Chapter Forty Eight.

Before morning Kate was sufficiently recovered to be removed to Leigh’s house; but it was days before her senses had fully returned, and her brain was thoroughly awake to the present and the past, to find herself lovingly attended by her aunt and Jenny Leigh, who was her companion down to Northwood, while Claud kept the doctor company in town and accompanied him as assistant every time he visited Great Ormond Street. For Leigh, in spite of his own injuries, continued to attend Garstang till he was thoroughly out of danger, though it was months before he was able to go to his office.

It was time he went there, for the place, and his country house in Kent, were in charge of his creditors’ representatives, it having come like a crash on the monetary world that Garstang, the money-lender and speculator, had failed for a very heavy sum.

Poetic justice or not, John Garstang found himself bankrupt in health and pocket; his bold attempt to save his position by making Kate his wife being the gambler’s last stroke.

As a matter of course, James Wilton was involved; led on by Garstang, he had mortgaged his property deeply, and the money was now called in, and ruin stared him in the face just at a time when he was prostrate with illness.

“It’s jolly hard on the old man,” said Claud one day when he had come up to town and called on Leigh, “for the guv’nor has lorded it down at Northwood all these years, and could have been doing it fine now if it hadn’t been for old Garstang. He gammoned the guv’nor into speculating, and then gammoned him when he lost to go on with the double or quits game, and a nice thing Johnny must have made out of it. If it had been sheep or turnips, of course the old man would have been all there; but it was a fat turkey playing cards with a fox, and I suppose everything comes to the hammer.”

“Very bad for your mother,” said Leigh.

“Oh, I don’t know. I say, may I light my pipe?”

“Oh, yes; smoke away while you have any brains left.”

“Better smoke one’s brains away than catch some infection in your doctor’s shop. How do I know that some one with the epidemics hasn’t been sitting in this chair?—ah! that’s better. I say, it’s a pity you don’t smoke, Leigh.”

“Is it? Very well, then, I’ll have a cigar with you to help keep off the infection. I did have a rheumatic patient in that chair this morning.”

“Eh? Did you? Oh, well, I’ll risk that. Ah, now you look more sociable, and as if you hadn’t got your back up because I called.”

“I couldn’t have had, because I was very glad to see you.”

“Were you? Well, you didn’t look it. You were saying about being bad for the mater. I don’t believe she’ll mind, if the guv’nor don’t worry. She’s about the most contented old girl that ever lived, if things will only go smooth. The crash comes hardest on poor me. It’s Othello’s occupation, gone, and no mistake, with yours truly. I say, don’t you think I could turn surgeon? I have lots of friends in the Mid-West Pack, and if they knew I was in the profession I could get all the accidents.”

“No,” said Leigh, smiling; “you are not cut out for a doctor.”

“I don’t think I am cut out for anything, Leigh, and things look very black. I can farm, and of course if the guv’nor hadn’t smashed I could have gone on all right. But it’s heart-breaking, Leigh; it is, upon my soul. I haven’t been home for weeks. Been along with an old aunt.”

“Why, you oughtn’t to leave a sinking ship, my lad.”

“Well, I know that,” said Claud, savagely; “and that’s why I’ve come here.”

“Why you’ve come here?” said Leigh, staring.

“Yes; don’t pretend that you can’t understand.”

“There is no pretence. Explain yourself.”

Claud Wilton had only just lit his pipe, but he tapped it empty on the bars, and sat gazing straight before him.

“I want to do the square thing,” he said; “but I’m such an impulsive beggar, and I can’t trust myself. I want you to send for your sister home; Kate’s all right again; mother told me so in a letter; and she has got her lawyer down there, and is transacting business. Look here, Leigh: it isn’t right for me to be down there when your sister’s at the Manor. I can’t see a shilling ahead now, and it isn’t fair to her.”

Leigh looked at him keenly.

“I shall have to marry Kate after all,” continued Claud, with a bitter laugh. “Do you hear, hated rival? We can’t afford to let the chance go. Oh, I say, Leigh, I wish you’d give me a dose, and put me out of my misery, for I’m about the most unhappy beggar that ever lived.”

“Things do look bad for you, certainly,” said Leigh. “How would it be if you tried for a stewardship to some country gentleman—you understand?”

“Oh, yes, I understand stock and farming generally; but who’d have me? Hanged if I couldn’t go and enlist in some cavalry regiment; that’s about all I’m fit for.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, my lad. Where are you staying?”

“Nowhere—just come up. I shall have to get a cheap room somewhere.”

“Nonsense! You can have a bed here. We’ll go and have a bit of dinner somewhere, and chat matters over afterwards. I may perhaps be able to help you.”

“With something out of the tintry-cum-fuldicum bottle?”

“I have a good many friends; but there’s no hurry. We shall see?”

Claud reached over, and gripped Leigh’s hand.

“Thankye, old chap,” he said. “It’s very good of you, but I’m not going to quarter myself on you. If you have any interest, though, and could get me something to go to abroad, I should be glad. Busy now, I suppose?”

