CHAPTER XLV. OF BYGONES

Were we at the outset instead of the close of our journey, we could not help dwelling on the scene the lecture-room presented as the discovery became whispered throughout the crowd. Our goal is, however, now almost in sight, and we must not tarry. We will but record one thought, as we say that they who were accustomed to associate the idea of fine sympathies with fine clothes and elegance of manner, would have been astonished at the instinctive delicacy and good breeding of that dense mass of men. Many were disappointed at the abrupt conclusion of a great enjoyment, nearly all were moved by intense curiosity to know the history of those so strangely brought together again, and yet not one murmured a complaint, not one obtruded a question; but with a few words of kindly greeting, a good wish, or a blessing, they stole quietly away and left the spot.

Seated side by side in a room of the inn, old Layton and his son remained till nigh daybreak. How much had they to ask and answer of each other! Amidst the flood of questions poured forth, anything like narrative made but sorry progress; but at length Alfred came to hear how his father had been duped by a pretended friend, cheated out of his discovery, robbed of his hard-won success, and then denounced as an impostor.

"This made me violent, and then they called me mad. A little more of such persecution and their words might have come true.

"I scarcely yet know to what I am indebted for my liberation. I was a patient in Swift's Hospital, when one day came the Viceroy to visit it, and with him came a man I had met before in society, but not over amicably, nor with such memories as could gratify. 'Who is this?' cried he, as he saw me at work in the garden. 'I think I remember his face.'

The keeper whispered something, and he replied, 'Ah! indeed!' while he drew near where I was digging. 'What do you grow here?' asked he of me, in a half-careless tone. 'Madder,' shouted I, with a yell that made him start; and then, recovering himself, he hastened off to report the answer to the Viceroy.

"They both came soon after to where I was. The Viceroy, with that incaution which makes some people talk before the insane as though they were deaf, said, in my hearing, 'And so you tell me he was once a Fellow of Trinity?' 'Yes, my Lord,' said I, assuming the reply, 'a Regius Professor and a Medallist, now a Madman and a Pauper. The converse is the gentleman at your side. _He_ began as a fool, and has ended as a Poor Law Commissioner!' They both turned away, but I cried out, 'Mr.

Ogden, one word with you before you go.' He came back. 'I have been placed here,' said I, 'at the instance of a man who has robbed me. I am not mad, but I am friendless. The name of my persecutor is Holmes. He writes himself Captain Nicholas Holmes--'

"He would not hear another word, but hurried away without answering me. I know no more than that I was released ten days after,--that I was turned out in the streets to starve or rob. My first thought was to find out this man Holmes. To meet and charge him with his conduct towards me, in some public place, would have been a high vengeance; but I sought him for weeks in vain, and at last learned he had gone abroad.

"How I lived all that time I cannot tell you; it is all to me now like a long and terrible dream. I was constantly in the hands of the police, and rarely a day passed that I had not some angry altercation with the authorities. I was in one of these one morning, when, half stupefied with cold and want, I refused to answer further. The magistrate asked, 'Has he any friends? Is there no one who takes any interest in him?'

The constable answered, 'None, your worship; and it is all the better, he would only heap disgrace on them!'

"It was then, for the first moment of my life, the full measure of all I had become stood plainly before me. In those few words lay the sentence passed upon my character. From that hour forth I determined never to utter my name again. I kept this pledge faithfully, nor was it difficult; few questioned, none cared for me. I lived--if that be the word for it--in various ways. I compounded drugs for chemists, corrected the press for printers, hawked tracts, made auction catalogues, and at last turned pyrotechnist to a kind of Vauxhall, all the while writing letters home with small remittances to your mother, who had died when I was in the madhouse. In a brief interval of leisure I went down to the North, to learn what I might of her last moments, and to see where they had laid her. There was a clergyman there who had been kind and hospitable towards me in better days, and it was to his house I repaired."

He paused, and for some minutes was silent. At length he said,--

"It is strange, but there are certain passages in my life, not very remarkable in themselves, that remain distinct and marked out, just as one sees certain portions of landscape by the glare of lightning flashes in a thunderstorm, and never forgets them after. Such was my meeting with this Mr. Millar. He was distributing bread to the poor, with the assistance of his clerk, on the morning that I came to his door.

The act, charitable and good in itself, he endeavored to render more profitable by some timely words of caution and advice; he counselled gratitude towards those who bestowed these bounties, and thrift in their use. Like all men who have never known want themselves, he denied that it ever came save through improvidence. He seemed to like the theme, and dwelt on it with pleasure, the more as the poor sycophants who received his alms eagerly echoed back concurrence in all that he spoke disparagingly of themselves. I waited eagerly till he came to a pause, and then I spoke.

