"You will not leave him?"
"No, sir. It is a very curious psychological study, and he is a Whitbury man."
Campbell knew quite enough of the would-be cynical doctor, to understand what all that meant. He came up to Elsley.
"Mr. Vavasour, I am going to the war, from which I expect never to return. If you believe me, give me your hand before I go."
Elsley, without lifting his head, beat on the table with his hand.
"I wish to die at peace with you and all the world. I am innocent in word, in thought. I shall not insult another person by saying that she is so. If you believe me, give me your hand."
Elsley stretched his hand, his head still buried. Campbell took it, and went silently downstairs.
"Is he gone?" moaned he, after a while.
"Yes."
"Does she--does she care for him?"
"Good heavens! How did you ever dream such an absurdity?"
Elsley only beat upon the table.
"She has been ill?"
"Is ill. She has lost her child."
"Which?" shrieked Elsley.
"A boy whom she should have had."
Elsley only beat on the table; then--
"Give me the bottle, Tom!"
"What bottle?"
"The laudanum;--there in the cupboard."
"I shall do no such thing. You are poisoning yourself."
"Let me then! I must, I tell you! I can live on nothing else. I shall go mad if I do not have it. I should have been mad by now. Nothing else keeps off these fits;--I feel one coming now. Curse you! give me the bottle!"
"What fits?"
"How do I know? Agony and torture--ever since I got wet on that mountain."
Tom knew enough to guess his meaning, and felt Elsley"s pulse and forehead.
"I tell you it turns every bone to red-hot iron!" almost screamed he.
"Neuralgia; rheumatic, I suppose," said Tom to himself. "Well, this is not the thing to cure you: but you shall have it to keep you quiet." And he measured him out a small dose.
"More, I tell you, more!" said Elsley, lifting up his head, and looking at it.
"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 pa.s.sion had come on, clung to any human friend. The very sound of Tom"s clear st.u.r.dy voice seemed pleasant to him, after long solitude and silence. At least it kept off the fiends of memory.