Mr. Sheldon had occasion to see Captain Paget early the following day, and questioned him closely about his protégé‘s movements. He had found Valentine a very useful tool in sundry1 intricate transactions of the commercial kind, and he expected his tools to be ready for his service. He was therefore considerably2 annoyed by Valentine’s abrupt3 departure.
“I think young Hawkehurst might have told me he was going out of town,” he said. “What the deuce has taken him off in such a hurry?”
“He is going to see some mysterious old aunt at Dorking, from whom he seems to expect money,” the Captain answered carelessly. “I daresay I can do what you want, Sheldon.”
“Very likely. But how comes that young fellow to have an aunt at Dorking? I fancy I’ve heard him say he was without a relative or a friend in the world — always excepting yourself.”
“The aunt may be another exception; some poor old soul that he’s half ashamed to own, I daresay — the inmate5 of an almshouse, perhaps. Val’s expectations may be limited to a few pounds hoarded6 in a china teapot.”
“I should have thought Hawkehurst the last man in the world to care about looking after that sort of thing. I could have given him plenty to do if he had stopped in town. He and my brother George are uncommonly7 intimate, by the bye,” added Mr. Sheldon meditatively8. It was his habit to be rather distrustful of his brother and of all his brother’s acquaintance. “I suppose you can give me Hawkehurst’s address, in case I should want to write to him?” he said.
“He told me to send my letters to the post-office, Dorking,” answered the Captain, “which really looks as if the aunt’s residence were something in the way of an almshouse.”
No more was said about Valentine’s departure. Captain Paget concluded his business with his patron and departed, leaving the stockbroker9 leaning forward upon his desk in a thoughtful attitude and scribbling10 purposeless figures upon his blotting-paper.
“There’s something queer in this young man running away from town; there’s some mystification somewhere,” he thought. “He has not gone to Dorking, or he would scarcely have told Lotta that he was going a hundred and fifty miles from town. He would be likely to be taken off his guard by her questions, and would tell the truth. I wonder whether Paget is in the secret. His manner seemed open enough; but that sort of man can pretend anything. I’ve noticed that he and George have been very confidential11 lately. I wonder whether there’s any underhand game on the cards between those two.”
The game of which Mr. Sheldon thought as he leant over his blotting-paper was a very different kind of game from that which really occupied the attention of George and his friend.
“I’ll go to his lodgings12 at once,” he said to himself by-and-by, rising and putting on his hat quickly in his eagerness to act upon his resolution. “I’ll see if he really has left town.”
The stockbroker hailed the first empty hansom to be seen in the crowded thoroughfare from which his shady court diverged13. In less than an hour he alighted before the door of the house in which Captain Paget lodged14.
“Is Mr. Hawkehurst in?” he asked of the girl who admitted him.
“No, sir; he’s just left to go into the country. He hasn’t been gone ten minutes. You might a’most have met him.”
“Do you know where he has gone?”
“I heard say it was Dorking, sir.”
“Humph! I should like to have seen him before he went. Did he take much luggage?”
“One portmanter, sir.”
“I suppose you didn’t notice where he told the man to drive?”
“Yes, sir; it was Euston-square.”
“Ah! Euston-square. I’ll go there, then, on the chance of catching15 him,” said Mr. Sheldon.
He bestowed16 a donation upon the domestic, reentered his hansom, and told the man to drive to Euston-square “like a shot.”
“So! His destination is Dorking, and he goes from Euston-square!” muttered Mr. Sheldon, in sombre meditation17, as the hansom rattled18 and rushed, and jingled19 and jolted20, over the stones. “There’s something under the cards here.”
Arrived at the great terminus, the stockbroker made his way to the down platform. There was a lull21 in the day’s traffic, and only a few listless wretches22 lounging disconsolately23 here and there, with eyes ever and anon lifted to the clock. Amongst these there was no Valentine Hawkehurst.
Mr. Sheldon peered into all the waiting-rooms, and surveyed the refreshment-counter; but there was still no sign of the man he sought. He went back to the ticket-office; but here again all was desolate24, the shutters25 of the pigeon-holes hermetically closed, and no vestige26 of Valentine Hawkehurst.
The stockbroker was disappointed, but not defeated. He returned to the platform, looked about him for a few moments, and then addressed himself to a porter of intelligent aspect.
“What trains have left here within the last half-hour?” he asked.
“Only one, sir; the 2.15 down, for Manchester.”
“You didn’t happen to notice a dark-eyed, dark-haired young man among the passengers — second class?” asked Mr. Sheldon.
“No, sir. There are always a good many passengers by that train; I haven’t time to notice their faces.”
The stockbroker asked no further questions. He was a man who did not care to be obliged to others for information which he could obtain for himself. He walked straight to a place where the time-tables were pasted on the wall, and ran his finger along the figures till he came to those he wanted.
The 2.15 train was a fast train, which stopped at only four places — Rugby, Ullerton, Murford, and Manchester.
