing thereon his new head-covering.
There was a litter on the table, a chemist’s set of weights and scales, divers papers, a spatula, pestle and mortar of glass, toy-like in size, and a book with memoranda, and pen and ink.
“Very busy, you see, Poynter; I’ve nearly completed my task, and in a few months, perhaps weeks, the medical world will be startled by my discovery.”
“What are you going to do with it when you’ve done?”
“Do with it?”
“Yes. Now, if I was you, I should say to a friend, ‘Lend me a thou.,’ and then take a little shop, put it up in bottles, with three-halfpenny stamps, and advertise it well as the new patent medicine.”
“My dear Mr Poynter!”
“Hold hard, doctor, I haven’t done,” he cried, speaking in a hard, browbeating manner, as if he were giving orders. “Give it a spanking name, ‘Heal-all,’ or ‘Cure all;’ won’t do to say Kill-all eh? Haw, haw, haw!”
He burst into a coarse, loud laugh, and the doctor sank back in his chair, with his brows twitching slightly.
“Hold hard, I have it. Nothing like a good name for the fools who swallow everything. Get something out of one of your Greek and Latin physic-books—one of those words like hippocaustus or allegorus, or something they can’t understand.”
“I do not quite see the force of your argument, my dear Mr Poynter,” said the doctor blandly.
“Not see? Why, man, it would be patent medicine then, and no one could take it from you. Look at Hannodyne—good stuff, too, when you’ve got a headache in the morning—Government stamp, to imitate which is forgery!”
“But still, I—”
“Don’t see? Nonsense! Make a fortune. You want it. Patients pretty scarce, eh?”
He laughed again offensively, and the doctor winced, but kept up his bland smooth smile.
“And suppose I took your advice, my dear Poynter, where is the friend to lend me a thousand pounds?”
“Ah! where’s the friend!” said Poynter, with a meaning look. “P’r’aps I know the friend, if things went as he wanted.”
The doctor’s face changed slightly, but his visitor was too obtuse to see it.
“And would you suggest that I should—er—preside in the little shop and sell the allegorus?”
“Ah, that ain’t a bad name, is it?” said Poynter, giving his head a shake in the stiff collar in which it rested as an egg does in a cup. “No, not you; not businesslike enough. Make Hendon do that.”
“Ah,” said the doctor slowly, as he took up the bottle, removed the stopper, and smelled the contents before moistening one finger and tasting it.
“You’ll end by poisoning yourself with that stuff, doctor,” said Poynter, chuckling.
“No,” he said blandly, “no, my dear James Poynter, no; it is a life-giver, not a destroyer. Now, if you were to take, say, twenty drops in water—”
“With sugar?” said Poynter, grinning.
“Yes, with sugar, if you liked. There’s no objection to flavouring the vehicle—water.”
“Vehicle—water? Why, I never heard of water being called a vehicle! Thought vehicle meant a carriage or trap.”
“In this case the water would be the vehicle, Poynter, and, as I was saying, if you were to take twenty drops of this extract, or rather, compound, you would feel as if a new lease of life were beginning—that everything looked brighter; that nerve and muscle were being strung up; your power of thought greater, and—try a little, my dear sir.”
“No, thankye, doctor; but if you’ve got a drop of brandy in the place and a bottle of soda, you may make it more than twenty drops of that.”
“I have some brandy,” said the doctor, rising, “but no soda-water. I can mix you a little soda and tartaric acid, though, in a glass of water, and it will have all the effect.”
James Poynter showed his great white teeth in a broad grin, threw himself back in the patients’ chair, and unhooking his watch-chain, began to swing round the big seal, pencil-case, and sovereign-purse which hung at the end.
“No, thankye, doctor,” he said. “Let’s have the brandy-and-water, and sugar purissima, as you folks call it now, and you can mix me up a tonic and send it on.”
“Certainly, my dear Poynter, certainly,” said the doctor, going to a closet, and taking out a spirit decanter, tumbler, and sugar, which he placed upon the stained green-baize table-cover, smilingly looking on afterwards with a little bright copper kettle in his hand as his visitor poured out liberally into his glass.
“All right, eh, doctor?” said the young man, looking up in the bland, smooth face, with a good many wrinkles about his right eye.
“I—er—do not understand you.”
“Brandy all right? No pilly-coshy or anything of that sort in it? Fill right up.”
“No,” said the doctor, smiling. “It’s the best brandy, and I’ll take a little with you.”
He filled up his guest’s glass, and then smilingly took a second tumbler from the cupboard, and mixed himself a draught.
“Yes, not bad brandy, doctor, but wants age,” said Poynter, rinsing his mouth with the hot spirit and water, as if he had been cleaning his teeth. “Now, I have a few dozen of a fine old cognac in my cellar that would give this fifty in a hundred, and lick it hollow.”
Perhaps to be expressive, Mr James Poynter shuffled his shoulders against the cushion of the chair and licked his lips, ending with a fish-like smack.
“Let me send you a dozen, doctor.”
“No, no, my dear sir. I did not know you were in the wine and spirit trade.”
“Stuff and nonsense!”
“And I could not afford—”
“Yah! Who asked you to? I meant as a present. Wine and spirit trade, indeed! Hang it! Do I look like a publican?”
Dr Chartley told an abominable lie, for if ever man, from the crown of his pomatumed head, down over his prominent nubbey forehead, small eyes, prominent cheekbones, unpleasant nose, and heavy jaw, to the toes of his boots, looked like a fast, race-attending licenced victualler, it was James Poynter.
Dr Chartley said, in answer to the indignant question, “No.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the visitor, mollifying himself with a large draught of brandy-and-water. “I should think not, indeed. I shall send you a dozen of that brandy.”
“No, no, I beg!” said the doctor earnestly; and his white forehead puckered up.
“Yes, I shall. May I smoke?”
“Certainly—certainly.”
A very large, well-filled cigar case was already in the visitor’s hands.
“Take one.”
“No, thanks. I never smoke.”
“Never mind, Hendon does. Here, I shall leave those six for him.”
“I really would rather you did not, Poynter; indeed I would.”
“Get out? What’s the good of having these things if some one else don’t enjoy ’em too? Make Hendon a bit more civil to me. He is so jolly—so jolly—what do you call it?—soopercilious with me. Because I’m not a doctor, I suppose. There’s half a dozen good ones for him when he comes in. Now then, doctor, go ahead. Want to see my tongue?”
“No—no,” said the doctor; “the look of your eye is sufficient, Mr Poynter. It is much clearer. Felt any more of the chest symptoms?”
“No, not so much of them; but I don’t sleep as I should: feverish and tossy—spend half my nights punching my pillow.”
“Have you given up the suppers?”
“Well, not quite. You see a man can’t drop everything. I know a lot of men, and one’s obliged, you see, to do as they do. But now look here; doctor. You’ve been treating me these three months.”
“Dear me! is it so long as that?”
