THE departure of Mr. Goldman left a void in the heart of Mr. William Hollis. He was a sociable man, with a craving for the company of his fellows, and although for quite a long time now his distinguished neighbor had been clearly labeled in his mind as “a pursy old pig,” he was an interesting person to talk to when he was in the humor. He was not always in the humor, it was true, for he was a “warm” man, an owner of house property; therefore he was in the happy position of not having to be civil to anybody when he didn’t feel like it. This afternoon, however, he had unbent.
The slowly receding form of Mr. Goldman waddled along by the hedge, turned into the lane, passed from view. In almost the same moment William Hollis felt a severe depression. He had reached the stage of life and fortune when he could not bear to be alone. With a kind of dull pain he realized that this was his forty-first birthday and that he had failed in life.
He was going down the hill. Unless he could take a pull on himself he was done. Already it might be too late. The best part of his life was behind him. A year ago that day, in this very garden, his only source of happiness, he had told himself that; two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, this had been the burden of his thoughts. But he was in a rut and there seemed to be no way out.
Twenty years ago he had felt it was in him to do something. He was an ambitious young fellow with a mind that looked forward to the day after to-morrow. Such a man ought to have done something. But now he knew that there had been a soft spot in him somewhere and that a moral and mental dry rot had already set in. He was a talker, a thinker, a dreamer; action was not his sphere. Unless he took a strong pull on himself he was out of the race.
He poured what remained of the jar of ale into the earthenware mug he kept for the purpose—Blackhampton ale tastes better out of a mug—and drank it slowly, without relish. Then he cut a few flowers to take home to his wife—to the wife who hadn’t spoken to him for nearly a week—arranged them in a bunch, with the delicacy of one unconsciously sensitive to form and color, looped a bit of twitch neatly round them, put on his coat, a stained and worn alpaca, put on his hat, a battered, disreputable straw, cast the eye of a lover round his precious garden, locked its dilapidated green door and started down the lane and down the hill towards the city.
It was now five o’clock and a little cooler, yet William Hollis walked very slowly. There was a lot of time to kill before the day was through. But his thoughts were biting him harder than ever as he turned into the famous road leading to the city, known as The Rise. This salubrious eminence, commanding the town from the northeast, was sacred to the city magnates. When a man made good in Blackhampton, really good, he built a house on The Rise. It was the ambition of every true Blackhamptonian to express his individuality in that way. Until he had achieved a house entirely to his own fancy and taste on The Rise, no son of Blackhampton could be said really to have “arrived.”
William Hollis trudged slowly along a well kept road, between two irregular lines of superb villas, gleaming with paint and glass, standing well back from the road in ample grounds of their own, with broad and trim gravel approaches. The first on the right was Rosemere, the residence of Sir Reuben Jope, three times Mayor of Blackhampton, a man of large fortune and robust taste, whose last expression was greenhouses and conservatories. They were said to produce fabulous things—flowers, fruits, shrubs, plants known only to tropical countries. Many a time from afar had Bill gazed upon them with rather wistful awe.
A little farther along was The Haven, the ancestral home of the Clints, a famous Blackhampton family whose local prestige was on a par with that of the Rothschilds in the city of London. Across the road was The Gables, the modest house of Lawyer Mossop, the town’s leading solicitor; then on the right, again, the reticulated dwelling of the philanthropic Stephen Mortimore, head of the great engineering firm of Mortimore, Barrow, and Mortimore. For a true son of Blackhampton these were names to conjure with. Even to walk along such a road gave one a feeling of worldly success, financial security, aristocratic exclusiveness.
Still a little further along on the left was what was clearly intended to be the pièce de resistance of The Rise. It was the brand-new residence of the very latest arrival and no house had been more discussed by Blackhampton society. It was intended to eclipse every other dwelling on The Rise, but it was of nondescript design, half suburban villa, half mediæval castle. From the æsthetic standpoint the result was so little satisfactory that a local wit had christened it “Dammit ’All.”
As “Dammit ’All” came into view, Bill Hollis found an almost morbid fascination in gazing at its turrets and the tower so regally crowning them. It was the house of his father-in-law, Mr. Josiah Munt. Sixteen years ago, in that very month of July, an ambitious young man had married his master’s eldest daughter. Melia Munt had espoused Bill Hollis in direct defiance of her father’s wishes and had lived long enough already to rue the day. Josiah, at that time, was not the great man he had since become, but he was a hard, unbending parent; and he gave Melia to understand clearly that if she married Hollis he would never speak to her again. Melia chose to defy him, as he always thought out of sheer perversity, and her implacable father had been careful to keep his word to the letter. Not again did he mention her name; not again did her old home receive her.