* * * * *
The hall-door shut heavily as Tait and the women in the kitchen sat and listened. They had not spoken since the crash of the falling chair in the room overhead. The area-door was open to the hot, sickly night air of London in midsummer. Tait slid noiselessly out and listened as his master hailed a passing hansom and jumped lightly in. The flaps banged together, the driver pulled open the roof-trap and leaned down to catch the shouted address. Tait's sharp ear caught it too, and the knowing grin that decorated the features of the cabman was reflected upon his decent smug countenance. His tongue was in his cheek as he returned to the kitchen. For his master had given the direction of a house of ill-fame.
Thenceforwards the door would have shut for ever upon the strenuous, honourable, cleanly, useful life of Owen Saxham, were it not that the For Ever of humanity means only a little space of years with God—sometimes only a little space of hours. Saxham did not need the evidence of the shower of cheques from people who hated paying, the request from the Committee of his Club that he would resign membership, the averted faces of his acquaintances, the elaborate cordiality of his friends, to tell him what he knew already. As the astute Tait had said, as Society knew already, he was a ruined man. He had made money, but the enormous expenses of the Defence swallowed up thousands. By bringing an action against the Treasury he might have recovered a portion of the costs—so he was told, but he had had enough of Law. He resigned his post at the Hospital, in spite of a thinly-worded remonstrance from the Senior Physician. He dismissed his servants generously. He disposed of his lease and furniture and other property through a firm of auctioneers who robbed him, and sold what stocks he had not realised upon, and wrote a farewell letter to his mother, and sailed for South Africa. Thenceforwards he was to build his nest with the birds of night, and rise from the stertorous sleep that is born of drunkenness only to drink himself drunk again.
From assiduous letter-writing friends David heard reports of his brother that grieved him deeply. He told these things to Mildred, and they shook their heads over them and sighed together. Poor Owen! It was most fortunate for his family that the Jury had taken so lenient a view of the case ... otherwise ...! They were quite certain in their own minds that poor Owen had been culpable, if not guilty. They were married six months later. The Directoire hats were out of date, of course, but Louis Quinze, with Watteau trimmings suited the six bridesmaids marvellously, and the "Non Angli sed Angeli" choir rendered the Anthem and the "Voice that Breathed" to perfection.
And Mildred, who never omitted her nightly prayers, made a special petition for the reformation of poor misguided Owen upon her wedding-night.
"Because we are so happy," she told David, who had found her kneeling, white and exquisitely virginal in her lace and cambric draperies by the bedside. "And he must be so miserable. And you know, though I never really cared for him, he was perfectly devoted to me."
"Who could help it?" cooed enamoured David, and knelt and kissed his bride's white feet. The white feet would show no ugly stains, although to reach the bridal bed, towards which her husband now drew her, they must tread upon his brother's bleeding heart.
XVIII
The Dop Doctor lifted his head as the bell of the front door rang loudly at the back passage-end. Two mounted officers of the Military Staff at Gueldersdorp had trotted up the street with an orderly behind them a moment before. The elder of the two had pulled sharply up in front of the green door whose brass-plate flamed in the last rays of sunset. He had dismounted lightly and gone up the steps and rung, saying something to his companion. The other officer had saluted and ridden on, as though to carry out some order: the orderly had come up and got off his horse and taken the bridle of the officer's, as the Dutch dispensary-attendant, Koets, had plodded heavily along the passage and opened the door, and now slouched heavily back, ushering in a presumable patient.