Lydia Trent
an excerpt

Lydia suppressed her natural urge to call this nonsense, and questioned Catherine – where and when had she seen him? How did she know it was him?

“I saw him in the street just now, not very far from here – I had been to buy some ribbon for Adeline, and as I came out of the haberdashers, a passing carriage obliged me to pause a moment at the side of the road. At that moment, an old man shuffled past me – there was something about his walk and his face which arrested my attention. I looked more closely, and the more I looked the more I became convinced, it was him. He was a little different – older, of course, very tanned, and his hair and beard were turned white, as if by some great shock, but in every other particular he answered my father's description. Yes, of course I knew him – I lived every day with him for the first 15 years of my life.

“I followed him a few streets, and he went into a lodging house. I dared not follow further, and so I came home.”

“But how could it have been our father?” asked Adeline, “When we know that Mrs Trent had him put out of the way?”

“We do not know for certain – we only suspect.” said Lydia. “It is possible that Mrs Trent's brother lied, or that we have misread the evidence entirely. (not much chance of that – she thought privately)

“Perhaps Catherine is mistaken, but such a matter calls for thorough investigation before we dismiss her story out of hand. And so your impression was that it really was him?”

“Yes, for all that it has been ten years since I saw him last, I swear I should know him anywhere. I looked him over closely, and am quite satisfied it was my father.”

“Well, there is one way to find out, and that is to go and see him.” said Lydia firmly. “Can you show us the way to the lodging-house?”

Not very long afterwards, three young ladies were ringing on the doorbell of a large, square, ugly house, in a dull, ugly street. A large, square, ugly woman answered the door – like the house, she had also been scrubbed to within an inch of her life.

“Excuse me, is Mr Wade at home?” inquired Lydia.

“Mr who?” said the lodging-house keeper, who, having been called from a pleasant little ceremony involving prawns, soft white rolls, and a steaming tea-pot from which issued a fragrant invitation to the delights of the tea-table, was not in the best of tempers.

“Mr Malcolm Wade. I believe he is residing here.”

“Never heard of him.” snapped the lodging-house woman, conscious that as she stood here 'jawing' her tea was going cold.

“Oh, Perhaps he was visiting someone here, then.”

“Not at all. Don't allow visitors. Good day.” and without further ado, the woman shut the door in their faces.

“Well, that is an end of that.” said Adeline, sadly. But Catherine was not beside her. She had run a few steps, and now accosted a man coming out of a small tobacconist shop over the way.

“Papa, papa, don't you know me?” she cried, “It's Catherine!”

“Catherine? Why I have a daughter called that – but you can't be her, she's a much younger girl. Hardly more than a babe in arms. Excuse me miss.”

So saying, the man walked off.

“Oh, Lydia, Adeline, it is him, I am sure of it! Why doesn't he know me?” and Catherine burst into tears.

The three hurried back to Uncle John's house, Lydia and Adeline trying and failing to comfort the despondent Catherine. She had not wept for long, but was very subdued.

“Of course he would not wish to know me.” she said bitterly. “Did he not get rid of me ten years ago?”

Lydia reminded her of the anxiety he had shown in his letters to Evelyn fo news of her, and his expressed wish to make amends.

“I know, dear, pay no attention. I am but sad and disappointed, and so I vent my disappointment in bitter speeches. Pay them no heed, and I shall be as unruffled as ever quite shortly.”

“Kitty, dearest, let us lay the whole matter before Uncle John. I am sure he will know what to do.” said Adeline, for since Alfred had told of the help the old gentleman had been in his first literary endeavours, the girl looked upon him as a sort of oracle of all things wise and good.

Catherine demurred at first, but was at last induced to consent, and so when their uncle came home, they told him the history of their afternoon.

“Well, dears,” began Mr Trent, after some thought, “You obtained some very useful information from that detective friend of Mr Denham's. My advice would be – call him in again. Perhaps he can sift to the bottom of this mystery.”

“Of course, what an excellent idea!” cried Adeline, and kissed her uncle. A note to Alfred was dispatched, and the young man was able to bring Mr Dodd to them on the following afternoon.

That gentleman looked thoughtful as they explained the story, stroked his chin over the letters, which he had not hitherto seen, and eventually went off, puffing his pipe hard as he walked – always a sure sign of deep cogitation with him.

His first call was to the nearest Post Office, where he borrowed a copy of the London Directory, and within a very short time was in a hansom, bowling along the narrow sidestreets of London.

