The Wharf by the Docks by Florence Warden (novel24 TXT) 📖

CHAPTER I.

SOMETHING AMISS.

Everybody knows Canterbury, with its Old-World charms and its ostentatious air of being content to be rather behind the times, of looking down upon the hurrying Americans who dash through its cathedral and take snap-shots at its slums, and at all those busy moderns who cannot afford to take life at its own jog-trot pace.

But everybody does not know the charming old halls and comfortable, old-fashioned mansions which are dotted about the neighboring country, either nestling in secluded nooks of the Kentish valleys or holding a stately stand on the wooded hills.

Of this latter category was The Beeches, a pretty house of warm, red brick, with a dignified Jacobean front, which stood upon the highest ground of a prettily wooded park, and commanded one of those soft, undulating, sleepy landscapes which are so characteristically English, and of which grazing sheep and ruminating cows form so important a feature. A little tame, perhaps, but very pleasant, very homely, very sweet to look upon by the tired eyes that have seen enough of the active, bustling world.

Mr. George Wedmore, of the firm of Wedmore, Parkinson and Bishop, merchants of the city of London, had bought back the place, which had formerly belonged to his family, from the Jews into whose hands it had fallen, and had settled there to spend in retirement the latter end of his life, surrounded by a family who were not too well pleased to exchange busy Bayswater for what they were flippant enough to call a wilderness.

Dinner was over; and Mr. Wedmore, in a snug easy-chair by the dining-room fire, was waiting for Doctor Haselden, who often looked in for a smoke and a game of chess with the owner of The Beeches.

A lean, fidgety man, with thin hair and grayish whiskers, Mr. Wedmore looked less at home in the velveteen suit and gaiters which he persisted in wearing even in the evening, less like the country gentleman it was his ambition to be, than like the care-laden city merchant he at heart still was.

On the other side of the table sat his better half, in whom it was easy to see he must have found all the charm of contrast to his own personality. A cheery, buxom woman, still handsome, full of life and fun, she had held for the whole of her married life a sway over her lord and master all the greater that neither of them was conscious of the fact. A most devoted and submissive wife, a most indulgent and affectionate mother, Mrs. Wedmore occupied the not unenviable position of being half slave, half idol in her own household.

The clock struck eight, and the bell rang.

"There he is! There's the doctor!" cried Mrs. Wedmore, with a beaming nod. Her husband sat up in his chair, and the troubled frown which he had worn all the evening grew a little deeper.

"I should like you, my dear, to leave us together this evening," said he.

Mrs. Wedmore jumped up at once, gathering her balls of wool and big knitting-needles together with one quick sweep of the arm.

"All right, dear," said she, with another nod, giving him an anxious look.

Mr. Wedmore perceived the look and smiled. He stretched out his hand to lay it gently on his wife's arm as she passed him.

"Nothing about me. Nothing for you to be alarmed about," said he.

Mrs. Wedmore hesitated a moment. She had her suspicions, and she would dearly have liked to know more. But she was the best trained of wives; and after a moment's pause, seeing that she was to hear nothing further, she said, good-humoredly: "All right, dear," and left the room, just in time to shake hands with Doctor Haselden as she went out.

Now, while the host found it impossible to shake off the signs of his old calling, the doctor was a man who had never been able to assume them. From head to foot there was no trace of the doctor in his appearance; he looked all over what at heart he was--the burly, good-humored, home-loving, land-loving country gentleman, who looked upon Great Datton, where his home was, as the pivot of the world.

However he was dressed, he always looked shabby, and he could never have been mistaken for anything but an English gentleman.

He shook hands with Mr. Wedmore, with a smile. These poor Londoners, trying to acclimatize themselves, amused him greatly. He looked upon them much as the Londoner looks upon the Polish Jew immigrants--with pity, a little jealousy, and no little scorn.

"Where's Carlo?" asked he.

"Oh, Carlo was a nuisance, so I've sent him to the stable," said Mr. Wedmore, with the slightly colder manner which he instantly assumed if any grievance of his, however small, was touched upon.

Carlo was a young retriever, which Mr. Wedmore, in the stern belief that it was the proper thing in a country house, had encouraged about the house until his habits of getting between everybody's legs and helping himself to the contents of everybody's plate had so roused the ire of the rest of the household that Mr. Wedmore had had to give way to the universal prejudice against him.

The doctor shook his head. Lack of capacity for managing a dog was just what one might have expected from these new-comers.