“More. You’ve poked my chest about, and listened to my works, and given me all sorts of stuff to take, and told me to eat this and drink that, and now I suppose you think I’m sound, wind and limb?”
“Certainly, my dear sir, certainly. I told you so at the first, and that no treatment was necessary.”
“Yes, yes, all right; but I’d got to be a bit nervous doctor, and now, as I say, you think me sound, wind and limb?”
“Quite.”
“Then you’ll agree, won’t you?”
“Agree?” said the doctor, looking over the glasses he had put on when commencing to be professional.
“Yes. I’m as good a man as there is at Mincing Lane over a tea bargain; but a job like this knocks the wind out of me, makes me feel a damaged lot where the sea-water’s got in, or a Maloo mixture. Can’t do it: but you understand.”
“Really, Mr Poynter, I—”
“Now don’t run away, doctor; don’t, please. I’m a warm man, and I’m getting warmer. My house is tip-top. I gave two-fifty for the piano, I did, ’pon my soul, and fifty apiece for the cut-glass chandies in the drawing-room. There ain’t a better garden in Sydenham. You’re willing, ain’t you?”
“Do you mean—”
“Yes, that’s it. Say the word. There, I’ve loved her ever since I first saw her. And situated as you are, doctor—”
“Mr Poynter.”
“No offence meant—far from it; but of course I can’t help seeing how things are. Come, you’ll give your consent, and get hers, and I’ll make settlements—anything you like. You shall come and have a bit o’ dinner with us every Sunday, and a glass o’ real port wine; and if you’d rather have a cab to come home, why, there you are. Come, there’s my hand. Where’s yours?”
“Do I understand—”
“Stop a moment, doctor. Of course you’ll attend us, whether we’re ill or whether we ain’t. Keep us in order, like; and as to your fees, why, I ask you now, as a man, what is a fee to me?”
“Mr Poynter!”
“One moment, doctor. I don’t say anything about a brougham. If Miss Richmond—I say, doctor, what made you call her Richmond and him Hendon?”
“A foolish whim—eccentricity,” said the doctor coldly. “One child was born on the North Road, the other at the pretty old place on the south west.”
“I see. Well, as I was saying, if Miss Richmond likes it to be a brougham, either the real thing, or on the job, she has only got to speak, and it’s lies.”
“Am I to understand, Mr Poynter, that this is a formal proposal for my daughter’s hand?”
“That’s it. How you can put it, doctor! You’re right; it is, and there’s my hand.”
“Mr Poynter,” said the doctor, drawing himself up in his chair, and without taking the extended hand, “that is a matter upon which I am not prepared to speak.”
“Why, you’re her father, ain’t you?”
“Does my daughter sanction this?”
“Well—er—yes—no—hardly, because I’ve never put it to her plump. But you know what women are—sealskins, a carriage, bit o’ jewellery,andtheir own way. Why, of course she does; did you ever know a woman as didn’t want to marry? They often say so, but—you know. There, say the word: I’ll just go in and see her, and it’ll be a good job for all of us, and I shall go away with the day fixed.”
“No, Mr Poynter,” said the doctor gravely; “I have been a medical man for thirty years—a great student, but I must frankly confess that I donotknow what women are. As to my daughter, she is of an age to judge for herself, and when she accepts a man for her husband—”
“I say, hold hard; there’s nothing on, is there?”
“You have told me that you love my child.”
“Like all that, doctor. But you know what I mean: old lover, prior attachment, and that sort of thing.”
“As far as I know, there has never been any attachment. Richmond is not like most girls.”
“Right doctor. She isn’t. That fetched me. Why, in her plain shabby things—”
The doctor winced. “She knocks my sister into fits, and Lyddy spends two-fifty a year in dressmaking and millinery, without counting jewellery and scent.”
“I may say,” continued the doctor, “that my daughter has always devoted herself to her brother and me.”
“Oh, yes, doctor, I’ve spotted that,” said the visitor, smoking furiously.
“And I have never seen any sign of an attachment. I once thought that there was a liking between her and young Mark Heath.”
“What, brother to that Miss Janet who comes here?” cried Poynter eagerly.
“The same; but that was years ago.”
“And he’s abroad, isn’t he?”
“He went to the Cape—to seek his fortune,” said the doctor gravely; “but he has not been heard of now for two years.”
“Dead, safe!” said Poynter, drawing a breath full of relief.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Afraid?”
“It would be sad if the young man had ended his career like that.”
“Of course. But they weren’t engaged?”
“Certainly not, Mr Poynter.”
“And you’ve no objection to me, doctor?”
“N–no—I—that is, Mr Poynter, I look upon this as a matter for my daughter to decide.”
“Of course, doctor. Well, I’ll just finish my cigar and grog, and then I’ll go and put it to her, plump and plain; and, as I said before, it’ll be a fine day’s work for us all.”
The doctor sighed.
“I say, you know,” continued his visitor, with the wrinkles coming about his eyes, “it was all a dodge of mine.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“There wasn’t anything the matter with me when I came.”
“Nothing whatever,” said the doctor, nodding acquiescence.
“What! you knew that?”
“Of course I did. I looked upon it as all imaginary.”
“But you took the fees, doctor?” said the young man, laughing.
“You took up my time.”
“But I say, doctor, isn’t that too bad?”
“Not at all. My dear sir, the medical profession. Won’t I be a poor one if we had no patients with imaginary ills. We treat them; they think we do them good; and they grow better. Surely we earn our fees.”
“Oh, but, doctor,” said the young man jocularly, “why not honestly tell them they are all right, instead of taking their coin?”
“Because if we did they would not believe us, and would go to some other medical man.”
“Then you knew I was all right?”
“Certainly I did.”
“And made me up that wretched physic to take.”
“You would not have been satisfied without.”
“Ah, well,” said the young man, with a chuckle which resulted in his wiping his eyes with his highly scented handkerchief, “I never took a drop.”
“I know that too,” said the doctor.
“Ah, well; we understand one another now, and I’d better go.”
James Poynter, however, seemed to be in no hurry to go, but sipped his brandy-and-water, smoked his cigar down to the throwing-away length, and then brought out from his vest-pocket an amber and meerschaum mouthpiece, tipped with gold, into which he fitted the wet end of the cigar, and smoked till he could smoke no longer, when he rose, flush-faced, and with the dew upon his forehead.
“I suppose I must go and get it done, doctor,” he said; “but it’s rather a—well, it makes a man feel—I say, doctor, what is there in a pretty woman that makes a man feel half afraid of her, like?”
“I told you, Mr Poynter, a short time back, that I did not understand women,” said the doctor gravelly. “I cannot tell. Say Nature’s heaven-gift for her defence.”
“Humph!” said Poynter, staring. “I say, doctor—cigar, you know. Could you give a fellow a mouthful of something that would take the taste out of one’s mouth? Going to see a lady.”