He alighted from the vehicle in a somewhat shabby district of the city, in front of a tall, narrow, dingy building. Affixed to the railings was a peeling sign, which proclaimed, in cracked and faded letters, that this venerable edifice was the grandly-named 'Lambscourt Hotel'.

He entered this less-than imposing hostelry, and soon found himself in conversation with a dilapidated waiter- cum- porter- cum- general factotum, in a rusty black livery and tarnished gold buttons, who emanated a general atmosphere of dust, tobacco-smoke, unwashed linen and stale beer. Following the exchange of a modest amount of silver, which disappeared quickly and furtively into the aged waiter's sagging pocket, this unpreposessing informant tunded out to be a mine of information about the previous year's tragic 'haccident'.

“For the genn'lman who occupied the room was not to be found, he giv his name as Mr Collins, but I don't thinks as that was the name he went by. Didn't leave no luggage either, which was queer – blowed if he had any to leave. Anyway, big chap he was, nose had been broke at one time, told me if anyone came asking after a Mrs Parrish they was to refer to him. Before too long, the genn'lman who fell, he comes in and asks for the lady, as I'd bin told, so I sends him on up. Ten minutes later there's a stir outside, and there he lays with his head broke. Of course the constables were called, but by that time Mister Collins as he called himself was vanished like a ghost in the night. So it was coming pretty clear as how the feller came to drop out of the window. Anyway, the constables fetched the hand-ambulance, and whisks the one as dropped – never did know his name – off to the free ward at St Thomas's. And that's the last I heerd of it. Of course the police poked about a rare bit, but nothing ever came of it.”

Mr Dodds thanked the elderly gent, and hopped in another hansom, which he directed to take him to Saint Thomas' hospital.

There he made some discreet enquiries, and after talking to several people - nurses, and porters, all more or less busy, but perfectly amenable to chat for a moment when they saw the glimmer of silver in the detective's friendly paw – he was able to ascertain that the gentleman had not died, but was now somewhat simple, had given his name as Mr Tom Alcott, and after a long convalescence, had retired to lodgings near Bayswater, where he kept body and soul together by means of whittling little trinkets out of wood.

The Bayswater connection decided the matter – Mr Dodds repaired to the lodging house where Lydia, Adeline and Catherine had met with such a rude repulse, and enquired after Mr Alcott.

“You shan't find 'im 'ere at this time of day.” snapped the Amazon who guarded the gates. “I arsks my gents to leave between ten am and seven pm, which is quite usual in my line of business.”

“Can you tell me, my good woman, where I might find him at this present moment?”

The lodging-house virago pursed her lips, in a manner that suggested she was mortally affronted by being called anyone's good woman. However, she did speak.

“Probably in the public, else sitting in the gardens chipping away with his pocket knife at some infernal bit of wood.” she grudgingly admitted, with a moue of disgust at both these habits in equal measure. Then, without any further ado, she shut the door. However, the gentleman he sought was not to be seen at either of the resorts the woman had named, so Mr Dodds decided to return after seven.

He had dined comfortably upon a mutton chop at an inn in a slightly less shabby neighbourhood, and at seven fifteen sharp was ringing the doorbell of the lodging-house once again.

This time, he found the woman in a towering rage.

“Oh, you've come back, have you?” she snapped. “Well, I'll tell you where you can find Mt Alcott – in bed. He comes a crawling back at five this afternoon, a-complaining of feeling ill, and begging to be let in. Rules are rules, says I, and until the clock strikes seven, not one foot shall cross that threshold. Allow it once, and you'll find yourself obliged to allow it again. And so I shut the door on him. Blest if at seven o clock one of my other gents weren't causing a ruckus at the door because Alcott was a-laying on the step! Well we couldn't get him to stand, so Mr Terwhillie just carried him up to his bed, says there ought to be a doctor. And who's to pay for that, I ask, not to mention the inconvenience. I don't have time for nursing and coddling, and he's a week behind on the rent as it is. I only let him off with it a few days as he's always punctual with it, and now look.” and the termagant folded her arms in mortal offence at the gentleman having had the efrontery to fall ill at her expense.