Mr. Wedmore turned his chair to face that of the doctor, and spoke in the sharp, incisive tones of a man who has serious business on hand.

"I've been hoping you would drop in every night for the last fortnight," said he, "and as you didn't come, I was at last obliged to send for you. I have a very important matter to consult you about. You've brought your pipe?" The doctor produced it from his pocket. "Well, fill it, and listen. It's about young Horne--Dudley Horne--that I want to speak to you, to consult you, in fact."

The doctor nodded as he filled his pipe.

"The young barrister I've met here, who's engaged to your elder daughter?"

"Well, she was all but engaged to him," admitted Mr. Wedmore, in a grudging tone. "But I'm going to put a stop to it, and I'll tell you why." Here he got up, as if unable to keep still in the state of excitement into which he was falling, and stood with his hands behind him and his back to the fire. "I have a strong suspicion that the young man's not quite right here." And lowering his voice, Mr. Wedmore touched his forehead.

"Good gracious! You surprise me!" cried the doctor. "He always seemed to me such a clever young fellow. Indeed, you said so to me yourself."

"So he is. Very clever," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I don't suppose there are many young chaps of his age--for he's barely thirty--at the Bar whose prospects are as good as his. But, for all that, I have a strong suspicion that he's got a tile loose, and that's why I wanted to speak to you. Now his father was in a lunatic asylum no less than three times, and was in one when he died."

The doctor looked grave.

"That's a bad history, certainly. Do you know how the father's malady started?"

"Why, yes. It was the effect of a wound in the head received when he was a young man out in America, in the war with Mexico in '46."

"That isn't the sort of mania that is likely to come down from father to son," said the doctor, "if his brain was perfectly sound before, and the recurrent mania the result of an accident."

"Well, so I've understood. And the matter has never troubled me at all until lately, when I have begun to detect certain morbid tendencies in Dudley, and a general change which makes me hesitate to trust him with the happiness of my daughter."

"Can you give me instances?" asked the doctor, although he began to feel sure that whatever opinion he might express on the matter, Mr. Wedmore would pay little attention to any but his own.

"Well, for you to understand the case, I must tell you a little more about the lad's father. He and I were very old friends--chums from boyhood, in fact. When he came back from America--where he went from a lad's love of adventure--he made a good marriage from a monetary point of view; married a wharf on the Thames, in fact, somewhere Limehouse way, and settled down as a wharfinger. He was a steady fellow, and did very well, until one fine morning he was found trying to cut his throat, and had to be locked up. Well, he was soon out again that time, and things went on straight enough for eight or nine years, by which time he had done very well--made a lot of money by speculation--and was thinking of retiring from business altogether. Then, perhaps it was the extra pressure of his increased business, but, at any rate, he broke out again, tried to murder his wife that time, and did, in fact, injure her so much that she died shortly afterward. Of course, he had to be shut up again; and a man named Edward Jacobs, a shrewd Jew, who was his confidential clerk, carried on the business in his absence. Now, both Horne and his wife had had the fullest confidence in this Jacobs, but he turned out all wrong. As soon as he learned, at the end of about twelve months, that Horne was coming out again, he decamped with everything he could lay his hands on; and from the position of affairs you may guess that he made a very good haul. Well, poor Horne found himself in a maze of difficulties; in fact, his clerk's fraud ruined him. Everything that could be sold or mortgaged had to go to the settlement, and when his affairs had been finally put straight, there was only a little bit left, that had been so settled upon his wife that no one could touch it. He made a good fight of it for a little while, with the help of a few old friends, but, in the end, he broke down again for the third time. But he escaped out of the asylum and went abroad, without seeing his friends or his child, and a few months afterward the announcement of his death in an American asylum was sent by a correspondent out there. Happily there were no difficulties about securing the mother's money for the son, and it was enough to educate the boy and to give him a start; but, of course, he had to begin the world as a poor man instead of a rich one. Perhaps that was all the better for him--or so I thought until lately."

"And what are these signs of a morbid tendency that you spoke of?" asked the doctor.

"Well, in the first place, after being almost extravagant in his devotion to my daughter, Doreen, he now neglects her outrageously--comes down very seldom, writes short letters or none. Now, my daughter is not the sort of girl that a sane man would neglect," added Doctor Wedmore, proudly.

"Certainly not," assented the doctor, inwardly thinking that it was much less surprising than it would have been in the case of one of his own girls.

"In the second place, he is always harping upon the subject of Jacobs and his peculations--an