http://www.freeliterature.org) from page mages generously made available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/aurorafloyd02bradgoog project gutenberg has the other two volumes of this work. volume ii: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48021 volume iii: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48022 aurora floyd. by m. e. braddon, author of "lady audley's secret." in three volumes. vol. i. fifth edition. london: tinsley brothers, 18 catherine steeet, strand. 1863. dedicated to admiral and mrs. basden, with the affectionate regards of the author. contents. chapter i. how a rich banker married an actress ii. aurora iii. what became of the diamond bracelet iv. after the ball v. john mellish vi. rejected and accepted vii. aurora's strange pensioner viii. poor john mellish comes back again ix. how talbot bulstrode spent his christmas x. fighting the battle xi. at the château d'arques xii. steeve hargraves, the "softy" xiii. the spring meeting aurora floyd chapter i. how a rich banker married an actress. faint streaks of crimson glimmer here and there amidst the rich darkness of the kentish woods. autumn's red finger has been lightly laid upon the foliage--sparingly, as the artist puts the brighter tints into his picture: but the grandeur of an august sunset blazes upon the peaceful landscape, and lights all into glory. the encircling woods and wide lawn-like meadows, the still ponds of limpid water, the trim hedges, and the smooth winding roads; undulating hill-tops, melting into the purple distance; labouring men's cottages gleaming white from the surrounding foliage; solitary roadside inns with brown thatched roofs and moss-grown stacks of lop-sided chimneys; noble mansions hiding behind ancestral oaks; tiny gothic edifices; swiss and rustic lodges; pillared gates surmounted by escutcheons hewn in stone, and festooned with green wreaths of clustering ivy; village churches and prim school-houses: every object in the fair english prospect is steeped in a luminous haze, as the twilight shadows steal slowly upward from the dim recesses of shady woodland and winding lane, and every outline of the landscape darkens against the deepening crimson of the sky. upon the broad _façade_ of a mighty red-brick mansion, built in the favourite style of the early georgian era, the sinking sun lingers long, making gorgeous illumination. the long rows of narrow windows are all a-flame with the red light, and an honest homeward-tramping villager pauses once or twice in the roadway to glance across the smooth width of dewy lawn and tranquil lake, half fearful that there must be something more than natural in the glitter of those windows, and that maybe maister floyd's house is a-fire. the stately red-brick mansion belongs to maister floyd, as he is called in the honest _patois_ of the kentish rustics; to archibald martin floyd, of the great banking-house of floyd, floyd, and floyd, lombard street, city. the kentish rustics know very little of this city banking-house, for archibald martin, the senior partner, has long retired from any active share in the business, which is carried on entirely by his nephews, andrew and alexander floyd, both steady, middle-aged men, with families and country houses; both owing their fortune to the rich uncle, who had found places in his counting-house for them some thirty years before, when they were tall, raw-boned, sandy-haired, red-complexioned scottish youths, fresh from some unpronounceable village north of aberdeen. the young gentlemen signed their names mcfloyd when they first entered their uncle's counting-house; but they very soon followed that wise relative's example, and dropped the formidable prefix. "we've nae need to tell these sootherran bodies that we're scotche," alick remarked to his brother, as he wrote his name for the first time a. floyd, all short. the scottish banking-house had thriven wonderfully in the hospitable english capital. unprecedented success had waited upon every enterprise undertaken by the old-established and respected firm of floyd, floyd, and floyd. it had been floyd, floyd, and floyd for upwards of a century; for as one member of the house dropped off some greener branch shot out from the old tree; and there had never yet been any need to alter the treble repetition of the well-known name upon the brass plates that adorned the swinging mahogany doors of the banking-house. to this brass plate archibald martin floyd pointed when, some thirty years before the august evening of which i write, he took his raw-boned nephews for the first time across the threshold of his house of business. "see there, boys," he said; "look at the three names upon that brass plate. your uncle george is over fifty, and a bachelor,--that's the first name; our first cousin, stephen floyd, of calcutta, is going to sell out of the business before long,--that's the second name; the third is mine, and i'm thirty-seven years of age, remember, boys, and not likely to make a fool of myself by marrying. your names will be wanted by-and-by to fill the blanks; see that you keep them bright in the mean time; for let so much as one speck rest upon them, and they'll never be fit for that brass plate." perhaps the rugged scottish youths took this lesson to heart, or perhaps honesty was a natural and inborn virtue in the house of floyd. be it as it might, neither alick nor andrew disgraced their ancestry; and when stephen floyd, the east-indian merchant, sold out, and uncle george grew tired of business and took to building, as an elderly, bachelor-like hobby, the young men stepped into their relatives' shoes, and took the conduct of the business upon their broad northern shoulders. upon one point only archibald martin floyd had misled his nephews, and that point regarded himself. ten years after his address to the young men, at the sober age of seven-and-forty, the banker not only made a fool of himself by marrying, but, if indeed such things are foolish, sank still further from the proud elevation of worldly wisdom, by falling desperately in love with a beautiful but penniless woman, whom he brought home with him after a business-tour through the manufacturing districts, and with but little ceremony introduced to his relations and the county families round his kentish estate as his newly-wedded wife. the whole affair was so sudden, that these very county families had scarcely recovered from their surprise at reading a certain paragraph in the left-hand column of the 'times,' announcing the marriage of "archibald martin floyd, banker, of lombard street and felden woods, to eliza, only surviving daughter of captain prodder," when the bridegroom's travelling carriage dashed past the gothic lodge at his gates, along the avenue and under the great stone portico at the side of the house, and eliza floyd entered the banker's mansion, nodding good-naturedly to the bewildered servants, marshalled into the hall to receive their new mistress. the banker's wife was a tall young woman, of about thirty, with a dark complexion, and great flashing black eyes that lit up a face, which might otherwise have been unnoticeable, into the splendour of absolute beauty. let the reader recall one of those faces, whose sole loveliness lies in the glorious light of a pair of magnificent eyes, and remember how far they surpass all others in their power of fascination. the same amount of beauty frittered away upon a well-shaped nose, rosy pouting lips, symmetrical forehead, and delicate complexion, would make an ordinarily lovely woman; but concentrated in one nucleus, in the wondrous lustre of the eyes, it makes a divinity, a circe. you may meet the first any day of your life; the second, once in a lifetime. mr. floyd introduced his wife to the neighbouring gentry at a dinner-party which he gave soon after the lady's arrival at felden woods, as his country seat was called; and this ceremony very briefly despatched, he said no more about his choice either to his neighbours or his relations, who would have been very glad to hear how this unlooked-for marriage had come about, and who hinted the same to the happy bridegroom, but without effect. of course this very reticence on the part of archibald floyd himself only set the thousand tongues of rumour more busily to work. round beckenham and west wickham, near which villages felden woods was situated, there was scarcely any one debased and degraded station of life from which mrs. floyd was not reported to have sprung. she had been a factory-girl, and the silly old banker had seen her in the streets of manchester, with a coloured handkerchief on her head, a coral necklace round her throat, and shoeless and stockingless feet tramping in the mud: he had seen her thus, and had fallen incontinently in love with her, and offered to marry her there and then. she was an actress, and he had seen her on the manchester stage; nay, lower still, she was some poor performer, decked in dirty white muslin, red-cotton velvet, and spangles, who acted in a canvas booth, with a pitiful set of wandering vagabonds and a learned pig. sometimes they said she was an equestrian, and it was at astley's, and not in the manufacturing districts, that the banker had first seen her; nay, some there were, ready to swear that they themselves had beheld her leaping through gilded hoops, and dancing the cachuca upon six bare-backed steeds, in that sawdust-strewn arena. there were whispered rumours that were more cruel than these; rumours which i dare not even set down here, for the busy tongues that dealt so mercilessly with the name and fame of eliza floyd were not unbarbed by malice. it may be that some of the ladies had personal reasons for their spite against the bride, and that many a waning beauty, in those pleasant kentish mansions, had speculated upon the banker's income, and the advantages attendant upon a union with the owner of felden woods. the daring, disreputable creature, with not even beauty to recommend her,--for the kentish damsels scrupulously ignored eliza's wonderful eyes, and were sternly critical with her low forehead, doubtful nose, and rather wide mouth,--the artful, designing minx, at the mature age of nine-and-twenty, with her hair growing nearly down to her eye-brows, had contrived to secure to herself the hand and fortune of the richest man in kent--the man who had been hitherto so impregnable to every assault from bright eyes and rosy lips, that the most indefatigable of manoeuvring mothers had given him up in despair, and ceased to make visionary and alnaschar-like arrangements of the furniture in mr. floyd's great red-brick palace. the female portion of the community wondered indignantly at the supineness of the two scotch nephews, and the old bachelor brother, george floyd. why did not these people show a little spirit--institute a commission of lunacy, and shut their crazy relative in a madhouse? he deserved it. the ruined _noblesse_ of the faubourg st.-germain could not have abused a wealthy bonapartist with more vigorous rancour than these people employed in their ceaseless babble about the banker's wife. whatever she did was a new subject for criticism; even at that first dinner-party, though eliza had no more ventured to interfere with the arrangements of the man-cook and housekeeper than if she had been a visitor at buckingham palace, the angry guests found that everything had degenerated since "that woman" had entered the house. they hated the successful adventuress,--hated her for her beautiful eyes and her gorgeous jewels, the extravagant gifts of an adoring husband,--hated her for her stately figure and graceful movements, which never betrayed the rumoured obscurity of her origin,--hated her, above all, for her insolence in not appearing in the least afraid of the lofty members of that new circle in which she found herself. if she had meekly eaten the ample dish of humble-pie which these county families were prepared to set before her,--if she had licked the dust from their aristocratic shoes, courted their patronage, and submitted to be "taken up" by them,--they might perhaps in time have forgiven her. but she did none of this. if they called upon her, well and good; she was frankly and cheerfully glad to see them. they might find her in her gardening-gloves, with rumpled hair and a watering-pot in her hands, busy amongst her conservatories; and she would receive them as serenely as if she had been born in a palace, and accustomed to homage from her very babyhood. let them be as frigidly polite as they pleased, she was always easy, candid, gay, and good-natured. she would rattle away about her "dear old archy," as she presumed to call her benefactor and husband; or she would show her guests some new picture he had bought, and would dare--the impudent, ignorant, pretentious creature!--to talk about art, as if all the high-sounding jargon with which they tried to crush her was as familiar to her as to a royal academician. when etiquette demanded her returning these stately visits, she would drive boldly up to her neighbours' doors in a tiny basket-carriage, drawn by one rough pony; for it was a whim of this designing woman to affect simplicity in her tastes, and to abjure all display. she would take all the grandeur she met with as a thing of course, and chatter and laugh, with her flaunting theatrical animation, much to the admiration of misguided young men, who could not see the high-bred charms of her detractors, but who were never tired of talking of mrs. floyd's jolly manner and glorious eyes. i wonder whether poor eliza floyd knew all or half the cruel things that were said of her! i shrewdly suspect that she contrived somehow or other to hear them all, and that she rather enjoyed the fun. she had been used to a life of excitement, and felden woods might have seemed dull to her but for these ever fresh scandals. she took a malicious delight in the discomfiture of her enemies. "how badly they must have wanted you for a husband, archy," she said, "when they hate me so ferociously! poor portionless old maids, to think that i should snatch their prey from them! i know they think it a hard thing that they can't have me hanged, for marrying a rich man." but the banker was so deeply wounded when his adored wife repeated to him the gossip which she had heard from her maid, who was a stanch adherent to a kind, easy mistress, that eliza ever afterwards withheld these reports from him. they amused her; but they stung him to the quick. proud and sensitive, like almost all very honest and conscientious men, he could not endure that any creature should dare to befoul the name of the woman he loved so tenderly. what was the obscurity from which he had taken her to him? is a star less bright because it shines on a gutter as well as upon the purple bosom of the midnight sea? is a virtuous and generous-hearted woman less worthy because you find her making a scanty living out of the only industry she can exercise; and acting juliet to an audience of factory-hands, who give threepence apiece for the privilege of admiring and applauding her? yes, the murder must out; the malicious were not altogether wrong in their conjectures: eliza prodder was an actress; and it was on the dirty boards of a second-rate theatre in lancashire that the wealthy banker had first beheld her. archibald floyd nourished a traditional, passive, but sincere admiration for the british drama. yes, the _british_ drama; for he had lived in a day when the drama was british, and when 'george barnwell' and 'jane shore' were amongst the favourite works of art of a play-going public. how sad that we should have degenerated since those classic days, and that the graceful story of milwood and her apprentice-admirer is now so rarely set before us! imbued, therefore, with this admiration for the drama, mr. floyd, stopping for a night at this second-rate lancashire town, dropped into the dusty boxes of the theatre to witness the performance of 'romeo and juliet;' the heiress of the capulets being represented by miss eliza percival, alias prodder. i do not believe that miss percival was a good actress, or that she would ever have become distinguished in her profession; but she had a deep melodious voice, which rolled out the words of her author in a certain rich though rather monotonous music, pleasant to hear; and upon the stage she was very beautiful to look at, for her face lighted up the little theatre better than all the gas that the manager grudged to his scanty audiences. it was not the fashion in those days to make "sensation" dramas of shakespeare's plays. there was no 'hamlet' with the celebrated water-scene, and the danish prince taking a "header" to save poor weak-witted ophelia. in the little lancashire theatre it would have been thought a terrible sin against all canons of dramatic art, had othello or his ancient attempted to sit down during any part of the solemn performance. the hope of denmark was no long-robed norseman with flowing flaxen hair, but an individual who wore a short rusty black, cotton-velvet garment, shaped like a child's frock, and trimmed with bugles, which dropped off and were trodden upon at intervals throughout the performance. the simple actors held, that tragedy, to be tragedy, must be utterly unlike anything that had ever happened beneath the sun. and eliza prodder patiently trod the old and beaten track, far too good-natured, light-hearted, and easy-going a creature to attempt any foolish interference with the crookedness of the times, which she was not born to set right. what can i say, then, about her performance of the impassioned italian girl? she wore white satin and spangles, the spangles sewn upon the dirty hem of her dress, in the firm belief, common to all provincial actresses, that spangles are an antidote to dirt. she was laughing and talking in the white-washed little green-room the very minute before she ran on to the stage to wail for her murdered kinsman and her banished lover. they tell us that macready began to be richelieu at three o'clock in the afternoon, and that it was dangerous to approach or to speak to him between that hour and the close of the performance. so dangerous, indeed, that surely none but the daring and misguided gentleman who once met the great tragedian in a dark passage, and gave him "good morrow, 'mac,'" would have had the temerity to attempt it. but miss percival did not take her profession very deeply to heart; the lancashire salaries barely paid for the physical wear and tear of early rehearsals and long performances; how then, for that mental exhaustion of the true artist who lives in the character he represents? the easy-going comedians with whom eliza acted made friendly remarks to each other on their private affairs in the intervals of the most vengeful discourse; speculated upon the amount of money in the house in audible undertones during the pauses of the scene; and when hamlet wanted horatio down at the footlights to ask him if he "marked that," it was likely enough that the prince's confidant was up the stage telling polonius of the shameful way in which his landlady stole the tea and sugar. it was not, therefore, miss percival's acting that fascinated the banker. archibald floyd knew that she was as bad an actress as ever played the leading tragedy and comedy for five-and-twenty shillings a week. he had seen miss o'neil in that very character, and it moved him to a pitying smile as the factory-hands applauded poor eliza's poison scene. but for all this he fell in love with her. it was a repetition of the old story. it was arthur pendennis at the little chatteris theatre bewitched and bewildered by miss fotheringay all over again. only that instead of a fickle, impressionable boy, it was a sober, steady-going business-man of seven-and-forty, who had never felt one thrill of emotion in looking on a woman's face until that night,--until that night,--and from that night the world only held for him one being, and life only had one object. he went the next evening, and the next; and then contrived to scrape acquaintance with some of the actors at a tavern next the theatre. they sponged upon him cruelly, these seedy comedians, and allowed him to pay for unlimited glasses of brandy-and-water, and flattered and cajoled him, and plucked out the heart of his mystery; and then went back to eliza percival, and told her that she had dropped into a good thing, for that an old chap with no end of money had fallen over head and ears in love with her, and that if she played her cards well, he would marry her to-morrow. they pointed him out to her through a hole in the green curtain, sitting almost alone in the shabby boxes, waiting for the play to begin, and for her black eyes to shine upon him once more. eliza laughed at her conquest; it was only one amongst many such, which had all ended alike,--leading to nothing better than the purchase of a box on her benefit night, or a bouquet left for her at the stage-door. she did not know the power of first love upon a man of seven-and-forty. before the week was out, archibald floyd had made her a solemn offer of marriage. he had heard a great deal about her from her fellow-performers, and had heard nothing but good. temptations resisted; insidious proffers of jewels and gewgaws indignantly declined; graceful acts of gentle womanly charity done in secret; independence preserved through all poverty and trial;--they told him a hundred stories of her goodness, that brought the blood to his face with proud and generous emotion. and she herself told him the simple history of her life: told him that she was the daughter of a merchant-captain called prodder; that she was born at liverpool; that she remembered little of her father, who was almost always at sea--nor of a brother, three years older than herself, who quarrelled with his father, the merchant-captain, and ran away, and was never heard of again--nor of her mother, who died when she, eliza, was four years old. the rest was told in a few words. she was taken into the family of an aunt who kept a grocer's shop in miss prodder's native town. she learnt artificial flower-making, and did not take to the business. she went often to the liverpool theatres, and thought she would like to go upon the stage. being a daring and energetic young person, she left her aunt's house one day, walked straight to the stage-manager of one of the minor theatres, and asked him to let her appear as lady macbeth. the man laughed at her, but told her that, in consideration of her fine figure and black eyes, he would give her fifteen shillings a week to "walk on," as he technically called the business of the ladies who wander on to the stage, sometimes dressed as villagers, sometimes in court costume of calico trimmed with gold, and stare vaguely at whatever may be taking place in the scene. from "walking on," eliza came to play minor parts, indignantly refused by her superiors; from these she plunged ambitiously into the tragic lead,--and thus for nine years pursued the even tenour of her way; until, close upon her nine-and-twentieth birthday, fate threw the wealthy banker across her pathway, and in the parish church of a small town in the potteries the black-eyed actress exchanged the name of prodder for that of floyd. she had accepted the rich man partly because, moved by a sentiment of gratitude for the generous ardour of his affection, she was inclined to like him better than any one else she knew; and partly in accordance with the advice of her theatrical friends, who told her, with more candour than elegance, that she would be a jolly fool to let such a chance escape her; but at the time she gave her hand to archibald martin floyd, she had no idea whatever of the magnitude of the fortune he had invited her to share. he told her that he was a banker, and her active mind immediately evoked the image of the only banker's wife she had ever known: a portly lady, who wore silk gowns, lived in a square stuccoed house with green blinds, kept a cook and housemaid, and took three box-tickets for miss percival's benefit. when, therefore, the doting husband loaded his handsome bride with diamond bracelets and necklaces, and with silks and brocades that were stiff and unmanageable from their very richness,--when he carried her straight from the potteries to the isle of wight, and lodged her in spacious apartments at the best hotel in ryde, and flung his money here and there, as if he had carried the lamp of aladdin in his coat-pocket,--eliza remonstrated with her new master, fearing that his love had driven him mad, and that this alarming extravagance was the first outburst of insanity. it seemed a repetition of the dear old burleigh story when archibald floyd took his wife into the long picture-gallery at felden woods. she clasped her hands for frank womanly joy as she looked at the magnificence about her. she compared herself to the humble bride of the earl, and fell on her knees and did theatrical homage to her lord. "o archy," she said, "it is all too good for me! i am afraid i shall die of my grandeur, as the poor girl pined away at burleigh house." in the full maturity of womanly loveliness, rich in health, freshness, and high spirits, how little could eliza dream that she would hold even a briefer lease of these costly splendours than the bride of burleigh had done before her! now the reader, being acquainted with eliza's antecedents, may perhaps find in them some clue to the insolent ease and well-bred audacity with which mrs. floyd treated the second-rate county families, who were bent upon putting her to confusion. she was an actress: for nine years she had lived in that ideal world in which dukes and marquises are as common as butchers and bakers in work-a-day life; in which, indeed, a nobleman is generally a poor mean-spirited individual, who gets the worst of it on every hand, and is contemptuously entreated by the audience on account of his rank. how should she be abashed on entering the drawing-rooms of these kentish mansions, when for nine years she had walked nightly on to a stage to be the focus of every eye, and to entertain her guests the evening through? was it likely she was to be over-awed by the lenfields, who were coachbuilders in park lane, or the miss manderlys, whose father had made his money by a patent for starch,--she, who had received king duncan at the gates of her castle, and had sat on a rickety throne dispensing condescending hospitality to the obsequious thanes at dunsinane? so, do what they would, they were unable to subdue this base intruder; while, to add to their mortification, it every day became more obvious that mr. and mrs. floyd made one of the happiest couples who had ever worn the bonds of matrimony, and changed them into garlands of roses. if this were a very romantic story, it would be perhaps only proper for eliza floyd to pine in her gilded bower, and misapply her energies in weeping for some abandoned lover, deserted in an evil hour of ambitious madness. but as my story is a true one,--not only true in a general sense, but strictly true as to the leading facts which i am about to relate,--and as i could point out, in a certain county, far northward of the lovely kentish woods, the very house in which the events i shall describe took place, i am bound also to be truthful here, and to set down as a fact that the love which eliza floyd bore for her husband was as pure and sincere an affection as ever man need hope to win from the generous heart of a good woman. what share gratitude may have had in that love, i cannot tell. if she lived in a handsome house, and was waited on by attentive and deferential servants; if she ate of delicate dishes, and drank costly wines; if she wore rich dresses and splendid jewels, and lolled on the downy cushions of a carriage, drawn by high-mettled horses, and driven by a coachman with powdered hair; if, wherever she went, all outward semblance of homage was paid to her; if she had but to utter a wish, and, swift as the stroke of some enchanter's wand, that wish was gratified,--she knew that she owed all to her husband, archibald floyd; and it may be that she grew not unnaturally to associate him with every advantage she enjoyed, and to love him for the sake of these things. such a love as this may appear a low and despicable affection when compared to the noble sentiment entertained by the nancys of modern romance for the bill sykeses of their choice; and no doubt eliza floyd ought to have felt a sovereign contempt for the man who watched her every whim, who gratified her every caprice, and who loved and honoured her as much, _ci-devant_ provincial actress though she was, as he could have done had she descended the steps of the loftiest throne in christendom to give him her hand. she was grateful to him, she loved him, and she made him perfectly happy; so happy that the strong-hearted scotchman was sometimes almost panic-stricken at the contemplation of his own prosperity, and would fall down on his knees and pray that this blessing might not be taken from him; that, if it pleased providence to afflict him, he might be stripped of every shilling of his wealth, and left penniless, to begin the world anew,--but with her. alas, it was this blessing, of all others, that he was to lose! for a year eliza and her husband lived this happy life at felden woods. he wished to take her on the continent, or to london for the season; but she could not bear to leave her lovely kentish home. she was happier than the day was long amongst her gardens, and pineries, and graperies, her dogs and horses, and her poor. to these last she seemed an angel, descended from the skies to comfort them. there were cottages from which the prim daughters of the second-rate county families fled, tract in hand, discomfited and abashed by the black looks of the half-starved inmates; but upon whose doorways the shadow of mrs. floyd was as the shadow of a priest in a catholic country--always sacred, yet ever welcome and familiar. she had the trick of making these people like her before she set to work to reform their evil habits. at an early stage of her acquaintance with them, she was as blind to the dirt and disorder of their cottages as she would have been to a shabby carpet in the drawing-room of a poor duchess; but by-and-by she would artfully hint at this and that little improvement in the _ménages_ of her pensioners, until in less than a month, without having either lectured or offended, she had worked an entire transformation. mrs. floyd was frightfully artful in her dealings with these erring peasants. instead of telling them at once in a candid and christian-like manner that they were all dirty, degraded, ungrateful, and irreligious, she diplomatized and finessed with them as if she had been canvassing the county. she made the girls regular in their attendance at church by means of new bonnets and smartly bound prayer-books; she kept married men out of the public-houses by bribes of tobacco to smoke at home, and once (oh, horror!) by the gift of a bottle of gin for moderate and social consumption in the family circle. she cured a dirty chimney-piece by the present of a gaudy china vase to its proprietress, and a slovenly hearth by means of a brass fender. she repaired a shrewish temper with a new gown, and patched up a family breach of long standing with a chintz waistcoat. but one brief year after her marriage,--while busy landscape-gardeners were working at the improvements she had planned; while the steady process of reformation was slowly but surely progressing amongst the grateful recipients of her bounty; while the eager tongues of her detractors were still waging war upon her fair fame; while archibald floyd rejoiced as he held a baby-daughter in his arms,--without one forewarning symptom to break the force of the blow, the light slowly faded out of those glorious eyes, never to shine again on this side of eternity, and archibald martin floyd was a widower. chapter ii. aurora. the child which eliza floyd left behind her, when she was so suddenly taken away from all earthly prosperity and happiness, was christened aurora. the romantic-sounding name had been a fancy of poor eliza's; and there was no caprice of hers, however trifling, that had not always been sacred with her adoring husband, and that was not doubly sacred now. the actual intensity of the widower's grief was known to no creature in this lower world. his nephews and his nephews' wives paid him pertinacious visits of condolence; nay, one of these nieces by marriage, a good motherly creature, devoted to her husband, insisted on seeing and comforting the stricken man. heaven knows whether her tenderness did convey any comfort to that shipwrecked soul! she found him like a man who had suffered from a stroke of paralysis, torpid, almost imbecile. perhaps she took the wisest course that could possibly have been taken. she said little to him upon the subject of his affliction; but visited him frequently, patiently sitting opposite to him for hours at a time, he and she talking of all manner of easy conventional topics,--the state of the country, the weather, a change in the ministry, and such subjects as were so far remote from the grief of his life, that a less careful hand than mrs. alexander floyd's could have scarcely touched upon the broken chords of that ruined instrument, the widower's heart. it was not until six months after eliza's death that mrs. alexander ventured to utter her name; but when she did speak of her, it was with no solemn hesitation, but tenderly and familiarly, as if she had been accustomed to talk of the dead. she saw at once that she had done right. the time had come for the widower to feel relief in speaking of the lost one; and from that hour mrs. alexander became a favourite with her uncle. years after, he told her that, even in the sullen torpor of his grief, he had had a dim consciousness that she pitied him, and that she was "a good woman." this good woman came that very evening into the big room, where the banker sat by his lonely hearth, with a baby in her arms,--a pale-faced child, with great wondering black eyes, which stared at the rich man in sombre astonishment; a solemn-faced, ugly baby, which was to grow by-and-by into aurora floyd, the heroine of my story. that pale, black-eyed baby became henceforth the idol of archibald martin floyd, the one object in all this wide universe for which it seemed worth his while to endure life. from the day of his wife's death he had abandoned all active share in the lombard-street business, and he had now neither occupation nor delight, save in waiting upon the prattlings and humouring the caprices of this infant daughter. his love for her was a weakness, almost verging upon a madness. had his nephews been very designing men, they might perhaps have entertained some vague ideas of that commission of lunacy for which the outraged neighbours were so anxious. he grudged the hired nurses their offices of love about the person of his child. he watched them furtively, fearful lest they should be harsh with her. all the ponderous doors in the great house at felden woods could not drown the feeblest murmur of that infant voice to those ever-anxious, loving ears. he watched her growth as a child watches an acorn it hopes to rear to an oak. he repeated her broken baby-syllables till people grew weary of his babble about the child. of course the end of all this was, that, in the common acceptation of the term, aurora was spoiled. we do not say a flower is spoiled because it is reared in a hot-house where no breath of heaven can visit it too roughly; but then, certainly, the bright exotic is trimmed and pruned by the gardener's merciless hand, while aurora shot whither she would, and there was none to lop the wandering branches of that luxuriant nature. she said what she pleased; thought, spoke, acted as she pleased; learned what she pleased; and she grew into a bright impetuous being, affectionate and generous-hearted as her mother, but with some touch of native fire blended in her mould that stamped her as original. it is the common habit of ugly babies to grow into handsome women, and so it was with aurora floyd. at seventeen she was twice as beautiful as her mother had been at nine-and-twenty, but with much the same irregular features, lighted up by a pair of eyes that were like the stars of heaven, and by two rows of peerlessly white teeth. you rarely, in looking at her face, could get beyond these eyes and teeth; for they so dazzled and blinded you that they defied you to criticise the doubtful little nose, or the width of the smiling mouth. what if those masses of blue-black hair were brushed away from a forehead too low for the common standard of beauty? a phrenologist would have told you that the head was a noble one; and a sculptor would have added that it was set upon the throat of a cleopatra. miss floyd knew very little of her poor mother's history. there was a picture in crayons hanging in the banker's sanctum sanctorum which represented eliza in the full flush of her beauty and prosperity; but the portrait told nothing of the history of its original, and aurora had never heard of the merchant-captain, the poor liverpool lodging, the grim aunt who kept a chandler's shop, the artificial flower-making, and the provincial stage. she had never been told that her maternal grandfather's name was prodder, and that her mother had played juliet to an audience of factory hands, for the moderate and sometimes uncertain stipend of four-and-twopence a night. the county families accepted and made much of the rich banker's heiress; but they were not slow to say that aurora was her mother's own daughter, and had the taint of the play-acting and horse-riding, the spangles and the sawdust, strong in her nature. the truth of the matter is, that before miss floyd emerged from the nursery she evinced a very decided tendency to become what is called "fast." at six years of age she rejected a doll, and asked for a rocking-horse. at ten she could converse fluently upon the subject of pointers, setters, fox-hounds, harriers, and beagles, though she drove her governess to the verge of despair by persistently forgetting under what roman emperor jerusalem was destroyed, and who was legate from the pope at the time of catherine of arragon's divorce. at eleven she talked unreservedly of the horses in the lenfield stables as a pack of screws; at twelve she contributed her half-crown to a derby sweepstakes amongst her father's servants, and triumphantly drew the winning horse; and at thirteen she rode across country with her cousin andrew, who was a member of the croydon hunt. it was not without grief that the banker watched his daughter's progress in these doubtful accomplishments; but she was so beautiful, so frank and fearless, so generous, affectionate, and true, that he could not bring himself to tell her that she was not all he could desire her to be. if he could have governed or directed that impetuous nature, he would have had her the most refined and elegant, the most perfect and accomplished of her sex; but he could not do this, and he was fain to thank god for her as she was, and to indulge her every whim. alexander floyd's eldest daughter, lucy, first cousin, once removed, to aurora, was that young lady's friend and confidante, and came now and then from her father's villa at fulham to spend a month at felden woods. but lucy floyd had half a dozen brothers and sisters, and was brought up in a very different manner to the heiress. she was a fair-faced, blue-eyed, rosy-lipped, golden-haired little girl, who thought felden woods a paradise upon earth, and aurora more fortunate than the princess royal of england, or titania, queen of the fairies. she was direfully afraid of her cousin's ponies and newfoundland dogs, and had a firm conviction that sudden death held his throne within a certain radius of a horse's heels; but she loved and admired aurora, after the manner common to these weaker natures, and accepted miss floyd's superb patronage and protection as a thing of course. the day came when some dark but undefined cloud hovered about the narrow home-circle at felden woods. there was a coolness between the banker and his beloved child. the young lady spent half her time on horseback, scouring the shady lanes round beckenham, attended only by her groom--a dashing young fellow, chosen by mr. floyd on account of his good looks for aurora's especial service. she dined in her own room after these long, lonely rides, leaving her father to eat his solitary meal in the vast dining-room, which seemed to be fully occupied when she sat in it, and desolately empty without her. the household at felden woods long remembered one particular june evening on which the storm burst forth between the father and daughter. aurora had been absent from two o'clock in the afternoon until sunset, and the banker paced the long stone terrace with his watch in his hand, the figures on the dial-plate barely distinguishable in the twilight, waiting for his daughter's coming home. he had sent his dinner away untouched; his newspapers lay uncut upon the table, and the household spies, we call servants, told each other how his hand had shaken so violently that he had spilled half a decanter of wine over the polished mahogany in attempting to fill his glass. the housekeeper and her satellites crept into the hall, and looked through the half-glass doors at the anxious watcher on the terrace. the men in the stables talked of "the row," as they called this terrible breach between father and child; and when at last horses' hoofs were heard in the long avenue, and miss floyd reined in her thorough-bred chestnut at the foot of the terrace-steps, there was a lurking audience hidden here and there in the evening shadow, eager to hear and see. but there was very little to gratify these prying eyes and ears. aurora sprang lightly to the ground before the groom could dismount to assist her, and the chestnut, with heaving and foam-flecked sides, was led off to the stable. mr. floyd watched the groom and the two horses as they disappeared through the great gates leading to the stable-yard, and then said very quietly, "you don't use that animal well, aurora. a six hours' ride is neither good for her nor for you. your groom should have known better than to allow it." he led the way into his study, telling his daughter to follow him, and they were closeted together for upwards of an hour. early the next morning miss floyd's governess departed from felden woods, and between breakfast and luncheon the banker paid a visit to the stables, and examined his daughter's favourite chestnut mare, a beautiful filly all bone and muscle, that had been trained for a racer. the animal had strained a sinew, and walked lame. mr. floyd sent for his daughter's groom, and paid and dismissed him on the spot. the young fellow made no remonstrance, but went quietly to his quarters, took off his livery, packed a carpet-bag, and walked away from the house without bidding good-bye to his fellow-servants, who resented the affront, and pronounced him a surly brute who had always been too high for this business. three days after this, upon the 14th of june, 1856, mr. floyd and his daughter left felden woods for paris, where aurora was placed at a very expensive and exclusive protestant finishing school, kept by the demoiselles lespard, in a stately mansion _entre cour et jardin_ in the rue saint-dominique, there to complete her very imperfect education. for a year and two months miss floyd has been away at this parisian finishing school; it is late in the august of 1857, and again the banker walks upon the long stone terrace in front of the narrow windows of his red-brick mansion, this time waiting for aurora's arrival from paris. the servants have expressed considerable wonder at his not crossing the channel to fetch his daughter, and they think the dignity of the house somewhat lowered by miss floyd travelling unattended. "a poor dear young thing, that knows no more of this wicked world than a blessed baby," said the housekeeper, "all alone amongst a pack of moustachioed frenchmen!" archibald martin floyd had grown an old man in one day--that terrible and unexpected day of his wife's death; but even the grief of that bereavement had scarcely seemed to affect him so strongly as the loss of his daughter aurora during the fourteen months of her absence from felden woods. perhaps it was that at sixty-five years of age he was less able to bear even a lesser grief; but those who watched him closely, declared that he seemed as much dejected by his daughter's absence as he could well have been by her death. even now, that he paces up and down the broad terrace, with the landscape stretching wide before him, and melting vaguely away under that veil of crimson glory shed upon all things by the sinking sun; even now that he hourly, nay, almost momentarily, expects to clasp his only child in his arms, archibald floyd seems rather nervously anxious than joyfully expectant. he looks again and again at his watch, and pauses in his walk to listen to beckenham church clock striking eight; his ears are preternaturally alert to every sound, and give him instant warning of carriage-wheels far off upon the wide high-road. all the agitation and anxiety he has felt for the last week has been less than the concentrated fever of this moment. will it pass on, that carriage, or stop at the lodge-gates? surely his heart could never beat so loud save by some wondrous magnetism of fatherly love and hope. the carriage stops. he hears the clanking of the gates; the crimson-tinted landscape grows dim and blurred before his eyes, and he knows no more till a pair of impetuous arms are twined about his neck, and aurora's face is hidden on his shoulder. it was a paltry hired carriage which miss floyd arrived in, and it drove away as soon as she had alighted, and the small amount of luggage she brought had been handed to the eager servants. the banker led his child into the study, where they had held that long conference fourteen months before. a lamp burned upon the library table, and it was to this light that archibald floyd led his daughter. a year had changed the girl to a woman--a woman with great hollow black eyes, and pale haggard cheeks. the course of study at the parisian finishing school had evidently been too hard for the spoiled heiress. "aurora, aurora," the old man cried piteously, "how ill you look! how altered! how----" she laid her hand lightly yet imperiously upon his lips. "don't speak of me," she said, "i shall recover; but you--you, father--you too are changed." she was as tall as her father, and, resting her hands upon his shoulders, she looked at him long and earnestly. as she looked, the tears welled slowly up to her eyes which had been dry before, and poured silently down her haggard cheeks. "my father, my devoted father," she said in a broken voice, "if my heart was made of adamant, i think it might break when i see the change in this beloved face." the old man checked her with a nervous gesture, a gesture almost of terror. "not one word, not one word, aurora," he said hurriedly; "at least, only one. that person--he is dead?" "he is." chapter iii. what became of the diamond bracelet. aurora's relatives were not slow to exclaim upon the change for the worse which a twelvemonth in paris had made in their young kinswoman. i fear that the demoiselles lespard suffered considerably in reputation amongst the circle round felden woods from miss floyd's impaired good looks. she was out of spirits too, had no appetite, slept badly, was nervous and hysterical, no longer took any interest in her dogs and horses, and was altogether an altered creature. mrs. alexander floyd declared it was perfectly clear that these cruel frenchwomen had worked poor aurora to a shadow: the girl was not used to study, she said; she had been accustomed to exercise and open air, and no doubt had pined sadly in the close atmosphere of a schoolroom. but aurora's was one of those impressionable natures which quickly recover from any depressing influence. early in september lucy floyd came to felden woods, and found her handsome cousin almost entirely recovered from the drudgery of the parisian _pension_, but still very loth to talk much of that seminary. she answered lucy's eager questions very curtly; said that she hated the demoiselles lespard and the rue saint-dominique, and that the very memory of paris was disagreeable to her. like most young ladies with black eyes and blue-black hair, miss floyd was a good hater; so lucy forbore to ask for more information upon what was so evidently an unpleasant subject to her cousin. poor lucy had been mercilessly well educated; she spoke half a dozen languages, knew all about the natural sciences, had read gibbon, niebuhr, and arnold, from the title-page to the printer's name, and looked upon the heiress as a big brilliant dunce; so she quietly set down aurora's dislike to paris to that young lady's distaste for tuition, and thought little more about it. any other reasons for miss floyd's almost shuddering horror of her parisian associations lay far beyond lucy's simple power of penetration. the fifteenth of september was aurora's birthday, and archibald floyd determined upon this, the nineteenth anniversary of his daughter's first appearance on this mortal scene, to give an entertainment, whereat his county neighbours and town acquaintance might alike behold and admire the beautiful heiress. mrs. alexander came to felden woods to superintend the preparations for this birthday ball. she drove aurora and lucy into town to order the supper and the band, and to choose dresses and wreaths for the young ladies. the banker's heiress was sadly out of place in a milliner's showroom; but she had that rapid judgment as to colour, and that perfect taste in form, which bespeak the soul of an artist; and while poor mild lucy was giving endless trouble, and tumbling innumerable boxes of flowers, before she could find any head-dress in harmony with her rosy cheeks and golden hair, aurora, after one brief glance at the bright _parterres_ of painted cambric, pounced upon a crown-shaped garland of vivid scarlet berries, with drooping and tangled leaves of dark shining green, that looked as if they had been just plucked from a running streamlet. she watched lucy's perplexities with a half-compassionate, half-contemptuous smile. "look at that poor bewildered child," she said; "i know that she would like to put pink and yellow against her golden hair. why, you silly lucy, don't you know that yours is the beauty which really does _not_ want adornment? a few pearls or forget-me-not blossoms, or a crown of water-lilies and a cloud of white areophane, would make you look a sylphide; but i dare say you would like to wear amber satin and cabbage-roses." from the milliner's they drove to mr. gunter's in berkeley square, at which world-renowned establishment mrs. alexander commanded those preparations of turkeys preserved in jelly, hams cunningly embalmed in rich wines and broths, and other specimens of that sublime art of confectionery which hovers midway between sleight-of-hand and cookery, and in which the berkeley square professor is without a rival. when poor thomas babington macaulay's new-zealander shall come to ponder over the ruins of st. paul's, perhaps he will visit the remains of this humbler temple in berkeley square, and wonder at the ice-pails and jelly-moulds, the refrigerators and stewpans, the hot plates long cold and unheeded, and all the mysterious paraphernalia of the dead art. from the west end mrs. alexander drove to charing cross; she had a commission to execute at dent's,--the purchase of a watch for one of her boys, who was just off to eton. aurora threw herself wearily back in the carriage while mrs. alexander and lucy stopped at the watchmaker's. it was to be observed that, although miss floyd had recovered much of her old brilliancy and gaiety of temper, a certain gloomy shade would sometimes steal over her countenance when she was left to herself for a few minutes; a darkly reflective expression quite foreign to her face. this shadow fell upon her beauty now as she looked out of the open window, moodily watching the passers-by. mrs. alexander was a long time making her purchase; and aurora had sat nearly a quarter of an hour blankly staring at the shifting figures in the crowd, when a man hurrying by was attracted by her face at the carriage window, and started, as if at some great surprise. he passed on, however, and walked rapidly towards the horse guards; but before he turned the corner, came to a dead stop, stood still for two or three minutes scratching the back of his head reflectively with his big, bare hand, and then walked slowly back towards mr. dent's emporium. he was a broad-shouldered, bull-necked, sandy-whiskered fellow, wearing a cut-away coat and a gaudy neckerchief, and smoking a huge cigar, the rank fumes of which struggled with a very powerful odour of rum-and-water recently imbibed. this gentleman's standing in society was betrayed by the smooth head of a bull-terrier, whose round eyes peeped out of the pocket of his cut-away coat, and by a blenheim spaniel carried under his arm. he was the very last person, amongst all the souls between cockspur street and the statue of king charles, who seemed likely to have anything to say to miss aurora floyd; nevertheless he walked deliberately up to the carriage, and, planting his elbows upon the door, nodded to her with friendly familiarity. "well," he said, without inconveniencing himself by the removal of the rank cigar, "how do?" after which brief salutation he relapsed into silence, and rolled his great brown eyes slowly here and there, in contemplative examination of miss floyd and the vehicle in which she sat; even carrying his powers of observation so far as to take particular notice of a plethoric morocco-bag lying on the back seat, and to inquire casually whether there was "anythink wallable in the old party's redicule?" but aurora did not allow him long for this leisurely employment; for looking at him with her eyes flashing forked lightnings of womanly fury, and her face crimson with indignation, she asked him in a sharp spasmodic tone whether he had anything to say to her. he had a great deal to say to her; but as he put his head in at the carriage window and made his communication, whatever it might be, in a rum-and-watery whisper, it reached no ears but those of aurora herself. when he had done whispering, he took a greasy leather-covered account-book, and a short stump of lead-pencil, considerably the worse for chewing, from his breast pocket, and wrote two or three lines upon a leaf, which he tore out and handed to aurora. "this is the address," he said; "you won't forget to send?" she shook her head, and looked away from him--looked away with an irrepressible gesture of disgust and loathing. "you wouldn't like to buy a spannel dawg," said the man, holding the sleek, curly, black-and-tan animal up to the carriage window; "or a french poodle what'll balance a bit of bread on his nose while you count ten? hay? you should have 'em a bargain--say fifteen pound the two." "no!" at this moment mrs. alexander emerged from the watchmaker's, just in time to catch a glimpse of the man's broad shoulders as he moved sulkily away from the carriage. "has that person been begging of you, aurora?" she asked, as they drove off. "no. i once bought a dog of him, and he recognized me." "and wanted you to buy one to-day?" "yes." miss floyd sat gloomily silent during the whole of the homeward drive, looking out of the carriage window, and not deigning to take any notice whatever of her aunt and cousin. i do not know whether it was in submission to that palpable superiority of force and vitality in aurora's nature which seemed to set her above her fellows, or simply in that inherent spirit of toadyism common to the best of us; but mrs. alexander and her fair-haired daughter always paid mute reverence to the banker's heiress, and were silent when it pleased her, or conversed at her royal will. i verily believe that it was aurora's eyes rather than archibald martin floyd's thousands which over-awed all her kinsfolk; and that if she had been a street-sweeper dressed in rags, and begging for halfpence, people would have feared her and made way for her, and bated their breath when she was angry. the trees in the long avenue of felden woods were hung with sparkling coloured lamps, to light the guests who came to aurora's birthday festival. the long range of windows on the ground-floor was ablaze with light; the crash of the band burst every now and then above the perpetual roll of carriage wheels and the shouted repetition of visitors' names, and pealed across the silent woods: through the long vista of half a dozen rooms opening one into another, the waters of a fountain, sparkling with a hundred hues in the light, glittered amid the dark floral wealth of a conservatory filled with exotics. great clusters of tropical plants were grouped in the spacious hall; festoons of flowers hung about the vapoury curtains in the arched doorways. light and splendour were everywhere around; and amid all, and more splendid than all, in the dark grandeur of her beauty, aurora floyd, crowned with scarlet, and robed in white, stood by her father's side. amongst the guests who arrive latest at mr. floyd's ball are two officers from windsor, who have driven across country in a mail-phaeton. the elder of these two, and the driver of the vehicle, has been very discontented and disagreeable throughout the journey. "if i'd had the remotest idea of the distance, maldon," he said, "i'd have seen you and your kentish banker very considerably inconvenienced before i would have consented to victimize my horses for the sake of this snobbish party." "but it won't be a snobbish party," answered the young man impetuously. "archibald floyd is the best fellow in christendom, and as for his daughter----" "oh, of course, a divinity, with fifty thousand pounds for her fortune; all of which will no doubt be very tightly settled upon herself if she is ever allowed to marry a penniless scapegrace like francis lewis maldon, of her majesty's 11th hussars. however, i don't want to stand in your way, my boy. go in and win, and my blessing be upon your virtuous endeavours. i can imagine the young scotchwoman--red hair (of course you'll call it auburn), large feet, and freckles!" "aurora floyd--red hair and freckles!" the young officer laughed aloud at the stupendous joke. "you'll see her in a quarter of an hour, bulstrode," he said. talbot bulstrode, captain of her majesty's 11th hussars, had consented to drive his brother-officer from windsor to beckenham, and to array himself in his uniform, in order to adorn therewith the festival at felden woods, chiefly because, having at two-and-thirty years of age run through all the wealth of life's excitements and amusements, and finding himself a penniless spendthrift in this species of coin, though well enough off for mere sordid riches, he was too tired of himself and the world to care much whither his friends and comrades led him. he was the eldest son of a wealthy cornish baronet, whose ancestor had received his title straight from the hands of scottish king james, when baronetcies first came into fashion; the same fortunate ancestor being near akin to a certain noble, erratic, unfortunate, and injured gentleman called walter raleigh, and by no means too well used by the same scottish james. now of all the pride which ever swelled the breasts of mankind, the pride of cornishmen is perhaps the strongest; and the bulstrode family was one of the proudest in cornwall. talbot was no alien son of this haughty house; from his very babyhood he had been the proudest of mankind. this pride had been the saving power that had presided over his prosperous career. other men might have made a downhill road of that smooth pathway which wealth and grandeur made so pleasant; but not talbot bulstrode. the vices and follies of the common herd were perhaps retrievable, but vice or folly in a bulstrode would have left a blot upon a hitherto unblemished escutcheon never to be erased by time or tears. that pride of birth, which was utterly unallied to pride of wealth or station, had a certain noble and chivalrous side, and talbot bulstrode was beloved by many a parvenu whom meaner men would have insulted. in the ordinary affairs of life he was as humble as a woman or a child; it was only when honour was in question that the sleeping dragon of pride which had guarded the golden apples of his youth, purity, probity, and truth, awoke and bade defiance to the enemy. at two-and-thirty he was still a bachelor, not because he had never loved, but because he had never met with a woman whose stainless purity of soul fitted her in his eyes to become the mother of a noble race, and to rear sons who should do honour to the name of bulstrode. he looked for more than ordinary every-day virtue in the woman of his choice; he demanded those grand and queenly qualities which are rarest in womankind. fearless truth, a sense of honour keen as his own, loyalty of purpose, unselfishness, a soul untainted by the petty basenesses of daily life,--all these he sought in the being he loved; and at the first warning thrill of emotion caused by a pair of beautiful eyes, he grew critical and captious about their owner, and began to look for infinitesimal stains upon the shining robe of her virginity. he would have married a beggar's daughter if she had reached his almost impossible standard; he would have rejected the descendant of a race of kings if she had fallen one decimal part of an inch below it. women feared talbot bulstrode; manoeuvring mothers shrank abashed from the cold light of those watchful gray eyes; daughters to marry blushed and trembled, and felt their pretty affectations, their ball-room properties, drop away from them under the quiet gaze of the young officer; till from fearing him, the lovely flutterers grew to shun and dislike him, and to leave bulstrode castle and the bulstrode fortune unangled for in the great matrimonial fisheries. so at two-and-thirty talbot walked serenely safe amid the meshes and pit-falls of belgravia, secure in the popular belief, that captain bulstrode of the 11th hussars was not a marrying man. this belief was perhaps strengthened by the fact that the cornishman was by no means the elegant ignoramus whose sole accomplishments consist in parting his hair, waxing his moustaches, and smoking a meerschaum that has been coloured by his valet, and who has become the accepted type of the military man in time of peace. talbot bulstrode was fond of scientific pursuits; he neither smoked, drank, nor gambled. he had only been to the derby once in his life, and on that one occasion had walked quietly away from the stand while the great race was being run, and the white faces were turned towards the fatal corner, and men were sick with terror and anxiety, and frenzied with the madness of suspense. he never hunted, though he rode as well as mr. assheton smith. he was a perfect swordsman, and one of mr. angelo's pet pupils; but he had never handled a billiard-cue in his life, nor had he touched a card since the days of his boyhood, when he took a hand at long whist with his father and mother and the parson of the parish, in the south drawing-room at bulstrode castle. he had a peculiar aversion to all games of chance and skill, contending that it was beneath a gentleman to employ, even for amusement, the implements of the sharper's pitiful trade. his rooms were as neatly kept as those of a woman. cases of mathematical instruments took the place of cigar-boxes; proof impressions of raphael adorned the walls ordinarily covered with french prints and water-coloured sporting-sketches from ackermann's emporium. he was familiar with every turn of expression in descartes and condillac, but would have been sorely puzzled to translate the argotic locutions of monsieur de kock, _père_. those who spoke of him summed him up by saying that he wasn't a bit like an officer; but there was a certain cavalry regiment, which he had commanded when a memorable and most desperate charge was made against a bristling wall of russian cannon, whose ranks told another story of captain bulstrode. he had made an exchange into the 11th hussars on his return from the crimea, whence, among other distinctions, he had brought a stiff leg, which for a time disqualified him from dancing. it was from pure benevolence, therefore, or from that indifference to all things which is easily mistaken for unselfishness, that talbot bulstrode had consented to accept an invitation to the ball at felden woods. the banker's guests were not of that charmed circle familiar to the captain of hussars; so talbot, after a brief introduction to his host, fell back among the crowd assembled in one of the doorways, and quietly watched the dancers; not unobserved himself, however, for he was just one of those people who will not pass in a crowd. tall and broad-chested, with a pale whiskerless face, aquiline nose, clear, cold, gray eyes, thick moustache, and black hair, worn as closely cropped as if he had lately emerged from coldbath fields or millbank prison, he formed a striking contrast to the yellow-whiskered young cornet who had accompanied him. even that stiff leg, which in others might have seemed a blemish, added to the distinction of his appearance, and, coupled with the glittering orders on the breast of his uniform, told of deeds of prowess lately done. he took very little delight in the gay assembly revolving before him to one of charles d'albert's waltzes. he had heard the same music before, executed by the same band; the faces, though unfamiliar to him, were not new: dark beauties in pink, fair beauties in blue; tall dashing beauties in silks, and laces, and jewels, and splendour; modestly downcast beauties in white crape and rose-buds. they had all been spread for him, those familiar nets of gauze and areophane, and he had escaped them all; and the name of bulstrode might drop out of the history of cornish gentry to find no record save upon gravestones, but it would never be tarnished by an unworthy race, or dragged through the mire of a divorce court by a guilty woman. while he lounged against the pillar of a doorway, leaning on his cane, and resting his lame leg, and wondering lazily whether there was anything upon earth that repaid a man for the trouble of living, cornet maldon approached him with a woman's gloved hand lying lightly on his arm, and a divinity walking by his side. a divinity! imperiously beautiful in white and scarlet, painfully dazzling to look upon, intoxicatingly brilliant to behold. captain bulstrode had served in india, and had once tasted a horrible spirit called _bang_, which made the men who drank it half mad; and he could not help fancying that the beauty of this woman was like the strength of that alcoholic preparation; barbarous, intoxicating, dangerous, and maddening. his brother-officer presented him to this wonderful creature, and he found that her earthly name was aurora floyd, and that she was the heiress of felden woods. talbot bulstrode recovered himself in a moment. this imperious creature, this cleopatra in crinoline, had a low forehead, a nose that deviated from the line of beauty, and a wide mouth. what was she but another trap set in white muslin, and baited with artificial flowers, like the rest? she was to have fifty thousand pounds for her portion, so she didn't want a rich husband; but she was a nobody, so of course she wanted position, and had no doubt read up the raleigh bulstrodes in the sublime pages of burke. the clear gray eyes grew cold as ever, therefore, as talbot bowed to the heiress. mr. maldon found his partner a chair close to the pillar against which captain bulstrode had taken his stand, and mrs. alexander floyd swooping down upon the cornet at this very moment, with the dire intent of carrying him off to dance with a lady who executed more of her steps upon the toes of her partner than on the floor of the ball-room, aurora and talbot were left to themselves. captain bulstrode glanced downward at the banker's daughter. his gaze lingered upon the graceful head, with its coronal of shining scarlet berries, encircling smooth masses of blue-black hair. he expected to see the modest drooping of the eyelids peculiar to young ladies with long lashes, but he was disappointed; for aurora floyd was looking straight before her, neither at him, nor at the lights, nor the flowers, nor the dancers, but far away into vacancy. she was so young, prosperous, admired, and beloved, that it was difficult to account for the dim shadow of trouble that clouded her glorious eyes. while he was wondering what he should say to her, she lifted her eyes to his face, and asked him the strangest question he had ever heard from girlish lips. "do you know if thunderbolt won the leger?" she asked. he was too much confounded to answer for a moment, and she continued rather impatiently, "they must have heard by six o'clock this evening in london; but i have asked half a dozen people here to-night, and no one seems to know anything about it." talbot's close-cropped hair seemed lifted from his head as he listened to this terrible address. good heavens! what a horrible woman! the hussar's vivid imagination pictured the heir of all the raleigh bulstrodes receiving his infantine impressions from such a mother. she would teach him to read out of the 'racing calendar;' she would invent a royal alphabet of the turf, and tell him that "d stands for derby, old england's great race," and "e stands for epsom, a crack meeting-place," &c. he told miss floyd that he had never been to doncaster in his life, that he had never read a sporting-paper, and that he knew no more of thunderbolt than of king cheops. she looked at him rather contemptuously. "cheops wasn't much," she said: "he won the liverpool autumn cup in blink bonny's year; but most people said it was a fluke." talbot bulstrode shuddered afresh; but a feeling of pity mingled with his horror. "if i had a sister," he thought, "i would get her to talk to this miserable girl, and bring her to a sense of her iniquity." aurora said no more to the captain of hussars, but relapsed into the old far-away gaze into vacancy, and sat twisting a bracelet round and round upon her finely modelled wrist. it was a diamond bracelet, worth a couple of hundred pounds, which had been given her that day by her father. he would have invested all his fortune in messrs. hunt and roskell's cunning handiwork, if aurora had sighed for gems and gewgaws. miss floyd's glance fell upon the glittering ornament, and she looked at it long and earnestly, rather as if she were calculating the value of the stones than admiring the taste of the workmanship. while talbot was watching her, full of wondering pity and horror, a young man hurried up to the spot where she was seated, and reminded her of an engagement for the quadrille that was forming. she looked at her tablets of ivory, gold, and turquoise, and with a certain disdainful weariness rose and took his arm. talbot followed her receding form. taller than most among the throng, her queenly head was not soon lost sight of. "a cleopatra with a snub nose two sizes too small for her face, and a taste for horseflesh!" said talbot bulstrode, ruminating upon the departed divinity. "she ought to carry a betting-book instead of those ivory tablets. how _distrait_ she was all the time she sat here! i dare say she has made a book for the leger, and was calculating how much she stands to lose. what will this poor old banker do with her? put her into a madhouse, or get her elected a member of the jockey club? with her black eyes and fifty thousand pounds, she might lead the sporting world. there has been a female pope, why should there not be a female 'napoleon of the turf'?" later, when the rustling leaves of the trees in beckenham woods were shivering in that cold gray hour which precedes the advent of the dawn, talbot bulstrode drove his friend away from the banker's lighted mansion. he talked of aurora floyd during the whole of that long cross-country drive. he was merciless to her follies; he ridiculed, he abused, he sneered at and condemned her questionable tastes. he bade francis lewis maldon marry her at his peril, and wished him joy of _such_ a wife. he declared that if he had such a woman for his sister he would shoot her, unless she reformed and burnt her betting-book. he worked himself up into a savage humour about the young lady's delinquencies, and talked of her as if she had done him an unpardonable injury by entertaining a taste for the turf; till at last the poor meek young cornet plucked up a spirit, and told his superior officer that aurora floyd was a very jolly girl, and a good girl, and a perfect lady, and that, if she did want to know who won the leger, it was no business of captain bulstrode's, and that he, bulstrode, needn't make such a howling about it. while the two men are getting to high words about her, aurora is seated in her dressing-room, listening to lucy floyd's babble about the ball. "there was never such a delightful party," that young lady said; "and did aurora see so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so? and above all, did she observe captain bulstrode, who had served all through the crimean war, and who walked lame, and was the son of sir john walter raleigh bulstrode, of bulstrode castle, near camelford?" aurora shook her head with a weary gesture. no, she hadn't noticed any of these people. poor lucy's childish talk was stopped in a moment. "you are tired, aurora dear," she said: "how cruel i am to worry you!" aurora threw her arms about her cousin's neck, and hid her face upon lucy's white shoulder. "i am tired," she said, "very, very tired." she spoke with such an utterly despairing weariness in her tone, that her gentle cousin was alarmed by her words. "you are not unhappy, dear aurora?" she asked anxiously. "no, no--only tired. there, go, lucy. good night, good night." she gently pushed her cousin from the room, rejected the services of her maid, and dismissed her also. then, tired as she was, she removed the candle from the dressing-table to a desk on the other side of the room, and seating herself at this desk, unlocked it, and took from one of its inmost recesses the soiled pencil-scrawl which had been given her a week before by the man who tried to sell her a dog in cockspur street. the diamond bracelet, archibald floyd's birthday gift to his daughter, lay in its nest of satin and velvet upon aurora's dressing-table. she took the morocco-case in her hand, looked for a few moments at the jewel, and then shut the lid of the little casket with a sharp metallic snap. "the tears were in my father's eyes when he clasped the bracelet on my arm," she said, as she reseated herself at the desk. "if he could see me now!" she wrapped the morocco case in a sheet of foolscap, secured the parcel in several places with red wax and a plain seal, and directed it thus:- "j. c., care of mr. joseph green, bell inn, doncaster." early the next morning miss floyd drove her aunt and cousin into croydon, and, leaving them at a berlin-wool shop, went alone to the post-office, where she registered and posted this valuable parcel. chapter iv. after the ball. two days after aurora's birthnight festival, talbot bulstrode's phaeton dashed once more into the avenue at felden woods. again the captain made a sacrifice on the shrine of friendship, and drove francis maldon from windsor to beckenham, in order that the young cornet might make those anxious inquiries about the health of the ladies of mr. floyd's household, which, by a pleasant social fiction, are supposed to be necessary after an evening of intermittent waltzes and quadrilles. the junior officer was very grateful for this kindness; for talbot, though the best of fellows, was not much given to putting himself out of the way for the pleasure of other people. it would have been far pleasanter to the captain to dawdle away the day in his own rooms, lolling over those erudite works which his brother-officers described by the generic title of "heavy reading," or, according to the popular belief of those hare-brained young men, employed in squaring the circle in the solitude of his chamber. talbot bulstrode was altogether an inscrutable personage to his comrades of the 11th hussars. his black-letter folios, his polished mahogany cases of mathematical instruments, his proof-before-letters engravings, were the fopperies of a young oxonian rather than an officer who had fought and bled at inkermann. the young men who breakfasted with him in his rooms trembled as they read the titles of the big books on the shelves, and stared helplessly at the grim saints and angular angels in the pre-raphaelite prints upon the walls. they dared not even propose to smoke in those sacred chambers, and were ashamed of the wet impressions of the rims of the moselle bottles which they left upon the mahogany cases. it seemed natural to people to be afraid of talbot bulstrode, just as little boys are frightened of a beadle, a policeman, and a schoolmaster, even before they have been told the attributes of these terrible beings. the colonel of the 11th hussars, a portly gentleman, who rode fifteen stone, and wrote his name high in the peerage, was frightened of talbot. that cold gray eye struck a silent awe into the hearts of men and women with its straight penetrating gaze that always seemed to be telling them they were found out. the colonel was afraid to tell his best stories when talbot was at the mess-table, for he had a dim consciousness that the captain was aware of the discrepancies in those brilliant anecdotes, though that officer had never implied a doubt by either look or gesture. the irish adjutant forgot to brag about his conquests amongst the fair sex: the younger men dropped their voices when they talked to each other of the side-scenes at her majesty's theatre; and the corks flew faster, and the laughter grew louder, when talbot left the room. the captain knew that he was more respected than beloved, and like all proud men who repel the warm feelings of others in utter despite of themselves, he was grieved and wounded because his comrades did not become attached to him. "will anybody, out of all the millions upon this wide earth, ever love me?" he thought. "no one ever has as yet. not even my father and mother. they have been proud of me; but they never loved me. how many a young profligate has brought his parents' gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, and has been beloved with the last heart-beat of those he destroyed, as i have never been in my life! perhaps my mother would have loved me better, if i had given her more trouble; if i had scattered the name of bulstrode all over london upon post-obits and dishonoured acceptances; if i had been drummed out of my regiment, and had walked down to cornwall without shoes or stockings, to fall at her feet, and sob out my sins and sorrows in her lap, and ask her to mortgage her jointure for the payment of my debts. but i have never asked anything of her, dear soul, except her love, and that she has been unable to give me. i suppose it is because i do not know how to ask. how often i have sat by her side at bulstrode, talking of all sorts of indifferent subjects, yet with a vague yearning at my heart to throw myself upon her breast and implore of her to love and bless her son; but held aloof by some icy barrier that i have been powerless all my life to break down! what woman has ever loved me? not one. they have tried to marry me, because i shall be sir talbot bulstrode of bulstrode castle; but how soon they have left off angling for the prize, and shrunk away from me chilled and disheartened! i shudder when i remember that i shall be three-and-thirty next march, and that i have never been beloved. i shall sell out, now the fighting is over, for i am no use amongst the fellows here; and, if any good little thing would fall in love with me, i would marry her and take her down to bulstrode, to my mother and father, and turn country gentleman." talbot bulstrode made this declaration in all sincerity. he wished that some good and pure creature would fall in love with him, in order that he might marry her. he wanted some spontaneous exhibition of innocent feeling which might justify him in saying, "i am beloved!" he felt little capacity for loving, on his own side; but he thought that he would be grateful to any good woman who would regard him with disinterested affection, and that he would devote his life to making her happy. "it would be something to feel that if i were smashed in a railway accident, or dropped out of a balloon, some one creature in this world would think it a lonelier place for lack of me. i wonder whether my children would love me? i dare say not. i should freeze their young affections with the latin grammar; and they would tremble as they passed the door of my study, and hush their voices into a frightened whisper when papa was within hearing." talbot bulstrode's ideal of woman was some gentle and feminine creature crowned with an aureole of pale auburn hair; some timid soul with downcast eyes, fringed with golden-tinted lashes; some shrinking being, as pale and prim as the mediæval saints in his pre-raphaelite engravings, spotless as her own white robes, excelling in all womanly graces and accomplishments, but only exhibiting them in the narrow circle of a home. perhaps talbot thought that he had met with his ideal when he entered the long drawing-room at felden woods with cornet maldon on the seventeenth of september, 1857. lucy floyd was standing by an open piano, with her white dress and pale golden hair bathed in a flood of autumn sunlight. that sunlit figure came back to talbot's memory long afterwards, after a stormy interval, in which it had been blotted away and forgotten, and the long drawing-room stretched itself out like a picture before his eyes. yes, this was his ideal. this graceful girl, with the shimmering light for ever playing upon her hair, and the modest droop in her white eyelids. but undemonstrative as usual, captain bulstrode seated himself near the piano, after the brief ceremony of greeting, and contemplated lucy with grave eyes that betrayed no especial admiration. he had not taken much notice of lucy floyd on the night of the ball; indeed, lucy was scarcely a candle-light beauty; her hair wanted the sunshine gleaming through it to light up the golden halo about her face, and the delicate pink of her cheeks waxed pale in the glare of the great chandeliers. while captain bulstrode was watching lucy with that grave contemplative gaze, trying to find out whether she was in any way different from other girls he had known, and whether the purity of her delicate beauty was more than skin deep, the window opposite to him was darkened, and aurora floyd stood between him and the sunshine. the banker's daughter paused on the threshold of the open window, holding the collar of an immense mastiff in both her hands, and looking irresolutely into the room. miss floyd hated morning callers, and she was debating within herself whether she had been seen, or whether it might be possible to steal away unperceived. but the dog set up a big bark, and settled the question. "quiet, bow-wow," she said; "quiet, quiet, boy." yes, the dog was called bow-wow. he was twelve years old, and aurora had so christened him in her seventh year, when he was a blundering, big-headed puppy, that sprawled upon the table during the little girl's lessons, upset ink-bottles over her copy-books, and ate whole chapters of pinnock's abridged histories. the gentlemen rose at the sound of her voice, and miss floyd came into the room and sat down at a little distance from the captain and her cousin, twirling a straw hat in her hand and staring at her dog, who seated himself resolutely by her chair, knocking double-knocks of good temper upon the carpet with his big tail. though she said very little, and seated herself in a careless attitude that bespoke complete indifference to her visitors, aurora's beauty extinguished poor lucy, as the rising sun extinguishes the stars. the thick plaits of her black hair made a great diadem upon her low forehead, and crowned her an eastern empress; an empress with a doubtful nose, it is true, but an empress who reigned by right divine of her eyes and hair. for do not these wonderful black eyes, which perhaps shine upon us only once in a lifetime, in themselves constitute a royalty? talbot bulstrode turned away from his ideal to look at this dark-haired goddess, with a coarse straw hat in her hand and a big mastiff's head lying on her lap. again he perceived that abstraction in her manner which had puzzled him upon the night of the ball. she listened to her visitors politely, and she answered them when they spoke to her; but it seemed to talbot as if she constrained herself to attend to them by an effort. "she wishes me away, i dare say," he thought; "and no doubt considers me a 'slow party,' because i don't talk to her of horses and dogs." the captain resumed his conversation with lucy. he found that she talked exactly as he had heard other young ladies talk; that she knew all they knew, and had been to the places they had visited. the ground they went over was very old indeed, but lucy traversed it with charming propriety. "she is a good little thing," talbot thought; "and would make an admirable wife for a country gentleman. i wish she would fall in love with me." lucy told him of some excursion in switzerland, where she had been during the preceding autumn with her father and mother. "and your cousin," he asked, "was she with you?" "no; aurora was at school in paris, with the demoiselles lespard." "lespard, lespard!" he repeated; "a protestant pension in the faubourg saint-dominique. why, a cousin of mine is being educated there, a miss trevyllian. she has been there for three or four years. do you remember constance trevyllian at the demoiselles lespard, miss floyd?" said talbot, addressing himself to aurora. "constance trevyllian! yes, i remember her," answered the banker's daughter. she said nothing more, and for a few moments there was rather an awkward pause. "miss trevyllian is my cousin," said the captain. "indeed!" "i hope that you were very good friends." "oh, yes." she bent over her dog, caressing his big head, and not even looking up as she spoke of miss trevyllian. it seemed as if the subject was utterly indifferent to her, and she disdained even to affect an interest in it. talbot bulstrode bit his lip with offended pride. "i suppose this purse-proud heiress looks down upon the trevyllians of tredethlin," he thought, "because they can boast of nothing better than a few hundred acres of barren moorland, some exhausted tin-mines, and a pedigree that dates from the days of king arthur." archibald floyd came into the drawing-room while the officers were seated there, and bade them welcome to felden woods. "a long drive, gentlemen," he said; "your horses will want a rest. of course you will dine with us. we shall have a full moon to-night, and you'll have it as light as day for your drive back." talbot looked at francis lewis maldon, who was sitting staring at aurora with vacant, open-mouthed admiration. the young officer knew that the heiress and her fifty thousand pounds were not for him; but it was scarcely the less pleasant to look at her, and wish that like captain bulstrode he had been the eldest son of a rich baronet. the invitation was accepted by mr. maldon as cordially as it had been given, and with less than his usual stiffness of manner on the part of talbot bulstrode. the luncheon-bell rang while they were talking, and the little party adjourned to the dining-room, where they found mrs. alexander floyd sitting at the bottom of the table. talbot sat next to lucy, with mr. maldon opposite to them, while aurora took her place beside her father. the old man was attentive to his guests, but the shallowest observer could have scarcely failed to notice his watchfulness of aurora. it was ever present in his careworn face, that tender, anxious glance which turned to her at every pause in the conversation, and could scarcely withdraw itself from her for the common courtesies of life. if she spoke, he listened,--listened as if every careless, half-disdainful word concealed a deeper meaning which it was his task to discern and unravel. if she was silent, he watched her still more closely, seeking perhaps to penetrate that gloomy veil which sometimes spread itself over her handsome face. talbot bulstrode was not so absorbed by his conversation with lucy and mrs. alexander as to overlook this peculiarity in the father's manner towards his only child. he saw too that when aurora addressed the banker, it was no longer with that listless indifference, half weariness, half disdain, which seemed natural to her on other occasions. the eager watchfulness of archibald floyd was in some measure reflected in his daughter; by fits and starts, it is true, for she generally sank back into that moody abstraction which captain bulstrode had observed on the night of the ball; but still it was there, the same feeling as her father's, though less constant and intense. a watchful, anxious, half-sorrowful affection, which could scarcely exist except under abnormal circumstances. talbot bulstrode was vexed to find himself wondering about this, and growing every moment less and less attentive to lucy's simple talk. "what does it mean?" he thought; "has she fallen in love with some man whom her father has forbidden her to marry, and is the old man trying to atone for his severity? that's scarcely likely. a woman with a head and throat like hers could scarcely fail to be ambitious--ambitious and revengeful, rather than over-susceptible of any tender passion. did she lose half her fortune upon that race she talked to me about? i'll ask her presently. perhaps they have taken away her betting-book, or lamed her favourite horse, or shot some pet dog, to cure him of distemper. she is a spoiled child, of course, this heiress, and i dare say her father would try to get a copy of the moon made for her, if she cried for that planet." after luncheon, the banker took his guests into the gardens that stretched far away upon two sides of the house; the gardens which poor eliza floyd had helped to plan nineteen years before. talbot bulstrode walked rather stiffly from his crimean wound, but mrs. alexander and her daughter suited their pace to his, while aurora walked before them with her father and mr. maldon, and with the mastiff close at her side. "your cousin is rather proud, is she not?" talbot asked lucy, after they had been talking of aurora. "aurora proud! oh, no, indeed: perhaps, if she has any fault at all (for she is the dearest girl that ever lived), it is that she has not sufficient pride; i mean with regard to servants, and that sort of people. she would as soon talk to one of those gardeners as to you or me; and you would see no difference in her manner, except that perhaps it would be a little more cordial to them than to us. the poor people round felden idolize her." "aurora takes after her mother," said mrs. alexander; "she is the living image of poor eliza floyd." "was mrs. floyd a countrywoman of her husband's?" talbot asked. he was wondering how aurora came to have those great, brilliant, black eyes, and so much of the south in her beauty. "no; my uncle's wife belonged to a lancashire family." a lancashire family! if talbot raleigh bulstrode could have known that the family name was prodder; that one member of the haughty house had passed his youth in the pleasing occupations of a cabin-boy, making thick coffee and toasting greasy herrings for the matutinal meal of a surly captain, and receiving more corporal correction from the sturdy toe of his master's boot than sterling copper coin of the realm! if he could have known that the great aunt of this disdainful creature, walking before him in all the majesty of her beauty, had once kept a chandler's shop in an obscure street in liverpool, and for aught any one but the banker knew, kept it still! but this was a knowledge which had wisely been kept even from aurora herself, who knew little except that, despite of having been born with that allegorical silver spoon in her mouth, she was poorer than other girls, inasmuch as she was motherless. mrs. alexander, lucy, and the captain overtook the others upon a rustic bridge, where talbot stopped to rest. aurora was leaning over the rough wooden balustrade, looking lazily at the water. "did your favourite win the race, miss floyd?" he asked, as he watched the effect of her profile against the sunlight; not a very beautiful profile certainly, but for the long black eyelashes, and the radiance under them, which their darkest shadows could never hide. "which favourite?" she said. "the horse you spoke to me about the other night,--thunderbolt; did he win?" "no." "i am very sorry to hear it." aurora looked up at him, reddening angrily. "why so?" she asked. "because i thought you were interested in his success." as talbot said this, he observed, for the first time, that archibald floyd was near enough to overhear their conversation, and, furthermore that he was regarding his daughter with even more than his usual watchfulness. "do not talk to me of racing; it annoys papa," aurora said to the captain, dropping her voice. talbot bowed. "i was right, then," he thought; "the turf is the skeleton. i dare say miss floyd has been doing her best to drag her father's name into the 'gazette,' and yet he evidently loves her to distraction; while i----" there was something so very pharisaical in the speech, that captain bulstrode would not even finish it mentally. he was thinking, "this girl, who, perhaps, has been the cause of nights of sleepless anxiety and days of devouring care, is tenderly beloved by her father; while i, who am a model to all the elder sons of england, have never been loved in my life." at half-past six the great bell at felden woods rang a clamorous peal that went shivering above the trees, to tell the country-side that the family were going to dress for dinner; and another peal at seven, to tell the villagers round beckenham and west wickham that maister floyd and his household were going to dine; but not altogether an empty or discordant peal, for it told the hungry poor of broken victuals and rich and delicate meats to be had almost for asking in the servants' offices;--shreds of fricandeaux and patches of dainty preparations, quarters of chickens and carcasses of pheasants, which would have gone to fatten the pigs for christmas, but for archibald floyd's strict commands that all should be given to those who chose to come for it. mr. floyd and his visitors did not leave the gardens till after the ladies had retired to dress. the dinner-party was very animated, for alexander floyd drove down from the city to join his wife and daughter, bringing with him the noisy boy who was just going to eton, and who was passionately attached to his cousin aurora; and whether it was owing to the influence of this young gentleman, or to that fitfulness which seemed a part of her nature, talbot bulstrode could not discover, but certain it was that the dark cloud melted away from miss floyd's face, and she abandoned herself to the joyousness of the hour with a radiant grace, that reminded her father of the night when eliza percival played lady teazle for the last time, and took her farewell of the stage in the little lancashire theatre. it needed but this change in his daughter to make archibald floyd thoroughly happy. aurora's smiles seemed to shed a revivifying influence upon the whole circle. the ice melted away, for the sun had broken out, and the winter was gone at last. talbot bulstrode bewildered his brain by trying to discover why it was that this woman was such a peerless and fascinating creature. why it was that, argue as he would against the fact, he was nevertheless allowing himself to be bewitched by this black-eyed siren; freely drinking of that cup of _bang_ which she presented to him, and rapidly becoming intoxicated. "i could almost fall in love with my fair-haired ideal," he thought, "but i cannot help admiring this extraordinary girl. she is like mrs. nisbett in her zenith of fame and beauty; she is like cleopatra sailing down the cydnus; she is like nell gwynne selling oranges; she is like lola montes giving battle to the bavarian students; she is like charlotte corday with the knife in her hand, standing behind the friend of the people in his bath; she is like everything that is beautiful, and strange, and wicked and unwomanly, and bewitching; and she is just the sort of creature that many a fool would fall in love with." he put the length of the room between himself and the enchantress, and took his seat by the grand piano, at which lucy floyd was playing slow harmonious symphonies of beethoven. the drawing-room at felden woods was so long, that, seated by this piano, captain bulstrode seemed to look back at the merry group about the heiress as he might have looked at a scene on the stage from the back of the boxes. he almost wished for an opera-glass as he watched aurora's graceful gestures and the play of her sparkling eyes; and then turning to the piano, he listened to the drowsy music, and contemplated lucy's face, marvellously fair in the light of that full moon of which archibald floyd had spoken, the glory of which, streaming in from an open window, put out the dim wax-candles on the piano. all that aurora's beauty most lacked was richly possessed by lucy. delicacy of outline, perfection of feature, purity of tint, all were there; but while one face dazzled you by its shining splendour, the other impressed you only with a feeble sense of its charms, slow to come and quick to pass away. there are so many lucys but so few auroras; and while you never could be critical with the one, you were merciless in your scrutiny of the other. talbot bulstrode was attracted to lucy by a vague notion that she was just the good and timid creature who was destined to make him happy; but he looked at her as calmly as if she had been a statue, and was as fully aware of her defects as a sculptor who criticises the work of a rival. but she was exactly the sort of woman to make a good wife. she had been educated to that end by a careful mother. purity and goodness had watched over her and hemmed her in from her cradle. she had never seen unseemly sights, or heard unseemly sounds. she was as ignorant as a baby of all the vices and horrors of this big world. she was lady-like, accomplished, well informed; and if there were a great many others of precisely the same type of graceful womanhood, it was certainly the highest type, and the holiest, and the best. later in the evening, when captain bulstrode's phaeton was brought round to the flight of steps in front of the great doors, the little party assembled on the terrace to see the two officers depart, and the banker told his guests how he hoped this visit to felden would be the beginning of a lasting acquaintance. "i am going to take aurora and my niece to brighton for a month or so," he said, as he shook hands with the captain; "but on our return you must let us see you as often as possible." talbot bowed, and stammered his thanks for the banker's cordiality. aurora and her cousin percy floyd, the young etonian, had gone down the steps, and were admiring captain bulstrode's thorough-bred bays, and the captain was not a little distracted by the picture the group made in the moonlight. he never forgot that picture. aurora, with her coronet of plaits dead black against the purple air, and her silk dress shimmering in the uncertain light, the delicate head of the bay horse visible above her shoulder, and her ringed white hands caressing the animal's slender ears, while the purblind old mastiff, vaguely jealous, whined complainingly at her side. how marvellous is the sympathy which exists between some people and the brute creation! i think that horses and dogs understood every word that aurora said to them,--that they worshipped her from the dim depths of their inarticulate souls, and would have willingly gone to death to do her service. talbot observed all this with an uneasy sense of bewilderment. "i wonder whether these creatures are wiser than we?" he thought; "do they recognize some higher attributes in this girl than we can perceive, and worship their sublime presence? if this terrible woman, with her unfeminine tastes and mysterious propensities, were mean, or cowardly, or false, or impure, i do not think that mastiff would love her as he does; i do not think my thorough-breds would let her hands meddle with their bridles: the dog would snarl, and the horses would bite, as such animals used to do in those remote old days when they recognized witchcraft and evil spirits, and were convulsed by the presence of the uncanny. i dare say this miss floyd is a good, generous-hearted creature,--the sort of person fast men would call a glorious girl,--but as well read in the 'racing calendar' and 'ruff's guide' as other ladies in miss yonge's novels. i'm really sorry for her." chapter v. john mellish. the house which the banker hired at brighton for the month of october was perched high up on the east cliff, towering loftily above the wind-driven waves; the purple coast of shoreham was dimly visible from the upper windows in the clear autumn mornings, and the chain pier looked like a strip of ribbon below the cliff. a pleasanter situation to my mind than those level terraces towards the west, from the windows of which the sea appears of small extent, and the horizon within half a mile or so of the parade. before mr. floyd took his daughter and her cousin to brighton, he entered into an arrangement which he thought, no doubt, a very great evidence of his wisdom; this was the engagement of a lady, who was to be a compound governess, companion, and chaperon to aurora, who, as mrs. alexander said, was sadly in need of some accomplished and watchful person, whose care it would be to train and prune those exuberant branches of her nature which had been suffered to grow as they would from her infancy. the beautiful shrub was no longer to trail its wild stems along the ground, or shoot upward to the blue skies at its own sweet will; it was to be trimmed and clipped and fastened primly to the stony wall of society with cruel nails and galling strips of cloth. in other words, an advertisement was inserted in the 'times' newspaper, setting forth that a lady, by birth and education, was required as finishing governess and companion in the household of a gentleman, to whom salary was no object, provided the aforesaid lady was perfect mistress of all the accomplishments under the sun, and was altogether such an exceptional and extraordinary being as could only exist in the advertising columns of a popular journal. but if the world had been filled with exceptional beings, mr. floyd could scarcely have received more answers to his advertisement than came pelting in upon the unhappy little postmaster at beckenham. the man had serious thoughts of hiring a cart, in which to convey the letters to felden. if the banker had advertised for a wife, and had stated the amount of his income, he could scarcely have had more answers. it seemed as if the female population of london, with one accord, was seized with the desire to improve the mind and form the manners of the daughter of the gentleman to whom terms were no object. officers' widows, clergymen's widows, lawyers' and merchants' widows, daughters of gentlemen of high family but reduced means, orphan daughters of all sorts of noble and distinguished people,--declared themselves each and every one to be the person who, out of all living creatures upon this earth, was best adapted for the post. mrs. alexander floyd selected six letters, threw the rest into the waste-paper basket, ordered the banker's carriage, and drove into town to see the six writers thereof. she was a practical and energetic woman, and she put the six applicants through their facings so severely, that when she returned to mr. floyd it was to announce that only one of them was good for anything, and that she was coming down to felden woods the next day. the chosen lady was the widow of an ensign who had died within six months of his marriage, and about an hour and a half before he would have succeeded to some enormous property, the particulars of which were never rightly understood by the friends of his unfortunate relict. but vague as the story might be, it was quite clear enough to establish mrs. walter powell in life as a disappointed woman. she was a woman with straight light hair, and a lady-like droop of the head. a woman who had left school to marry, and after six months' wedded life had gone back to the same school as instructress of the junior pupils. a woman whose whole existence had been spent in teaching and being taught; who had exercised in her earlier years a species of hand-to-mouth tuition, teaching in the morning that which she learnt over-night; who had never lost an opportunity of improving herself; who had grown mechanically proficient as a musician and an artist, who had a certain parrot-like skill in foreign languages, who had read all the books incumbent upon her to read, and who knew all the things imperative for her to know, and who, beyond all this, and outside the boundary of the schoolroom wall, was ignorant and soulless and low-minded and vulgar. aurora swallowed the bitter pill as best she might, and accepted mrs. powell as the person chartered for her improvement:--a kind of ballast to be flung into the wandering bark, to steady its erratic course and keep it off rocks and quicksands. "i must put up with her, lucy, i suppose," she said; "and i must consent to be improved and formed by the poor faded creature. i wonder whether she will be like miss drummond, who used to let me off from my lessons, and read novels while i ran wild in the gardens and stables. i can put up with her, lucy, as long as i have you with me; but i think i should go mad, if i were to be chained up alone with that grim, pale-faced watch-dog." mr. floyd and his family drove from felden to brighton in the banker's roomy travelling-carriage, with aurora's maid in the rumble, a pile of imperials upon the roof, and mrs. powell, with her young charges, in the interior of the vehicle. mrs. alexander had gone back to fulham, having done her duty, as she considered, in securing a protectress for aurora; but lucy was to stay with her cousin at brighton, and to ride with her on the downs. the saddle-horses had gone down the day before with aurora's groom, a gray-haired and rather surly old fellow who had served archibald floyd for thirty years; and the mastiff called bow-wow travelled in the carriage with his mistress. about a week after the arrival at brighton, aurora and her cousin were walking together on the west cliff, when a gentleman with a stiff leg rose from a bench upon which he had been seated listening to the band, and slowly advanced to them. lucy dropped her eyelids with a faint blush; but aurora held out her hand in answer to captain bulstrode's salute. "i thought i should be sure to meet you down here, miss floyd," he said. "i only came this morning, and i was going to call at folthorpe's for your papa's address. is he quite well?" "quite--yes, that is--pretty well." a shadow stole over her face as she spoke. it was a wonderful face for fitful lights and shades. "but we did not expect to see you at brighton, captain bulstrode; we thought your regiment was still quartered at windsor." "yes, my regiment--that is, the eleventh is still at windsor; but i have sold out." "sold out!" both aurora and her cousin opened their eyes at this intelligence. "yes; i was tired of the army. it's dull work now the fighting is all over. i might have exchanged and gone to india, certainly," he added, as if in answer to some argument of his own; "but i'm getting middle-aged, and i am tired of roaming about the world." "i should like to go to india," said aurora, looking seaward as she spoke. "you, aurora! but why?" exclaimed lucy. "because i hate england." "i thought it was france you disliked." "i hate them both. what is the use of this big world, if we are to stop for ever in one place, chained to one set of ideas, fettered to one narrow circle of people, seeing and hearing of the persons we hate for ever and ever, and unable to get away from the odious sound of their names? i should like to turn female missionary, and go to the centre of africa with dr. livingstone and his family; and i would go if it wasn't for papa." poor lucy stared at her cousin in helpless amazement. talbot bulstrode found himself falling back into that state of bewilderment in which this girl always threw him. what did she mean, this heiress of nineteen years of age, by her fits of despondency and outbursts of bitterness? was it not perhaps, after