Sawn Off Part 37

d.i.c.k made no resistance as Tom dragged him away from his brother; and Max got up, looking very strange about the head, as he hastily picked up and dragged on his wig.

"You--you--shall smart for this," he mumbled. "As for you, sir, never enter my house--"

"Be off!" roared d.i.c.k; and he made at his brother again. "Be off, you artificial sham!"

But Tom, with a look of bitter mortification in his face, restrained him; and Max, clinging to Fred, hurried out of the door, leaving Mrs s.h.i.+ngle trembling in a chair, where she had sunk; while Jessie knelt beside her, white as ashes, and holding her hand.

It was an ign.o.ble plight, made more absurd by d.i.c.k, who suddenly ran to the fireplace and took the tongs, with which he picked up a handkerchief, and ran to the door.

"Here, Saint Maximilian!" he shouted, "you've left your weeper;" and he threw the tongs out with a crash into the hall.

"Take care!" cried a familiar voice; "_I_ haven't done anything."

"What, Hopper, old man!" cried d.i.c.k, "you there?"

"Yes, I am, and heard it all--all I could," he added, stumping into the room.

d.i.c.k threw himself laughing into an easy chair, as he heard the door bang; but started up directly, as he saw Tom standing silent and mortified in the middle of the room.

"Thankye, Tom," he cried, as he held out his hand, which the young man took for a moment and then dropped. "Ah! you're put out, of course; and I don't wonder. It's enough to rile any young fellow with stuff in him; and you've got that, and acted like a man."

Tom gazed at him in silence, but did not try to speak.

"He's ordered you out of his house, my lad," continued d.i.c.k. "Not pleasant between father and son. There, I ain't going to abuse him," he hastened to add, as Tom made a deprecating gesture; "but don't you mind that,--you acted like a man, and your conscience will set you right.

Now, good-bye, my lad; and mind this: if you ever want a hundred pounds, or two hundred, or five hundred pounds, you've only got to say so to your uncle, Richard s.h.i.+ngle, and there it is."

"I thank you, sir," said Tom sadly; "but I shall not ask. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye?"

"Yes. I shall go abroad, and we may never meet again. I cannot stay here now. Good-bye, aunt. Good-bye, Jessie," he cried pa.s.sionately.

But she did not hear him; for, as Tom hurried to the door, she sank, fainting, at her mother's knee, while he pa.s.sed out, closely followed by the last-comer on the scene.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

HOPPER ON SUICIDE.

"Here! hold hard, you sir--hold hard!" cried Hopper, hooking Tom at last by the arm with his great stick.

Tom turned upon him savagely; but the old man did not move a muscle.

"Where are you going?"

"To the devil!" said Tom bitterly. "To drown myself, I think."

"Hey? Drown yourself? Well, don't go to do it on an empty stomach. I knew a man once who tried it, and he did nothing but float. Come home with me, and have a bit of dinner first."

Tom Fraser was just in the humour to be led, and he could not help smiling at the old man's words. The next moment Hopper seized his arm, and began signalling wildly with his stick to a pa.s.sing hansom cab, into which he thrust him.

"Get over farther," he cried, poking at him with his stick; and then, following, he shouted to the man, "Clement's Inn."

Nothing was said during the journey; and, on reaching the gateway, Hopper got out first, and, literally taking Tom into custody, led him to a black-looking house, and up a dingy old staircase, to a door at the top covered with iron bands and clamps. This he unlocked, and pushed his companion into a very old-fas.h.i.+oned-looking room, c.u.mbered with pictures, curiosities, and odds and ends piled up amongst the antique furniture.

"There!" said Hopper, stopping to caress a cat that came rubbing itself up against his left leg, and another that purred against his right, while a third and fourth leaped upon his back when he stooped, "this is my kennel--cat's kennel, if you like: I've got eight. That's their garden," he continued, throwing open a sliding window that looked upon a parapet; "they can run far enough along the roofs of the houses here.

Good view this, Tom Fraser. Ah! the very thing," he added, catching the young man's sleeve; "look down there--eighty feet, and good firm stones at the bottom. You say you want to go to the devil: jump down--I won't stop you."

Tom glanced below, and turned away with a shudder. "Well, it would make a nasty mess on the pavement, certainly," said Hopper, looking at him curiously, while the cats rubbed and purred about them; "but they'd soon sweep that away; and the dead-house is close by, in the Strand. I'll go as witness."

"For G.o.d's sake, hold your tongue!"

"Hey? Hold my tongue? Why? Better and quicker than jumping into the river, and struggling up and down, and wanting to get out; besides running the risk of floating to and fro with the tide, and looking like swollen bagpipes."

"Be silent!" shouted Tom, gazing at him in horror.

"What for?" chuckled the old man. "You'd look so ugly, too, with your nose rubbed off. Tide always rubs their noses off against the barges, and s.h.i.+ps, and piers of bridges. Lots of people wouldn't drown themselves if they knew how nasty they'd look when they were dead. I've seen 'em--dozens of times."

"Do you find any pleasure in tormenting me?" cried Tom furiously.

"Torment you, hey? Not I," chuckled Hopper. "You said you were going to drown yourself--that takes nearly five minutes; and they may fish you out with a boat-hook and bring you to, which they say isn't pleasant. I only, as the oldest friend of your family, suggested a quicker way."

Tom turned from the window, and threw himself into a chair.

"Ah! you're better," said Hopper, poking the fire up to make it blaze.

"Better!" groaned Tom.

"Yes, ever so much. You're not fretting about your step-father, but about Jessie: you're in love."

Tom was starting up, but the old man forced him back into his chair.

"Sit still, you young fool. You are in love, arn't you?"

"I suppose so," said Tom bitterly.

"I'll give you a dose for the complaint," chuckled the old fellow.

Then there was a knock at the door, which he opened, and a neat-looking servant bustled in and spread the table with the snowiest of cloths and brightest of old-fas.h.i.+oned gla.s.s and silver, ending by placing the first portion of a capitally cooked dinner on the table, and sending all the cats out of the window into the gutter, where they sat down patiently in a row, to gaze solemnly through the panes of gla.s.s till the repast was at an end.

"Why, I thought you were very poor!" said Tom, gazing curiously at his shabbily dressed host, as he opened a ma.s.sive carved oak cellaret, and took out a wine bottle that looked as old as the receptacle.

"Hey? Thought I was poor? More fool you!--you're always thinking stupid things. You've gone about nearly two years thinking Jessie don't care for you."

Tom started as if he had been stung; but he sank back in his chair, gazing wonderingly at the quaint old fellow, as he opened the bottle to pour out a couple of large gla.s.ses of generous fluid; and began wondering how much he knew.

"There, you handsome young long-eared donkey!" cried Hopper, placing one gla.s.s in the young man's fingers--"that's the finest Burgundy to be got for love or money. That'll give you strength of mind, and blood to sustain, and make you take a less bilious view of things than you do now. Catch hold! I'm an old-fas.h.i.+oned one, I am. Here's a toast. Are you ready?"

Tom took the gla.s.s, and nodded.