CRAWFORD SELLS A PATENT.
A few days after William Crawford's return from Welford, and the scene
in which he gave his wife a specimen of his quality as the player of a
part in private theatricals, he went up to London with one of the
hundred pounds in his pocket. He told her he could not dream of taking
the money from her except to pay the men working on the models and
machines for his great patent, and in the interest of their joint
worldly welfare.
He set off, as usual, in the afternoon, taking with him half the
money. He was a gambler, but no plunger. He played for the excitement
of the game, rather than for the sake of gaining. He had no idea that
he should win a fortune. His luck was usually bad, but this did not
keep him back; nor did he play on in the hope or expectation that it
would turn so as to recoup him. Every gambler is entitled to curse his
luck, and Crawford cursed his with no bated breath. But he would
rather have bad luck than no play. He was not a mean man with money
when he had it, but he was a desperate man when he wanted it.
Cards and pretty faces were his weaknesses. With regard to cards, he
recognised the laws of honour; with regard to pretty faces, he
regarded no law but the law of his wishes. He had never been in love
in his life. He admired pretty women, and made love to every pretty
woman he met, if occasion served. But he was completely wanting in any
feeling of self-sacrifice or devotion. He was, as he told his wife,
good at private theatricals. He could play the heroic, or romantic, or
sentimental lover, according as circumstances demanded, to the utmost
perfection; but his heart was never once touched. He looked on women
as inferior creatures, the natural prey of man. With them he had no
mercy or compunction. He made love automatically to the owner of every
pretty face he came across, provided there was no great risk from male
friend or relative; for, though he could assume the air and words of a
hero in the presence of a woman, he fought shy of men in their anger,
and was of that prudent disposition that prefers flight to fight.
On going to town this afternoon, he left half the money he had got
from his wife behind him. One hundred pounds was quite enough for one
night; one hundred pounds was quite as good as two. Playing for
certain stakes, one hundred pounds would last him the whole night,
even if luck were dead against him. Two hundred pounds would enable
him to play for stakes of double the amount: that was all. He would
rather play two nights for small stakes than one night for stakes of
double the value.
William Crawford was a cautious, not to say cowardly, man. This talk
of the artificers engaged in making a machine for him was not wholly
illusory. From time to time he ordered inexpensive portions of
machinery at a mechanical engineer's in the Blackfriars Road. He never
took the parts of the machine away; but left them in the workshops,
saying he would not remove them until it was all ready to be put
together. He had no fear that he might one day be driven to make good
his words about this wonderful machine in course of construction; but
if he were, there lay the wheels and racks and drums in the workshop.
Of course the manner in which they were to be put together remained
his secret. It was not likely he would divulge that until he had
secured his patent, and, for aught you could know or should know from
him to the contrary, he might have other portions of the machine in
course of manufacture for him in other workshops.
When he arrived in town this early day in June he went first to the
Blackfriars Road and gave an order for two cog-wheels of peculiar
make. He handed in a paper with the specification, paid a bill of a
couple of pounds, and then betook himself to the Counter Club.
Here he dined, and from the dinner-table went to the card-room, which
he did not leave until seven o'clock the next morning. He breakfasted
at the club, and after breakfast fell asleep in a chair in the
deserted smoking-room, and did not wake for a couple of hours. Then he
went out, and, turning into Bond Street, did a little shopping, and
got back to Richmond at about noon.
He found his wife in the drawing-room with some fancy work in her
hand. After an affectionate greeting, he sat down beside her and took
her hand as usual. Contrary to his custom, he had brought no book, or
flowers, or basket of fruit.
"And how did you get on in town, William?" she asked, giving no time
for him to notice, if he had not already noticed, the omission of his
customary little present.
"Very well indeed, Nellie. Better than I could have hoped. Better than
I deserved."
"Not better than you deserved, surely, dear," she said fondly. "That
could not be."
"Well, better than I could have hoped. I am afraid, Nellie, I got on
so splendidly that success has turned my head."
She looked at him in surprise and pressed his hand. "I know you better
than to think success could turn your head."
"Nevertheless, my success has had such an effect on me that I have not
brought you any flowers, or fruit, or a book. Does not that look like
being spoiled by success? Should I not be spoiled by prosperity when I
forgot you?"
"It does not follow," she said tenderly, as though she were excusing
herself, not him, "that because you did not bring me something that
you forgot me."
He put his hand in his pocket, took something out of it, and before
she knew what he was doing she found a gold bracelet, having a circle
of pearls round a large diamond, clasped upon her arm.
She gave a little cry of wonder and pleasure. "Why, what is this?
Where did you get it? Whom is it for?"
"It is for my own wife Nellie. I bought it for her in Bond Street
to-day, to show her that I did not forget her when away. And I did not
buy it out of the money she lent me yesterday--for, look!" He threw
into her lap a lot of gold and notes. "There's the hundred pounds I
took with me to town--and look!" He held out towards her more gold and
notes. "Here is another hundred I have got over and above what she
lent me, and the price of the bracelet."
"Wonder upon wonder!" she cried with a laugh and a simple childlike
joy in her husband's success. "Tell me all about the affair. Have you
met fairies?"
