Kitabı oku: «Two Years Ago, Volume II», sayfa 15
"Not more while you are with me."
"With you! Who the devil sent you here?"
"John Briggs, John Briggs, if I did not mean you good, should I be here now? Now do, like a reasonable man, tell me what you intend to do."
"What is that to you, or any man?" said Elsley, writhing with neuralgia.
"No concern of mine, of course: but your poor wife—you must see her."
"I can't, I won't!—that is, not yet! I tell you I cannot face the thought of her, much less the sight of her, and her family,—that Valencia! I'd rather the earth should open and swallow me! Don't talk to me, I say!"
And hiding his face in his hands, he writhed with pain, while Thurnall stood still patiently watching him, as a pointer dog does a partridge. He had found his game, and did not intend to lose it.
"I am better now; quite well!" said he, as the laudanum began to work.
"Yes! I'll go—that will be it—go to – at once. He'll give me an order for a magazine article; I'll earn ten pounds, and then off to Italy."
"If you want ten pounds, my good fellow, you can have them without racking your brains over an article." Elsley looked up proudly.
"I do not borrow, sir!"
"Well—I'll give you five for those pistols. They are of no use to you, and I shall want a spare brace for the East."
"Ah! I forgot them. I spent my last money on them," said he with a shudder; "but I won't sell them to you at a fancy price—no dealings between gentleman and gentleman. I'll go to a shop, and get for them what they are worth."
"Very good. I'll go with you, if you like. I fancy I may get you a better price for them than you would yourself: being rather a knowing one about the pretty little barkers." And Tom took his arm, and walked him quietly down into the street.
"If you ever go up those kennel-stairs again, friend," said he to himself, "my name's not Tom Thurnall."
They walked to a gunsmith's shop in the Strand, where Tom had often dealt, and sold the pistols for some three pounds.
"Now then let's go into 333, and get a mutton chop."
"No."
Elsley was too shy; he was "not fit to be seen."
"Come to my rooms, then, in the Adelphi, and have a wash and a shave. It will make you as fresh as a lark again, and then we'll send out for the eatables, and have a quiet chat."
Elsley did not say no. Thurnall took the thing as a matter of course, and he was too weak and tired to argue with him. Beside, there was a sort of relief in the company of a man who, though he knew all, chatted on to him cheerily and quietly, as if nothing had happened; who at least treated him as a sane man. From any one else he would have shrunk, lest they should find him out: but a companion, who knew the worst, at least saved him suspicion and dread.
His weakness, now that the collapse after passion had come on, clung to any human friend. The very sound of Tom's clear sturdy voice seemed pleasant to him, after long solitude and silence. At least it kept off the fiends of memory.
Tom, anxious to keep Elsley's mind employed on some subject which should not be painful, began chatting about the war and its prospects. Elsley soon caught the cue, and talked with wild energy and pathos, opium-fed, of the coming struggle between despotism and liberty, the arising of Poland and Hungary, and all the grand dreams which then haunted minds like his.
"By Jove!" said Tom, "you are yourself again now. Why don't you put all that into a book!"
"I may perhaps," said Elsley proudly.
"And if it comes to that, why not come to the war, and see it for yourself? A new country—one of the finest in the world. New scenery, new actors,—Why, Constantinople itself is a poem! Yes, there is another 'Revolt of Islam' to be written yet. Why don't you become our war poet? Come and see the fighting; for there'll be plenty of it, let them say what they will. The old bear is not going to drop his dead donkey without a snap and a hug. Come along, and tell people what it's all really like. There will be a dozen Cockneys writing battle songs, I'll warrant, who never saw a man shot in their lives, not even a hare. Come and give us the real genuine grit of it,—for if you can't, who can?"
"It is a grand thought! The true war poets, after all, have been warriors themselves. Körner and Alcaeus fought as well as sang, and sang because they fought. Old Homer, too,—who can believe that he had not hewn his way through the very battles which he describes, and seen every wound, every shape of agony? A noble thought, to go out with that army against the northern Anarch, singing in the van of battle, as Taillefer sang the song of Roland before William's knights, and to die like him, the proto-martyr of the Crusade, with the melody yet upon one's lips!"
And his face blazed up with excitement.
"What a handsome fellow he is, after all, if there were but more of him?" said Tom to himself. "I wonder if he'd fight, though, when the singing-fever was off him."
