The Rock Ahead. Edmund Yates

contrived to pour a small quantity down his throat. The stimulant acted for a little upon the dying man; he looked at her with eyes in which an intelligent purpose pierced the dull glaze preceding the fast-coming darkness, stretched his hand out to her, and drew her nearer, nearer. Gertrude bent over him until her chestnut hair touched his wan livid temples, and then, when her face was on a level with his own, he whispered in her ear.

      * * * * *

      Mrs. Bush had not gone many steps away from her own hall-door when she met Gilbert Lloyd. He was walking slowly, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his head bent, his eyes frowning and downcast, and his under-lip firmly held by his white, sharp, even teeth. He did not see Mrs. Bush until she came close up to him, and exclaimed,

      "O, Mr. Lloyd, how thankful I am I've met you! The gentleman is very bad indeed--just gone, sir,--and I was going for a doctor. There's not a moment to lose."

      Gilbert Lloyd's face turned perfectly white.

      "Impossible, Mrs. Bush," he said; "you must be mistaken. He was much better when I left him; besides, he was not seriously ill at all."

      "I don't know about that, sir, and I can't stay to talk about it; I must get the doctor at once."

      "No, no," said Lloyd, rousing himself; "I will do that. Where is the nearest? Tell me, and do you go back to him."

      "First turn to the right, second door on the left," said Mrs. Bush, with unusual promptitude. "Dr. Muxky's; he isn't long established, but does a good business."

      Gilbert Lloyd hurried away; and Mrs. Bush returned to the house, thinking only when she had reached it, that she had forgotten to mention his wife's arrival to Gilbert Lloyd.

      * * * * *

      When Lloyd entered the sick man's room, bringing with him Dr. Muxky, as that sandy-haired and youthful general practitioner was called by his not numerous clients, he saw a female figure bending over the bed. It was not that of Mrs. Bush; he had passed her loitering on the stairs,--ostensibly that she might conduct the gentlemen to the scene of action, really because she dared not reënter the room unsupported by a medical presence. The figure did not change its attitude as they entered, and Dr. Muxky approached the patient with a professional gliding step. He was followed by Lloyd; who, however, stopped abruptly on the opposite side of the bed when he met the full unshrinking gaze of his wife's bright, clear, threatening eyes.

      "May I trouble you to stand aside for a moment?" said Dr. Muxky courteously to Gertrude, who instantly moved, but only a very little way, and again stood quite still and quite silent. Dr. Muxky stooped over his patient, but only for a few seconds. Then he looked up at Gilbert Lloyd, and said hastily,

      "I have been called in too late, sir; I'm afraid your friend is dead."

      "Yes," said Gertrude quietly, as if the doctor had spoken to her: "he is dead. He has been dead some minutes."

      Gilbert Lloyd looked at her, but did not speak; the doctor looked from one to the other, but said nothing. Then Gertrude stretched out her hand and laid her fingers heavily upon the dead man's eyelids, and kept them there for several moments amid the silence. In a little while she steadily withdrew her hand, and without a word left the room.

      On the drawing-room landing she found Mrs. Bush. That practised and cautious landlady, mindful of the possible prejudice of her permanent lodgers against serious illness and probable death in their immediate vicinity, raised her finger, as a signal that a low tone of voice would be advisable.

      "Go upstairs; the doctor wants you," said Gertrude, and passed quickly down to the parlour. A few moments more, and she had put on her bonnet and shawl, opened the hall-door without noise, closed it softly, and was walking swiftly down the street towards the shore.

CHAPTER II.

      Pondered.

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      The sandy-haired slim young man, whose name was Muxky, who was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and who amongst the few poor people of Brighton that knew of his existence enjoyed the brevet-rank of doctor, found himself in anything but a pleasant position. The man to see whom he had been called in was dead; there was no doubt of that. No pulsation in the heart, dropped jaw, fixed eyes--all the usual appearances--ay, and rather more than the usual appearances: "What we professionally call the rigor mortis--the stiffness immediately succeeding death, my dear sir, is in this case very peculiarly developed." Mr. Muxky, in the course of his attendance at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, had seen many deathbeds, had inspected in an easy and pleasant manner many dead bodies; but he had never seen one which had presented such an extraordinary aspect of rigidity so immediately after death. He approached the bed once more, turned back the sheet which Mrs. Bush had drawn over the face, and kneeling by the side of the bed, passed his hand over and under the body. As he moved, Gilbert Lloyd moved too, taking up his position close behind him, and watching him narrowly. For an instant a deep look of anxiety played across Gilbert Lloyd's face, the lines round the mouth deepened and darkened, the brows came down over the sunken eyes, and the under jaw, relaxing, lost its aspect of determination; but as Mr. Muxky turned from the bed and addressed him, Lloyd's glance was perfectly steady, and his face expressed no emotions stronger than those which under the circumstances every man would be expected to feel, and no man would care to hide.

      "This is rather an odd experience, my dear sir," said Mr. Muxky; "called in to see our poor friend, who has, as it were, slipped his cable before my arrival. Our poor friend, now, was a--well--man of the world as you are--you will understand what I mean--our poor friend was a--free liver."

      Yes, Gilbert Lloyd thought that he was a man who ate and drank heartily, and never stinted himself in anything.

      "Nev-er stinted himself in anything!" repeated Mr. Muxky, who had by this time added many years to his personal appearance, and entirely prevented the bystanders from gleaning any expression from his eyes, by the assumption of a pair of glasses of neutral tint--"nev-er stinted himself in anything! Ah, a great deal may be ascribed to that, my dear sir; a great deal may be ascribed to that!"

      "Yes," said Gilbert Lloyd carelessly; "if a man will take as much lobster-salad and Strasbourg pie as he can eat, with as much champagne and moselle as he can carry; and if, in spite of the remonstrances of his friends, he will sit without his hat on the top of a drag, with the August sun beating down upon him--"

      "Did he do that, my dear sir--did he do that?"

      "He did, indeed! Several of us implored him to be careful; but you might as well have spoken to the wind as to him, poor dear fellow. We told him that he'd probably have a--a--what do you call it?"

      "General derangement of the system? Flux of blood to the--"

      "No, no; sunstroke--that's what I mean; sunstroke. Perigal, who was out in India in the Punjaub business--he was on our drag when poor Harvey was taken bad, and he said it was sunstroke all over--regular case."

      "Did he, indeed?" said Mr. Muxky. "Well, that's odd, very odd! From the symptoms you have described, I imagined that it must have been something of the kind:--brain overdone, system overtaxed. In this railway age, Mr. Lloyd, we live such desperately rapid lives, concentrate so much mental energy and bodily fibre into a few years, that--"

      "I'm glad you're satisfied, Mr. Muxky," said Gilbert Lloyd, pulling out his purse. "It's a satisfaction in these melancholy cases to know that everything has been done, and that there was no chance of saving the poor fellow, even if--"

      "I scarcely say that, Mr. Lloyd. A little bloodletting might, if taken at the exact moment--in tempore veni; you recollect the old quotation--might have been of some use. There's a prejudice just now against the use of the lancet, I know; but still-- For me?" taking a crisp hank-note which Lloyd handed to him. "O, thank you, thank you! This is far too munifi--"

      "The labourer, Mr. Muxky, is worthy