A Bachelor's Dream
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Vague as it was, the dream was to him dreadful, and the struggle that he made to find her, to save her, was so intense that he awoke – awoke to see her standing within a yard or two of his chair, a letter in her hand, the usual calmness of her face gone, her very lips unsteady. He started to his feet, and seized her hand – the dream still clung about him, and he did not realize her reality. Then he exclaimed, seeing the change in her:
"Mademoiselle, what is it? What is the matter? You are in trouble."
"Yes," she said faintly. She was trembling, and he gently induced her to sit in the chair from which he had risen. "Pray pardon me, sir," she said; "but I am troubled. I do not know what to do, and" – she faltered, glancing at him – "it seemed natural to come to you."
Sensible, practical George Brudenell was far from sensible and practical when in the presence of those glorious eyes, which looked at him beseechingly. He did not know it; but he had entirely bidden adieu to common-sense where Alexia Boucheafen was concerned. He said gently:
"What's the matter? Tell me? Am I to read this?"
"If you will." She let him take the letter; and he saw that it was written in a boyish, wavering hand, and that it commenced affectionately with her name. It was short, for the signature, to which his eyes turned instinctively, was upon the same page, and was, "Your brother, Gustave Boucheafen."
The Doctor repeated it aloud.
"Your brother, Mademoiselle?"
"You have heard me speak of my brother, sir?"
"Certainly – yes! But I thought he was in Paris."
"I thought so too. He was there three months ago, when I last heard from him. But the post he held was poor, miserable, he hated it; and he was threatening then to leave it and come to England, as I had one. He did so a month ago, and has found that the bad could be worse, for he writes that he is penniless, sir, and starving."
"And he writes to you for help, poor child!" exclaimed the Doctor pityingly.
"Yes. But, ah, sir, he is so young – a boy! He is two years younger than I am – only nineteen," Alexia urged deprecatingly. "And whom should he ask, poor Gustave? We have no other kin who care for us."
"Where is your brother?" inquired the Doctor.
"Close here, in London; but I forget the address." She pointed to the letter, which he still held. "Sir, if you read you will understand better far than I can explain."
Doctor Brudenell read the letter – just such a letter as a foolish, impulsive, reckless boy might write, and certainly describing a condition that was desperate enough. The Doctor returned it, and asked doubtfully:
"Mademoiselle, what do you wish me to do? You wish to help him?"
"Ah, sir – yes!" she cried eagerly, and then stopped, faltering. "But I have no money," she said, her head drooping.
The Doctor walked to the end of the room, came back, and stood beside her.
"My poor child, I understand you; but it must not be. Why should the little you earn go to your brother? At the best it would help him only for a very little time, for I see that he says he has no present prospect of employment. In a week or two he would be in his present state again. Something else must be done."
"Ah, sir, it is easy – so easy to speak!" said the governess bitterly.
"What else can be done? Who is there that will help him, poor Gustave?
He is even poorer, more helpless than I, for in all this England he has not even one friend."
It needed only these words and the glance that accompanied them to turn the doubtful notion that was in the Doctor's mind into a resolve. But he had a sufficient sense of his own imprudence even now to hesitate a little before speaking again.
"Mademoiselle," he said gently, "I know that a lad such as your brother must be often placed at a great disadvantage in his endeavors to get on if, as you say, he is alone and friendless. Being a foreigner increases the difficulty, no doubt. You must let me see if I cannot remedy it."
"You will help him!" cried Alexia eagerly. She rose, her face flushing, her eyes sparkling. It was the first time he had seen them shine so, the first time that a crimson flush had dispelled that curious ivory pallor; her beauty dazzled him; he thought her grateful for the help offered to a brother whom she loved. In her heart, with perfect coolness, she was thinking him a fool, and triumphing in the victory which she foresaw that she would win through his folly. It was her first full knowledge of her power over him. "Tell me what I must do?" she exclaimed.
"Write to your brother, and tell him to come here," returned the Doctor. He spoke quickly, refusing to doubt or falter. "I have no doubt I shall be able to help him to a fitting situation before long. Until then he must remain here. You will have at least the satisfaction of knowing that he is safe then. You – you do not object to the suggestion?" he added with sudden humility, afraid that he might have spoken too coolly, too imperatively. With a sudden movement she seized his hand and pressed it.
