Two Years Ago, Volume II

"Nothing, I assure you. Only I have given up my Aberalva practice. I am going to the East."

"Like the rest of the world."

"Not exactly. You go as a dignified soldier of her Majesty's; I as an undignified Abel Drugger, to dose Bashi-bazouks."

"Impossible! and with such an opening as you had there! You must excuse me; but my opinion of your prudence must not be so rudely shaken."

"Why do you not ask the question which Balzac's old Tourangeois judge asks, whenever a culprit is brought before him,—'Who is she?'"

"Taking for granted that there was a woman at the bottom of every mishap? I understand you," said the Major, with a sad smile. "Now let you and me walk a little together, and look at the Echinoid another day —or when I return from Sevastopol—"

Tom went out with him. A new ray of hope had crossed the Major's mind. His meeting with Thurnall might he providential; for he recollected now, for the first time, Mellot's parting hint.

"You knew Elsley Vavasour well?"

"No man better."

"Did you think that there was any tendency to madness in him?"

"No more than in any other selfish, vain, irritable man, with a strong imagination left to run riot."

"Humph! you seem to have divined his character. May I ask you if you knew him before you met him at Aberalva?"

Tom looked up sharply in the Major's face.

"You would ask, what cause I have for inquiring? I will tell you presently. Meanwhile I may say, that Mellot told me frankly that you had some power over him; and mentioned, mysteriously, a name—John Briggs, I think—which it appears that he once assumed."

"If Mellot thought fit to tell you anything, I may frankly tell you all.

John Briggs is his real name. I have known him from childhood." And then Tom poured into the ears of the surprised and somewhat disgusted Major all he had to tell.

"You have kept your secret mercifully, and used it wisely, sir; and I and others shall be always your debtors for it. Now I dare tell you in turn, in strictest confidence of course—"

"I am far too poor to afford the luxury of babbling."

And the Major told him what we all know.

"I expected as much," said he drily. "Now, I suppose that you wish me to exert myself in finding the man?"

"I do."

"Were Mrs. Vavasour only concerned, I should say—Not I! Better that she should never set eyes on him again."

"Better, indeed!" said he bitterly: "but it is I who must see him, if but for five minutes. I must!"

"Major Campbell's wish is a command. Where have you searched for him?"

"At his address, at his publisher's, at the houses of various literary friends of his, and yet no trace."

"Has he gone to the Continent?"

"Heaven knows! I have inquired at every passport office for news of any one answering his description; indeed, I have two detectives, I may tell you, at this moment, watching every possible place. There is but one hope, if he be alive. Can he have gone home to his native town?"

"Never! Anywhere but there."

"Is there any old friend of the lower class with whom he may have taken lodgings?"

Tom pondered.

"There was a fellow, a noisy blackguard, whom Briggs was asking after this very summer—a fellow who went off from Whitbury with some players. I know Briggs used to go to the theatre with him as a boy—what was his name? He tried acting, but did not succeed; and then became a scene-shifter, or something of the kind, at the Adelphi. He has some complaint, I forget what, which made him an out-patient at St. Mumpsimus's, some months every year. I know that he was there this summer, for I wrote to ask, at Briggs's request, and Briggs sent him a sovereign through me."

"But what makes you fancy that he can have taken shelter with such a man, and one who knows his secret?"

"It is but a chance: but he may have done it from the mere feeling of loneliness—just to hold by some one whom he knows in this great wilderness; especially a man in whose eyes he will be a great man, and to whom he has done a kindness; still, it is the merest chance."

"We will take it, nevertheless, forlorn hope though it be."

They took a cab to the hospital, and, with some trouble, got the man's name and address, and drove in search of him. They had some difficulty in finding his abode, for it was up an alley at the back of Drury Lane, in the top of one of those foul old houses which hold a family in every room; but, by dint of knocking at one door and the other, and bearing meekly much reviling consequent thereon, they arrived, "per modum tollendi" at a door which must be the right one, as all the rest were wrong.

"Does John Barker live here?" asks Thurnall, putting his head in cautiously for fear of drunken Irishmen, who might be seized with the national impulse to "slate" him.

"What's that to you?" answers a shrill voice from among soapsuds and steaming rags.

"Here is a gentleman wants to speak to him."

"So do a many as won't have that pleasure, and would be little the better for it if they had. Get along with you, I knows your lay."

