Mrs. Berenson put up her pince-nez and favoured the two men with a long, steady stare. She dropped the pince-nez with a deep sigh.
‘They do look like it, don’t they?’ she said despairingly. ‘There’s something in the way they wear their clothes and hold their hands that suggests it. Do you always rise at a certain hour?’ she went on, turning to Saxonstowe. ‘My husband had a habit of getting up at six in summer and seven in winter—it brought on an extraordinary form of nervous disease in me, and the doctors warned him that they would not be responsible for my life if he persisted. I believe he tried to break the habit off, poor fellow, but he died, and so of course there was an end of it.’
Ere Saxonstowe could decide whether he was expected to reply to the lady’s question as to his own habits, the sound of a rapidly driven and sharply pulled-up cab was heard outside, followed by loudly delivered instructions in Lucian’s voice. A minute later he rushed into the drawing-room. He had evidently come straight out of the cab, for he wore his hat and forgot to take it off—excitement and concern were written in large letters all over him. He began to gesticulate, addressing everybody, and talking very quickly and almost breathlessly. He was awfully sorry to have kept them waiting, and even now he must hurry away again immediately. He had heard late that afternoon of an old college friend who had fallen on evil days after an heroic endeavour to make a fortune out of literature, and had gone to him to find that the poor fellow, his wife, and two young children were all in the last stages of poverty, and confronting a cold and careless world from the insecure bastion of a cheap lodging in an unknown quarter of the town named Ball’s Pond. He described their plight and surroundings in a few graphic sentences, looking from one to the other with quick eager glances, as if appealing to them for comprehension, or sympathy, or assent.
‘And of course I must see to the poor chap and his family,’ he said. ‘They want food, and money, and lots of things. And the two children—Sprats, you must come back with me just now. I am keeping the cab—you must come and take those children away to your hospital. And where is Hoskins? I want food and wine for them; he must put it on top of the hansom.’
‘Are we all to go without dinner?’ asked Mrs. Damerel.
‘By no means, by no means!’ said Lucian. ‘Pray do not wait longer—indeed I don’t know when I shall return, there will be lots to do, and——’
‘But Sprats, if she goes with you, will go hungry,’ Mrs. Damerel urged.
Lucian stared at Sprats, and frowned, as if some deep mental problem had presented itself to him.
‘You can’t be very hungry, Sprats, you know,’ he said, with visible impatience. ‘You must have had tea during the afternoon—can’t you wait an hour or two and we’ll get something later on? Those two children must be brought away—my God! you should see the place—you must come, of course.’
‘Oh, I’m going with you!’ answered Sprats. ‘Don’t bother about us, you other people—angels of mercy are not very pleasant things at the moment you’re starving for dinner—go and dine and leave Lucian to me; I’ll put a cloak or something over my one swell gown and go with him. Now, Lucian, quick with your commissariat arrangements.’