CHAPTER IX.

MR. MAX BROWN.

In a populous and somewhat obscure part of Lambeth, not a hundred miles away from the great hospital, Bedlam, there ran a narrow street. Amongst the shops, on the left of this street in going from London, stood a house that could not strictly be called a shop now; though it had been one recently, and the two counters within it still remained. It had formerly been a small chemist's shop. About a year ago, a young medical man named Brown had taken it, done away with the drugs and chemicals, so far as retailing them to the public went, and there set himself up as a doctor. He dispensed his own medicines, so the counters were useful still, and his jars of powders and liquids occupied the pigeon-holes above, where the chemist's jars had once stood. The lower half of the windows had been stained white; on one of them was written in black letters, "Mr. Max Brown, surgeon;" on the other, "Mr. Max Brown, general medical practitioner."

It was now about a year since Mr. Max Brown had thus established himself; and he had done very fairly. If his practice did not afford a promise that he would speedily become a millionaire, it at least was sufficient to keep him. And to keep him well. Mr. Brown had himself been born and reared in as crowded a part of London as this, somewhere towards Clerkenwell, therefore the locality did not offend his tastes. He anticipated remaining in it for good, and had not the slightest doubt that his practice would steadily increase, and afford him a carriage and a better house in time. The tradespeople around, though far below those of Bond Street in the social scale, were tradespeople of sufficient substance, and could afford to pay Mr. Brown. He was a little dark man, of affable nature and manners, clever in his profession, liked by his patients, and winning his way more surely amongst them day by day.

In the midst of this humble prosperity a check occurred. Not to the prosperity, but to Mr. Brown's plans and projects. Several years before, his elder brother had gone to the West Indies, and his widowed mother and his sister had subsequently followed him out. The sister had married there. The brother, Kenneth Brown, was for some years successful manager of a planter's estate; he now managed one of his own. Altogether they were extremely prosperous; and the only one of the family left in England, Max, received pleasant letters from them by each fortnightly mail, and was quite at ease with regard to them. It therefore took him completely by surprise in the midst of this ease, to find himself suddenly summoned to Jamaica.

One day in this same hot summer, early in the month of June--for we must go back two or three weeks in our story--Mr. Brown, having completed his morning round of calls on patients, stood behind his counter making up the physic required by them, and waiting for his queer old maid-servant, Eve, to come and tell him his one-o'clock dinner was ready. The door stood open to the hot street, and to the foot-passengers traversing the pavement; and Sam, the young boy, was waiting at the opposite counter with his covered basket until the physic should be ready.

"That's all to-day, Sam," said his master, pleasantly, as he folded the white paper round the last bottle, and motioned to the lad to bring the basket forward. "And, look here"--showing one of the packets--"this is for a fresh place, Number 26, you see, in The Walk. It's a grocer's shop."

"All right, sir. I shall find it."

"Maximilian Brown, Esq.," interrupted a voice at this juncture. It was that of the postman. He came in at the open door, and read out the address of the letter--his usual custom--as he put it down.

"Oh, the mail's in, I see," observed the doctor to him.

"Yes, sir."

Postman and boy went out together. Mr. Brown, leisurely turning down his coat-cuffs, which were never allowed to come in contact with the physic, took up the West Indian letter, and broke the seal. By that seal, as well as by the writing, he knew it was from his mother. Mrs. Brown always sealed her letters.

The letter contained only a few shaky lines. It told her son Max that she was ill; ill, as she feared, unto death. And it enjoined him to come out to Jamaica, that she might see him before she died. A note from his brother was enclosed, which contained these words--

"Do come out, dear Max, if you can in any way manage it. Mother's heart is set upon it. There is no immediate danger, but she is breaking fast. Come by next mail if you can, the middle of June; but at any rate don't delay it longer than the beginning of July. I enclose you an order on our London bankers, that the want of funds may be no impediment to you.

"Your affectionate brother,

"KENNETH."

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.

Frank agreed to all: the terms were first-rate; just what he should have chosen, he said. And surely to him they looked so. He was suddenly lifted out of his state of penniless dependence, had a house over his head, and occupation. The very fact of possessing a home to bring Daisy to, would have lent enchantment to the view in his sanguine nature.