“Yes, I have patients to see. Be with me at six, and we’ll go somewhere. Only mind, you will sleep here while you are in town. I want to help you, and to be able to put my hand on you at once.”

The result was that Claud stayed three days with his friend; and on the third Leigh had a letter at breakfast from his sister, enclosing one from Mrs Wilton to her son, whose address she did not know, but thought perhaps he might have called upon Leigh.

“Eh? News from home?” said Claud, taking the note, and glancing eagerly at Leigh’s letter the while. “I say, how is she?”

“My sister? Quite well,” said Leigh, dryly.

Claud sighed, and opened his own letter.

“Poor old mater! she’s such a dear old goose; she’s about worrying herself to death about me, and—what!—oh, I say. Here, Leigh! Hurrah! There is life in a mussel after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, hark here. You know I told you that Kate had got her lawyer down there?”

“Yes,” said Leigh, frowning slightly.

“Well, God bless her for the dearest and best girl that ever breathed! She has arranged to clear off every one of the guv’nor’s present liabilities by taking over the mortgages, or whatever they are. The mater don’t understand, but she says it’s a family arrangement; and what do you think she says?”

Leigh shook his head.

“That she is sure that her father would not have seen his brother come to want God bless her. What a girl. Leigh, it’s all over with you now. Intense admiration for her noble cousin, Claud, and—confound it, old fellow, don’t look at me! I feel as if I should choke.”

He went hurriedly to the window, and stood looking out for some minutes, before coming back to where Leigh sat gravely smoking his cigar.

Claud Wilton’s eyes had a peculiarly weak look in them as he stood by Jenny’s brother, and his voice sounded strange.

“I’m going down by the next train,” he said. “This means the work at home going on as usual, and I shan’t be a beggar now, Leigh. I say, old man, I am going to act the true man by hier. I may speak right out to her now?”

“Whatever had happened I should not have objected, for sooner or later I know you would have made her a home.”

Claud nodded.

“And look here,” he cried, “why not come down with me? Kate would be delighted to see you. Only you wouldn’t bring Jenny back?”

“Take my loving message to my sister,” said Leigh, ignoring his companion’s other remark, “that I beg she will come home now at once.”

“Because I’m going down?” pleaded Claud.

“Yes,” said Leigh, gravely, “because you are going down.”

A year and a half glided by, and Kate Wilton had become full mistress of her property, and other matters remained, as the lawyers say, “in statu quo,” save that Jenny was back with her brother. James Wilton was very much broken, and his son was beginning to be talked of as a rising agriculturist. John Garstang was at Boulogne, and his stepson had married a wealthy Australian widow in Sydney.

Jenny had again and again tried to urge her brother to propose to Kate, but in vain.

“It is so stupid of you, dear,” she said. “I know she’d say yes to you, directly. Of course any girl would if you asked her.”

“Yes, I’m a noble specimen of humanity,” said Leigh, dryly.

“I believe you’re the proudest and most sensitive man that ever lived,” cried Jenny, angrily.

“One of them, sis.”

“And next time I shall advise her to propose to you. You couldn’t refuse.”

“You are too late, dear,” he said, gravely, as he recalled a letter he had received a month before, in which he had been reproached for ignoring the writer’s existence, and forcing her to humble herself and write.

There were words in that letter which seemed burned into his brain and he had a bitter fight to hold himself aloof. For in simple, heart-appealing language she had said: “Am I never to see you and tell you how I pray nightly for him who twice saved my life, and enabled me to live and say I am still worthy of being called his friend?”

Pride—honourable feeling—true manhood—whatever it was—he fought and won, for in his unworldly way he told himself that in his early struggles for a position he could not ask a rich heiress to be his wife.

“I know,” Jenny often said, “that she wishes she had hardly a penny in the world.”

It does not fall to many of us to have our fondest wishes fulfilled, but Kate Wilton had hers, though in a way which brought misery to thousands, though safety to more who have lived since.

For the great commercial crisis burst upon London. One of the great banks collapsed, and dragged others, like falling card houses, in its wake. Among others, Wilton’s Joint Stock Bank came to the ground, and in its ruin the two-thirds left of Kate’s money went out like so much burning paper, leaving only a few tiny sparks to scintillate in the tinder, and disappear.

“Oh, how horrible!” cried Jenny, when the news reached the Leighs. “What a horrid shame! I must go and see her now she is in such trouble.”

“No,” said Leigh, drawing himself up with a sigh of relief, “let me go first.”

“Pierce!” cried Jenny, excitedly, as she sprang to her brother’s breast, her face glowing from the result of shockingly selfish thoughts connected with Claud Wilton and matrimony, “and you mean to ask her that?”

He nodded, kissed her lovingly, and hurried to Kate Wilton’s side.

The interview was strictly private, as a matter of course, but the consequences were not long in following, and among other things James Wilton made his will—the will of a straightforward, honest man.

There were people who said that the passing of the Limited Liability Act was mainly due to the way in which Kate Wilton’s fortune was swept away. That undoubtedly was a piece of fiction, but out of evil came much good.

The End.