Fenton's Quest Part 40

"O, sir, what a providence it is that you've come!" she cried. "Poor dear gentleman, he has been that ill, and me not knowing what to do more than a baby, except in the way of sending for a doctor when I see how bad he was, and waiting on him myself day and night, which I have done faithful, and am that worn-out in consequence, that I shake like a haspen, and can't touch a bit of victuals. I had but just slipped round to the court, while he was asleep, poor dear, to give my children their dinner; for it's a hard trial, sir, having a helpless young family depending upon one; and it would but be fair that all I have gone through should be considered; for though I says it as shouldn't, there isn't one of your hired nurses would do more; and I'm willing to continue of it, provisoed as I have help at nights, and my trouble considered in my wages."

"You need have no apprehension; you shall be paid for your trouble. Has he been long ill?"

"Well, sir, he took the cold as were the beginning of his illness a fortnight ago come next Thursday. You may remember, perhaps, as it came on awful wet in the afternoon, last Thursday week, and Mr. Saltram was out in the rain, and walked home in it,--not being able to get a cab, I suppose, or perhaps not caring to get one, for he was always a careless gentleman in such respects,--and come in wet through to the skin; and instead of changing his clothes, as a Christian would have done, just gives himself a shake like, as he might have been a New-fondling dog that had been swimming, and sits down before the fire, which of course drawed out the steam from his things and made it worse, and writes away for dear life till twelve o'clock that night, having something particular to finish for them magazines, he says; and so, when I come to tidy-up a bit the last thing at night, I found him sitting at the table writing, and didn't take no more notice of me than a dog, which was his way, though never meant unkindly--quite the reverse."

The laundress paused to draw breath, and to pour a dose of medicine from one of the bottles on the table.

"Well, sir, the next day, he had a vi'lent cold, as you may suppose, and was low and languid-like, but went on with his writing, and it weren't no good asking him not. 'I want money, Mrs. Pratt,' he said; 'you can't tell how bad I want money, and these people pay me for my stuff as fast as I send it in.' The day after that he was a deal worse, and had a wandering way like, as if he didn't know what he was doing; and sat turning over his papers with one hand, and leaning his head upon the other, and groaned so that it went through one like a knife to hear him. 'It's no use,' he said at last; 'it's no use!' and then went and threw hisself down upon that bed, and has never got up since, poor dear gentleman! I went round to fetch a doctor out of Ess.e.x Street, finding as he was no better in the evening, and awful hot, and still more wandering-like--Mr.

Mew by name, a very nice gentleman--which said as it were rheumatic fever, and has been here twice a day ever since."

"Has Mr. Saltram never been in his right senses since that day?" Gilbert asked.

"O yes, sir; off and on for the first week he was quite hisself at times; but for the last three days he hasn't known any one, and has talked and jabbered a deal, and has been dreadful restless."

"Does the doctor call it a dangerous case?"

"Well, sir, not to deceive you, he ast me if Mr. Saltram had any friends as I could send for; and I says no, not to my knowledge; 'for,' says Mr.

Mew, 'if he have any relations or friends near at hand, they ought to be told that he's in a bad way;' and only this morning he said as how he should like to call in a physician, for the case was a bad one."

"I see. There is danger evidently," Gilbert said gravely. "I will wait and hear what the doctor says. He will come again to-day, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir; he's sure to come in the evening."

"Good; I will stay till the evening. I should like you to go round immediately to this Mr. Mew's house, and ask for the address of some skilled nurse, and then go on, in a cab if necessary, and fetch her."

"I could do that, sir, of course,--not but what I feel myself capable of nursing the poor dear gentleman."

"You can't nurse him night and day, my good woman. Do what I tell you, and bring back a professional nurse as soon as you can. If Mr. Mew should be out, his people are likely to know the address of such a person."

He gave the woman some silver, and despatched her; and then, being alone, sat down quietly in the sick-room to think out the situation.

Yes, there was no longer any doubt; that piteous appeal to Marian had settled the question. John Saltram, the friend whom he had loved, was the traitor. John Saltram had stolen his promised wife, had come between him and his fair happy future, and had kept the secret of his guilt in a dastardly spirit that made the act fifty times blacker than it would have seemed otherwise.

Sitting in the dreary silence of that sick chamber, a silence broken only by the painful sound of the sleeper's difficult breathing, many things came back to his mind; circ.u.mstances trivial enough in themselves, but invested with a grave significance when contemplated by the light of today's revelation.

He remembered those happy autumn afternoons at Lidford; those long, drowsy, idle days in which John Saltram had given himself up so entirely to the pleasure of the moment, with surely something more than mere sympathy with his friend's happiness. He remembered that last long evening at the cottage, when this man had been at his best, full of life and gaiety; and then that sudden departure, which had puzzled him so much at the time, and yet had seemed no surprise to Marian. It had been the result of some suddenly-formed resolution perhaps, Gilbert thought.

"Poor wretch! he may have tried to be true to me," he said to himself, with a sharp bitter pain at his heart.

He had loved this man so well, that even now, knowing himself to have been betrayed, there was a strange mingling of pity and anger in his mind, and mixed with these a touch of contempt. He had believed in John Saltram; had fancied him n.o.bler and grander than himself, somehow; a man who, under a careless half-scornful pretence of being worse than his fellows, concealed a nature that was far above the common herd; and yet this man had proved the merest caitiff, a weak cowardly villain.

"To take my hand in friendship, knowing what he had done, and how my life was broken! to pretend sympathy; to play out the miserable farce to the very last! Great heaven! that the man I have honoured could be capable of so much baseness!"