"And by good luck I shall dodge the Tiger," he assured himself. "He will never think of looking for me _here_. Were he to find me out, Mr. Blase Pellet would be down upon me for hush-money--for that I expect will be his move the moment he thinks I have any money in my pocket. Yes, better to be in this obscure place at present, than flourishing before the West-end world as a royal physician."

So when preliminaries were arranged he wrote to Mrs. Raynor, saying what a jolly thing he had dropped into.

But Mr. Max Brown reconsidered one item in the arrangement. Instead of Frank's coming in when he left, he had him there a week beforehand that he might introduce him to the patients. Frank was to take to the old servant, Eve, and to the boy, Sam: in short, nothing was to be altered, nothing changed excepting the master. Frank was to walk in and Mr. Brown to walk out; all else was to go on as before. Mr. Brown made no sort of objection to Frank's wife sharing the home: on the contrary, he made one or two extra arrangements for her comfort. When he sailed, the beginning of July, Frank was fully installed, and Daisy might come as soon as she pleased. But her sister wished to keep her a little longer.

On one of the hot mornings in that same month of July, a well-dressed young fellow in deep mourning might be seen picking his way through the narrow streets of Lambeth, rendered ankle-deep in mud by the prodigal benevolence of the water-cart. It was Charles Raynor. Having nothing to do with his time, he had come forth to find out Frank.

"It _can't_ be here!" cried Charley to himself, sniffing about fastidiously. "Frank would never take a practice in a low place like this! I say--here, youngster," he cried, arresting the steps of a tattered girl, who was running out of a shop, "do you chance to know where Mark Street is?"

"First turning you comes to," promptly responded the damsel, with assured confidence.

Charles found the turning and the street, and went down it, looking on all sides for the house he wanted. As he did not remember, or else did not know, the name of Frank's predecessor, the words "Mr. Max Brown" on some window-panes on the opposite side of the way afforded him no guide; and he might have gone on into endless wilds but for catching sight within the house of a shapely head and some bright hair, which he knew belonged to Frank. He crossed the street at a bound, and entered.

"Frank!"

Standing in the identical spot in which Max Brown was standing when we first saw him, was Frank, his head bent forward over an account-book, in which he was writing. He looked up hastily.

"Charley!"

Their hands met, and some mutual inquiries ensued. They had not seen each other since quitting Eagles' Nest.

"We thought you must be dead and buried, Frank. You might have come to see us."

"Just what I have been thinking--that you might have come to see me," returned Frank. "_I_ can't get away. Since Brown left, and for a week before it, I have not had a moment to myself: morning, noon and night, I am tied to my post here. Your time is your own, Charley."

"I have been about at the West-end, finding out Colonel Cockburn, and doing one thing or another," said Charley, by way of excusing his laziness. "Edina left us only yesterday."

"For Trennach?"

"Yes, for Trennach. We fancy she means to take up her abode for good in the old place. She does not feel at home anywhere else, she says, as she does there. It was good of her, though, was it not, Frank, to set us up in the new home?"

"Very good--even for Edina. And I believe few people in this world are so practically good as she is. I did a little towards helping her choose the furniture; not much, because I arranged with Brown. How is the school progressing?"

"All right. It is a dreadful come-down: but it has to be put up with. Alice cries every night."

"And about yourself? Have you formed any plans?"

"I am waiting till Cockburn returns to town. I expect he will get me a commission."

"A commission!" exclaimed Frank, dubiously; certain doubts and difficulties crossing his mind, as they had crossed Edina's.

"It will be the best thing for me if I can only obtain it. There is no other opening."

Frank remained silent. His doubts were very strong indeed; but he never liked to inflict thorns where he could not scatter flowers, and he would not damp Charley's evident ardour. Time might do that quickly enough.

