Chapter IV

IT WAS JUST SUCH A DAY AS THIS; AND THE AIR WAS SWEET, AND LIFE WAS SWEET.

Mr. Weston smiled, and the stranger smiled also. These smiles were like question and answer, and appeared to be given and accepted as a satisfactory defence to the labourer's accusations. At the same time there stole into Mr. Weston's eyes the same curiously pondering look which had dwelt in them when he and the stranger were first conversing.

"It cannot be," he answered.

"Why not?" asked the stranger. "More wonderful things have happened."

Suddenly he cast aside his nonchalant air, and said earnestly:

"Look into the brook."

As though compelled by an influence he had no power to withstand, Mr. Weston gazed into the brook, and saw reflected there his own face and the face of the stranger who was bending over the water by his side. Their backs were turned towards the labourer, who, not doubting the stranger's sinister designs, prepared himself for any emergency by spitting on his hands and smoothing his side-locks. He was aware of the responsible position he occupied, and he settled with himself that in the event of the stranger pushing Mr. Weston into the water, the first thing for him to do would be to run away and cry, "Fire!"

"Take my hand," the stranger said, in a sad sweet tone. They joined hands, and the hand-clasp was reflected in the brook. "Why cannot it be? It is not always that the words which make a friendship are as intangible as the shadowy semblance of it which we see before us. Words are not all air--spoken, forgotten, lost for ever. Why cannot it be? Here we two old men stand, looking into the past; it might really be so. How many years ago was it--forty?--that two young men stood beside a brook as we stand now, looking into the future?" Mr. Weston's hand tightened upon that of his companion. "They loved each other then--do they love each other now! I can answer for one. They were friends in the best meaning of the word--are they friends now? Thirty odd years have past. It was just such a day as this; and the air was sweet and life was sweet. Do you remember?"

They raised their faces to each other; their lips quivered; their eyes were suffused with tears.

"Gerald!"

"Richard!"

"It is like a dream," said Mr. Weston, with his hand to his eyes.

In the meanwhile the labourer stood dumbfoundered at the strange turn the scene had taken; the word "Fire" hung upon his tongue, and he swallowed it disgustedly. He had wit enough to perceive that he had made a deplorable mistake, and he was about to slink away, hoping not to be noticed, when the stranger's voice arrested his steps.

"Well, my friend!" he said, with sly twinkles.

The labourer scratched his head penitentially; the expression in his face conveyed an unmistakable appeal to the stranger not to hit a man when he was down.

"Dense is no word to express the condition of the rustic mind," said the stranger, with a full enjoyment of his victory. "There is but one way of imparting intelligence to it." He took a small piece of silver from his pocket, and the labourer's eyes followed the motion of his hand, and the labourer's lips grew parched again. "There, my friend; drink Mr. Weston's health in the best cider in the county."

The labourer took to his heels, and slouched off, rarely mystified.

"Custos rotulorum!" cried the stranger after him; and at those dread words the labourer took to his heels, and was soon out of sight.

Left to themselves, the two old men, who had been friends when they were young, gazed at each other in silent wonder at this strange and unexpected reunion. They said but little at first; words were slow a-coming.

"Did you know I was here?" asked Mr. Weston.

"I had no suspicion of it."

"It will be a long time before I get over the surprise of this meeting, Gerald," said Mr. Weston; "I scarcely thought we should ever meet again in this world."

"We speculated on the after-life when we were boys," answered Gerald; "but whenever I thought of you, you were not dead to me. I believed, as I hoped, that you lived and were prosperous."

"You thought of me, then? I am glad to know that. Gerald, I am truly pleased to see you."

"Not more than I am to see you."

"And you have really thought of me often; but you were always faithful."

"You have obtruded yourself upon me in the midst of the strangest scenes. There have been times, of course, when the affairs of life were most pressing, that you have not been present to my mind; but you have come back to me invariably, and sometimes in strangely-familiar connection with circumstances of which you could not possibly have had any knowledge, not knowing where I was, or what path of life I was pursuing."

"The same old Gerald," said Mr. Weston, pressing his friend's hand with affection; "and the same old way of talking."

"Not quite clear, eh? You used to say, 'Say that again, Gerald;' but you understand me now?"

"Perfectly."

Gerald laughed, and Mr. Weston laughed with him, without apparent cause, as he had often done in the time gone by. But there was something contagious in Gerald's laugh, and, indeed, in his whole manner; especially when he was serious, as he was now, he seemed to possess the power of compelling his friend to be of his humour.

"Perfectly, you say! Well, but I scarcely understand myself. That is so always with me when I generalise."

"It used to be so with you in the old days--or you used to say it was."

"When I specialise, I can make the thing clearer, so I will specialise now. Once being in Australia----"

"Ah, you have much to tell me!"

"I am working with two mates on the goldfields--working from sunrise to sunset, in the hope of catching a golden reef, following a will-o'-the-wisp deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth, and never catching it, mind you. Being down a hundred and forty feet, we--my mates and I--are misled by a thin vein of quartz that takes a horizontal direction, and we resolve to drive a tunnel in its direction. There is a theory among the miners that these thin veins must lead to the reef itself, bearing the same relation to the prize they work for as the veins in the human body bear to the heart. One day I am alone in this tunnel, where no glimpse of daylight can be seen. Two candles throw a dim light around. I am a hundred and forty feet below the surface of the earth, and but for the human aid at the top of the claim, I am completely cut off from the world, for we are the only workers on this hill. In my eager hunt after gold I have not thought of you for many months. Suddenly, as I am working with my short pick, sitting on the floor of the tunnel--for there is not room to stand upright--a stone drops from above into a little pool of water which has gathered at the bottom of the shaft, and as the sound of the plash falls upon my ear, your image comes to my mind in connection with a time when we stood side by side dropping stones into a stream. Now I have made my meaning clear to myself."

"You have made it very clear to me."

"Tell me: when I have been in your mind, in what way have I presented myself? As I was?"

"Always as you were, Gerald--with your bright eyes and brown curly hair----"

"That is it. Not with white hair, as ours is now. I have thought of you in the same way. Memory does not reason. So that it really is something of a shock to come upon each other after so long an interval, and after so great a change."

They fell into silence. Tender memories were stirred to life, and visions of scenes in which they had played prominent parts rose before them. Old as they were, romance was not dead in their hearts. But suddenly, as they traced the current of their early lives, they gazed at each other with sad meaning. Each knew instinctively that the thoughts of the other had halted at a certain momentous epoch in their careers.