“Martin, dearest, I know you have some great trouble. Why don’t you tell me? Is it anything very bad? Does it mean loss of fortune; poverty to be faced; this pretty home to be given up, perhaps?”
“No, no, no, my dear. The home is safe enough; the house will stand firm as long as you and I live. I am not a shilling poorer than I was yesterday. There is nothing the matter—nothing worth speaking about; blue devils, vapours if you like. That’s all.”
“You are ill, Martin. You have found out that there is something wrong with you—heart, lungs, something—and you are going to London to consult a physician. Oh, my dear, dear brother,” she cried, with a look of agony, her arms still clasped about his neck, “don’t keep me in the dark; let me know the worst.”
“There is no worst, Allegra. I am out of sorts, that’s all. I am going to town to see my lawyer.”
“MY LIFE CONTINUES YOURS, AND YOUR LIFE MINE.”
They started by the eleven-o’clock train from Fowey next morning, husband and wife, in a strangely silent companionship—Isola very pale and still as she sat in a corner of the railway carriage, with her back to the rivers and the sea. Naturally, in a place of that kind, they could not get away without being seen by some of their neighbours. Captain Pentreath was going to Bodmin, and insisted upon throwing away a half-finished cigar in order to enjoy the privilege of Colonel and Mrs. Disney’s society, being one of those unmeditative animals who hate solitude. He talked all the way to Par, lit a fresh cigar during the wait at the junction, and reappeared just as the colonel and his wife were taking their seats in the up-train.
“Have you room for me in there?” he asked, sacrificing more than half of his second cigar. “I’ve got the Mercury—Jepps is in for Stokumpton—a great triumph for our side.”
He spread out the paper, and made believe to begin to read with a great show of application, as if he meant to devour every syllable of Jepps’s long exposition of the political situation; but after two minutes he dropped the Mercury on his knees and began to talk. There were people in Fowey who doubted whether Captain Pentreath could read. He had been able once, of course, or he could hardly have squeezed himself into the Army; but there was an idea that he had forgotten the accomplishment, except in its most elementary form upon sign-boards, and in the headings of newspaper articles, printed large. It was supposed that the intensity of effort by which he had taken in the cramming that enabled him to pass the ordeal of the Examiners had left his brain a blank.