“Perhaps I can be of assistance, Madam.” said Mr Dodd smoothly, and in a very few moments he had paid the grumbling woman her few shillings rent, caused a doctor to be summoned, and taken possession of Mr Alcott and this unfortunate gentleman's room. Here the detective found an important piece of evidence concerning the true identity of 'Mr Alcott', after he had taken the sick gentleman's shirt up from the floor, where it had been thrown by Mr Terwhillie (now invisible) in a hasty preparation for bed - involving the simple expedient of removing his boots and outer garments, and pitching him pell-mell under the covers - and found it to be marked - 'MW'.
Chapter the 24th

It was an epoch in the history of Mrs Gant's lodging house (for such was the name of the formidable lady who ran that inhospitable abode with such implacable efficiency), when not one, but three young ladies crossed the threshold. O, black day indeed, when these bachelor halls were sullied by the footfalls of the fair! Mrs Gant was near apoplectic at the unwarranted intrusion, but her anger availed naught – come in they would.

These three were Adeline, Lydia, and Catherine, who had been summoned thither by a hasty note from Mr Dodd. This gentleman now met them in the hallway.

“Thankyou for coming, ladies,” he said. “I called you here because I am now more or less convinced of the truth of your assertion, Mrs Parrish, that this man is indeed Malcolm Wade, your father. Whether he is using a false name for some private reason, or whether his memory was as deranged as his intellect by the severe blow to the head he received, I am not entirely certain. At any rate, Malcolm Wade was lost sight of, and so he preserved himself from further attempts on his life.”

“Oh, thankyou!” cried Adeline.

“You say he is ill – how is he?” queried Catherine, more to the point.

“The doctor is with him now. I am afraid he was utterly prostrate when I saw him – stay, here is the doctor coming out now.”

The doctor, after being assured that these young ladies were connections of Mr Alcott, being his two daughters and their stepsister, spoke freely.

“Well, Sir, my dears, it looks a most unpromising case, most unpromising. I am sorry to alarm you, but the gentleman appears to have a bilious fever, which under normal circumstances would not in itself be dangerous, but the feverish symptoms, couled as they are with his past head injury, are very worrying. Our first proirity must be to break the fever. I have prescribed some draughts, which must be given hourly until the fever breaks. I shall also have to bleed him – we shall see if this is effective. In addition, he must be kept cool by the constant application of wet cloths.”

Catherine indicated her willingness to apply these remedies, and of course Lydia and Adeline spoke up offering to help her. Adeline, of course, had the most natural right to be there, but not only did she have less experience of nursing than Lydia, she had not been in strong health herself of late.

“Adeline, my dearest, you have been in delicate health – you cannot be allowed to destroy your health by the rigours of nursing. You had much better nurse yourself – Lydia and I will inform you of any change, however slight.”

Adeline made some demur at this.

“What will it avail, if we should bring your father back into health, if he should then find his daughter well-nigh broken by the effort?” persuaded Lydia. “You are not strong, and I would have the reunion between you two unmarred by the shadow of illness. Go, and be assured I shall do the very best I can for your father. Besides, we shall want someone who is free to come and go, to fetch things, and take messages, and be in every way useful. See, there is the doctor's prescription to be made up – you could go for it, and we shall need various supplies, for I do not believe Mrs Gant will be inclined to let us make free with her things.”

Adeline immediately agreed to take the prescription to be made up, and fetch anything needful. Thus the matter was settled, and the two elder girls took up their station in the sickroom.

They soon discovered that their wants were many, for the room was almost bare, and Mrs Gant disinclined to provide anything beyond the scant and indifferent breakfast and dinner which were included in the terms of her lodging. When Adeline returned with the medicine, she found herself furnished with a great list of things to be either borrowed from their uncle's house, or purchased at nearby shops, ranging from beef tea and calfs foot jelly, to a supply of rags to bathe the poor gentleman's forehead, to a spirit burner for boiling water, and bedding that the girls might supply the deficiency in the lodging house bed, as well as make up a couch for their own use.

How quickly the sickroom routine establishes itself – that strange twilit half-life, its time measured not by days and nights, but by the intervals of physic and fomentations, the odd hours of rising and sleeping, interrupted by the doctor's visits, and punctuated by the lancet. The patient was bled twice a day for the first few days, and the girls became quite accustomed to seeing the slow drip-drip-drip, staining the water in the basin below his arm pinker at ever splash. Despite this, and the constant wetting and bathing of the patient's forehead, which required a fresh cool cloth to be laid on his brow every ten minutes, despite the hourly draughts and the lowering diet (though the man scarce took anything, being unconscious for a great deal of the time, and wandering when he was awake) – despite all that medicine and two constant and devoted nurses could do, the fever raged unabated into the second week.

