Doctor Luttrell's First Patient Part 12

"You shall tell us all about it when you are better," she said, kindly; "perhaps, who knows, we may be able to help you find your friends; we are poor people ourselves, my husband is only just beginning to make a practice, so there is not much that we can do."

Then as she stooped over him and wiped his brow, she was almost startled by the sweetness of the smile that crossed the young man's face.

"Not much," he reiterated; but Olivia shook her head at him to inculcate silence, and carried away the empty cup.

When Marcus came home at dinner-time, she proposed sending a note across to Galvaston House to tell Mr. Gaythorne that she could not leave home that afternoon, but to her surprise Dr. Luttrell objected to this.

"You know how crotchety Mr. Gaythorne is," he said, quickly, "and it will never do to disappoint him; he might be a bit touchy. Barton will be all right, and I shall be in myself the greater part of the afternoon." And then Olivia's scruples vanished.

She felt Marcus had been wise when she entered the library. Mr.

Gaythorne was evidently expecting her; he had a large portfolio open before him. As he held out his hand to her without rising--for he had still great difficulty in moving--there was a brighter look on his face.

"We must make the most of the daylight," he said, and the next moment Olivia found herself in Venice.

The views were so beautiful and Mr. Gaythorne's descriptions so interesting, that, as usual, the time pa.s.sed quickly. It was not until they were drinking their coffee in the pleasant firelight that Olivia found an opportunity of narrating her husband's strange adventure of the previous evening.

Mr. Gaythorne listened with his usual air of half contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt; but before she came to the end of the recital he turned upon her quickly.

"Do you mean that the tramp is actually in your house at this moment?"

he asked, indignantly.

"Oh, please don't call him that; he is a gentleman, he speaks in quite an educated manner, and his ways are so refined. Marcus saw that at once."

"Pooh, nonsense! My dear Mrs. Luttrell, a gentlemanly tramp is the worst kind; it is generally drink and profligacy that have dragged them down. You will be robbed or burnt in your beds!"

Olivia could not conceal her amus.e.m.e.nt. A vivid remembrance of the flushed, weary young face of the wanderer rose before her; it was so boyish-looking with the fair hair and golden brown moustache.

"I am sure he does not drink," she returned, trying vainly to suppress a smile; but this contradiction did not please Mr. Gaythorne.

"How can you know anything about it?" he asked, testily; "from your own account he has told you nothing except that he has been in a hospital and a casual ward--they have plenty of cases of delirium tremens in both places. Good heavens! and I thought Dr. Luttrell was a sensible man. This is the way he takes care of his wife and child, harbouring a frozen-out tramp."

"Dear Mr. Gaythorne," returned Olivia, pleadingly, "just put yourself in my husband's place. Marcus found the poor young fellow on a doorstep in Harbut Road not a dozen yards from his own door. Being a doctor, he saw at once that he must be warmed and fed or life would be endangered, and Christmas night of all nights. How could he forbear in sheer humanity to take in the poor creature, and then when he found how weak he was, how was he to turn him out into the streets again?"

"He might have sent for a cab and had him driven to a hospital."

"No--Marcus said it was no case for a hospital, at least at present; they would not have admitted him; indeed--indeed he could not have done otherwise--I told him so at once. What is the use of going to church and saying one's prayers if one shrinks from such a clear duty as that?

Why, we should never dare to read St. James again!"

"And why not, may I ask?"

"Because we should have set our faces against his teaching. Oh, you know what I mean, Mr. Gaythorne," and Olivia repeated the text reverently: "'If a brother or sister be naked and in lack of daily food, and one of you say unto them go in peace, be ye clothed and fed, and yet you give them not those things needful for the body, what doth it profit?' Marcus does not only profess his religion. Oh"--finished Olivia, with sparkling eyes--"I did feel so proud of my husband last night."

"Well--well; if you choose to be Quixotic it is your own affair, not mine," but Mr. Gaythorne spoke with less irritation. "Now shall we go on with the portfolio, or do you want to go back to your gentlemanly tramp?" Then Olivia begged to finish the pictures.

"I have nearly half an hour before Dot's bedtime," she said, cheerfully, "and then I must go," and so harmony was restored.

When the half-hour had pa.s.sed, Olivia took her leave, but before she reached the door, Mr. Gaythorne called her back and thrust something into her hand.

"That will help you to provide for your tramp," he said, hurriedly, "and prevent him from eating you out of house and home. Mind you repay yourself before you lay out any for him: do you suppose," in a cynical tone, "that your husband's income will bear the expense of such an inmate as that?" and Olivia, to her intense astonishment, found the two crumpled bits of paper in her hand were five-pound notes.