The sleeper moved restlessly, the eyes were opened once more and turned upon Gilbert, not with the same utter blankness as before, but without the faintest recognition. The sick man saw some one watching him, and the figure was a.s.sociated with an unreal presence, the phantom of his brain, which had been with him often in the day and night.

"The man again!" he muttered. "When will she come?" And then raising himself upon his elbow, he cried imploringly, "Mother, you fetch her!"

He was speaking to his mother, whom he had loved very dearly--his mother who had been dead fifteen years.

Gilbert's mind went back to that far-away time in Egypt, when he had lain like this, helpless and unconscious, and this man had nursed and watched him with unwearying tenderness.

"I will see him safely through this," he said to himself, "and then----"

And then the account between them must be squared somehow. Gilbert Fenton had no thought of any direful vengeance. He belonged to an age in which injuries are taken very quietly, unless they are wrongs which the law can redress--wounds which can be healed by a golden plaster in the way of damages.

He could not kill his friend; the age of duelling was past, and he not romantic enough to be guilty of such an anachronism as mortal combat. Yet nothing less than a duel to the death could avenge such a wrong.

So friendship was at an end between those two, and that was all; it was only the utter severance of a tie that had lasted for years, nothing more. Yet to Gilbert it seemed a great deal. His little world had crumbled to ashes; love had perished, and now friendship had died this sudden bitter death, from which there was no possible resurrection.

In the midst of such thoughts as these he remembered the sick man's medicine. Mrs. Pratt had given him a few hurried directions before departing on her errand. He looked at his watch, and then went over to the table and prepared the draught and administered it with a firm and gentle hand.

"Who's that?" John Saltram muttered faintly. "It seems like the touch of a friend."

He dropped back upon the pillow without waiting for any reply, and fell into a string of low incoherent talk, with closed eyes.

The laundress was a long time gone, and Gilbert sat alone in the dismal little bedroom, where there had never been the smallest attempt at comfort since John Saltram had occupied it. He sat alone, or with that awful companionship of one whose mind was far away, which was so much more dreary than actual loneliness--sat brooding over the history of his friend's treachery.

What had he done with Marian? Was her disappearance any work of his, after all? Had he hidden her away for some secret reason of his own, and then acted out the play by pretending to search for her? Knowing him for the traitor he was, could Gilbert Fenton draw any positive line of demarcation between the amount of guilt which was possible and that which was not possible to him?

What had he done with Marian? How soon would he be able to answer that question? or would he ever be able to answer it? The thought of this delay was torture to Gilbert Fenton. He had come here to-day thinking to make an end of all his doubts, to force an avowal of the truth from those false lips. And behold, a hand stronger than his held him back. His interrogation must await the answer to that awful question--life or death.

The woman came in presently, bustling and out of breath. She had found a very trustworthy person, recommended by Mr. Mew's a.s.sistant--a person who would come that evening without fail.

"It was all the way up at Islington, sir, and I paid the cabman three-and-six altogether, which he said it were his fare. And how has the poor dear been while I was away?" asked Mrs. Pratt, with her head on one side and an air of extreme solicitude.

"Very much as you see him now. He has mentioned a name once or twice, the name of Marian. Have you ever heard that?"

"I should say I have, sir, times and often since he's been ill. 'Marian, why don't you come to me?' so pitiful; and then, 'Lost, lost!' in such a awful wild way. I think it must be some favourite sister, sir, or a young lady as he has kep' company with."

"Marian!" cried the voice from the bed, as if their cautious talk had penetrated to that dim brain. "Marian! O no, no; she is gone; I have lost her! Well, I wished it; I wanted my freedom."

Gilbert started, and stood transfixed, looking intently at the unconscious speaker. Yes, here was the clue to the mystery. John Saltram had grown tired of his stolen bride--had sighed for his freedom. Who should say that he had not taken some iniquitous means to rid himself of the tie that had grown troublesome to him?

Gilbert Fenton remembered Ellen Carley's suspicions. He was no longer inclined to despise them.

It was dreary work to sit by the bedside watching that familiar face, to which fever and delirium had given a strange weird look; dismal work to count the moments, and wonder when that voice, now so thick of utterance as it went on muttering incoherent sentences and meaningless phrases, would be able to reply to those questions which Gilbert Fenton was burning to ask.

Was it a guilty conscience, the dull slow agony of remorse, which had stricken this man down--this strong powerfully-built man, who was a stranger to illness and all physical suffering? Was the body only crushed by the burden of the mind? Gilbert could not find any answer to these questions. He only knew that his sometime friend lay there helpless, unconscious, removed beyond his reach as completely as if he had been lying in his coffin.

"O G.o.d, it is hard to bear!" he said half aloud: "it is a bitter trial to bear. If this illness should end in death, I may never know Marian's fate."

He sat in the sick man's room all through that long dismal afternoon, waiting to see the doctor, and with the same hopeless thoughts repeating themselves perpetually in his mind.

It was nearly eight o'clock when Mr. Mew at last made his evening visit.

He was a grave gray-haired little man, with a shrewd face and a pleasant manner; a man who inspired Gilbert with confidence, and whose presence was cheering in a sick-room; but he did not speak very hopefully of John Saltram.

"It is a bad case, sir--a very bad case," he said gravely, after he had made his careful examination of the patient's condition. "There has been a violent cold caught, you see, through our poor friend's recklessness in neglecting to change his damp clothes, and rheumatic fever has set in.

But it appears to me that there are other causes at work--mental disturbance, and so on. Our friend has been taxing his brain a little too severely, I gather from Mrs. Pratt's account of him; and these things will tell, sir; sooner or later they have their effect."