“Dick!” she said. “What’s …?”
“The fact is,” he said apologetically, and swallowed the lump in his throat, “I’ve come into some money. I want to take you …”
“No, you don’t!” Dolly said vehemently, and propped herself on one arm despite his protests. “I don’t care if you’ve come into a hundred pounds! No!”
“It’s a little more than that, my dear. You see …”
“I told you before!” said Dolly. “I’ll go with you, I’ll live with you like we did before, becos I love you. But I won’t take anything from you except to eat or drink or go a-junketing. I won’t take presents. That’s wrong.
“Dolly, my dear! Listen to me!”
To demonstrate that she was not angry, Dolly smiled. A film seemed to lift from her eyes, and they brightened.
“Do you recolleck when you won a five-pound note in a wager? And wanted to give the five-pound note to me? And I wouldn’t have it? And you were so vexed with me that you tore it up?” Her forehead wrinkled. “What was the wager?”
“I can’t remember, Dolly. I can’t remember anything except you.”
“Oh, I’m stupid,” said Dolly. “It was at the fencing school. The son of Gold Ingots Company or suchlike, from Lombard Street, dared you to try him with real sabers …” She broke off, with anxiety in her face. “Dick? What is it? You looked at me,” she drew back, “as though you hated me.”
“Not ever you, Dolly. Not ever you!”
“Then what is it?”
“I was thinking of a certain man named … no matter.”
“Oh,” murmured Dolly, and the fear lest he be angry died out of her eyes.
Propped on one elbow, her yellow hair vivid against the tawny skin, she seemed to press memories against her breast as though in her heart she feared there might be no future.
“Gold Ingots,” she said, “kept a-lunging at your chest with the point of the saber. You’d parry, and cut another curl off his head with the edge, and never hurt him, and apologize. I wasn’t frightened, Dick. I knew he couldn’t touch you.”
Pain touched her again as her knees moved. She fell back helplessly. Her companion had become desperate.
“What is it, Dolly? Where does it hurt you?”
Uncertainly Dolly put her hand on her right side, moving the hand three inches or so across the abdomen.
“Truly it doesn’t hurt,” she muttered, “unless I move my legs. It’s awful funny. My legs are like boards.”
Darwent jumped to his feet. Since he had allowed his lawyer to arrange all things, he was about to call “Mulberry!” when he suddenly realized that Mr. Mulberry was there.
Mr. Mulberry, hat in hand, stood just inside the now-open door to the front room. Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh were in the doorway. At that time Darwent could not understand why Mrs. Raleigh had tears in her eyes, and even her cadaverous-faced husband was not far from this emotion.
“La, now, you’ve upset her!” said Mrs. Raleigh, and flew across with the lace trembling on her cap. In the half-darkness they could scarcely see each other’s faces, and the tiny room was crowded.
“There, now!” Mrs. Raleigh said accusingly.
Dolly, exhausted, had fallen into a doze. As Darwent was about to speak, Mr. Mulberry cut him short.
“No haste, lad,” he advised. “D’ye think I’d trust that young what-d’ye-call-it, that Sir Fopling Flutter ….”
“Jemmy Fletcher?”
“Ay; Jemmy Fletcher; it’s the same thing. D’ye think I’d trust him to fetch anybody we wanted? I sent your carriage to Bart’s Hospital as soon as you stepped out of it. It should return at any minute.”
Mrs. Raleigh, pink-faced, tossed her head.
“Hark at the man!” she scoffed. “There’s nothing wrong with the poor girl but old-fashioned chills and fever. The black medicine will cure her, if it’s strong enough and nasty-tasting enough. Wasn’t I one of a family of thirteen? Haven’t I raised four of my own?”
(Then what had been the other reason for the tears in her eyes, the apprehensive movements?)
“Dick,” intervened Augustus Raleigh, in his deep voice like a ghost in a play.
He stepped forward from the doorway. Even his bald head seemed dusty from long work at the theater, but he held himself straight. Though, his dark clothes and gaiters were shabby, his neckcloth was clean and his cadaverous face smooth-shaven even from blueness. His dignity was very real.
