All at once he was startled into the most vivid life. Coming towards him, but yet a little distance away, and with several of the hurrying crowd between them, he saw Captain Lennox. The light from a shop-window shone full on his pale, strongly-marked features, and there could be no mistake. Philip sprang forward eagerly, and the sudden movement seemed to have the effect of attracting the Captain's glance towards him. For one brief moment there came, or Philip thought there did, a gleam of recognition into those steel-blue eyes; the next, they and their owner were alike hidden by the intervening crowd.
Philip Cleeve shouldered his way along more roughly than he had ever done before; in a few seconds he was standing on the exact spot where he had seen Lennox, but that individual was no longer visible. He had vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed him up. Philip stared about him, like a man suddenly moonstruck, unheedful of the jostling and elbowing of the passersby. Up the street and down the street he gazed, but no Captain Lennox was to be seen. What could have become of him?
"Surely he need not hide himself from me!" thought Philip. "We are both in the same boat."
Looking about for the Captain, in a sort of amazed doubt, Philip saw that he stood close before the open door of a large drapery emporium, Was it possible that Lennox had taken refuge inside? No sooner did the thought flash across Philip's mind, than he marched boldly into the shop. There were several people there, customers and assistants, but no signs of the man he was seeking. A civil assistant came up to ask what they could serve him with, and Philip frankly avowed the cause of his entering. A friend--a gentleman--had suddenly disappeared before he could reach him; he could only think he had entered the shop.
"Very possibly," the young man replied; and as he was not to be seen in it now, he might have passed through it, and left by the opposite door.
Then Philip saw that the shop was what might be called a double one; that is to stay, that it had a door and window opening into another street. Had Lennox walked in at one door and out at the other, without stopping to purchase anything? It was the conclusion Philip came to. He recognised the uselessness of further pursuit of Lennox. It was clear that the Captain had purposely evaded meeting him: the reason for such evasion was not far to seek. Philip purchased a pair of gloves, and then pursued his aimless way, weary and downcast.
Where should he go, and what should he do? He knew not, and he did not greatly care. He was there alone in the huge wilderness of London, without one living creature that knew him or that cared for him. It was not too late to take the last train home; but he had a fixed repugnance against doing so. Why hasten to meet his mother's reproachful eyes, and Mr. Tiplady's incisive questionings? And yet, if he stayed the night in London, he must face those ordeals on the morrow. What could the morrow bring him, more than to-day had brought? Still he wandered aimlessly on, through one mile of street after another, his thoughts brimming over with bitterness at the recollection of all his mad folly. What now to him but mad folly seemed those nights at The Lilacs when, flushed with wine, he had staked his mother's savings on the turn of a card, and had seen the gold, hoarded by her for his sake, swept almost contemptuously into the pockets of such men as Camberley and Lennox, who, the moment his back was turned, probably sneered at him as a jay parading in peacock's plumes? What now to him, but folly, seemed the spells which he had allowed to be woven round him by the witcheries of Margaret Ducie? In his heart of hearts he had never really cared for her, however much at the time he might fancy that he had--not even when her hold over him had seemed the strongest. And now, when he looked back, she assumed in his thoughts the semblance of one of those specious phantoms, lovely to look upon, but who seem sent only to lure weak-minded fools to destruction.
Poor Philip! From the burning thoughts within him rose next another phantom. Nothing specious about her, but pure and saint-like as a lily steeped in dew--the image of Maria Kettle. Had he indeed lost her? He knew now how much she was to him; that he had never loved but her.
Yes, she was surely lost to him for ever. He would have no home to take her to, and no prospect of winning a position for himself: a life of commonplace drudgery, of separation from the only woman he had ever loved, or could love, was all that now lay before him.
Still onward, ever onward, went he in his pain.