"'Now,' said I, 'let us reverse this medal, and read it on the other side. Though as poor and wretched as any of those about, I have not partaken of your bounty, and I have the right to tell you that your words are untrue, your teaching unsound, and your theory a falsehood. To men like us, houseless, homeless, and friendless, you may as well preach good breeding and decorous manners, as talk of providence and thrift.

Want is a disease; it attacks the poor, whose constitutions are exposed to it; and to lecture us against its inroads is like cautioning us against cold, by saying "Take care to wear strong boots,--mind that you take your greatcoat,--be sure that you do not expose yourself to the night air." You would be shocked, would you not, to address such sarcastic counsels to such poor, barefoot, ragged creatures as we are?

And yet you are not shocked by enjoining things fifty times more absurd, five hundred times more difficult. Thrift is the inhabitant of warm homesteads, where the abundant meal is spread upon the board and the fire blazes on the hearth. It never lives in the hovel, where the snowdrift lodges in the chimney and the rain beats upon the bed of straw!'

"'Who is this fellow?' cried the Rector, outraged at being thus replied to. 'Where did he come from?'

"'From a life of struggle and hardship,' said I, 'that if _you_ had been exposed to and confronted with, you had died of starvation, despite all your wise saws on thrift and providence.'

"'Gracious mercy!' muttered he, 'can this be--' and then he stopped; and beckoning me to follow him into an inner room, he retired.

"'Do I speak to Dr. Layton?' asked he, curtly, when we were alone.

"'I was that man,' said I. 'I am nothing now.'

"'By what unhappy causes have you come to this?'

"'The lack of that same thrift you were so eloquent about, perhaps. I was one of those who could write, speak, invent, and discover; but I was never admitted a brother of the guild of those who save. The world, however, has always its compensations, and I met thrifty men. Some of them stole my writings, and some filched my discoveries. They have prospered, and live to illustrate your pleasant theory. But I have not come here to make my confessions; I would learn of you certain things about what was once my home.'

"He was most kind,--he would have been more than kind to me had I let him; but I would accept of nothing. 'I did not even break bread under his roof, though I had fasted for a day and a half. He had a few objects left with him to give me, which I took,--the old pocket-book one of them,--and then I went away."

The old man's narrative was henceforth one long series of struggles with fortune. He concealed none of those faults by which he had so often wrecked his better life. Hating and despising the companionship to which his reduced condition had brought him, he professed to believe there was less degradation in drunkenness than in such association. Through all he said, in fact, there was the old defiant spirit of early days, a scornful rejection of all assistance, and even, in failure and misery, a self-reliance that seemed invincible. He had come to America by the invitation of a theatrical manager, who had failed, leaving him in the direst necessity and want.

The dawn of day found him still telling of his wayward life, its sorrows, its struggles, and defeats.

CHAPTER XLVI. THE DOCTOR'S NARRATIVE

Old Layton never questioned his son whither they were going, or for what, till the third day of their journeying together. Such, indeed, was the preoccupation of his mind, that he travelled along unmindful of new places and new people, all his thoughts deeply engaged by one single theme, Brief as this interval was, what a change had it worked in his appearance! Instead of the wild and haggard look his features used to wear, their expression was calm, somewhat stern, perhaps, and such as might have reminded one who had seen him in youth of the Herbert Layton of his college days. He had grown more silent, too, and there was in his manner the same trait of haughty reserve which once distinguished him.

His habits of intemperance were abandoned at once, and without the slightest reference to motive or intention he gave his son to see that he had entered on a new course in life.

"Have you told me where we are going, Alfred, and have I forgotten it?"

said he, on the third day of the journey.

"No, father; so many other things occurred to us to talk over that I never thought of this. It is time, however, I should tell you. We are going to meet one who would rather make your acquaintance than be the guest of a king."

The old man smiled with a sort of cold incredulity, and his son went on to recount how, in collecting the stray papers and journals of the "Doctor," as they styled him between them, this stranger had come to conceive the greatest admiration for his bold energy of temperament and the superior range of his intellect. The egotism, so long dormant in that degraded nature, revived and warmed up as the youth spoke, and he listened with proud delight at the story of all the American's devotion to him.

"He is a man of science, then, Alfred?"

"Nothing of the kind."

"He is, at least, one of those quick-minded fellows who in this stirring country adapt to their purpose discoveries they have had no share in making; is he not?"

"Scarcely even that. He is a man of ordinary faculties, many prejudices, but of a manly honesty of heart I have never seen surpassed."

"Then he is poor," said the old man, sarcastically.

"I know little of his circumstances, but I believe they are ample."

"Take my word for it, boy, they are not," said the other, with a bitter smile. "Fortune is a thrifty goddess, and where she bestows a generous nature she takes care it shall have nothing to give away."

