Pondering tonight upon this strange scene of five years ago, John Treverton asked himself if there might not have been some kind of link between this man and Zaïre Chicot.
XXXIV
George Gerard in Danger
Although George Gerard had made up his mind to leave Beechampton by the first train on Monday morning, and although he began to feel doubtful as to the purity of Edward Clare’s intentions, and altogether uncomfortable in the society of that young man, when Monday came and showed him a dark sky, and a world almost blotted out by rain, he yielded, more weakly than it was his nature to yield, to the friendly persuasion of Mrs. Clare and her daughter, who had come down to the breakfast room at an early hour, to pour out the departing guest’s tea.
“You really must not travel on such a wretched morning,” said the Vicar’s wife, with maternal kindness. “I wouldn’t let Edward start on a long journey in such weather.”
George Gerard thought of the discomforts of a third class carriage, the currents of icy air creeping in at every crack, the incursion of damp passengers at every station, breathing frostily, and flapping their muddy garments against his knees, the streaming umbrellas in the comers, the all-pervading wretchedness: and then his thoughtful eyes roamed round the pretty, little breakfast room, where the furniture would hardly have fetched twenty pounds at an auction, but where the snugness and cosiness and homelike air were above price; and from the room he glanced at its occupants, Celia in her dark winter gown, of coarse blue serge, fitting to perfection, and set-off by the last fashion in collar and cuffs.
“Why do you worry Mr. Gerard, mother?” asked Celia, looking up from her tea-making. “Don’t you see that we are so horribly dull here, and he is so anxious to get away from us, that he would go through a much worse ordeal than a wet journey in order to make his escape.”
“I almost wish you knew what a cruel speech that is, Miss Clare,” said Gerard, looking down at her with a grave smile from his station in front of the fire.
“Why cruel?”
“Because you unconsciously taunt me with my poverty. The eight or ten patients I ought to see tomorrow morning are worth a hundred pounds a year to me at most, and yet I can hardly venture to jeopardise that insignificant income.”
“How you will look back and laugh at these days years hence, when you are being driven in your brougham from Savile Row to the railway station, to start for Windsor Castle, at the command of a telegram from royalty.”
“Leaving royal telegrams and Windsor Castle out of the question, there is such a distance between my present abode and Savile Row that I doubt my ever being able to traverse it,” said Gerard; “but in the meantime my few paying patients are of vital importance to me, and I have some rather critical cases among my poor people.”
“Poor dear things, I am sure they can all wait,” said Celia. “Perhaps it will do them good to suspend their treatment for a day or two. Physic seems at best such a doubtful advantage.”
“I have a friend who looks after anything serious,” said Gerard, dubiously. “If I were to follow my own inclination I should most assuredly stay.”
“Then follow it,” cried Celia. “I always do. Mamma, give Mr. Gerard some bacon and potatoes, while I run and tell Peter to go to the George, and let them know that the omnibus need not call here.”
“I am afraid I am imposing upon your kind hospitality, and giving you a great deal of trouble,” said Gerard, when Celia had slipped out of the room to give her orders.
“You are giving us no trouble; and you must know that I should be happy to receive any friend of my son’s.”
Gerard’s sallow cheek flushed faintly at this speech. He felt that there was a kind of imposture in his position at the Vicarage. Everyone insisted upon regarding him as an intimate friend of Edward Clare; and already it had been made clear to him that Edward was a man whom he could never make his friend. But for Edward Clare’s mother and sister he had a much more cordial feeling.
He sat down to breakfast with the two ladies. The Vicar would breakfast later, and one of Edward’s privileges as a poet of the future was to lie in bed until ten o’clock every morning in the present. Never, perhaps, was a merrier breakfast eaten. Gerard, having made up his mind to stay, abandoned himself unreservedly to the pleasure of the moment. Celia questioned him about his life, and drew from him a lively description of some of the more curious incidents in his career. He had but rarely joined in the wilder amusements of his fellow students, but he had joined them often enough to see all that was strange and interesting in London life. Celia listened open-eyed, with rosy lips apart in wonder.
“Ah, that is what I call living,” she exclaimed. “How different from our system of vegetation here. I’m sure if Harvey had lived all his life at Hazlehurst he would never have found out anything about the circulation of the blood. I don’t believe ours does circulate.”
“If you could only know how sweet your rural stagnation seems to a dweller in cities,” said Gerard.
“Let the dweller in cities try it for a month or six weeks,” said Celia. “He will be weary enough by the end of that time; unless he is one of those sporting creatures who are always happy as long as they can go about with a gun or a fishing rod murdering something.”
“I should want neither gun nor rod,” said Gerard. “I think I could find complete happiness among these hills.”
“What, away from all your hospitals?”
“I am speaking of my holiday life. I could not afford to live always away from
