CHAPTER XX
“WHAT will ye give me, and I'll tell ye?” said Maxley to Alfred Hardie.
“Five pounds.”
“That is too much.”
“Five shillings, then.”
“That is too little. Lookee here; your garden owes me thirty shillings for work: suppose you pays me, and that will save me from going to your Dad for it.”
Alfred consented readily, and paid the money. Then Maxley told him it was Captain Dodd he had been talking with.
“I thought so! I thought so!” cried Alfred joyfully, “but I was afraid to believe it: it was too delightful. Maxley, you're a trump you don't know what anxiety you have relieved me of. Some fool has gone and reported the Agia wrecked; look here!” and he showed him his Lloyd's. “Luckily it has only just come, so I haven't been miserable long.”
“Well, to be sure, news flies fast now-a-days. He have been wrecked for that matter.” He then surprised Alfred by telling him all he had just learned from Dodd; and was going to let out about the L. 4,000, when he recollected this was the banker's son, and while he was talking to him, it suddenly struck Maxley that this young gentleman would come down in the world should the bank break, and then the Dodds, he concluded, judging others by himself, would be apt to turn their backs on him. Now he liked Alfred, and was disposed to do him a good turn, when he could without hurting James Maxley. “Mr. Alfred,” said he, “I know the world better than you do: you be ruled by me, or you'll rue it. You put on your Sunday coat this minute, and off like a shot to Albyn Villee; you'll get there before the Captain; he have got a little business to do first; that is neither here nor there: besides, you are young and lissom. You be the first to tell Missus Dodd the good news; and, when the Captain comes, there sits you aside Miss Julee: and don't you be shy and shamefaced, take him when his heart is warm, and tell him why you are there: 'I love her dear,' says you. He be only a sailor and they never has no sense nor prudence; he is a'most sure to take you by the hand, at such a time: and once you get his word, he'll stand good, to his own hurt. He's one of that sort, bless his silly old heart.”
A good deal of this was unintelligible to Alfred, but the advice seemed good—advice generally does when it squares with our own wishes. He thanked Maxley, left him, made a hasty toilet, and ran to Albion Villa.
Sarah opened the door to him in tears.
The news of the wreck had come to Albion Villa just half an hour ago, and in that half hour they had tasted more misery than hitherto their peaceful lot had brought them in years. Mrs. Dodd was praying and crying in her room; Julia had put on her bonnet, and was descending in deep distress and agitation, to go down to the quay and learn more if possible.
Alfred saw her on the stairs, and at sight of her pale, agitated face flew to her.
She held out both hands piteously to him: “O Alfred!”
“Good news!” he panted. “He is alive—Maxley has seen him—I have seen him—he will be here directly—my own love, dry your eyes—calm your fears—he is safe—he is well: hurrah! hurrah!”
The girl's pale face flushed red with hope, then pale again with emotion, then rosy red with transcendent joy. “Oh, bless you! bless you!” she murmured, in her sweet gurgle so full of heart: then took his head passionately with both her hands, as if she was going to kiss him: uttered a little inarticulate cry of love and gratitude over him, then turned and flew up the stairs, crying “Mamma! mamma!” and burst into her mother's room. When two such Impetuosities meet as Alfred and Julia, expect quick work.
What happened in Mrs. Dodd's room may be imagined: and soon both ladies came hastily out to Alfred, and he found himself in the drawing-room seated between them, and holding a hand of each, and playing the man delightfully, soothing and assuring them. Julia believed him at a word, and beamed with unmixed delight and anticipation of the joyful meeting. Mrs. Dodd cost him more trouble: her soft hand trembled still in his, and she put question upon question. But when he told her he with his own eyes had seen Captain Dodd talking to Maxley, and gathered from Maxley he had been shipwrecked on the coast of France, and lost his chronometer and his sextant, these details commanded credit. Bells were rung: the Captain's dressing-room ordered to be got ready; the cook put on her mettle, and Alfred invited to stay and dine with the long-expected one: and the house of mourning became the house of joy.
“And then it was he who brought the good news,” whispered Julia to her mother, “and that is so sweet.”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Dodd, “he will make even me love him. The L. 14,000! I hope that was not lost in the wreck.”
