I awoke with a start, to see standing over against me in the gloom of the doorway, not the figure of my wife come from the company of the dead with warning on her lips, but that of Stephen Strong. Yes, it was he, for the light of the candle that I had lit when I went to seek the drug fell full upon his pale face and large bald head.
“Hullo, doctor,” he said in his harsh but not unkindly voice, “having a nip and a nap, eh? What’s your tipple? Hollands it looks, but it smells more like peach brandy. May I taste it? I’m a judge of hollands,” and he lifted the glass of prussic acid and water from the table.
In an instant my dazed faculties were awake, and with a swift motion I had knocked the glass from his hand, so that it fell upon the floor and was shattered.
“Ah!” he said, “I thought so. And now, young man, perhaps you will tell me why you were playing a trick like that?”
“Why?” I answered bitterly. “Because my wife is dead; because my name is disgraced; because my career is ruined; because they have commenced a new action against me, and, if I live, I must become a bankrupt——”
“And you thought that you could make all these things better by killing yourself. Doctor, I didn’t believe that you were such a fool. You say you have done nothing to be ashamed of, and I believe you. Well, then, what does it matter what these folk think? For the rest, when a man finds himself in a tight place, he shouldn’t knock under, he should fight his way through. You’re in a tight place, I know, but I was once in a tighter, yes, I did what you have nearly done—I went to jail on a false charge and false evidence. But I didn’t commit suicide. I served my time, and I think it crazed me a bit though it was only a month; at any rate, I was what they call a crank when I came out, which I wasn’t when I went in. Then I set to work and showed up those for whom I had done time—living or dead they’ll never forget Stephen Strong, I’ll warrant—and after that I turned to and became the head of the Radical party and one of the richest men in Dunchester; why, I might have been in Parliament half a dozen times over if I had chosen, although I am only a draper. Now, if I have done all this, why can’t you, who have twice my brains and education, do as much?
“Nobody will employ you? I will find folk who will employ you. Action for damages? I’ll stand the shot of that however it goes; I love a lawsuit, and a thousand or two won’t hurt me. And now I came round here to ask you to supper, and I think you’ll be better drinking port with Stephen Strong than hell-fire with another tradesman, whom I won’t name. Before we go, however, just give me your word of honour that there shall be no more of this sort of thing,” and he pointed to the broken glass, “now or afterwards, as I don’t want to be mixed up with inquests.”
“I promise,” I answered presently.
“That will do,” said Mr. Strong, as he led the way to the door.
I need not dwell upon the further events of that evening, inasmuch as they were almost a repetition of those of the previous night. Mrs. Strong received me kindly in her faded fashion, and, after a few inquiries about the trial, sought refuge in her favourite topic of the lost Tribes. Indeed, I remember that she was rather put out because I had not already mastered the books and pamphlets which she had given me. In the end, notwithstanding the weariness of her feeble folly, I returned home in much better spirits.