BROTHERS.
"What do you want with me?" said Oliver trying to shake off the rude
grasp.
"I want you--you," gasped the man. He was evidently much excited, and
his breath came in hard, quick pants. "Have you forgotten your own
brother?"
The two paused for an instant under a gas lamp. Oliver looked into
Francis Trent's drawn, livid face--into the wild, bloodshot eyes, and
for an instant recoiled. It struck him that the face was that of a
madman. But it was, nevertheless, the face of his brother, and after
that momentary pause he recovered himself and laughed slightly.
"Forgotten you? I'm not very likely to forget you, my boy. Well, what do
you want?"
"I want that two thousand pounds."
His hand still clutched Oliver's arm, and the grasp was becoming
unpleasant.
"Can you not take your hand off my arm?" said the younger man, coolly.
"I'm not going to run away. Apropos, what have you been doing with
yourself all these weeks! I thought you had given us the slip
altogether."
"I want my money," said Francis, doggedly.
Oliver looked at him curiously. What did this persistence mean? What
money was he thinking about?
"Your money?" he repeated.
"Yes, my money--the money you ought to have given me by this time--where
is it?"
"You mean the sum I promised you on my wedding-day?"
Francis nodded, with a rather confused look upon his face.
"My wedding-day has not occurred yet," said Oliver, lightly. "Upon my
word, I doubt whether it ever will occur. Don't alarm yourself, Francis.
I shall get the money for you before long--I've not forgotten it."
"I want it now. Two thousand pounds," said Francis, thickly.
"Are you drunk, man! Do you think I carry two thousand pounds about with
me in my pocket? Go home--I'll see you again when you are sober."
"I have touched nothing but water to-day," said his brother. "I swear
it--so help me, God! I know what I'm about. And I know _you_. I know you
for the vilest cheat and trickster that ever walked the earth. I've been
in hospital--I don't know how long. I know that you would cheat me if
you could. You were to pay me within six months--and it's over six
months now."
"I tell you I'm not married. I was to pay you on my wedding-day."
"You were to pay me within six months. Have you opened a bank account
for me and paid in the two thousand pounds?"
"Are you mad, Francis?"
"Mad?--I may well be mad after all you have made me suffer. I tell you I
want money--money--money--I want two thousand pounds."
His voice rose almost to a shriek, and the sound reverberated along the
quiet street with startling effect. Oliver shrank into himself a little,
and gave a hurried glance around him. They were still in Upper Woburn
Place, and he was afraid that the noise should excite remark. It was
plain to him that Francis was either drunk or out of his mind, and he
therefore concentrated his attention on getting quietly away from him,
or leading him to some more secluded spot.
"Look here," he said, in a conciliatory tone. "You shall have your money
if you'll be quiet and come away with me. Come to my house and I'll
explain things to you. You've not seen Rosalind for a long time, have
you? Come in and talk things over."
"Oh, you want to trap me, do you?" said Francis, sullenly. "No, I'll not
come to your house. Go in and fetch the money out to me, or I'll make
you repent it."
Oliver was almost at his wit's end.
"All right," he said, soothingly. "I will fetch it. I can give you a
cheque, you know. But don't you want a little loose change to go on
with? Take these."
He held out a handful of gold and silver. Francis looked at it with
covetous eyes for a minute or two, then thrust his brother's hand aside
with a jerk which almost sent the coins into the road.
"I want justice, not charity," he said. "I want the money you promised
me."
Oliver shrugged his shoulders, and slowly returned the money to his
pocket.
"I am more than ever convinced that you are either mad or drunk, my
boy," he said. "You should never refuse ten pounds when you can get it,
and it's not a thing that I should fancy you have often done before.
However, as you choose."
He walked onward, and Francis walked, heavily and unsteadily, at his
side, muttering to himself as he went. Oliver glanced curiously at him
from time to time.
