MR. BRADFIELD WELCOMES AN OLD FRIEND.
It was impossible for Chris not to be struck by the change in Mr.
Bradfield’s face, impossible for her to avoid the supposition that this
change was caused by the sight of the shabby man who stood on one side
as the dog-cart went by, and called to “John Bradfield” by name.
Her companion was too shrewd not to know this. He turned to her,
therefore, and said:
“That was a narrow squeak. Never had such a fright in my life as that
fellow gave me; I thought I’d run over him.”
Chris was deceived by this speech, and she said, innocently:
“He knew you, Mr. Bradfield. He called to you by name!”
Mr. Bradfield turned in his seat, as if to have another look at the
man; but they had turned a corner, and he was out of sight.
“Did he, though?” said he, as if in surprise. “Well, I daresay he’ll
find me out, if he wants anything of me. People have a trick of doing
that.” Then, as if dismissing the subject from his thoughts, he said,
“Well, haven’t I been ‘good?’ Will you come out with me again?”
Chris laughed with some constraint. Mr. Bradfield certainly had behaved
well, but she did not want to put his good behaviour to any further
tests. There was about him all the time a certain air of an angler
playing his fish, which made her ask herself whether she were not in
truth compromising herself by receiving from him even those attentions,
slight as they were, which she could not avoid.
They reached home before the rest of the party, and Chris ran upstairs
to her mother, while Mr. Bradfield went to his study. Stelfox, who made
himself useful about the house when he was not in attendance upon Mr.
Richard, was just placing upon the table a great pile of letters. This
being Christmas eve, the mid-day post had been some hours late.
Mr. Bradfield glanced searchingly at Stelfox. He was rather afraid of
that faithful servitor, who was too useful a person, and perhaps too
shrewd a one, to be dismissed. Manners, the weak-eyed secretary, was
away for his holiday, so that master and man were alone. After a few
moments’ rapid debate with himself, Mr. Bradfield asked a question
which had been very near his lips since the night before, when Lilith’s
communication had made him uneasy.
“How is your patient to-day, Stelfox?” he asked, as an opening.
“About the same as usual, sir.”
“Been giving you much trouble lately?”
“Not more than usual, sir.”
“And that’s not much, eh?”
“No, sir, that’s not much.”
“Do you think he gets any more rational as time goes on? Any more fit
to be about?”
Mr. Bradfield put this question in the same tone as the rest, but the
look with which he accompanied the words was more penetrating, more
curious than before.
He wanted Stelfox to look up, but the man persisted in looking down.
“He’s about the same, sir, as he’s been ever since I’ve known him.”
“Just as mad? Just as unfit to go about uncontrolled?”
“Exactly the same, sir.”
Now Mr. Bradfield was not satisfied with this answer. He looked angrily
at all that he could see of Stelfox’s stolid face, and then said,
shortly:
“I haven’t seen you to speak to about that affair of Wednesday
last--you know--when he got away.”
Stelfox raised his eyes for a moment, as respectfully as ever.
“No, sir, you haven’t.”
“Did you have any difficulty with him, in getting him to come back? It
was in the barn you found him, wasn’t it--where I told you he was?”
“Yes, sir, it was in the barn. I had no difficulty with him.”
“And, of course, you have taken good care that he shouldn’t get out
again?”
Now this was a question, undoubtedly, although he hardly meant it to
be taken as one. It was supposed to be a matter-of-course remark, that
hardly needed an answer. Stelfox’s answer was, perhaps, just the least
bit aggressive in tone.
“I have taken the same care of him as usual, sir; I can’t do no more.”
John Bradfield, as he glanced again at the man’s face, looked doubtful
still; but he saw that he had gone as far as he dared.
“I am quite satisfied with your care of him, Stelfox, quite satisfied.
Of course, I’m always anxious, always nervous. I shouldn’t like him to
get out again, and frighten the ladies.”
“There’s no fear of that, sir,” said Stelfox, as stolidly as ever.
“It’s a very awkward and responsible position that I have taken upon
myself, in undertaking to keep an insane person under my own roof,”
pursued John Bradfield. “The expense is nothing to me, and, of course,
I don’t mind the danger to myself. His father was a very valued servant
of mine, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for his son. I could never
have borne to see the boy taken away to a pauper lunatic asylum.”