all, only an affectation of singularity? aurora looked at him with her brightest smile while he was asking himself this question. "you will come and see papa?" she said. captain bulstrode declared that he desired no greater happiness than to pay his respects to mr. floyd, in token whereof he walked with the young ladies towards the east cliff. from that morning, the officer became a constant visitor at the banker's. he played chess with lucy, accompanied her on the piano when she sang, assisted her with valuable hints when she painted in water-colours, put in lights here and glimpses of sky there, deepened autumnal browns, and intensified horizon purples, and made himself altogether useful to the young lady, who was, as we know, accomplished in all lady-like arts. mrs. powell, seated in one of the windows of the pleasant drawing-room, shed the benignant light of her faded countenance and pale-blue eyes upon the two young people, and represented all the proprieties in her own person; aurora, when the weather prevented her riding, occupied herself more restlessly than profitably by taking up books and tossing them down, pulling bow-wow's ears, staring out of the windows, drawing caricatures of the promenaders on the cliff, and dragging out a wonderful little watch, with a bunch of dangling inexplicable golden absurdities, to see what o'clock it was. talbot bulstrode, while leaning over lucy's piano or drawing-board, or pondering about the next move of his queen, had ample leisure to watch the movements of miss floyd, and to be shocked at the purposeless manner in which that young lady spent the rainy mornings. sometimes he saw her poring over 'bell's life,' much to the horror of mrs. walter powell, who had a vague idea of the iniquitous proceedings recited in that terrible journal, but who was afraid to stretch her authority so far as to forbid its perusal. mrs. powell looked with silent approbation upon the growing familiarity between gentle lucy floyd and the captain. she had feared at first that talbot was an admirer of aurora's; but the manner of the two soon dispelled her alarm. nothing could be more cordial than miss floyd's treatment of the officer; but she displayed the same indifference to him that she did to everything else, except her dog and her father. was it possible that well-nigh perfect face and those haughty graces had no charm for the banker's daughter? could it be that she could spend hour after hour in the society of the handsomest and most aristocratic man she had ever met, and yet be as heart-whole as when the acquaintance began? there was one person in the little party who was for ever asking that question, and never able to answer it to her own satisfaction, and that person was lucy floyd. poor lucy floyd, who was engaged, night and day, in mentally playing that old german game which faust and margaret played together with the full-blown rose in the garden,--"he loves me--loves me not!" mrs. walter powell's shallow-sighted blue eyes might behold in lucy captain bulstrode's attraction to the east cliff; but lucy herself knew better--bitterly, cruelly better. "captain bulstrode's attentions to miss lucy floyd were most evident," mrs. powell said one day when the captain left, after a long morning's music and singing and chess. how lucy hated the prim phrase! none knew so well as she the value of those "attentions." they had been at brighton six weeks, and for the last five the captain had been with them nearly every morning. he had ridden with them on the downs, and driven with them to the dyke, and lounged beside them listening to the band, and stood behind them in their box at the pretty little theatre, and crushed with them into the pavilion to hear grisi and mario, and alboni and poor bosio. he had attended them through the whole round of brighton amusements, and had never seemed weary of their companionship. but for all this, lucy knew what the last leaf upon the rose would tell her, when the many petals should be plucked away, and the poor stem be left bare. she knew how often he forgot to turn over the leaf in the beethoven sonatas; how often he put streaks of green into an horizon that should have been purple, and touched up the trees in her foreground with rose-pink, and suffered himself to be ignominiously checkmated from sheer inattention, and gave her wandering, random answers when she spoke to him. she knew how restless he was when aurora read 'bell's life,' and how the very crackle of the newspaper made him wince with nervous pain. she knew how tender he was of the purblind mastiff, how eager to be friends with him, how almost sycophantic in his attentions to the big stately animal. lucy knew, in short, that which talbot as yet did not know himself: she knew that he was fast falling over head and ears in love with her cousin, and she had at the same time a vague idea that he would much rather have fallen in love with herself, and that he was blindly struggling with the growing passion. it was so; he was falling in love with aurora. the more he protested against her, the more determinedly he exaggerated her follies, and argued with himself upon the folly of loving her, so much the more surely did he love her. the very battle he was fighting kept her for ever in his mind, until he grew the veriest slave of the lovely vision, which he only evoked in order to endeavour to exorcise. "how could he take her down to bulstrode, and introduce her to his father and mother?" he thought; and at the thought she appeared to him illuminating the old cornish mansion by the radiance of her beauty, fascinating his father, bewitching his mother, riding across the moorland on her thorough-bred mare, and driving all the parish mad with admiration of her. he felt that his visits to mr. floyd's house were fast compromising him in the eyes of its inmates. sometimes he felt himself bound in honour to make lucy an offer of his hand; sometimes he argued that no one had any right to consider his attentions more particular to one than to the other of the young ladies. if he had known of that weary game which lucy was for ever mentally playing with the imaginary rose, i am sure he would not have lost an hour in proposing to her; but mrs. alexander's daughter had been far too well educated to betray one emotion of her heart, and she bore her girlish agonies, and concealed her hourly tortures, with the quiet patience common to these simple womanly martyrs. she knew that the last leaf must soon be plucked, and the sweet pain of uncertainty be for ever ended. heaven knows how long talbot bulstrode might have done battle with his growing passion, had it not been for an event which put an end to his indecision and made him desperate. this event was the appearance of a rival. he was walking with aurora and lucy upon the west cliff one afternoon in november, when a mail-phaeton and pair suddenly drew up against the railings that separated them from the road, and a big man, with huge masses of scotch plaid twisted about his waist and shoulders, sprang out of the vehicle, splashing the mud upon his legs, and rushed up to talbot, taking off his hat as he approached, and bowing apologetically to the ladies. "why, bulstrode," he said, "who on earth would have thought of seeing you here? i heard you were in india, man; but what have you done to your leg?" he was so breathless with hurry and excitement, that he was utterly indifferent to punctuation; and it seemed as much as he could do to keep silence while talbot introduced him to the ladies as mr. mellish, an old friend and school-fellow. the stranger stared with such open-mouthed admiration at miss floyd's black eyes, that the captain turned round upon him almost savagely, as he asked what had brought _him_ to brighton. "the hunting season, my boy. tired of yorkshire; know every field, ditch, hedge, pond, sunk fence, and scrap of timber in the three ridings. i'm staying at the bedford; i've got my stud with me--give you a mount to-morrow morning if you like. harriers meet at eleven--dyke road. i've a gray that'll suit you to a nicety--carry my weight, and as easy to sit as your arm-chair." talbot hated his friend for talking of horses; he felt a jealous terror of him. this, perhaps, was the sort of man whose society would be agreeable to aurora,--this big, empty-headed yorkshireman, with his babble about his stud and hunting appointments. but turning sharply round to scrutinize miss floyd, he was gratified to find that young lady looking vacantly at the gathering mists upon the sea, and apparently unconscious of the existence of mr. john mellish, of mellish park, yorkshire. this john mellish was, i have said, a big man, looking even bigger than he was by reason of about eight yards' length of thick shepherd's plaid twisted scientifically about his shoulders. he was a man of thirty years of age at least, but having withal such a boyish exuberance in his manner, such a youthful and innocent joyousness in his face, that he might have been a youngster of eighteen just let loose from some public academy of the muscular christianity school. i think the rev. charles kingsley would have delighted in this big, hearty, broad-chested young englishman, with brown hair brushed away from an open forehead, and a thick auburn moustache bordering a mouth for ever ready to expand into a laugh. such a laugh, too! such a hearty and sonorous peal, that the people on the parade turned round to look at the owner of those sturdy lungs, and smiled good-naturedly for very sympathy with his honest merriment. talbot bulstrode would have given a hundred pounds to get rid of the noisy yorkshireman. what business had he at brighton? wasn't the biggest county in england big enough to hold him, that he must needs bring his north-country bluster to sussex, for the annoyance of talbot's friends? captain bulstrode was not any better pleased when, strolling a little further on, the party met with archibald floyd, who had come out to look for his daughter. the old man begged to be introduced to mr. mellish, and invited the honest yorkshireman to dine at the east cliff that very evening, much to the aggravation of talbot, who fell sulkily back, and allowed john to make the acquaintance of the ladies. the familiar brute ingratiated himself into their good graces in about ten minutes; and by the time they reached the banker's house was more at his ease with aurora than was the heir of bulstrode after two months' acquaintance. he accompanied them to the door-step, shook hands with the ladies and mr. floyd, patted the mastiff bow-wow, gave talbot a playful sledge-hammer-like slap upon the shoulder, and ran back to the bedford to dress for dinner. his spirits were so high that he knocked over little boys and tumbled against fashionable young men, who drew themselves up in stiff amazement as the big fellow dashed past them. he sang a scrap of a hunting-song as he ran up the great staircase to his eyrie at the bedford, and chattered to his valet as he dressed. he seemed a creature especially created to be prosperous; to be the owner and dispenser of wealth, the distributor of good things. people who were strangers to him ran after and served him on speculation, knowing instinctively that they would get ample reward for their trouble. waiters in a coffee-room deserted other tables to attend upon that at which he was seated. box-keepers would leave parties of six shivering in the dreary corridors while they found a seat for john mellish. mendicants picked him out from the crowd in a busy thoroughfare, and hung about him, and would not be driven away without a dole from the pocket of his roomy waistcoat. he was always spending his money for the convenience of other people. he had an army of old servants at mellish park, who adored him and tyrannized over him after the manner of their kind. his stables were crowded with horses that were lame, or wall-eyed, or otherwise disqualified for service, but that lived on his bounty like a set of jolly equine paupers, and consumed as much corn as would have supplied a racing stud. he was perpetually paying for things he neither ordered nor had, and was for ever being cheated by the dear honest creatures about him, who, for all they did their best to ruin him, would have gone through typical fire and water to serve him, and would have clung to him, and worked for him, and supported him out of those very savings for which they had robbed him, when the ruin came. if "muster john" had a headache, every creature in that disorderly household was unhappy and uneasy till the ailment was cured; every lad in the stables, every servant-maid in the house, was eager that his or her remedy should be tried for his restoration. if you had said at mellish park that john's fair face and broad shoulders were not the highest forms of manly beauty and grace, you would have been set down as a creature devoid of all taste or judgment. to the mind of that household, john mellish in "pink" and pipe-clayed tops was more beautiful than the apollo belvidere, whose bronze image in little adorned a niche in the hall. if you had told them that fourteen-stone weight was not indispensable to manly perfection, or that it was possible there were more lofty accomplishments than driving unicorn or shooting forty-seven head of game in a morning, or pulling the bay mare's shoulder into joint that time she got a sprain in the hunting-field, or vanquishing joe millings, the east riding smasher, without so much as losing breath,--those simple-hearted yorkshire servants would have fairly laughed in your face. talbot bulstrode complained that everybody respected him, and nobody loved him. john mellish might have uttered the reverse of this complaint, had he been so minded. who could help loving the honest, generous squire, whose house and purse were open to all the country-side? who could feel any chilling amount of respect for the friendly and familiar master who sat upon the table in the big kitchen at mellish park, with his dogs and servants round him, and gave them the history of the day's adventures in the hunting-field, till the old blind fox-hound at his feet lifted his big head and set up a feeble music? no; john mellish was well content to be beloved, and never questioned the quality of the affection bestowed upon him. to him it was all the purest virgin gold; and you might have talked to him for twelve hours at a sitting without convincing him that men and women were vile and mercenary creatures, and that if his servants, and his tenantry, and the poor about his estate, loved him, it was for the sake of the temporal benefits they received of him. he was as unsuspicious as a child, who believes that the fairies in a pantomime are fairies for ever and ever, and that the harlequin is born in patches and a mask. he was as open to flattery as a school-girl who distributes the contents of her hamper among a circle of toadies. when people told him he was a fine fellow, he believed them, and agreed with them, and thought that the world was altogether a hearty, honest place, and that everybody was a fine fellow. never having an _arrière pensée_ himself, he looked for none in the words of other people, but thought that every one blurted out their real opinions, and offended or pleased their fellows, as frankly and blunderingly as himself. if he had been a vicious young man, he would no doubt have gone altogether to the bad, and fallen among thieves. but being blest with a nature that was inherently pure and innocent, his greatest follies were no worse than those of a big school-boy who errs from very exuberance of spirit. he had lost his mother in the first year of his infancy, and his father had died some time before his majority; so there had been none to restrain his actions, and it was something at thirty years of age to be able to look back upon a stainless boyhood and youth, which might have been befouled with the slime of the gutters, and infected with the odour of villanous haunts. had he not reason to be proud of this? is there anything, after all, so grand as a pure and unsullied life--a fair picture, with no ugly shadows lurking in the background--a smooth poem, with no crooked, halting line to mar the verse--a noble book, with no unholy page--a simple story, such as our children may read? can any greatness be greater? can any nobility be more truly noble? when a whole nation mourned with one voice but a few months since; when we drew down our blinds and shut out the dull light of the december day, and listened sadly to the far booming of the guns; when the poorest put aside their work-a-day troubles to weep for a widowed queen and orphaned children in a desolate palace; when rough omnibus-drivers forgot to blaspheme at each other, and tied decent scraps of crape upon their whips, and went sorrowfully about their common business, thinking of that great sorrow at windsor,--the words that rose simultaneously to every lip dwelt most upon the spotless character of him who was lost; the tender husband, the watchful father, the kindly master, the liberal patron, the temperate adviser, the stainless gentleman. it is many years since england mourned for another royal personage who was called a "gentleman." a gentleman who played practical jokes, and held infamous orgies, and persecuted a wretched foreign woman, whose chief sin and misfortune it was to be his wife; a gentleman who cut out his own nether garments, and left the companion of his gayest revels, the genius whose brightness had flung a spurious lustre upon the dreary saturnalia of vice, to die destitute and despairing. surely there is some hope that we have changed for the better within the last thirty years, inasmuch as we attach a new meaning to-day to this simple title of "gentleman." i take some pride, therefore, in the two young men of whom i write, for the simple reason that i have no dark patches to gloss over in the history of either of them. i may fail in making you like them; but i can promise that you shall have no cause to be ashamed of them. talbot bulstrode may offend you with his sulky pride; john mellish may simply impress you as a blundering countrified ignoramus; but neither of them shall ever shock you by an ugly word or an unholy thought. chapter vi. rejected and accepted. the dinner-party at mr. floyd's was a very merry one; and when john mellish and talbot bulstrode left the east cliff to walk westward, at eleven o'clock at night, the yorkshireman told his friend that he had never enjoyed himself so much in his life. this declaration must, however, be taken with some reserve; for it was one which john was in the habit of making about three times a week: but he really had been very happy in the society of the banker's family; and, what was more, he was ready to adore aurora floyd without any further preparation whatever. a few bright smiles and sparkling glances, a little animated conversation about the hunting-field and the race-course, combined with half a dozen glasses of those effervescent wines which archibald floyd imported from the fair moselle country, had been quite enough to turn the head of john mellish, and to cause him to hold wildly forth in the moonlight upon the merits of the beautiful heiress. "i verily believe i shall die a bachelor, talbot," he said, "unless i can get that girl to marry me. i've only known her half a dozen hours, and i'm head-over-heels in love with her already. what is it that has knocked me over like this, bulstrode? i've seen other girls with black eyes and hair, and she knows no more of horses than half the women in yorkshire; so it isn't that. what is it, then, hey?" he came to a full stop against a lamp-post, and stared fiercely at his friend as he asked this question. talbot gnashed his teeth in silence. it was no use battling with his fate, then, he thought; the fascination of this woman had the same effect upon others as upon himself; and while he was arguing with, and protesting against, his passion, some brainless fellow, like this mellish, would step in and win the prize. he wished his friend good night upon the steps of the old ship hotel, and walked straight to his room, where he sat with his window open to the mild november night, staring out at the moon-lit sea. he determined to propose to aurora floyd before twelve o'clock the next day. why should he hesitate? he had asked himself that question a hundred times before, and had always been unable to answer it; and yet he had hesitated. he could not dispossess himself of a vague idea that there was some mystery in this girl's life; some secret known only to herself and her father; some one spot upon the history of the past which cast a shadow on the present. and yet, how could that be? how could that be, he asked himself, when her whole life only amounted to nineteen years, and he had heard the history of those years over and over again? how often he had artfully led lucy to tell him the simple story of her cousin's girlhood! the governesses and masters that had come and gone at felden woods. the ponies and dogs, and puppies and kittens, and petted foals; the little scarlet riding-habit that had been made for the heiress, when she rode after the hounds with her cousin andrew floyd. the worst blots that the officer could discover in those early years were a few broken china vases, and a great deal of ink spilt over badly-written french exercises. and after being educated at home until she was nearly eighteen, aurora had been transferred to a parisian finishing-school; and that was all. her life had been the every-day life of other girls of her own position, and she differed from them only in being a great deal more fascinating, and a little more wilful, than the majority. talbot laughed at himself for his doubts and hesitations. "what a suspicious brute i must be," he said, "when i imagine i have fallen upon the clue to some mystery simply because there is a mournful tenderness in the old man's voice when he speaks to his only child! if i were sixty-seven years of age, and had such a daughter as aurora, would there not always be a shuddering terror mingled with my love,--a horrible dread that something would happen to take her away from me? i will propose to miss floyd to-morrow." had talbot been thoroughly candid with himself, he would perhaps have added, "or john mellish will make her an offer the day after." captain bulstrode presented himself at the house on the east cliff some time before noon on the next day; but he found mr. mellish on the door-step, talking to miss floyd's groom and inspecting the horses, which were waiting for the young ladies; for the young ladies were going to ride, and john mellish was going to ride with them. "but if you'll join us, bulstrode," the yorkshireman said, good-naturedly, "you can ride the gray i spoke of yesterday. saunders shall go back and fetch him." talbot rejected this offer rather sulkily. "i've my own horses here, thank you," he answered. "but if you'll let your groom ride down to the stables and tell my man to bring them up, i shall be obliged to you." after which condescending request captain bulstrode turned his back upon his friend, crossed the road, and folding his arms upon the railings, stared resolutely at the sea. but in five minutes more the ladies appeared upon the door-step, and talbot, turning at the sound of their voices, was fain to cross the road once more for the chance of taking aurora's foot in his hand as she sprang into her saddle; but john mellish was before him again, and miss floyd's mare was curveting under the touch of her light hand before the captain could interfere. he allowed the groom to attend to lucy, and, mounting as quickly as his stiff leg would allow him, he prepared to take his place by aurora's side. again he was too late; miss floyd had cantered down the hill attended by mellish, and it was impossible for talbot to leave poor lucy, who was a timid horsewoman. the captain never admired lucy so little as on horseback. his pale saint with the halo of golden hair seemed to him sadly out of place in a side-saddle. he looked back at the day of his morning visit to felden, and remembered how he had admired her, and how exactly she corresponded with his ideal, and how determined he was to be bewitched by her rather than by aurora. "if she had fallen in love with me," he thought, "i would have snapped my fingers at the black-browed heiress, and married this fair-haired angel out of hand. i meant to do that when i sold my commission. it was not for aurora's sake i left the army, it was not aurora whom i followed down here. which did i follow? what did i follow, i wonder? my destiny, i suppose, which is leading me through such a witch's dance as i never thought to tread at the sober age of three-and-thirty. if lucy had only loved me, it might have been all different." he was so angry with himself, that he was half inclined to be angry with poor lucy for not extricating him from the snares of aurora. if he could have read that innocent heart, as he rode in sulky silence across the stunted turf on the wide downs! if he could have known the slow sick pain in that gentle breast, as the quiet girl by his side lifted her blue eyes every now and then to steal a glance at his hard profile and moody brow! if he could have read her secret later, when, talking of aurora, he for the first time clearly betrayed the mystery of his own heart! if he could have known how the landscape grew dim before her eyes, and how the brown moorland reeled beneath her horse's hoofs until they seemed going down, down, down into some fathomless depth of sorrow and despair! but he knew nothing of this; and he thought lucy floyd a pretty, inanimate girl, who would no doubt be delighted to wear a becoming dress as bridesmaid at her cousin's wedding. there was to be a dinner-party that evening upon the east cliff, to which both john mellish and talbot were invited; and the captain savagely determined to bring matters to an issue before the night was out. talbot raleigh bulstrode would have been very angry with you, had you watched him too closely that evening as he fastened the golden solitaire in his narrow cravat before his looking-glass in the bow-window at the old ship. he was ashamed of himself for being causelessly savage with his valet, whom he dismissed abruptly before he began to dress; and had not the courage to call the man back again when his own hot hands refused to do their office. he spilt half a bottleful of perfume upon his varnished boots, and smeared his face with a scented waxy compound bought of monsieur eugène rimmel, which promised to _lisser sans graisser_ his moustache. he broke one of the crystal-boxes in his dressing-case, and put the bits of broken glass in his waistcoat-pocket from sheer absence of mind. he underwent semi-strangulation with the unbending circular collar in which, as a gentleman, it was his duty to invest himself; and he could have beaten the ivory backs of his brushes upon his head in blind execration of that short, stubborn black hair, which only curled at the _other ends;_ and when at last he emerged from his room, it was with a spiteful sensation that every waiter in the place knew his secret, and had a perfect knowledge of every emotion in his breast, and that the very newfoundland dog lying on the door-step had an inkling of the truth, as he lifted up his big head to look at the captain, and then dropped it again with a contemptuously lazy yawn. captain bulstrode offered a handful of broken glass to the man who drove him to the east cliff, and then confusedly substituted about fifteen shillings worth of silver coin for that abnormal species of payment. there must have been two or three earthquakes and an eclipse or so going on in some part of the globe, he thought, for this jog-trot planet seemed all tumult and confusion to talbot bulstrode. the world was all brighton, and brighton was all blue moonlight, and steel-coloured sea, and glancing, dazzling gas-light, and hare-soup and cod and oysters, and aurora floyd. yes, aurora floyd, who wore a white silk dress, and a thick circlet of dull gold upon her hair, who looked more like cleopatra to-night than ever, and who suffered mr. john mellish to take her down to dinner. how talbot hated the yorkshireman's big fair face, and blue eyes, and white teeth, as he watched the two young people across a phalanx of glass and silver, and flowers and wax-candles, and pickles, and other fortnum-and-mason ware! here was a golden opportunity lost, thought the discontented captain, forgetful that he could scarcely have proposed to miss floyd at the dinner-table, amidst the jingle of glasses and popping of corks, and with a big powdered footman charging at him with a side-dish or a sauce-tureen while he put the fatal question. the desired moment came a few hours afterwards, and talbot had no longer any excuse for delay. the november evening was mild, and the three windows in the drawing-room were open from floor to ceiling. it was pleasant to look out from the hot gas-light upon that wide sweep of moon-lit ocean, with a white sail glimmering here and there against the purple night. captain bulstrode sat near one of the open windows, watching that tranquil scene, with, i fear, very little appreciation of its beauty. he was wishing that the people would drop off and leave him alone with aurora. it was close upon eleven o'clock, and high time they went. john mellish would of course insist upon waiting for talbot; this was what a man had to endure on account of some old school-boy acquaintance. all rugby might turn up against him in a day or two, and dispute with him for aurora's smiles. but john mellish was engaged in a very animated conversation with archibald floyd, having contrived with consummate artifice to ingratiate himself in the old man's favour, and the visitors having one by one dropped off, aurora, with a listless yawn that she took little pains to conceal, strolled out on to the broad iron balcony. lucy was sitting at a table at the other end of the room, looking at a book of beauty. oh, my poor lucy! how much did you see of the honourable miss brownsmith's high forehead and roman nose? did not that young lady's handsome face stare up at you dimly through a blinding mist of tears that you were a great deal too well educated to shed? the chance had come at last. if life had been a haymarket comedy, and the entrances and exits arranged by mr. buckstone himself, it could have fallen out no better than this. talbot bulstrode followed aurora on to the balcony; john mellish went on with his story about the beverley foxhounds; and lucy, holding her breath at the other end of the room, knew as well what was going to happen as the captain himself. is not life altogether a long comedy, with fate for the stage-manager, and passion, inclination, love, hate, revenge, ambition, and avarice by turns in the prompter's box? a tiresome comedy sometimes, with dreary, talkee-talkee front scenes which come to nothing, but only serve to make the audience more impatient as they wait while the stage is set and the great people change their dresses; or a "sensation" comedy, with unlooked-for tableaux and unexpected _dénouements;_ but a comedy to the end of the chapter, for the sorrows which seem tragic to us are very funny when seen from the other side of the footlights; and our friends in the pit are as much amused with our trumpery griefs as the haymarket _habitués_ when mr. box finds his gridiron empty, or mr. cox misses his rasher. what can be funnier than other people's anguish? why do we enjoy mr. maddison morton's farces, and laugh till the tears run down our cheek at the comedian who enacts them? because there is scarcely a farce upon the british stage which is not, from the rising to the dropping of the curtain, a record of human anguish and undeserved misery. yes, undeserved and unnecessary torture--there is the special charm of the entertainment. if the man who was weak enough to send his wife to camberwell _had_ crushed a baby behind a chest of drawers, his sufferings wouldn't be half so delightful to an intellectual audience. if the gentleman who became embroiled with his laundress _had_ murdered the young lady in the green boots, where would be the fun of that old adelphi farce in which poor wright was wont to delight us? and so it is with our friends on the other side of the footlights, who enjoy our troubles all the more because we have not always deserved them, and whose sorrows we shall gloat over by-and-by, when the bell for the next piece begins, and it is their turn to go on and act. talbot bulstrode went out on to the balcony, and the earth stood still for ten minutes or so, and every steel-blue star in the sky glared watchfully down upon the young man in this the supreme crisis of his life. aurora was leaning against a slender iron pilaster, looking aslant into the town and across the town to the sea. she was wrapped in an opera cloak; no stiff, embroidered, young-ladyfied garment; but a voluminous drapery of soft scarlet woollen stuff, such as semiramide herself might have worn. "she looks like semiramide," talbot thought. "how did this scotch banker and his lancashire wife come to have an assyrian for their daughter?" he began brilliantly, this young man, as lovers generally do. "i am afraid you must have fatigued yourself this evening, miss floyd," he remarked. aurora stifled a yawn as she answered him. "i am rather tired," she said. it wasn't very encouraging. how was he to begin an eloquent speech, when she might fall asleep in the middle of it? but he did; he dashed at once into the heart of his subject, and he told her how he loved her; how he had done battle with this passion, which had been too strong for him; how he loved her as he never thought to love any creature upon this earth; and how he cast himself before her in all humility to take his sentence of life or death from her dear lips. she was silent for some moments, her profile sharply distinct to him in the moonlight, and those dear lips trembling visibly. then, with a half-averted face, and in words that seemed to come slowly and painfully from a stifled throat, she gave him his answer. that answer was a rejection! not a young lady's no, which means yes to-morrow; or which means perhaps that you have not been on your knees in a passion of despair, like lord edward fitz-morkysh in miss oderose's last novel. nothing of this kind; but a calm negative, carefully and tersely worded, as if she feared to mislead him by so much as one syllable that could leave a loophole through which hope might creep into his heart. he was rejected. for a moment it was quite as much as he could do to believe it. he was inclined to imagine that the signification of certain words had suddenly changed, or that he had been in the habit of mistaking them all his life, rather than that those words meant this hard fact; namely, that he, talbot raleigh bulstrode, of bulstrode castle, and of saxon extraction, had been rejected by the daughter of a lombard-street banker. he paused--for an hour and a half or so, as it seemed to him--in order to collect himself before he spoke again. "may i--venture to inquire," he said,--how horribly commonplace the phrase seemed! he could have used no worse had he been inquiring for furnished lodgings,--"may i ask if any prior attachment--to one more worthy----" "oh, no, no, no!" the answer came upon him so suddenly, that it almost startled him as much as her rejection. "and yet your decision is irrevocable?" "quite irrevocable." "forgive me if i am intrusive; but--but mr. floyd may perhaps have formed some higher views----" he was interrupted by a stifled sob as she clasped her hands over her averted face. "higher views!" she said; "poor dear old man! no, no, indeed." "it is scarcely strange that i bore you with these questions. it is so hard to think that, meeting you with your affections disengaged, i have yet been utterly unable to win one shadow of regard upon which i might build a hope for the future." poor talbot! talbot, the splitter of metaphysical straws and chopper of logic, talking of building hopes on shadows, with a lover's delirious stupidity. "it is so hard to resign every thought of your ever coming to alter your decision of to-night, aurora,"--he lingered on her name for a moment, first because it was so sweet to say it, and secondly, in the hope that she would speak,--"it is so hard to remember the fabric of happiness i had dared to build, and to lay it down here to-night for ever." talbot quite forgot that, up to the time of the arrival of john mellish, he had been perpetually arguing against his passion, and had declared to himself over and over again that he would be a consummate fool if he was ever beguiled into making aurora his wife. he reversed the parable of the fox; for he had been inclined to make faces at the grapes while he fancied them within his reach, and now that they were removed from his grasp, he thought that such delicious fruit had never grown to tempt mankind. "if--if," he said, "my fate had been happier, i know how proud my father, poor old sir john, would have been of his eldest son's choice." how ashamed he felt of the meanness of this speech! the artful sentence had been constructed in order to remind aurora whom she was refusing. he was trying to bribe her with the baronetcy which was to be his in due time. but she made no answer to the pitiful appeal. talbot was almost choked with mortification. "i see--i see," he said, "that it is hopeless. good night, miss floyd." she did not even turn to look at him as he left the balcony; but with her red drapery wrapped tightly round her, stood shivering in the moonlight, with the silent tears slowly stealing down her cheeks. "higher views!" she cried bitterly, repeating a phrase that talbot used,--"higher views! god help him!" "i must wish you good-night and good-bye at the same time," captain bulstrode said, as he shook hands with lucy. "good-bye?" "yes; i leave brighton early to-morrow." "so suddenly?" "why, not exactly suddenly. i always meant to travel this winter. can i do anything for you--at cairo?" he was so pale and cold and wretched-looking, that she almost pitied him--pitied him in spite of the wild joy growing up in her heart. aurora had refused him--it was perfectly clear--refused _him!_ the soft blue eyes filled with tears at the thought that a demigod should have endured such humiliation. talbot pressed her hand gently in his own clammy palm. he could read pity in that tender look, but possessed no lexicon by which he could translate its deeper meaning. "you will wish your uncle good-bye for me, lucy," he said. he called her lucy for the first time; but what did it matter now? his great affliction set him apart from his fellow-men, and gave him dismal privileges. "good-night, lucy; good-night and good-bye. i--i--shall hope to see you again--in a year or two." the pavement of the east cliff seemed so much air beneath talbot bulstrode's boots as he strode back to the old ship; for it is peculiar to us, in our moments of supreme trouble or joy, to lose all consciousness of the earth we tread, and to float upon an atmosphere of sublime egotism. but the captain did not leave brighton the next day on the first stage of his egyptian journey. he stayed at the fashionable watering-place; but he resolutely abjured the neighbourhood of the east cliff, and, the day being wet, took a pleasant walk to shoreham through the rain; and shoreham being such a pretty place, he was no doubt much enlivened by that exercise. returning through the fog at about four o'clock, the captain met mr. john mellish close against the turnpike outside cliftonville. the two men stared aghast at each other. "why, where on earth are you going?" asked talbot. "back to yorkshire by the first train that leaves brighton." "but this isn't the way to the station!" "no; but they're putting the horses in my portmanteau, and my shirts are going by the leeds cattle-train; and----" talbot bulstrode burst into a loud laugh, a harsh and bitter cachinnation, but affording wondrous relief to that gentleman's overcharged breast. "john mellish," he said, "you have been proposing to aurora floyd." the yorkshireman turned scarlet. "it--it--wasn't honourable of her to tell you," he stammered. "miss floyd has never breathed a word to me upon the subject. i've just come from shoreham, and you've only lately left the east cliff. you've proposed, and you've been rejected." "i have," roared john; "and it's deuced hard when i promised her she should keep a racing stud if she liked, and enter as many colts as she pleased for the derby, and give her own orders to the trainer, and i'd never interfere;--and--and--mellish park is one of the finest places in the county; and i'd have won her a bit of blue ribbon to tie up her bonny black hair." "that old frenchman was right," muttered captain bulstrode: "there _is_ a great satisfaction in the misfortune of others. if i go to my dentist, i like to find another wretch in the waiting-room; and i like to have my tooth extracted first, and to see him glare enviously at me as i come out of the torture chamber, knowing that my troubles are over, while his are to come. good-bye, john mellish, and god bless you. you're not such a bad fellow after all." talbot felt almost cheerful as he walked back to the ship, and he took a mutton cutlet and tomata sauce, and a pint of moselle for his dinner: and the food and wine warmed him; and not having slept a wink on the previous night, he fell into a heavy indigestible slumber, with his head hanging over the sofa-cushion, and dreamt that he was at grand cairo (or at a place which would have been that city had it not been now and then bulstrode castle, and occasionally chambers in the albany); and that aurora floyd was with him, clad in imperial purple, with hieroglyphics on the hem of her robe, and wearing a clown's jacket of white satin and scarlet spots, such as he had once seen foremost in a great race. captain bulstrode arose early the next morning, with the full intention of departing from sussex by the 8.45 express; but suddenly remembering that he had but poorly acknowledged archibald floyd's cordiality, he determined on sacrificing his inclinations on the shrine of courtesy, and calling once more at the east cliff to take leave of the banker. having once resolved upon this line of action, the captain would fain have hurried that moment to mr. floyd's house; but finding that it was only half-past seven, he was compelled to restrain his impatience and await a more seasonable hour. could he go at nine? scarcely. at ten? yes, surely, as he could then leave by the eleven o'clock train. he sent his breakfast away untouched, and sat looking at his watch in a mad hurry for the time to pass, yet growing hot and uncomfortable as the hour drew near. at a quarter to ten he put on his hat and left the hotel. mr. floyd was at home, the servant told him--upstairs in the little study, he thought. talbot waited for no more. "you need not announce me," he said; "i know where to find your master." the study was on the same floor as the drawing-room; and close against the drawing-room door talbot paused for a moment. the door was open; the room empty; no, not empty: aurora floyd was there, seated with her back towards him, and her head leaning on the cushions of her chair. he stopped for another moment to admire the back view of that small head with its crown of lustrous raven hair, then took a step or two in the direction of the banker's study; then stopped again, then turned back, went into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him. she did not stir as he approached her, nor answer when he stammered her name. her face was as white as the face of a dead woman, and her nerveless hands hung over the cushions of the arm-chair. a newspaper was lying at her feet. she had quietly swooned away sitting there by herself, with no one by to restore her to consciousness. talbot flung some flowers from a vase on the table, and dashed the water over aurora's forehead; then wheeling her chair close to the open window, he set her with her face to the wind. in two or three moments she began to shiver violently, and soon afterwards opened her eyes, and looked at him; as she did so, she put her hands to her head, as if trying to remember something. "talbot!" she said, "talbot!" she called him by his christian name, she who five-and-thirty hours before had coldly forbidden him to hope. "aurora," he cried, "aurora, i thought i came here to wish your father good-bye; but i deceived myself. i came to ask you once more, and once for all, if your decision of the night before last was irrevocable." "heaven knows i thought it was when i uttered it." "but it was not?" "do you wish me to revoke it?" "do i wish? do i----" "because if you really do, i will revoke it; for you are a brave and honourable man, captain bulstrode, and i love you very dearly." heaven knows into what rhapsodies he might have fallen, but she put up her hand, as much as to say, "forbear to-day, if you love me," and hurried from the room. he had accepted the cup of _bang_ which the siren had offered, and had drained the very dregs thereof, and was drunken. he dropped into the chair in which aurora had sat, and, absent-minded in his joyful intoxication, picked up the newspaper that had lain at her feet. he shuddered in spite of himself as he looked at the title of the journal; it was 'bell's life.' a dirty copy, crumpled, and beer-stained, and emitting rank odours of inferior tobacco. it was directed to miss floyd, in such sprawling penmanship as might have disgraced the potboy of a sporting public-house:- "miss floid, fell dun wodes, kent." the newspaper had been redirected to aurora by the housekeeper at felden. talbot ran his eye eagerly over the front page; it was almost entirely filled with advertisements (and such advertisements!), but in one column there was an account headed, "frightful accident in germany: an english jockey killed." captain bulstrode never knew why he read of this accident. it was in no way interesting to him, being an account of a steeple-chase in prussia, in which a heavy english rider and a crack french horse had been killed. there was a great deal of regret expressed for the loss of the horse, and none for the man who had ridden him, who, the reporter stated, was very little known in sporting circles; but in a paragraph lower down was added this information, evidently procured at the last moment: "the jockey's name was conyers." chapter vii. aurora's strange pensioner. archibald floyd received the news of his daughter's choice with evident pride and satisfaction. it seemed as if some heavy burden had been taken away, as if some cruel shadow had been lifted from the lives of father and daughter. the banker took his family back to felden woods, with talbot bulstrode in his train; and the chintz rooms--pretty, cheerful chambers, with bow-windows that looked across the well-kept stable-yard into long glades of oak and beech--were prepared for the ex-hussar, who was to spend his christmas at felden. mrs. alexander and her husband were established with her family in the western wing; mr. and mrs. andrew were located at the eastern angle; for it was the hospitable custom of the old banker to summon his kinsfolk about him early in december, and to keep them with him till the bells of picturesque beckenham church had heralded in the new year. lucy floyd's cheeks had lost much of their delicate colour when she returned to felden, and it was pronounced, by all who observed the change, that the air of the east cliff, and the autumn winds drifting across the bleak downs, had been too much for the young lady's strength. aurora seemed to have burst forth into some new and more glorious beauty since the morning upon which she had accepted the hand of talbot bulstrode. there was a proud defiance in her manner, which became her better than gentleness becomes far lovelier women. there was a haughty _insouciance_ about this young lady which gave new brilliancy to her great black eyes, and new music to her joyous laugh. she was like some beautiful noisy, boisterous waterfall; for ever dancing, rushing, sparkling, scintillating, and utterly defying you to do anything but admire it. talbot bulstrode, having once abandoned himself to the spell of the siren, made no further struggle, but fairly fell into the pit-falls of her eyes, and was entangled in the meshy network of her blue-black hair. the greater the tension of the bow-string, the stronger the rebound thereof; and talbot bulstrode was as weak to give way at last as he had long been powerful to resist. i must write his story in the commonest words. he could not help it! he loved her; not because he thought her better, or wiser, or lovelier, or more suited to him than many other women,--indeed he had grave doubts upon every one of these points,--but because it was his destiny, and he loved her. what is that hard word which m. victor hugo puts into the mouth of the priest in 'the hunch-back of notre dame' as an excuse for the darkness of his sin? [greek: ananke!] it was his fate! so he wrote to his mother, and told her that he had chosen a wife, who was to sit in the halls of bulstrode, and whose name was to be interwoven with the chronicles of the house; told her, moreover, that miss floyd was a banker's daughter, beautiful and fascinating, with big black eyes, and fifty thousand pounds for her dowry. lady raleigh bulstrode answered her son's letter upon a quarter of a quire of note-paper, filled with fearful motherly prayers and suggestions; anxious hopes that he had chosen wisely; questionings as to the opinions and religious principles of the young lady,--much indeed that talbot would have been sorely puzzled to answer. enclosed in this was a letter to aurora, a womanly and tender epistle, in which pride was tempered with love, and which brought big tears welling up to miss floyd's eyes, until lady bulstrode's firm penmanship grew blotted and blurred beneath the reader's vision. and whither went poor slaughtered john mellish? he returned to mellish park, carrying with him his dogs, and horses, and grooms, and phaeton, and paraphernalia; but his grief--having unluckily come upon him after the racing season--was too much for him, and he fled away from the roomy old mansion, with its pleasant surroundings of park and woodland; for aurora floyd was not for him, and it was all flat, stale, and unprofitable. so he went to paris, or _parry_, as he called that imperial city, and established himself in the biggest chambers at meurice's, and went backwards and forwards between that establishment and galignani's ten times a day, in quest of the english papers. he dined drearily at véfour's, philippe's, the trois frères, the maison dorée, and the café de paris. his big voice was heard at every expensive dining place in paris, ordering "_toos killyar de mellyour: vous savez;_" but he sent the daintiest dishes away untasted, and would sit for a quarter of an hour counting the toothpicks in the tiny blue vases, and thinking of aurora. he rode dismally in the bois de boulogne, and sat shivering in _cafés chantants_, listening to songs that always seemed set to the same melody. he haunted the circuses, and was well-nigh in love with a fair _manège_ rider, who had black eyes, and reminded him of aurora; till, upon buying the most powerful opera-glass that the rue de rivoli could afford, he discovered that the lady's face was an inch deep in a certain white wash called _blanc rosati_, and that the chief glory of her eyes were the rings of indian ink which surrounded them. he could have dashed that double-barrelled truth-revealer to the ground, and trodden the lenses to powder with his heel, in his passion of despair: better to have been for ever deceived, to have gone on believing that woman to be like aurora, and to have gone to that circus every night until his hair grew white, but not with age, and until he pined away and died. the party at felden woods was a very joyous one. the voices of children made the house pleasant; noisy lads from eton and westminster clambered about the balustrades of the staircases, and played battledore-and-shuttlecock upon the long stone terrace. these young people were all cousins to aurora floyd, and loved the banker's daughter with a childish worship, which mild lucy could never inspire. it was pleasant to talbot bulstrode to see that wherever his future wife trod, love and admiration waited upon her footsteps. he was not singular in his passion for this glorious creature, and it could be, after all, no such terrible folly to love one who was beloved by all who knew her. so the proud cornishman was happy, and gave himself up to his happiness without further protest. did aurora love him? did she make him due return for the passionate devotion, the blind adoration? she admired and esteemed him; she was proud of him--proud of that very pride in his nature which made him so different to herself; and she was too impulsive and truthful a creature to keep this sentiment a secret from her lover. she revealed, too, a constant desire to please her betrothed husband, suppressing at least all outward token of the tastes that were so unpleasant to him. no more copies of 'bell's life' littered the ladies' morning-room at felden; and when andrew floyd asked aurora to ride to meet with him, his cousin refused the offer which would once have been so welcome. instead of following the croydon hounds, miss floyd was content to drive talbot and lucy in a basket-carriage through the frost-bespangled country-side. lucy was always the companion and confidante of the lovers; it was hard for her to hear their happy talk of the bright future stretching far away before them--stretching down, down the shadowy aisles of time, to an escutcheoned tomb at bulstrode, where husband and wife would lie down, full of years and honours, in the days to come. it was hard to have to help them plan a thousand schemes of pleasure, in which--heaven pity her!--she was to join. but she bore her cross meekly, this pale elaine of modern days; and she never told talbot bulstrode that she had gone mad and loved him, and was fain to die. talbot and aurora were both concerned to see the pale cheeks of their gentle companion; but everybody was ready to ascribe them to a cold, or a cough, or constitutional debility, or some other bodily evil, which was to be cured by drugs and boluses; and no one for a moment imagined that anything could possibly be amiss with a young lady who lived in a luxurious house, went shopping in a carriage and pair, and had more pocket-money than she cared to spend. but the lily maid of astolat lived in a lordly castle, and had doubtless ample pocket-money to buy gorgeous silks for her embroidery, and had little on earth to wish for, and nothing to do; whereby she fell sick for love of sir lancelot, and pined and died. surely the secret of many sorrows lies in this. how many a grief has been bred of idleness and leisure! how many a spartan youth has nursed a bosom-devouring fox for very lack of better employment! do the gentlemen who write the leaders in our daily journals ever die of grief? do the barristers whose names appear in almost every case reported in those journals go mad for love unrequited? did the lady with the lamp cherish any foolish passion in those days and nights of ceaseless toil, in those long watches of patient devotion far away in the east? do the curates of over-crowded parishes, the chaplains of gaols and convict-ships, the great medical attendants in the wards of hospitals--do they make for themselves the griefs that kill? surely not. with the busiest of us there may be some holy moments, some sacred hour snatched from the noise and confusion of the revolving wheel of life's machinery, and offered up as a sacrifice to sorrow and care; but the interval is brief, and the great wheel rolls on, and we have no time to pine or die. so lucy floyd, having nothing better to do, nursed and made much of her hopeless passion. she set up an altar for the skeleton, and worshipped at the shrine of her grief; and when people told her of her pale face, and the family doctor wondered at the failure of his quinine mixture, perhaps she nourished a vague hope that before the spring-time came back again, bringing with it the wedding-day of talbot and aurora, she would have escaped from all this demonstrative love and happiness, and be at rest. aurora answered lady raleigh bulstrode's letter with an epistle expressive of such gratitude and humility, such earnest hope of winning the love of talbot's mother, mingled with a dim fearfulness of never being worthy of that affection, as won the cornish lady's regard for her future daughter. it was difficult to associate the impetuous girl with that letter, and lady bulstrode made an image of the writer that very much differed from the fearless and dashing original. she wrote aurora a second letter, more affectionately worded than the first, and promised the motherless girl a daughter's welcome at bulstrode. "will she ever let me call her 'mother,' talbot?" aurora asked, as she read lady bulstrode's second letter, to her lover. "she is very proud, is she not?--proud of your ancient descent? my father comes from a glasgow mercantile family, and i do not even know anything about my mother's relations." talbot answered her with a grave smile. "she will accept you for your native worth, dearest aurora," he said, "and will ask no foolish questions about the pedigree of such a man as archibald floyd; a man whom the proudest aristocrat in england might be glad to call his father-in-law. she will reverence my aurora's transparent soul and candid nature, and will bless me for the choice i have made." "i shall love her very dearly if she will only let me. should i have ever cared about horse-racing, and read sporting-papers, if i could have called a good woman 'mother?'" she seemed to ask this question rather of herself than of talbot. complete as was archibald floyd's satisfaction at his daughter's disposal of her heart, the old man could not calmly contemplate a separation from this idolized daughter; so aurora told talbot that she could never take up her abode in cornwall during her father's lifetime; and it was finally arranged that the young couple were to spend half the year in london, and the other half at felden woods. what need had the lonely widower of that roomy mansion, with its long picture-gallery and snug suites of apartments, each of them large enough to accommodate a small family? what need had one solitary old man of that retinue of servants, the costly stud in the stables, the new-fangled vehicles in the coach-houses, the hot-house flowers, the pines and grapes and peaches, cultivated by three scottish gardeners? what need had he of these things? he lived principally in the study in which he had once had a stormy interview with his only child; the study in which hung the crayon portrait of eliza floyd; the room which contained an old-fashioned desk he had bought for a guinea in his boyhood, and in which there were certain letters written by a hand that was dead, some tresses of purple-black hair cut from the head of a corpse, and a pasteboard ticket, printed at a little town in lancashire, calling upon the friends and patrons of miss eliza percival to come to the theatre, for her especial benefit, upon the night of august 20, 1837. it was decided, therefore, that felden woods was to be the country residence of talbot and aurora, till such time as the young man should succeed to the baronetcy and bulstrode castle, and be required to live upon his estate. in the mean time the ex-hussar was to go into parliament, if the electors of a certain little borough in cornwall, which had always sent a bulstrode to westminster, should be pleased to return him. the marriage was to take place early in may, and the honeymoon was to be spent in switzerland and at bulstrode castle. mrs. walter powell thought that her doom was sealed, and that she would have to quit those pleasant pastures after the wedding-day; but aurora speedily set the mind of the ensign's widow at rest by telling her that as she, miss floyd, was utterly ignorant of housekeeping, she would be happy to retain her services after marriage as guide and adviser in such matters. the poor about beckenham were not forgotten in aurora floyd's morning drives with lucy and talbot. parcels of grocery and bottles of wine often lurked beneath the crimson-lined leopard-skin carriage-rug; and it was no uncommon thing for talbot to find himself making a footstool of a huge loaf of bread. the poor were very hungry in that bright december weather, and had all manner of complaints, which, however otherwise dissimilar, were all to be benefited by one especial treatment; namely, half-sovereigns, old brown sherry, french brandy, and gunpowder tea. whether the daughter was dying of consumption, or the father laid up with the rheumatics, or the husband in a raging fever, or the youngest boy recovering from a fall into a copper of boiling water, the above-named remedies seemed alike necessary, and were far more popular than the chicken-broths and cooling fever-drinks prepared by the felden cook. it pleased talbot to see his betrothed dispensing good things to the eager recipients of her bounty. it pleased him to think how even his mother must have admired this high-spirited girl, content to sit down in close cottage chambers and talk to rheumatic old women. lucy distributed little parcels of tracts prepared by mrs. alexander, and flannel garments made by her own white hands; but aurora gave the half-sovereigns and the old sherry; and i'm afraid these simple cottagers liked the heiress best; although they were wise enough and just enough to know that each lady gave according to her means. it was in returning from a round of these charitable visits that an adventure befell the little party, which was by no means pleasing to captain bulstrode. aurora had driven further than usual, and it was striking four as her ponies dashed past beckenham church and down the hill towards felden woods. the afternoon was cold and cheerless; light flakes of snow drifted across the hard road, and hung here and there upon the leafless hedges, and there was that inky blackness in the sky which presages a heavy fall. the woman at the lodge ran out with her apron over her head to open the gates as miss floyd's ponies approached, and at the same moment a man rose from a bank by the roadside, and came close up to the little carriage. he was a broad-shouldered, stout-built fellow, wearing a shabby velveteen cut-away coat, slashed about with abnormal pockets, and white and greasy at the seams and elbows. his chin was muffled in two or three yards of dirty woollen comforter, after the fashion of his kind; and the band of his low-crowned felt hat was ornamented with a short clay pipe, coloured of a respectable blackness. a dingy white dog, with a brass collar, bow legs, a short nose, blood-shot eyes, one ear, a hanging jaw, and a generally supercilious expression of countenance, rose from the bank at the same moment with his master, and growled ominously at the elegant vehicle and the mastiff bow-wow trotting by its side. the stranger was the same individual who had accosted miss floyd in cockspur street three months before. i do not know whether aurora recognized this person; but i know that she touched her ponies' ears with the whip, and that the spirited animals had dashed past the man, and through the gates of felden, when he sprang forward, caught at their heads, and stopped the light basket-carriage, which rocked under the force of his strong hand. talbot bulstrode leapt from the vehicle, heedless of his stiff leg, and caught the man by the collar. "let go that bridle!" he cried, lifting his cane; "how dare you stop this lady's ponies?" "because i wanted to speak to her, that's why. let go o' my coat, will yer?" the dog made at talbot's legs, but the young man whirled round his cane and inflicted such chastisement upon the snub nose of that animal as sent him into temporary retirement, howling dismally. "you are an insolent scoundrel, and i've a good mind to----" "yer'd be hinserlent, p'raps, if yer was hungry," answered the man, with a pitiful whine, which was meant to be conciliating. "such weather as this here's all very well for young swells such as you, as has your dawgs and guns and 'untin'; but the winter's tryin' to a poor man's temper, when he's industrious and willin', and can't get a stroke of honest work to do, or a mouthful of vittals. i only want to speak to the young lady; she knows me well enough." "which young lady?" "miss floyd; the heiress." they were standing a little way from the pony-carriage. aurora had risen from her seat and flung the reins to lucy; she was looking towards the two men, pale and breathless, doubtless terrified for the result of the encounter. talbot released the man's collar, and went back to miss floyd. "do you know this person, aurora?" he asked. "yes." "he is one of your old pensioners, i suppose?" "he is; do not say anything more to him, talbot. his manner is rough, but he means no harm. stop with lucy while i speak to him." rapid and impetuous in all her movements, she sprang from the carriage and joined the man beneath the bare branches of the trees before talbot could remonstrate. the dog, which had crawled slowly back to his master's side, fawned upon her as she approached, and was driven away by a fierce growl from bow-wow, who was little likely to brook any such vulgar rivalry. the man removed his felt hat, and tugged ceremoniously at a tuft of sandyish hair which ornamented his low forehead. "you might have spoken to a cove without all this here row, miss floyd," he said, in an injured tone. aurora looked at him indignantly. "why did you stop me here?" she said; "why couldn't you write to me?" "because writin's never so much good as speakin', and because such young ladies as you are uncommon difficult to get at. how did i know that your pa mightn't have put his hand upon my letter, and there'd have been a pretty to do? though i dessay, as for that, if i was to go up to the house, and ask the old gent for a trifle, he wouldn't be back'ard in givin' it. i dessay he'd be good for a fi'-pun note; or a tenner, if it came to that." aurora's eyes flashed sparks of fire as she turned upon the speaker. "if ever you dare to annoy my father you shall pay dearly for it, matthew harrison," she said; "not that _i_ fear anything you can say, but i will not have him annoyed; i will not have him tormented. he has borne enough, and suffered enough, heaven knows, without that. i will not have him harassed, and his best and tenderest feelings made a market of, by such as you. i will not!" she stamped her foot upon the frosty ground as she spoke. talbot bulstrode saw and wondered at the gesture. he had half a mind to leave the carriage and join aurora and her petitioner; but the ponies were restless, and he knew that it would not do to abandon the reins to poor timid lucy. "you needn't take on so, miss floyd," answered the man, whom aurora had addressed as matthew harrison; "i'm sure i want to make things pleasant to all parties. all i ask is that you'll act a little liberal to a cove wot's come down in the world since you see him last. lord, wot a world it is for ups and downs! if it had been the summer season, i'd have had no needs to worrit you; but what's the good of standin' at the top of regent street such weather as this with tarrier-pups and such likes? old ladies has no eye for dawgs in the winter; and even the gents as cares for rat-catching is gettin' uncommon scarce. there aint nothink doin' on the turf whereby a chap can make a honest penny; nor won't be, come the craven meetin'. i'd never have come anigh you, miss, if i hadn't been hard up; and i know you'll act liberal." "act liberally!" cried aurora. "good heavens! if every guinea i have, or ever hope to have, could blot out the business that you trade upon, i'd open my hands and let the money run through them as freely as so much water." "it was only good-natur'd of me to send you that ere paper, though, miss, eh?" said mr. matthew harrison, plucking a dry twig from the tree nearest him, and chewing it for his delectation. aurora and the man had walked slowly onward as they spoke, and were by this time at some distance from the pony-carriage. talbot bulstrode was in a fever of restless impatience. "do you know this pensioner of your cousin's, lucy?" he asked. "no, i can't remember his face. i don't think he belongs to beckenham." "why, if i hadn't have sent you that ere 'life,' you wouldn't have know'd; would you now?" said the man. "no, no, perhaps not," answered aurora. she had taken her porte-monnaie from her pocket, and mr. harrison was furtively regarding the little morocco receptacle with glistening eyes. "you don't ask me about any of the particklars," he said. "no. what should i care to know of them?" "no, certently," answered the man, suppressing a chuckle; "you know enough, if it comes to that; and if you wanted to know any more, i couldn't tell you; for them few lines in the paper is all i could ever get hold of about the business. but i allus said it, and i allus will; if a man as rides up'ards of eleven stone----" it seemed as if he were in a fair way of rambling on for ever so long, if aurora had not checked him by an impatient frown. perhaps he stopped all the more readily as she opened her purse at the same moment, and he caught sight of the glittering sovereigns lurking between leaves of crimson silk. he had no very acute sense of colour; but i am sure that he thought gold and crimson made a pleasing contrast, as he looked at the yellow coin in miss floyd's porte-monnaie. she poured the sovereigns into her own gloved palm, and then dropped the golden shower into mr. harrison's hands, which were hollowed into a species of horny basin for the reception of her bounty. the great trunk of an oak screened them from the observation of talbot and lucy, as aurora gave the man this money. "you have no claim on me," she said, stopping him abruptly, as he began a declaration of his gratitude, "and i protest against your making a market of any past events which have come under your knowledge. remember, once and for ever, that i am not afraid of you; and that if i consent to assist you, it is because i will not have my father annoyed. let me have the address of some place where a letter may always find you,--you can put it into an envelope and direct it to me here,--and from time to time i promise to send you a moderate remittance; sufficient to enable you to lead an honest life, if you, or any of your set, are capable of doing so; but i repeat, that if i give you this money as a bribe, it is only for my father's sake." the man uttered some expression of thanks, looking at aurora earnestly; but there was a stern shadow upon the dark face that forbade any hope of conciliation. she was turning from him, followed by the mastiff, when the bandy-legged dog ran forward, whining and raising himself upon his hind legs to lick her hand. the expression of her face underwent an immediate change. she shrank from the dog, and he looked at her for a moment with a dim uncertainty in his blood-shot eyes; then, as conviction stole upon the brute mind, he burst into a joyous bark, frisking and capering about miss floyd's silk dress, and imprinting dusty impressions of his fore paws upon the rich fabric. "the pore hanimal knows yer, miss," said the man, deprecatingly; "you was never 'aughty to 'im." the mastiff bow-wow made as if he would have torn up every inch of ground in felden woods at this juncture; but aurora quieted him with a look. "poor boxer!" she said; "poor boxer! so you know me, boxer." "lord, miss, there's no knowin' the faithfulness of them animals." "poor boxer! i think i should like to have you. would you sell him, harrison?" the man shook his head. "no, miss," he answered, "thank you kindly; there aint much in the way of dawgs as i'd refuse to make a bargain about. if you wanted a mute spannel, or a russian setter, or a hile of skye, i'd get him for you and welcome, and ask nothin' for my trouble; but this here bull-tarrier's father and mother and wife and fambly to me, and there aint money enough in your pa's bank to buy him, miss." "well, well," said aurora, relentingly, "i know how faithful he is. send me the address, and don't come to felden again." she returned to the carriage, and taking the reins from talbot's hand, gave the restless ponies their head; the vehicle dashed past mr. matthew harrison, who stood hat in hand, with his dog between his legs, until the party had gone by. miss floyd stole a glance at her lover's face, and saw that captain bulstrode's countenance wore its darkest expression. the officer kept sulky silence till they reached the house, when he handed the two ladies from the carriage and followed them across the hall. aurora was on the lowest step of the broad staircase before he spoke. "aurora," he said, "one word before you go upstairs." she turned and looked at him a little defiantly; she was still very pale, and the fire with which her eyes had flashed upon mr. matthew harrison, dog-fancier and rat-catcher, had not yet died out of the dark orbs. talbot bulstrode opened the door of a long chamber under the picture-gallery--half billiard-room, half library, and almost the pleasantest apartment in the house--and stood aside for aurora to pass him. the young lady crossed the threshold as proudly as marie antoinette going to face her plebeian accusers. the room was empty. miss floyd seated herself in a low easy-chair by one of the two great fireplaces, and looked straight at the blaze. "i want to ask you about that man, aurora," captain bulstrode said, leaning over a _prie-dieu_ chair, and playing nervously with the carved arabesques of the walnut-wood framework. "about which man?" this might have been prevarication in some women; from aurora it was simply defiance, as talbot knew. "the man who spoke to you in the avenue just now. who is he, and what was his business with you?" here captain bulstrode fairly broke down. he loved her, reader, he loved her, remember, and he was a coward. a coward under the influence of that most cowardly of all passions, love!--the passion that could leave a stain upon a nelson's name; the passion which might have made a dastard of the bravest of the three hundred at thermopylæ, or the six hundred at balaklava. he loved her, this unhappy young man, and he began to stammer, and hesitate, and apologize, shivering under the angry light in her wonderful eyes. "believe me, aurora, that i would not for the world play the spy upon your actions, or dictate to you the objects of your bounty. no, aurora, not if my right to do so were stronger than it is, and i were twenty times your husband; but that man, that disreputable-looking fellow who spoke to you just now--i don't think he is the sort of person you ought to assist." "i dare say not," she said; "i have no doubt i assist many people who ought by rights to die in a workhouse or drop on the high-road; but, you see, if i stopped to question their deserts, they might die of starvation while i was making my inquiries; so perhaps it's better to throw away a few shillings upon some unhappy creature who is wicked enough to be hungry, and not good enough to deserve to have anything given him to eat." there was a recklessness about this speech that jarred upon talbot, but he could not very well take objection to it; besides, it was leading away from the subject upon which he was so eager to be satisfied. "but that man, aurora--who is he?" "a dog-fancier." talbot shuddered. "i thought he was something horrible," he murmured; "but what, in heaven's name, could he want of you, aurora?" "what most of my petitioners want," she answered; "whether it's the curate of a new chapel with mediæval decorations, who wants to rival our lady of bons-secours upon one of the hills about norwood; or a laundress, who has burnt a week's washing, and wants the means to make it good; or a lady of fashion, who is about to inaugurate a home for the children of indigent lucifer-match sellers; or a lecturer upon political economy, or shelley and byron, or upon charles dickens and the modern humorists, who is going to hold forth at croydon: they all want the same thing; money! if i tell the curate that my principles are evangelical, and that i can't pray sincerely if there are candlesticks on the altar, he is not the less glad of my hundred pounds. if i inform the lady of fashion that i have peculiar opinions about the orphans of lucifer-match sellers, and cherish a theory of my own against the education of the masses, she will shrug her shoulders deprecatingly, but will take care to let me know that any donation miss floyd may be pleased to afford will be equally acceptable. if i told them that i had committed half a dozen murders, or that i had a silver statue of the winner of last year's derby erected on an altar in my dressing-room, and did daily and nightly homage to it, they would take my money and thank me kindly for it, as that man did just now." "but one word, aurora: does the man belong to this neighbourhood?" "no." "how, then, did you come to know him?" she looked at him for a moment; steadily, unflinchingly, with a thoughtful expression in that ever-changing countenance; looked as if she were mentally debating some point. then rising suddenly, she gathered her shawl about her, and walked towards the door. she paused upon the threshold, and said-"this cross-questioning is scarcely pleasant, captain bulstrode. if i choose to give a five-pound note to any person who may ask me for it, i expect full licence to do so; and i will not submit to be called to account for my actions--even by you." "aurora!" the tenderly reproachful tone struck her to the heart. "you may believe, talbot," she said,--"you must surely believe that i know too well the value of your love to imperil it by word or deed--you _must_ believe this." chapter viii. poor john mellish comes back again. john mellish grew weary of the great city of paris. better love, and contentment, and a crust in a _mansarde_, than stalled oxen or other costly food in the loftiest saloons _au premier_, with the most obsequious waiters to do us homage, repressing so much as a smile at our insular idiom. he grew heartily weary of the rue de rivoli, the gilded railings of the tuileries gardens, and the leafless trees behind them. he was weary of the place de la concorde, and the champs elysées, and the rattle of the hoofs of the troop about his imperial highness's carriage, when napoleon the third, or the baby prince, took his airing. the plot was yet a-hatching which was to come so soon to a climax in the rue lepelletier. he was tired of the broad boulevards, and the theatres, and the cafés, and the glove-shops--tired of staring at the jewellers' windows in the rue de la paix, picturing to himself the face of aurora floyd under the diamond and emerald tiaras displayed therein. he had serious thoughts at times of buying a stove and a basket of charcoal, and asphyxiating himself quietly in the great gilded saloon at meurice's. what was the use of his money, or his dogs, or his horses, or his broad acres? all these put together would not purchase aurora floyd. what was the good of life, if it came to that, since the banker's daughter refused to share it with him? remember that this big, blue-eyed, curly-haired john mellish had been from his cradle a spoiled child,--spoiled by poor relations and parasites, servants and toadies, from the first hour to the thirtieth year of his existence,--and it seemed such a very hard thing that this beautiful woman should be denied to him. had he been an eastern potentate, he would have sent for his vizier, and would have had that official bow-strung before his eyes, and so made an end of it; but being merely a yorkshire gentleman and landowner, he had no more to do but to bear his burden quietly. as if he had ever borne anything quietly! he flung half the weight of his grief upon his valet; until that functionary dreaded the sound of miss floyd's name, and told a fellow-servant in confidence that his master "made such a howling about that young woman as he offered marriage to at brighton, that there was no bearing him." the end of it all was, that one night john mellish gave sudden orders for the striking of his tents, and early the next morning departed for the great northern railway, leaving only the ashes of his fires behind him. it was only natural to suppose that mr. mellish would have gone straight to his country residence, where there was much business to be done by him: foals to be entered for coming races, trainers and stable-boys to be settled with, the planning and laying down of a proposed tan-gallop to be carried out, and a racing stud awaiting the eye of the master. but instead of going from the dover railway station to the great northern hotel, eating his dinner, and starting for doncaster by the express, mr. mellish drove to the gloucester coffee-house, and there took up his quarters, for the purpose, as he said, of seeing the cattle-show. he made a melancholy pretence of driving to baker street in a hansom cab, and roamed hither and thither for a quarter of an hour, staring dismally into the pens, and then fled away precipitately from the yorkshire gentlemen-farmers, who gave him hearty greeting. he left the gloucester the next morning in a dog-cart, and drove straight to beckenham. archibald floyd, who knew nothing of this young yorkshireman's declaration and rejection, had given him a hearty invitation to felden woods. why shouldn't he go there? only to make a morning call upon the hospitable banker; not to see aurora; only to take a few long respirations of the air she breathed before he went back to yorkshire. of course he knew nothing of talbot bulstrode's happiness; and it had been one of the chief consolations of his exile to remember that that gentleman had put forth in the same vessel, and had been shipwrecked along with him. he was ushered into the billiard-room, where he found aurora floyd seated at a little table near the fire, making a pencil copy of a proof engraving of one of rosa bonheur's pictures, while talbot bulstrode sat by her side preparing her pencils. we feel instinctively that the man who cuts lead-pencils, or holds a skein of silk upon his outstretched hands, or carries lap-dogs, opera-cloaks, camp-stools, or parasols, is "engaged." even john mellish had learned enough to know this. he breathed a sigh so loud as to be heard by lucy and her mother seated by the other fireplace,--a sigh that was on the verge of a groan,--and then held out his hand to miss floyd. not to talbot bulstrode. he had vague memories of roman legends floating in his brain, legends of superhuman generosity and classic self-abnegation; but he could not have shaken hands with that dark-haired young cornishman, though the tenure of the mellish estate had hung upon the sacrifice. he could not do it. he seated himself a few paces from aurora and her lover, twisting his hat about in his hot, nervous hands until the brim was well-nigh limp; and was powerless to utter one sentence, even so much as some poor pitiful remark about the weather. he was a great spoiled baby of thirty years of age; and i am afraid that, if the stern truth must be told, he saw aurora floyd across a mist, that blurred and distorted the bright face before his eyes. lucy floyd came to his relief, by carrying him off to introduce him to her mother; and kind-hearted mrs. alexander was delighted with his frank, fair english face. he had the good fortune to stand with his back to the light, so that neither of the ladies detected that foolish mist in his blue eyes. archibald floyd would not hear of his visitor's returning to town either that night or the next day. "you must spend christmas with us," he said, "and see the new year in, before you go back to yorkshire. i have all my children about me at this season, and it is the only time that felden seems like an old man's home. your friend bulstrode stops with us" (mellish winced as he received this intelligence), "and i sha'n't think it friendly if you refuse to join our party." what a pitiful coward this john mellish must have been to accept the banker's invitation, and send the newport pagnell back to the gloucester, and suffer himself to be led away by mr. floyd's own man to a pleasant chamber, a few doors from the chintz-rooms occupied by talbot! but i have said before, that love is a cowardly passion. it is like the toothache; the bravest and strongest succumb to it, and howl aloud under the torture. i don't suppose the iron duke would have been ashamed to own that he objected to having his teeth out. i have heard of a great fighting man who could take punishment better than any other of the genii of the ring, but who fainted away at the first grip of the dentist's forceps. john mellish consented to stay at felden, and he went between the lights into talbot's dressing-room, to expostulate with the captain upon his treachery. talbot did his best to console his doleful visitant. "there are more women than one in the world," he said, after john had unbosomed himself of his grief--he didn't think this, the hypocrite, though he said it--"there are more women than one, my dear mellish; and there are many very charming and estimable girls, who would be glad to win the affections of such a fellow as you." "i hate estimable girls," said mr. mellish; "bother my affections! nobody will ever win my affections; but i love her, i love that beautiful black-eyed creature down-stairs, who looks at you with two flashes of lightning, and rides like young challoner in a cloth habit; i love her, bulstrode, and you told me that she'd refused you, and that you were going to leave brighton by the eight o'clock express, and you didn't; and you sneaked back and made her a second offer, and she accepted you, and, damme, it wasn't fair play." having said which, mr. mellish flung himself upon a chair, which creaked under his weight, and fell to poking the fire furiously. it was hard for poor talbot to have to excuse himself for having won aurora's hand. he could not very well remind john mellish that if miss floyd had accepted him, it was perhaps because she preferred him to the honest yorkshireman. to john the matter never presented itself in this light. the spoiled child had been cheated out of that toy above all other toys, upon the possession of which he had set his foolish heart. it was as if he had bidden for some crack horse at tattersall's, in fair and open competition with a friend, who had gone back after the sale to outbid him in some underhand fashion. he could not understand that there had been no dishonesty in talbot's conduct, and he was highly indignant when that gentleman ventured to hint to him that perhaps, on the whole, it would have been wiser to have kept away from felden woods. talbot bulstrode had avoided any further allusion to mr. matthew harrison the dog-fancier; and this, the first dispute between the lovers, had ended in the triumph of aurora. miss floyd was not a little embarrassed by the presence of john mellish, who roamed disconsolately about the big rooms, seating himself ever and anon at one of the tables to peer into the lenses of a stereoscope, or to take up some gorgeously-bound volume and drop it on the carpet in gloomy absence of mind, and who sighed heavily when spoken to, and was altogether far from pleasant company. aurora's warm heart was touched by the piteous spectacle of this rejected lover, and she sought him out once or twice, and talked to him about his racing stud, and asked him how he liked the hunting in surrey; but john changed from red to white, and from hot to cold, when she spoke to him, and fled away from her with a scared and ghastly aspect, which would have been grotesque had it not been so painfully real. but by-and-by john found a more pitiful listener to his sorrows than ever talbot bulstrode had been; and this gentle and compassionate listener was no other than lucy floyd, to whom the big yorkshireman turned in his trouble. did he know, or did he guess, by some wondrous clairvoyance, that her griefs bore a common likeness to his own, and that she was just the one person, of all others at felden woods, to be pitiful to him and patient with him? he was by no means proud, this transparent, boyish, babyish good fellow. two days after his arrival at felden, he told all to poor lucy. "i suppose you know, miss floyd," he said, "that your cousin rejected me. yes, of course you do; i believe she rejected bulstrode about the same time; but some men haven't a ha'porth of pride: i must say i think the captain acted like a sneak." a sneak! her idol, her adored, her demi-god, her dark-haired and gray-eyed divinity, to be spoken of thus! she turned upon mr. mellish with her fair cheeks flushed into a pale glow of anger, and told him that talbot had a right to do what he had done, and that whatever talbot did was right. like most men whose reflective faculties are entirely undeveloped, john mellish was blessed with a sufficiently rapid perception; a perception sharpened just then by that peculiar sympathetic prescience, that marvellous clairvoyance of which i have spoken; and in those few indignant words, and that angry flush, he read poor lucy's secret: she loved talbot bulstrode as he loved aurora--hopelessly. how he admired this fragile girl, who was frightened of horses and dogs, and who shivered if a breath of the winter air blew across the heated hall, and who yet bore her burden with this quiet, uncomplaining patience! while he, who weighed fourteen stone, and could ride forty miles across country with the bitterest blasts of december blowing in his face, was powerless to endure his affliction. it comforted him to watch lucy, and to read in those faint signs and tokens, which had escaped even a mother's eye, the sad history of her unrequited affection. poor john was too good-natured and unselfish to hold out for ever in the dreary fortress of despair which he had built up for his habitation; and on christmas-eve, when there were certain rejoicings at felden, held in especial honour of the younger visitors, he gave way, and joined in their merriment, and was more boyish than the youngest of them, burning his fingers with blazing raisins, suffering his eyes to be bandaged at the will of noisy little players at blindman's-buff, undergoing ignominious penalties in their games of forfeits, performing alternately innkeepers, sheriff's officers, policemen, clergymen, and justices, in the acted charades, lifting the little ones who wanted to see "de top of de kitmat tee" in his sturdy arms, and making himself otherwise agreeable and useful to young people of from three to fifteen years of age; until at last, under the influence of all this juvenile gaiety, and perhaps two or three glasses of moselle, he boldly kissed aurora floyd beneath the branch of mistletoe, hanging, "for this night only," in the great hall at felden woods. and having done this, mr. mellish fairly lost his wits, and was "off his head" for the rest of the evening; making speeches to the little ones at the supper-table, and proposing mr. archibald floyd and the commercial interests of great britain, with three times three; leading the chorus of those tiny treble voices with his own sonorous bass; and weeping freely--he never quite knew why--behind his table-napkin. it was through an atmosphere of tears, and sparkling wines, and gas, and hot-house flowers, that he saw aurora floyd, looking, ah, how lovely! in those simple robes of white which so much became her, and with a garland of artificial holly round her head. the spiked leaves and the scarlet berries formed themselves into a crown--i think, indeed, that a cheese-plate would have been transformed into a diadem, if miss floyd had been pleased to put it on her head--and she looked like the genius of christmas: something bright and beautiful; too beautiful to come more than once a year. when the clocks were striking 2 a.m., long after the little ones had been carried away muffled up in opera-cloaks, terribly sleepy, and i'm afraid in some instances under the influence of strong drink,--when the elder guests had all retired to rest, and the lights, with a few exceptions, were fled, the garlands dead, and all but talbot and john mellish departed, the two young men walked up and down the long billiard-room, in the red glow of the two declining fires, and talked to each other confidentially. it was the morning of christmas-day, and it would have been strange to be unfriendly at such a time. "if you'd fallen in love with the other one, bulstrode," said john, clasping his old school-fellow by the hand, and staring at him pathetically, "i could have looked upon you as a brother; she's better suited to you, twenty thousand times better adapted to you, than her cousin, and you ought to have married her--in common courtesy--i mean to say as an honourable--having very much compromised yourself by your attentions--mrs. whatshername--the companion--mrs. powell--said so--you ought to have married her." "married her! married whom?" cried talbot rather savagely, shaking off his friend's hot grasp, and allowing mr. mellish to sway backward upon the heels of his varnished boots in rather an alarming manner. "who do you mean?" "the sweetest girl in christendom--except one," exclaimed john, clasping his hot hands and elevating his dim blue eyes to the ceiling; "the loveliest girl in christendom, except one--lucy floyd." "lucy floyd!" "yes, lucy; the sweetest girl in----" "who says that i ought to marry lucy floyd?" "she says so--no, no, i don't mean that! i mean," said mr. mellish, sinking his voice to a solemn whisper,--"i mean that lucy floyd loves you! she didn't tell me so--oh, no, bless your soul,--she never uttered a word upon the subject; but she loves you. yes," continued john, pushing his friend away from him with both hands, and staring at him as if mentally taking his pattern for a suit of clothes, "that girl loves you, and has loved you all along. i am not a fool, and i give you my word and honour that lucy floyd loves you." "not a fool!" cried talbot; "you're worse than a fool, john mellish--you're drunk!" he turned upon his heel contemptuously, and taking a candle from a table near the door, lighted it, and strode out of the room. john stood rubbing his hands through his curly hair, and staring helplessly after the captain. "this is the reward a fellow gets for doing a generous thing," he said, as he thrust his own candle into the burning coals, ignoring any easier mode of lighting it. "it's hard, but i suppose it's human nature." talbot bulstrode went to bed in a very bad humour. could it be true that lucy loved him? could this chattering yorkshireman have discovered a secret which had escaped the captain's penetration? he remembered how, only a short time before, he had wished that this fair-haired girl might fall in love with him, and now all was trouble and confusion. guinevere was lady of his heart, and poor elaine was sadly in the way. mr. tennyson's wondrous book had not been given to the world in the year fifty-seven, or no doubt poor talbot would have compared himself to the knight whose "honour rooted in dishonour stood." had he been dishonourable? had he compromised himself by his attentions to lucy? had he deceived that fair and gentle creature? the down pillows in the chintz chamber gave no rest to his weary head that night; and when he fell asleep in the late daybreak, it was to dream horrible dreams, and to see in a vision aurora floyd standing on the brink of a clear pool of water in a woody recess at felden, and pointing down through its crystal surface to the corpse of lucy, lying pale and still amidst lilies and clustering aquatic plants, whose long tendrils entwined themselves with the fair golden hair. he heard the splash of the water in that terrible dream, and awoke, to find his valet breaking the ice in his bath in the adjoining room. his perplexities about poor lucy vanished in the broad daylight, and he laughed at a trouble which must have grown out of his own vanity. what was he, that young ladies should fall in love with him? what a weak fool he must have been to have believed for one moment in the drunken babble of john mellish! so he dismissed the image of aurora's cousin from his mind, and had eyes, ears, and thought only for aurora herself, who drove him to beckenham church in her basket-carriage, and sat by his side in the banker's great square pew. alas, i fear he heard very little of the sermon that was preached that day; but, for all that, i declare that he was a good and devout man: a man whom god had blest with the gift of earnest belief; a man who took all blessings from the hand of god reverently, almost fearfully; and as he bowed his head at the end of that christmas service of rejoicing and thanksgiving, he thanked heaven for his overflowing cup of gladness, and prayed that he might become worthy of so much happiness. he had a vague fear that he was too happy; too much bound up heart and soul in the dark-eyed woman by his side. if she were to die! if she were to be false to him! he turned sick and dizzy at the thought; and even in that sacred temple the devil whispered to him that there were still pools, loaded pistols, and other certain remedies for such calamities as those,--so wicked as well as cowardly a passion is this terrible fever, love! the day was bright and clear, the light snow whitening the ground; every line of hedge-top and tree cut sharply out against the cold blue of the winter sky. the banker proposed that they should send home the carriages, and walk down the hill to felden; so talbot bulstrode offered aurora his arm, only too glad of the chance of a _tête-à-tête_ with his betrothed. john mellish walked with archibald floyd, with whom the yorkshireman was an especial favourite; and lucy was lost amid a group of brothers, sisters, and cousins. "we were so busy all yesterday with the little people," said talbot, "that i forgot to tell you, aurora, that i had had a letter from my mother." miss floyd looked up at him with her brightest glance. she was always pleased to hear anything about lady bulstrode. "of course there is very little news in the letter," added talbot, "for there is rarely much to tell at bulstrode. and yet--yes--there is one piece of news which concerns yourself." "which concerns me?" "yes. you remember my cousin, constance trevyllian?" "y-es--" "she has returned from paris, her education finished at last, and she, i believe, all-accomplished, and has gone to spend christmas at bulstrode. good heavens, aurora! what is the matter?" nothing very much, apparently. her face had grown as white as a sheet of letter-paper; but the hand upon his arm did not tremble. perhaps, had he taken especial notice of it, he would have found it preternaturally still. "aurora, what is the matter?" "nothing. why do you ask?" "your face is as pale as----" "it is the cold, i suppose," she said, shivering. "tell me about your cousin, this miss trevyllian; when did she go to bulstrode castle?" "she was to arrive the day before yesterday. my mother was expecting her when she wrote." "is she a favourite of lady bulstrode's?" "no very especial favourite. my mother likes her well enough; but constance is rather a frivolous girl." "the day before yesterday," said aurora; "miss trevyllian was to arrive the day before yesterday. the letters from cornwall are delivered at felden early in the afternoon; are they not?" "yes, dear." "you will have a letter from your mother today, talbot." "a letter to-day! oh, no, aurora, she never writes two days running; seldom more than once a week." miss floyd did not make any answer to this, nor did her face regain its natural hue during the whole of the homeward walk. she was very silent, only replying in the briefest manner to talbot's inquiries. "i am sure that you are ill, aurora," he said, as they ascended the terrace steps. "i am ill." "but, dearest, what is it? let me tell mrs. alexander, or mrs. powell. let me go back to beckenham for the doctor." she looked at him with a mournful earnestness in her eyes. "my foolish talbot," she said, "do you remember what macbeth said to _his_ doctor? there are diseases that cannot be ministered to. let me alone; you will know soon enough--you will know very soon, i dare say." "but, aurora, what do you mean by this? what can there be upon your mind?" "ah, what indeed! let me alone, let me alone, captain bulstrode." he had caught her hand; but she broke from him, and ran up the staircase, in the direction of her own apartments. talbot hurried to lucy, with a pale, frightened, face. "your cousin is ill, lucy," he said; "go to her, for heaven's sake, and see what is wrong." lucy obeyed immediately; but she found the door of miss floyd's room locked against her; and when she called to aurora, and implored to be admitted, that young lady cried out-"go away, lucy floyd! go away, and leave me to myself, unless you want to drive me mad!" chapter ix. how talbot bulstrode spent his christmas. there was no more happiness for talbot bulstrode that day. he wandered from room to room, till he was as weary of that exercise as the young lady in monk lewis's 'castle spectre;' he roamed forlornly hither and thither, hoping to find aurora, now in the billiard-room, now in the drawing-room. he loitered in the hall, upon the shallow pretence of looking at barometers and thermometers, in order to listen for the opening and shutting of aurora's door. all the doors at felden woods were perpetually opening and shutting that afternoon, as it seemed to talbot bulstrode. he had no excuse for passing the doors of miss floyd's apartments, for his own rooms lay at the opposite angle of the house; but he lingered on the broad staircase, looking at the furniture-pictures upon the walls, and not seeing one line in these wardour-street productions. he had hoped that aurora would appear at luncheon; but that dismal meal had been eaten without her; and the merry laughter and pleasant talk of the family assembly had sounded far away to talbot's ears--far away across some wide ocean of doubt and confusion. he passed the afternoon in this wretched manner, unobserved by any one but lucy, who watched him furtively from her distant seat, as he roamed in and out of the drawing-room. ah, how many a man is watched by loving eyes whose light he never sees! how many a man is cared for by a tender heart whose secret he never learns! a little after dusk, talbot bulstrode went to his room to dress. it was some time before the bell would ring; but he would dress early, he thought, so as to make sure of being in the drawing-room when aurora came down. he took no light with him, for there were always wax-candles upon the chimney-piece in his room. it was almost dark in that pleasant chintz chamber, for the fire had been lately replenished, and there was no blaze; but he could just distinguish a white patch upon the green-cloth cover of the writing-table. the white patch was a letter. he stirred the black mass of coal in the grate, and a bright flame went dancing up the chimney, making the room as light as day. he took the letter in one hand, while he lighted one of the candles on the chimney-piece with the other. the letter was from his mother. aurora floyd had told him that he would receive such a letter. what did it all mean? the gay flowers and birds upon the papered walls spun round him as he tore open the envelope. i firmly believe that we have a semi-supernatural prescience of the coming of all misfortune; a prophetic instinct, which tells us that such a letter, or such a messenger, carries evil tidings. talbot bulstrode had that prescience as he unfolded the paper in his hands. the horrible trouble was before him; a brooding shadow, with a veiled face, ghastly and undefined; but it was _there._ "my dear talbot,--i know that the letter i am about to write will distress and perplex you; but my duty lies not the less plainly before me. i fear that your heart is much involved in your engagement to miss floyd." the evil tidings concerned aurora, then; the brooding shadow was slowly lifting its dark veil, and the face of her he loved best on earth appeared behind it. "but i know," continued that pitiless letter, "that the sense of honour is the strongest part of your nature, and that, however you may have loved this girl" (o god, she spoke of his love in the past!), "you will not suffer yourself to be entrapped into a false position through any weakness of affection. there is some mystery about the life of aurora floyd." this sentence was at the bottom of the first page; and before talbot bulstrode's shaking hand could turn the leaf, every doubt, every fear, every presentiment he had ever felt, flashed back upon him with preternatural distinctness. "constance trevyllian came here yesterday; and you may imagine that in the course of the evening you were spoken of, and your engagement discussed." a curse upon their frivolous women's gossip! talbot crushed the letter in his hand, and was about to fling it from him; but, no, it _must_ be read. the shadow of doubt must be faced, and wrestled with, and vanquished, or there was no more peace upon this earth for him. he went on reading the letter. "i told constance that miss floyd had been educated in the rue st.-dominique, and asked if she remembered her. 'what!' she said, 'is it the miss floyd whom there was such a fuss about? the miss floyd who ran away from school?' and she told me, talbot, that a miss floyd was brought to the desmoiselles lespard by her father last june twelvemonth, and that less than a fortnight after arriving at the school she disappeared; her disappearance of course causing a great sensation and an immense deal of talk among the other pupils, as it was said she had _run away_. the matter was hushed up as much as possible; but you know that girls will talk, and from what constance tells me, i imagine that very unpleasant things were said about miss floyd. now you say that the banker's daughter only returned to felden woods in september last. _where was she in the interval?_" he read no more. one glance told him that the rest of the letter consisted of motherly cautions, and admonitions as to how he was to act in this perplexing business. he thrust the crumpled paper into his bosom, and dropped into a chair by the hearth. it was so, then! there was a mystery in the life of this woman. the doubts and suspicions, the undefined fears and perplexities, which had held him back at the first, and caused him to wrestle against his love, had not been unfounded. there was good reason for them all, ample reason for them; as there is for every instinct which providence puts into our hearts. a black wall rose up round about him, and shut him for ever from the woman he loved; this woman whom he loved, so far from wisely, so fearfully well; this woman, for whom he had thanked god in the church only a few hours before. and she was to have been his wife; the mother of his children, perhaps. he clasped his cold hands over his face and sobbed aloud. do not despise him for those drops of anguish: they were the virgin tears of his manhood. never since infancy had his eyes been wet before. god forbid that such tears as those should be shed more than once in a lifetime! the agony of that moment was not to be lived through twice. the hoarse sobs rent and tore his breast as if his flesh had been hacked by a rusty sword; and when he took his wet hands from his face, he wondered that they were not red; for it seemed to him as if he had been weeping blood. what should he do? go to aurora, and ask her the meaning of that letter? yes; the course was plain enough. a tumult of hope rushed back upon him, and swept away his terror. why was he so ready to doubt her? what a pitiful coward he was to suspect her--to suspect this girl, whose transparent soul had been so freely unveiled to him; whose every accent was truth! for in his intercourse with aurora, the quality which he had learned most to reverence in her nature was its sublime candour. he almost laughed at the recollection of his mother's solemn letter. it was so like these simple country people, whose lives had been bounded by the narrow limits of a cornish village--it was so like them to make mountains out of the veriest mole-hills. what was there so wonderful in that which had occurred? the spoiled child, the wilful heiress, had grown tired of a foreign school, and had run away. her father, not wishing the girlish escapade to be known, had placed her somewhere else, and had kept her folly a secret. what was there from first to last in the whole affair that was not perfectly natural and probable, the exceptional circumstances of the case duly considered? he could fancy aurora, with her cheeks in a flame, and her eyes flashing lightning, flinging a page of blotted exercises into the face of her french master, and running out of the schoolroom, amid a tumult of ejaculatory babble. the beautiful, impetuous creature! there is nothing a man cannot admire in the woman he loves, and talbot was half inclined to admire aurora for having run away from school. the first dinner-bell had rung during captain bulstrode's agony; so the corridors and rooms were deserted when he went to look for aurora, with his mother's letter in his breast. she was not in the billiard-room or the drawing-room, but he found her at last in a little inner chamber at the end of the house, with a bay-window looking out over the park. the room was dimly lighted by a shaded lamp, and miss floyd was seated in the uncurtained window, with her elbow resting on a cushioned ledge, looking out at the steel-cold wintry sky and the whitened landscape. she was dressed in black; her face, neck, and arms gleaming marble-white against the sombre hue of her dress; and her attitude was as still as that of a statue. she neither stirred nor looked round when talbot entered the room. "my dear aurora," he said, "i have been looking for you everywhere." she shivered at the sound of his voice. "you wanted to see me?" "yes, dearest. i want you to explain something to me. a foolish business enough, no doubt, my darling, and, of course, very easily explained; but, as your future husband, i have a right to ask for an explanation; and i know, i know, aurora, that you will give it in all candour." she did not speak, although talbot paused for some moments, awaiting her answer. he could only see her profile, dimly lighted by the wintry sky. he could not see the mute pain, the white anguish, in that youthful face. "i have had a letter from my mother, and there is something in that letter which i wish you to explain. shall i read it to you, dearest?" his voice faltered upon the endearing expression, and he remembered afterwards that it was the last time he had ever addressed her with a lover's tenderness. the day came when she had need of his compassion, and when he gave it freely; but that moment sounded the death-knell of love. in that moment the gulf yawned, and the cliffs were rent asunder. "shall i read you the letter, aurora?" "if you please." he took the crumpled epistle from his bosom, and, bending over the lamp, read it aloud to aurora. he fully expected at every sentence that she would interrupt him with some eager explanation; but she was silent until he had finished, and even then she did not speak. "aurora, aurora, is this true?" "perfectly true." "but why did you run away from the rue st.