At this point Mr Dodd asked permission to call in a second physician, a gentleman of his odd and varied acquaintance. This practitioner duly arrived, and proceeded to scare the girls half out of their wits by railing against almost every treatment thus far employed.

“Cool cloths I approve of, but look here – the man needs all his strenght and what does my esteemed colleague do, but prescribe the very things that will most weaken him. He is low and weak, his illness has been exacerbated by poor diet – so what shall we do? Why, give him only modest amounts of barely nutritious food, and so starve him still further. His stomach lining is irritated – therefore let us prescribe strong raking medicines.” stormed the Doctor Spratt. This was as nothing to his ire, however, when he found out the gentleman had been bled – and bled freely, twice a day.

“It's murder, that's what it is!” he blazed. “Without that, I could have saved him, but he needs strength, and what does the man do but rob him twice daily of the precious fluid which is the basis of his strength. He has dripped out his very life into that basin. I will do my best to repair the damage, but in the face of this, I am forced to say that I believe the case is hopeless, quite hopeless.”

The girls were utterly dismayed at this pronouncement, but hoped that things were not quite so black as the good doctor painted them. They speedily obeyed the doctor's injunctions as to medicine, which was to be of a strengthening rather than lowering tendency, and diet, which consisted of such items as brandy and strong beef tea, also intended to have a strengthening effect.

Their efforts were rewarded by a lessening of the fever overnight, and the girls became quite hopeful, but the doctor did not share their optimism.

“See, he has not yet regained consciousness. It is all the fault of that cursed bleeding.”

He persevered with his treatment, however, though the ladies were much troubled by the intervals of delirium becoming longer and the intervals of sleep – or rather stupor – becoming less. At the end of the second week, however, their patient showed a change. His breathing eased, and there appeared a light perspiration upon his brow. Both Adeline and Doctor Spratt were called.

“Ah, he is sleeping naturally. I do not hold out hopes of a full recovery, but he is somewhat better. Keep the room quiet, and let him sleep. When he wakes, give him the draught I will now prescribe, and whatever nourishment he can take. I will return in a few hours.”

The girls hugged each other, but sensibly kept their joy in abatement. The gentleman slept for almost two hours, at the end of which time he opened his eyes, and, starting slightly at the slim figure of the girl seated by the bed, spke in a thin, weak voice.

“What, am I still wandering? This is witchery, I am sure, for you lok very like someone dear to me.”

“Yes, father, it is I, Catherine.”

“But how come you to be here? Did you come to the hotel after all? The man said he did not know where you were. Where is he? How came he to lie to me? Am I still at the Lambscourt? I came here seeking for you, Catherine.”

“No, father, you are not at the Lambscourt Hotel – you have not been there in a year.” and in a few short sentences she described how he had been living, under a name not his own, since his fall. Mr Wade was amazed at this, but Lydia hushed his questions.

“Do not excite yourself, sir, you are still very ill. When you are a little better, you may speak with your daughters, but for now, you must drink this, and eat a little if you can, and husband your strength.”

Mr Wade was too weak to object, and after he had taken his medicine and drunk a little beef broth, he lapsed back into sleep. When next he awoke, Adeline was there.

“Father,” said Catherine, “This is Adeline.”

“Why, yes,” he replied, weakly, “I should have known her at once – for she is the very image of her mother when first I married her. Now then, I am glad you are both here, for I have something to say to you.”

“Sir, cannot it wait?” interrupted Lydia, “You are very weak, and I am sure you will overtax your strength.”

“Nay, it would overset me more to leave this unsaid, for I am as conscious of my weakness as you are, and fear if I do not speak now then my tale will never be heard.” Lydia was silent at this, and so he continued.

“When I lost my Adeline – I speak of my wife, not you my dear – I believed I had stopped caring for any living thing. I could hardly bear to look on the baby which my love had died bringing into the world, and my elder daughter, in trying to comfort me, only served to irritate me. You distracted me from my grief, girls, when all I wanted was to treasure it up and hide from the world, hugging my pain to my myself.

“It was a hard pain to bear, however, and I sought relief in drink. In my selfish grief, I forgot that two little girls had lost their mamma – I felt as if I alone had the right to mourn that angel.

