Part 18 (2/2)

you remember the quotation,--Shakspeare. Where on earth is he? My dear Sir Philip, I am sure you would enjoy his conversation.”

Sir Philip! Could it be Sir Philip Derval to whom the mayor was giving a flattering yet scarcely propitiatory description of myself? Curiosity combined with a sense of propriety in not keeping myself an unsuspected listener; I emerged from the curtain, but silently, and reached the centre of the room before the mayor perceived me. He then came up to me eagerly, linked his arm in mine, and leading me to a gentleman seated on a sofa, close by the window I had quitted, said,--

”Doctor, I must present you to Sir Philip Derval, just returned to England, and not six hours in L----. If you would like to see the museum again, Sir Philip, the doctor, I am sure, will accompany you.”

”No, I thank you; it is painful to me at present to see, even under your roof, the collection which my poor dear friend, Dr. Lloyd, was so proudly beginning to form when I left these parts.”

”Ay, Sir Philip, Dr. Lloyd was a worthy man in his way, but sadly duped in his latter years; took to mesmerism, only think! But our young doctor here showed him up, I can tell you.”

Sir Philip, who had acknowledged my first introduction to his acquaintance by the quiet courtesy with which a well-bred man goes through a ceremony that custom enables him to endure with equal ease and indifference, now evinced by a slight change of manner how little the mayor's reference to my dispute with Dr. Lloyd advanced me in his good opinion. He turned away with a bow more formal than his first one, and said calmly,

”I regret to hear that a man so simple-minded and so sensitive as Dr.

Lloyd should have provoked an encounter in which I can well conceive him to have been worsted. With your leave, Mr. Mayor, I will look into your ballroom. I may perhaps find there some old acquaintances.”

He walked towards the dancers, and the mayor, linking his arm in mine, followed close behind, saying in his loud hearty tones,--

”Come along, you too, Dr. Fenwick, my girls are there; you have not spoken to them yet.”

Sir Philip, who was then half way across the room, turned round abruptly, and, looking me full in the face, said,--

”Fenwick, is your name Fenwick,--Allen Fenwick?”

”That is my name, Sir Philip.”

”Then permit me to shake you by the hand; you are no stranger, and no mere acquaintance to me. Mr. Mayor, we will look into your ballroom later; do not let us keep you now from your other guests.”

The mayor, not in the least offended by being thus summarily dismissed, smiled, walked on, and was soon lost amongst the crowd.

Sir Philip, still retaining my hand, reseated himself on the sofa, and I took my place by his side. The room was still deserted; now and then a straggler from the ballroom looked in for a moment, and then sauntered back to the central place of attraction.

”I ain trying to guess,” said I, ”how my name should be known to you.

Possibly you may, in some visit to the Lakes, have known my father?”

”No; I know none of your name but yourself,--if, indeed, as I doubt not, you are the Allen Fenwick to whom I owe no small obligation. You were a medical student at Edinburgh in the year ----?”

”Yes.”

”So! At that time there was also at Edinburgh a young man, named Richard Strahan. He lodged in a fourth flat in the Old Town.”

”I remember him very well.”

”And you remember, also, that a fire broke out at night in the house in which he lodged; that when it was discovered there seemed no hope of saving him. The flames wrapped the lower part of the house; the staircase had given way. A boy, scarcely so old as himself, was the only human being in the crowd who dared to scale the ladder that even then scarcely reached the windows from which the smoke rolled in volumes; that boy penetrated into the room, found the inmate almost insensible, rallied, supported, dragged him to the window, got him on the ladder,--saved his life then: and his life later, by nursing with a woman's tenderness, through the fever caused by terror and excitement, the fellow-creature he had rescued by a man's daring. The name of that gallant student was Allen Fenwick, and Richard Strahan is my nearest living relation. Are we friends now?”

I answered confusedly. I had almost forgotten the circ.u.mstances referred to. Richard Strahan had not been one of my more intimate companions, and I bad never seen nor heard of him since leaving college. I inquired what had become of him.

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