"Object – I? Ah, sir, how can I, when you are so good, so more than kind?" She stopped, faltering. "My poor Gustave shall thank you – I cannot. For what can I say but, Thank you a hundred times!"
"Tut, tut!" said the Doctor lightly, recovering his self-possession as she released his hand. "You make too much of it – it is nothing. I am only too pleased to be able to serve you. You will write to your brother?"
"At once, sir." She was turning to the door, when a thought occurred to him – a last lingering touch of prudence and caution made him say:
"Mademoiselle, you have not told me. How did your brother know where you were – where to write to you?"
"By the papers, sir – by what you call the reports of police," she said, turning and replying without the least hesitation. "It was the first thing that he saw, my poor boy, that account of me. But he would not come here or let me know he was in England, lest I should be troubled about him, and he did not wish me to know, besides, that he was poor and distressed. I am sure of that, although he does not tell me."
She left the room, and ran fleetly up-stairs to her own sitting-room. The children were in bed, and there was no one to see her as she drew her writing-case toward her, and wrote swiftly:
"I have succeeded; my cause was won before I had time to plead it. You are at liberty to come here. If, once here, you will succeed in doing what you desire, I cannot tell. It is your affair, not mine. I have done my part. Come then, and remember yours – my brother."
* * * * *
Doctor Brudenell, paying his visit to the governess's sitting-room the next evening to bid his nephews and niece good-night, found there, not the children, but a stranger. His momentary look of surprise vanished as he recollected; and, while he spoke a few rather embarrassed words of greeting and welcome, he keenly scanned Gustave Boucheafen.
He was a handsome young fellow, tall, slender, and dark, and looking very boyish, in spite of some deep lines on the white forehead and about the small, tightly-compressed lips. His clothes were shabby, almost threadbare; there was an air of carelessness, even recklessness, about him, and yet there was something that was far more easy to feel than to describe which proclaimed him to be a gentlemen. All this the Doctor noted as he took the soft slim hand, and answered as briefly as he could the voluble speech of thanks which the young man tendered him, speaking in English less correct than Alexia's and with a certain extravagance of expression and manner which discomfited George Brudenell, and which he decided was wholly French.
But, although embarrassed, as he always was by anything fresh and new, he spoke very kindly and encouragingly to the brother, conscious always of the sister's beautiful eyes resting gently upon him; and, after a few questions asked and answered, he left the two to themselves, and was called out shortly afterward to attend a very stout old gentleman whom he had warned six months before to take his choice between present port-wine and future apoplexy. The old gentleman, being as obstinate as old people of both sexes occasionally are, had heroically chosen the port; and now, according to the account of a flushed messenger, he was enduring the punishment prophesied, and was purple already. The weary Doctor took up his hat resignedly and went out. Alexia Boucheafen, standing idly leaning against the window-frame, negligently listening to what her companion was saying, saw her employer hurrying down the steps and along the hot pavement, upon which the sun had been shining fiercely all day.
"He has gone out," she said, looking round, with a curious inflection in her voice, as though that fact had a bearing upon the conversation that had gone before.
"Already?" cried the young man eagerly. "Better than I hoped. And does he leave his study, laboratory – what does he call it? – unlocked?"
"Yes."
"You are sure?"
"Am I likely to be mistaken?"
"Of course not – no!" He moved across to the door. "Well, come, show me!
Come!"
"You are in a hurry," said the governess, not stirring.
"What would you have me do?" he demanded impatiently. "Can we let time and opportunity slip together, with what we have to do?"
"Have we not done enough for the present?" she asked slowly. Calm and cold as she was, a slight irrepressible shudder shook her frame, and he eyed her incredulously.
"Your note used to be different," he said, with a meaning glance.
"Enough? What do you mean?"
"I saw it." She looked at him steadily, with unflinching eyes. "I saw him!"
"You did?"
"I did."
"You! What possessed you?"