"We really want to speak to him, and to pay him, if he will—"

"Go along! I'm up to the something to your advantage dodge, and to the mustachio dodge too. Do you fancy I don't know a bailiff, because he's dressed like a swell?"

"But, my good woman!" said Tom, laughing.

"You put your crocodile foot in here, and I'll hit the hot water over the both of you!" and she caught up the pan of soapsuds.

"My dear soul! I am a doctor belonging to the hospital which your husband goes to; and have known him since he was a boy, down in Berkshire."

"You?" and she looked keenly at him.

"My name is Thurnall. I was a medical man once in Whitbury, where your husband was born."

"You?" said she again, in a softened tone, "I knows that name well enough."

"You do? What was your name, then?" said Tom, who recognised the woman's Berkshire accent beneath its coat of cockneyism.

"Never you mind: I'm no credit to it, so I'll let it be. But come in, for the old county's sake. Can't offer you a chair, he's pawned 'em all. Pleasant old place it was down there, when I was a young girl; they say it's grow'd a grand place now, wi' a railroad. I think many times I'd like to go down and die there." She spoke in a rough, sullen, careless tone, as if life-weary.

"My good woman," said Major Campbell, a little impatiently, "can you find your husband for us?"

"Why then?" asked she sharply, her suspicion seeming to return.

"If he will answer a few questions, I will give him five shillings. If he can find out for me what I want, I will give him five pounds."

"Shouldn't I do as well? If you gi' it he, it's little out of it I shall see, but he coming home tipsy when it's spent. Ah, dear! it was a sad day for me when I first fell in with they play-goers!"

"Why should she not do it as well?" said Thurnall. "Mrs. Barker, do you know anything of a person named Briggs—John Briggs, the apothecary's son, at Whitbury?"

She laughed a harsh bitter laugh.

"Know he? yes, and too much reason. That was where it all begun, along of that play-going of he's and my master's."

"Have you seen him lately?" asked Campbell, eagerly.

"I seen 'un? I'd hit this water over the fellow, and all his play-acting merryandrews, if ever he sot a foot here!"

"But have you heard of him?"

"Ees—" said she carelessly; "he's round here now, I heard my master say, about the 'Delphy, with my master: a drinking, I suppose. No good, I'll warrant."

"My good woman," said Campbell, panting for breath, "bring me face to face with that man, and I'll put a five-pound note in your hand there and then."

"Five pounds is a sight to me: but it's a sight more than the sight of he's worth," said she suspiciously again.

"That's the gentleman's concern," said Tom. "The money's yours. I suppose you know the worth of it by now?"

"Ees, none better. But I don't want he to get hold of it; he's made away with enough already;" and she began to think.

"Curiously impassive people, we Wessex worthies, when we are a little ground down with trouble. You must give her time, and she will do our work. She wants the money, but she is long past being excited at the prospect of it."

"What's that you're whispering?" asked she sharply.

Campbell stamped with impatience.

"You don't trust us yet, eh?—then, there!" and he took five sovereigns from his pocket, and tossed them on the table. "There's your money! I trust you to do the work, as you've been paid beforehand."

She caught up the gold, rang every piece on the table to see if it was sound; and then—

"Sally, you go down with these gentlemen to the Jonson's Head, and if he ben't there, go to the Fighting Cocks; and if he ben't there, go to the Duke of Wellington; and tell he there's two gentlemen has heard of his poetry, and wants to hear 'un excite. And then you give he a glass of liquor, and praise up his nonsense, and he'll tell you all he knows, and a sight more. Gi' un plenty to drink. It'll be a saving and a charity, for if he don't get it out of you, he will out of me."

And she returned doggedly to her washing.

"Can't I do anything for you?" asked Tom, whose heart always yearned over a Berkshire soul. "I have plenty of friends down at Whitbury still."

"More than I have. No, sir," said she sadly, and with the first touch of sweetness they had yet heard in her voice. "I've cured my own bacon, and I must eat it. There's none down there minds me, but them that would be ashamed of me. And I couldn't go without he, and they wouldn't take he in; so I must just bide." And she went on washing.

"God help her!" said Campbell, as he went downstairs.

"Misery breeds that temper, and only misery, in our people. I can show you as thorough gentlemen and ladies, people round Whitbury, living on ten shillings a week, as you will show me in Belgravia living on five thousand a year."

