The Mark Of Cain Part 10

muttered Bielby)--"and her father was a man who had been rather unsuccessful in life."

"What was his profession, what did he do?"

"He had been a sailor, I think," said the academic philanthropist; "but when I knew him he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he was anything, a professional tattooer."

"What's that?"

"He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of that cla.s.s for a livelihood."

Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a level with the situation.

"Has Miss--h'm, Spears--Shields? thank you; has she been an orphan long?" he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the most undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter's character.

"I only heard of his death yesterday," said Maitland.

"Was it sudden?"

"Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St George's, Hanover Square."

"St. George's, Hanover Square, indeed!" said the don, and once more he relapsed, after a long whistle, into a significant silence. "Maitland,"

he said at last, "how did you come to be acquainted with these people?

The father, as I understand, was a kind of artist; but you can't, surely, have met them in society?"

"He came a good deal to 'my public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. I think I told you about it, sir, and you rather seemed to approve of it. The tavern in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying to do something for the riverside population, and to mix with them for their good, you know."

"Good-night!" growled Bielby, very abruptly, and with considerable determination in his tone. "I am rather busy this evening. I think you had better think no more about the young lady, and say nothing whatever about the matter to anyone. Good-night!".

So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, in the astonishment caused by Maitland's avowals, he had allowed to go out, and he applied himself to a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of the Cambridge school, and drank beer. Maitland knew his friend and mentor too well to try to prolong the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak college room, where a timid fire was smoking and crackling among the wet f.a.ggots, with a feeling that he must steer his own course in this affair. It was clearly quite out of the path of Bielby's experience.

"And yet," thought Maitland, "if I had not taken his advice about trying to become more human, and taken that infernal public-house too, I never would have been in this hole."

All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything that might reasonably be called food. "He had eaten; he had not dined," to adopt the distinction of Brillat-Savarin. He had been dependent on the gritty and flaccid hospitalities of refreshment-rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now he felt faint as well as weary; but, rummaging amidst his cupboards, he could find no provisions more tempting and nutritious than a box of potted shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of some Hungarian vintage sent by an advertising firm to the involuntary bailees of St.

Gatien's. Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these delicacies.

He did not forget that he had neglected to answer a note, on philanthropic business, from Mrs. St. John Deloraine.

Weary as he was, he took pleasure in replying at length, and left the letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a heavy headache, he tumbled into bed, where, for that matter, he went on tumbling and tossing during the greater part of the night. About five o'clock he fell into a sleep full of dreams, only to be awakened, at six, by the steam-whooper, or "devil," a sweet boon with which his philanthropy had helped to endow the reluctant and even recalcitrant University of Oxford.

"Instead of becoming human, I have only become humanitarian," Maitland seemed to hear his own thoughts whispering to himself in a night-mare.

Through the slowly broadening winter dawn, in s.n.a.t.c.hes of sleep that lasted, or seemed to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, with a feverish iteration.

CHAPTER VII.--After the Inquest.

To be ill in college rooms, how miserable it is! Mainland's scout called him at half-past seven with the invariable question, "Do you breakfast out, sir?" If a man were in the condemned cell, his scout (if in attendance) would probably arouse him on the morning of his execution with, "Do you breakfast out, sir?"

"No," said Maitland, in reply to the changeless inquiry; "in common room as usual. Pack my bag, I am going down by the nine o'clock train."

Then he rose and tried to dress; but his head ached more than ever, his legs seemed to belong to someone else, and to be no subject of just complacency to their owner. He reeled as he strove to cross the room, then he struggled back into bed, where, feeling alternately hot and cold, he covered himself with his ulster, in addition to his blankets.

Anywhere but in college, Maitland would, of course, have rung the bell and called his servant; but in our conservative universities, and especially in so reverend a pile as St. Gatiens, there was, naturally, no bell to ring. Maitland began to try to huddle himself into his greatcoat, that he might crawl to the window and shout to Dakyns, his scout.

