By this time the good ship was standing out to sea.
* * * * * *
Mr. Foster returned to his hotel in very low spirits; the mere sight of the sea, the mere sense of being on board a steamer, the bustle and departure, and the glad anticipations which he heard all around him, had produced a fit of home-sickness. It rarely occurred that Mr. Foster, as the strictly business man, revolted against business in any shape, or resented its exactions, but he did so on this occasion, and yielded to a sort of physical and mental malaise, which he was ready to impute partly to fatigue, and partly to the fact that he had been amusing himself more than was his custom during the last few days, and this was the reaction. 'I go back to the grind now,' he thought, 'and I will get it over as soon as possible--I can't stand much more of this kind of thing; it doesn't pay. My Helen would be cured of her funny unreasonable notions about the supremacy of my business in my thoughts, her pretty jealousy would vanish like a cloud if she could only see me now, if she could only look into my heart and know how I longed to have done with it all and to get back to her. How I envy the people who are going where she is!'
He was walking slowly, with bent head and a musing manner, rarely seen in the busy streets of the water-side city, as he thought this, and he mechanically put his hand into his breast-pocket searching for his wife's last letter, which he felt sure he had brought down with him; but it was not there. 'I must have left it in my room,' he thought, and quickened his steps. On reaching the hotel, Mr. Foster went to his room and found the letter, which he glanced over and placed in his pocket-book.
Everything, tide included, had favoured the departure of his friends. It was nigh noon when the ship steamed down the Mersey, and the solitary man, who was in a humour to indulge the sense of solitude, had several hours to dispose of before returning to London. He had contemplated staying one night in Liverpool, but he changed his mind; he would go and have a look at the chief places of interest in the city and its environs, and so dispose of the hours until he could go away.
It was a little after one when he left the Adelphi, and set out on a sort of strolling tour, and his mind, an active and intelligent one, soon became diverted and interested in the novel scene. There is a good deal to be seen in Liverpool and at Birkenhead, and Mr. Foster gave his mind to seeing it; so that it was much later than he had calculated upon when he was crossing in the ferry from the latter place, and he perceived, with some vexation, that he had overstayed his time, and could not possibly leave by the night train as he had intended. 'Not that it matters,' he thought, 'except that Helen's letter will be waiting for me instead of my being waiting for it.'
'I beg your pardon,' he said, making room on the bench where he was sitting for a man who had stood, with rather an ostentatious air of expecting to have room made for him, just in front of Mr. Foster, 'I didn't see that you wanted a place;' and the man sat down, after some words of course.
He was a slight man, who carried himself awkwardly, with high shoulders and sunken chest and stooping head; he was of dark complexion, had straight black hair, which fitted his head like a thatch, and a black beard, but he was painfully nearsighted, and wore spectacles of such power that his eyes, seen through them, seemed to be buried in cavities altogether disproportionate to the other feature. He was curiously ill-dressed, not only as regards the fabric of his garments, which was incongruous, but also as regards their fit, which had not the slightest reference to either his height or his breadth. They were formed of two or three kinds of cloth of different degrees of coarseness, but all of the cheapest description, and all rusty black, which associates itself in one's mind with the Scripture-reading, amateur-preaching, charity-letter writing, and tract-distributing class. He wore shoes, which might have been made for any one of the passengers on board the ferry with as much reference to their fit as for him, and his gray cotton gloves were too long in the fingers and too wide in the wrists. In the dog's-eared pocket of his black cloth waistcoat he carried a clumsy silver watch, attached to a frayed piece of black braid; and a shiny leather case, which had evidently been replenished with tracts since he had lavishly distributed his morning supply of that improving order of literature, protruded from the breast-pocket of his shapeless coat.
Mr. Foster glanced at the stranger as one naturally glances at a person to whom one has done a passing civility, and was not far out in his estimate of his social position and professional character; not that he was familiar with the precise type, but the character was too ostentatiously put forward to be mistaken.
A respectable-looking stout woman, with a large basket, which she held tenaciously upon her knees, to her extreme discomfort, no doubt considering it much too precious to be intrusted to the open space of deck at her feet, got into conversation with Mr. Foster's neighbour, with all the facility accorded by custom to social intercourse with gentlemen of his profession, and after a few minutes Mr. Foster found himself taking an interest in the conversation. It referred to the physical and spiritual needs of the water-side population, and the man spoke in a sensible and straightforward way, quite devoid of cant, which pleased Mr. Foster, and was singularly at variance with his appearance--that of the most conventional theatrical type, which one is almost irresistibly tempted to associate with imposture and hypocrisy.