With the same noiseless step she had entered, she now glided softly from the room, closing the door so gently that it was only when he looked round that he was aware of being alone. For a moment or two he busied himself with the objects on the table; he arranged phials and retorts, he lighted his stove, he stood fanning the charcoal till the red mass glowed brightly, and then, as though forgetting the pursuit he was engaged in, he sat down upon a chair, and sank into a dreamy revery.
Another low tap at the door aroused him from his musings, and the low voice he knew so well gently told him it was his morning to attend the dispensary, a distance fully three miles off. More than one complaint had been already made of his irregularity and neglect, and, intending to pay more attention in future, he had charged his wife to keep him mindful of his duties.
“You will scarcely reach Ballintray before one o'clock, Herbert,” said she, in her habitually timid tone.
“What if I should not try? What if I throw up the beggarly office at once? What if I burst through this slavery of patrons and chairmen and boards? Do you fancy we should starve, Grace?”
“Oh, no, Herbert,” cried she, eagerly; “I have no fears for our future.”
“Then your courage is greater than mine,” said he, bitterly, and with one of the sudden changes of humor which often marked him. “Can't you anticipate how the world would pass sentence on me, the idle debauchee, who would not earn his livelihood, but must needs forfeit his subsistence from sheer indolence?—ay, and the world would be right too. He who breaks stones upon the highroad will not perform his task the better because he can tell the chemical constituent of every fragment beneath his hammer. Men want common work from common workmen, and there are always enough to be found. I'll set out at once.”
With this resolve, uttered in a tone she never gainsaid or replied to, he took his hat and left the cottage.
There is no more aggressive spirit than that of the man who, with the full consciousness of great powers, sees himself destined to fill some humble and insignificant station, well knowing the while the inferiority of those who have conquered the high places in life. Of all the disqualifying elements of his own character, his unsteadiness, his want of thrift, perseverance, or conduct, his deficiency in tact or due courtesy, his stubborn indifference to others,—of all these he will take no account as he whispers to his heart,
“I passed that fellow at school!—I beat this one at college!—how often have I helped yonder celebrity with his theme!—how many times have I written his exercise for that great dignitary!” Oh, what a deep well of bitterness lies in the nature of one so tried and tortured, and how cruel is the war that he at last wages with the world, and, worse again, with his own heart!
Scarcely noticing the salutations of the country people, as they touched their hats to him on the road, or the more familiar addresses of the better-to-do farmers as they passed, Layton strode onwards to the little village where his dispensary stood.