"I wonder what _has_ happened to him," he said to himself. "It's not
safe to question, but I _should_ like to know. Is it drink? or is it
brain disease? One thing or the other it must be. He does not look as if
he would live to spend the two thousand pounds--if ever he gets it. I
wonder if I could contrive to stave off the payment----"
And then he fell into a gloomy calculation of ways and means,
possibilities and chances, which lasted until the house in Russell
Square was reached. Here the brothers paused, and Oliver looked keenly
into his companion's face, noting that a somewhat remarkable change had
passed over it. Instead of being flushed and swollen, as if from
drinking, it had become very pale. His eyes seemed on the point of
closing, and he wavered unsteadily in his walk. Oliver had to put out
his hand to save him from falling, and to help him to the steps, where
he collapsed into a sitting posture, with his head against the railings.
He seemed to be stupefied, if not asleep.
"Dead drunk," said Oliver to himself. "The danger's over for to-night,
at any rate. Now, what shall I do with him? I can't get him into the
house and lock him into a room--that would make talk. I think I had
better leave him to the tender mercies of the next policeman; if he gets
run in for being drunk and incapable, so much the better for me."
He took out his latch key and let himself into the house, closing the
door softly behind him, so as not to awaken the half-sleeping wretch
upon the steps. Then he ascended the stairs--still softly, as if he
thought that he was not yet out of danger of awaking him--and locked
himself into his own room. Then he drew a long breath, and stood
motionless for a moment, with bent brows and downcast eyes. "There will
be no end to this," he said to himself, "until Francis is shipped off to
America or landed safely in a madhouse. One seems to me about as likely
as another. I wonder whether he was drunk to-night, or insane? Drunk, I
think: insanity"--with a sinister smile--"would be too great a stroke of
luck for me!"
But it was perfectly true, as Francis had said, that no drop of
intoxicating liquor had passed his lips that day. He was suffering from
brain disease, as Oliver had half suspected, although not to such an
extent that he could actually be called insane. A certain form of mania
was gradually taking possession of his mind. He was convinced that he
had been robbed by his brother of much that was his due; and that Oliver
was even now withholding money that was his. This fancy had its
foundation in fact, for Oliver had wronged him more than once, and was
ready to wrong him again should a suitable opportunity occur; but the
notion that at present occupied his mind, respecting the payment of the
two thousand pounds, was largely a figment of his disordered brain.
Oliver had certainly questioned within himself whether he should be
called upon to pay this sum, and as Francis seemed to have completely
disappeared, he began to think that he might evade his promise to do so;
but he had not as yet sought to free himself from the necessity of
paying it. Francis' own words and demeanor suggested this idea for the
first time to his mind. Was it possible, he asked himself, to prove that
Francis was insane--clap him into a lunatic asylum--get rid of him
forever without hush-money? True, there was his wife, Mary, to be
silenced; but she had no influence and no friends. "Power is always in
the hands of those who have most money," Oliver said to himself, as he
reviewed the situation, after leaving Francis on the door step. "I have
more money than Francis, certainly: I ought to be able to control his
fate a little--and my own."
But Oliver, astute as he thought himself, was occasionally mistaken in
his conclusions. Francis Trent, as we have said, was not intoxicated;
and when he had dozed quietly for a few moments on the door-step, he
came somewhat to himself, as he usually did after these fits of frenzy.
He felt dazed and bewildered, but he was no longer furious. He could not
remember very well what he had said to Oliver, or what Oliver had said
to him. But he knew where he was, and that in this region--between
Russell Square and St. Pancras Church--he should find his truest friends
and perhaps also his bitterest foes.
He roused himself, stretched his cramped limbs, and turned back to
wander towards Upper Woburn Place, hardly knowing, however, why he bent
his steps in that direction. Instinct, not memory or reflection, guided
him, and when he halted, he leaned against the railings of the house
from which he had seen Oliver come forth, without realizing for one
moment that it was the house in which his faithful and half-forgotten
Mary was to be found.
