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Chapter Forty Seven
“I say, he didn’t shoot you, did he?”
“Yes – through the arm,” said Leigh faintly. “Better directly. Can you keep him down, Wilton?”
“Oh yes, I’ll keep the beggar down,” said Claud, cocking the pistol. “Do you hear, you sir? You move a hand and as sure as I’ve got you here, I’ll fire. Send for a doctor someone.”
“No, no,” cried Leigh, a little more firmly; “not yet;” and he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and folded it with one hand. “Tie this tightly round my arm.”
“You take the pistol then – that’s it – and let the brute have it if he stirs. I won’t get off him. Kneel down.”
Leigh obeyed after taking the pistol, and Claud bound the handkerchief tightly round his arm.
“Hurt you?”
“Yes; but the sickness is going off. Tighter: it will stop the bleeding.”
“All right; but I say, we had better have in a doctor,” said Claud excitedly.
“Not yet. We don’t want an expose,” said Leigh anxiously.
“Shall I go for one, sir?” said the housekeeper.
“No. How is she now?” said Leigh anxiously.
“Just the same, sir,” said the woman, stifling her sobs.
“I’ll come in a moment or two. Go back; there is nothing to fear now.”
A burst of hysterical sobbing came from the front door, where Becky was crouching down, with her face buried in her hands.
“Take her with you,” said Leigh hastily; and he stood before Garstang while Becky walked into the library, shivering with dread.
“Here, you hold up, what’s your name,” cried Claud. “You behaved like a trump. It’s all right; he can’t hurt you now.”
“No,” said Leigh, in a harsh whisper, as the two women passed in and the door swung to; “nor anyone else. Look.”
“Eh?” said Claud wonderingly. “What at?”
“Don’t you see?” said Leigh, bending down and turning Garstang’s head a little on one side.
“Ugh!” ejaculated Claud. “Blood! I didn’t mean that. Why, he must have hit his head on that bit of marble.”
“Yes,” answered Leigh, after a brief examination, “the skull is fractured. We must get him away from here.”
“Not dangerous, is it, doctor?” said Claud, aghast.
Leigh made no answer, but rose to his feet and sat down on one of the hall chairs.
“What is it – faint?” said Claud.
“Yes – get me – something – he cannot move.”
“She seems to be more like sleeping now, sir,” said the housekeeper, appearing at the door. “Oh, no, no; don’t let him get up!”
“It’s all right, old lady. Here, got any brandy? The doctor’s hurt, and faint.”
“Yes, sir; yes, sir,” said the woman, glancing in a horrified way, at the two injured men, as she passed into the dining-room, from which she returned directly with a decanter and glass.
“It’s port wine, sir,” she said in a trembling voice; and she poured out a glass.
Leigh drained it, and rose to his feet.
“I will come back directly,” he said.
“That’s right. I say, I don’t quite like his looks.”
Leigh bent over the prostrate man, but said nothing, and passed into the library, where he spent five minutes in attendance upon Kate; and at the end of that time he rose with a sigh of relief.
“Will she come to, sir?” whispered the housekeeper, with her voice trembling.
“Yes, I think the worst is over. The medicine I gave her is counteracting the effects of the drug.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” burst out Becky; and she flumped down on the carpet and caught one of Kate’s hands, to lay it against her cheek and hold it there, as she rocked herself to and fro.
“Becky! Becky! you mustn’t,” whispered her mother.
“Let her alone; she will do no harm,” said Leigh, quietly.
“Are – are you going to send for the police, sir?” faltered the woman.
“No, certainly not yet,” replied Leigh; and he went back into the hall.
“I say,” said Claud, in a voice full of awe, “I’m jolly glad you’ve come. He ain’t dying, is he?”
For answer Leigh went down on one knee, and made a fresh examination.
“No,” he said at last; “but he is very bad. I cannot help carry him, but he must be got into one of the rooms.”
“Fetch that old girl out, and we’ll carry him,” said Claud; and after a moment or two’s thought Leigh went to the library, stood for a while examining his patient there, and then signed to Becky and her mother to follow him.
Under his directions a blanket was brought, passed under the injured man, and then each took a corner, and he was borne into the dining-room and laid upon a couch.
“I don’t like to call in police, or a strange surgeon,” Leigh whispered to Claud. “We do not want this affair to become public.”
“By George, no!” said Claud, hastily.
“Then you must help me. I can do what is necessary; and these women can nurse him.”