He took Elsley upstairs into his bed-room, got him washed and shaved: and sent out the woman of the house for mutton chops and stout, and began himself setting out the luncheon table, while Elsley in the room within chanted to himself snatches of poetry.
"The notion has taken: he's composing a war song already, I believe." It actually was so: but Elsley's brain was weak and wandering; and he was soon silent; and motionless so long, that Tom opened the door and looked in anxiously.
He was sitting on a chair, his hands fallen on his lap, the tears running down his face.
"Well?" asked Tom smilingly, not noticing the tears; "how goes on the opera? I heard through the door the orchestra tuning for the prelude."
Elsley looked up in his face with a puzzled piteous expression.
"Do you know, Thurnall, I fancy at moments that my mind is not what it was. Fancies flit from me as quickly as they come. I had twenty verses five minutes ago, and now I cannot recollect one."
"No wonder," thought Tom to himself. "My clear fellow, recollect all that you have suffered with this neuralgia. Believe me all you want is animal strength. Chops and porter will bring all the verses back, or better ones instead of them."
He tried to make Elsley eat; and Elsley tried himself: but failed. The moment the meat touched his lips he loathed it, and only courtesy prevented his leaving the room to escape the smell. The laudanum had done its work upon his digestion. He tried the porter, and drank a little: then, suddenly stopping, he pulled out a phial, dropped a heavy dose of his poison into the porter, and tossed it off.
"Sold am I?" said Tom to himself. "He must have hidden the bottle as he came out of the room with me. Oh, the cunning of those opium-eaters? However, it will keep him quiet just now, and to Eaton Square I must go."
"You had better be quiet now, my dear fellow, after your dose; talking will only excite you. Settle yourself on my bed, and I'll be back in an hour."
So he put Elsley on his bed, carefully removing razors and pistols (for he had still his fears of an outburst of passion), then locked him in, ran down into the Strand, threw himself into a cab for Eaton Square, and asked for Valencia.
Campbell had been there already; so Tom took care to tell nothing which he had not told, expecting, and rightly, that he would not mention Elsley's having fired at him. Lucia was still all but senseless, too weak even to ask for Elsley; to attempt any meeting between her and her husband would be madness.
"What will you do with the unhappy man, Mr. Thurnall?"
"Keep him under my eye, day and night, till he is either rational again, or—"
"Do you think that he may?—Oh my poor sister!"
"I think that he may yet end very sadly, madam. There is no use concealing the truth from you. All I can promise is, that I will treat him as my own brother."
Valencia held out her fair hand to the young doctor. He stooped, and lifted the tips of her fingers to his lips.
"I am not worthy of such an honour, madam. I shall study to deserve it." And he bowed himself out, the same sturdy, self-confident Tom, doing right, he hardly knew why, save that it was all in the way of business.
And now arose the puzzle, what to do with Elsley? He had set his heart on going down to Whitbury the next day. He had been in England nearly six months, and had not yet seen his father; his heart yearned, too, after the old place, and Mark Armsworth, and many an old friend, whom he might never see again. "However, that fellow I must see to, come what will: business first and pleasure afterwards. If I make him all right— if I even get him out of the world decently, I get the Scoutbush interest on my side—though I believe I have it already. Still, it's as well to lay people under as heavy an obligation as possible. I wish Miss Valencia had asked me whether Elsley wanted any money: it's expensive keeping him myself. However, poor thing, she has other matters to think of: and I dare say, never knew the pleasures of an empty purse. Here we are! Three-and-sixpence—eh, cabman? I suppose you think I was born Saturday night? There's three shillings. Now, don't chaff me, my excellent friend, or you will find you have met your match, and a leetle more!"
And Tom hurried into his rooms, and found Elsley still sleeping.
He set to work, packing and arranging, for with him every moment found its business: and presently heard his patient call faintly from the next room.