-dominique?" "i cannot tell you." "and where were you between the month of june in the year fifty-six and last september?" "i cannot tell you, talbot bulstrode. this is my secret, which i cannot tell you." "you cannot tell me! there is upwards of a year missing from your life; and you cannot tell me, your betrothed husband, what you did with that year?" "i cannot." "then, aurora floyd, you can never be my wife." he thought that she would turn upon him, sublime in her indignation and fury, and that the explanation he longed for would burst from her lips in a passionate torrent of angry words; but she rose from her chair, and, tottering towards him, fell upon her knees at his feet. no other action could have struck such terror to his heart. it seemed to him a confession of guilt. but what guilt? what guilt? what was the dark secret of this young creature's brief life? "talbot bulstrode," she said, in a tremulous voice, which cut him to the soul,--"talbot bulstrode, heaven knows how often i have foreseen and dreaded this hour. had i not been a coward, i should have anticipated this explanation. but i thought--i thought the occasion might never come; or that when it did come you would be generous--and--trust me. if you can trust me, talbot; if you can believe that this secret is not utterly shameful----" "not utterly shameful!" he cried. "o god! aurora, that i should ever hear you talk like this! do you think there are any degrees in these things? there must be _no_ secret between my wife and me; and the day that a secret, or the shadow of one, arises between us, must see us part for ever. rise from your knees, aurora; you are killing me with this shame and humiliation. rise from your knees; and if we are to part this moment, tell me, tell me, for pity's sake, that i have no need to despise myself for having loved you with an intensity which has scarcely been manly." she did not obey him, but sank lower in her half-kneeling, half-crouching attitude, her face buried in her hands, and only the coils of her black hair visible to captain bulstrode. "i was motherless from my cradle, talbot," she said, in a half-stifled voice. "have pity upon me." "pity!" echoed the captain; "_pity!_ why do you not ask me for _justice?_ one question, aurora floyd; one more question; perhaps the last i ever may ask of you. does your father know why you left that school, and where you were during that twelvemonth?" "he does." "thank god, at least, for that! tell me, aurora, then--only tell me this, and i will believe your simple word as i would the oath of another woman. tell me if he approved of your motive in leaving that school; if he approved of the manner in which your life was spent during that twelvemonth. if you can say yes, aurora, there shall be no more questions between us, and i can make you without fear my loved and honoured wife." "i cannot," she answered. "i am only nineteen; but within the two last years of my life i have done enough to break my father's heart; to break the heart of the dearest father that ever breathed the breath of life." "then all is over between us. god forgive you, aurora floyd; but by your own confession you are no fit wife for an honourable man. i shut my mind against all foul suspicions; but the past life of my wife must be a white unblemished page, which all the world may be free to read." he walked towards the door, and then, returning, assisted the wretched girl to rise, and led her back to her seat by the window, courteously, as if she had been his partner at a ball. their hands met with as icy a touch as the hands of two corpses. ah, how much there was of death in that touch! how much had died between those two within the last few hours!--hope, confidence, security, love, happiness; all that makes life worth the holding. talbot bulstrode paused upon the threshold of the little chamber, and spoke once more. "i shall have left felden in half an hour, miss floyd," he said; "it will be better to allow your father to suppose that the disagreement between us has arisen from something of a trifling nature, and that my dismissal has come from you. i shall write to mr. floyd from london, and, if you please, i will so word my letter as to lead him to think this." "you are very good," she answered. "yes, i would rather he should think that. it may spare him pain. heaven knows i have cause to be grateful for anything that will do that." talbot bowed and left the room, closing the door behind him. the closing of that door had a dismal sound to his ear. he thought of some frail young creature abandoned by her sister nuns in a living tomb. he thought that he would rather have left aurora lying rigidly beautiful in her coffin than as he was leaving her to-day. the jangling, jarring sound of the second dinner-bell clanged out, as he went from the semi-obscurity of the corridor into the glaring gaslight of the billiard-room. he met lucy floyd coming towards him in her rustling silk dinner-dress, with fringes and laces and ribbons and jewels fluttering and sparkling about her; and he almost hated her for looking so bright and radiant, remembering, as he did, the ghastly face of the stricken creature he had just left. we are apt to be horribly unjust in the hour of supreme trouble; and i fear that if any one had had the temerity to ask talbot bulstrode's opinion of lucy floyd just at that moment, the captain would have declared her to be a mass of frivolity and affectation. if you discover the worthlessness of the only woman you love upon earth, you will perhaps be apt to feel maliciously disposed towards the many estimable people about you. you are savagely inclined, when you remember that they for whom you care nothing are so good, while she on whom you set your soul is so wicked. the vessel which you freighted with every hope of your heart has gone down; and you are angry at the very sight of those other ships riding so gallantly before the breeze. lucy recoiled at the aspect of the young man's face. "what is it?" she asked; "what has happened, captain bulstrode?" "nothing--i have received a letter from cornwall which obliges me to----" his hollow voice died away into a hoarse whisper before he could finish the sentence. "lady bulstrode--or sir john--is ill perhaps?" hazarded lucy. talbot pointed to his white lips and shook his head. the gesture might mean anything. he could not speak. the hall was full of visitors and children going into dinner. the little people were to dine with their seniors that day, as an especial treat and privilege of the season. the door of the dining-room was open, and talbot saw the gray head of archibald floyd dimly visible at the end of a long vista of lights and silver and glass and evergreens. the old man had his nephews and nieces and their children grouped about him; but the place at his right hand, the place aurora was meant to fill, was vacant. captain bulstrode turned away from that gaily-lighted scene and ran up the staircase to his room, where he found his servant waiting with his master's clothes laid out, wondering why he had not come to dress. the man fell back at the sight of talbot's face, ghastly in the light of the wax-candles on the dressing-table. "i am going away, philman," said the captain, speaking very fast, and in a thick indistinct voice. "i am going down to cornwall by the express to-night, if i can get to town in time to catch the train. pack my clothes and come after me. you can join me at the paddington station. i shall walk up to beckenham, and take the first train for town. here, give this to the servants for me, will you?" he took a confused heap of gold and silver from his pocket, and dropped it into the man's hand. "nothing wrong at bulstrode, i hope, sir?" said the servant. "is sir john ill?" "no, no; i've had a letter from my mother--i--you'll find me at the great western." he snatched up his hat, and was hurrying from the room; but the man followed him with his greatcoat. "you'll catch your death, sir, on such a night as this," the servant said, in a tone of respectful remonstrance. the banker was standing at the door of the dining-room when talbot crossed the hall. he was telling a servant to look for his daughter. "we are all waiting for miss floyd," the old man said; "we cannot begin dinner without miss floyd." unobserved in the confusion, talbot opened the great door softly, and let himself out into the cold winter's night. the long terrace was all ablaze with the lights in the high narrow windows, as upon the night when he had first come to felden; and before him lay the park, the trees bare and leafless, the ground white with a thin coating of snow, the sky above gray and starless,--a cold and desolate expanse, in dreary contrast with the warmth and brightness behind. all this was typical of the crisis of his life. he was leaving warm love and hope, for cold resignation or icy despair. he went down the terrace-steps, across the trim garden-walks and out into that wide, mysterious park. the long avenue was ghostly in the gray light, the tracery of the interlacing branches above his head making black shadows, that flickered to and fro upon the whitened ground beneath his feet. he walked for a quarter of a mile before he looked back at the lighted windows behind him. he did not turn, until a bend in the avenue had brought him to a spot from which he could see the dimly lighted bay-window of the room in which he had left aurora. he stood for some time looking at this feeble glimmer, and thinking--thinking of all he had lost, or all he had perhaps escaped--thinking of what his life was to be henceforth without that woman--thinking that he would rather have been the poorest ploughboy in beckenham parish than the heir of bulstrode, if he could have taken the girl he loved to his heart, and believed in her truth. chapter x. fighting the battle. the new year began in sadness at felden woods, for it found archibald floyd watching in the sick-room of his only daughter. aurora had taken her place at the long dinner-table upon the night of talbot's departure; and except for being perhaps a little more vivacious and brilliant than usual, her manner had in no way changed after that terrible interview in the bay-windowed room. she had talked to john mellish, and had played and sung to her younger cousins; she had stood behind her father, looking over his cards through all the fluctuating fortunes of a rubber of long whist; and the next morning her maid had found her in a raging fever, with burning cheeks and blood-shot eyes, her long purple-black hair all tumbled and tossed about the pillows, and her dry hands scorching to the touch. the telegraph brought two grave london physicians to felden before noon; and the house was clear of visitors by nightfall, only mrs. alexander and lucy remaining to assist in nursing the invalid. the west-end doctors said very little. this fever was as other fevers to them. the young lady had caught a cold perhaps; she had been imprudent, as these young people will be, and had received some sudden chill. she had very likely overheated herself with dancing, or had sat in a draught, or eaten an ice. there was no immediate danger to be apprehended. the patient had a superb constitution; there was wonderful vitality in the system; and with careful treatment she would soon come round. careful treatment meant a two-guinea visit every day from each of these learned gentlemen; though, perhaps, had they given utterance to their inmost thoughts, they would have owned that, for all they could tell to the contrary, aurora floyd wanted nothing but to be let alone, and left in a darkened chamber to fight out the battle by herself. but the banker would have had all saville row summoned to the sick-bed of his child, if he could by such a measure have saved her a moment's pain; and he implored the two physicians to come to felden twice a day if necessary, and to call in other physicians if they had the least fear for their patient. aurora was delirious; but she revealed very little in that delirium. i do not quite believe that people often make the pretty, sentimental, consecutive confessions under the influence of fever which are so freely attributed to them by the writers of romances. we rave about foolish things in those cruel moments of feverish madness. we are wretched because there is a man with a white hat on in the room; or a black cat upon the counterpane; or spiders crawling about the bed-curtains; or a coal-heaver who _will_ put a sack of coals on our chest. our delirious fancies are like our dreams, and have very little connection with the sorrows or joys which make up the sum of our lives. so aurora floyd talked of horses and dogs, and masters and governesses; of childish troubles that had afflicted her years before, and of girlish pleasures, which, in her normal state of mind, had been utterly forgotten. she seldom recognized lucy or mrs. alexander, mistaking them for all kinds of unlikely people; but she never entirely forgot her father, and, indeed, always seemed to be conscious of his presence, and was perpetually appealing to him, imploring him to forgive her for some act of childish disobedience committed in those departed years of which she talked so much. john mellish had taken up his abode at the grayhound inn, in croydon high street, and drove every day to felden woods, leaving his phaeton at the park-gates, and walking up to the house to make his inquiries. the servants took notice of the big yorkshireman's pale face, and set him down at once as "sweet" upon their young lady. they liked him a great deal better than captain bulstrode, who had been too "'igh" and "'aughty" for them. john flung his half-sovereigns right and left when he came to the hushed mansion in which aurora lay, with loving friends about her. he held the footman who answered the door by the button-hole, and would have gladly paid the man half-a-crown a minute for his time while he asked anxious questions about miss floyd's health. mr. mellish was warmly sympathized with, therefore, in the servants' hall at felden. his man had informed the banker's household how he was the best master in england, and how mellish park was a species of terrestrial paradise, maintained for the benefit of trustworthy retainers; and mr. floyd's servants expressed a wish that their young lady might get well, and marry the "fair one," as they called john. they came to the conclusion that there had been what they called "a split" between miss floyd and the captain, and that he had gone off in a huff; which was like his impudence, seeing that their young lady would have hundreds of thousands of pounds by-and-by, and was good enough for a duke instead of a beggarly officer. talbot's letter to mr. floyd reached felden woods on the 27th of december; but it lay for some time unopened upon the library table. archibald had scarcely heeded his intended son-in-law's disappearance, in his anxiety about aurora. when he did open the letter, captain bulstrode's words were almost meaningless to him, though he was just able to gather that the engagement had been broken,--by his daughter's wish, as talbot seemed to infer. the banker's reply to this communication was very brief; he wrote: "my dear sir,--your letter arrived here some days since, but has only been opened by me this morning. i have laid it aside, to be replied to, d.v., at a future time. at present i am unable to attend to anything. my daughter is seriously ill. "yours obediently, "archibald floyd." "seriously ill!" talbot bulstrode sat for nearly an hour with the banker's letter in his hand, looking at those two words. how much or how little might the sentence mean? at one moment, remembering archibald floyd's devotion to his daughter, he thought that this serious illness was doubtless some very trifling business,--some feminine nervous attack, common to young ladies upon any hitch in their love affairs; but five minutes afterwards he fancied that those words had an awful meaning--that aurora was dying; dying of the shame and anguish of that interview in the little chamber at felden. heaven above! what had he done? had he murdered this beautiful creature, whom he loved a million times better than himself? had he killed her with those impalpable weapons, those sharp and cruel words which he had spoken on the 25th of december? he acted the scene over again and again, until the sense of outraged honour, then so strong upon him, seemed to grow dim and confused; and he began almost to wonder why he had quarrelled with aurora. what if, after all, this secret involved only some school-girl's folly? no; the crouching figure and ghastly face gave the lie to that hope. the secret, whatever it might be, was a matter of life and death to aurora floyd. he dared not try to guess what it was. he strove to close his mind against the surmises that would arise to him. in the first days that succeeded that terrible christmas he determined to leave england. he would try to get some government appointment that would take him away to the other end of the world, where he could never hear aurora's name--never be enlightened as to the mystery that had separated them. but now, now that she was ill,--in danger, perhaps,--how could he leave the country? how could he go away to some place where he might one day open the english newspapers and see her name among the list of deaths? talbot was a dreary guest at bulstrode castle. his mother and his cousin constance respected his pale face, and held themselves aloof from him in fear and trembling; but his father asked what the deuce was the matter with the boy, that he looked so chapfallen, and why he didn't take his gun and go out on the moors, and get an appetite for his dinner, like a christian, instead of moping in his own rooms all day long, biting his fingers' ends. once, and once only, did lady bulstrode allude to aurora floyd. "you asked miss floyd for an explanation, i suppose, talbot?" she said. "yes, mother." "and the result?" "was the termination of our engagement. i had rather you would not speak to me of this subject again, if you please, mother." talbot took his gun, and went out upon the moors, as his father advised; but it was not to slaughter the last of the pheasants, but to think in peace of aurora floyd, that the young man went out. the low-lying clouds upon the moorlands seemed to shut him in like prison-walls. how many miles of desolate country lay between the dark expanse on which he stood and the red-brick mansion at felden!--how many leafless hedge-rows!--how many frozen streams! it was only a day's journey, certainly, by the great western; but there was something cruel in the knowledge that half the length of england lay between the kentish woods and that far angle of the british isles upon which castle bulstrode reared its weather-beaten walls. the wail of mourning voices might be loud in kent, and not a whisper of death reach the listening ears in cornwall. how he envied the lowest servant at felden, who knew day by day and hour by hour of the progress of the battle between death and aurora floyd! and yet, after all, what was she to him? what did it matter to him if she were well or ill? the grave could never separate them more utterly than they had been separated from the very moment in which he discovered that she was not worthy to be his wife. he had done her no wrong; he had given her a full and fair opportunity of clearing herself from the doubtful shadow on her name; and she had been unable to do so. nay, more, she had given him every reason to suppose, by her manner, that the shadow was even a darker one than he had feared. was he to blame, then? was it his fault if she were ill? were his days to be misery, and his nights a burden because of her? he struck the stock of his gun violently upon the ground at the thought, and thrust the ramrod down the barrel, and loaded his fowling-piece furiously with nothing; and then, casting himself at full length upon the stunted turf, lay there till the early dusk closed in about him, and the soft evening dew saturated his shooting-coat, and he was in a fair way to be stricken with rheumatic fever. i might fill chapters with the foolish sufferings of this young man; but i fear he must have become very wearisome to my afflicted readers; to those, at least, who have never suffered from this fever. the sharper the disease, the shorter its continuance; so talbot will be better by-and-by, and will look back at his old self, and laugh at his old agonies. surely this inconstancy of ours is the worst of all--this fickleness, by reason of which we cast off our former selves with no more compunction than we feel in flinging away a worn-out garment. our poor threadbare selves, the shadows of what we were! with what sublime, patronizing pity, with what scornful compassion, we look back upon the helpless dead and gone creatures, and wonder that anything so foolish could have been allowed to cumber the earth! shall i feel the same contempt ten years hence for myself as i am to-day, as i feel today for myself as i was ten years ago? will the loves and aspirations, the beliefs and desires of to-day, appear as pitiful then as the dead loves and dreams of the bygone decade? shall i look back in pitying wonder, and think what a fool that young man was, although there was something candid and innocent in his very stupidity, after all? who can wonder that the last visit to paris killed voltaire? fancy the octogenarian looking round the national theatre, and seeing himself, through an endless vista of dim years, a young man again, paying his court to a "goat-faced cardinal," and being beaten by de rohan's lackeys in broad daylight. have you ever visited some still country town after a lapse of years, and wondered, o fast-living reader! to find the people you knew in your last visit still alive and thriving, with hair unbleached as yet, although you have lived and suffered whole centuries since then? surely providence gives us this sublimely egotistical sense of time as a set-off against the brevity of our lives! i might make this book a companion in bulk to the catalogue of the british museum, if i were to tell all that talbot bulstrode felt and suffered in the month of january, 1858,--if i were to anatomize the doubts and confusions and self-contradictions, the mental resolutions made one moment to be broken the next. i refrain, therefore, and will set down nothing but the fact, that on a certain sunday midway in the month, the captain, sitting in the family pew at bulstrode church, directly facing the monument of admiral hartley bulstrode, who fought and died in the days of queen elizabeth, registered a silent oath that, as he was a gentleman and a christian, he would henceforth abstain from holding any voluntary communication with aurora floyd. but for this vow he must have broken down, and yielded to his yearning fear and love, and gone to felden woods to throw himself, blind and unquestioning, at the feet of the sick woman. * * * * * the tender green of the earliest leaflets was breaking out in bright patches upon the hedge-rows round felden woods; the ash-buds were no longer black upon the front of march, and pale violets and primroses made exquisite tracery in the shady nooks beneath the oaks and beeches. all nature was rejoicing in the mild april weather, when aurora lifted her dark eyes to her father's face with something of their old look and familiar light. the battle had been a long and severe one; but it was well-nigh over now, the physicians said. defeated death drew back for a while, to wait a better opportunity for making his fatal spring; and the feeble victor was to be carried down-stairs to sit in the drawing-room for the first time since the night of december the 25th. john mellish, happening to be at felden that day, was allowed the supreme privilege of carrying the fragile burden in his strong arms, from the door of the sick chamber to the great sofa by the fire in the drawing-room; attended by a procession of happy people bearing shawls and pillows, vinaigrettes and scent-bottles, and other invalid paraphernalia. every creature at felden was devoted to this adored convalescent. archibald floyd lived only to minister to her; gentle lucy waited on her night and day, fearful to trust the service to menial hands; mrs. powell, like some pale and quiet shadow, lurked amidst the bed-curtains, soft of foot and watchful of eye, invaluable in the sick-chamber, as the doctors said. throughout her illness, aurora had never mentioned the name of talbot bulstrode. not even when the fever was at its worst, and the brain most distraught, had that familiar name escaped her lips. other names, strange to lucy, had been repeated by her again and again: the names of places and horses and slangy technicalities of the turf, had interlarded the poor girl's brain-sick babble; but whatever were her feelings with regard to talbot, no word had revealed their depth or sadness. yet i do not think that my poor dark-eyed heroine was utterly feelingless upon this point. when they first spoke of carrying her down-stairs, mrs. powell and lucy proposed the little bay-windowed chamber, which was small and snug, and had a southern aspect, as the fittest place for the invalid; but aurora cried out shuddering, that she would never enter that hateful chamber again. as soon as ever she was strong enough to bear the fatigue of the journey, it was considered advisable to remove her from felden; and leamington was suggested by the doctors as the best place for the change. a mild climate and a pretty inland retreat, a hushed and quiet town, peculiarly adapted to invalids, being almost deserted by other visitors after the hunting season. shakespeare's birthday had come and gone, and the high festivals at stratford were over, when archibald floyd took his pale daughter to leamington. a furnished cottage had been engaged for them a mile and a half out of the town; a pretty place, half villa, half farmhouse, with walls of white plaster chequered with beams of black wood, and well-nigh buried in a luxuriant and trimly-kept flower-garden; a pleasant place, forming one of a little cluster of rustic buildings crowded about a gray old church in a nook of the roadway, where two or three green lanes met, and went branching off between overhanging hedges; a most retired spot, yet clamorous with that noise which is of all others cheerful and joyous,--the hubbub of farmyards, the cackle of poultry, the cooing of pigeons, the monotonous lowing of lazy cattle, and the squabbling grunt of quarrelsome pigs. archibald could not have brought his daughter to a better place. the chequered farmhouse seemed a haven of rest to this poor weary girl of nineteen. it was so pleasant to lie wrapped in shawls, on a chintz-covered sofa, in the open window, listening to the rustic noises in the straw-littered yard upon the other side of the hedge, with her faithful bow-wow's big fore-paws resting on the cushions at her feet. the sounds in the farmyard were pleasanter to aurora than the monotonous inflections of mrs. powell's voice; but as that lady considered it a part of her duty to read aloud for the invalid's delectation, miss floyd was too good-natured to own how tired she was of 'marmion' and 'childe harold,' 'evangeline,' and 'the queen of the may,' and how she would have preferred in her present state of mind to listen to a lively dispute between a brood of ducks round the pond in the farmyard, or a trifling discussion in the pigsty, to the sublimest lines ever penned by poet, living or dead. the poor girl had suffered very much, and there was a certain sensuous, lazy pleasure in this slow recovery, this gradual return to strength. her own nature revived in unison with the bright revival of the genial summer weather. as the trees in the garden put forth new strength and beauty, so the glorious vitality of her constitution returned with much of its wonted power. the bitter blows had left their scars behind them, but they had not killed her, after all. they had not utterly changed her even, for glimpses of the old aurora appeared day by day in the pale convalescent; and archibald floyd, whose life was at best but a reflected existence, felt his hopes revive as he looked at his daughter. lucy and her mother had gone back to the villa at fulham, and to their own family duties; so the leamington party consisted only of aurora and her father, and that pale shadow of propriety, the ensign's light-haired widow. but they were not long without a visitor. john mellish, artfully taking the banker at a disadvantage in some moment of flurry and confusion at felden woods, had extorted from him an invitation to leamington; and a fortnight after their arrival he presented his stalwart form and fair face at the low wooden gates of the chequered cottage. aurora laughed (for the first time since her illness) as she saw that faithful adorer come, carpet-bag in hand, through the labyrinth of grass and flower-beds towards the open window at which she and her father sat; and archibald, seeing that first gleam of gaiety in the beloved face, could have hugged john mellish for being the cause of it. he would have embraced a street tumbler, or the low comedian of a booth at a fair, or a troop of performing dogs and monkeys, or anything upon earth that could win a smile from his sick child. like the eastern potentate in the fairy tale, who always offers half his kingdom and his daughter's hand to any one who can cure the princess of her bilious headache, or extract her carious tooth, archibald would have opened a banking account in lombard street, with a fabulous sum to start with, for any one who could give pleasure to this black-eyed girl, now smiling, for the first time in that year, at sight of the big fair-faced yorkshireman coming to pay his foolish worship at her shrine. it was not to be supposed that mr. floyd had felt no wonder as to the cause of the rupture of his daughter's engagement to talbot bulstrode. the anguish and terror endured by him during her long illness had left no room for any other thought; but since the passing away of the danger, he had pondered not a little upon the abrupt rupture between the lovers. he ventured once, in the first week of their stay at leamington, to speak to her upon the subject, asking why it was she had dismissed the captain. now if there was one thing more hateful than another to aurora floyd, it was a lie. i do not say that she had never told one in the course of her life. there are some acts of folly which carry falsehood and dissimulation at their heels as certainly as the shadows which follow us when we walk towards the evening sun; and we very rarely swerve from the severe boundary-line of right without being dragged ever so much farther than we calculated upon across the border. alas! my heroine is not faultless. she would take her shoes off to give them to the barefooted poor; she would take the heart from her breast, if she could by so doing heal the wounds she has inflicted upon the loving heart of her father. but a shadow of mad folly has blotted her motherless youth, and she has a terrible harvest to reap from that lightly-sown seed, and a cruel expiation to make for that unforgotten wrong. yet her natural disposition is all truth and candour; and there are many young ladies, whose lives have been as primly ruled and ordered as the fair pleasure-gardens of a tyburnian square, who could tell a falsehood with a great deal better grace than aurora floyd. so when her father asked her why she had _dismissed_ talbot bulstrode, she made no answer to that question; but simply told him that the quarrel had been a very painful one, and that she hoped never to hear the captain's name again: although at the same time she assured mr. floyd that her lover's conduct had been in nowise unbecoming a gentleman and a man of honour. archibald implicitly obeyed his daughter in this matter, and the name of talbot bulstrode never being spoken, it seemed as if the young man had dropped out of their lives, or as if he had never had any part in the destiny of aurora floyd. heaven knows what aurora herself felt and suffered in the quiet of her low-roofed, white-curtained little chamber, with the soft may moonlight stealing in at the casement-windows, and creeping in wan radiance about the walls. heaven only knows the bitterness of the silent battle. her vitality made her strong to suffer; her vivid imagination intensified every throb of pain. in a dull and torpid soul grief is a slow anguish; but with her it was a fierce and tempestuous emotion, in which past and future seemed rolled together with the present to make a concentrated agony. but, by an all-wise dispensation, the stormy sorrow wears itself out by reason of its very violence, while the dull woe drags its slow length sometimes through weary years, becoming at last engrafted in the very nature of the patient sufferer, as some diseases become part of our constitutions. aurora was fortunate in being permitted to fight her battle in silence, and to suffer unquestioned. if the dark hollow rings about her eyes told of sleepless nights, archibald floyd forbore to torment her with anxious speeches and trite consolations. the clairvoyance of love told him that it was better to let her alone. so the trouble hanging over the little circle was neither seen nor spoken of. aurora kept her skeleton in some quiet corner, and no one saw the grim skull, or heard the rattle of the dry bones. archibald floyd read his newspapers, and wrote his letters; mrs. walter powell tended the convalescent, who reclined during the best part of the day on the sofa in the open window; and john mellish loitered about the garden and the farmyard, leaned on the low white gate, smoking his cigar, and talking to the men about the place, and was in and out of the house twenty times in an hour. the banker pondered sometimes in serio-comic perplexity as to what was to be done with this big yorkshireman, who hung upon him like a good-natured monster of six feet two, conjured into existence by the hospitality of a modern frankenstein. he had invited him to dinner, and, lo, he appeared to be saddled with him for life. he could not tell the friendly, generous, loud-spoken creature to go away. besides, mr. mellish was on the whole very useful, and he did much towards keeping aurora in apparently good spirits. yet, on the other hand, was it right to tamper with this great loving heart? was it just to let the young man linger in the light of those black eyes, and then send him away when the invalid was equal to the effort of giving him his _congé?_ archibald floyd did not know that john had been rejected by his daughter on a certain autumn morning at brighton. so he made up his mind to speak frankly, and sound the depths of his visitor's feelings. mrs. powell was making tea at a little table near one of the windows; aurora had fallen asleep with an open book in her hand; and the banker walked with john mellish up and down an espaliered alley in the golden sunset. archibald freely communicated his perplexities to the yorkshireman. "i need not tell you, my dear mellish," he said, "how pleasant it is to me to have you here. i never had a son; but if it had pleased god to give me one, i could have wished him to be just such a frank, noble-hearted fellow as yourself. i'm an old man, and have seen a great deal of trouble--the sort of trouble which strikes deeper home to the heart than any sorrows that begin in lombard street or on 'change; but i feel younger in your society, and i find myself clinging to you and leaning on you as a father might upon his son. you may believe, then, that _i_ don't wish to get rid of you." "i do, mr. floyd; but do you think that any one else wishes to get rid of me? do you think i'm a nuisance to miss floyd?" "no, mellish," answered the banker energetically. "i am sure that aurora takes pleasure in your society, and seems to treat you almost as if you were her brother; but--but i know your feelings, my dear boy, and what i fear is, that you may perhaps never inspire a warmer feeling in her heart." "let me stay and take my chance, mr. floyd," cried john, throwing his cigar across the espaliers, and coming to a dead stop upon the gravel-walk in the warmth of his enthusiasm. "let me stay and take my chance. if there's any disappointment to be borne, i'll bear it like a man; i'll go back to the park, and you shall never be bothered with me again. miss floyd has rejected me once already; but perhaps i was in too great a hurry. i've grown wiser since then, and i've learnt to bide my time. i've one of the finest estates in yorkshire; i'm not worse looking than the generality of fellows, or worse educated than the generality of fellows. i mayn't have straight hair, and a pale face, and look as if i'd walked out of a three-volume novel, like talbot bulstrode. i may be a stone or two over the correct weight for winning a young lady's heart; but i'm sound, wind and limb. i never told a lie, or committed a mean action; and i love your daughter with as true and pure a love as ever man felt for woman. may i try my luck once more?" "you may, john." "and have i,--thank you, sir, for calling me john,--have i your good wishes for my success?" the banker shook mr. mellish by the hand as he answered this question. "you have, my dear john, my best and heartiest wishes." so there were three battles of the heart being fought in that spring-tide of fifty-eight. aurora and talbot, separated from each other by the length and breadth of half england, yet united by an impalpable chain, were struggling day by day to break its links; while poor john mellish quietly waited in the background, fighting the sturdy fight of the strong heart, which very rarely fails to win the prize it is set upon, however high or far away that prize may seem to be. chapter xi. at the château d'arques. john mellish made himself entirely at home in the little leamington circle after this interview with mr. floyd. no one could have been more tender in his manner, more respectful, untiring, and devoted, than was this rough yorkshireman to the broken old man. archibald must have been less than human had he not in somewise returned this devotion, and it is therefore scarcely to be wondered that he became very warmly attached to his daughter's adorer. had john mellish been the most designing disciple of machiavelli, instead of the most transparent and candid of living creatures, i scarcely think he could have adopted a truer means of making for himself a claim upon the gratitude of aurora floyd than by the affection he evinced for her father. and this affection was as genuine as all else in that simple nature. how could he do otherwise than love aurora's father? he was her father. he had a sublime claim upon the devotion of the man who loved her; who loved her as john loved,--unreservedly, undoubtingly, childishly; with such blind, unquestioning love as an infant feels for its mother. there may be better women than that mother, perhaps; but who shall make the child believe so? john mellish could not argue with himself upon his passion, as talbot bulstrode had done. he could not separate himself from his love, and reason with the wild madness. how could he divide himself from that which was himself; more than himself; a diviner self? he asked no questions about the past life of the woman he loved. he never sought to know the secret of talbot's departure from felden. he saw her, beautiful, fascinating, perfect; and he accepted her as a great and wonderful fact, like the round midsummer moon shining down on the rustic flower-beds and espaliered garden-walks in the balmy june nights. so the tranquil days glided slowly and monotonously past that quiet circle. aurora bore her silent burden; bore her trouble with a grand courage, peculiar to such rich organizations as her own; and none knew whether the serpent had been rooted from her breast, or had made for himself a permanent home in her heart. the banker's most watchful care could not fathom the womanly mystery; but there were times when archibald floyd ventured to hope that his daughter was at peace, and talbot bulstrode well-nigh forgotten. in any case, it was wise to keep her away from felden woods; so mr. floyd proposed a tour through normandy to his daughter and mrs. powell. aurora consented, with a tender smile and gentle pressure of her father's hand. she divined the old man's motive, and recognized the all-watchful love which sought to carry her from the scene of her trouble. john mellish, who was not invited to join the party, burst forth into such raptures at the proposal, that it would have required considerable hardness of heart to have refused his escort. he knew every inch of normandy, he said, and promised to be of infinite use to mr. floyd and his daughter; which, seeing that his knowledge of normandy had been acquired in his attendance at the dieppe steeple-chases, and that his acquaintance with the french language was very limited, seemed rather doubtful. but for all this he contrived to keep his word. he went up to town and hired an all-accomplished courier, who conducted the little party from town to village, from church to ruin, and who could always find relays of normandy horses for the banker's roomy travelling-carriage. the little party travelled from place to place until pale gleams of colour returned in transient flushes to aurora's cheeks. grief is terribly selfish. i fear that miss floyd never took into consideration the havoc that might be going on in the great honest heart of john mellish. i dare say that if she had ever considered the matter, she would have thought that a broad-shouldered yorkshireman of six feet two could never suffer seriously from such a passion as love. she grew accustomed to his society; accustomed to have his strong arm handy for her to lean upon when she grew tired; accustomed to his carrying her sketch-book and shawls and camp-stools; accustomed to be waited upon by him all day, and served faithfully by him at every turn; taking his homage as a thing of course, but making him superlatively and dangerously happy by her tacit acceptance of it. september was half gone when they bent their way homeward, lingering for a few days at dieppe, where the bathers were splashing about in semi-theatrical costume, and the etablissement des bains was all aflame with coloured lanterns, and noisy with nightly concerts. the early autumnal days were glorious in their balmy beauty. the best part of a year had gone by since talbot bulstrode had bade aurora that adieu which, in one sense at least, was to be eternal. they two, aurora and talbot, might meet again, it is true. they might meet, ay, and even be cordial and friendly together, and do each other good service in some dim time to come; but the two lovers who had parted in the little bay-windowed room at felden woods could _never_ meet again. between _them_ there was death and the grave. perhaps some such thoughts as these had their place in the breast of aurora floyd as she sat, with john mellish at her side, looking down upon the varied landscape from the height upon which the ruined walls of the château d'arques still rear the proud memorials of a day that is dead. i don't suppose that the banker's daughter troubled herself much about henry the fourth, or any other dead-and-gone celebrity who may have left the impress of his name upon that spot. she felt a tranquil sense of the exquisite purity and softness of the air, the deep blue of the cloudless sky, the spreading woods and grassy plains, the orchards, where the trees were rosy with their plenteous burden, the tiny streamlets, the white villa-like cottages and straggling gardens, outspread in a fair panorama beneath her. carried out of her sorrow by the sensuous rapture we derive from nature, and for the first time discovering in herself a vague sense of happiness, she began to wonder how it was she had outlived her grief by so many months. she had never during those weary months heard of talbot bulstrode. any change might have come to him without her knowledge. he might have married; might have chosen a prouder and worthier bride to share his lofty name. she might meet him on her return to england with that happier woman leaning upon his arm. would some good-natured friend tell the bride how talbot had loved and wooed the banker's daughter? aurora found herself pitying this happier woman, who would, after all, win but the second love of that proud heart; the pale reflection of a sun that has set; the feeble glow of expiring embers when the great blaze has died out. they had made her a couch with shawls and carriage-rugs, outspread upon a rustic seat, for she was still far from strong; and she lay in the bright september sunshine, looking down at the fair landscape, and listening to the hum of beetles and the chirp of grasshoppers upon the smooth turf. her father had walked to some distance with mrs. powell, who explored every crevice and cranny of the ruins with the dutiful perseverance peculiar to commonplace people; but faithful john mellish never stirred from aurora's side. he was watching her musing face, trying to read its meaning--trying to gather a gleam of hope from some chance expression flitting across it. neither he nor she knew how long he had watched her thus, when, turning to speak to him about the landscape at her feet, she found him on his knees imploring her to have pity upon him, and to love him, or to let him love her; which was much the same. "i don't expect you to love _me_, aurora," he said passionately; "how should you? what is there in a big clumsy fellow like me to win your love? i don't ask that. i only ask you to let me love you, to let me worship you, as the people we see kneeling in the churches here worship their saints. you won't drive me away from you, will you, aurora, because i presume to forget what you said to me that cruel day at brighton? you would never have suffered me to stay with you so long, and to be so happy, if you had meant to drive me away at the last! you never could have been so cruel!" miss floyd looked at him with a sudden terror in her face. what was this? what had she done? more wrong, more mischief? was her life to be one of perpetual wrong-doing? was she to be for ever bringing sorrow upon good people? was this john mellish to be another sufferer by her folly? "oh, forgive me!" she cried, "forgive me! i never thought----" "you never thought that every day spent by your side must make the anguish of parting from you more cruelly bitter. o aurora, women should think of these things! send me away from you, and what shall i be for the rest of my life?--a broken man, fit for nothing better than the race-course and the betting-rooms; a reckless man, ready to go to the bad by any road that can take me there; worthless alike to myself and to others. you must have seen such men, aurora; men whose unblemished youth promised an honourable manhood; but who break up all of a sudden, and go to ruin in a few years of mad dissipation. nine times out of ten a woman is the cause of that sudden change. i lay my life at your feet, aurora; i offer you more than my heart--i offer you my destiny. do with it as you will." he rose in his agitation, and walked a few paces away from her. the grass-grown battlements sloped away from his feet; an outer and inner moat lay below him, at the bottom of a steep declivity. what a convenient place for suicide, if aurora should refuse to take pity upon him! the reader must allow that he had availed himself of considerable artifice in addressing miss floyd. his appeal had taken the form of an accusation rather than a prayer, and he had duly impressed upon this poor girl the responsibility she would incur in refusing him. and this, i take it, is a meanness of which men are often guilty in their dealings with the weaker sex. miss floyd looked up at her lover with a quiet, half-mournful smile. "sit down there, mr. mellish," she said, pointing to a camp-stool at her side. john took the indicated seat, very much with the air of a prisoner in a criminal dock about to answer for his life. "shall i tell you a secret?" asked aurora, looking compassionately at his pale face. "a secret?" "yes; the secret of my parting with talbot bulstrode. it was not i who dismissed him from felden; it was he who refused to fulfil his engagement with me." she spoke slowly, in a low voice, as if it were painful to her to say the words which told of so much humiliation. "he did!" cried john mellish, rising, red and furious, from his seat, eager to run to look for talbot bulstrode then and there, in order to inflict chastisement upon him. "he did, john mellish, and he was justified in doing so," answered aurora, gravely. "you would have done the same." "o aurora, aurora!" "you would. you are as good a man as he, and why should your sense of honour be less strong than his? a barrier arose between talbot bulstrode and me, and separated us for ever. that barrier was a secret." she told him of the missing year in her young life; how talbot had called upon her for an explanation, and how she had refused to give it. john listened to her with a thoughtful face, which broke out into sunshine as she turned to him and said-"how would you have acted in such a case, mr. mellish?" "how should i have acted, aurora? i should have trusted you. but i can give you a better answer to your question, aurora. i can answer it by a renewal of the prayer i made you five minutes ago. be my wife." "in spite of this secret?" "in spite of a hundred secrets. i could not love you as i do, aurora, if i did not believe you to be all that is best and purest in woman. i cannot believe this one moment, and doubt you the next. i give my life and honour into your hands. i would not confide them to the woman whom i could insult by a doubt." his handsome saxon face was radiant with love and trustfulness as he spoke. all his patient devotion, so long unheeded, or accepted as a thing of course, recurred to aurora's mind. did he not deserve some reward, some requital for all this? but there was one who was nearer and dearer to her, dearer than even talbot bulstrode had ever been; and that one was the white-haired old man pottering about amongst the ruins on the other side of the grassy platform. "does my father know of this, mr. mellish?" she asked. "he does, aurora. he has promised to accept me as his son; and heaven knows i will try to deserve that name. do not let me distress you, dearest. the murder is out now. you know that i still love you; still hope. let time do the rest." she held out both her hands to him with a tearful smile. he took those little hands in his own broad palms, and bending down kissed them reverently. "you are right," she said; "let time do the rest. you are worthy of the love of a better woman than me, john mellish; but, with the help of heaven, i will never give you cause to regret having trusted me." chapter xii. steeve hargraves, the "softy." early in october aurora floyd returned to felden woods, once more "engaged." the county families opened their eyes when the report reached them that the banker's daughter was going to be married, not to talbot bulstrode, but to mr. john mellish, of mellish park, near doncaster. the unmarried ladies--rather hanging on hand about beckenham and west wickham--did not approve of all this chopping and changing. they recognized the taint of the prodder blood in this fickleness. the spangles and the sawdust were breaking out, and aurora was, as they had always said, her mother's own daughter. she was a very lucky young woman, they remarked, in being able, after jilting one rich man, to pick up another; but of course a young person whose father could give her fifty thousand pounds on her wedding-day might be permitted to play fast and loose with the male sex, while worthier marianas moped in their moated granges till gray hairs showed themselves in glistening _bandeaux_, and cruel crow's feet gathered about the corners of bright eyes. it is well to be merry and wise, and honest and true, and to be off with the old love, &c.; but it is better to be miss floyd, of the senior branch of floyd, floyd, and floyd, for then you need be none of these things. at least to such effect was the talk about beckenham when archibald brought his daughter back to felden woods; and a crowd of dressmakers and milliners set to work at the marriage garments as busily as if miss floyd had never had any clothes in her life before. mrs. alexander and lucy came back to felden to assist in the preparations for the wedding. lucy had improved very much in appearance since the preceding winter; there was a happier light in her soft blue eyes, and a healthier hue in her cheeks; but she blushed crimson when she first met aurora, and hung back a little from miss floyd's caresses. the wedding was to take place at the end of november. the bride and bridegroom were to spend the winter in paris, where archibald floyd was to join them, and return to england, "in time for the craven meeting," as john mellish said,--for i am sorry to say that, having been so happily successful in his love-affair, this young man's thoughts returned into their accustomed channels; and the creature he held dearest on earth next to miss floyd and those belonging to her, was a bay filly called aurora, and entered for the oaks and leger of a future year. ought i to apologize for my heroine, because she has forgotten talbot bulstrode, and that she entertains a grateful affection for this adoring john mellish? she ought, no doubt, to have died of shame and sorrow after talbot's cruel desertion; and heaven knows that only her youth and vitality carried her through a very severe battle with the grim rider of the pale horse; but having once passed through that dread encounter, she was, however feeble, in a fair way to recover. these passionate griefs, to kill at all, must kill suddenly. the lovers who die for love in our tragedies die in such a vast hurry, that there is generally some mistake or misapprehension about the business, and the tragedy might have been a comedy if the hero or heroine had only waited for a quarter of an hour. if othello had but lingered a little before smothering his wife, mistress emilia might have come in and sworn and protested; and cassio, with the handkerchief about his leg, might have been in time to set the mind of the valiant moor at rest, and put the venetian dog to confusion. how happily mr. and mrs. romeo montague might have lived and died, thanks to the dear good friar, if the foolish bridegroom had not been in such a hurry to swallow the vile stuff from the apothecary's! and as people are, i hope and believe, a little wiser in real life than they appear to be upon the stage, the worms very rarely get an honest meal off men and women who have died for love. so aurora walked through the rooms at felden in which talbot bulstrode had so often walked by her side; and if there was any regret at her heart, it was a quiet sorrow, such as we feel for the dead,--a sorrow not unmingled with pity, for she thought that the proud son of sir john raleigh bulstrode might have been a happier man if he had been as generous and trusting as john mellish. perhaps the healthiest sign of the state of her heart was, that she could speak of talbot freely, cheerfully, and without a blush. she asked lucy if she had met captain bulstrode that year; and the little hypocrite told her cousin, yes; that he had spoken to them one day in the park, and that she believed he had gone into parliament. she _believed!_ why, she knew his maiden speech by heart, though it was on some hopelessly uninteresting bill in which the cornish mines were in some vague manner involved with the national survey; and she could have repeated it as correctly as her youngest brother could declaim to his "romans, countrymen and lovers." aurora might forget him, and basely marry a fair-haired yorkshireman; but for lucy floyd earth only held this dark knight, with the severe gray eyes and the stiff leg. poor lucy, therefore, loved and was grateful to her brilliant cousin for that fickleness which had brought about such a change in the programme of the gay wedding at felden woods. the fair young confidante and bridesmaid could assist in the ceremonial now with a good grace. she no longer walked about like a "corpse alive;" but took a hearty womanly interest in the whole affair, and was very much concerned in a discussion as to the merits of pink _versus_ blue for the bonnets of the bridesmaids. the boisterous happiness of john mellish seemed contagious, and made a genial atmosphere about the great mansion at felden. stalwart andrew floyd was delighted with his young cousin's choice. no more refusals to join him in the hunting-field; but half the county breakfasting at felden, and the long terrace and garden luminous with "pink." not a ripple disturbed the smooth current of that brief courtship. the yorkshireman contrived to make himself agreeable to everybody belonging to his dark-eyed divinity. he flattered their weaknesses, he gratified their caprices, he studied their wishes, and paid them all such insidious court, that i'm afraid invidious comparisons were drawn between john and talbot, to the disadvantage of the proud young officer. it was impossible for any quarrel to arise between the lovers, for john followed his mistress about like some big slave, who only lived to do her bidding; and aurora accepted his devotion with a sultana-like grace, which became her amazingly. once more she visited the stables and inspected her father's stud, for the first time since she had left felden for the parisian finishing school. once more she rode across country, wearing a hat which provoked considerable criticism,--a hat which was no other than the now universal turban, or pork-pie, but which was new to the world in the autumn of fifty-eight. her earlier girlhood appeared to return to her once more. it seemed almost as if the two years and a half in which she had left and returned to her home, and had met and parted with talbot bulstrode, had been blotted from her life, leaving her spirits fresh and bright as they were before that stormy interview in her father's study in the june of fifty-six. the county families came to the wedding at beckenham church, and were fain to confess that miss floyd looked wondrously handsome in her virginal crown of orange buds and flowers, and her voluminous mechlin veil; she had pleaded hard to be married in a bonnet, but had been overruled by a posse of female cousins. mr. richard gunter provided the marriage feast, and sent a man down to felden to superintend the arrangements, who was more dashing and splendid to look upon than any of the kentish guests. john mellish alternately laughed and cried throughout that eventful morning. heaven knows how many times he shook hands with archibald floyd, carrying the banker off into solitary corners, and swearing, with the tears running down his broad cheeks, to be a good husband to the old man's daughter; so that it must have been a relief to the white-haired old scotchman when aurora descended the staircase, rustling in violet moiré antique, and surrounded by her bridesmaids, to take leave of this dear father before the prancing steeds carried mr. and mrs. mellish to that most prosaic of hymeneal stages, the london bridge station. mrs. mellish! yes, she was mrs. mellish now. talbot bulstrode read of her marriage in that very column of the newspaper in which he had thought perhaps to see her death. how flatly the romance ended! with what a dull cadence the storm died out, and what a commonplace gray, every-day sky succeeded the terrors of the lightning! less than a year since, the globe had seemed to him to collapse, and creation to come to a standstill because of his trouble; and he was now in parliament, legislating for the cornish miners, and getting stout, his ill-natured friends said; and she--she who ought, in accordance with all dramatic propriety, to have died out of hand long before this, she had married a yorkshire landowner, and would no doubt take her place in the county and play my lady bountiful in the village, and be chief patroness at the race-balls, and live happily ever afterwards. he crumpled the 'times' newspaper, and flung it from him in his rage and mortification. "and i once thought that she loved me!" he cried. and she did love you, talbot bulstrode; loved you as she can never love this honest, generous, devoted john mellish, though she may by-and-by bestow upon him an affection which is a great deal better worth having. she loved you with the girl's romantic fancy and reverent admiration; and tried humbly to fashion her very nature anew, that she might be worthy of your sublime excellence. she loved you as women only love in their first youth, and as they rarely love the men they ultimately marry. the tree is perhaps all the stronger when these first frail branches are lopped away to give place to strong and spreading arms, beneath which a husband and children may shelter. but talbot could not see all this. he saw nothing but that brief announcement in the 'times:' "john mellish, esq., of mellish park, near doncaster, to aurora, only daughter of archibald floyd, banker, of felden woods, kent." he was angry with his sometime love, and more angry with himself for feeling that anger; and he plunged furiously into blue-books, to prepare himself for the coming session; and again he took his gun and went out upon the "barren, barren moorland," as he had done in the first violence of his grief, and wandered down to the dreary sea-shore, where he raved about his "amy, shallow-hearted," and tried the pitch of his voice against the ides of february should come round, and the bill for the cornish miners be laid before the speaker. towards the close of january, the servants at mellish park prepared for the advent of master john and his bride. it was a work of love in that disorderly household, for it pleased them that master would have some one to keep him at home, and that the county would be entertained, and festivals held in the roomy rambling mansion. architects, upholsterers, and decorators had been busy through the short winter days preparing a suite of apartments for mrs. mellish; and the western, or as it was called the gothic, wing of the house had been restored and remodelled for aurora, until the oak-roofed chambers blazed with rose-colour and gold, like a mediæval chapel. if john could have expended half his fortune in the purchase of a roc's egg to hang in these apartments, he would have gladly done so. he was so proud of his cleopatra-like bride, his jewel beyond all parallel amid all gems, that he fancied he could not build a shrine rich enough for his treasure. so the house in which honest country squires and their sensible motherly wives had lived contentedly for nearly three centuries was almost pulled to pieces, before john thought it worthy of the banker's daughter. the trainers and grooms and stable-boys shrugged their shoulders superciliously, and spat fragments of straw disdainfully upon the paved stable-yard, as they heard the clatter of the tools of stonemasons and glaziers busy about the façade of the restored apartments. the stable would be _naught_ now, they supposed, and muster mellish would be always tied to his wife's apron-string. it was a relief to them to hear that mrs. mellish was fond of riding and hunting, and would no doubt take to horse-racing in due time, as the legitimate taste of a lady of position and fortune. the bells of the village church rang loudly and joyously in the clear winter air as the carriage-and-four which had met john and his bride at doncaster, dashed into the gates of mellish park and up the long avenue to the semi-gothic, semi-barbaric portico of the great door. hearty yorkshire voices rang out in loud cheers of welcome as aurora stepped from the carriage, and passed under the shadow of the porch and into the old oak hall, which had been hung with evergreens and adorned with floral devices; amongst which figured the legend, "welcom to melish!" and other such friendly inscriptions, more conspicuous for their kindly meaning than their strict orthography. the servants were enraptured with their master's choice. she was so brightly handsome, that the simple-hearted creatures accepted her beauty as we accept the sunlight, and felt a genial warmth in that radiant loveliness, which the most classical perfection could never have inspired. indeed, a grecian outline might have been thrown away upon the yorkshire servants, whose uncultivated tastes were a great deal more disposed to recognize splendour of colour than purity of form. they could not choose but admire aurora's eyes, which they unanimously declared to be "regular shiners;" and the flash of her white teeth, glancing between the full crimson lips; and the bright flush which lighted up her pale olive skin; and the purple lustre of her massive coronal of plaited hair. her beauty was of that luxuriant and splendid order which has always most effect upon the masses, and the fascination of her manner was almost akin to sorcery in its power over simple people. i lose myself when i try to describe the feminine intoxications, the wonderful fascination exercised by this dark-eyed siren. surely the secret of her power to charm must have been the wonderful vitality of her nature, by virtue of which she carried life and animal spirits about with her as an atmosphere, till dull people grew merry by reason of her contagious presence; or perhaps the true charm of her manner was that childlike and exquisite unconsciousness of self which made her for ever a new creature; for ever impulsive and sympathetic, acutely sensible of all sorrow in others, though of a nature originally joyous in the extreme. mrs. walter powell had been transferred from felden woods to mellish park, and was comfortably installed in her prim apartments when the bride and bridegroom arrived. the yorkshire housekeeper was to abandon the executive power to the ensign's widow, who was to take all trouble of administration off aurora's hands. "heaven help your friends if they ever had to eat a dinner of my ordering, john," mrs. mellish said, making free confession of her ignorance; "i am glad, too, that we have no occasion to turn the poor soul out upon the world once more. those long columns of advertisements in the 'times' give me a sick pain at my heart when i think of what a governess must have to encounter. i cannot loll back in my carriage and be 'grateful for my advantages,' as mrs. alexander says, when i remember the sufferings of others. i am rather inclined to be discontented with my lot, and to think it a poor thing, after all, to be rich and happy in a world where so many must suffer; so i am glad we can give mrs. powell something to do at mellish park." the ensign's widow rejoiced very much in that she was to be retained in such comfortable quarters; but she did not thank aurora for the benefits received from the open hands of the banker's daughter. she did not thank her, because--she hated her. why did she hate her? she hated her for the very benefits she received, or rather because she, aurora, had power to bestow such benefits. she hated her as such slow, sluggish, narrow-minded creatures always hate the frank and generous; hated her as envy will for ever hate prosperity; as haman hated mordecai from the height of his throne; and as the man of haman nature would hate, were he supreme in the universe. if mrs. walter powell had been a duchess, and aurora a crossing-sweeper, she would still have envied her; she would have envied her glorious eyes and flashing teeth, her imperial carriage and generous soul. this pale, whity-brown-haired woman felt herself contemptible in the presence of aurora, and she resented the bounteous vitality of this nature which made her conscious of the sluggishness of her own. she detested mrs. mellish for the possession of attributes which she felt were richer gifts than all the wealth of the house of floyd, floyd, and floyd melted into one mountain of ore. but it is not for a dependent to hate, except in a decorous and gentlewomanly manner--secretly, in the dim recesses of her soul; while she dresses her face with an unvarying smile--a smile which she puts on every morning with her clean collar, and takes off at night when she goes to bed. now as, by an all-wise dispensation of providence, it is not possible for one person so to hate another without that other having a vague consciousness of the deadly sentiment, aurora felt that mrs. powell's attachment to her was of no very profound nature. but the reckless girl did not seek to fathom the depth of any inimical feeling which might lurk in her dependent's breast. "she is not very fond of me, poor soul!" she said; "and i dare say i torment and annoy her with my careless follies. if i were like that dear considerate little lucy, now--" and with a shrug of her shoulders, and an unfinished sentence such as this, mrs. mellish dismissed the insignificant subject from her mind. you cannot expect these grand, courageous creatures to be frightened of quiet people. and yet, in the great dramas of life, it is the quiet people who do the mischief. iago was not a noisy person; though, thank heaven! it is no longer the fashion to represent him as an oily sneak, whom even the most foolish of moors _could not_ have trusted. aurora was at peace. the storms that had so nearly shipwrecked her young life had passed away, leaving her upon a fair and fertile shore. whatever griefs she had inflicted upon her father's devoted heart had not been mortal; and the old banker seemed a very happy man when he came, in the bright april weather, to see the young couple at mellish park. amongst all the hangers-on of that large establishment there was only one person who did not join in the general voice when mrs. mellish was spoken of, and that one person was so very insignificant that his fellow-servants scarcely cared to ascertain his opinion. he was a man of about forty, who had been born at mellish park, and had pottered about the stables from his babyhood, doing odd jobs for the grooms, and being reckoned, although a little "fond" upon common matters, a very acute judge of horse-flesh. this man was called stephen, or, more commonly, steeve hargraves. he was a squat, broad-shouldered fellow, with a big head, a pale haggard face,--a face whose ghastly pallor seemed almost unnatural,--reddish-brown eyes, and bushy, sandy eyebrows, which formed a species of penthouse over those sinister-looking eyes. he was the sort of man who is generally called _repulsive_,--a man from whom you recoil with a feeling of instinctive dislike, which is, no doubt, both wicked and unjust; for we have no right to take objection to a man because he has an ugly glitter in his eyes, and shaggy tufts of red hair meeting on the bridge of his nose, and big splay feet, which seem made to crush and destroy whatever comes in their way. this was what aurora mellish thought when, a few days after her arrival at the park, she saw steeve hargraves for the first time, coming out of the harness-room with a bridle across his arm. she was angry with herself for the involuntary shudder with which she drew back at the sight of this man, who stood at a little distance polishing the brass ornaments upon a set of harness, and furtively regarding mrs. mellish as she leaned on her husband's arm, talking to the trainer about the foals at grass in the meadows outside the park. aurora asked who the man was. "why, his name is hargraves, ma'am," answered the trainer; "but we call him steeve. he's a little bit touched in the upper story,--a little bit 'fond,' as we call it here; but he's useful about the stables when he pleases; that arnt always though, for he's rather a queer temper, and there's none of us has ever been able to get the upper hand of him, as master knows." john mellish laughed. "no," he said; "steeve has pretty much his own way in the stables, i fancy. he was a favourite groom of my father's twenty years ago; but he got a fall in the hunting-field, which did him some injury about the head, and he's never been quite right since. of course this, with my poor father's regard for him, gives him a claim upon us, and we put up with his queer ways, don't we, langley?" "well, we do, sir," said the trainer; "though, upon my honour, i'm sometimes half afraid of him, and begin to think he'll get up in the middle of the night and murder some of us." "not till some of you have won a hatful of money, langley. steeve's a little too fond of the brass to murder any of you for nothing. you shall see his face light up presently, aurora," said john, beckoning to the stable-man. "come here, steeve. mrs. mellish wishes you to drink her health." he dropped a sovereign into the man's broad muscular palm,--the hand of a gladiator, with horny flesh and sinews of iron. steeve's red eyes glistened as his fingers closed upon the money. "thank you kindly, my lady," he said, touching his cap. he spoke in a low subdued voice, which contrasted so strangely with the physical power manifest in his appearance that aurora drew back with a start. unhappily for this poor "fond" creature, whose person was in itself repulsive, there was something in this inward, semi-whispering voice which gave rise to an instinctive dislike in those who heard him speak for the first time. he touched his greasy woollen cap once more, and went slowly back to his work. "how white his face is!" said aurora. "has he been ill?" "no. he has had that pale face ever since his fall. i was too young when it happened, to remember much about it; but i have heard my father say, that when they brought the poor creature home, his face, which had been florid before, was as white as a sheet of writing-paper, and his voice, until that period strong and gruff, was reduced to the half-whisper in which he now speaks. the doctors did all they could for him, and carried him through an awful attack of brain-fever; but they could never bring back his voice, nor the colour to his cheeks." "poor fellow!" said mrs. mellish gently; "he is very much to be pitied." she was reproaching herself, as she said this, for that feeling of repugnance which she could not overcome. it was a repugnance closely allied to terror; she felt as if she could scarcely be happy at mellish park while that man was on the premises. she was half inclined to beg her indulgent husband to pension him off, and send him to the other end of the county; but the next moment she was ashamed of her childish folly, and a few hours afterwards had forgotten steeve hargraves, the "softy," as he was politely called in the stables. reader, when any creature inspires you with this instinctive unreasoning abhorrence, avoid that creature. he is dangerous. take warning, as you take warning by the clouds in the sky, and the ominous stillness of the atmosphere when there is a storm coming. nature cannot lie; and it is nature which has planted that shuddering terror in your breast; an instinct of self-preservation rather than of cowardly fear, which at the first sight of some fellow-creature tells you more plainly than words can speak, "that man is my enemy!" had aurora suffered herself to be guided by this instinct,--had she given way to the impulse which she despised as childish, and caused stephen hargraves to be dismissed from mellish park, what bitter misery, what cruel anguish, might have been spared to herself and others! the mastiff bow-wow had accompanied his mistress to her new home; but bow-wow's best days were done. a month before aurora's marriage he had been run over by a pony-carriage in one of the roads about felden, and had been conveyed, bleeding and disabled, to the veterinary surgeon's, to have one of his hind-legs put into splints, and to be carried through his sufferings by the highest available skill in the science of dog-doctoring. aurora drove every day to croydon to see her sick favourite; and at the worst bow-wow was always well enough to recognize his beloved mistress, and roll his listless, feverish tongue over her white hands, in token of that unchanging brute affection which can only perish with life. so the mastiff was quite lame as well as half blind when he arrived at mellish park, with the rest of aurora's goods and chattels. he was a privileged creature in the roomy mansion; a tiger-skin was spread for him upon the hearth in the drawing-room, and he spent his declining days in luxurious repose, basking in the fire-light or sunning himself in the windows, as it pleased his royal fancy; but, feeble as he was, always able to limp after mrs. mellish when she walked on the lawn or in the woody shrubberies which skirted the gardens. one day, when she had returned from her morning's ride with john and her father, who accompanied them sometimes upon a quiet gray cob, and seemed a younger man for the exercise, she lingered on the lawn in her riding-habit after the horses had been taken back to the stables, and mr. mellish and his father-in-law had re-entered the house. the mastiff saw her from the drawing-room window, and crawled out to welcome her. tempted by the exquisite softness of the atmosphere, she strolled, with her riding-habit gathered under her arm and her whip in her hand, looking for primroses under the clumps of trees upon the lawn. she gathered a cluster of wild-flowers, and was returning to the house, when she remembered some directions respecting a favourite pony that was ill, which she had omitted to give to her groom. she crossed the stable-yard, followed by bow-wow, found the groom, gave him her orders, and went back to the gardens. while talking to the man, she had recognized the white face of steeve hargraves at one of the windows of the harness-room. he came out while she was giving her directions, and carried a set of harness across to a coach-house on the opposite side of the quadrangle. aurora was on the threshold of the gates opening from the stables into the gardens, when she was arrested by a howl of pain from the mastiff bow-wow. rapid as lightning in every movement, she turned round in time to see the cause of this cry. steeve hargraves had sent the animal reeling away from him with a kick from his iron-bound clog. cruelty to animals was one of the failings of the "softy." he was not cruel to the mellish horses, for he had sense enough to know that his daily bread depended upon his attention to them; but heaven help any outsider that came in his way! aurora sprang upon him like a beautiful tigress, and catching the collar of his fustian jacket in her slight hands, rooted him to the spot upon which he stood. the grasp of those slender hands, convulsed by passion, was not to be easily shaken off; and steeve hargraves, taken completely off his guard, stared aghast at his assailant. taller than the stable-man by a foot and a half, she towered above him, her cheeks white with rage, her eyes flashing fury, her hat fallen off, and her black hair tumbling about her shoulders, sublime in her passion. the man crouched beneath the grasp of the imperious creature. "let me go!" he gasped, in his inward whisper, which had a hissing sound in his agitation; "let me go, or you'll be sorry; let me go!" "how dared you!" cried aurora,--"how dared you hurt him? my poor dog! my poor lame, feeble dog! how dared you to do it? you cowardly dastard! you----" she disengaged her right hand from his collar and rained a shower of blows upon his clumsy shoulders with her slender whip; a mere toy, with emeralds set in its golden head, but stinging like a rod of flexible steel in that little hand. "how dared you!" she repeated again and again, her cheeks changing from white to scarlet in the effort to hold the man with one hand. her tangled hair had fallen to her waist by this time, and the whip was broken in half a dozen places. john mellish, entering the stable-yard by chance at this very moment, turned white with horror at beholding the beautiful fury. "aurora! aurora!" he cried, snatching the man's collar from her grasp, and hurling him half a dozen paces off. "aurora, what is it?" she told him in broken gasps the cause of her indignation. he took the splintered whip from her hand, picked up her hat, which she had trodden upon in her rage, and led her across the yard towards the back entrance to the house. it was such bitter shame to him to think that this peerless, this adored creature should do anything to bring disgrace, or even ridicule, upon herself. he would have stripped off his coat and fought with half a dozen coal-heavers, and thought nothing of it; but that she---"go in, go in, my darling girl," he said, with sorrowful tenderness; "the servants are peeping and prying about, i dare say. you should not have done this; you should have told me." "i should have told you!" she cried impatiently. "how could i stop to tell you when i saw him strike my dog, my poor lame dog?" "go in, darling, go in! there, there, calm yourself, and go in." he spoke as if he had been trying to soothe an agitated child, for he saw by the convulsive heaving of her breast that the violent emotion would terminate in hysteria, as all womanly fury must, sooner or later. he half led, half carried her up a back staircase to her own room, and left her lying on a sofa in her riding-habit. he thrust the broken whip into his pocket, and then, setting his strong white teeth and clenching his fist, went to look for stephen hargraves. as he crossed the hall in his way out, he selected a stout leather-thonged hunting-whip from a stand of formidable implements. steeve, the "softy," was sitting on a horse-block when john re-entered the stable-yard. he was rubbing his shoulders with a very doleful face, while a couple of grinning stable-boys, who had perhaps witnessed his chastisement, watched him from a respectful distance. they had no inclination to go too near him just then, for the "softy" had a playful habit of brandishing a big clasp-knife when he felt himself aggrieved; and the bravest lad in the stables had no wish to die from a stab in the abdomen, with the pleasant conviction that his murderer's heaviest punishment might be a fortnight's imprisonment, or an easy fine. "now, mr. hargraves," said john mellish, lifting the "softy" off the horse-block and planting him at a convenient distance for giving full play to the hunting-whip, "it wasn't mrs. mellish's business to horsewhip you, but it was her duty to let me do it for her; so take that, you coward." the leathern thong whistled in the air, and curled about steeve's shoulders; but john felt there was something despicable in the unequal contest. he threw the whip away, and still holding him by the collar, conducted the "softy" to the gates of the stable-yard. "you see that avenue," he said, pointing down a fair glade that stretched before them; "it leads pretty straight out of the park, and i strongly recommend you, mr. stephen hargraves, to get to the end of it as fast as ever you can, and never to show your ugly white face upon an inch of ground belonging to me again. d'ye hear?" "e-es, sir." "stay! i suppose there's wages or something due to you." he took a handful of money from his waistcoat-pocket and threw it on the ground, sovereigns and half-crowns rolling hither and thither on the gravel-path; then turning on his heel, he left the "softy" to pick up the scattered treasure. steeve hargraves dropped on his knees, and groped about till he had found the last coin; then, as he slowly counted the money from one hand into the other, his white face relapsed into a grin: john mellish had given him gold and silver amounting to upwards of two years of his ordinary wages. he walked a few paces down the avenue, and then looking back shook his fist at the house he was leaving behind him. "you're a fine-spirited madam, mrs. john mellish, sure enough," he muttered; "but never you give me a chance of doing you any mischief, or by the lord, _fond_ as i am, i'll do it! they think the 'softy's' up to naught, perhaps. wait a bit." he took his money from his pocket again, and counted it once more, as he walked slowly towards the gates of the park. it will be seen, therefore, that aurora had two enemies, one without and one within her pleasant home: one for ever brooding discontent and hatred within the holy circle of the domestic hearth; the other plotting ruin and vengeance without the walls of the citadel. chapter xiii. the spring meeting. the early spring brought lucy floyd on a visit to her cousin, a wondering witness of the happiness that reigned at mellish park. poor lucy had expected to find aurora held as something better than the dogs, and a little higher than the horses, in that yorkshire household; and was considerably surprised to find her dark-eyed cousin a despotic and capricious sovereign, reigning with undisputed sway over every creature, biped or quadruped, upon the estate. she was surprised to see the bright glow in her cheeks, the merry sparkle in her eyes; surprised to hear the light tread of her footstep, the gushing music of her laugh; surprised, in fact, to discover that, instead of weeping over the dry bones of her dead love for talbot bulstrode, aurora had learned to love her husband. have i any need to be ashamed of my heroine in that she had forgotten her straight-nosed, gray-eyed cornish lover, who had set his pride and his pedigree between himself and his affection, and had loved her at best with a reservation, although heaven only knows how dearly he had loved her? have i any cause to blush for this poor, impetuous girl, if, turning in the sickness of her sorrowful heart with a sense of relief and gratitude to the honest shelter of john's love, she had quickly learnt to feel for him an affection which repaid him a thousandfold for his long-suffering devotion? surely it would have been impossible for any true-hearted woman to withhold some such repayment for such a love as that which, in every word, and look, and thought, and deed, john mellish bestowed upon his wife. how could she be for ever his creditor for such a boundless debt? are hearts like his common amongst our clay? is it a small thing to be beloved with this loyal and pure affection? is it laid so often at the feet of any mortal woman that she should spurn and trample upon the holy offering? he had loved; and more, he had trusted her. he had trusted her, when the man who passionately loved her had left her in an agony of doubt and despair. the cause of this lay in the difference between the two men. john mellish had as high and stern a sense of honour as talbot bulstrode; but while the proud cornishman's strength of brain lay in the reflective faculties, the yorkshireman's acute intellect was strongest in its power of perception. talbot drove himself half mad with imagining what _might be;_ john saw what _was;_ and he saw, or fancied he saw, that the woman he loved was worthy of all love; and he gave his peace and honour freely into her keeping. he had his reward. he had his reward in her frank womanly affection, and in the delight of seeing that she was happy; no cloud upon her face, no shadow on her life, but ever-beaming joy in her eyes, ever-changing smiles upon her lips. she was happy in the calm security of her home, happy in that pleasant stronghold in which she was so fenced about and guarded by love and devotion. i do not know that she ever felt any romantic or enthusiastic love for this big yorkshireman; but i do know that from the first hour in which she laid her head upon his broad breast she was true to him--true as a wife should be; true in every thought; true in the merest shadow of a thought. a wide gulf yawned around the altar of her home, separating her from every other man in the universe, and leaving her alone with that one man whom she had accepted as her husband. she had accepted him in the truest and purest sense of the word. she had accepted him from the hand of god, as the protector and shelterer of her life; and morning and night, upon her knees, she thanked the gracious creator who had made this man for her help-meet. but after duly setting down all this, i have to confess that poor john mellish was cruelly hen-pecked. such big, blustering fellows are created to be the much-enduring subjects of petticoat government; and they carry the rosy garlands until their dying hour with a sublime unconsciousness that those floral chains are not very easy to be broken. your little man is self-assertive, and for ever on his guard against womanly domination. all tyrannical husbands on record have been little men, from mr. daniel quilp upwards; but who could ever convince a fellow of six foot two in his stockings that he was afraid of his wife? he submits to the pretty tyrant with a quiet smile of resignation. what does it matter? she is so little, so fragile; he could break that tiny wrist with one twist of his big thumb and finger; and in the mean time, till affairs get desperate, and such measures become necessary, it's as well to let her have her own way. john mellish did not even debate the point. he loved her, and he laid himself down to be trampled upon by her gracious feet. whatever she did or said was charming, bewitching, and wonderful to him. if she ridiculed and laughed at him, her laughter was the sweetest harmony in creation; and it pleased him to think that his absurdities could give birth to such music. if she lectured him, she arose to the sublimity of a priestess, and he listened to her and worshipped her as the most noble of living creatures. and with all this, his innate manliness of character preserved him from any taint of that quality our _argot_ has christened _spooneyism_. it was only those who knew him well and watched him closely who could fathom the full depths of his tender weakness. the noblest sentiments approach most nearly to the universal, and this love of john's was in a manner universal. it was the love of husband, father, mother, brother, melted into one comprehensive affection. he had a mother's weak pride in aurora, a mother's foolish vanity in the wonderful creature, the _rara avis_ he had won from her nest to be his wife. if mrs. mellish was complimented while john stood by, he simpered like a school-girl who blushes at a handsome man's first flatteries. i'm afraid he bored his male acquaintance about "my wife:" her marvellous leap over the bullfinch; the plan she drew for the new stables, "which the architect said was a better plan than he could have drawn himself, sir, by gad" (a clever man, that doncaster architect); the surprising way in which she had discovered the fault in the chestnut colt's off fore-leg; the pencil sketch she had made of her dog bow-wow ("sir edwin landseer might have been proud of such spirit and dash, sir"). all these things did the county gentlemen hear, until, perhaps, they grew a shade weary of john's talk of "my wife." but they were never weary of aurora herself. she took her place at once among them; and they bowed down to her and worshipped her, envying john mellish the ownership of such a high-bred filly, as i fear they were but likely, unconsciously, to designate my black-eyed heroine. the domain over which aurora found herself empress was no inconsiderable one. john mellish had inherited an estate which brought him an income of something between sixteen and seventeen thousand a year. far-away farms, upon wide yorkshire wolds and fenny lincolnshire flats, owned him master; and the intricate secrets of his possessions were scarcely known to himself,--known, perhaps, to none but his land-steward and solicitor, a grave gentleman who lived in doncaster, and drove about once a fortnight down to mellish park, much to the horror of its light-hearted master, to whom "business" was a terrible bugbear. not that i would have the reader for a moment imagine john mellish an empty-headed blockhead, with no comprehension save for his own daily pleasures. he was not a reading man, nor a business man, nor a politician, nor a student of the natural sciences. there was an observatory in the park; but john had fitted it up as a smoking-room, the revolving openings in the roof being very convenient for letting out the effluvia of his guests' cheroots and havanas; mr. mellish caring for the stars very much after the fashion of that assyrian monarch who was content to see them shine, and thank their maker for their beauty. he was not a spiritualist; and unless one of the tables at mellish could have given him "a tip" for the "sellinger," or great ebor, he would have cared very little if every inch of walnut and rosewood in his house had grown oracular. but for all this he was no fool; he had that brightly clear intellect which very often accompanies perfect honesty of purpose, and which is the very intellect of all others most successful in the discomfiture of all knavery. he was not a creature to despise, for his very weaknesses were manly. perhaps aurora felt this, and that it was something to rule over such a man. sometimes, in an outburst of loving gratitude, she would nestle her handsome head upon his breast,--tall as she was, she was only tall enough to take shelter under his wing,--and tell him that he was the dearest and the best of men, and that, although she might love him to her dying day, she could never, _never_, never love him half as much as he deserved. after which, half ashamed of herself for the sentimental declaration, she would alternately ridicule, lecture, and tyrannize over him for the rest of the day. lucy beheld this state of things with silent bewilderment. could the woman who had once been loved by talbot bulstrode sink to _this?_ the happy wife of a fair-haired yorkshireman; with her fondest wishes concentred in her namesake the bay filly, which was to run in a weight-for-age race at the york spring, and was entered for the ensuing derby; interested in a tan gallop, a new stable; talking of mysterious but evidently all-important creatures, called by such names as scott and fobert and chiffney and challoner; and to all appearance utterly forgetful of the fact that there existed upon the earth a divinity with fathomless gray eyes, known to mortals as the heir of bulstrode. poor lucy was like to have been driven well-nigh demented by the talk about this bay filly, aurora, as the spring meeting drew near. she was taken to see her every morning by aurora and john, who, in their anxiety for the improvement of their favourite, looked at the animal upon each visit as if they expected some wonderful physical transformation to have occurred in the stillness of the night. the loose box in which the filly was lodged was watched night and day by an amateur detective force of stable-boys and hangers-on; and john mellish once went so far as to dip a tumbler into the pail of water provided for the bay filly, aurora, to ascertain, of his own experience, that the crystal fluid was innocuous; for he grew nervous as the eventful day drew nigh, and was afraid of lurking danger to the filly from dark-minded touts who might have heard of her in london. i fear the touts troubled their heads very little about this graceful two-year old, though she had the blood of old melbourne and west australian in her veins, to say nothing of other aristocracy upon the maternal side. the suspicious gentlemen hanging about york and doncaster in those early april days were a great deal too much occupied with lord glasgow's lot, and john scott's lot, and lord zetland's and mr. merry's lot, and other lots of equal distinction, to have much time to prowl about mellish park, or peer into that meadow which the young man had caused to be surrounded by an eight-foot fence for the privacy of the derby winner _in futuro._ lucy declared the filly to be the loveliest of creatures, and safe to win any number of cups and plates that might be offered for equine competition; but she was always glad, when the daily visit was over, to find herself safely out of reach of those high-bred hind-legs, which seemed to possess a faculty for being in all four corners of the loose-box at one and the same moment. the first day of the meeting came, and found half the mellish household established at york: john and his family at an hotel near the betting-rooms; and the trainer, his satellites, and the filly, at a little inn close to the knavesmire. archibald floyd did his best to be interested in the event which was so interesting to his children; but he freely confessed to his grandniece, lucy, that he heartily wished the meeting over, and the merits of the bay filly decided. she had stood her trial nobly, john said; not winning with a rush, it is true; in point of fact, being in a manner beaten; but evincing a power to _stay_, which promised better for the future than any two-year-old velocity. when the saddling-bell rang, aurora, her father, and lucy were stationed in the balcony, a crowd of friends about them; mrs. mellish, with a pencil in her hand, putting down all manner of impossible bets in her excitement, and making such a book as might have been preserved as a curiosity in sporting annals. john was pushing in and out of the ring below; tumbling over small book-men in his agitation; dashing from the ring to the weighing-house; and hanging about the small pale-faced boy who was to ride the filly as anxiously as if the jockey had been a prime minister, and john a family-man with half a dozen sons in need of government appointments. i tremble to think how many bonuses, in the way of five-pound notes, john promised this pale-faced lad, on condition that the stakes (some small matter amounting to about sixty pounds) were pulled off--pulled off where, i wonder?--by the bay filly aurora. if the youth had not been of that preternatural order of beings who seem born of an emotionless character to wear silk for the good of their fellow-men, his brain must certainly have been dazed by the variety of conflicting directions which john mellish gave him within the critical last quarter of an hour; but having received his orders early that morning from the trainer, accompanied with a warning not to suffer himself to be _tewed_ (yorkshire _patois_ for worried) by anything mr. mellish might say, the sallow-complexioned lad walked about in the calm serenity of innocence,--there are honest jockeys in the world,--and took his seat in the saddle with as even a pulse as if he had been about to ride in an omnibus. there were some people upon the stand that morning who thought the face of aurora mellish as pleasant a sight as the smooth greensward of the knavesmire, or the best horse-flesh in the county of york. all forgetful of herself in her excitement, with her natural vivacity multiplied by the animation of the scene before her, she was more than usually lovely; and archibald floyd looked at her with a fond emotion, so intermingled with gratitude to heaven for the happiness of his daughter's destiny as to be almost akin to pain. she was happy; she was thoroughly happy at last, this child of his dead eliza, this sacred charge left to him by the woman he had loved; she was happy, and she was _safe;_ he could go to his grave resignedly to-morrow, if it pleased god,--knowing this. strange thoughts, perhaps, for a crowded race-course; but our most solemn fancies do not come always in solemn places. nay, it is often in the midst of crowds and confusion that our souls wing their loftiest flights, and the saddest memories return to us. you see a man sitting at some theatrical entertainment, with a grave, abstracted face, over which no change of those around him has any influence. he may be thinking of his dead wife, dead ten years ago; he may be acting over well-remembered scenes of joy and sorrow; he may be recalling cruel words, never to be atoned for upon earth, angry looks gone to be registered against him in the skies; while his children are laughing at the clown on the stage below him. he may be moodily meditating inevitable bankruptcy or coming ruin, holding imaginary meetings with his creditors, and contemplating prussic acid upon the refusal of his certificate, while his eldest daughter is crying with pauline deschappelles. so archibald floyd, while the numbers were going up, and the jockeys being weighed, and the book-men clamouring below him, leaned over the broad ledge of the stone balcony, and, looking far away across the grassy amphitheatre, thought of the dead wife who had bequeathed to him this precious daughter. the bay filly, aurora, was beaten ignominiously. mrs. mellish turned white with despair as she saw the amber jacket, black belt, and blue cap crawling in at the heels of the ruck, the jockey looking pale defiance at the bystanders: as who should say that the filly had never been meant to win, and that the defeat of to-day was but an artfully-concocted _ruse_ whereby fortunes were to be made in the future? john mellish, something used to such disappointments, crept away to hide his discomfiture outside the ring; but aurora dropped her card and pencil, and, stamping her foot upon the stone flooring of the balcony, told lucy and the banker that it was a shame, and that the boy must have sold the race, as it was _impossible_ the filly could have been fairly beaten. as she turned to say this, her cheeks flushed with passion, and her eyes flashing bright indignation on any one who might stand in the way to receive the angry electric light, she became aware of a pale face and a pair of gray eyes earnestly regarding her from the threshold of an open window two or three paces off; and in another moment both she and her father had recognized talbot bulstrode. the young man saw that he was recognized, and approached them, hat in hand,--very, very pale, as lucy always remembered,--and, with a voice that trembled as he spoke, wished the banker and the two ladies "good day." and it was thus that they met, these two who had "parted in silence and tears," more than "half broken-hearted," to sever, as they thought, for eternity; it was thus--upon this commonplace, prosaic, half-guinea grand stand--that destiny brought them once more face to face. a year ago, and how often in the spring twilight aurora floyd had pictured her possible meeting with talbot bulstrode! he would come upon her suddenly, perhaps, in the still moonlight, and she would swoon away and die at his feet of the unendurable emotion. or they would meet in some crowded assembly; she dancing, laughing with hollow, simulated mirth; and the shock of one glance of those eyes would slay her in her painted glory of jewels and grandeur. how often, ah, how often she had acted the scene and felt the anguish!