THE FIRST STAGE ON THE JOURNEY HOME.
Joseph Wilmot obeyed his old master, and ordered a very excellent
luncheon, which was served in the best style of the Dolphin; and a
sojourn at the Dolphin is almost a recompense for the pains and
penalties of the voyage home from India. Mr. Dunbar, from the sublime
height of his own grandeur, stooped to be very friendly with his old
valet, and insisted upon Joseph's sitting down with him at the
well-spread table. But although the Anglo-Indian did ample justice to
the luncheon, and washed down a spatchcock and a lobster-salad with
several glasses of iced Moselle, the reprobate ate and drank very
little, and sat for the best part of the time crumbling his bread in a
strange absent manner, and watching his companion's face. He only spoke
when his old master addressed him; and then in a constrained,
half-mechanical way, which might have excited the wonder of any one
less supremely indifferent than Henry Dunbar to the feelings of his
fellow-creatures.
The Anglo-Indian finished his luncheon, left the table, and walked to
the window: but Joseph Wilmot still sat with a full glass before him.
The sparkling bubbles had vanished from the clear amber wine; but
although Moselle at half-a-guinea a bottle could scarcely have been a
very common beverage to the ex-convict, he seemed to have no
appreciation of the vintage. He sat with his head bent and his elbow on
his knee; brooding, brooding, brooding.
Henry Dunbar amused himself for about ten minutes looking out at the
busy street—the brightest, airiest, lightest, prettiest High Street in
all England, perhaps; and then turned away from the window and looked
at his old valet. He had been accustomed, five-and-thirty years ago, to
be familiar with the man, and to make a confidant and companion of him,
and he fell into the same manner now, naturally; as if the
five-and-thirty years had never been; as if Joseph Wilmot had never
been wronged by him. He fell into the old way, and treated his
companion with that haughty affability which a monarch may be supposed
to exhibit towards his prime favourite.
"Drink your wine, Wilmot," he exclaimed; "don't sit meditating there,
as if you were a great speculator brooding over the stagnation of the
money-market. I want bright looks, man, to welcome me back to my native
country. I've seen dark faces enough out yonder; and I want to see
smiling and pleasanter faces here. You look as black as if you had
committed a murder, or were plotting one."
The Outcast smiled.
"I've so much reason to look cheerful, haven't I?" he said, in the same
tone he had used when he had declared his acceptance of the banker's
bounty. "I've such a pleasant life before me, and such agreeable
recollections to look back upon. A man's memory seems to me like a book
of pictures that he must be continually looking at, whether he will or
not: and if the pictures are horrible, if he shudders as he looks at
them, if the sight of them is worse than the pain of death to him, he
must look nevertheless. I read a story the other day—at least my girl
was reading it to me; poor child! she tries to soften me with these
things sometimes—and the man who wrote the story said it was well for
the most miserable of us to pray, 'Lord, keep my memory green!' But
what if the memory is a record of crime, Mr. Dunbar? Can we pray that
_those_ memories may be kept green? Wouldn't it be better to pray that
our brains and hearts may wither, leaving us no power to look back upon
the past? If I could have forgotten the wrong you did me
five-and-thirty years ago, I might have been a different man: but I
couldn't forget it. Every day and every hour I have remembered it. My
memory is as fresh to-day as it was four-and-thirty years ago, when my
wrongs were only a twelvemonth old."
Joseph Wilmot had said all this almost as if he yielded to an
uncontrollable impulse, and spoke because he must speak, rather than
from the desire to upbraid Henry Dunbar. He had not looked at the
Anglo-Indian; he had not changed his attitude; he had spoken with his
head still bent, and his eyes fixed upon the ground.
Mr. Dunbar had gone back to the window, and had resumed his
contemplation of the street; but he turned round with a gesture of
angry impatience as Joseph Wilmot finished speaking.
"Now, listen to me, Wilmot," he said. "If the firm in St. Gundolph Lane
sent you down here to annoy and insult me directly I set foot upon
British ground, they have chosen a very nice way of testifying their
respect for their chief: and they have made a mistake which they shall
repent having made sooner or later. If you came here upon your own
account, with a view to terrify me, or to extort money from me, you
have made a mistake. If you think to make a fool of me by any maudlin
sentimentality, you make a still greater mistake. I give you fair
warning. If you expect any advantage from me, you must make yourself
agreeable to me. I am a rich man, and know how to recompense those who
please me: but I will not be bored or tormented by any man alive: least
of all by you. If you choose to make yourself useful, you can stay: if
you don't choose to do so, the sooner you leave this room the better
for yourself, if you wish to escape the humiliation of being turned out
by the waiter."
At the end of this speech Joseph Wilmot looked up for the first time.
He was very pale, and there were strange hard lines about his
compressed lips, and a new light in his eyes.
"I am a poor weak fool," he said, quietly; "very weak and very foolish,
when I think there can be anything in that old story to touch your
heart, Mr. Dunbar. I will not offend you again, believe me. I have not
led a very sober life of late years: I've had a touch of _delirium
tremens_, and my nerves are not as strong as they used to be: but I'll
not annoy you again. I'm quite ready to make myself useful in any way
you may require."
"Get me a time-table, then, and let's see about the trains. I don't
want to stay in Southampton all day."
Joseph Wilmot rang, and ordered the time-table; Henry Dunbar studied
it.
"There is no express before ten o'clock at night," he said; "and I
don't care about travelling by a slow train. What am I to do with
myself in the interim?"
He was silent for a few moments, turning over the leaves of Bradshaw's
Guide, and thinking.
"How far is it from here to Winchester?" he asked presently.
"Ten miles, or thereabouts, I believe," Joseph answered.
