At length closing-time came. He dragged himself back to Vauxhall, shut himself into his dreary little room, pulled the table toward the open window, and began to work at Herr Sivertsen’s translating. Night after night he had gone on, with the dogged courage of his old Viking ancestors, upheld by the same fierce, fighting nature which had made them the terror of the North. But at last he was at the very end of his strength. A violent shivering fit seized him. Work was no longer possible; he could only stagger to the bed, with that terrible consciousness of being utterly and hopelessly beaten, which to a man is so hard to bear.
Oppressed by a frightful sense of loneliness, dazed by physical pain, and tortured by the thought of Blanche’s disgrace, there was yet one thing which gave him moments of relief—like a child he strained his eyes to see the picture of Bergen which hung by the bedside.
Later on, when the summer twilight deepened into night, and he could no longer make out the harbor, and the shipping, and the familiar mountains, he buried his face in the pillow and sobbed aloud, in a forlorn misery which, even in Paradise, must have wrung his mother’s heart.
Roy Boniface came back from Devonshire the following day, his holiday being shortened by a week on account of the illness of Mrs. Horner’s uncle. As there was every reason to expect a legacy from this aged relative, Mr. Horner insisted on going down at once to see whether they could be of any use; and since the shop was never left without one of the partners, poor Roy, anathematizing the whole race of the Horners, had to come back and endure as best he might a London August and an empty house.
Like many other business men, he relieved the monotony of his daily work by always keeping two or three hobbies in hand. The mania for collecting had always been encouraged at Rowan Tree House, and just now botany was his keenest delight. It was even perhaps absorbing too much of his time, and Cecil used laughingly to tell him that he loved it more than all the men and women in the world put together. He was contentedly mounting specimens on the night of his return, when James Horner looked in, the prospective legacy making him more than ever fussy and pompous.