"I don't doubt it," said Campbell…. "So 'she couldn't go without he,' drunken dog as he is! Thus it is with them all the world over."

"So much the worse for them," said Tom cynically, "and for the men too. They make fools of us first with our over-fondness of them; and then they let us make fools of ourselves with their over-fondness of us."

"I fancy sometimes that they were all meant to be the mates of angels, and stooped to men as a pis aller; reversing the old story of the sons of heaven and the daughters of men."

"And accounting for the present degeneracy. When the sons of heaven married the daughters of men, their offspring were giants and men of renown. Now the sons of men marry the daughters of heaven, and the offspring is Wiggle, Waggle, Windbag, and Redtape."

They visited one public-house after another, till the girl found for them the man they wanted, a shabby, sodden-visaged fellow, with a would-be jaunty air of conscious shrewdness and vanity, who stood before the bar, his thumbs in his armholes, and laying down the law to a group of coster-boys, for want of a better audience.

The girl, after sundry plucks at his coat-tail, stopped him in the midst of his oration, and explained her errand somewhat fearfully.

Mr. Barker bent down his head on one side, to signify that he was absorbed in attention to her news; and then drawing himself up once more, lifted his greasy hat high in air, bowed to the very floor, and broke forth:—

"Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors:A man of war, and eke a man of peace—That is, if you come peaceful; and if not,Have we not Hiren here?"

And the fellow put himself into a fresh attitude.

"We come in peace, my good sir," said Tom; "first to listen to your talented effusions, and next for a little private conversation on a subject on which—" but Mr. Barker interrupted,—

"To listen, and to drink? The muse is dry,And Pegasus doth thirst for Hippocrene,And fain would paint—imbibe the vulgar call—Or hot or cold, or long or short—Attendant!"

The bar girl, who knew his humour, came forward.

"Glasses all round—these noble knights will pay—Of hottest hot, and stiffest stiff. Thou mark'st me?Now to your quest!"

And he faced round with a third attitude.

"Do you know Mr. Briggs?" asked the straightforward Major. He rolled his eyes to every quarter of the seventh sphere, clapped his hand upon his heart, and assumed an expression of angelic gratitude:—

"My benefactor! Were the world a waste,A thistle-waste, ass-nibbled, goldfinch-pecked,And all the men and women merely asses,I still could lay this hand upon this heart,And cry, 'Not yet alone! I know a man—A man Jove-fronted, and Hyperion-curled—A gushing, flushing, blushing human heart!'"

"As sure as you live, sir," said Tom, "if you won't talk honest prose, I won't pay for the brandy and water."

"Base is the slave who pays, and baser prose—Hang uninspired patter! 'Tis in verseThat angels praise, and fiends in Limbo curse."

"And asses bray, I think," said Tom, in despair. "Do you know where Mr.

Briggs is now?"

"And why the devil do you want to know?For that's a verse, sir, although somewhat slow."

The two men laughed in spite of themselves.

"Better tell the fellow the plain truth," said Campbell to Thurnall.

"Come out with us, and I will tell you." And Campbell threw down the money, and led him off, after he had gulped down his own brandy, and half Tom's beside.

"What? leave the nepenthe untasted?"

They took him out, and he tucked his arms through theirs, and strutted down Drury Lane.

"The fact is, sir,—I speak to you, of course, in confidence, as one gentleman to another—"

Mr. Barker replied by a lofty and gracious bow.

"That his family are exceedingly distressed at his absence, and his wife, who, as you may know, is a lady of high family, dangerously ill; and he cannot be aware of the fact. This gentleman is the medical man of her family, and I—I am an intimate friend. We should esteem it therefore the very greatest service if you would give us any information which—"

"Weep no more, gentle shepherds, weep no more;For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,Sunk though he be upon a garret floor,With fumes of Morpheus' crown about his head."

"Fumes of Morpheus' crown?" asked Thurnall.

"That crimson flower which crowns the sleepy god,And sweeps the soul aloft, though flesh may nod."

"He has taken to opium!" said Thurnall to the bewildered Major. "What I should have expected."

"God help him! we must save him out of that last lowest deep!" cried

Campbell. "Where is he, sir?"