--only a year ago, less than a year ago, ay, even so lately as on that balmy september day when she had lain on the rustic couch at the château d'arques, looking down at the fair normandy landscape, with faithful john at watch by her side, the tame goats browsing upon the grassy platform behind her, and preternaturally ancient french children teasing the mild, long-suffering animals. and to-day she met him with her thoughts so full of the horse which had just been beaten, that she scarcely knew what she said to her sometime lover. aurora floyd was dead and buried, and aurora mellish, looking critically at talbot bulstrode, wondered how any one could have ever gone near to the gates of death for the love of him. it was talbot who grew pale at this unlooked-for encounter; it was talbot whose voice was shaken in the utterance of those few every-day syllables which common courtesy demanded of him. the captain had not so easily learned to forget. he was older than aurora, and he had reached the age of two-and-thirty without having ever loved woman, only to be the more desperately attacked by the fatal disease when his time came. he suffered acutely at that sudden meeting. wounded in his pride by her serene indifference, dazzled afresh by her beauty, mad with jealous fury at the thought that he had lost her, captain bulstrode's feelings were of no very enviable nature; and if aurora had ever wished to avenge that cruel scene at felden woods, her hour of vengeance had most certainly come. but she was too generous a creature to have harboured such a thought. she had submitted in all humility to talbot's decree; she had accepted his decision, and had believed in its justice; and seeing his agitation to-day, she was sorry for him. she pitied him, with a tender, matronly compassion; such as she, in the safe harbour of a happy home, might be privileged to feel for this poor wanderer, still at sea on life's troubled ocean. love, and the memory of love, must indeed have died before we can feel like this. the terrible passion must have died that slow and certain death, from the grave of which no haunting ghost ever returns to torment the survivors. it was, and it is not. aurora might have been shipwrecked and cast on a desert island with talbot bulstrode, and might have lived ten years in his company, without ever feeling for ten seconds as she had felt for him once. with these impetuous and impressionable people, who live quickly, a year is sometimes as twenty years; so aurora looked back at talbot bulstrode across a gulf which stretched for weary miles between them, and wondered if they had really ever stood side by side, allied by hope and love, in the days that were gone. while aurora was thinking of these things, as well as a little of the bay filly, and while talbot, half choked by a thousand confused emotions, tried to appear preternaturally at his ease, john mellish, having refreshed his spirits with bottled beer, came suddenly upon the party, and slapped the captain on the back. _he_ was not jealous, this happy john. secure in his wife's love and truth, he was ready to face a regiment of her old admirers; indeed, he rather delighted in the idea of avenging aurora upon this cowardly lover. talbot glanced involuntarily at the members of the york constabulary on the course below; wondering how they would act if he were to fling john mellish over the stone balcony, and do a murder then and there. he was thinking this while john was nearly wringing off his hand in cordial salutation, and asking what the deuce had brought him to the york spring. talbot explained rather lamely that, being knocked up by his parliamentary work, he had come down to spend a few days with an old brother-officer, captain hunter, who had a place between york and leeds. mr. mellish declared that nothing could be more lucky than this. he knew hunter well; the two men must join them at dinner that day; and talbot must give them a week at the park after he left the captain's place. talbot murmured some vague protestation of the impossibility of this, to which john paid no attention whatever, hustling his sometime rival away from the ladies in his eagerness to get back to the ring, where he had to complete his book for the next race. so captain bulstrode was gone once more, and throughout the brief interview no one had cared to notice lucy floyd, who had been pale and red by turns half a dozen times within the last ten minutes. john and talbot returned after the start, with captain hunter, who was brought on to the stand to be presented to aurora, and who immediately entered into a very animated discussion upon the day's racing. how captain bulstrode abhorred this idle babble of horse-flesh; this perpetual jargon, alike in every mouth--from aurora's rosy cupid's bow to the tobacco-tainted lips of the book-men in the ring! thank heaven, this was not _his_ wife who knew all the slang of the course, and, with _lorgnette_ in hand, was craning her swan-like throat to catch sight of a bend in the knavesmire and the horse that had a lead of half a mile. why had he ever consented to come into this accursed horse-racing county? why had he deserted the cornish miners, even for a week? better to be wearing out his brains over dryasdust pamphlets and parliamentary minutes than to be here; desolate amongst this shallow-minded, clamorous multitude, who have nothing to do but to throw up caps and cry huzza for any winner of any race. talbot, as a bystander, could not but remark this, and draw from this something of a philosophical lesson on life. he saw that there was always the same clamour and the same rejoicing in the crowd, whether the winning jockey wore blue and black belt, yellow and black cap, white with scarlet spots, or any other variety of colour, even to dismal sable; and he could but wonder how this was. did the unlucky speculators run away and hide themselves while the uplifted voices were rejoicing? when the welkin was rent with the name of caractacus or tim whiffler, where were the men who had backed buckstone or the marquis unflinchingly up to the dropping of the flag and the ringing of the bell? when thormanby came in with a rush, where were the wretched creatures whose fortunes hung on "the yankee" or wizard? they were voiceless, these poor unlucky ones, crawling away with sick white faces to gather in groups, and explain to each other, with stable jargon intermingled with oaths, how the victory just over ought not to have been, and never could have been, but for some un-looked-for and preposterous combination of events never before witnessed upon any mortal course. how little is ever seen of the losers in any of the great races run upon this earth! for years and years the name of louis napoleon is an empty sound, signifying nothing; when, lo, a few master strokes of policy and _finesse_, a little juggling with those pieces of pasteboard out of which are built the shaky card-palaces men call empires, and creation rings with the same name; the outsider emerges from the ruck, and the purple jacket spotted with golden bees is foremost in the mighty race. talbot bulstrode leaned with folded arms upon the stone balustrade, looking down at the busy life below him, and thinking of these things. pardon him for his indulgence in dreary platitudes and worn-out sentimentalities. he was a desolate, purposeless man; entered for no race himself; scratched for the matrimonial stakes; embittered by disappointment; soured by doubt and suspicion. he had spent the dull winter months upon the continent, having no mind to go down to bulstrode to encounter his mother's sympathy and his cousin constance trevyllian's chatter. he was unjust enough to nourish a secret dislike to that young lady for the good service she had done him by revealing aurora's flight. are we ever really grateful to the people who tell us of the iniquity of those we love? are we ever really just to the kindly creatures who give us friendly warning of our danger? no, never! we hate them; always involuntarily reverting to them as the first causes of our anguish; always repeating to ourselves that, had they been silent, that anguish need never have been; always ready to burst forth in our wild rage with the mad cry, that "it is better to be much abused than but to know't a little." when the friendly ancient drops his poisoned hints into poor othello's ear, it is not mistress desdemona, but iago himself, whom the noble moor first has a mind to strangle. if poor innocent constance trevyllian had been born the veriest cur in the county of cornwall, she would have had a better chance of winning talbot's regard than she had now. why had he come into yorkshire? i left that question unanswered just now, for i am ashamed to tell the reasons which actuated this unhappy man. he came, in a paroxysm of curiosity, to learn what kind of life aurora led with her husband, john mellish. he had suffered horrible distractions of mind upon this subject; one moment imagining her the most despicable of coquettes, ready to marry any man who had a fair estate and a good position to offer her, and by-and-by depicting her as some white-robed iphigenia, led a passive victim to the sacrificial shrine. so, when happening to meet his goodnatured brother-officer at the united service club, he had consented to run down to captain hunter's country place, for a brief respite from parliamentary minutes and red-tape, the artful hypocrite had never owned to himself that he was burning to hear tidings of his false and fickle love, and that it was some lingering fumes of the old intoxication that carried him down to yorkshire. but now, now that he met her--met her, the heartless, abominable creature, radiant and happy--mere simulated happiness and feverish mock radiance, no doubt, but too well put on to be quite pleasing to him,--_now he knew her._ he knew her at last, the wicked enchantress, the soulless siren. he knew that she had never loved him; that she was of course powerless to love; good for nothing but to wreath her white arms and flash the dark splendour of her eyes for weak man's destruction; fit for nothing but to float in her beauty above the waves that concealed the bleached bones of her victims. poor john mellish! talbot reproached himself for his hardness of heart in nourishing one spiteful feeling towards a man who was so deeply to be pitied. when the race was done, captain bulstrode turned, and beheld the black-eyed sorceress in the midst of a group gathered about a grave patriarch with gray hair and the look of one accustomed to command. this grave patriarch was john pastern. i write his name with respect, even as it was reverentially whispered there, till, travelling from lip to lip, every one present knew that a great man was amongst them. a very quiet, unassuming veteran, sitting with his womankind about him,--his wife and daughter, as i think,--self-possessed and grave, while men were busy with his name in the crowd below, and while tens of thousands were staked in trusting dependence on his acumen. what golden syllables might have fallen from those oracular lips, had the veteran been so pleased! what hundreds would have been freely bidden for a word, a look, a nod, a wink, a mere significant pursing-up of the lips from that great man! what is the fable of the young lady who discoursed pearls and diamonds to a truth such as this? pearls and diamonds must be of large size which would be worth the secrets of those richmond stables, the secrets which mr. pastern might tell if he chose. perhaps it is the knowledge of this which gives him a calm, almost clerical, gravity of manner. people come to him and fawn upon him, and tell him that such and such a horse from his stable has won, or looks safe to win; and he nods pleasantly, thanking them for the kind information; while perhaps his thoughts are far away on epsom downs or newmarket heath, winning future derbys and two thousands with colts that are as yet unfoaled. john mellish is on intimate terms with the great man, to whom he presents aurora, and of whom he asks advice upon a matter that has been troubling him for some time. his trainer's health is failing him, and he wants assistance in the stables; a younger man, honest and clever. does mr. pastern know such a one? the veteran tells him, after due consideration, that he does know of a young man; honest, he believes, as times go, who was once employed in the richmond stables, and who had written to him only a few days before, asking for his influence in getting him a situation. "but the lad's name has slipped my memory," added mr. pastern; "he was but a lad when he was with me; but, bless my soul, that's ten years ago! i'll look up his letter, when i go home, and write to you about him. i know he's clever, and i believe he's honest; and i shall be only too happy," concluded the old gentleman, gallantly, "to do anything to oblige mrs. mellish." end of vol. i. (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page mages generously made available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/aurorafloyd01bradgoog project gutenberg has the other two volumes of this work. volume i: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48020 volume ii: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48021 aurora floyd. by m. e. braddon, author of "lady audley's secret." in three volumes. vol. iii. fifth edition. london: tinsley brothers, 18 catherine steeet, strand. 1863. contents. chapter i. at the golden lion ii. my wife! my wife! what wife? i have no wife iii. aurora's flight iv. john mellish finds his home desolate v. an unexpected visitor vi. talbot bulstrode's advice vii. on the watch viii. captain prodder goes back to doncaster ix. the discovery of the weapon with which james conyers had been slain x. under a cloud xi. reunion xii. the brass button by crosby, birmingham xiii. off the scent xiv. talbot bulstrode makes atonement for the past chapter i. at the golden lion. mr. william dork, the constable, reached doncaster at about a quarter-past one o'clock upon the morning after the murder, and drove straight to the reindeer. that hotel had been closed for a couple of hours, and it was only by the exercise of his authority that mr. dork obtained access, and a hearing from the sleepy landlord. the young man who had driven mr. prodder was found after considerable difficulty, and came stumbling down the servants' staircase in a semi-somnolent state to answer the constable's inquiries. he had driven the seafaring gentleman, whose name he did not know, direct to the doncaster station, in time to catch the mail-train, which started at 12.50. he had parted with the gentleman at the door of the station three minutes before the train started. this was all the information that mr. dork could obtain. if he had been a sharp london detective, he might have made his arrangements for laying hands upon the fugitive sailor at the first station at which the train stopped; but being merely a simple rural functionary, he scratched his stubbled head, and stared at the landlord of the reindeer in utter mental bewilderment. "he was in a devil of a hurry, this chap," he muttered rather sulkily. "what did he want to coot away for?" the young man who had acted as charioteer could not answer this question. he only knew that the seafaring gentleman had promised him half a sovereign if he caught the mail-train, and that he had earned his reward. "well, i suppose it aint so very particklar," said mr. dork, sipping a glass of rum, which he had ordered for his refreshment. "you'll have to appear to-morrow, and you can tell nigh as much as t'other chap," he added, turning to the young man. "you was with him when the shot were fired, and you warn't far when he found the body. you'll have to appear and give evidence whenever the inquest's held. i doubt if it'll be to-morrow; for there won't be much time to give notice to the coroner." mr. dork wrote the young man's name in his pocket-book, and the landlord vouched for his being forthcoming when called upon. having done thus much, the constable left the inn, after drinking another glass of rum, and refreshing john mellish's horse with a handful of oats and a drink of water. he drove at a brisk pace back to the park stables, delivered the horse and gig to the lad who had waited for his coming, and returned to his comfortable dwelling in the village of meslingham, about a mile from the park gates. i scarcely know how to describe that long, quiet, miserable day which succeeded the night of the murder. aurora mellish lay in a dull stupor, not able to lift her head from the pillows upon which it rested, scarcely caring to raise her eyelids from the aching eyes they sheltered. she was not ill, nor did she affect to be ill. she lay upon the sofa in her dressing-room, attended by her maid, and visited at intervals by john, who roamed hither and thither about the house and grounds, talking to innumerable people, and always coming to the same conclusion, namely, that the whole affair was a horrible mystery, and that he heartily wished the inquest well over. he had visitors from twenty miles round his house,--for the evil news had spread far and wide before noon,--visitors who came to condole and to sympathize, and wonder, and speculate, and ask questions, until they fairly drove him mad. but he bore all very patiently. he could tell them nothing except that the business was as dark a mystery to him as it could be to them, and that he had no hope of finding any solution to the ghastly enigma. they one and all asked him the same question: "had any one a motive for killing this man?" how could he answer them? he might have told them that if twenty persons had had a powerful motive for killing james conyers, it was possible that a one-and-twentieth person who had no motive might have done the deed. that species of argument which builds up any hypothesis out of a series of probabilities may, after all, lead very often to false conclusions. mr. mellish did not attempt to argue the question. he was too weary and sick at heart, too anxious for the inquest to be over, and be free to carry aurora away with him, and turn his back upon the familiar place, which had been hateful to him ever since the trainer had crossed its threshold. "yes, my darling," he said to his wife, as he bent over her pillow, "i shall take you away to the south of france directly this business is settled. you shall leave the scene of all past associations, all bygone annoyances. we will begin the world afresh." "god grant that we may be able to do so," aurora answered gravely. "ah, my dear, i cannot tell you that i am sorry for this man's death. if he had died nearly two years ago, when i thought he did, how much misery he would have saved me!" once in the course of that long summer's afternoon mr. mellish walked across the park to the cottage at the north gates. he could not repress a morbid desire to look upon the lifeless clay of the man whose presence had caused him such vague disquietude, such instinctive terror. he found the "softy" leaning on the gate of the little garden, and one of the grooms standing at the door of the death-chamber. "the inquest is to be held at the golden lion, at ten o'clock to-morrow morning," mr. mellish said to the men. "you, hargraves, will be wanted as a witness." he walked into the darkened chamber. the groom understood what he came for, and silently withdrew the white drapery that covered the trainer's dead face. accustomed hands had done their awful duty. the strong limbs had been straightened. the lower jaw, which had dropped in the agony of sudden death, was supported by a linen bandage; the eyelids were closed over the dark-violet eyes; and the face, which had been beautiful in life, was even yet more beautiful in the still solemnity of death. the clay which in life had lacked so much, in its lack of a beautiful soul to light it from within, found its level in death. the worthless soul was gone, and the physical perfection that remained had lost its only blemish. the harmony of proportion, the exquisitely-modelled features, the charms of detail,--all were left; and the face which james conyers carried to the grave was handsomer than that which had smiled insolent defiance upon the world in the trainer's lifetime. john mellish stood for some minutes looking gravely at that marble face. "poor fellow!" thought the generous-hearted young squire; "it was a hard thing to die so young. i wish he had never come here. i wish lolly had confided in me, and let me make a bargain with this man to stop away and keep her secret. her secret! her father's secret more likely. what secret could she have had, that a groom was likely to discover? it may have been some mercantile business, some commercial transaction of archibald floyd's, by which the old man fell into his servant's power. it would be only like my glorious aurora, to take the burden upon her own shoulders, and to bear it bravely through every trial." it was thus that john mellish had often reasoned upon the mystery which divided him from his wife. he could not bear to impute even the shadow of evil to her. he could not endure to think of her as a poor helpless woman entrapped into the power of a mean-spirited hireling, who was only too willing to make his market out of her secrets. he could not tolerate such an idea as this; and he sacrificed poor archibald floyd's commercial integrity for the preservation of aurora's womanly dignity. ah, how weak and imperfect a passion is this boundless love! how ready to sacrifice others for that one loved object, which _must_ be kept spotless in our imaginations, though a hecatomb of her fellow-creatures are to be blackened and befouled for her justification! if othello could have established desdemona's purity by the sacrifice of the reputation of every lady in cyprus, do you think he would have spared the fair inhabitants of the friendly isle? no; he would have branded every one of them with infamy, if he could by so doing have rehabilitated the wife he loved. john mellish _would_ not think ill of his wife. he resolutely shut his eyes to all damning evidence. he clung with a desperate tenacity to his belief in her purity, and only clung the more tenaciously as the proofs against her became more numerous. the inquest was held at a road-side inn, within a quarter of a mile of the north gates--a quiet little place, only frequented on market-days by the country people going backwards and forwards between doncaster and the villages beyond meslingham. the coroner and his jury sat in a long bare room, in which the frequenters of the golden lion were wont to play bowls in wet weather. the surgeon, steeve hargraves, jarvis, the young man from the reindeer, william dork the constable, and mr. mellish, were the only witnesses called: but colonel maddison and mr. lofthouse were both present during the brief proceedings. the inquiry into the circumstances of the trainer's death occupied a very short time. nothing was elicited by the brief examination of the witnesses which in any way led to the elucidation of the mystery. john mellish was the last person interrogated, and he answered the questions put to him with prompt decision. there was one inquiry, however, which he was unable to answer, although it was a very simple one. mr. hayward, the coroner, anxious to discover so much of the history of the dead man as might lead eventually to the discovery of his murderer, asked mr. mellish if his trainer had been a bachelor or a married man. "i really cannot answer that question," said john; "i should imagine that he was a single man, as neither he nor mr. pastern told me anything to the contrary. had he been married, he would have brought his wife with him, i should suppose. my trainer, langley, was married when he entered my service, and his wife and children have occupied the premises over my stables for some years." "you infer, then, that james conyers was unmarried?" "most decidedly." "and it is your opinion that he had made no enemies in the neighbourhood?" "it is next to impossible that he could have done so." "to what cause, then, do you attribute his death?" "to an unhappy accident. i can account for it in no other way. the path through the wood is used as a public thoroughfare, and the whole of the plantation is known to be infested with poachers. it was past ten o'clock at night when the shot was heard. i should imagine that it was fired by a poacher whose eyes deceived him in the shadowy light." the coroner shook his head. "you forget, mr. mellish," he said, "that the cause of death was not an ordinary gun-shot wound. the shot heard was the report of a pistol, and the deceased was killed by a pistol-bullet." john mellish was silent. he had spoken in good faith as to his impression respecting the cause of the trainer's death. in the press and hurry, the horror and confusion of the two last days, the smaller details of the awful event had escaped his memory. "do you know any one amongst your servants, mr. mellish," asked the coroner, "whom you would consider likely to commit an act of violence of this kind? have you any one of an especially vindictive character in your household?" "no," answered john, decisively; "i can answer for my servants as i would for myself. they were all strangers to this man. what motive could they possibly have had to seek his death?" mr. hayward rubbed his chin, and shook his head reflectively. "there was this superannuated trainer whom you spoke of just now, mr. mellish," he said. "i am well aware that the post of trainer in your stables is rather a good thing. a man may save a good deal of money out of his wages and perquisites with such a master as you. this former trainer may not have liked being superseded by the deceased. he may have felt some animus towards his successor." "langley!" cried john mellish; "he is as good a fellow as ever breathed. he was not superseded; he resigned the active part of his work at his own wish, and he retained his full wages by mine. the poor fellow has been confined to his bed for the last week." "humph," muttered the coroner. "then you can throw no light upon this business, mr. mellish?" "none whatever. i have written to mr. pastern, in whose stables the deceased was employed, telling him of the circumstances of the trainer's death, and begging him to forward the information to any relative of the murdered man. i expect an answer by to-morrow's post; and i shall be happy to submit that answer to you." prior to the examination of the witnesses, the jurymen had been conducted to the north lodge, where they had beheld the mortal remains of james conyers. mr. morton had accompanied them, and had endeavoured to explain to them the direction which the bullet had taken, and the manner in which, according to his own idea, the shot must have been fired. the jurymen who had been empanelled to decide upon this awful question were simple agriculturists and petty tradesmen, who grudged the day's lost labour, and who were ready to accept any solution of the mystery which might be suggested to them by the coroner. they hurried back to the golden lion, listened deferentially to the evidence and to mr. hayward's address, retired to an adjoining apartment, where they remained in consultation for the space of about five minutes, and whence they emerged with a very rambling form of decision, which mr. hayward reduced into a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown. very little had been said about the disappearance of the seafaring man who had carried the tidings of the murder to mr. mellish's house. nobody for a moment imagined that the evidence of this missing witness might have thrown some ray of light upon the mystery of the trainer's death. the seafaring man had been engaged in conversation with the young man from the reindeer at the time when the shot was fired; he was therefore not the actual murderer; and strangely significant as his hurried flight might have been to the acute intelligence of a well-trained metropolitan police-officer, no one amongst the rustic officials present at the inquest attached any importance to the circumstance. nor had aurora's name been once mentioned during the brief proceedings. nothing had transpired which in any way revealed her previous acquaintance with james conyers; and john mellish drew a deep breath, a long sigh of relief, as he left the golden lion and walked homewards. colonel maddison, mr. lofthouse, and two or three other gentlemen lingered on the threshold of the little inn, talking to mr. hayward, the coroner. the inquest was terminated; the business was settled; and the mortal remains of james conyers could be carried to the grave at the pleasure of his late employer. all was over. the mystery of death and the secrets of life would be buried peacefully in the grave of the murdered man; and john mellish was free to carry his wife away with him whithersoever he would. free, have i said? no; for ever and for ever the shadow of that bygone mystery would hang like a funeral pall between himself and the woman he loved. for ever and for ever the recollection of that ghastly undiscovered problem would haunt him in sleeping and in waking, in the sunlight and in the darkness. his nobler nature, triumphing again and again over the subtle influences of damning suggestions and doubtful facts, was again and again shaken, although never quite defeated. he fought the battle bravely, though it was a very hard one, and it was to endure perhaps to the end of time. that voiceless argument was for ever to be argued; the spirits of faith and infidelity were for ever to be warring with each other in that tortured breast, until the end of life; until he died, perhaps, with his head lying upon his wife's bosom, with his cheek fanned by her warm breath; but ignorant to the very last of the real nature of that dark something, that nameless and formless horror with which he had wrestled so patiently and so long. "i'll take her away with me," he thought; "and when we are divided by a thousand miles of blue water from the scene of her secret, i will fall on my knees before her, and beseech her to confide in me." he passed by the north lodge with a shudder, and walked straight along the high road towards the principal entrance of the park. he was close to the gates when he heard a voice, a strange suppressed voice, calling feebly to him to stop. he turned round and saw the "softy" making his way towards him with a slow, shambling run. of all human beings, except perhaps that one who now lay cold and motionless in the darkened chamber at the north lodge, this steeve hargraves was the last whom mr. mellish cared to see. he turned with an angry frown upon the "softy," who was wiping the perspiration from his pale face with the ragged end of his neck-handkerchief, and panting hoarsely. "what is the matter?" asked john. "what do you want with me?" "it's th' coroner," gasped stephen hargraves,--"th' coroner and mr. lofthouse, th' parson. they want to speak to ye, sir, oop at the loion." "what about?" steeve hargraves gave a ghastly grin. "i doan't know, sir," he whispered. "it's hardly loikely they'd tell me. there's summat oop, though, i'll lay; for mr. lofthouse was as whoite as ashes, and seemed strangely oopset about summat. would you be pleased to step oop and speak to 'un directly, sir?--that was my message." "yes, yes; i'll go," answered john absently. he had taken his hat off, and was passing his hand over his hot forehead in a half-bewildered manner. he turned his back upon the "softy," and walked rapidly away, retracing his steps in the direction of the roadside inn. stephen hargraves stood staring after him until he was out of sight, and then turned and walked on slowly towards the turnstile leading into the wood. "_i_ know what they've found," he muttered; "and _i_ know what they want with him. he'll be some time oop there; so i'll slip across the wood and tell her. yes,"--he paused, rubbing his hands, and laughing a slow voiceless laugh, which distorted his ugly face, and made him horrible to look upon,--"yes, it will be nuts for me to tell her." chapter ii. "my wife! my wife! what wife? i have no wife." the golden lion had reassumed its accustomed air of rustic tranquillity when john mellish returned to it. the jurymen had gone back to their different avocations, glad to have finished the business so easily; the villagers, who had hung about the inn to hear what they could of the proceedings, were all dispersed; and the landlord was eating his dinner, with his wife and family, in the comfortable little bar-parlour. he put down his knife and fork as john entered the sanded bar, and left his meal to receive such a distinguished visitor. "mr. hayward and mr. lofthouse are in the coffee-room, sir," he said. "will you please to step this way?" he opened the door of a carpeted room, furnished with shining mahogany tables, and adorned by half a dozen gaudily-coloured prints of the doncaster meetings, the great match between voltigeur and flying dutchman, and other events which had won celebrity for the northern race-course. the coroner was sitting at the bottom of one of the long tables, with mr. lofthouse standing near him. william dork, the meslingham constable, stood near the door, with his hat in his hand, and with rather an alarmed expression dimly visible in his ruddy face. mr. hayward and mr. lofthouse were both very pale. one rapid glance was enough to show all this to john mellish,--enough to show him this, and something more: a basin of blood-stained water before the coroner, and an oblong piece of wet paper, which lay under mr. hayward's clenched hand. "what is the matter? why did you send for me?" john asked. bewildered and alarmed as he had been by the message which had summoned him hurriedly back to the inn, he was still more so by the confusion evident in the coroner's manner as he answered this question. "pray sit down, mr. mellish," he said. "i--i--sent for you--at--the--the advice of mr. lofthouse, who--who, as a clergyman and a family man, thought it incumbent upon me----" reginald lofthouse laid his hand upon the coroner's arm with a warning gesture. mr. hayward stopped for a moment, cleared his throat, and then continued speaking, but in an altered tone. "i have had occasion to reprehend william dork for a breach of duty, which, though i am aware it may have been, as he says, purely unintentional and accidental----" "it was indeed, sir," muttered the constable submissively. "if i'd ha' know'd----" "the fact is, mr. mellish, that on the night of the murder, dork, in examining the clothes of the deceased, discovered a paper, which had been concealed by the unhappy man between the outer material and the lining of his waistcoat. this paper was so stained by the blood in which the breast of the waistcoat was absolutely saturated, that dork was unable to decipher a word of its contents. he therefore was quite unaware of the importance of the paper; and, in the hurry and confusion consequent on the very hard duty he has done for the last two days, he forgot to produce it at the inquest. he had occasion to make some memorandum in his pocket-book almost immediately after the verdict had been given, and this circumstance recalled to his mind the existence of the paper. he came immediately to me, and consulted me upon this very awkward business. i examined the document, washed away a considerable portion of the stains which had rendered it illegible, and have contrived to decipher the greater part of it." "the document is of some importance, then?" john asked. he sat at a little distance from the table, with his head bent and his fingers rattling nervously against the side of his chair. he chafed horribly at the coroner's pompous slowness. he suffered an agony of fear and bewilderment. why had they called him back? what was this paper? how _could_ it concern him? "yes," mr. hayward answered; "the document is certainly an important one. i have shown it to mr. lofthouse, for the purpose of taking his advice upon the subject. i have not shown it to dork; but i detained dork in order that you may hear from him how and where the paper was found, and why it was not produced at the inquest." "why should i ask any questions upon the subject?" cried john, lifting his head suddenly, and looking from the coroner to the clergyman. "how should this paper concern me?" "i regret to say that it does concern you very materially, mr. mellish," the rector answered gently. john's angry spirit revolted against that gentleness. what right had they to speak to him like this? why did they look at him with those grave, pitying faces? why did they drop their voices to that horrible tone in which the bearers of evil tidings pave their way to the announcement of some overwhelming calamity? "let me see this paper, then, if it concerns me," john said very carelessly. "oh, my god!" he thought, "what is this misery that is coming upon me? what is this hideous avalanche of trouble which is slowly descending to crush me?" "you do not wish to hear anything from dork?" asked the coroner. "no, no!" cried john savagely. "i only want to see that paper." he pointed as he spoke to the wet and blood-stained document under mr. hayward's hand. "you may go, then, dork," the coroner said quietly; "and be sure you do not mention this business to any one. it is a matter of purely private interest, and has no reference to the murder. you will remember?" "yes, sir." the constable bowed respectfully to the three gentlemen and left the room. he was very glad to be so well out of the business. "they needn't have _called_ me," he thought. (to _call_, in the northern _patois_, is to scold, to abuse.) "they needn't have said it was repri--what's its name--to keep the paper. i might have burnt it, if i'd liked, and said naught about it." "now," said john, rising and walking to the table as the door closed upon the constable, "now then, mr. hayward, let me see this paper. if it concerns me, or any one connected with me, i have a right to see it." "a right which i will not dispute," the coroner answered gravely, as he handed the blood-stained document to mr. mellish. "i only beg you to believe in my heartfelt sympathy with you in this----" "let me alone!" cried john, waving the speaker away from him as he snatched the paper from his hand; "let me alone! can't you see that i'm nearly mad?" he walked to the window, and with his back to the coroner and mr. lofthouse, examined the blotched and blotted document in his hands. he stared for a long time at those blurred and half-illegible lines before he became aware of their full meaning. but at last the signification of that miserable paper grew clear to him, and with a loud cry of anguish he dropped into the chair from which he had risen, and covered his face with his strong right hand. he held the paper in the left, crumpled and crushed by the convulsive pressure of his grasp. "my god!" he ejaculated, after that first cry of anguish,--"my god! i never thought of this. i never could have imagined this." neither the coroner nor the clergyman spoke. what could they say to him? sympathetic words could have no power to lessen such a grief as this; they would only fret and harass the strong man in his agony; it was better to obey him; it was far better to let him alone. he rose at last, after a silence that seemed long to the spectators of his grief. "gentlemen," he said, in a loud, resolute voice that resounded through the little room, "i give you my solemn word of honour that when archibald floyd's daughter married me, she believed this man, james conyers, to be dead." he struck his clenched first upon the table, and looked with proud defiance at the two men. then, with his left hand, the hand that grasped the blood-stained paper, thrust into his breast, he walked out of the room. he walked out of the room and out of the house, but not homewards. a grassy lane, opposite the golden lion, led away to a great waste of brown turf, called harper's common. john mellish walked slowly along this lane, and out upon this quiet common-land, lonely even in the broad summer daylight. as he closed the five-barred gate at the end of the lane, and emerged upon the open waste, he seemed to shut the door of the world that lay behind him, and to stand alone with his great grief, under the low, sunless, summer sky. the dreary scene before him, and the gray atmosphere above his head, seemed in strange harmony with his grief. the reedy water-pools, unbroken by a ripple; the barren verdure, burnt a dull grayish brown by the summer sun; the bloomless heather, and the flowerless rushes,--all things upon which he looked took a dismal colouring from his own desolation, and seemed to make him the more desolate. the spoiled child of fortune,--the popular young squire, who had never been contradicted in nearly two-and-thirty years,--the happy husband, whose pride in his wife had touched upon that narrow boundary-line which separates the sublime from the ridiculous,--ah! whither had they fled, all these shadows of the happy days that were gone? they had vanished away; they had fallen into the black gulf of the cruel past. the monster who devours his children had taken back these happy ones, and a desolate man was left in their stead. a desolate man, who looked at a broad ditch and a rushy bank, a few paces from where he stood, and thought, "was it i who leapt that dike a month ago to gather forget-me-nots for my wife?" he asked himself that question, reader, which we must all ask ourselves sometimes. was he really that creature of the irrecoverable past? even as i write this, i can see that common-land of which i write. the low sky, the sunburnt grass, the reedy water-pools, the flat landscape stretching far away on every side to regions that are strange to me. i can recall every object in that simple scene,--the atmosphere of the sunless day, the sounds in the soft summer air, the voices of the people near me; i can recall everything except--_myself_. this miserable _ego_ is the one thing that i cannot bring back; the one thing that seems strange to me; the one thing that i can scarcely believe in. if i went back to that northern common-land to-morrow, i should recognize every hillock, every scrap of furze, or patch of heather. the few years that have gone by since i saw it will have made a scarcely perceptible difference in the features of the familiar place. the slow changes of nature, immutable in her harmonious law, will have done their work according to that unalterable law; but this wretched me has undergone so complete a change, that if you could bring me back that _alter ego_ of the past, i should be unable to recognize the strange creature; and yet it is by no volcanic shocks, no rending asunder of rocky masses, no great convulsions, or terrific agonies of nature, that the change has come about; it is rather by a slow, monotonous wearing away of salient points; an imperceptible adulteration of this or that constituent part; an addition here, and a subtraction there, that the transformation takes place. it is hard to make a man believe in the physiologists, who declare that the hand which uses his pen to-day is not the same hand that guided the quill with which he wrote seven years ago. he finds it very difficult to believe this; but let him take out of some forgotten writing-desk, thrust into a corner of his lumber-room, those letters which he wrote seven years ago, and which were afterwards returned to him by the lady to whom they were addressed, and the question which he will ask himself, as he reads the faded lines, will most surely be, "was it i who wrote this bosh? was it i who called a lady with white eyelashes 'the guiding star of a lonely life'? was it i who was 'inexpressibly miserable' with one _s_, and looked 'forward with unutterable anxiety to the party in onslow square, at which i once more should look into those soft blue eyes?' what party in onslow square? _non mi recordo._ 'those soft blue eyes' were garnished with white lashes, and the lady to whom the letters were written, jilted me, to marry a rich soap-boiler." even the law takes cognizance of this wonderful transformation. the debt which smith contracts in 1850 is null and void in 1857. the smith of '50 may have been an extravagant rogue; the smith of '57 may be a conscientious man, who would not cheat his creditors of a farthing. shall smith the second be called upon to pay the debts of smith the first? i leave that question to smith's conscience and the metaphysicians. surely the same law should hold good in breach of promise of marriage. smith the first may have adored miss brown; smith the second may detest her. shall smith of 1857 be called upon to perform the contract entered into by that other smith of 1850? the french criminal law goes still further. the murderer whose crime remains unsuspected for ten years can laugh at the police-officers who discover his guilt in the eleventh. surely this must be because the real murderer is no longer amenable to justice; because the hand that struck the blow, and the brain that plotted the deed, are alike vanished. poor john mellish, with the world of the past crumbled at his feet, looked out at the blank future, and mourned for the people who were dead and gone. he flung himself at full length upon the stunted grass, and taking the crumpled paper from his breast, unfolded it and smoothed it out before him. it was a certificate of marriage. the certificate of a marriage which had been solemnized at the parish church of dover, upon the 2nd of july, 1856, between james conyers, bachelor, rough-rider, of london, son of joseph conyers, stage-coachman, and susan, his wife, and aurora floyd, spinster, daughter of archibald floyd, banker, of felden woods, kent. chapter iii. aurora's flight. mrs. mellish sat in her husband's room on the morning of the inquest, amongst the guns and fishing-rods, the riding-boots and hunting-whips, and all the paraphernalia of sportsmanship. she sat in a capacious wicker-work arm-chair, close to the open window, with her head lying back upon the chintz-covered cushions, and her eyes wandering far away across the lawn and flower-beds towards the winding pathway by which it was likely john mellish would return from the inquest at the golden lion. she had openly defied mrs. powell, and had locked the door of this quiet chamber upon that lady's stereotyped civilities and sympathetic simperings. she had locked the door upon the outer world, and she sat alone in the pleasant window, the full-blown roses showering their scented petals upon her lap with every breath of the summer breeze, and the butterflies hovering about her. the old mastiff sat by her side, with his heavy head lying on her lap, and his big dim eyes lifted to her face. she sat alone, i have said; but heaven knows she was not companionless. black care and corroding anxiety kept her faithful company, and would not budge from her side. what companions are so adhesive as trouble and sorrow? what associates so tenacious, what friends so watchful and untiring? this wretched girl stood alone in the centre of a sea of troubles, fearful to stretch out her hands to those who loved her, lest she should drag them into that ocean which was rising to overwhelm her. "oh, if i could suffer alone!" she thought; "if i could suffer all this misery alone, i think i would go through it to the last without complaining; but the shame, the degradation, the anguish, will come upon others more heavily than upon me. what will they not suffer? what will they not endure, if the wicked madness of my youth should become known to the world?" those others, of whose possible grief and shame she thought with such cruel torture, were her father and john mellish. her love for her husband had not lessened by one iota her love for that indulgent father, on whom the folly of her girlhood had brought such bitter suffering. her generous heart was wide enough for both. she had acknowledged no "divided duty," and would have repudiated any encroachment of the new affection upon the old. the great river of her love widened into an ocean, and embraced a new shore with its mighty tide; but that far-away source of childhood, from which affection first sprang in its soft infantine purity, still gushed in crystal beauty from its unsullied spring. she would perhaps scarcely have recognized the coldly-measured affection of mad lear's youngest daughter--the affection which could divide itself with mathematical precision between father and husband. surely love is too pure a sentiment to be so weighed in the balance. must we subtract something from the original sum when we are called upon to meet a new demand? or has not affection rather some magic power by which it can double its capital at any moment when there is a run upon the bank? when mrs. john anderson becomes the mother of six children, she does not say to her husband, "my dear john, i shall be compelled to rob you of six-tenths of my affection in order to provide for the little ones." no; the generous heart of the wife grows larger to meet the claims upon the mother, as the girl's heart expanded with the new affection of the wife. every pang of grief which aurora felt for her husband's misery was doubled by the image of her father's sorrow. she could not divide these two in her own mind. she loved them, and was sorry for them, with an equal measure of love and sorrow. "if--if the truth should be discovered at this inquest," she thought, "i can never see my husband again; i can never look in his face any more. i will run away to the end of the world, and hide myself from him for ever." she had tried to capitulate with her fate; she had endeavoured to escape the full measure of retribution, and she had failed. she had done evil that good might come of it, in the face of that command which says that all such evil-doing shall be wasted sin, useless iniquity. she had deceived john mellish in the hope that the veil of deception might never be rent in twain, that the truth might be undiscovered to the end, and the man she loved spared from cruel shame and grief. but the fruits of that foolish seed, sown long ago in the day of her disobedience, had grown up around her and hedged her in upon every side, and she had been powerless to cut a pathway for herself through the noxious weeds that her own hands had planted. she sat with her watch in her hand, and her eyes wandered every now and then from the gardens before her to the figures on the dial. john mellish had left the house at a little after nine o'clock, and it was now nearly two. he had told her that the inquest would be over in a couple of hours, and that he would hurry home directly it was finished, to tell her the result. what would be the result of that inquest? what inquiries might be made? what evidence might, by some unhappy accident, be produced to compromise or to betray her? she sat in a dull stupor, waiting to receive her sentence. what would it be? condemnation or release? _if_ her secret should escape detection, if james conyers should be allowed to carry the story of his brief married life to the grave, what relief, what release for the wretched girl, whose worst sin had been to mistake a bad man for a good one; the ignorant trustfulness of a child who is ready to accept any shabby pilgrim for an exiled nobleman or a prince in disguise! it was half-past two, when she was startled by the sound of a shambling footstep upon the gravelled pathway underneath the verandah. the footstep slowly shuffled on for a few paces; then paused, then shuffled on again; and at last a face that she hated made itself visible at the angle of the window, opposite to that against which she sat. it was the white face of the "softy," which was poked cautiously forward a few inches within the window-frame. the mastiff sprang up with a growl, and made as if he would have flown at that ugly leering face, which looked like one of the hideous decorations of a gothic building; but aurora caught the animal's collar with both her hands, and dragged him back. "be quiet, bow-wow," she said; "quiet, boy,--quiet." she still held him with one firm hand, soothing him with the other. "what do you want?" she asked, turning upon the "softy" with a cold icy grandeur of disdain, which made her look like nero's wife defying her false accusers. "what do you want with me? your master is dead, and you have no longer an excuse for coming here. you have been forbidden the house and the grounds. if you forget this another time, i shall request mr. mellish to remind you." she lifted her disengaged hand and laid it upon the window-sash; she was going to draw it down, when stephen hargraves stopped her. "don't be in such a hoory," he said; "i want to speak to you. i've coom straight from th' inquest. i thought you might want to know all about it. i coom out o' friendliness, though you did pay into me with th' horsewhip." aurora's heart beat tempestuously against her aching breast. ah! what hard duty that poor heart had done lately! what icy burdens it had borne, what horrible oppression of secrecy and terror had weighed upon it, crushing out all hope and peace! an agony of suspense and dread convulsed that tortured heart as the "softy" tempted her, tempted her to ask him the issue of the inquest, that she might receive from his lips the sentence of life or death. she little knew how much of her secret this man had discovered; but she knew that he hated her, and that he suspected enough to know his power of torturing her. she lifted her proud head and looked at him with a steady glance of defiance. "i have told you that your presence is disagreeable," she said. "stand aside, and let me shut the window." the "softy" grinned insolently, and holding the window-frame with one of his broad hands, put his head into the room. aurora rose to leave the window; but he laid the other hand upon her wrist, which shrunk instinctively from contact with his hard horny palm. "i tell you i've got summat particklar to say to you," he whispered. "you shall hear all about it. i was one of th' witnesses at th' inquest, and i've been hanging about ever since, and i know everything." aurora flung her head back disdainfully, and tried to wrench her wrist from that strong grasp. "let me go!" she said. "you shall suffer for this insolence when mr. mellish returns." "but he won't be back just yet awhile," said the "softy," grinning. "he's gone back to the golden lion. th' coroner and mr. lofthouse, th' parson, sent for him to tell him summat--_summat about you!_" hissed mr. stephen hargraves, with his dry white lips close to aurora's ear. "what do you mean?" cried mrs. mellish, still writhing in the "softy's" grasp, still restraining her dog from flying at him with her disengaged hand; "what do you mean?" "i mean what i say," answered steeve hargraves; "i mean that it's all found out. they know everything; and they've sent for mr. mellish to tell him. they've sent for him to tell him what you was to him that's dead." a low wail broke from aurora's lips. she had expected to hear this, perhaps; she had, at any rate, dreaded it; she had only fought against receiving the tidings from this man; but he had conquered her; he had conquered her as the dogged obstinate nature, however base, however mean, will always conquer the generous and impulsive soul. he had secured his revenge, and had contrived to be the witness of her agony. he released her wrist as he finished speaking, and looked at her--looked at her with an insolently triumphant leer in his small eyes. she drew herself up, proudly still, proudly and bravely in spite of all, but with her face changed--changed from its former expression of restless pain to the dull blankness of despair. "they found th' certificate," said the "softy." "he'd carried it about with him, sewed up in's waistco-at." the certificate! heaven have pity upon her girlish ignorance! she had never thought of that; she had never remembered that miserable scrap of paper which was the legal evidence of her folly. she had dreaded the presence of that husband who had arisen, as if from the grave, to pursue and torment her; but she had forgotten that other evidence of the parish register, which might also arise against her at any moment. she had feared the finding of something--some letter--some picture--some accidental record amongst the possessions of the murdered man; but she had never thought of this most conclusive evidence, this most incontrovertible proof. she put her hand to her head, trying to realize the full horror of her position. the certificate of her marriage with her father's groom was in the hands of john mellish. "what will he think of me?" she thought. "how would he ever believe me if i were to tell him that i had received what i thought positive evidence of james conyers's death a year before my second marriage? how _could_ he believe in me? i have deceived him too cruelly to dare to ask his confidence." she looked about, trying to collect herself, trying to decide upon what she ought to do, and in her bewilderment and agony forgot for a moment the greedy eyes which were gloating upon her misery. but she remembered herself presently, and turning sternly upon stephen hargraves, spoke to him with a voice which was singularly clear and steady. "you have told me all that you have to tell," she said; "be so good as to get out of the way while i shut the window." the "softy" drew back and allowed her to close the sashes; she bolted the window, and drew down the venetian blind, effectually shutting out her spy, who crept away slowly and reluctantly towards the shrubbery, through which he could make his way safely out of the grounds. "i've paid her out," he muttered, as he shambled off under the shelter of the young trees; "i've paid her out pretty tidy. it's almost better than money," he said, laughing silently--"it's almost better than money to pay off them kind of debts." aurora seated herself at john mellish's desk, and wrote a few hurried lines upon a sheet of paper that lay uppermost amongst letters and bills. "my dear love,"--she wrote,--"i cannot remain here to see you after the discovery which has been made to-day. i am a miserable coward; and i cannot meet your altered looks, i cannot hear your altered voice. i have no hope that you can have any other feeling for me than contempt and loathing. but on some future day, when i am far away from you, and the bewilderment of my present misery has grown less, i will write and explain everything. think of me mercifully, if you can; and if you can believe that, in the wicked concealments of the last few weeks, the mainspring of my conduct has been my love for you, you will only believe the truth. god bless you, my best and truest. the pain of leaving you for ever is less than the pain of knowing that you had ceased to love me. good-bye." she lighted a taper, and sealed the envelope which contained this letter. "the spies who hate and watch me shall not read this," she thought, as she wrote john's name upon the envelope. she left the letter upon the desk, and, rising from her seat, looked round the room,--looked with a long lingering gaze, that dwelt on each familiar object. how happy she had been amongst all that masculine litter! how happy with the man she had believed to be her husband! how innocently happy before the coming down of that horrible storm-cloud which had overwhelmed them both! she turned away with a shudder. "i have brought disgrace and misery upon all who have loved me," she thought. "if i had been less cowardly,--if i had told the truth,--all this might have been avoided, if i had confessed the truth to talbot bulstrode." she paused at the mention of that name. "i will go to talbot," she thought. "he is a good man. i will go to him; i shall have no shame now in telling him all. he will advise me what to do; he will break this discovery to my poor father." aurora had dimly foreseen this misery when she had spoken to lucy bulstrode at felden; she had dimly foreseen a day in which all would be discovered, and she would fly to lucy to ask for a shelter. she looked at her watch. "a quarter past three," she said. "there is an express that leaves doncaster at five. i could walk the distance in the time." she unlocked the door, and ran up-stairs to her own rooms. there was no one in the dressing-room; but her maid was in the bedroom, arranging some dresses in a huge wardrobe. aurora selected her plainest bonnet and a large gray cloak, and quietly put them on before the cheval glass in one of the pretty french windows. the maid, busy with her own work, did not take any particular notice of her mistress's actions; for mrs. mellish was accustomed to wait upon herself, and disliked any officious attention. "how pretty the rooms look!" aurora thought, with a weary sigh; "how simple and countrified! it was for _me_ that the new furniture was chosen,--for me that the bath-room and conservatory were built." she looked through the vista of brightly-carpeted rooms. would they ever seem as cheerful as they had once done to their master? would he still occupy them, or would he lock the doors, and turn his back upon the old house in which he had lived such an untroubled life for nearly two-and-thirty years? "my poor boy, my poor boy!" she thought. "why was i ever born to bring such sorrow upon him?" there was no egotism in her sorrow for his grief. she knew that he had loved her, and she knew that his parting would be the bitterest agony of his life; but in the depth of mortification which her own womanly pride had undergone, she could not look beyond the present shame of the discovery made that day, to a future of happiness and release. "he will believe that i never loved him," she thought. "he will believe that he was the dupe of a designing woman, who wished to regain the position she had lost. what will he not think of me that is base and horrible?" the face which she saw in the glass was very pale and rigid; the large dark eyes dry and lustrous, the lips drawn tightly down over the white teeth. "i look like a woman who could cut her throat in such a crisis as this," she thought. "how often i have wondered at the desperate deeds done by women! i shall never wonder again." she unlocked her dressing-case, and took a couple of bank-notes and some loose gold from one of the drawers. she put these in her purse, gathered her cloak about her, and walked towards the door. she paused on the threshold to speak to her maid, who was still busy in the inner room. "i am going into the garden, parsons," she said; "tell mr. mellish that there is a letter for him in his study." the room in which john kept his boots and racing accounts was called a "study" by the respectful household. the dog bow-wow lifted himself lazily from his tiger-skin rug as aurora crossed the hall, and came sniffing about her, and endeavoured to follow her out of the house. but she ordered him back to his rug, and the submissive animal obeyed her, as he had often done in his youth, when his young mistress used to throw her doll into the water at felden, and send the faithful mastiff to rescue that fair-haired waxen favourite. he obeyed her now, but a little reluctantly; and he watched her suspiciously as she descended the flight of steps before the door. she walked at a rapid pace across the lawn, and into the shrubbery, going steadily southwards, though by that means she made her journey longer; for the north lodge lay towards doncaster. in her way through the shrubbery she met two people, who walked closely side by side, engrossed in a whispering conversation, and who both started and changed countenance at seeing her. these two people were the "softy" and mrs. powell. "so," she thought, as she passed this strangely-matched pair, "my two enemies are laying their heads together to plot my misery. it is time that i left mellish park." she went out of a little gate, leading into some meadows. beyond these meadows there was a long shady lane that led behind the house to doncaster. it was a path rarely chosen by any of the household at the park, as it was the longest way to the town. aurora stopped at about a mile from the house which had been her own, and looked back at the picturesque pile of building, half hidden under the luxuriant growth of a couple of centuries. "good-bye, dear home, in which i was an impostor and a cheat," she said; "good-bye, for ever and for ever, my own dear love." while aurora uttered these few words of passionate farewell, john mellish lay upon the sun-burnt grass, staring absently at the still water-pools under the gray sky,--pitying her, praying for her, and forgiving her from the depth of his honest heart. chapter iv. john mellish finds his home desolate. the sun was low in the western sky, and distant village clocks had struck seven, when john mellish walked slowly away from that lonely waste of stunted grass called harper's common, and strolled homewards in the peaceful evening. the yorkshire squire was still very pale. he walked with his head bent forward upon his breast, and the hand that grasped the crumpled paper thrust into the bosom of his waistcoat; but a hopeful light shone in his eyes, and the rigid lines of his mouth had relaxed into a tender smile--a smile of love and forgiveness. yes, he had prayed for her and forgiven her, and he was at peace. he had pleaded her cause a hundred times in the dull quiet of that summer's afternoon, and had excused her and forgiven her. not lightly, heaven is a witness; not without a sharp and cruel struggle, that had rent his heart with tortures undreamed of before. this revelation of the past was such bitter shame to him; such horrible degradation; such irrevocable infamy. his love, his idol, his empress, his goddess--it was of her he thought. by what hellish witchcraft had she been ensnared into the degrading alliance, recorded in this miserable scrap of paper? the pride of five unsullied centuries arose, fierce and ungovernable, in the breast of the country gentleman, to resent this outrage upon the woman he loved. o god! had all his glorification of her been the vain-boasting of a fool who had not known what he talked about? he was answerable to the world for the past as well as for the present. he had made an altar for his idol, and had cried aloud to all who came near her, to kneel down and perform their worship at her shrine; and he was answerable to these people for the purity of their divinity. he could not think of her as less than the idol which his love had made her--perfect, unsullied, unassailable. disgrace, where she was concerned, knew in his mind no degrees. it was not his own humiliation he thought of when his face grew hot as he imagined the talk there would be in the country if this fatal indiscretion of aurora's youth ever became generally known; it was the thought of her shame that stung him to the heart. he never once disturbed himself with any prevision of the ridicule which was likely to fall upon himself. it was here that john mellish and talbot bulstrode were so widely different in their manner of loving and suffering. talbot had sought a wife who should reflect honour upon himself, and had fallen away from aurora at the first trial of his faith, shaken with horrible apprehensions of his own danger. but john mellish had submerged his very identity into that of the woman he loved. she was his faith and his worship, and it was for her departed glory that he wept in this cruel day of shame. the wrong which he found so hard to forgive was not her wrong against him; but that other and more fatal wrong against herself. i have said that his affection was universal, and partook of all the highest attributes of that sublime self-abnegation which we call love. the agony which he felt to-day was the agony which archibald floyd had suffered years before. it was vicarious torture, endured for aurora, and not for himself; and in his struggle against that sorrowful anger which he felt for her folly, every one of her perfections took up arms upon the side of indignation, and fought against their own mistress. had she been less beautiful, less queenly, less generous, great and noble, he might have forgiven her that self-inflicted shame more easily. but she was so perfect; and how could she, how could she? he unfolded the wretched paper half a dozen times, and read and re-read every word of that commonplace legal document, before he could convince himself that it was not some vile forgery, concocted by james conyers for purposes of extortion. but he prayed for her, and forgave her. he pitied her with more than a mother's tender pity, with more than a sorrowful father's anguish. "my poor dear!" he said, "my poor dear! she was only a school-girl when this certificate was first written: an innocent child; ready to believe in any lies told her by a villain." a dark frown obscured the yorkshireman's brow as he thought this; a frown that would have promised no good to mr. james conyers, had not the trainer passed out of the reach of all earthly good and evil. "will god have mercy upon a wretch like that?" thought john mellish; "will that man be forgiven for having brought disgrace and misery upon a trusting girl?" it will perhaps be wondered at, that john mellish, who suffered his servants to rule in his household, and allowed his butler to dictate to him what wines he should drink; who talked freely to his grooms, and bade his trainer sit in his presence,--it will be wondered at, perhaps, that this frank, free-spoken, simple-mannered young man should have felt so bitterly the shame of aurora's unequal marriage. it was a common saying in doncaster, that squire mellish of the park had no pride; that he would clap poor folks on the shoulder and give them good-day as he lounged in the quiet street; that he would sit upon the cornchandler's counter, slashing his hunting-whip upon those popular tops, about which a legend was current, to the effect that they were always cleaned with champagne,--and discussing the prospects of the september meeting; and that there was not within the three ridings, a better landlord or a nobler-hearted gentleman. and all this was perfectly true. john mellish was entirely without personal pride; but there was another pride, which was wholly inseparable from his education and position, and this was the pride of caste. he was strictly conservative; and although he was ready to talk to his good friend the saddler, or his trusted retainer the groom, as freely as he would have held converse with his equals, he would have opposed all the strength of his authority against the saddler had that honest tradesman attempted to stand for his native town, and would have annihilated the groom with one angry flash of his bright blue eyes had the servant infringed by so much as an inch upon the broad extent of territory that separated him from his master. the struggle was finished before john mellish arose from the brown turf and turned towards the home which he had left early that morning, ignorant of the great trouble that was to fall upon him, and only dimly conscious of some dark foreboding of the coming of an unknown horror. the struggle was over, and there was now only hope in his heart--the hope of clasping his wife to his breast, and comforting her for all the past. however bitterly he might feel the humiliation of this madness of her ignorant girlhood, it was not for him to remind her of it; his duty was to confront the world's slander or the world's ridicule, and oppose his own breast to the storm, while she was shielded by the great shelter of his love. his heart yearned for some peaceful foreign land, in which his idol would be far away from all who could tell her secret, and where she might reign once more glorious and unapproachable. he was ready to impose any cheat upon the world, in his greediness of praise and worship for her--for her. how tenderly he thought of her, walking slowly homewards in that tranquil evening! he thought of her waiting to hear from him the issue of the inquest, and he reproached himself for his neglect when he remembered how long he had been absent. "but my darling will scarcely be uneasy," he thought; "she will hear all about the inquest from some one or other, and she will think that i have gone into doncaster on business. she will know nothing of the finding of this detestable certificate. no one need know of it. lofthouse and hayward are honourable men, and they will keep my poor girl's secret; they will keep the secret of her foolish youth,--my poor, poor girl!" he longed for that moment which he fancied so near; the moment in which he should fold her in his arms and say, "my dearest one, be at peace; there is no longer any secret between us. henceforth your sorrows are my sorrows, and it is hard if i cannot help you to carry the load lightly. we are one, my dear. for the first time since our wedding-day, we are truly united." he expected to find aurora in his own room, for she had declared her intention of sitting there all day; and he ran across the broad lawn to the rose-shadowed verandah that sheltered his favourite retreat. the blind was drawn down and the window bolted, as aurora had bolted it in her wish to exclude mr. stephen hargraves. he knocked at the window, but there was no answer. "lolly has grown tired of waiting," he thought. the second dinner-bell rang in the hall while mr. mellish lingered outside this darkened window. the commonplace sound reminded him of his social duties. "i must wait till dinner is over, i suppose, before i talk to my darling," he thought. "i must go through all the usual business, for the edification of mrs. powell and the servants, before i can take my darling to my breast, and set her mind at ease for ever." john mellish submitted himself to the indisputable force of those ceremonial laws which we have made our masters, and he was prepared to eat a dinner for which he had no appetite, and wait two hours for that moment for whose coming his soul yearned, rather than provoke mrs. powell's curiosity by any deviation from the common course of events. the windows of the drawing-room were open, and he saw the glimmer of a pale muslin dress at one of them. it belonged to mrs. powell, who was sitting in a contemplative attitude, gazing at the evening sky. she was not thinking of that western glory of pale crimson and shining gold. she was thinking that if john mellish cast off the wife who had deceived him, and who had never legally been his wife, the yorkshire mansion would be a fine place to live in; a fine place for a housekeeper who knew how to obtain influence over her master, and who had the secret of his married life and his wife's disgrace to help her on to power. "he's such a blind, besotted fool about her," thought the ensign's widow, "that if he breaks with her to-morrow, he'll go on loving her just the same, and he'll do anything to keep her secret. let it work which way it will, they're in my power--they're both in my power; and i'm no longer a poor dependent, to be sent away, at a quarter's notice, when it pleases them to be tired of me." the bread of dependence is not a pleasant diet; but there are many ways of eating the same food. mrs. powell's habit was to receive all favours grudgingly, as she would have given, had it been her lot to give instead of to receive. she measured others by her own narrow gauge, and was powerless to comprehend or believe in the frank impulses of a generous nature. she knew that she was a useless member of poor john's household, and that the young squire could have easily dispensed with her presence. she knew, in short, that she was retained by reason of aurora's pity for her friendlessness; and having neither gratitude nor kindly feelings to give in return for her comfortable shelter, she resented her own poverty of nature, and hated her entertainers for their generosity. it is a property of these narrow natures so to resent the attributes they can envy, but cannot even understand; and mrs. powell had been far more at ease in households in which she had been treated as a lady-like drudge than she had ever been at mellish park, where she was received as an equal and a guest. she had eaten the bitter bread upon which she had lived so long in a bitter spirit; and her whole nature had turned to gall from the influence of that disagreeable diet. a moderately-generous person can bestow a favour, and bestow it well; but to receive a boon with perfect grace requires a far nobler and more generous nature. john mellish approached the open window at which the ensign's widow was seated, and looked into the room. aurora was not there. the long saloon seemed empty and desolate. the decorations of the temple looked cold and dreary, for the deity was absent. "no one here!" exclaimed mr. mellish, disconsolately. "no one here but me," murmured mrs. powell, with an accent of mild deprecation. "but where is my wife, ma'am?" he said those two small words, "my wife," with such a tone of resolute defiance, that mrs. powell looked up at him as he spoke, and thought, "he has seen the certificate." "where is aurora?" repeated john. "i believe that mrs. mellish has gone out." "gone out! where?" "you forget, sir," said the ensign's widow reproachfully,--"you appear to forget your special request that i should abstain from all supervision of mrs. mellish's arrangements. prior to that request, which i may venture to suggest was unnecessarily emphatic, i had certainly considered myself, as the humble individual chosen by miss floyd's aunt, and invested by her with a species of authority over the young lady's actions, in some manner responsible for----" john mellish chafed horribly under the merciless stream of long words, which mrs. powell poured upon his head. "talk about that another time, for heaven's sake, ma'am," he said impatiently. "i only want to know where my wife is. two words will tell me that, i suppose?" "i am sorry to say that i am unable to afford you any information upon that subject," answered mrs. powell; "mrs. mellish quitted the house at half-past three o'clock, dressed for walking. i have not seen her since." heaven forgive aurora for the trouble it had been her lot to bring upon those who best loved her! john's heart grew sick with terror at this first failure of his hope. he had pictured her waiting to receive him, ready to fall upon his breast in answer to his passionate cry, "aurora, come! come, dear love! the secret has been discovered, and is forgiven." "somebody knows where my wife has gone, i suppose, mrs. powell?" he said fiercely, turning upon the ensign's widow in his wrathful sense of disappointment and alarm. he was only a big child, after all, with a child's alternate hopefulness and despair; with a child's passionate devotion for those he loved, and ignorant terror of danger to those beloved ones. "mrs. mellish may have made a confidante of parsons," replied the ensign's widow; "but she certainly did not enlighten _me_ as to her intended movements. shall i ring the bell for parsons?" "if you please." john mellish stood upon the threshold of the french window, not caring to enter the handsome chamber of which he was the master. why should he go into the house? it was no home for him without the woman who had made it so dear and sacred; dear, even in the darkest hour of sorrow and anxiety; sacred, even in despite of the trouble his love had brought upon him. the maid parsons appeared in answer to a message sent by mrs. powell; and john strode into the room and interrogated her sharply as to the departure of her mistress. the girl could tell very little, except that mrs. mellish had said that she was going into the garden, and that she had left a letter in the study for the master of the house. perhaps mrs. powell was even better aware of the existence of this letter than the abigail herself. she had crept stealthily into john's room after her interview with the "softy" and her chance encounter of aurora. she had found the letter lying on the table, sealed with a crest and monogram that were engraved upon a blood-stone worn by mrs. mellish amongst the trinkets on her watch-chain. it was not possible therefore to manipulate this letter with any safety, and mrs. powell had contented herself by guessing darkly at its contents. the "softy" had told her of the fatal discovery of the morning, and she instinctively comprehended the meaning of that sealed letter. it was a letter of explanation and farewell, perhaps; perhaps only of farewell. john strode along the corridor that led to his favourite room. the chamber was dimly lighted by the yellow evening sunlight which streamed from between the venetian blinds, and drew golden bars upon the matted floor. but even in that dusky and uncertain light he saw the white patch upon the table, and sprang with tigerish haste upon the letter his wife had left for him. he drew up the venetian blind, and stood in the embrasure of the window, with the evening sunlight upon his face, reading aurora's letter. there was neither anger nor alarm visible in his face as he read; only supreme love and supreme compassion. "my poor darling! my poor girl! how could she think that there could ever be such a word as good-bye between us! does she think so lightly of my love as to believe that it could fail her now, when she wants it most? why, if that man had lived," he thought, his face darkening with the memory of that unburied clay which yet lay in the still chamber at the north lodge,--"if that man had lived, and had claimed her, and carried her from me by the right of the paper in my breast, i would have clung to her still; i would have followed wherever he went, and would have lived near him, that she might have known where to look for a defender from every wrong: i would have been his servant, the willing servant and contented hanger-on of a boor, if i could have served her by enduring his insolence. so, my dear, my dear," murmured the young squire, with a tender smile, "it was worse than foolish to write this letter to me, and even more useless than it was cruel to run away from the man who would follow you to the farthest end of this wide world." he put the letter into his pocket, and took his hat from the table. he was ready to start--he scarcely knew for what destination; for the end of the world, perhaps--in his search for the woman he loved. but he was going to felden woods before beginning the longer journey, as he fully believed that aurora would fly to her father in her foolish terror. "to think that anything could ever happen to change or lessen my love for her," he said; "foolish girl! foolish girl!" he rang for his servant, and ordered the hasty packing of his smallest portmanteau. he was going to town for a day or two, and he was going alone. he looked at his watch; it was only a quarter after eight, and the mail left doncaster at half-past twelve. there was plenty of time, therefore; a great deal too much time for the feverish impatience of mr. mellish, who would have chartered a special engine to convey him, had the railway officials been willing. there were four long hours during which he must wait, wearing out his heart in his anxiety to follow the woman he loved, to take her to his breast and comfort and shelter her, to tell her that true love knows neither decrease nor change. he ordered the dog-cart to be got ready for him at eleven o'clock. there was a slow train that left doncaster at ten; but as it reached london only ten minutes before the mail, it was scarcely desirable as a conveyance. yet after the hour had passed for its starting, mr. mellish reproached himself bitterly for that lost ten minutes, and was tormented by a fancy that, through the loss of those very ten minutes, he should miss the chance of an immediate meeting with aurora. it was nine o'clock before he remembered the necessity of making some pretence of sitting down to dinner. he took his place at the end of the long table, and sent for mrs. powell, who appeared in answer to his summons, and seated herself with a well-bred affectation of not knowing that the dinner had been put off for an hour and a half. "i'm sorry i've kept you so long, mrs. powell," he said, as he sent the ensign's widow a ladleful of clear soup, that was of the temperature of lemonade. "the truth is, that i--i--find i shall be compelled to run up to town by the mail." "upon no unpleasant business, i hope?" "oh, dear no, not at all. mrs. mellish has gone up to her father's place, and--and--has requested me to follow her," added john, telling a lie with considerable awkwardness, but with no very great remorse. he did not speak again during dinner. he ate anything that his servants put before him, and took a good deal of wine; but he ate and drank alike unconsciously, and when the cloth had been removed, and he was left alone with mrs. powell, he sat staring at the reflection of the wax-candles in the depths of the mahogany. it was only when the lady gave a little ceremonial cough, and rose with the intention of simpering out of the room, that he roused himself from his long reverie, and looked up suddenly. "don't go just this moment, if you please, mrs. powell," he said. "if you'll sit down again for a few minutes, i shall be glad. i wished to say a word or two to you before i leave mellish park." he rose as he spoke, and pointed to a chair. mrs. powell seated herself, and looked at him earnestly; with an eager, viperish earnestness, and a nervous movement of her thin lips. "when you came here, mrs. powell," said john, gravely, "you came as my wife's guest, and as my wife's friend. i need scarcely say that you could have had no better claim upon my friendship and hospitality. if you had brought a regiment of dragoons with you, as the condition of your visit, they would have been welcome; for i believed that your coming would give pleasure to my poor girl. if my wife had been indebted to you for any word of kindness, for any look of affection, i would have repaid that debt a thousand-fold, had it lain in my power to do so by any service, however difficult. you would have lost nothing by your love for my poor motherless girl, if any devotion of mine could have recompensed you for that tenderness. it was only reasonable that i should look to you as the natural friend and counsellor of my darling; and i did so, honestly and confidently. forgive me if i tell you that i very soon discovered how much i had been mistaken in entertaining such a hope. i soon saw that you were no friend to my wife." "mr. mellish!" "oh, my dear madam, you think because i keep hunting-boots and guns in the room i call my study, and because i remember no more of the latin that my tutor crammed into my head than the first line of the eton syntax,--you think, because i'm not clever, that i must needs be a fool. that's your mistake, mrs. powell; i'm not clever enough to be a fool, and i've just sufficient perception to see any danger that assails those i love. you don't like my wife; you grudge her her youth and her beauty, and my foolish love for her; and you've watched, and listened, and plotted--in a lady-like way, of course--to do her some evil. forgive me if i speak plainly. where aurora is concerned, i feel very strongly. to hurt her little finger is to torture my whole body. to stab her once is to stab me a hundred times. i have no wish to be discourteous to a lady; i am only sorry that you have been unable to love a poor girl who has rarely failed to win friends amongst those who have known her. let us part without animosity, but let us understand each other for the first time. you do not like us, and it is better that we should part before you learn to hate us." the ensign's widow waited in utter stupefaction until mr. mellish stopped, from want of breath, perhaps, rather than from want of words. all her viperish nature rose in white defiance of him as he walked up and down the room, chafing himself into a fury with his recollection of the wrong she had done him in not loving his wife. "you are perhaps aware, mr. mellish," she said, after an awful pause, "that under such circumstances the annual stipend due to me for my services cannot be expected to cease at your caprice; and that, although you may turn me out of doors,"--mrs. powell descended to this very commonplace locution, and stooped to the vernacular in her desire to be spiteful,--"you must understand that you will be liable for my salary until the expiration of----" "oh, pray do not imagine that i shall repudiate any claim you may make upon me, mrs. powell," said john, eagerly; "heaven knows it has been no pleasure to me to speak as plainly as i have spoken to-night. i will write a cheque for any amount you may consider proper as compensation for this change in our arrangements. i might have been more polite, perhaps; i might have told you that my wife and i think of travelling on the continent, and that we are, therefore, breaking up our household. i have preferred telling you the plain truth. forgive me if i have wounded you." mrs. powell rose, pale, menacing, terrible; terrible in the intensity of her feeble wrath, and in the consciousness that she had power to stab the heart of the man who had affronted her. "you have merely anticipated my own intention, mr. mellish," she said. "i could not possibly have remained a member of your household after the very unpleasant circumstances that have lately transpired. my worst wish is, that you may find yourself involved in no greater trouble through your connection with mr. floyd's daughter. let me add one word of warning before i have the honour of wishing you good evening. malicious people might be tempted to smile at your enthusiastic mention of your 'wife;' remembering that the person to whom you allude is aurora conyers, the widow of your groom, and that she has never possessed any legal claim to the title you bestow upon her." if mrs. powell had been a man, she would have found her head in contact with the turkey carpet of john's dining-room before she could have concluded this speech; as she was a woman, john mellish stood looking her full in the face, waiting till she had finished speaking. but he bore the stab she inflicted without flinching under its cruel pain, and he robbed her of the gratification she had hoped for. he did not let her see his anguish. "if lofthouse has told her the secret," he cried, when the door had closed upon mrs. powell, "i'll horsewhip him in the church." chapter v. an unexpected visitor. aurora found a civil railway official at the doncaster station, who was ready to take a ticket for her, and find her a comfortable seat in an empty carriage; but before the train started, a couple of sturdy farmers took their seats upon the spring cushions opposite mrs. mellish. they were wealthy gentlemen, who farmed their own land, and travelled express; but they brought a powerful odour of the stable-yard into the carriage, and they talked with that honest northern twang which always has a friendly sound to the writer of this story. aurora, with her veil drawn over her pale face, attracted very little of their attention. they talked of farming-stock and horse-racing, and looked out of the window every now and then to shrug their shoulders at somebody else's agriculture. i believe they were acquainted with the capabilities of every acre of land between doncaster and harrow, and knew how it might have been made "worth ten shillin' an acre more than it was, too, sir," as they perpetually informed each other. how wearisome their talk must have seemed to the poor lonely creature who was running away from the man she loved,--from the man who loved her, and would love to the end of time! "i didn't mean what i wrote," she thought. "my poor boy would never love me less. his great heart is made up of unselfish love and generous devotion. but he would be so sorry for me; he would be so sorry! he could never be proud of me again; he could never boast of me any more. he would be always resenting some insult, or imagining some slight. it would be too painful for him. he would see his wife pointed at as the woman who had married her groom. he would be embroiled in a hundred quarrels, a hundred miseries. i will make the only return that i can ever make to him for his goodness to me: i will give him up, and go away and hide myself from him for ever." she tried to imagine what john's life would be without her. she tried to think of him in some future time, when he should have worn out his grief, and reconciled himself to her loss. but she could not, she could not! she could not endure any image of _him_ in which he was separated from his love for her. "how should i ever think of him without thinking of his love for me?" she thought. "he loved me from the first moment in which he saw me. i have never known him except as a lover; generous, pure, and true." and in this mind aurora watched the smaller stations, which looked like mere streaks of whitened woodwork as the express tore past them; though every one of them was a milestone upon the long road which was separating her from the man she loved. ah, careless wives, who think it a small thing, perhaps, that your husbands are honest and generous, constant and true, and who are apt to grumble because your next-door neighbours have started a carriage, while you are fain to be content with eighteenpenny airings in vehicles procured at the nearest cab-stand,--stop and think of this wretched girl, who in this hour of desolation recalled a thousand little wrongs she had done to her husband, and would have laid herself under his feet to be walked over by him could she have thus atoned for her petty tyrannies, her pretty caprices! think of her in her loneliness, with her heart yearning to go back to the man she loved, and with her love arrayed against herself and pleading for him. she changed her mind a hundred times during that four hours' journey; sometimes thinking that she would go back by the next train, and then again remembering that her first impulse had been, perhaps, after all, only too correct, and that john mellish's heart had turned against her in the cruel humiliation of that morning's discovery. have you ever tried to imagine the anger of a person whom you have never seen angry? have you ever called up the image of a face that has never looked on you except in love and gentleness, and invested that familiar countenance with the blank sternness of estrangement? aurora did this. she acted over and over again in her weary brain the scene that might have taken place between her husband and herself. she remembered that scene in the hackneyed stage-play, which everybody affects to ridicule and secretly weeps at. she remembered mrs. haller and the stranger, the children, the countess, the cottage, the jewels, the parchments, and all the old familiar properties of that well-known fifth act in the simple, social tragedy; and she pictured to herself john mellish retiring into some distant country with his rheumatic trainer langley, and becoming a misanthropical hermit, after the manner of the injured german. what was her life to be henceforth? she shut her eyes upon that blank future. "i will go back to my father," she thought; "i will go back to him again, as i went before. but this time there shall be no falsehoods, no equivocations; and this time nothing shall tempt me to leave him again." amid all her perplexities, she clung to the thought that lucy and talbot would help her. she would appeal to passionless talbot bulstrode in behalf of her poor heart-broken john. "talbot will tell me what is right and honourable to be done," she thought. "i will hold by what he says. he shall be the arbiter of my future." i do not believe that aurora had ever entertained any very passionate devotion for the handsome cornishman; but it is very certain that she had always respected him. it may be that any love she had felt for him had grown out of that very respect, and that her reverence for his character was made all the greater by the contrast between him and the base-born schemer for whom her youth had been sacrificed. she had submitted to the decree which had separated her from her affianced lover, for she had believed in its justice; and she was ready now to submit to any decision pronounced by the man, in whose sense of honour she had unbounded confidence. she thought of all these things again and again and again, while the farmers talked of sheep and turnips, of thorley's food, swedes, and beans, and corn, and clover, and of mysterious diseases, which they discussed gravely, under such terms as "red gum," "finger and toe," &c. they alternated this talk with a dash of turf scandal; and even in the all-absorbing perplexities of her domestic sorrows, mrs. mellish could have turned fiercely upon these innocent farmers when they pooh-poohed john's stable, and made light of the reputation of her namesake the bay filly, and declared that no horse that came out of the squire's stables was ever anything better than a plater or a screw. the journey came to an end, only too quickly, it seemed to aurora: too quickly, for every mile widened the gulf she had set between herself and the home she loved; every moment only brought the realization of her loss more fully home to her mind. "i will abide by talbot bulstrode's advice," she kept saying to herself; indeed, this thought was the only reed to which she clung in her trouble. she was not a strong-minded woman. she had the generous, impulsive nature which naturally turns to others for help and comfort. secretiveness had no part in her organization, and the one concealment of her life had been a perpetual pain and grief to her. it was past eight o'clock when she found herself alone amidst the bustle and confusion of the king's cross terminus. she sent a porter for a cab, and ordered the man to drive to halfmoon street. it was only a few days since she had met lucy and talbot at felden woods, and she knew that mr. bulstrode and his wife were detained in town, waiting for the prorogation of the house. it was saturday evening, and therefore a holiday for the young advocate of the cornish miners and their rights; but talbot spent his leisure amongst blue-books and parliamentary minutes, and poor lucy, who might have been shining, a pale star, at some crowded _conversazione_, was compelled to forego the pleasure of struggling upon the staircase of one of those wise individuals who insist upon inviting their acquaintances to pack themselves into the smallest given space consistent with the preservation of life, and trample upon each other's lace flounces and varnished boots with smiling equanimity. perhaps, in the universal fitness of things, even these fashionable evenings have a certain solemn purpose, deeply hidden under considerable surface-frivolity. it may be that they serve as moral gymnasia, in which the thews and sinews of social amenity are racked and tortured, with a view to their increased power of endurance. it is good for a man to have his favourite corn trodden upon, and yet be compelled to smile under the torture; and a woman may learn her first great lesson in fortitude from the destruction of fifty guineas' worth of mechlin, and the necessity of assuring the destroyer that she is rather gratified than otherwise by the sacrifice. _noblesse oblige._ it is good to "suffer and be strong." cold coffee and tepid ice-cream may not be the most strengthening or delightful of food; but there may be a moral diet provided at these social gatherings which is not without its usefulness. lucy willingly abandoned her own delights; for she had that ladylike appreciation of society which had been a part of her education. her placid nature knew no abnormal tendencies. she liked the amusements that other girls of her position liked. she had none of the eccentric predilections which had been so fatal to her cousin. she was not like that lovely and illustrious spanish lady who is said to love the cirque better than the opera, and to have a more intense appreciation of a series of flying plunges through tissue-paper-covered hoops than of the most elaborate _fioriture_ of tenor or soprano. she gave up something, therefore, in resigning the stereotyped gaieties of the london season. but heaven knows, it was very pleasant to her to make the sacrifice. her inclinations were fatted lambs, which she offered willingly upon the altar of her idol. she was never happier than when sitting by her husband's side, making extracts from the blue-books to be quoted in some pamphlet that he was writing; or if she was ever happier, it was only when she sat in the ladies' gallery, straining her eyes athwart the floriated iron fretwork, which screened her from any wandering glances of distracted members, in her vain efforts to see her husband in his place on the government benches, and very rarely seeing more than the crown of mr. bulstrode's hat. she sat by talbot's side upon this evening, busy with some pretty needlework, and listening with patient attention to her husband's perusal of the proof-sheets of his last pamphlet. it was a noble specimen of the stately and ponderous style of writing, and it abounded in crushing arguments and magnificent climaxes, which utterly annihilated somebody (lucy didn't exactly make out who), and most incontrovertibly established something, though mrs. bulstrode couldn't quite understand what. it was enough for her that he had written that wonderful composition, and that it was his rich baritone voice that rolled out the studied johnsonese. if he had pleased to read greek to her, she would have thought it pleasant to listen. indeed there were pet passages of homer which mr. bulstrode now and then loved to recite to his wife, and which the little hypocrite pretended to admire. no cloud had darkened the calm heaven of lucy's married life. she loved, and was beloved. it was a part of her nature to love in a reverential attitude, and she had no wish to approach nearer to her idol. to sit at her sultan's feet and replenish his chibouque; to watch him while he slept, and wave the punkah above his seraphic head; to love and admire and pray for him,--made up the sum of her heart's desire. it was close upon nine o'clock, when mr. bulstrode was interrupted in the very crowning sentence of his peroration by a double knock at the street-door. the houses in halfmoon street are small, and talbot flung down his proof-sheet with a gesture expressive of considerable irritation. lucy looked up, half sympathizingly, half apologetically, at her lord and master. she held herself in a manner responsible for his ease and comfort. "who can it be, dear?" she murmured; "at such a time, too!" "some annoyance or other, i dare say, my dear," answered talbot. "but whoever it is, i won't see them to-night. i suppose, lucy, i've given you a pretty fair idea of the effect of this upon my honourable friend the member for----" before mr. bulstrode could name the borough of which his honourable friend was the representative, a servant announced that mrs. mellish was waiting below to see the master of the house. "aurora!" exclaimed lucy, starting from her seat and dropping the fairy implements of her work in a little shower upon the carpet; "aurora! it can't be, surely? why, talbot, she only went back to yorkshire a few days ago." "mr. and mrs. mellish are both below, i suppose?" mr. bulstrode said to the servant. "no, sir; mrs. mellish came alone in a cab from the station, i believe. mrs. mellish is in the library, sir. i asked her to walk upstairs; but she requested to see you alone, sir, if you please." "i'll come directly," answered talbot. "tell mrs. mellish i will be with her immediately." the door closed upon the servant, and lucy ran towards it, eager to hurry to her cousin. "poor aurora!" she said; "there must be something wrong, surely. uncle archibald has been taken ill, perhaps; he was not looking well when we left felden. i'll go to her, talbot; i'm sure she'd like to see me first." "no, lucy; no," answered mr. bulstrode, laying his hand upon the door, and standing between it and his wife; "i had rather you didn't see your cousin until i have seen her. it will be better for me to see her first." his face was very grave, and his manner almost stern as he said this. lucy shrank from him as if he had wounded her. she understood him, very vaguely, it is true; but she understood that he had some doubt or suspicion of her cousin, and for the first time in his life mr. bulstrode saw an angry light kindled in his wife's blue eyes. "why should you prevent my seeing aurora?" lucy asked; "she is the best and dearest girl in the world. why shouldn't i see her?" talbot bulstrode stared in blank amazement at his mutinous wife. "be reasonable, my dear lucy," he answered very mildly; "i hope always to be able to respect your cousin--as much as i respect you. but if mrs. mellish leaves her husband in yorkshire, and comes to london without his permission,--for he would never permit her to come alone,--she must explain to me why she does so before i can suffer my wife to receive her." poor lucy's fair head drooped under this reproof. she remembered her last conversation with her cousin; that conversation in which aurora had spoken of some far-off day of trouble, that might bring her to ask for comfort and shelter in halfmoon street. had the day of trouble come already? "is it wrong of aurora to come alone, talbot, dear?" lucy asked meekly. "is it wrong?" repeated mr. bulstrode, fiercely. "would it be wrong for you to go tearing from here to cornwall, child?" he was irritated by the mere imagination of such an outrage, and he looked at lucy as if he half suspected her of some such intention. "but aurora may have had some very particular reason, dear?" pleaded his wife. "i cannot imagine any reason powerful enough to justify such a proceeding," answered talbot; "but i shall be better able to judge of that when i've heard what mrs. mellish has to say. stay here, lucy, till i send for you." "yes, talbot." she obeyed as submissively as a child; but she lingered near the door after her husband had closed it upon her, with a mournful yearning in her heart. she wanted to go to her cousin, and comfort her, if she had need of comfort. she dreaded the effect of her husband's cold and passionless manner upon aurora's impressionable nature. mr. bulstrode went down to the library to receive his kinswoman. it would have been strange if he had failed to remember that christmas evening, nearly two years before, upon which he had gone down to the shadowy room at felden, with every hope of his heart crushed, to ask for comfort from the woman he loved. it would have been strange if, in the brief interval that elapsed between his leaving the drawing-room and entering the library, his mind had not flown back to that day of desolation. if there was an infidelity to lucy in that sharp thrill of pain that pierced his heart as the old memory came back, the sin was as short-lived as the agony which it brought with it. he was able now to say, in all singleness of heart, "i made a wise choice, and i shall never repent having made it." the library was a small apartment at the back of the dining-room. it was dimly lighted, for aurora had lowered the lamp. she did not want mr. bulstrode to see her face. "my dear mrs. mellish," said talbot gravely, "i am so surprised at this visit, that i scarcely know how to say i am glad to see you. i fear something must have happened to cause your travelling alone. john is ill, perhaps, or----" he might have said much more if aurora had not interrupted him by casting herself upon her knees before him, and looking up at him with a pale, agonized face, that seemed almost ghastly in the dim lamp-light. it was impossible to describe the look of horror that came over talbot bulstrode's face as she did this. it was the felden scene over again. he came to her in the hope that she would justify herself, and she tacitly acknowledged her humiliation. she was a guilty woman, then; a guilty creature, whom it would be his painful duty to cast out of that pure household. she was a poor, lost, polluted wretch, who must not be admitted into the holy atmosphere of a christian gentleman's home. "mrs. mellish! mrs. mellish!" he cried, "what is the meaning of this? why do you give me this horrible pain again? why do you insist upon humiliating yourself and me by such a scene as this?" "oh, talbot, talbot!" answered aurora, "i come to you because you are good and honourable. i am a desolate, wretched woman, and i want your help--i want your advice. i will abide by it; i will, talbot bulstrode; so help me, heaven." her voice was broken by her sobs. in her passionate grief and confusion she forgot that it was just possible such an appeal as this might be rather bewildering in its effect upon talbot. but perhaps, even amid his bewilderment, the young cornishman saw, or fancied he saw, something in aurora's manner which had no fellowship with guilt; or with such guilt as he had at first dreaded. i imagine that it must have been so; for his voice was softer and his manner kinder when he next addressed her. "aurora," he said, "for pity's sake, be calm. why have you left mellish park? what is the business in which i can help or advise you? be calm, my dear girl, and i will try and understand you. god knows how much i wish to be a friend to you, for i stand in a brother's place, you know, my dear, and demand a brother's right to question your actions. i am sorry you came up to town alone, because such a step was calculated to compromise you; but if you will be calm and tell me why you came, i may be able to understand your motives. come, aurora, try and be calm." she was still on her knees, sobbing hysterically. talbot would have summoned his wife to her assistance, but he could not bear to see the two women associated until he had discovered the cause of aurora's agitation. he poured some water into a glass, and gave it her. he placed her in an easy-chair near the open window, and then walked up and down the room until she had recovered herself. "talbot bulstrode," she said quietly, after a long pause, "i want you to help me in the crisis of my life. i must be candid with you, therefore, and tell you that which i would have died rather than tell you two years ago. you remember the night upon which you left felden?" "remember it? yes, yes." "the secret which separated us then, talbot, was the one secret of my life,--the secret of my disobedience, the secret of my father's sorrow. you asked me to give you an account of that one year which was missing out of the history of my life. i could not do so, talbot; _i would not!