They were standing together in the same place two months later when he
told her all, and asked her to be his wife in his own brusque
characteristic way.
"You have been so good, so kind," she said, in rather formal phrase, but
with her sweet eyes shining through tears and her sensitive lips
trembling. "You have shown yourself to be so noble in your unselfish care
for others, in your unsparing efforts for the good and benefit of
everyone----"
"Put that by," said Saxham rather roughly, "and please to look at me, Miss
Mildare."
He had never called her Lynette since her recovery, or touched the pretty
hand he coveted unless in formal greeting.
"Put all that by. You see me to-day as you have seen me for months past,
conscientious and cleanly, sober and sane, in body as in mind, discharging
my duty at the Hospital and elsewhere as well as any other man possessing
the special qualifications it demands. Pray understand that I am not a
philanthropist, and have never posed as one. For the sake, first of a man
who believed in me, and secondly of a woman whom I love--and you are
she--I have done what I have."
He squared his great shoulders and stood up before her, and, though his
face had never had any charm for her, its power went home to her and its
passion thrilled.
"I play no part. The man I seem to be I am. But up to seven months ago,
before the siege began, I was known in this town, and with reason, as the
Dop Doctor."
He saw recollection waken in her eyes, and nerved himself to the sharp
ordeal of changing it to repulsion and disgust.
"You have heard that name applied to me. It conveyed nothing loathsome to
your innocent mind. You once repeated it to me, and were about to ask its
meaning. I had it in my mind then to enlighten you, and for the mean and
cowardly baseness that shrank from the exposure I have to pay now in
the"--a muscle in his pale face twitched--"the exquisite pain it is to me
to tell you to-day."
"Then do not tell me." She said it almost in a whisper. "Dr. Saxham, I beg
you most earnestly to spare yourself." She dropped her eyes under the
fierce earnestness of his, and knitted her cold little hands in one
another. "Please leave the rest unsaid," she begged, without looking at
him.
"It cannot be," said Saxham. "Miss Mildare, the Dop Doctor was only
another nickname for the Town Drunkard. And now you know what you should
have known before if I had not been a coward and a knave."
She turned her eyes softly upon him, and they could not rest, it seemed to
her, upon a man of braver and more lofty bearing.
"I _was_ the Town Drunkard," Saxham went on, in the cold, clear voice that
cut like a knife to the intelligence. "Known in every liquor-saloon, and
familiar to every constable, and a standing butt for the clumsy jests that
the most utter dolt of a Police Magistrate might splutter from the Bench."
His jarring laugh hurt her. "The Man in the Street, and the Woman of the
Street, for that matter--pardon me if I offend your ears, but the truth
must be told--were my godfather and my godmother, and they gave me that
name between them. You are trembling, Miss Mildare. Sit down upon that
balk, and I will finish."
There was a remnant of timber lying near that had been used in the
construction of a gun-mounting. She moved to it and sat down, and the
Doctor went on:
"I am not going to weary you with the story of how I came to be--what I
have told you. But that I had lived a clean and honourable and temperate
life up to thirty years of age--when my world caved in with me--I swear is
the very truth!"