He worded his letter with infinite care, for it was as delicate a piece of work as he had ever been called upon to do, and it took him a full hour. He posted it himself in a pillar-box on his way to Paddington.
CHAPTER II
The Man with the Medals
Though Paul left Mr. Ferguson’s office with a calm enough face, his mind was bewildered and fear clutched at his heart. Things were happening to him which he had never imagined at all. He had been confident with all the perfect confidence of eighteen years and his confidence in a second was gone. He was in real distress, which made him ache like some physical hurt and tortured him at night so that he could not sleep till long after daybreak. He could not adjust himself to the new conditions of his life. He looked with surprise upon other people, in the streets or in the public rooms of his hotel, who were unaware of the troubles which had hold of him.
He had planned his visit to London full with many a pilgrimage. The London of Dickens and De Quincey—its inns, its gardens and churches! That old mansion at the northwest corner of Greek Street, where Mr. Brunell had given a lodging and a bundle of law papers for a pillow, to his youthful client—all were to be visited with a thrill of excitement and a hope that they would not fall short of the images he had made of them in his thoughts. But the glamour had faded from all these designs. He paced the streets, and indeed all day, but it was to get through the long dismal hours and he walked like one in a maze.
He knew no one and throughout the four days no one spoke to him at all. He moved through the crowded thoroughfares unnoticed as a wraith; he sat apart in restaurants; and as his father had done, he tramped by night the hollow-sounding streets of the city where the lamp-posts kept their sentry guard. On the fifth day, however, the expected letter did come by the first post from Mr. Ferguson.
“If you will travel to Pulburo’ in Sussex by the 3.55 P. M. train from Victoria on the day you receive this, Colonel Vanderfelt will send a car to meet you at the station and will put you up for the night. Will you please send a telegram to him”; and the Colonel’s address followed.
Paul sent off his telegram at once and followed it in the afternoon. Outside Pulboro’ station a small grey car was waiting and a girl of his own age, with brown eyes and a fresh pretty face and a small bright blue hat sitting tightly on her curls, was at the wheel.
“I am Phyllis Vanderfelt,” she explained. “My father asked me to drive in and fetch you. He has had to be away to-day and won’t get home much before dinner time, I’m afraid.”
She turned the car and drove westwards under the railway arch talking rather quickly as people who are uneasy and dread an awkward silence will do. They passed through a little town of narrow winding streets and high walls clustered under a great church with a leaping spire, like a piece of old France, and swung out onto a high wide road which dipped and rose, with the great ridge of the South Downs sweeping from Chanctonbury Ring to Hampshire on their left, forests and bush-strewn slopes of emerald and cliffs of chalk silver-white in the sun, and from end to end of the high rolling barrier the swift shadows of the clouds flitting like great birds.