Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 145

Your letter came on Saturday with the key & 10/ which was very welcome. I shall struggle along somehow. The great thing is to scrape the rent together. I have £5 laid by towards it. I really hardly know myself how I have managed it. I had 15/6 deducted from it as I lost a week, but then there are taxes. I hope by the time you get this Duff will be ready to come. The box has not turned up yet, but I shall go round to the station tonight & have a look—I shall sleep in my ulster until you send down the blankets. Have got my furniture into the C.R. [Consulting Room] and it looks very well indeed. That landlady charged me 9d each for breakfasts and teas— while I fondly imagined she would only charge for the tea, milk &c expended. I could have lived like a prince by taking all my food out instead of half starving myself.

My plate is just being put up now. I am as pleased as ever with the location of the house & am confident of success. There is not room enough for lodgings to say nothing of the look of the thing. I have Hall—Consulting Room & Waiting Room on ground floor—above are Surgery and Sitting Room—and then there are two bedrooms up on the top.

He was barely installed when Budd struck again, writing to reveal that he had been reading the Mam’s letters in Plymouth all along, and refusing now to send the £1 a week he’d promised. He had only waited to spring his trap for Conan Doyle—who had defended Budd in his replies to his mother—to commit himself financially in Portsmouth beyond his ability once Budd’s help was withdrawn. Budd had been ‘scheming my ruin,’ he realized, ‘which would be nothing financially, since I had nothing to lose, but would be much both to my mother and me if it touched my honour.’