"His father's affairs went smash, and Tom became security to save the family name, mortgaged all his own little property that came to him through his mother, exchanged from a crack regiment at home, and came out here into the staff corps. It was a foolish, quixotic business altogether; no one was a bit obliged to him: his sisters thought he might have done more, his father was a callous old beggar, and took everything he got quite as a matter of course, and Tom was the support of his relations, and their scapegoat."
"The very last animal I'd like to be," remarked Mr. Quentin; "but don't let me interrupt you; go on."
"Well, as if Tom had not enough on his hands, he saddled himself with a wife—a wife he did not want either, a beautiful Greek! It seems that she burst into tears when he told her he was going to India, and I'm not sure that she did not faint on his breast into the bargain. However, the long and the short of it was, that Tom had a soft heart, and he offered to take her out with him as Mrs. D——.
"Mrs. Denis had a lovely face, an empty head, no heart, and no money; in fact, no interest, or connections, or anything! and she was the very worst wife for a poor man like Tom. She came out to Bombay, and carried all before her; one would have thought she had thousands at her back—her carriages, dresses and dinners! 'pon my word, they ran the Governor's wife pretty hard. There was no holding her; at least, it would have taken a stronger man than Tom Denis to do that. She flatly refused to live on the plains, or to go within five hundred miles of his native regiment; and his rôle was to broil in some dusty, baking station, and to supply my lady up in the hills, or spending the season at Poonah or Bombay, with almost the whole of his pay.—I believe she scarcely left him enough rupees to keep body and soul together!"
"The man must have been a fool!" said Mr. Lisle emphatically, now speaking for the first time.
"Aye, a fool about a pretty face, like many another," growled the doctor. "There was no denying her beauty! The pure Greek type; her figure a model, every movement the poetry of motion. She was Cockney born, though; her father a Greek refugee, conspirator, whatever you like, and of course, a Prince at Athens, and the descendant of Princes, according to his own tale—meanwhile a fourth-rate painter in London, whose Princess kept lodgers! Well, Mrs. Denis was very clever with her pen, and made capital imitations of her husband's signature! She borrowed freely from the Soucars, she ran bills in all directions, she had a vice in common with her kinsfolk of Crete, and she was the prettiest woman in India! Luckily for Denis (I say it with all respect to her ashes), she died after a short but brilliant social career, leaving him this girl and some enormous debts. The fact of the matter was, Tom was a ruined man. And all these years, between his father's affairs and his wife's liabilities, his life has been a long battle, and poor as he was, and no doubt is, he never could say no to a needy friend; and I need scarcely tell you, that people soon discovered this agreeable trait in his character!"
"It's a pity he has not a little more moral courage, and that he never studied the art of saying 'no,'" remarked Mr. Lisle dryly; "it's merely a matter of nerve and practice."
"It's not that, exactly," rejoined Dr. Parks, "but that he is too much afraid of hurting people's feelings, too simple and unselfish. I hope this girl who has come out will stand between him and this greedy world!"
"I should have thought it ought to be the other way."
"So it ought, but you see what Denis is yourself," turning and appealing to Jim Quentin. "Go over to him to-morrow morning, and tell him that you are at your wits' ends for five hundred rupees, and he will hand it out to you like a lamb."