“Are you going in?” he said sharply.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I shall not,” said Waymark.
“I’ll go to your place, and wait there.”
But when Abraham, whose eyes had not moved from the
prisoner throughout the proceedings, rose at length
to leave, a step or two brought him to a man who was
leaning against the wall, powerless from conflicting
excitement, and deadly pale. It was Waymark.
Mr. Woodstock took him by the arm and led him out.
“Why couldn’t you keep away?” the
old man exclaimed hoarsely, and with more of age in
his voice than any one had ever yet heard in it.
Waymark shook himself free, and laughed as one laughs
under torment.
ART AND MISERY
One Monday afternoon at the end of October—three
months had gone by since the trial—Waymark
carried his rents to St. John Street Road as usual.
“I’m going to Tottenham,” said Mr.
Woodstock. “You may as well come with me.”
“By the by, I finished my novel the other day,”
Waymark said, as they drove northward.
“That’s right. No doubt you’re
on your way to glory, as the hymn says.”
Abraham was in good spirits. One would have said
that he had grown younger of late. That heaviness
and tendency to absent brooding which not long ago
seemed to indicate the tightening grip of age, was
disappearing; he was once more active and loud and
full of his old interests.
“How’s Casti?” Mr. Woodstock went
on to ask.
“A good deal better, I think, but shaky.
Of course things will be as bad as ever when his wife
comes out of the hospital.”
“Pity she can’t come out heels first,”
muttered Abraham.
Waymark found that the purpose of their journey was
to inspect a large vacant house, with a good garden
and some fine trees about it. The old man wished
for his opinion, and, by degrees, let it be known
that he thought of buying the property.
“I suppose you think me an old fool to want
a house like this at my time of life, eh?”
There was a twinkle in his eye, and a moment after
he fairly burst into a laugh of pleasure. Waymark
asked no questions, and received no more information;
but a thought rose in his mind which occupied him
for the rest of the day.
In the evening Julian came. He looked like one
who had recovered from a long illness, very pale and
thin, and his voice had tremblings and uncertainties
of key. In fact, a feverish disorder had been
upon him for some weeks, never severe enough to prevent
his getting about, but weakening him to a serious
degree. It would doubtless have developed into
some more pronounced illness, but for the period of
comparative rest and quietness which had begun shortly
after the miseries of the trial. Harriet’s
ailments had all at once taken such a decided turn
for the worse—her fits becoming incessant,
