Mrs. Woodward fell upon his breast and wept, and bade
God bless him, and called him her son and her dearest
friend, and sobbed till her heart was nigh to break.
‘What,’ she thought, ’what could
her daughter wish for, when she repulsed from her feet
such a suitor as Harry Norman?’
He then went quietly down the stairs, quietly out
of the house, and having packed up his bag at the
inn, started off through the pouring rain, and walked
away through the dark stormy night, through the dirt
and mud and wet, to his London lodgings; nor was he
again seen at Surbiton Cottage for some months after
this adventure.
A COMMUNICATION OF IMPORTANCE
Norman’s dark wet walk did him physically no
harm, and morally some good. He started on it
in that frame of mind which induces a man to look
with indifference on all coming evils under the impression
that the evils already come are too heavy to admit
of any increase. But by the time that he was
thoroughly wet through, well splashed with mud, and
considerably fatigued by his first five or six miles’
walk, he began to reflect that life was not over with
him, and that he must think of future things as well
as those that were past.
He got home about two o’clock, and having knocked
up his landlady, Mrs. Richards, betook himself to
bed. Alaric had been in his room for the last
two hours, but of Charley and his latch-key Mrs.
Richards knew nothing. She stated her belief,
however, that two a.m. seldom saw that erratic gentleman
in his bed.
On the following morning, Alaric, when he got his
hot water, heard that Norman returned during the night
from Hampton, and he immediately guessed what had
brought him back. He knew that nothing short
of some great trouble would have induced Harry to
leave the Cottage so abruptly, and that that trouble
must have been of such a nature as to make his remaining
with the Woodwards an aggravation of it. No such
trouble could have come on him but the one.
As Charley seldom made his appearance at the breakfast
table on Sunday mornings, Alaric foresaw that he must
undergo a tete-a-tete which would not be agreeable
to himself, and which must be much more disagreeable
to his companion; but for this there was no help.
Harry had, however, prepared himself for what he had
to go through, and immediately that the two were alone,
he told his tale in a very few words.
‘Alaric,’ said he, ’I proposed to
Gertrude last night, and she refused me.’
Alaric Tudor was deeply grieved for his friend.
There was something in the rejected suitor’s
countenance—something in the tone of voice,
which would have touched any heart softer than stone;
and Alaric’s heart had not as yet been so hardened
by the world as to render him callous to the sight
of such grief as this.
’Take my word for it, Harry, she’ll think
better of it in a month or two,’ he said.