“Try cold water,” said the doctor, in a tone of voice which sounded like throwing that fluid upon he young man’s hopes; but he had so much faith in himself that the verbal water glanced from his fine feathers, and after rinsing his mouth, he shook hands clumsily, intending to leave the doctor’s fee within his palm, but managed to drop the more valuable of the two coins on the edge of the fender, when it flew beneath the grate, and had to be fished out with the tongs.
“Dodgy stuff, money, doctor,” said Poynter, setting down the fire-iron, and blowing the coin.
“Don’t take all that trouble, pray.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble, doctor. I was never above picking up a sov. There, don’t you come. I know my way;” and he left the consulting-room to go into the house and learn his fate.
“Brute!” said the doctor, with a look of disgust, as he sank into his chair. “Why is Fate so unfair with her gold! I thought as much, but Richmond will sayno.”
“Old lunatic!” said James Poynter, with his fat upper lip curling in disgust, as his eyes lit on the row of glass jars with their ghastly contents. “Once I get my lady home, I don’t mean to see much of him. Here, boy,” he said, as he reached the hall, and so suddenly that there was nearly a serious accident, for Bob was coming down the balustrade from the first floor, gliding upon the central part of his person with arms and legs extended—taking hold having grown common.
The sharp “Here, boy!” so startled him that he overbalanced himself, went right over, but caught at the upright spindly bars, and so far saved himself that he came down upon his feet in a couple of somersaults, recovering himself directly, and coming forward with a grin upon his bloodless face, as if the feat had been intended.
“Ah, you’ll break your neck some day. Here’s a shilling for you. Take me into Miss Chartley at once.”
Bob bit the coin, and slipped it into his pocket before he replied, “Gone out.”
“Gone out? Will she be long?”
“Dessay she’ll be hours, sir.”
James Poynter stamped with his foot, and muttered something unparliamentary.
“Tell Miss Chartley,” he said. “No, don’t tell her anything. Here, let me out.”
Bob ran to the ponderous old door, and stood holding it open with his eyes glittering as he stared at the visitor, till he had hurried out with his hat set very much on one side, and walked sharply away.
“Thought he’d want the bob again,” said the boy. “Just do for the old gal. Well, I’m blessed!”
This last consequent upon his catching sight of a shabby-looking figure in black, with a damaged bonnet, and a weirdly dissipated look, rising slowly into sight up the area-steps, and then coming out of the creaking gate to the boy, who grew more serious the nearer the figure came.
It was not a pleasant face to look upon, for it was not over-clean; the black and grey hair was ill-arranged, and the eyes that shone above the flushed cheeks belied the woman sadly if they did not tell the truth about potations.
“Why, Bob, my darling,” she said, with an exaggerated fawning smile, “and how is my bonny boy?”
“Here stow that, mother,” cried the lad, struggling from an embrace. “Don’t! Can’t yer see I’ve been brushing my hair?”
“Yes, and it looks beautiful, ducky. I’ve been knocking ever so long at the hairy door, and that fine madam saw me, and wouldn’t let me in.”
“No; she says I ain’t never to let you in no more.”
“Not let me in no more to see my own boy?”
“No; she says you took some fresh butter last time you was here, and you sha’n’t come.”
“Then you sha’n’t stay, Bob; I’ll take you away, my darling. Oh, it’s a wicked, cruel world!”
“Here, I say, mother, stow that. Whatcher want?”
“What, my darling? Yes, that’s it: want—staring want; but you sha’n’t stay here.”
“Get out. I shall.”
“No, you sha’n’t, you ungrateful boy. I won’t be separated from my own child. Bob dear, have you got any money?”
“Eh?”
“Anybody give you anything?” whined the woman. “There ain’t been nothing pass my lips this blessed day.”
“Oho! what a wunner!” cried the boy. “Why, I can smell yer.”
“No, no, my dear; that’s Mrs Billson as you can smell. I’ve been talking to her, and she drink ’orrid. Ain’tcher got a few pence for your poor lone mother, who’s ready to break her heart sometimes because she’s parted from her boy?”
“Will you go away if I give you something?”
“Go away? Oho!” whined the woman, wiping off a maudlin tear with the end of her shawl.
“Here, I say, don’t cry on the front-doorsteps. Come down in the hairy, where nobody can’t see you.”
“Driven away by my own boy! Oho, oho!”
“’Tain’t my fault. Doctor said you wasn’t to come, and if you did he’d send me away.”
“Then come home, Bob, to your poor heartbroken mother.”
“Walker!” cried the boy. “Why yer ain’t got no home to give a chap.”
“No home?”
“Well, I don’t call that a home, living up in a hattic along o’ old Mother Billson.”
“Oh, you ungrateful boy! Ain’t it enough for me to have come down so that I’m obliged to see my own son in liveries, without him turning against me.”
“Who’s a-turning again you? Don’t cry, I tell yer,” he said, angrily stamping a foot.
“Then you shall come home.”
“Sha’n’t. I ain’t going to leave the doctor and Miss Rich for nobody, so there.”
“Ugh, you viper!”
“Here, stow that. Who’s a viper? See what they’ve done for me when I was runned over. Why, if it hadn’t been for Miss Rich a-nussing of me when you was allus tipsy, you wouldn’t have had no boy at all, only a dead ’un berrid out at Finchley along o’ the old man.”
“Ah, you wicked ungrateful little serpent! They’ve been setting you again’ your poor suffering mother.”
“Stow that, I say. You’ll have the doctor hear you if you don’t be quiet.”
“I won’t be quiet, you wicked, wicked—”
“Look here! If you don’t hold your row, I won’t give you the bob and two coppers I’ve got for you.”
“Have you got some money for your poor mother, then?”
“I’ve got a bob a gent give me, and twopence, my half of what we got for the bones me and ’Lisbeth sold.”
“Ah? I’m a poor suffering woman, and I do say things sometimes as I don’t mean,” whined the wretched creature. “Give me the money, dear, and let me go.”
“If I give it to yer, you won’t say no more about my coming away?”
“No, dear; I only want to see you happy.”
“Well, there, then,” he said, giving her the coins; “and, I say—”
“Yes, my precious.”
“You ain’t to spend none of it in gin.”
“Gin? Oh, no, my dear.”
“Get some pudding out of Holborn, and a saveloy; and, I say, mother, get yourself a bit o’ tea.”
“Yes, my darling.”
“And don’t let Mrs Billson gammon you into lending her none of it.”
“No, my dear. And there, good-bye, Bob; be a good boy. I won’t come wherriting of you no more’n I can help.”
The miserable object, from whom out of compassion Richmond Chartley had rescued the boy, shuffled along the street to the nearest public-house, to buy more plus spirit with which to attack her miserable minus spirit, with the result that, as a mathematical problem, one would kill the other as sure as Fate.
Meanwhile Bob stood on the step watching her.
“Wonder whether the old gal does like me? Somehow she allus goes as soon as she gets all a chap’s got. Now she’ll go and have a drop. She allus does when she says she won’t.”
“Bob! you Bob!” came in a shrill voice from the kitchen stairs.
“Can’t you see I’m a-coming?” cried the boy; and hurriedly closing the door, he returned to his work.
