"No, there is no telegram from Cape Town."
Then he shut the glazed door, and returned to the very congenial occupation in which he had been engaged, and Owen Saxham went heavily to the bedroom placed at the disposal of the _locum tenens_. The single window looked out upon a square garden with a tennis-ground, where the De Boursy-Williams girls had been used to play. The apricot on the south wall was laden with the as yet immature fruit, an abandoned household cat slept, unconscious of impending starvation, upon a bench under a pepper-tree.
It was a small, sordid, shabby chamber, with a fly-spotted paper, a chest of drawers lacking knobs, a greenish swing looking-glass, and a narrow iron bedstead. His scanty belongings were scattered about. There were no medical books or surgical instruments. The Dop Doctor had sold all the tools of his trade years before. He turned to Williams's books, standard works which had been bought at his recommendation, when he wished to refresh his excellent memory; the instruments he used when to the entreaties of a fatherly friend Williams added the alluring chink of gold belonged also to that generous patron. There were some old clothes in the ramshackle deal wardrobe; there was some linen and underclothing in the knobless chest of drawers. With the exception of a Winchester repeating-rifle in excellent condition, a bandolier and ammunition-pouch, a hunting-knife and a Colt's revolver of large calibre, in addition to the weapon he carried, there was not an article of property of any value in the room. Old riding-boots with dusty spurs and a pair of veldschoens stood by the wall; a pair of trodden-down carpet slippers lay beside a big cheap zinc bath that stood there, full of cold water; some well-used pipes were on the chest of drawers, with a tin of Virginia; and an old brown camel's-hair dressing-gown hung over a castorless, shabby, American-cloth-covered armchair. And an empty whisky-bottle stood upon the washstand, melancholy witness to the drunkard's passion.
Yet there were a few poor little toilet articles upon the dressing-table that betokened the dainty personal habits of cleanliness and care that from lifelong use become instinctive. The hands of the untidy, slovenly, big man with the drink-swollen features were exquisitely kept; and when the dark-red colour should go out of the square face, the skin would show wonderfully unblemished and healthy for a drunkard, and the blue eyes would be steady and clear. Excess had not injured a splendid constitution as yet. But Saxham knew that by-and-by ...