Ere she went to rest Ruth wrote a note to Marston, and sent the servant with it to the post.
‘Let me see you at once. A great trouble has come upon us.’ That was all she wrote. Her heart was too full, her mind too disturbed, to write down in black and white the ghastly truth that her father was ruined, and that they were beggared by the failure of the Great Blankshire Bank.
CHAPTER XLIV.
A JOURNEY’S END.
In the back parlour of a little house at Camberwell a young woman lies, wan and white-faced, upon an antiquated and uncomfortable sofa of the lodging-house pattern. In a chair by the side of her, holding her hand in a professional manner, sits a pale, smooth-faced gentleman, dressed in black. Standing near, his eyes fixed eagerly upon the pale gentleman’s face, is an old man, whose garb and manner speak eloquently of the country.
The invalid is Bess, the old man is her father, and the professional gentleman is Mr. Goff, the surgeon, who, having a large family and a small practice, and living in a neighbourhood where half-crown fees are commoner than guinea ones, is fain to unite the business of a chemist with the profession of a surgeon. But though Mr. Goff is not above retailing tooth-brushes, acid drops, scented soap, and lemonade, as well as leeches, rhubarb, magnesia, and drugs of all descriptions, he has the reputation of being a very clever man, and of having effected some marvellous cures; and when Marks, terrified at his daughter’s appearance, asked Mrs. Ketley, the landlady, if she knew of a good medical man, Mrs. Ketley immediately suggested Mr. Goff, round the corner.
Mr. Goff was plain-spoken and curt. The half-guinea-a-minute small talk and the fashionable-physician smirk were not part and parcel of his business. ‘Visit, medicine included, two-and-six,’ left but small margin for those little courtesies which are so necessary to the success of a West-End doctor.
Mr. Goff would feel a pulse, look at a tongue, prescribe, and be down the front door-steps before the smiling creature, all shirt-front and white teeth, who basks in the favour of fashionable indisposition, would have arranged his hat and cane in the hall, and put on his sympathetic smirk preparatory to being shown into the presence of his patient.
But Mr. Goff, in spite of his tremendous hurry, his bluff speech, his rough hair, and his ill-fitting black clothes, loved his work and took real interest in his patients. He was particularly interested in the white-faced trembling girl, by whose side he sat while her old father watched his face so eagerly.
‘Shock to system, eh? Something upset her?’
This with an inquiring glance at Marks.