It was on Saturday night that Godfrey Sherwood came at length to
Warburton's lodgings. Reaching home between twelve and one o'clock Will
saw a man who paced the pavement near Mrs. Wick's door; the man, at
sight of him, hastened forward; there were exclamations of surprise and
of pleasure.
"I came first of all at nine o'clock," said Sherwood. "The landlady
said you wouldn't be back before midnight, so I came again. Been to the
theatre, I suppose?"
"Yes," answered Will, "taking part in a play called 'The Grocer's
Saturday Night.'
"I'd forgotten. Poor old fellow! You won't have much more of _that_
thank Heaven!--Are you too tired to talk to-night?"
"No, no; come in."
The house was silent and dark. Will struck a match to light the candle
placed for him at the foot of the stairs, and led the way up to his
sitting-room on the first floor. Here he lit a lamp, and the two
friends looked at each other. Each saw a change. If Warburton was thin
and heavy-eyed, Sherwood's visage showed an even more noticeable
falling-off in health.
"What's been the matter with you?" asked Will. "Your letter said you
had had an illness, and you look as if you hadn't got over it yet."
"Oh, I'm all right now," cried the other. "Liver got out of order--or
the spleen, or something--I forget. The best medicine was the news I
got about old Strangwyn.--There, by Jove! I've let the name out. The
wonder is I never did it before, when we were talking. It doesn't
matter now. Yes, it's Strangwyn, the whisky man. He'll die worth a
million or two, and Ted is his only son. I was a fool to lend that
money to Ted, but we saw a great deal of each other at one time, and
when he came asking for ten thousand--a mere nothing for a fellow of
his expectations--nobody thought his father could live a year, but the
old man has held out all this time, and Ted, the rascal, kept swearing
he couldn't pay the interest on his debt. Of course I could have made
him; but he knew I shouldn't dare to risk the thing coming to his
father's ears. I've had altogether about three hundred pounds, instead
of the four hundred a year he owed me--it was at four per cent. Now, of
course, I shall get all the arrears--but that won't pay for all the
mischief that's been done."
"Is it certain," asked Will, "that Strangwyn will pay?"
"Certain? If he doesn't I sue him. The case is plain as daylight."
"There's no doubt that he'll have his father's money?"
"None whatever. For more than a year now, he's been on good terms with
the old man. Ted is a very decent fellow, of his sort. I don't say that
I care as much for him now as I used to; we've both of us altered; but
his worst fault is extravagance. The old man, it must be confessed,
isn't very good form; he smells rather of the distillery; but Ted
Strangwyn might come of the best family in the land. Oh, you needn't
have the least anxiety. Strangwyn will pay, principal and interest, as
soon as the old man has retired; and that may happen any day, any
hour.--How glad I am to see you again, Will! I've known one or two
plucky men, but no one like you. I couldn't have gone through it; I
should have turned coward after a month of that. Well, it's over, and
it'll be something to look back upon. Some day, perhaps, you'll amuse
your sister by telling her the story. To tell you the truth, I couldn't
bear to come and see you; I should have been too miserably ashamed of
myself.--And not a soul has found you out, all this time?"
"No one that I know of."
"You must have suffered horribly from loneliness.--But I have things to
tell you, important things." He waved his arm. "Not to-night; it's too
late, and you look tired to death."
"Tell on," said Warburton. "If I went to bed I shouldn't sleep--where
are you staying?"
