He turned back, and came down to dinner five minutes
after the time. At ten minutes before dinner-time
Mr. Bolton heard that he was gone out and was offended,—thinking
it quite possible that he would not return at all.
What might not be expected from a young man who could
so easily abandon his inheritance! But he was
there, only five minutes after the time, and the dinner
was eaten almost in silence. In the evening there
was tea, and the coldest shivering attempt at conversation
for half an hour, during which he could still at moments
catch the glance of Hester’s eyes, and see the
moving curve of her lips. Then there was a reading
of the Bible, and prayer, and before ten he was in
his bed-room.
On the next morning as he took his departure, Mr.
Bolton said a word intended to be gracious. ’I
hope you may succeed in your enterprise, Mr. Caldigate.’
‘Why should I not as well as another?’
said John, cheerily.
’If you are steady, sober, industrious, self-denying
and honest, you probably will,’ replied the
banker.
‘To promise all that would be to promise too
much,’ said John. ’But I mean to
make an effort.’
Then at that moment he made one effort which was successful.
For an instant he held Hester’s fingers within
his hand.
Daniel Caldigate
That piece of business was done. It was one of
the disagreeable things which he had had to do before
he could get away to the gold-diggings, and it was
done. Now he had to say farewell to his father,
and that would be a harder task. As the moment
was coming in which he must bid adieu to his father,
perhaps for ever, and bid adieu to the old place which,
though he despised it, he still loved, his heart was
heavy within him. He felt sure that his father
had no special regard for him;—in which
he was, of course, altogether wrong, and the old man
was equally wrong in supposing that his son was unnaturally
deficient in filial affection. But they had never
known each other, and were so different that neither
had understood the other. The son, however, was
ready to confess to himself that the chief fault had
been with himself. It was natural, he thought,
that a father’s regard should be deadened by
such conduct as his had been, and natural that an
old man should not believe in the quick repentance
and improvement of a young one.
He hired a gig and drove himself over from Cambridge
to Folking. As he got near to the place, and
passed along the dikes, and looked to the right and
left down the droves, and trotted at last over the
Folking bridge across the Middle Wash, the country
did not seem to him to be so unattractive as of yore;
and when he recognised the faces of the neighbours,
when one of the tenants spoke to him kindly, and the
girls dropped a curtsey as he passed, certain soft
regrets began to crop up in his mind. After all,
there is a comfort in the feeling of property—not