“Oh, mamma! who cares when his own dear, sweet, precious life has been in danger, and is mercifully preserved? Why does he not come? I shall scold him for keeping us waiting. You know I am not a bit afraid of him, though he is papa. Indeed, I am ashamed to say I govern him with a rod of—no matter what. Do, do, do let us all three put on our bonnets, and run and meet him. I want him so to love somebody the very first day.”
Mrs. Dodd said, “Well, wait a few minutes, and then, if he is not here, you two shall go. I dare hardly trust myself to meet my darling husband in the open street.”
Julia ran to Alfred: “If he does not come in ten minutes, you and I may go and meet him.”
“You are an angel,” murmured Alfred.
“You are another,” said Julia haughtily. “Oh, dear, I can't sit down, and I don't want flattery: I want papa. A waltz! a waltz! then one can go mad with joy without startling propriety. I can't answer for the consequences if I don't let off a little, little happiness.”
“That I will,” said Mrs. Dodd; “for I am as happy as you, and happier.” She played a waltz.
Julia's eyes were a challenge: Alfred started up and took her ready hand, and soon the gay young things were whirling round, the happiest pair in England.
But in the middle of the joyous whirl, Julia's quick ear, on the watch all the time, heard the gate swing to: she glided like an eel from Alfred's arm and ran to the window. Arrived there, she made three swift vertical bounds like a girl with a skipping rope, only her hands were clapping in the air at the same time; then down the stairs, screaming, “His chest his chest! he is coming, coming, come!”
Alfred ran after her.
Mrs. Dodd, unable to race with such antelopes, slipped quietly out into the little balcony.
Julia had seen two men carrying a trestle with a tarpauling over it, and a third walking beside. Dodd's heavy sea-chest had been more than once carried home this way. She met the men at the door, and overpowered them with questions:—
“Is it his clothes? Then he wasn't so much wrecked after all. Is he with you? Is he coming directly? Why don't you tell me?”
The porters at first wore the stolid impassive faces of their tribe; but when this bright young creature questioned them, brimming over with ardour and joy, their countenances fell and they hung their heads.
The little sharp-faced man, who was walking beside the others stepped forward to reply to Julia.
He was interrupted by a terrible scream from the balcony.
Mrs. Dodd was leaning wildly over it, with dilating eyes and quivering hand, that pointed down to the other side of the trestle: “Julia!! Julia!!”
Julia ran round, and stood petrified, her pale lips apart, and all her innocent joy frozen in a moment.
The tarpauling was scanty there, and a man's hand and part of his arm dangled helpless out.
The hand was blanched, and wore a well-known ring.
CHAPTER XXI
IN the terror and confusion no questions were then asked: Alfred got to David's head, and told Skinner to take his feet; Mrs. Dodd helped, and they carried him up and laid him on her bed. The servant girls cried and wailed, and were of little use: Mrs. Dodd hurried them off for medical aid, and she and Julia, though pale as ghosts, and trembling in every limb, were tearless and almost silent, and did all for the best. They undid a shirt button that confined his throat: they set his head high, and tried their poor little eau-de-Cologne and feminine remedies; and each of them held an insensible hand in both hers, clasping it piteously and trying to hold him tight, so that Death should not take him away from them.
“My son, where is my son?” sighed Mrs. Dodd.
Alfred threw his arm round her neck: “You have one son here: what shall I do?”
The next minute he was running to the telegraph office for her.
At the gate he found Skinner hanging about, and asked him hurriedly how the calamity had happened. Skinner said Captain Dodd had fallen down senseless in the street, and he had passed soon after, recognised him, and brought him home: “I have paid the men, sir; I wouldn't let them ask the ladies at such a time.”
“Oh, thank you! thank you, Skinner! I will repay you; it is me you have obliged.” And Alfred ran off with the words in his mouth.
Skinner looked after him and muttered: “I forgot him. It is a nice mess. Wish I was out of it.” And he went back, hanging his head, to Alfred's father.
Mr. Osmond met him. Skinner turned and saw him enter the villa.
Mr. Osmond came softly into the room, examined Dodd's eye, felt his pulse, and said he must be bled at once.
Mrs. Dodd was averse to this. “Oh, let us try everything else first,” said she. But Osmond told her there was no other remedy: “All the functions we rely on in the exhibition of medicines are suspended.”
