CHAPTER XXI.

CRAWFORD SELLS A PATENT.

A few days after William Crawford's return from Welford, and the scene in which he gave his wife a specimen of his quality as the player of a part in private theatricals, he went up to London with one of the hundred pounds in his pocket. He told her he could not dream of taking the money from her except to pay the men working on the models and machines for his great patent, and in the interest of their joint worldly welfare.

He set off, as usual, in the afternoon, taking with him half the money. He was a gambler, but no plunger. He played for the excitement of the game, rather than for the sake of gaining. He had no idea that he should win a fortune. His luck was usually bad, but this did not keep him back; nor did he play on in the hope or expectation that it would turn so as to recoup him. Every gambler is entitled to curse his luck, and Crawford cursed his with no bated breath. But he would rather have bad luck than no play. He was not a mean man with money when he had it, but he was a desperate man when he wanted it.

Cards and pretty faces were his weaknesses. With regard to cards, he recognised the laws of honour; with regard to pretty faces, he regarded no law but the law of his wishes. He had never been in love in his life. He admired pretty women, and made love to every pretty woman he met, if occasion served. But he was completely wanting in any feeling of self-sacrifice or devotion. He was, as he told his wife, good at private theatricals. He could play the heroic, or romantic, or sentimental lover, according as circumstances demanded, to the utmost perfection; but his heart was never once touched. He looked on women as inferior creatures, the natural prey of man. With them he had no mercy or compunction. He made love automatically to the owner of every pretty face he came across, provided there was no great risk from male friend or relative; for, though he could assume the air and words of a hero in the presence of a woman, he fought shy of men in their anger, and was of that prudent disposition that prefers flight to fight.

On going to town this afternoon, he left half the money he had got from his wife behind him. One hundred pounds was quite enough for one night; one hundred pounds was quite as good as two. Playing for certain stakes, one hundred pounds would last him the whole night, even if luck were dead against him. Two hundred pounds would enable him to play for stakes of double the amount: that was all. He would rather play two nights for small stakes than one night for stakes of double the value.

William Crawford was a cautious, not to say cowardly, man. This talk of the artificers engaged in making a machine for him was not wholly illusory. From time to time he ordered inexpensive portions of machinery at a mechanical engineer's in the Blackfriars Road. He never took the parts of the machine away; but left them in the workshops, saying he would not remove them until it was all ready to be put together. He had no fear that he might one day be driven to make good his words about this wonderful machine in course of construction; but if he were, there lay the wheels and racks and drums in the workshop. Of course the manner in which they were to be put together remained his secret. It was not likely he would divulge that until he had secured his patent, and, for aught you could know or should know from him to the contrary, he might have other portions of the machine in course of manufacture for him in other workshops.

When he arrived in town this early day in June he went first to the Blackfriars Road and gave an order for two cog-wheels of peculiar make. He handed in a paper with the specification, paid a bill of a couple of pounds, and then betook himself to the Counter Club.

Here he dined, and from the dinner-table went to the card-room, which he did not leave until seven o'clock the next morning. He breakfasted at the club, and after breakfast fell asleep in a chair in the deserted smoking-room, and did not wake for a couple of hours. Then he went out, and, turning into Bond Street, did a little shopping, and got back to Richmond at about noon.

He found his wife in the drawing-room with some fancy work in her hand. After an affectionate greeting, he sat down beside her and took her hand as usual. Contrary to his custom, he had brought no book, or flowers, or basket of fruit.

"And how did you get on in town, William?" she asked, giving no time for him to notice, if he had not already noticed, the omission of his customary little present.

"Very well indeed, Nellie. Better than I could have hoped. Better than I deserved."

"Not better than you deserved, surely, dear," she said fondly. "That could not be."

"Well, better than I could have hoped. I am afraid, Nellie, I got on so splendidly that success has turned my head."

She looked at him in surprise and pressed his hand. "I know you better than to think success could turn your head."

"Nevertheless, my success has had such an effect on me that I have not brought you any flowers, or fruit, or a book. Does not that look like being spoiled by success? Should I not be spoiled by prosperity when I forgot you?"

"It does not follow," she said tenderly, as though she were excusing herself, not him, "that because you did not bring me something that you forgot me."

He put his hand in his pocket, took something out of it, and before she knew what he was doing she found a gold bracelet, having a circle of pearls round a large diamond, clasped upon her arm.

She gave a little cry of wonder and pleasure. "Why, what is this? Where did you get it? Whom is it for?"

"It is for my own wife Nellie. I bought it for her in Bond Street to-day, to show her that I did not forget her when away. And I did not buy it out of the money she lent me yesterday--for, look!" He threw into her lap a lot of gold and notes. "There's the hundred pounds I took with me to town--and look!" He held out towards her more gold and notes. "Here is another hundred I have got over and above what she lent me, and the price of the bracelet."

"Wonder upon wonder!" she cried with a laugh and a simple childlike joy in her husband's success. "Tell me all about the affair. Have you met fairies?"