"A vow! a vow! I have a vow in heaven!Why guide the hounds toward the trembling hare?Our Adonais hath drunk poison; Oh!What deaf and viperous murderer could crownLife's early cup with such a draught of woe?"

"As I live, sir," cried Campbell, losing his self-possession in disgust at the fool; "you may rhyme your own nonsense as long as you will, but you shan't quote the Adonais about that fellow in my presence."

Mr. Barker shook himself fiercely free of Campbell's arm, and faced round at him in a fighting attitude. Campbell stood eyeing him sternly, but at his wit's end.

"Mr. Barker," said Tom blandly, "will you have another glass of brandy and water, or shall I call a policeman?"

"Sir," sputtered he, speaking prose at last, "this gentleman has insulted me! He has called my poetry nonsense, and my friend a fellow. And blood shall not wipe out—what liquor may?"

The hint was sufficient; but ere he had drained another glass, Mr. Barker was decidedly incapable of managing his affairs, much less theirs; and became withal exceedingly quarrelsome, returning angrily to the grievance of Briggs having been called a fellow; in spite of all their entreaties, he talked himself into a passion, and at last, to Campbell's extreme disgust, rushed out of the bar into the street.

"This is too vexations! To have kept half-an-hour's company with such an animal, and then to have him escape me after all! A just punishment on me for pandering to his drunkenness."

Tom made no answer, but went quietly to the door, and peeped out.

"Pay for his liquor, Major, and follow. Keep a few yards behind me; there will be less chance of his recognising us than if he saw us both together."

"Why, where do you think he's going?"

"Not home, I can see. Ten to one that he will go raging off straight to Briggs, to put him on his guard against us. Just like a drunkard's cunning it would be. There, he has turned up that side street. Now follow me quick. Oh that he may only keep his legs!"

They gained the bottom of that street before he had turned out of it; and so through another, and another, till they ran him to earth in one of the courts out of St. Martin's Lane.

Into a doorway he went, and up a stair. Tom stood listening at the bottom, till he heard the fellow knock at a door far above, and call out in a drunken tone. Then he beckoned to Campbell, and both, careless of what might follow, ran upstairs, and pushing him aside, entered the room without ceremony.

Their chances of being on the right scent were small enough, considering that, though every one was out of town, there were a million and a half of people in London at that moment; and, unfortunately, at least fifty thousand who would have considered Mr. John Barker a desirable visitor; but somehow, in the excitement of the chase, both had forgotten the chances against them, and the probability that they would have to retire downstairs again, apologising humbly to some wrathful Joseph Buggins, whose convivialities they might have interrupted. But no; Tom's cunning had, as usual, played him true; and as they entered the door, they beheld none other than the lost Elsley Vavasour, alias John Briggs.

Major Campbell advanced bowing, hat in hand, with a courteous apology on his lips.

It was a low lean-to garret; there was a deal table and an old chair in it, but no bed. The windows were broken; the paper hanging down in strips. Elsley was standing before the empty fireplace, his hand in his bosom, as if he had been startled by the scuffle outside. He had not shaved for some days.

So much Tom could note; but no more. He saw the glance of recognition pass over Elsley's face, and that an ugly one. He saw him draw something from his bosom, and spring like a cat almost upon the table. A flash—a crack. He had fired a pistol full in Campbell's face.

Tom was startled, not at the thing, but that such a man should have done it. He had seen souls, and too many, flit out of the world by that same tiny crack, in Californian taverns, Arabian deserts, Australian gullies. He knew all about that: but he liked Campbell; and he breathed more freely the next moment, when he saw him standing still erect, a quiet smile on his face, and felt the plaster dropping from the wall upon his own head. The bullet had gone over the Major. All was right.

"He is not man enough for a second shot," thought Tom quietly, "while the Major's eye is on him."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Vavasour," he heard the Major say, in a gentle unmoved voice, "for this intrusion. I assure you that there is no cause for any anger on your part; and I am come to entreat you to forget and forgive any conduct of mine which may have caused you to mistake either me or the lady whom I am unworthy to mention."

"I am glad the beggar fired at him," thought Tom. "One spice of danger, and he's himself again, and will overawe the poor cur by mere civility. I was afraid of some abject methodist parson humility, which would give the other party a handle."

