“Frank, we must pass the last evening cosily together,” said he; “I must be with Julia till half-past seven, but for the remainder of the evening I am yours.”
It is needless to trouble the reader with any account of what passed between Tom and me, in this the last evening of our sojourn together; past hours were revived and future pleasures anticipated. Tom spoke in rapture of his approaching happiness, and of the liberality of the young lady’s uncle, who had already presented them with a new bungalow.
“She’s an angel, Frank,” said he, “if ever there was one on earth; may you find just such another! and if you do, and can, by exchange or otherwise, find your way back to the Zubberdust Bullumteers, we shall make the happiest quartet in the country. ’Twill be so pleasant to pass our evenings together, won’t it? a little music, and chess, and so forth.”
Battleton accompanied me to Captain Belfield’s budgerow, where we took an affectionate farewell of each other, he promising to write to me a full, true, and particular account of the wedding.
Poor Tom! the next time we met was some years after; he ascending the Ganges, I going down. It was by mere accident we discovered each other, not having for some time communicated, and cordial was our greeting. There was still a dash of sadness in it, like a gleam of wintry sunlight. The joyous anticipations of the lover had long since subsided into the cares, the anxieties, and the troubles of the husband and father.
The predictions of the caustic captain had been in some sort realized. The quarter-mastership had, it is true, in due time, become vacant; but, in the interim, “another king had arisen, who knew not Joseph,” and Tom had in consequence failed to obtain it.
Thought and moody care sat on the brow of the once joyous Rattleton, for debts were accumulating, children coming fast, and the fair Julia’s health was beginning to fail: to send her “home,” at the expense of some thousand rupees, or see her die before his eyes, were the painful alternatives between which he would shortly have to choose.
Even Tom himself complained of hepatic derangement—vulyò, the liver—and could not take his quantum of beer-shrob as of yore; a springtide of crosses and difficulties, in fact, had set in upon him.
Just before we met, he had sustained a not uncommon river disaster; his horse-boat had been upset by a whirlwind, by which he had lost his buggy, two horses, and other property, to the value of Rs. 1,500, for which he could claim no compensation. Three of his servants went down with the boat, as if to verify the old adage.
He had barely recovered from the shock occasioned by this misfortune, when he had to sustain another, though of a different kind. He had discovered that his child’s dhye, or native nurse, was in the habit of dosing his infant with opium, that it might not disturb her slumbers. Tom threatened; madam took huff, and marched off; the delicate Julia was in despair. The only succedaneum that might have been rendered available, a goat, had accompanied the horses to the shades below.