“Wann be’m going, Jim?”
“Doan’t ’ee know? Whay, wann thyur’s a lot more money scraped up for to build a chapel.” Although David walked along without paying any apparent regard, each word fell like a lash on his sore heart, on which the burden of the other man’s deeds seemed to be heaped.
He went through his work dully and mechanically, but without failing in any point of its routine. He was, however, detained at the office until a later hour than usual, owing to a delay on the line, and he made up his mind, in the intervals during which he allowed his mind to dwell on the subject, to search for Nat Wills in Underham itself before going farther; thinking it not unlikely, from some words the boy had let drop, that he would find a hiding-place there.
When he left the office it was quite dark, and long ago the glory of the setting sun had faded out of the heavens. For an hour or two he went, as he had determined, from house to house in the black courts where vice and misery huddle together, nearer us oftener than we think in our contentedness. And even here he was scourged by the other man’s sin. Women taunted him with it, every taunt carrying a fresh sting. Some of them in moments of emotion had given him their pence for the object he had at heart, and cast this in his teeth again, or reproached him with mute white faces which were more intolerable. No one could tell what it cost him to feel that the work he had believed to be in progress lay all unravelled and useless in his hand, the stone which infinite labour had pushed upwards had dropped back an inert mass. The solitude, too, of a sectarian creed was upon him. He felt alone among these people. When he came out at last into a wider street, the light from a lamp hard by falling on his face showed it intensified with a look of such pain as a man cannot endure long and live.
The purpose in his heart was, however, as strong as ever, and he moved slowly along the street towards another quarter in which it was possible that Nat might have found refuge. Just as he reached a corner Anthony Miles came round it on his way from the Bennetts’. It was not a happy time for him to meet David, after the talk of the night before, and when the evening had been such as we know. He stopped abruptly, and David stopped also.
“That’s you, Stephens, is it not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr Bennett has been telling me of the rascally manner in which that man Higgins has made off. I should think that ought to show you the set of fellows you’re getting mixed up with. But if you will run your head against a wall there’s another thing I’ve got to say. I understand you are still trying for a bit of land in Thorpe, and you may as well know that I’ve not changed my mind, and that I shall fight you through thick and thin before you get it.”
“I know that, sir,” said David, with a concentrated forlornness in his voice of which Anthony was immediately aware. “You’ve done it with all your might up to now, but you won’t need to trouble yourself much longer.”
“Have you changed your opinions, then?” said Anthony, softened by the thought of concession.