The Wharf by the Docks | Page 2

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 time, and things went on straight enough for eight or nine years, by which time he had done very well--made a lot of money by speculation--and was thinking of retiring from business altogether. Then, perhaps it was the extra pressure of his increased business, but, at any rate, he broke out again, tried