“Dick,” said Mr. Raleigh, “I don’t understand. This gentleman,” and he nodded in stately fashion toward Mr. Mulberry, “says you have been in prison, but he will say no more. Emma and I did not know of it. We keep ourselves much to ourselves, especially in these days …”
“Especially in these days?”
Mr. Raleigh ignored this.”
“But, Dick! They speak of ‘your carriage’; and I’ll swear you wear a hundred guineas on your back.” Mr. Raleigh’s voice grew less sepulchral and more anxious. “Dick, you haven’t taken to thieving or the like?”
“No, of course not!”
“Didn’t I tell you?” sniffed Mrs. Raleigh, and began to cry.
“Sir,” Darwent continued, with formal respect, “I can’t ever repay what you and your wife have done for Dolly.”
”But that was little enough!”
“Little? Perhaps you think so. But by accident, as I was telling Dolly, I have come into some money. I won’t insult you, surely, if I remind you of the old rule of share and share alike?”
Mr. Raleigh gave him a strange look.
“I wish Dolly,” said Darwent, “to have more luxury than she has ever dreamed of. I wish to see her, this very afternoon, in a furnished house in St. James’s …”
“St. James’s!”
“And I should esteem it the greatest favor if Mrs. Raleigh could go with her and look after her. With, of course,” he added hastily, as he saw a wild glance between husband and wife, “yourself to accompany Mrs. Raleigh. Sir, you will find me not ungrateful.”
Then, to his intense discomfort, he saw tears well up in old Raleigh’s eyes. But the harsh voice of Mr. Mulberry struck in.
“Pull up, Dick!” the lawyer told him. “D’ye think I can find you a furnished house at an hour or two’s notice?”
“Can’t you?”
“In a day or two, yes. No doubt! Meanwhile …”
“Meanwhile,” said Darwent, “it must be managed notwithstanding.”
Mr. Mulberry looked thoughtful, pursing up his thick lips. “Oh, it could be managed!” He would not meet Darwent’s eye, but stared with a faraway look at the back of Mr. Raleigh’s neck. “You already own a house, Dick, which must be tolerably well furnished.”
“I own a house?”
“Number thirty-eight St. James’s Square,” Mr. Mulberry said coolly. “Under the law, d’ye see, it became your property when you married.”
“So it did,” agreed Darwent after a pause, and unholy joy drove the blood to his heart. “I had forgotten. So it did!”
“Married!” almost screamed Mrs. Raleigh. Her husband, who had given a start, backed against the chest of drawers. “Dick! You’re not married?”
Darwent glanced quickly toward Dolly, who was in a doze and could not hear him. Dolly moaned, turning her head from side to side.
“To speak a truth, Mrs. Raleigh …”
A double knock on the street door in the next room, a knock firm yet authoritative, sent Mrs. Raleigh flying to answer it. But old Hubert Mulberry anticipated her. Mr. Mulberry opened the street door to a portly, dignified, fresh-complexioned gentleman whose dark beaver hat and funereal-seeming clothes contrasted with his merry eyes, and who gave his name as Mr. Samuel Hereford, surgeon in chief at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.
Waving Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh away, Mr. Mulberry spoke to the newcomer in a rapid whisper, and the surgeon nodded gravely.
In the tiny bedroom, standing beside the bed and gripping Dolly’s hand, Darwent heard the surgeon cough in the doorway.
“Lord Darwent?” he asked in a very low voice, removing his hat with a profound bow. “Your servant, my lord.”
“Yours to command, sit.” And Darwent poured out Dolly’s story as he knew it. “For God’s sake,” he added, “tell me what is wrong! And if she is in need of surgery.”
“We shall do our best, my lord,” Mr. Hereford replied cheerfully, but with suitable portentousness. “If your lordship will be good enough to go into the other room, I shall wait upon you as soon as may be.”
In the front room, where the Raleighs’ most valued possessions were a chiming clock on the wooden mantelpiece and a canary in a wicker cage, both Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh were much agitated. Hubert Mulberry eyed them with a sardonic look.
“I could hate you, Dick,” said Mrs. Raleigh, stamping her foot on the floor. “Don’t tell me I couldn’t! I could!”