"Thurnall!" said he; "I have been a long journey. I have been to Whitbury once more, and followed my father about his garden, and sat upon my mother's knee. And she taught me one text, and no more. Over and over again she said it, as she looked down at me with still sad eyes, the same text which she spoke the day I left her for London. I never saw her again. 'By this, my son, be admonished; of making of books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.'…. Yes, I will go down to Whitbury, and he a little child once more. I will take poor lodgings, and crawl out day by day, down the old lanes, along the old river-banks, where I fed my soul with fair and mad dreams, and reconsider it all from the beginning;—and then die. No one need know me; and if they do, they need not be ashamed of me, I trust—ashamed that a poet has risen up among them, to speak words which have been heard across the globe. At least, they need never know my shame—never know that I have broken the heart of an angel, who gave herself to me, body and soul—attempted the life of a man whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose—never know that I have killed my own child!—that a blacker brand than Cain's is on my brow!—Never know—Oh, my God, what care I? Let them know all, as long as I can have done with shams and affectations, dreams, and vain ambitions, and he just my own self once more, for one day, and then die!"
And he burst into convulsive weeping.
"No, Tom, do not comfort me! I ought to die, and I shall die. I cannot face her again; let her forget me, and find a husband who will—and be a father to the children whom I neglected! Oh, my darlings, my darlings! If I could but see you once again: but no! you too would ask me where I had been so long. You too would ask me—your innocent faces at least would—why I had killed your little brother!—Let me weep it out, Thurnall; let me face it all! This very misery is a comfort, for it will kill me all the sooner."
"If you really mean to go to Whitbury, my poor dear fellow," said Tom at last, "I will start with you to-morrow morning. For I too must go; I must see my father."
"You will really?" asked Elsley, who began to cling to him like a child.
"I will indeed. Believe me, you are right; you will find friends there, and admirers too. I know one."
"You do?" asked he, looking up.
"Mary Armsworth, the banker's daughter."
"What! That purse-proud, vulgar man?"
"Don't be afraid of him. A truer and more delicate heart don't beat. No one has more cause to say so than I. He will receive you with open arms, and need be told no more than is necessary; while, as his friend, you may defy gossip, and do just what you like."
Tom slipped out that afternoon, paid Elsley's pittance of rent at his old lodgings; bought him a few necessary articles, and lent him, without saying anything, a few more. Elsley sat all day as one in a dream, moaning to himself at intervals, and following Tom vacantly with his eyes, as he moved about the room. Excitement, misery, and opium were fast wearing out body and mind, and Tom put him to bed that evening, as he would have put a child.
Tom walked out into the Strand to smoke in the fresh air, and think, in spite of himself, of that fair saint from whom he was so perversely flying. Gay girls slithered past him, looked round at him, but in vain; those two great sad eyes hung in his fancy, and he could see nothing else. Ah—if she had but given him back his money—why, what a fool he would have made of himself! Better as it was. He was meant to be a vagabond and an adventurer to the last; and perhaps to find at last the luck which had flitted away before him.
He passed one of the theatre doors; there was a group outside, more noisy and more earnest than such groups are wont to be; and ere he could pass through them, a shout from within rattled the doors with its mighty pulse, and seemed to shake the very walls. Another; and another!—What was it? Fire?
No. It was the news of Alma.
And the group surged to and fro outside, and talked, and questioned, and rejoiced; and smart gents forgot their vulgar pleasures, and looked for a moment as if they too could have fought—had fought—at Alma; and sinful girls forgot their shame, and looked more beautiful than they had done for many a day, as, beneath the flaring gas-light, their faces glowed for a while with noble enthusiasm, and woman's sacred pity, while they questioned Tom, taking him for an officer, as to whether he thought there were many killed.
"I am no officer: but I have been in many a battle, and I know the Russians well, and have seen how they fight; and there is many a brave man killed, and many a one more will be."
"Oh, does it hurt them much?" asked one poor thing.
"Not often," quoth Tom.
"Thank God, thank God!" and she turned suddenly away, and with the impulsive nature of her class, burst into violent sobbing and weeping.
Poor thing! perhaps among the men who fought and fell that day was he to whom she owed the curse of her young life; and after him her lonely heart went forth once more, faithful even in the lowest pit.
"You are strange creatures, women, women!" thought Tom: "but I knew that many a year ago. Now then—the game is growing fast and furious, it seems. Oh, that I may find myself soon in the thickest of it!"
So said Tom Thurnall; and so said Major Campbell, too, that night, as he prepared everything to start next morning to Southampton. "The better the day, the better the deed," quoth he. "When a man is travelling to a better world, he need not be afraid of starting on a Sunday."
CHAPTER XXV.
THE BANKER AND HIS DAUGHTER
Tom and Elsley are safe at Whitbury at last; and Tom, ere he has seen his father, has packed Elsley safe away in lodgings with an old dame whom he can trust. Then he asks his way to his father's new abode; a small old-fashioned house, with low bay windows jutting out upon the narrow pavement.