Chapter Four.Public Opinion on Current Events.These was a desperate scuffle going on round the corner as Hendon Chartley came by one day, and he would have passed on without seeing it, only that his English blood was stirred at the way in which the odds were all on one side—four boys being engaged in pummelling one who, in spite of the thrashing he was getting, fought on boldly, till, with a couple of sharp cuts of his cane, Hendon settled two of the combatants, when the other two ran away.“Thankye, sir.”“You young dog, is it you?” cried Hendon.“Yes, sir; and I should ha’ licked all on ’em if you hadn’t come.”“Why, you ungrateful young rascal, be off back and wash your face. Look here: I’ll have you turned away.”“No, sir; please, sir, don’t, sir. I couldn’t help it, sir, I was obliged to fight, sir; I was indeed, sir. Oh, don’t, sir; you hurts!”Hendon listened to no remonstrance, but catching the boy by the collar he thrust him back till he reached the door, which he opened with his latch-key, and, bundling the boy in, sent him staggering along the hall as he closed the door, and went on once more.“Yah! who cares for you?” cried the boy angrily; and then his countenance changed, and he broke into a smile as he found himself face to face with Rich.“Why, Bob,” she exclaimed, “what is the matter?”“I couldn’t help it, Miss. Mr Hendon shoved me in like that. I meant to come in by the area.”“But why did he bring you back like that? Did he know where you had been?”“Oh, no, Miss! I never tells anybody where I’m going with a note for you; not even Mr Poynter, Miss. Here’s the letter; and Miss Heath said I was to give her love to you, and she hadn’t been because she was so busy.”Bob drew a letter from his pocket, and as he did so made upon it an ugly mark.“Why, Bob, your hand’s bleeding!”“Is it, Miss? Oh, ah! so it is. That ain’t nothink.”“You are all over mud, too. Have you met with an accident again?”The boy’s lips parted to say “Yes,” but as he gazed up into the clear searching eyes which looked down so kindly into his, he shook his head.“No, Miss,” he said boldly.“Why, Bob, you have not been fighting?”“I didn’t want to fight, Miss; but what’s a chap to do?”“Surely not fight when he is sent on an errand,” said Rich severely.“I didn’t want to fight,” said the boy again: “but I was fighting, and Mr Hendon ketched me.”“I’m afraid, Bob, I shall be obliged to speak to my father, and have you sent away.”“No, no! don’t do that, Miss; please don’t. I will be so very useful, and I will do everythink ’Lisbeth tells me. Don’t send a feller away.”“We cannot keep a boy who behaves so badly,” continued Rich, who was trying to hide being amused and pleased at the boy’s affectionate earnestness.“Then I won’t fight no more,” said Bob. “But you don’t know what it is, Miss. You don’t know how the fellers tease yer. They’re allers at yer. Soon as yer goes down the street, some one shouts ‘Bottles!’ Jest because I takes out the physic. I should jest like to make some on ’em take it. I’d give ’em a dose.”“But, Bob, you ought to be too sensible to take any notice about a rude boy calling you names.”“So I am, Miss,” cried the boy, “ever so much. I never did nothing till they began on the doctor.”“Began on the doctor?”“Yes, Miss; saying all sorts o’ things about him. I shouldn’t like to tell you what.”“And I should not like to hear, Bob,” said Rich gravely, as she went up-stairs; while after waiting till he heard a door close, Bob went cautiously into the surgery, crept to the door of the consulting-room, and listened to find out whether the doctor was there, and finding him absent, the boy went nimbly to the nest of drawers, opened one, and took out a pair of scissors before lifting a tin case from a corner—a case which looked like the holder of a map.Bob removed the lid, drew out a roll of diachylon, and after cutting off a strip, he replaced the lid and scissors, and descended to the kitchen, where Elizabeth was peeling potatoes, and making the droning noise which she evidently believed to be a song.“Look ye here!” cried the boy, triumphantly showing his bleeding knuckles.Elizabeth uttered a faint cry.“Why, you’ve been fighting!” she cried. “Oh, you bad wicked boy!”“So are you,” cried Bob tauntingly: “you’d fight if the chaps served you as they did me, and said what they did about the doctor.”“What did they say?” said the girl, giving her nose a rub as if to make it more plastic.“You bathe them cuts nistely and put some sticking-plaister on, and I’ll tell you.”Elizabeth set down the potato basin, wiped her hands, and after filling a tin bowl full of cold water, and fetching a towel, she tenderly bathed the boy’s dirty injured hands.“Now tell me what they said about the doctor,” she said coaxingly.“Why, they gets saying things to try and get me took away. My old woman don’t like me stopping.”“She’s a dreadful old creature,” said Elizabeth angrily, “and I won’t have her here.”“So’s your old woman a dreadful old creature,” retorted Bob, “and I won’t have her here.”“My mother’s been dead ten years,” said Elizabeth, battling with an obstinate bit of mud, “and I won’t have you speak to me in that impudent way.”“Then you leave my poor old woman alone.”“You let her stop away instead of always coming down them area-steps, and you encouraging her.”“That I don’t, so come now. She’s my old woman and I’m very fond on her, but I wish she wouldn’t come. She allus comes when I’m busy.”“And she ought to be very glad you are here.”“But she ain’t. She says doctors are bad ’uns. And that they do all sorts o’ things as they oughtn’t to. She was in the orspittle once, and she said it was horrid, and if she hadn’t made haste and got well they’d have ’sected her.”“Lor!” said Elizabeth, drying the boy’s hands with a series of gentle pats of the towel.“And she says she knows the doctor does them sort o’ things on the sly, and that she shall take me away, and I don’t want to go.”“Well, that didn’t make you fight, did it?”“Yes, it did, now. I was going to tell you, on’y you’re in such a hurry, I went to take a letter for Miss Rich this morning, and as I was coming back, I meets mother, and she was asking me if I’d got any—”“Money?” said Elizabeth promptly.“Well, s’pose she did? If your mother warn’t dead, and hadn’t any money, p’raps if she met you in the street she’d ask you for money. Then how would you like it if four chaps come and said, ‘Hallo, Bottles, how many dead ’uns have you got in the dust-hole?’”“Lor! did they say that?” said Elizabeth, squeezing the boy’s hand in the interest she took.“I say don’t! You hurt. Here, cut up some o’ that dacklum and warm it, and stick it on. Then one on ’em said he looked through the keyhole one day, and saw the doctor sharpening his knife; and that set mother off crying, and she sets down on a doorstep, and goes on till she made me wild; and the more she cried and said she’d take me away the more they danced about, and called me body-snatcher.”“How awful!” said Elizabeth, holding a strip of diachylon at the end of the scissors to warm at the fire.“But I got the old woman off at last for twopence, and soon as she’d gone I was coming home, and I met them four again, and they began at me once more.”“Did they, though?” said Elizabeth.“Yes, and I pitched into ’em: and so would any one, I say. Why, it’s enough to make the old woman fetch me away. I say, Liz, you don’t want me to go, do you?”