He became conscious ere long that he was bareheaded, and supplied himself with the needed article—with the latest thing in mourning bands upon it—at his hatter’s in Cornhill. Leaving the shop, he blundered into the capacious waistcoat of Sowell, who was walking arm-in-arm with Powell and Cowell. And they wrung his hands and tenderly condoled with him, lengthening their faces that were expanded in irrepressible smiles of happiness, and squeezing tears into eyes that were twinkling with relief and joy.
For the wreck of The Realm had saved the credit of the Army Contractors. The quills of Tussell of The Thunderbolt and those other War Correspondents who told barbed truths were robbed of their venom. They were to be feared no more. Henceforth everything that was lacking to the health and comfort of the British Eastern Expedition would be proved to have been contained in that capacious scapegoat. There would be no end to the possibilities of the transport—safe at the bottom of Balaklava Bay.
And the sacrifice of young Mortimer had wreathed the crime of Jowell with a halo of impeccability. Sowell, Cowell, Powell and Co. could hardly refrain from chuckling, and digging him in the ribs. And they bore him off to lunch with them in a private room at a well-known City tavern, where Bowell, Dowell, Crowell, Shoell, and others of the fraternity were to meet them by appointment. And they plied the bereaved parent with meats and wines, and flattered and cockered him. After the cloth was drawn, their exultation bubbled over. There were toasts and speeches, full of allusions of the sly and subtle kind. And the health of their idol being drunk with acclamations, he got up heavily out of his chair to make a speech.
“Gentlemen...” he began.
There were protestations. Cowell would rather have heard the words “My friends” from the lips of a man so endeared to those present by long years of business association and successful enterprise, as his honored friend, Thompson Jowell. There were cries of “Hear, hear!” at this.
“By Gosh! You shall have your way!” said Jowell thickly, beating his big knuckles heavily on the shiny mahogany. Then he cleared his throat and began:
“My friends, if you do this thing that you have planned to do I will never come home again or call myself by your name, or take another sixpence of your money. Don’t do it, Governor! Don’t do it, for God’s sake! He might forgive you! I never should, I know!”
He smiled upon the sickened faces round the table, waiting for the applause that should have greeted the shoddy sentiment he had intended to dish up for them.... He did not know that he had repeated the words of his dead son’s last letter; or that he had wound up his communication to the underwriters by quoting them.
He must have left the confederates staring, for he found himself in the street, walking Westwards at a great rate.... It was now dark, and very wet—and the people who passed him were for the most part sheltered by umbrellas, and omitted to notice the stout man in the mourning hatband and flaring waistcoat, who walked with his coat unbuttoned heedless of the pouring rain.... But it seemed to Jowell that eyes followed him, and fingers pointed at him—and that the sentences of Mortimer’s last letter flared at him from every hoarding, and were written in fiery characters upon the pavement under his feet.
He let himself into the great house in Hanover Square, shut up and blinded and looked after, in his absence from town—by a housekeeper and an under-butler. He was expected, and preparations had been made to receive him. But, explaining to the curtseying housekeeper that he would want no dinner, he passed into his sumptuous library and locked the door. Nobody ventured to disturb him, and when he came out it was nearly midnight. To the under-butler, who was waiting up to valet him, he spoke quite gently, bidding him fasten up the house and go to rest.