The Perfume of Egypt | Page 6

see whether I had forgotten my old fag.
"And right glad I am that you did, my boy," said I; "where is your luggage? We must send to the hotel for it, for I shall make you up a bed here for to-night."
He made a feeble protest, which I at once overruled; a messenger was found and despatched to the hotel, and we settled down for a talk about old times which lasted far into the night. The next morning he went betimes to call upon his lawyers, and in the afternoon started for Fernleigh Hall (now his property), but not before we had decided that I should run down and spend Christmas there with him instead of accepting any of my three previous invitations.
"I expect to find everything in a terrible state," he said; "but in a week's time I shall be able to get things a little to rights, and if you will turn up on the twenty-third I will promise you at least a bed to sleep in, and you will be doing a most charitable action in preventing my first Christmas in England for many a year from being a lonely one."
So we settled it, and consequently at four o'clock on the afternoon of the twenty-third I was shaking hands again with Jack on the platform of the little country station a few miles from Fernleigh. The short day had already drawn to a close by the time we reached the house, so I could get only a general idea of its outside appearance. It was a large Elizabethan mansion, but evidently not in very good repair; however, the rooms into which we were ushered were bright and cheerful enough. We had a snug little dinner, and after it Jack proposed to show me over the house. Accordingly, preceded by a solemn old butler with a lamp, we wandered through interminable mazes of rambling passages, across great desolated halls, and in and out of dozens of tapestried and panelled bedrooms -- some of them with walls of enormous thickness, suggestive of all sorts of trap-doors and secret outlets -- till my brain became absolutely confused, and I felt as though, if my companions had abandoned me, I might have spent days in trying to find my way out of the labyrinth.
"You could accommodate an army here, Jack!" said I.
"Yes," he replied, "and in the good old days Fernleigh was known all over the county for its open hospitality; but now, as you see, the rooms are bare and almost unfurnished."
"You'll soon change all that when you bring home a nice little wife," I said; "the place only wants a lady to take care of it."
"No hope of it, my dear fellow, I'm sorry to say," replied Jack; "there is not enough money for that."
I knew how in our school-days he had worshipped with all a boy's devotion lovely Lilian Featherstone, the daughter of the rector of the parish, and I had heard from him at college that on his part at least their childish intimacy had ripened into something deeper; so I asked after her now, and soon discovered that his sojourn in the tropics had worked no change in his feelings in this respect, that he had already contrived to meet her and her father out riding since his return, and that be had good reason to hope from her blush of pleasure on seeing him that he had not been forgotten in his absence. But alas! her father had only his living to depend on, and Jack's uncle (a selfish profligate) had not only let everything go to ruin, but had also so encumbered the estate that, by the time all was paid off and it was entirely free, there was but little money left -- barely sufficient to support Jack himself, and certainly not enough to marry upon.
"So there is no hope of Lilian yet, you see," he concluded; "but I am young and strong; I can work, and I think she will wait for me. You shall see her on Thursday, for I have promised that we will dine with them then; they would have insisted on having me on Christmas day, but that I told them I had an old school-fellow coming down."
Just then we reached the door of the picture-gallery, and the old butler, having thrown it open, was proceeding to usher us in, but I said:
"No, Jack, let us leave this until tomorrow; we cannot see pictures well by this light. Let us go back to the fire, and you shall tell me that old legend of your family that was so much talked about at college; I never heard more than the merest fragments of it."
"There is nothing worth calling a legend," said Jack, as we settled down in