“Indeed, but I do, sir.”“No, you don’t. I say, Liz, I’m so precious hungry. Got anything to give a fellow?”“No. You took out two slices of bread and dripping to eat as you went.”Bob nodded.“Why you never went and give them to that old woman, did you?”“Ah, your mother’s been dead ten years,” said Bob sententiously. “S’pose I did give it to her? It was mine, and I wasn’t obliged to eat it, was I? Thankye, that’ll do.”Bob patted the plaister down on his knuckles, and had reached the kitchen door, when Elizabeth of the smudgy face called him by name, and, with as near an approach to a smile as she could display, showed him a piece of pudding on the cupboard shell.“And you said you wanted me to go,” said Bob, with his mouth full, after a busy pause; “but I know’d you didn’t mean it. I say, Liz, is that big gent with the rings and chains and shiny hat going to marry Miss Rich?”“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth, suddenly growing deeply interested. “Why?”“Because he’s always coming to see the doctor, and whenever I let him in he asks me where Miss Rich is, and gives me something.”“Lor!”“Yes, and he looks at her so.”“Do he, now? And what does Miss Rich say?”“Oh, she only talks to him about its being fine or rainy, and as if she didn’t want to stop in the room.”“Then she is,” said Elizabeth triumphantly.“Is? Is what?”“Going to marry him. That’s the proper way to a lady to behave.”“Oh!” said Bob shortly, and a curious frown came over his countenance. “I don’t like him, somehow. I wish one didn’t want money quite so bad.”Bob went up-stairs, and the place being empty he shut himself up in the surgery, to indulge in a morbid taste for trying flavour or odour of everything in the place, and fortunately so far without fatal or even dangerous results.After a time he had a fit, and prescribed for himselfSyrup Aurantii—so much in cold water, leaving himself in imagination in the chair while he mixed the medicine, and going back to the chair to take it. After recovering from his imaginary fit, he spelled over a number of theLancet, dwelling long over in account of an operation of a novel kind; and ending by standing upon a chair and carefully noting the contents of the doctor’s glass jars of preparations, which he turned round and round till he was tired, and came down, to finish the morning by helping himself to about a teaspoonful of chlorate of potassium, which he placed in his trousers-pocket, not from any intention of taking it to purify his blood, but to drop in pinches in the kitchen fire and startle Elizabeth.“Teach her not to say things agen my old woman,” said Bob. “Just as if she can help being old!”
These was a desperate scuffle going on round the corner as Hendon Chartley came by one day, and he would have passed on without seeing it, only that his English blood was stirred at the way in which the odds were all on one side—four boys being engaged in pummelling one who, in spite of the thrashing he was getting, fought on boldly, till, with a couple of sharp cuts of his cane, Hendon settled two of the combatants, when the other two ran away.
“Thankye, sir.”
“You young dog, is it you?” cried Hendon.
“Yes, sir; and I should ha’ licked all on ’em if you hadn’t come.”
“Why, you ungrateful young rascal, be off back and wash your face. Look here: I’ll have you turned away.”
“No, sir; please, sir, don’t, sir. I couldn’t help it, sir, I was obliged to fight, sir; I was indeed, sir. Oh, don’t, sir; you hurts!”
Hendon listened to no remonstrance, but catching the boy by the collar he thrust him back till he reached the door, which he opened with his latch-key, and, bundling the boy in, sent him staggering along the hall as he closed the door, and went on once more.
“Yah! who cares for you?” cried the boy angrily; and then his countenance changed, and he broke into a smile as he found himself face to face with Rich.
“Why, Bob,” she exclaimed, “what is the matter?”
“I couldn’t help it, Miss. Mr Hendon shoved me in like that. I meant to come in by the area.”
“But why did he bring you back like that? Did he know where you had been?”
“Oh, no, Miss! I never tells anybody where I’m going with a note for you; not even Mr Poynter, Miss. Here’s the letter; and Miss Heath said I was to give her love to you, and she hadn’t been because she was so busy.”
Bob drew a letter from his pocket, and as he did so made upon it an ugly mark.
“Why, Bob, your hand’s bleeding!”
“Is it, Miss? Oh, ah! so it is. That ain’t nothink.”
“You are all over mud, too. Have you met with an accident again?”
The boy’s lips parted to say “Yes,” but as he gazed up into the clear searching eyes which looked down so kindly into his, he shook his head.
“No, Miss,” he said boldly.
“Why, Bob, you have not been fighting?”
“I didn’t want to fight, Miss; but what’s a chap to do?”
“Surely not fight when he is sent on an errand,” said Rich severely.
“I didn’t want to fight,” said the boy again: “but I was fighting, and Mr Hendon ketched me.”
“I’m afraid, Bob, I shall be obliged to speak to my father, and have you sent away.”
“No, no! don’t do that, Miss; please don’t. I will be so very useful, and I will do everythink ’Lisbeth tells me. Don’t send a feller away.”
“We cannot keep a boy who behaves so badly,” continued Rich, who was trying to hide being amused and pleased at the boy’s affectionate earnestness.
“Then I won’t fight no more,” said Bob. “But you don’t know what it is, Miss. You don’t know how the fellers tease yer. They’re allers at yer. Soon as yer goes down the street, some one shouts ‘Bottles!’ Jest because I takes out the physic. I should jest like to make some on ’em take it. I’d give ’em a dose.”
“But, Bob, you ought to be too sensible to take any notice about a rude boy calling you names.”
“So I am, Miss,” cried the boy, “ever so much. I never did nothing till they began on the doctor.”
“Began on the doctor?”
“Yes, Miss; saying all sorts o’ things about him. I shouldn’t like to tell you what.”
“And I should not like to hear, Bob,” said Rich gravely, as she went up-stairs; while after waiting till he heard a door close, Bob went cautiously into the surgery, crept to the door of the consulting-room, and listened to find out whether the doctor was there, and finding him absent, the boy went nimbly to the nest of drawers, opened one, and took out a pair of scissors before lifting a tin case from a corner—a case which looked like the holder of a map.
Bob removed the lid, drew out a roll of diachylon, and after cutting off a strip, he replaced the lid and scissors, and descended to the kitchen, where Elizabeth was peeling potatoes, and making the droning noise which she evidently believed to be a song.
“Look ye here!” cried the boy, triumphantly showing his bleeding knuckles.
Elizabeth uttered a faint cry.
“Why, you’ve been fighting!” she cried. “Oh, you bad wicked boy!”
“So are you,” cried Bob tauntingly: “you’d fight if the chaps served you as they did me, and said what they did about the doctor.”
“What did they say?” said the girl, giving her nose a rub as if to make it more plastic.
“You bathe them cuts nistely and put some sticking-plaister on, and I’ll tell you.”
Elizabeth set down the potato basin, wiped her hands, and after filling a tin bowl full of cold water, and fetching a towel, she tenderly bathed the boy’s dirty injured hands.
