The train from London to Southampton was due in an hour. The clerk who gave Joseph Wilmot this information asked him how his brother was getting on.
“He is much better,” Joseph answered. “I am going on to Southampton to execute some important business he was to have done there. I shall come back early to-morrow morning.”
He walked into the waiting-room, and stopped there, seated in the same attitude the whole time: never stirring, never lifting his head from his breast: always brooding, brooding, brooding: as he had brooded in the railway carriage, as he had brooded in the little parlour of the inn. He took his ticket for Southampton as soon as the office was open, and then stood on the platform, where there were two or three stragglers, waiting for the train to come up.
It came at last. Joseph Wilmot sprang into a second-class carriage, took his seat in the corner, with his hat slouched over his eyes, which were almost hidden by its dilapidated brim.
It was late when he reached Southampton; but he seemed to be acquainted with the town, and he walked straight to a small public-house by the river-side, almost hidden under the shadow of the town wall.
Here he got a bed, and here he ascertained1 that the Electra had not yet arrived.
He ate his supper in his own room, though he was requested to take it in the public apartment. He seemed to shrink from meeting any one, or talking to any one; and still brooded over his own black thoughts: as he had brooded at the railway station, in the parlour of the Basingstoke inn, in the carriage with his brother Sampson.
Whatever his thoughts were, they absorbed him so entirely2 that he seemed like a man who walks in his sleep, doing everything mechanically, and without knowing what he does.
But for all this he was active, for he rose very early the next morning. He had not had an hour’s sleep throughout the night, but had lain in every variety of restless attitude, tossing first on this side and then on that: always thinking, thinking, thinking, till the action of his brain became as mechanical as that of any other machine, and went on in spite of himself.
He went downstairs, paid the money for his supper and night’s lodging3 to a sleepy servant-girl, and left the house as the church-clock in an old-fashioned square hard by struck eight.
He walked straight to the High Street, and entered the shop of a tailor and general outfitter. It was a stylish4 establishment, and there was a languid young man taking down the shutters5, who appeared to be the only person on the establishment just at present.
He looked superciliously6 enough at Joseph Wilmot, eyeing him lazily from head to foot, and yawning as he did so.
“You’d better make yourself scarce,” he said; “our principal never gives anything to tramps.”
“Your principal may give or keep what he likes,” Joseph answered, carelessly; “I can pay for what I want. Call your master down: or stay, you’ll do as well, I dare say. I want a complete rig-out from head to heel. Do you understand?”
“I shall, perhaps, when I see the money for it,” the languid youth answered, with a sneer7.
“So you’ve learned the way of the world already, have you, my lad?” said Joseph Wilmot, bitterly. Then, pulling his brother’s memorandum-book from his pocket, he opened it, and took out the little packet of bank-notes. “I suppose you can understand these?” he said.
The languid youth lifted his nose, which by its natural conformation betrayed an aspiring8 character, and looked dubiously9 at his customer.
“I can understand as they might be flash uns,” he remarked, significantly.
Mr. Joseph Wilmot growled10 out an oath, and made a plunge11 at the young shopman.
“I said as they might be flash,” the youth remonstrated12, quite meekly13; “there’s no call to fly at me. I didn’t mean to give no offence.”
“No,” muttered Mr. Wilmot; “egad! you’d better not mean it. Call your master.”
The youth retired14 to obey: he was quite subdued15 and submissive by this time.
Joseph Wilmot looked about the shop.
“The cur forgot the till,” he muttered; “I might try my hand at that, if —” He stopped and smiled with a strange, deliberate expression, not quite agreeable to behold16 —“if I wasn’t going to meet Henry Dunbar.”
There was a full-length looking-glass in one corner of the shop. Joseph Wilmot walked up to it, looked at himself for a few moments in silent contemplation, and then shook his clenched17 hand at the reflected image.
“You’re a vagabond!” he muttered between his set teeth, “and you look it! You’re an outcast; and you look it! But who set the mark upon you? Who’s to blame for all the evil you have done? Whose treachery made you what you are? That’s the question!”
The owner of the shop appeared, and looked sharply at his customer.
“Now, listen to me!” Joseph Wilmot said, slowly and deliberately18. “I’ve been down upon my luck for some time past, and I’ve just got a bit of money. I’ve got it honestly, mind you; and I don’t want to be questioned by such a jackanapes as that shopboy of yours.”
The languid youth folded his arms, and endeavoured to look ferocious19 in his fiery20 indignation; but he drew a little way behind his master as he did so.
The proprietor21 of the shop bowed and smiled.
“We shall be happy to wait upon you, sir,” he said; “and I have no doubt we shall be able to give you satisfaction. If my shopman has been impertinent —”
“He has,” interrupted Joseph; “but I don’t want to make any palaver22 about that. He’s like the rest of the world, and he thinks if a man wears a shabby coat, he must be a scoundrel; that’s all. I forgive him.”
