Occasional coals dropping into the fender with a hot tick, tick, chirrupped a lullaby to the four happy companions. And the men learnt a fine silence from the fine silence of the dogs.
Half way through the second cigar Rupert shifted under his master"s patent-leather boots and raised his huge head. His eyes blinked out of their sleep, then ceased to blink and became attentive. Then his ears, which had been lying down on each side of his head in the suavest att.i.tude which such features of a dog can a.s.sume, lifted themselves up and pointed grimly forward as he listened to something. His flaccid legs contracted under him, and the muscles of his back quivered. Mab, less readily alert, quickly caught the infection of his attention, rolled over out of her sideways position and couched beside him. The movement of the dogs was not congenial to the doctor. Rupert"s curious back, alert under his feet, communicated an immediate sense of disquiet to the very centre of his being. He said to Julian:
"The acuteness of animal senses has its drawbacks. These dogs must have heard some sound in the street that is entirely inaudible to us. Well, Rupert, what is it? Lie down again and go to sleep."
Stooping forward he put his hand on the dog"s neck, and gave him a push, expecting him to yield readily, and tumble over onto the warm rug to sleep once more. But Rupert resisted his hand, and instead, got up, and stood at attention. Mab immediately followed his example.
"What are they after, doctor?" said Julian.
As he spoke a bell rang in the house.
"Nemesis for prolonging the pleasure," Levillier said. "A summons to a patient, no doubt."
As if in reply to the twitter of the bell, Rupert sprang forward and barked. He remained beside the door, waiting, while Mab barked too, nearer the fire. The bell sounded again, and the footstep of Lawler, who always sat up as late as his master, was heard on the stairs from the servants" part of the house. It pa.s.sed them on its errand to the front door, but during its pa.s.sage the excitement of the two dogs rapidly increased. They began to bark furiously and to bristle.
"I never saw them like this before," the doctor said, not without anxiety.
As he spoke Lawler opened the hall door. They heard the latch go and the faint voice of somebody in colloquy with him. For the dogs were now abruptly silent, but displayed the most curious savage intentness, showing their teeth, and standing each by the door as if sentinels on guard. The colloquy ceasing, steps again sounded in the hall, but more than Lawler"s. Evidently the man was returning towards the room accompanied by somebody from the street. The doctor was keenly observing the mastiffs, and just as Lawler"s hand struck upon the handle of the door to turn it, he suddenly called out sharply:
"Lawler, you are not to open the door!"
And as he called, the doctor ran forward between the two dogs and caught their collars in his two hands. They tugged and leaped to get away, but he held on. The surprised voice of the obedient Lawler was heard on the hither side of the door, saying:
"I beg your pardon, sir."
The doctor said hastily to Julian:
"These dogs will tear the person who has just come into the house to pieces if we don"t take care. Catch on to Mab, Addison."
Julian obeyed, and the dog was like live iron with determination under his grasp.
"Some one is with you, Lawler," the doctor said. "Does he wish to see me?"
"If you please, sir, it is Mr. Cresswell, Mr. Valentine come back for Mr.
Addison."
Julian felt himself go suddenly pale.
CHAPTER VI
THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING
Rather reluctantly, Julian acted on the advice of Doctor Levillier and went out of town for a week on the following day. He took his way to the sea, and tried to feel normal in a sailing-boat with a gnarled and corrugated old salt for his only companion. But his success was only partial, for while his body gave itself to the whisper of the ungoverned breezes, while his hands held the ropes, and his eyes watched the subtle proceedings of the weather, and his ears listened to the serial stories of the waves, and to the conversational peregrinations of his Ancient Mariner about the China Seas in bygone days, his mind was still in London, still busily concerned itself with the very things that should now undergo a sea change and vanish in ozone. Recent events oppressed him, to the occasional undoing of the old salt, well accustomed to the seasick reverence of his despairing clients on board the _Star of the Sea_. When the mind of a man has once fallen into the habit of prancing in a circle like a circus horse, it is difficult to drive it back into the public streets, to make it trot serenely forward in its ordinary ways. And Julian had with him a ring-master in the person of the ignorant Rip. Whenever his eyes fell on Rip, curled uneasily in the bottom of the swinging boat, he went at a tangent back to Harley Street, and the strange finale of his evening with the doctor.