But at this moment there fell most gratefully on his ear the sound of a strenuous sniff, repeated at short intervals in his sitting-room. Often had Maitland regretted the chronic cold and handkerchiefless condition of his bedmaker; but now her sniff was welcome as music, much more so than that of two hunting horns which ambitious sportsmen were trying to blow in quad.

"Mrs. Trattles!" cried Maitland, and his own voice sounded faint in his ears. "Mrs. Trattles!"

The lady thus invoked answered with becoming modesty, punctuated by sniffs, from the other side of the door:

"Yes, sir; can I do anything for you, sir?"

"Call Dakyns, please," said Maitland, falling back on his pillow. "I don't feel very well."

Dakyns appeared in due course.

"Sorry to hear you're ill, sir; you do look a little flushed. Hadn't I better send for Mr. Whalley, sir?"

Now, Mr. Whalley was the doctor whom Oxford, especially the younger generation, delighted to honor.

"No; I don't think you need. Bring me breakfast here. I think I'll be able to start for town by the 11.58. And bring me my letters."

"Very well, sir," answered Dakyns.

Then with that fearless a.s.sumption of responsibility which always does an Englishman credit, he sent the college messenger in search of Mr.

Whalley before he brought round Maitland's letters and his breakfast commons.

There were no letters bearing on the subject of Margaret's disappearance; if any such had been addressed to him, they would necessarily be, as Maitland remembered after his first feeling of disappointment, at his rooms in London. Neither Miss Marlett, if she had aught to communicate, nor anyone else, could be expected to know that Mait-land's first act would be to rush to Oxford and consult Bielby.

The guardian of Margaret turned with no success to his breakfast commons; even tea appeared unwelcome and impossible.

Maitland felt very drowsy, dull, indifferent, when a knock came to his door, and Mr. Whalley entered. He could not remember having sent for him; but he felt that, as an invalid once said, "there was a pain somewhere in the room," and he was feebly pleased to see his physician.

"A very bad feverish cold," was the verdict, and Mr. Whalley would call again next day, till which time Maitland was forbidden to leave his room.

He drowsed through the day, disturbed by occasional howls from the quadrangle, where the men were s...o...b..lling a little, and, later, by the sc.r.a.ping shovels of the navvies who had been sent in to remove the snow, and with it the efficient cause of nocturnal disorders in St. Gatien's.

So the time pa.s.sed, Maitland not being quite conscious of its pa.s.sage, and each hour putting Margaret Shields more and more beyond the reach of the very few people who were interested in her existence. Maitland's illness took a more severe form than Whalley had antic.i.p.ated, and the lungs were affected. Bielby was informed of his state, and came to see him; but Maitland talked so wildly about the _Hit or Miss_, about the man in the bearskin coat, and other unintelligible matters, that the hermit soon withdrew to the more comprehensible fragments of "Demetrius of Scepsis." He visited his old pupil daily, and behaved with real kindness; but the old implicit trust never revived with Maitland's returning health.

At last the fever abated. Maitland felt weak, yet perfectly conscious of what had pa.s.sed, and doubly anxious about what was to be done, if there was, indeed, a chance of doing anything.

Men of his own standing had by this time become aware that he was in Oxford, and sick, consequently there was always someone to look after him.

"Brown," said Maitland to a friend, on the fifth day after his illness began, "would you mind giving me my things? I'll try to dress."

The experiment was so far successful that Maitland left the queer bare slit of a place called his bedroom (formed, like many Oxford bedrooms, by a part.i.tion added to the large single room of old times), and moved into the weirdly aesthetic study, decorated in the Early William Morris manner.

"Now will you howl for Dakyns, and make him have this telegram sent to the post? Awfully sorry to trouble you, but I can't howl yet for myself," whispered Maitland, huskily, as he scribbled on a telegraph form.

"Delighted to howl for you," said Brown, and presently the wires were carrying a message to Barton in town. Maitland wanted to see him at once, on very pressing business. In a couple of hours there came a reply: Barton would be with Maitland by dinner-time.