“I daresay he has gone to Manchester,” thought Mr. Sheldon —“on some racing27 business most likely, which he wants to keep dark from his patron the Captain. What a fool I am to trouble myself about him, as if he couldn’t stir without meaning mischief28 to me! But I don’t understand the friendship between him and George. My brother George is not likely to take up any man without some motive29.”
After these reflections Mr. Sheldon left the station and went back to his office in another hansom, still extremely thoughtful and somewhat disquieted30.
“What does it matter to me where they go or what they do?” he asked himself, impatient of some lurking31 weakness of his own; “what does it matter to me whether those two are friendly or unfriendly? They can do me no harm.”
There happened to be a kind of lull in the stormy regions of the Stock Exchange at the time of Valentine Hawkehurst’s departure. Stagnation32 had descended33 upon that commercial ocean, which is such a dismal34 waste of waters for the professional speculator in its hour of calm. All the Bulls in the zoological creation would have failed to elevate the drooping35 stocks and shares and first-preference bonds and debentures36, which hung their feeble heads and declined day by day, the weaker of them threatening to fade away and diminish to a vanishing-point, as it seemed to some dejected holders37 who read the Stock–Exchange lists and the money article in the Times with a persistent38 hopefulness which struggled against the encroachments of despair. The Bears had been busy, but were now idle — having burnt their fingers, commercial gentlemen remarked. So Bulls and Bears alike hung listlessly about a melancholy39 market, and conversed40 together dolefully in corners; and the burden of all their lamentations was to the effect that there never had been such times, and things never had been so bad, and it was a question whether they would ever right themselves. Philip Sheldon shared in the general depression. His face was gloomy, and his manner for the time being lost something of its brisk, business-like cheerfulness. The men who envied his better fortunes watched him furtively41 when he showed himself amongst them, and wondered whether Sheldon, of Jull, Girdlestone, and Sheldon, had been hit by these bad times.
It was not entirely42 the pressure of that commercial stagnation which weighed on the spirits of Philip Sheldon. The stockbroker was tormented43 by private doubts and uncertainties44 which had nothing to do with the money-market.
On the day after Valentine’s journey to Ullerton, Mr. Sheldon the elder presented himself at his brother’s office in Gray’s Inn. It was his habit to throw waifs and strays of business in the attorney’s way, and to make use of him occasionally, though he had steadily45 refused to lend or give him money; and it was big habit, as it were, to keep an eye upon his younger brother — rather a jealous eye, which took note of all George’s doings, and kept suspicious watch upon all George’s associates. Going unannounced into his brother’s office on this particular morning, Philip Sheldon found him bending over an outspread document — a great sheet of cartridge46-paper covered with a net-work of lines, dotted about with circles, and with little patches of writing in red and black ink in the neatest possible penmanship. Mr. Sheldon the elder, whose bright black eyes were as the eyes of the hawk4, took note of this paper, and had caught more than one stray word that stood out in larger and bolder characters than its neighbours, before his brother could fold it; for it is not an easy thing for a man to fold an elephantine sheet of cartridge when he is nervously47 anxious to fold it quickly, and is conscious that the eyes of an observant brother are upon him.
Before George had mastered the folding of the elephantine sheet, Philip had seen and taken note of two words. One of these was the word INTESTATE, and the other the name HAYGARTH.
“You seem in a great hurry to get that document out of the way,” said Philip, as he seated himself in the client’s chair.
“Well, to tell the truth, you rather startled me,” answered George. “I didn’t know who it might be, you know; and I was expecting a fellow who —” And then Mr. Sheldon the younger broke off abruptly48, and asked, with rather a suspicious air, “Why didn’t that boy announce you?”
“Because I wouldn’t let him. Why should he announce me? One would think you were carrying on some political conspiracy49, George, and had a modern Thistlewood gang hidden in that cupboard yonder. How thick you and Hawkehurst are, by the bye!”
In spite of the convenient “by the bye,” this last remark of the stockbroker’s sounded rather irrelevant50.
“I don’t know about being ‘thick.’ Hawkehurst seems a very decent young fellow, and he and I get on pretty well together. But I’m not as ‘thick’ with him as I was with Tom Halliday.”
It was to be observed that Mr. Sheldon the younger was very apt to refer to that friendship with the dead Yorkshireman in the course of conversation with Philip.
“Hawkehurst has just left town,” said Philip indifferently.
“Yes, I know he has.”
“When did you hear it?”
“I saw him last night,” answered George, taken off his guard by the carelessness of his brother’s manner.
“Did you?” cried Mr. Sheldon. “You make a mistake there. He left town at two o’clock yesterday.”
“How do you happen to know that?” asked George sharply.
“Because I happened to be at the station and saw him take his ticket. There’s something underhand in that journey of his by the way; for Paget told me he was going to Dorking. I suppose he and Paget have some game of their own on the cards. I was rather annoyed by the young man’s departure, as I had some work for him. However, I can find plenty of fellows to do it as well as Hawkehurst could have done.”
