But Clara Talboys had written to him, imploring him to return to Essex without delay. Could he refuse to do her bidding, however painful its accomplishment might be? And again, the man was dying, perhaps, and had implored to see him. Would it not be cruel to refuse to go--to delay an hour unnecessarily? He looked at his watch. It wanted only five minutes to nine. There was no train to Audley after the Ipswich mail, which left London at half-past eight; but there was a train that left Shoreditch at eleven, and stopped at Brentwood between twelve and one. Robert decided upon going by this train, and walking the distance between Brentwood and Audley, which was upwards of six miles.
He had a long time to wait before it would be necessary to leave the Temple on his way to Shoreditch, and he sat brooding darkly over the fire and wondering at the strange events which had filled his life within the last year and a half, coming like angry shadows between his lazy inclinations and himself, and investing him with purposes that were not his own.
"Good Heaven!" he thought, as he smoked his second pipe; "how can I believe that it was I who used to lounge all day in this easy-chair reading Paul de Kock, and smoking mild Turkish; who used to drop in at half price to stand among the pressmen at the back of the boxes and see a new burlesque and finish the evening with the 'Chough and Crow,' and chops and pale ale at 'Evans'. Was it I to whom life was such an easy merry-go-round? Was it I who was one of the boys who sit at ease upon the wooden horses, while other boys run barefoot in the mud and work their hardest in the hope of a ride when their work is done? Heaven knows I have learned the business of life since then: and now I must needs fall in love and swell the tragic chorus which is always being sung by the poor addition of my pitiful sighs and, groans. Clara Talboys! Clara Talboys! Is there any merciful smile latent beneath the earnest light of your brown eyes? What would you say to me if I told you that I love you as earnestly and truly as I have mourned for your brother's fate--that the new strength and purpose of my life, which has grown out of my friendship for the murdered man, grows even stronger as it turns to you, and changes me until I wonder at myself? What would she say to me? Ah! Heaven knows. If she happened to like the color of my hair or the tone of my voice, she might listen to me, perhaps. But would she hear me any more because I love her truly, and purely; because I would be constant and honest and faithful to her? Not she! These things might move her, perhaps to be a little pitiful to me; but they would move her no more! If a girl with freckles and white eylashes adored me, I should only think her a nuisance; but if Clara Talboys had a fancy to trample upon my uncouth person, I should think she did me a favor. I hope poor little Alicia may pick up with some fair-haired Saxon in the course of her travels. I hope--" His thoughts wandered away wearily and lost themselves. How could he hope for anything or think of anything, while the memory of his dead friend's unburied body haunted him like a horrible specter? He remembered a story--a morbid, hideous, yet delicious story, which had once pleasantly congealed his blood on a social winter's evening--the story of a man, monomaniac, perhaps, who had been haunted at every turn by the image of an unburied kinsman who could not rest in his unhallowed hiding-place. What if that dreadful story had its double in reality? What if he were henceforth to be haunted by the phantom of murdered George Talboys?