Charlotte's Inheritance Part 35

Gustave Len.o.ble's letters lying unanswered in her desk a.s.serted the all-absorbing nature of Diana's affection for the fading girl. She _was_ fading. The consciousness of this made all other love sacrilege, as it seemed to Diana. She sat up late that night to answer Gustave's last letter of piteous complaint.

"She had forgotten him. Ah, that he had been foolish--insensate--to confide himself in her love! Was he not old and grey in comparison to such youth--such freshness--a venerable dotard of thirty-five? What had he with dreams of love and marriage? Fie, then. He humiliated himself in the dust beneath her _mignon_ feet. He invited her to crush him with those cruel feet. But if she did not answer his letters, he would come to Harold's Hill. He would mock himself of that ferocious Sheldon--of a battalion of Sheldons still more ferocious--of all the world, at last--to be near her."

"Believe me, dear Gustave, I do not forget," wrote Diana, in reply to these serio-comic remonstrances. "I was truly sorry to leave town, on your account and on my father's. But my dear adopted sister is paramount with me now. You will not grudge her my care or my love, for she may not long be with me to claim them. There is nothing but sorrow here in all our hearts; sorrow, and an ever-present dread."

Book the Eighth.

A FIGHT AGAINST TIME.

CHAPTER I.

A DREAD REVELATION.

The early fast train by which Valentine Hawkehurst travelled brought him into town at a quarter past nine o'clock. During the journey he had been meditating on the way in which he should set to work when he arrived in London. No ignorance could be more profound than his on all points relating to the medical profession. Dimly floating in his brain there were the names of doctors whom he had heard of as celebrated men--one for the chest, another for the liver, another for the skin, another for the eyes; but, among all these famous men, who was the man best able to cope with the mysterious wasting away, the gradual, almost imperceptible ebbing of that one dear life which Valentine wanted to save?

This question must be answered by some one; and Valentine was sorely puzzled as to who that some one must be.

The struggling young writer had but few friends. He had, indeed, worked too hard for the possibility of friends.h.i.+p. The cultivation of the severer Muses is rarely compatible with a wide circle of acquaintances; and Valentine, if not a cultivator of these severe ones, had been a hard and honest worker during the later reputable portion of his life. His friends.h.i.+ps of the previous portion had been the friends.h.i.+ps of the railway-carriage and the smoking room, the _cafe_ and the gaming-table.

He could count upon his fingers the people to whom he could apply for counsel in this crisis of his life. There was George Sheldon, a man for whom he entertained a most profound contempt; Captain Paget, a man who might or might not be able to give him good advice, but who would inevitably sacrifice Charlotte Halliday's welfare to self-interest, if self-interest could be served by the recommendation of an incompetent adviser.

"He would send me to some idiot of the Doddleson cla.s.s, if he thought he could get a guinea or a dinner by the recommendation," Valentine said to himself, and decided that to Horatio Paget he would not apply. There were his employers, the editors and proprietors of the magazines for which he worked; all busy over-burdened workers in the great mill, spending the sunny hours of their lives between a pile of unanswered letters and a waste-paper basket; men who would tell him to look in the Post-office Directory, without lifting their eyes from the paper over which their restless pens were speeding.

No. Amongst these was not the counsellor whom Valentine Hawkehurst needed in this dire hour of difficulty.

"There are some very good fellows among the Ragam.u.f.fins," he said to himself, as he thought of the only literary and artistic club of which he was a member; "fellows who stuck by me when I was down in the world, and who would do anything to serve me now they know me for an honest worker.

But, unfortunately, farce writers and burlesque writers, and young meerschaum-smoking painters, are not the sort of men to give good advice: I want the advice of a medical man."

Mr. Hawkehurst almost bounded from his seat as he said this. The advice of a medical man? Yes; and was there not a medical man among the Ragam.u.f.fins? and something more than a medical man? That very doctor, who of all other men upon this earth could best give him counsel--the doctor who had stood by the deathbed of Charlotte Halliday's father.

He remembered the conversation that had occurred at Bayswater, on the evening of Christmas day, upon this very subject. He remembered how from the talk about ghosts they had drifted somehow into talking of Tom Halliday; whereupon Mrs. Sheldon had been melted to tears, and had gone on to praise Philip Sheldon's conduct to his dying friend, and to speak of Mr. Burkham, the strange doctor, called in too late to save, or, it might have been, incapable to save.

"Sheldon seems to have a genius for calling in incapable doctors," he thought bitterly.

Incapable as Mr. Burkham might have been for the exigencies of this particular case, he would at least be able to inform Valentine who among the medical celebrities of London would be best adapted to advise in such an illness as Charlotte Halliday's.

"And if, as Diana has sometimes suggested, there is any hereditary disease, this Burkham may be able to throw some light upon the nature of it," thought Valentine.

He went straight from the railway terminus to the quiet tavern upon the first floor of which the Ragam.u.f.fins had their place of rendezvous. It was not an hour for the encounter of many Ragam.u.f.fins. A meek-looking young man, of clerical aspect, who had adapted a Palais Royal farce, and had awoke in the morning to find himself famous, and eligible for admission amongst the Ragam.u.f.fins, was sipping his sherry and soda-water while he skimmed the morning papers. Him Mr. Hawkehurst saluted with an absent nod, and went in search of the steward of the club, from whom he obtained Mr. Burkham's address, with some little trouble in the way of hunting through old and obscure doc.u.ments.

It was the old address; the old dingy, comfortable, m.u.f.fin-bell-haunted street in which Mr. Burkham had lived ten years before, when he was summoned to attend the sick Yorks.h.i.+re farmer.

