Chapter 2 | The Second Guardian | Yussuf the Guide

“That!” to which Mrs Dunn alluded was a double knock at the front door; a few minutes later the maid ushered in a tall broad-shouldered man of about forty. His hair was thin upon the crown, but crisp and grizzled, and its spareness seemed due to the fact that nature required so much stuff to keep up the supply for his tremendous dark beard that his head ran short. It was one of those great beards that are supposed to go with the portrait of some old patriarch, and over this could be seen a pair of beautiful large clear eyes that wore a thoughtful dreamy aspect, and a broad high white forehead. He was rather shabbily dressed in a pepper-and-salt frock-coat, vest, and trousers, one of which had been turned up as if to keep it out of the mud while the other was turned down; and both were extremely baggy and worn about the knees. Judging from appearances his frock-coat might have been brushed the week before last, but it was doubtful, though his hat, which he placed upon the table as he entered, certainly had been brushed very lately, but the wrong way.

He did not wear gloves upon his hands, but in his trousers pockets, from which he pulled them to throw them in his hat, after he had carefully placed two great folio volumes, each minus one cover, upon a chair, and then he shook hands, smiling blandly, with Mrs Dunn, and with the lawyer.

“Bless the man!” said Mrs Dunn to herself, “one feels as if one couldn’t be cross with him; and there’s a button off the wrist-band of his shirt.”

“’Fraid you had not received my telegram, sir,” said the lawyer in rather a contemptuous tone, for Mrs Dunn had annoyed him, and he wanted to wreak his irritation upon someone else.

“Telegram?” said the professor dreamily. “Oh, yes. It was forwarded to me from Oxford. I was in town.”

“Oh! In town?”

“Yes. At an hotel in Craven Street. I am making preparations, you know, for my trip.”

“No, I don’t know,” said the lawyer snappishly. “How should I know?”

“Of course not,” said the professor smiling. “The fact is, I’ve been so much—among books—lately—that—these are fine. Picked them up at a little shop near the Strand. Buttknow’s Byzantine Empire.”

He picked up the two musty old volumes, and opened them upon the table, as a blast rang out.

The professor started and stared, his dreamy eyes opening wider, but seeing that it was only the lawyer blowing his nose, he smiled and turned over a few leaves.

“A good deal damaged; but such a book is very rare, sir.”

“My dear sir, I asked you to come here to talk business,” said the lawyer, tapping the table with his snuff-box, “not books.”

“True. I beg your pardon,” said the professor. “I was in town making the final preparations for my departure to the Levant, and I did not receive the telegram till this morning. That made me so late.”

“Humph!” ejaculated the lawyer, and he took some more snuff.

“And how is Lawrence this morning?” said the professor in his calm, mild way. “I hope better, Mrs Dunn.”

“Bless the man! No. He is worse,” cried Mrs Dunn shortly.

“Dear me! I am very sorry. Poor boy! I’m afraid I have neglected him. His poor father was so kind to me.”

“Everybody has neglected him, sir,” cried Mrs Dunn, “and the doctor says that the poor boy will die.”

“Mrs Dunn, you shock me,” cried the professor, with the tears in his eyes, and his whole manner changing. “Is it so bad as this?”

“Quite, sir,” cried the lawyer, “and I want to consult you as my co-executor and trustee about getting the boy somewhere in the south of England or to France.”

“But medical assistance,” said the professor. “We must have the best skill in London.”

“He has had it, sir,” cried Mrs Dunn, “and they can’t do anything for him. He’s in a decline.”

“There, sir, you hear,” said the lawyer. “Now, then, what’s to be done?”

“Done!” cried the professor, with a display of animation that surprised the others. “He must be removed to a warmer country at once. I had no idea that matters were so bad as this. Mr Burne, Mrs Dunn, I am a student much interested in a work I am writing on the Byzantine empire, and I was starting in a few days for Asia Minor. My passage was taken. But all that must be set aside, and I will stop and see to my dear old friend’s son.”

Poo woomp poomp. Pah!

Mr Burne blew a perfectly triumphal blast with his pocket-handkerchief, took out his snuff-box, put it back, jumped up, and, crossing to where the professor was standing, shook his hand very warmly, and without a word, while Mrs Dunn wiped her eyes upon her very stiff watered silk apron, but found the result so unsatisfactory that she smoothed it down, and hunted out a pocket-handkerchief from somewhere among the folds of her dress and polished her eyes dry.

Then she seemed as if she put a sob in that piece of white cambric, and wrapped it up carefully, just as if it were something solid, doubling the handkerchief over and over and putting it in her pocket before going up to the professor and kissing his hand.

“Ha!” said the latter, smiling at first one and then the other. “This is very good of you. I don’t often find people treat me so kindly as this. You see, I am such an abstracted, dreamy man. I devote myself so much to my studies that I think of nothing else. My friends have given me up, and—and I’m afraid they laugh at me. I am writing, you see, a great work upon the old Roman occupation of—. Dear me! I’m wandering off again. Mrs Dunn, can I not see my old friend’s son?”

“To be sure you can, sir. Pray, come,” cried the old lady; and, leading the way, she ushered the two visitors out into the hall, the professor following last, consequent upon having gone back to fetch the two big folio volumes; but recollecting himself, and colouring like an ingenuous girl, he took them back, and laid them upon the dining-room table.

Mrs Dunn paused at the drawing-room door and held up a finger.

“Please, be very quiet with him, gentlemen,” she said. “The poor boy is very weak, and you must not stay long.”

The lawyer nodded shortly, the professor bent his head in acquiescence, and the old lady opened the drawing-room door.