"What do you want with me?" said Oliver trying to shake off the rude grasp.
"I want you--you," gasped the man. He was evidently much excited, and his breath came in hard, quick pants. "Have you forgotten your own brother?"
The two paused for an instant under a gas lamp. Oliver looked into Francis Trent"s drawn, livid face--into the wild, bloodshot eyes, and for an instant recoiled. It struck him that the face was that of a madman. But it was, nevertheless, the face of his brother, and after that momentary pause he recovered himself and laughed slightly.
"Forgotten you? I"m not very likely to forget you, my boy. Well, what do you want?"
"I want that two thousand pounds."
His hand still clutched Oliver"s arm, and the grasp was becoming unpleasant.
"Can you not take your hand off my arm?" said the younger man, coolly.
"I"m not going to run away. Apropos, what have you been doing with yourself all these weeks! I thought you had given us the slip altogether."
"I want my money," said Francis, doggedly.
Oliver looked at him curiously. What did this persistence mean? What money was he thinking about?
"Your money?" he repeated.
"Yes, my money--the money you ought to have given me by this time--where is it?"
"You mean the sum I promised you on my wedding-day?"
Francis nodded, with a rather confused look upon his face.
"My wedding-day has not occurred yet," said Oliver, lightly. "Upon my word, I doubt whether it ever will occur. Don"t alarm yourself, Francis.
I shall get the money for you before long--I"ve not forgotten it."
"I want it now. Two thousand pounds," said Francis, thickly.
"Are you drunk, man! Do you think I carry two thousand pounds about with me in my pocket? Go home--I"ll see you again when you are sober."
"I have touched nothing but water to-day," said his brother. "I swear it--so help me, G.o.d! I know what I"m about. And I know _you_. I know you for the vilest cheat and trickster that ever walked the earth. I"ve been in hospital--I don"t know how long. I know that you would cheat me if you could. You were to pay me within six months--and it"s over six months now."
"I tell you I"m not married. I was to pay you on my wedding-day."
"You were to pay me within six months. Have you opened a bank account for me and paid in the two thousand pounds?"
"Are you mad, Francis?"
"Mad?--I may well be mad after all you have made me suffer. I tell you I want money--money--money--I want two thousand pounds."
His voice rose almost to a shriek, and the sound reverberated along the quiet street with startling effect. Oliver shrank into himself a little, and gave a hurried glance around him. They were still in Upper Woburn Place, and he was afraid that the noise should excite remark. It was plain to him that Francis was either drunk or out of his mind, and he therefore concentrated his attention on getting quietly away from him, or leading him to some more secluded spot.
"Look here," he said, in a conciliatory tone. "You shall have your money if you"ll be quiet and come away with me. Come to my house and I"ll explain things to you. You"ve not seen Rosalind for a long time, have you? Come in and talk things over."
"Oh, you want to trap me, do you?" said Francis, sullenly. "No, I"ll not come to your house. Go in and fetch the money out to me, or I"ll make you repent it."
Oliver was almost at his wit"s end.
"All right," he said, soothingly. "I will fetch it. I can give you a cheque, you know. But don"t you want a little loose change to go on with? Take these."
He held out a handful of gold and silver. Francis looked at it with covetous eyes for a minute or two, then thrust his brother"s hand aside with a jerk which almost sent the coins into the road.
"I want justice, not charity," he said. "I want the money you promised me."
Oliver shrugged his shoulders, and slowly returned the money to his pocket.
"I am more than ever convinced that you are either mad or drunk, my boy," he said. "You should never refuse ten pounds when you can get it, and it"s not a thing that I should fancy you have often done before.
However, as you choose."
He walked onward, and Francis walked, heavily and unsteadily, at his side, muttering to himself as he went. Oliver glanced curiously at him from time to time.
"I wonder what _has_ happened to him," he said to himself. "It"s not safe to question, but I _should_ like to know. Is it drink? or is it brain disease? One thing or the other it must be. He does not look as if he would live to spend the two thousand pounds--if ever he gets it. I wonder if I could contrive to stave off the payment----"
And then he fell into a gloomy calculation of ways and means, possibilities and chances, which lasted until the house in Russell Square was reached. Here the brothers paused, and Oliver looked keenly into his companion"s face, noting that a somewhat remarkable change had pa.s.sed over it. Instead of being flushed and swollen, as if from drinking, it had become very pale. His eyes seemed on the point of closing, and he wavered unsteadily in his walk. Oliver had to put out his hand to save him from falling, and to help him to the steps, where he collapsed into a sitting posture, with his head against the railings.
He seemed to be stupefied, if not asleep.