"Oh there is no need for this," she said, in distress; "have you forgotten the turkey and all those good things Aunt Madge sent us?" but Mr. Gaythorne waved her away.

"Nonsense," he said, crossly; "do you suppose a trifle like that matters to me? Why, I am not spending half my income; if you want any more you can just let me know; but if you take my advice you will get rid of that fellow as soon as possible."

Marcus smiled when Olivia showed him the money. "Put it away for the present," he said, "it will buy Barton some warm clothes; we can afford to give him his bit and sup for a few days; he is stone broke, as they call it, and a few pounds may be just what he requires, and put him on his feet again."

When Mrs. Broderick heard of the strange guest at No. 1, Galvaston Terrace, she was deeply interested, and warmly commended Marcus's philanthropy.

"I wonder," she said, thoughtfully, after a few minutes' silence, "whether any of Fergus's things would fit him; you know what a foolish body I have been, Livy, to keep them all this time, and it gives Deb so much trouble to preserve them from moth; but there, we all have our crazes.

"I have been meaning to part with them for a long time, and this seems a good opportunity; it does seem such a pity to touch that money; it would set him up to have a few pounds in hand."

Olivia could not deny this, and in her secret heart she thought Aunt Madge could not do better with her dead husband's things.

"It will be a real act of charity," she said, frankly. "Oh, Aunt Madge, if you could only see his clothes, they are so worn and threadbare, and when Martha washed his s.h.i.+rt and socks she almost cried over the holes; and then his boots!"

"Say no more, my child, it shall be done, and at once," and Mrs.

Broderick's mouth looked unusually firm.

The very next day Marcus carried a big parcel upstairs and opened it before Robert Barton's astonished eyes.

Mrs. Broderick, who did nothing grudgingly, had put up all she thought requisite--a warm suit, and a great coat, a pair of boots, some coloured flannel s.h.i.+rts and warm underclothing.

"It has upset him a bit," Marcus said, when he re-entered the parlour, "he is still so weak, you see. He fairly broke down when I showed him the things. He is very grateful; by-the-bye, Livy," sitting down beside her as he spoke, "he has been telling me more about himself to-night; not much, certainly, he does not seem to like speaking of himself, but he gave me a brief outline.

"He has relations, only he has not seen them for some years; it appeared he quarrelled with them or got wrong somehow; in fact, he owned he had been a bit wild, and then things went from bad to worse with him, and he had a run of ill-luck.

"It seems he is an artist and rather fond of his profession, but he hurt his hand, and blood-poisoning came on, and for some time he was afraid he would lose his right arm; for months he could paint no pictures, and so all his little capital was swallowed up."

"But why did he not write to his people, Marcus, and make it up with them?"

"So he did, but his letters never got answered, and he got sick of it at last. When he was pretty nearly at the end of his tether he came back to England. I think he said he was in Paris then, or was it Beyrout? well, never mind, he went straight to his old home; but to his horror the house was shut up, and to let, and the caretaker told him that no one had lived there for years, and that she believed the party who had owned it was abroad; he could get nothing more than that out of her.

"He put up at a little wayside inn that night, meaning to make inquiries in the neighbourhood, but the next day he fell ill, and after a bit they took him to the hospital, and since then he drifted up to London, hoping to see his father's old lawyer and glean intelligence from him, but he found he was dead. His fixed intention was to go down again to the place and see the vicar and prosecute his inquiries in person, but ill-luck pursued him; he was robbed in some wretched lodging, and soon found himself in actual want; 'but I mean, if I die for it, to get to Medhurst somehow,' he said to me. 'I could have found someone to identify me there; not that we had been there long, for my people mostly lived abroad, but there must be some friends who could tell me about them.'

"It is a queer story altogether, and yet not a wholly improbable one; but there is a mystery somewhere, Livy, and I am sure of one thing, that his name is not Barton. I hinted as much, but he only flushed up and said nothing."

CHAPTER XI.

THE NIGHT-BELL RINGS.

"A bad beginning leads to a bad ending."--_Livy_.

The next few days pa.s.sed quietly. Dr. Luttrell professed himself perfectly satisfied with his patient's progress. In spite of his delicate aspect, and the terrible hards.h.i.+ps he had experienced, Robert Barton proved that he had a fair amount of recuperative power. Perhaps his youth was in his favour, and it was soon evident that he had a naturally sanguine temperament. His nature was singularly ill-balanced, he was always in extremes--either in the depths of depression or else unaccountably excited. Olivia would sometimes find him crouching over the fire with his head between his hands in a state of morose misery. And at other times she would hear him whistling a few bars from some opera in quite a light-hearted way.