“But I can’t help you,” protested the young man. “If it was a horse I could do something. Don’t understand men.”
“I do, to some extent,” said Leigh, smiling faintly. Then, to the woman, “You can go back now. Call me at once if there is any change.”
The two trembling women went out, and after another feeble protest Claud manfully took off his coat, and acting under Leigh’s instructions, properly bandaged the painful wound made by Garstang’s bullet, which had struck high up in Leigh’s arm, and passed right through, a very short distance beneath the skin.
“A mere nothing,” said Leigh, coolly, as the wound was plugged and bandaged, the table napkins coming in handy. “Why, Wilton, you’d make a capital dresser.”
“Ugh!” ejaculated the young man, with a shudder. “I should like to be down on one. Sick as a cat.”
“Take a glass of wine, man,” said Leigh, smiling.
“I just will,” said Claud, gulping one down. “Thank you, since you are so pressing, I think I will take another. Hah! that puts Dutch courage in a fellow,” he sighed, after a second goodly sip. “It’s good port, Garstang. Here’s bad health to you – you beast.”
He drank the rest of his wine.
“I say, doctor, you don’t expect me to help timber his head, do you?”
Leigh nodded, as he drew his shirt-sleeve down over his bandages.
“But the brute would have shot me, too.”
“Yes, but he’s hors de combat, my lad, and you don’t want to jump on a fallen enemy.”
“Don’t know so much about that, doctor,” said the young man, dryly, “but you ought.”
“Perhaps so,” replied Leigh, “but I am what you would call crotchety, and I must treat him as I would a man who never did me harm. Come, your wine has strung you up. Let’s get to work.”
“Must I? Hadn’t you better put the beggar out of his misery? He isn’t a bit of good in the world, and has done a lot of harm to everyone he knows.”
“Bad fracture,” said Leigh, gravely, as he passed his hand round the insensible man’s head, “but not complicated. He must have fallen with tremendous violence.”
“Of course he did,” said Claud. “He had my weight on him, as well as his own. Can he hear what we say?”
“No, and will not for some time to come. Now, take the scissors out of my pocket-book, and cut away all the hair round the back. There, cut close: don’t be afraid.”
“Afraid! Not I,” said Claud, with a laugh, “I’ll take it all off, and make him look like a – what I hope he will be – a convict.”
He began snipping away industriously, talking flippantly the while, to keep down the feeling of faintness which still troubled him.
“Fancy me coming to be old Garstang’s barber! I say, doctor, you’d like to keep a lock of the beggar’s hair, wouldn’t you? I mean to have one.”
“Mind what you are doing,” said Leigh, quietly; and as Claud went on cutting he prepared bandages with one hand and his teeth, from another of the fine damask napkins; and in spite of the pain he suffered, bandaged the injury, and at last sank exhausted in a chair, but rose directly to go across to the library.
“How is she?” said Claud, anxiously, upon his return.
“The effects are passing off, and in two or three hours I hope she will come to.”
“Then look here,” said Claud, anxiously, “ought I to – I mean, ought you to send over to somebody and tell her how things are going on? She’ll be horribly anxious.”
Leigh frowned slightly.
“You mean my sister, of course,” he said. “No; she is aware that I was called in to a case of emergency, but she does not know that it is here.”
“Doesn’t she know? I say, though, I’m a bit puzzled how you came here.”
“This man fetched me.”
“Fetched you? How came he to do that?”
“In ignorance of who I was, of course. But how came you here so opportunely?”
“Oh, I’ve been watching and tracking for long enough, till I ran him to earth; and I’ve been trying for days to get at him. Got hold of that woman with the tied-up head at last – only this evening – and was going to bribe her, but she let out everything to me, and after telling me everything, said she’d let me in. So I went for you, and as you were out I was obliged to try and get Kate away at once. You know the rest I say, this is what you call a climax, isn’t it?”
Leigh sat gazing at him sternly, but Claud did not avoid his eyes, and went on.
“Now look here; of course he got her for the sake of her money, and she can’t stop here. But she must be taken away as soon as she can be moved.”
“Of course.”
“Yes, of course,” said Claud, firmly. “It isn’t a time for stickling about ourselves; we’ve got to think about her, poor lass. Damn him! I feel as if I could go and tear all his bandages off – a beast!”
“What do you propose, then?” said Leigh, calmly.
