Chapter V
Arabella

As it happened, Andrew did visit the «Flower-garden» at Red Hall that afternoon, because Rose, for him the queen of all flowers, had asked him to tea. Owing to circumstances that have been set out, he arrived a little late for which he was reproached by Rose, who opened the front door for him.

«Oh! Andrew,» she said, «I did hope that you would have been in time for once, since then we might have had a few minutes together. Now that can’t be, as Angelica and my father are waiting for their tea, and immediately afterwards my cousin Emma is coming for me and we are going to the theatre where we have a box.»

«What theatre? I didn’t know any of them began before eight o’clock, and who gave you the box?» asked Andrew rather heavily, for something about all these announcements chilled him.

«The Haymarket, which takes a long time to reach by bus; also we must be early because of the crowd, and Emma has the box.»

«I see,» replied Andrew without conviction, whereon she brushed his hand with her own and after a quick glance up the passage, bent her sweet face towards him. Then, when the inevitable had happened, with a little sigh of happiness, she flitted before him into the sitting-room.

Following more slowly, for he had paused to hang up his hat, Andrew met Dr. Watson who was coming from the surgery, and stopped to report to him all that had happened in connection with his remarkable case. Watson listened entranced.

«You did right, quite right,» he said, «though I’m not certain that I should have dared. However, if Clinton has approved, all is well, for I think him the greatest authority in Europe. It was good of him to come, too, but those big men are often like that and will do for nothing what they would charge fifty guineas for if they were called in. Well, my boy, you must be tired, come and have some tea. We will talk about it afterwards.»

So they went in and drank tea out of the porridge-bowls, the best china not being in evidence, and Andrew, who had eaten little that day, devoured sundry slices of the thick bread and butter, also some marrons glacés which Rose presented to him in an elegant and expensive- looking box, after all of which he felt much refreshed.

Presently, in a rather nervous kind of way, like one who feels it incumbent on her to show an active interest in the proceedings of some one else, she asked Andrew what he had been doing.

«Well,» he answered gaily, «if you want to know, subject to your father’s consent, I have been accepting an appointment, or rather a kind of partnership in the making.»

«Indeed! Oh! do tell me about it. Will you be well paid?»

«Very well, much more than I am worth, five hundred pounds a year to begin with, which means a lot to me,» and he glanced at her with meaning.

«Five hundred pounds a year!» she exclaimed, opening her big blue eyes, while Sister Angelica, in a thin voice like that of a far echo, repeated, «Five hundred pounds a year!» from the shadows at the end of the long Elizabethan table, and even Dr. Watson, awaking from his reveries, looked extremely interested. «Who offered you that?» and again Sister Angelica echoed, «Who offered you that?»

«You would never guess though. It was a friend of yours, Doctor Somerville Black.»

Rose’s face fell.

«Really,» she said in a voice so quiet that it was almost stern, «and what are you to do? Go somewhere to look after the patients whom he sends away to that watering-place of which he is so fond?»

«No,» answered Andrew, «I am to stop here to help him in London.»

«Oh! that will be delightful for you,» she said, smiling mechanically. «And now I must try on my new dress before Emma comes to fetch me, so good-bye, An – I mean Mr. West – I do congratulate you. I do indeed.» Then for one moment she let her beautiful blue eyes rest on his, and turning, glided away.

As it happened, doubtless by the merest accident, Dr. Somerville Black found himself for a little while in the box that was occupied by Rose and her cousin Emma at the Haymarket that night. Being busy he did not stop long, which in a sense did not trouble him as he was no playgoer, and in fact had not been inside a theatre for years. Arriving in the middle of an act, he waited until its end and then asked what it was all about. Rose, with the very same sweet smile and the very same glance of the perfect eyes that had entranced Andrew in the afternoon, explained to the best of her ability, which was not very well, since she had no natural gift towards synopsis.

«Ah!» said the doctor with a yawn, «most thrilling, I have no doubt, but I find real life quite interesting enough for me. You see, I have just come here from a death-bed, that of a lady who was rather great in her quiet way and who has suffered from cancer for three years without a murmur. So the sham sufferings of that painted minx at so much a night don’t move me very deeply, but I am glad that you young people like them, having none of your own. By the way, I know the lady; she’s consulted me several times and never paid my bill, and I who have seen more of her than you have, can tell you that she is uncommonly plain and has an execrable figure which goes out wherever it ought to come in and goes in wherever it ought to come out.»

«Oh! Doctor,» said Rose, «how can you say such things of the beautiful Elfrida Verney?»

«Perhaps because she hasn’t paid my bill, or perhaps because they happen to be true. It isn’t easy to disentangle human motives even if they chance to be one’s own. By the way, did you see young West before you left home? And if so, had he any more news of that case in Hozier’s Lane?»

«I saw him,» answered Rose, «but he said nothing to me about Hozier’s Lane.»

«No, of course he wouldn’t. When a man sees you, young lady, he thinks of things different to Hozier’s Lanes, and people hovering on the edge of death. I admit I do myself who am nearly forty years his senior,» and he looked at her and sighed.

«He told me,» went on Rose, hurriedly, blushing beneath those admiring eyes, «that you had asked him to come to help you in your work.»