Charley was looking about him. He had been looking about him ever since he entered, somewhat after the fastidious manner that he had looked at the streets, but more furtively. Appearances were surprising him. The small shop (it seemed no better) with the door standing open to the narrow street; the counters on either side; the glass jars above; the scales lying to hand, and sundry packets of pills and powders beside them: to him, it all savoured of a small retail chemist's business. Charley thought he must be in a sort of dream. He could not understand how or why Frank had condescended to so inferior a position as this.

"Do you _like_ this place, Frank?"

"Uncommonly," answered Frank: and his honest blue eyes, glancing brightly into Charley's, confirmed the words. "It is a relief to be in harness again; and to have a home to bring Daisy to."

"Will Daisy like it?" questioned Charles. And the hesitation in his tone, which he could not suppress, plainly betrayed his opinion--that she would not like it.

Frank's countenance fell. It was the one bitter drop in the otherwise sufficiently palatable cup.

"I _wish_ I could have done better for her. It is only for a time, you know, Charley."

"I see," said Charley, feeling relieved. "You are only here whilst looking out for something better."

"That's it, in one sense. I stay here until Brown comes back. By that time I hope to--to pick myself up again."

The slight pause was caused by a consciousness that he did not feel assured upon the point. That Mr. Blase Pellet and his emissary, the Tiger, and all their unfriendly machinations combined, would by that time be in some way satisfactorily disposed of, leaving himself a free agent again, Frank devoutly hoped and most sanguinely expected. It was only when his mind dipped into details, and he began to consider how and by what means these enemies were likely to be subdued, that he felt anxious and doubtful.

"Something good may turn up for you, Frank, before the fellow--Brown, if that's his name--comes home. I suppose you'll take it if it does."

"Not I. My bargain with Brown is to remain here until he returns. And here I shall remain."

"Oh, well--of course a bargain's a bargain. How long does he expect to be away?"

"He did not know. He might stay four or six months with his people, he thought, if things went on well here."

"I say, why do you keep that street-door open?"

"I don't know," answered Frank. "From habit, I suppose. Brown used to keep it open, and I have done the same. I like it so. It gives a little liveliness to the place."

"People may take the place for a shop, and come in."

"Some have done so," laughed Frank. "It was a chemist's shop before Brown took to it. I tell them it is only a surgery now."

"When do you expect Daisy?" asked Charles, after a pause.

"This evening."

"This evening!"

"I shall snatch a moment at dusk to fetch her," added Frank. "Mrs. Townley is going into Cornwall on a visit to The Mount, and Daisy comes home."

"Have the people at The Mount forgiven Daisy yet?"

"No. They will not do that, I expect, until I am established as a first-rate practitioner, with servants and carriages about me. Mrs. St. Clare likes show."

"She wouldn't like this, I'm afraid," spoke Charles, candidly, looking up at the low ceiling and across at the walls.

Frank was saved a reply. Sam, the boy, who had been out on an errand, entered, and began delivering a message to his master.

"Would you like some dinner, Charley?" asked Frank. "Come along, I don't know what there is to-day."

Passing through a side-door behind him, Frank stepped into an adjoining sitting-room. It was narrow, but comfortable. The window looked to the street. The fireplace was at the opposite end, side by side with the door that led to the house beyond. A mahogany sofa covered with horsehair stood against the wall on one side; a low bookcase and a work-table on the other. The chairs matched the sofa; on the centre table the dinner-cloth was laid.

"Not a bad room, this," said Charley, thinking it an improvement on the shop.

"There's a better sitting-room upstairs," observed Frank.

"Well furnished, too. Brown liked to have decent things about him; and his people, he said, helped him liberally when he set up here. That work-table he bought the other day for Daisy's benefit."

"He must be rather a good sort of a fellow."

"He's a very good one. What have you for dinner, Eve? Put a knife and fork for this gentleman."

"Roast beef, sir," replied the old woman, who was carrying in the dishes, and nodded graciously to Charles, as much as to say he was welcome. "I thought the new mistress might like to find a cut of cold meat in the house."

"Quite right," said Frank. "Sit down, Charley."

Charley sat down, and did ample justice to the dinner, especially the Yorkshire pudding, a dish of which he was particularly fond, and had not lost his relish for amidst the dainties of the table at Eagles' Nest. He began to think Frank's quarters were not so bad on the whole, compared with no quarters at all, and no dinner to eat.