It had been a curious tableau divided by a door. Levillier and he stood on one side tugging mightily at the intent mastiffs, which strained at their collars, dropping beads of foam from their grinning jaws, savages, instead of calm companions. On the other side, in the hall, Lawler and Valentine paused in amazement, and a colloquy shot to and fro through the wooden barrier. On hearing the name of Valentine mentioned by the butler, the doctor had cast an instant glance of unbounded amazement upon Julian.
And Julian had returned it, feeling in his heart the dawning of an inexplicable trouble.
"Is anything the matter?" Valentine"s voice had asked.
"No," said the doctor in reply. "But please go into the dining-room. We will come to you there. And Lawler--"
"Yes, sir."
"When you have shown Mr. Cresswell to the dining-room, be careful to shut the door, and to keep it shut till I come."
"Yes, sir."
The butler"s well-trained voice had vibrated with surprise and Julian had found himself mechanically smiling as he noted this. Then the footsteps of servant and visitor had retreated. Presently a door was heard to shut.
Lawler returned, and was pa.s.sing discreetly by, to wonder, in his pantry, if his master had gone mad, when the doctor again called to him.
"Go downstairs, Lawler, and in a moment I shall bring the dogs to you."
"Yes, sir."
The butler"s voice was now almost shrill with scarcely governable astonishment, and his footsteps seemed to tremble uneasily upon the stairs as he retired. Then the doctor went to a corner of the room and took down from a hook a whip with a heavy thong.
"I haven"t had to use this since they were both puppies," he said, with a side glance at the dogs. "Now, Addison, keep hold of Mab and go in front of me down the servants" stairs. If the dogs once get out of hand we shall have trouble in the house to-night."
The door was opened, and then a veritable affray began. The animals seemed half mad. They tore at their collars, and struggled furiously to break loose, snarling and even snapping, their great heads turned in the direction of the dining-room. The doctor, firmest as well as kindest of men, recognized necessity, and used the whip unsparingly, lashing the animals through the door to the servants" quarters, and down the stairs.
It was a violent procession to the lower regions. Julian could not get it out of his head. Entangled among the leaping dogs on the narrow stairway, he had a sense of whirling in the eddies of a stream, driven from this side to the other. His arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets. The shriek of the lash curling over and around the dogs, the dim vision of the doctor"s compressed lips and eyes full of unaccustomed fire, the damp foam on his hands as he rocked from one wall to the other, amid a dull music of growls, and fierce, low barks, came back to him now as he trimmed the sails to catch the undecided winds, or felt the tiller leap under his hold. Each moment he had expected to be bitten, but somehow they all tumbled together unhurt into Lawler"s pantry, where they found that factotum standing grim and wire-strung with antic.i.p.ation. Beyond the pantry were the dogs" night quarters, and they were quickly driven into them and shut up. But they still bounded and beat against the door, and presently began to howl a vain chorale.
"Lord, Lord, sir! what"s come to them?" Lawler exclaimed.
His fat face had become as white as a sheet, and the doctor was scarcely less pale as he leaned against the dresser, whip in hand, drawing panting breaths.
"I can"t tell. They will be all right in a minute."
He pulled himself up.
"Go to bed now if you like, Lawler," he said, rather abruptly. "Come, Addison."
They regained the hall, and made their way to Valentine. He was sitting by the dining-table in a watchful att.i.tude, and sprang hastily up as they came in.
"My dear doctor," he said, "what a pandemonium! I nearly came to your a.s.sistance."
"It"s very lucky you didn"t, Cresswell," the doctor answered, almost grimly.
"Why?"
"Because if you had you might chance to be a dead man by this time."
Out on the sea, under the streaming clouds that fled before the wind, Julian recalled the strange terseness of that reply, and the perhaps stranger silence that followed it. For Valentine had made no comment, had asked for no explanation. He had simply dropped the subject, and the three men had remained together for a few minutes, constrained and ill at ease. Then the doctor had said:
"Let us go back now to my room."