Page:Unto the Third and Fourth Generation.pdf/1

 

 I.

Euston station at 9 on Sunday, the twenty third of December, 18—, I leaned out of the window of a carriage of the Scotch train, and Sir George Chute shook hands with me from the platform.

“Good by, Robert,” said Sir George. “Mind you come to me the very moment of your return. I shall be anxious to hear everything. Our good friends at Cleator are half strangers to both of us, you know—well, to me, at all events. My kind regards to Miss Clousedale—to Mrs. Hill, too—good by! Good by!”

I waved my hand to him as the train sped away from the platform. He had dined with me that night in my rooms at the Temple, and had come to Euston to see me off. Sir George was five and twenty years my senior, but nevertheless my closest friend. In earlier life he had been the friend of my father. Forty years before they had been fellow clerks in the office of a country attorney. Their courses then fell apart. Sir George Chute had become the most prosperous solicitor in London, and my father, Sir Robert Harcourt, was an Indian judge. But though separated by half the world, their friendship had been maintained. I myself was born in India, and when at fourteen I was sent to England to begin my education at a public school, it was Sir George who established me at Harrow. In due time he sent me on to Oxford, and afterwards opened up to me my career at the bar. I had been five years a junior, and my success was due in great part to Sir George. He was more than my friend—he was my foster father.

But the debt I owed him included a claim that touched me closer than any material obligations. He had been the means by which I had come to know Lucy Clousedale. Lucy had come up to London from her home in Cumberland to consult him as a solicitor in relation to the mining estate which was her inheritance. She was two and twenty, and both her parents were long dead. Her only companion throughout life had been an old nurse, who was a maiden lady, but was always addressed as Mrs. Hill. The friendlessness of the orphan girl had touched Sir George, and he had invited her to his house in Cheyne Walk. It was there that I had met her. To meet her was to admire her, for surely no lovelier woman ever lived. Her health, her sweetness, her simplicity, her naturalness, her freshness, had made a deep impression. This was early in May, and during the next month or two she had been invited everywhere. Lucy spoke with a slight northern accent, and sang old English songs. Everything was new to her, and everything was wonderful. It will not wrong the truth to say that in that home of the neurotic woman she had been the success of the hour.

I was a happy man, for our acquaintance had ripened into friendship, and our friendship into love. Before she left London at the end of June, Lucy had promised to be my wife. We were not to be married until the following spring, but I was to visit her at home at Christmas. Her last evening in London we spent together at Sir George Chute's. It was a sweet and happy time. The soft glow of a London sunset lay along the sleepy Thames as we sat in the balcony and looked towards the old Battersea Bridge. Before the lamps were lit she sang “Sally in our Alley." I had one pang only—the thought of our six months' separation.

But that was over at length. The long tale of my duties at the courts was at an end for the present. Christmas was near, and I was in the train for Cumberland. I lay back in my seat, and beguiled the first hour of my journey with a packet of old letters from my breast pocket. Most of them were from Lucy—the daintiest little things in the neatest penmanship. I noticed for the second time that in this regard two of the  Rh