_ my pride revolted against the horrible humiliation. if you had discovered the secret yourself, and had accused me of the disgraceful truth, i would have attempted no denial; but with my own lips to utter the hateful story--no, no, i could have borne anything better than that. but now that my secret is common property, in the keeping of police-officers and stable-boys, i can afford to tell you all. when i left the school in the rue saint-dominique, i ran away to marry my father's groom!" "aurora!" talbot bulstrode dropped into the chair nearest him, and sat blankly staring at his wife's cousin. was this the secret humiliation which had prostrated her at his feet in the chamber at felden woods? "oh, talbot, how could i have told you this? how can i tell you now why i did this mad and wicked thing, blighting the happiness of my youth by my own act, and bringing shame and grief upon my father? i had no romantic, overwhelming love for this man. i cannot plead the excuses which some women urge for their madness. i had only a school-girl's sentimental fancy for his dashing manner, only a school-girl's frivolous admiration of his handsome face. i married him because he had dark-blue eyes, and long eyelashes, and white teeth, and brown hair. he had insinuated himself into a kind of intimacy with me, by bringing me all the empty gossip of the race-course, by extra attention to my favourite horses, by pampering my pets. all these things brought about association between us; he was always my companion in my rides; and he contrived, before long, to tell me his story. bah! why should i weary you with it?" cried aurora scornfully. "he was a prince in disguise, of course; he was a gentleman's son; his father had kept his hunters; he was at war with fortune; he had been ill-used and trampled down in the battle of life. his talk was something to this effect, and i believed him. why should i disbelieve him? i had lived all my life in an atmosphere of truth. my governess and i talked perpetually of the groom's romantic story. she was a silly woman, and encouraged my folly; out of mere stupidity, i believe, and with no suspicion of the mischief she was doing. we criticised the groom's handsome face, his white hands, his aristocratic manners. i mistook insolence for good breeding; heaven help me! and as we saw scarcely any society at that time, i compared my father's groom with the few guests who came to felden; and the town-bred impostor profited by comparison with rustic gentlemen. why should i stay to account to you for my folly, talbot bulstrode? i could never succeed in doing so, though i talked for a week; i cannot account to myself for my madness. i can only look back to that horrible time, and wonder why i was mad." "my poor aurora! my poor aurora!" he spoke in the pitying tone with which he might have comforted her had she been a child. he was thinking of her in her childish ignorance, exposed to the insidious advances of an unscrupulous schemer, and his heart bled for the motherless girl. "my father found some letters written by this man, and discovered that his daughter had affianced herself to his groom. he made this discovery while i was out riding with james conyers,--the groom's name was conyers,--and when i came home there was a fearful scene between us. i was mad enough and wicked enough to defend my conduct, and to reproach my father with the illiberality of his sentiments. i went even further: i reminded him that the house of floyd and floyd had had a very humble origin. he took me to paris upon the following day. i thought myself cruelly treated. i revolted against the ceremonial monotony of the _pension;_ i hated the studies, which were ten times more difficult than anything i had ever experienced with my governess; i suffered terribly from the conventual seclusion, for i had been used to perfect freedom amongst the country roads round felden: and amidst all this, the groom pursued me with letters and messages; for he had followed me to paris, and spent his money recklessly in bribing the servants and hangers-on of the school. he was playing for a high stake, and he played so desperately that he won. i ran away from school, and married him at dover, within eight or nine hours of my escape from the rue saint-dominique." she buried her face in her hands, and was silent for some time. "heaven have pity upon my wretched ignorance!" she said at last; "the illusion under which i had married this man ended in about a week. at the end of that time i discovered that i was the victim of a mercenary wretch, who meant to use me to the uttermost as a means of wringing money from my father. for some time i submitted, and my father paid, and paid dearly, for his daughter's folly; but he refused to receive the man i had married, or to see me until i separated myself from that man. he offered the groom an income, on the condition of his going to australia, and resigning all association with me for ever. but the man had a higher game to play. he wanted to bring about a reconciliation with my father; and he thought that in due time that tender father's resolution would have yielded to the force of his love. it was little better than a year after our marriage that i made a discovery that transformed me in one moment from a girl into a woman; a revengeful woman, perhaps, mr. bulstrode. i discovered that i had been wronged, deceived, and outraged by a wretch who laughed at my ignorant confidence in him. i had learned to hate the man long before this occurred: i had learned to despise his shallow trickeries, his insolent pretensions; but i do not think i felt his deeper infamy the less keenly for that. we were travelling in the south of france, my husband playing the great gentleman upon my father's money, when this discovery was made by me--or not by me; for it was forced upon me by a woman who knew my story and pitied me. within half an hour of obtaining this knowledge, i acted upon it. i wrote to james conyers, telling him i had discovered that which gave me the right to call upon the law to release me from him; and if i refrained from doing so, it was for my father's sake, and not for his. i told him that so long as he left me unmolested and kept my secret, i would remit him money from time to time. i told him that i left him to the associations he had chosen for himself; and that my only prayer was, that god, in his mercy, might grant me complete forgetfulness of him. i left this letter for him with the _concierge_, and quitted the hotel in such a manner as to prevent his obtaining any trace of the way i had gone. i stopped in paris for a few days, waiting for a reply to a letter i had written to my father, telling him that james conyers was dead. perhaps that was the worst sin of my life, talbot. i deceived my father; but i believed that i was doing a wise and merciful thing in setting his mind at rest. he would have never been happy so long as he had believed the man lived. you understand all now, talbot," she said mournfully. "you remember the morning at brighton?" "yes, yes; and the newspaper with the marked paragraph--the report of the jockey's death." "that report was false, talbot bulstrode," cried aurora. "james conyers was not killed." talbot's face grew suddenly pale. he began to understand something of the nature of that trouble which had brought aurora to him. "what, he was still living, then?" he said anxiously. "yes; until the night before last." "but where--where has he been all this time?" "during the last ten days--at mellish park." she told him the terrible story of the murder. the trainer's death had not yet been reported in the london papers. she told him the dreadful story; and then, looking up at him with an earnest, imploring face, as she might have done had he been indeed her brother, she entreated him to help and counsel her in this terrible hour of need. "teach me how to do what is best for my dear love," she said. "don't think of me or my happiness, talbot; think only of him. i will make any sacrifice; i will submit to anything. i want to atone to my poor dear for all the misery i have brought upon him." talbot bulstrode did not make any reply to this earnest appeal. the administrative powers of his mind were at work; he was busy summing up facts and setting them before him, in order to grapple with them fairly; and he had no attention to waste upon sentiment or emotion. he was walking up and down the room, with his eyebrows knitted sternly over his cold gray eyes, and his head bent. "how many people know this secret, aurora?" he asked presently. "i can't tell you that; but i fear it must be very generally known," answered mrs. mellish, with a shuddering recollection of the "softy's" insolence. "i heard of the discovery that had been made from a hanger-on of the stables, a man who hates me,--a man whom i--had a misunderstanding with." "have you any idea who it was that shot this conyers?" "no, not the least idea." "you do not even guess at any one?" "no." talbot took a few more turns up and down the small apartment, in evident trouble and perplexity of mind. he left the room presently, and called at the foot of the staircase: "lucy, my dear, come down to your cousin." i'm afraid mrs. bulstrode must have been lurking somewhere about the outside of the drawing-room door, for she flew down the stairs at the sound of the strong voice, and was by her husband's side two or three seconds after he had spoken. "o talbot!" she said, "how long you have been! i thought you would never send for me. what has been the matter with my poor darling?" "go in to her, and comfort her, my dear," mr. bulstrode answered, gravely: "she has had enough trouble, heaven knows, poor girl. don't ask her any questions, lucy; but make her as comfortable as you can, and give her the best room you can find for her. she will stay with us as long as she remains in town." "dear, dear talbot," murmured the young cornishman's grateful worshipper, "how kind you are!" "kind!" cried mr. bulstrode; "she has need of friends, lucy; and, god knows, i will act a brother's part towards her, faithfully and bravely. yes, bravely!" he added, raising his head with an almost defiant gesture as he slowly ascended the stairs. what was the dark cloud which he saw brooding so fatally over the far horizon? he dared not think of what it was,--he dared not even acknowledge its presence; but there was a sense of trouble and horror in his breast that told him the shadow was there. lucy bulstrode ran into the library, and flung herself upon her cousin's breast, and wept with her. she did not ask the nature of the sorrow which had brought aurora an unexpected and uninvited guest to that modest little dwelling-house. she only knew that her cousin was in trouble, and that it was her happy privilege to offer her shelter and consolation. she would have fought a sturdy battle in defence of this privilege; but she adored her husband for the generosity which had granted it to her without a struggle. for the first time in her life, poor gentle lucy took a new position with her cousin. it was her turn to protect aurora; it was her turn to display a pretty motherly tenderness for the desolate creature whose aching head rested on her bosom. the west-end clocks were striking three, in the dead middle of the night, when mrs. mellish fell into a feverish slumber, even in her sleep, even in her sleep repeating again and again: "my poor john! my poor dear love! what will become of him? my own faithful darling!" chapter vi. talbot bulstrode's advice. talbot bulstrode went out early upon the quiet sunday morning after aurora's arrival, and walked down to the telegraph company's office at charing cross, whence he despatched a message to mr. john mellish. it was a very brief message, only telling mr. mellish to come to town without delay, and that he would find aurora in halfmoon street. mr. bulstrode walked quietly homewards in the morning sunshine, after having performed this duty. even the london streets were bright and dewy in that early sunlight, for it was only a little after seven o'clock, and the fresh morning breezes came sweeping over the house-tops, bringing health and purity from shooter's hill and highgate, streatham and barnsbury, richmond and hampstead. the white morning mists were slowly melting from the worn grass in the green park; and weary creatures, who had had no better shelter than the quiet sky, were creeping away to find such wretched resting-places as they might, in that free city, in which, to sit for an unreasonable time upon a doorstep, or to ask a rich citizen for the price of a loaf, is to commit an indictable offence. surely it was impossible for any young legislator not quite worn out by a life-long struggle with the time which was never meant to be set right,--surely it was impossible for any fresh-hearted prosperous young liberal to walk through those quiet streets without thinking of these things. talbot bulstrode thought very earnestly and very mournfully. to what end were his labours, after all? he was fighting for a handful of cornish miners; doing battle with the rampant spirit of circumlocution for the sake of a few benighted wretches, buried in the darkness of a black abyss of ignorance a hundred times deeper and darker than the material obscurities in which they laboured. he was working his hardest and his best that these men might be taught, in some easy, unambitious manner, the simplest elements of christian love and christian duty. he was working for these poor far-away creatures, in their forgotten corner of the earth; and here, around and about him, was ignorance more terrible, because, hand-in-hand with ignorance of all good, there was the fatal experience of all evil. the simple cornish miner who uses his pickaxe in the region of his friend's skull, when he wishes to enforce an argument, does so because he knows no other species of emphasis. but in the london universities of crime, knavery and vice and violence and sin matriculate and graduate day by day; to take their degrees in the felon's dock or on the scaffold. how could he be otherwise than sorrowful, thinking of these things? were the cities of the plain worse than this city; in which there were yet so many good and earnest men labouring patiently day by day, and taking little rest? was the great accumulation of evil so heavy that it rolled for ever back upon the untiring sisyphus? or did they make some imperceptible advance towards the mountain-top, despite of all discouragement? with this weary question debating itself in his brain, mr. bulstrode walked along piccadilly towards the comfortable bachelor's quarters, whose most commonplace attributes lucy had turned to favour and to prettiness; but at the door of the gloucester coffee-house talbot paused to stare absently at a nervous-looking chestnut mare, who insisted upon going through several lively performances upon her hind-legs, very much to the annoyance of an unshaven ostler, and not particularly to the advantage of a smart little dog-cart to which she was harnessed. "you needn't pull her mouth to pieces, my man," cried a voice from the doorway of the hotel; "use her gently, and she'll soon quiet herself. steady, my girl; steady!" added the owner of this voice, walking to the dog-cart as he spoke. talbot had good reason to stop short, for this gentleman was mr. john mellish, whose pale face, and loose, disordered hair betokened a sleepless night. he was going to spring into the dog-cart, when his old friend tapped him on the shoulder. "this is rather a lucky accident, john; for you're the very person i want to see," said mr. bulstrode. "i've just telegraphed to you." john mellish stared with a blank face. "don't hinder me, please," he said; "i'll talk to you by-and-by. i'll call upon you in a day or two. i'm just off to felden. i've only been in town an hour and a half, and should have gone down before, if i had not been afraid of knocking up the family." he made another attempt to get into the vehicle, but talbot caught him by the arm. "you needn't go to felden," he said; "your wife's much nearer." "eh?" "she's at my house. come and have some breakfast." there was no shadow upon talbot bulstrode's mind as his old schoolfellow caught him by the hand, and nearly dislocated his wrist in a paroxysm of joy and gratitude. it was impossible for him to look beyond that sudden burst of sunshine upon john's face. if mr. mellish had been separated from his wife for ten years, and had just returned from the antipodes for the sole purpose of seeing her again, he could scarcely have appeared more delighted at the prospect of a speedy meeting. "aurora here!" he said; "at your house? my dear old fellow, you can't mean it! but of course i ought to have known she'd come to you. she couldn't have done anything better or wiser, after having been so foolish as to doubt me." "she came to me for advice, john. she wanted me to advise her how to act for your happiness,--yours, you great yorkshireman, and not her own." "bless her noble heart!" cried mr. mellish, huskily. "and you told her----" "i told her nothing, my dear fellow; but i tell you to take your lawyer down to doctor's commons with you to-morrow morning, get a new licence and marry your wife for the second time, in some quiet, little, out-of-the-way church in the city." aurora had risen very early upon that peaceful sunday morning. the few hours of feverish and fitful sleep had brought very little comfort to her. she stood with her weary head leaning against the window-frame, and looked hopelessly out into the empty london street. she looked out into the desolate beginning of a new life, the blank uncertainty of an unknown future. all the minor miseries peculiar to a toilet in a strange room were doubly miserable to her. lucy had brought the poor luggageless traveller all the paraphernalia of the toilet-table, and had arranged everything with her own busy hands. but the most insignificant trifle that aurora touched in her cousin's chamber brought back the memory of some costly toy chosen for her by her husband. she had travelled in her white morning-dress, and the soft lace and muslin were none the fresher for her journey; but as two of lucy's dresses joined together scarcely fitted her stately cousin, mrs. mellish was fain to be content with her limp muslin. what did it matter? the loving eyes which noted every shred of ribbon, every morsel of lace, every fold of her garments, were, perhaps, never to look upon her again. she twisted her hair into a careless mass at the back of her head, and had completed her toilet, when lucy came to the door, tenderly anxious to know how she had slept. "i will abide by talbot's decision," she repeated to herself again and again. "if he says it is best for my dear that we should part, i will go away for ever. i will ask my father to take me far away, and my poor darling shall not even know where i have gone. i will be true in what i do, and will do it thoroughly." she looked to talbot bulstrode as a wise judge, to whose sentence she would be willing to submit. perhaps she did this because her own heart kept for ever repeating, "go back to the man who loves you. go back, go back! there is no wrong you can do him so bitter as to desert him. there is no unhappiness you can bring upon him equal to the unhappiness of losing you. let _me_ be your guide. go back, go back!" but this selfish monitor must not be listened to. how bitterly this poor girl, so old in experience of sorrow, remembered the selfish sin of her mad marriage! she had refused to sacrifice a school-girl's foolish delusion; she had disobeyed the father who had given her seventeen years of patient love and devotion; and she looked at all the misery of her youth as the fatal growth of this evil seed, so rebelliously sown. surely such a lesson was not to be altogether unheeded! surely it was powerful enough to teach her the duty of sacrifice! it was this thought that steeled her against the pleadings of her own affection. it was for this that she looked to talbot bulstrode as the arbiter of her future. had she been a roman catholic, she would have gone to her confessor, and appealed to a priest--who, having no social ties of his own, must, of course, be the best judge of all the duties involved in domestic relations--for comfort and succour; but being of another faith, she went to the man whom she most respected, and who, being a husband himself, might, as she thought, be able to comprehend the duty that was due to her husband. she went down-stairs with lucy into a little inner room upon the drawing-room floor; a snug apartment, opening into a mite of a conservatory. it was mr. and mrs. bulstrode's habit to breakfast in this cosy little chamber, rather than in that awful temple of slippery morocco, funereal bronze, and ghastly mahogany, which upholsterers insist upon as the only legitimate place in which an englishman may take his meals. lucy loved to sit opposite her husband at the small round table, and minister to his morning appetite from her pretty breakfast equipage of silver and china. she knew--to the smallest weight employed at apothecaries' hall, i think--how much sugar mr. bulstrode liked in his tea. she poured the cream into his cup as carefully as if she had been making up a prescription. he took the simple beverage in a great shallow breakfast-cup of fragile turquoise sã¨vres, that had cost seven guineas; and had been made for madame du barry, the _rococo_ merchant had told talbot. (had his customer been a lady, i fear marie antoinette would have been described as the original possessor of this porcelain.) mrs. bulstrode loved to minister to her husband. she picked the bloated livers of martyred geese out of the strasburg pies for his delectation; she spread the butter upon his dry toast; and pampered and waited on him, serving him as only such women serve their idols. but this morning she had her cousin's sorrows to comfort; and she established aurora in a capacious chintz-covered easy-chair on the threshold of the conservatory, and seated herself at her feet. "my poor pale darling!" she said, tenderly, "what can i do to bring the roses back to your cheeks?" "love me and pity me, dear," aurora answered, gravely; "but don't ask me any questions." the two women sat thus for some time, aurora's handsome head bent over lucy's fair face, and her hands clasped in both lucy's hands. they talked very little, and only spoke then of indifferent matters, or of lucy's happiness and talbot's parliamentary career. the little clock over the chimney-piece struck the quarter before eight--they were very early, these unfashionable people--and a minute afterwards mrs. bulstrode heard her husband's step upon the stairs, returning from his ante-breakfast walk. it was his habit to take a constitutional stroll in the green park, now and then, so lucy had thought nothing of this early excursion. "talbot has let himself in with his latch-key," said mrs. bulstrode; "and i may pour out the tea, aurora. but listen, dear; i think there's some one with him." there was no need to bid aurora listen; she had started from her low seat, and stood erect and motionless, breathing in a quick, agitated manner, and looking towards the door. besides talbot bulstrode's step there was another, quicker and heavier; a step she knew so well. the door was opened, and talbot entered the room, followed by a visitor, who pushed aside his host with very little attention to the laws of civilized society, and, indeed, nearly drove mr. bulstrode backwards into a gilded basket of flowers. but this stalwart john mellish had no intention of being unmannerly or brutal. he pushed aside his friend only as he would have pushed, or tried to push, aside a regiment of soldiers with fixed bayonets, or a lancaster gun, or a raging ocean, or any other impediment that had come between him and aurora. he had her in his arms before she could even cry his name aloud, in her glad surprise; and in another moment she was sobbing on his breast. "my darling! my pet! my own!" he cried, smoothing her dark hair with his broad hand, and blessing her and weeping over her,--"my own love! how could you do this? how could you wrong me so much? my own precious darling! had you learnt to know me no better than _this_, in all our happy married life?" "i came to ask talbot's advice, john," she said, earnestly; "and i mean to abide by it, however cruel it may seem." mr. bulstrode smiled gravely, as he watched these two foolish people. he was very much pleased with his part in the little domestic drama; and he contemplated them with a sublime consciousness of being the author of all this happiness. for they were happy. the poet has said, there are some moments--very rare, very precious, very brief--which stand by themselves, and have their perfect fulness of joy within their own fleeting span, taking nothing from the past, demanding nothing of the future. had john and aurora known that they were to be separated by the breadth of europe for the remainder of their several lives, they would not the less have wept joyful tears at the pure blissfulness of this meeting. "you asked me for my advice, aurora," said talbot, "and i bring it you. let the past die with the man who died the other night. the future is not yours to dispose of; it belongs to your husband, john mellish." having delivered himself of these oracular sentences, mr. bulstrode seated himself at the breakfast-table, and looked into the mysterious and cavernous interior of a raised pie, with such an intent gaze, that it seemed as if he never meant to look out of it. he devoted so many minutes to this serious contemplation, that by the time he looked up again, aurora had become quite calm, while mr. mellish affected an unnatural gaiety, and exhibited no stronger sign of past emotion than a certain inflamed appearance in the region of his eyelids. but this stalwart, devoted, impressionable yorkshireman ate a most extraordinary repast in honour of this reunion. he spread mustard on his muffins. he poured worcester sauce into his coffee, and cream over his devilled cutlets. he showed his gratitude to lucy by loading her plate with comestibles she didn't want. he talked perpetually, and devoured incongruous viands in utter absence of mind. he shook hands with talbot so many times across the breakfast-table, that he exposed the lives or limbs of the whole party to imminent peril from the boiling water in the urn. he threw himself into a paroxysm of coughing, and made himself scarlet in the face, by an injudicious use of cayenne pepper; and he exhibited himself altogether in such an imbecile light that talbot bulstrode was compelled to have recourse to all sorts of expedients to keep the servants out of the room during the progress of that rather noisy and bewildering repast. the sunday papers were brought to the master of the house before breakfast was over; and while john talked, ate, and gesticulated, mr. bulstrode hid himself behind the open leaves of the latest edition of the 'weekly dispatch,' reading a paragraph that appeared in that journal. this paragraph gave a brief account of the murder and the inquest at mellish; and wound up by that rather stereotyped sentence, in which the public are informed that "the local police are giving unremitting attention to the affair, and we think we may venture to affirm that they have obtained a clue which will most probably lead to the early discovery of the guilty party." talbot bulstrode, with the newspaper still before his face, sat for some little time frowning darkly at the page upon which this paragraph appeared. the horrible shadow, whose nature he would not acknowledge even to himself, once more lowered upon the horizon which had just seemed so bright and clear. "i would give a thousand pounds," he thought, "if i could find the murderer of this man." chapter vii. on the watch. very soon after breakfast, upon that happy sabbath of reunion and contentment, john mellish drove aurora to felden woods. it was necessary that archibald floyd should hear the story of the trainer's death from the lips of his own children, before newspaper paragraphs terrified him with some imperfect outline of the truth. the dashing phaeton in which mr. bulstrode was in the habit of driving his wife was brought to the door as the church-bells were calling devout citizens to their morning duties; and at that unseemly hour john mellish smacked his whip, and dashed off in the direction of westminster bridge. talbot bulstrode's horses soon left london behind them, and before long the phaeton was driving upon trim park-like roads, over-shadowed by luxuriant foliage, and bordered here and there by exquisitely-ordered gardens and rustic villas, that glittered whitely in the sunshine. the holy peace of the quiet sabbath was upon every object that they passed, even upon the leaves and flowers, as it seemed to aurora. the birds sang subdued and murmuring harmonies; the light summer breeze scarcely stirred the deep grass, on which the lazy cattle stood to watch the phaeton dash by. ah, how happy aurora was, seated by the side of the man whose love had outlasted every trial! how happy now that the dark wall that had divided them was shattered, and they were indeed united! john mellish was as tender and pitying towards her, as a mother to her forgiving child. he asked no explanations; he sought to know nothing of the past. he was content to believe that she had been foolish and mistaken; and that the mistake and folly of her life would be buried in the grave of the murdered trainer. the lodge-keeper at felden woods exclaimed as he opened the gates to his master's daughter. he was an old man, and he had opened the same gates more than twenty years before, when the banker's dark-eyed bride had first entered her husband's mansion. archibald floyd welcomed his children heartily. how could he ever be otherwise than unutterably happy in the presence of his darling, however often she might come, with whatever eccentricity she might time her visits? mrs. mellish led her father into his study. "i must speak to you alone, papa," she said; "but john knows all i have to say. there are no secrets between us now. there never will be again." aurora had a painful story to tell her father, for she had to confess to him that she had deceived him upon the occasion of her return to felden woods after her parting with james conyers. "i told you a story, father," she said, "when i told you that my husband was dead. but heaven knows, i believed that i should be forgiven the sin of that falsehood, for i thought that it would spare you grief and trouble of mind; and surely anything would have been justifiable that could have done that. i suppose good never can come out of evil, for i have been bitterly punished for my sin. i received a newspaper within a few months of my return, in which there was a paragraph describing the death of james conyers. the paragraph was not correct, for the man had escaped with his life; and when i married john mellish, my first husband was alive." archibald floyd uttered a cry of despair, and half rose from his easy-chair; but aurora knelt upon the ground by his side, with her arms about him, soothing and comforting him. "it is all over now, dear father," she said; "it is all over. the man is dead. i will tell you how he died by-and-by. it is all over. john knows all; and i am to marry him again. talbot bulstrode says that it is necessary, as our marriage was not legal. my own dear father, there is to be no more secrecy, no more unhappiness,--only love, and peace, and union for all of us." she told the old man the story of the trainer's death, dwelling very little upon the particulars, and telling nothing of her own doings that night, except that she had been in the wood at the time of the murder, and that she had heard the pistol fired. it was not a pleasant story, this story of murder and violence and treachery within the boundary of his daughter's home. even amid aurora's assurances that all sorrow was past, that doubt and uncertainty were to vanish away before security and peace, archibald floyd could not control this feeling. he was restless and uneasy in spite of himself. he took john mellish out upon the terrace in the afternoon sunshine, while aurora lay asleep upon one of the sofas in the long drawing-room, and talked to him of the trainer's death as they walked up and down. there was nothing to be elicited from the young squire that threw any light upon the catastrophe, and archibald floyd tried in vain to find any issue out of the darkness of the mystery. "can you imagine any one having any motive for getting rid of this man?" the banker asked. john shrugged his shoulders. he had been asked this question so often before, and had been always obliged to give the same reply. no; he knew of no motive which any one about mellish could be likely to have. "had the man any money about him?" asked mr. floyd. "goodness knows whether he had or not," john answered carelessly; "but i should think it wasn't likely he had much. he had been out of a situation, i believe, for some time before he came to me, and he had spent a good many months in a prussian hospital. i don't suppose he was worth robbing." the banker remembered the two thousand pounds which he had given to his daughter. what had aurora done with that money? had she known of the trainer's existence when she asked for it? and had she wanted it for him? she had not explained this in her hurried story of the murder, and how could he press her upon so painful a subject? why should he not accept her own assurance that all was over, and that nothing remained but peace? archibald floyd and his children spent a tranquil day together; not talking much, for aurora was completely worn out by the fatigue and excitement she had undergone. what had her life been but agitation and terror since the day upon which mr. john pastern's letter had come to mellish to tell her of the existence of her first husband? she slept through the best part of the day, lying upon a sofa, and with john mellish sitting by her side keeping watch over her. she slept while the bells of beckenham church summoned the parishioners to afternoon service, and while her father went to assist in those quiet devotions, and to kneel on his hassock in the old square pew, and pray for the peace of his beloved child. heaven knows how earnestly the old man prayed for his daughter's happiness, and how she filled his thoughts; not distracting him from more sacred thoughts, but blending her image with his worship in alternate prayer and thanksgiving! those who watched him as he sat, with the sunshine on his gray head, listening reverentially to the sermon, little knew how much trouble had been mingled with the great prosperity of his life. they pointed him out respectfully to strangers, as a man whose signature across a slip of paper could make that oblong morsel of beaten rag into an incalculable sum of money; a man who stood upon a golden pinnacle with the rothschilds and montefiores and couttses; who could afford to pay the national debt any morning that the whim seized him; and who was yet a plain man, and simple as a child, as anybody might see, the admiring parishioners would add, as the banker came out of church shaking hands right and left, and nodding to the charity children. i'm afraid the children dropped lower curtsies in the pathway of mr. floyd than even before the vicar of beckenham; for they had learned to associate the image of the banker with buns and tea, with sixpences and oranges, gambols on the smooth lawn at felden woods, and jovial feasts in monster tents to the music of clashing brazen bands, and with even greater treats in the way of excursions to a crystal palace on a hill, an enchanted fairyland of wonders, from which it was delicious to return in the dewy evening, singing hymns of rejoicing that shook the vans in which they travelled. the banker had distributed happiness right and left; but the money which might have paid the national debt had been impotent to save the life of the dark-eyed woman he had loved so tenderly, or to spare him one pang of uneasiness about his idolized child. had not that all-powerful wealth been rather the primary cause of his daughter's trouble, since it had cast her, young, inexperienced, and trusting, a prey into the mercenary hands of a bad man, who would not have cared to persecute her but for the money that had made her such a golden prize for any adventurer who might please to essay the hazard of winning her? with the memory of these things always in his mind, it was scarcely strange that archibald floyd should bear the burden of his riches meekly and fearfully, knowing that, whatever he might be in the stock exchange, he was in the sight of heaven only a feeble old man, very assailable by suffering, very liable to sorrow, and humbly dependent on the mercy of the hand that is alone powerful to spare or to afflict, as seemeth good to him who guides it. aurora awoke out of her long sleep while her father was at church. she awoke to find her husband watching her; the sunday papers lying forgotten on his knee, and his honest eyes fixed on the face he loved. "my own dear john," she said, as she lifted her head from the pillows, supporting herself upon her elbow, and stretching out one hand to mr. mellish, "my own dear boy, how happy we are together now! will anything ever come to break our happiness again, my dear? can heaven be so cruel as to afflict us any more?" the banker's daughter, in the sovereign vitality of her nature, had rebelled against sorrow as a strange and unnatural part of her life. she had demanded happiness almost as a right; she had wondered at her afflictions, and been unable to understand why she should be thus afflicted. there are natures which accept suffering with patient meekness, and acknowledge the justice by which they suffer; but aurora had never done this. her joyous soul had revolted against sorrow, and she arose now in the intense relief which she felt in her release from the bonds that had been so hateful to her, and challenged providence with her claim to be happy for evermore. john mellish thought very seriously upon this matter. he could not forget the night of the murder,--the night upon which he had sat alone in his wife's chamber pondering upon his unworthiness. "do you think we deserve to be happy, lolly?" he said presently. "don't mistake me, my darling. i know that you're the best and brightest of living creatures,--tender-hearted, loving, generous, and true. but do you think we take life quite seriously enough, lolly dear? i'm sometimes afraid that we're too much like the careless children in the pretty childish allegory, who played about amongst the flowers on the smooth grass in the beautiful garden, until it was too late to set out upon the long journey on the dark road which would have led them to paradise. what shall we do, my darling, to deserve the blessings god has given us so freely; the blessings of youth and strength, and love and wealth? what shall we do, dear? i don't want to turn mellish into a philanstery exactly, nor to give up my racing-stud, if i can help it," john said reflectively; "but i want to do something, lolly, to prove that i am grateful to providence. shall we build a lot of schools, or a church, or alms-houses, or something of that sort? lofthouse would like me to put up a painted window in mellish church, and a new pulpit with a patent sounding-board; but i can't see that painted windows and sounding-boards do much good in a general way. i want to do something, aurora, to prove my gratitude to the providence that has given me the loveliest and best of women for my true-hearted wife." the banker's daughter smiled almost mournfully upon her devoted husband. "have i been such a blessing to you, john," she said, "that you should be grateful for me? have i not brought you far more sorrow than happiness, my poor dear?" "no," shouted mr. mellish emphatically. "the sorrow you have brought me has been nothing to the joy i have felt in your love. my own dearest girl, to be sitting here by your side to-day, and to hear you tell me that you love me, is enough happiness to set against all the trouble of mind that i have endured since the man that is dead came to mellish." i hope my poor john mellish will be forgiven if he talked a great deal of nonsense to the wife he loved. he had been her lover from the first moment in which he had seen her, darkly beautiful, upon the gusty brighton parade; and he was her lover still. no shadow of contempt had ever grown out of his familiarity with her. and indeed i am disposed to take objection to that old proverb; or at least to believe that contempt is only engendered of familiarity with things which are in themselves base and spurious. the priest, who is familiar with the altar, learns no contempt for its sacred images; but it is rather the ignorant neophyte who sneers and sniggers at things which he cannot understand. the artist becomes only more reverent as toil and study make him more familiar with his art; its eternal sublimity grows upon him, and he worships the far-away goddess of perfection as humbly when he drops his brush or his chisel after a life of patient labour, as he did when first he ground colour or pointed rough blocks of marble for his master. and i cannot believe that a good man's respect for the woman he loves can be lessened by that sweet and every-day familiarity in which a hundred household virtues and gentle beauties--never dreamed of in the ball-rooms where he first danced with an unknown idol in gauzy robes and glimmering jewels--grow upon him, until he confesses that the wife of ten years' standing is even ten times dearer than the bride of a week's honeymoon. archibald floyd came back from church, and found his two children sitting side by side in one of the broad windows, watching for his arrival, and whispering together like lovers, as i have said they were. they dined pleasantly together later in the evening; and a little after dark the phaeton was brought round to the terrace-steps, and aurora kissed her father as she wished him good night. "you will come up to town, and be present at the marriage, sir, i know," john whispered, as he took his father-in-law's hand. "talbot bulstrode will arrange all about it. it is to take place at some out-of-the-way little church in the city. nobody will be any the wiser, and aurora and i will go back to mellish as quietly as possible. there's only lofthouse and hayward know the secret of the certificate, and they----" john mellish stopped suddenly. he remembered mrs. powell's parting sting. _she_ knew the secret. but how could she have come by that knowledge? it was impossible that either lofthouse or hayward could have told her. they were both honourable men, and they had pledged themselves to be silent. archibald floyd did not observe his son-in-law's embarrassment; and the phaeton drove away, leaving the old man standing on the terrace-steps looking after his daughter. "i must shut up this place," he thought, "and go to mellish to finish my days. i cannot endure these separations; i cannot bear this suspense. it is a pitiful sham, my keeping house, and living in all this dreary grandeur. i'll shut up the place, and ask my daughter to give me a quiet corner in her yorkshire home, and a grave in the parish churchyard." the lodge-keeper turned out of his comfortable gothic habitation to open the clanking iron gates for the phaeton; but john drew up his horses before they dashed into the road, for he saw that the man wanted to speak to him. "what is it, forbes?" he asked. "oh, it's nothing particular, sir," the man said, "and perhaps i oughtn't to trouble you about it; but did you expect any one down to-day, sir?" "expect any one here?--no!" exclaimed john. "there's been a person inquirin', sir, this afternoon,--two persons, i may say, in a shay-cart, but one of 'em asked particular if you was here, sir, and if mrs. mellish was here; and when i said yes, you was, the gent says it wasn't worth troublin' you about--the business as he'd come upon--and as he'd call another time. and he asked me what time you'd be likely to be leavin' the woods; and i said i made no doubt you'd stay to dinner up at the house. so he says, 'all right,' and drives off." "he left no message, then?" "no, sir. he said nothin' more than what i've told you." "then his business could have been of no great importance, forbes," answered john, laughing. "so we needn't worry our heads about him. good-night." mr. mellish dropped a five-shilling piece into the lodge-keeper's hand, gave talbot's horses their heads, and the phaeton rolled off london-wards over the crisp gravel of the well-kept beckenham roads. "who could the man have been?" aurora asked, as they left the gates. "goodness knows, my dear," john answered carelessly. "somebody on racing business, perhaps." racing business seems to be in itself such a mysterious business that it is no strange thing for mysterious people to be always turning up in relation to it. aurora, therefore, was content to accept this explanation; but not without some degree of wonderment. "i can't understand the man coming to felden after you, john," she said. "how could he know that you were to be there to-day?" "ah, how indeed, lolly!" returned mr. mellish. "he chanced it, i suppose. a sharp customer, no doubt; wants to sell a horse, i dare say, and heard i didn't mind giving a good price for a good thing." mr. mellish might have gone even further than this, for there were many _horsey_ gentlemen in his neighbourhood, past masters in the art they practised, who were wont to say that the young squire, judiciously manipulated, might be induced to give a remarkably good price for a very bad thing; and there were many broken-down, slim-legged horses in the mellish stables that bore witness to the same fact. those needy _chevaliers d'esprit_ who think that burke's landed gentry were created by providence and endowed with the goods of this world for their especial benefit, just as pigeons are made plump and nice-eating for the delectation of hawks, drove a wholesale trade upon the young man's frank simplicity and hearty belief in his fellow-creatures. i think it is eliza cook who says, "it is better to trust and be deceived, than own the mean, poor spirit that betrays;" and if there is any happiness in being "done," poor john enjoyed that fleeting delight pretty frequently. there was a turn in the road between beckenham and norwood; and as the phaeton swept round, a chaise or dog-cart, a shabby vehicle enough, with a rakish-looking horse, drove close up, and the man who was driving asked the squire to put him in the nearest way to london. the vehicle had been behind them all the way from felden, but had kept at a very respectful distance until now. "do you want to get to the city or the west end?" john asked. "the west end." "then you can't do better than follow us," answered mr. mellish; "the road's clean enough, and your horse seems a good one to go. you can keep us in sight, i suppose?" "yes, sir, and thank ye." "all right, then." talbot bulstrode's thorough-breds dashed off, but the rakish-looking horse kept his ground behind them. he had something of the insolent, off-hand assurance of a butcher's horse, accustomed to whirl a bare-headed blue-coated master through the sharp morning air. "i was right, lolly," mr. mellish said, as he left the dog-cart behind. "how do you mean, dear?" asked aurora. "the man who spoke to us just now is the man who has been inquiring for me at felden. he's a yorkshireman." "a yorkshireman!" "yes; didn't you hear the north-country twang?" no: she had not listened to the man, nor heeded him. how should she think of anything but her new-born happiness--the new-born confidence between herself and the husband she loved? do not think her hard-hearted or cruel if she forgot that it was the death of a fellow-creature, a sinful man stricken down in the prime of youth and health, that had given her this welcome release. she had suffered so much, that the release could not be otherwise than welcome, let it come how it might. her nature, frank and open as the day, had been dwarfed and crippled by the secret that had blighted her life. can it be wondered, then, that she rejoiced now that all need of secrecy was over, and this generous spirit might expand as it pleased? it was past ten when the phaeton turned into halfmoon street. the men in the dog-cart had followed john's directions to the letter; for it was only in piccadilly that mr. mellish had lost sight of them amongst other vehicles travelling backwards and forwards on the lamp-lit thoroughfare. talbot and lucy received their visitors in one of the pretty little drawing-rooms. the young husband and wife had spent a quiet day together; going to church in the morning and afternoon, dining alone, and sitting in the twilight, talking happily and confidentially. mr. bulstrode was no sabbath-breaker; and john mellish had reason to consider himself a peculiarly privileged person, inasmuch as the thorough-breds had been permitted to leave their stables for his service; to say nothing of the groom, who had been absent from his hard seat in the servants' pew at a fashionable chapel, in order that he might accompany john and aurora to felden. the little party sat up rather late, aurora and lucy talking affectionately together, side by side, upon a sofa in the shadow of the room, while the two men lounged in the open window. john told his host the history of the day, and in doing so casually mentioned the man who had asked him the way to london. strange to say, talbot bulstrode seemed especially interested in this part of the story. he asked several questions about the men. he asked what they were like; what was said by either of them; and made many other inquiries, which seemed equally trivial. "then they followed you into town, john?" he said finally. "yes; i only lost sight of them in piccadilly, five minutes before i turned the corner of the street." "do you think they had any motive in following you?" asked talbot. "well, i fancy so; they're on the look-out for information, i expect. the man who spoke to me looked something like a tout. i've heard that lord stamford's rather anxious about my west-australian colt, the pork butcher. perhaps his people have set these men to work to find out if i'm going to run him in the leger." talbot bulstrode smiled bitterly, almost mournfully, at the vanity of horse-flesh. it was painful to see this light-hearted young squire looking in such ignorant hopefulness towards an horizon upon which graver and more thoughtful men could see a dreadful shadow lowering. mr. bulstrode was standing close to the balcony; he stepped out amongst the china boxes of mignonette, and looked down into the quiet street. a man was leaning against a lamp-post, some few paces from talbot's house, smoking a cigar, and with his face turned towards the balcony. he finished his cigar deliberately, threw the end into the road, and walked away while talbot kept watch; but mr. bulstrode did not leave his post of observation, and about a quarter of an hour afterwards he saw the same man lounging slowly along the pavement upon the other side of the street. john, who sat within the shadow of the window-curtains, lolling against them, and creasing their delicate folds with the heavy pressure of his broad back, was utterly unconscious of all this. early the next morning mr. bulstrode and mr. mellish took a hansom cab, and rattled down to doctors' commons, where, for the second time in his life, john gave himself up to be fought for by white-aproned ecclesiastical touts, and eventually obtained the archbishop of canterbury's gracious sanction of his marriage with aurora, widow of james conyers, only daughter of archibald floyd, banker. from doctors' commons the two gentlemen drove to a certain quiet, out-of-the-way church within the sound of bow bells, but so completely hidden amongst piles of warehouses, top-heavy chimneys, sloping roofs, and other eccentricities of masonry, that any unhappy bridegroom, who had appointed to be married there, was likely enough to spend the whole of the wedding-day in futile endeavours to find the church-door. here john discovered a mouldy clerk, who was fetched from some habitation in the neighbourhood with considerable difficulty, by a boy, who volunteered to accomplish anything under heaven for a certain copper consideration; and to this clerk mr. mellish gave notice of a marriage which was to take place upon the following day, by special licence. "i'll take my second marriage-certificate back with me," john said, as he left the church; "and then i should like to see who'll dare to look me in the face, and tell me that my darling is not my own lawfully-wedded wife." he was thinking of mrs. powell as he said this. he was thinking of the pale, spiteful eyes that had looked at him, and of the woman's tongue that had stabbed him with all a little nature's great capacity for hate. he would be able to defy her now; he would be able to defy every creature in the world who dared to breathe a syllable against his beloved wife. early the next morning the marriage took place. archibald floyd, talbot bulstrode, and lucy were the only witnesses; that is to say, the only witnesses with the exception of the clerk and the pew-opener, and a couple of men who lounged into the church when the ceremony was half over, and slouched about one of the side aisles, looking at the monuments, and talking to each other in whispers, until the parson took off his surplice, and john came out of the vestry with his wife upon his arm. mr. and mrs. mellish did not return to halfmoon street; they drove straight to the great northern station, whence they started by the afternoon express for doncaster. john was anxious to return; for remember that he had left his household under very peculiar circumstances, and strange reports might have arisen in his absence. the young squire would perhaps have scarcely thought of this, had not the idea been suggested to him by talbot bulstrode, who particularly urged upon him the expediency of returning immediately. "go back, john," said mr. bulstrode, "without an hour's unnecessary delay. if by any chance there should be some further disturbance about this murder, it will be much better for you, and aurora too, to be on the spot. i will come down to mellish myself in a day or two, and will bring lucy with me, if you will allow me." "allow you, my dear talbot!" "i _will_ come, then. good-bye, and god bless you! take care of your wife." chapter viii. captain prodder goes back to doncaster. mr. samuel prodder, returning to london after having played his insignificant part in the tragedy at mellish park, found that city singularly dull and gloomy. he put up at some dismal boarding-house, situated amid a mazy labyrinth of brick and mortar between the tower and wapping, and having relations with another boarding-house in liverpool. he took up his abode at this place, in which he was known and respected. he drank rum-and-water, and played cribbage with other seamen, made after the same pattern as himself. he even went to an east-end theatre upon the saturday night after the murder, and sat out the representation of a nautical drama, which he would have been glad to have believed in, had it not promulgated such wild theories in the science of navigation, and exhibited such extraordinary experiments in the manoeuvring of the man-of-war, upon which the action of the play took place, as to cause the captain's hair to stand on end in the intensity of his wonder. the things people did upon that ship curdled samuel prodder's blood, as he sat in the lonely grandeur of the eighteenpenny boxes. it was quite a common thing for them to walk unhesitatingly through the bulwarks and disappear in what ought to have been the sea. the extent of browbeating and humiliation borne by the captain of that noble vessel; the amount of authority exercised by a sailor with loose legs; the agonies of sea-sickness, represented by a comic countryman, who had no particular business on board the gallant bark; the proportion of hornpipe-dancing and nautical ballad-singing gone through, as compared to the work that was done,--all combined to impress poor samuel with such a novel view of her majesty's naval service, that he was very glad when the captain who had been browbeaten suddenly repented of all his sins,--not without a sharp reminder from the prompter, who informed the _dramatis personã¦,_ in a confidential voice that it was _parst_ twelve, and they'd better cut it short,--joined the hands of the contumacious sailor and a young lady in white muslin, and begged them to be 'appy. it was in vain that the captain sought distraction from the one idea upon which he had perpetually brooded since the night of his visit to mellish park. he would be wanted in yorkshire to tell what he knew of the dark history of that fatal night. he would be called upon to declare at what hour he had entered the wood, whom he had met there, what he had seen and heard there. they would extort from him that which he would have died rather than tell. they would cross-examine, and bewilder, and torment him, until he told them everything,--until he repeated, syllable by syllable, the passionate words that had been said,--until he told them how, within a quarter of an hour of the firing of the pistol, he had been the witness of a desperate scene between his niece and the murdered man,--a scene in which concentrated hate, vengeful fury, illimitable disdain and detestation had been expressed by her--by her alone:--the man had been calm and moderate enough. it was she who had been angry; it was she who had given loud utterance to her hate. now, by reason of one of those strange inconsistencies common to weak human nature, the captain, though possessed night and day by a blind terror of being suddenly pounced upon by the minions of the law, and compelled to betray his niece's secret, could not rest in his safe retreat amid the labyrinths of wapping, but must needs pine to return to the scene of the murder. he wanted to know the result of the inquest. the sunday papers gave a very meagre account, only hinting darkly at suspected parties. he wanted to ascertain for himself what had happened at the inquest, and whether his absence had given rise to suspicion. he wanted to see his niece again,--to see her in the daylight, undisturbed by passion. he wanted to see this beautiful tigress in her calmer moods, if she ever had any calmer moods. heaven knows the simple merchant-captain was well-nigh distracted as he thought of his sister eliza's child, and the awful circumstances of his first and only meeting with her. was she--that which he feared people might be led to think her, if they heard the story of that scene in the wood? no, no, no! she was his sister's child,--the child of that merry, impetuous little girl, who had worn a pinafore and played hop-scotch. he remembered his sister flying into a rage with one tommy barnes for unfair practices in that very game, and upbraiding him almost as passionately as aurora had upbraided the dead man. but if tommy barnes had been found strangled by a skipping-rope or shot dead from a pea-shooter in the next street a quarter of an hour afterwards, would eliza's brother have thought that she must needs be guilty of the boy's murder? the captain had gone so far as to reason thus, in his trouble of mind. his sister eliza's child would be likely to be passionate and impetuous; but his sister eliza's child would be a generous, warm-hearted creature, incapable of any cruelty in either thought or deed. he remembered his sister eliza boxing his ears on the occasion of his gouging out the eyes of her wax-doll; but he remembered the same dark-eyed child sobbing piteously at the spectacle of a lamb that a heartless butcher was dragging to the slaughter-house. but the more seriously captain prodder revolved this question in his mind, the more decidedly his inclination pointed to doncaster; and early upon that very morning on which the quiet marriage had taken place in the obscure city church, he repaired to a magnificent israelitish temple of fashion in the minories, and there ordered a suit of such clothes as were most affected by elegant landsmen. the israelitish salesman recommended something light and lively in the fancy-check line; and mr. prodder, submitting to that authority as beyond all question, invested himself in a suit which he had contemplated solemnly athwart a vast expanse of plate-glass, before entering the temple of the graces. it was "our aristocratic tourist," at seventy-seven shillings and sixpence, and was made of a fleecy and rather powdery-looking cloth; in which the hues of baked and unbaked bricks predominated over a more delicate hearthstone tint,--which latter the shopman declared to be a colour that west-end tailors had vainly striven to emulate. the captain, dressed in "our aristocratic tourist," which suit was of the ultra cut-away and peg-toppy order, and with his sleeves and trousers inflated by any chance summer's breeze, had perhaps more of the appearance of a tombola than is quite in accordance with a strictly artistic view of the human figure. in his desire to make himself utterly irrecognizable as the seafaring man who had carried the tidings of the murder to mellish park, the captain had tortured himself by substituting a tight circular collar and a wisp of purple ribbon for the honest half-yard of snowy linen which it had been his habit to wear turned over the loose collar of his blue coat. he suffered acute agonies from this modern device, but he bore them bravely; and he went straight from the tailor's to the great northern railway station, where he took his ticket for doncaster. he meant to visit that town as an aristocratic tourist; he would keep himself aloof from the neighbourhood of mellish park, but he would be sure to hear the result of the inquest, and he would be able to ascertain for himself whether any trouble had come upon his sister's child. the sea-captain did not travel by that express which carried mr. and mrs. mellish to doncaster, but by an earlier and a slower train, which lumbered quietly along the road, conveying inferior persons, to whom time was not measured by a golden standard, and who smoked, and slept, and ate, and drank resignedly enough, through the eight or nine hours' journey. it was dusk when samuel prodder reached the quiet racing-town from which he had fled away in the dead of the night so short a time before. he left the station, and made his way to the market-place, and from the market-place he struck into a narrow lane that led him to an obscure street upon the outskirts of the town. he had a great terror of being led by some unhappy accident into the neighbourhood of the reindeer, lest he should be recognized by some hanger-on of that hotel. half-way between the beginning of the straggling street and the point at which it dwindled and shrank away into a country lane, the captain found a little public-house called the crooked rabbit,--such an obscure and out-of-the-way place of entertainment that poor samuel thought himself safe in seeking for rest and refreshment within its dingy walls. there was a framed-and-glazed legend of "good beds" hanging behind an opaque window-pane,--beds for which the landlord of the crooked rabbit was in the habit of asking and receiving almost fabulous prices during the great leger week. but there seemed little enough doing at the humble tavern just now, and captain prodder walked boldly in, ordered a steak and a pint of ale, with a glass of rum-and-water, hot, to follow, at the bar, and engaged one of the good beds for his accommodation. the landlord, who was a fat man, lounged with his back against the bar reading the sporting news in the 'manchester guardian;' and it was the landlady who took mr. prodder's orders and showed him the way into an awkwardly-shaped parlour, which was much below the rest of the house, and into which the uninitiated visitor was apt to precipitate himself head foremost, as into a well or pit. there were several small mahogany tables in this room, all adorned with sticky arabesques, formed by the wet impressions of the bottom rims of pewter pots; there were so many spittoons that it was almost impossible to walk from one end of the room to the other without taking unintentional foot-baths of sawdust; there was an old bagatelle-table, the cloth of which had changed from green to dingy yellow, and was frayed and tattered like a poor man's coat; and there was a low window, the sill of which was almost on a level with the pavement of the street. the merchant-captain threw off his hat, loosened the slip of ribbon and the torturing circular collar supplied him by the israelitish outfitter, and cast himself into a shining mahogany arm-chair close to this window. the lower panes were shrouded by a crimson curtain, and he lifted this very cautiously and peered for a few moments into the street. it was lonely enough and quiet enough in the dusky summer's evening. here and there lights twinkled in a shop window, and upon one threshold a man stood talking to his neighbour. with one thought always paramount in his mind, it is scarcely strange that samuel prodder should fancy these people must necessarily be talking of the murder. the landlady brought the captain the steak he had ordered, and the tired traveller seated himself at one of the tables and discussed his simple meal. he had eaten nothing since seven o'clock that morning, and he made very short work of the three-quarters of a pound of meat that had been cooked for him. he finished his beer, drank his rum-and-water, smoked a pipe, and then, as he had the room still to himself, he made an impromptu couch of windsor chairs arranged in a row, and, in his own _parlance_, turned-in upon this rough hammock to take a brief stretch. he might have set his mind at rest, perhaps, before this, had he chosen. he could have questioned the landlady about the murder at mellish park; she was likely to know as much as any one else he might meet at the crooked rabbit. but he had refrained from doing this because he did not wish to draw attention to himself in any way, as a person in the smallest degree interested in the murder. how did he know what inquiries had possibly been made for the missing witness? there was perhaps some enormous reward offered for his apprehension, and a word or a look might betray him to the greedy eyes of those upon the watch to obtain it. remember that this broad-shouldered seafaring man was as ignorant as a child of all things beyond the deck of his own vessel, and the watery high-roads he had been wont to navigate. life along shore was a solemn mystery to him,--the law of the british dominions a complication of inscrutable enigmas, only to be spoken of and thought of in a spirit of reverence and wonder. if anybody had told him that he was likely to be seized upon as an accessory before the fact, and hung out of hand for his passive part in the mellish park catastrophe, he would have believed them implicitly. how did he know how many acts of parliament his conduct in leaving doncaster without giving his evidence might come under? it might be high treason, lese-majesty,--anything in the world that is unpronounceable and awful,--for aught this simple sailor knew to the contrary. but in all this it was not his own safety that captain prodder thought of. that was of very little moment to this light-hearted, easy-going sailor. he had perilled his life too often on the high seas to set any exaggerated value upon it ashore. if they chose to hang an innocent man, they must do their worst; it would be their mistake, not his; and he had a simple seaman-like faith, rather vague, perhaps, and not very reduceable to anything like thirty-nine articles, which told him there were sweet little cherubs sitting up aloft who would take good care that any such sublunary mistake should be rectified in a certain supernal log-book, upon whose pages samuel prodder hoped to find himself set down as an honest and active sailor, always humbly obedient to the signals of his commander. it was for his niece's sake, then, that the sailor dreaded any discovery of his whereabouts; and it was for her sake that he resolved upon exercising the greatest degree of caution of which his simple nature was capable. "i won't ask a single question," he thought; "there's sure to be a pack of lubbers dropping in here, by-and-by, and i shall hear 'em talking about the business as likely as not. these country folks would have nothing to talk about if they didn't overhaul the ship's books of their betters." the captain slept soundly for upwards of an hour, and was awakened at the end of that time by the sound of voices in the room, and the fumes of tobacco. the gas was flaring high in the low-roofed parlour when he opened his eyes, and at first he could scarcely distinguish the occupants of the room for the blinding glare of light. "i won't get up," he thought; "i'll sham asleep for a bit, and see whether they happen to talk about the business." there were only three men in the room. one of them was the landlord, whom samuel prodder had seen reading in the bar; and the other two were shabby-looking men, with by no means too respectable a stamp either upon their persons or their manners. one of them wore a velveteen cut-away coat with big brass buttons, knee-breeches, blue stockings, and highlows. the other was a pale-faced man, with mutton-chop whiskers, and dressed in a shabby-genteel costume, that gave indication of general vagabondage rather than of any particular occupation. they were talking of horses when captain prodder awoke, and the sailor lay for some time listening to a jargon that was utterly unintelligible to him. the men talked of lord zetland's lot, of lord glasgow's lot, and the leger and the cup, and made offers to bet with each other, and quarrelled about the terms, and never came to an agreement, in a manner that was utterly bewildering to poor samuel; but he waited patiently, still feigning to be asleep, and not in any way disturbed by the men, who did not condescend to take any notice of him. "they'll talk of the other business presently," he thought; "they're safe to talk of it." mr. prodder was right. after discussing the conflicting merits of half the horses in the racing calendar, the three men abandoned the fascinating subject; and the landlord re-entering the room after having left it to fetch a fresh supply of beer for his guests, asked if either of them had heard if anything new had turned up about that business at mellish park. "there's a letter in to-day's 'guardian,'" he added, before receiving any reply to his question, "and a pretty strong one. it tries to fix the murder upon some one in the house, but it don't exactly name the party. it wouldn't be safe to do that yet awhile, i suppose." upon the request of the two men, the landlord of the crooked rabbit read the letter in the manchester daily paper. it was a very clever letter, and a spirited one, giving a synopsis of the proceedings at the inquest, and commenting very severely upon the manner in which that investigation had been conducted. mr. prodder quailed until the windsor chairs trembled beneath him as the landlord read one passage, in which it was remarked that the stranger who carried the news of the murder to the house of the victim's employer, the man who had heard the report of the pistol, and had been chiefly instrumental in the finding of the body, had not been forthcoming at the inquest. "he had disappeared mysteriously and abruptly, and no efforts were made to find him," wrote the correspondent of the 'guardian.' "what assurance can be given for the safety of any man's life when such a crime as the mellish park murder is investigated in this loose and indifferent manner? the catastrophe occurred within the boundary of the park fence. let it be discovered whether any person in the mellish household had a motive for the destruction of james conyers. the man was a stranger to the neighbourhood. he was not likely, therefore, to have made enemies outside the boundary of his employer's estate, but he may have had some secret foe within that limit. who was he? where did he come from? what were his antecedents and associations? let each one of these questions be fully sifted, let a cordon be drawn round the house, and every creature living in it be held under the surveillance of the law until patient investigation has done its work, and such evidence has been collected as must lead to the detection of the guilty person." to this effect was the letter which the landlord read in a loud and didactic manner, that was very imposing, though not without a few stumbles over some hard words, and a good deal of slapdash jumping at others. samuel prodder could make very little of the composition, except that it was perfectly clear he had been missed at the inquest, and his absence commented upon. the landlord and the shabby-genteel man talked long and discursively upon the matter; the man in the velveteen coat, who was evidently a thorough-bred cockney and only newly arrived in doncaster, required to be told the whole story before he was upon a footing with the other two. he was very quiet, and generally spoke between his teeth, rarely taking the unnecessary trouble of removing his short clay-pipe from his mouth, except when it required refilling. he listened to the story of the murder very intently, keeping one eye upon the speaker and the other on his pipe, and nodding approvingly now and then in the course of the narrative. he took his pipe from his mouth when the story was finished, and filled it from an india-rubber pouch, which had to be turned inside-out in some mysterious manner before the tobacco could be extricated from it. while he was packing the loose fragments of shag or bird's-eye neatly into the bowl of the pipe with his stumpy little finger, he said, with supreme carelessness-"i know'd jim conyers." "did you now?" exclaimed the landlord, opening his eyes very wide. "i know'd him," repeated the man, "as intimate as i know'd my own mother; and when i read of the murder in the newspaper last sunday, you might have knocked me down with a feather. 'jim's got it at last,' i said; for he was one of them coves that goes through the world cock-a-doodling over other people to sich a extent, that when they _do_ drop in for it, there's not many particular sorry for 'em. he was one of your selfish chaps, this here; and when a chap goes through this life makin' it his leadin' principle to care about nobody, he mustn't be surprised if it ends by nobody carin' for him. yes, i know'd jim conyers," added the man, slowly and thoughtfully, "and i know'd him under rather pecooliar circumstances." the landlord and the other man pricked up their ears at this point of the conversation. the trainer at mellish park had, as we know, risen to popularity from the hour in which he had fallen upon the dewy turf in the wood, shot through the heart. "if there wasn't any particklar objections," the landlord of the crooked rabbit said, presently, "i should oncommonly like to hear anything you've got to tell about the poor chap. there's a deal of interest took about the matter in doncaster, and my customers have scarcely talked of anything else since the inquest." the man in the velveteen coat rubbed his chin and smoked his pipe reflectively. he was evidently not a very communicative man; but it was also evident that he was rather gratified by the distinction of his position in the little public-house parlour. this was no other than mr. matthew harrison, the dog-fancier; aurora's pensioner, the man who had traded upon her secret, and made himself the last link between her and the low-born husband she had abandoned. samuel prodder lifted himself from the windsor chairs at this juncture. he was too much interested in the conversation to be able to simulate sleep any longer. he got up, stretched his legs and arms, made elaborate show of having just awakened from a profound and refreshing slumber, and asked the landlord of the crooked rabbit to mix him another glass of that pineapple-rum grog. the captain lighted his pipe while his host departed upon this errand. the seaman glanced rather inquisitively at mr. harrison; but he was fain to wait until the conversation took its own course, and offered him a safe opportunity of asking a few questions. "the pecooliar circumstances under which i know'd james conyers," pursued the dog-fancier, after having taken his own time and smoked out half a pipeful of tobacco, to the acute aggravation of his auditory, "was a woman,--and a stunner she was, too; one of your regular spitfires, that'll knock you into the middle of next week if you so much as asks her how she does in a manner she don't approve of. she was a woman, she was, and a handsome one, too; but she was more than a match for james, with all his brass. why, i've seen her great black eyes flash fire upon him," said mr. harrison, looking dreamily before him, as if he could even at that moment see the flashing eyes of which he spoke; "i've seen her look at him, as if she'd wither him up from off the ground he trod upon, with that contempt she felt for him." samuel prodder grew strangely uneasy as he listened to this man's talk of flashing black eyes and angry looks directed at james conyers. had he not seen his niece's shining orbs flame fire upon the dead man only a quarter of an hour before he received his death-wound? only so long--heaven help that wretched girl!--only so long before the man for whom she had expressed unmitigated hate had fallen by the hand of an unknown murderer. "she must have been a tartar, this young woman of yours," the landlord observed to mr. harrison. "she was a tartar," answered the dog-fancier: "but she was the right sort, too, for all that; and what's more, she was a kind friend to me. there's never a quarter-day goes by that i don't have cause to say so." he poured out a fresh glass of beer as he spoke, and tossed the liquor down his capacious throat with the muttered sentiment, "here's towards her." another man had entered the room while mr. prodder had sat smoking his pipe and drinking his rum-and-water, a hump-backed, white-faced man, who sneaked into the public-house parlour as if he had no right to be there, and seated himself noiselessly at one of the tables. samuel prodder remembered this man. he had seen him through the window in the lighted parlour of the north lodge when the body of james conyers had been carried into the cottage. it was not likely, however, that the man had seen the captain. "why, if it isn't steeve hargraves from the park!" exclaimed the landlord, as he looked round and recognized the "softy"; "he'll be able to tell plenty, i dare say. we've been talking of the murder, steeve," he added, in a conciliatory manner. mr. hargraves rubbed his clumsy hands about his head, and looked furtively, yet searchingly, at each member of the little assembly. "ay, sure," he said; "folks don't seem to me to talk about owght else. it was bad enoogh oop at the park; but it seems worse in doncaster." "are you stayin' up town, steeve?" asked the landlord, who seemed to be upon pretty intimate terms with the late hanger-on of mellish park. "yes, i'm stayin' oop town for a bit; i've been out of place since the business oop there; you know how i was turned out of the house that had sheltered me ever since i was a boy, and you know who did it. never mind that; i'm out o' place now, but you may draw me a mug of ale; i've money enough for that." samuel prodder looked at the "softy" with considerable interest. he had played a small part in the great catastrophe, yet it was scarcely likely that he should be able to throw any light upon the mystery. what was he but a poor half-witted hanger-on of the murdered man, who had lost all by his patron's untimely death? the "softy" drank his beer, and sat, silent, ungainly, and disagreeable to look upon, amongst the other men. "there's a reg'lar stir in the manchester papers about this murder, steeve," the landlord said, by way of opening a conversation; "it don't seem to me as if the business was goin' to be let drop over-quietly. there'll be a second inquest, i reckon, or a examination, or a memorial to the secretary of state, or summat o' that sort, before long." the "softy's" face, expressionless almost always, expressed nothing now but stolid indifference; the stupid indifference of a half-witted ignoramus, to whose impenetrable intellect even the murder of his own master was a far-away and obscure event, not powerful enough to awaken any effort of attention. "yes; i'll lay there'll be a stir about it before long," the landlord continued. "the papers put it down very strong that the murder must have been done by some one in the house; by some one as had more knowledge of the man, and more reason to be angry against him, than strangers could have. now you, hargraves, were living at the place; you must have seen and heard things that other people haven't had the opportunity to hear. what do _you_ think about it?" mr. hargraves scratched his head reflectively. "the papers are cleverer nor me," he said at last; "it wouldn't do for a poor fond chap like me to go agen such as them. i think what they think. i think it was some one about the pleace did it; some one that had good reason to be spiteful again him that's dead." an imperceptible shudder passed over the "softy's" frame as he alluded to the murdered man. it was strange with what gusto the other three men discussed the ghastly subject; returning to it persistently in spite of every interruption, and in a manner licking their lips over its gloomiest details. it was surely more strange that they should do this, than that stephen hargraves should exhibit some reluctance to talk freely upon the dismal topic. "and who do you think had cause to be spiteful agen him, steeve?" asked the landlord. "had him and mr. mellish fell out about the management of the stable?" "him and _mr._ mellish had never had an angry word pass between 'em, as i've heerd of," answered the "softy." he laid such a singular emphasis upon the word _mr._ that the three men looked at him wonderingly, and captain prodder took his pipe from his mouth and grasped the back of a neighbouring chair as firmly as if he had entertained serious thoughts of flinging that trifle of furniture at the "softy's" head. "who else could it have been, then, as had a spite against the man?" asked some one. samuel prodder scarcely knew who it was who spoke, for his attention was concentrated upon stephen hargraves; and he never once removed his gaze from the white face, and dull, blinking eyes. "who was it that went to meet him late at night in the north lodge?" whispered the "softy." "who was it that couldn't find words that was bad enough for him, or looks that was angry enough for him? who was it that wrote him a letter,--i've got it, and i mean to keep it too,--askin' of him to be in the wood at such-and-such a time upon the very night of the murder? who was it that met him there in the dark,--as others could tell as well as me? who was it that did this?" no one answered. the men looked at each other and at the "softy" with open mouths, but said nothing. samuel prodder grasped the topmost bar of the wooden chair still more tightly, and his broad bosom rose and fell beneath his tourist waistcoat like a raging sea; but he sat in the shadow of the queerly-shaped room, and no one noticed him. "who was it that ran away from her own home and hid herself, after the inquest?" whispered the "softy." "who was it that was afraid to stop in her own house, but must run away to london without leaving word where she was gone for anybody? who was it that was seen upon the mornin' before the murder, meddlin' with her husband's guns and pistols, and was seen by more than me, as them that saw her will testify when the time comes? who was this?" again there was no answer. the raging sea laboured still more heavily under captain prodder's waistcoat, and his grasp tightened, if it could tighten, on the rail of the chair; but he uttered no word. there was more to come, perhaps, yet; and he might want every chair in the room as instruments with which to appease his vengeance. "you was talkin', when i just came in, a while ago, of a young woman in connection with mr. james conyers, sir," said the "softy," turning to matthew harrison; "a black-eyed woman, you said; might she have been his wife?" the dog-fancier started, and deliberated for a few moments before he answered. "well, in a manner of speaking, she was his wife," he said at last, rather reluctantly. "she was a bit above him, loike--wasn't she?" asked the "softy." "she had more money than she knew what to do with--eh?" the dog-fancier stared at the questioner. "you know who she was, i suppose?" he said suspiciously. "i think i do," whispered stephen hargraves. "she was the daughter of mr. floyd, the rich banker oop in london; and she married our squire while her first husband was alive; and she wrote a letter to him that's dead, askin' of him to meet her upon the night of the murder." captain prodder flung aside the chair. it was too poor a weapon with which to wreak his wrath; and with one bound he sprang upon the "softy," seizing the astonished wretch by the throat, and overturning a table, with a heap of crashing glasses and pewter pots, that rolled away into the corners of the room. "it's a lie!" roared the sailor; "you foul-mouthed hound! you know that it's a lie! give me something," cried captain prodder; "give me something, somebody, and give it quick, that i may pound this man into a mash as soft as a soaked ship's biscuit; for if i use my fists to him i shall murder him, as sure as i stand here. it's my sister eliza's child you want to slander, is it? you'd better have kept your mouth shut while you was in her own uncle's company. i meant to have kep' quiet here," cried the captain, with a vague recollection that he had betrayed himself and his purpose; "but was i to keep quiet and hear lies told of my own niece? take care," he added, shaking the "softy," till mr. hargraves's teeth chattered in his head, "or i'll knock those crooked teeth of yours down your ugly throat, to hinder you from telling any more lies of my dead sister's only child." "they weren't lies," gasped the "softy," doggedly; "i said i've got the letter, and i have got it. let me go, and i'll show it to you." the sailor released the dirty wisp of cotton neckerchief by which he had held stephen hargraves; but he still retained a grasp upon his coat-collar. "shall i show you the letter?" asked the "softy." "yes." mr. hargraves fumbled in his pockets for some minutes, and ultimately produced a dirty scrap of crumpled paper. it was the brief scrawl which aurora had written to james conyers, telling him to meet her in the wood. the murdered man had thrown it carelessly aside after reading it, and it had been picked up by stephen hargraves. he would not trust the precious document out of his own clumsy hands, but held it before captain prodder for inspection. the sailor stared at it, anxious, bewildered, fearful; he scarcely knew how to estimate the importance of the wretched scrap of circumstantial evidence. there were the words, certainly, written in a bold, scarcely feminine, hand. but these words in themselves proved nothing until it could be proved that his niece had written them. "how do i know as my sister eliza's child wrote that?" he asked. "ay, sure; but she did though," answered the "softy." "but, coom, let me go now, will you?" he added, with cringing civility; "i didn't know you was her uncle. how was i to know owght about it? i don't want to make any mischief agen mrs. mellish, though she's been no friend to me. i didn't say anything at the inquest, did i? though i might have said as much as i've said to-night, if it comes to that, and have told no lies. but when folks bother _me_ about him that's dead, and ask this and that and t'oother, and go on as if i had a right to know all about it, i'm free to tell my thoughts, i suppose? surely i'm free to tell my thoughts?" "i'll go straight to mr. mellish, and tell him what you've said, you scoundrel!" cried the captain. "ay, do," whispered stephen hargraves maliciously; "there's some of it that'll be stale news to him, anyhow." chapter ix. the discovery of the weapon with which james conyers had been slain. mr. and mrs. mellish returned to the house in which they had been so happy; but it is not to be supposed that the pleasant country mansion could be again, all in a moment, the home that it had been before the advent of james conyers the trainer, and the acting of the tragedy that had so abruptly concluded his brief service. no; every pang that aurora had felt, every agony that john had endured, had left a certain impress upon the scene in which it had been suffered. the subtle influences of association hung heavily about the familiar place. we are the slaves of such associations, and we are powerless to stand against their silent force. scraps of colour and patches of gilding upon the walls will bear upon them, as plainly as if they were covered with hieroglyphical inscriptions, the shadows of the thoughts of those who have looked upon them. transient and chance effects of light or shade will recall the same effects, seen and observed--as fagin observed the broken spike upon the guarded dock--in some horrible crisis of misery and despair. the commonest household goods and chattels will bear mute witness of your agonies: an easy-chair will say to you, "it was upon me you cast yourself in that paroxysm of rage and grief;" the pattern of a dinner-service may recall to you that fatal day on which you pushed your food untasted from you, and turned your face, like grief-stricken king david, to the wall. the bed you lay upon, the curtains that sheltered you, the pattern of the paper on the walls, the common every-day sounds of the household, coming muffled and far-away to that lonely room in which you hid yourself,--all these bear record of your sorrow, and of that hideous double action of the mind which impresses these things most vividly upon you at the very time when it would seem they should be most indifferent. but every sorrow, every pang of wounded love, or doubt, or jealousy, or despair, is a fact--a fact once, and a fact for ever; to be outlived, but very rarely to be forgotten; leaving such an impress upon our lives as no future joys can quite wear out. the murder has been done, and the hands are red. the sorrow has been suffered; and however beautiful happiness may be to us, she can never be the bright virginal creature she once was; for she has passed through the valley of the shadow of death, and we have discovered that she is not immortal. it is not to be expected, then, that john mellish and his wife aurora could feel quite the same in the pretty chambers of the yorkshire mansion as they had felt before the first shipwreck of their happiness. they had been saved from peril and destruction, and landed, by the mercy of providence, high and dry upon the shore that seemed to promise them pleasure and security henceforth. but the memory of the tempest was yet new to them; and upon the sands that were so smooth to-day they had seen yesterday the breakers beating with furious menace, and hurrying onward to destroy them. the funeral of the trainer had not yet taken place, and it was scarcely a pleasant thing for mr. mellish to remember that the body of the murdered man still lay, stark and awful, in the oak coffin that stood upon trestles in the rustic chamber at the north lodge. "i'll pull that place down, lolly," john said, as he turned away from an open window, through which he could see the gothic chimneys of the trainer's late habitation glimmering redly above the trees. "i'll pull the place down, my pet. the gates are never used, except by the stable-boys; i'll knock them down, and the lodge too, and build some loose boxes for the brood-mares with the materials. and we'll go away to the south of france, darling, and run across to italy, if you like, and forget all about this horrid business." "the funeral will take place to-morrow, john, will it not?" aurora asked. "to-morrow, dear!--to-morrow is wednesday, you know. it was upon thursday night that----" "yes, yes," she answered, interrupting him. "i know; i know." she shuddered as she spoke, remembering the ghastly circumstances of the night to which he alluded; remembering how the dead man had stood before her, strong in health and vitality, and had insolently defied her hatred. away from mellish park, she had only remembered that the burden of her life had been removed from her, and that she was free. but here--here upon the scene of the hideous story--she recollected the manner of her release; and that memory oppressed her even more terribly than her old secret, her only sorrow. she had never seen or known in this man, who had been murdered, one redeeming quality, one generous thought. she had known him as a liar, a schemer, a low and paltry swindler, a selfish spendthrift, extravagant to wantonness upon himself, but meaner than words could tell towards others; a profligate, a traitor, a glutton, a drunkard. this is what she had found behind her school-girl's fancy for a handsome face, for violet-tinted eyes, and soft-brown curling hair. do not call her hard, then, if sorrow had no part in the shuddering horror she felt as she conjured up the image of him in his death-hour, and saw the glazing eyes turned angrily upon her. she was little more than twenty; and it had been her fate always to take the wrong step, always to be misled by the vague finger-posts upon life's high-road, and to choose the longest, and crookedest, and hardest way towards the goal she sought to reach. had she, upon the discovery of her first husband's infidelity, called the law to her aid,--she was rich enough to command its utmost help, though sir cresswell cresswell did not then keep the turnpike upon such a royal road to divorce as he does now,--she might have freed herself from the hateful chains so foolishly linked together, and might have defied this dead man to torment or assail her. but she had chosen to follow the counsel of expediency, and it had led her upon the crooked way through which i have striven to follow her. i feel that there is much need of apology for her. her own hands had sown the dragon's teeth, from whose evil seed had sprung up armed men, strong enough to rend and devour her. but then, if she had been faultless, she could not have been the heroine of this story; for i think some wise man of old remarked, that the perfect women were those who left no histories behind them, but went through life upon such a tranquil course of quiet well-doing as left no footprints on the sands of time; only mute records hidden here and there, deep in the grateful hearts of those who had been blest by them. the presence of the dead man within the boundary of mellish park made itself felt throughout the household that had once been such a jovial one. the excitement of the catastrophe had passed away, and only the dull gloom remained--a sense of oppression not to be cast aside. it was felt in the servants' hall, as well as in aurora's luxurious apartments. it was felt by the butler as well as by the master. no worse deed of violence than the slaughter of an unhappy stag, who had rushed for a last refuge to the mellish park flower-garden, and had been run down by furious hounds upon the velvet lawn, had ever before been done within the boundary of the young squire's home. the house was an old one, and had stood, gray and ivy-shrouded, through the perilous days of civil war. there were secret passages, in which loyal squires of mellish park had hidden from ferocious roundheads bent upon riot and plunder. there were broad hearth-stones, upon which sturdy blows had been given and exchanged by strong men in leathern jerkins and clumsy iron-heeled boots; but the royalist mellish had always ultimately escaped,--up a chimney, or down a cellar, or behind a curtain of tapestry; and the wicked praise-the-lord thompsons, and smiter-of-the-philistines joneses, had departed after plundering the plate-chest and emptying the wine-barrels. there had never before been set upon the place in which john mellish had first seen the light, the red hand of murder. it was not strange, then, that the servants sat long over their meals, and talked in solemn whispers of the events of the past week. there was more than the murder to talk about. there was the flight of mrs. mellish from beneath her husband's roof upon the very day of the inquest. it was all very well for john to give out that his wife had gone up to town upon a visit to her cousin, mrs. bulstrode. such ladies as mrs. mellish do not go upon visits without escort, without a word of notice, without the poorest pretence of bag and baggage. no; the mistress of mellish park had fled away from her home under the influence of some sudden panic. had not mrs. powell said as much, or hinted as much? for when did that lady-like creature ever vulgarize her opinions by stating them plainly? the matter was obvious. mr. mellish had taken, no doubt, the wisest course: he had pursued his wife and had brought her back, and had done his best to hush up the matter; but aurora's departure had been a flight,--a sudden and unpremeditated flight. the lady's-maid,--ah, how many handsome dresses, given to her by a generous mistress, lay neatly folded in the girl's boxes on the second story!--told how aurora had come to her room, pale and wild-looking, and had dressed herself unassisted for that hurried journey, upon the day of the inquest. the girl liked her mistress, loved her, perhaps; for aurora had a wondrous and almost dangerous faculty for winning the love of those who came near her; but it was so pleasant to have something to say about this all-absorbing topic, and to be able to make oneself a feature in the solemn conclave. at first they had talked only of the murdered man, speculating upon his life and history, and building up a dozen theoretical views of the murder. but the tide had turned now, and they talked of their mistress; not connecting her in any positive or openly expressed manner with the murder, but commenting upon the strangeness of her conduct, and dwelling much upon those singular coincidences by which she had happened to be roaming in the park upon the night of the catastrophe, and to run away from her home on the day of the inquest. "it _was_ odd, you know," the cook said; "and them black-eyed women are generally regular spirity ones. _i_ shouldn't like to offend master john's wife. do you remember how she paid into t' 'softy'?" "but there was naught o' sort between her and the trainer, was there?" asked some one. "i don't know about that. but 'softy' said she hated him like poison, and that there was no love lost between 'em." but why should aurora have hated the dead man? the ensign's widow had left the sting of her venom behind her, and had suggested to these servants, by hints and innuendos, something so far more base and hideous than the truth, that i will not sully these pages by recording it. but mrs. powell had of course done this foul thing without the utterance of one ugly word that could have told against her gentility, had it been repeated aloud in a crowded drawing-room. she had only shrugged her shoulders, and lifted her straw-coloured eyebrows, and sighed half regretfully, half deprecatingly; but she had blasted the character of the woman she hated as shamefully as if she had uttered a libel too gross for holywell street. she had done a wrong that could only be undone by the exhibition of the blood-stained certificate in john's keeping, and the revelation of the whole story connected with that fatal scrap of paper. she had done this before packing her boxes; and she had gone away from the house that had sheltered her, well-pleased at having done this wrong; and comforting herself yet further by the intention of doing more mischief through the medium of the penny post. it is not to be supposed that the manchester paper, which had caused so serious a discussion in the humble parlour of the crooked rabbit, had been overlooked in the servants' hall at mellish park. the manchester journals were regularly forwarded to the young squire from that metropolis of cotton-spinning and horse-racing; and the mysterious letter in the 'guardian' had been read and commented upon. every creature in that household, from the fat housekeeper, who had kept the keys of the store-room through nearly three generations, to the rheumatic trainer, langley, had a certain interest in the awful question. a nervous footman turned pale as that passage was read which declared that the murder had been committed by some member of the household; but i think there were some younger and more adventurous spirits--especially a pretty housemaid, who had seen the thrilling drama of 'susan hopley' performed at the doncaster theatre during the spring meeting--who would have rather liked to be accused of the crime, and to emerge spotless and triumphant from the judicial ordeal, through the evidence of an idiot, or a magpie, or a ghost, or some other witness common and popular in criminal courts. did aurora know anything of all this? no; she only knew that a dull and heavy sense of oppression in her own breast made the very summer atmosphere floating in at the open windows seem stifling and poisonous; that the house, which had once been so dear to her, was as painfully and perpetually haunted by the ghastly presence of the murdered man, as if the dead trainer had stalked palpably about the corridors wrapped in a blood-stained winding-sheet. she dined with her husband alone in the great dining-room. they were very silent at dinner, for the presence of the servants sealed their lips upon the topic that was uppermost in their minds. john looked anxiously at his wife every now and then, for he saw that her face had grown paler since her arrival at mellish; but he waited until they were alone before he spoke. "my darling," he said, as the door closed behind the butler and his subordinate, "i am sure you are ill. this business has been too much for you." "it is the air of this house that seems to oppress me, john," answered aurora. "i had forgotten all about this dreadful business while i was away. now that i have come back, and find that the time which has been so long to me--so long in misery and anxiety, and so long in joy, my own dear love, through you--is in reality only a few days, and that the murdered man still lies near us, i--; i shall be better when--when the funeral is over, john." "my poor darling, i was a fool to bring you back. i should never have done so, but for talbot's advice. he urged me so strongly to come back directly. he said that if there should be any disturbance about the murder, we ought to be upon the spot." "disturbance! what disturbance?" cried aurora. her face blanched as she spoke, and her heart sank within her. what further disturbance could there be? was the ghastly business as yet unfinished, then? she knew--alas! only too well--that there could be no investigation of this matter which would not bring her name before the world linked with the name of the dead man. how much she had endured in order to keep that shameful secret from the world! how much she had sacrificed in the hope of saving her father from humiliation! and now, at the last, when she had thought that the dark chapter of her life was finished, the hateful page blotted out,--now, at the very last, there was a probability of some new disturbance which would bring her name and her history into every newspaper in england. "oh, john, john!" she cried, bursting into a passion of hysterical sobs, and covering her face with her clasped hands; "am i never to hear the last of this? am i never, never, never to be released from the consequences of my miserable folly?" the butler entered the room as she said this; she rose hurriedly, and walked to one of the windows, in order to conceal her face from the man. "i beg your pardon, sir," the old servant said; "but they've found something in the park, and i thought perhaps you might like to know----" "they've found something! what?" exclaimed john, utterly bewildered between his agitation at the sight of his wife's grief and his endeavour to understand the man. "a pistol, sir. one of the stable-lads found it just now. he went to the wood with another boy to look at the place where--the--the man was shot; and he's brought back a pistol he found there. it was close against the water, but hid away among the weeds and rushes. whoever threw it there, thought, no doubt, to throw it in the pond; but jim, that's one of the boys, fancied he saw something glitter, and sure enough it was the barrel of a pistol; and i think must be the one that the trainer was shot with, mr. john." "a pistol!" cried mr. mellish; "let me see it." his servant handed him the weapon. it was small enough for a toy, but none the less deadly in a skilful hand. it was a rich man's fancy, deftly carried out by some cunning gunsmith, and enriched by elaborate inlaid work of purple steel and tarnished silver. it was rusty, from exposure to rain and dew; but mr. mellish knew the pistol well, for it was his own. it was his own; one of his pet playthings; and it had been kept in the room which was only entered by privileged persons,--the room in which his wife had busied herself with the rearrangement of his guns upon the day of the murder. chapter x. under a cloud. talbot bulstrode and his wife came to mellish park a few days after the return of john and aurora. lucy was pleased to come to her cousin; pleased to be allowed to love her without reservation; grateful to her husband for his gracious goodness in setting no barrier between her and the friend she loved. and talbot,--who shall tell the thoughts that were busy in his mind, as he sat in a corner of the first-class carriage, to all outward appearance engrossed in the perusal of a 'times' leader? i wonder how much of the thunderer's noble saxon english mr. bulstrode comprehended that morning! the broad white paper on which the 'times' is printed serves as a convenient screen for a man's face. heaven knows what agonies have been sometimes endured behind that printed mask! a woman, married, and a happy mother, glances carelessly enough at the births and marriages and deaths, and reads perhaps that the man she loved, and parted with, and broke her heart for, fifteen or twenty years before, has fallen, shot through the heart, far away upon an indian battle-field. she holds the paper firmly enough before her face; and her husband goes on with his breakfast, and stirs his coffee, or breaks his egg, while she suffers her agony,--while the comfortable breakfast-table darkens and goes away from her, and the long-ago day comes back upon which the cruel ship left southampton, and the hard voices of well-meaning friends held forth monotonously upon the folly of improvident marriages. would it not be better, by-the-by, for wives to make a practice of telling their husbands all the sentimental little stories connected with the pre-matrimonial era? would it not be wiser to gossip freely about charles's dark eyes and moustache, and to hope that the poor fellow is getting on well in the indian service, than to keep a skeleton, in the shape of a phantom ensign in the 87th, hidden away in some dark chamber of the feminine memory? but other than womanly agonies are suffered behind the 'times.' the husband reads bad news of the railway company in whose shares he has so rashly invested that money which his wife believes safely lodged in the jog-trot, three-per-cent.