“Now tell me what they said about the doctor,” she said coaxingly.
“Why, they gets saying things to try and get me took away. My old woman don’t like me stopping.”
“She’s a dreadful old creature,” said Elizabeth angrily, “and I won’t have her here.”
“So’s your old woman a dreadful old creature,” retorted Bob, “and I won’t have her here.”
“My mother’s been dead ten years,” said Elizabeth, battling with an obstinate bit of mud, “and I won’t have you speak to me in that impudent way.”
“Then you leave my poor old woman alone.”
“You let her stop away instead of always coming down them area-steps, and you encouraging her.”
“That I don’t, so come now. She’s my old woman and I’m very fond on her, but I wish she wouldn’t come. She allus comes when I’m busy.”
“And she ought to be very glad you are here.”
“But she ain’t. She says doctors are bad ’uns. And that they do all sorts o’ things as they oughtn’t to. She was in the orspittle once, and she said it was horrid, and if she hadn’t made haste and got well they’d have ’sected her.”
“Lor!” said Elizabeth, drying the boy’s hands with a series of gentle pats of the towel.
“And she says she knows the doctor does them sort o’ things on the sly, and that she shall take me away, and I don’t want to go.”
“Well, that didn’t make you fight, did it?”
“Yes, it did, now. I was going to tell you, on’y you’re in such a hurry, I went to take a letter for Miss Rich this morning, and as I was coming back, I meets mother, and she was asking me if I’d got any—”
“Money?” said Elizabeth promptly.
“Well, s’pose she did? If your mother warn’t dead, and hadn’t any money, p’raps if she met you in the street she’d ask you for money. Then how would you like it if four chaps come and said, ‘Hallo, Bottles, how many dead ’uns have you got in the dust-hole?’”
“Lor! did they say that?” said Elizabeth, squeezing the boy’s hand in the interest she took.
“I say don’t! You hurt. Here, cut up some o’ that dacklum and warm it, and stick it on. Then one on ’em said he looked through the keyhole one day, and saw the doctor sharpening his knife; and that set mother off crying, and she sets down on a doorstep, and goes on till she made me wild; and the more she cried and said she’d take me away the more they danced about, and called me body-snatcher.”
“How awful!” said Elizabeth, holding a strip of diachylon at the end of the scissors to warm at the fire.
“But I got the old woman off at last for twopence, and soon as she’d gone I was coming home, and I met them four again, and they began at me once more.”
“Did they, though?” said Elizabeth.
“Yes, and I pitched into ’em: and so would any one, I say. Why, it’s enough to make the old woman fetch me away. I say, Liz, you don’t want me to go, do you?”
“Indeed, but I do, sir.”
“No, you don’t. I say, Liz, I’m so precious hungry. Got anything to give a fellow?”
“No. You took out two slices of bread and dripping to eat as you went.”
Bob nodded.
“Why you never went and give them to that old woman, did you?”
“Ah, your mother’s been dead ten years,” said Bob sententiously. “S’pose I did give it to her? It was mine, and I wasn’t obliged to eat it, was I? Thankye, that’ll do.”
Bob patted the plaister down on his knuckles, and had reached the kitchen door, when Elizabeth of the smudgy face called him by name, and, with as near an approach to a smile as she could display, showed him a piece of pudding on the cupboard shell.
“And you said you wanted me to go,” said Bob, with his mouth full, after a busy pause; “but I know’d you didn’t mean it. I say, Liz, is that big gent with the rings and chains and shiny hat going to marry Miss Rich?”
“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth, suddenly growing deeply interested. “Why?”
“Because he’s always coming to see the doctor, and whenever I let him in he asks me where Miss Rich is, and gives me something.”
“Lor!”
“Yes, and he looks at her so.”
“Do he, now? And what does Miss Rich say?”
“Oh, she only talks to him about its being fine or rainy, and as if she didn’t want to stop in the room.”
“Then she is,” said Elizabeth triumphantly.
“Is? Is what?”
“Going to marry him. That’s the proper way to a lady to behave.”
“Oh!” said Bob shortly, and a curious frown came over his countenance. “I don’t like him, somehow. I wish one didn’t want money quite so bad.”
Bob went up-stairs, and the place being empty he shut himself up in the surgery, to indulge in a morbid taste for trying flavour or odour of everything in the place, and fortunately so far without fatal or even dangerous results.
After a time he had a fit, and prescribed for himselfSyrup Aurantii—so much in cold water, leaving himself in imagination in the chair while he mixed the medicine, and going back to the chair to take it. After recovering from his imaginary fit, he spelled over a number of theLancet, dwelling long over in account of an operation of a novel kind; and ending by standing upon a chair and carefully noting the contents of the doctor’s glass jars of preparations, which he turned round and round till he was tired, and came down, to finish the morning by helping himself to about a teaspoonful of chlorate of potassium, which he placed in his trousers-pocket, not from any intention of taking it to purify his blood, but to drop in pinches in the kitchen fire and startle Elizabeth.
“Teach her not to say things agen my old woman,” said Bob. “Just as if she can help being old!”
