“It is the doctor she wants,” cried Jack. “That is the first thing;” and he turned and rushed down stairs still more rapidly than he had come up. The first thing he did was to go across to old Betty’s cottage, and send the old woman to Pamela’s aid, or at least, if aid was impossible, to remain with her. There he found Powys, who was waiting till the guests went away from Brownlows. Him Jack placed in Mrs. Swayne’s parlor, to be ready to lend any assistance that might be wanted, or to call succor from the great house if necessary; and then he himself buttoned his coat and set off on a wild race over hedge and field for the doctor. The nearest doctor was in Dewsbury, a mile and a half away. Jack knew every step of the country, and plunged into the unseen by-ways and across the ploughed fields; in so short a time that Mrs. Swayne had scarcely reached her own house before he dashed back again in the doctor’s gig. Then he went into the dark little parlor to wait and take breath. He was in evening-dress, just as he had been dancing; his light varnished boots were heavy with ploughed soil and wet earth, his shirt wet with rain, his whole appearance wild and disheveled. Powys looked at him with the strange mixture of repugnance and liking that existed between the young men, and drew forward a chair for him before the dying fire.
“Why did not you let me go?” he said. “I was in better trim for it than you.”
“You did not know the way,” said Jack; “besides there are things that nobody can do for one.” Then he added, after a pause, “Her daughter is going to be my wife.”
“Ah!” said Powys, with a sigh, half of sympathy, half of envy. He did not think of Jack’s circumstances in any speculative way, but only as comparing them with his own hard and humble fate, who should never have a wife, as he said to himself—to whom it was mere presumption, madness, to think of love at all.
“Yes,” said Jack, putting his wet feet to the fire; and then he too gave forth a big sigh from his excited breast, and felt the liking grow stronger than the repugnance, and that he must speak to some one or die.
“It is a pretty mess,” he said; “I thought they were very poor, and it turns out she has a right to almost all my father has—trust-money that was left to him if he could not find her; and he was never able to find her. And, at last, after all was settled between us, she turns up; and now, I suppose, she’s going to die.”
“I hope not,” said Powys, not knowing what answer to make.
“It’s easy to say you hope not,” said Jack, “but she will—you’ll see she will. I never saw such a woman. And then what am I to do?—forsake my poor Pamela, who does not know a word of it, because she is an heiress, or marry her and rob my father? You may think yours is a hard case, but I’d like to know what you would do if you were me?”
“I should not forsake her, anyhow,” said Powys, kindling with the thought.
“And neither shall I, by Jove,” said Jack, getting up in his vehemence. “What should I care for fathers and mothers, or any fellow in the world? It’s all that cursed money—that’s what it always is. It comes in your way and in my way wherever a man turns—not that one can get on without it either,” said Jack, suddenly sitting down and leaning over the fire with his face propped up in his two hands.