“Well, for the present we’d better take her to your house. She must be in a horrid state, and the best thing for her is to find herself along with some one she loves. It will do her no end of good to find Jenny’s – I beg your pardon, Miss Leigh’s arms around her.”
“Yes, you are quite right; and I could go to an hotel.”
“Humph! Yes, I suppose you ought to, but I’ve been thinking of something else, if you don’t mind. The guv’nor’s shut up with his gout, so I think I ought to go home and fetch the mater. She talks a deal, but she’s a jolly motherly sort, and was fond of Kate. There’s no harm in her, only that she’s a bit soft about her beautiful boy – me, you know,” he said, with one of his old grins.
Leigh winced a little, and Claud’s face grew solemn directly.
“I say,” he said hastily, “it was queer that he should have come and fetched you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Leigh, “a curious stroke of fate, or whatever you may call it; and yet simple enough. It was in a case of panic; he was seeking a doctor, and my red lamp was the first he saw. But after all, it was the same when we were boys; if we had strong reasons, through some escapade, for wishing to avoid a certain person, he was the very first whom we met.”
“Yes, Mr Wilton; what you propose is the best course that can be pursued, and I think it is our duty towards your cousin; we can arrange later on what ought to be done about this man. You and your relatives may or may not think it right to prosecute him, but you may rest assured that his injury will keep him a close prisoner for a long while to come.”
“Yes, I suppose that fall was a regular crippler, but you have to think about prosecuting too. The law does not allow people to use pistols.”
“We can discuss that by-and-by. Now, please, I shall be greatly obliged if you will go to my sister, and tell her as much as you think is necessary. If she has gone to bed she must be roused. Ask her to be ready to receive Miss Wilton, and then I think you ought to go down to Northwood and fetch Mrs Wilton.”
“All right – like a shot,” said Claud, eagerly. “I mean directly,” he cried, colouring a little. “But, er – you mean this?”
“Of course,” said Leigh, smiling; “why should I not? Let me be frank with you, if I can with a sensation of having a hole bored through my arm with a red-hot bar. A short time back I felt that if there was a man living with whom I could never be on friendly terms, you were that man; but you have taught me that it is dangerous to judge any one from a shallow knowledge of what he is at heart. I know you better now; I hope to know you better in the future. Will you shake hands?”
“Oh!” ejaculated Claud, seizing the hand violently, and dropping it the next instant as if it were red-hot. For Leigh’s face contracted, and he turned faint from the agony caused by the jar. “What a thoughtless brute I am! Here, have another glass of that beast’s wine.”
“No, no, I’m better now. There, quick! It must be very late, and I don’t want my sister to have gone to bed. I dare say she would sit up for me some time, though.”
“Yes, I’m off,” cried Claud, excitedly; “but let me say – no, no, I can’t say it now; you must mean it, though, or you wouldn’t have spoken like that.”
He had reached the door, when Leigh stopped him.
“I’ll go in first and see how your cousin is; Jenny would like the last report.”
“Better, certainly,” he said on his return; and Claud hurried out of the house.
“He said ‘Jenny,’” he muttered, as he ran towards Leigh’s new home. “‘Jenny,’ not ‘my sister,’ or ‘Miss Leigh.’ Oh, what a lucky brute I am! But I do wish I wasn’t such a cad!”
Chapter Forty Eight
Before morning Kate was sufficiently recovered to be removed to Leigh’s house; but it was days before her senses had fully returned, and her brain was thoroughly awake to the present and the past, to find herself lovingly attended by her aunt and Jenny Leigh, who was her companion down to Northwood, while Claud kept the doctor company in town and accompanied him as assistant every time he visited Great Ormond Street. For Leigh, in spite of his own injuries, continued to attend Garstang till he was thoroughly out of danger, though it was months before he was able to go to his office.
It was time he went there, for the place, and his country house in Kent, were in charge of his creditors’ representatives, it having come like a crash on the monetary world that Garstang, the money-lender and speculator, had failed for a very heavy sum.
Poetic justice or not, John Garstang found himself bankrupt in health and pocket; his bold attempt to save his position by making Kate his wife being the gambler’s last stroke.
As a matter of course, James Wilton was involved; led on by Garstang, he had mortgaged his property deeply, and the money was now called in, and ruin stared him in the face just at a time when he was prostrate with illness.