Chapter Five.A Sister’s Trial.“Don’t ask questions. There’s the money; take it. You don’t think I stole it, do you?”“Stole it, Hendon dear? No, of course. How can you talk so?”“Then, why don’t you take it?”“Because, as your sister, I think I have a right to know whence it comes.”“And, as your brother, seeing how we live here, in everybody’s debt, I don’t think you need be so jolly particular.”“However poor we are, Hendon, we need not lose our self-respect.”“Self-respect! How is a man to have self-respect, without a penny in his pocket?”“You just showed me pounds.”“Yes, now.”“How did you come by it, Hendon?”“Don’t ask,” he cried impatiently. “Take it, and pay that poor girl some wages on account, and give young Bob a tightener. Don’t be so squeamish, Rich.”“I will not take the money. You deceived me once before.”“Well, if I’d told you I won it at pool you wouldn’t have taken it.”“No,” said Rich firmly, “I would sooner have lived on dry bread. This money, then, is part of some gambling transaction?”“It isn’t.”“Then how did you come by it?”“Well, then, if you will have it, Poynter lent it to me.”“Oh, Hendon, Hendon, has it come to this?” cried Richmond piteously.“Yes, it has. What is a fellow to do? Home’s wretched; one never has a shilling. The guvnor’s mad over his essence, as he calls it, and I believe, if he saw us starve, he would smile and sigh.”“No, no. He is so intent upon his discovery, that he does not realise our position.”“His discovery! Bah! Lunacy! There isn’t a fellow at Guy’s who wouldn’t laugh at me if I told him what the guvnor does. Rich, old girl, I’m sick of it! It was madness for me to go through all this training, when I might have been earning money as porter or a clerk. Everything has been swallowed up in the fees. Why, if Jem Poynter hadn’t come forward like a man, and paid the last—”“What?”“Well, what are you shouting at?”“Did Mr Poynter pay your last fees at Guy’s?”“Of course he did. Do you suppose the money was caught at the bottom of a spout after a shower?”“Hendon, dear Hendon!”“There, it’s no use to be so squeamish. If those last hadn’t been paid, it would have been like throwing away all that had been paid before.”“I did not know of this—I did not know of this!”“Don’t, don’t, dear! I couldn’t help it. I used to feel as bad as you do; but this cursed poverty hardens a man. I fought against it; but Poynter was always after me, tempting me, standing dinners when I was as hungry as a hound; giving me wine and cigars. He has almost forced money on me lots of times; and at—at other times—when I’ve had a few glasses—I haven’t refused it. It’s all Janet’s fault.”“Hendon!”“Well, so it is!” cried the young fellow passionately. “If she hadn’t thrown me over as she did—”“To save you from additional poverty.”“No, it didn’t; it made me desperate, and ready to drink when a chap like Poynter was jolly, and forced champagne on me. I was as proud as you are once, but my pride’s about all gone!”“Hush! I will not hear you speak like that, Hendon, my own darling brother! For Janet’s sake—”“She’s nothing to me now. I was thrown over for some other fellow.”“How dare you, sir! You know it is not true! Dear Janet! Working daily like a slave, and offering me her hard earnings when we were so pressed.”“Did she—did she?” cried Hendon excitedly, and with his pale face flushing up.“There,” cried Richmond half-laughingly, half-scornfully, “confess, sir, that a lying spirit was on your lips. Say you believe that of Janet and that you do not still love her, if you dare!”Hendon Chartley let his head fall into his hands, and bent down, with his shoulders heaving with the emotion he could not conceal, while his sister bent over him and laid her hand upon his head.He started up at her touch, seized and kissed her hand, and then, going to the side of the room, he laid his arm against the panel and his brow upon it, to stand talking there.“I can’t help it, Rich dear,” he groaned; “I feel like a brute beast sometimes, and as if I can never look her in the face again. I’ve drunk; I’ve gone wild in a kind of despair; and Poynter seems to have been always by me to egg me on, and get me under his thumb.”“My own brother!”“Don’t touch me, dear. I can’t stop here. I’ll do as Mark Heath did, and if Janet’ll wait, perhaps some day I may come back to her a better man, and she may forgive me.”There was a pause.“I don’t believe anything of her but what is good and true; God bless her for a little darling—Why, Rich!”He turned sharply, for a low moan had escaped his sister, and he found that she had sunk into a chair, and was sobbing bitterly, with her face in her hands.“Rich darling, I did not mean it. What have I said?”“Nothing, nothing, dear; only you—you must not leave me.”“But Mark Heath—Ah! what a fool I am!” he cried, catching his sister in his arms. “I did not think what I was saying; and, Rich dear, hold up, I don’t believe the dear old boy is dead.”“Hush, Hendon dear,” said Richmond, mastering her emotion; “I want—I want to talk to you about Mr Poynter.”“Yes, all right. Sit down, dear, and I won’t be such a fool.”“You must not leave me.”“I won’t. I’ll stop and fight it out like a man. And as for James Poynter, I wish I hadn’t let him pay those rates.”“What?”“I didn’t like to tell you, but I let out to him about the gas and water and the rest of it, and next day he gave me all the receipts. It was one night after I’d dined with him at his club, and I was a bit primed. I thought it was very noble of him then, but when I saw it all I did nothing but curse and swear. It was nearly the death of a patient at Guy’s, for I forget what I was about. Hang it, Rich dear! don’t look so white as that.”“I—I was wondering why we had not been troubled more,” she stammered; and then, with her face flushing, she turned fiercely upon her brother.“Hendon,” she cried, “do you know what this means?”There was utter silence, and Hendon Chartley turned his face away.“I say, do you know what this means? Hendon, speak?”“Yes.”It was slowly and unwillingly said.“And you have encouraged this man to make advances to the woman your best friend—almost your brother—loved?”“Oh, Rich!”“Speak.”“No, no! I never encouraged him. I fought against it, and it has made me half mad when the great vulgar boor has sat talking about you, and drinking your health and praising you. Rich, I tell you I’ve felt sometimes as if I could smash the champagne bottle over his thick skull for even daring to think about you.”“And yet you have let him do all this!” cried Richmond, with her eyes flashing. “Hendon—brother, for the sake of this man’s money and the comforts it would bring, do you wish to see me his wife?”“Damn it, no! I’d sooner see you dead!” cried the young man passionately. “Say the word, old girl, and I’ll fight for you as a brother should. I’ll half-starve myself but what I’ll get on, and pay that thick-skinned City elephant every penny I’ve had.”“And some day Janet shall put her arms round your neck, and tell you that you are the best and truest boy that ever lived.”“Ah! some day,” said Hendon sadly.“Yes, some day,” cried Rich, clasping him in her arms. “Hendon dear, you’ve made me strong where I felt very, very weak, and now we can join hands and fight the enemy to the very last.”“When old Mark shall come back.”“Hush!”“No, I’ll not hush! When dear old Mark shall come back, and all these troubles be like a dream.”Richmond looked up with a sad smile in her brother’s face, and kissed him once again.“And Janet—” he said hoarsely, after he had returned her caress.“Is acting as a true woman should. Take her as a pattern, dear, and show some self-denial.”“Why not take you, Rich?” he said kindly as he gazed in the sweet careworn face before him. “There, I won’t ask you to have the money. I’m off; if I stop here longer I shall be acting like a girl. As for Poynter, if he comes and pesters you—”“Mr Poynter will not come,” said Richmond, drawing herself up proudly. “He has acted like a coward to us both.”“One moment, Rich,” said Hendon eagerly: “do you think—the governor—”“Has taken money from him? No.”“Thank God!”“My father, whatever his weakness, is a true gentleman at heart. He would not do this thing.”Hendon advanced a step to take his sister in his arms, but in his eyes then she wore so much the aspect of an indignant queen that he raised her thin white hand to his lips instead, and hurried from the house.
“Don’t ask questions. There’s the money; take it. You don’t think I stole it, do you?”
“Stole it, Hendon dear? No, of course. How can you talk so?”
“Then, why don’t you take it?”
“Because, as your sister, I think I have a right to know whence it comes.”
“And, as your brother, seeing how we live here, in everybody’s debt, I don’t think you need be so jolly particular.”
“However poor we are, Hendon, we need not lose our self-respect.”
“Self-respect! How is a man to have self-respect, without a penny in his pocket?”
“You just showed me pounds.”
“Yes, now.”
“How did you come by it, Hendon?”
“Don’t ask,” he cried impatiently. “Take it, and pay that poor girl some wages on account, and give young Bob a tightener. Don’t be so squeamish, Rich.”
“I will not take the money. You deceived me once before.”
“Well, if I’d told you I won it at pool you wouldn’t have taken it.”
“No,” said Rich firmly, “I would sooner have lived on dry bread. This money, then, is part of some gambling transaction?”
“It isn’t.”
“Then how did you come by it?”
