The Step In The House

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 462, 18 September 1928, Page 5

The Step In The House

► By

Rina Ramsay.

CHAPTER X. The doctor was dog-tired. He had come in soaked to the skin from his country round. His car had gone wrong, and he had had to push it into Higgins’s barn, and finish his work in Higgins’s rickety market cart, behind the hard-mouthed old mare, who had herself to take her accustomed road regardless of any more or less sober interference from her load —and to pull up religiously at every publichouse. It was a hard day, altogether. Three times his dinner had been interrupted. He had heard his housekeeper expostulating, and had gone out into the passage to find himself really wanted. Somehow Mrs. Price, although the widow of his predecessor, could never be made to see why he should put his patients before her cooking. She was bitterly offended at it, and showed it. A petty vexation, that, but to a tired man mud— And then had come this night call He roused himself with difficulty. “Right who is it?” he said, throwing up the window. He hadn’t a speaking-tube. ‘it was a young voice, a girls voice, and it was strange to him. It reached him clearly, and yet it was not shrill. He wondered vaguely. There were few girls in this place whom he did not know. “Dodds —Dodds of the shop—he s worse: he wants you He was hurrying into his clothes. It was very dark in the street below. When he let himself out of the house he found her waiting, close to the door. He guessed that she was afraid of the darkness. “Why didn't Sam come for me? he said: “why did they send you?” She walked with him, a dim presence, just one of the shadows of night. He liked her soft, breathless voice. Her face he could not see. “He sent Sam to find —to find hislawyer.” So that was it. Grim old Harry Dodds in a panic, wanting to make his wili. t ,

He remembered now—remembered the old fellow’s terrible excitement two days ago over some relation who had dropped from the skies unexpectedly, and was coming, not at the old man’s instigation. Dodds had seemed frightened —curiously frightened. He had worked himself into a sort of frenzy, repeating “I can’t stop her—l can’t stop her.” until he, as a doctor, had felt obliged to suggest that some way should be found of warning off the unwelcome visitor. But Mrs. Beamish, his old servant, just shook her head

and smiled. There was no way to stop her—she had sailed already. “He wants to see her though,” she said st,outly, and Dodds himself had not contradicted her. He had subsided, muttering. Some old family trouble, no doubt: and this girl it was who had come a long journey and probably conquered him—and he desired to make some provision for her. Well there would be time. He was dying, but dying slowly. It wasn’t likely that to-night’s summons betokened a fatal seizure—it only meant an immediate need of something to dull his pain. The doctor quickened his pace, already a rapid stride, and the shadow beside him hurried with him. Their steps sounded hollow and hard in the empty street. Of course, Sam would have to go for the lawyer. She, strange to the town, could never have found his house in this puzzling darkness. The street lamps had been put out for the sake of a hidden moon—it must have been bad enough searching for him. “How did you know where I lived?” he said. “I didn’t,” she said. “Mr. Beamish woke me up and said ‘Run to the doctor’s—the house at the top of the street’—and I—l felt along the doors till I found a night bell.” Her voice fluttered as if with the tremor of her search. “Is he going to die?” she asked. “Not to-night,” said the doctor confidently. “Of course, he is in a very serious state, and weak. But he's got an iron will—he won’t die till he's done whatever he wants to do.” She said nothing. Slowly they had reached the house, the queer old-fash-ioned house adjoining Harry Dodds’s shop with its jutting windows and its three high steps up from the street. The door was ajar, left so that Mrs. Beamish need not travel down from her master’s sick room to let them in, and a dim, far off light checked the darkness. They went in and the doctor went straight upstairs. Harry Dodds’s old servant came out on the landing, drawing the bedroom door shut behind her. She faced the doctor as he came upstairs. “I can’t get him quieted, doctor,” she said. “He’s got this will in his head, and nothing but it will serve him. Such an uproar because I said that Adams might be away at the races. He had

a bit. of an attack just now and It scared him. He thinks he might go off before morning.” She hesitated a minute, and dropped her voice lower. “Wltftt he did to-day,” she said, “you’ll never believe. Up he got when I was washing up in the kitchen, and dressed himself and got himself down into the shop, and sent the boy on an errand. Sam wasn’t in, but one of the customers slipped round and rapped on the kitchen door and warned me. I had him back to bed as fast as I could, but the mischief was done, I make it. It was I sent for you, doctor. I dursen’t take the risk of him and Johnny Adams making wills in the middle of the night without you.” “I see,” said the doctor, without a smile. “But it’s right he should,” she went on, excusing herself. “Here’s Missy travelled hundreds of miles to find out her last relation—l knew he’d give in, I knew he’d see reason—it would be a bitter shame if he was to die first and Missy thrown on the world—” She stopped herself quickly, and the doctor following her look, saw the girl who had been her messenger leaning as if she was suddenly very tired against the head of the stairs. Such a little pale, lovely face. He had never seen eyes so blue, —“And so,” finished Mrs. Beamish hastily, “the minute he said so I packed off Sam.” The doctor nodded. “I’d better see him now,” he said, and the old servant padded softly into her master’s room behind him. She was a corpulent old woman with a weather-beaten red face, and the twinkling eyes of a gossip, and she moved about actively for her size. In small matters her master was known to stand in awe of her, but there were times when he got out of hand; and then, as she often lamented she could not turn him. Old Dodds lay fidgeting, his peaked sallow countenance fixed eagerly on the door. They both heard a muttered “Dam” when he saw the doctor. “I didn’t want you,” he said. “They shouldn’t rouse you out of your bed for nothing. I want to see Johnny Adams about my will.” “Better let me make you comfortable first, though,” said the doctor quietly. The old man submitted. He liked the doctor. Mrs. Beamish had noticed it many times with amazement. There were so few, to her knowledge, with whom old Dodds hadn’t some kind of quarrel. There was a grudging friendliness in his voice when he growled at him. He took two drops now obediently, and then, with a flicker of vivacity, peered about him. “A ou’ve not let her in, you wicked