Tom stops, and looks in the window. His father is sitting close to it, in his arm-chair, his hands upon his knees, his face lifted to the sunlight, with chin slightly outstretched, and his pale eyes feeling for the light. The expression would have been painful, but for its perfect sweetness and resignation. His countenance is not, perhaps, a strong one; but its delicacy, and calm, and the high forehead, and the long white locks, are most venerable. With a blind man's exquisite sense, he feels Tom's shadow fall on him, and starts, and calls him by name; for he has been expecting him, and thinking of nothing else all the morning, and takes for granted that it must be he.
In another moment Tom is at his father's side. What need to describe the sacred joy of those first few minutes, even if it were possible? But unrestrained tenderness between man and man, rare as it is, and, as it were, unaccustomed to itself, has no passionate fluency, no metaphor or poetry, such as man pours out to woman, and woman again to man. All its language lies in the tones, the looks, the little half-concealed gestures, hints which pass themselves off modestly in jest; and such was Tom's first interview with his father; till the old Isaac, having felt Tom's head and hands again and again, to be sure whether it were his very son or no, made him sit down by him, holding him still fast, and began—
"Now, tell me, tell me, while Jane gets you something to eat. No, Jane, you mustn't talk to Master Tom yet, to bother about how much he's grown;—nonsense, I must have him all to myself, Jane. Go and get him some dinner. Now, Tom," as if he was afraid of losing a moment; "you have been a dear boy to write to me every week; but there are so many questions which only word of mouth will answer, and I have stored up dozens of them! I want to know what a coral reef really looks like, and if you saw any trepangs upon them? And what sort of strata is the gold really in? And you saw one of those giant rays; I want a whole hour's talk about the fellow. And—What an old babbler I am! talking to you when you should be talking to me. Now begin. Let us have the trepangs first. Are they real Holothurians or not?"
And Tom began, and told for a full half-hour, interrupted then by some little comment of the old man's, which proved how prodigious was the memory within, imprisoned and forced to feed upon itself.
"You seem to know more about Australia than I do, father," said Tom at last.
"No, child; but Mary Armsworth, God bless her! comes down here almost every evening to read your letters to me; and she has been reading to me a book of Mrs. Lee's Adventures in Australia, which reads like a novel; delicious book—to me at least. Why, there is her step outside, I do believe, and her father's with her!"
The lighter woman's step was inaudible to Tom; but the heavy, deliberate waddle of the banker was not. He opened the house-door, and then the parlour-door, without knocking; but when he saw the visitor, he stopped on the threshold with outstretched arms.
"Hillo, ho! who have we here? Our prodigal son returned, with his pockets full of nuggets from the diggings. Oh, mum's the word, is it?" as Tom laid his finger on his lips. "Come here, then, and let's have a look at you!" and he catches both Tom's hands in his, and almost shakes them off. "I knew you were coming, old boy! Mary told me—she's in all the old man's secrets. Come along, Mary, and see your old playfellow. She has got a little fruit for the old gentleman. Mary, where are you I always colloguing with Jane."
Mary comes in: a little dumpty body, with a yellow face, and a red nose, the smile of an angel, and a heart full of many little secrets of other people's—and of one great one of her own, which is no business of any man's—and with fifty thousand pounds as her portion, for she is an only child. But no man will touch that fifty thousand; for "no one would marry me for myself," says Mary; "and no one shall marry me for my money."
So she greets Tom shyly and humbly, without looking in his face, yet very cordially; and then slips away to deposit on the table a noble pine-apple.
"A little bit of fruit from her greenhouse," says the old man in a disparaging tone: "and, oh Jane, bring me a saucer. Here's a sprat I just capered out of Hemmelford mill-pit; perhaps the Doctor would like it fried for supper, if it's big enough not to fall through the gridiron."
Jane, who knows Mark Armsworth's humour, brings in the largest dish in the house, and Mark pulls out of his basket a great three-pound trout.
"Aha! my young rover; Old Mark's right hand hasn't forgot its cunning, eh? And this is the month for them; fish all quiet now. When fools go a-shooting, wise men go a-fishing! Eh? Come here, and look me over. How do I wear, eh? As like a Muscovy duck as ever, you young rogue? Do you recollect asking me, at the Club dinner, why I was like a Muscovy duck? Because I was a fat thing in green velveteen, with a bald red head, that was always waddling about the river bank. Ah, those were days! We'll have some more of them. Come up to-night and try the old '21 bin."