Dr. Short now drove up, and was ushered in.
Mrs. Dodd asked him imploringly whether it was necessary to bleed. But Dr. Short knew his business too well to be entrapped into an independent opinion where a surgeon had been before him. He drew Mr. Osmond apart, and inquired what he had recommended: this ascertained, he turned to Mrs. Dodd and said, “I advise venesection or cupping.”
“Oh, Dr. Short, pray have pity and order something less terrible. Dr. Sampson is so averse to bleeding.”
“Sampson? Sampson? never heard of him.”
“It is the chronothermal man,” said Osmond.
“Oh, ah! but this is too serious a case to be quacked. Coma with stertor, and a full, bounding pulse, indicates liberal bloodletting. I would try venesection; then cup, if necessary, or leech the temple. I need not say, sir, calomel must complete the cure. The case is simple, and, at present, surgical: I leave it in competent hands.” And he retired, leaving the inferior practitioner well pleased with him and with himself; no insignificant part of a physicians art.
When he was gone, Mr. Osmond told Mrs. Dodd that however crotchety Dr. Sampson might be, he was an able man, and had very properly resisted the indiscriminate use of the lancet: the profession owed him much. “But in apoplexy the leech and the lancet are still our sheet-anchor.”
Mrs. Dodd utter a faint shriek: “Apoplexy! Oh, David! Oh, my darling, have you come home for this?”
Osmond assured her apoplexy was not necessarily fatal; provided the cerebral blood-vessels were relieved in time by depletion.
The fixed eye and terrible stertorous breathing on the one hand, and the promise of relief on the other, overpowered Mrs. Dodd's reluctance. She sent Julia out of the room on a pretext, and then consented with tears to David's being bled. But she would not yield to leave the room. No; this tender woman nerved herself to see her husband's blood flow, sooner than risk his being bled too much by the hard hand of custom. Let the peevish fools, who make their own troubles in love, compare their slight and merited pangs with this: she was his true lover and his wife, yet there she stood with eye horror-stricken yet unflinching, and saw the stab of the little lancet, and felt it deeper than she would a javelin through her own body, and watched the blood run that was dearer to her than her own.
At the first prick of the lancet David shivered, and, as the blood escaped, his eye unfixed, and the pupils contracted and dilated, and once he sighed. “Good sign that!” said Osmond.
“Oh, that is enough, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd: “we shall faint if you take any more.”
Osmond closed the vein, observing that a local bleeding would do the rest. When he had staunched the blood, Mrs. Dodd sank half fainting in her chair. By some marvellous sympathy it was she who had been bled, and whose vein was now closed. Osmond sprinkled water on her face; she thanked him, and said sweetly, “You see I could not have lost any more.”
When it was over she came to tell Julia; she found her sitting on the stairs crying and pale as marble. She suspected. And there was Alfred hanging over her, and in agony at her grief: out came his love for her in words and accents unmistakable, and this in Osmond's hearing and the maid's.
“Oh, hush! hush!” cried poor Mrs. Dodd, and her face was seen to burn through her tears.
And this was the happy, quiet, little villa of my opening chapters.
Ah! Richard Hardie! Richard Hardie!
The patient was cupped on the nape of the neck by Mr. Osmond, and, on the glasses drawing, showed signs of consciousness, and the breathing was relieved. These favourable symptoms were neither diminished nor increased by the subsequent application of the cupping needles.
“We have turned the corner.” said Mr. Osmond cheerfully.
Rap! rap! rap! came a telegraphic message from Dr. Sampson, and was brought up to the sick-room.
“Out visiting patients when yours came. In apoplexy with a red face and stertorous breathing, put the feet in mustard bath and dash much cold water on the head from above. On revival give emetic: cure with sulphate of quinine. In apoplexy with a white face, treat as for a simple faint: here emetic dangerous. In neither apoplexy bleed. Coming down by train.”
This message added to Mrs. Dodd's alarm; the whole treatment varied so far from what had been done. She faltered her misgivings. Osmond reassured her. “Not bleed in apoplexy!” said he superciliously; “why, it is the universal practice. Judge for yourself. You see the improvement.”
Mrs. Dodd admitted it.
