Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series Part 76

I had no heart affection that I was aware of, but I had to press my hand to still its thumping as I leaned over Roger.

"Really married? Surely married?"

"As fast and sure as the registrar could marry us," came the smothered answer. "We did not go to church."

"Oh, Roger! _How_ came you to do it?"

"Because I was a fool."

I sat down again, right back in the chair. Things that had puzzled me before were clearing themselves now. _This_ was the torment that had worried his mind and prolonged, if not induced, the fever, when he first lay ill of the accident; this was the miserable secret that had gone well-nigh to disturb the brain: partly for the incubus the marriage entailed upon him, partly lest it should be found out. It had caused him to invent fables in more ways than one. Not only had he to conceal his proper address from us all when at Gibraltar Terrace, especially from his mother and Mr. Brandon; but he had had to scheme with Scott to keep his wife in ignorance altogether--of his accident and of where he was lying, lest Lizzie should present herself at his bedside. To account for his absence from home, Scott had improvised a story to her of Roger's having been despatched by the hospital authorities to watch a case of illness at a little distance; and Lizzie unsuspiciously supplied Scott with changes of raiment and other things Roger needed from his chest of drawers.

This did for a time. But about the period of Roger's quitting Gibraltar Terrace, Lizzie unfortunately caught up an inkling that she was being deceived. Miss Panken's general acquaintance was numerous, and one day one of them chanced to go into the bar-room of the Bell-and-Clapper, and to mention, incidentally, that Roger Bevere had been run over by a hansom cab, and was lying disabled in some remote doctor's quarters--for that's what Scott told his fellow-students. Madam Lizzie rose in rebellion, accused Scott of being no gentleman, and insisted upon her right to be enlightened. So, to stop her from making her appearance at St. Bartholomew's with inconvenient inquiries, and possibly still more inconvenient revelations, Roger had promptly to quit the new lodgings at Mrs. Long's, and return to the old home near the Bell-and-Clapper. But I did not learn these particulars at first.

"Who knows it, Roger?" I asked, breaking the silence.

"Not one of them but Scott," he answered, supposing I alluded to the hospital. "I see Pitt has his doubts."

"But they know--some of them--that Lizzie is here!"

"Well? So did you, but you did not suspect further. They think of course that--well, there's no help for what they think. When a fellow is in such a position as mine, he has to put up with things as they come. I can't quite ruin myself, Johnny; or let the authorities know what an idiot I've been. Lizzie's aunt knows it; and that's enough at present; and so do those girls at the Bell-and-Clapper--worse luck!"

It was impossible to talk much of it then, at that first disclosure; I wished Roger good-afternoon, and went away in a fever-dream.

My wildest surmises had not pictured this dismal climax. No, never; for all that Mistress Lizzie's left hand displayed a plain gold ring of remarkable thickness. "She would have it thick," Roger said to me later.

Poor Roger! poor Roger!

I felt it like a blow--like a blow. No good would ever come of it--to either of them. Worse than no good to him. It was not so much the unsuitableness of the girl's condition to his; it was the girl herself.

She would bring him no credit, no comfort as long as she lived: what happiness could he ever find with her? I had grown to like Roger, with all his faults and failings, and it almost seemed to me, in my sorrow for him, as if my own life were blighted.

It might not have been quite so bad--not _quite_--had Lizzie been a different girl. Modest, yielding, gentle, like that little Mabel I had seen, for instance, learning to adapt her manners to the pattern of her husband's; had she been that, why, in time, perhaps, things might have smoothed down for him. But Lizzie! with her free and loud manners, her off-hand ways, her random speech, her vulgar laughs! Well, well!

How was it possible she had been able to bring her fascinations to bear upon him--he with his refinement? One can but sit down in amazement and ask how, in the name of common-sense, such incongruities happen in the world. She must have tamed down what was objectionable in her to sugar and sweetness while setting her cap at Bevere; while he--he must have been blind, physically and mentally. But no sooner was the marriage over than he awoke to see what he had done for himself. Since then his time had been princ.i.p.ally spent in setting up contrivances to keep the truth from becoming known. Mr. Brandon had talked of his skeleton in the closet: he had not dreamt of such a skeleton as this.

"Must have gone in largely for strong waters in those days, and been in a chronic state of imbecility, I should say," observed Pitt, making his comments to me confidentially.

For I had spoken to him of the marriage, finding he knew as much as I did. "I shall never be able to understand it," I said.

"_That's_ easy enough. When Circe and a goose sit down to play chess, no need to speculate which will win the game."

"You speak lightly of it, Mr. Pitt."

"Not particularly. Where's the use of speaking gravely now the deed's done? It is a pity for Bevere; but he is only one young man amidst many such who in one way or another spoil their lives at its threshold.

Johnny Ludlow, when I look about me and see the snares spread abroad in this great metropolis by night and by day, and at the crowds of inexperienced lads--they are not much better--who have to run to and fro continually, I marvel that the number of those who lose themselves is not increased tenfold."

He had changed his tone to one solemn enough for a judge.

"I cannot _think_ how he came to do it," I argued. "Or how such a one as Bevere, well-intentioned, well brought up, could have allowed himself to fall into what Mr. Brandon calls loose habits. How came he to take to drinking ways, even in a small degree?"

"The railway refreshment-bars did that for him, I take it," answered Pitt. "He lived up here from the first, by the Bell-and-Clapper, and I suppose found the underground train more convenient than the omnibus. Up he'd rush in a morning to catch--say--the half-past eight train, and would often miss it by half-a-minute. A miss is as good as a mile.