"I must have him myself to-night; indeed I must, Mark," says the Doctor.
"All to yourself you selfish old rogue?"
"Why—no—"
"We'll come down, then, Mary and I, and bring the '21 with us, and hear all his cock-and-bull stories. Full of travellers' lies as ever, eh? Well, I'll come, and smoke my pipe with you. Always the same old Mark, my lad," nudging Tom with his elbow; "one fellow comes and borrows my money, and goes out and calls me a stingy old hunks because I won't let him cheat me; another comes, and eats my pines, and drinks my port, goes home, and calls me a purse-proud upstart, because he can't match 'em. Never mind; old Mark's old Mark; sound in the heart, and sound in the liver, just the same as thirty years ago, and will be till he takes his last quietus est—
'And drops into his grassy nest.'
Bye, bye, Doctor! Come, Mary!"
And out he toddled, with silent little Mary at his heels.
"Old Mark wears well, body and soul," said Tom.
"He is a noble, generous fellow, and as delicate-hearted as a woman withal, in spite of his conceit and roughness. Fifty and odd years now, Tom, have we been brothers, and I never found him change. And brothers we shall be, I trust, a few years more, till I see you back again from the East, comfortably settled. And then—"
"Don't talk of that, sir, please!" said Tom, quite quickly and sharply.
"How ill poor Mary looks!"
"So they say, poor child; and one hears it in her voice. Ah, Tom, that girl is an angel; she has been to me daughter, doctor, clergyman, eyes and library; and would have been nurse too, if it had not been for making old Jane jealous. But she is ill. Some love affair, I suppose—"
"How quaint it is, that the father has kept all the animal vigour to himself, and transmitted none to the daughter."
"He has not kept the soul to himself, Tom, or the eyes either. She will bring me in wild flowers, and talk to me about them, till I fancy I can see them as well as ever. Ah, well! It is a sweet world still, Tom, and there are sweet souls in it. A sweet world: I was too fond of looking at it once, I suppose, so God took away my sight, that I might learn to look at Him." And the old man lay back in his chair, and covered his face with his handkerchief, and was quite still awhile. And Tom watched him, and thought that he would give all his cunning and power to be like that old man.
Then Jane came in, and laid the cloth,—a coarse one enough,—and Tom picked a cold mutton bone with a steel fork, and drank his pint of beer from the public-house, and lighted his father's pipe, and then his own, and vowed that he had never dined so well in his life, and began his traveller's stories again.
And in the evening Mark came in, with a bottle of the '21 in his coat-tail pocket; and the three sat and chatted, while Mary brought out her work, and stitched listening silently, till it was time to lead the old man upstairs.
Tom put his father to bed, and then made a hesitating request—
"There is a poor sick man whom I brought down with me, sir, if you could spare me half-an-hour. It really is a professional case; he is under my charge, I may say."
"What is it, boy?"
"Well, laudanum and a broken heart."
"Exercise and ammonia for the first. For the second, God's grace and the grave: and those latter medicines you can't exhibit, my dear boy. Well, as it is professional duty, I suppose you must: but don't exceed the hour; I shall lie awake till you return, and then you must talk me to sleep."
So Tom went out and homeward with Mark and Mary, for their roads lay together; and as he went, he thought good to tell them somewhat of the history of John Briggs, alias Elsley Vavasour.
"Poor fool!" said Mark, who listened in silence to the end. "Why didn't he mind his bottles, and just do what Heaven sent him to do? Is he in want of the rhino, Tom?"
"He had not five shillings left after he had paid his fare; and he refuses to ask his wife for a farthing."
"Quite right—very proper spirit." And Mark walked on in silence a few minutes.
"I say, Tom, a fool and his money are soon parted. There's a five-pound note for him, you begging, insinuating dog, and be hanged to you both! I shall die in the workhouse at this rate."
"Oh father, you will never miss—"
"Who told you I thought I should, pray? Don't you go giving another five pounds out of your pocket-money behind my back, ma'am. I know your tricks of old. Tom, I'll come and see the poor beggar to-morrow with you, and call him Mr. Vavasour—Lord Vavasour, if he likes—if you'll warrant me against laughing in his face." And the old man did laugh, till he stopped and held his sides again.