"I hardly know. I could not help it. I had a fancy that I must."
"You with fancies, you with whims and caprices!" He laughed a laugh of fierce mockery, strode across the room, took her slender wrist in his hand and felt the pulse. "Ah, you are ill, your nerves are out of order, or" – in a different tone – "you suffer from a lapse of memory, perhaps!"
"What do you mean?" – wrestling herself free, and drawing her level brows together in a sudden threatening frown.
He went on as though he had not heard her:
"I hoped that your one relapse would be your last, and pleaded for you, thinking so. It was no easy matter to win you – even you – absolution."
"Bah!" she retorted scoffingly. "Think you I do not know why it was granted? I am valuable, am I not?"
"You were."
"Were!" she cried. "Am I less now because, looking at that dead boy, I for once remembered that I was a woman? You doubt me! Who are you to dare do it? What have you done for the Cause that will weigh in the scales against what I have done? Show me the paltry pin-prick of suffering that you place against my agony?"
"Hush!" he said, in a low tone, and glancing round warningly, evidently taken aback by her sudden vehemence. "You mistake me. I wished merely to remind you."
"Goad me, rather!" she retorted with unabated passion. "I forget! I forget either the blood of the dead or the tortures of the living! I forget the oath I swore with this in my hand!"
Her fingers had been restlessly plucking at the bosom of her gown, and now she held out upon her open hand the tiny roll of red-marked paper. She looked at it for a few moments with dilating eyes, while the color died out of her face and left it impassive marble again. Then she slowly restored the little roll to her breast and turned to the door.
"Come," she said. "I will show you."
CHAPTER VI
Doctor Brudenell realized very often the fact that the life of a London medical man, however large his practice and solvent his patients, is not by any means an enviable one. Once upon a time, when a red lamp had been a novelty, and the power to write "M. D." after his ordinary signature a delicious dignity, a patient had been to him a prodigy, something precious for its rarity, even if it called him away from his dinner or ruthlessly rang him up in the middle of the night. But that was a long time ago, in the days of his impecunious youth; and now, in his prosperous middle-age, he would often have willingly bartered a good many patients for a little more leisure.
This was particularly the case upon a hot, oppressive night a week later, a night such as London generally experiences in August. It was Saturday, and certainly it was not pleasant, after a week of fatiguing work, to be summoned as soon as he had got into his bedroom, at considerably past eleven o'clock at night, to attend a patient who resided somewhere in the wilds of Holloway.
However, there was no help for it; and the Doctor, philosophically resigning himself, and taking care to be sure that his latch-key was in his pocket, spoke a word to Mrs. Jessop, as a precaution against that worthy woman's putting up the chain of the hall door before she went to bed, and let himself out. It was a fine night, hot as it was, with a large bright moon hardly beginning to wane, and myriads of stars. Doctor Brudenell, as good and quick a walker now as he had been twenty years before, thought lightly of the distance between his own house and that of his patient, and soon reached his destination. It was little that he could do – in fact, he had been sent for without real need – and it was not much after twelve o'clock when he reached the railway-arch which spans the Holloway Road. He stopped for a moment, and looked up, thinking what a black bar it seemed in the yellow moonlight, and how oddly quiet the streets were, which all day long were teeming with noisy life. Most of the shops were closed, and only a few straggling foot-passengers were to be seen. Only for a moment did he thus glance about him, taking his hat off to push the damp hair from his forehead, for his quick walk had made him warm. Then he walked on under the arch, to stop before it was half traversed, for a hand suddenly placed upon his shoulders brought him to a halt.
"Your pardon, sir," said a voice in his ear. "You are a doctor, I believe?"
"I am!" The Doctor tried in the gloom of the arch to make out the face of the inquirer, but in vain. He could only tell that it was a young man by his voice and gestures, and he saw that he was considerably taller than himself.
"Doctor Brudenell, I think?"
"I am Doctor Brudenell. What is wanted?"
"Yourself, sir, if you please. A person – my – brother – is ill – almost dying, it is feared. Will you accompany me to him? There is no time to be lost."
"What is the matter with him?" asked the Doctor.