-yielding consols. the dashing son, with newmarket tendencies, reads evil tidings of the horse he has backed so boldly, perhaps at the advice of a manchester prophet, who warranted putting his friends in the way of winning a hatful of money for the small consideration of three-and-sixpence in postage-stamps. visions of a book that it will not be very easy to square; of a black list of play or pay engagements; of a crowd of angry book-men clamorous for their dues, and not slow to hint at handy horse-ponds, and possible tar and feathers, for defaulting swells and sneaking "welshers"; all these things flit across the disorganized brain of the young man, while his sisters are entreating to be told whether the 'crown diamonds' is to be performed that night, and if "dear miss pyne" will warble rode's air before the curtain falls. the friendly screen hides his face; and by the time he has looked for the covent garden advertisements, and given the required information, he is able to set the paper down and proceed calmly with his breakfast, pondering ways and means as he does so. lucy bulstrode read a high-church novel, while her husband sat with the 'times' before his face, thinking of all that had happened to him since he had first met the banker's daughter. how far away that old love-story seemed to have receded since the quiet domestic happiness of his life had begun in his marriage with lucy! he had never been false, in the remotest shadow of a thought, to his second love; but now that he knew the secret of aurora's life, he could but look back and wonder how he should have borne that cruel revelation if john's fate had been his; if he had trusted the woman he loved in spite of the world, in spite of her own strange words, which had so terribly strengthened his worst fears, so cruelly redoubled his darkest doubts. "poor girl!" he thought; "it was scarcely strange that she should shrink from telling that humiliating story. i was not tender enough. i confronted her in my obstinate and pitiless pride. i thought of myself rather than of her, and of her sorrow. i was barbarous and ungentlemanly; and then i wondered that she refused to confide in me." talbot bulstrode, reasoning after the fact, saw the weak points of his conduct with a preternatural clearness of vision, and could not repress a sharp pang of regret that he had not acted more generously. there was no infidelity to lucy in this thought. he would not have exchanged his devoted little wife for the black-browed divinity of the past, though an all-powerful fairy had stood at his side ready to cancel his nuptials and tie a fresh knot between him and aurora. but he was a gentleman, and he felt that he had grievously wronged, insulted and humiliated a woman whose worst fault had been the trusting folly of an innocent girl. "i left her on the ground in that room at felden," he thought,--"kneeling on the ground, with her beautiful head bowed down before me. o my god, can i ever forget the agony of that moment! can i ever forget what it cost me to do that which i thought was right!" the cold perspiration broke out upon his forehead as he remembered that bygone pain, as it may do with a cowardly person who recalls too vividly the taking out of a three-pronged double-tooth, or the cutting off of a limb. "john mellish was ten times wiser than i," thought mr. bulstrode; "he trusted to his instinct, and recognized a true woman when he met her. i used to despise him at rugby because he couldn't construe cicero. i never thought he'd live to be wiser than me." talbot bulstrode folded the 'times' newspaper, and laid it down in the empty seat by his side. lucy shut the third volume of her novel. how should she care to read when it pleased her husband to desist from reading? "lucy," said mr. bulstrode, taking his wife's hand (they had the carriage to themselves--a piece of good fortune which often happens to travellers who give the guard half-a-crown),--"lucy, i once did your cousin a great wrong; i want to atone for it now. if any trouble, which no one yet foresees, should come upon her, i want to be her friend. do you think i am right in wishing this, dear?" "right, talbot!" mrs. bulstrode could only repeat the word in unmitigated surprise. when did she ever think him anything but the truest and wisest and most perfect of created beings? everything seemed very quiet at mellish when the visitors arrived. there was no one in the drawing-room, nor in the smaller room within the drawing-room; the venetians were closed, for the day was close and sultry; there were vases of fresh flowers upon the tables; but there were no open books, no litter of frivolous needlework or drawing-materials, to indicate aurora's presence. "mr. and mrs. mellish expected you by the later train, i believe, sir," the servant said, as he ushered talbot and his wife into the drawing-room. "shall i go and look for aurora?" lucy said to her husband. "she is in the morning-room, i dare say." talbot suggested that it would be better, perhaps, to wait till mrs. mellish came to them. so lucy was fain to remain where she was. she went to one of the open windows, and pushed the shutters apart. the blazing sunshine burst into the room, and drowned it in light. the smooth lawn was aflame with scarlet geraniums and standard roses, and all manner of gaudily-coloured blossoms; but mrs. bulstrode looked beyond this vividly-tinted _parterre_ to the thick woods, that loomed darkly purple against the glowing sky. it was in that very wood that her husband had declared his love for her; the same wood that had since been outraged by violence and murder. "the--the man is buried, i suppose, talbot?" she said to her husband. "i believe so, my dear." "i should never care to live in this place again, if i were aurora." the door opened before mrs. bulstrode had finished speaking, and the mistress of the house came towards them. she welcomed them affectionately and kindly, taking lucy in her arms, and greeting her very tenderly; but talbot saw that she had changed terribly within the few days that had passed since her return to yorkshire, and his heart sank as he observed her pale face and the dark circles about her hollow eyes. could she have heard----? could anybody have given her reason to suppose----? "you are not well, mrs. mellish," he said, as he took her hand. "no, not very well. this oppressive weather makes my head ache." "i am sorry to see you looking ill. where shall i find john?" asked mr. bulstrode. aurora's pale face flushed suddenly. "i--i--don't know," she stammered. "he is not in the house; he has gone out--to the stables--or to the farm, i think. i'll send for him." "no, no," talbot said, intercepting her hand on its way to the bell. "i'll go and look for him. lucy will be glad of a chat with you, i dare say, aurora, and will not be sorry to get rid of me." lucy, with her arm about her cousin's waist, assented to this arrangement. she was grieved to see the change in aurora's looks, the unnatural constraint of her manner. mr. bulstrode walked away, hugging himself upon having done a very wise thing. "lucy is a great deal more likely to find out what is the matter than i am," he thought. "there is a sort of freemasonry between women, an electric affinity, which a man's presence always destroys. how deathly pale aurora looks! can it be possible that the trouble i expected has come so soon?" he went to the stables, but not so much to look for john mellish as in the hope of finding somebody intelligent enough to furnish him with a better account of the murder than any he had yet heard. "some one else, as well as aurora, must have had a reason for wishing to get rid of this man," he thought. "there must have been some motive: revenge,--gain,--something which no one has yet fathomed." he went into the stable-yard; but he had no opportunity of making his investigation, for john mellish was standing in a listless attitude before a small forge, watching the shoeing of one of his horses. the young squire looked up with a start as he recognized talbot, and gave him his hand, with a few straggling words of welcome. even in that moment mr. bulstrode saw that there was perhaps a greater change in john's appearance than in that of aurora. the yorkshireman's blue eyes had lost their brightness, his step its elasticity; his face seemed sunken and haggard, and he evidently avoided meeting talbot's eye. he lounged listlessly away from the forge, walking at his guest's side in the direction of the stable-gates; but he had the air of a man who neither knows nor cares whither he is going. "shall we go to the house?" he said. "you must want some luncheon after your journey." he looked at his watch as he said this. it was half-past three, an hour after the usual time for luncheon at mellish. "i've been in the stables all the morning," he said. "we're busy making our preparations for the york summer." "what horses do you run?" mr. bulstrode asked, politely affecting to be interested in a subject that was utterly indifferent to him, in the hope that stable-talk might rouse john from his listless apathy. "what horses!" repeated mr. mellish vaguely. "i--i hardly know. langley manages all that for me, you know; and--i--i forget the names of the horses he proposed, and----" talbot bulstrode turned suddenly upon his friend, and looked him full in the face. they had left the stables by this time, and were in a shady pathway that led through a shrubbery towards the house. "john mellish," he said, "this is not fair towards an old friend. you have something on your mind, and you are trying to hide it from me." the squire turned away his head. "i have something on my mind, talbot," he said quietly. "if you could help me, i'd ask your help more than any man's. but you can't--you can't!" "but suppose i think i _can_ help you?" cried mr. bulstrode. "suppose i mean to try and do so, whether you will or no? i think i can guess what your trouble is, john; but i thought you were a braver man than to give way under it; i thought you were just the sort of man to struggle through it nobly and bravely, and to get the better of it by your own strength of will." "what do you mean!" exclaimed john mellish. "you can guess--you know--you thought! have you no mercy upon me, talbot bulstrode? can't you see that i'm almost mad, and that this is no time for you to force your sympathy upon me? do you want me to betray myself? do you want me to betray----" he stopped suddenly, as if the words had choked him, and, passionately stamping his foot upon the ground, walked on hurriedly, with his friend still by his side. the dining-room looked dreary enough when the two men entered it, although the table gave promise of a very substantial luncheon; but there was no one to welcome them, or to officiate at the banquet. john seated himself wearily in a chair at the bottom of the table. "you had better go and see if mrs. bulstrode and your mistress are coming to luncheon," he said to a servant, who left the room with his master's message, and returned three minutes afterwards to say that the ladies were not coming. the ladies were seated side by side upon a low sofa in aurora's morning-room. mrs. mellish sat with her head upon her cousin's shoulder. she had never had a sister, remember; and gentle lucy stood in place of that near and tender comforter. talbot was perfectly right; lucy had accomplished that which he would have failed to bring about. she had found the key to her cousin's unhappiness. "ceased to love you, dear!" exclaimed mrs. bulstrode, echoing the words that aurora had last spoken. "impossible!" "it is true, lucy," answered mrs. mellish, despairingly. "he has ceased to love me. there is a black cloud between us now, now that all secrets are done away with. it is very bitter for me to bear, lucy; for i thought we should be so happy and united. but--but it is only natural. he feels the degradation so much. how can he look at me without remembering who and what i am? the widow of his groom! can i wonder that he avoids me?" "avoids you, dear?" "yes, avoids me. we have scarcely spoken a dozen words to each other since the night of our return. he was so good to me, so tender and devoted during the journey home, telling me again and again that this discovery had not lessened his love, that all the trial and horror of the past few days had only shown him the great strength of his affection; but on the night of our return, lucy, he changed--changed suddenly and inexplicably; and now i feel that there is a gulf between us that can never be passed again. he is alienated from me for ever!" "aurora, all this is impossible," remonstrated lucy. "it is your own morbid fancy, darling." "my fancy!" cried aurora bitterly. "ah, lucy, you cannot know how much i love my husband, if you think that i could be deceived in one look or tone of his. is it my fancy that he averts his eyes when he speaks to me? is it my fancy that his voice changes when he pronounces my name? is it my fancy that he roams about the house like a ghost, and paces up and down his room half the night through? if these things are my fancy, heaven have mercy upon me, lucy; for i must be going mad." mrs. bulstrode started as she looked at her cousin. could it be possible that all the trouble and confusion of the past week or two had indeed unsettled this poor girl's intellect? "my poor aurora!" she murmured, smoothing the heavy hair away from her cousin's tearful eyes: "my poor darling! how is it possible that john should change towards you? he loved you so dearly, so devotedly; surely nothing could alienate him from you." "i used to think so, lucy," aurora murmured in a low, heart-broken voice; "i used to think nothing could ever come to part us. he said he would follow me to the uttermost end of the world; he said that no obstacle on earth should ever separate us; and now----" she could not finish the sentence, for she broke into convulsive sobs, and hid her face upon her cousin's shoulder, staining mrs. bulstrode's pretty silk dress with her hot tears. "oh, my love, my love!" she cried piteously, "why didn't i run away and hide myself from you? why didn't i trust to my first instinct, and run away from you for ever? any suffering would be better than this! any suffering would be better than this!" her passionate grief merged into a fit of hysterical weeping, in which she was no longer mistress of herself. she had suffered for the past few days more bitterly than she had ever suffered yet. lucy understood all that. she was one of those people whose tenderness instinctively comprehends the griefs of others. she knew how to treat her cousin; and in less than an hour after this emotional outbreak aurora was lying on her bed, pale and exhausted, but sleeping peacefully. she had carried the burden of her sorrow in silence during the past few days, and had spent sleepless nights in brooding over her trouble. her conversation with lucy had unconsciously relieved her, and she slumbered calmly after the storm. lucy sat by the bed watching the sleeper for some time, and then stole on tiptoe from the room. she went, of course, to tell her husband all that had passed, and to take counsel from his sublime wisdom. she found talbot in the drawing-room alone; he had eaten a dreary luncheon in john's company, and had been hastily left by his host immediately after the meal. there had been no sound of carriage-wheels upon the gravelled drive all that morning; there had been no callers at mellish park since john's return; for a horrible scandal had spread itself throughout the length and breadth of the county, and those who spoke of the young squire and his wife talked in solemn under-tones, and gravely demanded of each other whether some serious step should not be taken about the business which was uppermost in every body's mind. lucy told talbot all that aurora had said to her. this was no breach of confidence in the young wife's code of morality; for were not she and her husband immutably one, and how _could_ she have any secret from him? "i thought so!" mr. bulstrode said, when lucy had finished her story. "you thought what, dear?" "that the breach between john and aurora was a serious one. don't look so sorrowful, my darling. it must be our business to reunite these divided lovers. you shall comfort aurora, lucy; and i'll look after john." talbot bulstrode kissed his little wife, and went straight away upon his friendly errand. he found john mellish in his own room,--the room in which aurora had written to him upon the day of her flight; the room from which the murderous weapon had been stolen by some unknown hand. john had hidden the rusty pistol in one of the locked drawers of his davenport; but it was not to be supposed that the fact of its discovery could be locked up or hidden away. _that_ had been fully discussed in the servants' hall; and who shall doubt that it had travelled further, percolating through some of those sinuous channels which lead away from every household? "i want you to come for a walk with me, mr. john mellish," said talbot, imperatively; "so put on your hat, and come into the park. you are the most agreeable gentleman i ever had the honour to visit, and the attention you pay your guests is really something remarkable." mr. mellish made no reply to this speech. he stood before his friend, pale, silent, and sullen. he was no more like the hearty yorkshire squire whom we have known, than he was like viscount palmerston or lord clyde. he was transformed out of himself by some great trouble that was preying upon his mind; and being of a transparent and childishly truthful disposition, was unable to disguise his anguish. "john, john!" cried talbot, "we were little boys together at rugby, and have backed each other in a dozen childish fights. is it kind of you to withhold your friendship from me now, when i have come here on purpose to be a friend to you--to you and to aurora?" john mellish turned away his head as his friend mentioned that familiar name; and the gesture was not lost upon mr. bulstrode. "john, why do you refuse to trust me?" "i don't refuse. i----why did you come to this accursed house?" cried john mellish, passionately; "why did you come here, talbot bulstrode? you don't know the blight that is upon this place, and those who live in it, or you would have no more come here than you would willingly go to a plague-stricken city. do you know that since i came back from london not a creature has called at this house? do you know that when i and--and--my wife--went to church on sunday, the people we knew sneaked away from our path as if we had just recovered from typhus fever? do you know that the cursed gaping rabble come from doncaster to stare over the park-palings, and that this house is a show to half the west riding? why do you come here? you will be stared at, and grinned at, and scandalized,--you, who----go back to london to-night, talbot, if you don't want to drive me mad." "not till you trust me with your troubles, john," answered mr. bulstrode firmly. "put on your hat, and come out with me. i want you to show me the spot where the murder was done." "you may get some one else to show it you," muttered john, sullenly; "i'll not go there!" "john mellish!" cried talbot suddenly, "am i to think you a coward and a fool? by the heaven that's above me, i shall think so if you persist in this nonsense. come out into the park with me; i have the claim of past friendship upon you, and i'll not have that claim set aside by any folly of yours." the two men went out upon the lawn, john complying moodily enough with his friend's request, and walked silently across the park towards that portion of the wood in which james conyers had met his death. they had reached one of the loneliest and shadiest avenues in this wood, and were, in fact, close against the spot from which samuel prodder had watched his niece and her companion on the night of the murder, when talbot stopped suddenly, and laid his hand on the squire's shoulder. "john," he said, in a determined tone, "before we go to look at the place where this bad man died, you must tell me your trouble." mr. mellish drew himself up proudly, and looked at the speaker with gloomy defiance lowering upon his face. "i will tell no man that which i do not choose to tell," he said firmly; and then with a sudden change that was terrible to see, he cried impetuously, "why do you torment me, talbot? i tell you that i can't trust you--i can't trust any one upon earth. if--if i told you--the horrible thought that--if i told you, it would be your duty to--i--talbot, talbot, have pity upon me--let me alone--go away from me--i----" stamping furiously, as if he would have trampled down the cowardly despair for which he despised himself, and beating his forehead with his clenched fists, john mellish turned away from his friend, and, leaning against the gnarled branch of a great oak, wept aloud. talbot bulstrode waited till the paroxysm had passed away before he spoke again; but when his friend had grown calmer, he linked his arm about him, and drew him away almost as tenderly as if the big yorkshireman had been some sorrowing woman, sorely in need of manly help and comfort. "john, john," he said gravely, "thank god for this; thank god for anything that breaks the ice between us. i know what your trouble is, poor old friend, and i know that you have no cause for it. hold up your head, man, and look straightforward to a happy future. i know the black thought that has been gnawing at your poor foolish manly heart: _you think that aurora murdered the groom!_" john mellish, started, shuddering convulsively. "no, no," he gasped; "who said so--who said----?" "you think this, john," continued talbot bulstrode; "and you do her the most grievous wrong that ever yet was done to woman; a more shameful wrong than i committed when i thought that aurora floyd had been guilty of some base intrigue." "you don't know----" stammered john. "i don't know! i know all, and foresaw trouble for you, before _you_ saw the cloud that was in the sky. but i never dreamt of this. i thought the foolish country people would suspect your wife, as it always pleases people to try and fix a crime upon the person in whom that crime would be more particularly atrocious. i was prepared for this; but to think that you--you, john, who should have learned to know your wife by this time--to think that you should suspect the woman you have loved of a foul and treacherous murder!" "how do we know that the--that the man was murdered?" cried john vehemently. "who says that the deed was treacherously done? he may have goaded her beyond endurance, insulted her generous pride, stung her to the very quick, and in the madness of her passion--having that wretched pistol in her possession--she may----" "stop!" interrupted talbot. "what pistol? you told me the weapon had not been found." "it was found upon the night of our return." "yes; but why do you associate this weapon with aurora? what do you mean by saying that the pistol was in her possession?" "because--o my god! talbot, why do you wring these things from me?" "for your own good, and for the justification of an innocent woman; so help me, heaven!" answered mr. bulstrode. "do not be afraid to be candid with me, john. nothing would ever make me believe aurora mellish guilty of this crime." the yorkshireman turned suddenly towards his friend, and leaning upon talbot bulstrode's shoulder, wept for the second time during that woodland ramble. "may god in heaven bless you for this, talbot!" he cried passionately. "ah, my love, my dear, what a wretch i have been to you! but heaven is my witness that, even in my worst agony of doubt and horror, my love has never lessened. it never could!--it never could!" "john, old fellow," said mr. bulstrode, cheerfully, "perhaps, instead of talking this nonsense, which leaves me entirely in the dark as to everything that has happened since you left london, you will do me the favour to enlighten me as to the cause of these foolish suspicions." they had reached the ruined summer-house and the pool of stagnant water, on the margin of which james conyers had met with his death. mr. bulstrode seated himself upon a pile of broken timber, while john mellish paced up and down the smooth patch of turf between the summer-house and the water, and told, disjointedly enough, the story of the finding of the pistol, which had been taken out of his room. "i saw that pistol upon the day of the murder," he said. "i took particular notice of it; for i was cleaning my guns that morning, and i left them all in confusion while i went down to the lodge to see the trainer. when i came back--i----" "well, what then?" "aurora had been setting my guns in order." "you argue, therefore, that your wife took the pistol?" john looked piteously at his friend; but talbot's grave smile reassured him. "no one else had permission to go into the room," he answered. "i keep my papers and accounts there, you know; and it's an understood thing that none of the servants are allowed to go there, except when they clean the room." "to be sure! but the room is not locked, i suppose?" "locked! of course not!" "and the windows--which open to the ground--are sometimes left open, i dare say?" "almost always in such weather as this." "then, my dear john, it may be just possible that some one who had not permission to enter the room did, nevertheless, enter it, for the purpose of abstracting this pistol. have you asked aurora why she took upon herself to rearrange your guns?--she had never done such a thing before, i suppose?" "oh, yes, very often. i'm rather in the habit of leaving them about after cleaning them; and my darling understands all about them as well as i do. she has often put them away for me." "then there was nothing particular in her doing so upon the day of the murder. have you asked her how long she was in your room, and whether she can remember seeing this particular pistol, among others?' "ask her!" exclaimed john; "how could i ask her, when----" "when you have been mad enough to suspect her. no, my poor old friend; you made the same mistake that i committed at felden. you presupposed the guilt of the woman you loved; and you were too great a coward to investigate the evidence upon which your suspicions were built. had i been wise enough, instead of blindly questioning this poor bewildered girl, to tell her plainly what it was that i suspected, the incontrovertible truth would have flashed out of her angry eyes, and one indignant denial would have told me how basely i had wronged her. you shall not make the mistake that i made, john. you must go frankly and fearlessly to the wife you love, tell her of the suspicion that overclouds her fame, and implore her to help you to the uttermost of her power in unravelling the mystery of this man's death. the assassin _must_ be found, john; for so long as he remains undiscovered, you and your wife will be the victims of every penny-a-liner who finds himself at a loss for a paragraph." "yes," mr. mellish answered bitterly, "the papers have been hard at it already; and there's been a fellow hanging about the place for the last few days whom i've had a very strong inclination to thrash. some reporter, i suppose, come to pick up information." "i suppose so," talbot answered thoughtfully; "what sort of a man was he?" "a decent-looking fellow enough; but a londoner, i fancy, and--stay!" exclaimed john suddenly, "there's a man coming towards us from the turnstile; and unless i'm considerably mistaken, it's the very fellow." mr. mellish was right. the wood was free to any foot-passenger who pleased to avail himself of the pleasant shelter of spreading beeches, and the smooth carpet of mossy turf, rather than tramp wearily upon the dusty highway. the stranger advancing from the turnstile was a decent-looking person, dressed in dark tight-fitting clothes, and making no unnecessary or ostentatious display of linen, for his coat was buttoned tightly to the chin. he looked at talbot and john as he passed them,--not insolently, or even inquisitively, but with one brightly rapid and searching glance, which seemed to take in the most minute details in the appearance of both gentlemen. then, walking on a few paces, he stopped and looked thoughtfully at the pond, and the bank above it. "this is the place, i think, gentlemen?" he said, in a frank and rather free-and-easy manner. talbot returned his look with interest. "if you mean the place where the murder was committed, it is," he said. "ah, i understood so," answered the stranger, by no means abashed. he looked at the bank, regarding it, now from one point, now from another, like some skilful upholsterer taking the measure of a piece of furniture. then walking slowly round the pond, he seemed to plumb the depth of the stagnant water with his small gray eyes. talbot bulstrode watched the man as he took this mental photograph of the place. there was a business-like composure in his manner, which was entirely different to the eager curiosity of a scandalmonger and a busybody. mr. bulstrode rose as the man walked away, and went slowly after him. "stop where you are, john," he said, as he left his companion; "i'll find out who this fellow is." he walked on, and overtook the stranger at about a hundred yards from the pond. "i want to have a few words with you before you leave the park, my friend," he said quietly: "unless i'm very much mistaken, you are a member of the detective police, and come here with credentials from scotland yard." the man shook his head, with a quiet smile. "i'm not obliged to tell everybody my business," he answered coolly; "this footpath is a public thoroughfare, i believe?" "listen to me, my good fellow," said mr. bulstrode. "it may serve your purpose to beat about the bush; but i have no reason to do so, and therefore may as well come to the point at once. if you are sent here for the purpose of discovering the murderer of james conyers, you can be more welcome to no one than to the master of that house." he pointed to the gothic chimneys as he spoke. "if those who employ you have promised you a liberal reward, mr. mellish will willingly treble the amount they may have offered you. he would not give you cause to complain of his liberality, should you succeed in accomplishing the purpose of your errand. if you think you will gain anything by underhand measures, and by keeping yourself dark, you are very much mistaken; for no one can be better able or more willing to give you assistance in this than mr. and mrs. mellish." the detective--for he had tacitly admitted the fact of his profession--looked doubtfully at talbot bulstrode. "you're a lawyer, i suppose?" he said. "i am mr. talbot bulstrode, member for penruthy, and the husband of mrs. mellish's first cousin." the detective bowed. "my name is joseph grimstone, of scotland yard and ball's pond," he said; "and i certainly see no objection to our working together. if mr. mellish is prepared to act on the square, i'm prepared to act with him, and to accept any reward his generosity may offer. but if he or any friend of his wants to hoodwink joseph grimstone, he'd better think twice about the game before he tries it on; that's all." mr. bulstrode took no notice of this threat, but looked at his watch before replying to the detective. "it's a quarter-past six," he said. "mr. mellish dines at seven. can you call at the house, say at nine, this evening? you shall then have all the assistance it is in our power to give you." "certainly, sir. at nine this evening." "we shall be prepared to receive you. good afternoon." mr. grimstone touched his hat, and strolled quietly away under the shadow of the beeches, while talbot bulstrode walked back to rejoin his friend. it may be as well to take this opportunity of stating the reason of the detective's early appearance at mellish park. upon the day of the inquest, and consequently the next day but one after the murder, two anonymous letters, worded in the same manner, and written by the same hand, were received respectively by the head of the doncaster constabulary and by the chief of the scotland-yard detective confederacy. these anonymous communications--written in a hand which, in spite of all attempt at disguise, still retained the spidery peculiarities of feminine caligraphy--pointed, by a sinuous and inductive process of reasoning, at aurora mellish as the murderess of james conyers. i need scarcely say that the writer was no other than mrs. powell. she has disappeared for ever from my story, and i have no wish to blacken a character which can ill afford to be slandered. the ensign's widow actually believed in the guilt of her beautiful patroness. it is so easy for an envious woman to believe horrible things of the more prosperous sister whom she hates. chapter xi. reunion. "we are on the verge of a precipice," talbot bulstrode thought, as he prepared for dinner in the comfortable dressing-room allotted to him at mellish,--"we are on the verge of a precipice, and nothing but a bold grapple with the worst can save us. any reticence, any attempt at keeping back suspicious facts, or hushing up awkward coincidences would be fatal to us. if john had made away with this pistol with which the deed was done, he would have inevitably fixed a most fearful suspicion upon his wife. thank god i came here to-day! we must look matters straight in the face, and our first step must be to secure aurora's help. so long as she is silent as to her share in the events of that day and night, there is a link missing in the chain, and we are all at sea. john must speak to her to-night; or perhaps it will be better for me to speak." mr. bulstrode went down to the drawing-room, where he found his friend pacing up and down, solitary and wretched. "the ladies are going to dine up-stairs," said mr. mellish, as talbot joined him. "i have just had a message to say so. why does she avoid me, talbot? why does my wife avoid me like this? we have scarcely spoken to each other for days." "shall i tell you why, you foolish john?" answered mr. bulstrode. "your wife avoids you because you have chosen to alienate yourself from her, and because she thinks, poor girl, that she has lost your affection. she fancies that the discovery of her first marriage has caused a revulsion of feeling, and that you no longer love her." "no longer love her!" cried john. "o my god! she ought to know that, if i could give my life for her fifty times over, i would do it, to save her one pang. i would do it, so help me, heaven, though she were the guiltiest wretch that had ever crawled the earth!" "but no one asks you to do anything of the kind," said mr. bulstrode. "you are only requested to be reasonable and patient, to put a proper trust in providence, and to be guided by people who are rather less impetuous than your ungovernable self." "i will do what you like, talbot; i will do what you like." mr. mellish pressed his friend's hand. had he ever thought, when he had seen talbot an accepted lover at felden, and had hated him with a savage and wild indian-like fury, that he would come to be thus humbly grateful to him; thus pitifully dependent upon his superior wisdom? he wrung the young politician's hand, and promised to be as submissive as a child beneath his guidance. in compliance, therefore, with talbot's commands, he ate a few morsels of fish, and drank a couple of glasses of sherry; and having thus gone through a show of dining, he went with mr. bulstrode to seek aurora. she was sitting with her cousin in the morning-room, looking terribly pale in the dim dusk of the august evening,--pale and shadowy in her loose white muslin dress. she had only lately risen after a long feverish slumber, and had pretended to dine out of courtesy to her guest. lucy had tried in vain to comfort her cousin. this passionate, impetuous, spoiled child of fortune and affection refused all consolation, crying out again and again that she had lost her husband's love, and that there was nothing left for her upon earth. but in the very midst of one of these despondent speeches, she sprang up from her seat, erect and trembling, with her parted lips quivering and her dark eyes dilated, startled by the sound of a familiar step, which within the last few days had been seldom heard in the corridor outside her room. she tried to speak, but her voice failed her; and in another moment the door had been dashed open by a strong hand, and her husband stood in the room, holding out his arms and calling to her. "aurora! aurora! my own dear love, my own poor darling!" she was folded to his breast before she knew that talbot bulstrode stood close behind him. "my own darling," john said, "my own dearest, you cannot tell how cruelly i have wronged you. but, oh, my love, the wrong has brought unendurable torture with it. my poor guiltless girl! how could i--how could i----but i was mad, and it was only when talbot----" aurora lifted her head from her husband's breast and looked wonderingly into his face, utterly unable to guess the meaning of these broken sentences. talbot laid his hand upon his friend's shoulder. "you will frighten your wife if you go on in this manner, john," he said quietly. "you mustn't take any notice of his agitation, my dear mrs. mellish. there is no cause, believe me, for all this outcry. will you sit down by lucy and compose yourself? it is eight o'clock, and between this and nine we have some serious business to settle." "serious business!" repeated aurora vaguely. she was intoxicated by her sudden happiness. she had no wish to ask any explanation of the mystery of the past few days. it was all over, and her faithful husband loved her as devotedly and tenderly as ever. how could she wish to know more than this? she seated herself at lucy's side, in obedience to talbot; but she still held her husband's hand, she still looked in his face, for the moment most supremely unconscious that the scheme of creation included anything beyond this stalwart yorkshireman. talbot bulstrode lighted the lamp upon aurora's writing-table,--a shaded lamp, which only dimly illuminated the twilight room,--and then, taking his seat near it, said gravely-"my dear mrs. mellish, i shall be compelled to say something which i fear may inflict a terrible shock upon you. but this is no time for reservation; scarcely a time for ordinary delicacy. will you trust in the love and friendship of those who are around you, and promise to bear this new trial bravely? i believe and hope that it will be a very brief one." aurora looked wonderingly at her husband, not at talbot. "a new trial?" she said inquiringly. "you know that the murderer of james conyers has not yet been discovered?" said mr. bulstrode. "yes, yes; but what of that?" "my dear mrs. mellish, my dear aurora! the world is apt to take a morbid delight in horrible ideas. there are some people who think that you are guilty of this crime!" "_i!_" she rose suddenly from her low seat, and turned her face towards the lamp-light, with a look of such blank amazement, such utter wonder and bewilderment, that had talbot bulstrode until that moment believed her guilty, he must thenceforth and for ever have been firmly convinced of her innocence. "_i!_" she repeated. then turning to her husband, with a sudden alteration in her face, that blank amazement changing to a look of sorrow, mingled with reproachful wonder, she said in a low voice-"_you_ thought this of me, john; _you_ thought this!" john mellish bowed his head before her. "i did, my dear," he murmured--"god forgive me for my wicked folly--i did think this, aurora. but i pitied you, and was sorry for you, my own dear love; and when i thought it most, i would have died to save you from shame or sorrow. my love has never changed, aurora; my love has never changed." she gave him her hand, and once more resumed her seat. she sat for some moments in silence, as if trying to collect her thoughts, and to understand the meaning of this strange scene. "who suspects me of this crime?" she said presently. "has any one else suspected me? any one besides--my husband?" "i can scarcely tell you, my dear mrs. mellish," answered talbot; "when an event of this kind takes place, it is very difficult to say who may or may not be suspected. different persons set up different theories: one man writes to a newspaper to declare that, in his opinion, the crime was committed by some person within the house; another man writes as positively to another paper, asserting that the murderer was undoubtedly a stranger. each man brings forward a mass of suppositious evidence in favour of his own argument, and each thinks a great deal more of proving his own cleverness than of furthering the ends of justice. no shadow of slander must rest upon this house, or upon those who live in it. it is necessary, therefore, imperatively necessary, that the real murderer should be found. a london detective is already at work. these men are very clever; some insignificant circumstance, forgotten by those most interested in discovering the truth, would often be enough to set a detective on the right track. this man is coming here at nine o'clock; and we are to give him all the assistance we can. will you help us, aurora?" "help you! how?" "by telling us all you know of the night of the murder. why were you in the wood that night?" "i was there to meet the dead man." "for what purpose?" aurora was silent for some moments, and then looking up with a bold, half-defiant glance, she said suddenly-"talbot bulstrode, before you blame or despise me, remember how the tie that bound me to this man had been broken. the law would have set me free from him, if i had been brave enough to appeal to the law; and was i to suffer all my life because of the mistake i had made in not demanding a release from the man whose gross infidelity entitled me to be divorced from him? heaven knows i had borne with him patiently enough. i had endured his vulgarity, his insolence, his presumption; i had gone penniless while he spent my father's money in a gambling-booth on a race-course, and dinnerless while he drank champagne with cheats and reprobates. remember this, when you blame me most. i went into the wood that night to meet him for the last time upon this earth. he had promised me that he would emigrate to australia upon the payment of a certain sum of money." "and you went that night to pay it to him?" cried talbot eagerly. "i did. he was insolent, as he always was; for he hated me for having discovered that which shut him out from all claim upon my fortune. he hated himself for his folly in not having played his cards better. angry words passed between us; but it ended in his declaring his intention of starting for liverpool early the next morning, and--" "you gave him the money?" "yes." "but tell me,--tell me, aurora," cried talbot, almost too eager to find words, "how long had you left him when you heard the report of the pistol?' "not more than ten minutes." "john mellish," exclaimed mr. bulstrode, "was there any money found upon the person of the murdered man?" "no--yes; i believe there was a little silver," mr. mellish answered vaguely. "a little silver!" cried talbot contemptuously. "aurora, what was the sum you gave james conyers upon the night of his death?" "two thousand pounds." "in a cheque?" "no; in notes." "and that money has never been heard of since?" no; john mellish declared that he had never heard of it. "thank god!" exclaimed mr. bulstrode; "we shall find the murderer." "what do you mean?" asked john. "whoever killed james conyers, killed him in order to rob him of the money that he had upon him at the time of his death." "but who could have known of the money?" asked aurora. "anybody; the pathway through the wood is a public thoroughfare. your conversation with the murdered man may have been overheard. you talked about the money, i suppose?" "yes." "thank god, thank god! ask your wife's pardon for the cruel wrong you have done her, john, and then come downstairs with me. it's past nine, and i dare say mr. grimstone is waiting for us. but stay,--one word, aurora. the pistol with which this man was killed was taken from this house, from john's room. did you know that?" "no; how should i know it?" mrs. mellish asked naã¯vely. "that fact is against the theory of the murder having been committed by a stranger. is there any one of the servants whom you could suspect of such a crime, john?" "no," answered mr. mellish decisively; "not one." "and yet the person who committed the murder must have been the person who stole your pistol. you, john, declare that very pistol to have been in your possession upon the morning before the murder." "most certainly." "you put john's guns back into their places upon that morning, aurora," said mr. bulstrode; "do you remember seeing that particular pistol?" "no," mrs. mellish answered; "i should not have known it from the others." "you did not find any of the servants in the room that morning?" "oh, no," aurora answered immediately; "mrs. powell came into the room while i was there. she was always following me about; and i suppose she had heard me talking to----" "talking to whom?" "to james conyers's hanger-on and messenger, stephen hargraves--the 'softy,' as they call him." "you were talking to him? then this stephen hargraves was in the room that morning?" "yes; he brought me a message from the murdered man, and took back my answer." "was he alone in the room?" "yes; i found him there when i went in, expecting to find john. i dislike the man,--unjustly, perhaps; for he is a poor, half-witted creature, who i dare say scarcely knows right from wrong; and i was angry at seeing him. he must have come in through the window." a servant entered the room at this moment. he came to say that mr. grimstone had been waiting below for some time, and was anxious to see mr. bulstrode. talbot and john went down-stairs together. they found mr. joseph grimstone sitting at a table in a comfortable room that had lately been sacred to mrs. powell, with the shaded lamp drawn close to his elbow, and a greasy little memorandum-book open before him. he was thoughtfully employed making notes in this memorandum-book with a stumpy morsel of lead-pencil--when do these sort of people begin their pencils, and how is it that they always seem to have arrived at the stump?--when the two gentlemen entered. john mellish leaned against the mantel-piece, and covered his face with his hand. for any practical purpose, he might as well have been in his own room. he knew nothing of talbot's reason for this interview with the detective officer. he had no shadowy idea, no growing suspicion shaping itself slowly out of the confusion and obscurity, of the identity of the murderer. he only knew that his aurora was innocent; that she had indignantly refuted his base suspicion; and that he had seen the truth, radiant as the light of inspiration, shining out of her beautiful face. mr. bulstrode rang, and ordered a bottle of sherry for the delectation of the detective; and then, in a careful and business-like manner, he recited all that he had been able to discover upon the subject of the murder. joseph grimstone listened very quietly, following talbot bulstrode with a shining track of lead-pencil hieroglyphics over the greasy paper, just as tom thumb strewed crumbs of bread in the forest-pathway, with a view to his homeward guidance. the detective only looked up now and then to drink a glass of sherry, and smack his lips with the quiet approval of a connoisseur. when talbot had told all that he had to tell, mr. grimstone thrust the memorandum-book into a very tight breast-pocket, and taking his hat from under the chair upon which he had been seated, prepared to depart. "if this information about the money is quite correct, sir," he said, "i think i can see my way through the affair; that is, if we can have the numbers of the notes. i can't stir a peg without the numbers of the notes." talbot's countenance fell. here was a death-blow. was it likely that aurora, that impetuous and unbusiness-like girl, had taken the numbers of the notes, which, in utter scorn and loathing, she had flung as a last bribe to the man she hated? "i'll go and make inquiries of mrs. mellish," he said; "but i fear it is scarcely likely i shall get the information you want." he left the room; but five minutes afterwards returned triumphant. "mrs. mellish had the notes from her father," he said. "mr. floyd took a list of the numbers before he gave his daughter the money." "then if you'll be so good as to drop mr. floyd a line, asking for that list by return of post, i shall know how to act," replied the detective. "i haven't been idle this afternoon, gentlemen, any more than you. i went back after i parted with you, mr. bulstrode, and had another look at the pond. i found something to pay me for my trouble." he took from his waistcoat-pocket a small object, which he held between his finger and thumb. talbot and john looked intently at this dingy object, but could make nothing out of it. it seemed to be a mere disc of rusty metal. "it's neither more nor less than a brass button," the detective said, with a smile of quiet superiority; "maker's name, crosby, birmingham. there's marks upon it which seem uncommon like blood; and unless i'm very much mistaken, it'll be found to fit pretty correct into the barrel of your pistol, mr. mellish. so what we've got to do is to find a gentleman wearin', or havin' in his possession, a waistcoat with buttons by crosby, birmingham, and one button missin'; and if we happen to find the same gentleman changin' one of the notes that mr. floyd took the numbers of, i don't think we shall be _very_ far off layin' our hands on the man we want." with which oracular speech mr. grimstone departed, charged with a commission to proceed forthwith to doncaster, to order the immediate printing and circulating of a hundred bills, offering a reward of 200_l._ for such information as would lead to the apprehension of the murderer of james conyers. this reward to be given by mr. mellish, and to be over and above any reward offered by the government. chapter xii. the brass button by crosby, birmingham. mr. matthew harrison and captain prodder were both accommodated with suitable entertainment at the sign of the crooked rabbit; but while the dog-fancier appeared to have ample employment in the neighbourhood,--employment of a mysterious nature, which kept him on the tramp all day, and sent him home at sunset, tired and hungry, to his hostelry,--the sailor, having nothing whatever to do, and a great burden of care upon his mind, found the time hang very heavily upon his hands; although, being naturally of a social and genial temper, he made himself very much at home in his strange quarters. from mr. harrison the captain obtained much information respecting the secret of all the sorrow that had befallen his niece. the dog-fancier had known james conyers from his boyhood; had known his father, the "swell" coachman of a brighton highflyer, or sky-rocket, or electric, and the associate of the noblemen and gentlemen of that princely era, in which it was the right thing for the youthful aristocracy to imitate the manners of mr. samuel weller, senior. matthew harrison had known the trainer in his brief and stormy married life, and had accompanied aurora's first husband as a humble dependent and hanger-on in that foreign travel which had been paid for out of archibald floyd's cheque-book. the honest captain's blood boiled as he heard that shameful story of treachery and extortion practised upon an ignorant school-girl. oh, that he had been by to avenge those outrages upon the child of the dark-eyed sister he had loved! his rage against the undiscovered murderer of the dead man was redoubled when he remembered how comfortably james conyers had escaped from his vengeance. mr. stephen hargraves, the "softy," took good care to keep out of the way of the crooked rabbit, having no wish to encounter captain prodder a second time; but he still hung about the town of doncaster, where he had a lodging up a wretched alley, hidden away behind one of the back streets,--a species of lair common to every large town, only to be found by the inhabitants of the locality. the "softy" had been born and bred, and had lived his life, in such a narrow radius, that the uprooting of one of the oaks in mellish park could scarcely be a slower or more painful operation than the severing of those ties of custom which held the boorish hanger-on to the neighbourhood of the household in which he had so long been an inmate. but now that his occupation at mellish park was for ever gone, and his patron, the trainer, dead, he was alone in the world, and had need to look out for a fresh situation. but he seemed rather slow to do this. he was not a very prepossessing person, it must be remembered, and there were not very many services for which he was fitted. although upwards of forty years of age, he was generally rather loosely described as a young man who understood all about horses; and this qualification was usually sufficient to procure for any individual whatever some kind of employment in the neighbourhood of doncaster. the "softy" seemed, however, rather to keep aloof from the people who knew and could have recommended him; and when asked why he did not seek a situation, gave evasive answers, and muttered something to the effect that he had saved a little bit of money at mellish park, and had no need to come upon the parish if he was out of work for a week or two. john mellish was so well known as a generous paymaster, that this was a matter of surprise to no one. steeve hargraves had no doubt had pretty pickings in that liberal household. so the "softy" went his way unquestioned, hanging about the town in a lounging, uncomfortable manner, sitting in some public-house taproom half the day and night, drinking his meagre liquor in a sullen and unsocial style peculiar to himself, and consorting with no one. he made his appearance at the railway station one day, and groped helplessly through all the time-tables pasted against the walls: but he could make nothing of them unaided, and was at last compelled to appeal to a good-tempered-looking official who was busy on the platform. "i want th' liverpool trayuns," he said, "and i can find naught about 'em here." the official knew mr. hargraves, and looked at him with a stare of open wonder. "my word, steeve," he said laughing, "what takes you to liverpool? i thought you'd never been further than york in your life?" "maybe i haven't," the "softy" answered sulkily; "but that's no reason i shouldn't go now. i've heard of a situation at liverpool as i think'll suit me." "not better than the place you had with mr. mellish." "perhaps not," muttered mr. hargraves, with a frown darkening over his ugly face; "but mellish park be no pleace for me now, and arnt been for a long time past." the railway official laughed. the story of aurora's chastisement of the half-witted groom was pretty well known amongst the townspeople of doncaster; and i am sorry to say there were very few members of that sporting community who did not admire the mistress of mellish park something more by reason of this little incident in her history. mr. hargraves received the desired information about the railway route between doncaster and liverpool, and then left the station. a shabby-looking little man, who had also been mating some inquiries of the same official who had talked to the "softy," and had consequently heard the above brief dialogue, followed stephen hargraves from the station into the town. indeed, had it not been that the "softy" was unusually slow of perception, he might have discovered that upon this particular day the same shabby-looking little man generally happened to be hanging about any and every place to which he, mr. hargraves, betook himself. but the cast-off retainer of mellish park did not trouble himself with any such misgivings. his narrow intellect, never wide enough to take in many subjects at a time, was fully absorbed by other considerations; and he loitered about with a gloomy and preoccupied expression in his face, that by no means enhanced his personal attractions. it is not to be supposed that mr. joseph grimstone let the grass grow under his feet after his interview with john mellish and talbot bulstrode. he had heard enough to make his course pretty clear to him, and he went to work quietly and sagaciously to win the reward offered to him. there was not a tailor's shop in doncaster or its vicinity into which the detective did not make his way. there was not a garment _confectionã©e_ by any of the civil purveyors upon whom he intruded that mr. grimstone did not examine; not a drawer of odds and ends which he did not ransack, in his search for buttons by "crosby, maker, birmingham." but for a long time he made his inquisition in vain. before the day succeeding that of talbot's arrival at mellish park was over, the detective had visited every tailor or clothier in the neighbourhood of the racing metropolis of the north, but no traces of "crosby, maker, birmingham," had he been able to find. brass waistcoat-buttons are not particularly affected by the leaders of the fashion in the present day, and mr. grimstone found almost every variety of fastening upon the waistcoats he examined, except that one special style of button, a specimen of which, out of shape and blood-stained, he carried deep in his trousers-pocket. he was returning to the inn at which he had taken up his abode, and where he was supposed to be a traveller in the glenfield starch and sugar-plum line, tired and worn out with a day's useless work, when he was attracted by the appearance of some ready-made garments gracefully festooned about the door of a doncaster pawnbroker, who exhibited silver teaspoons, oil-paintings, boots and shoes, dropsical watches, doubtful rings, and remnants of silk and satin, in his artistically-arranged window. mr. grimstone stopped short before the money-lender's portal. "i won't be beaten," he muttered between his teeth. "if this man has got any weskits, i'll have a look at 'em." he lounged into the shop in a leisurely manner, and asked the proprietor of the establishment if he had anything cheap in the way of fancy waistcoats. of course the proprietor had everything desirable in that way, and from a kind of grove or arbour of all manner of dry goods at the back of the shop, he brought out half a dozen brown-paper parcels, the contents of which he exhibited to mr. joseph grimstone. the detective looked at a great many waistcoats, but with no satisfactory result. "you haven't got anything with brass buttons, i suppose?" he inquired at last. the proprietor shook his head reflectively. "brass buttons aint much worn now-a-days," he said; "but i'll lay i've got the very thing you want, now i come to think of it. i got 'em an uncommon bargain from a traveller for a birmingham house, who was here at the september meeting three years ago, and lost a hatful of money upon underhand, and left a lot of things with me, in order to make up what he wanted." mr. grimstone pricked up his ears at the sound of "birmingham." the pawnbroker retired once more to the mysterious caverns at the back of his shop, and after a considerable search succeeded in finding what he wanted. he brought another brown-paper parcel to the counter, turned the flaming gas a little higher, and exhibited a heap of very gaudy and vulgar-looking waistcoats, evidently of that species of manufacture which is generally called slop-work. "these are the goods," he said; "and very tasty and lively things they are, too. i had a dozen of 'em; and i've only got these five left." mr. grimstone had taken up a waistcoat of a flaming check pattern, and was examining it by the light of the gas. yes; the purpose of his day's work was accomplished at last. the back of the brass buttons bore the name of crosby, birmingham. "you've only got five left out of the dozen," said the detective; "then you've sold seven?" "i have." "can you remember who you sold 'em to?" the pawnbroker scratched his head thoughtfully. "i think i must have sold 'em all to the men at the works," he said. "they take their wages once a fortnight; and there's some of 'em drop in here every other saturday night to buy something or other, or to take something out of pledge. i know i sold four or five that way." "but can you remember selling one of them to anybody else?" asked the detective. "i'm not asking out of curiosity; and i don't mind standing something handsome by-and-by, if you can give me the information i want. think it over, now, and take your time. you couldn't have sold 'em all seven to the men from the works." "no; i didn't," answered the pawnbroker after a pause. "i remember now, i sold one of them--a fancy sprig on a purple ground--to josephs the baker, in the next street; and i sold another--a yellow stripe on a brown ground--to the head-gardener at mellish park." mr. joseph grimstone's face flushed hot and red. his day's work had not been wasted. he was bringing the buttons by crosby of birmingham very near to where he wanted to bring them. "you can tell me the gardener's name, i suppose?" he said to the pawnbroker. "yes; his name's dawson. he belongs to doncaster, and he and i were boys together. i should not have remembered selling him the waistcoat, perhaps, for it's nigh upon a year and a half ago; only he stopped and had a chat with me and my missis the night he bought it." mr. grimstone did not linger much longer in the shop. his interest in the waistcoats was evidently departed. he bought a couple of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, out of civility, no doubt, and then bade the pawnbroker good-night. it was nearly nine o'clock; but the detective only stopped at his inn long enough to eat about a pound and a quarter of beefsteak, and drink a pint of ale, after which brief refreshment he started for mellish park on foot. it was the principle of his life to avoid observation, and he preferred the fatigue of a long and lonely walk to the risks contingent upon hiring a vehicle to convey him to his destination. talbot and john had been waiting hopefully all the day for the detective's coming, and welcomed him very heartily when he appeared, between ten and eleven. he was shown into john's own room this evening; for the two gentlemen were sitting there smoking and talking after aurora and lucy had gone to bed. mrs. mellish had good need of rest, and could sleep peacefully now; for the dark shadow between her and her husband had gone for ever, and she could not fear any peril, any sorrow, now that she knew herself to be secure of his love. john looked up eagerly as mr. grimstone followed the servant into the room; but a warning look from talbot bulstrode checked his impetuosity, and he waited till the door was shut before he spoke. "now, then, grimstone," he said; "what news?" "well, sir, i've had a hard day's work," the detective answered gravely, "and perhaps neither of you gentlemen--not being professional--would think much of what i've done; but for all that, i believe i'm bringin' it home, sir; i believe i'm bringin' it home." "thank god for that!" murmured talbot bulstrode, reverently. he had thrown away his cigar, and was standing by the fireplace, with his arm resting upon the angle of the mantel-piece. "you've got a gardener by the name of dawson in your service, mr. mellish?" said the detective. "i have," answered john: "but, lord have mercy upon us! you don't mean to say you think it's him? dawson's as good a fellow as ever breathed." "i don't say i think it's any one as yet, sir," mr. grimstone answered sententiously; "but when a man as had two thousand pound upon him in bank-notes is found in a wood shot through the heart, and the notes missin'--the wood bein' free to anybody as chose to walk in it--it's a pretty open case for suspicion. i should like to see this man dawson, if it's convenient." "to-night?" asked john. "yes: the sooner the better. the less delay there is in this sort of business, the more satisfactory for all parties, with the exception of the party that's wanted," added the detective. "i'll send for dawson, then," answered mr. mellish; "but i expect he'll have gone to bed by this time." "then he can but get up again, if he has, sir," mr. grimstone said politely. "i've set my heart upon seeing him to-night, if it's all the same to you." it is not to be supposed that john mellish was likely to object to any arrangement which might hasten, if by but a moment's time, the hour of the discovery for which he so ardently prayed. he went straight off to the servants' hall to make inquiries for the gardener, and left talbot bulstrode and the detective together. "there aint nothing turned up here, i suppose, sir," said joseph grimstone, addressing mr. bulstrode, "as will be of any help to us?" "yes," talbot answered. "we have got the numbers of the notes which mrs. mellish gave the murdered man. i telegraphed to mr. floyd's country house, and he arrived here himself only an hour ago, bringing the list of the notes with him." "and an uncommon plucky thing of the old gentleman to do, beggin' your pardon, sir," exclaimed the detective with enthusiasm. five minutes afterwards, mr. mellish re-entered the room, bringing the gardener with him. the man had been into doncaster to see his friends, and only returned about half an hour before; so the master of the house had caught him in the act of making havoc with a formidable cold joint, and a great jar of pickled cabbage, in the servants' hall. "now, you're not to be frightened, dawson," said the young squire, with friendly indiscretion; "of course nobody for a moment suspects you, any more than they suspect me; but this gentleman here wants to see you, and of course you know there's no reason that he shouldn't see you if he wishes it, though what he wants with you--" mr. mellish stopped abruptly, arrested by a frown from talbot bulstrode; and the gardener, who was innocent of the faintest comprehension of his master's meaning, pulled his hair respectfully, and shuffled nervously upon the slippery indian matting. "i only want to ask you a question or two to decide a wager between these two gentlemen and me, mr. dawson," said the detective with reassuring familiarity. "you bought a second-hand waistcoat of gogram, in the market-place, didn't you, about a year and a half ago?" "ay, sure, sir. i bought a weskit at gogram's," answered the gardener; "but it weren't second-hand; it were bran new." "a yellow stripe upon a brown ground?" the man nodded, with his mouth wide open, in the extremity of his surprise at this london stranger's familiarity with the details of his toilet. "i dunno how you come to know about that weskit, sir," he said, with a grin; "it were wore out full six months ago; for i took to wearin' of it in t' garden, and garden-work soon spiles anything in the way of clothes; but him as i give it to was glad enough to have it, though it was awful shabby." "him as you give it to?" repeated mr. grimstone, not pausing to amend the sentence, in his eagerness. "you gave it away, then?" "yees, i gave it to th' 'softy;' and wasn't th' poor fond chap glad to get it, that's all!" "the 'softy'!" exclaimed mr. grimstone. "who's the 'softy'?" "the man we spoke of last night," answered talbot bulstrode; "the man whom mrs. mellish found in this room upon the morning before the murder,--the man called stephen hargraves." "ay, ay, to be sure; i thought as much," murmured the detective. "that will do, mr. dawson," he added, addressing the gardener, who had shuffled a good deal nearer to the doorway in his uneasy state of mind. "stay, though; i may as well ask you one more question. were any of the buttons missing off that waistcoat when you gave it away?" "not one on 'em," answered the gardener, decisively. "my missus is too particular for that. she's a reg'lar toidy one, she is; allers mendin' and patchin'; and if one of t' buttons got loose she was sure to sew it on toight again, before it was lost." "thank you, mr. dawson," returned the detective, with the friendly condescension of a superior being. "good-night." the gardener shuffled off, very glad to be released from the awful presence of his superiors, and to go back to the cold meat and pickles in the servants' hall. "i think i'm bringing the business into a nutshell, sir," said mr. grimstone, when the door had closed upon the gardener. "but the less said, the better, just yet awhile. i'll take the list of the numbers of the notes, please, sir; and i believe i shall come upon you for that two hundred pound, mr. mellish, before either of us is many weeks older." so, with the list made by cautious archibald floyd, bestowed safely in his waistcoat-pocket, mr. joseph grimstone walked back to doncaster through the still summer's night, intent upon the business he had undertaken. "it looked uncommon black against the lady about a week ago," he thought, as he walked meditatively across the dewy grass in mellish park; "and i fancy the information they got at the yard would have put a fool upon the wrong scent, and kept him on it till the right one got worn out. but it's clearing up, it's clearing up beautiful; and i think it'll turn out one of the neatest cases i ever had the handling of." chapter xiii. off the scent. it is scarcely necessary to say, that, with the button by crosby in his pocket, and with the information acquired from dawson the gardener, stowed away carefully in his mind, mr. joseph grimstone looked with an eye of particular interest upon steeve hargraves the "softy." the detective had not come to doncaster alone. he had brought with him a humble ally and follower, in the shape of the little shabby-looking man who had encountered the "softy" at the railway station, having received orders to keep a close watch upon mr. stephen hargraves. it was of course a very easy matter to identify the "softy" in the town of doncaster, where he had been pretty generally known since his childhood. mr. grimstone had called upon a medical practitioner, and had submitted the button to him for inspection. the stains upon it were indeed that which the detective had supposed--blood; and the surgeon detected a minute morsel of cartilage adhering to the jagged hasp of the button; but the same surgeon declared that this missile could not have been the one used by the murderer of james conyers. it had not been through the dead man's body; it had inflicted only a surface wound. the business which now lay before mr. grimstone was the tracing of one or other of the bank-notes; and for this purpose he and his ally set to work upon the track of the "softy," with a view of discovering all the places which it was his habit to visit. the haunts affected by mr. hargraves turned out to be some half-dozen very obscure public-houses; and to each of these joseph grimstone went in person. but he could discover nothing. all his inquiries only elicited the fact that stephen hargraves had not been observed to change, or to attempt to change, any bank-note whatever. he had paid for all he had had, and spent more than it was usual for him to spend, drinking a good deal harder than had been his habit heretofore; but he had paid in silver, except on one occasion, when he had changed a sovereign. the detective called at the bank; but no person answering the description of stephen hargraves had been observed there. the detective endeavoured to discover any friends or companions of the "softy;" but here again he failed. the half-witted hanger-on of the mellish stables had never made any friends, being entirely deficient in all social qualities. there was something almost miraculous in the manner in which mr. joseph grimstone contrived to make himself master of any information which he wished to acquire; and before noon on the day after his interview with mr. dawson the gardener, he had managed to eliminate all the facts set down above, and had also succeeded in ingratiating himself into the confidence of the dirty old proprietress of that humble lodging in which the "softy" had taken up his abode. it is scarcely necessary to this story to tell how the detective went to work; but while stephen hargraves sat soddening his stupid brain with medicated beer in a low tap-room not far off, and while mr. grimstone's ally kept close watch, holding himself in readiness to give warning of any movement on the part of the suspected individual, mr. grimstone himself went so cleverly to work in his manipulation of the "softy's" landlady, that in less than a quarter of an hour he had taken full possession of that weak point in the intellectual citadel which is commonly called the blind side, and was able to do what he pleased with the old woman and her wretched tenement. his peculiar pleasure was to make a very elaborate examination of the apartment rented by the "softy," and any other apartments, cupboards, or hiding-places to which mr. hargraves had access. but he found nothing to reward him for his trouble. the old woman was in the habit of receiving casual lodgers, resting for a night or so at doncaster before tramping further on their vagabond wanderings; and the six-roomed dwelling-place was only furnished with such meagre accommodation as may be expected for fourpence and sixpence a night. there were few hiding-places,--no carpets, underneath which fat bundles of bank-notes might be hidden; no picture-frames, behind which the same species of property might be bestowed; no ponderous cornices or heavily-fringed valances shrouding the windows, and affording dusty recesses wherein the title-deeds of half a dozen fortunes might lie and rot. there were two or three cupboards, into which mr. grimstone penetrated with a tallow candle; but he discovered nothing of any more importance than crockery-ware, lucifer-matches, fire-wood, potatoes, bare ropes, on which an onion lingered here and there and sprouted dismally in its dark loneliness, empty ginger-beer bottles, oyster-shells, old boots and shoes, disabled mouse-traps, black beetles, and humid fungi rising ghost-like from the damp and darkness. mr. grimstone emerged dirty and discomforted, from one of these dark recesses, after a profitless search, which had occupied a couple of weary hours. "some other chap'll go in and cut the ground under my feet, if i waste my time this way," thought the detective. "i'm blest if i don't think i've been a fool for my pains. the man carries the money about him,--that's as clear as mud; and if i were to search doncaster till my hair got gray, i shouldn't find what i want." mr. grimstone shut the door of the last cupboard which he had examined, with an impatient slam, and then turned towards the window. there was no sign of his scout in the little alley before the house, and he had time therefore for further business. he had examined everything in the "softy's" apartment, and he had paid particular attention to the state of mr. hargraves' wardrobe, which consisted of a pile of garments, every one of which bore in its cut and fashion the stamp of a different individuality, and thereby proclaimed itself as having belonged to another master. there was a newmarket coat of john mellish's, and a pair of hunting-breeches, which could only have built by the great poole himself, split across the knees, but otherwise little the worse for wear. there was a linen jacket, and an old livery waistcoat that had belonged to one of the servants at the park; odd tops of every shade known in the hunting-field, from the spotless white, or the delicate champagne-cleaned cream colour of the dandy, to the favourite vinegar hue of the hard-riding country squire; a groom's hat with a tarnished band and a battered crown; hob-nailed boots, which may have belonged to mr. dawson; corduroy breeches that could only have fitted a dropsical lodge-keeper, long deceased; and there was one garment which bore upon it the ghastly impress of a dreadful deed that had but lately been done. this was the velveteen shooting-coat worn by james conyers, the trainer, which, pierced with the murderous bullet, and stiffened by the soaking torrent of blood, had been appropriated by mr. stephen hargraves in the confusion of the catastrophe. all these things, with sundry rubbish in the way of odd spurs and whip-handles, scraps of broken harness, ends of rope, and such other scrapings as only a miser loves to accumulate, were packed in a lumbering trunk covered with mangy fur, and secured by about a dozen yards of knotted and jagged rope, tied about it in such a manner as the "softy" had considered sufficient to defy the most artful thief in christendom. mr. grimstone had made very short work of all the elaborate defences in the way of knots and entanglements, and had ransacked the box from one end to the other; nay, had even closely examined the fur covering of the trunk, and had tested each separate brass-headed nail to ascertain if any of them had been removed or altered. he may have thought it just possible that two thousand pounds' worth of bank of england paper had been nailed down under the mangy fur. he gave a weary sigh as he concluded his inspection, replaced the garments one by one in the trunk, reknotted and secured the jagged cord, and with a weary sigh turned his back upon the "softy's" chamber. "it's no good," he thought. "the yellow-striped waistcoat isn't among his clothes, and the money isn't hidden away anywhere. can he be deep enough to have destroyed that waistcoat, i wonder? he'd got a red woollen one on this morning; perhaps he's got the yellow-striped one under it." mr. grimstone brushed the dust and cobwebs off his clothes, washed his hands in a greasy wooden bowl of scalding water, which the old woman brought him, and then sat down before the fire, picking his teeth thoughtfully, and with his eyebrows set in a reflective frown over his small gray eyes. "i don't like to be beat," he thought; "i don't like to be beat." he doubted if any magistrate would grant him a warrant against the "softy" upon the strength of the evidence in his possession--the blood-stained button by crosby of birmingham; and without a warrant he could not search for the notes upon the person of the man he suspected. he had sounded all the out-door servants at mellish park, but had been able to discover nothing that threw any light upon the movements of stephen hargraves on the night of the murder. no one remembered having seen him; no one had been on the southern side of the wood that night. one of the lads had passed the north lodge on his way from the high-road to the stables, about the time at which aurora had heard the shot fired in the wood, and had seen a light burning in the lower window; but this, of course, proved nothing either one way or the other. "if we could find the money _upon him_," thought mr. grimstone; "it would be pretty strong proof of the robbery; and if we find the waistcoat off which that button came, in his possession, it wouldn't be bad evidence of the murder, putting the two things together; but we shall have to keep a precious sharp watch upon my friend, while we hunt up what we want, or i'm blest if he won't give us the slip, and be off to liverpool and out of the country before we know where we are." now the truth of the matter is, that mr. joseph grimstone was not, perhaps, acting quite so conscientiously in this business as he might have done, had the love of justice in the abstract, and without any relation to sublunary reward, been the ruling principle of his life. he might have had any help he pleased, from the doncaster constabulary, had he chosen to confide in the members of that force; but, as a very knowing individual who owns a three-year old, which he has reason to believe "a flyer," is apt to keep the capabilities of his horse a secret from his friends and the sporting public, while he puts a "pot" of money upon the animal at enormous odds, so mr. grimstone desired to keep his information to himself, until it should have brought him its golden fruit in the shape of a small reward from government, and a large one from john mellish. the detective had reason to know that the dogberries of doncaster, misled by a duplicate of that very letter which had first aroused the attention of scotland yard, were on the wrong scent, as he had been at first; and he was very well content to leave them where they were. "no," he thought, "it's a critical game; but i'll play it single-handed, or, at least, with no one better than tom chivers to help me through with it; and a ten-pound note will satisfy him, if we win the day." pondering thus, mr. grimstone departed, after having recompensed the landlady for her civility by a donation which the old woman considered princely. he had entirely deluded her as to the object of his search by telling her that he was a lawyer's clerk, commissioned by his employer to hunt for a codicil which had been hidden somewhere in that house by an old man who had lived in it in the year 1783; and he had contrived, in the course of conversation, to draw from the old woman, who was of a garrulous turn, all that she had to tell about the "softy." it was not much, certainly. mr. hargraves had never changed a bank-note with her knowledge. he had paid for his bit of victuals as he had it, but had not spent a shilling a day. as to bank-notes, it wasn't at all likely that he had any of them; for he was always complaining that he was very poor, and that his little bit of savings, scraped together out of his wages, wouldn't last him long. "this hargraves is a precious deep one for all they call him soft," thought mr. grimstone, as he left the lodging-house, and walked slowly towards the sporting public-house at which he had left the "softy" under the watchful eye of mr. tom chivers. "i've often heard say that these half-witted chaps have more cunning in their little fingers than a better man has in the whole of his composition. another man would have never been able to stand against the temptation of changing one of those notes; or would have gone about wearing that identical waistcoat; or would have made a bolt of it the day after the murder; or tried on something or other that would have blown the gaff upon him; but not your 'softy!' he hides the notes and he hides the waistcoat, and then he laughs in his sleeve at those that want him, and sits drinking his beer as comfortably as you please." pondering thus, the detective made his way to the public-house in which he had left mr. stephen hargraves. he ordered a glass of brandy-and-water at the bar, and walked into the taproom, expecting to see the "softy" still brooding sullenly over his drink, still guarded by the apparently indifferent eye of mr. chivers. but it was not so. the taproom was empty; and upon making cautious inquiries, mr. grimstone discovered that the "softy" and his watcher had been gone for upwards of an hour. mr. chivers had been forbidden to let his charge out of sight under any circumstances whatever, except indeed if the "softy" had turned homewards while mr. grimstone was employed in ransacking his domicile, in which event tom was to have slipped on a few paces before him, and given warning to his chief. wherever stephen hargraves went, mr. thomas chivers was to follow him; but he was, above all, to act in such a manner as would effectually prevent any suspicion arising in the "softy's" mind as to the fact that he was followed. it will be seen, therefore, that poor chivers had no very easy task to perform, and it has been seen that he had heretofore contrived to perform it pretty skilfully. if stephen hargraves sat boozing in a taproom half the day, mr. chivers was also to booze or to make a pretence of boozing, for the same length of time. if the "softy" showed any disposition to be social, and gave his companion any opportunity of getting friendly with him, the detective's underling was to employ his utmost skill and discretion in availing himself of that golden chance. it is a wondrous provision of providence that the treachery which would be hateful and horrible in any other man, is considered perfectly legitimate in the man who is employed to hunt out a murderer or a thief. the vile instruments which the criminal employed against his unsuspecting victim are in due time used against himself; and the wretch who laughed at the poor unsuspecting dupe who was trapped to his destruction by _his_ lies, is caught in his turn by some shallow deceit, or pitifully hackneyed device, of the paid spy, who has been bribed to lure him to his doom. for the outlaw of society, the code of honour is null and void. his existence is a perpetual peril to innocent women and honourable men; and the detective who beguiles him to his end does such a service to society as must doubtless counterbalance the treachery of the means by which it is done. the days of jonathan wild and his compeers are over, and the thief-taker no longer begins life as a thief. the detective officer is as honest as he is intrepid and astute, and it is not his own fault if the dirty nature of all crime gives him now and then dirty work to do. but mr. stephen hargraves did not give the opportunity for which tom chivers had been bidden to lie in wait; he sat sullen, silent, stupid, unapproachable; and as tom's orders were not to force himself upon his companion, he was fain to abandon all thought of worming himself into the "softy's" good graces. this made the task of watching him all the more difficult. it is not such a very easy matter to follow a man without seeming to follow him. it was market-day too, and the town was crowded with noisy country people. mr. grimstone suddenly remembered this, and the recollection by no means added to his peace of mind. "chivers never did sell me," he thought, "and surely he won't do it now. i dare say they're safe enough, for the matter of that, in some other public. i'll slip out and look after them." mr. grimstone had, as i have said, already made himself acquainted with all the haunts affected by the "softy." it did not take him long, therefore, to look in at the three or four public-houses where steeve hargraves was likely to be found, and to discover that he was not there. "he's slouching about the town somewhere or other, i dare say," thought the detective, "with my mate close upon his heels. i'll stroll towards the market-place, and see if i can find them anywhere that way." mr. grimstone turned out of the by-street in which he had been walking, into a narrow alley leading to the broad open square upon which the market-place stands. the detective went his way in a leisurely manner, with his hands in his pockets and a cigar in his mouth. he had perfect confidence in mr. thomas chivers, and the crowded state of the market-place and its neighbourhood in no way weakened his sense of security. "chivers will stick to him through thick and thin," he thought; "he'd keep an eye upon his man if he had to look after him between charing cross and whitehall when the queen was going to open parliament. he's not the man to be flummuxed by a crowd in a country market-place." serene in this sense of security, mr. grimstone amused himself by looking about him, with an expression of somewhat supercilious wonder, at the manners and customs of those indigenã¦ who, upon market-day, make their inroad into the quiet town. he paused upon the edge of a little sunken flight of worn steps leading down to the stage-door of the theatre, and read the fragments of old bills mouldering upon the door-posts and lintel. there were glowing announcements of dramatic performances that had long ago taken place; and above the rain and mud stained relics of the past, in bold black lettering, appeared the record of a drama as terrible as any that had ever been enacted in that provincial theatre. the bill-sticker had posted the announcement of the reward offered by john mellish for the discovery of the murderer in every available spot, and had not forgotten this position, which commanded one of the entrances to the market-place. "it's a wonder to me," muttered mr. grimstone, "that that blessed bill shouldn't have opened the eyes of these doncaster noodles. but i dare say they think it's a blind, a planned thing to throw 'em off the scent their clever noses are sticking to so determined. if i can get my man before they open their eyes, i shall have such a haul as i haven't met with lately." musing thus pleasantly, mr. grimstone turned his back upon the theatre, and crossed over to the market. within the building the clamour of buying and selling was at its height: noisy countrymen chaffering in their northern _patois_ upon the value and merits of poultry, butter, and eggs; dealers in butchers' meat bewildering themselves in the endeavour to simultaneously satisfy the demands of half a dozen sharp and bargain-loving housekeepers; while from without there came a confused clatter of other merchants and other customers, clamouring and hustling round the stalls of greengrocers and the slimy barrows of blue-jacketed fishmongers. in the midst of all this bustle and confusion, mr. grimstone came suddenly upon his trusted ally, pale, terror-stricken, and--alone! the detective's mind was not slow to grasp the full force of the situation. "you've lost him!" he whispered fiercely, seizing the unfortunate mr. chivers by the collar, and pinning him as securely as if he had serious thoughts of making him a permanent fixture upon the stone-flags of the market-place. "you've lost him, tom chivers!" he continued, hoarse with agitation. "you've lost the party that i told you was worth more to me than any other party i ever gave you the office for. you've lost me the best chance i've ever had since i've been in scotland yard, and yourself too; for i should have acted liberal by you," added the detective, apparently oblivious of that morning's reverie, in which he had pre-determined offering his assistant ten pounds, in satisfaction of all his claims,--"i should have acted very liberal by you, tom. but what's the use of standing jawing here? you come along with me; you can tell me how it happened as we go." with his powerful grasp still on the underling's collar, mr. grimstone walked out of the market-place, neither looking to the right nor the left, though many a pair of rustic eyes opened to their widest as he passed, attracted no doubt by the rapidity of his pace and the obvious determination of his manner. perhaps those rustic bystanders thought that the stern-looking gentleman in the black frock-coat had arrested the shabby little man in the act of picking his pocket, and was bearing him off to deliver him straight into the hands of justice. mr. grimstone released his grasp when he and his companion had got clear of the market-place. "now," he said, breathless, but not slackening his pace,--"now i suppose you can tell me how you came to make such an"--inadmissable adjective--"fool of yourself? never you mind where i'm goin'. i'm goin' to the railway station. never you mind why i'm goin' there. you'd guess why, if you weren't a fool. now tell me all about it, can't you?" "it aint much to tell," the humble follower gasped, his respiratory functions sadly tried by the pace at which his superior went over the ground. "it aint much. i followed your instructions faithful. i tried, artful and quiet-like, to make acquaintance with him; but that warn't a bit o' good. he was as surly as a bull-terrier, so i didn't force him to it; but kept an eye upon him, and let out before him as it was racin' business as had brought me to doncaster, and as i was here to look after a horse, what was in trainin' a few miles off, for a gent in london; and when he left the public, i went after him, but not conspicuous. but i think from that minute he was fly, for he didn't go three steps without lookin' back, and he led me such a chase as made my legs tremble under me, which they trembles at this moment; and then he gets me into the market-place, and he dodges here, and he dodges there, and wherever the crowd's thickest he dodges most, till he gets me at last in among a ring of market-people round a couple o' coves a-millin' with each other, and there i loses him. and i've been in and out the market, and here and there, until i'm fit to drop, but it aint no good; and you've no call to lay the blame on me, for mortal man couldn't have done more." mr. chivers wiped the perspiration from his face in testimony of his exertions. dirty little streams were rolling down his forehead and trickling upon his poor faded cheeks. he mopped up these evidences of his fatigue with a red cotton handkerchief, and gave a deprecatory sigh. "if there's anybody to lay blame on, it aint me," he said mildly. "i said all along you ought to have had help. a man as is on his own ground, and knows his own ground, is more than a match for one cove, however hard he may work." the detective turned fiercely upon his meek dependent. "who's blaming you?" he cried impatiently. "i wouldn't cry out before i was hurt, if i were you." they had reached the railway station by this time. "how long is it since you missed him?" asked mr. grimstone of the penitent chivers. "three-quarters of a hour, or it may be a hour," tom added doubtfully. "i dare say it _is_ an hour," muttered the detective. he walked straight to one of the chief officials, and asked what trains had left within the last hour. "two--both market trains: one eastward, selby way; the other for penistone, and the intervening stations." the detective looked at the time-table, running his thumb-nail along the names of the stations. "that train will reach penistone in time to catch the liverpool train, won't it?" he asked. "just about." "what time did it go?" "the penistone train?" "yes." "about half an hour ago; at 2.30." the clocks had struck three as mr. grimstone made his way to the station. "half an hour ago," muttered the detective. "he'd have had ample time to catch the train after giving chivers the slip." he questioned the guards and porters as to whether any of them had seen a man answering to the description of the "softy:" a white-faced, hump-backed fellow, in corduroys and a fustian jacket; and even penetrated into the ticket-clerk's office to ask the same question. no; none of them had seen mr. stephen hargraves. two or three of them recognized him by the detective's description, and asked if it was one of the stable-men from mellish park that the gentleman was inquiring after. mr. grimstone rather evaded any direct answer to this question. secrecy was, as we know, the principle upon which he conducted his affairs. "he may have contrived to give 'em all the slip," he said confidentially to his faithful but dispirited ally. "he may have got off without any of 'em seeing him. he's got the money about him, i'm all but certain of that; and his game is to get off to liverpool. his inquiries after the trains yesterday proves that. now i might telegraph, and have him stopped at liverpool--supposing him to have given us all the slip, and gone off there--if i like to let others into the game; but i don't. i'll play to win or lose; but i'll play single-handed. he may try another dodge, and get off hull way by the canal-boats that the market-people use, and then slip across to hamburg, or something of that sort; but that aint likely,--these fellows always go one way. it seems as if the minute a man has taken another man's life, or forged his name, or embezzled his money, his ideas get fixed in one groove, and never can soar higher than liverpool and the american packet." mr. chivers listened respectfully to his patron's communications. he was very well pleased to see the serenity of his employer's mind gradually returning. "now, i'll tell you what, tom," said mr. grimstone. "if this chap has given us the slip, why he's given us the slip, and he's got a start of us, which we sha'n't be able to pick up till half-past ten o'clock to-night, when there's a train that'll take us to liverpool. if he _hasn't_ given us the slip, there's only one way he can leave doncaster, and that's by this station; so you stay here patient and quiet till you see me, or hear from me. if he is in doncaster, i'm jiggered if i don't find him." with which powerful asseveration mr. grimstone walked away, leaving his scout to keep watch for the possible coming of the "softy." chapter xiv. talbot bulstrode makes atonement for the past. john mellish and talbot bulstrode walked to and fro upon the lawn before the drawing-room windows on that afternoon on which the detective and his underling lost sight of stephen hargraves. it was a dreary time, this period of watching and waiting, of uncertainty and apprehension; and poor john mellish chafed bitterly under the burden which he had to bear. now that his friend's common sense had come to his relief, and that a few plain out-spoken sentences had dispersed the terrible cloud of mystery; now that he himself was fully assured of his wife's innocence, he had no patience with the stupid country people who held themselves aloof from the woman he loved. he wanted to go out and do battle for his slandered wife; to hurl back every base suspicion into the faces that had scowled upon his idolized aurora. how could they dare, these foul-minded slanderers, to harbour one base thought against the purest, the most perfect of women? mr. mellish of course quite forgot that he, the rightful defender of all this perfection, had suffered his mind to be for a time obscured beneath the black shadow of that vile suspicion. he hated the old friends of his youth for their base avoidance of him; the servants of his household for a half-doubtful, half-solemn expression of face, which he knew had relation to that growing suspicion, that horrible suspicion, which seemed to grow stronger with every hour. he broke out into a storm of rage with the gray-haired butler, who had carried him pick-a-back in his infancy, because the faithful retainer tried to hold back certain newspapers which contained dark allusions to the mellish mystery. "who told you i didn't want the 'manchester guardian,' jarvis?" he cried fiercely; "who gave you the right to dictate what i'm to read or what i'm to leave unread? i do want to-day's 'guardian;' to-day's, and yesterday's, and to-morrow's, and every other newspaper that comes into this house. i won't have them overhauled by you, or anyone, to see whether they're pleasant reading or not, before they're brought to me. do you think _i'm_ afraid of anything these penny-a-liner fellows can write?" roared the young squire, striking his open hand upon the table at which he sat. "let them write their best or their worst of me. but let them write one word that can be twisted into an insinuation upon the purest and truest woman in all christendom, and, by the lord above me, i'll give them such a thrashing--penny-a-liners, printers, publishers, and every man-jack of them--as shall make them remember the business to the last hour of their lives!" mr. mellish said all this in despite of the restraining presence of talbot bulstrode. indeed, the young member for penruthy had by no means a pleasant time of it during those few days of anxiety and suspense. a keeper set to watch over a hearty young jungle-tiger, and bidden to prevent the noble animal from committing any imprudence, might have found his work little harder than that which mr. bulstrode did, patiently and uncomplainingly, for pure friendship's sake. john mellish roamed about in the custody of this friendly keeper, with his short auburn hair tumbled into a feverish-looking mass, like a field of ripening corn that had been beaten by a summer hurricane, his cheeks sunken and haggard, and a bristling yellow stubble upon his chin. i dare say he had made a vow neither to shave nor be shaven until the murderer of james conyers should be found. he clung desperately to talbot bulstrode, but he clung with still wilder desperation to the detective, the professional criminal hunter, who had in a manner tacitly pledged himself to the discovery of the real homicide. all through the fitful august day, now hot and still, now overclouded and showery, the master of mellish park went hither and thither,--now sitting in his study; now roaming out on the lawn; now pacing up and down the drawing-room, displacing, disarranging, and overturning the pretty furniture; now wandering up and down the staircase, lolling on the landing-places, and patrolling the corridor outside the rooms in which lucy and aurora sat together making a show of employing themselves, but only waiting, waiting, waiting, for the hoped-for end. poor john scarcely cared to meet that dearly-loved wife; for the great earnest eyes that looked in his face always asked the same question so plainly,--always appealed so piteously for the answer that could not be given. it was a weary and a bitter time. i wonder, as i write of it, when i think of a quiet somersetshire household in which a dreadful deed was done, the secret of which has never yet been brought to light, and perhaps never will be revealed until the day of judgment, what must have been suffered by each member of _that_ family? what slow agonies, what ever-increasing tortures, while that cruel mystery was the "sensation" topic of conversation in a thousand happy home-circles, in a thousand tavern-parlours and pleasant club-rooms!--a common and ever-interesting topic, by means of which travellers in first-class railway carriages might break down the ceremonial icebergs which surround each travelling englishman, and grow friendly and confidential; a safe topic upon which even tacit enemies might talk pleasantly without fear of wrecking themselves upon hidden rocks of personal insinuation. god help that household, or any such household, through the weary time of waiting which it may please him to appoint, until that day in which it shall be his good pleasure to reveal the truth! god help all patient creatures labouring under the burden of an unjust suspicion, and support them unto the end! john mellish chafed and fretted himself ceaselessly all through that august day at the non-appearance of the detective. why didn't he come? he had promised to bring or send them news of his proceedings. talbot in vain assured his friend that mr. grimstone was no doubt hard at work; that such a discovery as he had to make was not to be made in a day; and that mr. mellish had nothing to do but to make himself as comfortable as he could, and wait quietly for the event he desired so eagerly. "i should not say this to you, john," mr. bulstrode said by-and-by, "if i did not believe--as i know this man grimstone believes--that we are upon the right track, and are pretty sure to bring the crime home to the wretch who committed it. you can do nothing but be patient, and wait the result of grimstone's labours." "yes," cried john mellish; "and in the mean time all these people are to say cruel things of my darling, and keep aloof from her, and--no, i _can't_ bear it, talbot; i can't bear it. i'll turn my back upon this confounded place; i'll sell it; i'll burn it down; i'll--i'll do anything to get away, and take my precious one from the wretches who have slandered her!" "that you shall _not_ do, john mellish," exclaimed talbot bulstrode, "until the murderer of james conyers has been discovered. go away, then, as soon as you like; for the associations of this place cannot be otherwise than disagreeable to you--for a time, at least. but until the truth is out, you must remain here. if there is any foul suspicion against aurora, her presence here will best give the lie to that suspicion. it was her hurried journey to london which first set people talking of her, i dare say," added mr. bulstrode, who was of course entirely ignorant of the fact that an anonymous letter from mrs. powell had originally aroused the suspicions of the doncaster constabulary. so through the long summer's day talbot reasoned with and comforted his friend, never growing weary of his task, never for one moment losing sight of the interests of aurora mellish and her husband. perhaps this was a self-imposed penalty for the wrong which he had done the banker's daughter long ago in the dim star-lit chamber at felden. if it was so, he did penance very cheerfully. "heaven knows how gladly i would do her a service," he thought; "her life has been a troubled one, in spite of her father's thousands. thank heaven, my poor little lucy has never been forced into playing the heroine of a tragedy like this; thank heaven, my poor little darling's life flows evenly and placidly in a smooth channel!" he could not but reflect with something of a shudder that it might have been his wife whose history was being canvassed throughout the west riding. he could not be otherwise than pleased to remember that the name of the woman he had chosen had never gone beyond the holy circle of her own home, to be the common talk among strangers. there are things which are utterly unendurable to some people, but which are not at all terrible in the eyes of others. john mellish, secure in his own belief in his wife's innocence, would have been content to carry her away with him, after razing the home of his forefathers to the ground, and defying all yorkshire to find a flaw or speck upon her fair fame. but talbot bulstrode would have gone mad with the agony of the thought that common tongues had defiled the name he loved, and would, in no after-triumph of his wife's innocence, been able to forget or to recover from the torture of that unendurable agony. there are people who cannot forget, and talbot bulstrode was one of them. he had never forgotten his christmas agony at felden woods, and the after-struggle at bulstrode castle; nor did he ever hope to forget it. the happiness of the present, pure and unalloyed though it was, could not annihilate the anguish of the past. _that_ stood alone,--so many months, weeks, days, and hours of unutterable misery, riven away from the rest of his life, to remain for ever a stony memorial upon the smooth plains of the past. archibald martin floyd sat with his daughter and lucy, in mrs. mellish's morning-room, the pleasantest chamber for many reasons, but chiefly because it was removed from the bustle of the house, and from the chance of unwelcome intrusion. all the troubles of that household had been made light of in the presence of the old man, and no word had been dropped before him, which could give him reason to guess that his only child had been suspected of the most fearful crime that man or woman can commit. but archibald floyd was not easily to be deceived where his daughter's happiness was in question; he had watched that beautiful face--whose ever-varying expression was its highest charm--so long and earnestly, as to have grown familiar with its every look. no shadow upon the brightness of his daughter's beauty could possibly escape the old man's eyes, dim as they may have grown for the figures in his banking-book. it was aurora's business, therefore, to sit by her father's side in the pleasant morning-room, to talk to him and amuse him; while john rambled hither and thither, and made himself otherwise tiresome to his patient companion, talbot bulstrode. mrs. mellish repeated to her father again and again, that there was no cause for uneasiness; they were merely anxious--naturally anxious--that the guilty man should be found and brought to justice; nothing more. the banker accepted this explanation of his daughter's pale face very quietly; but he was not the less anxious,--anxious he scarcely knew why, but with the shadow of a dark cloud hanging over him, that was not to be driven away. thus the long august day wore itself out, and the low sun--blazing a lurid red behind the trees in mellish wood, until it made that pool beside which the murdered man had fallen, seem a pool of blood--gave warning that one weary day of watching and suspense was nearly done. john mellish, far too restless to sit long at dessert, had roamed out upon the lawn: still attended by his indefatigable keeper, talbot bulstrode, and employed himself in pacing up and down the smooth grass amid mr. dawson's flower-beds, looking always towards the pathway that led to the house, and breathing suppressed anathemas against the dilatory detective. "one day nearly gone, thank heaven, talbot!" he said, with an impatient sigh. "will to-morrow bring us no nearer what we want, i wonder? what if it should go on like this for long? what if it should go on for ever, until aurora and i go mad with this wretched anxiety and suspense? yes, i know you think me a fool and a coward, talbot bulstrode; but i can't bear it quietly, i tell you i can't. i know there are some people who can shut themselves up with their troubles, and sit down quietly and suffer without a groan; but i can't. i must cry out when i am tortured, or i should dash my brains out against the first wall i came to, and make an end of it. to think that anybody should suspect my darling! to think that they should believe her to be----" "to think that _you_ should have believed it, john!" said mr. bulstrode, gravely. "ah, there's the cruelest stab of all," cried john; "if _i_,--i who know her, and love her, and believe in her as man never yet believed in woman,--if _i_ could have been bewildered and maddened by that horrible chain of cruel circumstances, every one of which pointed--heaven help me!--at her!