Turning up a broad street to his right, a sailor crossed the road and touched his hat.
“Beg pardon, sir, but ain’t you Mr Wareham?”
He signified his right to the name.
“I’ve a message for you, sir, from the young lady on board the yacht. I was to say as we ain’t going out of harbour to-day, sir, and that if she was wanted, you’d only got to send a boat for her.”
He was told to carry back the answer that Mr Wareham would take care to act upon her wishes.
“You’ve a fine yacht out there,” he added, in order to gratify the man.
“If you saw her sail, sir, you’d say so. But she hasn’t done nothing here, and it seems as if we were going to be too late for the regattas. Never knew that happen afore.”
He departed, and Wareham walked on quickly to the museum, ran up the broad staircase, and wandered into a world of arctic creatures, where he was secure from interruption.
For the last three or four days his hopes of Hugh’s recovery had been low, now some conviction told him it was all but hopeless. “Hugh, old Hugh!” he kept repeating to himself, as the past years of their friendship trooped up again. Always he had been, in thought as well as fact, the elder, the supporter; now in the shadowy twilight of the Great Unseen, Hugh had passed to strange heights of experience; the careless words he used to rattle off, dropped now, changed, as coming from one whose feet were near the eternal shore.
The special thing which Hugh had to say had scarcely presented itself since. It seemed a matter of no moment; something perhaps to be considered in the far future, but not yet. Dying, Anne belonged to Hugh; Wareham’s only dread was lest she should disappoint him, a vague uneasiness about Lord Milborough was in his mind, and he did not think Hugh had any consciousness of this new disturbing element. He asked few questions about her, and it was impossible to say what had passed between them in their last interview, except that he had appeared satisfied. But Anne herself? She had refused to leave the place, had, but half-an-hour ago, sent a message that she was at hand, yet Wareham had his doubts. Did she feel? Did she care? Her own words came back, when she had called herself heartless, and under the intoxication of her presence he had indignantly refuted the accusation. Admitting it even, how was he to blame her? since a vessel can pour out no more than is in it. But with those eyes! Was it possible that no heart reigned behind them? If it were so, Wareham, suddenly stern judge, acknowledged that it was well Hugh should go while yet he loved her, and clung to the dream that she might yet love him.