"There's trouble everywhere. It attaches itself more or less to all
people as they journey through life. Yes, I quite agree with what you
say, Squire: that I, a man at my ease in the world and possessing no
close ties of my own, ought to be tolerably exempt from care. But I am
not so. You have heard of the skeleton in the closet, Johnny Ludlow.
Few families are without one. I have mine."
Mr. Brandon nodded to me, as he spoke, over the silver coffee-pot. I had
gone to the Tavistock Hotel from Miss Deveen's to breakfast with him and
the Squire--who had come up for a week. You have heard of this visit of
ours to London before, and there's no need to say more about it here.
The present skeleton in Mr. Brandon's family closet was his nephew,
Roger Bevere. The young fellow, now aged twenty-three, had been for
some years in London pursuing his medical studies, and giving perpetual
trouble to his people in the country. During this present visit Mr.
Brandon had been unable to hear of him. Searching here, inquiring there,
nothing came of it: Roger seemed to have vanished into air. This morning
the post had brought Mr. Brandon a brief note:
"SIR,
"Roger Bevery is lying at No. 60, Gibraltar Terrace (Islington
District), with a broken arm.
"Faithfully yours,
"T. PITT."
The name was spelt Bevery in the note, you observe. Strangers, deceived
by the pronunciation, were apt to write it so.
"Well, this is nice news!" had been Mr. Brandon's comment upon the short
note.
"Any way, you will be more at your ease now you have found him,"
remarked the Squire.
"I don't know that, Todhetley. I have found, it seems, the address of
the place where he is lying, but I have not found _him_. Roger has been
going to the bad this many a day; I expect by this time he must be
nearing the journey's end."
"It is only a broken arm that he has, sir," I put in, thinking what a
gloomy view he was taking of it all. "That is soon cured."
"Don't you speak so confidently, Johnny Ludlow," reproved Mr. Brandon.
"We shall find more the matter with Roger than a broken arm; take my
word for that. He has been on the wrong tack this long while. A broken
arm would not cause him to hide himself--and that's what he must have
been doing."
"Some of those hospital students are a wild lot--as I have heard," said
the Squire.
Mr. Brandon nodded in answer. "When Roger came from Hampshire to
enter on his studies at St. Bartholomew's, he was as pure-hearted,
well-intentioned a young fellow as had ever been trained by an anxious
mother"--and Mr. Brandon poured a drop more weak tea out of his own
tea-pot to cover his emotion. "Fit for heaven, one might have thought:
any way, had been put in the road that leads to it. Loose, reckless
companions got hold of him, and dragged him down to their evil ways."
Breakfast over, little time was lost in starting to find out Gibraltar
Terrace. The cab soon took us to it. Roger had been lying there more
than a week. Hastening up that way one evening, on leaving the hospital,
to call upon a fellow-student, he was knocked down by a fleet hansom
rounding the corner of Gibraltar Terrace. Pitt the doctor happened to be
passing at the time, and had him carried into the nearest house: one he
had attended patients in before. The landlady, Mrs. Mapping, showed us
upstairs.
(And she, poor faded woman, turned out to have been known to the Squire
in the days long gone by, when she was pretty little Dorothy Grape.
But I have told her story already, and there's no need to allude to it
again.)
Roger lay in bed, in a small back-room on the first-floor; a mild, fair,
pleasant-looking young man with a white bandage round his head. Mr. Pitt
explained that the arm was not absolutely broken, but so much contused
and inflamed as to be a worse hurt. This would not have kept him in
bed, however, but the head had also been damaged, and fever set in.
"So this is where he has lain, hiding, while I have been ransacking
London for him!" remarked Mr. Brandon, who was greatly put out by the
whole affair; and perhaps the word "hiding" might have more truth in it
than even he suspected.
"When young Scott called last night--a fellow-student of your nephew's
who comes to see him and bring him changes of clothes from his
lodgings--he said you were making inquiries at the hospital and had
left your address," explained Pitt. "So I thought I ought to write to
you, sir."
"And I am much obliged to you for doing it, and for your care of him
also," said Mr. Brandon.
And presently, when Pitt was leaving, he followed him downstairs to Mrs.
Mapping's parlour, to ask whether Roger was in danger.
"I do not apprehend any, now that the fever is subsiding," answered
Pitt. "I can say almost surely that none will arise if we can only keep
him quiet. That has been the difficulty throughout--his restlessness. It
is just as though he had something on his mind."
"What should he have on his mind?" retorted Mr. Brandon, in contention.
"Except his sins. And I expect _they_ don't trouble him much."
Pitt laughed a little. "Well, sir, he is not in any danger at present.
But if the fever were to come back again--and increase--why, I can't
foresee what the result might be."
"Then I shall send for Lady Bevere."