Masterman and Son
Copyright© 2024 by W. J. Dawson
Chapter 24: The New World
Against the main-line platform of Waterloo Station the special boat-train was drawn up. It was half-past eight in the morning. Almost momently suburban trains arrived, discharging their crowds of workers, who passed in long files toward the portals of the station, and were swallowed up, like so many tiny streams, in the great sea of London. Some of them turned their eyes curiously, perhaps a little yearningly, toward the boat-train; but for the most part these arriving throngs passed on with sedate, indifferent faces. The boat-train represented liberty—it was the symbol of things free and large; but their thoughts did not go so far as that. For them, life offered no release; there was no discharge in their warfare; to the end of their days they would tread the city streets, push their humble fortunes as they best could amid its clangour, and sink into rest at last beneath its gray skies.
Yet this morning the skies were not gray. The magic of June lay upon the city. The toil-worn metropolis had dressed itself in shining raiment, as if it would fain remind its departing sons that it also could be fair; as if it meant that this last vision of its fairness should be for them a rebuke and a torturing memory through all the years of absence.
A man and a woman crossed the platform, closely observing the labels on the windows of the carriages.
“Ah! here it is! ‘Masterman and party,’” said Bundy.
“They should be here by this time, shouldn’t they?” said Mrs. Bundy.
“No, there’s plenty of time—nearly half an hour.”
They stood beside the train, talking in eager tones.
“You ordered flowers for their cabin, didn’t you?”
“Yes; and I’ve done something else. I’ve got a suite of rooms for them. But they won’t know that till they get aboard.”
“Ah! I’m glad of that! I suppose it’s the last thing we can do for them.”
“Pray don’t be melancholy,” said Bundy, with an attempt at cheerfulness. “They’re going to be very happy. Let us see them off with smiles.”
“Ah! it’s very well to talk. But these partings make me miserable. I couldn’t have loved Arthur more if he’d been my own son. But he won’t want me any more now. He’ll have Elizabeth.”
“Well, aren’t you glad of it?”
“Oh yes, I’m glad. It was a beautiful wedding. And she is a sweet girl. But there’s nothing makes you feel so old as weddings, somehow. They make you realise how much of life lies behind you.”
This intimate talk was interrupted by the increasing crowd that thronged the platform.
“Well, cheer up! Here they come!” said Bundy.
And Mrs. Bundy, instantly superior to grievous meditations, ran to meet the little group, with smiles and tenderness. She made no scruple of kissing Arthur openly, embraced Elizabeth with fervour, wrung Vickars’s hand, to the last moment bought them books, papers, and magazines, and whispered various occult directions for the attainment of health and happiness into Arthur’s ear, much as she had done years before when he went to school for the first time. And then came the crowded sensations of the moment when the shrill whistle sounded, the wheels moved, and the train sped into the spacious sunshine.