"Sir, you will know when you see him. I" – with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders – "can I tell?"
"But is it a fit, a fever, an accident? What is it?" asked Doctor
Brudenell impatiently. "You must know that."
"Sir, it cannot be a fever, since an hour ago he was well. Pray, sir, will you come? He is very ill. Delay is dangerous."
The man moved on as he spoke, and the Doctor moved with him, for his arm was still clasped by the stranger's strong supple fingers. But outside the archway he stopped.
"Stay! Why do you come to me? Have you no regular medical attendant?"
"We have not, sir. As to why I come to you – I have heard of you, that is all. I reached your house almost as you left it, and have followed you, and waited. Pray come, sir, I entreat you. There is a carriage waiting here."
A carriage was standing just outside the arch – an ordinary-looking close carriage, drawn by a light-colored horse, and driven by a coachman who was singularly muffled up, considering the heat of the night. The Doctor mechanically noticed that there were no lamps to the carriage, as, in obedience to the eager pressure of his companion's hand, he got in. The other followed, shutting the door smartly behind him, and the vehicle started instantly.
Doctor Brudenell, leaning back in his corner, looked curiously – as well as the dimness of the carriage would let him – with the keen eyes of a man accustomed to weigh and observe, at his companion, who, with his hands in his pockets and his hat pulled down over his brows, appeared to be half asleep. He was a very handsome man, that was certain – face dark and clear cut, complexion swarthy, figure at once lithe and muscular, and some years under thirty. There was a turn of the throat, a trick of movement, when he presently changed his position restlessly, that perplexed the watcher. The Doctor fancied that he must have seen this man before, but he could not remember where.
"Is it far?" he asked suddenly. It must be, he thought. They had been in the carriage at least a quarter of an hour; the horse had been going at a swift trot, and now there was no sign of slackening speed.
The young man started, and opened his eyes.
"It is not now, sir. We shall soon be there – in time, I hope."
He stamped twice upon the floor of the carriage impatiently, as though in anxiety; but the sound seemed to act as a signal, for the driver instantly whipped up the horse, and the speed was increased – almost doubled. The curtains of the windows were down, and the Doctor drew one of them aside and peered out. They were in a street he did not know, badly paved, badly lighted, squalid, flanked by rows of high mean houses, half of which seemed empty, for hardly a light shone from their windows. He looked round.
"Where are we?"
"We are close there, sir."
"But what street is this? I don't know it in the least."
"Sir, I do not know it; but I know that in a moment we shall be there."
The Doctor sank back into his corner again resignedly. He was fatigued, sleepy, put out. Just then he most heartily wished that this young man had found some one else to attend to the wants of his brother. He must be crazy – to have gone all that distance after a doctor, and then to follow and accost one in the street! It was as queer a thing in its way as his twenty years in the profession had brought to his knowledge. Thinking over this his eyelids drooped; he no longer saw the dim figure of his companion and was startled when presently the carriage stopped with a jerk. In a moment the young man had opened the door, sprung out, and was saying:
"We are here. Alight, sir, if you please."
Doctor Brudenell, confused and sleepy still, did so, looking about him. He was in a narrow paved court, entirely unlighted, closed in at the lower end by what seemed to be a huge deserted stack of warehouses and fenced upon the farther side by the blank walls and regular rows of narrow windows of what had evidently been a manufactory; but the windows were broken; a door hung swinging upon its hinges; it was evident that this place was unused and deserted too. Upon the side where he stood were a couple of old houses, bare and desolate, with broken windows, broken railings – dark, silent – the most dismal houses the Doctor had ever seen.
At the door of the first of these, where a faint light was visible in one of the lower windows as the carriage stopped, the young man tapped cautiously with his hand three times. In another moment the door was softly opened, the figure of the opener being lost in the gloom within. On the broken door-step the Doctor hesitated; he was not a timid man, but this all seemed very strange. However, he obeyed the pressure of the hand laid upon his arm, and entered; glancing behind him as he did so, he saw that the carriage had disappeared.
