‘If every woman who has a good-for-nothing son or brother was to be judged as harshly----’ said Ben, making an effort to keep his temper. Hillyard turned round upon him with a hoarse exclamation of anger.
‘He was not a good-for-nothing, by----!’ he cried. ‘You know nothing about him. You call a man names in his grave, poor fellow, because a girl has got a pair of pretty blue eyes.’
‘It appears to me that our road is no longer the same,’ said Ben, with the superiority of temper and good manners. ‘I am going to my rooms, and you, I suppose, are going back to the club. I daresay we shall meet there shortly, as we are the only men in town. Good morning, just now.’
And thus they parted almost as suddenly as they met. Ben went into the Park, and composed himself with a long walk, at first with a pretence of making his way to his rooms, as he had said. He went across almost to the gate, and then he turned and made a circuit back again. He wanted cheap lodgings, that was evident,--and then!--The truth was that his mind was swept and garnished, emptied of all the traditions, and occupations, and hopes of his previous life. All had ended for him as by a sudden deluge, and the chambers stood open for the first inhabitant that had force enough to enter. Was it love that had burst in like an armed man? A certain sweet agitation took possession of his whole being. His agitation had been bitter enough in the morning, when he took the account of all those dead household gods of his, from which no comfort came; or rather it had been a kind of bitter calm,--death after a fashion. Now life had rushed back and tingled in all his veins. The world was no more a desert, but full of unknown beauty and wonder. Since his first step out of the familiar ways had taught him so much, what might not his further progress reveal? Might it not be, after all, that his deliverance from the conventional round was the opening of a new, and fresh, and glorious existence? Would not he be as free in Guildford Street, Manchester Square, as in the backwoods,--as undisturbed by impertinent observation? What were the buhl cabinets and the old Dresden in comparison with horsehair, and mahogany, and Millicent Tracy’s blue eyes up-stairs? He tried to consider the matter calmly without reference to those eyes, and he thought he succeeded in doing so. He reminded himself with elaborate, almost judicial, calm that he had but two hundred pounds a-year; that he could not afford to live at the Albany any longer; that cheap lodgings were necessary to him, not altogether out of reach of the world, but beyond the inspection of curious acquaintances. Under these circumstances the adaptation to all his wants of the ground-floor at No. 10 was almost miraculous. It was Providential. Ben had not been in the habit of using that word as some people do; but yet he felt that in the present remarkable circumstances the use of it was justifiable. Something beyond ordinary chance must have guided him in his ignorance to exactly the place he wanted. And the machinery employed to bring about this single result had been so elaborate and complicated. First, a suicide far off in Australia; second, the return of an adventurer who had been sent there expressly to make Fitzgerald Tracy’s acquaintance, and convey his dying message;--a friendship which had been brought about by such means surely must count for something in a man’s life.