CHRONOLOGY.--The Hard Cash sailed from Canton months before the boat race at Henley recorded in Chapter I., but it landed in Barkington a fortnight after the last home event I recorded in its true series.
Now this fortnight, as it happens, was fruitful of incidents, and must be dealt with at once. After that, "Love" and "Cash," the converging branches of this story, will flow together in one stream.
Alfred Hardie kept faith with Mrs. Dodd, and, by an effort she appreciated, forbore to express his love for Julia except by the pen. He took in Lloyd's shipping news, and got it down by rail, in hopes there would be something about the _Agra;_ then he could call at Albion Villa.
Mrs. Dodd had given him that loophole: meantime he kept moping for an invitation, which never came.
Julia was now comparatively happy, and so indeed was Alfred; but then the male of our species likes to be superlatively happy, not comparatively;and that Mrs. Dodd forgot or perhaps had not observed.
One day Sampson was at Albion Villa, and Alfred knew it. Now, though it was a point of honour with poor Alfred not to hang about after Julia until her father's return, he had a perfect right to lay in wait for Sampson and hear something about her; and he was so deep in love that even a word at second-hand from her lips was a drop of dew to his heart.
So he strolled up towards the villa. He had nearly reached it, when a woman ran past him making the most extraordinary sounds: I can only describe it as screaming under her breath. Though he only saw her back, he recognised Mrs. Maxley. One back differeth from another, whatever you may have been told to the contrary in novels and plays. He called to her:
she took no notice, and darted wildly through the gate of Albion Villa.
Alfred's curiosity was excited, and he ventured to put his head over the gate. But Mrs. Maxley had disappeared.
Alfred had half a mind to go in and inquire if anything was the matter:
it would be a good excuse.
While he hesitated, the dining-room window was thrown violently up, and Sampson looked out. "Hy! Hardie! my good fellow! for Heaven's sake a fly, and a fast one!"It was plain something very serious had occurred: so Alfred flew towards the nearest fly-stand. On the way, he fell in with a chance fly drawn up at a public-house; he jumped on the box and drove rapidly towards Albion Villa. Sampson was hobbling to meet him--he had sprained his ankle or would not have asked for a conveyance--to save time he got up beside Alfred, and told him to drive hard to Little Friar Street. On the way he explained hurriedly: Mrs. Maxley had burst in on him at Albion Villa to say her husband was dying in torment: and indeed the symptoms she gave were alarming, and, if correct, looked very like lockjaw. But her description had been cut short by a severe attack, which choked her and turned her speechless and motionless, and white to the very lips.
"'Oho,' sis I, 'brist-pang!' And at such a time, ye know. But these women are as unseasonable as they are unreasonable. Now, angina pictoris or brist-pang is not curable through the lungs, nor the stomick, nor the liver, nor the stays, nor the saucepan, as the bunglintinkerindox of the schools pretind, but only through that mighty mainspring the Brain; and instid of going meandering to the Brain round by the stomick, and so giving the wumman lots o' time to die first, which is the scholastic practice, I wint at the Brain direct, took a puff o' chlorofm put m' arm round her neck, laid her back in a chair--she didn't struggle, for, when this disorrder grips ye, ye cant move hand nor foot--and had my lady into the land of Nod in half a minute; thin off t' her husband; so here's th'
Healer between two stools--spare the whipcord, spoil the knacker!--it would be a good joke if I was to lose both pashints for want of a little unbeequity, wouldn't it--Lash the lazy vagabin!--Not that I care: what interest have I in their lives? they never pay: but ye see custom's second nature; an d'Ive formed a vile habit; I've got to be a Healer among the killers: an d'a Triton among--the millers. Here we are at last, Hiven be praised." And he hopped into the house faster than most people can run on a good errand. Alfred flung the reins to a cad and followed him.
The room was nearly full of terrified neighbours: Sampson shouldered them all roughly out of his way, and there, on a bed, lay Maxley's gaunt figure in agony.
His body was drawn up by the middle into an arch, and nothing touched the bed but the head and the heels; the toes were turned back in the most extraordinary contortion, and the teeth set by the rigour of the convulsion, and in the man's white face and fixed eyes were the horror and anxiety, that so often show themselves when the body feels itself in the grip of Death.
Mr. Osmond the surgeon was there; he had applied a succession of hot cloths to the pit of the stomach, and was trying. to get laudanum down the throat, but the clenched teeth were impassable.
He now looked up and said politely, "Ah! Dr. Sampson, I am glad to see you here. The seizure is of a cataleptic nature, I apprehend. The treatment hitherto has been hot epithems to the abdomen, and----"Here Sampson, who had examined the patient keenly, and paid no more attention to Osmond than to a fly buzzing, interrupted him as unceremoniously--"Poisoned," said he philosophically.
"Poisoned!!" screamed the people.
"Poisoned!" cried Mr. Osmond, in whose little list of stereotyped maladies poisoned had no place. "Is there any one you have reason to suspect?""I don't suspect, nor conject, sir: I know. The man is poisoned, the substance strychnine. Now stand out of the way you gaping gabies, and let me work. Hy, young Oxford! you are a man: get behind and hold both his arms for your life! That's you!"He whipped off his coat laid hold of Osmond's epithems, chucked them across the room, saying, "You may just as well squirt rose-water at a house on fire;" drenched his handkerchief with chloroform, sprang upon the patient like a mountain cat and chloroformed him with all his might.