"Oh, father, father, don't be so cruel. Remember how wretched the poor man is."
"I can't think of anything but old Bolus's boy turned poet. Why did you tell me, Tom, you bad fellow? It's too much for a man at my time of life, and after his dinner too."
And with that he opened the little gate by the side of the grand one, and turned to ask Tom—
"Won't come in, boy, and have one more cigar?"
"I promised my father to be back as quickly as possible."
"Good lad—that's the plan to go on—
'You'll be churchwarden before all's over,
And so arrive at wealth and fame.'
Instead of writing po-o-o-etry? Do you recollect that morning, and the black draught? Oh dear, my side!"
And Tom heard him keckling to himself up the garden walk to his house; went off to see that Elsley was safe; and then home, and slept like a top; no wonder, for he would have done so the night before his execution.
And what was little Mary doing all the while?
She had gone up to the room, after telling her father, with a kiss, not to forget to say his prayers. And then she fed her canary bird, and made up the Persian cat's bed; and then sat long at the open window, gazing out over the shadow-dappled lawn, away to the poplars sleeping in the moonlight, and the shining silent stream, and the shining silent stars, till she seemed to become as one of them, and a quiet heaven within her eyes took counsel with the quiet heaven above. And then she drew in suddenly, as if stung by some random thought, and shut the window. A picture hung over her mantelpiece—a portrait of her mother, who had been a country beauty in her time. She glanced at it, and then at the looking-glass. Would she have given her fifty thousand pounds to have exchanged her face for such a face as that?
She caught up her little Thomas à Kempis, marked through and through with lines and references, and sat and read steadfastly for an hour and more. That was her school, as it has been the school of many a noble soul. And, for some cause or other, that stinging thought returned no more; and she knelt and prayed like a little child; and like a little child slept sweetly all the night, and was away before breakfast the next morning, after feeding the canary and the cat, to old women who worshipped her as their ministering angel, and said, looking after her: "That dear Miss Mary, pity she is so plain! Such a match as she might have made! But she'll be handsome enough, when she is a blessed angel in heaven."
Ah, true sisters of mercy, whom the world sneers at as "old maids," if you pour out on cats and dogs and parrots, a little of the love which is yearning to spend itself on children of your own flesh and blood! As long as such as you walk this lower world, one needs no Butler's Analogy to prove to us that there is another world, where such as you will have a fuller and a fairer (I dare not say a juster) portion.
* * * * *
Next morning Mark started with Tom to call on Elsley, chatting and puffing all the way.
"I'll butter him, trust me. Nothing comforts a poor beggar like a bit of praise when he's down; and all fellows that take to writing are as greedy after it as trout after the drake, even if they only scribble in county newspapers. I've watched them when I've been electioneering, my boy!"
"Only," said Tom, "don't be angry with him if he is proud and peevish.
The poor fellow is all but mad with misery."
"Poh! quarrel with him? whom did I ever quarrel with? If he barks, I'll stop his mouth with a good dinner. I suppose he's gentleman enough, to invite?"
"As much a gentleman as you and I; not of the very first water, of course. Still he eats like other people, and don't break many glasses during a sitting. Think! he couldn't have been a very great cad to marry a nobleman's daughter!"
"Why, no. Speaks well for him, that, considering his breeding. He must be a very clever fellow to have caught the trick of the thing so soon."
"And so he is, a very clever fellow; too clever by half; and a very fine-hearted fellow, too, in spite of his conceit and his temper. But that don't prevent his being an awful fool!"
"You speak like a book, Tom!" said old Mark, clapping him on the back. "Look at me! no one can say I was ever troubled with genius: but I can show my money, pay my way, eat my dinner, kill my trout, hunt my hounds, help a lame dog over a stile" (which was Mark's phrase for doing a generous thing), "and thank God for all; and who wants more, I should like to know? But here we are—you go up first!"
They found Elsley crouched up over the empty grate, his head in his hands, and a few scraps of paper by him, on which he had been trying to scribble. He did not look up as they came in, but gave a sort of impatient half-turn, as if angry at being disturbed. Tom was about to announce the banker; but he announced himself.
"Come to do myself the honour of calling on you, Mr. Vavasour. I am sorry to see you so poorly; I hope our Whitbury air will set all right."
