‘I don’t see the fun,’ said Ben; but certainly the dark clouds over him were moved by the suggestion. ‘And I have not your knowledge or resources. Absolutely, if you’ll believe me, I have not an idea what to do.’
‘So I should think,’ said Hillyard. ‘It would be odd if you had, plunged into it like this, without a moment’s notice. Lie on your oars, my dear fellow, for a day or two, and come about with me. We may hit on something, you know; and, at all events, a few days’ waiting can do you no harm.’
By this time his meal had been served to him, and its arrival interrupted the talk. Ben rose and walked away to a distant window, already feeling some qualms of self-disgust at what he had done. As he stood looking out upon the flood of human beings, each absorbed in his own interests, he felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, how utterly unimportant to the world was his individual comfort, or that of any one mortal creature. He was no more to the crowd, not so much, as one drop of perfume or of bitterness would be to the pleasant Thames as it floated past his father’s house,--not near so much. The sea would be a juster emblem,--that sea which swallowed up rivers and showed no increase, which threw forth its lavish atoms to the air and knew no diminution. He had been an important personage up to this moment, even in his own opinion, though he had always known theoretically the insignificance of the individual. But he knew it now with a certainty beyond theory. When Hillyard and he were driven against the rocks, who would know the difference or be any the wiser? He who a month ago would have compassionately taken Hillyard home with him, to give him a little time to consider, was now, under the adventurer’s guidance, a more hopeless adventurer than Hillyard. Ben’s thoughts were not pleasant as he stood and looked out, watching the stream,--deep, no doubt, with human passion, sorrow, and perplexity, but so inexpressive on the surface,--which kept flowing on like water, as perennial and unbroken. His own life flitted before him like a dream as he stood looking out,--so useless, and luxurious, and free; so care-laden and overwhelmed by storms; so vague and doubtful in the future. Had he even known what would await him in the end his fate would have been less hard. Perhaps his very efforts to work out the time of his probation might secure the loss of his birthright. He might find that he worked the wrong way, that he had missed the end, even after his best exertions. A funeral procession was making its way at the moment up the busy street, to which it gave so strange a moral. And Ben turned away his head and sat down, sickened by the sight of the slow hearse with its waving plumes. To think he should have been defrauded even of his natural grief, even of the softening of his heart, which should have come over his father’s grave! Was the inmate of that other coffin leaving a wrong behind him, casting a stone with his dead hands to crush his children? This, no doubt, was a harsh way of taking his trouble; but there are men to whom all crosses come harshly, and Ben Renton was one of them. Hillyard, satisfied and comfortable, with a slight flush of bodily well-being on his face, came up to him as he mused, with a glass of sherry in his hand.