"Have you chanced to see that man, Charley, since you came to London?" inquired Frank, putting the question with a certain reluctance, for he hated to allude to the subject.

"What man?" returned Charley.

"The Tiger."

"No, I have not seen him. I learnt at Oxford that I had been mistaken in thinking he was looking after me----"

"He was not looking after you," interrupted Frank.

"My creditors there all assured me---- Oh, Frank, how could I forget?" broke off Charley. "What an ungrateful fellow I am! Though, indeed, not really ungrateful, but it had temporarily slipped my memory. How good it was of you to settle those two bills for me! I would not write to thank you: I preferred to wait until we met. How did you raise the money?"

Frank, who had finished his dinner, had nothing to do but to stare at Charles. And he did stare, "I don't know what you are talking about, Charley. What bills have I settled for you?"

"The two wretched bills I had accepted and went about in fear of. You know. Was it not you who paid them?"

"Are they paid?"

"Yes. All paid and done with. It must have been you, Frank. There's no one else that it could have been."

"My good lad, I assure you I know nothing whatever about it. Where should I get a hundred pounds from? What could induce you to think it was I?"

Charles told the tale--all he knew of it. They wasted some minutes in conjectures, and then came to the conclusion that it must have been Major Raynor himself who had paid. He had become acquainted in some way with Charles's trouble and had quietly relieved it. A lame conclusion, as both felt: for setting aside the fact that the poor major was short of money himself, to pay bills for his son secretly was eminently uncharacteristic of him: he would have been far more likely to proclaim it to the whole house, and reproach Charley in its hearing. But they were fain to rest in the belief, from sheer want of any other benefactor to fix upon. Not a soul was there in the wide world, as far as Charley knew, to come forth in this manner, excepting his father.

"I think it must have been so," concluded Charles. "Perhaps the dear old man got to know, through Lamb, of Huddles's visit that day."

"And what of Eagles' Nest?" asked Frank, as he passed back into the surgery with Charles, and sent the boy into the kitchen to his dinner. "Has George Atkinson taken possession yet?"

"We have heard nothing of Eagles' Nest, Frank; we don't care to hear anything. Possession? Of course he has. You may depend upon it he would make an indecent rush into it the very day after we came out of it, the wretch! If he did not the same night."

Frank could not help a smile at the outburst of indignation. "Atkinson ought to do something for you, Charley," he said. "After turning you out of one home, the least he could do would be to find you another. I dare say he might put you into some post or other."

"And do you suppose I'd take it!" fired Charles, his eyes blazing. "What queer ideas you must have, Frank! You are as bad as Edina. As if----"

"Oh, please, Dr. Brown, would you come to mother," interrupted a small child, darting in at the open door. "She have fell through the back parlour window a-cleaning of it, and her arm be broke, she says."

"Who is your mother, little one?"

"At the corner shop, please, sir. Number eleven."

"Tell her I will come directly."

Charles was taking up his hat, to leave. "Why does she call you Dr. Brown?" he questioned, as the child ran off, and Frank was making ready to follow her and summoning Sam to the surgery.

"Half the people here call me so. It comes more readily to them than the new name. Good-bye, Charley. My love to all at home. Come again soon."

He sped away in the wake of the child. Charley turned the other way on his road homewards, carrying with him a very disparaging opinion of Lambeth.

In the small back sitting-room, underneath its two lighted gas-burners, stood Mrs. Frank Raynor, her heart beating faster than usual, her breath laboured. She felt partly frightened, partly confused by what she saw--by the aspect of the place she was brought to, as her new home. Frank had in a degree prepared her for it as they came along in the cab which brought them, Daisy's boxes piled upon it: but either he had done it insufficiently, or she had failed to realize his description of what he called the "humble den," for it came upon her with a shock. Both as Margaret St. Clare and as Margaret Raynor her personal experiences of dwelling-places had been pleasant and sunny.

