The bell rang, and with a scream the engine attached to the eleven-fifteen train for London forged slowly out of the Southampton station. Tom Durham, with an unusual expression of emotion on his face, stood upon the platform kissing his hand to Alice, who, with the tears in her eyes, leant back in the carriage and covered her face with her handkerchief. In a second-class compartment next to that which she occupied were two middle-aged, plainly-dressed men, who had been observing the parting of the half-brother and sister with some interest.
"Was not that Tom Durham?" said one, as the train sped on its way.
"Right you are," said the other; "I knew his face, but could not put a name to it. What is he at now--working on the square or on the cross?"
"On the square, I believe," said the first; "leastways I saw him walking with Mr. Calverley in the City the other day, and he would not have been in such respectable company if he had not been all right."
"I suppose not," said the other man, "for the time being; but Tom Durham is a shaky kind of customer anyways."
[CHAPTER II.]
EXIT TOM DURHAM.
Mr. Durham remained watching the departing train until it had passed out of sight, when he turned round and walked quietly out of the station. The emotion he had shown--and which, to his great astonishment, he had really felt--had vanished, and left him in a deeply contemplative state. He pushed his arms half way up to his elbows in his pockets, and muttered to himself as he strode along the street; but it was not until he found himself in the sitting-room at Radley's Hotel, and had made himself a stiff glass of brandy-and-water from the bottle, duly included in the bill which Alice had paid, that he gave his feelings much vent. Then loading a short black pipe from a capacious tobacco-pouch, he seated himself at the table, and as he went through his various papers and memoranda thought aloud.
"This is a rum start, and no mistake! Twenty years ago, when I left this very same place a 'prentice on board the old Gloucestershire, I never thought I should have the luck to stay in this swell hotel, and, better still, not to have to put my hand in my own pocket to pay the bill. It is luck, no doubt; a large slice of luck, larded with talent and peppered with experience. That's the sort of meal for a man that wants to get on in the world, and that's just what I have got before me. Now, when I walk out of this hotel, I shall have two thousand pounds in my pocket. In my pocket!--not to be paid on my arrival at Ceylon, as the old gentleman at first insisted. Ally was of great assistance there. I wonder why she backed me so energetically? I suppose, because she thought it would have been infra dig. for her brother to appear in the eyes of those blessed natives, over whom he is to exercise superintendence, as though he had not been considered worthy of being trusted with the money, and she was delighted with the notion of bringing it down here herself and handing it to me.
"If I hadn't touched the money until my arrival at Ceylon, I should have had to wait a pretty long time. You're a dear old gentleman, Mr. Claxton, and you mean well; but I don't quite see the fun of spending the rest of my days in looking after a lot of niggers under a sun that would dry the life-blood out of me before my time. There is an old saying, that everyone must eat a peck of dirt in the course of their lives. Well, I ate mine early, took it down at one gulp, and I don't want any more of the same food. Besides, it is all very well for Ally to talk about gratitude and that kind of thing; but she does not know what I do, and it is entirely because I know what I do about my worthy brother-in-law, that I have been enabled to put the screw upon him, and to get out of him that very respectable bundle of bank-notes. That was just like my luck again, to find that out, and be able to bring it home to him so pat; directly I first got on the scent, I knew there was money in it, and I followed it up until I placed it chuck-a-block before him, and he parted freely. In such a respectable way, too. None of your extortion; none of your threatening letters; none of your 'left till called for,' under initials, at the post-office; none of your hanging about London spending money which nobody can imagine how you get, and thereby starting suspicions of other matters which might not come out quite so nicely if looked into. 'Agent at Ceylon to the firm of Calverley and Company, brokers, Mincing-lane, London; iron-smelters and boiler-makers, Swartmoor Foundry, Cumberland;' that's what Thomas D. will have engraved on his card when he gets there; and the two thousand pounds, as John gravely remarked before Alice, were for fitting-up the office, and other necessary expenses. I wonder what that poor child thought the other necessary expenses could possibly be, to take such an amount of money?