“Why, you’ve been drinking already!” exclaimed the man, with a suddenly quickened interest in Mr. Bashwood’s case. “What was it? Beer?”
Mr. Bashwood, in his low, lost tones, echoed the last word.
It was close on the porter’s dinner-time. But, when the lower orders of the English people believe they have discovered an intoxicated man, their sympathy with him is boundless. The porter let his dinner take its chance, and carefully assisted Mr. Bashwood to reach the public-house. “Gin-and-bitters will put you on your legs again,” whispered this Samaritan setter-right of the alcoholic disasters of mankind.
If Mr. Bashwood had really been intoxicated, the effect of the porter’s remedy would have been marvelous indeed. Almost as soon as the glass was emptied, the stimulant did its work. The long-weakened nervous system of the deputy-steward, prostrated for the moment by the shock that had fallen on it, rallied again like a weary horse under the spur. The dull flush on his cheeks, the dull stare in his eyes, disappeared simultaneously. After a momentary effort, he recovered memory enough of what had passed to thank the porter, and to ask whether he would take something himself. The worthy creature instantly accepted a dose of his own remedy—in the capacity of a preventive—and went home to dinner as only those men can go home who are physically warmed by gin-and-bitters and morally elevated by the performance of a good action.
Still strangely abstracted (but conscious now of the way by which he went), Mr. Bashwood left the public-house a few minutes later, in his turn. He walked on mechanically, in his dreary black garments, moving like a blot on the white surface of the sun-brightened road, as Midwinter had seen him move in the early days at Thorpe Ambrose, when they had first met. Arrived at the point where he had to choose between the way that led into the town and the way that led to the great house, he stopped, incapable of deciding, and careless, apparently, even of making the attempt. “I’ll be revenged on her!” he whispered to himself, still absorbed in his jealous frenzy of rage against the woman who had deceived him. “I’ll be revenged on her,” he repeated, in louder tones, “if I spend every half-penny I’ve got!”
Some women of the disorderly sort, passing on their way to the town, heard him. “Ah, you old brute,” they called out, with the measureless license of their class, “whatever she did, she served you right!”
The coarseness of the voices startled him, whether he comprehended the words or not. He shrank away from more interruption and more insult, into the quieter road that led to the great house.
At a solitary place by the wayside he stopped and sat down. He took off his hat and lifted his youthful wig a little from his bald old head, and tried desperately to get beyond the one immovable conviction which lay on his mind like lead—the conviction that Miss Gwilt had been purposely deceiving him from the first. It was useless. No effort would free him from that one dominant impression, and from the one answering idea that it had evoked—the idea of revenge. He got up again, and put on his hat and walked rapidly forward a little way—then turned without knowing why, and slowly walked back again “If I had only dressed a little smarter!” said the poor wretch, helplessly. “If I had only been a little bolder with her, she might have overlooked my being an old man!” The angry fit returned on him. He clinched his clammy, trembling hands, and shook them fiercely in the empty air. “I’ll be revenged on her,” he reiterated. “I’ll be revenged on her, if I spend every half-penny I’ve got!” It was terribly suggestive of the hold she had taken on him, that his vindictive sense of injury could not get far enough away from her to reach the man whom he believed to be his rival, even yet. In his rage, as in his love, he was absorbed, body and soul, by Miss Gwilt.
In a moment more, the noise of running wheels approaching from behind startled him. He turned and looked round. There was Mr. Pedgift the elder, rapidly overtaking him in the gig, just as Mr. Pedgift had overtaken him once already, on that former occasion when he had listened under the window at the great house, and when the lawyer had bluntly charged him with feeling a curiosity about Miss Gwilt!
In an instant the inevitable association of ideas burst on his mind. The opinion of Miss Gwilt, which he had heard the lawyer express to Allan at parting, flashed back into his memory, side by side with Mr. Pedgift’s sarcastic approval of anything in the way of inquiry which his own curiosity might attempt. “I may be even with her yet,” he thought, “if Mr. Pedgift will help me!—Stop, sir!” he called out, desperately, as the gig came up with him. “If you please, sir, I want to speak to you.”