For that"s a verse, sir, although somewhat slow."
The two men laughed in spite of themselves.
"Better tell the fellow the plain truth," said Campbell to Thurnall.
"Come out with us, and I will tell you." And Campbell threw down the money, and led him off, after he had gulped down his own brandy, and half Tom"s beside.
"What? leave the nepenthe untasted?"
They took him out, and he tucked his arms through theirs, and strutted down Drury Lane.
"The fact is, sir,--I speak to you, of course, in confidence, as one gentleman to another--"
Mr. Barker replied by a lofty and gracious bow.
"That his family are exceedingly distressed at his absence, and his wife, who, as you may know, is a lady of high family, dangerously ill; and he cannot be aware of the fact. This gentleman is the medical man of her family, and I--I am an intimate friend. We should esteem it therefore the very greatest service if you would give us any information which--"
"Weep no more, gentle shepherds, weep no more; For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be upon a garret floor, With fumes of Morpheus" crown about his head."
"Fumes of Morpheus" crown?" asked Thurnall.
"That crimson flower which crowns the sleepy G.o.d, And sweeps the soul aloft, though flesh may nod."
"He has taken to opium!" said Thurnall to the bewildered Major. "What I should have expected."
"G.o.d help him! we must save him out of that last lowest deep!" cried Campbell. "Where is he, sir?"
"A vow! a vow! I have a vow in heaven!
Why guide the hounds toward the trembling hare?
Our Adonais hath drunk poison; Oh!
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life"s early cup with such a draught of woe?"
"As I live, sir," cried Campbell, losing his self-possession in disgust at the fool; "you may rhyme your own nonsense as long as you will, but you shan"t quote the Adonais about that fellow in my presence."
Mr. Barker shook himself fiercely free of Campbell"s arm, and faced round at him in a fighting att.i.tude. Campbell stood eyeing him sternly, but at his wit"s end.
"Mr. Barker," said Tom blandly, "will you have another gla.s.s of brandy and water, or shall I call a policeman?"
"Sir," sputtered he, speaking prose at last, "this gentleman has insulted me! He has called my poetry nonsense, and my friend a fellow.
And blood shall not wipe out--what liquor may?"
The hint was sufficient; but ere he had drained another gla.s.s, Mr.
Barker was decidedly incapable of managing his affairs, much less theirs; and became withal exceedingly quarrelsome, returning angrily to the grievance of Briggs having been called a fellow; in spite of all their entreaties, he talked himself into a pa.s.sion, and at last, to Campbell"s extreme disgust, rushed out of the bar into the street.
"This is too vexations! To have kept half-an-hour"s company with such an animal, and then to have him escape me after all! A just punishment on me for pandering to his drunkenness."
Tom made no answer, but went quietly to the door, and peeped out.
"Pay for his liquor, Major, and follow. Keep a few yards behind me; there will be less chance of his recognising us than if he saw us both together."
"Why, where do you think he"s going?"
"Not home, I can see. Ten to one that he will go raging off straight to Briggs, to put him on his guard against us. Just like a drunkard"s cunning it would be. There, he has turned up that side street. Now follow me quick. Oh that he may only keep his legs!"
They gained the bottom of that street before he had turned out of it; and so through another, and another, till they ran him to earth in one of the courts out of St. Martin"s Lane.
Into a doorway he went, and up a stair. Tom stood listening at the bottom, till he heard the fellow knock at a door far above, and call out in a drunken tone. Then he beckoned to Campbell, and both, careless of what might follow, ran upstairs, and pushing him aside, entered the room without ceremony.
Their chances of being on the right scent were small enough, considering that, though every one was out of town, there were a million and a half of people in London at that moment; and, unfortunately, at least fifty thousand who would have considered Mr. John Barker a desirable visitor; but somehow, in the excitement of the chase, both had forgotten the chances against them, and the probability that they would have to retire downstairs again, apologising humbly to some wrathful Joseph Buggins, whose convivialities they might have interrupted. But no; Tom"s cunning had, as usual, played him true; and as they entered the door, they beheld none other than the lost Elsley Vavasour, alias John Briggs.
Major Campbell advanced bowing, hat in hand, with a courteous apology on his lips.
It was a low lean-to garret; there was a deal table and an old chair in it, but no bed. The windows were broken; the paper hanging down in strips. Elsley was standing before the empty fireplace, his hand in his bosom, as if he had been startled by the scuffle outside. He had not shaved for some days.
So much Tom could note; but no more. He saw the glance of recognition pa.s.s over Elsley"s face, and that an ugly one. He saw him draw something from his bosom, and spring like a cat almost upon the table. A flash--a crack. He had fired a pistol full in Campbell"s face.
Tom was startled, not at the thing, but that such a man should have done it. He had seen souls, and too many, flit out of the world by that same tiny crack, in Californian taverns, Arabian deserts, Australian gullies.
He knew all about that: but he liked Campbell; and he breathed more freely the next moment, when he saw him standing still erect, a quiet smile on his face, and felt the plaster dropping from the wall upon his own head. The bullet had gone over the Major. All was right.
"He is not man enough for a second shot," thought Tom quietly, "while the Major"s eye is on him."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Vavasour," he heard the Major say, in a gentle unmoved voice, "for this intrusion. I a.s.sure you that there is no cause for any anger on your part; and I am come to entreat you to forget and forgive any conduct of mine which may have caused you to mistake either me or the lady whom I am unworthy to mention."
"I am glad the beggar fired at him," thought Tom. "One spice of danger, and he"s himself again, and will overawe the poor cur by mere civility.
I was afraid of some abject methodist parson humility, which would give the other party a handle."
Elsley heard him with a stupefied look, like that of a trapped wild beast, in which rage, shame, suspicion, and fear, were mingled with the vacant glare of the opium-eater"s eye. Then his eye drooped beneath Campbell"s steady gentle gaze, and he looked uneasily round the room, still like a trapped wild beast, as if for a hole to escape by; then up again, but sidelong, at Major Campbell.
"I a.s.sure you, sir, on the word of a Christian and a soldier, that you are labouring under an entire misapprehension. For G.o.d"s sake and Mrs.
Vavasour"s sake, come back, sir, to those who will receive you with nothing but affection! Your wife has been all but dead; she thinks of no one but you, asks for no one but you. In G.o.d"s name, sir, what are you doing here, while a wife who adores you is dying from your--I do not wish to be rude, sir, but let me say at least--neglect?"
Elsley looked at him still askance, puzzled, inquiring. Suddenly his great beautiful eyes opened to preternatural wideness, as if trying to grasp a new thought. He started, shifted his feet to and fro, his arms straight down by his sides, his fingers clutching after something. Then he looked up hurriedly again at Campbell; and Thurnall looked at him also; and his face was as the face of an angel.
"Miserable a.s.s!" thought Tom, "if he don"t see innocence in that man"s countenance, he wouldn"t see it in his own child"s."
Elsley suddenly turned his back to them, and thrust his hand into his bosom. Now was Tom"s turn.
In a moment he had vaulted over the table, and seized Elsley"s wrist, ere he could draw the second pistol.
"No, my dear Jack," whispered he quietly, "once is enough in a day!"
"Not for him, Tom, for myself!" moaned Elsley.
"For neither, dear lad! Let bygones be bygones, and do you be a new man, and go home to Mrs. Vavasour."
"Never, never, never, never, never, never!" shrieked Elsley like a baby, every word increasing in intensity, till the whole house rang; and then threw himself into the crazy chair, and dashed his head between his hands upon the table.
"This is a case for me, Major Campbell. I think you had better go now."