old woman, have you?” he said. “No, sir,” said Mrs. Beamish, soothingly—“ She’s gone to bed.” He gave a curious chuckle. “Doctor,” he said. “Did you see her? I heard her step on the stairs when you came. You’re a young man: you’d notice—pretty, isn’t she? If I let her in she’d coax—she’d wheedle—l'd be wax in her hands like I used to be with her mother. Wasn’t a thing I didn’t do for my half-sister Elizabeth, And she married a gentleman, she did, and she wouldn’t own me before her servants. She with the same blue eyes ” “There, there,” said Mrs. Beamish, in a purring voice. “Well,” he said peevishly. “You’re aye telling me she’s so like her—but I’ll not be made a fool of twice—you didn’t guess what I wanted yesterday when I called for my spectacles, and that Whittakers’ Almanack—Johnny Adams’s father was a great liar. It must have been he that told me intestate’s property was taken by the King—l didn’t mind the King having my stuff, poor man, he has vexation enough—but there it stood in black and white print, that without a will all the money would go to the next of kin. Think of that!” There was a cunning twinkle in his eye as he watched the old servant from his pillow, it was as if he guessed she would not have routed out the lawyer with such alacrity if she had known that. “There’s my hurry,” he said, “I’ll not have this girl stepping in and inheriting what I have—l’ll not break the oath I took 20 years ago, when I tore up the will I made. I’ll not be humoured, I’ll not be outwitted, you soft old woman! ” “Better not talk so much,” said the doctor. « There was a noise in the house below. “That’s Johnny Adams,” said the old man tartly. “Bring him up. And you go down, both of you. He’ll do what I want.” Young Adams, who had succeeded to his father’s affairs in the little country town, had been to the races, but had come down on the midnight train. He came quickly upstairs following Sam’s directions. “First on the right—three steps up”—he was repeating to himself. “Infernally dark up here. What the devil!” His key changed, as he checked himself, muttering something apologetic and polite—then he came on again. Another moment and he was shut in with the implacable old man in the bed. The doctor followed

Dodds’s old servant across the landing. The girl was sitting on the bottom step of the upper flight, of stairs that went to the top of the house. As they came out she rose, looking toward them. Her eyes were deep and wistful. “Can Ido anything? Would he—would he like to see me?” she said. Mrs. Beamish shook her head. “No, dearie,” she said, “he’s fractious. You step up to bed, my lamb. I’ll call you if you are wanted. But she won’t be, will she, doctor?” She followed the girl with her eyes as she ascended slowly, and was lost in the upper shadows of the ill-lighted house. “I put her in Miss Elizabeth’s little old room,” she said. “There’s only the master’s and the old parlour on this landing. And is he going to leave his money away from her after all? Doctor—it’s hard—it’s hard.” She gave a kind of snort, and went down to join Sam and make herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. It was a high and narrow house. All one side of it ran the shop, the quaint old wine and provision business that had been a part of that small town for so many years that the smart new places springing up around had not yet managed to rob it of its ancient title. It was still known to the old inhabitants simply as the Shop. The street door opened abruptly on the stairs, rising steep out of the stuffy passage that the one gas jet illuminated dimly. It was heavily carpeted. Beside the stair foot was the door of a sitting room and at the back the kitchen. On the floor above was the unused parlour, a bath room, and a linen closet, and Dodds’ own big

• bedroom; and oyer that three small rooms and an attic occupied by Mrs. l Beamish and her husband Sam. At the bottom of the stairs the old • servant turned anxiously to the docl tor. “You’ll not go till he’s done with the lawyer, will you, doctor?” she . said. “If he works himself up again there’s no telling what a mischief it may do him.”

1 No, it wasn’t worth while going . down the street and getting back to his bed, perhaps to be hauled out | again in ten minutes. He turned into the sitting room, and dropped into i Harry Dodds' great armchair. , “It’ll do him good to get this off ! his mind,” he said, t j Mrs. Beamish snorted. (To be Continued)