Two Years Ago Volume Ii Part 46

"I have settled it. Poor unhappy man! We will talk of something more pleasant. Tell me about your s.h.i.+pwreck, and that place,--Aberalva, is it not? What a pretty name!"

Tom told her, wondering then, and wondering long afterwards, how she had "settled it" with her father. She chatted on artlessly enough, till the old man came in, and to dinner, in capital humour, without saying one word of Elsley.

"How has the old lion been tamed?" thought Tom. "The two greatest affronts you could offer him in old times were, to break an engagement, and to despise his good cheer." He did not know what the quiet oil on the waters of such a spirit as Mary's can effect.

The evening pa.s.sed pleasantly enough till nine, in chatting over old times, and listening to the history of every extraordinary trout and fox which had been killed within twenty miles, when the footboy entered with a somewhat scared face.

"Please, sir, is Mr. Vavasour here?"

"Here? Who wants him?"

"Mrs. Brown, sir, in Hemmelford Street. Says he lodges with her, and has been to seek for him at Dr. Thurnall's."

"I think you had better go, Mr. Thurnall," said Mary, quietly.

"Indeed you had, boy. Bother poets, and the day they first began to breed in Whitbury! Such an evening spoilt! Have a cup of coffee? No?

then a gla.s.s of sherry?"

Out went Tom. Mrs. Brown had been up, and seen him seemingly sleeping; then had heard him run downstairs hurriedly. He pa.s.sed her in the pa.s.sage, looking very wild. "Seemed, sir, just like my nevy's wife's brother, Will Ford, before he made away with hes'self."

Tom goes off post haste, revolving many things in a crafty heart. Then he steers for Bolus's shop. Bolus is at "The Angler's Arms;" but his a.s.sistant is in.

"Did a gentleman call here just now, in a long cloak, with a felt wide-awake?"

"Yes." And the a.s.sistant looks confused enough for Tom to rejoin,--

"And you sold him laudanum?"

"Why--ah--"

"And you had sold him laudanum already this afternoon, you young rascal?

How dare you, twice in six hours? I'll hold you responsible for the man's life!"

"You dare call me a rascal?" bl.u.s.ters the youth, terror-stricken at finding how much Tom knows.

"I am a member of the College of Surgeons," says Tom, recovering his coolness, "and have just been dining with Mr. Armsworth. I suppose you know him?"

The a.s.sistant shook in his shoes at the name of that terrible justice of the peace and of the war also; and meekly and contritely he replied,--

"Oh sir, what shall I do?"

"You're in a very neat sc.r.a.pe; you could not have feathered your nest better," says Tom, quietly filling his pipe, and thinking. "As you behave now, I will get you out of it, or leave you to--you know what, as well as I. Get your hat."

He went out, and the youth followed trembling, while Tom formed his plans in his mind.

"The wild beast goes home to his lair to die, and so may he; for I fear it's life and death now. I'll try the house where he was born. Somewhere in Water Lane it is I know."

And toward Water Lane he hurried. It was a low-lying offshoot of the town, leading along the water meadows, with a straggling row of houses on each side, the perennial haunts of fever and ague. Before them, on each side the road, and fringed with pollard willows and tall poplars, ran a tiny branch of the Whit, to feed some mill below; and spread out, meanwhile, into ponds and mires full of offal and duckweed and rank floating gra.s.s. A thick mist hung knee-deep over them, and over the gardens right and left; and as Tom came down on the lane from the main street above, he could see the mist spreading across the water-meadows and reflecting the moon-beams like a lake; and as he walked into it, he felt as if he were walking down a well. And he hurried down the lane, looking out anxiously ahead for the long cloak.

At last he came to a better sort of house. That might be it. He would take the chance. There was a man of the middle cla.s.s, and two or three women, standing at the gate. He went up--

"Pray, sir, did a medical man named Briggs ever live here?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"Why"--Tom thought matters were too serious for delicacy--"I am looking for a gentleman, and thought he might have come here."

"And so he did, if you mean one in a queer hat and a cloak."

"How long since?"

"Why, he came up our garden an hour or more ago; walked right into the parlour without with your leave, or by your leave, and stared at us all round like one out of his mind; and so away, as soon as ever I asked him what he was at--"

"Which way?"

"To the river, I expect: I ran out, and saw him go down the lane, but I was not going far by night alone with any such strange customers."

"Lend me a lanthorn then, for Heaven's sake!"

The lanthorn is lent, and Tom starts again down the lane.

Now to search. At the end of the lane is a cross road parallel to the river. A broad still ditch lies beyond it, with a little bridge across, where one gets minnows for bait: then a broad water-meadow; then silver Whit.

The bridge-gate is open. Tom hurries across the road to it. The lanthorn shows him fresh footmarks going into the meadow. Forward!

Up and down in that meadow for an hour or more did Tom and the trembling youth beat like a brace of pointer dogs, stumbling into gripes, and over sleeping cows; and more than once stopping short just in time, as they were walking into some broad and deep feeder.

Almost in despair, and after having searched down the river bank for full two hundred yards, Tom was on the point of returning, when his eye rested on a part of the stream where the mist lay higher than usual, and let the reflection of the moonlight off the water reach his eye; and in the moonlight ripples, close to the farther bank of the river--what was that black lump?

Tom knew the spot well; the river there is very broad, and very shallow, flowing round low islands of gravel and turf. It was very low just now too, as it generally is in October: there could not be four inches of water where the black lump lay, but on the side nearest him the water was full knee deep.

The thing, whatever it was, was forty yards from him; and it was a cold night for wading. It might be a ha.s.sock of rushes; a tuft of the great water-dock; a dead dog; one of the "hangs" with which the club-water was studded, torn up and stranded: but yet, to Tom, it had not a canny look.

"As usual! Here am I getting wet, dirty, and miserable, about matters which are not the slightest concern of mine! I believe I shall end by getting hanged or shot in somebody else's place, with this confounded spirit of meddling. Yah! how cold the water is!"

For in he went, the grumbling honest dog; stepped across to the black lump; and lifted it up hastily enough,--for it was Elsley Vavasour.

Drowned?

No. But wet through, and senseless from mingled cold and laudanum.

Whether he had meant to drown himself, and lighting on the shallow, had stumbled on till he fell exhausted: or whether he had merely blundered into the stream, careless whither he went, Tom knew not, and never knew; for Elsley himself could not recollect.

Tom took him in his arms, carried him ash.o.r.e and up through the water meadow; borrowed a blanket and a wheelbarrow at the nearest cottage; wrapped him up; and made the offending surgeon's a.s.sistant wheel him to his lodgings.

He sat with him there an hour; and then entered Mark's house again with his usual composed face, to find Mark and Mary sitting up in great anxiety.

"Mr. Armsworth, does the telegraph work at this time of night?"