“My dear Emma,” remonstrated her husband, trying to look very imposing with one hand inside his waistcoat like General Bonaparte, “we had no reason to believe that Dick’s intentions towards Dolly …”
“Oh, fiddle!” said Mrs. Raleigh. “If two young people choose to enjoy ’emselves, pray what business is it of ours or the parson’s? As though we’d never done the same, in our time?”
“My dear!”
“Fie to all hypocrites, I say!” The little, plump, pleasant-faced woman again burst into tears. “But he’s married, Mr. Raleigh! His wife …”
“She is no wife,” interrupted Darwent. “She will have a surprise in store for her, I think. Mulberry!”
“Ay, lad?”
“Isn’t it true that this marriage can be annulled? Since, to employ a word which has always amused me, it has never been consummated?”
“It can be annulled; true enough.” Mr. Mulberry scowled. “But I’ve had more than a word or two, Dick, with the old fox Crockit.”
“Well?”
“Your dear Caroline’s grandfather,” said Mr. Mulberry, “made provision against everything except death. Annulment, separation, even a near-impossible divorce that takes an Act of Parliament: she loses her inheritance for any of ’em. She’ll fight you, Dick. Don’t you see that? She’ll fight you.”
“In that case,” Darwent spoke politely, “we had better begin the fight ourselves. Mrs. Raleigh! Mr. Raleigh!”
Always in his mind, when he thought of Dolly, was the hideous fear of surgery. The surgeon was skilled of course. But, when the patient lay strapped to an operating table, not even laudanum or strong drink could stifle the screams.
“If Dolly’s illness be not—serious,” he said, “will you come to St. James’s Square and take care of her? The playhouse is closed. Surely you can have no duties in midsummer?”
He did not understand the reason for the long silence.
The canary, in its wicker cage hung from the rotted ceiling boards, began to sing thinly. Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh exchanged glances.
“Why, Dick,” the deep voice said slowly, “it’s plain Dolly never told you.”
“Told me what?”
“I have no duties at the playhouse. I was dismissed, we must call it in disgrace, towards the end of April.”
There was another silence.
“Forgive the impertinence of the question; but … how have you managed to live since then?”
“Well, Dick, there isn’t much left.” Mr. Raleigh avoided his eye. “Two and eightpence three farthings. Emma and I, like the wasters we have always been, spent fivepence today on a bottle of strong waters.
“You come to us,” Mr. Raleigh added suddenly, his dark eyes aglitter under wrinkled and trembling lids, “with this request. You beg it, Dick, as though we were conferring some great favor on you. You make a man cease to feel worthless. God bless you.”
Mrs. Raleigh had turned away to hide her face, and was looking out of the window.
“‘Cease to feel worthless,’” Darwent repeated bitterly. “Why did they dismiss you?”
Augustus Raleigh did not look bitter: only apologetic. But he could keep up his stately pose no longer. Lifting his hands, those hands so deft to shape and paint a stage-king’s throne into living reality, he inspected them and let them fall. The canary trilled a song beyond him.
“I had the misfortune,” he replied, “to annoy a gentleman who had gone backstage to the greenroom. I hoped he had not noticed. Indeed, he scarcely seemed to glance at me. I had not meant to spill paint on his boot. But I am told he spoke with four friends, and five complaints were lodged with the directors. What could the directors do?”
“They could do,” said Darwent, “what I will not suggest in Mrs. Raleigh’s hearing. May I ask the name of this gentleman?”
“I fear he moves in more exalted circles than ours. His name was Buckstone, Sir John Buckstone.”
On the sagging wooden mantelpiece, the chiming clock whirred, tinkled twice, and struck the half-hour after five.
Darwent stood motionless, his right hand on the gray cape over his left shoulder. His gaze, which suddenly terrified Emma Raleigh, moved over to the clock, noted the time, and moved back to Mr. Raleigh.
“And has Sir John Buckstone,” he asked gently, “as many as four friends?”
“Well, Dick, they admire him. Why speak about this? Let it go! There’s not a man in London who isn’t afraid of him.”
Again Hubert Mulberry’s voice cut sharply into emotion.
“Take it easy, Dick!” he begged. “Control yourself. Sit down.”
The latch clicked on the door to the bedroom. From the doorway emerged the portly, dignified figure of Mr. Hereford, the surgeon.