“It’s jolly hard on the old man,” said Claud one day when he had come up to town and called on Leigh, “for the guv’nor has lorded it down at Northwood all these years, and could have been doing it fine now if it hadn’t been for old Garstang. He gammoned the guv’nor into speculating, and then gammoned him when he lost to go on with the double or quits game, and a nice thing Johnny must have made out of it. If it had been sheep or turnips, of course the old man would have been all there; but it was a fat turkey playing cards with a fox, and I suppose everything comes to the hammer.”
“Very bad for your mother,” said Leigh.
“Oh, I don’t know. I say, may I light my pipe?”
“Oh, yes; smoke away while you have any brains left.”
“Better smoke one’s brains away than catch some infection in your doctor’s shop. How do I know that some one with the epidemics hasn’t been sitting in this chair? – ah! that’s better. I say, it’s a pity you don’t smoke, Leigh.”
“Is it? Very well, then, I’ll have a cigar with you to help keep off the infection. I did have a rheumatic patient in that chair this morning.”
“Eh? Did you? Oh, well, I’ll risk that. Ah, now you look more sociable, and as if you hadn’t got your back up because I called.”
“I couldn’t have had, because I was very glad to see you.”
“Were you? Well, you didn’t look it. You were saying about being bad for the mater. I don’t believe she’ll mind, if the guv’nor don’t worry. She’s about the most contented old girl that ever lived, if things will only go smooth. The crash comes hardest on poor me. It’s Othello’s occupation, gone, and no mistake, with yours truly. I say, don’t you think I could turn surgeon? I have lots of friends in the Mid-West Pack, and if they knew I was in the profession I could get all the accidents.”
“No,” said Leigh, smiling; “you are not cut out for a doctor.”
“I don’t think I am cut out for anything, Leigh, and things look very black. I can farm, and of course if the guv’nor hadn’t smashed I could have gone on all right. But it’s heart-breaking, Leigh; it is, upon my soul. I haven’t been home for weeks. Been along with an old aunt.”
“Why, you oughtn’t to leave a sinking ship, my lad.”
“Well, I know that,” said Claud, savagely; “and that’s why I’ve come here.”
“Why you’ve come here?” said Leigh, staring.
“Yes; don’t pretend that you can’t understand.”
“There is no pretence. Explain yourself.”
Claud Wilton had only just lit his pipe, but he tapped it empty on the bars, and sat gazing straight before him.
“I want to do the square thing,” he said; “but I’m such an impulsive beggar, and I can’t trust myself. I want you to send for your sister home; Kate’s all right again; mother told me so in a letter; and she has got her lawyer down there, and is transacting business. Look here, Leigh: it isn’t right for me to be down there when your sister’s at the Manor. I can’t see a shilling ahead now, and it isn’t fair to her.”
Leigh looked at him keenly.
“I shall have to marry Kate after all,” continued Claud, with a bitter laugh. “Do you hear, hated rival? We can’t afford to let the chance go. Oh, I say, Leigh, I wish you’d give me a dose, and put me out of my misery, for I’m about the most unhappy beggar that ever lived.”
“Things do look bad for you, certainly,” said Leigh. “How would it be if you tried for a stewardship to some country gentleman – you understand?”
“Oh, yes, I understand stock and farming generally; but who’d have me? Hanged if I couldn’t go and enlist in some cavalry regiment; that’s about all I’m fit for.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, my lad. Where are you staying?”
“Nowhere – just come up. I shall have to get a cheap room somewhere.”
“Nonsense! You can have a bed here. We’ll go and have a bit of dinner somewhere, and chat matters over afterwards. I may perhaps be able to help you.”
“With something out of the tintry-cum-fuldicum bottle?”
“I have a good many friends; but there’s no hurry. We shall see?”
Claud reached over, and gripped Leigh’s hand.
“Thankye, old chap,” he said. “It’s very good of you, but I’m not going to quarter myself on you. If you have any interest, though, and could get me something to go to abroad, I should be glad. Busy now, I suppose?”
“Yes, I have patients to see. Be with me at six, and we’ll go somewhere. Only mind, you will sleep here while you are in town. I want to help you, and to be able to put my hand on you at once.”
The result was that Claud stayed three days with his friend; and on the third Leigh had a letter at breakfast from his sister, enclosing one from Mrs Wilton to her son, whose address she did not know, but thought perhaps he might have called upon Leigh.
“Eh? News from home?” said Claud, taking the note, and glancing eagerly at Leigh’s letter the while. “I say, how is she?”
“My sister? Quite well,” said Leigh, dryly.
Claud sighed, and opened his own letter.