"I trust your precept will not apply to this case, at all events. I have been his pensioner for nigh a year back: I am so still. I had hoped, indeed, by this project of lecturing--"

"Nay, nay, boy, no success could come of that. Had you been a great name in your own country, and come here heralded by honors won already, they would have given you a fair hearing and a generous recompense, but they will not take as money the unstamped metal; they will not stoop to accept what the old country sends forth without acknowledgment, as good enough for _them_. Believe me, this race is prouder than our own, and it is not by unworthy sneers at them that we shall make them less vainglorious."

"I scarcely know them, but for the sake of that one man I owe them a deep affection," said Alfred, warmly.

"I have a scheme for you," said the old man, after a pause; "but we will talk of it later on. For the present, I want you to aid me in a plan of my own. Ever since I have been in this country I have endeavored to find out a person whose name alone was known to me, and with whom I gave a solemn promise to communicate,--a death-bed promise it was, and given under no common circumstances. The facts were these:--

"I was once upon a time, when practising as a physician at Jersey, sent for to attend a patient taken suddenly and dangerously ill. The case was a most embarrassing one. There were symptoms so incongruous as to reject the notion of any ordinary disease, and such as might well suggest the suspicion of poisoning, and yet so skilfully and even patiently had the scheme been matured, the detection of the poison during life was very difficult My eagerness in the inquiry was mistaken by the patient for a feeling of personal kindness towards himself,--an error very familiar to all medical men in practice. He saw in my unremitting attention and hourly watching by his bedside the devotion of one like an old friend, and not the scientific ardor of a student.

"It is just possible that his gratitude was the greater, that the man was one little likely to conciliate good feeling or draw any sympathy towards him. He was a hard, cold, selfish fellow, whose life had been passed amongst the worst classes of play-men, and who rejected utterly all thought of truth or confidence in his old associates. I mention this to show how, in a very few days, the accident of my situation established between us a freedom and a frankness that savored of long acquaintance.

"In his conversations with me he confessed that his wife had been divorced from a former husband, and, from circumstances known to him, he believed she desired his death. He told me of the men to whom in particular his suspicions attached, and the reasons of the suspicions; that these men would be irretrievably ruined if his speculations on the turf were to succeed, and that there was not one of them would not peril his life to get sight of his book on the coming Derby. I was curious to ascertain why he should have surrounded himself with men so obviously his enemies, and he owned it was an act prompted by a sort of dogged courage, to show them that he did not fear them. Nor was this the only motive, as he let out by an inadvertence; he cherished the hope of detecting an intrigue between one of his guests and his wife, as the means of liberating himself from a tie long distasteful to him.

"One of the party had associated himself with him in this project, and promised him all his assistance. Here was a web of guilt and treachery, entangled enough to engage a deep interest! For the man himself, I cared nothing; there was in his nature that element of low selfishness that is fatal to all sense of sympathy. His thoughts and speculations ranged only over suspicions and distrusts, and the only hopes he ever expressed were for the punishment of his enemies. Scarcely, indeed, did a visit pass in which he did not compel me to repeat a solemn oath that the mode of his death should be explored, and his poisoners--if there were such--be brought to trial. As he drew nigh his last, his sufferings gave little intervals of rest, and his mind occasionally wandered. Even in his ravings, however, revenge never left him, and he would break out into wild rhapsodies in imitation of the details of justice, calling on the prisoners, and by name, to say whether they would plead guilty or not; asking them to stand forward, and then reciting with hurried impetuosity the terms of an indictment for murder. To these there would succeed a brief space of calm reason, in which he told me that his daughter--a child by a former wife--was amply provided for, and that her fortune was so far out of the reach of his enemies that it-lay in America, where her uncle, her guardian, resided. He gave me his name and address, and in my pocket-book--this old and much-used pocket-book that you see--he wrote a few tremulous lines, accrediting me to this gentleman as the one sole friend beside him in his last struggles. As he closed the book, he said, 'As you hope to die in peace, swear to me not to neglect this, nor leave my poor child a beggar.' And I swore it.

"His death took place that night; the inquest followed on the day after.

My suspicions were correct; he had died of corrosive sublimate; the quantity would have killed a dozen men. There was a trial and a conviction. One of them, I know, was executed, and, if I remember aright, sentence of transportation passed on another. The woman, however, was not implicated, and her reputed lover escaped. My evidence was so conclusive and so fatal that the prisoners' counsel had no other resource than to damage my credit by assailing my character, and in his cross-examination of me he drew forth such details of my former life, and the vicissitudes of my existence, that I left the witness-table a ruined man. It was not a very difficult task to represent a life of poverty as one of ignominy and shame. The next day my acquaintances passed without recognizing me, and from that hour forth none ever consulted me. In my indignation at this injustice I connected all who could have in any way contributed to my misfortune, and this poor orphan child amongst the rest. Had I never been engaged in that ill-starred case, my prospects in life had been reasonably fair and hopeful. I was in sufficient practice, increasing in repute, and likely to succeed, when this calamitous affair crossed me.