Elsley heard him with a stupefied look, like that of a trapped wild beast, in which rage, shame, suspicion, and fear, were mingled with the vacant glare of the opium-eater's eye. Then his eye drooped beneath Campbell's steady gentle gaze, and he looked uneasily round the room, still like a trapped wild beast, as if for a hole to escape by; then up again, but sidelong, at Major Campbell.

"I assure you, sir, on the word of a Christian and a soldier, that you are labouring under an entire misapprehension. For God's sake and Mrs. Vavasour's sake, come back, sir, to those who will receive you with nothing but affection! Your wife has been all but dead; she thinks of no one but you, asks for no one but you. In God's name, sir, what are you doing here, while a wife who adores you is dying from your—I do not wish to be rude, sir, but let me say at least—neglect?"

Elsley looked at him still askance, puzzled, inquiring. Suddenly his great beautiful eyes opened to preternatural wideness, as if trying to grasp a new thought. He started, shifted his feet to and fro, his arms straight down by his sides, his fingers clutching after something. Then he looked up hurriedly again at Campbell; and Thurnall looked at him also; and his face was as the face of an angel.

"Miserable ass!" thought Tom, "if he don't see innocence in that man's countenance, he wouldn't see it in his own child's."

Elsley suddenly turned his back to them, and thrust his hand into his bosom. Now was Tom's turn.

In a moment he had vaulted over the table, and seized Elsley's wrist, ere he could draw the second pistol.

"No, my dear Jack," whispered he quietly, "once is enough in a day!"

"Not for him, Tom, for myself!" moaned Elsley.

"For neither, dear lad! Let bygones be bygones, and do you be a new man, and go home to Mrs. Vavasour."

"Never, never, never, never, never, never!" shrieked Elsley like a baby, every word increasing in intensity, till the whole house rang; and then threw himself into the crazy chair, and dashed his head between his hands upon the table.

"This is a case for me, Major Campbell. I think you had better go now."

"You will not leave him?"

"No, sir. It is a very curious psychological study, and he is a Whitbury man."

Campbell knew quite enough of the would-be cynical doctor, to understand what all that meant. He came up to Elsley.

"Mr. Vavasour, I am going to the war, from which I expect never to return. If you believe me, give me your hand before I go."

Elsley, without lifting his head, beat on the table with his hand.

"I wish to die at peace with you and all the world. I am innocent in word, in thought. I shall not insult another person by saying that she is so. If you believe me, give me your hand."

Elsley stretched his hand, his head still buried. Campbell took it, and went silently downstairs.

"Is he gone?" moaned he, after a while.

"Yes."

"Does she—does she care for him?"

"Good heavens! How did you ever dream such an absurdity?"

Elsley only beat upon the table.

"She has been ill?"

"Is ill. She has lost her child."

"Which?" shrieked Elsley.

"A boy whom she should have had."

Elsley only beat on the table; then—

"Give me the bottle, Tom!"

"What bottle?"

"The laudanum;—there in the cupboard."

"I shall do no such thing. You are poisoning yourself."

"Let me then! I must, I tell you! I can live on nothing else. I shall go mad if I do not have it. I should have been mad by now. Nothing else keeps off these fits;—I feel one coming now. Curse you! give me the bottle!"

"What fits?"

"How do I know? Agony and torture—ever since I got wet on that mountain."

Tom knew enough to guess his meaning, and felt Elsley's pulse and forehead.

"I tell you it turns every bone to red-hot iron!" almost screamed he.

"Neuralgia; rheumatic, I suppose," said Tom to himself. "Well, this is not the thing to cure you: but you shall have it to keep you quiet." And he measured him out a small dose.

"More, I tell you, more!" said Elsley, lifting up his head, and looking at it.

"Not more while you are with me."

"With you! Who the devil sent you here?"

"John Briggs, John Briggs, if I did not mean you good, should I be here now? Now do, like a reasonable man, tell me what you intend to do."

"What is that to you, or any man?" said Elsley, writhing with neuralgia.

"No concern of mine, of course: but your poor wife—you must see her."

"I can't, I won't!—that is, not yet! I tell you I cannot face the thought of her, much less the sight of her, and her family,—that Valencia! I'd rather the earth should open and swallow me! Don't talk to me, I say!"

And hiding his face in his hands, he writhed with pain, while Thurnall stood still patiently watching him, as a pointer dog does a partridge. He had found his game, and did not intend to lose it.