George was looking into an open drawer in his desk while his brother said this. He had a habit of opening drawers and peering into them absently during the progress of an interview, as if looking for some particular paper, that was never to be found.
After this the conversation became less personal. The brothers talked a little of the events of the day, the money-article in that morning’s Times, the probability or improbability of a change in the rate of discount. But this conversation soon flagged, and Mr. Sheldon rose to depart.
“I suppose that sheet of cartridge-paper which you had so much trouble to fold is one of your genealogical tables,” he said as he was going. “You needn’t try to keep things dark from me, George. I’m not likely to steal a march upon you; my own business gives me more work than I can do. But if you have really got a good thing at last, I shouldn’t mind going into it with you, and finding the money for the enterprise.”
George Sheldon looked at his elder brother with a malicious51 flitter in his eyes.
“On condition that you got the lion’s share of the profits,” he said. “O yes; I know how generous you are, Phil. I have asked you for money before today, and you have refused it.”
Mr. Sheldon’s face darkened just a little at this point. “Your manner of asking it was offensive,” he said.
“Well, I’m sorry for that,” answered George politely. “However, you refused me money when I did want it; so you needn’t offer it me now I don’t want it. There are some people who think I have sacrificed my life to a senseless theory; and perhaps you are one of them. But there is one thing you may be certain of, Philip Sheldon: if ever I do get a good chance, I shall know how to keep it to myself.”
There are men skilled in the concealment52 of their feelings on all ordinary occasions, who will yet betray themselves in a crisis of importance. George Sheldon would fain have kept his project hidden from his elder brother; but in this one unguarded moment he forgot himself, and allowed the sense of triumph to irradiate his face.
The stockbroker was a reader of men rather than books; and it is a notable thing what superiority in all worldly wisdom is possessed53 by men who eschew54 books. He was able to translate the meaning of George’s smile — a smile of mingled55 triumph and malice56.
“The fellow has got a good thing,” he thought to himself, “and Hawkehurst is in it. It must be a deuced good thing too, or he wouldn’t refuse my offer of money.” Mr. Sheldon was the last man in the world to reveal any mortification57 which he might experience from his brother’s conduct.
“Well, you’re quite right to stick to your chance, George,” he said, with agreeable frankness. “You’ve waited long enough for it. As for me, I’ve got my fingers in a good many pies just at present; so perhaps I had better keep them out of yours, whatever plums there may be to be picked out of it by an enterprising Jack58 Horner. Pick out your plums for yourself, old fellow, and I’ll be one of the first to call you a good boy for your pains.”
With this Mr. Sheldon slapped his brother’s shoulder and departed.
“I think I’ve had the best of Master Phil for once,” muttered George; and then he thrust his sinewy59 hands into the depths of his trousers-pocket, and indulged in a silent laugh, which displayed his strong square white teeth to perfection. “I flatter myself I took a rise out of Phil to-day,” he muttered.
The sense of a malicious triumph over a social enemy is a very delightful60 kind of thing — so delightful that a man is apt to ignore the possible cost of the enjoyment61. It is like the pleasure of kicking a man who is down — very delicious in its way; only one never knows how soon the man may be up again.
George Sheldon, who was tolerably skilled in the science of human nature, should have known that “taking a rise” out of his brother was likely to be a rather costly62 operation. Philip was not the safest man to deal with at any time; but he was most dangerous when he was “jolly.”
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sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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inmate
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| n.被收容者；(房屋等的)居住人；住院人 | |
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hoarded
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| v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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uncommonly
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| adv. 稀罕(极，非常) | |
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meditatively
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| adv.冥想地 | |
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stockbroker
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| n.股票（或证券），经纪人（或机构） | |
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scribbling
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| n.乱涂[写]胡[乱]写的文章[作品]v.潦草的书写( scribble的现在分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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diverged
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| 分开( diverge的过去式和过去分词 )； 偏离； 分歧； 分道扬镳 | |
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lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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jingled
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| 喝醉的 | |
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jolted
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| （使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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lull
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| v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇 | |
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wretches
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| n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋 | |
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disconsolately
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| adv.悲伤地，愁闷地；哭丧着脸 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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disquieted
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| v.使不安，使忧虑，使烦恼( disquiet的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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stagnation
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| n. 停滞 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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debentures
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| n.公司债券( debenture的名词复数 ) | |
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holders
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| 支持物( holder的名词复数 )； 持有者； （支票等）持有人； 支托（或握持）…之物 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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conversed
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的过去式 ) | |
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furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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uncertainties
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| 无把握( uncertainty的名词复数 )； 不确定； 变化不定； 无把握、不确定的事物 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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cartridge
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| n.弹壳，弹药筒；(装磁带等的)盒子 | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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50
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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51
malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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eschew
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| v.避开，戒绝 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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mortification
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| n.耻辱，屈辱 | |
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58
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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sinewy
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| adj.多腱的，强壮有力的 | |
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60
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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61
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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