“Well, then, if you will have it, Poynter lent it to me.”
“Oh, Hendon, Hendon, has it come to this?” cried Richmond piteously.
“Yes, it has. What is a fellow to do? Home’s wretched; one never has a shilling. The guvnor’s mad over his essence, as he calls it, and I believe, if he saw us starve, he would smile and sigh.”
“No, no. He is so intent upon his discovery, that he does not realise our position.”
“His discovery! Bah! Lunacy! There isn’t a fellow at Guy’s who wouldn’t laugh at me if I told him what the guvnor does. Rich, old girl, I’m sick of it! It was madness for me to go through all this training, when I might have been earning money as porter or a clerk. Everything has been swallowed up in the fees. Why, if Jem Poynter hadn’t come forward like a man, and paid the last—”
“What?”
“Well, what are you shouting at?”
“Did Mr Poynter pay your last fees at Guy’s?”
“Of course he did. Do you suppose the money was caught at the bottom of a spout after a shower?”
“Hendon, dear Hendon!”
“There, it’s no use to be so squeamish. If those last hadn’t been paid, it would have been like throwing away all that had been paid before.”
“I did not know of this—I did not know of this!”
“Don’t, don’t, dear! I couldn’t help it. I used to feel as bad as you do; but this cursed poverty hardens a man. I fought against it; but Poynter was always after me, tempting me, standing dinners when I was as hungry as a hound; giving me wine and cigars. He has almost forced money on me lots of times; and at—at other times—when I’ve had a few glasses—I haven’t refused it. It’s all Janet’s fault.”
“Hendon!”
“Well, so it is!” cried the young fellow passionately. “If she hadn’t thrown me over as she did—”
“To save you from additional poverty.”
“No, it didn’t; it made me desperate, and ready to drink when a chap like Poynter was jolly, and forced champagne on me. I was as proud as you are once, but my pride’s about all gone!”
“Hush! I will not hear you speak like that, Hendon, my own darling brother! For Janet’s sake—”
“She’s nothing to me now. I was thrown over for some other fellow.”
“How dare you, sir! You know it is not true! Dear Janet! Working daily like a slave, and offering me her hard earnings when we were so pressed.”
“Did she—did she?” cried Hendon excitedly, and with his pale face flushing up.
“There,” cried Richmond half-laughingly, half-scornfully, “confess, sir, that a lying spirit was on your lips. Say you believe that of Janet and that you do not still love her, if you dare!”
Hendon Chartley let his head fall into his hands, and bent down, with his shoulders heaving with the emotion he could not conceal, while his sister bent over him and laid her hand upon his head.
He started up at her touch, seized and kissed her hand, and then, going to the side of the room, he laid his arm against the panel and his brow upon it, to stand talking there.
“I can’t help it, Rich dear,” he groaned; “I feel like a brute beast sometimes, and as if I can never look her in the face again. I’ve drunk; I’ve gone wild in a kind of despair; and Poynter seems to have been always by me to egg me on, and get me under his thumb.”
“My own brother!”
“Don’t touch me, dear. I can’t stop here. I’ll do as Mark Heath did, and if Janet’ll wait, perhaps some day I may come back to her a better man, and she may forgive me.”
There was a pause.
“I don’t believe anything of her but what is good and true; God bless her for a little darling—Why, Rich!”
He turned sharply, for a low moan had escaped his sister, and he found that she had sunk into a chair, and was sobbing bitterly, with her face in her hands.
“Rich darling, I did not mean it. What have I said?”
“Nothing, nothing, dear; only you—you must not leave me.”
“But Mark Heath—Ah! what a fool I am!” he cried, catching his sister in his arms. “I did not think what I was saying; and, Rich dear, hold up, I don’t believe the dear old boy is dead.”
“Hush, Hendon dear,” said Richmond, mastering her emotion; “I want—I want to talk to you about Mr Poynter.”
“Yes, all right. Sit down, dear, and I won’t be such a fool.”
“You must not leave me.”
“I won’t. I’ll stop and fight it out like a man. And as for James Poynter, I wish I hadn’t let him pay those rates.”
“What?”
“I didn’t like to tell you, but I let out to him about the gas and water and the rest of it, and next day he gave me all the receipts. It was one night after I’d dined with him at his club, and I was a bit primed. I thought it was very noble of him then, but when I saw it all I did nothing but curse and swear. It was nearly the death of a patient at Guy’s, for I forget what I was about. Hang it, Rich dear! don’t look so white as that.”
“I—I was wondering why we had not been troubled more,” she stammered; and then, with her face flushing, she turned fiercely upon her brother.
“Hendon,” she cried, “do you know what this means?”
There was utter silence, and Hendon Chartley turned his face away.
“I say, do you know what this means? Hendon, speak?”
“Yes.”
It was slowly and unwillingly said.
“And you have encouraged this man to make advances to the woman your best friend—almost your brother—loved?”
“Oh, Rich!”
“Speak.”
“No, no! I never encouraged him. I fought against it, and it has made me half mad when the great vulgar boor has sat talking about you, and drinking your health and praising you. Rich, I tell you I’ve felt sometimes as if I could smash the champagne bottle over his thick skull for even daring to think about you.”
“And yet you have let him do all this!” cried Richmond, with her eyes flashing. “Hendon—brother, for the sake of this man’s money and the comforts it would bring, do you wish to see me his wife?”
“Damn it, no! I’d sooner see you dead!” cried the young man passionately. “Say the word, old girl, and I’ll fight for you as a brother should. I’ll half-starve myself but what I’ll get on, and pay that thick-skinned City elephant every penny I’ve had.”
“And some day Janet shall put her arms round your neck, and tell you that you are the best and truest boy that ever lived.”
“Ah! some day,” said Hendon sadly.
“Yes, some day,” cried Rich, clasping him in her arms. “Hendon dear, you’ve made me strong where I felt very, very weak, and now we can join hands and fight the enemy to the very last.”
“When old Mark shall come back.”
“Hush!”
“No, I’ll not hush! When dear old Mark shall come back, and all these troubles be like a dream.”
Richmond looked up with a sad smile in her brother’s face, and kissed him once again.
“And Janet—” he said hoarsely, after he had returned her caress.
“Is acting as a true woman should. Take her as a pattern, dear, and show some self-denial.”
“Why not take you, Rich?” he said kindly as he gazed in the sweet careworn face before him. “There, I won’t ask you to have the money. I’m off; if I stop here longer I shall be acting like a girl. As for Poynter, if he comes and pesters you—”
“Mr Poynter will not come,” said Richmond, drawing herself up proudly. “He has acted like a coward to us both.”
“One moment, Rich,” said Hendon eagerly: “do you think—the governor—”
“Has taken money from him? No.”
“Thank God!”
“My father, whatever his weakness, is a true gentleman at heart. He would not do this thing.”
Hendon advanced a step to take his sister in his arms, but in his eyes then she wore so much the aspect of an indignant queen that he raised her thin white hand to his lips instead, and hurried from the house.