--if _i_ could be deluded by these things until my brain reeled, and i went nearly mad with doubting my own dearest love, what may strangers think--strangers who neither know nor love her, but who are only too ready to believe anything unnaturally infamous? talbot, i _won't_ endure this any longer. i'll ride into doncaster and see this man grimstone. he _must_ have done some good to-day. i'll go at once." mr. mellish would have walked straight off to the stables; but talbot bulstrode caught him by the arm. "you may miss the man on the road, john," he said. "he came last night after dark, and may come as late to-night. there's no knowing whether he'll come by the road, or the short cut across the fields. you're as likely to miss him as not." mr. mellish hesitated. "he mayn't come at all to-night," he said; "and i tell you i can't bear this suspense." "let _me_ ride into doncaster, then, john," urged talbot; "and you stay here to receive grimstone if he should come." mr. mellish was considerably mollified by this proposition. "will you ride into the town, talbot?" he said. "upon my word, it's very kind of you to propose it. i shouldn't like to miss this man upon any account; but at the same time i don't feel inclined to wait for the chance of his coming or staying away. i'm afraid i'm a great nuisance to you, bulstrode." "not a bit of it," answered talbot, with a smile. perhaps he smiled involuntarily at the notion of how little john mellish knew what a nuisance he had been through that weary day. "i'll go with very great pleasure, john," he said, "if you'll tell them to saddle a horse for me." "to be sure; you shall have red rover, my covert hack. we'll go round to the stables, and see about him at once." the truth of the matter is, talbot bulstrode was very well pleased himself to hunt up the detective, rather than that john mellish should execute that errand in person; for it would have been about as easy for the young squire to have translated a number of the 'sporting magazine' into porsonian greek, as to have kept a secret for half an hour, however earnestly entreated, or however conscientiously determined to do so. mr. bulstrode had made it his particular business, therefore, during the whole of that day, to keep his friend as much as possible out of the way of every living creature, fully aware that mr. mellish's manner would most certainly betray him to the least observant eyes that might chance to fall upon him. red rover was saddled, and, after twenty loudly whispered injunctions from john, talbot bulstrode rode away in the evening sunlight. the nearest way from the stables to the high road took him past the north lodge. it had been shut up since the day of the trainer's funeral, and such furniture as it contained left to become a prey to moths and rats; for the mellish servants were a great deal too superstitiously impressed with the story of the murder to dream of readmitting those goods and chattels which had been selected for mr. conyers's accommodation to the garrets whence they had been taken. the door had been locked, therefore, and the key given to dawson the gardener, who was to be once more free to use the place as a storehouse for roots and matting, superannuated cucumber-frames, and crippled garden tools. the place looked dreary enough, though the low sun made a gorgeous illumination upon one of the latticed windows that faced the crimson west, and though the last leaves of the roses were still lying upon the long grass in the patch of garden before the door out of which mr. conyers had gone to his last resting-place. one of the stable-boys had accompanied mr. bulstrode to the lodge in order to open the rusty iron gates, which hung loosely on their hinges, and were never locked. talbot rode at a brisk pace into doncaster, never drawing rein until he reached the little inn at which the detective had taken up his quarters. mr. grimstone had been snatching a hasty refreshment, after a weary and useless perambulation about the town, and came out with his mouth full, to speak to mr. bulstrode. but he took very good care not to confess that since three o'clock that day neither he nor his ally had seen or heard of mr. stephen hargraves, or that he was actually no nearer the discovery of the murderer than he had been at eleven o'clock upon the previous night, when he had discovered the original proprietor of the fancy waistcoat, with buttons by crosby, birmingham, in the person of dawson the gardener. "i'm not losing any time, sir," he said, in answer to talbot's inquiries; "my sort of work's quiet work, and don't make no show till it's done. i've reason to think the man we want is in doncaster; so i stick in doncaster, and mean to, till i lay my hand upon him, unless i should get information as would point further off. tell mr. mellish i'm doing my duty, sir, and doing it conscientious; and that i shall neither eat nor drink nor sleep more than just as much as'll keep human nature together, until i've done what i've set my mind on doing." "but you've discovered nothing fresh, then?" said talbot; "you've nothing new to tell me?" "whatever i've discovered is neither here nor there yet awhile, sir," answered the detective vaguely. "you keep your heart up, and tell mr. mellish to keep his heart up, and trust in me." talbot bulstrode was obliged to be content with this rather doubtful comfort. it was not much, certainly; but he determined to make the best of it to john mellish. he rode out of doncaster, past the reindeer and the white-fronted houses of the wealthier citizens of that prosperous borough, and away upon the smooth high road. the faint shimmer of the pale pearly moonlight lit up the tree-tops right and left of him, as he left the suburb behind, and made the road ghostly beneath his horse's feet. he was in no very hopeful humour, after his interview with mr. grimstone, and he knew that hungry-eyed members of the doncaster constabulary were keeping stealthy watch upon every creature in the mellish household, and that the slanderous tongues of a greedy public were swelling into a loud and ominous murmur against the wife john loved. every hour, every moment, was of vital importance. a hundred perils menaced them on every side. what might they not have to dread from eager busy-bodies anxious to distinguish themselves, and proud of being the first to circulate a foul scandal against the lovely daughter of one of the richest men upon the stock exchange? hayward the coroner, and lofthouse the rector, both knew the secret of aurora's life; and it would be little wonder if, looking at the trainer's death by the light of that knowledge, they believed her guilty of some share in the ghastly business which had terminated the trainer's service at mellish park. what if, by some horrible fatality, the guilty man should escape, and the truth never be revealed! for ever and for ever, until her blighted name should be written upon a tombstone, aurora mellish must rest under the shadow of this suspicion. could there be any doubt that the sensitive and highly-strung nature would give way under the unendurable burden; that the proud heart would break beneath the undeserved disgrace? what misery for her! and not for her alone, but for every one who loved her, or had any share in her history! heaven pardon the selfishness that prompted the thought, if talbot bulstrode remembered that he would have some part in that bitter disgrace; that his name was allied, if only remotely, with that of his wife's cousin; and that the shame which would make the name of mellish a byword, must also cast some slur upon the escutcheon of the bulstrodes. sir bernard burke, compiling the romance of the county families, would tell that cruel story, and hinting cautiously at aurora's guilt, would scarcely fail to add, that the suspected lady's cousin had married talbot raleigh bulstrode, esq., eldest son and heir of sir john walter raleigh bulstrode, baronet, of bulstrode castle, cornwall. now, although the detective had affected a hopeful and even mysterious manner in his brief interview with talbot, he had not succeeded in hoodwinking that gentleman, who had a vague suspicion that all was not quite right, and that mr. joseph grimstone was by no means so certain of success as he pretended to be. "it's my firm belief that this man hargraves has given him the slip," talbot thought. "he said something about believing him to be in doncaster, and then the next moment added that he might be further off. it's clear, therefore, that grimstone doesn't know where he is; and in that case it's as likely as not that the man's made off with his money, and will get away from england, in spite of us. if he does this----" mr. bulstrode did not finish the sentence. he had reached the north lodge, and dismounted to open the iron gate. the lights of the house shone hospitably far away beyond the wood, and the voices of some men about the stable-gates sounded faintly in the distance; but the north lodge and the neglected shrubbery around it were as silent as the grave, and had a certain phantom-like air in the dim moonlight. talbot led his horse through the gates. he looked up at the windows of the lodge, as he passed, half involuntarily; but he stopped with a suppressed exclamation of surprise, at the sight of a feeble glimmer, which was not the moonlight, in the window of that upper chamber in which the murdered man had slept. before that exclamation had well-nigh crossed his lips, the light had disappeared. if any one of the mellish grooms or stable-boys had beheld that brief apparition, he would have incontinently taken to his heels, and rushed breathless to the stables, with a wild story of some supernatural horror in the north lodge; but mr. bulstrode being altogether of another mettle, walked softly on, still leading his horse, until he was well out of ear-shot of any one within the lodge, when he stopped and tied the red rover's bridle to a tree, and turned back towards the north gates, leaving the corn-fed covert hack cropping greedily at dewy hazel twigs, and any greenmeat within his reach. the heir of sir john walter raleigh bulstrode crept back to the lodge, almost as noiselessly as if he had been educated for mr. grimstone's profession, choosing the grassy pathway beneath the trees for his cautious footsteps. as he approached the wooden paling that shut in the little garden of the lodge, the light which had been so suddenly extinguished, reappeared behind the white curtain of the upper window. "it's queer!" mused mr. bulstrode, as he watched the feeble glimmer; "but i dare say there's nothing in it. the associations of this place are strong enough to make one attach a foolish importance to anything connected with it. i think i heard john say the gardeners keep their tools there, and i suppose it's one of them. but it's late, too, for any of them to be at work." it had struck ten while mr. bulstrode rode homeward; and it was more than unlikely that any of the mellish servants would be out at such a time. talbot lingered by the wicket-gate, irresolute as to what he should do next, but thoroughly determined to see the last of this late visitor at the north lodge, when the shadow of a man flitted across the white curtain,--a shadow even more weird and ungainly than such things are;--the shadow of a man with a hump-back! talbot bulstrode uttered no cry of surprise; but his heart knocked furiously against his ribs, and the blood rushed hotly to his face. he never remembered having seen the "softy;" but he had always heard him described as a hump-backed man. there could be no doubt of the shadow's identity; there could be still less doubt that stephen hargraves had visited that place for no good purpose. what could bring him there--to that place above all other places, which, if he were indeed guilty, he would surely most desire to avoid? stolid, semi-idiotic, as he was supposed to be, surely the common terrors of the lowest assassin, half brute, half caliban, would keep him away from that spot. these thoughts did not occupy more than those few moments in which the violent beating of talbot bulstrode's heart held him powerless to move or act; then, pushing open the gate, he rushed across the tiny garden, trampling recklessly upon the neglected flower-beds, and softly tried the door. it was firmly secured with a heavy chain and padlock. "he has got in at the window, then," thought mr. bulstrode. "what, in heaven's name, could be his motive in coming here?" talbot was right. the little lattice-window had been wrenched nearly off its hinges, and hung loosely among the tangled foliage that surrounded it. mr. bulstrode did not hesitate a moment before he plunged head foremost into the narrow aperture through which the "softy" must have found his way, and scrambled as he could into the little room. the lattice, strained still further, dropped, with a crashing noise, behind him; but not soon enough to serve as a warning for stephen hargraves, who appeared upon the lowest step of the tiny corkscrew staircase at the same moment. he was carrying a tallow candle in a battered tin candlestick in his right hand, and he had a small bundle under his left arm. his white face was no whiter than usual, but he presented an awfully corpse-like appearance to mr. bulstrode, who had never seen him, or noticed him, before. the "softy" recoiled, with a gesture of intense terror, as he saw talbot; and a box of lucifer-matches, which he had been carrying in the candlestick, rolled to the ground. "what are you doing here?" asked mr. bulstrode, sternly; "and why did you come in at the window?" "i warn't doin' no wrong;" the "softy" whined piteously; "and it aint your business neither," he added, with a feeble attempt at insolence. "it is my business. i am mr. mellish's friend and relation; and i have reason to suspect that you are here for no good purpose," answered talbot. "i insist upon knowing what you came for." "i haven't come to steal owght, anyhow," said mr. hargraves; "there's nothing here but chairs and tables, and 'taint loikely i've come arter them." "perhaps not; but you have come after something, and i insist upon knowing what it is. you wouldn't come to this place unless you'd a very strong reason for coming. what have you got there?" mr. bulstrode pointed to the bundle carried by the "softy." stephen hargraves' small red-brown eyes evaded those of his questioner, and made believe to mistake the direction in which talbot looked. "what have you got there?" repeated mr. bulstrode; "you know well enough what i mean. what have you got there, in that bundle under your arm?" the "softy" clutched convulsively at the dingy bundle, and glared at his questioner with something of the savage terror of some ugly animal at bay. except that in his brutalized manhood, he was more awkward, and perhaps more repulsive, than the ugliest of the lower animals. "it's nowght to you, nor to anybody else," he muttered sulkily. "i suppose a poor chap may fetch his few bits of clothes without being _called_ like this?" "what clothes? let me see the clothes." "no, i won't; they're nowght to you. they--it's only an old weskit as was give me by one o' th' lads in th' steables." "a waistcoat!" cried mr. bulstrode; "let me see it this instant. a waistcoat of yours has been particularly inquired for, mr. hargraves. it's a chocolate waistcoat, with yellow stripes and brass buttons, unless i'm very much mistaken. let me see it." talbot bulstrode was almost breathless with excitement. the "softy" stared aghast at the description of his waistcoat, but he was too stupid to comprehend instantaneously the reason for which this garment was wanted. he recoiled for a few paces, and then made a rush towards the window; but talbot's hands closed upon his collar, and held him as if in a vice. "you'd better not trifle with me," cried mr. bulstrode; "i've been accustomed to deal with refractory sepoys in india, and i've had a struggle with a tiger before now. show me that waistcoat!" "i won't!" "by the heaven above us, you shall!" "i won't!" the two men closed with each other in a hand-to-hand struggle. powerful as the soldier was, he found himself more than matched by stephen hargraves, whose thick-set frame, broad shoulders, and sinewy arms were almost herculean in, their build. the struggle lasted for a considerable time,--or for a time that seemed considerable to both of the combatants; but at last it drew towards its termination, and the heir of all the bulstrodes, the commander of squadrons of horse, the man who had done battle with bloodthirsty sikhs, and ridden against the black mouths of russian cannon at balaclava, felt that he could scarcely hope to hold out much longer against the half-witted hanger-on of the mellish stables. the horny fingers of the "softy" were upon his throat, the long arms of the "softy" were writhing round him, and in another moment talbot bulstrode lay upon the floor of the north lodge, with the "softy's" knee planted upon his heaving chest. another moment, and in the dim moonlight,--the candle had been thrown down and trampled upon in the beginning of the scuffle,--the heir of bulstrode castle saw stephen hargraves fumbling with his disengaged hand in his breast-pocket. one moment more, and mr. bulstrode heard that sharp metallic noise only associated with the opening of a clasp-knife. "e'es," hissed the "softy," with his hot breath close upon the fallen man's cheek, "you wanted t' see th' weskit, did you; but you sha'n't, for i'll serve you as i served him. 'taint loikely i'll let you stand between me and two thousand pound." talbot raleigh bulstrode had a faint notion that a broad sheffield blade flashed in the silvery moonlight; but at this moment his senses grew confused under the iron grip of the "softy's" hand, and he knew little, except that there was a sudden crashing of glass behind him, a quick trampling of feet, and a strange voice roaring some seafaring oath above his head. the suffocating pressure was suddenly removed from his throat; some one, or something, was hurled into a corner of the little room; and mr. bulstrode sprang to his feet, a trifle dazed and bewildered, but quite ready to do battle again. "who is it?' he cried. "it's me, samuel prodder," answered the voice that had uttered that dreadful seafaring oath. "you were pretty nigh done for, mate, when i came aboard. it aint the first time i've been up here after dark, takin' a quiet stroll and a pipe, before turning in over yonder." mr. prodder indicated doncaster by a backward jerk of his thumb. "i'd been watchin' the light from a distance, till it went out suddenly five minutes ago, and then i came up close to see what was the matter. i don't know who you are, or what you are, or why you've been quarrelling; but i know you've been pretty near as nigh your death to-night as ever that chap was in the wood." "the waistcoat!" gasped mr. bulstrode; "let me see the waistcoat!" he sprang once more upon the "softy," who had rushed towards the door, and was trying to beat out the panel with his iron-bound clog; but this time mr. bulstrode had a stalwart ally in the merchant-captain. "a bit of rope comes uncommon handy in these cases," said samuel prodder; "for which reason i always make a point of carrying it somewhere about me." he plunged up to his elbow in one of the capacious pockets of his tourist peg-tops, and produced a short coil of tarry rope. as he might have lashed a seaman to a mast in the last crisis of a wreck, so he lashed mr. stephen hargraves now, binding him right and left, until the struggling arms and legs, and writhing trunk, were fain to be still. "_now_, if you want to ask him any questions, i make no doubt he'll answer 'em," said mr. prodder, politely. "you'll find him a deal quieter after that." "i can't thank you now," talbot answered hurriedly; "there'll be time enough for that by-and-by." "ay, ay, to be sure, mate," growled the captain; "no thanks is needed where no thanks is due. is there anything else i can do for you?" "yes, a good deal presently; but i must find this waistcoat first. where did he put it, i wonder? stay, i'd better try and get a light. keep your eye upon that man while i look for it." captain prodder only nodded. he looked upon his scientific lashing of the "softy" as the triumph of art; but he hovered near his prisoner in compliance with talbot's request, ready to fall upon him if he should make any attempt to stir. there was enough moonlight to enable mr. bulstrode to find the lucifers and candlestick after a few minutes' search. the candle was not improved by having been trodden upon; but talbot contrived to light it, and then set to work to look for the waistcoat. the bundle had rolled into a corner. it was tightly bound with a quantity of whip-cord, and was harder than it could have been had it consisted solely of the waistcoat. "hold the light for me while i undo this," talbot cried, thrusting the candlestick into mr. prodder's hand. he was so impatient that he could scarcely wait while he cut the whip-cord about the bundle with the "softy's" huge clasp-knife, which he had picked up while searching for the candle. "i thought so," he said, as he unrolled the waistcoat; "the money's here." the money was there, in a small russia-leather pocket-book, in which aurora had given it to the murdered man. if there had been any confirmation needed for this fact, the savage yell of rage which broke from stephen's lips would have afforded that confirmation. "it's the money," cried talbot bulstrode. "i call upon you, sir, to bear witness, whoever you may be, that i find this waistcoat and this pocket-book in the possession of this man, and that i take them from him after a struggle, in which he attempts my life." "ay, ay! i know him well enough," muttered the sailor; "he's a bad 'un; and him and me have had a stand further, before this." "and i call upon you to bear witness that this man is the murderer of james conyers." "what?" roared samuel prodder; "him! why, the double-dyed villain: it was him that put it into my head that it was my sister eliza's chi--that it was mrs. mellish----" "yes, yes, i know. but we've got him now. will you run to the house, and send some of the men to fetch a constable, while i stop here?" mr. prodder assented willingly. he had assisted talbot in the first instance without any idea of what the business was to lead to. now he was quite as much excited as mr. bulstrode. he scrambled through the lattice, and ran off to the stables, guided by the lighted windows of the groom's dormitories. talbot waited very quietly while he was gone. he stood at a few paces from the "softy," watching mr. hargraves as he gnawed savagely at his bonds, in the hope perhaps of setting himself free. "i shall be ready for you," the young cornishman said quietly, "whenever you're ready for me." a crowd of grooms and hangers-on came with lanterns before the constables could arrive; and foremost amongst them came mr. john mellish, very noisy and very unintelligible. the door of the lodge was opened, and they all burst into the little chamber, where, heedless of grooms, gardeners, stable-boys, hangers-on, and rabble, john mellish fell on his friend's breast and wept aloud. * * * * * l'envoi. what more have i to tell of this simple drama of domestic life? the end has come. the element of tragedy which has been so intermingled in the history of a homely yorkshire squire and his wife, is henceforth to be banished from the record of their lives. the dark story which began in aurora floyd's folly, and culminated in the crime of a half-witted serving-man, has been told from the beginning to the end. it would be worse than useless to linger upon the description of a trial which took place at york at the michaelmas assizes. the evidence against stephen hargraves was conclusive; and the gallows outside york castle ended the life of a man who had never been either help or comfort to any one of his fellow-creatures. there was an attempt made to set up a plea of irresponsibility upon the part of the "softy," and the _sobriquet_ which had been given him was urged in his defence; but a set of matter-of-fact jurymen looking at the circumstances of the murder, saw nothing in it but a most cold-blooded assassination, perpetrated by a wretch whose sole motive was gain; and the verdict which found stephen hargraves guilty, was tempered by no recommendation to mercy. the condemned murderer protested his innocence up to the night before his execution, and upon that night made a full confession of his crime, as is generally the custom of his kind. he related how he had followed james conyers into the wood upon the night of his assignation with aurora, and how he had watched and listened during the interview. he had shot the trainer in the back while mr. conyers sat by the water's edge looking over the notes in the pocket-book, and he had used a button off his waistcoat instead of wadding, not finding anything else suitable for the purpose. he had hidden the waistcoat and pocket-book in a rat-hole in the wainscot of the murdered man's chamber, and, being dismissed from the lodge suddenly, had been compelled to leave his booty behind him, rather than excite suspicion. it was thus that he had returned upon the night on which talbot found him, meaning to secure his prize and start for liverpool at six o'clock the following morning. aurora and her husband left mellish park immediately after the committal of the "softy" to york prison. they went to the south of france, accompanied by archibald floyd, and once more travelled together through scenes which were over-shadowed by no sorrowful association. they lingered long at nice, and here talbot and lucy joined them, with an impedimental train of luggage and servants, and a normandy nurse with a blue-eyed girl-baby. it was at nice that another baby was born, a black-eyed child--a boy, i believe--but wonderfully like that solemn-faced infant which mrs. alexander floyd carried to the widowed banker two-and-twenty years before at felden woods. it is almost supererogatory to say that samuel prodder, the sea-captain, was cordially received by hearty john mellish and his wife. he is to be a welcome visitor at the park whenever he pleases to come; indeed, he is homeward bound from barbadoes at this very time, his cabin-presses filled to overflowing with presents which he is carrying to aurora, in the way of chillis preserved in vinegar, guava-jelly, the strongest jamaica rum, and other trifles suitable for a lady's acceptance. it may be some comfort to the gentlemen in scotland yard to know that john mellish acted liberally to the detective, and gave him the full reward, although talbot bulstrode had been the captor of the "softy." so we leave aurora, a little changed, a shade less defiantly bright, perhaps, but unspeakably beautiful and tender, bending over the cradle of her first-born; and though there are alterations being made at mellish, and loose-boxes for brood mares building upon the site of the north lodge, and a subscription tan-gallop being laid across harper's common, i doubt if my heroine will care so much for horseflesh, or take quite so keen an interest in weight-for-age races as compared to handicaps, as she has done in the days that are gone. the end. (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page mages generously made available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/aurorafloyd00bradgoog project gutenberg has the other two volumes of this work. volume i: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48020 volume iii: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48022 aurora floyd. by m. e. braddon, author of "lady audley's secret." in three volumes. vol. ii. fifth edition. london: tinsley brothers, 18 catherine steeet, strand. 1863. contents. chapter i. "love took up the glass of time, and turned it in his glowing hands" ii. mr. pastern's letter iii. mr. james conyers iv. the trainer's messenger v. out in the rain vi. money matters vii. captain prodder viii. "he only said, i am a-weary" ix. still constant x. on the threshold of darker miseries xi. captain prodder carries bad news to his niece's house xii. the deed that had been done in the wood chapter i. "love took up the glass of time, and turned it in his glowing hands." talbot bulstrode yielded at last to john's repeated invitations, and consented to pass a couple of days at mellish park. he despised and hated himself for the absurd concession. in what a pitiful farce had the tragedy ended! a visitor in the house of his rival. a calm spectator of aurora's every-day, commonplace happiness. for the space of two days he had consented to occupy this most preposterous position. two days only; then back to the cornish miners, and the desolate bachelor's lodgings in queen's square, westminster; back to his tent in life's great sahara. he could not for the very soul of him resist the temptation of beholding the inner life of that yorkshire mansion. he wanted to know for certain--what was it to him, i wonder?--whether she was really happy, and had utterly forgotten him. they all returned to the park together, aurora, john, archibald floyd, lucy, talbot bulstrode, and captain hunter. the last-named officer was a jovial gentleman, with a hook nose and auburn whiskers; a gentleman whose intellectual attainments were of no very oppressive order, but a hearty, pleasant guest in an honest country mansion, where there is cheer and welcome for all. talbot could but inwardly confess that aurora became her new position. how everybody loved her! what an atmosphere of happiness she created about her wherever she went! how joyously the dogs barked and leapt at sight of her, straining their chains in the desperate effort to approach her! how fearlessly the thorough-bred mares and foals ran to the paddock-gates to bid her welcome, bending down their velvet nostrils to nestle upon her shoulder, responsive to the touch of her caressing hand! seeing all this, how could talbot refrain from remembering that this same sunlight might have shone upon that dreary castle far away by the surging western sea? she might have been his, this beautiful creature; but at what price? at the price of honour; at the price of every principle of his mind, which had set up for himself a holy and perfect standard--a pure and spotless ideal for the wife of his choice. forbid it, manhood! he might have weakly yielded; he might have been happy, with the blind happiness of a lotus-eater, but not the reasonable bliss of a christian. thank heaven for the strength which had been given to him to escape from the silken net! thank heaven for the power which had been granted to him to fight the battle! standing by aurora's side in one of the wide windows of mellish park, looking far out over the belted lawn to the glades in which the deer lay basking drowsily in the april sunlight, he could not repress the thought uppermost in his mind. "i am--very glad--to see you so happy, mrs. mellish." she looked at him with frank, truthful eyes, in whose brightness there was not one latent shadow. "yes," she said, "i am very, very happy. my husband is very good to me. he loves--and trusts me." she could not resist that one little stab--the only vengeance she ever took upon him; but a stroke that pierced him to the heart. "aurora! aurora! aurora!" he cried. that half-stifled cry revealed the secret of wounds that were not yet healed. mrs. mellish turned pale at the traitorous sound. this man must be cured. the happy wife, secure in her own stronghold of love and confidence, could not bear to see this poor fellow still adrift. she by no means despaired of his cure, for experience had taught her, that although love's passionate fever takes several forms, there are very few of them incurable. had she not passed safely through the ordeal herself, without one scar to bear witness of the old wounds? she left captain bulstrode staring moodily out of the window, and went away to plan the saving of this poor shipwrecked soul. she ran in the first place to tell mr. john mellish of her discovery, as it was her custom to carry to him every scrap of intelligence great and small. "my dearest old jack," she said--it was another of her customs to address him by every species of exaggeratedly endearing appellation; it may be that she did this for the quieting of her own conscience, being well aware that she tyrannized over him--"my darling boy, i have made a discovery." "about the filly?" "about talbot bulstrode." john's blue eyes twinkled maliciously. he was evidently half prepared for what was coming. "what is it, lolly?" lolly was a corruption of aurora, devised by john mellish. "why, i'm really afraid, my precious darling, that he hasn't quite got over----" "my taking you away from him!" roared john. "i thought as much. poor devil--poor talbot! i could see that he would have liked to fight me on the stand at york. upon my word, i pity him!" and in token of his compassion mr. mellish burst into that old joyous, boisterous, but musical laugh, which talbot might almost have heard at the other end of the house. this was a favourite delusion of john's. he firmly believed that he had won aurora's affection in fair competition with captain bulstrode; pleasantly ignoring that the captain had resigned all pretensions to miss floyd's hand nine or ten months before his own offer had been accepted. the genial, sanguine creature had a habit of deceiving himself in this manner. he saw all things in the universe just as he wished to see them; all men and women good and honest; life one long, pleasant voyage in a well-fitted ship, with only first-class passengers on board. he was one of those men who are likely to cut their throats or take prussic acid upon the day they first encounter the black visage of care. "and what are we to do with this poor fellow, lolly?" "marry him!" exclaimed mrs. mellish. "both of us?" said john simply. "my dearest pet, what an obtuse old darling you are! no; marry him to lucy floyd, my first cousin once removed, and keep the bulstrode estate in the family." "marry him to lucy!" "yes; why not? she has studied enough, and learnt history, and geography, and astronomy, and botany, and geology, and conchology, and entomology enough; and she has covered i don't know how many china jars with impossible birds and flowers; and she has illuminated missals, and read high-church novels. so the next best thing she can do is to marry talbot bulstrode." john had his own reasons for agreeing with aurora in this matter. he remembered that secret of poor lucy's, which he had discovered more than a year before at felden woods: the secret which had been revealed to him by some mysterious sympathetic power belonging to hopeless love. so mr. mellish declared his hearty concurrence in aurora's scheme, and the two amateur match-makers set to work to devise a complicated man-trap, in the which talbot was to be entangled; never for a moment imagining that, while they were racking their brains in the endeavour to bring this piece of machinery to perfection, the intended victim was quietly strolling across the sunlit lawn towards the very fate they desired for him. yes, talbot bulstrode lounged with languid step to meet his destiny, in a wood upon the borders of the park; a part of the park, indeed, inasmuch as it was within the boundary-fence of john's domain. the wood-anemones trembled in the spring breezes, deep in those shadowy arcades; pale primroses showed their mild faces amid their sheltering leaves; and in shady nooks, beneath low-spreading boughs of elm and beech, oak and ash, the violets hid their purple beauty from the vulgar eye. a lovely spot, soothing by its harmonious influence; a very forest sanctuary, without whose dim arcades man cast his burden down, to enter in a child. captain bulstrode had felt in no very pleasant humour as he walked across the lawn; but some softening influence stole upon him, on the threshold of that sylvan shelter, which made him feel a better man. he began to question himself as to how he was playing his part in the great drama of life. "good heavens!" he thought, "what a shameful coward, what a negative wretch, i have become by this one grief of my manhood! an indifferent son, a careless brother, a useless, purposeless creature, content to dawdle away my life in feeble pottering with political economy. shall i ever be in earnest again? is this dreary doubt of every living creature to go with me to my grave? less than two years ago my heart sickened at the thought that i had lived to two-and-thirty years of age, and had never been loved. since then--since then--since then i had lived through life's brief fever; i have fought manhood's worst and sharpest battle, and find myself--where? exactly where i was before; still companionless upon the dreary journey; only a little nearer to the end." he walked slowly onward into the woodland aisle, other aisles branching away from him right and left into deep glades and darkening shadow. a month or so later, and the mossy ground beneath his feet would be one purple carpet of hyacinths, the very air thick with a fatal-scented vapour from the perfumed bulbs. "i asked too much," said talbot, in that voiceless argument we are perpetually carrying on with ourselves; "i asked too much; i yielded to the spell of the siren, and was angry because i missed the white wings of the angel. i was bewitched by the fascinations of a beautiful woman, when i should have sought for a noble-minded wife." he went deeper and deeper into the wood, going to his fate, as another man was to do before the coming summer was over; but to what a different fate! the long arcades of beech and elm had reminded him from the first of the solemn aisles of a cathedral. the saint was only needed. and coming suddenly to a spot where a new arcade branched off abruptly on his right hand, he saw, in one of the sylvan niches, as fair a saint as had ever been modelled by the hand of artist and believer,--the same golden-haired angel he had seen in the long drawing-room at felden woods,--lucy floyd, with the pale aureola about her head, her large straw-hat in her lap filled with anemones and violets, and the third volume of a novel in her hand. how much in life often hangs, or seems to us to hang, upon what is called by playwrights, "a situation!" but for this sudden encounter, but for thus coming upon this pretty picture, talbot bulstrode might have dropped into his grave ignorant to the last of lucy's love for him. but, given a sunshiny april morning (april's fairest bloom, remember, when the capricious nymph is mending her manners, aware that her lovelier sister may is at hand, and anxious to make a good impression before she drops her farewell curtsy, and weeps her last brief shower of farewell tears)--given a balmy spring morning, solitude, a wood, wild-flowers, golden hair and blue eyes, and is the result difficult to arrive at? talbot bulstrode, leaning against the broad trunk of a beech, looked down at the fair face, which crimsoned under his eyes; and the first glimmering hint of lucy's secret began to dawn upon him. at that moment he had no thought of profiting by the discovery, no thought of what he was afterwards led on to say. his mind was filled with the storm of emotion that had burst from him in that wild cry to aurora. rage and jealousy, regret, despair, envy, love, and hate,--all the conflicting feelings that had struggled like so many demons in his soul at sight of aurora's happiness, were still striving for mastery in his breast; and the first words he spoke revealed the thoughts that were uppermost. "your cousin is very happy in her new life, miss floyd?" he said. lucy looked up at him with surprise. it was the first time he had spoken to her of aurora. "yes," she answered quietly, "i think she is happy." captain bulstrode whisked the end of his cane across a group of anemones, and decapitated the tremulous blossoms. he was thinking, rather savagely, what a shame it was that this glorious aurora could be happy with big, broad-shouldered, jovial-tempered john mellish. he could not understand the strange anomaly; he could not discover the clue to the secret; he could not comprehend that the devoted love of this sturdy yorkshireman was in itself strong enough to conquer all difficulties, to outweigh all differences. little by little, he and lucy began to talk of aurora, until miss floyd told her companion all about that dreary time at felden woods, during which the life of the heiress was well-nigh despaired of. so she had loved him truly, then, after all; she had loved, and had suffered, and had lived down her trouble, and had forgotten him, and was happy. the story was all told in that one sentence. he looked blankly back at the irrecoverable past, and was angry with the pride of the bulstrodes, which had stood between himself and his happiness. he told sympathizing lucy something of his sorrow; told her that misapprehension--mistaken pride--had parted him from aurora. she tried, in her gentle, innocent fashion, to comfort the strong man in his weakness, and in trying revealed--ah, how simply and transparently!--the old secret, which had so long been hidden from him. heaven help the man whose heart is caught at the rebound by a fair-haired divinity, with dove-like eyes, and a low tremulous voice softly attuned to his grief. talbot bulstrode saw that he was beloved; and, in very gratitude, made a dismal offer of the ashes of that fire which had burnt so fiercely at aurora's shrine. do not despise this poor lucy if she accepted her cousin's forgotten lover with humble thankfulness; nay, with a tumult of wild delight, and with joyful fear and trembling. she loved him so well, and had loved him so long. forgive and pity her, for she was one of those pure and innocent creatures whose whole being resolves itself into _affection;_ to whom passion, anger, and pride are unknown; who live only to love, and who love until death. talbot bulstrode told lucy floyd that he had loved aurora with the whole strength of his soul, but that, now the battle was over, he, the stricken warrior, needed a consoler for his declining days: would she, could she, give her hand to one who would strive to the uttermost to fulfil a husband's duty, and to make her happy? happy! she would have been happy if he had asked her to be his slave; happy if she could have been a scullery-maid at bulstrode castle, so that she might have seen the dark face she loved once or twice a day through the obscure panes of some kitchen window. but she was the most undemonstrative of women, and, except by her blushes, and her drooping eyelids, and the tear-drop trembling upon the soft auburn lashes, she made no reply to the captain's appeal, until at last, taking her hand in his, he won from her a low-consenting murmur which meant yes. good heavens! how hard it is upon such women as these that they feel so much and yet display so little feeling! the dark-eyed, impetuous creatures, who speak out fearlessly, and tell you that they love or hate you--flinging their arms round your neck or throwing the carving-knife at you, as the case may be--get full value for all their emotion; but these gentle creatures love, and make no sign. they sit, like patience on a monument, smiling at grief; and no one reads the mournful meaning of that sad smile. concealment, like the worm i' the bud, feeds on their damask cheeks; and compassionate relatives tell them that they are bilious, and recommend some homely remedy for their pallid complexions. they are always at a disadvantage. their inner life may be a tragedy, all blood and tears, while their outer existence is some dull domestic drama of every-day life. the only outward sign lucy floyd gave of the condition of her heart was that one tremulous, half-whispered affirmative; and yet what a tempest of emotion was going forward within! the muslin folds of her dress rose and fell with the surging billows; but, for the very life of her, she could have uttered no better response to talbot's pleading. it was only by-and-by, after she and captain bulstrode had wandered slowly back to the house, that her emotion betrayed itself. aurora met her cousin in the corridor out of which their rooms opened, and, drawing lucy into her own dressing-room, asked the truant where she had been. "where have you been, you runaway girl? john and i have wanted you half a dozen times." miss lucy floyd explained that she had been in the wood with the last new novel,--a high-church novel, in which the heroine rejected the clerical hero because he did not perform the service according to the rubric. now miss lucy floyd made this admission with so much confusion and so many blushes, that it would have appeared as if there were some lurking criminality in the fact of spending an april morning in a wood; and being further examined as to why she had stayed so long, and whether she had been alone all the time, poor lucy fell into a pitiful state of embarrassment, declaring that she had been alone; that is to say, part of the time--or at least most of the time; but that captain bulstrode---but in trying to pronounce his name,--this beloved, this sacred name,--lucy floyd's utterance failed her; she fairly broke down, and burst into tears. aurora laid her cousin's face upon her breast, and looked down, with a womanly, matronly glance, into those tearful blue eyes. "lucy, my darling," she said, "is it really and truly as i think--as i wish:--talbot loves you?" "he has asked me to marry him," lucy whispered. "and you--you have consented--you love him?" lucy floyd only answered by a new burst of tears. "why, my darling, how this surprises me! how long has it been so, lucy? how long have you loved him?" "from the hour i first saw him," murmured lucy; "from the day he first came to felden. o aurora! i know how foolish and weak it was; i hate myself for the folly; but he is so good, so noble, so----" "my silly darling; and because he is good and noble, and has asked you to be his wife, you shed as many tears as if you had been asked to go to his funeral. my loving, tender lucy, you loved him all the time, then; and you were so gentle and good to me--to me, who was selfish enough never to guess----my dearest, you are a hundred times better suited to him than ever i was, and you will be as happy--as happy as i am with that ridiculous old john." aurora's eyes filled with tears as she spoke. she was truly and sincerely glad that talbot was in a fair way to find consolation, still more glad that her sentimental cousin was to be made happy. talbot bulstrode lingered on a few days at mellish park;--happy, ah! too happy days for lucy floyd--and then departed, after receiving the congratulations of john and aurora. he was to go straight to alexander floyd's villa at fulham, and plead his cause with lucy's father. there was little fear of his meeting other than a favourable reception; for talbot bulstrode of bulstrode castle was a very great match for a daughter of the junior branch of floyd, floyd, and floyd, a young lady whose expectations were considerably qualified by half a dozen brothers and sisters. so captain bulstrode went back to london as the betrothed lover of lucy floyd; went back with a subdued gladness in his heart, all unlike the stormy joys of the past. he was happy in the choice he had made calmly and dispassionately. he had loved aurora for her beauty and her fascination; he was going to marry lucy because he had seen much of her, had observed her closely, and believed her to be all that a woman should be. perhaps, if stern truth must be told, lucy's chief charm in the captain's eyes lay in that reverence for himself which she so _naã¯vely_ betrayed. he accepted her worship with a quiet, unconscious serenity, and thought her the most sensible of women. mrs. alexander was utterly bewildered when aurora's sometime lover pleaded for her daughter's hand. she was too busy a mother amongst her little flock to be the most penetrating of observers, and she had never suspected the state of lucy's heart. she was glad, therefore, to find that her daughter did justice to her excellent education, and had too much good sense to refuse so advantageous an offer as that of captain bulstrode; and she joined with her husband in perfect approval of talbot's suit. so, there being no let or hindrance, and as the lovers had long known and esteemed each other, it was decided, at the captain's request, that the wedding should take place early in june, and that the honeymoon should be spent at bulstrode castle. at the end of may, mr. and mrs. mellish went to felden, on purpose to attend lucy's wedding, which took place with great style at fulham, archibald floyd presenting his grand-niece with a cheque for five thousand pounds after the return from church. once during that marriage ceremony talbot bulstrode was nigh upon rubbing his eyes, thinking that the pageant must be a dream. a dream surely; for here was a pale, fair-haired girl by his side, while the woman he had chosen two years before stood amidst a group behind him, and looked on at the ceremony, a pleased spectator. but when he felt the little gloved hand trembling upon his arm, as the bride and bridegroom left the altar, he remembered that it was no dream, and that life held new and solemn duties for him from that hour. now my two heroines being married, the reader versed in the physiology of novel writing may conclude that my story is done, that the green curtain is ready to fall upon the last act of the play, and that i have nothing more to do than to entreat indulgence for the shortcomings of the performance and the performers. yet, after all, does the business of the real life-drama always end upon the altar-steps? must the play needs be over when the hero and heroine have signed their names in the register? does man cease to be, to do, and to suffer when he gets married? and is it necessary that the novelist, after devoting three volumes to the description of a courtship of six weeks' duration, should reserve for himself only half a page in which to tell us the events of two-thirds of a lifetime? aurora is married, and settled, and happy; sheltered, as one would imagine, from all dangers, safe under the wing of her stalwart adorer; but it does not therefore follow that the story of her life is done. she has escaped shipwreck for a while, and has safely landed on a pleasant shore; but the storm may still lower darkly upon the horizon, while the hoarse thunder grumbles threateningly in the distance. chapter ii. mr. pastern's letter. mr. john mellish reserved to himself one room upon the ground-floor of his house: a cheerful, airy apartment, with french windows opening upon the lawn; windows that were sheltered from the sun by a verandah overhung with jessamine and roses. it was altogether a pleasant room for the summer season, the floor being covered with an india matting instead of a carpet, and many of the chairs being made of light basket-work. over the chimney-piece hung a portrait of john's father, and opposite to this work of art there was the likeness of the deceased gentleman's favourite hunter, surmounted by a pair of brightly polished spurs, the glistening rowels of which had often pierced the sides of that faithful steed. in this chamber mr. mellish kept his whips, canes, foils, single-sticks, boxing-gloves, spurs, guns, pistols, powder and shot flasks, fishing-tackle, boots, and tops; and many happy mornings were spent by the master of mellish park in the pleasing occupation of polishing, repairing, inspecting, and otherwise setting in order, these possessions. he had as many pairs of hunting-boots as would have supplied half leicestershire--with tops to match. he had whips enough for all the melton hunt. surrounded by these treasures, as it were in a temple sacred to the deities of the race-course and the hunting-field, mr. john mellish used to hold solemn audiences with his trainer and his head-groom upon the business of the stable. it was aurora's custom to peep into this chamber perpetually, very much to the delight and distraction of her adoring husband, who found the black eyes of his divinity a terrible hindrance to business; except, indeed, when he could induce mrs. mellish to join in the discussion upon hand, and lend the assistance of her powerful intellect to the little conclave. i believe that john thought she could have handicapped the horses for the chester cup as well as mr. topham himself. she was such a brilliant creature, that every little smattering of knowledge she possessed appeared to such good account as to make her seem an adept in any subject of which she spoke; and the simple yorkshireman believed in her as the wisest as well as the noblest and fairest of women. mr. and mrs. mellish returned to yorkshire immediately after lucy's wedding. poor john was uneasy about his stables; for his trainer was a victim to chronic rheumatism, and mr. pastern had not as yet made any communication respecting the young man of whom he had spoken on the stand at york. "i shall keep langley," john said to aurora, speaking of his old trainer; "for he's an honest fellow, and his judgment will always be of use to me. he and his wife can still occupy the rooms over the stables; and the new man, whoever he may be, can live in the lodge on the north side of the park. nobody ever goes in at that gate; so the lodge-keeper's post is a sinecure, and the cottage has been shut up for the last year or two. i wish john pastern would write." "and i wish whatever you wish, my dearest life," aurora said dutifully to her happy slave. very little had been heard of steeve hargraves, the "softy," since the day upon which john mellish had turned him neck and crop out of his service. one of the grooms had seen him in a little village close to the park, and stephen had informed the man that he was getting his living by doing odd jobs for the doctor of the parish, and looking after that gentleman's horse and gig; but the "softy" had seemed inclined to be sulky, and had said very little about himself or his sentiments. he made very particular inquiries, though, about mrs. mellish, and asked so many questions as to what aurora did and said, where she went, whom she saw, and how she agreed with her husband, that at last the groom, although only a simple country lad, refused to answer any more interrogatories about his mistress. steeve hargraves rubbed his coarse, sinewy hands, and chuckled as he spoke of aurora. "she's a rare proud one,--a regular high-spirited lady," he said, in that whispering voice that always sounded strange. "she laid it on to me with that riding-whip of hers; but i bear no malice--i bear no malice. she's a beautiful creature, and i wish mr. mellish joy of his bargain." the groom scarcely knew how to take this, not being fully aware if it was intended as a compliment or an impertinence. so he nodded to the "softy," and strode off, leaving him still rubbing his hands and whispering about aurora mellish, who had long ago forgotten her encounter with mr. stephen hargraves. how was it likely that she should remember him, or take heed of him? how was it likely that she should take alarm because the pale-faced widow, mrs. walter powell, sat by her hearth and hated her? strong in her youth and beauty, rich in her happiness, sheltered and defended by her husband's love, how should she think of danger? how should she dread misfortune? she thanked god every day that the troubles of her youth were past, and that her path in life led henceforth through smooth and pleasant places, where no perils could come. lucy was at bulstrode castle, winning upon the affections of her husband's mother, who patronized her daughter-in-law with lofty kindness, and took the blushing timorous creature under her sheltering wing. lady bulstrode was very well satisfied with her son's choice. he might have done better, certainly, as to position and fortune, the lady hinted to talbot; and in her maternal anxiety, she would have preferred his marrying any one rather than the cousin of that miss floyd who ran away from school, and caused such a scandal at the parisian seminary. but lady bulstrode's heart warmed to lucy, who was so gentle and humble, and who always spoke of talbot as if he had been a being far "too bright and good," &c., much to the gratification of her ladyship's maternal vanity. "she has a very proper affection for you, talbot," lady bulstrode said, "and, for so young a creature, promises to make an excellent wife; far better suited to you, i am sure, than her cousin could ever have been." talbot turned fiercely upon his mother, very much to the lady's surprise. "why will you be for ever bringing aurora's name into the question, mother?" he cried. "why cannot you let her memory rest? you parted us for ever,--you and constance,--and is not that enough? she is married, and she and her husband are a very happy couple. a man might have a worse wife than mrs. mellish, i can tell you; and john seems to appreciate her value in his rough way." "you need not be so violent, talbot," lady bulstrode said, with offended dignity. "i am very glad to hear that miss floyd has altered since her school-days, and i hope that she may continue to be a good wife," she added, with an emphasis which insinuated that she had no very great hopes of the continuance of mr. mellish's happiness. "my poor mother is offended with me," talbot thought, as lady bulstrode swept out of the room. "i know i am an abominable bear, and that nobody will ever truly love me so long as i live. my poor little lucy loves me after her fashion; loves me in fear and trembling, as if she and i belonged to different orders of beings; very much as the flying woman must have loved my countryman, peter wilkins, i think. but, after all, perhaps my mother is right, and my gentle little wife is better suited to me than aurora would have been." so we dismiss talbot bulstrode for a while, moderately happy, and yet not quite satisfied. what mortal ever was _quite_ satisfied in this world? it is a part of our earthly nature always to find something wanting, always to have a vague, dull, ignorant yearning which cannot be appeased. sometimes, indeed, we are happy; but in our wildest happiness we are still unsatisfied, for it seems then as if the cup of joy were too full, and we grow cold with terror at the thought that, even because of its fulness, it may possibly be dashed to the ground. what a mistake this life would be, what a wild feverish dream, what an unfinished and imperfect story, if it were not a prelude to something better! taken by itself, it is all trouble and confusion; but taking the future as the keynote of the present, how wondrously harmonious the whole becomes! how little does it signify that our joys here are not complete, our wishes not fulfilled, if the completion and the fulfilment are to come hereafter! little more than a week after lucy's wedding, aurora ordered her horse immediately after breakfast, upon a sunny summer morning, and, accompanied by the old groom who had ridden behind john's father, went out on an excursion amongst the villages round mellish park, as it was her habit to do once or twice a week. the poor in the neighbourhood of the yorkshire mansion had good reason to bless the coming of the banker's daughter. aurora loved nothing better than to ride from cottage to cottage, chatting with the simple villagers, and finding out their wants. she never found the worthy creatures very remiss in stating their necessities, and the housekeeper at mellish park had enough to do in distributing aurora's bounties amongst the cottagers who came to the servants' hall with pencil orders from mrs. mellish. mrs. walter powell sometimes ventured to take aurora to task on the folly and sinfulness of what she called indiscriminate almsgiving; but mrs. mellish would pour such a flood of eloquence upon her antagonist, that the ensign's widow was always glad to retire from the unequal contest. nobody had ever been able to argue with archibald floyd's daughter. impulsive and impetuous, she had always taken her own course, whether for weal or woe, and nobody had been strong enough to hinder her. returning on this lovely june morning from one of these charitable expeditions, mrs. mellish dismounted from her horse at a little turnstile leading into the wood, and ordered the groom to take the animal home. "i have a fancy for walking through the wood, joseph," she said; "it's such a lovely morning. take care of mazeppa; and if you see mr. mellish, tell him that i shall be home directly." the man touched his hat, and rode off, leading aurora's horse. mrs. mellish gathered up the folds of her habit, and strolled slowly into the wood, under whose shadow talbot bulstrode and lucy had wandered on that eventful april day which sealed the young lady's fate. now aurora had chosen to ramble homewards through this wood because, being thoroughly happy, the warm gladness of the summer weather filled her with a sense of delight which she was loth to curtail. the drowsy hum of the insects, the rich colouring of the woods, the scent of wild-flowers, the ripple of water,--all blended into one delicious whole, and made the earth lovely. there is something satisfactory, too, in the sense of possession; and aurora felt, as she looked down the long avenues, and away through distant loopholes in the wood to the wide expanse of park and lawn, and the picturesque, irregular pile of building beyond, half gothic, half elizabethan, and so lost in a rich tangle of ivy and bright foliage as to be beautiful at every point,--she felt, i say, that all the fair picture was her own, or her husband's, which was the same thing. she had never for one moment regretted her marriage with john mellish. she had never, as i have said already, been inconstant to him by one thought. in one part of the wood the ground rose considerably; so that the house, which lay low, was distinctly visible whenever there was a break in the trees. this rising ground was considered the prettiest spot in the wood, and here a summer-house had been erected: a fragile, wooden building, which had fallen into decay of late years, but which was still a pleasant resting-place upon a summer's day, being furnished with a wooden table and a broad bench, and sheltered from the sun and wind by the lower branches of a magnificent beech. a few paces away from this summer-house there was a pool of water, the surface of which was so covered with lilies and tangled weeds as to have beguiled a short-sighted traveller into forgetfulness of the danger beneath. aurora's way led her past this spot, and she started with a momentary sensation of terror on seeing a man lying asleep by the side of the pool. she quickly recovered herself, remembering that john allowed the public to use the footpath through the wood; but she started again when the man, who must have been a bad sleeper to be aroused by her light footstep, lifted his head, and displayed the white face of the "softy." he rose slowly from the ground upon seeing mrs. mellish, and crawled away, looking at her as he went, but not making any acknowledgment of her presence. aurora could not repress a brief terrified shudder; it seemed as if her footfall had startled some viperish creature, some loathsome member of the reptile race, and scared it from its lurking-place. steeve hargraves disappeared amongst the trees as mrs. mellish walked on, her head proudly erect, but her cheek a shade paler than before this unexpected encounter with the "softy." her joyous gladness in the bright summer's day had forsaken her as suddenly as she had met stephen hargraves; that bright smile, which was even brighter than the morning sunshine, faded out, and left her face unnaturally grave. "good heavens!" she exclaimed, "how foolish i am! i am actually afraid of that man,--afraid of that pitiful coward who could hurt my feeble old dog. as if such a creature as that could do one any mischief!" of course this was very wisely argued, as no coward ever by any chance worked any mischief upon this earth since the saxon prince was stabbed in the back while drinking at his kinswoman's gate, or since brave king john and his creature plotted together what they should do with the little boy arthur. aurora walked slowly across the lawn towards that end of the house at which the apartment sacred to mr. mellish was situated. she entered softly at the open window, and laid her hand upon john's shoulder, as he sat at a table covered with a litter of account-books, racing-lists, and disorderly papers. he started at the touch of the familiar hand. "my darling, i'm so glad you've come in. how long you've been!" she looked at her little jewelled watch. poor john had loaded her with trinkets and gewgaws. his chief grief was that she was a wealthy heiress, and that he could give her nothing but the adoration of his simple, honest heart. "only half-past one, you silly old john," she said. "what made you think me late?" "because i wanted to consult you about something, and to tell you something. such good news!" "about what?" "about the trainer." she shrugged her shoulders, and pursed up her red lips with a bewitching little gesture of indifference. "is that all?" she said. "yes; but aint you glad we've got the man at last--the very man to suit us, i think? where's john pastern's letter?" mr. mellish searched amongst the litter of papers upon the table, while aurora, leaning against the framework of the open window, watched him, and laughed at his embarrassment. she had recovered her spirits, and looked the very picture of careless gladness as she leaned in one of those graceful and unstudied attitudes peculiar to her, supported by the framework of the window, and with the trailing jessamine waving round her in the soft summer breeze. she lifted her ungloved hand, and gathered the roses above her head as she talked to her husband. "you most disorderly and unmethodical of men," she said, laughing; "i wouldn't mind betting five to one you won't find it." i'm afraid that mr. mellish muttered an oath as he tossed about the heterogeneous mass of papers in his search for the missing document. "i had it five minutes before you came in, aurora," he said, "and now there's not a sign of it----oh, here it is!" mr. mellish unfolded the letter, and, smoothing it out upon the table before him, cleared his throat preparatory to reading the epistle. aurora still leaned against the window-frame, half in and half out of the room, singing a snatch of a popular song, and trying to gather an obstinate half-blown rose which grew provokingly out of reach. "you're attending, aurora?" "yes, dearest and best." "but do come in. you can't hear a word there." aurora shrugged her shoulders, as who should say, "i submit to the command of a tyrant," and advanced a couple of paces from the window; then looking at john with an enchantingly insolent toss of her head, she folded her hands behind her, and told him she would "be good." she was a careless, impetuous creature, dreadfully forgetful of what mrs. walter powell called her "responsibilities;" every mortal thing by turns, and never any one thing for two minutes together; happy, generous, affectionate; taking life as a glorious summer's holiday, and thanking god for the bounty which made it so pleasant to her. mr. john pastern began his letter with an apology for having so long deferred writing. he had lost the address of the person he had wished to recommend, and had waited until the man wrote to him a second time. "i think he will suit you very well," the letter went on to say, "as he is well up in his business, having had plenty of experience, as groom, jockey, and trainer. he is only thirty years of age, but met with an accident some time since, which lamed him for life. he was half killed in a steeple-chase in prussia, and was for upwards of a year in a hospital at berlin. his name is james conyers, and he can have a character from----" the letter dropped out of john mellish's hand as he looked up at his wife. it was not a scream which she had uttered. it was a gasping cry, more terrible to hear than the shrillest scream that ever came from the throat of woman in all the long history of womanly distress. "aurora! aurora!" he looked at her, and his own face changed and whitened at the sight of hers. so terrible a transformation had come over her during the reading of that letter, that the shock could not have been greater had he looked up and seen another person in her place. "it's wrong; it's wrong!" she cried hoarsely; "you've read the name wrong. it can't be that!" "what name?" "what name?" she echoed fiercely, her face flaming up with a wild fury,--"that name! i tell you, it _can't_ be. give me the letter." he obeyed her mechanically, picking up the paper and handing it to her, but never removing his eyes from her face. she snatched it from him; looked at it for a few moments, with her eyes dilated and her lips apart; then, reeling back two or three paces, her knees bent under her, and she fell heavily to the ground. chapter iii. mr. james conyers. the first week in july brought james conyers, the new trainer, to mellish park. john had made no particular inquiries as to the man's character of any of his former employers, as a word from mr. pastern was all-sufficient. mr. mellish had endeavoured to discover the cause of aurora's agitation at the reading of john pastern's letter. she had fallen like a dead creature at his feet; she had been hysterical throughout the remainder of the day, and delirious in the ensuing night, but she had not uttered one word calculated to throw any light upon the secret of her strange manifestation of emotion. her husband sat by her bedside upon the day after that on which she had fallen into the death-like swoon; watching her with a grave, anxious face, and earnest eyes that never wandered from her own. he was suffering very much the same agony that talbot bulstrode had endured at felden on the receipt of his mother's letter. the dark wall was slowly rising and separating him from the woman he loved. he was now to discover the tortures known only to the husband whose wife is parted from him by that which has more power to sever than any width of land or wide extent of ocean--_a secret_. he watched the pale face lying on the pillow; the large, black, haggard eyes, wide open, and looking blankly out at the faraway purple tree-tops in the horizon; but there was no clue to the mystery in any line of that beloved countenance; there was little more than an expression of weariness, as if the soul, looking out of that white face, was so utterly enfeebled as to have lost all power to feel anything but a vague yearning for rest. the wide casement windows were open, but the day was hot and oppressive--oppressively still and sunny; the landscape sweltering under a yellow haze, as if the very atmosphere had been opaque with molten gold. even the roses in the garden seemed to feel the influence of the blazing summer sky, dropping their heavy heads like human sufferers from headache. the mastiff bow-wow, lying under an acacia upon the lawn, was as peevish as any captious elderly gentleman, and snapped spitefully at a frivolous butterfly that wheeled, and spun, and threw somersaults about the dog's head. beautiful as was this summer's day, it was one on which people are apt to lose their tempers, and quarrel with each other, by reason of the heat; every man feeling a secret conviction that his neighbour is in some way to blame for the sultriness of the atmosphere, and that it would be cooler if he were out of the way. it was one of those days on which invalids are especially fractious, and hospital nurses murmur at their vocation; a day on which third-class passengers travelling long distances by excursion train are savagely clamorous for beer at every station, and hate each other for the narrowness and hardness of the carriage seats, and for the inadequate means of ventilation provided by the railway company; a day on which stern business men revolt against the ceaseless grinding of the wheel, and, suddenly reckless of consequences, rush wildly to the crown and sceptre, to cool their overheated systems with water souchy and still hock; an abnormal day, upon which the machinery of every-day life gets out of order, and runs riot throughout twelve suffocating hours. john mellish, sitting patiently by his wife's side, thought very little of the summer weather. i doubt if he knew whether the month was january or june. for him earth only held one creature, and she was ill and in distress--distress from which he was powerless to save her--distress the very nature of which he was ignorant. his voice trembled when he spoke to her. "my darling, you have been very ill," he said. she looked at him with a smile so unlike her own that it was more painful to him to see than the loudest agony of tears, and stretched out her hand. he took the burning hand in his, and held it while he talked to her. "yes, dearest, you have been ill; but morton says the attack was merely hysterical, and that you will be yourself again to-morrow, so there's no occasion for anxiety on that score. what grieves me, darling, is to see that there is something on your mind; something which has been the real cause of your illness." she turned her face upon the pillow, and tried to snatch her hand from his in her impatience, but he held it tightly in both his own. "does my speaking of yesterday distress you, aurora?" he asked gravely. "distress me? oh, no!" "then tell me, darling, why the mention of that man, the trainer's name, had such a terrible effect upon you." "the doctor told you that the attack was hysterical," she said coldly; "i suppose i was hysterical and nervous yesterday." "but the name, aurora, the name. this james conyers--who is he?" he felt the hand he held tighten convulsively upon his own, as he mentioned the trainer's name. "who is this man? tell me, aurora. for god's sake, tell me the truth." she turned her face towards him once more, as he said this. "if you only want the truth from me, john, you must ask me nothing. remember what i said to you at the chã¢teau d'arques. it was a secret that parted me from talbot bulstrode. you trusted me then, john,--you must trust me to the end; if you cannot trust me----" she stopped suddenly, and the tears welled slowly up to her large, mournful eyes, as she looked at her husband. "what, dearest?" "we must part; as talbot and i parted." "part!" he cried; "my love, my love! do you think there is anything upon this earth strong enough to part us, except death? do you think that any combination of circumstances, however strange, however inexplicable, would ever cause me to doubt your honour; or to tremble for my own? could i be here if i doubted you? could i sit by your side, asking you these questions, if i feared the issue? nothing shall shake my confidence; nothing can. but have pity on me; think how bitter a grief it is to sit here, with your hand in mine, and to know that there is a secret between us. aurora, tell me,--this man, this conyers,--what is he, and who is he?" "you know that as well as i do. a groom once; afterwards a jockey; and now a trainer." "but you know him?" "i have seen him." "when?" "some years ago, when he was in my father's service." john mellish breathed more freely for a moment. the man had been a groom at felden woods, that was all. this accounted for the fact of aurora's recognizing his name; but not for her agitation. he was no nearer the clue to the mystery than before. "james conyers was in your father's service," he said thoughtfully; "but why should the mention of his name yesterday have caused you such emotion?" "i cannot tell you." "it is another secret, then, aurora," he said reproachfully; "or has this man anything to do with the old secret of which you told me at the chã¢teau d'arques?" she did not answer him. "ah, i see; i understand, aurora," he added, after a pause. "this man was a servant at felden woods; a spy, perhaps; and he discovered the secret, and traded upon it, as servants often have done before. this caused your agitation at hearing his name. you were afraid that he would come here and annoy you, making use of this secret to extort money, and keeping you in perpetual terror of him. i think i can understand it all. i am right; am i not?" she looked at him with something of the expression of a hunted animal that finds itself at bay. "yes, john." "this man--this groom--knows something of--of the secret." "he does." john mellish turned away his head, and buried his face in his hands. what cruel anguish! what bitter degradation! this man, a groom, a servant, was in the confidence of his wife; and had such power to harass and alarm her, that the very mention of his name was enough to cast her to the earth, as if stricken by sudden death. what, in the name of heaven, could this secret be, which was in the keeping of a servant, and yet could not be told to him? he bit his lip till his strong teeth met upon the quivering flesh, in the silent agony of that thought. what could it be? he had sworn, only a minute before, to trust in her blindly to the end; and yet, and yet---his massive frame shook from head to heel in that noiseless struggle; doubt and despair rose like twin-demons in his soul; but he wrestled with them, and overcame them; and, turning with a white face to his wife, said quietly-"i will press these painful questions no further, aurora. i will write to pastern, and tell him that the man will not suit us; and----" he was rising to leave her bedside, when she laid her hand upon his arm. "don't write to mr. pastern, john," she said; "the man will suit you very well, i dare say. i had rather he came." "you wish him to come here?" "yes." "but he will annoy you; he will try to extort money from you." "he would do that in any case, since he is alive. i thought that he was dead." "then you really wish him to come here?" "i do." john mellish left his wife's room inexpressibly relieved. the secret could not be so very terrible after all, since she was willing that the man who knew it should come to mellish park; where there was at least a remote chance of his revealing it to her husband. perhaps, after all, this mystery involved others rather than herself,--her father's commercial integrity--her mother? he had heard very little of that mother's history; perhaps she----pshaw! why weary himself with speculative surmises? he had promised to trust her, and the hour had come in which he was called upon to keep his promise. he wrote to mr. pastern, accepting his recommendation of james conyers, and waited rather impatiently to see what kind of man the trainer was. he received a letter from conyers, very well written and worded, to the effect that he would arrive at mellish park upon the 3rd of july. aurora had recovered from her brief hysterical attack when this letter arrived; but as she was still weak and out of spirits, her medical man recommended change of air; so mr. and mrs. mellish drove off to harrogate upon the 28th of june, leaving mrs. powell behind them at the park. the ensign's widow had been scrupulously kept out of aurora's room during her short illness; being held at bay by john, who coolly shut the door in the lady's sympathetic face, telling her that he'd wait upon his wife himself, and that when he wanted female assistance he would ring for mrs. mellish's maid. now mrs. walter powell, being afflicted with that ravenous curiosity common to people who live in other people's houses, felt herself deeply injured by this line of conduct. there were mysteries and secrets afloat, and she was not to be allowed to discover them; there was a skeleton in the house, and she was not to anatomize the bony horror. she scented trouble and sorrow as carnivorous animals scent their prey; and yet she who hated aurora was not to be allowed to riot at the unnatural feast. why is it that the dependents in a household are so feverishly inquisitive about the doings and sayings, the manners and customs, the joys and sorrows, of those who employ them? is it that, having abnegated for themselves all active share in life, they take an unhealthy interest in those who are in the thick of the strife? is it because, being cut off in a great measure by the nature of their employment from family ties and family pleasures, they feel a malicious delight in all family trials and vexations, and the ever-recurring breezes which disturb the domestic atmosphere? remember this, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, when you quarrel. _your servants enjoy the fun._ surely that recollection ought to be enough to keep you for ever peaceful and friendly. your servants listen at your doors, and repeat your spiteful speeches in the kitchen, and watch you while they wait at table, and understand every sarcasm, every innuendo, every look, as well as those at whom the cruel glances and the stinging words are aimed. they understand your sulky silence, your studied and over-acted politeness. the most polished form your hate and anger can take is as transparent to those household spies as if you threw knives at each other, or pelted your enemy with the side-dishes and vegetables, after the fashion of disputants in a pantomime. nothing that is done in the parlour is lost upon these quiet, well-behaved watchers from the kitchen. they laugh at you; nay worse, they pity you. they discuss your affairs, and make out your income, and settle what you can afford to do and what you can't afford to do; they prearrange the disposal of your wife's fortune, and look prophetically forward to the day when you will avail yourself of the advantages of the new bankruptcy act. they know why you live on bad terms with your eldest daughter, and why your favourite son was turned out of doors; and they take a morbid interest in every dismal secret of your life. you don't allow them followers; you look blacker than thunder if you see mary's sister or john's poor old mother sitting meekly in your hall; you are surprised if the postman brings them letters, and attribute the fact to the pernicious system of over-educating the masses; you shut them from their homes and their kindred, their lovers and their friends; you deny them books, you grudge them a peep at your newspaper; and then you lift up your eyes and wonder at them because they are inquisitive, and because the staple of their talk is scandal and gossip. mrs. walter powell, having been treated by most of her employers, as a species of upper servant, had acquired all the instincts of a servant; and she determined to leave no means untried in order to discover the cause of aurora's illness, which the doctor had darkly hinted to her had more to do with the mind than the body. john mellish had ordered a carpenter to repair the lodge at the north gate, for the accommodation of james conyers; and john's old trainer, langley, was to receive his colleague and introduce him to the stables. the new trainer made his appearance at the lodge-gates in the glowing july sunset; he was accompanied by no less a person than steeve hargraves the "softy," who had been lurking about the station upon the look out for a job, and who had been engaged by mr. conyers to carry his portmanteau. to the surprise of the trainer, stephen hargraves set down his burden at the park gates. "you'll have to find some one else to carry it th' rest 't' ro-ad," he said, touching his greasy cap, and extending his broad palm to receive the expected payment. mr. james conyers was rather a dashing fellow, with no small amount of that quality which is generally termed "swagger," so he turned sharply round upon the "softy" and asked him what the devil he meant. "i mean that i mayn't go inside yon geates," muttered stephen hargraves; "i mean that i've been toorned oot of yon pleace that i've lived in, man and boy, for forty year,--toorned oot like a dog, neck and crop." mr. conyers threw away the stump of his cigar and stared superciliously at the "softy." "what does the man mean?" he asked of the woman who had opened the gates. "why, poor fellow, he's a bit fond, sir, and him and mrs. mellish didn't get on very well: she has a rare spirit, and i _have_ heard that she horsewhipped him for beating her favourite dog. any ways, master turned him out of his service." "because my lady had horsewhipped him. servants'-hall justice all the world over," said the trainer, laughing, and lighting a second cigar from a metal fusee-box in his waistcoat pocket. "yes, that's joostice, aint it?" the "softy" said eagerly. "you wouldn't like to be toorned oot of a pleace as you'd lived in forty year, would you? but mrs. mellish has a rare spirit, bless her pretty feace!" the blessing enunciated by mr. stephen hargraves had such a very ominous sound, that the new trainer, who was evidently a shrewd, observant fellow, took his cigar from his mouth on purpose to stare at him. the white face, lighted up by a pair of red eyes with a dim glimmer in them, was by no means the most agreeable of countenances; but mr. conyers looked at the man for some moments, holding him by the collar of his coat in order to do so with more deliberation: then pushing the "softy" away with an affably contemptuous gesture, he said, laughing-"you're a character, my friend, it strikes me; and not too safe a character either. i'm dashed if i should like to offend you. there's a shilling for your trouble, my man," he added tossing the money into steeve's extended palm with careless dexterity. "i suppose i can leave my portmanteau here till to-morrow, ma'am?" he said, turning to the woman at the lodge. "i'd carry it down to the house myself if i wasn't lame." he was such a handsome fellow, and had such an easy, careless manner, that the simple yorkshire woman was quite subdued by his fascinations. "leave it here, sir, and welcome," she said, curtsying, "and my master shall take it to the house for you as soon as he comes in. begging your pardon, sir, but i suppose you're the new gentleman that's expected in the stables?" "precisely." "then i was to tell you, sir, that they've fitted up the north lodge for you: but you was to please go straight to the house, and the housekeeper was to make you comfortable and give you a bed for to-night." mr. conyers nodded, thanked her, wished her good night, and limped slowly away, through the shadows of the evening, and under the shelter of the over-arching trees. he stepped aside from the broad carriage-drive on to the dewy turf that bordered it, choosing the softest, mossiest places with a sybarite's instinct. look at him as he takes his slow way under those glorious branches, in the holy stillness of the summer sunset, his face sometimes lighted by the low, lessening rays, sometimes darkened by the shadows of the leaves above his head. he is wonderfully handsome--wonderfully and perfectly handsome--the very perfection of physical beauty; faultless in proportion, as if each line in his face and form had been measured by the sculptor's rule, and carved by the sculptor's chisel. he is a man about whose beauty there can be no dispute, whose perfection servant-maids and duchesses must alike confess--albeit they are not bound to admire; yet it is rather a sensual type of beauty, this splendour of form and colour, unallied to any special charm of expression. look at him now, as he stops to rest, leaning against the trunk of a tree, and smoking his big cigar with easy enjoyment. he is thinking. his dark-blue eyes, deeper in colour by reason of the thick black lashes which fringe them, are half closed, and have a dreamy, semi-sentimental expression, which might lead you to suppose the man was musing upon the beauty of the summer sunset. he is thinking of his losses on the chester cup, the wages he is to get from john mellish, and the perquisites likely to appertain to the situation. you give him credit for thoughts to match with his dark, violet-hued eyes, and the exquisite modelling of his mouth and chin; you give him a mind as ã¦sthetically perfect as his face and figure, and you recoil on discovering what a vulgar, every-day sword may lurk under that beautiful scabbard. mr. james conyers is, perhaps, no worse than other men of his station; but he is decidedly no better. he is only very much handsomer; and you have no right to be angry with him because his opinions and sentiments are exactly what they would have been if he had had red hair and a pug nose. with what wonderful wisdom has george eliot told us that people are not any better because they have long eyelashes! yet it must be that there is something anomalous in this outward beauty and inward ugliness; for, in spite of all experience, we revolt against it, and are incredulous to the last, believing that the palace which is outwardly so splendid can scarcely be ill furnished within. heaven help the woman who sells her heart for a handsome face, and awakes when the bargain has been struck, to discover the foolishness of such an exchange! it took mr. conyers a long while to walk from the lodge to the house. i do not know how, technically, to describe his lameness. he had fallen, with his horse, in the prussian steeple-chase, which had so nearly cost him his life, and his left leg had been terribly injured. the bones had been set by wonderful german surgeons, who put the shattered leg together as if it had been a chinese puzzle, but who, with all their skill, could not prevent the contraction of the sinews, which had left the jockey lamed for life, and no longer fit to ride in any race whatever. he was of the middle height, and weighed something over eleven stone, and had never ridden except in continental steeple-chases. mr. james conyers paused a few paces from the house, and gravely contemplated the irregular pile of buildings before him. "a snug crib," he muttered; "plenty of tin hereabouts, i should think, from the look of the place." being ignorant of the geography of the neighbourhood, and being, moreover, by no means afflicted by an excess of modesty, mr. conyers went straight to the principal door, and rang the bell sacred to visitors and the family. he was admitted by a grave old man-servant, who, after deliberately inspecting his brown shooting-coat, coloured shirt-front, and felt hat, asked him, with considerable asperity, what he was pleased to want. mr. conyers explained that he was the new trainer, and that he wished to see the housekeeper; but he had hardly finished doing so, when a door in an angle of the hall was softly opened, and mrs. walter powell peeped out of the snug little apartment sacred to her hours of privacy. "perhaps the young man will be so good as to step in here," she said, addressing herself apparently to space, but indirectly to james conyers. the young man took off his hat, uncovering a mass of luxuriant brown curls, and limped across the hall in obedience to mrs. powell's invitation. "i dare say i shall be able to give you any information you require." james conyers smiled, wondering whether the bilious-looking party, as he mentally designated mrs. powell, could give him any information about the york summer meeting; but he bowed politely, and said he merely wanted to know where he was to hang out--he stopped and apologized--where he was to sleep that night, and whether there were any letters for him. but mrs. powell was by no means inclined to let him off so cheaply. she set to work to pump him, and laboured so assiduously that she soon exhausted that very small amount of intelligence which he was disposed to afford her, being perfectly aware of the process to which he was subjected, and more than equal to the lady in dexterity. the ensign's widow, therefore, ascertained little more than that mr. conyers was a perfect stranger to john mellish and his wife, neither of whom he had ever seen. having failed to gain much by this interview, mrs. powell was anxious to bring it to a speedy termination. "perhaps you would like a glass of wine after your walk?" she said; "i'll ring for some, and i can inquire at the same time about your letters. i dare say you are anxious to hear from the relatives you have left at home." mr. conyers smiled for the second time. he had neither had a home nor any relatives to speak of, since the most infantine period of his existence; but had been thrown upon the world a sharp-witted adventurer at seven or eight years old. the "relatives" for whose communication he was looking out so eagerly were members of the humbler class of book-men with whom he did business. the servant despatched by mrs. powell returned with a decanter of sherry and about half a dozen letters for mr. conyers. "you'd better bring the lamp, william," said mrs. powell, as the man left the room; "for i'm sure you'll never be able to read your letters by this light," she added politely to mr. conyers. the fact was, that mrs. powell, afflicted by that diseased curiosity of which i have spoken, wanted to know what kind of correspondents these were whose letters the trainer was so anxious to receive, and sent for the lamp in order that she might get the full benefit of any scraps of information to be got at by rapid glances and dexterously stolen peeps. the servant brought a brilliant camphine-lamp, and mr. conyers, not at all abashed by mrs. powell's condescension, drew his chair close to the table, and after tossing off a glass of sherry, settled himself to the perusal of his letters. the ensign's widow, with some needlework in her hand, sat directly opposite to him at the small round table, with nothing but the pedestal of the lamp between them. james conyers took up the first letter, examined the superscription and seal, tore open the envelope, read the brief communication upon half a sheet of note-paper, and thrust it into his waistcoat-pocket. mrs. powell, using her eyes to the utmost, saw nothing but a few lines in a scratchy plebeian handwriting, and a signature which, seen at a disadvantage upside-down, didn't look unlike "johnson." the second envelope contained only a tissue-paper betting-list; the third held a dirty scrap of paper with a few words scrawled in pencil; but at sight of the uppermost envelope of the remaining three mr. james conyers started as if he had been shot. mrs. powell looked from the face of the trainer to the superscription of the letter, and was scarcely less surprised than mr. conyers. the superscription was in the handwriting of aurora mellish. it was a peculiar hand; a hand about which there could be no mistake; not an elegant italian hand, sloping, slender, and feminine, but large and bold, with ponderous up-strokes and down-strokes, easy to recognize at a greater distance than that which separated mrs. powell from the trainer. there was no room for any doubt. mrs. mellish had written to her husband's servant, and the man was evidently familiar with her hand, yet surprised at receiving her letter. he tore open the envelope, and read the contents eagerly twice over, frowning darkly as he read. mrs. powell suddenly remembered that she had left part of her needlework upon a cheffonier behind the young man's chair, and rose quietly to fetch it. he was so much engrossed by the letter in his hand that he was not aware of the pale face which peered for one brief moment over his shoulder, as the faded, hungry eyes stole a glance at the writing on the page. the letter was written on the first side of a sheet of note-paper, with only a few words carried over to the second page. it was this second page which mrs. powell saw. the words written at the top of the leaf were these:--"above all, _express no surprise_.--a." there was no ordinary conclusion to the letter; no other signature than this big capital a. chapter iv. the trainer's messenger. mr. james conyers made himself very much at home at mellish park. poor langley, the invalid trainer, who was a yorkshireman, felt himself almost bewildered by the easy insolence of his town-bred successor. mr. conyers looked so much too handsome and dashing for his office, that the grooms and stable-boys bowed down to him, and paid court to him as they had never done to simple langley, who had been very often obliged to enforce his commands with a horsewhip or a serviceable leather strap. james conyers's handsome face was a capital with which that gentleman knew very well how to trade, and he took the full amount of interest that was to be got for it without compunction. i am sorry to be obliged to confess that this man, who had sat in the artists' studios and the life academies for apollo and antinous, was selfish to the backbone; and so long as he was well fed and clothed and housed and provided for, cared very little whence the food and clothing came, or who kept the house that sheltered him, or filled the purse which he jingled in his trousers-pocket. heaven forbid that i should be called upon for his biography. i only know that he sprang from the mire of the streets, like some male aphrodite rising from the mud; that he was a blackleg in the gutter at four years of age, and a "welsher" in the matter of marbles and hardbake before his fifth birthday. even then he was for ever reaping the advantage of a handsome face; for tender-hearted matrons, who would have been deaf to the cries of a snub-nosed urchin, petted and compassionated the pretty boy. in his earliest childhood he learned therefore to trade upon his beauty, and to get the most that he could for that merchandise; and he grew up utterly unprincipled, and carried his handsome face out into the world to help him on to fortune. he was extravagant, lazy, luxurious, and selfish; but he had that easy indifferent grace of manner which passes with shallow observers for good-nature. he would not have gone three paces out of his way to serve his best friend; but he smiled and showed his handsome white teeth with equal liberality to all his acquaintance; and took credit for being a frank, generous-hearted fellow on the strength of that smile. he was skilled in the uses of that gilt gingerbread of generosity which so often passes current for sterling gold. he was dexterous in the handling of those cogged dice which have all the rattle of the honest ivories. a slap on the back, a hearty shake of the hand, often went as far from him as the loan of a sovereign from another man, and jim conyers was firmly believed in by the doubtful gentlemen with whom he associated, as a good-natured fellow who was nobody's enemy but his own. he had that superficial cockney cleverness which is generally called knowledge of the world; knowledge of the worst side of the world, and utter ignorance of all that is noble upon earth, it might perhaps be more justly called. he had matriculated in the streets of london, and graduated on the race-course; he had never read any higher literature than the sunday papers and the 'racing calendar,' but he contrived to make a very little learning go a long way, and was generally spoken of by his employers as a superior young man, considerably above his station. mr. conyers expressed himself very well contented with the rustic lodge which had been chosen for his dwelling-house. he condescendingly looked on while the stable-lads carried the furniture, selected for him by the housekeeper from the spare servants' rooms, from the house to the lodge, and assisted in the arrangement of the tiny rustic chambers, limping about in his shirt-sleeves, and showing himself wonderfully handy with a hammer and a pocketful of nails. he sat upon a table and drank beer with such charming affability, that the stable-lads were as grateful to him as if he had treated them to that beverage. indeed, seeing the frank cordiality with which james conyers smote the lads upon the back, and prayed them to be active with the can, it was almost difficult to remember that he was not the giver of the feast, and that it was mr. john mellish who would have to pay the brewer's bill. what, amongst all the virtues, which adorn this earth, can be more charming than the generosity of upper servants? with what hearty hospitality they pass the bottle! how liberally they throw the seven-shilling gunpowder into the teapot! how unsparingly they spread the twenty-penny fresh butter on the toast! and what a glorious welcome they give to the droppers-in of the servants' hall! it is scarcely wonderful that the recipients of their bounty forget that it is the master of the household who will be called upon for the expenses of the banquet, and who will look ruefully at the total of the quarter's housekeeping. it was not to be supposed that so dashing a fellow as mr. james conyers could, in the lodging-house-keepers' _patois_, "do for" himself. he required a humble drudge to black his boots, make his bed, boil his kettle, cook his dinner, and keep the two little chambers at the lodge in decent order. casting about in a reflective mood for a fitting person for this office, his recreant fancy hit upon steeve hargraves the "softy." he was sitting upon the sill of an open window in the little parlour of the lodge, smoking a cigar and drinking out of a can of beer, when this idea came into his head. he was so tickled by the notion, that he took his cigar from his mouth in order to laugh at his ease. "the man's a character," he said, still laughing, "and i'll have him to wait upon me. he's been forbid the place, has he? turned out neck and crop because my lady highropes horsewhipped him. never mind that; _i'll_ give him leave to come back, if it's only for the fun of the thing." he limped out upon the high-road half an hour after this, and went into the village to find steeve hargraves. he had little difficulty in doing this, as everybody knew the "softy," and a chorus of boys volunteered to fetch him from the house of the doctor, in whose service he did odd jobs, and brought him to mr. conyers five minutes afterwards, looking very hot and dirty, but as pale of complexion as usual. stephen hargraves agreed very readily to abandon his present occupation and to wait upon the trainer, in consideration of five shillings a week and his board and lodging; but his countenance fell when he discovered that mr. conyers was in the service of john mellish, and lived on the outskirts of the park. "you're afraid of setting foot upon his estate, are you?" said the trainer, laughing. "never mind, steeve, _i_ give you leave to come, and i should like to see the man or woman in that house who'll interfere with any whim of mine. _i_ give you leave. you understand." the "softy" touched his cap and tried to look as if he understood; but it was very evident that he did not understand, and it was some time before mr. conyers could persuade him that his life would be safe within the gates of mellish park. but he was ultimately induced to trust himself at the north lodge, and promised to present himself there in the course of the evening. now mr. james conyers had exerted himself as much in order to overcome the cowardly objections of this rustic clown as he could have done if steeve hargraves had been the most accomplished body servant in the three ridings. perhaps there was some deeper motive than any regard for the man himself in this special preference for the "softy;" some lurking malice, some petty spite, the key to which was hidden in his own breast. if, while standing smoking in the village street, _chaffing_ the "softy" for the edification of the lookers-on, and taking so much trouble to secure such an ignorant and brutish esquire,--if one shadow of the future, so very near at hand, could have fallen across his path, surely he would have instinctively recoiled from the striking of that ill-omened bargain. but james conyers had no superstition; indeed, he was so pleasantly free from that weakness as to be a disbeliever in all things in heaven and on earth, except himself and his own merits; so he hired the "softy," for the fun of the thing, as he called it, and walked slowly back to the park gates to watch for the return of mr. and mrs. mellish, who were expected that afternoon. the woman at the lodge brought him out a chair, and begged him to rest himself under the portico. he thanked her with a pleasant smile, and sitting down amongst the roses and honeysuckles, lighted another cigar. "you'll find the north lodge dull, i'm thinking, sir," the woman said, from the open window, where she had reseated herself with her needlework. "well, it isn't very lively, ma'am, certainly," answered mr. conyers, "but it serves my purpose well enough. the place is lonely enough for a man to be murdered there and nobody be any the wiser; but as i have nothing to lose, it will answer well enough for me." he might perhaps have said a good deal more about the place, but at this moment the sound of wheels upon the high-road announced the return of the travellers, and two or three minutes afterwards the carriage dashed through the gate, and past mr. james conyers. whatever power this man might have over aurora, whatever knowledge of a compromising secret he might have obtained and traded upon, the fearlessness of her nature showed itself now as always, and she never flinched at the sight of him. if he had placed himself in her way on purpose to watch the effect of his presence, he must surely have been disappointed; for except that a cold shadow of disdain passed over her face as the carriage drove by him, he might have imagined himself unseen. she looked pale and care-worn, and her eyes seemed to have grown larger, since her illness; but she held her head as erect as ever, and had still the air of imperial grandeur which constituted one of her chief charms. "so that is mr. mellish," said conyers, as the carriage disappeared. "he seems very fond of his wife." "ay, sure; and he is too. fond of her! why, they say there isn't another such couple in all yorkshire. and she's fond of him, too, bless her handsome face! but who wouldn't be fond of master john?" mr. conyers shrugged his shoulders; these patriarchal habits and domestic virtues had no particular charm for him. "she had plenty of money, hadn't she?" he asked, by way of bringing the conversation into a more rational channel. "plenty of money! i should think so. they say her pa gave her fifty thousand pounds down on her wedding-day; not that our master wants money; he's got enough and to spare." "ah, to be sure," answered mr. conyers; "that's always the way of it. the banker gave her fifty thousand, did he? if miss floyd had married a poor devil, now, i don't suppose her father would have given her fifty sixpences." "well, no; if she'd gone against his wishes, i don't suppose he would. he was here in the spring,--a nice, white-haired old gentleman; but failing fast." "failing fast. and mrs. mellish will come into a quarter of a million at his death, i suppose. good afternoon, ma'am. it's a queer world." mr. conyers took up his stick, and limped away under the trees, repeating this ejaculation as he went. it was a habit with this gentleman to attribute the good fortune of other people to some eccentricity in the machinery of life, by which he, the only really deserving person in the world, had been deprived of his natural rights. he went through the wood into a meadow where some of the horses under his charge were at grass, and spent upwards of an hour lounging about the hedgerows, sitting on gates, smoking his pipe, and staring at the animals, which seemed about the hardest work he had to do in his capacity of trainer. "it isn't a very hard life, when all's said and done," he thought, as he looked at a group of mares and foals, who, in their eccentric diversions, were performing a species of sir roger de coverley up and down the meadow. "it isn't a very hard life; for as long as a fellow swears hard and fast at the lads, and gets rid of plenty of oats, he's right enough. these country gentlemen always judge a man's merits by the quantity of corn they have to pay for. feed their horses as fat as pigs, and never enter 'em except among such a set of screws as an active pig could beat; and they'll swear by you. they'd think more of having a horse win the margate plate, or the hampstead heath sweepstakes, than if he ran a good fourth in the derby. bless their innocent hearts! i should think fellows with plenty of money and no brains must have been invented for the good of fellows with plenty of brains and no money; and that's how we contrive to keep our equilibrium in the universal see-saw." mr. james conyers, puffing lazy clouds of transparent blue smoke from his lips, and pondering thus, looked as sentimental as if he had been ruminating upon the last three pages of the 'bride of abydos,' or the death of paul dombey. he had that romantic style of beauty peculiar to dark-blue eyes and long black lashes; and he could not wonder what he should have for dinner without a dreamy pensiveness in the purple shadows of those deep-blue orbs. he had found the sentimentality of his beauty almost of greater use to him than the beauty itself. it was this sentimentality which always put him at an advantage with his employers. he looked like an exiled prince doing menial service in bitterness of spirit and a turned-down collar. he looked like lara returned to his own domains to train the horses of a usurper. he looked, in short, like anything but what he was,--a selfish, good-for-nothing, lazy scoundrel, who was well up in the useful art of doing the minimum of work, and getting the maximum of wages. he strolled slowly back to his rustic habitation, where he found the "softy" waiting for him; the kettle boiling upon a handful of bright fire, and some tea-things laid out upon the little round table. mr. conyers looked rather contemptuously at the humble preparations. "i've mashed the tea for 'ee," said the "softy;" "i thought you'd like a coop." the trainer shrugged his shoulders. "i can't say i'm particular attached to the cat-lap," he said, laughing; "i've had rather too much of it when i've been in training,--half-and-half, warm tea and cold-drawn castor-oil. i'll send you into doncaster for some spirits to-morrow, my man: or to-night, perhaps," he added reflectively, resting his elbow upon the table and his chin in the hollow of his hand. he sat for some time in this thoughtful attitude, his retainer steeve hargraves watching him intently all the while, with that half-wondering, half-admiring stare with which a very ugly creature--a creature so ugly as to know it is ugly--looks at a very handsome one. at the close of his reverie, mr. conyers took out a clumsy silver watch, and sat for a few minutes staring vacantly at the dial. "close upon six," he muttered at last. "what time do they dine at the house, steeve?" "seven o'clock," answered the "softy." "seven o'clock. then you'd have time to run there with a message, or a letter, and catch 'em just as they're going in to dinner." the "softy" stared aghast at his new master. "a message or a letter," he repeated; "for mr. mellish?" "no; for mrs. mellish." "but i daren't," exclaimed stephen hargraves; "i daren't go nigh the house; least of all to speak to her. i don't forget the day she horsewhipped me. i've never seen her since, and i don't want to see her. you think i am a coward, don't 'ee?" he said, stopping suddenly, and looking at the trainer, whose handsome lips were curved into a contemptuous smile. "you think i'm a coward, don't 'ee, now?" he repeated. "well, i don't think you are over-valiant," answered mr. conyers, "to be afraid of a woman, though she was the veriest devil that ever played fast and loose with a man." "shall i tell you what it is i am afraid of?" said steeve hargraves, hissing the words through his closed teeth in that unpleasant whisper peculiar to him. "it isn't mrs. mellish. it's myself. it's _this_"--he grasped something in the loose pocket of his trousers as he spoke,--"it's _this_. i'm afraid to trust myself a-nigh her, for fear i should spring upon her, and cut her thro-at from ear to ear. i've seen her in my dreams sometimes, with her beautiful white thro-at laid open, and streaming oceans of blood; but, for all that, she's always had the broken whip in her hand, and she's always laughed at me. i've had many a dream about her; but i've never seen her dead or quiet; and i've never seen her without the whip." the contemptuous smile died away from the trainer's lips as steeve hargraves made this revelation of his sentiments, and gave place to a darkly thoughtful expression, which overshadowed the whole of his face. "i've no such wonderful love for mrs. mellish myself," he said; "but she might live to be as old as methuselah, for aught i care, if she'd----" he muttered something between his teeth, and walked up the little staircase to his bedroom, whistling a popular tune as he went. he came down again with a dirty-looking leather desk in his hand; which he flung carelessly on to the table. it was stuffed with crumpled untidy-looking letters and papers, from among which he had considerable difficulty in selecting a tolerably clean sheet of note-paper. "you'll take a letter to mrs. mellish, my friend," he said to stephen, stooping over the table and writing as he spoke; "and you'll please to deliver it safe into her own hands. the windows will all be open this sultry weather, and you can watch till you see her in the drawing-room; and when you do, contrive to beckon her out, and give her this." he had folded the sheet of paper by this time, and had sealed it carefully in an adhesive envelope. "there's no need of any address," he said, as he handed the letter to steeve hargraves; "you know who it's for, and you won't