“Then as to the cold water,” said Osmond, “I would hardly advise so rough a remedy. And he is going on so well. But you can send for ice; and meantime give me a good-sized stocking.”
He cut and fitted it adroitly to the patient's head, then drenched it with eau-de-Cologne, and soon the head began to steam.
By-and-bye, David muttered a few incoherent words, and the anxious watchers thanked God aloud for them.
At length Mr. Osmond took leave with a cheerful countenance, and left them all grateful to him, and with a high opinion of his judgment and skill, especially Julia. She said Dr. Sampson was very amusing to talk to, but she should be sorry to trust to that rash, reckless, boisterous man in time of danger.
About two in the morning a fly drove rapidly up to the villa, and Sampson got out.
He found David pale and muttering, and his wife and children hanging over him in deep distress.
He shook hands with them in silence, and eyed the patient keenly. He took the nightcap off, removed the pillows, lowered his head, and said quietly, “This is the cold fit come on: we must not shut our eyes on the pashint. Why, what is this? he has been cupped!” And Sampson changed colour and his countenance fell.
Mrs. Dodd saw and began to tremble. “I could not hear from you; and Dr. Short and Mr. Osmond felt quite sure: and he seems better. Oh, Dr. Sampson, why were you not here? We have bled him as well. Oh, don't, don't, don't say it was wrong! He would have died; they said so. Oh, David! David! your wife has killed you.” And she knelt and kissed his hand and implored his pardon, insensible.
Julia clung sobbing to her mother, in a vain attempt to comfort her.
Sampson groaned.
“No, no,” said he: “don't go on so, my poor soul; you did all for the best; and now we must make the best of what is done. Hartshorn! brandy! and caution! For those two assassins have tied my hands.”
While applying these timid remedies, he inquired if the cause was known. They told him they knew nothing; but that David had been wrecked on the coast of France, and had fallen down senseless in the street: a clerk of Mr. Hardie's had recognised him, and brought him home: so Alfred said.
“Then the cause is mintil,” said Sampson, “unless he got a blow on the hid in bein' wrecked.”'
He then examined David's head carefully, and found a long scar.
“But this is not it,” said he; “this is old.”
Mrs. Dodd clasped her hands, and assured him it was new to her: her David had no scar there when he left her last.
Pursuing his examination, Sampson found an open wound in his left shoulder.
He showed it them; and they were all as pale as the patient in a moment. He then asked to see his coat, and soon discovered a corresponding puncture in it, which he examined long and narrowly.
“It is a stab—with a one-edged knife.”
There was a simultaneous cry of horror.
“Don't alarm yourselves for that,” said Sampson; “it is nothing: a mere flesh-wound. It is the vein-wound that alarms me. This school knows nothing about the paroxysms and remissions of disease. They have bled and cupped him for a passing fit. It has passed into the cold stage, but no quicker than it would have done without stealing a drop of blood. To-morrow, by disease's nature, he will have another hot fit in spite of their bleeding. Then those ijjits would leech his temples; and on that paroxysm remitting by the nature of the disease, would fancy their leeches had cured it.”
The words were the old words, but the tone and manner was so different: no shouting, no anger: all was spoken low and gently, and with a sort of sad and weary and worn-out air.
He ordered a kettle of hot water and a quantity of mustard, and made his preparations for the hot fit, as he called it, maintaining the intermittent and febrile character of all disease.
The patient rambled a good deal, but quite incoherently, and knew nobody.
But about eight o'clock in the morning he was quite quiet and apparently sleeping: so Mrs. Dodd stole out of the room to order some coffee for Sampson and Edward. They were nodding, worn out with watching.
Julia, whose high-strung nature could dispense with sleep on such an occasion, was on her knees praying for her father.
Suddenly there came from the bed, like a thunder-clap, two words uttered loud and furiously—
“HARDIE! VILLAIN!”
Up started the drowsy watchers, and rubbed their eyes. They had heard the sound, but not the sense.
Julia rose from her knees bewildered and aghast: she had caught the strange words distinctly—words that were to haunt her night and day.
