He ordered magazines whose very names Mr. Holt, the principal bookseller in Bursley, was unfamiliar with, and after the magazines came books of verse and novels enclosed in covers of mystic design, and printed in a style which Mr. Holt, though secretly impressed, set down as eccentric. Mr. Holt's shop performed the functions of a club for the dignitaries of the town; and since he took care that this esoteric literature was well displayed on the counter until called for, the young man's fame as _a great reader_ soon spread, and Richard began to see that he was regarded as a curiosity of which Bursley need not be ashamed. His self-esteem, already fostered into lustiness by a number of facile school successes, became more marked, although he was wise enough to keep a great deal of it to himself.
One evening, after Mary and her husband had been talking quietly some while, Richard came into the sitting-room.
"I don't want any supper," he said, "I'm going for a bit of a walk."
"Shall we tell him?" Mary asked, smiling, after he had left the room.
"Please yourself," said William, also smiling.
"He talks a great deal about going to London. I hope he won't go till--after April; I think it would upset me."
"You need not trouble, I think, my dear," William answered. "He talks about it, but he isn't gone yet."
Mr. Vernon was not quite pleased with Richard. He had obtained for him--being connected with the best people in the town--a position as shorthand and general clerk in a solicitor's office, and had learnt privately that though the youth was smart enough, he was scarcely making that progress which might have been expected. He lacked "application." William attributed this shortcoming to the excessive reading of verse and obscure novels.
April came, and, as Mr. Vernon had foretold, Richard still remained in Bursley. But the older man was now too deeply absorbed in another matter to interest himself at all in Richard's movements,--a matter in which Richard himself exhibited a shy concern. Hour followed anxious hour, and at last was heard the faint, fretful cry of a child in the night. Then stillness. All that Richard ever saw was a coffin, and in it a dead child at a dead woman's feet.