"No, dear. Only a good angel, and you are she," he said, and kissed the hand below the gleaming bracelet.

"But I did not give you this. You got this yourself."

"No, you did not give me this money directly, but you gave me the means of getting it."

"But tell me all, dear. I am dying to hear."

"You must know, then, that in designing some machinery for preparing my fibre I hit upon an immense improvement in the scutching machine now in use. I patented my improvement, and sold my patent last evening for two hundred and fifty pounds."

She was overwhelmed with gratitude and joy. This was the first-fruit of his genius, the earnest of his great triumph.

For half-an-hour they sat and chatted, he telling her his schemes for the future, and she listening, full of delight and pride and love. Then he said he had some writing to do, and went to his room.

The fact was that he could hardly keep his eyes open. It had been a very hot night at the Counter Club, and he had come away the winner of close upon three hundred pounds. He locked the door, drew down the blind, threw himself on a couch, and was fast asleep in a few minutes.

Mrs. Crawford always breakfasted in her own room, and had her other meals brought to her in the drawing-room. She had gradually sunk back almost to the helpless condition in which she had lived so long before the fire. She suffered no pain, but she was nearly as helpless as a year ago. If necessity required it, she could creep about the room by resting her hands on the furniture, but as a rule she went from one place to the other by means of her invalid's chair. She never ventured down-stairs now. She lived upon the first-floor. Here were her bedroom, the drawing-room, her husband's study--which he called his own room--and the dressing-room where he slept, so as to be within call if she needed assistance in the night.

The doctors told Crawford that his wife was, if anything, rather worse than she had been before the fire, and that any other such shock would in all likelihood kill her.

"Is there no chance of it producing an effect like the former one?" Crawford had asked.

Well, there was no saying for certain. This, however, was sure, that if she sustained another shock and by chance she once more regained the use of her limbs, the relief would be only temporary, and the reaction would leave her in a very critical condition indeed--the chances were ten to one she would die.

A shock, then, was to be avoided at any cost.

With Mrs. Crawford's life all William Crawford's interest in the property would pass away. This property brought in more than Ned Bayliss, or Jim Ford, or Matt Jordan, or any of the other loafers on Welford Bridge imagined. The income was nearer to two than one thousand a year, and Mrs. Crawford's savings exceeded three thousand pounds. These savings would become Crawford's absolute property upon his wife's death. She had practically put them at his disposal already. They were his own, she told him, and he took her word for it. But that was a good reason why he should be moderately careful of them. As long as she lived he had not only these savings at his disposal, but the lion's share of the income as well. If he did not blunder, nothing could take the savings away from him; if she died he would lose all participation in the fine income.

A shock was to be avoided at any cost.

One morning after breakfast, in the middle of June, Crawford came into the drawing-room, and said to his wife:

"I have slept so badly! I do not know when I had so little sleep, and the little I got so disturbed."

She looked at him anxiously. "You are not unwell? You don't feel anything the matter, do you?"

"O, no! I am quite well. But I have had such horrid nightmares. What you said to me a fortnight ago about the want of gates on that ice-house all came back to me in sleep last night, and I had the most awful visions of that young Layard drowning in it while I was looking on, unable to stretch out my hand to save him." He made a gesture as though to sweep away the spectacle still haunting him.

"I am so sorry, William, I said anything about the place. I am, indeed. I spoke foolishly, no doubt. You are not so superstitious as to fancy anything dreadful has happened?" she asked, losing colour and leaning back in her chair.

"Dear me! No. And I don't think you spoke foolishly at all. I now see that what you said was quite right. I own it's very selfish of me, but I do not feel disposed to go through another such night as last. That brought home to me the danger you saw at once, and instinctively."

She could not help smiling and feeling gratified at these candid and gracious words from so clever a man--from a man who got two hundred and fifty pounds the other day for the pure brain-work of a couple of hours.

"And what do you think of doing?"

"Well, I feel that the surest way to lay the ghost that haunted me last night, and provide against all danger, would be for me to go down to Welford and get these gateways boarded up."

"Indeed, indeed! I'm sure that would be the best thing to do. When did you fancy you would go?"

"I could go to-day. I am not doing anything particular. Do you want me for anything?"

He asked the question in a soft submissive voice.

"I!" she cried, flushing with pleasure at his deference to her. "Not I, William! I am all right, and feel as well as usual. You could do nothing that would please me more."

"Very well, then; I'll go at once. I shall not want more than an hour or so there. I need not wait to see the thing done. All I shall have to do is to get hold of a carpenter, and put the job into his hands."

And so he set out for Welford.

The fact is he had dreamed last night of Hetty Layard's bright face and wonderful golden hair, and he was getting tired of Richmond and--the house.

It would be very pleasant to go down to Welford, knock at the door, and find Hetty alone. Her brother would be at the gasworks. Philip Ray was in some public office or other, and could not come to make that tow-path horrible with his presence at that hour of the day. He should be able to reach Crawford's House at about eleven, and get away at about one or two. Thus he would run no risks, and he should see again the prettiest girl he had now in his memory.