“Ah, that was her husband that is to be; that was Mr. Hurd. She can go nowhere without him, not even to see her old beau.”
At these words, every one of them an adder, Alfred turned on her furiously, and his long arm shot out of its own accord, and the fingers opened like an eagle's claw. She saw, and understood, but never blenched. Her vindictive eye met his dilating flashing orbs unflinchingly.
“You pass for a woman,” he said, “and I am too wretched for anger.” He turned from her with a deep convulsive sob, and, almost staggering, leaned his brow against the wall of the house.
She had done what no man had as yet succeeded in; she had broken his spirit. And here a man would have left him alone. But the rejected beauty put her lips to his ear, and whispered into them, “This is only the beginning.” Then she left him and went to his room and stole all his paper, and pens, and ink, and his very Aristotle. He was to have no occupation now, except to brood, and brood, and brood.
As for Alfred, he sat down upon a bench in the yard a broken man: up to this moment he had hoped his Julia was as constant as himself. But no; either she had heard he was mad, and with the universal credulity had believed it, or perhaps, not hearing from him at all believed herself forsaken; and was consoling herself with a clergyman. Jealousy did not as yet infuriate Alfred. Its first effect resembled that of a heavy blow. Little Beverley found him actually sick, and ran to the Robin. The ex-prizefighter brought him a thimbleful of brandy, but he would not take it. “Ah no, my friends,” he said, “that cannot cure me; it is not my stomach; it is my heart. Broken, broken!”
The Robin retired muttering. Little Beverley kneeled down beside him, and kissed his hand with a devotion that savoured of the canine. Yet it was tender, and the sinking heart clung to it. “Oh, Frank!” he cried, “my Julia believes me mad, or thinks me false, or something, and she will marry another before I can get out to tell her all I have endured was for loving her. What shall I do? God protect my reason! What will become of me?”
He moaned, and young Frank sorrowed over him, till the harsh voice of Rooke summoned him to some menial duty. This discharged, he came running back; and sat on the bench beside his crushed benefactor without saying a word. At last he delivered this sapient speech: “I see. You want to get out of this place.”
Alfred only sighed hopelessly.
“Then I must try and get you out,” said Frank. Alfred shook his head.
“Just let me think,” said Frank solemnly; and he sat silent looking like a young owl: for thinking soon puzzled him, and elicited his intellectual weakness, whereas in a groove of duties he could go as smoothly as half the world, and but for his official, officious Protector, might just as well have been Boots at the Swan, as Boots and Chambermaid at the Wolf.