Harrington felt that he must bear with this twaddle for the sake of the twenty pounds which would enable him to lend Juliet a round fifty, and would thereby enable Juliet to go to Medlow Court and flirt with unknown men, and forget him upon whom her impecuniosity was inflicting such humiliation. After all, love is only another name for suffering.
Mr. Hayfield lived in West-Walk terrace, where he had a neat first floor in a stucco villa, semi-detached, and built at a period when villas strove to be architectural without attaining beauty. The first floor consisted of a front sitting-room, looking out upon the alley of sycamores and the green beyond, and a back bedroom, looking over gardens and houses, towards the church-tower in the heart of the town.
Provided with a latch-key, Mr. Hayfield admitted his master’s son to the inner mysteries of the villa, where a lady with a very reedy voice was singing “Far away,” in the front parlour, while a family conversation which almost drowned her melody was going on in the back parlour. Mr. Hayfield’s bedroom candlestick and matches were ready for him on a Swiss bracket near his door, and his lamp was ready on a table in his sitting-room, where every object was disposed with a studied precision which marked at once the confirmed bachelor and the model lodger. “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “The Christian Year,” “Whitaker’s Almanack,” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” were placed with mathematical regularity upon the walnut loo table, surrounding a centrepiece of wax flowers in an alabaster vase under a glass shade. A smaller table of the nature described as Pembroke was placed nearer the fire, and on this appeared Mr. Hayfield’s supper-tray, set forth with a plate of cold roast beef, a glass saucer of Oriental pickle, cheese, and accompaniments, flanked by an Imperial pint of Guinness’. A small fire burned brightly in the grate, whose dimensions had been reduced by a careful adjustment of fire-bricks.
“Sit down, my dear Mr. Harrington, you’ll find that chair very comfortable. I’ll go and get you the money. My cash-box is in the next room. Can I tempt you to join me in a plate of cold ribs? There’s plenty more where that came from. Mrs. Potter has a fine wing rib every Sunday, from year’s end to year’s end. I generally take my dinner with her and her family, but I sup alone. A little society goes a long way with a man of my age. I like my Lloyd and my News of the World after supper.”
He went into his bedroom, which was approached by folding doors, and came back again in two minutes with a couple of crisp notes, the savings of half a year, savings which meant a good deal of self-denial in a man who, in his own words, wished to live like a gentleman. The old clerk prided himself upon his good broadcloth, clean linen, and respectable lodgings; and it was felt in the town that so respectable a servant enhanced even the respectability of Dalbrook and Son.
Harrington took the bank-notes with many thanks, and insisted upon writing a note of hand—albeit the old clerk reminded him that Sunday was a dies non—at the desk where Hayfield wrote his letters and did any copying work he cared to do after office hours. He stayed while the old man ate his temperate meal, but would not be persuaded to share it. Indeed, his lips felt hot and dry, and it seemed to him as if he should never want to eat again; but he gladly accepted a tumbler of the refreshing Guinness’ upon the repeated assurance that there was plenty more where that came from.
There was a rapid thaw on the following morning, so Harrington rode the black over to the Mount in the twilight after office hours, a liberty which that high-bred animal resented by taking fright at every doubtful object in the long leafless avenue beyond the Roman Amphitheatre.
Trifles which would have been light as air to him, jogging homeward in company after a long day’s hunting, assumed awful and ghostly aspects under the combined influences of solitude and want of work. The twilight ride to the Mount was in fact a series of hairbreadth escapes, and it would have needed a stronger stimulant than the Dowager’s wishy-washy tea to restore Mr. Dalbrook’s physical balance, if his mental balance had not been so thoroughly unhinged as to make him half unconscious of physical discomfort.
“You look awfully seedy,” said Juliet, as she poured out tea from a pot that had been standing nearly half an hour.