Edina: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

It took a great deal to disturb the equable temperament of Max Brown. This did disturb him. He stood staring at the different missives: now at his mother's, now at his brother's, now at the good round sum named in the order. A thunderbolt could not more effectually have taken him back. Eve, a clean old body in a flowery chintz gown, with a mob-cap and bow of green ribbon surmounting her grey hair, came in twice to say the loin of lamb waited: but she received no reply in return.

"I can't go," Max was repeating to himself. "I don't see how I can go. What would become of my practice?"

But his mother was his mother: and Max Brown, a dutiful son, began to feel that he should not like her to die before he had seen her once again. She was not sixty yet. The whole of the rest of the day and part of the night he was revolving matters in his mind; and in the morning he sent an advertisement to the Times and to a medical journal.

For more than a week the advertisement brought no result. Answers there were to it, and subsequent interviews with those who wrote them; but none that availed Max Brown. Either the applicants did not suit him, or his offer did not suit them. He then inserted the advertisement a second time.

And it chanced to fall under the notice of Frank Raynor. Or, strictly speaking, under the notice of Frank's friend Crisp. This was close upon the return of Frank from Eagles' Nest. Daisy was with her sister in Westbourne Terrace, and Frank had been taken in by Mr. Crisp, a young surgeon who held an appointment in one of the London hospitals. He occupied private rooms, and could accommodate Frank with a sofa-bedstead. Mr. Crisp saw the advertisement on the morning of its second appearance in the Times, and pointed it out to Frank.

"A qualified medical practitioner wanted, to take entire charge for a few months of a general practice in London during the absence of the principal."

"It may be worth looking after, old fellow," said Crisp.

Frank seized upon the suggestion eagerly. Most anxious was he to be relieved from his present state of inactivity. An interview took place between him and Max Brown; and before it terminated Frank had accepted the post.

To him it looked all couleur-de-rose. During the very few days he had now been in London, that enemy, the Tiger, had troubled his mind more than was pleasant. That the man had come up in the same train, and absolutely in the compartment immediately behind his own, for the purpose of keeping him in view, and of tracking out his place of abode in town, appeared only too evident to him. When Frank had deposited his wife at her sister's door, the turnings and twistings he caused the cab to take in carrying him to Crisp's, would have been sufficient to baffle a detective. Frank hoped it had baffled the Tiger: but he had scarcely liked to show himself abroad since. Therefore the obscurity of the locality in which Mr. Brown's practice lay, whilst it had frightened away one or two dandies who had inquired about it, was a strong recommendation in the eyes of Frank.

The terms proposed by Mr. Brown were these: That Frank Raynor should enter the house as he went out of it, take his place in all respects, carry on the practice for him until he himself returned, and live upon the proceeds. If the returns amounted to more than a certain sum, the surplus was to be reserved for Mr. Brown.