"Dead drunk," said Oliver to himself. "The danger"s over for to-night, at any rate. Now, what shall I do with him? I can"t get him into the house and lock him into a room--that would make talk. I think I had better leave him to the tender mercies of the next policeman; if he gets run in for being drunk and incapable, so much the better for me."
He took out his latch key and let himself into the house, closing the door softly behind him, so as not to awaken the half-sleeping wretch upon the steps. Then he ascended the stairs--still softly, as if he thought that he was not yet out of danger of awaking him--and locked himself into his own room. Then he drew a long breath, and stood motionless for a moment, with bent brows and downcast eyes. "There will be no end to this," he said to himself, "until Francis is shipped off to America or landed safely in a madhouse. One seems to me about as likely as another. I wonder whether he was drunk to-night, or insane? Drunk, I think: insanity"--with a sinister smile--"would be too great a stroke of luck for me!"
But it was perfectly true, as Francis had said, that no drop of intoxicating liquor had pa.s.sed his lips that day. He was suffering from brain disease, as Oliver had half suspected, although not to such an extent that he could actually be called insane. A certain form of mania was gradually taking possession of his mind. He was convinced that he had been robbed by his brother of much that was his due; and that Oliver was even now withholding money that was his. This fancy had its foundation in fact, for Oliver had wronged him more than once, and was ready to wrong him again should a suitable opportunity occur; but the notion that at present occupied his mind, respecting the payment of the two thousand pounds, was largely a figment of his disordered brain.
Oliver had certainly questioned within himself whether he should be called upon to pay this sum, and as Francis seemed to have completely disappeared, he began to think that he might evade his promise to do so; but he had not as yet sought to free himself from the necessity of paying it. Francis" own words and demeanor suggested this idea for the first time to his mind. Was it possible, he asked himself, to prove that Francis was insane--clap him into a lunatic asylum--get rid of him forever without hush-money? True, there was his wife, Mary, to be silenced; but she had no influence and no friends. "Power is always in the hands of those who have most money," Oliver said to himself, as he reviewed the situation, after leaving Francis on the door step. "I have more money than Francis, certainly: I ought to be able to control his fate a little--and my own."
But Oliver, astute as he thought himself, was occasionally mistaken in his conclusions. Francis Trent, as we have said, was not intoxicated; and when he had dozed quietly for a few moments on the door-step, he came somewhat to himself, as he usually did after these fits of frenzy.
He felt dazed and bewildered, but he was no longer furious. He could not remember very well what he had said to Oliver, or what Oliver had said to him. But he knew where he was, and that in this region--between Russell Square and St. Pancras Church--he should find his truest friends and perhaps also his bitterest foes.
He roused himself, stretched his cramped limbs, and turned back to wander towards Upper Woburn Place, hardly knowing, however, why he bent his steps in that direction. Instinct, not memory or reflection, guided him, and when he halted, he leaned against the railings of the house from which he had seen Oliver come forth, without realizing for one moment that it was the house in which his faithful and half-forgotten Mary was to be found.
The door opened, as he waited, and some of the guests came out. Two or three carriages drove up: there was a call for a hansom, a whistle, and an answering shout. Francis Trent watched the proceedings with a sort of stupid attention. They reminded him of the previous night when he had seen Ethel Kenyon coming out of the theatre after her farewell performance. But on that occasion he had pa.s.sed unnoticed and unrecognized. This was not now to be the case.
Suddenly a woman on the threshold of Mr. Brooke"s house caught sight of the weary, shabby figure leaning against the railings. Francis heard a little gasp, a little cry, and felt a hand upon his own. "Francis! is it you? have you really come back?" It was Mary Kingston who looked him in the face.
He returned the gaze with lack-l.u.s.tre, unseeing eyes. When the fever-fit of rage left him, he was still subject to odd lapses of memory. One of these had a.s.sailed him now. He did not recognize his wife in the very least.
"I--I don"t know you," he said. "Go away, woman. I"m not doing any harm."
There is nothing so piteous as the absence of recognition of the patient"s best friends in cases of brain-disease. Francis Trent"s condition sent a stab of pain to Mary"s innermost heart. She forgot where she was--she forgot her duties as doorkeeper; she remembered only that she loved this man, and that he had forgotten her. She cried aloud----
"Francis, I am your wife."
"I have no wife," said the distraught man, looking listlessly beyond her. "I am here to see Oliver--he is to give me some money."
"Don"t you remember Mary, Francis? Look at me--look at me."
"Mary?" he said, doubtfully. "Oh, yes, I remember Mary. But you are not Mary, are you?"