Part 10 (1/2)

muttered Bielby)--”and her father was a man who had been rather unsuccessful in life.”

”What was his profession, what did he do?”

”He had been a sailor, I think,” said the academic philanthropist; ”but when I knew him he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he was anything, a professional tattooer.”

”What's that?”

”He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of that cla.s.s for a livelihood.”

Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a level with the situation.

”Has Miss--h'm, Spears--s.h.i.+elds? thank you; has she been an orphan long?” he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the most undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter's character.

”I only heard of his death yesterday,” said Maitland.

”Was it sudden?”

”Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St George's, Hanover Square.”

”St. George's, Hanover Square, indeed!” said the don, and once more he relapsed, after a long whistle, into a significant silence. ”Maitland,”

he said at last, ”how did you come to be acquainted with these people?

The father, as I understand, was a kind of artist; but you can't, surely, have met them in society?”

”He came a good deal to 'my public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. I think I told you about it, sir, and you rather seemed to approve of it. The tavern in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying to do something for the riverside population, and to mix with them for their good, you know.”

”Good-night!” growled Bielby, very abruptly, and with considerable determination in his tone. ”I am rather busy this evening. I think you had better think no more about the young lady, and say nothing whatever about the matter to anyone. Good-night!”.

So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, in the astonishment caused by Maitland's avowals, he had allowed to go out, and he applied himself to a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of the Cambridge school, and drank beer. Maitland knew his friend and mentor too well to try to prolong the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak college room, where a timid fire was smoking and crackling among the wet f.a.ggots, with a feeling that he must steer his own course in this affair. It was clearly quite out of the path of Bielby's experience.

”And yet,” thought Maitland, ”if I had not taken his advice about trying to become more human, and taken that infernal public-house too, I never would have been in this hole.”

All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything that might reasonably be called food. ”He had eaten; he had not dined,” to adopt the distinction of Brillat-Savarin. He had been dependent on the gritty and flaccid hospitalities of refreshment-rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now he felt faint as well as weary; but, rummaging amidst his cupboards, he could find no provisions more tempting and nutritious than a box of potted shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of some Hungarian vintage sent by an advertising firm to the involuntary bailees of St.

Gatien's. Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these delicacies.

He did not forget that he had neglected to answer a note, on philanthropic business, from Mrs. St. John Deloraine.

Weary as he was, he took pleasure in replying at length, and left the letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a heavy headache, he tumbled into bed, where, for that matter, he went on tumbling and tossing during the greater part of the night. About five o'clock he fell into a sleep full of dreams, only to be awakened, at six, by the steam-whooper, or ”devil,” a sweet boon with which his philanthropy had helped to endow the reluctant and even recalcitrant University of Oxford.

”Instead of becoming human, I have only become humanitarian,” Maitland seemed to hear his own thoughts whispering to himself in a night-mare.

Through the slowly broadening winter dawn, in s.n.a.t.c.hes of sleep that lasted, or seemed to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, with a feverish iteration.

CHAPTER VII.--After the Inquest.

To be ill in college rooms, how miserable it is! Mainland's scout called him at half-past seven with the invariable question, ”Do you breakfast out, sir?” If a man were in the condemned cell, his scout (if in attendance) would probably arouse him on the morning of his execution with, ”Do you breakfast out, sir?”

”No,” said Maitland, in reply to the changeless inquiry; ”in common room as usual. Pack my bag, I am going down by the nine o'clock train.”

Then he rose and tried to dress; but his head ached more than ever, his legs seemed to belong to someone else, and to be no subject of just complacency to their owner. He reeled as he strove to cross the room, then he struggled back into bed, where, feeling alternately hot and cold, he covered himself with his ulster, in addition to his blankets.