“He has made a mistake or two in the matter, it seems to me,” said Ibbetson with so much concentrated anger in the tone that Clive looked at him in surprise. But he recovered himself quickly and put out his hand, “You’ll write, that’s understood. I’m going down to Hetherton, and will see you again when I come back.”
The interview had only been partly satisfactory. He felt sure that Clive had neither forged a cheque nor committed any other crime, and therefore Trent’s black insinuations deserved all that Phillis had thought of them. At the same time there was a depression about the young fellow which seemed to show that he was under some darker cloud than a debt of fifty pounds to a cousin. The more he thought of it, the more this conviction grew on him. Perhaps at Hetherton a light would be thrown upon it.
Before he had any chance of getting a hansom, he had to walk for some distance, and a thick wetting rain was falling. Lights were flashing and rolling through the fog, the noise of wheels, the cry of newsmen, were the only distinct sounds which reached him out of that mighty roar which London sends forth day and night. Damp and prosaic enough it all was; a beggar stretched forth a bony hand, the repulsiveness of face and figure unclothed by the picturesqueness which in the South might have softened its hideousness. Yet, as Jack splashed along, something within him seemed to leap into life as if in answer to a trumpet call. After all, it was his own country. He was young, strong, work had in it more of a joy than a burden. He felt as if he had been living of late in a fool’s paradise of dreams, where he was of no good to himself or to anyone else, except, perhaps, to kind Miss Cartwright. He had rather prided himself upon an absence of ambition. But a consciousness of strength and a desire to use it seemed to awaken that evening, and, although he did not own it, probably a wish that others—at any rate one other—should see that he, too, could do, awoke at the same time. Hetherton had gone from him, but he felt as if other Hethertons lay beckoning to him from a blue distance, and though he smiled at his own airy castles, they had the power of enabling him to face the prospect of the actual place with perfect cheerfulness. He refused the first hansom that offered itself, feeling as if the walk home among all those other workers who were passing, coming and going, was a sort of pledge of brotherhood with them—given to himself. And he resolved to run down to Hetherton to see what he could find out about Trent and Clive.
Chapter Fifteen.
Jack Expresses an Opinion.
It was afternoon the next day before he left London, and past dark when he reached the Hetherton station. But the day had been fairly fine, and there was nothing in the evening to prevent his walking the two or three miles which lay between the station and the house, while his portmanteau was to come after him in the carrier’s cart. He lingered a little, especially when he had crossed the sandy common and got down among the sturdy Scotch firs, so that, what with listening to the rustling of the wind in their tops, and the brawling of the swollen river, as he passed in at the lodge he heard the little clock striking seven, the dinner hour at the Court.
Jack was a favourite with all the servants, and the old butler bustled out from the dining-room directly he heard who had arrived, and sent a young footman off with orders about the room.
“You’ll like to wash your hands, Mr John, and I’ll let master know you’re come.”