CHAPTER XII.

LUCIUS HAS AN INTERVIEW WITH A FAMOUS PERSONAGE.

It is one thing for a man to make a rash promise, but another thing for him to keep it. A man in love will pledge himself to any enterprise—to any adventure—even to the discovery of a new planet or a new continent, should his mistress demand as much. After contemplating the question from every possible point of view, Lucius Davoren was disposed to think that he had pledged himself to the performance of something that was more impossible than astronomical or geographical discovery, when he promised to find Lucille Sivewright’s father, or, failing that, obtain for her at least the story of his fate.

It had seemed a great point to get the old man to speak freely of his lost son; but even with this new light thrown upon the business, an Egyptian darkness still surrounded the figure of the missing man. He had sailed for a certain port. He might be still a denizen of that Southern city. Yet what less likely in such a man’s career than continued residence anywhere? The criminal is naturally a wanderer. He has no fixed abiding-place. Fresh woods and pastures new are the necessity of his contraband existence. Like a smuggled keg of cognac, he passes from place to place under a cloud of mystery. None see him arrive or depart. Like the chameleon, he changes colour—now wearing dyed whiskers and a wig, now returning to the hues of nature. He has as many names as the Roman Jupiter.

Had Lucius been a free man, he might have gone straight to Rio, and hunted up the traces of the missing man, unaided and alone. He might have discovered some clue even after the lapse of years since the sailing of the Spanish merchantman El Dorado. It was just within the limits of possibility that he might have found the man himself.

But to do this would have involved the abandonment of much that was of vital moment to himself—would have indeed thrown the whole scheme of his existence out of gear. In the first place he was poor, and his pitiful salary as parish doctor was of inestimable value to him. Now, a parish doctor has no more liberty to rove than the parish turncock, and vast would be the wonder of the vestry—or the overseers—if informed that the parish surgeon had gone for a fortnight’s grouse shooting on the Sutherland hills, or set sail for the Mediterranean in a friend’s yacht, or joined one of the great Cook’s caravans bound for Egypt or Peru.

Again, Lucius had now the nucleus of a very fair private practice. His patients, for the most part small tradesmen, paid punctually, and there were among them some wealthy traders whose custom was worth having. He saw the beginning, very small it is true, but the beginning of fortune. That dream of Savile-row was to be realised out of such small beginnings. His patients believed in him, and talked of him; and so far as reputation can be made in such a place as the Shadrack-Basin district, his reputation was fast being made. To turn his back upon all this would be to sacrifice, or at any rate to postpone indefinitely, his hope of winning a home for the woman he loved.

Beyond this there remained a third reason why he should refrain from setting forth upon that wild-goose chase which, however barren as to result, would at least serve to prove him the most devoted and chivalrous of lovers. To go to Rio was to leave Lucille, and for an indefinite period; since the business upon which he would go was essentially a business requiring deliberation, ample leisure, time for inquiry, for travelling to and fro, time enough to waste in following up trails which, though promising much, might prove false,—time and indomitable patience. How could he afford time and patience with his heart racked by fears for the safety of Lucille? What might not happen during his absence? The old man was in so precarious a condition that his illness might at any moment take a fatal turn—in a state so critical that to deliver him over to a strange doctor, and perhaps a careless one, would be a kind of assassination.

Thus, after profound thought, Lucius determined that even love should not impel him to so rash a course as a voyage to Rio in quest of Ferdinand Sivewright.

‘After all,’ he said to himself, ‘there is no wiser saying than that of Apelles to the cobbler, “Let every man stick to his own trade.” I may be a clever surgeon, but a very poor detective-officer; and it will be safer to spend the little money I can spare in employing a retired policeman than in trying my ’prentice hand in the art of detection. We bluster a good deal in the newspapers about the incompetence of the police, when they fail to hunt up a criminal who has plunged into the great sea of humanity, leaving not a bubble to mark the place where he went down; yet I doubt if any of those brilliant journalists who furnish indignant editorials on the police question would do much better in the detective line than the officials whose failures they ridicule. Yes, I will submit the case to Mr. Otranto, the private detective.’

Once resolved, Lucius lost no more time; but called at Mr. Otranto’s office in the city, and was fortunate enough to find that gentleman at home—a plain-mannered little man, with a black frock-coat buttoned up to the chin, and the half-military stamp of the ex-policeman strong upon him. He was a brisk little man, too, disinclined to waste time upon unnecessary detail.

To him Lucius freely confided all he knew about Ferdinand Sivewright—his character, antecedents, the ship in which he sailed, the port from which he went, the approximate date of his departure.

Mr. Otranto shrugged his shoulders. He had whistled a little impromptu accompaniment to Mr. Davoren’s statement under his breath; a kind of internal whistling, indicative of deepest thought.