They were followed immediately by a loud groan, and the stertorous breathing recommenced, and the face was no longer pale, but flushed and turgid. On this Sampson hurried Julia from the room, and, with Edward's help, placed David on a stool in the bath, and getting on a chair, discharged half a bucket of cold water on his head: the patient gasped: another, and David shuddered, stared wildly, and put his hand to his head; a third, and he staggered to his feet.
At this moment Mrs. Dodd coming hastily into the room, he looked steadily at her, and said, “Lucy!”
She ran to throw her arms round him, but Sampson interfered. “Gently! gently!” said he; “we must have no violent emotions.”
“Oh, no! I will be prudent.” And she stood quiet with her arms still extended, and cried for joy.
They got David to bed again, anti Sampson told Mrs. Dodd there was no danger now from the malady, but only from the remedies.
And in fact David fell into a state of weakness and exhaustion, and kept muttering unintelligibly.
Dr. Short called in the morning, and was invited to consult with Dr. Sampson. He declined. “Dr. Sampson is a notorious quack: no physician of any eminence will meet him in consultation.”
“I regret that resolution,” said Mrs. Dodd quietly, “as it will deprive me of the advantage of your skill.”
Dr. Short bowed stifly. “I shall be at your service, madam, when that empiric has given the patient up.” And he drove away.
Osmond, finding Sampson installed, took the politic line; he contrived to glide by fine gradations into the empiric's opinions, without recanting his own, which were diametrically opposed.
Sampson, before he shot back to town, asked him to provide a good reliable nurse.
He sent a young woman of iron. She received Sampson's instructions, and assumed the command of the sick-room, and was jealous of Mrs. Dodd and Julia, looked on them as mere rival nurses, amateurs, who, if not snubbed, might ruin the professionals. She seemed to have forgotten in the hospitals all about the family affections and their power of turning invalids themselves into nurses.
The second night she got the patient all to herself for four hours, from eleven till two.
The ladies having consented to this arrangement its order to recruit themselves for the work they were not so mad as to intrust wholly to a hireling, nurse's feathers smoothed themselves perceptibly.
At twelve the patient was muttering and murmuring incessantly about wrecks, and money, and things: of which vain babble nurse showed her professional contempt by nodding.
At 12.30 she slept
At 1.20 she snored very loud, and woke instantly at the sound.
She took the thief out of the candle, and went like a good sentinel to look at her charge.
He was not there.
She rubbed her eyes, and held the candle over the place where he ought to be—where, in fact, he must be; for he was far too weak to move.
She tore the bedclothes down: she beat and patted the clothes with her left hand, and the candle began to shake violently in her right.
The bed was empty.
Mrs. Dodd was half asleep when a hurried tap came to her door: she started up in a moment and great dread fell on her; was David sinking?
“Ma'am! Ma'am! Is he here?”
“He! Who?” cried Mrs. Dodd, bewildered.
“Why, him! He can't be far off”
In a moment Mrs. Dodd had opened the door, and her tongue and the nurse's seemed to dash together, so fast came the agitated words from each in turn; and crying, “Call my son! Alarm the house!” Mrs. Dodd darted into the sickroom. She was out again in a moment, and up in the attics rousing the maids, while the nurse thundered at Edward's door and Julia's, and rang every bell she could get at. The inmates were soon alarmed, and flinging on their clothes: meantime Mrs. Dodd and the nurse scoured the house and searched every nook in it down to the very cellar: they found no David.
But they found something.
The street door ajar.
It was a dark drizzly night.
Edward took one road, Mrs. Dodd and Elizabeth another.
They were no sooner gone, than Julia drew the nurse into a room apart and asked her eagerly if her father had said nothing.
“Said nothing, Miss? Why he was a-talking all the night incessant.”
“Did he say anything particular? think now.”
“No, Miss: he went on as they all do just before a change. I never minds 'em; I hear so much of it.”
“Oh, nurse! nurse! have pity on me; try and recollect.”
“Well, Miss, to oblige you then; it was mostly fights this time—and wrecks—and villains—and bankers—and sharks.”
“Bankers??!” asked Julia eagerly.
“Yes, Miss, and villains, they come once or twice, but most of the time it was sharks, and ships, and money, and—hotch-potch I call it the way they talk. Bless your heart, they know no better: everything they ever saw, or read, or heard tell of—it all comes out higgledy-piggledy just before they goes off. We that makes it a business never takes no notice of what they says, Miss, and never repeats it out of one sick house into another, that you may rely on.”