Mr. Burkham's career had not been brightened by the suns.h.i.+ne of prosperity. He had managed to live somehow, and to find food and raiment for his young wife, who, when she considered the lilies of the field, may have envied their s.h.i.+ning robes of pure whiteness, so dingy and dark was her own apparel. When children came, the young surgeon contrived to find food and raiment for them also, but not without daily and hourly struggles with that grim wolf who haunts the thresholds of so many dwellings, and will not be thrust from the door. Sometimes a little glimmering ray of light illumined Mr. Burkham's pathway, and he was humbly grateful to Providence for the brief glimpse of suns.h.i.+ne. But for a meek fair-faced man, with a nervous desire to do well, a very poor opinion of his own merits, and a diffident, not to say depressed manner, the world is apt to be a hard battle-ground.

Mr. Burkham sometimes found himself well-nigh beaten in the cruel strife; and at such times, in the dead silence of the night, with mortal agonies, and writhings as of Pythoness upon tripod, Mr. Burkham gave himself up to the composition of a farce, adapted, not from the French, but from his memories of Wright and Bedford in the jovial old student days, when the pit of the Adelphi Theatre had been the pleasant resort of his evenings.

He could no longer afford the luxury of theatrical entertainments, except when provided with a free admission. But from the hazy reminiscences floating in his poor tired brain he concocted little pieces which he fondly hoped might win him money and fame.

With much effort and interest he contrived to get himself elected a Ragam.u.f.fin; believing that to be a Ragm.u.f.fin was to secure a position as a dramatic writer. But with one or two fortunate exceptions, his pieces were refused. The managers would not have the poor little feeble phantasmagoria of bygone fun, even supported by the whole clan of Ragam.u.f.fins. So Mr. Burkham had gradually melted into the dimness of Bloomsbury, and haunted the club-room of the Ragam.u.f.fins no more.

A hansom carried Valentine Hawkehurst swiftly to these regions of Bloomsbury. It was no time for the saving of cab-hire. The soldier of fortune thought no longer of his nest-eggs--his Unitas Bank deposit-notes. He was fighting with time and with death; foes dire and dreadful, against whose encroachments the st.u.r.diest of mortal warriors can make but a feeble stand. He found the dingy-looking house in the dingy-looking street; and the humble drudge who opened the door informed him that Mr. Burkham was at home, and ushered him into a darksome and dreary surgery at the back of the house, where a phrenological head, considerably the worse for London smoke, surmounted a dingy bookcase filled with the dingiest of books. A table, upon which were a blotting-book and inkstand, and two shabby horsehair chairs, composed the rest of the furniture. Valentine sent his card to the surgeon, and seated himself on one of the horsehair chairs, to await that gentleman's appearance.

He came after a brief delay, which seemed long to his visitor. He came from regions in the back of the house, rubbing his hands, which seemed to have been newly washed, and the odour of senna and aloes hung about his garments.

"I doubt if you remember my name, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine; "but you and I are members of the same club, and that a club among the members of which considerable good feeling prevails. I come to ask a favour"--Mr.

Burkham winced, for this sounded like genteel begging, and for genteel beggars this struggling surgeon had no spare cash--"which it will scarcely cause you a moment's thought to grant. I am in great distress"--Mr. Burkham winced again, for this sounded still more like begging--"mental distress"--Mr. Burkham gave a little sigh of relief--"and I come to you for advice." Mr. Burkham gave a more profound sigh of relief.

"I can a.s.sure you that my best advice is at your command," he said, seating himself, and motioning to his visitor to be seated. "I am beginning to remember your face amongst the members of the club, though the name on your card did not strike me as familiar. You see, I have never been able to afford much time for relaxation at the Ragam.u.f.fins', though I a.s.sure you I found the agreeable conversation there, the literary _on dits_, and so on, a very great relief. But my own little efforts in the dramatic line were not successful, and I found myself compelled to devote myself more to my profession. And now I have said quite enough about myself; let me hear how I can be useful to you."

"In the first place, let me ask you a question. Do you know anything of a certain Dr. Doddleson?"

"Of Plantagenet Square?"

"Yes; of Plantagenet Square."

"Well, not much. I have heard him called Dowager Doddleson; and I believe he is very popular among hypochondriac old ladies who have more money than they know what to do with, and very little common sense to regulate their disposal of it."

"Is Dr. Doddleson a man to whom you would intrust the life of your dearest friend?"

"Most emphatically no!" cried the surgeon, growing red with excitement.

"Very well, Mr. Burkham; my dearest friend, a young lady--well, in plain truth, the woman who was to have been my wife, and whom I love as it is not the lot of every plighted wife to be loved--this dear girl has been wasting away for the last two or three months under the influence of an inscrutable malady, and Dr. Doddleson is the only man called to attend her in all that time."

"A mistake!" said Mr. Burkham, gravely; "a very great mistake! Dr.

Doddleson lives in a fine square, and drives a fine carriage, and has a reputation amongst the cla.s.s I have spoken of; but he is about the last man I would consult as to the health of any one dear to me."

"That is precisely the opinion which I formed after ten minutes'

conversation with him. Now, what I want from you, Mr. Burkham, is the name and address of the man to whom I can intrust this dear girl's life."

"Let me see. There are so many men, you know, and great men. Is it a case of consumption?"

"No, thank G.o.d!"

"Heart-disease, perhaps?"

"No; there is no organic disease. It is a languor--a wasting away."

Mr. Burkham suggested other diseases whereof the outward sign was languor and wasting.

"No," replied Valentine; "according to Dr. Doddleson there is actually no disease--nothing but this extreme prostration--this gradual vanis.h.i.+ng of vital power. And now I come to another point upon which I want your advice. It has been suggested that this const.i.tutional weakness may be inherited; and here I think you can help me."

"How so?"