The clock was striking ten when the cab had drawn up in Mark Street. She looked out to see why it stopped. She saw a narrow street, an inferior locality, small shops on either side. The one before which they had halted appeared to be a shop too: the door stood open, a gas-burner was alight within.

"Why are we stopping here, Frank?"

Frank, hastening to jump out, did not hear the question. He turned to help her.

"This is not the place?" she cried in doubt.

"Yes, this is it, Daisy."

He took her in, piloted her between the counters into the lighted side-room, and turned back to see to the luggage; leaving her utterly aghast, bewildered, and standing as still as a statue.

The door at the end of the room opened, and a curious old figure, attired in a chintz gown of antique shape, with a huge bow of green ribbon on her muslin cap, appeared at it. Eve curtsied to her new mistress: the new mistress stared at the servant.

"You are welcome, ma'am. We are glad to see you. And, please, would you like the supper-tray brought in?"

"Is--is this Mr. Raynor's?" questioned Daisy, in tones that seemed to say she dreaded the answer.

"Sure enough it is, ma'am, for the present. He is here during the master's absence."

Daisy said no more. She only stood still in her grievous astonishment, striving to comprehend it all, and to hush her dismayed heart. The luggage was being brought in, and Eve went to help with it. Frank found his wife seated on the horsehair sofa, when he came in; and caught the blank look on her pale face.

"You are tired, Daisy. You would like to take your things off. Come upstairs, and I will show you your bedroom."

Lighting a candle, he led the way, Daisy following mechanically up the steep, confined staircase, to which she herself seemed to present a contrast, with her fashionable attire of costly black gauze, relieved by frillings of soft white net.

"The room's not very large, Daisy," he said, entering one on the first floor, the window looking out on some back leads. "There's a larger one in front on the upper landing, but I thought you would prefer this, and it is better furnished. It was Brown's room. He said I had better take to it, for if I went up higher I might not hear the night-bell.

"Yes," replied Daisy, faintly, undoing the strings of her bonnet. "Was it a--a shop we came through?"

"That was the surgery. It used to be a shop, and Brown never took the trouble to alter its arrangement."

"Have you always to come through it on entering the house?"

"Yes. There is no other entrance. The houses in these crowded places are confined in space, you see, Daisy. I will help Sam to bring up the boxes," added Frank, disappearing.

When finally left to herself, Margaret sat down and burst into a passionate flood of tears. It seemed to her that, in coming to dwell here, she must lose caste for ever. Frank called to her presently, to know whether she was not coming down.

Drying her eyes as she best could, she took up the candle to descend. On the opposite side of the small landing, a door stood open to a sitting-room, and she looked in. A fair-sized room this, for it was over both the surgery and the parlour, and a very nice room too, its carpet of a rich dark hue, with chairs and window-hangings to match, and furniture that was good and handsome. She put the candle on a console, crossed to one of the windows, and gazed down at the street.

Late though it was, people were surging to and fro; not at all the sort of people Daisy had been accustomed to. Over the way was a small fish-shop: a ragged man and boy, standing before it, were eating mussels. To pass one's days in such a street as this must be frightfully depressing, and Mrs. Raynor burst into tears again.

"Why, my darling, what is the matter?"

Frank, coming up in search of her, found her sobbing wildly, her head buried on the arm of one of the chairs. She lifted it, and let it rest upon his shoulder.

"You are disappointed, Daisy. I see it."

"It--it is such a wretched street, Frank; and--and such a house!"

Frank flushed painfully. He felt the complaint to his heart's core.

"It is only for a time, Daisy. Until I can get into something better. If that may ever be!" he added to himself, as Blase Pellet's image rose before his mind.

Daisy sobbed more quietly. He was holding her to him.

"I know, my poor girl, how inferior it is; altogether different from anything you have been accustomed to; but this home is better than none at all. We can at least be together and be happy here."

"Yes, we can," replied Daisy, rallying her spirits and her sweet nature, as she lifted her face to look into his. "I married you for worse, as well as for better, Frank, my best love. We _will_ be happy in it."

"As happy as a king and queen in a fairy-tale," rejoined Frank, a whole world of hope in his tones.

And that was Daisy's instalment in her London home.