The speaker was Tom Bristow; the person addressed was a casual compagnon de voyage, whose acquaintance he had made during the Channel passage; and the scene was a first-class compartment in the mail train from Dover to London.
“You wouldn’t be so ready to praise an English May-day if you had been here last week, as I was,” was the reply. “No sunshine—not a gleam; but, in place of it, a confounded east wind that was almost keen enough to shave you. Every second fellow you met spoke to you through his nose; and when you did happen to get near a fire, you were frozen through on one side before you were half warmed through on the other.”
“Well, it’s pleasant enough now, in all conscience,” said Tom, with a smile of easy content.
Tom Bristow, who was very thorough in most of his undertakings, had remained abroad—extending his travels into Palestine and Egypt—till his health was completely reestablished. But, as he said to himself, he had now had enough of sands and sunsets; of dirty Algerines and still dirtier Arabs; of camel-riding and mule-riding; of beggars and bucksheesh; and he was now coming back, with renewed zest, to the prosaic duties of everyday existence, as exemplified, in his case, in the rise and fall of public securities and the refined gambling of the London Stock Exchange.
By the time he had been a week in London he had made himself thoroughly master of the situation again, and almost felt as if he had never been away. “I have been so long used to an idle life,” he said to himself, about a fortnight after his return, “that very little work seems to knock me up. Why not take the five o’clock train this afternoon, and run down as far as Gatehouse Farm, and spend a couple of days with old Li Dering? Where in the wide world is there any air equal to that which blows across the sandhills of the old farm?”
Between nine and ten o’clock on Sunday morning Tom Bristow knocked at the well-remembered door. After sleeping at the Station Hotel, he had walked leisurely across the fields, his heart beating high with the expectation of shortly being able to grasp his friend by the hand. Everything seemed as if he had left the farm but yesterday, except that then it was autumn and now it was spring. Mrs. Bevis answered his knock. She started at the sight of him, and could not repress an exclamation of surprise. “Yes, here I am once more,” said Tom, with his pleasant smile. “Don’t tell me that Mr. Dering is not at home.”
Mrs. Bevis’s answer was a sudden burst of tears.
“What has happened, Mrs. Bevis?” cried Tom, in alarm. “Not—not—?” His looks finished the question.
“Oh, Mr. Bristow, haven’t you heard, sir?” cried Mrs. Bevis through her sobs.
“I’ve heard nothing—not a word. I have only just returned from abroad.”