CHAPTER I.
WHAT MR. NETLEY SAID.
A LONG, dree journey by that very unsavoury route to and from the Continent—Rotterdam and Harwich—and Jerome Wellfield, on the morning after his parting from his sister and sweetheart, found himself in London. He had nothing to do there—no business in the great city—no means, no right to take any pleasure in the same. He made his way from the Liverpool Street Station to that at Euston Square, where he found he had some two hours to wait before the express to Irkford should start.
Who does not know the dreariness of such hours of waiting, weary, travel-worn and alone, in some great wilderness of a city station? They were the two most dismal hours he had ever passed.
At last, at eleven in the forenoon, the train to Manchester started. Jerome cast himself into a second-class compartment, and with weary eyes saw, when he was not half-dozing, ‘the happy autumn fields’ through which the express rushed smoothly and swiftly, and with slackened speed at last rolled into that cheering and inspiriting terminus, the London Road Station, Manchester.
From Ems—even from Elberthal—to Manchester! The contrast just flashed across his mind as he alighted.
A clerk presently accosted him inquiringly, ‘Mr. Wellfield?’ and then gave him a note which he carried. The note was a kindly, pleasant one from Mr. Netley, begging him to go to his house, and make it his headquarters until his business in Manchester was settled. Business prevented him from coming to the station himself and taking his guest home, but he would be in to dinner at seven. The address was given, and he hoped his clerk would bring word that Mr. Wellfield was on his way to ‘Birch Lodge.’
With the sensation that this was true friendliness, Jerome bade the youth tell Mr. Netley that he accepted his invitation with many thanks, and, getting into a cab, gave the address, and was driven to Mr. Netley’s house—his ‘box,’ as he called it in his note.
For a bachelor’s box it was remarkably roomy and comfortable. The housekeeper had evidently expected the guest, and led him upstairs to the room prepared for him. Declining her offer of refreshments, he was left alone, with exactly two hours on his hands before dinner-time. Part of the time he employed in writing that letter to Sara which has already been spoken of—the rest in meditations, not particularly agreeable, on his ‘present condition and future prospects.’ During the few hours he had been in England he had felt a distinctly stronger chagrin and disappointment at the idea of the utter loss of home than he had yet experienced. He could not understand nor account for this feeling, but it was there, and it was strong. He felt a sudden rush of indignation at the manner in which he had been all these years cheated and hoodwinked—and that by his father. This Mr. Bolton, who now reigned at the Abbey—who and what was he? The desire to visit the place once more grew stronger. Wild schemes for becoming rich, and having the place back again, ran riot in his mind—chimerical schemes, for, as each one rose and fell, he had to tell himself again and again that each was vanity. In England—in this part of England especially—the way in which men made fortunes was that of trade and successful speculation. He knew absolutely nothing of trade, and had not the remotest idea in what ‘speculation’ consisted. He saw no way at all of becoming rich. He saw the most probable and the best fate he could expect rise up and stand very clearly before his mental eyes—a secretaryship, clerkship, or something of that kind—neither of them avocations in which, as a rule, money is very rapidly accumulated.