He was up in the bed by magic, towering above them all, and he pointed to the door with a tremendous gesture and an eye that flamed. Mrs. Davies caught the electric spark, in a moment she tore the door open, and the pair bundled down the stairs before that terrible eye and finger.
“Susan--Susan!” Susan heard his elevated voice, and came running in in great anxiety.
“They say there is no such thing as friendship between a man and a woman. Prove to me this is a falsehood!”
“I will go all round England for you, Mr. Eden,” cried the girl, panting and flushing.
“My writing-desk!--it is to a village sixty miles from this, but you will be there in four hours; in that village lives the man who can cure me, if any one can.”
“What will you take with you?” asked Mrs. Davies, all in a bustle.
“Take this to his house, see him, tell him the truth, and bring him with you to-morrow--it will be fifty pounds out of his pocket to leave his patients--but I think he will come. Oh, yes! he will come--for auld lang syne.”
“Good-by, Mr. Eden--God bless you, aunt. I want to be gone; I shall bring him if I have to carry him in my arms.” And with these words Susan was gone.
“Now, good Mrs. Davies, give me the Bible. Often has that book soothed the torn nerves as well as the bleeding heart--and let no one come here to grieve or vex me for twenty-four hours--and fling that man's draught away, I want to live.”
Mrs. Davies had heard Hodges and Fry aright. Mr. Eden by her clew had interpreted the visit aright, with this exception, that he overrated his own importance in Mr. Hawes's eyes. For Hawes mocked at the chaplain's appeal to the Home Office ever since the office had made his tools the virtual referees.
Still a shade of uneasiness remained. During the progress of this long duel Eden had let fall two disagreeable hints. One was that he would spend a thousand pounds in setting such prisoners as survived Hawes's discipline to indict him, and the other that he would appeal to the public press.
This last threat had touched our man of brass; for if there is one thing upon earth that another thing does not like, your moral malefactor, who happens to be out of the law's reach, hates and shivers at the New Bailey in Printing-house Yard. So, upon the whole, Mr. Hawes thought that the best thing Mr. Eden could do would be to go to heaven without any more fuss.