Julia scarcely heard this: her hands were tight to her brow as if to aid her to think with all her force.
The result was, she told Sarah to put on her bonnet and rushed upstairs.
She was not gone three minutes, but in that short interval the nurse's tongue and Sarah's clashed together swiftly and incessantly.
Julia heard them. She came down with a long cloak on, whipped the hood over her head, beckoned Sarah quickly, and darted out. Sarah followed instinctively, but ere they had gone many yards from the house, said, “Oh, Miss, nurse thinks you had much better not go.”
“Nurse thinks! Nurse thinks! What does she know of me and my griefs?”
“Why, Miss, she is a very experienced woman, and she says—Oh, dear! oh, dear! And such a dark cold night for you to be out!”
“Nurse? Nurse? What did she say?”
“Oh, I haven't the heart to tell you: if you would but come back home with me! She says as much as that poor master's troubles will be over long before we can get to him.” And with this Sarah burst out sobbing.
“Come quicker,” cried Julia despairingly. But after a while she said, “Tell me; only don't stop me.”
“Miss, she says she nursed Mr. Campbell, the young curate that died last harvest-time but one, you know; and he lay just like master, and she expecting a change every hour: and oh, Miss, she met him coming down-stairs in his nightgown: and he said, 'Nurse, I am all right now,' says he, and died momently in her arms at the stair-foot. And she nursed an old farmer that lay as weak as master, and just when they looked for him to go, lo! and behold him dressed and out digging potatoes, and fell down dead before they could get hands on him mostly: and nurse have a friend, that have seen more than she have, which she is older than nurse, and says a body's life is all one as a rushlight, flares up strong momently just before it goes out altogether. Dear heart! where ever are we going to in the middle of the night?”
“Don't you see? To the quay.”
“Oh, don't go there, Miss, whatever! I can't abide the sight of the water when a body's in trouble.” Here a drunken man confronted them, and asked then if they wanted a beau; and on their slipping past him in silence, followed them, and offered repeatedly to treat them. Julia moaned and hurried faster. “Oh, Miss,” said Sarah, “what could you expect, coming out at this time of night? I'm sure the breath is all out of me, you do tear along so.”
“Tear? we are crawling. Ah! Sarah, you are not his daughter. There, follow me! I cannot go so slow.” And she set off to run.
Presently she passed a group of women standing talking at a corner of the street, and windows were open with nightcapped heads framed in them.
She stopped a moment to catch the words; they were talking about a ghost which was said to have just passed down the street, and discussing whether it was a real ghost or a trick to frighten people.
Julia uttered a low cry and redoubled her speed, and was soon at Mr. Richard Hardie's door; but the street was deserted, and she was bewildered, and began to think she had been too hasty in her conjecture. A chill came over her impetuosity. The dark, drizzly, silent night, the tall masts, the smell of the river—how strange it all seemed: and she to be there alone at such an hour!
Presently she heard voices somewhere near. She crossed over to a passage that seemed to lead towards them; and then she heard the voices plainly, and among them one that did not mingle with the others, for it was the voice she loved. She started back and stood irresolute. Would he be displeased with her?
Feet came trampling slowly along the passage.
His voice came with them.
She drew back and looked round for Sarah.
While she stood fluttering, the footsteps came close, and there emerged from the passage into the full light of the gas-lamp Alfred and two policemen carrying a silent senseless figure in a night-gown, with a great-coat thrown over part of him.
It was her father, mute and ghastly.
The policemen still tell of that strange meeting under the gaslight by Hardie's Bank; and how the young lady flung her arms round her father's head, and took him for death, and kissed his pale cheeks, and moaned over him; and how the young gentleman raised her against her will, and sobbed over her; and how they, though policemen, cried like children. And to them I must refer the reader: I have not the skill to convey the situation.
They got more policemen to help, and carried him to Albion Villa.
On the way something cold and mysterious seemed to have come between Julia and Alfred. They walked apart in gloomy silence, broken only by foreboding sighs.
I pass over the tempest of emotions under which that sad burden entered Albion Villa, and hurry to the next marked event.
