CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST.

MARTIN DOBREE’S PLEDGE.

I followed Simmons’s cab up Bellringer Street, and watched Johanna alight and enter the house.  The door was scarcely closed upon her when I rang, and asked the slatternly drudge of a servant if I could see Mr. Foster.  She asked me to go up to the parlor on the second floor, and I went alone, with little expectation of finding Mrs. Foster there, unless Johanna was there also, in which case I was to appear as a stranger to her.

The parlor looked poorer and shabbier by daylight than at night.  There was not a single element of comfort in it.  The curtains hung in rags about a window begrimed with soot and smoke.  The only easy-chair was the one occupied by Foster, who himself looked as shabby and worn as the room.  The cuffs and collar of his shirt were yellow and tattered; his hair hung long and lank; and his skin had a sallow, unwholesome tint.  The diamond ring upon his finger was altogether out of keeping with his threadbare coat, buttoned up to the chin, as if there were no waistcoat beneath it.  From head to foot he looked a broken-down, seedy fellow, yet still preserving some lingering traces of the gentleman.  This was Olivia’s husband!

A good deal to my surprise, I saw Mrs. Foster seated quietly at a table drawn close to the window, very busily writing—­engrossing, as I could see, for some miserable pittance a page.  She must have had some considerable practice in the work, for it was done well, and her pen ran quickly over the paper.  A second chair left empty opposite to her showed that Foster had been engaged at the same task, before he heard my step on the stairs.  He looked weary, and I could not help feeling something akin to pity for him.  I did not know that they had come down as low as that.

“I did not expect you to come before night,” he said, testily; “I like to have some idea when my medical attendant is coming.”

“I was obliged to come now,” I answered, offering no other apology.  The man irritated me more than any other person that had ever come across me.  There was something perverse and splenetic in every word he uttered, and every expression upon his face.

“I do not like your partner,” he said; “don’t send him again.  He knows nothing about his business.”

He spoke with all the haughtiness of a millionnaire to a country practitioner.  I could hardly refrain from smiling as I thought of Jack’s disgust and indignation.

“As for that,” I replied, “most probably neither of us will visit you again.  Dr. Lowry will return to-morrow, and you will be in his hands once more.”

“No!” he cried, with a passionate urgency in his tone—­“no, Martin Dobree; you said if any man in London could cure me, it was yourself.  I cannot leave myself in any other hands.  I demand from you the fulfilment of your words.  If what you said is true, you can no more leave me to the care of another physician, than you could leave a fellow-creature to drown without doing your utmost to save him.  I refuse to be given up to Dr. Lowry.”