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СКАЧАТЬ rage was great, therefore, when three days after the duel, he awoke, missed her, and found in her place the senior bedmaker of Magdalen--a worthy woman, learned in simples and with hands of horn, but far from beautiful. This good person he saluted with a vigour which proved him already far on the road to recovery; and when he was tired of swearing, he wept and threw his nightcap at her. Finally, between one and the other, and neither availing to bring back his Briseis, he fell into a fever; which, as he was kept happed up in a box-bed, in a close room, with every window shut and every draught kept off by stuffy curtains--such was the fate of sick men then--bade fair to postpone his recovery to a very distant date.

      In this plight he sent one day for Mr. Thomasson, who had the nominal care of the young gentleman; and the tutor being brought from the club tavern in the Corn Market which he occasionally condescended to frequent, the invalid broke to him his resolution.

      'See here, Tommy,' he said in a voice weak but vicious. 'You have got to get her back. I will not be poisoned by this musty old witch any longer.'

      'But if she will not come?' said Mr. Thomasson sadly.

      'The little fool threw up the sponge when she came before,' the patient answered, tossing restlessly. 'And she will come again, with a little pressure. Lord, I know the women! So should you.'

      'She came before because--well, I do not quite know why she came,' Mr. Thomasson confessed.

      'Any way, you have got to get her back.'

      The tutor remonstrated, 'My dear good man,' he said unctuously, 'you don't think of my position. I am a man of the world, I know--'

      'All of it, my Macaroni!'

      'But I cannot be--be mixed up in such a matter as this, my dear sir.'

      'All the same, you have got to get her,' was the stubborn answer. 'Or I write to my lady and tell her you kept mum about my wound. And you will not like that, my tulip.'

      On that point he was right; for if there was a person in the world of whom Mr. Thomasson stood in especial awe, it was of Lady Dunborough. My lord, the author of 'Pomaria Britannica' and 'The Elegant Art of Pomiculture as applied to Landscape Gardening,' was a quantity he could safely neglect. Beyond his yew-walks and his orchards his lordship was a cipher. He had proved too respectable even for the peerage; and of late had cheerfully resigned all his affairs into the hands of his wife, formerly the Lady Michal M'Intosh, a penniless beauty, with the pride of a Scotchwoman and the temper of a Hervey. Her enemies said that my lady had tripped in the merry days of George the Second, and now made up for past easiness by present hardness. Her friends--but it must be confessed her ladyship had no friends.

      Be that as it might, Mr. Thomasson had refrained from summoning her to her son's bedside; partly because the surgeons had quickly pronounced the wound a trifle, much more because the little he had seen of her ladyship had left him no taste to see more. He knew, however, that the omission would weigh heavily against him were it known; and as he had hopes from my lady's aristocratic connections, and need in certain difficulties of all the aid he could muster, he found the threat not one to be sneezed at. His laugh betrayed this.

      However, he tried to put the best face on the matter. 'You won't do that,' he said. 'She would spoil sport, my friend. Her ladyship is no fool, and would not suffer your little amusements.'

      'She is no fool,' Mr. Dunborough replied with emphasis. 'As you will find, Tommy, if she comes to Oxford, and learns certain things. It will be farewell to your chance of having that milksop of a Marquis for a pupil!'

      Now, it was one of Mr. Thomasson's highest ambitions at this time to have the young Marquis of Carmarthen entrusted to him; and Lady Dunborough was connected with the family, and, it was said, had interest there. He was silent.

      'You see,' Mr. Dunborough continued, marking with a chuckle the effect his words had produced, 'you have got to get her.'

      Mr. Thomasson did not admit that that was so, but he writhed in his chair; and presently he took his leave and went away, his plump pale face gloomy and the crow's feet showing plain at the corners of his eyes. He had given no promise; but that evening a messenger from the college requested Mrs. Masterson to attend at his rooms on the following morning.

      She did not go. At the appointed hour, however, there came a knock on the tutor's door, and that gentleman, who had sent his servant out of the way, found Mr. Fishwick on the landing. 'Tut-tut!' said the don with some brusqueness, his hand still on the door; 'do you want me?' He had seen the attorney after the duel, and in the confusion attendant on the injured man's removal; and knew him by sight, but no farther.

      'I--hem--I think you wished to see Mrs. Masterson?' was Mr. Fishwick's answer, and the lawyer, but with all humility, made as if he would enter.

      The tutor, however, barred the way. 'I wished to see Mrs. Masterson,' he said drily, and with his coldest air of authority. 'But who are you?'

      'I am here on her behalf,' Mr. Fishwick answered, meekly pressing his hat in his hands.

      'On her behalf?' said Mr. Thomasson stiffly. 'Is she ill?'

      'No, sir, I do not know that she is ill.'

      'Then I do not understand,' Mr. Thomasson answered in his most dignified tone. 'Are you aware that the woman is in the position of a college servant, inhabiting a cottage the property of the college? And liable to be turned out at the college will?'

      'It may be so,' said the attorney.

      'Then, if you please, what is the meaning of her absence when requested by one of the Fellows of the college to attend?'

      'I am here to represent her,' said Mr. Fishwick.

      'Represent her! Represent a college laundress! Pooh! I never heard of such a thing.'

      'But, sir, I am her legal adviser, and--'

      'Legal adviser!' Mr. Thomasson retorted, turning purple--he was really puzzled. 'A bedmaker with a legal adviser! It's the height of impudence! Begone, sir, and take it from me, that the best advice you can give her is to attend me within the hour.'

      Mr. Fishwick looked rather blue. 'If it has nothing to do with her property,' he said reluctantly, and as if he had gone too far.

      'Property!' said Mr. Thomasson, gasping.

      'Or her affairs.'

      'Affairs!' the tutor cried. 'I never heard of a bedmaker having affairs.'

      'Well,' said the lawyer doggedly, and with the air of a man goaded into telling what he wished to conceal, 'she is leaving Oxford. That is the fact.'

      'Oh!' said Mr. Thomasson, falling on a sudden into the minor key. 'And her daughter?'

      'And her daughter.'

      'That is unfortunate,' the tutor answered, thoughtfully rubbing his hands. 'The truth is--the girl proved so good a nurse in the case of my noble friend who was injured the other day--my lord Viscount Dunborough's son, a most valuable life--that since she absented herself, he has not made the same progress. And as I am responsible for him--'

      'She should never have attended him!' the attorney answered with unexpected sharpness.

      'Indeed! СКАЧАТЬ