Part 17 (1/2)
”Heaven only knows,” said the Doctor. ”Since my poor wife died she has been mistress here, and naturally very independent and womanly--a strange girl, my dear boy. I have been so wrapped up in my profession, that I have lost the habit of guiding her.”
”But the servants--what do they say?”
”That your brother saw her to the door, and she went straight up to her bedroom and shut herself in. When I came back she had gone out again, leaving this letter. I am afraid, my boy, you will have to wait. But there! it will be all right. Poor child! she will be as humble to you as I am.--Yes!”
This was to the Doctor's confidential servant, who brought in half-a-dozen cards with pencilled appeals.
”Dear me! dear me!” said the Doctor, taking the cards. ”Any one else?”
”Room's packed, sir.”
”Clive, my dear boy, I must see my poor patients. There, there! go and wait patiently. I'll come on to-night. You will see to matters, and perhaps I shall have a letter from Janet, and you will be able to write to her or go and see her. There, there! We are all straight again?”
”My dear old friend!” cried Clive.
”That's right! I did see the lawyer last night. Go and be patient; matters are mending fast. One moment though. Clive, my dear boy, angry pa.s.sions rise; you will not go and see your brother.”
”No, sir; he is keeping out of my way, or--”
”Eh? yes--or what?”
”I believe I should kill him.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
THE RICH MAN'S WILL.
Jessop Reed took good care that his brother should have no opportunity for meeting him to bring him to book, and during the interval before Grantham Reed's funeral the only news Clive heard of Janet was that she would be back to accompany her father to old Mr Reed's burial.
”There! my dear boy,” said the Doctor; ”I can do no more. You see she does not even give me her address. I believe, though, that she is down at Weymouth with the Hartleys.”
This was on the day before the funeral, and Clive had to exercise a little more patience till after all was over.
He was calmer now. There was that awful presence in the gloomy old house, and he felt that it was no time to think of his own troubles or to attack his brother. These matters, in spite of the suffering they caused him, were put aside, and he sat in the study thinking of all that had pa.s.sed with the stern, kindly-hearted old man lying above there in his last sleep. Of how he had fought the world to ama.s.s wealth, and of this his last speculation, whose success he had been fated not to witness, cut off as he was just after his son's announcement of the wealth it must of a certainty produce.
It seemed to Clive to be a hard lesson in the vanity of human hopes; but he did not flinch from his task.
”It was his wish,” he said to himself, ”that the mine should come out triumphant, and it shall, for all our sakes.”
As he mused, he thought of different business friends who had embarked in the speculation upon the base of his father's credit, but mainly upon the reports which he had sent home, his father having made these announcements to him during his absence in the replies to letters, the last being that the Doctor had bought heavily just before the shares bounded up and were still rising.
”Poor old father!” he said to himself; ”he shall find that I will do my duty by it to the end, for I suppose he will leave me the management-- perhaps fully to take his place.”
These business matters would intrude, and he did not cavil at them, for he knew that he was carrying out the old man's wishes.
Then came the thoughts of Janet again, and they were mingled with a bitter feeling of indignation against her for her readiness to think evil of one whose every thought had been true. But he knew that the reconciliation would be very sweet, and told himself that she was still but a girl, and that her character would ripen by and by.
”And be full of trust,” he muttered.
Then the scene of her leaving that room, angry, jealous, and proud, leaning upon his brother's arm, came back, and a sensation of fierce anger thrilled him.