The languid youth, very much in the background, and quite sheltered, by his master, might have been heard murmuring faintly —
“Oh, indeed! Forgive, indeed! Do you really, now? Thank you for nothing!” and other sentences of a derisive23 character.
“I want a complete rig-out,” continued Joseph Wilmot; “a new suit of clothes — hat, boots, umbrella, a carpet-bag, half-a-dozen shirts, brush and comb, shaving tackle, and all the et-ceteras. Now, as you may be no more inclined to trust me than that young whipper-snapper of yours, for all you’re so uncommon24 civil, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I want this beard of mine trimmed and altered. I’ll go to a barber’s and get that done, and in the meantime you can make your mind easy about the character of these gentlemen.”
He handed the tradesman three of the Bank of England notes. The man looked at them doubtfully.
“If you think they ain’t genuine, send ’em round to one of your neighbours, and get ’em changed,” Joseph Wilmot said; “but be quick about it. I shall be back here in half an hour.”
He walked out of the shop, leaving the man still staring, with the three notes in his hand.
The vagabond, with his hat slouched over his eyes, and big hands in his pockets, strolled away from the High Street down to a barber’s shop near the docks.
Here he had his beard shaved off, his ragged25 moustache trimmed into the most aristocratic shape, and his long, straggling grey hair cut and arranged according to his own directions.
If he had been the vainest of men, bent26 on no higher object in life than the embellishment of his person, he could not have been more particular or more difficult to please.
When the barber had completed his work, Joseph Wilmot washed his face, readjusted the hair upon his ample forehead, and looked at himself in a little shaving-glass that hung against the wall.
So far as the man’s head and face went, the transformation27 was perfect. He was no longer a vagabond. He was a respectable, handsome-looking gentleman, advanced in middle age. Not altogether unaristocratic-looking.
The very expression of his face was altered. The defiant28 sneer was changed into a haughty29 smile; the sullen30 scowl31 was now a thoughtful frown.
Whether this change was natural to him, and merely brought about by the alteration32 in his hair and beard, or whether it was an assumption of his own, was only known to the man himself.
He put on his hat, still slouching the brim over his eyes, paid the barber, and went away. He walked straight to the docks, and made inquiries33 about the steamer Electra. She was not expected to arrive until the next day, at the earliest. Having satisfied himself upon this point, Joseph Wilmot went back to the outfitter’s to choose his new clothes.
This business occupied him for a long time; for in this he was as difficult to please as he had been in the matter of his beard and hair. No punctilious34 old bachelor, the best and brightest hours of whose life had been devoted35 to the cares of the toilet, could have shown himself more fastidious than this vagabond, who had been out-at-elbows for ten years past, and who had worn a felon’s dress for thirteen years at a stretch in Norfolk Island.
But he evinced no bad taste in the selection of a costume. He chose no gaudy36 colours, or flashily-cut vestments. On the contrary, the garb37 he assumed was in perfect keeping with the style of his hair and moustache. It was the dress of a middle-aged38 gentleman; fashionable, but scrupulously39 simple, quiet alike in colour and in cut.
When his toilet was complete, from his twenty-one shilling hat to the polished boots upon his well-shaped feet, he left the shady little parlour in which he had changed his clothes, and came into the shop, with a glove dangling40 loosely in one ungloved hand, and a cane41 in the other.
The tradesman and his shopboy stared aghast.
“If that turn-out had cost you fifty pound, sir, instead of eighteen pound, twelve, and elevenpence, it would be worth all the money to you; for you look like a dook;” cried the tailor, with enthusiasm.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Mr. Wilmot said, carelessly. He stood before the cheval-glass, and twirled his moustache as he spoke42, looking at himself thoughtfully, with a smile upon his face. Then he took his change from the tailor, counted it, and dropped the gold and silver into his waistcoat-pocket.
The man’s manner was as much altered as his person. He had entered the shop at eight o’clock that morning a blackguard as well as a vagabond. He left it now a gentleman; subdued in voice, easy and rather listless in gait, haughty and self-possessed43 in tone.
“Oh, by the bye,” he said, pausing upon the threshold of the door, “I’ll thank you to bundle all those old things of mine together into a sheet of brown paper: tie them up tightly. I’ll call for them after dark to-night.”
Having said this, very carelessly and indifferently, Mr. Wilmot left the shop: but though he was now as well dressed and as gentlemanly-looking as any man in Southampton, he turned into the first by-street, and hurried away from the town to a lonely walk beside the water.
He walked along the shore until he came to a village near the river, and about a couple of miles from Southampton. There he entered a low-roofed little public-house, very quiet and unfrequented, ordered some brandy and cold water of a girl who was seated at work behind the bar, and then went into the parlour — a low-ceilinged, wainscoted room, whose walls were adorned44 here and there with auctioneers’ announcements of coming sales of live and dead stock, farm-houses, and farming implements45, interspersed46 with railway time-tables.
