"I have none," replied the General. "Northferry and ourselves will soon, I suppose, have to part for ever; and I should have thought your connexion with that pleasant place was already severed. Alas! that it should be so. I have come to that time of life, Chandos, when the mind's food is memory. Hope is the pabulum of youth, my young friend; recollection the diet of old age: and we cling to everything that recalls pleasant memories, as one of your London diner's-out attaches himself to a giver of good dinners. But what, I wonder, takes you to Northferry?"
"A wild goose chase, I believe," answered Chandos; "I would fain encourage expectation of some good resulting from it; but the hopes fade away as soon as they are born; and I go more because a good and a wise friend advises me, than from any conviction on my own part. Neither do I exactly go to Northferry; but very near it I shall certainly be, if you have any commands."
"Few, few," replied the General. "One thing, indeed, you may do, if you will; namely, bring the little boy, Tim, to London with you. I must put him to a school in the neighbourhood; for even misfortune must not make me forget my given word."
Chandos promised to take all care of the boy; and the conversation turned to other subjects.
CHAPTER XL.
Four days passed after Chandos Winslow's conference with General Tracy ere he could quit London. Lawyers are not fond of moving fast. Some difficulties occurred in drawing up the notice to be served upon Sir William Winslow and Lord Overton, regarding the sale of Winslow Abbey; and the whole arrangements were not completed till late on the fourth night. Chandos consoled himself easily, however; for during those four days he twice saw Rose Tracy; and he began to comprehend better than he had ever done before, how Mark Antony had lost a world for Cleopatra's eyes. At length, however, on the fifth morning, one of those machines which the Londoners, in their monosyllabic propensity call a "cab," whirled him and his light portmanteau down to the railway terminus, and in two minutes after, Chandos was rolling away upon the rails towards his native place. The morning had been beautiful, dawning with a brightness and a lustre which do not always promise well for the risen day; and ere the train had reached the second station, the sky was covered with gray cloud, and a thin, fine rain was dewing the whole earth. Thicker and faster it came down as the traveller proceeded on his way, till at length when he got out, about sixty miles from town, to perform the rest of his journey by coach, a perfect deluge was pattering upon the roof of the shed under which he alighted. He had neither umbrella nor great coat; and he was glad to find an inside place disengaged, to carry him at least part of the way warm and dry.
His companions were an elderly woman, with a large basket, well furnished with sandwiches, and a wicker bottle full of gin-and-water; and a tall, stout man, of about forty-five or forty-six, tolerably well dressed, in a long brown great-coat, and endowed with an exceedingly yellow complexion. The lady did not seem inclined for much conversation, but consoled herself from time to time for the evils of travelling by the sources of comfort which she had provided in her bottle and basket. The male traveller was somewhat more communicative, though in a peculiarly short, dry way. He saluted Chandos on his entering the coach with a "Good morning, Sir;" which act of homeliness of course bespoke the rude countryman, in a land where every well-educated man demeans himself towards his neighbour as an enemy, till something occurs to make them friends. Chandos, on his part, was not in the slightest degree afraid of having his pocket picked, his character injured, or his mind contaminated; and therefore he answered his new companion civilly, and asked if he had come down by the train.
"Yes, Sir," replied the other; "from a fool's errand."
"How so?" asked Chandos.
"Seeking in London what I might have found in the country, and what I did not find there," rejoined the stranger; "travelling up to look for that which travelled down with me, without looking for."