This resolution, now taken, was final. Mr. Sherman’s encouragement gave new strength to Holdsworth’s wishes, and the restlessness that beset him became almost unbearable to him. In ten days from that date a ship named the “Wellington” sailed for London; she was to carry many passengers, but one saloon berth was still vacant, and that Mr. Sherman himself procured and paid for, for Holdsworth. Nor did his kindness stop with this. A few days before the ship left Sydney he asked Holdsworth if he had saved any money.
“Yes, four hundred pounds.”
“Come! that will help you along for a time. Dr. Marlow, a friend of mine, is attending an old lady to England. I have explained your case to him, and begged him to give you his closest attention. He is clever, and the long term of intimacy you will enjoy before you reach London may be productive of some good to you. And now do me the favour to put this in your pocket,” he continued, handing Holdsworth a little parcel. “No need to examine its contents now. It is a small gift from my sister and myself. You will find my address inside it, which will remind you to write to us; for be sure that nobody can take more interest in you than we do. Above all, remember that if ever you should want a friend, you will find two very steadfast ones in Sydney, who will rejoice to welcome you back.”
The parcel contained bank-notes to the value of three hundred pounds.
[CHAPTER XX.]
AN INSPIRATION.
In the fine old times—the good old times—a short journey took a long time; and it was evening when the Gravesend coach put Holdsworth down at the door of an old inn in Southwark named the “Green Dragon.”
He was now in London, but in an unfamiliar part of it, and he stood for some minutes gazing up and down the wide long street, with its hurrying crowds, and thronging vehicles, and endless shops, without getting one idea more from it than ever he had got out of Pitt Street or George Street, or any other street in Sydney.
It mattered little to him where he should sleep that night. He had as yet formed no plans as to how he should act with respect to beginning the inquiries which were to give him back his life’s history. So he entered the bar of the “Green Dragon” and asked for a bedroom, with which he was at once accommodated.
On descending the stairs he was encountered by a very polite waiter, who begged to receive his orders for refreshments. The house was a very old-established one, and the waiter, with a smile of concern, as though the necessity were a melancholy one that obliged him to suggest such obvious truths at that time of day, ventured to observe that the gentleman might travel the whole breadth and length of the United Kingdom without meeting with better wines and choicer cooking than were to be found at that inn. On the strength of this and a small appetite Holdsworth ordered supper, and was conducted to the coffee-room, where he seated himself, the only occupant of the dark bare apartment, at a table furnished with a mustard-pot large enough to have supplied a hospital with poultices, and amused himself as best he could with staring at some grisly, faded prints after Hogarth, and a map of London, to which several generations of flies had contributed squares, streets, and blind alleys nowhere to be found in the metropolis proper.