He paused, and seemed to expect some comment. So Stelfox said:
“I understand, sir; I quite understand.”
But he looked as if he did not.
“And the hard part of it is,” went on Mr. Bradfield, in a loud,
aggrieved tone of voice, “that if some friend, say, of his father’s,
were to turn up now, and want to see him, ten to one he’d think I ought
to have treated the lad differently, put him into an asylum, or done
something or other that I haven’t done.”
Again he paused. Stelfox, still stolid, still apparently without vivid
interest, said:
“No doubt, sir.”
Mr. Bradfield would have given anything to know exactly what was
passing in the man’s mind. Stelfox would have given anything to know
what was passing in his master’s.
Mr. Bradfield, impatient, turned on his heel, and began rummaging
among the letters the post had brought, tossing on to his secretary’s
already well-covered table all those directed in handwritings he did
not know, and opening the rest, only to throw them for the most part,
half-read, into the waste-paper basket.
“However,” he went on, still reading, “I have the satisfaction of
knowing I have done my best for the lad. And so have you, Stelfox. And
I may as well take this opportunity of telling you that you will start
the New Year with new wages. No objection to another ten pounds a year,
I suppose?”
“Not the least, sir, and thank you,” replied Stelfox, moving aside from
the door as somebody knocked at it from the outside.
Then Mr. Graham-Shute put his head in.
“Any admission?” said he, and he brought the rest of himself inside
without waiting for an answer. “It’s d--d cold in these parts,
Bradfield, and you keep your horses too fat. We’ve been a week on the
road back from those d--d ruins. I’m frozen to death. There was only
one comfort, and that was that my little Maudie’s jaw got too stiff to
move. So we had a heavenly spell of silence on the way back.”
He walked to the fire, and began slowly taking off his silk muffler,
his gloves, and his overcoat in the cheery warmth.
Stelfox had quietly withdrawn.
“By-the-bye, Bradfield,” went on Mr. Graham-Shute, agitating his jaw
violently, as if under the impression that in the Arctic atmosphere
outside something had gone wrong with it, “you’ll never guess who we
met down in the town just now, looking about for you.”
John Bradfield’s back was turned to his cousin, who might otherwise
have seen that the approaching communication was no surprise to him. He
was expected to show curiosity, however, so he asked:
“Well, who was it?”
“Why, your old pal, Alfred Marrable, who went out to Australia with you
over thirty years ago. He doesn’t seem to have done as well out there
as you did, by the looks of him. I knew him in a moment, dark as it
was, by that odd limp in his walk. So I stopped the carriage and spoke
to him. It appears he has come down here on purpose to see you. So I
put him on the road. We were full, or I would have given him a lift.”
“Much obliged to you, I am sure,” said John Bradfield, rather more
drily than he meant to do.
Mr. Graham-Shute, who took an intelligent interest in his cousin’s
affairs, stared at him in astonishment.
“What, don’t you want to see him?” he asked. “I thought I was bringing
you the best piece of news you’d had for a long day. For you’ve
generally such a good memory for your old friends, and I know that you
and Marrable were always great chums. Did you fall out, or what?”
“No,” said John Bradfield, recovering himself. “But the longest memory
is not eternal, and it’s seventeen years since I saw him last. I’ll do
all I can for him, certainly, for the sake of auld lang syne.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a footman knocked at the
door, and informed his master that a person wished to see him, a person
who gave the name of Marrable.
“Oh, yes, I’ll go and see him myself,” said John Bradfield, who hoped
that his cousin would, in the meantime, take himself off, and allow him
to welcome his old friend Marrable _en tête-à-tête_.
“I daresay he’ll be too shy, after all these years, to come in at all,”
said he, as he went out. But what he thought was, “I’ll do my best to
get rid of him.”
Graham-Shute’s voice, however, rang out cheerily after him:
“You have forgotten Marrable, if that’s what you think of him.”
John Bradfield went slowly down the few stairs which led into the inner
hall. By the time he reached the bend which would bring him in sight of
the newcomer, he had made up his mind.
“I must take the bull by the horns,” said he to himself. “After all,
the man’s a fool, and will be easy to manage, even if he does know or
guess a little too much.”
With all his knowledge of the world, John Bradfield was capable of
making the mistake of thinking a fool can be easy to manage.