Instead of cooling his heels on the draughty and deserted platform, he would turn into the refreshment-room, and find there warmth and sociable company in the shape of pretty girls to chat with: and, if he so minded, a gla.s.s of something or other to keep out the cold on a wintry morning."

"As if Bevere would!--at that early hour!"

"Some of them do," affirmed Pitt. "Anyway, that's how Bevere fell into the habit of frequenting the bar-room of the Bell-and-Clapper. It lay so handy, you see; right in his path. He would run into it again of an evening when he returned: he had no home, no friends waiting for him, only lodgings. There----"

"I thought Bevere used to board with a family," I interrupted.

"So he did at first; and very nice people they were: Mr. Brandon took care he should be well placed. That's why Bevere came up this way at all: it was rather far from the hospital, but Mr. Brandon knew the people. In a short time, however, the lady died, the home was broken up, and Bevere then took lodgings on his own account; and so--there was no one to help him keep out of mischief. To go on with what I was saying.

He learnt to frequent the bar-room at the Bell-and-Clapper: not only to run into it in a morning, but also on his return in the evening. He had no sociable tea or dinner-table waiting for him, you see, with pleasant faces round it. All the pleasant faces he met were those behind the counter; and there he would stay, talking, laughing, chaffing with the girls, one of whom was Miss Lizzie, goodness knows how long--the places are kept open till midnight."

"It had its attractions for him, I suppose--what with the girls and the bottles."

Pitt nodded. "It has for many a one besides him, Johnny. Roger had to call for drink; possibly without the slightest natural inclination for anything, he had perforce to call for it; he could hardly linger there unless he did. By-and-by, I reckon, he got to like the drink; he acquired the taste for it, you see, and habit soon becomes second nature; one gla.s.s became two gla.s.ses, two gla.s.ses three. This went on for a time. The next act in the young man's drama was, that he allowed himself to glide into an entanglement of some sort with one of the said girls, Miss Lizzie Field, and was drawn in to marry her."

"How have you learnt these particulars?"

"Partly from Scott. They are true. Scott has a married brother living up this way, and is often running up here; indeed at one time he lived with him, and he and Bevere used to go to and fro to St. Bartholomew's in company. Yes," slowly added the doctor, "that refreshment-room has been the bane of Roger Bevere."

"And not of Scott?"

"It did Scott no good; you may take a vow of that. But Scott has some plain, rough common-sense of his own, which kept him from going too far.

He may make a good man yet; and a name also, for he possesses all the elements of a skilful surgeon. Bevere succ.u.mbed to the seductions of the bar-room, as other foolish young fellows, well-intentioned at heart, but weak in moral strength, have done, and will do again. Irresistible temptations they present, these places, to the young men who have to come in contact with them. If the lads had to go out of their way to seek the temptation, they might never do it; but it lies right in their path, you perceive, and they can't pa.s.s it by. Of course I am not speaking of all young men; only of those who are deficient in moral self-control. To some, the Bell-and-Clapper bar-room presents no more attraction than the Bell-and-Clapper Church by its side; or any other of such rooms, either."

"Is there not any remedy for this state of things?"

Pitt shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose not," he said. "Since I pulled up from drinking, I have been unable to see what these underground railway-rooms are needed for: why a man or woman, travelling for half-an-hour, more or less, must needs be provided with places to drink in at both ends of the journey and all the middles. Biscuits and buns are there as well, you may say--serving an excuse perhaps. But for one biscuit called for, there are fifty gla.s.ses of ale, or what not. Given the necessity for the rooms," added Pitt, with a laugh, "I should do away with the lady-servers and subst.i.tute men; which would put an end to three parts of the attraction. No chance of _that_ reformation."

"Because it would do away with three parts of the custom," I said, echoing his laugh.

"Be you very sure of that, Johnny Ludlow. However, it is no business of mine to find fault with existing customs, seeing that I cannot alter them," concluded the doctor.

What he said set me thinking. Every time I pa.s.sed by one of these stations, so crowded with the traffic of young city men, and saw the bottles arrayed to charm the sight, their bright colours gleaming and glistening, and looked at the serving-damsels, with their bedecked heads, arrayed to charm also, I knew Pitt must be right. These rooms might bring in grist to their owners' mill; but it struck me that I should not like, when I grew old, to remember that I had owned one.

Roger Bevere's arm began to yield to treatment, but he continued very ill in himself; too ill to get up. Torment of mind and torment of body are a bad complication.

One afternoon when I was sitting with him, sundry quick knocks downstairs threatened to disturb the doze he was falling into--and Pitt had said that sleep to him just now was like gold. I crept away to stop it. In the middle of the parlour, thumping on the floor with her cotton umbrella--a huge green thing that must have been the fellow, when made, to Sairey Gamp's--stood Mrs. d.y.k.e, a stout, good-natured, sensible woman, whom I often saw there. Her husband was a well-to-do coachman, whose first wife had been sister to Lizzie's mother, and this wife was their cousin.

"Where's Lizzie, sir?" she asked. "Out, I suppose?"

"Yes, I think so. I saw her with her bonnet on."

"The girl's out, too, I take it, or she'd have heard me," remarked Mrs.

d.y.k.e, as she took her seat on the shabby red sofa, and pushed her bonnet back from her hot and comely face. "And how are we going on up there, sir?"--pointing to the ceiling.

"Very slowly. He cannot get rid of the fever."

She lodged the elegant umbrella against the sofa's arm and turned sideways to face me. I had sat down by the window, not caring to go back and run the risk of disturbing Roger.