"John Verney will tell you all about it," said Mr. Desmond, glancing cheerily at our hero. His was ever the habit to draw out the humblest of his guests.
So John recited how young Anthony Ashley, standing on the Hill, just below the churchyard, chanced to see a pauper's coffin fall to the ground and burst open, revealing the pitiful corpse within, and how he had exclaimed in horror, "Good heavens! Can this be permitted simply because the man was poor and friendless?" And how, then and there, the boy had sworn to devote his powers to the amelioration of poverty-stricken lives.
"Yes," said Mr. Desmond. "He told me that the next fifteen minutes decided his career. Ah, he succeeded greatly. Why, when I was at Harrow we used to cross from Waterloo to Euston through some of the worst slums in the world. You boys can't realize what they looked like. And Shaftesbury's work and example wiped them out of our civilization."[27]
When John returned to his uncle's house of Verney Boscobel (his home since his father's death), Cæsar Desmond accompanied him. Then it seemed to John that his cup brimmed, that everything he desired had been granted unto him. Verney Boscobel stood in the heart of the great forest, one of the few large manors within that splendid demesne. The boys arrived at Lyndhurst Road Station late in the evening, long after dusk, and were driven in darkness through Bartley and Minstead up to the high-lying moors of Stoneycross. Next morning, early, John woke his friend, and opened the shutters.
"Jolly morning," he said. "Have a look at the Forest, old chap."
Cæsar jumped out of bed, and drew a long breath.
"Ah!" he exclaimed; "it's fairyland."
Frost had silvered all things below. Above, motionless upon the blue heavens, as if still frozen by the icy fingers of a December night, were some aerial transparencies of aqueous vapour, amethystine in colour, with edges of white foam. In the east, obscured, but not concealed, by grey mist, hung the crimson orb of the sun. From it faint rays shot forth, touching the clouds beneath, which, roused, so to speak, out of sleep, drifted lethargically in a southerly direction.
"Underneath the young grey dawn
A multitude of dense, white, fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks, ...
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind."