Cursed by a Fortune Part 75

"My brother, Mr Wilton?" said Jenny, in a freezing tone.

"Oh, I say, please don't," he whispered earnestly; "I am trying so hard to show you that I'm not such a cad as you used to think, and when you speak to me in that way it makes me feel as if there's nothing, left to do but enlist, and get sent off to India, or the Crimea, or somewhere, to be killed out of the way."

"Tell me quickly, where is she?"

"I can't yet. I'm not quite sure."

"Pah!"

"Ah, you wait a bit, and you'll see; and if I do find her I shall bring her here."

"Here?" cried Jenny, excitedly.

"Yes, why not? she likes you better than anybody in the world; he likes, her, and--. Here, I can't stop. Good-bye; tell him I'll be back again as soon as I can, for find her I will to-night."

"But Mr Wilton--Claud!"

"Ah!" he cried excitedly, turning to her.

"Tell me one thing."

"Everything," he cried, wildly, "if you'll speak to me like that.

Someone I thought had got her; I'm about sure now, but--I'd give anything to stop--but I can't."

He rushed out into the street, and Jenny returned to her room and work, trembling with a double excitement, one moment blaming herself for being too free with her visitor, the next forgetting everything in the news.

"Oh, Pierce, dear Pierce! if it is only true," she muttered, as her work dropped from her hands, and she sat hour after hour longing for her brother's return. This was not till ten, when she was trembling with excitement, and in momentary expectation of seeing Claud Wilton return first.

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE.

Jenny was standing at the window, watching the people go by, when a cab drew up and Leigh sprang out, to let himself in with his latch-key; and she was half-way down to meet him as he was coming up.

"Pierce," she whispered excitedly. "Claud Wilton has been. He has, he is sure, found Kate; and he is coming again to fetch you to where she is."

Leigh staggered, and caught at the bal.u.s.trade to save himself from falling.

"Where is she?" he panted.

"I--don't know; he was not quite sure, but he is coming again. He says no one but you has a right to be there when she is found; and Pierce-- Pierce--he is going to bring her here!"

Leigh stood gazing straight before him, feeling as if he could hardly breathe, and he followed his sister into the drawing-room, but had hardly sunk into a chair when there was a tremendous peal at the bell.

"Here he is!" cried Jenny; and Leigh sprang from his seat to hurry down, but restrained himself, and to his sister's despair, stood waiting.

"Pierce, dear," she whispered, "pray go."

"I have no right," he said huskily; and Jenny wrung her hands and tried vainly for what she deemed the correct words to say.

The painful silence was broken by the appearance of the maid.

"A gentleman to see you, sir; very important."

"Mr Wilton?" cried Jenny.

"No, ma'am, a strange gentleman," said the girl. "Someone very bad."

Leigh exhaled his pent-up breath with a sigh of relief, and went quickly down to where his visitor was waiting, looking wild and ghastly.

Garstang!--the man he had been watching for months without result, but who looked at him as one whom he had never met before.

"Will you come with me directly?" he cried. "My house--only in the next street. I'd better tell you at once, so that you may bring some antidote with you. I need not explain--a young lady--my wife--a foolish quarrel--a little jealousy--and she has taken some of that new sedative, Xyrania--a poisonous dose, I fear."

"A young lady--my wife," rang in Leigh's ears like the death knell of all hopes. Then he was right: this man had carried her off with her consent, and it had come to this.

"Do you not hear me, sir?" cried Garstang; "Mr--I don't know your name; I came to the first red lamp. You are a doctor?"

"Yes, yes, of course," cried Leigh, hastily.

"Then, for G.o.d's sake, come on before it is too late!"

Leigh was the calm, cold, collected physician once again, and he spoke in a strange tone that he did not know as his own.

"Xyrania," he said; and he went to a case of bottles and jars, took down one of the former, poured a small quant.i.ty into a phial, corked it, and said solemnly--

"Lead the way, sir--quick; but I must tell you that an overdose of that drug means sleep from which there is no awaking."

Garstang uttered a low, harsh sound, and motioned towards the door, leading the way; while Leigh followed him, with his brain feeling, in addition to the terrific crus.h.i.+ng weight of depression as if all the world were nothing now, confused and strange, as he wondered that the man did not recognise him; and too much stunned to grasp the fact that he who had filled so large a measure of his thoughts for months had never met him face to face--probably had never heard of him, save as some doctor in practice at Northwood.

Then, as they hurried along the pavement, and at the end of another hundred yards turned into Great Ormond Street, Leigh felt oppressed by another thought--that after all, Kate, if it were she he was being taken to see, must have been for months past in the house he had so often gazed at in pa.s.sing, with an intense desire to enter, but had always crushed down that desire, telling himself that it was insane.

Meanwhile Garstang was talking to him in a hurried excited tone, uttering words that hardly reached his companion's understanding; but he caught fragments about "unhappy temper--insomnia--indulgence in the potent drug--his agony and despair"--and then he cried wildly, as he paused at the door of the familiar house with its overhanging eaves, and inserted the latch-key:

"Doctor--any fee you like to demand, but you must save my wife's life."

"Must save his wife's life!" groaned Leigh, mentally, as his heart gave what seemed to be one heavy throb. Then he stepped into the great gloomy hall.

CHAPTER FORTY SIX.

"His wife!"

The words kept repeating themselves in Pierce Leigh's brain like the beating of some artery charged to bursting, and the agony seemed greater than he could bear; while the revelation which had been so briefly made told of misery and a terrible despair which had driven the woman he loved to this desperate act. But for one thought he would have rushed madly away to try and forget everything by a similar act, for the means were at home, ready to his hand, his suffering being more than he could bear.

But there was that thought; she was in peril of her life, and the husband had flown unconsciously to him for help. He might be able to save her--make her owe that life to him--and this thought fought against his weakness, and for the time being made him strong enough to follow Garstang to the library door, just as poor Becky darted away and disappeared through the doorway leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

As Leigh entered and saw Kate lying motionless upon the sofa, with the housekeeper kneeling by her side, a pang shot through him which seemed to cleave his heart; then as it pa.s.sed away he was the calm stern physician once more.