"Morley's Hotel. Not at my own expense," Sherwood added hastily. "I'm
acting as secretary to a man--a man I got to know in Ireland. A fine
fellow! You'll know him very soon. It's about him that I want to tell
you. But first of all, that idea of mine about Irish eggs. The trouble
was I couldn't get capital enough. My cousin Hackett risked a couple of
hundred pounds; it was all lost before the thing could really be set
going. I had a bad time after that, Will, a bad time, I tell you. Yet
good results came of it. For two or three months I lived on next to
nothing--a few pence a day, all told. Of course, if I had let Strangwyn
know how badly off I was, he'd have sent a cheque; but I didn't feel I
had any right to his money, it was yours, not mine. Besides, I said to
myself that, if I suffered, it was only what I deserved; I took it as a
sort of expiation of the harm I'd done. All that time I was in Dublin,
I tried to get employment but nobody had any use for me--until at last,
when I was all but dying of hunger, somebody spoke to me of a certain
Milligan, a young and very rich man living in Dublin. I resolved to go
and see him, and a lucky day it was. You remember Conolly--Bates's
traveller? Well, Milligan is just that man, in appearance; a thorough
Irishman, and one of the best hearted fellows that ever lived. Though
he's rich I found him living in a very plain way, in a room which
looked like a museum, full of fossils, stuffed birds and animals, queer
old pictures, no end of such things. Well, I told him plainly who I
was, and where I was; and almost without thinking, he cried out--'What
could be simpler? Come and be my secretary.'--'You want a
secretary?'--'I hadn't thought of it,' said Milligan, 'but now it
strikes me it's just what I _do_ want. I knew there was something. Yes,
yes, come and be my secretary; you're just the man.' He went on to tell
me he had a lot of correspondence with sellers of curiosities, and it
bored him to write the letters. Would I come for a couple of hours a
day? He'd pay me twenty pounds a month. You may suppose I wasn't long
in accepting. We began the next day, and in a week's time we were good
friends. Milligan told me that he'd always had weak health, and he was
convinced his life had been saved by vegetarianism. I myself wasn't
feeling at all fit just then; he persuaded me to drop meat, and taught
me all about the vegetarian way of living. I hadn't tried it for a
month before I found the most wonderful results. Never in my life had I
such a clear mind, and such good spirits. It remade me."
"So you've come to London to hunt for curios?" interposed Will.
"No, no; let me go on. When I got to know Milligan well, I found that
he had a large estate somewhere in Connaught. And, as we talked, an
idea came to me." Again he sprang up from his chair. "'If I were a
landowner on that scale,' I said, 'do you know what I should do--I
should make a vegetarian colony; a self-supporting settlement of people
who ate no meat, drank no alcohol, smoked no tobacco; a community
which, as years went on, might prove to the world that there was the
true ideal of civilised life--health of mind and of body, true culture,
true humanity!'" The eyes glowed in his fleshless, colourless face; he
spoke with arm raised, head thrown back--the attitude of an
enthusiastic preacher. "Milligan caught at the idea--caught at it
eagerly. 'There's something fine in that!' he said. 'Why shouldn't it
be done?' 'You're the man that could do it,' I told him. 'You'd be a
benefactor to the human race. Isolated examples are all very well, but
what we want is an experiment on a large scale, going on through more
than one generation. Let children be born of vegetarian parents,
brought up as vegetarians, and this in conditions of life every way
simple, natural, healthy. This is the way to convert the world.' So
that's what we're working at now, Milligan and I. Of course there are
endless difficulties; the thing can't be begun in a hurry; we have to
see no end of people, and correspond with the leaders of vegetarianism
everywhere. But isn't it a grand idea? Isn't it worth working for?"
Warburton mused, smiling.
"I want you to join us," said Sherwood abruptly.
"Ho, ho! That's another matter."
"I shall bring you books to read."
"I've no time. I'm a grocer."
"Pooh!" exclaimed Sherwood. "In a few days you'll be an independent
man.--Yes, yes, I know that you'll have only a small capital, when
things are settled; but it's just people with a small capital that we
want to enlist; the very poor and the well-to-do will be no use to us.
It's too late to-night to go into details. We have time to talk, plenty
of time. That you will join us, I feel sure. Wait till you've had time
to think about it. For my own part, I've found the work of my life, and
I'm the happiest man living!"
He walked round and round the table, waving his arms, and Warburton,
after regarding him curiously, mused again, but without a smile.