‘I’m afraid it’s not the most hopeful case,’ he said; ‘twelve years is a long time. See what a number of earthquakes and shipwrecks and revolutions and what you may call general blow-ups you get in a dozen years; and then consider the case of one individual man who may drop through at any moment, who, being by nature a bad lot, will change his name any number of times. However, I can put the business into the hands of a party out yonder who will do all that can be done on the spot.’

‘Yonder, meaning Rio?’ inquired Lucius. ‘Have you correspondents so far afield?’

‘Sir,’ said Mr. Otranto, with a complacent glance at the map of the world which hung against the wall opposite him, ‘there are very few corners of this habitable earth where I have _not_ a correspondent.’

The business was settled without farther discussion. Lucius gave Mr. Otranto a substantial deposit, to prove that his inquiry was not prompted by frivolity, and to insure that gentleman’s zeal; private inquiry being, as Mr. Otranto indirectly informed his client, a somewhat expensive luxury.

This done, Lucius felt that he had not been false to his pledge. He told Lucille nothing, however, except that he meant to keep his promise, so far as it was possible and reasonable for him to keep it.

‘If I tell you that I think you foolish for cherishing a wild hope, dearest, you will tell me that I am unkind,’ he said, as they paced their favourite walk in the barren old garden at sunset that evening.

‘Lucius,’ asked Lucille, not long after this, ‘I am going to ask you a favour.’

‘My dearest, what do I live for except to please you?’

‘O, Lucius, a great many things; for your patients, for science, for the hope of being a famous doctor by and by.’

‘Only secondary objects in my life now, Lucille. They once made the sum of life, I grant; they are henceforth no more than means to an end—and that end is the creation of a home for you.’

‘How good of you to say that! I am hardly worthy of such love, when my heart dwells so much upon the past. Yet, Lucius, if you could only know how I cling to the memory of that dim strange time, which seems almost as far away as a dream, you would forgive me even for putting that memory above my affection for you.’

‘I forgive you freely, darling, for a sentiment which does but prove the tenderness and constancy of your nature. I am content even to hold the second place. But what is the favour you have to ask, Lucille?’

‘Let me hear you play. Poor grandpapa is seldom down-stairs of an evening now. There could be no harm in your bringing your violin, and playing a little now and then when he has gone back to his room. His room is so far from the parlour that he would never hear you; and, after all, playing the violin is not a crime. Do let me hear you, Lucius! The old sweet sad music will remind me of my father. And I know you play divinely,’ she added, looking up at him with innocent admiring eyes.

What could he do? He was mortal, loved music to distraction, and had some belief in his own playing.

‘So be it, my sweetest. I’ll bring the Amati; but you must stow him away in some dusky corner between whiles, where your grandfather cannot possibly discover him, or he might wreak his vengeance upon my treasure. After all, as you say, there can be no harm in a violin, and it will be hardly a breach of honour for me to play you a sonata now and then, after my patient has gone to bed. Your father must have been a fine player, or his playing would have hardly made such an impression upon you as a child of seven.’

‘Yes,’ she answered dreamily, ‘I suppose it was what you call fine playing. I know that it was sometimes mournful as the cry of a broken heart, sometimes wild and strange—so strange that it has made me cling closer to his knees, as I sat at his feet in the dusky room, afraid to look round lest I should see some unearthly form conjured out of the shadows by that awful music. You know how children look behind them with scared faces as they cower round the Christmas fire, listening to a ghost story. I have felt like that when I listened to my father’s playing.’

‘I will bring you pleasanter music, Lucille, and conjure no ghosts out of the evening shadows—only happy thoughts of our future.’

This was the prelude to many peaceful evenings, full of a placid happiness which knew not satiety. Lucius brought his Amati, feeling very much like a conspirator when he conveyed the instrument into Mr. Sivewright’s house by stealth, as it were, and gave it into Lucille’s keeping, to be hidden by day, and only to be brought forth at night, when her grandfather had retired to his remote bedchamber, beyond ken of those sweet sounds.

The old woman in the bonnet—who was at once housekeeper, cook, laundress, and parlour-maid in this curious establishment—was of course in the secret. But Lucius had found this ancient female improve upon acquaintance, and he was now upon intimate and friendly terms with her. She had lived for an indefinite length of years in Mr. Sivewright’s service—remembered Lucille’s childhood in the dark old back rooms in Bond-street—but no power of persuasion could extract any information from her. Upon entering Mr. Sivewright’s household in the remote past she had promised to hold her tongue; and she was religiously silent to this hour. Of the old man she could never be induced to say more than that he was a ‘carrack-ter;’ a remark which, accompanied as it always was with a solemn shake of her head, might be complimentary or otherwise.