«Yes, I did. I have a high opinion of that young man, although he has weaknesses like the rest of us. Have you anything to say against it? By your voice I gather you don’t approve.»

«Oh! no, though of course my father will miss him, and I should have thought that more experience among the poor would have been useful to him before he went into a fashionable practice.»

«Would you, indeed. Well, my dear, now that we have come to professional matters, perhaps you will allow me to form my own judgment. I’ll listen to yours on actresses or fur coats, or china, or anything that is pretty and useless, but not upon whom I should choose to be my assistant in my work, which is ugly but I hope on the whole useful, even if well paid. Now I must be off if I want to catch that lady in time, for, you see, I promised to be with her when she died and I don’t give her more than another hour or two. Here, young woman, bring a couple of boxes of those chocolates, the best you’ve got. Now good night to both of you. I hope you will enjoy the rest of the play. You’ll find my small brougham waiting outside to take you home; I’ve told the door-porter about it. I’ll come and see you soon at Red Hall; indeed, I may be down there to- morrow about that case of West’s.»

Then with a smile and a nod he was gone.

«What an interesting man the Doctor is,» said Cousin Emma, a neutral-tinted person who had been observing everything from the corner of the box.

«Yes, very,» answered Rose in the intervals of crunching up one of the chocolates with her pearl-like teeth. «But I wish he wouldn’t come here and talk about death-beds; it spoils the play.» Then taking another chocolate, she added, «Hush! the curtain is going up and we mustn’t miss anything.»

Having triumphantly pulled his case in Hozier’s Lane out of the very jaws of death and generally wound up his medical affairs with Brother Watson by inducting another young man into his honourable but unpaid share in that extensive practice, Andrew departed from Red Hall and proceeded to Harley Street. To be accurate, he did not altogether proceed since he continued to reside at Justice Street. Dr. Somerville Black had suggested that he should take rooms in his neighbourhood and even half-offered to put him up on the top floor of the great Harley Street mansion, while at the same time suggesting that he might find himself more independent elsewhere. But when Andrew brought the subject to the notice of Mrs. Josky, there was such an explosion that he never even dared to allude to it again. Growing frigid, Mrs. Josky began by asking whether he thought that he had been cheated in her house, because, if so, she was willing to produce the accounts – if she could find them, though she rather believed that she had used the most of them for Laurie’s curl-papers. However, doubtless the tradesmen would «come forward» to corroborate her statements.

When Andrew disclaimed any such idea with an almost agonized emphasis, she took another tack, or rather tacks. Was the cooking not to his taste? She knew that sometimes in Whitechapel one did not get quite the freshest fish. Herself, recently, she had been made very ill by a bad herring, but she thanked both her own God and that of the deceased Josky, who was of another sort though which she had never really understood, that the said herring, although she had bought it for him, inspired her with doubts, so that she determined to eat it herself.

Again Andrew waved his hands wildly and began to explain, till she cut him short.

Perhaps, she suggested, it was the distance that troubled him. If so she had a friend, a connection indeed, for he was a relative of Josky’s, who happened to be under certain obligations to her and owned a really tip-top hansom cab. For a very moderate sum this person, his horses and his cab would be at Andrew’s disposal day and night, «for,» added Mrs. Josky darkly, «I’ll see he don’t cheat you. He’d know better than to try it on with me, would Amos, unless he wants to see them hosses and that cab at his uncle’s, I mean, up the spout.»

Andrew murmured something about trams and buses, but again she cut him short.

«I know what it is,» she said. «It’s the neighbourhood which you think low, having as it were gone up in the world. Well, I have been considering a move myself. Give me a fortnight and I’ll see what I can do over Harley Street way. I’m told there’s a good opening for my kind of trade round about Marylebone Road.»

«But it isn’t the neighbourhood,» gasped Andrew.

«Then it must be that there dratted girl, what they call the Whitechapel Rose,» ejaculated Mrs. Josky, «and Abraham and all the prophets, as Josky used to say, only know what I am to do against her. I’ll make bold to say one thing, though, Mr. Andrew, and that is, you look out that you don’t find her in Harley Street before you.»

«Whatever do you mean?» asked Andrew amazed.

Mrs. Josky pulled herself up, fearing that she might have gone too far, and Andrew, recovering strength, gathered himself for another charge, when the Fates intervened in the shape of stifled sobs followed by a piercing howl, proceeding from the landing outside. Mrs. Josky heard and inspiration took her.

«Listen to that poor child, Mr. Andrew,» she said, «what you dragged up from the bottom of the grave. She’s been eavesdropping, having guessed what was in your heart, for which I’ll smack her head afterwards, and that’s why she’s howling outside there, like a cat on the tiles, because she can’t bear to think that you’re so cruel as to go and leave her, which she never would have believed of you, nor for the matter of that, wouldn’t I unless I had heard it with my own ears and on the right side of the door.»

Then with frightful suddenness Mrs. Josky also burst into tears.

«Stop! Stop!» cried Andrew, «and I’ll stop too – for all my life, if you like.»

Instantly, Mrs. Josky’s tears dried up, and at the same moment the howls from the landing died away.