The man turned away, and something in his silence led Robert to stroll on beside him to the open end of the platform.
'I have lost my only friend,' MacNiell said at last hoarsely. 'He took me up when my own father would have nothing to say to me. He found me work; he wrote to me; for years he stood between me and perdition. I am just going out to a post in New Zealand he got for me, and next week before I sail—I—I—am to be married—and he was to be there. He was so pleased—he had seen her.'
It was one story out of a hundred like it, as Robert knew very well. They talked for a few minutes, then the train loomed in the distance.
'He saved you,' said Robert, holding out his hand, 'and at a dark moment in my own life I owed him everything. There is nothing we can do for him in return but—to remember him! Write to me, if you can or will, from New Zealand, for his sake.'
A few seconds later the train sped past the bare little cemetery, which lay just beyond the line. Robert bent forward. In the pale yellow glow of the evening he could distinguish the grave, the mound of gravel, the planks, and some figures moving beside it. He strained his eyes till he could see no more, his heart full of veneration, of memory, of prayer. In himself life seemed so restless and combative. Surely he, more than others, had need of the lofty lessons of death!
CHAPTER XLV
In the weeks which followed—weeks often of mental and physical depression, caused by his sense of personal loss and by the influence of an overworked state he could not be got to admit—Elsmere owed much to Hugh Flaxman's cheery sympathetic temper, and became more attached to him than ever, and more ready than ever, should the fates deem it so, to welcome him as a brother-in-law. However, the fates for the moment seemed to have borrowed a leaf from Langham's book, and did not apparently know their own minds. It says volumes for Hugh Flaxman's general capacities as a human being that at this period he should have had any attention to give to a friend, his position as a lover was so dubious and difficult.
After the evening at the Workmen's Club, and as a result of further meditation, he had greatly developed the tactics first adopted on that occasion. He had beaten a masterly retreat, and Rose Leyburn was troubled with him no more.
The result was that a certain brilliant young person was soon sharply conscious of a sudden drop in the pleasures of living. Mr. Flaxman had been the Leyburns' most constant and entertaining visitor. During the whole of May he paid one formal call in Lerwick Gardens, and was then entertained tête-à-tête by Mrs. Leyburn, to Rose's intense subsequent annoyance, who knew perfectly well that her mother was incapable of chattering about anything but her daughters.