Late in life she married Benajah Waddy, the youngest brother of the three. Janeway had made him bookkeeper, secretary, agent, but he had finally, after his mother’s death, dwindled into the old shop. Mary, considering herself his brother’s widow, came to a Hebraical, religious conclusion as to her duty. With entire simplicity of heart, she told Benajah that they ought to be married. As a matter of course, they were. The usual wife found, also, in process of time, their only son, Benajah, and married him. These both died, leaving their only son, Ira Waddy, to the charge of his aged and widowed grandmother, Mary, widow in heart of Ira the First.
Her grandson was named Ira after his great-uncle, the soldier. By-and-by it was discovered that a wide river in India bore the same name, and young Waddy was attracted toward his namesake. The old influence which, now reviving, made his blood hot as flame, urged him to know the land not merely of the citron and myrtle, but of spice and pungent condiments. His grandmother lavished upon him all the beautiful tenderness of her long-suppressed and desolated love, and then she died.
Ira Waddy’s hot ardency of nature could not bear coolly any wrong. Wrong came to him. It would have extinguished an ancestor of the Whitegift class. Him it only kindled to counter-fire. He had his great quarrel with life, as many men have; he, in his young life. The Janeways had always been kind to him; so had their neighbours, the Beldens. In childish sports and youthful intercourse with the children of both families, he had often talked with enthusiasm of tropic splendours and India, his destined abode. When the world of his early associations became too narrow for him—too narrow because there his wrong would meet and hurtle him daily—then he thought again of India, and tropic indolence, and thoughtless people. Being an orphan and without kin, he could go where he chose. He chose India.
There, as the years passed, he became rich and powerful, a nabob, a merchant prince; but with all that this tale has no concern—it is written merely to chronicle the facts of his Return.
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH MR. WADDY REACHES HALIFAX AND
MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE
THE Niagara was running into Halifax.
It was early of a bright summer morning, and all the passengers came on deck, joyous with hopes of terra firma. There was our hero, Mr. Ira Waddy; there were two shipboard friends of his, Harry Dunston and Gilbert Paulding; there was the Budlong family, to wit: old De Flournoy Budlong; Mrs. De Flournoy Budlong, his second wife, luxuriantly handsome, and greatly his junior; Tim De Flournoy Budlong, and Arabella De Flournoy Budlong; and accompanying them was M. Auguste Henri Miromenil de Châteaunéant.
They all looked fresh and well-dressed in shore toggery. The Budlongs, particularly, were in full bloom. They were always now in full bloom, and meant the world should fully know they were returning from Europe with fashion and the fashions, with a gallery of pictures and a Parisian pronunciation. Old Budlong had once been a brisk young clerk, lively and lucky. He was called Flirney then. He had traded in most things and all had yielded him pelf. He was now a capitalist, fat and uneasy, with a natural jollity which he thought unbecoming his position and endeavoured to suppress. Budlong in full bloom was as formal as a ball bouquet.