The Wharf by the Docks | Page 2

to assume
them. From head to foot there was no trace of the doctor in his
appearance; he looked all over what at heart he was--the burly,

good-humored, home-loving, land-loving country gentleman, who
looked upon Great Datton, where his home was, as the pivot of the
world.
However he was dressed, he always looked shabby, and he could never
have been mistaken for anything but an English gentleman.
He shook hands with Mr. Wedmore, with a smile. These poor
Londoners, trying to acclimatize themselves, amused him greatly. He
looked upon them much as the Londoner looks upon the Polish Jew
immigrants--with pity, a little jealousy, and no little scorn.
"Where's Carlo?" asked he.
"Oh, Carlo was a nuisance, so I've sent him to the stable," said Mr.
Wedmore, with the slightly colder manner which he instantly assumed
if any grievance of his, however small, was touched upon.
Carlo was a young retriever, which Mr. Wedmore, in the stern belief
that it was the proper thing in a country house, had encouraged about
the house until his habits of getting between everybody's legs and
helping himself to the contents of everybody's plate had so roused the
ire of the rest of the household that Mr. Wedmore had had to give way
to the universal prejudice against him.
The doctor shook his head. Lack of capacity for managing a dog was
just what one might have expected from these new-comers.
Mr. Wedmore turned his chair to face that of the doctor, and spoke in
the sharp, incisive tones of a man who has serious business on hand.
"I've been hoping you would drop in every night for the last fortnight,"
said he, "and as you didn't come, I was at last obliged to send for you. I
have a very important matter to consult you about. You've brought your
pipe?" The doctor produced it from his pocket. "Well, fill it, and listen.
It's about young Horne--Dudley Horne--that I want to speak to you, to
consult you, in fact."

The doctor nodded as he filled his pipe.
"The young barrister I've met here, who's engaged to your elder
daughter?"
"Well, she was all but engaged to him," admitted Mr. Wedmore, in a
grudging tone. "But I'm going to put a stop to it, and I'll tell you why."
Here he got up, as if unable to keep still in the state of excitement into
which he was falling, and stood with his hands behind him and his back
to the fire. "I have a strong suspicion that the young man's not quite
right here." And lowering his voice, Mr. Wedmore touched his
forehead.
"Good gracious! You surprise me!" cried the doctor. "He always
seemed to me such a clever young fellow. Indeed, you said so to me
yourself."
"So he is. Very clever," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I don't suppose
there are many young chaps of his age--for he's barely thirty--at the Bar
whose prospects are as good as his. But, for all that, I have a strong
suspicion that he's got a tile loose, and that's why I wanted to speak to
you. Now his father was in a lunatic asylum no less than three times,
and was in one when he died."
The doctor looked grave.
"That's a bad history, certainly. Do you know how the father's malady
started?"
"Why, yes. It was the effect of a wound in the head received when he
was a young man out in America, in the war with Mexico in '46."
"That isn't the sort of mania that is likely to come down from father to
son," said the doctor, "if his brain was perfectly sound before, and the
recurrent mania the result of an accident."
"Well, so I've understood. And the matter has never troubled me at all
until lately, when I have begun to detect certain morbid tendencies in

Dudley, and a general change which makes me hesitate to trust him
with the happiness of my daughter."
"Can you give me instances?" asked the doctor, although he began to
feel sure that whatever opinion he might express on the matter, Mr.
Wedmore would pay little attention to any but his own.
"Well, for you to understand the case, I must tell you a little more about
the lad's father. He and I were very old friends--chums from boyhood,
in fact. When he came back from America--where he went from a lad's
love of adventure--he made a good marriage from a monetary point of
view; married a wharf on the Thames, in fact, somewhere Limehouse
way, and settled down as a wharfinger. He was a steady fellow, and did
very well, until one fine morning he was found trying to cut his throat,
and had to be locked up. Well, he was soon out again that