“When I married your stepmother, there was no love in the case. It was a matter of convenience only – she particularly needed a home, and I hoped that she would take the care of you off my hands. I believed she had, and so I was free to sink further into my selfish courses, and when she took Adeline off my hands entirely, I was, at the time, more glad than sorry, and so I did not bother to seek my recreant wife or missing daughter.

“That left you, Catherine, on my hands. But every day that passed increased my self-devotion, and my dependence on drink and the excitements of the card table and the race track. For I felt that my heart had died within me, and the only time I felt alive was the moment before the turn of a card or the start of a race, when a fortune may be won or lost in the next breath.

“I had sunk so low as prison, and Martin Parrish's offer, to secure my release from both prison and the encumbrance of a daughter I had forgotten how to love, I greeted with open arms. And so I played that shabby trick upon you, Catherine, and took myself off to the antipodes basely hugging myself for what I thought was my good fortune.

“I started out on a sheep station, and then when gold was found I took myself off to the diggings to try my luck. I did not prosper at first, as I soon found out that a gold maine is not a good place for a habitual drunk. A besotted man cannot get the best claim, and he is cheated and robbed at every turn.

“And so I gave up drinking, and threw myself into my work. It was slow at starting, but I had a few pieces of good fortune, and so I persevered. But it was a lonely life. The man I ended up going into a company with – for it is very hard to mine and defend a claim alone – had a family, a wife and two young daughters. I found myself watching those two little girls as they played around the diggings, and fell to wondering what had become of my own girls. My companion was injured, and I saw how tenderly he was nursed by his wife, and how lovingly his girls came and made sunshine for papa, and it finally came to me just what I had lost.

“There was also a parson at the diggings, who had come out and started a sort of church in a tent. I had never had much truck with the church before, but this good father found me when I was low, and through kind words, which rebuked me, but showed me love and compassion, led me into a penitent spirit.

“And so I came home, and tried to find you. I had some inkling of my second wife's whereabouts, and found her easily enough, but she would not at first tell me anything of either of you. I had seen Adeline, but had frightened her, and Evelyn warned me not to approach you again if I wished to know where Catherine was. At last she told me news of you could be found at the Lambscourt Hotel in London, and there I went as fast as I could.

“I was met by a gentleman who was welcoming at first, and poured me a drink, and professed to know all about you, but when I tried to move, I found myself faint and drowsy – I believe the drink must have been drugged. And then... then I woke up here with you, and was informed a year had passed without my knowing it.

“Girls, my daughters, I cannot hope for your forgiveness – I have done you both too great a wrong for that. I cannot hope to stand in a father's place to you, for I have been worse than no father at all. The money I made at the diggings in Australia, I came to place entirely at your disposal – not that money is any recompense, but the only fatherly action I can now perform is to provide for my daughters.”

“Oh, father, on my part there is nothing to forgive!” wept Adeline, kissing the sick man's hand.

Catherine hesitated a moment, but then laid her hand on Adeline's shoulder as she leaned over the pale, wasted form of her father.

“You did me a great and cruel wrong when you tricked me into marrying Martin Parrish, father,” she said slowly, her eyes burning with repressed emotion, “But yes, I give you my foregiveness likewise.”

“Then I have nothing left on this Earth to wish for.” said their father, and, sinking back on his pillows, closed his eyes, with a calmer expression than he had worn for days.

“All through this weary fever, I have seen my Adeline calling to me – 'where are my girls, Malcolm?' - now I can answer her.” and he was silent, and before long lapsed back into sleep.

He roused again when the doctor came, and was able to give that gentleman the details of his true identity, as well as the direction of his banker in London, who held his will and other important documents as well as the money he had raised at the Australian gold fields. The doctor took down these particulars, and then examined him. Alas, there were some disturbing hectic sympoms becoming apparent – Mr Wade was flushed, his eye bright and feverish. The doctor ordered another draught, and advised the patient to sleep as much as he could, while the girls, his nurses, were to pursue the same cooling treatment as before.

It was to no avail – Mr Wade suffered a relapse. He lingered several days more, and the doctor and the girls laboured manfully to bring him through, but it was no use. The sick man was sinking hourly, and in the early hours of the fourth day, he breathed his last. The doctor railed against the murderous practice of bleeding, and the girls quietly knelt and prayed that their father would find forgiveness in heaven as easily as he had on Earth.

Malcolm Wade was buried in a quiet churchyard close to his lodgings, and when his will and papers were examined, it was found he had left Catherine and Adeline the posessors of over thirty thousand pounds, to be shared equally between them.