“My lord,” Mr. Hereford said gravely, causing both Raleighs to twitch their heads round, “you most urgently desired to learn whether the patient had need of surgery. Let me reassure you at once, my lord. The patient has no need of surgery.”
Darwent’s knees weakened with relief, so that unwittingly he followed Mr. Mulberry’s advice by groping for a chair and sitting down.
“Do I understand you find it … not serious?”
“Not serious, my lord,” the surgeon returned dryly, “unless you consider serious a matter of simple indigestion, which (alas!) may attack any of us.”
“I thank you.” Darwent cleared his throat. “But the fever? The pain?”
Mr. Hereford hesitated, rolling his eyes and pursing up his lips.
“The pain,” he said, and pressed his hand to the right side of his lower abdomen, “would seem to be here. Yet that must be considered in relation to the other symptoms. Should the patient indeed require surgery, it must be for some operation as yet unknown to medical science.”
A subdued twinkle appeared in Mr. Hereford’s eyes as he added:
“Now we poor fellows, my lord, consider this to be most unlikely.”
The agnostic Darwent offered up a silent prayer of thanks.
“At the same time,” said Mr. Hereford, “there are certain matters which (I confess) somewhat perplex me. Alarming? No, no! But curious.”
Darwent rose to his feet. From one corner of the room, where he had flung it when he entered, he picked up his hat.
“Would it harm her, do you think, if she were removed to other lodgings?”
“Dear me, no! I even fancy it would benefit her.”
“And will you have the kindness, Mr. Hereford, to accompany her there?”
“I shall be honored, my lord.”
“Again I thank you.” Darwent’s tone changed. “Mr. Mulberry!”
“I’ve been awaiting instructions, my lord,” said the lawyer, aping Mr. Hereford’s style of speech. “But I’m not happy. It may be I was hasty to suggest … Have a care, Dick!”
“Use my carriage,” said Darwent, “and take them all to number thirty-eight St. James’s Square. I’ll go to White’s in a hackney coach; my affairs there should not take long; I propose to join you directly.”
Mr. Mulberry’s voice went up.
“That’s all very well! But what if a certain lady (eh?)
should refuse to admit us?”
Darwent showed his teeth.
“Should the lady refuse you entrance to my house,” he said, “summon the watch and have her put under restraint until I arrive. —She wants the law? She shall have the law!”
Turning round, his hatbrim formally against his chest, Darwent bowed courteously to the others.
“Please forgive my absence for a time,” he added. “I have a matter to discuss with Sir John Buckstone.”
Chapter VIII
Displays the Dandy-Lions at Home
“DAMME, OLD BOY, BUT you’re ten minutes late,” mildly complained Jemmy Fletcher. “Deuced sorry, you know, too. But I’m afraid I forgot to write a note to that surgeon you wanted.”
Jemmy, lean and elegant, stood in the doorway of White’s Club not far from the foot of St. James’s Street. At the foot of the street, back from Pall Mall, was the old red-brick St. James’s Palace with its row of mock battlements and its two thin towers at the gate. In the broad street, sloping up to Piccadilly, you might find every club of importance save Watier’s.
From Brookes’s to the humbler Cocoa-Tree, from the Guards’ to the Thatched House Tavern, they closed charmed doors against the vulgar. But White’s, where play at the green table ravaged even large fortunes and General Scott had won two hundred thousand pounds at whist, stood above them all.
Jemmy Fletcher seemed to sense this, or imagined he did, as Darwent glanced round.
“I say,” whispered Jemmy. “Don’t look up. But there it is.”
“There what is.”
“The bow window, damme! The famous bow window above the door! Only a very select few,” Jemmy said with a tinge of envy, “can sit in that window. Or they glare daggers at you until you go away. Here! Dash it! Stop!”
For Darwent, after remarking that he had heard much of the window, was frankly staring upward.
There they sat, behind the glass panes edged with white, only a few of the elect at this hour before sunset. By mutual consent they sat as motionless as a waxworks. They wore their hats indoors, according to club usage. Their fixed unsmiling faces looked out at the street with eyes as glassy as a boy’s marbles: seeing everybody, recognizing nobody.
The Bride of Newgate Page 9
