Part 23 (2/2)
She saw her lover carried off, and then she walked away to a lodging where she was known, and where they would put her up for the night. She was too excited to feel any fear for the consequences of her act as yet.
”Yes, it will be too delightful,” she said to herself as she went along.
”I will send Miss Mary her old sweetheart.”
The barrister had not been so far from being the prophet of his own fate, when he penned those verses to ”La Fille de Marbre.”
CHAPTER XIV.
SUSAN BRINGS MARY TO AN OLD LOVER.
On losing sight of the barrister, Dr. Duncan returned to the hospital, hurried over certain professional duties which he could not neglect, and then went off to Hudson's rooms in the Temple in the hope that his friend had found his way home. He did not forget to take with him some sedative drugs, which he knew the unfortunate man would most certainly be in need of.
He did not reach the Temple until three in the morning.
On mounting the stairs he found both doors of the chambers wide open, for Hudson had not thought of closing them after him when he rushed out in his mad frenzy.
The doctor entered the rooms; they were deserted. He looked around him and saw the half empty brandy bottle on the table. The mirror over the mantel-piece was broken, and fragments of the gla.s.s were lying on the floor; the madman, after Susan had left him, seeing his own image in the mirror, had mistaken it for some other person, and had thrown a chair at it. The candle was still burning, a fact which proved to the doctor that his friend had been in his chambers, since he left him outside the Albion.
Dr. Duncan went out, and on inquiring of the porter at the Middle Temple gate learned that Hudson had left the Temple nearly two hours before.
Alarmed for his friend's safety, he returned to the chambers, and pa.s.sed the rest of the night there, vainly waiting for him.
Morning came, and he could stay no longer; he would be soon due at the hospital, so he called on a barrister whom he knew to be a friend of Hudson's, put the whole circ.u.mstances before him, and persuaded him to watch for the return of the man to his chambers, and see that the proper steps were taken for his safety.
On going out, he found that he had still some little time to spare, and it occurred to him that he would not walk directly to the hospital, but take a road on which he thought he might probably meet Mary Grimm on her way to the same destination. He knew it was about the hour that she usually started from home.
He had been very anxious to find an opportunity of speaking again to her in private. He determined to discover what were her objections to accepting his love, and whether they were really insuperable.
He walked on, until he reached the street in which she lived without encountering her; so he stood at the end of it, waiting till she came out, his heart beating with excitement.
He stood there several minutes, then looking at his watch he saw it was later than he had imagined; and thinking that he must have missed her, he was about to turn away sick at heart with disappointment, when suddenly he perceived her well-known figure approaching him.
When she saw him, her feelings were as strongly stirred as were his own, and her face lost all its colour.
They shook hands in silence, each conscious that the other was too deeply moved for language.
Then the doctor spoke words simple in themselves, and with a calm voice; but yet they seemed to her to breathe forth all the pa.s.sion that a human being under that fiercest spell of love can feel.
”I knew that you walked by this road to the hospital. I have come here to meet you, Miss King.”
Mary answered nothing. He continued, ”I have come to see you, to speak to you. No, let us go this way,” and he turned off into a road, which was not the direct one to the hospital, but which led through the neighbouring park, and was little frequented by pedestrians at that early hour, so afforded opportunity for undisturbed conversation.
They walked on side by side for some minutes without either speaking.
”Mary!” then said the doctor--”you must let me call you Mary, even if I am only to be your friend--I have so longed to see you by yourself, to learn from your lips what my fate is to be!”
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