The Wharf by the Docks. Florence Warden

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СКАЧАТЬ he's barely thirty—at the Bar whose prospects are as good as his. But, for all that, I have a strong suspicion that he's got a tile loose, and that's why I wanted to speak to you. Now his father was in a lunatic asylum no less than three times, and was in one when he died."

      The doctor looked grave.

      "That's a bad history, certainly. Do you know how the father's malady started?"

      "Why, yes. It was the effect of a wound in the head received when he was a young man out in America, in the war with Mexico in '46."

      "That isn't the sort of mania that is likely to come down from father to son," said the doctor, "if his brain was perfectly sound before, and the recurrent mania the result of an accident."

      "Well, so I've understood. And the matter has never troubled me at all until lately, when I have begun to detect certain morbid tendencies in Dudley, and a general change which makes me hesitate to trust him with the happiness of my daughter."

      "Can you give me instances?" asked the doctor, although he began to feel sure that whatever opinion he might express on the matter, Mr. Wedmore would pay little attention to any but his own.

      "Well, for you to understand the case, I must tell you a little more about the lad's father. He and I were very old friends—chums from boyhood, in fact. When he came back from America—where he went from a lad's love of adventure—he made a good marriage from a monetary point of view; married a wharf on the Thames, in fact, somewhere Limehouse way, and settled down as a wharfinger. He was a steady fellow, and did very well, until one fine morning he was found trying to cut his throat, and had to be locked up. Well, he was soon out again that time, and things went on straight enough for eight or nine years, by which time he had done very well—made a lot of money by speculation—and was thinking of retiring from business altogether. Then, perhaps it was the extra pressure of his increased business, but, at any rate, he broke out again, tried to murder his wife that time, and did, in fact, injure her so much that she died shortly afterward. Of course, he had to be shut up again; and a man named Edward Jacobs, a shrewd Jew, who was his confidential clerk, carried on the business in his absence. Now, both Horne and his wife had had the fullest confidence in this Jacobs, but he turned out all wrong. As soon as he learned, at the end of about twelve months, that Horne was coming out again, he decamped with everything he could lay his hands on; and from the position of affairs you may guess that he made a very good haul. Well, poor Horne found himself in a maze of difficulties; in fact, his clerk's fraud ruined him. Everything that could be sold or mortgaged had to go to the settlement, and when his affairs had been finally put straight, there was only a little bit left, that had been so settled upon his wife that no one could touch it. He made a good fight of it for a little while, with the help of a few old friends, but, in the end, he broke down again for the third time. But he escaped out of the asylum and went abroad, without seeing his friends or his child, and a few months afterward the announcement of his death in an American asylum was sent by a correspondent out there. Happily there were no difficulties about securing the mother's money for the son, and it was enough to educate the boy and to give him a start; but, of course, he had to begin the world as a poor man instead of a rich one. Perhaps that was all the better for him—or so I thought until lately."

      "And what are these signs of a morbid tendency that you spoke of?" asked the doctor.

      "Well, in the first place, after being almost extravagant in his devotion to my daughter, Doreen, he now neglects her outrageously—comes down very seldom, writes short letters or none. Now, my daughter is not the sort of girl that a sane man would neglect," added Doctor Wedmore, proudly.

      "Certainly not," assented the doctor, inwardly thinking that it was much less surprising than it would have been in the case of one of his own girls.

      "In the second place, he is always harping upon the subject of Jacobs and his peculations—an old subject, which he might well let rest. And, in the third place, he has become moody, morose and absent-minded; and my son, Max, who often visits him at his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, has noticed the change even more than I, who have fewer opportunities of seeing him."

      The doctor was puffing stolidly at his pipe and looking at the fire.

      "It is very difficult to form an opinion upon report only," said he. "Frankly, I can see nothing in what you have told me about the young man which could not be explained in other and likelier ways. He may have got entangled, for instance, with some woman in London."

      Mr. Wedmore took fire at this suggestion.

      "In that case, the sooner Doreen forgets all about him the better."

      "Mind, I'm only suggesting!" put in the doctor, hastily. "There may be a dozen more reasons—"

      "I shall not wait to find them out," said Mr. Wedmore, decisively. "He and Max are coming down together this evening. My wife would have them to help in organizing some affair they're getting up for Christmas. I'll send him to the right-about without any more nonsense."

      "But surely that is hardly—"

      "Hardly what?" snapped out Mr. Wedmore, as he poked the fire viciously.

      "Well, hardly fair to either of the young people. Put a few questions to him yourself, or better still, let your wife do it. It may be only a storm in a teacup, after all. Remember, he is the son of your old friend. And you wouldn't like to have it on your conscience that you had treated him harshly."

      The doctor's advice was sane and sound enough, but Mr. Wedmore was not in the mood to listen to it. That notion of an entanglement with another woman rankled in his proud mind, and made him still less inclined to be patient and forbearing.

      "I shall give Doreen warning of what I am going to do at once," said he, "before Horne turns up."

      The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He was obstinate himself.

      Mr. Wedmore crossed the long room to the door, and opened it sharply.

      The hall was full of people and of great bales of goods, which were piled upon the center-table and heaped up all around it.

      "Doreen!" he called, sharply.

      Out of the crowd there rushed a girl—such a girl! One of those radiant creatures who explain the cult of womanhood; who make it difficult even for sober-minded, middle-aged men and matrons to realize that this is nothing but flesh and blood like themselves; one of those beautiful creatures who claim worship as a right and who repay it with kindness and brightness and sweetness and laughter.

      No house was ever dull that held Doreen Wedmore.

      She was a tall girl, brown-haired, brown-eyed, made to laugh and to live in the sunshine. Nobody could resist her, and nobody ever tried to.

      She sprang across the hall to her father and whirled him back into the dining-room, and put her back against it.

      "Dudley's come!" said she. "He's in the hall—among the blankets!"

      "Blankets!"

      "Yes." She was crossing the room by this time to the doctor, whom she had quickly perceived, and was holding out her hand to him. "You must know, doctor, that we are up to our eyes in blankets just now, and in bundles of red flannel, and in soup and coals. Papa has been reading up Christmas in the country in the olden time, and he finds that to be correct you must deluge the neighborhood with those articles. They are not at all what the people want, as far as I can make out. But that СКАЧАТЬ