“Surely this common brawler ought not to have the care of these nice, sweet children; something must be done about it; and when the man is sober, he must be talked to!”
Alas! it is a hard case with a man who lives upon his own bottom and responsibility, making himself no allies, sewing himself on to nobody’s skirts, insulating himself, — hard, when his trouble comes; and so poor Doctor Grimshawe was like to find it.
He had succeeded by dint of good skill, and some previous practice at quarter-staff, in keeping his assailants at bay, though not without some danger on his own part; but their number, their fierceness, and the more skilled assault of some among them must almost immediately have been successful, when the Doctor’s part was strengthened by an unexpected ally. This was a person [Endnote: 2] of tall, slight figure, who, without lifting his hands to take part in the conflict, thrust himself before the Doctor, and turned towards the assailants, crying, —
“Christian men, what would you do? Peace, — peace!”
His so well intended exhortation took effect, indeed, in a certain way, but not precisely as might have been wished: for a blow, aimed at Doctor Grim, took effect on the head of this man, who seemed to have no sort of skill or alacrity at defending himself, any more than at making an assault; for he never lifted his hands, but took the blow as unresistingly as if it had been kindly meant, and it levelled him senseless on the ground.
Had the mob really been enraged for any strenuous cause, this incident would have operated merely as a preliminary whet to stimulate them to further bloodshed. But, as they were mostly actuated only by a natural desire for mischief, they were about as well satisfied with what had been done as if the Doctor himself were the victim. And besides, the fathers and respectabilities of the town, who had seen this mishap from afar, now began to put forward, crying out, “Keep the peace! keep the peace! A riot! a riot!” and other such cries as suited the emergency; and the crowd vanished more speedily than it had congregated, leaving the Doctor and the two children alone beside the fallen victim of a quarrel not his own. Not to dwell too long on this incident, the Doctor, laying hold of the last of his enemies, after the rest had taken to their heels, ordered him sternly to stay and help him bear the man, whom he had helped to murder, to his house.
“It concerns you, friend; for, if he dies, you hang to a dead certainty!”
And this was done accordingly.
CHAPTER VI
About an hour thereafter there lay on a couch that had been hastily prepared in the study a person of singularly impressive presence: a thin, mild-looking man, with a peculiar look of delicacy and natural refinement about him, although he scarcely appeared to be technically and as to worldly position what we call a gentleman; plain in dress and simple in manner, not giving the idea of remarkable intellectual gifts, but with a kind of spiritual aspect, fair, clear complexion, gentle eyes, still somewhat clouded and obscured by the syncope into which a blow on the head had thrown him. He looked middle-aged, and yet there was a kind of childlike, simple expression, which, unless you looked at him with the very purpose of seeing the traces of time in his face, would make you suppose him much younger.
“And how do you find yourself now, my good fellow?” asked Doctor Grimshawe, putting forth his hand to grasp that of the stranger, and giving it a good, warm shake. “None the worse, I should hope?” [Endnote: 1.]
“Not much the worse,” answered the stranger: “not at all, it may be. There is a pleasant dimness and uncertainty in my mode of being. I am taken off my feet, as it were, and float in air, with a faint delight in my sensations. The grossness, the roughness, the too great angularity of the actual, is removed from me. It is a state that I like well. It may be, this is the way that the dead feel when they awake in another state of being, with a dim pleasure, after passing through the brief darkness of death. It is very pleasant.”
He answered dreamily, and sluggishly, reluctantly, as if there were a sense of repose in him which he disliked to break by putting any of his sensations into words. His voice had a remarkable sweetness and gentleness, though lacking in depth of melody.
“Here, take this,” said the Doctor, who had been preparing some kind of potion in a teaspoon: it may have been a dose of his famous preparation of spider’s web, for aught I know, the operation of which was said to be of a soothing influence, causing a delightful silkiness of sensation; but I know not whether it was considered good for concussions of the brain, such as it is to be supposed the present patient had undergone. “Take this: it will do you good; and here I drink your very good health in something that will do me good.”
So saying, the grim Doctor quaffed off a tumbler of brandy and water.
“How sweet a contrast,” murmured the stranger, “between that scene of violence and this great peace that has come over me! It is as when one can say, I have fought the good fight.”
“You are right,” said the Doctor, with what would have been one of his deep laughs, but which he modified in consideration of his patient’s tenderness of brain. “We both of us fought a good fight; for though you struck no actual stroke, you took them as unflinchingly as ever I saw a man, and so turned the fortune of the battle better than if you smote with a sledge-hammer. Two things puzzle me in the affair. First, whence came my assailants, all in that moment of time, unless Satan let loose out of the infernal regions a synod of fiends, hoping thus to get a triumph over me. And secondly, whence came you, my preserver, unless you are an angel, and dropped down from the sky.”
“No,” answered the stranger, with quiet simplicity. “I was passing through the street to my little school, when I saw your peril, and felt it my duty to expostulate with the people.”
“Well,” said the grim Doctor, “come whence you will, you did an angel’s office for me, and I shall do what an earthly man may to requite it. There, we will talk no more for the present.”
He hushed up the children, who were already, of their own accord, walking on tiptoe and whispering, and he himself even went so far as to refrain from the usual incense of his pipe, having observed that the stranger, who seemed to be of a very delicate organization, had seemed sensible of the disagreeable effect on the atmosphere of the room. The restraint lasted, however, only till (in the course of the day) crusty Hannah had fitted up a little bedroom on the opposite side of the entry, to which she and the grim Doctor moved the stranger, who, though tall, they observed was of no great weight and substance, — the lightest man, the Doctor averred, for his size, that ever he had handled.
Every possible care was taken of him, and in a day or two he was able to walk into the study again, where he sat gazing at the sordidness and unneatness of the apartment, the strange festoons and drapery of spiders’ webs, the gigantic spider himself, and at the grim Doctor, so shaggy, grizzly, and uncouth, in the midst of these surroundings, with a perceptible sense of something very strange in it all. His mild, gentle regard dwelt too on the two beautiful children, evidently with a sense of quiet wonder how they should be here, and altogether a sense of their unfitness; they, meanwhile, stood a little apart, looking at him, somewhat disturbed and awed, as children usually are, by a sense that the stranger was not perfectly well, that he had been injured, and so set apart from the rest of the world.
“Will you come to me, little one?” said he, holding out a delicate hand to Elsie.
Elsie came to his side without any hesitation, though without any of the rush that accompanied her advent to those whom she affected. “And you, my little man,” added the stranger, quietly, and looking to Ned, who likewise willingly approached, and, shaking him by the offered hand, let it go again, but continued standing by his side.
“Do you know, my little friends,” said the stranger, “that it is my business in life to instruct such little people as you?”
“Do they obey you well, sir?” asked Ned, perhaps conscious of a want of force in the person whom he addressed.
The stranger smiled faintly.