Upon the principle that it never rains but it pours, trouble seemed just
now to be rife, and Patty took upon herself more than her share. Janet
used to say again and again that her friend must visit her no more, but
sorrow only seemed to link them more and more together. Janet, however,
was a good deal at Duplex Street, and there used to be some mournful old
minor quartettes played. Patty presiding at the piano, while Jared
scraped the bass out of an old violoncello, to Canau and Janet's first
and second violin.
But somehow, at this time, Decadia seemed to have a fascination for
Patty, and though Mrs Jared was ready to complain, she saw that her
child was suffering, and did not give utterance to her thoughts.
The consequence was that Patty was more and more at the dingy house, her
light step passing, as it were, too quickly over the pollution around to
take taint therefrom. There were times, though, when the incidents at
the place seemed to repel her, and she would determine to stay away; but
Janet's troubles, and the unvarying kindness of Canau would have been
sufficient to draw her there without the yearning look in Janet's great
pleading eyes when her friend had been longer away than usual. And when
suspicion had fallen upon the house, let people think what they might,
Patty told herself that it was her duty to cling to her friends the
closer for their troubles.
Now, if in these nineteenth century busy hurrying days we were in want
of a seer, we should hardly go to the ranks of the constabulary to seek
him; but all the same it seemed as if police constable James Braid was
right in his prophetic mind when, in allusion to various visits that he
had seen paid by Lionel Redgrave to Decadia, he shook his head, and
exclaimed, "You'll go there wunst too often--wunst too often, my fine
fellow."
Police constable James Braid must have been right; for it came to pass
one day that Harry Clayton was seated in his rooms with the "oak
sported," a wet towel round his weary head, and his mind far away in the
antique, when there was a summons at the door, and his attendant placed
a telegram in his hand. He took the envelope eagerly, for to a nearly
friendless man, messages, even letters, were but occasional visitants;
but his countenance rapidly assumed a pained expression, as he
comprehended more fully the meaning of the abrupt words he read, and
associated them with the past.