The door was gently closed; and he stood in absolute darkness, hesitating, wondering. He fancied he heard cautious feet stealing across the bare floor of the hall; but not another sound broke the oppressive brooding silence of the close, musty-smelling old house. In another moment he would have spoken, have demanded the meaning of all this, when a faint gleam of light appeared at the end of the hall, and from the lower stairs a man's hand and arm became visible, holding a lamp. A hand was laid upon his arm at the same moment, and the voice of his summoner spoke quietly in his ear:
"Your patient is ready, sir. Come, if you please."
The speaker went toward the stairs, and the light was withdrawn. The
Doctor followed him for a few paces, then stopped abruptly.
"Down-stairs!" he said incredulously.
"Sir, he was too bad to be moved."
"I see. Go before, if you please."
The light glimmered faintly at the foot of the staircase again, and the Doctor followed his conductor down, noting that the steps were dirty and bare, that the stone passage-way at the bottom was also dirty and bare, that, for all the indications that there were to the contrary, this was an absolutely unfurnished house. As he reached the last stair he looked keenly at the man who held the lamp – a middle-aged man, loose-jointed and loosely dressed, with iron-gray hair and a scar upon his cheek. He spoke with a slightly foreign accent, and, with a bow, moved aside from the doorway in which he stood.
"You are welcome, sir; I thank you. Enter, if you please."
Doctor Brudenell did so, then started and stopped involuntarily. A sick man, a man on the point of dying – were they mad enough to keep him in a room such as this? A room? A sty, rather! The door was stone, with a few sacks spread upon it; the windows were secured by crazy shutters, the only table was formed by boards laid upon two old barrels, and the two or three chairs were broken. The only other piece of furniture or semblance of furniture was an old couch, the horse-hair covering tattered, straggling pieces of the stuffing hanging down. Lying upon it was the figure of a man, with some roughly-applied bandages about his head and face.
Strange as it all was, the sight of this man, the cause of his being there, restored to the Doctor his professional coolness and self-possession. He was a medical man – this was his patient. He advanced, and with rapid deft fingers removed the bandages, laying bare a face so horribly disfigured that, practiced as he was, he felt his own turn pale. He spoke quickly and aloud, knowing that the sick man was insensible, and looking at the other two.
"What's this? What has happened to this man? He is burnt!"
"As you say, sir." The gray-haired man, still holding the lamp, bowed.
"Most horribly burnt – and with chemicals. Is it not so?"
"It is, sir."
"There has been an explosion. He was trying to do something with them – probably combine them – he made a mistake in his method or calculations, and they exploded," said the Doctor rapidly.
"Again you are right, sir." The two men exchanged swift glances of mingled admiration and contempt – admiration of the Doctor's quickness and lucidity, contempt of him for being there. He did not see them; he was continuing his examination of the insensible man. The injuries to the head and face were the worst, but the throat, chest, and arms were also burned severely. Doctor Brudenell rose from the knee upon which he had sunk down to pursue his examination.
"You should have told me what the case was," he said sternly, looking at the young man. "You bring me here in ignorance, and I am absolutely helpless. I have no materials for treating injuries such as these. I require lint, oil, bandages."
"They are here," said the gray-haired man quietly; and as his companion, in obedience to a motion of his hand, left the room, he looked at the Doctor, and asked anxiously, "Sir, can you save his life?"
"I don't know – it depends upon his constitution – of which I know nothing – and the care that is bestowed upon him. But" – with a glance round the wretched apartment – "he will not live if he stays here."
"He will not stay here."
The Doctor said no more, for the young man came back with bandages, lint, and oil. All three had evidently been purchased in anticipation of their being wanted. The Doctor applied them as well as he could, by the dim light of the lamp. The patient moved and moaned, but he did not open his eyes or show any signs of consciousness; the other two did not speak once. His task concluded, the Doctor turned to them abruptly.
"He had better be moved at once; he cannot pass the night here – indeed, he should have been got up-stairs at the first. If there is any assistance that you can call it will be as well. He is utterly helpless. He must be carried."
"Good!" said the elder man quietly, and with the suspicion of a mocking smile at the corners of his mouth. "Explain, sir, if you please. Carried where?"
"Up-stairs, of course!"