Mr. Joseph Wilmot had this room all to himself. He seated himself by the open window, took up a country newspaper, and tried to read.
But that attempt was a most dismal47 failure. In the first place, there was very little in the paper to read: and in the second, Joseph Wilmot would have been unable to chain his attention to the page upon which his eyes were fixed48, though all the wisdom of the world had been concentrated upon that one sheet of printed paper.
No; he could not read. He could only think. He could only think of this strange chance which had come to him after five-and-thirty weary years. He could only think of his probable meeting with Henry Dunbar.
He entered the village public-house at a little after one, and he stayed there throughout the rest of the day, drinking brandy-and-water — not immoderately: he was very careful and watchful49 of himself in that matter — taking a snack of bread and cold meat for his dinner, and thinking of Henry Dunbar.
In that he never varied50, let him do what he would.
In the railway carriage, at the Basingstoke inn, at the station, through the long sleepless51 night at the public-house by the water, in the tailor’s shop, even when he was most occupied by the choice of his clothes, he had still thought of Henry Dunbar. From the time of his meeting the old clerk at the Waterloo terminus, he had never ceased to think of Henry Dunbar.
He never once thought of his brother: not so much even as to wonder whether the stroke had been fatal — whether the old man was yet dead. He never thought of his daughter, or the anguish52 his prolonged absence might cause her to suffer.
He had put away the past as if it had never been, and concentrated all the force of his mind upon the one idea which possessed him like some strong demon53.
Sometimes a sudden terror seized him.
What if Henry Dunbar should have died upon the passage home? What if the Electra should bring nothing but a sealed leaden coffin54, and a corpse55 embalmed56 in spirit?
No, he could not imagine that! Fate, darkly brooding over these two men throughout half a long lifetime, had held them asunder57 for five-and-thirty years, to fling them mysteriously together now.
It seemed as if the old clerk’s philosophy was not so very unsound, after all. Sooner or later — sooner or later — the day of retribution comes.
When it grew dusk, Joseph Wilmot left the little inn, and walked back to Southampton. It was quite dark when he entered the High Street, and the tailor’s shop was closing.
“I thought you’d forgotten your parcel, sir,” the man said; “I’ve had it ready for you ever so long. Can I send it any where for you?”
“No, thank you; I’ll take it myself.”
With the brown-paper parcel — which was a very bulky one — under his arm, Joseph Wilmot left the tailor’s shop, and walked down to an open pier58 or quay59 abutting60 on the water.
On his way along the river shore, between the village public-house and the town of Southampton, he had filled his pockets with stones. He knelt down now by the edge of the pier, and tied all these stones together in an old cotton pocket-handkerchief.
When he had done this, carefully, compactly, and quickly, like a man accustomed to do all sorts of strange things, he tied the handkerchief full of stones to the whipcord that bound the brown-paper parcel, and dropped both packages into the water.
The spot which he had chosen for this purpose was at the extreme end of the pier, where the water was deepest.
He had done all this cautiously, taking care to make sure every now and then that he was unobserved.
And when the parcel had sunk, he watched the widening circle upon the surface of the water till it died away.
“So much for James Wentworth, and the clothes he wore,” he said to himself as he walked away.
He slept that night at the village inn where he had spent the day, and the next morning walked into Southampton.
It was a little after nine o’clock when he entered the docks, and the Electra was visible to the naked eye, steaming through the blue water under a cloudless summer sky.
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ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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stylish
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| adj.流行的，时髦的；漂亮的，气派的 | |
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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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superciliously
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| adv.高傲地；傲慢地 | |
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sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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aspiring
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| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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dubiously
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| adv.可疑地，怀疑地 | |
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growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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remonstrated
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| v.抗议( remonstrate的过去式和过去分词 )；告诫 | |
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meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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palaver
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| adj.壮丽堂皇的；n.废话，空话 | |
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derisive
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| adj.嘲弄的 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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punctilious
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| adj.谨慎的，谨小慎微的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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garb
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| n.服装，装束 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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scrupulously
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| adv.一丝不苟地；小心翼翼地，多顾虑地 | |
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dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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implements
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| n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效 | |
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interspersed
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| adj.[医]散开的；点缀的v.intersperse的过去式和过去分词 | |
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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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48
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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49
watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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50
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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51
sleepless
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| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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52
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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53
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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54
coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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56
embalmed
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| adj.用防腐药物保存（尸体）的v.保存（尸体）不腐( embalm的过去式和过去分词 )；使不被遗忘；使充满香气 | |
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57
asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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58
pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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quay
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| n.码头，靠岸处 | |
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abutting
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| adj.邻接的v.（与…）邻接( abut的现在分词 )；（与…）毗连；接触；倚靠 | |
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