Next day the patient had lost his extreme pallor, and wore a certain uniform sallow hue; and at noon, just before Sampson's return, he opened his eyes wide, and fixed them on Mrs. Dodd and Julia, who were now his nurses. They hailed this with delight, and held their breath to hear him speak to them the first sweet words of reviving life and love.
But soon, to their surprise and grief, they found he did not know them. They spoke to him, each in turn, and told him piteously who they were, and implored him with tears to know them and speak to them. But no; he fixed a stony gaze on them that made them shudder, and their beloved voices passed over him like an idle wind.
Sampson, when he came, found the ladies weeping by the bedside.
They greeted him with affection, Julia especially: the boisterous controversialist had come out a gentle, zealous artist in presence of a real danger.
Dr. Sampson knew nothing of what had happened in his absence. He stepped to the bedside cheerfully, and the ladies' eyes were bent keenly on his face in silence.
He had no sooner cast eyes on David than his countenance fell, and his hard but expressive features filled with concern.
That was enough for Mrs. Dodd. “And he does not know me,” she cried: “he does not know my voice. His voice would call me back from the grave itself. He is dying. He will never speak to me again. Oh, my poor orphan girl!”
“No! no!” said Samson, “you are quite mistaken: he will not die. But——”
His tongue said no more. His grave and sombre face spoke volumes.
CHAPTER XXII
To return to the bank. Skinner came back from the Dodds' that miserable afternoon in a state of genuine agitation and regret. He was human, and therefore mixed, and their desolation had shocked him.
The footman told him Mr. Hardie was not at home; gone to London, he believed. Skinner walked away dejected. What did this mean? Had he left the country?
He smiled at his fears, and felt positive Mr. Hardie had misled the servants, and was quietly waiting for him in the bank parlour.
It was now dusk: he went round to that little dark nook of the garden the parlour window opened on, and tapped: there was no reply; the room looked empty. He tried the sash: it yielded. Mr. Hardie had been too occupied with embezzling another's property to take common precautions in defence of his own; never in his life before had he neglected to fasten the iron shutters with his own hand, and to-day he had left the very window unfastened. This augured ill. “He is off: he has done me along with the rest,” thought Skinner. He stepped into the room, found a lucifer-box, shut the shutters, lighted a candle, and went peering about amongst the banker's papers, to see if he could find a clue to his intentions; and, as he pottered and peered, he quaked as well: a detector by dishonest means feels thief-like, and is what he feels. He made some little discoveries that guided him in his own conduct; he felt more and more sure his employer would outwit him if he could, and resolved it should be diamond cut diamond.
The church clock struck one.
He started at the hour, crept out and closed the window softly, then away by the garden gate.
A light was still burning in Alfred's room, and at this Skinner had another touch of compunction. “There is one won't sleep this night along of our work,” thought he.
At three next afternoon Mr. Hardie reappeared.
He had gone up to town to change the form of the deposit:—He took care to think of it as a deposit still, the act of deposit having been complete, the withdrawal incomplete, and by no fault of his, for he had offered it back; but Fate and Accident had interposed. He had converted the notes into gold direct, and the bills into gold through notes; this was like going into the river to hide his trail. Next process: he turned his gold into L. 500 notes, and came flying home with them.
His return was greeted by Skinner with a sigh of relief. Hardie heard it, interpreted it aright, and sent for him into the parlour, and there told him with a great affectation of frankness what he had done, then asked significantly if there was any news at Albion Villa.
Skinnier in reply told Mr. Hardie of the distress he had witnessed up at Albion Villa: “And, sir,” said he, lowering his voice, “Mr. Alfred helped carry the body upstairs. It is a nice mess altogether, sir, when you come to think.”
“Ah! all the better,” was the cool reply: “he will be useful to let us know what we want; he will tell Jane, and Jane me. You don't think he will live, do you?”
“Live! no: and then who will know the money is here?”
“Who should know? Did not he say he had just landed, and been shipwrecked? Shipwrecked men do not bring fourteen thousand pounds ashore.” The speaker's eyes sparkled: Skinner watched him demurely. “Skinner,” said he solemnly, “I believe my daughter Jane is right, and that Providence really interferes sometimes in the affairs of this world. You know how I have struggled to save my family from disgrace and poverty: those struggles have failed in a great degree: but Heaven has seen them, and saved this money from the sea, and dropped it into my very hands to retrieve my fortunes with. I must be grateful: spend a portion of it in charity, and rear a noble fortune on the rest. Confound it all!”