“Poor old mater! she’s such a dear old goose; she’s about worrying herself to death about me, and – what! – oh, I say. Here, Leigh! Hurrah! There is life in a mussel after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, hark here. You know I told you that Kate had got her lawyer down there?”
“Yes,” said Leigh, frowning slightly.
“Well, God bless her for the dearest and best girl that ever breathed! She has arranged to clear off every one of the guv’nor’s present liabilities by taking over the mortgages, or whatever they are. The mater don’t understand, but she says it’s a family arrangement; and what do you think she says?”
Leigh shook his head.
“That she is sure that her father would not have seen his brother come to want God bless her. What a girl. Leigh, it’s all over with you now. Intense admiration for her noble cousin, Claud, and – confound it, old fellow, don’t look at me! I feel as if I should choke.”
He went hurriedly to the window, and stood looking out for some minutes, before coming back to where Leigh sat gravely smoking his cigar.
Claud Wilton’s eyes had a peculiarly weak look in them as he stood by Jenny’s brother, and his voice sounded strange.
“I’m going down by the next train,” he said. “This means the work at home going on as usual, and I shan’t be a beggar now, Leigh. I say, old man, I am going to act the true man by hier. I may speak right out to her now?”
“Whatever had happened I should not have objected, for sooner or later I know you would have made her a home.”
Claud nodded.
“And look here,” he cried, “why not come down with me? Kate would be delighted to see you. Only you wouldn’t bring Jenny back?”
“Take my loving message to my sister,” said Leigh, ignoring his companion’s other remark, “that I beg she will come home now at once.”
“Because I’m going down?” pleaded Claud.
“Yes,” said Leigh, gravely, “because you are going down.”
A year and a half glided by, and Kate Wilton had become full mistress of her property, and other matters remained, as the lawyers say, “in statu quo,” save that Jenny was back with her brother. James Wilton was very much broken, and his son was beginning to be talked of as a rising agriculturist. John Garstang was at Boulogne, and his stepson had married a wealthy Australian widow in Sydney.
Jenny had again and again tried to urge her brother to propose to Kate, but in vain.
“It is so stupid of you, dear,” she said. “I know she’d say yes to you, directly. Of course any girl would if you asked her.”
“Yes, I’m a noble specimen of humanity,” said Leigh, dryly.
“I believe you’re the proudest and most sensitive man that ever lived,” cried Jenny, angrily.
“One of them, sis.”
“And next time I shall advise her to propose to you. You couldn’t refuse.”
“You are too late, dear,” he said, gravely, as he recalled a letter he had received a month before, in which he had been reproached for ignoring the writer’s existence, and forcing her to humble herself and write.
There were words in that letter which seemed burned into his brain and he had a bitter fight to hold himself aloof. For in simple, heart-appealing language she had said: “Am I never to see you and tell you how I pray nightly for him who twice saved my life, and enabled me to live and say I am still worthy of being called his friend?”
Pride – honourable feeling – true manhood – whatever it was – he fought and won, for in his unworldly way he told himself that in his early struggles for a position he could not ask a rich heiress to be his wife.
“I know,” Jenny often said, “that she wishes she had hardly a penny in the world.”
It does not fall to many of us to have our fondest wishes fulfilled, but Kate Wilton had hers, though in a way which brought misery to thousands, though safety to more who have lived since.
For the great commercial crisis burst upon London. One of the great banks collapsed, and dragged others, like falling card houses, in its wake. Among others, Wilton’s Joint Stock Bank came to the ground, and in its ruin the two-thirds left of Kate’s money went out like so much burning paper, leaving only a few tiny sparks to scintillate in the tinder, and disappear.
“Oh, how horrible!” cried Jenny, when the news reached the Leighs. “What a horrid shame! I must go and see her now she is in such trouble.”
“No,” said Leigh, drawing himself up with a sigh of relief, “let me go first.”
“Pierce!” cried Jenny, excitedly, as she sprang to her brother’s breast, her face glowing from the result of shockingly selfish thoughts connected with Claud Wilton and matrimony, “and you mean to ask her that?”
He nodded, kissed her lovingly, and hurried to Kate Wilton’s side.
The interview was strictly private, as a matter of course, but the consequences were not long in following, and among other things James Wilton made his will – the will of a straightforward, honest man.
There were people who said that the passing of the Limited Liability Act was mainly due to the way in which Kate Wilton’s fortune was swept away. That undoubtedly was a piece of fiction, but out of evil came much good.
