The Perfume of Egypt | Page 6

to him. He had at once thrown up his position and started for
England by the next steamer. Arriving in London too late to see his
lawyers that day, and having after his long absence no other friends
there, he had come, as he expressed it, to 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;