"Ten miles! Very well, then, Wilmot, I'll tell you what I'll do. I've a
friend in the neighbourhood of Winchester, an old college companion, a
man who has a fine estate in Hampshire, and a house near St. Cross. If
you'll order a carriage and pair to be got ready immediately, we'll
drive over to Winchester. I'll go and see my old friend Michael
Marston; we'll dine at the George, and go up to London by the express
which leaves Winchester at a quarter past ten. Go and order the
carriage, and lose no time about it, that's a good fellow."
Half an hour after this the two men left Southampton in an open
carriage, with the banker's portmanteau, dressing-case, and
despatch-box, and Joseph Wilmot's carpet-bag. It was three o'clock when
the carriage drove away from the entrance of the Dolphin Hotel: it
wanted five minutes to four when Mr. Dunbar and his companion entered
the handsome hall of the George.
Throughout the drive the banker had been in very excellent spirits,
smoking cheroots, and admiring the lovely English landscape, the
spreading pastures, the glimpses of woodland, the hills beyond the grey
cathedral city, purple in the distance.
He had talked a good deal, making himself very familiar with his humble
friend. But he had not talked so much or so loudly as Joseph Wilmot.
All gloomy memories seemed to have melted away from this man's mind.
His former moody silence had been succeeded by a manner that was almost
unnaturally gay. A close observer would have detected that his laugh
was a little forced, his loudest merriment wanting in geniality: but
Henry Dunbar was not a close observer. People in Calcutta, who courted
and admired the rich banker, had been wont to praise the aristocratic
ease of his manner, which was not often disturbed by any vulgar
demonstration of his own emotions, and very rarely ruffled by any
sympathy with the joys, or pity for the sorrows, of his
fellow-creatures.
His companion's ready wit and knowledge of the world—the very worst
part of the world, unhappily—amused the languid Anglo-Indian: and by
the time the travellers reached Winchester, they were on excellent
terms with each other. Joseph Wilmot was thoroughly at home with his
patron; and as the two men were dressed in the same fashion, and had
pretty much the same nonchalance of manner, it would have been very
difficult for a stranger to have discovered which was the servant and
which the master.
One of them ordered dinner for eight o'clock, the best dinner the house
could provide. The luggage was taken up to a private room, and the two
men walked away from the hotel arm-in-arm.
They walked under the shadow of a low stone colonnade, and then turned
aside by the market-place, and made their way into the precincts of the
cathedral. There are quaint old courtyards, and shadowy quadrangles
hereabouts; there are pleasant gardens, where the flowers seem to grow
brighter in the sanctified shade than other flowers that flaunt in the
unhallowed sunshine. There are low old-fashioned houses, with Tudor
windows and ponderous porches, grey gables crowned with yellow
stone-moss, high garden-walls, queer nooks and corners, deep
window-seats in painted oriels, great oaken beams supporting low dark
ceilings, heavy clusters of chimneys half borne down by the weight of
the ivy that clings about them; and over all, the shadow of the great
cathedral broods, like a sheltering wing, preserving the cool quiet of
these cosy sanctuaries.
Beyond this holy shelter fair pastures stretch away to the feet of the
grassy hills: and a winding stream of water wanders in and out: now
hiding in dim groves of spreading elms: now creeping from the darkness,
with a murmuring voice and stealthy gliding motion, to change its very
nature, and become the noisiest brook that ever babbled over sunlit
pebbles on its way to the blue sea.
In one of the grey stone quadrangles close under the cathedral wall,
the two men, still arm-in-arm, stopped to make an inquiry about Mr.
Michael Marston, of the Ferns, St. Cross.
Alas! Ben Bolt, it is a fine thing to sail away to foreign shores and
prosper there; but it is not so pleasant to come home and hear that
Alice is dead and buried; that of all your old companions there is only
one left to greet you; and that even the brook, which rippled through
your boyish dreams, as you lay asleep amongst the rushes on its brink,
has dried up for ever!
Mr. Michael Marston had been dead more than ten years. His widow, an
elderly lady, was still living at the Ferns.
This was the information which the two men obtained from a verger, whom
they found prowling about the quadrangle, Very little was said. One of
the men asked the necessary questions. But neither of them expressed
either regret or surprise.
They walked away silently, still arm-in-arm, towards the shady groves
and spreading pastures beyond the cathedral precincts.
The verger, who was elderly and slow, called after them in a feeble
voice as they went away:
"Maybe you'd like to see the cathedral, gentlemen; it's well worth
seeing."
But he received no answer. The two men were out of hearing, or did not
care to reply to him.
"We'll take a stroll towards St. Cross, and get an appetite for
dinner," Mr. Dunbar said, as he and his companion walked along a
pathway, under the shadow of a moss-grown wall, across a patch of
meadow-land, and away into the holy quiet of a grove.
A serene stillness reigned beneath the shelter of the spreading
branches. The winding streamlet rippled along amidst wild flowers and
trembling rushes; the ground beneath the feet of these two idle
wanderers was a soft bed of moss and rarely-trodden grass.
It was a lonely place this grove; for it lay between the meadows and
the high-road. Feeble old pensioners from St. Cross came here
sometimes, but not often. Enthusiastic disciples of old Izaak Walton
now and then invaded the holy quiet of the place: but not often. The
loveliest spots on earth are those where man seldom comes.
This spot was most lovely because of its solitude. Only the gentle
waving of the leaves, the long melodious note of a lonely bird, and the
low whisper of the streamlet, broke the silence.
The two men went into the grove arm-in-arm. One of them was talking,
the other listening, and smoking a cigar as he listened. They went into
the long arcade beneath the over-arching trees, and the sombre shadows
closed about them and hid them from the world.