Lucille she praised with fondest enthusiasm, but of Lucille’s father she said not a word. On the various occasions when Lucius had ventured to press his questions on this subject, she had acted always in the same manner. Her countenance assumed a dark and forbidding aspect; she abruptly set down the dish, or tray, or teapot, or whatever object she might happen to be carrying, and as abruptly vanished from the room. Persistence here availed nothing.

‘Mr. Sivewright bound me over not to talk about his business when he first engaged me,’ she said once, when hard pressed by Lucius, who had hoped through her to obtain some better clue to the fate of Ferdinand Sivewright. ‘I’ve held my tongue for uppards o’ five-and-twenty years. It ain’t likely I should begin to blab now.’

Although uncommunicative, this faithful domestic was not unfriendly. She treated Lucille with an affectionate familiarity, and in a manner took the lovers under her wing.

‘I was sure and certain, the first time I laid eyes on him, that you and Dr. Davory would keep company,’ she said to Lucille; and her protecting influence overshadowed the lovers at all times, like the wings of a guardian angel. She evidently regarded herself in the light of Miss Sivewright’s duenna; and would come away from some mysterious operations in the labyrinthine offices and outhouses of the ancient mansion, where she had a piece of lumber which she spoke of casually as her good gentleman, in order to hover about Lucille and Lucius in their walks, or to listen, awestricken and open-mouthed, to the strains of the violin. Discovering ere long that this rough unpolished jewel was not wanting in some of the finer qualities of the diamond, Lucius admitted Mrs. Wincher, in some measure, to his confidence—discussed his future freely in her presence, imparted his hopes and fears, and felt that perhaps within this unbeauteous husk dwelt the soul of a friend; and assuredly neither he nor Lucille could afford to sacrifice a friend on account of external shortcomings. So Mrs. Wincher was accepted by him, bonnet and all, and her hoverings about the pathway of innocent love went unreproved.

‘I am so glad you are not angry with Wincher for being a little too familiar,’ said Lucille. ‘She cannot forget that she took care of me when I was a poor solitary child in those back rooms in Bond-street; and I know she is faithful and good.’

Jacob Wincher, or Mrs. Wincher’s good gentleman, was a feeble prowling old man, who took charge of the collection, and pottered about from morn till dewy eve—which, by the way, never was dewy in the Shadrack district—dusting, polishing, arranging, and rearranging Mr. Sivewright’s treasures—a very feeble old man, but learned in all the mysteries of bric-à-brac, and enthusiastic withal; a man whose skilful hands wandered about among egg-shell china, light as the wings of a butterfly. He had been Mr. Sivewright’s factotum in Bond-street, but was no more inclined to be communicative than Mrs. Wincher, whom he spoke of, with reciprocal respect, as his good lady.

Happy summer evenings, when, in the deepening dusk, Lucius awoke the sweet sad strains of his violin, while Lucille sat knitting by the window, and Mrs. Wincher, in the inevitable bonnet, occupied the extreme edge of a chair by the door, listening with folded arms and the serious attention of a musical critic.

‘I can’t say but what I’ve a preference for livelier toons,’ she would remark, after patiently awaiting the end of a dirge by Spohr, ‘but the fingering is beautiful. I like to watch the fingering. My good gentleman used to play the fiddle very sweet afore we was married—“John Anderson my Jones,” and the “Bird Waltz,” and “British Grenayders,” and such-like—but he give it up afterwards. There was no time to waste upon music in Bond-street. Up early and abed late, and very often travel a hundred miles backards and forrards between morning and night to attend a sale in the country—that was Mr. Sivewright’s motter.’

These musical entertainments were naturally of rare occurrence. Mr. Sivewright had been for some time gradually improving, and was more inclined for society as his strength returned, but was, on the other hand, disinclined to come down-stairs; so Lucius and Lucille had to spend the greater part of their time in his room, where Lucius entertained his patient with tidings of the outer world, while Lucille made tea at a little table in the narrow space which the collector had left clear in the midst of his crowded chamber. There were a few flowers now in the one unobstructed window, and Lucille had done all she could, with her small means, to make the room pretty and homelike.

Mr. Sivewright listened while the lovers discussed their future, but with no indulgent ear.

‘Love and poverty!’ he said, with his harsh laugh; ‘a nice stock-in-trade upon which to set up in the business of life! However, I suppose you are no more foolish than all the fools who have travelled the same beaten road before your time: and the same old question remains to be solved by you, just as it has been solved by others—whether the love will outwear the poverty, or the poverty wear out the love.’

‘We are not afraid to stand the test,’ said Lucius.

‘We are not afraid,’ echoed Lucille.