The Adventures of Dick Maitland | Page 3

the said Mr Jonas had succeeded to the executorship of many wills--Mr Maitland's among them--as well as the other portions of his father's business; and so great had been the zeal and interest that he had displayed during the necessary negotiations, that Mrs Maitland had been most favourably impressed. Indeed Jonas Cuthbertson had honestly earned the very high opinion that Mrs Maitland had formed of him, displaying not only interest and zeal but also a considerable amount of acumen in the matter of Dick's placing. For, when Mrs Maitland, perhaps very naturally, expressed the wish that Dick should begin his studies under the guidance of some eminent Harley Street specialist, the solicitor strenuously opposed the idea, not only upon the score of expense, but also because, as he argued, Dick would certainly acquire a wider knowledge of diseases and their cure--and acquire it much more quickly--under some hard-working practitioner among the East-End poor of London; and that, as he very truly pointed out, was the great desideratum in such a case as Dick's, far outweighing the extra hard work and the sordid surroundings to which Mrs Maitland had at first so strenuously objected. Moreover, Dick agreed with the solicitor; and in the end the maternal objections were overcome, careful enquiries were instituted, and finally Dick found himself installed as a pupil in the somewhat Bohemian establishment of Doctor Julian Humphreys, M.D., M.R.C.P., M.R.C.S., and several other letters of the alphabet. And, queer though the arrangement was in many respects, it proved eminently satisfactory to Dick; for Dr Humphreys was not only an extraordinarily able physician and surgeon, but also marvellously clever and learned outside the bounds of his profession, gentle and tender- hearted as a woman, and a thoroughly good fellow all round, in the best and highest sense of the term. As for Dick, he displayed from the outset a quite exceptional aptitude for the noble profession which he had chosen; study, instead of being irksome, was a pleasure--almost a passion--with him; his nerves were steel, he never for a moment lost his head even when assisting at the most sickening operation; his touch was light and sure; and knowledge seemed to come to him intuitively. No wonder that Doctor Humphreys persistently predicted a brilliant and successful career for his pupil.
Upon his arrival home Dick found his mother in such an acute state of distress that for the first few moments of their interview she seemed to be quite incapable of making any intelligible statement: she could do nothing but weep copiously upon her stalwart son's shoulder and gasp that they were ruined--utterly and irretrievably ruined! At length, however, the lad managed to extract from Mrs Maitland the statement that she had seen, in the previous morning's papers, an account of the suicide of Mr Jonas Cuthbertson, a solicitor; and, judging from the name and other particulars given in the published account, that it must be their Mr Cuthbertson, she had hurried up to town and called at Cuthbertson's chambers, where her worst apprehensions had received complete and terrible confirmation. From the particulars supplied by Mr Herbert, Cuthbertson's chief clerk, it appeared that "Mr Jonas", after walking worthily in his father's footsteps for two years, had become infected with the gambling craze, and, first losing all his own money, had finally laid hands upon as much of his clients' property as he could obtain access to, until, his ill luck still pursuing him, he had lost that also, and then had sought to evade the consequences of his misdeeds by blowing out his brains with two shots from a revolver. This final act of folly had been perpetrated two days before the account of it in the papers had fallen under Mrs Maitland's notice, and in the interim there had, of course, been time only to make a very cursory examination into the affairs of the suicide, but that examination had sufficed to reveal the appalling fact that every available security, both of his own and of his clients, had disappeared, while sufficient evidence had been discovered to show pretty clearly what had led to their disappearance.
This was the sum and substance of Mrs Maitland's somewhat incoherently told story, and when Dick had heard it through to the end he had no reason to doubt its truth; but manifestly it was not at all the sort of story to be taken upon trust, it must be fully and completely investigated, if only for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not anything, however small, was to be saved from the wreck; accordingly, after partaking of a hasty lunch, young Maitland wended his way to the City, and there had a most discouraging interview with Mr Herbert, who was by this time busily engaged upon the preparation of a detailed statement