He looked enviously at the workers in a brick-yard the train was passing at that moment. There were men there, coarse and ignorant, but brawny of limb and broad of chest; and there were children too, boys and girls of tender years, working steadily for scanty pay; but they were all workers, and they looked stolidly contented with their lot.
“With all my university education,” thought the boy artist bitterly, “I am less capable of self-support than those ignorant brick-makers. Why did my father bring me up with expensive tastes and like the heir of fine estates, only to cast me off to starve at the first moment I displeased him? What is the empty name of gentleman worth, if one cannot keep it and be a worker? If he had put me to some trade, I should not have been half so miserable to-day. I am only twenty years old, and my life is a failure at the outset.”
The train swept on through new scenes, and the course of the young man’s musings was changed, but their bitterness remained in full strength.
“I wonder what my father can want of me,” he said to himself presently. “How can he put me in the way of a fortune? He promised that I should study law, but he has forgotten the promise. With a profession to depend upon, I know I could win a competence. Perhaps it is to speak of this he has sent for me this morning. He surely cannot mean for me,” and the young man’s brow darkened, “to become a gambler, as he has been? I shall refuse, if he proposes it. For my innocent Lally’s sake, I will keep myself pure of his vices.”
This resolution was strong within him when he alighted from the train at Canterbury and took a hansom cab to Wyndham village. The drive of several miles was occupied with speculations as to what his father wanted of him, and with thoughts of his young wife in her dingy lodgings at New Brompton, and he did not even notice the houses, farms and villas they passed, nor any feature of the scenery, until the horse slackened his speed to a walk, and the driver opened his small trap in the roof, and said:
“The house yonder on the ridge, sir, is Hawkhurst, the seat of the Wynde family. Sir Harold Wynde died in India a year ago, you know, sir, and the property belongs to his only child, a daughter. A mile or so beyond is Wyndham village.”
Rufus Black turned his gaze upon the fair domain of the Wyndes. It lay on both sides of the highway, stretching as far as his eye could reach. The grand old mansion of gray stone, with outlying houses of glass glittering in the summer sunshine like immense jewels, the great lawns, the gardens, the park, the cool woods, all these made up one of the fairest pictures the eyes of Rufus Black had ever rested upon.
“How glorious!” he said involuntarily. “And it all belongs to a lady!”
“Yes, sir, a mere girl,” replied the cabman. “She is at school in France. It’s a great place, is Hawkhurst.”
He dropped the trap and urged on his horse, but Rufus continued to look upon the house and estate with great, envious eyes. Why should all this belong to one, and that one a mere girl, while he wanted for bread? His soul was convulsed with bitterness and repining, and the shadow of his trouble rested upon his face.