“And I wish to have none with him. He is a very good and kind-hearted man. But I could not bear to hear his voice, after—after what he did for me, and Kitty.”
“I was afraid there would be that objection,” my uncle answered kindly; “but you will get over that by-and-by, my boy. And it would be rude not to see him, for he takes the greatest interest in your case. He has been disappointed himself, I believe; though of course he did not tell me so. He is too much a man for that sort of thing. I shall go and hear him preach some day, unless our vicar comes back again. They tell me that he does a lot of good, and he preached against robbing orchards once, although he has only got one apple tree, and it is eaten up with American blight. There’s another fellow wants to see you too—not much of the parson about him. He can tell you things you ought to know; and being about as he always is, I wonder you have not been to see him. Not that I care for Sam Henderson; but he is not so bad as he used to be. He is going to be married next month; and I’ll be bound he won’t let his wife—”
“Run away from him—you were going to say. Perhaps he will not be able to help himself. Well, I will see him, if he likes to come. I shall be back by nine o’clock. It is very kind of him to wish it. But send up a bottle of whisky, uncle. I have no drink of any sort in the house; and Sam is nothing without his glass, although he never takes very much. I must give him something, if he comes.”
“And take a drop yourself, my boy, if only for a little change. I don’t hold with cold water, when a fellow is so down; though it is better than the opposite extreme. I suppose, by-the-bye, that your Kitty has not taken—”
“Uncle Corny!” I cried, in a voice that made him jump; “what next will you imagine? She never touched anything, not even beer; though I often tried to make her take a glass. She had seen too much of that, where she was.”
“All right, Kit. But you are getting very cross; which is not the proper lesson of affliction, as the Reverend Peter might express it. Well, I’ll send little Bill up, with the bottle and a corkscrew. I don’t suppose you know where to find anything now. That’s the worst of married life even for three weeks. But I have got a plan I mean to tell you of to-morrow.”
When I came back, a little after dark, having finished that hopeless wandering which I went through every evening now, there was Sam Henderson, sitting on an empty flower-pot outside my door, with a cigar in his mouth. He might have gone inside, for I left the front door open all day long and all night too, unless the weather prevented it, for I had nothing to be robbed of now; at least nothing that I cared about, except Kitty’s clothes, which I had locked out of sight. And it seemed to be delicate and kind of Sam, to sit here in discomfort, instead of walking in. And he showed another piece of good taste and good will, which could hardly be expected from so blunt and rough a man—he said not a word about his own bright prospects, until I inquired about them.
But he shook my hand in a very friendly way, and left me to begin upon the matter which had brought me to my present state. And for some time I also avoided that.
“I will tell you, old chap,” he said at last, in reply to my anxious question, “exactly what I think, though it is not good for much, being altogether out of my own line. I think you have been awfully wronged, as abominably wronged as any fellow ever was, on the face of this earth—which is saying a good bit, mind you. Knowing what a lot of infernal rogues there are to be found at every corner, and much more often than decent fellows, I am never brought up standing by any black job; though the ins and outs of it may floor me. The Professor is a soft man, isn’t he? He has shown it in many ways, although he is so clever. You would call him a soft man, wouldn’t you?”
“Well,” I said, wondering how this could bear upon it, “I suppose he is rather of the credulous order, as most good men are, who measure others by themselves. But he had left England long before. So that can have little to do with it.”