And his crestfallen countenance showed some ugly misgiving had flashed on him quite suddenly.
“What sir? what?” asked Skinner eagerly.
“The receipt!”
CHAPTER XXIII
“THE receipt? Oh, is that all? You have got that,” said Skinner very coolly.
“What makes you think so?” inquired the other keenly. He instantly suspected Skinner of having it.
“Why, sir, I saw it in his hand.”
“Then it has got to Albion Villa, and we are ruined.”
“No, no, sir; you won't hear me: I am sure I saw it fall out of his hand when he was taken ill; and I think, but I won't be sure, he fell on it. Anyway, there was nothing in his hands when I delivered him at Albion Villa; so it must be here. I daresay you have thrown it into a drawer or somewhere, promiscuously.”
“No, no, Skinner,” said Mr. Hardie, with increasing alarm: “it is useless for us to deceive ourselves. I was not three minutes in the room, and thought of nothing but getting to town and cashing the bills.”
He rang the bell sharply, and on Betty coming in, asked her what she had done with that paper that was on the floor.
“Took it up and put it on the table, sir. This was it, I think.” And she had her finger upon a paper.
“No! no!” said Mr. Hardie. “The one I mean was much smaller than that.”
“What” said she, with that astonishing memory for trifles people have who never read, “was it a little crumpled up paper lying by the basket?”
“Yes! yes! that sounds like it.”
“Oh, I put that into the basket.”
Mr. Hardie's eye fell directly on the basket, but it was empty. She caught his glance, and told him she had emptied it in the dust-hole as usual. Mr. Hardie uttered an angry exclamation. Betty, an old servant of his wife's, resented it with due dignity by tossing her head as she retired.
“There is no help for it,” said Mr. Hardie bitterly; “we must go and grub in the dust-hole now.”
“Why, sir, your name is not on it, after all.”
“What does that matter? A man is bound by the act of his agent; besides, it is my form, and my initials on the back. Come, let us put a good face on the thing.” And he led the way to the kitchen, and got up a little laugh, and asked the scullery-maid if she could show Mr. Skinner and him the dust-hole. She stared, but obeyed, and the pair followed her, making merry.
The dust-hole was empty.
The girl explained: “It is the dustman's day: he came at eleven o'clock in the morning and carried all the dust away: and grumbled at the paper and the bones, he did. So I told him beggars musn't be choosers: just like his impudence! when he gets it for nothing, and sells it for a mint outside the town.” The unwonted visitors left her in dead silence almost before she had finished her sentence.
Mr. Hardie sat down in his parlour thoroughly discomposed; Skinner watched him furtively.
At last the former broke out: “This is the devil's doing: the devil in person. No intelligence nor ability can resist such luck. I almost wish we had never meddled with it: we shall never feel safe, never be safe.”
Skinner made light of the matter, treated the receipt as thrown into the sea. “Why, sir,” said he, “by this time it will have found its way to that monstrous heap of ashes on the London Road; and who will ever look for it there, or notice it if they find it?” Hardie shook his head: “That monstrous heap is all sold every year to the farmers. That receipt, worth L. 14,000 to me, will be strewed on the soil for manure; then some farmer's man, or some farmer's boy that goes to the Sunday-school, will read it, see Captain Dodd's name, and bring it to Albion Villa, in hopes of a sixpence: a sixpence! Heaven help the man who does a doubtful act and leaves damnatory evidence on paper kicking about the world.”
From that hour the cash Hardie carried in his bosom, without a right to it, began to blister.
He thought of telling the dustman he had lost a paper, and setting him to examine the mountain of ashes on the London Road; but here caution stepped in: how could he describe the paper without awakening curiosity and defeating his own end? He gave that up. It was better to let the sleeping dog lie.
Finally, he resolved to buy security in a world where after all one has to buy everything: so he employed an adroit agent, and quietly purchased that mountain, the refuse of all Barkington. But he felt so ill-used, he paid for it in his own notes: by this means the treaty reverted to the primitive form of barter*—ashes for rags.