第12章

'My dear Doctor.'

'Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion? You will show the best way of applying it, far better than Mr.Goodchild can.'

'With pleasure.'

The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the door.'Lorn!' said the Doctor, calling after him.

He returned.

'Mr.Goodchild will keep me company till you come home.Don'thurry.Excuse my calling you back.'

'It is not,' said the Assistant, with his former smile, 'the first time you have called me back, dear Doctor.'With those words he went away.

'Mr.Goodchild,' said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice, and with his former troubled expression of face, 'I have seen that your attention has been concentrated on my friend.'

'He fascinates me.I must apologise to you, but he has quite bewildered and mastered me.'

'I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,' said the Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr.Goodchild's, 'become in the course of time very heavy.I will tell you something.You may make what use you will of it, under fictitious names.I know I may trust you.I am the more inclined to confidence to-night, through having been unexpectedly led back, by the current of our conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my early life. Will you please to draw a little nearer?'

Mr.Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went on thus: speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, that the wind, though it was far from high, occasionally got the better of him.

When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many years than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened to arrive in the town of Doncaster, exactly in the middle of a race-week, or, in other words, in the middle of the month of September.He was one of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, and open- mouthed young gentlemen, who possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection, and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life making friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go.His father was a rich manufacturer, and had bought landed property enough in one of the midland counties to make all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly envious of him.Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect of the great estate and the great business after his father's death; well supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked after, during his father's lifetime.Report, or scandal, whichever you please, said that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be violently indignant when he foundthat his son took after him.This may be true or not.I myself only knew the elder Mr.Holliday when he was getting on in years; and then he was as quiet and as respectable a gentleman as ever I met with.

Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained way, that he would go to the races.He did not reach the town till towards the close of the evening, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed at the principal hotel.Dinner they were ready enough to give him; but as for a bed, they laughed when he mentioned it.In the race-week at Doncaster, it is no uncommon thing for visitors who have not bespoken apartments, to pass the night in their carriages at the inn doors.As for the lower sort of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that full time, sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep under.Rich as he was, Arthur's chance of getting a night's lodging (seeing that he had not written beforehand to secure one) was more than doubtful.He tried the second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the inferior inns after that; and was met everywhere by the same form of answer.No accommodation for the night of any sort was left.All the bright golden sovereigns in his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the race-week.

To a young fellow of Arthur's temperament, the novelty of being turned away into the street, like a penniless vagabond, at every house where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new and highly amusing piece of experience.He went on, with his carpet-bag in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for travellers that he could find in Doncaster, until he wandered into the outskirts of the town.By this time, the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, the clouds were gathering heavily, and there was every prospect that it was soon going to rain.

The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young Holliday's good spirits.He began to contemplate the houseless situation in which he was placed, from the serious rather than the humorous point of view; and he looked about him, for another public-house to inquire at, with something very like downright anxiety in his mind on the subject of alodging for the night.The suburban part of the town towards which he had now strayed was hardly lighted at all, and he could see nothing of the houses as he passed them, except that they got progressively smaller and dirtier, the farther he went.Down the winding road before him shone the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint, lonely light that struggled ineffectually with the foggy darkness all round him.He resolved to go on as far as this lamp, and then, if it showed him nothing in the shape of an Inn, to return to the central part of the town and to try if he could not at least secure a chair to sit down on, through the night, at one of the principal Hotels.

As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walking close under it, found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court, on the wall of which was painted a long hand in faded flesh-colour, pointing with a lean forefinger, to this inscription:-THE TWO ROBINS.