“Abroad? and the very best thing you could do. Show yourself fit to keep up the credit of your employers abroad, and it’s the best stepping stone to advancement at home. I am very glad to hear you have such an enlightened notion.”
Harry was not pleased to have the ground thus cut from under his feet. To be told, when you hint at what seems a desperate resolution, that it is the best thing you can do, is exasperating. He withdrew with dignity from the field and proffered no more confidence. The cutlets gave him a safer outlet, for though he was in trouble he was hungry. It was a long time since six o’clock; he had resisted Eadie’s offers of a “snack” between, and the cutlets, though very nice, were not more than a mouthful to Harry. Mr. Joscelyn trifled with one on his plate; but he supplied his nephew with a liberal hand.
“I shan’t be here, I am afraid, to see you away. I am dining out, as I told you—it is unfortunate. But you are used to looking after yourself.”
“I would need to be,” said Harry, bitterly, and then he added, “I’ll say goodbye to you now, Uncle Henry. Very likely I’ll never see you again. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or where I may be going. You’ve always been very kind to me; a fellow does not think anything of that at the time—it seems all just a matter of course, you know. But I see now you’ve always been very kind. I shall remember it as long as I live. I said last night, he had never done anything for me, it was all Uncle Henry. So it is, though I’m not sure that I ever thought of it before.”
Mr. Joscelyn smiled, but he was touched.
“Well, well, Harry,” he said; “that was natural; but now you show a very nice feeling. And I always was glad to do what I could for you. As schoolboys go you were not at all objectionable, and though you are a little out of temper now things will come round. Put that in your pocket. It’s only a trifle; but I daresay you may want some little things, especially if you’re going abroad. That’s all. Let me hear how you are going on from time to time. I shall always be glad to hear.”
And then he began to talk of the news, and what the Duke was going to do in the prospect of a new election for the county. “If Lord Charles does not get in, it will be ridiculous—worse than wrong, absurd, considering the stake they have in the county.” But it may be supposed that, in the present crisis of his affairs, Harry Joscelyn cared very little for Lord Charles. He replied civilly to his uncle’s talk; but as a matter of fact he was very anxious to see what was in the envelope which Mr. Joscelyn had insisted he should put in his pocket. It was not likely it would be anything of an exciting character; but yet there was no telling. When, however, Uncle Henry was gone, and Harry was free to examine this envelope, it proved to contain two crisp ten pound notes—no more. He was very much disappointed at first, thinking (foolishly) that it might even be the capital he wanted—the thousand pounds to set him up. But after a while, and somewhat grudgingly, Harry allowed to himself that it was kind. Sometimes there is more pleasure to be got out of twenty pounds than out of a thousand. Uncle Henry meant it very kindly. The young man’s heart was a little softened and warmed, almost against his will, by the gift.
And when evening came, and with it the train which roars along between that deep cutting under the fells, between two high walls of living stone, to “the South” and the world, Harry, with a little portmanteau, in which Mrs. Eadie had packed the things she had bought for him, walked down to the station, boldly passing both lamps and policemen, and went away. The little portmanteau was not half full; but Eadie thought it was “more respectable.” He felt so himself. To have gone without any luggage at all would have given him a thrill of shame. It was with a strange forlorn feeling that he lounged about the station, looking at everything as if he might never see it again. Strangely enough he seemed to find out features in the place which he had never noticed before, in that last look round, things which his indifferent eye had seen, without noticing, ever so often; but which now at last he perceived, and would recollect as part of Wyburgh, should he never see it again. He was glad that it was dark when the train swept through the valley in which the White House was. Though he could not see anything, yet he went to the other side of the carriage, and so plunged along, passing all those familiar places without seeing them, yet more vividly conscious of them than, he thought, he had ever been before. What were they thinking, he wondered? Would they have any suspicion that he was passing, going away—for ever. For ever! something else seemed to say this in the air about him, not his own voice. Was it possible that he might never pass this way again?
CHAPTER IX.
WAITING.
JOAN did not sleep much on that eventful night. She lay down in her bed after the uncomfortable sleep which she had snatched among the wash-tubs, but it was more as a matter of form than for any good there was in it. She was secretly very anxious about Harry. Though she had taken upon her so cheerfully to affirm that he had gone to the “Red Lion,” she had not any confidence in this suggestion. She lay staring at the window as it slowly grew a glimmering square, in the cold blue of the dawning, wondering what had become of him. She had no great imagination, and therefore there did not rush upon her mind a crowd of visionary dangers such as would have besieged her mother, but she lay with her face turned up to the ceiling and her eyes wide open, asking herself what he was likely to have done; what he would be doing now? He might fall into bad company, she thought, with a distinct identification of one house in the village which did not bear a very good reputation, and of which, as it happened, Harry was entirely ignorant; or he might go straight off to the office, which, on the whole, was the best thing he could do. That was all very well for the future; but where was he to-night? where was he now?