"No, dear. Only a good angel, and you are she," he said, and kissed
the hand below the gleaming bracelet.
"But I did not give you this. You got this yourself."
"No, you did not give me this money directly, but you gave me the
means of getting it."
"But tell me all, dear. I am dying to hear."
"You must know, then, that in designing some machinery for preparing
my fibre I hit upon an immense improvement in the scutching machine
now in use. I patented my improvement, and sold my patent last evening
for two hundred and fifty pounds."
She was overwhelmed with gratitude and joy. This was the first-fruit
of his genius, the earnest of his great triumph.
For half-an-hour they sat and chatted, he telling her his schemes for
the future, and she listening, full of delight and pride and love.
Then he said he had some writing to do, and went to his room.
The fact was that he could hardly keep his eyes open. It had been a
very hot night at the Counter Club, and he had come away the winner of
close upon three hundred pounds. He locked the door, drew down the
blind, threw himself on a couch, and was fast asleep in a few minutes.
Mrs. Crawford always breakfasted in her own room, and had her other
meals brought to her in the drawing-room. She had gradually sunk back
almost to the helpless condition in which she had lived so long before
the fire. She suffered no pain, but she was nearly as helpless as a
year ago. If necessity required it, she could creep about the room by
resting her hands on the furniture, but as a rule she went from one
place to the other by means of her invalid's chair. She never ventured
down-stairs now. She lived upon the first-floor. Here were her
bedroom, the drawing-room, her husband's study--which he called his
own room--and the dressing-room where he slept, so as to be within
call if she needed assistance in the night.
The doctors told Crawford that his wife was, if anything, rather worse
than she had been before the fire, and that any other such shock would
in all likelihood kill her.
"Is there no chance of it producing an effect like the former one?"
Crawford had asked.
Well, there was no saying for certain. This, however, was sure, that
if she sustained another shock and by chance she once more regained
the use of her limbs, the relief would be only temporary, and the
reaction would leave her in a very critical condition indeed--the
chances were ten to one she would die.
A shock, then, was to be avoided at any cost.
With Mrs. Crawford's life all William Crawford's interest in the
property would pass away. This property brought in more than Ned
Bayliss, or Jim Ford, or Matt Jordan, or any of the other loafers on
Welford Bridge imagined. The income was nearer to two than one
thousand a year, and Mrs. Crawford's savings exceeded three thousand
pounds. These savings would become Crawford's absolute property upon
his wife's death. She had practically put them at his disposal
already. They were his own, she told him, and he took her word for it.
But that was a good reason why he should be moderately careful of
them. As long as she lived he had not only these savings at his
disposal, but the lion's share of the income as well. If he did not
blunder, nothing could take the savings away from him; if she died he
would lose all participation in the fine income.
A shock was to be avoided at any cost.
One morning after breakfast, in the middle of June, Crawford came into
the drawing-room, and said to his wife:
"I have slept so badly! I do not know when I had so little sleep, and
the little I got so disturbed."
She looked at him anxiously. "You are not unwell? You don't feel
anything the matter, do you?"
"O, no! I am quite well. But I have had such horrid nightmares. What
you said to me a fortnight ago about the want of gates on that
ice-house all came back to me in sleep last night, and I had the most
awful visions of that young Layard drowning in it while I was looking
on, unable to stretch out my hand to save him." He made a gesture as
though to sweep away the spectacle still haunting him.
"I am so sorry, William, I said anything about the place. I am,
indeed. I spoke foolishly, no doubt. You are not so superstitious as
to fancy anything dreadful has happened?" she asked, losing colour and
leaning back in her chair.
"Dear me! No. And I don't think you spoke foolishly at all. I now see
that what you said was quite right. I own it's very selfish of me, but
I do not feel disposed to go through another such night as last. That
brought home to me the danger you saw at once, and instinctively."
She could not help smiling and feeling gratified at these candid and
gracious words from so clever a man--from a man who got two hundred
and fifty pounds the other day for the pure brain-work of a couple of
hours.
"And what do you think of doing?"
"Well, I feel that the surest way to lay the ghost that haunted me
last night, and provide against all danger, would be for me to go down
to Welford and get these gateways boarded up."
"Indeed, indeed! I'm sure that would be the best thing to do. When did
you fancy you would go?"
"I could go to-day. I am not doing anything particular. Do you want me
for anything?"
He asked the question in a soft submissive voice.
"I!" she cried, flushing with pleasure at his deference to her. "Not
I, William! I am all right, and feel as well as usual. You could do
nothing that would please me more."
"Very well, then; I'll go at once. I shall not want more than an hour
or so there. I need not wait to see the thing done. All I shall have
to do is to get hold of a carpenter, and put the job into his hands."
And so he set out for Welford.
The fact is he had dreamed last night of Hetty Layard's bright face
and wonderful golden hair, and he was getting tired of Richmond
and--the house.
It would be very pleasant to go down to Welford, knock at the door,
and find Hetty alone. Her brother would be at the gasworks. Philip Ray
was in some public office or other, and could not come to make that
tow-path horrible with his presence at that hour of the day. He should
be able to reach Crawford's House at about eleven, and get away at
about one or two. Thus he would run no risks, and he should see again
the prettiest girl he had now in his memory.