The door opened, as he waited, and some of the guests came out. Two or
three carriages drove up: there was a call for a hansom, a whistle, and
an answering shout. Francis Trent watched the proceedings with a sort of
stupid attention. They reminded him of the previous night when he had
seen Ethel Kenyon coming out of the theatre after her farewell
performance. But on that occasion he had passed unnoticed and
unrecognized. This was not now to be the case.
Suddenly a woman on the threshold of Mr. Brooke's house caught sight of
the weary, shabby figure leaning against the railings. Francis heard a
little gasp, a little cry, and felt a hand upon his own. "Francis! is it
you? have you really come back?" It was Mary Kingston who looked him in
the face.
He returned the gaze with lack-lustre, unseeing eyes. When the fever-fit
of rage left him, he was still subject to odd lapses of memory. One of
these had assailed him now. He did not recognize his wife in the very
least.
"I--I don't know you," he said. "Go away, woman. I'm not doing any
harm."
There is nothing so piteous as the absence of recognition of the
patient's best friends in cases of brain-disease. Francis Trent's
condition sent a stab of pain to Mary's innermost heart. She forgot
where she was--she forgot her duties as doorkeeper; she remembered only
that she loved this man, and that he had forgotten her. She cried
aloud----
"Francis, I am your wife."
"I have no wife," said the distraught man, looking listlessly beyond
her. "I am here to see Oliver--he is to give me some money."
"Don't you remember Mary, Francis? Look at me--look at me."
"Mary?" he said, doubtfully. "Oh, yes, I remember Mary. But you are not
Mary, are you?"
"Yes, indeed I am. Where have you been all this time? Oh, my poor dear,
you can't tell me! You are ill, Francis. Let me take care of you. Can
you tell me where you live?"
But he could not reply. His head drooped upon his breast: he looked as
if he neither saw nor heard. What was she to do?
Of one thing Mary was certain. Now that she had found her husband, she
was not going to lose sight of him again.
She would go with him whithersoever he went, unless he repelled her by
force. She gave one regretful thought to her young mistress, and to a
certain project which she had determined to put into effect that night,
and then she thought of the Brookes no more. She must leave them, and
follow her husband's fortunes. There was no other way for her.
Fortunately she had money in her pocket. She had also thrown a shawl
across her arm before she came to the door. The shawl belonged to Miss
Brooke, and had been offered to one of the guests as a loan; but Mary
had forgotten all about the guests, and appropriated the shawl, with the
cool resolution which characterized her in cases of emergency.
Necessity--especially the necessity entailed by love--knows no law. At
that moment she knew no law but that of her repressed and stunted, but
always abiding, affection for the husband who had burdened her life for
many weary years with toil and anxiety and care. For him she would do
anything--throw up all friendships, sacrifice her future, her character,
and, if need be, her life.
She wrapped the shawl round her head, and put her arm through her
husband's, without once looking back.
"Come, Francis," she said, quietly, "show me where you live now. We will
go home."
She led him unresistingly away. For a little while he walked as if in a
dream; but by and by his movements became more assured, and he turned so
decidedly in one direction that she saw he knew his way and was
pursuing it. She said nothing, but kept close to his side, with her hand
resting lightly on his arm. She was not mistaken in her expectations.
Francis went straight to the wretched lodging in which he had slept for
the past few nights, and Mary at once assumed the management of his
affairs.
She was rewarded--as she thought, poor soul!--for her efforts. When she
had lighted a fire and a candle, and prepared some sort of frugal meal
for the man she loved, he lifted up his face and looked at her with a
gleam of returning memory and intelligence in his haggard eyes.
"Mary," he said, in a bewildered tone, "Mary--my wife? How did you come
here, Mary? How did you find me out?"
"Are you glad to see me, dear?" said Mary.
"Yes--yes, I am. Everything will be right now. You'll manage things for
me."
It was an acknowledgment of the power of her affection which more than
recompensed her for the trouble of the last few months.