give it to anybody else. there, get along with you. she'll say nothing to _you_, man, when she sees who the letter comes from." the "softy" looked darkly at his new employer; but mr. james conyers rather piqued himself upon a quality which he called determination, but which his traducers designated obstinacy, and he made up his mind that no one but steeve hargraves should carry the letter. "come," he said, "no nonsense, mr. stephen! remember this: if i choose to employ you, and if i choose to send you on any errand whatsoever, there's no one in that house will dare to question my right to do it. get along with you!" he pointed, as he spoke, with the stem of his pipe, to the gothic roof and ivied chimneys of the old house gleaming amongst a mass of foliage. "get along with you, mr. stephen, and bring me an answer to that letter," he added, lighting his pipe and seating himself in his favourite attitude upon the window-sill,--an attitude which, like everything about him, was a half-careless, half-defiant protest of his superiority to his position. "you needn't wait for a written answer. yes or no will be quite enough, you may tell mrs. mellish." the "softy" whispered something, half inaudible, between his teeth; but he took the letter, and pulling his shabby rabbit-skin cap over his eyes, walked slowly off in the direction to which mr. conyers had pointed, with a half-contemptuous action, a few moments before. "a queer fish," muttered the trainer, lazily watching the awkward figure of his attendant; "a queer fish; but it's rather hard if i can't manage _him_. i've twisted his betters round my little finger before to-day." mr. conyers forgot that there are some natures which, although inferior in everything else, are strong by reason of their stubbornness, and not to be twisted out of their natural crookedness by any trick of management or skilfulness of handling. the evening was sunless but sultry; there was a lowering darkness in the leaden sky, and an unnatural stillness in the atmosphere that prophesied the coming of a storm. the elements were taking breath for the struggle, and lying silently in wait against the breaking of their fury. it would come by-and-by, the signal for the outburst, in a long, crackling peal of thunder that would shake the distant hills and flutter every leaf in the wood. the trainer looked with an indifferent eye at the ominous aspect of the heavens. "i must go down to the stables, and send some of the boys to get the horses under cover," he said; "there'll be a storm before long." he took his stick and limped out of the cottage, still smoking; indeed, there were very few hours in the day, and not many during the night, in which mr. conyers was unprovided with his pipe or cigar. steeve hargraves walked very slowly along the narrow pathway which led across the park to the flower-garden and lawn before the house. this north side of the park was wilder and less well kept than the rest; but the thick undergrowth swarmed with game, and the young hares flew backwards and forwards across the pathway, startled by the "softy's" shambling tread, while every now and then the partridges rose in pairs from the tangled grass, and skimmed away under the low roof of foliage. "if i was to meet mr. mellish's keeper here, he'd look at me black enough, i dare say," muttered the "softy," "though i aint after the game. lookin' at a pheasant's high treason in his mind, curse him!" he put his hands low down in his pockets, as if scarcely able to resist the temptation to wring the neck of a splendid cock-pheasant that was strutting through the high grass, with a proud serenity of manner that implied a knowledge of the game-laws. the trees on the north side of the park formed a species of leafy wall which screened the lawn, so that, coming from this northern side, the "softy" emerged at once from the shelter into the smooth grass bordering this lawn, which was separated from the park by an invisible fence. as steeve hargraves, still sheltered from observation by the trees, approached the place, he saw that his errand was shortened, for mrs. mellish was leaning upon a low iron gate, with the dog bow-wow, the dog that he had beaten, at her side. he had left the narrow pathway and struck in amongst the undergrowth, in order to make a shorter cut to the flower-garden, and as he came from under the shelter of the low branches which made a leafy cave about him, he left a long track of parted grass behind him, like the track of the footstep of a tiger, or the trail of a slow, ponderous serpent creeping towards its prey. aurora looked up at the sound of the shambling footstep, and, for the second time since she had beaten him, she encountered the gaze of the "softy." she was very pale, almost as pale as her white dress, which was unenlivened by any scrap of colour, and which hung about her in loose folds that gave a statuesque grace to her figure. she was dressed with such evident carelessness that every fold of muslin seemed to tell how far away her thoughts had been when that hasty toilette was made. her black brows contracted as she looked at the "softy." "i thought mr. mellish had dismissed you," she said, "and that you had been forbidden to come here?" "yes, ma'am, muster mellish did turn me out of the house i'd lived in, man and boy, nigh upon forty year; but i've got a new pleace now, and my new master sent me to you with a letter." watching the effect of his words, the "softy" saw a leaden change come over the pale face of his listener. "what new master?" she asked. steeve hargraves lifted his hand and pointed across his shoulder. she watched the slow motion of that clumsy hand, and her eyes seemed to grow larger as she saw the direction to which it pointed. "your new master is the trainer, james conyers,--the man who lives at the north lodge?" she said. "yes, ma'am." "what does he want with you?" she asked. "i keep his place in order for him, ma'am, and run errands for him; and i've brought a letter." "a letter? ah, yes, give it me." the "softy" handed her the envelope. she took it slowly, without removing her eyes from his face, but watching him with a fixed and earnest look that seemed as if it would have fathomed something beneath the dull red eyes which met hers. a look that betrayed some doubtful terror hidden in her own breast, and a vague desire to penetrate the secrets of his. she did not look at the letter, but held it half crushed in the hand hanging by her side. "you can go," she said. "i was to wait for an answer." the black brows contracted again, and this time a bright gleam of fury kindled in the great black eyes. "there is no answer," she said, thrusting the letter into the bosom of her dress, and turning to leave the gate; "there is no answer, and there shall be none till i choose. tell your master that." "it wasn't to be a written answer," persisted the "softy;" "it was to be yes or no, that's all; but i was to be sure and wait for it." the half-witted creature saw some feeling of hate and fury in her face beyond her contemptuous hatred of himself, and took a savage pleasure in tormenting her. she struck her foot impatiently upon the grass, and plucking the letter from her breast, tore open the envelope, and read the few lines it contained. few as they were, she stood for nearly five minutes with the open letter in her hand, separated from the "softy" by the iron fence, and lost in thought. the silence was only broken during this pause by an occasional growl from the mastiff, who lifted his heavy lip, and showed his feeble teeth for the edification of his old enemy. she tore the letter into a hundred morsels, and flung it from her before she spoke. "yes," she said at last; "tell your master that." steeve hargraves touched his cap and went back through the grassy trail he had left, to carry this message to the trainer. "she hates me bad enough," he muttered, as he stopped once to look back at the quiet white figure on the lawn, "but she hates t'oother chap worse." chapter v. out in the rain. the second dinner-bell rang five minutes after the "softy" had left aurora, and mr. john mellish came out upon the lawn to look for his wife. he came whistling across the grass, and whisking the roses with his pocket-handkerchief in very gaiety of heart. he had quite forgotten the anguish of that miserable morning after the receipt of mr. pastern's letter. he had forgotten all but that his aurora was the loveliest and dearest of women, and that he trusted her with the boundless faith of his big, honest heart. "why should i doubt such a noble, impetuous creature?" he thought; "doesn't every feeling and every sentiment write itself upon her lovely, expressive face in characters the veriest fool could read? if i please her, what bright smiles light up in her black eyes! if i vex her,--as i do, poor awkward idiot that i am, a hundred times a day,--how the two black arches contract over her pretty impertinent nose, while the red lips pout defiance and disdain! shall i doubt her because she keeps one secret from me, and freely tells me i must for ever remain ignorant of it; when an artful woman would try to set my mind at rest with some shallow fiction invented to deceive me? heaven bless her! no doubt of her shall ever darken my life again, come what may." it was easy for mr. mellish to make this mental vow, believing fully that the storm was past, and that lasting fair weather had set in. "lolly darling," he said, winding his great arm round his wife's waist, "i thought i had lost you." she looked up at him with a sad smile. "would it grieve you much, john," she said in a low voice, "if you were really to lose me?" he started as if he had been struck, and looked anxiously at her pale face. "would it grieve me, lolly!" he repeated; "not for long; for the people who came to your funeral would come to mine. but, my darling, my darling, what can have made you ask this question? are you ill, dearest? you have been looking pale and tired for the last few days, and i have thought nothing of it. what a careless wretch i am!" "no, no, john," she said; "i don't mean that. i know you would grieve, dear, if i were to die. but suppose something were to happen which would separate us for ever,--something which would compel me to leave this place never to return to it,--what then?" "what then, lolly?" answered her husband, gravely. "i would rather see your coffin laid in the empty niche beside my mother's in the vault yonder,"--he pointed in the direction of the parish church, which was close to the gates of the park,--"than i would part with you thus. i would rather know you to be dead and happy than i would endure any doubt about your fate. oh, my darling, why do you speak of these things? i couldn't part with you--i couldn't! i would rather take you in my arms and plunge with you into the pond in the wood; i would rather send a bullet into your heart, and see you lying murdered at my feet." "john, john, my dearest and truest!" she said, her face lighting up with a new brightness, like the sudden breaking of the sun through a leaden cloud, "not another word, dear: we will never part. why should we? there is very little upon this wide earth that money cannot buy; and it shall help to buy our happiness. we will never part, darling; never." she broke into a joyous laugh as she watched his anxious, half-wondering face. "why, you foolish john, how frightened you look!" she said. "haven't you discovered yet that i like to torment you now and then with such questions as these, just to see your big blue eyes open to their widest extent? come, dear; mrs. powell will look white thunder at us when we go in, and make some meek conventional reply to our apologies for this delay, to the effect that she doesn't care in the least how long she waits for dinner, and that on the whole she would rather never have any dinner at all. isn't it strange, john, how that woman hates me?" "hates _you_, dear, when you're so kind to her!" "but she hates me for being kind to her, john. if i were to give her my diamond-necklace, she'd hate me for having it to give. she hates us because we're rich and young and handsome," said aurora, laughing; "and the very opposite of her namby-pamby, pale-faced self." it was strange that from this moment aurora seemed to regain her natural gaiety of spirits, and to be what she had been before the receipt of mr. pastern's letter. whatever dark cloud had hovered over her head, since the day upon which that simple epistle had caused such a terrible effect, seemed to have been suddenly removed. mrs. walter powell was not slow to perceive this change. the eyes of love, clear-sighted though they may be, are dull indeed beside the eyes of hate. _those_ are never deceived. aurora had wandered out of the drawing-room, listless and dispirited, to stroll wearily upon the lawn;--mrs. powell, seated in one of the windows, had watched her every movement, and had seen her in the distance speaking to some one (she had been unable to distinguish the "softy" from her post of observation);--and this same aurora returned to the house almost another creature. there was a look of determination about the beautiful mouth (which female critics called too wide), a look not usual to the rosy lips, and a resolute brightness in the eyes, which had some significance surely, mrs. powell thought, if she could only have found the key to that hidden meaning. ever since aurora's brief illness, the poor woman had been groping for this key--groping in mazy darknesses which baffled her utmost powers of penetration. who and what was this groom, that aurora should write to him, as she most decidedly had written? why was he to express no surprise, and what cause could there be for his expressing any surprise in the simple economy of mellish park? the mazy darknesses were more impenetrable than the blackest night, and mrs. powell well-nigh gave up all hope of ever finding any clue to the mystery. and now behold a new complication had arisen in aurora's altered spirits. john mellish was delighted with this alteration. he talked and laughed until the glasses near him vibrated with his noisy mirth. he drank so much sparkling moselle that his butler jarvis (who had grown gray in the service of the old squire, and had poured out master john's first glass of champagne) refused at last to furnish him with any more of that beverage; offering him in its stead some very expensive hock, the name of which was in fourteen unpronounceable syllables, and which john tried to like, but didn't. "we'll fill the house with visitors for the shooting season, lolly, darling," said mr. mellish. "if they come on the 1st of september, they'll all be comfortably settled for the leger. the dear old dad will come of course, and trot about on his white pony like the best of men and bankers in christendom. captain and mrs. bulstrode will come too; and we shall see how our little lucy looks, and whether solemn talbot beats her in the silence of the matrimonial chamber. then there's hunter, and a host of fellows; and you must write me a list of any nice people you'd like to ask down here; and we'll have a glorious autumn; won't we, lolly?" "i hope so, dear," said mrs. mellish, after a little pause, and a repetition of john's eager question. she had not been listening very attentively to john's plans for the future, and she startled him rather by asking him a question very wide from the subject upon which he had been speaking. "how long do the fastest vessels take going to australia, john?" she asked quietly. mr. mellish stopped with his glass in his hand to stare at his wife as she asked this question. "how long do the fastest vessels take to go to australia?" he repeated. "good gracious me, lolly, how should i know? three weeks or a month--no, i mean three months; but, in mercy's name, aurora, why do you want to know?" "the average length of the voyage is, i believe, about three months; but some fast-sailing packets do it in seventy, or even in sixty-eight days," interposed mrs. powell, looking sharply at aurora's abstracted face from under cover of her white eyelashes. "but why, in goodness name, do you want to know, lolly?" repeated john mellish. "you don't want to go to australia, and you don't know anybody who's going to australia." "perhaps mrs. mellish is interested in the female emigration movement," suggested mrs. powell: "it is a most delightful work." aurora replied neither to the direct nor the indirect question. the cloth had been removed (for no modern customs had ever disturbed the conservative economy of mellish park), and mrs. mellish sat, with a cluster of pale cherries in her hand, looking at the reflection of her own face in the depths of the shining mahogany. "lolly!" exclaimed john mellish, after watching his wife for some minutes, "you are as grave as a judge. what can you be thinking of?" she looked up at him with a bright smile, and rose to leave the dining-room. "i'll tell you one of these days, john," she said. "are you coming with us, or are you going out upon the lawn to smoke?" "if you'll come with me, dear," he answered, returning her smile with the frank glance of unchangeable affection which always beamed in his eyes when they rested on his wife. "i'll go out and smoke a cigar, if you'll come with me, lolly." "you foolish old yorkshireman," said mrs. mellish, laughing, "i verily believe you'd like me to smoke one of your choice cigars, by way of keeping you company." "no, darling, i'd never wish to see you do anything that didn't square--that wasn't compatible," interposed mr. mellish, gravely, "with the manners of the noblest lady, and the duties of the truest wife in england. if i love to see you ride across country with a red feather in your hat, it is because i think that the good old sport of english gentlemen was meant to be shared by their wives, rather than by people whom i would not like to name; and because there is a fair chance that the sight of your spanish hat and scarlet plume at the meet may go some way towards keeping miss wilhelmina de lancy (who was born plain scroggins, and christened sarah) out of the field. i think our british wives and mothers might have the battle in their own hands, and win the victory for themselves and their daughters, if they were a little braver in standing to their ground; if they were not quite so tenderly indulgent to the sins of eligible young noblemen, and, in their estimate of a man's qualifications for the marriage state, were not so entirely guided by the figures in his banker's book. it's a sad world, lolly; but john mellish, of mellish park, was never meant to set it right." mr, mellish stood on the threshold of a glass-door which opened on to a flight of steps leading to the lawn, as he delivered himself of this homily, the gravity of which was quite at variance with the usual tenour of his discourse. he had a cigar in his hand, and was going to light it, when aurora stopped him. "john, dear," she said, "my most unbusiness-like of darlings, have you forgotten that poor langley is so anxious to see you, that he may give you up the old accounts before the new trainer takes the stable business into his hands? he was here half an hour before dinner, and begged that you would see him to-night." mr. mellish shrugged his shoulders. "langley's as honest a fellow as ever breathed," he said. "i don't want to look into his accounts. i know what the stable costs me yearly on an average, and that's enough." "but for his satisfaction, dear." "well, well, lolly, to-morrow morning, then." "no, dear, i want you to ride out with me to-morrow." "to-morrow evening." "you 'meet the captains at the citadel,'" said aurora, laughing; "that is to say, you dine at holmbush with colonel pevensey. come, darling, i insist on your being business-like for once in a way; come to your sanctum sanctorum, and we'll send for langley, and look into the accounts." the pretty tyrant linked her arm in his, and led him to the other end of the house, and into that very room in which she had swooned away at the hearing of mr. pastern's letter. she looked thoughtfully out at the dull evening sky as she closed the windows. the storm had not yet come, but the ominous clouds still brooded low over the earth, and the sultry atmosphere was heavy and airless. mrs. mellish made a wonderful show of her business habits, and appeared to be very much interested in the mass of cornchandlers', veterinary surgeons', saddlers', and harness-makers' accounts with which the old trainer respectfully bewildered his master. but about ten minutes after john had settled himself to his weary labour, aurora threw down the pencil with which she had been working a calculation (by a process of so wildly original a nature, as to utterly revolutionize cocker, and annihilate the hackneyed notion that twice two are four), and floated lightly out of the room, with some vague promise of coming back presently, leaving mr. mellish to arithmetic and despair. mrs. walter powell was seated in the drawing-room reading, when aurora entered that apartment with a large black-lace shawl wrapped about her head and shoulders. mrs. mellish had evidently expected to find the room empty; for she started and drew back at the sight of the pale-faced widow, who was seated in a distant window, making the most of the last faint rays of summer twilight. aurora paused for a moment a few paces within the door, and then walked deliberately across the room towards the farthest window from that at which mrs. powell was seated. "are you going out in the garden this dull evening, mrs. mellish?" asked the ensign's widow. aurora stopped half-way between the window and the door to answer her. "yes," she said coldly. "allow me to advise you not to go far. we are going to have a storm." "i don't think so." "what, my dear mrs. mellish, not with that thunder-cloud yonder?" "i will take my chance of being caught in it then. the weather has been threatening all the afternoon. the house is insupportable to-night." "but you will surely not go far?" mrs. mellish did not appear to hear this last remonstrance. she hurried through the open window, and out upon the lawn, striking northwards towards that little iron gate across which she had talked to the "softy." the arch of the leaden sky seemed to contract above the tree-tops in the park, shutting in the earth as if with a roof of hot iron, after the fashion of those cunningly-contrived metal torture-chambers which we read of; but the rain had not yet come. "what can take her into the garden on such an evening as this?" thought mrs. powell, as she watched the white dress receding in the dusky twilight. "it will be dark in ten minutes, and she is not usually so fond of going out alone." the ensign's widow laid down the book in which she had appeared so deeply interested, and went to her own room, where she selected a comfortable gray cloak from a heap of primly folded garments in her capacious wardrobe. she muffled herself in this cloak, hurried downstairs with a soft but rapid step, and went out into the garden through a little lobby near john mellish's room. the blinds in the squire's sanctum were not drawn down, and mrs. powell could see the master of the house bending over his paper under the light of a reading lamp, with the rheumatic trainer seated by his side. it was by this time quite dark, but aurora's white dress was faintly visible upon the other side of the lawn. mrs. mellish was standing beside the little iron gate when the ensign's widow emerged from the house. the white dress was motionless for some time, and the pale watcher, lurking under the shade of a long verandah, began to think that her trouble was wasted, and that perhaps, after all, aurora had no special purpose in this evening ramble. mrs. walter powell felt cruelly disappointed. always on the watch for some clue to the secret whose existence she had discovered, she had fondly hoped that even this unseasonable ramble might be some link in the mysterious chain she was so anxious to fit together. but it appeared that she was mistaken. the unseasonable ramble was very likely nothing more than one of aurora's caprices--a womanly foolishness signifying nothing. no! the white dress was no longer motionless, and in the unnatural stillness of the hot night mrs. powell heard the distant scrooping noise of a hinge revolving slowly, as if guided by a cautious hand. mrs. mellish had opened the iron gate, and had passed to the other side of the invisible barrier which separated the gardens from the park. in another moment she had disappeared under the shadow of the trees which made a belt about the lawn. mrs. powell paused, almost terrified by her unlooked-for discovery. what, in the name of all that was darkly mysterious, could mrs. mellish have to do between nine and ten o'clock on the north side of the park--the wildly kept, deserted north side, in which, from year's end to year's end, no one but the keepers ever walked? the blood rushed hotly up to mrs. powell's pale face, as she suddenly remembered that the disused, dilapidated lodge upon this north side had been given to the new trainer as a residence. remembering this was nothing, but remembering this in connection with that mysterious letter signed "a." was enough to send a thrill of savage, horrible joy through the dull veins of the dependent. what should she do? follow mrs. mellish, and discover where she was going? how far would this be a safe thing to attempt? she turned back and looked once more through the window of john's room. he was still bending over the papers, still in as apparently hopeless confusion of mind. there seemed little chance of his business being finished very quickly. the starless night and her dark dress alike sheltered the spy from observation. "if i were close behind her, she would never see me," she thought. she struck across the lawn to the iron gate and passed into the park. the brambles and the tangled undergrowth caught at her dress as she paused for a moment looking about her in the summer night. there was no trace of aurora's white figure among the leafy alleys stretching in wild disorder before her. "i'll not attempt to find the path she took," thought mrs. powell; "i know where to find her." she groped her way into the narrow footpath leading to the lodge. she was not sufficiently familiar with the place to take the short cut which the "softy" had made for himself through the grass that afternoon, and she was some time walking from the iron gate to the lodge. the front windows of this rustic lodge faced a road that led to the stables; the back of the building looked towards the path down which mrs. powell went, and the two small windows in this back wall were both dark. the ensign's widow crept softly round to the front, looked about her cautiously, and listened. there was no sound but the occasional rustle of a leaf, tremulous even in the still atmosphere, as if by some internal prescience of the coming storm. with a slow, careful footstep, she stole towards the little rustic window and looked into the room within. she had not been mistaken when she had said that she knew where to find aurora. mrs. mellish was standing with her back to the window. exactly opposite to her sat james conyers the trainer, in an easy attitude, and with his pipe in his mouth. the little table was between them, and the one candle which lighted the room was drawn close to mr. conyers's elbow, and had evidently been used by him for the lighting of his pipe. aurora was speaking. the eager listener could hear her voice, but not her words; and she could see by the trainer's face that he was listening intently. he was listening intently, but a dark frown contracted his handsome eyebrows, and it was very evident that he was not too well satisfied with the bent of the conversation. he looked up when aurora ceased speaking, shrugged his shoulders, and took his pipe out of his mouth. mrs. powell, with her pale face close against the window-pane, watched him intently. he pointed with a careless gesture to an empty chair near aurora, but she shook her head contemptuously, and suddenly turned towards the window; so suddenly, that mrs. powell had scarcely time to recoil into the darkness before aurora had unfastened the iron latch and flung the narrow casement open. "i cannot endure this intolerable heat," she exclaimed, impatiently; "i have said all i have to say, and need only wait for your answer." "you don't give me much time for consideration," he said, with an insolent coolness which was in strange contrast to the restless vehemence of her manner. "what sort of answer do you want?" "yes or no." "nothing more?" "no, nothing more. you know my conditions; they are all written here," she added, putting her hand upon an open paper which lay upon the table; "they are all written clearly enough for a child to understand. will you accept them? yes or no?" "that depends upon circumstances," he answered, filling his pipe, and looking admiringly at the nail of his little finger, as he pressed the tobacco into the bowl. "upon what circumstances?" "upon the inducement which you offer, my dear mrs. mellish." "you mean the price?" "that's a low expression," he said, laughing; "but i suppose we both mean the same thing. the inducement must be a strong one which will make me do all that,"--he pointed to the written paper,--"and it must take the form of solid cash. how much is it to be?" "that is for you to say. remember what i have told you. decline to-night and i telegraph to my father to-morrow morning, telling him to alter his will." "suppose the old gentleman should be carried off in the interim, and leave that pleasant sheet of parchment standing as it is. i hear that he's old and feeble; it might be worth while calculating the odds upon such an event. i've risked my money on a worse chance before to-night." she turned upon him with so dark a frown as he said this, that the insolently heartless words died upon his lips and left him looking at her gravely. "egad," he said, "you're as great a devil as ever you were. i doubt if that isn't a good offer after all. give me two thousand down, and i'll take it." "two thousand pounds!" "i ought to have said twenty, but i've always stood in my own light." mrs. powell, crouching down beneath the open casement, had heard every word of this brief dialogue; but at this juncture, half-forgetful of all danger in her eagerness to listen, she raised her head until it was nearly on a level with the window-sill. as she did so, she recoiled with a sudden thrill of terror. she felt a puff of hot breath upon her cheek, and the garments of a man rustling against her own. she was not the only listener. the second spy was stephen hargraves the "softy." "hush!" he whispered, grasping mrs. powell by the wrist, and pinning her in her crouching attitude by the muscular force of his horny hand; "it's only me; steeve the 'softy,' you know; the stable-helper that _she_" (he hissed out the personal pronoun with such a furious impetus that it seemed to whistle sharply through the stillness),--"the fondy that she horsewhipped. i know you, and i know you're here to listen. he sent me into doncaster to fetch this" (he pointed to a bottle under his arm); "he thought it would take me four or five hours to go and get back; but i ran all the way, for i knew there was soommat oop." he wiped his streaming face with the ends of his coarse neckerchief as he finished speaking. his breath came in panting gasps, and mrs. powell could hear the laborious beating of his heart in the stillness. "i won't tell o' you," he said, "and you won't tell o' me. i've got the stripes upon my shoulder where she cut me with the whip to this day. i look at 'em sometimes, and they help to keep me in mind. she's a fine madam, aint she, and a great lady too? ay, sure she is; but she comes to meet her husband's servant on the sly, after dark, for all that. maybe the day isn't far off when _she'll_ be turned from these gates, and warned off this ground; and the merciful lord send that i live to see it. hush!" with her wrist still pinioned in his strong grasp, he motioned her to be silent, and bent his pale face forward; every feature rigid, in the listening expectancy of his hungry gaze. "listen," he whispered; "listen! every fresh word damns her deeper than the last." the trainer was the first to speak after this pause in the dialogue within the cottage. he had quietly smoked out his pipe, and had emptied the ashes of his tobacco upon the table before he took up the thread of the conversation at the point at which he had dropped it. "two thousand pounds," he said, "that is the offer, and i think it ought to be taken freely. two thousand down, in bank-of-england notes (fives and tens, higher figures might be awkward), or sterling coin of the realm. you understand; two thousand down. that's _my_ alternative; or i leave this place to-morrow morning--with all belonging to me." "by which course you would get nothing," said mrs. john mellish, quietly. "shouldn't i? what does the chap in the play get for his trouble when the blackamoor smothers his wife? i should get nothing--but my revenge upon a tiger-cat, whose claws have left a mark upon me that i shall carry to my grave." he lifted his hair with a careless gesture of his hand, and pointed to a scar upon his forehead, a white mark, barely visible in the dim light of the tallow-candle. "i'm a good-natured, easy-going fellow, mrs. john mellish, but i don't forget. is it to be the two thousand pounds, or war to the knife?" mrs. powell waited eagerly for aurora's answer; but before it came, a round heavy rain-drop pattered upon the light hair of the ensign's widow. the hood of her cloak had fallen back, leaving her head uncovered. this one large drop was the warning of the coming storm. the signal peal of thunder rumbled slowly and hoarsely in the distance, and a pale flash of lightning trembled on the white faces of the two listeners. "let me go," whispered mrs. powell, "let me go; i must get back to the house before the rain begins." the "softy" slowly relaxed his iron grip upon her wrist. he had held it unconsciously, in his utter abstraction to all things except the two speakers in the cottage. mrs. powell rose from her knees, and crept noiselessly away from the lodge. she remembered the vital necessity of getting back to the house before aurora, and of avoiding the shower. her wet garments would betray her if she did not succeed in escaping the coming storm. she was of a spare, wizen figure, encumbered with no superfluous flesh, and she ran rapidly along the narrow sheltered pathway leading to the iron gate through which she had followed aurora. the heavy rain-drops fell at long intervals upon the leaves. a second and a third peal of thunder rattled along the earth, like the horrible roar of some hungry animal creeping nearer and nearer to its prey. blue flashes of faint lightning lit up the tangled intricacies of the wood, but the fullest fury of the storm had not yet burst forth. the rain-drops came at shorter intervals as mrs. powell passed out of the wood, through the little iron gate; faster still as she hurried across the lawn; faster yet as she reached the lobby-door, which she had left ajar an hour before, and sat down panting upon a little bench within, to recover her breath before she went any further. she was still sitting on this bench, when the fourth peal of thunder shook the low roof above her head, and the rain dropped from the starless sky with such a rushing impetus, that it seemed as if a huge trap-door had been opened in the heavens, and a celestial ocean let down to flood the earth. "i think my lady will be nicely caught," muttered mrs. walter powell. she threw her cloak aside upon the lobby bench, and went through a passage leading to the hall. one of the servants was shutting the hall-door. "have you shut the drawing-room windows, wilson?" she asked. "no, ma'am; i am afraid mrs. mellish is out in the rain. jarvis is getting ready to go and look for her, with a lantern and the gig-umbrella." "then jarvis can stop where he is; mrs. mellish came in half an hour ago. you may shut all the windows, and close the house for the night." "yes, ma'am." "by-the-by, what o'clock is it, wilson? my watch is slow." "a quarter past ten, ma'am, by the dining-room clock." the man locked the hall-door, put up an immense iron bar, which worked with some rather complicated machinery, and had a bell hanging at one end of it, for the frustration of all burglarious and designing ruffians. from the hall the man went to the drawing-room, where he carefully fastened the long range of windows; from the drawing-room to the lobby; and from the lobby to the dining-room, where he locked the half-glass door opening into the garden. this being done, all communication between the house and the garden was securely shut off. "he shall know of her goings-on, at any rate," thought mrs. powell, as she dogged the footsteps of the servant to see that he did his work. the mellish household did not take very kindly to this deputy mistress; and when the footman went back to the servants' hall, he informed his colleagues that she was pryin' and pokin' about sharper than hever, and watchin' of a feller like a old 'ouse-cat. mr. wilson was a cockney, and had been newly-imported into the establishment. when the ensign's widow had seen the last bolt driven home to its socket, and the last key turned in its lock, she went back to the drawing-room and seated herself at the lamp-lit table, with some delicate morsel of old-maidish fancy-work, which seemed to be the converse of penelope's embroidery, as it appeared to advance at night, and retrograde by day. she had hastily smoothed her hair and rearranged her dress, and she looked as uncomfortably neat as when she came down to breakfast in the fresh primness of her matutinal toilette. she had been sitting at her work for about ten minutes when john mellish entered the room, emerging weary but triumphant from his struggle with the simple rules of multiplication and subtraction. mr. mellish had evidently suffered severely in the contest. his thick brown hair was tumbled into a rough mass that stood nearly upright upon his head, his cravat was untied, and his shirt-collar thrown open for the relief of his capacious throat; and these and many other marks of the struggle he bore upon him when he entered the drawing-room. "i've broken loose from school at last, mrs. powell," he said, flinging his big frame upon one of the sofas, to the imminent peril of the german-spring cushions; "i've broken away before the flag dropped, for langley would have liked to keep me there till midnight. he followed me to the door of this room with fourteen bushels of oats that was down in the cornchandler's account and was not down in the book he keeps to check the cornchandler. why the deuce don't he put it down in his book and make it right, then, i ask, instead of bothering me? what's the good of his keeping an account to check the cornchandler if he don't make his account the same as the cornchandler's? but it's all over!" he added, with a great sigh of relief, "it's all over! and all i can say is, i hope the new trainer isn't honest." "do you know much of the new trainer, mr. mellish?" asked mrs. powell, blandly; rather as if she wished to amuse her employer by the exertion of her conversational powers than for the gratification of any mundane curiosity. "deuced little," returned john, indifferently. "i haven't even seen the fellow yet; but john pastern recommended him, and he's sure to be all right; besides, aurora knows the man: he was in her father's service once." "oh, indeed!" said mrs. powell, giving the two insignificant words a significant little jerk; "oh, indeed! mrs. mellish knows him, does she? then of course he's a trustworthy person. he's a remarkably handsome young man." "remarkably handsome, is he?" said mr. mellish, with a careless laugh. "then i suppose all the maids will be falling in love with him, and neglecting their work to look out of the windows that open on to the stable-yard, hey? that's the sort of thing when a man has a handsome groom, aint it? susan and sarah, and all the rest of 'em, take to cleaning the windows, and wearing new ribbons in their caps?" "i really don't know anything about that, mr. mellish," answered the ensign's widow, simpering over her work as if the question they were discussing was so very far away that it was impossible for her to be serious about it; "but my experience has thrown me into a very large number of families." (she said this with perfect truth, as she had occupied so many situations that her enemies had come to declare she was unable to remain in any one household above a twelvemonth, by reason of her employers' discovery of her real nature.) "i have occupied positions of trust and confidence," continued mrs. powell, "and i regret to say that i have seen much domestic misery arise from the employment of handsome servants, whose appearance and manners are superior to their station. mr. conyers is not at all the sort of person i should like to see in a household in which i had the charge of young ladies." a sick, half-shuddering faintness crept through john's herculean frame as mrs. powell expressed herself thus; so vague a feeling that he scarcely knew whether it was mental or physical, any better than he knew what it was that he disliked in this speech of the ensign's widow. the feeling was as transient as it was vague. john's honest blue eyes looked, wonderingly round the room. "where's aurora?" he said; "gone to bed?" "i believe mrs. mellish has retired to rest," mrs. powell answered. "then i shall go too. the place is as dull as a dungeon without her," said mr. mellish, with agreeable candour. "perhaps you'll be good enough to make me a glass of brandy-and-water before i go, mrs. powell, for i've got the cold shivers after those accounts." he rose to ring the bell; but before he had gone three paces from the sofa, an impatient knocking at the closed outer shutters of one of the windows arrested his footsteps. "who, in mercy's name, is that?" he exclaimed, staring at the direction from which the noise came, but not attempting to respond to the summons. mrs. powell looked up to listen, with a face expressive of nothing but innocent wonder. the knocking was repeated more loudly and impatiently than before. "it must be one of the servants," muttered john; "but why doesn't he go round to the back of the house? i can't keep the poor devil out upon such a night as this, though," he added good-naturedly, unfastening the window as he spoke. the sashes opened inwards, the venetian shutters outwards. he pushed these shutters open, and looked out into the darkness and the rain. aurora, shivering in her drenched garments, stood a few paces from him, with the rain beating down straight and heavily upon her head. even in that obscurity her husband recognized her. "my darling," he cried, "is it you? you out at such a time, and on such a night! come in, for mercy's sake; you must be drenched to the skin." she came into the room; the wet hanging in her muslin dress streamed out upon the carpet on which she trod, and the folds of her lace shawl clung tightly about her figure. "why did you let them shut the windows?" she said, turning to mrs. powell, who had risen, and was looking the picture of ladylike uneasiness and sympathy. "you knew that i was in the garden." "yes, but i thought you had returned, my dear mrs. mellish," said the ensign's widow, busying herself with aurora's wet shawl, which she attempted to remove, but which mrs. mellish plucked impatiently away from her. "i saw you go out, certainly; and i saw you leave the lawn in the direction of the north lodge; but i thought you had returned some time since." the colour faded out of john mellish's face. "the north lodge!" he said. "have you been to the north lodge?" "i have been in the _direction of the north lodge_," aurora answered, with a sneering emphasis upon the words. "your information is perfectly correct, mrs. powell, though i did not know you had done me the honour of watching my actions." mr. mellish did not appear to hear this. he looked from his wife to his wife's companion with a half-bewildered expression--an expression of newly-awakened doubt, of dim, struggling perplexity--that was very painful to see. "the north lodge!" he repeated; "what were you doing at the north lodge, aurora?" "do you wish me to stand here in my wet clothes while i tell you?" asked mrs. mellish, her great black eyes blazing up with indignant pride. "if you want an explanation for mrs. powell's satisfaction, i can give it here; if only for your own, it will do as well upstairs." she swept towards the door, trailing her wet shawl after her, but not less queenly, even in her dripping garments; semiramide and cleopatra may have been out in wet weather. on the threshold of the door she paused and looked back at her husband. "i shall want you to take me to london to-morrow, mr. mellish," she said. then with one haughty toss of her beautiful head, and one bright flash of her glorious eyes, which seemed to say, "slave, obey and tremble!" she disappeared, leaving mr. mellish to follow her, meekly, wonderingly, fearfully; with terrible doubts and anxieties creeping, like venomous living creatures, stealthily into his heart. chapter vi. money matters. archibald floyd was very lonely at felden woods without his daughter. he took no pleasure in the long drawing-room, or the billiard-room and library, or the pleasant galleries, in which there were all manner of easy corners, with abutting bay-windows, damask-cushioned oaken benches, china vases as high as tables, all enlivened by the alternately sternly masculine and simperingly feminine faces of those ancestors whose painted representations the banker had bought in wardour street. (indeed, i fear those scottish warriors, those bewigged worthies of the northern circuit, those taper-waisted ladies with pointed stomachers, tucked-up petticoats, pannier-hoops, and blue-ribbon bedizened crooks, had been painted to order, and that there were such items in the account of the wardour street _rococo_ merchant as, "to one knight banneret, killed at bosworth 25_l._ 5_s._") the old banker, i say, grew sadly weary of his gorgeous mansion, which was of little avail to him without aurora. people are not so very much happier for living in handsome houses, though it is generally considered such a delightful thing to occupy a mansion which would be large enough for a hospital, and take your simple meal at the end of a table long enough to accommodate a board of railway directors. archibald floyd could not sit beside both the fireplaces in his long drawing-room, and he felt strangely lonely looking from the easy-chair on one hearth-rug, through a vista of velvet-pile and satin-damask, walnut-wood, buhl, malachite, china, parian, crystal, and ormolu, at that solitary second hearth-rug and those empty easy-chairs. he shivered in his dreary grandeur. his five-and-forty by thirty feet of velvet-pile might have been a patch of yellow sand in the great sahara for any pleasure he derived from its occupation. the billiard-room, perhaps, was worse; for the cues and balls were every one made precious by aurora's touch; and there was a great fine-drawn seam upon the green cloth, which marked the spot where miss floyd had ripped it open that time she made her first juvenile essay at a cannon. the banker locked the doors of both these splendid apartments, and gave the keys to his housekeeper. "keep the rooms in order, mrs. richardson," he said, "and keep them thoroughly aired; but i shall only use them when mr. and mrs. mellish come to me." and having shut up these haunted chambers, mr. floyd retired to that snug little study in which he kept his few relics of the sorrowful past. it may be said that the scottish banker was a very stupid old man, and that he might have invited the county families to his gorgeous mansion; that he might have summoned his nephews and their wives, with all grand nephews and nieces appertaining, and might thus have made the place merry with the sound of fresh young voices, and the long corridors noisy with the patter of restless little feet. he might have lured literary and artistic celebrities to his lonely hearth-rug, and paraded the lions of the london season upon his velvet-pile. he might have entered the political arena, and have had himself nominated for beckenham, croydon, or west wickham. he might have done almost anything; for he had very nearly as much money as aladdin, and could have carried dishes of uncut diamonds to the father of any princess whom he might take it into his head to marry. he might have done almost anything, this ridiculous old banker; yet he did nothing but sit brooding over his lonely hearth--for he was old and feeble, and he sat by the fire even in the bright summer weather--thinking of the daughter who was far away. he thanked god for her happy home, for her devoted husband, for her secure and honourable position; and he would have given the last drop of his blood to obtain for her these advantages; but he was, after all, only mortal, and he would rather have had her by his side. why did he not surround himself with society, as brisk mrs. alexander urged, when she found him looking pale and care-worn? why? because society was not aurora. because all the brightest _bon-mots_ of all the literary celebrities who have ever walked this earth seemed dull to him when compared with his daughter's idlest babble. literary lions! political notabilities! out upon them! when sir edward bulwer lytton and mr. charles dickens should call in mr. makepeace thackeray and mr. wilkie collins, to assist them in writing a work, in fifteen volumes or so, about aurora, the banker would be ready to offer them a handsome sum for the copyright. until then, he cared very little for the best book in mr. mudie's collection. when the members of the legislature should bring their political knowledge to bear upon aurora, mr. archibald floyd would be happy to listen to them. in the interim, he would have yawned in lord palmerston's face or turned his back upon earl russell. the banker had been a kind uncle, a good master, a warm friend, and a generous patron; but he had never loved any creature except his wife eliza and the daughter she had left to his care. life is not long enough to hold many such attachments as these; and the people who love very intensely are apt to concentrate the full force of their affection upon one object. for twenty years this black-eyed girl had been the idol before which the old man had knelt; and now that the divinity is taken away from him, he falls prostrate and desolate before the empty shrine. heaven knows how bitterly this beloved child had made him suffer, how deeply she had plunged the reckless dagger to the very core of his loving heart, and how freely, gladly, tearfully, and hopefully he had forgiven her. but she had never atoned for the past. it is poor consolation which lady macbeth gives to her remorseful husband when she tells him that "what's done cannot be undone;" but it is painfully and terribly true. aurora could not restore the year which she had taken out of her father's life, and which his anguish and despair had multiplied by ten. she could not restore the equal balance of the mind which had once experienced a shock so dreadful as to shatter its serenity, as we shatter the mechanism of a watch when we let it fall violently to the ground. the watchmaker patches up the damage, and gives us a new wheel here, and a spring there, and sets the hands going again; but they never go so smoothly as when the watch was fresh from the hands of the maker, and they are apt to stop suddenly with no shadow of warning. aurora could not atone. whatever the nature of that girlish error which made the mystery of her life, it was not to be undone. she could more easily have baled the ocean dry with a soup-ladle,--and i dare say she would gladly have gone to work to spoon out the salt water, if by so doing she could have undone that bygone mischief. but she could not; she could not! her tears, her penitence, her affection, her respect, her devotion, could do much; but they could not do this. the old banker invited talbot bulstrode and his young wife to make themselves at home at felden, and drive down to the woods as freely as if the place had been some country mansion of their own. they came sometimes, and talbot entertained his great uncle-in-law with the troubles of the cornish miners, while lucy sat listening to her husband's talk with unmitigated reverence and delight. archibald floyd made his guests very welcome upon these occasions, and gave orders that the oldest and costliest wines in the cellar should be brought out for the captain's entertainment, but sometimes in the very middle of talbot's discourses upon political economy the old man would sigh wearily, and look with a dimly yearning gaze far away over the tree-tops in a northward direction, towards that distant yorkshire household in which his daughter was the queen. perhaps mr. floyd had never quite forgiven talbot bulstrode for the breaking off of the match between him and aurora. the banker had certainly of the two suitors preferred john mellish; but he would have considered it only correct if captain bulstrode had retired from the world upon the occasion of aurora's marriage, and broken his heart in foreign exile, rather than advertising his indifference by a union with poor little lucy. archibald looked wonderingly at his fair-haired niece, as she sat before him in the deep bay-window, with the sunshine upon her amber tresses and the crisp folds of her peach-coloured dress, looking for all the world like one of the painted heroines so dear to the pre-raphaelite brotherhood, and marvelled how it was that talbot could have come to admire her. she was very pretty, certainly, with pink cheeks, a white nose, and rose-coloured nostrils, and a species of beauty which consists in very careful finishing off and picking out of the features; but, oh, how tame, how cold, how weak, beside that egyptian goddess, that assyrian queen with the flashing eyes and the serpentine coils of purple-black hair! talbot bulstrode was very calm, very quiet, but apparently sufficiently happy. i use that word "sufficiently" advisedly. it is a dangerous thing to be too happy. your high-pressure happiness, your sixty-miles-an-hour enjoyment, is apt to burst up and come to a bad end. better the quietest parliamentary train, which starts very early in the morning and carries its passengers safe into the terminus when the shades of night come down, than that rabid, rushing express, which does the journey in a quarter of the time, but occasionally topples over a bank, or rides pickaback upon a luggage train, in its fiery impetuosity. talbot bulstrode was substantially happier with lucy than he ever could have been with aurora. his fair young wife's undemonstrative worship of him soothed and flattered him. her gentle obedience, her entire concurrence in his every thought and whim, set his pride at rest. she was not eccentric, she was not impetuous. if he left her alone all day in the snug little house in halfmoon street which he had furnished before his marriage, he had no fear of her calling for her horse and scampering away into rotten row, with not so much as a groom to attend upon her. she was not strong-minded. she could be happy without the society of newfoundlands and skye terriers. she did not prefer landseer's dog-pictures above all other examples of modern art. she might have walked down regent street a hundred times without being once tempted to loiter upon the curb-stone and bargain with suspicious-looking merchants for a "noice leetle dawg." she was altogether gentle and womanly, and talbot had no fear to trust her to her own sweet will, and no need to impress upon her the necessity of lending her feeble little hands to the mighty task of sustaining the dignity of the raleigh bulstrodes. she would cling to him sometimes half lovingly, half timidly, and, looking up with a pretty deprecating smile into his coldly handsome face, ask him, falteringly, if he was _really_, really happy. "yes, my darling girl," the cornish captain would answer, being very well accustomed to the question, "decidedly, very happy." his calm business-like tone would rather disappoint poor lucy, and she would vaguely wish that her husband had been a little more like the heroes in the high-church novels, and a little less devoted to adam smith, mcculloch, and the cornish mines. "but you don't love me as you loved aurora, talbot?" (there were profane people who corrupted the captain's christian name into "tal;" but mrs. bulstrode was not more likely to avail herself of that disrespectful abbreviation than she was to address her gracious sovereign as "vic.") "but you don't love me as you loved aurora, talbot dear?" the pleading voice would urge, so tenderly anxious to be contradicted. "not _as_ i loved aurora, perhaps, darling." "not as much?" "as much and better, my pet; with a more enduring and a wiser love." if this was a little bit of a fib when the captain first said it, is he to be utterly condemned for the falsehood? how could he resist the loving blue eyes so ready to fill with tears if he had answered coldly; the softly pensive voice, tremulous with emotion; the earnest face; the caressing hand laid so lightly upon his coat-collar? he must have been more than mortal had he given any but loving answers to those loving questions. the day soon came when his answers were no longer tinged with so much as the shadow of falsehood. his little wife crept stealthily, almost imperceptibly, into his heart; and if he remembered the fever-dream of the past, it was only to rejoice in the tranquil security of the present. talbot bulstrode and his wife were staying at felden woods for a few days during the burning july weather, and sat down to dinner with mr. floyd upon the day succeeding the night of the storm. they were disturbed in the very midst of that dinner by the unexpected arrival of mr. and mrs. mellish, who rattled up to the door in a hired vehicle just as the second course was being placed upon the table. archibald floyd recognized the first murmur of his daughter's voice, and ran out into the hall to welcome her. she showed no eagerness to throw herself into her father's arms, but stood looking at john mellish with a weary, absent expression, while the stalwart yorkshireman allowed himself to be gradually disencumbered of a chaotic load of travelling-bags, sun-umbrellas, shawls, magazines, newspapers, and over-coats. "my darling, my darling!" exclaimed the banker, "what a happy surprise, what an unexpected pleasure!" she did not answer him, but, with her arms about his neck, looked mournfully into his face. "she would come," said john mellish, addressing himself generally; "she would come. the deuce knows why! but she said she must come, and what could i do but bring her? if she asked me to take her to the moon, what could i do but take her? but she wouldn't bring any luggage to speak of, because we're going back to-morrow." "going back to-morrow!" repeated mr. floyd; "impossible!" "bless your heart!" cried john, "what's impossible to lolly? if she wanted to go to the moon, she'd go, don't i tell you? she'd have a special engine, or a special balloon, or a special something or other, and she'd go. when we were in paris she wanted to see the big fountains play; and she told me to write to the emperor and ask him to have them set going for her. she did, by jove!" lucy bulstrode came forward to bid her cousin welcome; but i fear that a sharp jealous pang thrilled through that innocent heart at the thought that those fatal black eyes were again brought to bear upon talbot's life. mrs. mellish put her arms about her cousin as tenderly as if she had been embracing a child. "you here, dearest lucy!" she said. "i am so very glad!" "he loves me," whispered little mrs. bulstrode, "and i never, never can tell you how good he is." "of course not, my darling," answered aurora, drawing her cousin aside while mr. mellish shook hands with his father-in-law and talbot bulstrode. "he is the most glorious of princes, the most perfect of saints, is he not? and you worship him all day; you sing silent hymns in his praise, and perform high mass in his honour, and go about telling his virtues upon an imaginary rosary. ah, lucy, how many kinds of love there are! and who shall say which is the best or highest? i see plain, blundering john mellish yonder, with unprejudiced eyes; i know his every fault, i laugh at his every awkwardness. yes, i laugh now, for he is dropping those things faster than the servants can pick them up." she stopped to point to poor john's chaotic burden. "i see all this as plainly as i see the deficiencies of the servant who stands behind my chair; and yet i love him with all my heart and soul, and i would not have one fault corrected, or one virtue exaggerated, for fear it should make him different to what he is." lucy bulstrode gave a little half-resigned sigh. "what a blessing that my poor cousin is happy!" she thought; "and yet how can she be otherwise than miserable with that absurd john mellish?" what lucy meant, perhaps, was this:--how could aurora be otherwise than wretched in the companionship of a gentleman who had neither a straight nose nor dark hair? some women never outlive that school-girl infatuation for straight noses and dark hair. some girls would have rejected napoleon the great because he wasn't "tall," or would have turned up their noses at the author of 'childe harold' if they had happened to see him in a stand-up collar. if lord byron had never turned down his collars, would his poetry have been as popular as it was? if mr. alfred tennyson were to cut his hair, would that operation modify our opinion of 'the queen of the may'? where does that marvellous power of association begin and end? perhaps there may have been a reason for aurora's contentment with her commonplace, prosaic husband. perhaps she had learned at a very early period of her life that there are qualities even more valuable than exquisitely-modelled features or clustering locks. perhaps, having begun to be foolish very early, she had outstripped her contemporaries in the race, and had earlier learned to be wise. archibald floyd led his daughter and her husband into the dining-room, and the dinner-party sat down again with the two unexpected guests, and the luke-warm salmon brought in again for mr. and mrs. mellish. aurora sat in her old place on her father's right hand. in the old girlish days miss floyd had never occupied the bottom of the table, but had loved best to sit close to that foolishly-doting parent, pouring out his wine for him in defiance of the servants, and doing other loving offices which were deliciously inconvenient to the old man. to-day aurora seemed especially affectionate. that fondly-clinging manner had all its ancient charm to the banker. he put down his glass with a tremulous hand to gaze at his darling child, and was dazzled with her beauty, and drunken with the happiness of having her near him. "but, my darling," he said, by-and-by, "what do you mean by talking about going back to yorkshire to-morrow?" "nothing, papa, except that i _must_ go," answered mrs. mellish, determinedly. "but why come, dear, if you could only stop one night?" "because i wanted to see you, dearest father, and talk to you about--about money matters." "that's it," exclaimed john mellish, with his mouth half full of salmon and lobster-sauce. "that's it! money matters! that's all i can get out of her. she goes out late last night, and roams about the garden, and comes in wet through and through, and says she must come to london about money matters. what should she want with money matters? if she wants money, she can have as much as she wants. she shall write the figures, and i'll sign the cheque; or she shall have a dozen blank cheques to fill in just as she pleases. what is there upon this earth that i'd refuse her? if she dipped a little too deep, and put more money than she could afford upon the bay filly, why doesn't she come to me instead of bothering you about money matters? you know i said so in the train, aurora, ever so many times. why bother your poor papa about it?" the poor papa looked wonderingly from his daughter to his daughter's husband. what did it all mean? trouble, vexation, weariness of spirit, humiliation, disgrace? ah, heaven help that enfeebled mind whose strength has been shattered by one great shock! archibald floyd dreaded the token of a coming storm in every chance cloud on the summer's sky. "perhaps i may prefer to spend my _own_ money, mr. john mellish," answered aurora, "and pay any foolish bets i have chosen to make out of my _own_ purse, without being under an obligation to any one." mr. mellish returned to his salmon in silence. "there is no occasion for a great mystery, papa," resumed aurora; "i want some money for a particular purpose, and i have come to consult with you about my affairs. there is nothing very extraordinary in that, i suppose?" mrs. john mellish tossed her head, and flung this sentence at the assembly, as if it had been a challenge. her manner was so defiant, that even talbot and lucy felt called upon to respond with a gentle dissenting murmur. "no, no, of course not; nothing more natural," muttered the captain; but he was thinking all the time,--"thank god i married the other one." after dinner the little party strolled out of the drawing-room windows on to the lawn, and away towards that iron bridge upon which aurora had stood, with her dog by her side, less than two years ago, on the occasion of talbot bulstrode's second visit to felden woods. lingering upon that bridge on this tranquil summer's evening, what could the captain do but think of that september day, barely two years agone? barely two years! not two years! and how much had been done and thought and suffered since! how contemptible was the narrow space of time! yet what terrible eternities of anguish, what centuries of heart-break, had been compressed into that pitiful sum of days and weeks! when the fraudulent partner in some house of business puts the money which is not his own upon a derby favourite, and goes home at night a loser, it is strangely difficult for that wretched defaulter to believe that it is not twelve hours since he travelled the road to epsom confident of success, and calculating how he should invest his winnings. talbot bulstrode was very silent, thinking of the influence which this family of felden woods had had upon his destiny. his little lucy saw that silence and thoughtfulness, and, stealing softly to her husband, linked her arm in his. she had a right to do it now. yes, to pass her little soft white hand under his coat-sleeve, and even look up, almost boldly, in his face. "do you remember when you first came to felden, and we stood upon this very bridge?" she asked: for she too had been thinking of that faraway time in the bright september of '57. "do you remember, talbot dear?" she had drawn him away from the banker and his children, in order to ask this all-important question. "yes, perfectly, darling. as well as i remember your graceful figure seated at the piano in the long drawing-room, with the sunshine on your hair." "you remember that!--you remember _me!_" exclaimed lucy, rapturously. "very well, indeed." "but i thought--that is, i know--that you were in love with aurora then." "i think not." "you only think not?" "how can i tell!" cried talbot. "i freely confess that my first recollection connected with this place is of a gorgeous black-eyed creature, with scarlet in her hair; and i can no more disassociate her image from felden woods than i can, with my bare right hand, pluck up the trees which give the place its name. but if you entertain one distrustful thought of that pale shadow of the past, you do yourself and me a grievous wrong. i made a mistake, lucy; but, thank heaven! i saw it in time." it is to be observed that captain bulstrode was always peculiarly demonstrative in his gratitude to providence for his escape from the bonds which were to have united him to aurora. he also made a great point of the benign compassion in which he held john mellish. but in despite of this, he was apt to be rather captious and quarrelsomely disposed towards the yorkshireman; and i doubt if john's little stupidities and weaknesses were, on the whole, very displeasing to him. there are some wounds which never quite heal. the jagged flesh may reunite; cooling medicines may subdue the inflammation; even the scar left by the dagger-thrust may wear away, until it disappears in that gradual transformation which every atom of us is supposed by physiologists to undergo; but the wound _has been_, and to the last hour of our lives there are unfavourable winds which can make us wince with the old pain. aurora treated her cousin's husband with the calm cordiality which she might have felt for a brother. she bore no grudge against him for the old desertion; for she was happy with her husband. she was happy with the man who loved and believed in her, with a strength of confidence which had survived every trial of his simple faith. mrs. mellish and lucy wandered away among the flower-beds by the water-side, leaving the gentlemen on the bridge. "so you are very, very happy, my lucy?" said aurora. "oh, yes, yes, dear. how could i be otherwise? talbot is so good to me. i know, of course, that he loved you first, and that he doesn't love me quite--in the same way, you know--perhaps, in fact--not as much." lucy bulstrode was never tired of harping on this unfortunate minor string. "but i am very happy. you must come and see us, aurora dear. our house is so pretty!" mrs. bulstrode hereupon entered into a detailed description of the furniture and decorations in halfmoon street, which is perhaps scarcely worthy of record. aurora listened rather absently to the long catalogue of upholstery, and yawned several times before her cousin had finished. "it's a very pretty house, i dare say, lucy," she said at last, "and john and i will be very glad to come and see you some day. i wonder, lucy, if i were to come in any trouble or disgrace to your door, whether you would turn me away?" "trouble! disgrace!" repeated lucy looking frightened. "you wouldn't turn me away, lucy, would you? no; i know you better than that. you'd let me in secretly, and hide me away in one of the servants' bedrooms, and bring me food by stealth, for fear the captain should discover the forbidden guest beneath his roof. you'd serve two masters, lucy, in fear and trembling." before mrs. bulstrode could make any answer to this extraordinary speech the approach of the gentlemen interrupted the feminine conference. it was scarcely a lively evening, this july sunset at felden woods. archibald floyd's gladness in his daughter's presence was something damped by the peculiarity of her visit; john mellish had some shadowy remnants of the previous night's disquietude hanging about him; talbot bulstrode was thoughtful and moody; and poor little lucy was tortured by vague fears of her brilliant cousin's influence. i don't suppose that any member of that "attenuated" assembly felt very much regret when the great clock in the stable-yard struck eleven, and the jingling bedroom candlesticks were brought into the room. talbot and his wife were the first to say good-night. aurora lingered at her father's side, and john mellish looked doubtfully at his dashing white sergeant, waiting to receive the word of command. "you may go, john," she said; "i want to speak to papa." "but i can wait, lolly." "on no account," answered mrs. mellish sharply. "i am going into papa's study to have a quiet confabulation with him. what end would be gained by your waiting? you've been yawning in our faces all the evening. you're tired to death, i know, john; so go at once, my precious pet, and leave papa and me to discuss our money matters." she pouted her rosy lips, and stood upon tiptoe, while the big yorkshireman kissed her. "how you do henpeck me, lolly!" he said rather sheepishly. "good-night, sir. god bless you! take care of my darling." he shook hands with mr. floyd, parting from him with that half-affectionate, half-reverent manner which he always displayed to aurora's father. mrs. mellish stood for some moments silent and motionless, looking after her husband; while her father, watching her looks, tried to read their meaning. how quiet are the tragedies of real life! that dreadful scene between the moor and his ancient takes place in the open street of cyprus, according to modern usage. i can scarcely fancy othello and iago debating about poor desdemona's honesty in st. paul's churchyard, or even in the market-place of a country town; but perhaps the cyprus street was a dull one, a _cul-de-sac_, it may be, or at least a deserted thoroughfare, something like that in which monsieur melnotte falls upon the shoulder of general damas and sobs out his lamentations. but our modern tragedies seem to occur indoors, and in places where we should least look for scenes of horror. who can forget that tempestuous scene of jealous fury and mad violence which took place in a second floor in northumberland street, while the broad daylight was streaming in through the dusty windows, and the common london cries ascending from the pavement below? any chance traveller driving from beckenham to west wickham would have looked, perhaps enviously, at the felden mansion, and sighed to be lord of that fair expanse of park and garden; yet i doubt if in the county of kent there was any creature more disturbed in mind than archibald floyd the banker. those few moments during which aurora stood in thoughtful silence were as so many hours to his anxious mind. at last she spoke. "will you come to the study, papa?" she said; "this room is so big, and so dimly lighted. i always fancy there are listeners in the corners." she did not wait for an answer; but led the way to a room upon the other side of the hall,--the room in which she and her father had been so long closeted together upon the night before her departure for paris. the crayon portrait of eliza floyd looked down upon archibald and his daughter. the face wore so bright and genial a smile that it was difficult to believe that it was the face of the dead. the banker was the first to speak. "my darling girl," he said, "what is it you want with me?" "money, papa. two thousand pounds." she checked his gesture of surprise, and resumed before he could interrupt her. "the money you settled upon me on my marriage with john mellish is invested in our own bank, i know. i know, too, that i can draw upon my account when and how i please; but i thought that if i wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds the unusual amount might attract attention,--and it might possibly fall into your hands. had this occurred you would perhaps have been alarmed, at any rate astonished. i thought it best, therefore, to come to you myself and ask you for the money, especially as i must have it in notes." archibald floyd grew very pale. he had been standing while aurora spoke; but as she finished he dropped into a chair near his little office table, and resting his elbow upon an open desk leaned his head on his hand. "what do you want money for, my dear?" he asked gravely. "never mind that, papa. it is my money, is it not; and i may spend it as i please?" "certainly, my dear, certainly," he answered, with some slight hesitation. "you shall spend whatever you please. i am rich enough to indulge any whim of yours, however foolish, however extravagant. but your marriage settlement was rather intended for the benefit of your children--than--than for--anything of this kind; and i scarcely know if you are justified in touching it without your husband's permission; especially as your pin-money is really large enough to enable you to gratify any reasonable wish." the old man pushed his gray hair away from his forehead with a weary action and a tremulous hand. heaven knows that even in that desperate moment aurora took notice of the feeble hand and the whitening hair. "_give_ me the money, then, papa," she said. "give it me from your own purse. you are rich enough to do that." "rich enough! yes, if it were twenty times the sum," answered the banker slowly. then, with a sudden burst of passion, he exclaimed, "o aurora, aurora! why do you treat me so badly? have i been so cruel a father that you can't confide in me? aurora, why do you want this money?" she clasped her hands tightly together, and stood looking at him for a few moments irresolutely. "i cannot tell you," she said, with grave determination. "if i were to tell you--what--what i think of doing, you might thwart me in my purpose. father! father!" she cried, with a sudden change in her voice and manner, "i am hemmed in on every side by difficulty and danger; and there is only one way of escape--except death. unless i take that one way, i must die. i am very young,--too young and happy, perhaps, to die willingly. give me the means of escape." "you mean this sum of money?" "yes." "you have been pestered by some connection--some old associate of--his?" "no!" "what then?" "i cannot tell you." they were silent for some moments. archibald floyd looked imploringly at his child, but she did not answer that earnest gaze. she stood before him with a proudly downcast look: the eyelids drooping over the dark eyes, not in shame, not in humiliation; only in the stern determination to avoid being subdued by the sight of her father's distress. "aurora," he said at last, "why not take the wisest and the safest step? why not tell john mellish the truth? the danger would disappear; the difficulty would be overcome. if you are persecuted by this low rabble, who so fit as he to act for you? tell him, aurora--tell him all!" "no, no, no!" she lifted her hands and clasped them upon her pale face. "no, no; not for all this wide world!" she cried. "aurora," said archibald floyd, with a gathering sternness upon his face, which overspread the old man's benevolent countenance like some dark cloud,--"aurora,--god forgive me for saying such words to my own child,--but i must insist upon your telling me that this is no new infatuation, no new madness, which leads you to----" he was unable to finish his sentence. mrs. mellish dropped her hands from before her face, and looked at him with her eyes flashing fire, and her cheeks in a crimson blaze. "father," she cried, "how dare you ask me such a question? new infatuation! new madness! have i suffered so little, do you think, from the folly of my youth? have i paid so small a price for the mistake of my girlhood, that you should have cause to say these words to me to-night? do i come of so bad a race," she said, pointing indignantly to her mother's portrait, "that you should think so vilely of me? do i----" her tragical appeal was rising to its climax, when she dropped suddenly at her father's feet, and burst into a tempest of sobs. "papa, papa, pity me!" she cried; "pity me!" he raised her in his arms, and drew her to him, and comforted her, as he had comforted her for the loss of a scotch terrier-pup twelve years before, when she was small enough to sit on his knee, and nestle her head in his waistcoat. "pity you, my dear!" he said. "what is there i would not do for you to save you one moment's sorrow? if my worthless life could help you; if----" "you will give me the money, papa?" she asked, looking up at him half coaxingly through her tears. "yes, my darling; to-morrow morning." "in bank-notes?" "in any manner you please. but, aurora, why see these people? why listen to their disgraceful demands? why not tell the truth?" "ah, why, indeed!" she said thoughtfully. "ask me no questions, dear papa; but let me have the money to-morrow, and i promise you that this shall be the very last you hear of my old troubles." she made this promise with such perfect confidence that her father was inspired with a faint ray of hope. "come, darling papa," she said; "your room is near mine; let us go up-stairs together." she entwined her arm in his, and led him up the broad staircase; only parting from him at the door of his room. mr. floyd summoned his daughter into the study early the next morning, while talbot bulstrode was opening his letters, and lucy strolling up and down the terrace with john mellish. "i have telegraphed for the money, my darling," the banker said. "one of the clerks will be here with it by the time we have finished breakfast." mr. floyd was right. a card inscribed with the name of a mr. george martin was brought to him during breakfast. "mr. martin will be good enough to wait in my study," he said. aurora and her father found the clerk seated at the open window, looking admiringly through festoons of foliage, which clustered round the frame of the lattice, into the richly-cultivated garden. felden woods was a sacred spot in the eyes of the junior clerks in lombard street, and a drive to beckenham in a hansom cab on a fine summer's morning, to say nothing of such chance refreshment as pound-cake and old madeira, or cold fowl and scotch ale, was considered no small treat. mr. george martin, who was labouring under the temporary affliction of being only nineteen years of age, rose in a confused flutter of respect and surprise, and blushed very violently at sight of mrs. mellish. aurora responded to his reverential salute with such a pleasant nod as she might have bestowed upon the younger dogs in the stable-yard, and seated herself opposite to him at the little table by the window. it was such an excruciatingly narrow table that the crisp ribbons about aurora's muslin dress rustled against the drab trousers of the junior clerk as mrs. mellish sat down. the young man unlocked a little morocco pouch which he wore suspended from a strap across his shoulder, and produced a roll of crisp notes; so crisp, so white and new, that, in their unsullied freshness, they looked more like notes on the bank of elegance than the circulating medium of this busy, money-making nation. "i have brought the cash for which you telegraphed, sir," said the clerk. "very good, mr. martin," answered the banker. "here is my cheque ready written for you. the notes are----?" "twenty fifties, twenty-five twenties, fifty tens," the clerk said glibly. mr. floyd took the little bundle of tissue-paper, and counted the notes with the professional rapidity which he still retained. "quite correct," he said, ringing the bell, which was speedily answered by a simpering footman. "give this gentleman some lunch. you will find the madeira very good," he added kindly, turning to the blushing junior; "it's a wine that is dying out; and by the time you're my age, mr. martin, you won't be able to get such a glass as i can offer you to-day. good morning." mr. george martin clutched his hat nervously from the empty chair on which he had placed it, knocked down a heap of papers with his elbow, bowed, blushed, and stumbled out of the room, under convoy of the simpering footman, who nourished a profound contempt for the young men from the "hoffice." "now, my darling," said mr. floyd, "here is the money. though, mind, i protest against----" "no, no, papa, not a word," she interrupted; "i thought that was all settled last night." he sighed with the same weary sigh as on the night before, and seating himself at his desk, dipped a pen into the ink. "what are you going to do, papa?" "i'm only going to take the numbers of the notes." "there is no occasion." "there is always occasion to be business-like," said the old man firmly, as he checked the numbers of the notes one by one upon a sheet of paper with rapid precision. aurora paced up and down the room impatiently while this operation was going forward. "how difficult it has been to me to get this money!" she exclaimed. "if i had been the wife and daughter of two of the poorest men in christendom, i could scarcely have had more trouble about this two thousand pounds. and now you keep me here while you number the notes, not one of which is likely to be exchanged in this country." "i learnt to be business-like when i was very young, aurora," answered mr. floyd, "and i have never been able to forget my old habits." he completed his task in defiance of his daughter's impatience, and handed her the packet of notes when he had done. "i will keep the list of numbers, my dear," he said. "if i were to give it to you, you would most likely lose it." he folded the sheet of paper and put it in a drawer of his desk. "twenty years hence, aurora," he said, "should i live so long, i should be able to produce this paper, if it were wanted." "which it never will be, you dear methodical papa," answered aurora. "my troubles are ended now. yes," she added, in a graver tone, "i pray god that my troubles may be ended now." she encircled her arms about her father's neck, and kissed him tenderly. "i must leave you, dearest, to-day," she said; "you must not ask me why,--you must ask me nothing! you must only love and trust me,--as my poor john trusts me,--faithfully, hopefully, through everything." chapter vii. captain prodder. while the doncaster express was carrying mr. and mrs. mellish northwards, another express journeyed from liverpool to london with its load of passengers. amongst these passengers there was a certain broad-shouldered and rather bull-necked individual, who attracted considerable attention during the journey, and was an object of some interest to his fellow-travellers and the railway officials at the two or three stations where the train stopped. he was a man of about fifty years of age, but his years were worn very lightly, and only recorded by some wandering streaks and patches of gray amongst his thick blue-black stubble of hair. his complexion, naturally dark, had become of such a bronzed and coppery tint by perpetual exposure to meridian suns, tropical hot winds, the fiery breath of the simoom, and the many other trifling inconveniences attendant upon an out-door life, as to cause him to be frequently mistaken for the inhabitant of some one of those countries in which the complexion of the natives fluctuates between burnt sienna, indian red, and vandyke brown. but it was rarely long before he took an opportunity to rectify this mistake, and to express that hearty contempt and aversion for all _furriners_ which is natural to the unspoiled and unsophisticated briton. upon this particular occasion he had not been half an hour in the society of his fellow-passengers before he had informed them that he was a native of liverpool, and the captain of a merchant vessel trading, in a manner of speaking, he said, everywhere; that he had run away from his father and his home at a very early period of his life; and had shifted for himself in different parts of the globe ever since: that his christian name was samuel and his surname prodder, and that his father had been, like himself, a captain in the merchant's service. he chewed so much tobacco and drank so much fiery jamaica rum from a pocket-pistol in the intervals of his conversation, that the first-class compartment in which he sat was odorous with the compound perfume. but he was such a hearty, loud-spoken fellow, and there was such a pleasant twinkle in his black eyes, that the passengers (with the exception of one crusty old lady) treated him with great good-humour, and listened very patiently to his talk. "chewin' aint smokin', you know, is it?" he said, with a great guffaw, as he cut himself a terrible block of cavendish; "and railway companies aint got any laws against that. they can put a fellow's pipe out, but he can chew his quid in their faces; though i won't say which is wust for their carpets, neither." i am sorry to be compelled to confess that this brown-visaged merchant-captain, who said _wust_, and chewed cavendish tobacco, was uncle to mrs. john mellish of mellish park; and that the motive for this very journey was neither more nor less than his desire to become acquainted with his niece. he imparted this fact--as well as much other information relating to himself, his tastes, habits, adventures, opinions, and sentiments--to his travelling companions in the course of the journey. "do you know for why i'm going to london by this identical train?" he asked generally, as the passengers settled themselves into their places after taking refreshment at rugby. the gentlemen looked over their newspapers at the talkative sailor, and a young lady looked up from her book; but nobody volunteered to speculate an opinion upon the mainspring of mr. prodder's actions. "i'll tell you for why," resumed the merchant captain, addressing the assembly, as if in answer to their eager questioning. "i'm going to see my niece, which i have never seen before. when i ran away from father's ship, the _ventur'some_, nigh upon forty year ago, and went aboard the craft of a captain by the name of mobley, which was a good master to me for many a day, i had a little sister as i had left behind at liverpool, which was dearer to me than my life." he paused to refresh himself with rather a demonstrative sip from the pocket-pistol. "but if _you_," he continued generally, "if _you_ had a father that'd fetch you a clout of the head as soon as look at you, _you'd_ run away perhaps; and so did i. i took the opportunity to be missin' one night as father was settin' sail from yarmouth harbour; and not settin' that wonderful store by me which some folks do by their only sons, he shipped his anchor without stoppin' to ask many questions, and left me hidin' in one of the little alleys which cut the town of yarmouth through and across, like they cut the cakes they make there. there was many in yarmouth that knew me, and there wasn't one that didn't say, 'sarve him right,' when they heard how i'd given father the slip; and the next day cap'en mobley gave me a berth as cabin-boy aboard the _mariar anne_." mr. prodder again paused to partake of refreshment from his portable spirit-store, and this time politely handed the pocket-pistol to the company. "now perhaps you'll not believe me," he resumed, after his friendly offer had been refused, and the wicker-covered vessel replaced in his capacious pocket,--"you won't perhaps believe me when i tell you, as i tell you candid, that up to last saturday week i never could find the time nor the opportunity to go back to liverpool, and ask after the little sister that i'd left no higher than the kitchen table, and that had cried fit to break her poor little heart when i went away. but whether you believe it or whether you don't, it's as true as gospel," cried the sailor, thumping his ponderous fist upon the padded elbow of the compartment in which he sat; "it's as true as gospel. i've coasted america, north and south; i've carried west-indian goods to the east indies, and east-indian goods to the west indies; i've traded in norwegian goods between norway and hull; i've carried sheffield goods from hull to south america; i've traded between all manner of countries and all manner of docks; but somehow or other i've never had the time to spare to go on shore at liverpool, and find out the narrow little street in which i left my sister eliza, no higher than the table, more than forty years ago, until last saturday was a week. last saturday was a week i touched at liverpool with a cargo of furs and poll-parrots,--what you may call fancy goods; and i said to my mate, i said, 'i'll tell you what i'll do, jack; i'll go ashore, and see my little sister eliza.'" he paused once more, and a softening change came over the brightness of his black eyes. this time he did not apply himself to the pocket-pistol. this time he brushed the back of his brown hand across his eye-lashes, and brought it away with a drop or two of moisture glittering upon the bronzed skin. even his voice was changed when he continued, and had mellowed to a richer and more mournful depth, until it very much resembled the melodious utterance which twenty-one years before had assisted to render miss eliza percival the popular tragedian of the preston and bradford circuit. "god forgive me," continued the sailor, in that altered voice; "but throughout my voyages i'd never thought of my sister eliza but in two ways; sometimes one, sometimes t'other. one way of thinking of her, and expecting to see her, was as the little sister that i'd left, not altered by so much as one lock of her hair being changed from the identical curl into which it was twisted the morning she cried and clung about me on board the _ventur'some_, having come aboard to wish father and me good-bye. perhaps i oftenest thought of her in this way. anyhow, it was in this way, and no other, that i always saw her in my dreams. the other way of thinking of her, and expectin' to see her, was as a handsome, full-grown, buxom, married woman, with a troop of saucy children hanging on to her apron-string, and every one of 'em askin' what uncle samuel had brought 'em from foreign parts. of course this fancy was the most rational of the two; but the other fancy, of the little child with the long black curly hair, would come to me very often, especially at night when all was quiet aboard, and when i took the wheel in a spell while the helmsman turned in. lord bless you, ladies and gentlemen! many a time of a starlight night, when we've been in them latitudes where the stars are brighter than common, i've seen the floating mists upon the water take the very shape of that light figure of a little girl in a white pinafore, and come skipping towards me across the waves. i don't mean that i've seen a ghost, you know; but i mean that i could have seen one if i'd had the mind, and that i've seen as much of a one as folks ever do see upon this earth: the ghosts of their own memories and their own sorrows, mixed up with the mists of the sea or the shadows of the trees wavin' back'ards and for'ards in the moonlight, or a white curtain agen a window, or something of that sort. well, i was such a precious old fool with these fancies and fantigs,"--mr. samuel prodder seemed rather to pride himself upon the latter word, as something out of the common,--"that when i went ashore at liverpool, last saturday was a week, i couldn't keep my eyes off the little girls in white pinafores as passed me by in the streets, thinkin' to see my eliza skippin' along, with her black curls flyin' in the wind, and a bit of chalk, to play hop-scotch with, in her hand; so i was obliged to say to myself, quite serious, 'now, samuel prodder, the little girl you're a lookin' for must be fifty years of age, if she's a day, and it's more than likely that she's left off playin' hop-scotch and wearin' white pinafores by this time.' if i hadn't kept repeatin' this, internally like, all the way i went, i should have stopped half the little girls in liverpool to ask 'em if their name was eliza, and if they'd ever had a brother, as ran away and was lost. i had only one thought of how to set about findin' her, and that was to walk straight to the back street in which i remembered leavin' her forty years before. i'd no thought that those forty years could make any more change than to change her from a girl to a woman, and it seemed almost strange to me that they could make as much change as that. there was one thing i never thought of; and if my heart beat loud and quick when i knocked at the little front-door of the very identical house in which we'd lodged, it was with nothing but hope and joy. the forty years that had sent railways spinning all over england hadn't made much difference in the old house; it was forty years dirtier, perhaps, and forty years shabbier, and it stood in the very heart of the town instead of on the edge of the open country; but, exceptin' that, it was pretty much the same; and i expected to see the same landlady come to open the door, with the same dirty artificial flowers in her cap, and the same old slippers down at heel scrapin' after her along the bit of oilcloth. it gave me a kind of a turn when i didn't see this identical landlady, though she'd have been turned a hundred years old if she'd been alive; and i might have prepared myself for the disappointment if i'd thought of that, but i hadn't; and when the door was opened by a young woman with sandy hair, brushed backwards as if she'd been a chinese, and no eyebrows to speak of, i did feel disappointed. the young woman had a baby in her arms, a black-eyed baby, with its eyes opened so wide that it seemed as if it had been very much surprised with the look of things on first comin' into the world, and hadn't quite recovered itself yet; so i thought to myself, as soon as i clapped eyes on the little one, why, as sure as a gun, that's my sister eliza's baby; and my sister eliza's married, and lives here still. but the young woman had never heard the name of prodder, and didn't think there was anybody in the neighbourhood as ever had. i felt my heart, which had been beatin' louder and quicker every minute, stop all of a sudden when she said this, and seemed to drop down like a dead weight; but i thanked her for her civil answers to my questions, and went on to the next house to inquire there. i might have saved myself the trouble, for i made the same inquiries at every house on each side of the street, going straight from door to door, till the people thought i was a sea-farin' tax-gatherer; but nobody had never heard the name of prodder, and the oldest inhabitant in the street hadn't lived there ten years. i was quite disheartened when i left the neighbourhood, which had once been so familiar, and which seemed so strange and small and mean and shabby now. i'd had so little thought of failing to find eliza in the very house in which i'd left her, that i'd made no plans beyond. so i was brought to a dead stop; and i went back to the tavern where i'd left my carpet-bag, and i had a chop brought me for my dinner, and i sat with my knife and fork before me thinkin' what i was to do next. when eliza and i had parted forty years before, i remembered father leavin' her in charge of a sister of my mother's (my poor mother had been dead a year), and i thought to myself, the only chance there is left for me now is to find aunt sarah." by the time mr. prodder arrived at this stage of his narrative his listeners had dropped off gradually, the gentlemen returning to their newspapers, and the young lady to her book, until the merchant-captain found himself reduced to communicate his adventures to one goodnatured-looking young fellow, who seemed interested in the brown-faced sailor, and encouraged him every now and then with an assenting nod or a friendly "ay, ay, to be sure." "'the only chance i can see,' ses i," continued mr. prodder, "'is to find aunt sarah.' i found aunt sarah. she'd been keepin' a shop in the general line when i went away forty year ago, and she was keepin' the same shop in the general line when i came back last saturday week; and there was the same flyblown handbills of ships that was to sail immediate, and that had sailed two year ago, accordin' to the date upon the bills; and the same wooden sugar-loaves wrapped up in white paper; and the same lattice-work gate, with a bell that rang as loud as if it was meant to give the alarm to all liverpool as well as to my aunt sarah in the parlour behind the shop. the poor old soul was standing behind the counter, serving two ounces of tea to a customer, when i went in. forty years had made so much change in her, that i shouldn't have known her if i hadn't known the shop. she wore black curls upon her forehead, and a brooch like a brass butterfly in the middle of the curls, where the parting ought to have been, and she wore a beard; and the curls were false, but the beard wasn't; and her voice was very deep, and rather manly, and she seemed to me to have grown manly altogether in the forty years that i'd been away. she tied up the two ounces of tea, and then asked me what i pleased to want. i told her that i was little sam, and that i wanted my sister eliza." the merchant-captain paused, and looked out of the window for upwards of five minutes before he resumed his story. when he did resume it, he spoke in a very low voice, and in short detached sentences, as if he couldn't trust himself with long ones for fear he should break down in the middle of them. "eliza had been dead one-and-twenty years. aunt sarah told me all about it. she'd tried the artificial flower-makin'; and she hadn't liked it. and she'd turned play-actress. and when she was nine-and-twenty, she'd married; she'd married a gentleman that had no end of money; and she'd gone to live at a fine place somewheres in kent. i've got the name of it wrote down in my memorandum-book. but she'd been a good and generous friend to aunt sarah; and aunt sarah was to have gone to kent to see her, and to stop all the summer with her. but while aunt was getting ready to go for that very visit, my sister eliza died, leaving a daughter behind her, which is the niece that i'm goin' to see. i sat down upon the three-legged wooden stool against the counter, and hid my face in my hands; and i thought of the little girl that i'd seen playin' at hop-scotch forty years before, until i thought my heart would burst; but i didn't shed a tear. aunt sarah took a big brooch out of her collar, and showed me a ring of black hair behind a bit of glass, with a gold frame round it. 'mr. floyd had this brooch made a purpose for me,' she said; 'he has always been a liberal gentleman to me, and he comes down to liverpool once in two or three years, and takes tea with me in yon back parlour; and i've no call to keep a shop, for he allows me a handsome income; but i should die of the mopes if it wasn't for the business.' there was eliza's name and the date of her death engraved upon the back of the brooch. i tried to remember where i'd been and what i'd been doing that year. but i couldn't, sir. all the life that i looked back upon seemed muddled and mixed up, like a dream; and i could only think of the little sister i'd said good-bye to, aboard the _ventur'some_ forty years before. i got round by little and little, and i was able half an hour afterwards to listen to aunt sarah's talk. she was nigh upon seventy, poor old soul, and she'd always been a good one to talk. she asked me if it wasn't a great thing for the family that eliza had made such a match; and if i wasn't proud to think that my niece was a young heiress, that spoke all manner of languages, and rode in her own carriage? and if that oughtn't to be a consolation to me? but i told her that i'd rather have found my sister married to the poorest man in liverpool, and alive and well, to bid me welcome back to my native town. aunt sarah said if those were my religious opinions, she didn't know what to say to me. and she showed me a picture of eliza's tomb in beckenham churchyard, that had been painted expressly for her by mr. floyd's orders. floyd was the name of eliza's husband. and then she showed me a picture of miss floyd, the heiress, at the age of ten, which was the image of eliza all but the pinafore; and it's that very miss floyd that i'm going to see." "and i dare say," said the kind listener, "that miss floyd will be very much pleased to see her sailor uncle." "well, sir, i think she will," answered the captain. "i don't say it from any pride i take in myself, lord knows; for i know i'm a rough and ready sort of a chap, that 'u'd be no great ornament in a young lady's drawing-room; but if eliza's daughter's anything like eliza, i know what she'll say and what she'll do, as well as if i see her saying and doing it. she'll clap her pretty little hands together, and she'll clasp her arms round my neck, and she'll say, 'lor, uncle, i am _so_ glad to see you!' and when i tell her that i was her mother's only brother, and that me and her mother was very fond of one another, she'll burst out a cryin', and she'll hide her pretty face upon my shoulder, and she'll sob as if her dear little heart was going to break for love of the mother that she never saw. that's what she'll do," said captain prodder, "and i don't think the truest born lady that ever was could do any better." the goodnatured traveller heard a great deal more from the captain of his plans for going to beckenham to claim his niece's affections, in spite of all the fathers in the world. "mr. floyd's a good man, i dare say, sir," he said; "but he's kept his daughter apart from her aunt sarah, and it is but likely he'll try to keep her from me. but if he does he'll find he's got a toughish customer to deal with in captain samuel prodder." the merchant-captain reached beckenham as the evening shadows were deepening amongst the felden oaks and beeches, and the long rays of red sunshine fading slowly out in the low sky. he drove up to the old red-brick mansion in a hired fly, and presented himself at the hall-door just as mr. floyd was leaving the dining-room, to finish the evening in his lonely study. the banker paused, to glance with some slight surprise at the loosely-clad, weather-beaten looking figure of the sailor, and mechanically put his hand amongst the gold and silver in his pocket. he thought the seafaring man had come to present some petition for himself and his comrades. a life-boat was wanted somewhere on the kentish coast, perhaps: and this pleasant-looking, bronze-coloured man had come to collect funds for the charitable work. he was thinking this, when, in reply to the town-bred footman's question, the sailor uttered the name of prodder; and in the one moment of its utterance his thoughts flew back over one-and-twenty years, and he was madly in love with a beautiful actress, who owned blushingly to that plebeian cognomen. the banker's voice was faint and husky as he turned to the captain, and bade him welcome to felden woods. "step this way, mr. prodder," he said, pointing to the open door of the study. "i am very glad to see you. i--i--have often heard of you. you are my dead wife's runaway brother." even amidst his sorrowful recollection of that brief happiness of the past, some natural alloy of pride had its part, and he closed the study-door carefully before he said this. "god bless you, sir," he said, holding out his hand to the sailor. "i see i am right. your eyes are like eliza's. you and yours will always be welcome beneath my roof. yes, samuel prodder,--you see i know your christian name;--and when i die you will find you have not been forgotten." the captain thanked his brother-in-law heartily, and told him that he neither asked or wished for anything except permission to see his niece, aurora floyd. as he made this request, he looked towards the door of the little room, evidently expecting that the heiress might enter at any moment. he looked terribly disappointed when the banker told him that aurora was married, and lived near doncaster; but that if he had happened to come ten hours earlier he would have found her at felden woods. ah! who has not heard those common words? who has not been told that, if they had come sooner, or gone earlier, or hurried their pace, or slackened it, or done something that they have not done, the whole course of life would have been otherwise? who has not looked back regretfully at the past, which, differently fashioned, would have made the present other than it is? we think it hard that we cannot take the fabric of our life to pieces, as a mantua-maker unpicks her work, and make up the stuff another way. how much waste we might save in the cloth, how much better a shape we might make the garment, if we only had the right to use our scissors and needle again, and re-fashion the past by the experience of the present! "to think, now, that i should have been comin' yesterday!" exclaimed the captain; "but put off my journey because it was a friday! if i'd only knowed!" of course, captain prodder, if you had only known what it was not given you to know, you would no doubt have acted more prudently; and so would many other people. if mr. william palmer had known that detection was to dog the footsteps of crime, and the gallows to follow at the heels of detection, he would most likely have hesitated long before he mixed the strychnine-pills for the friend whom, with cordial voice, he was entreating to be of good cheer. we spend the best part of our lives in making mistakes, and the poor remainder in reflecting how very easily we might have avoided them. mr. floyd explained, rather lamely, perhaps, how it was that the liverpool spinster had never been informed of her grand-niece's marriage with mr. john mellish; and the merchant-captain announced his intention of starting for doncaster early the next morning. "don't think that i want to intrude upon your daughter, sir," he said, as if perfectly acquainted with the banker's nervous dread of such a visit. "i know her station's high above me, though she's my own sister's only child; and i make no doubt that those about her would be ready enough to turn up their noses at a poor old salt that has been tossed and tumbled about in every variety of weather for this forty year. i only want to see her once in a way, and to hear her say, perhaps, 'lor, uncle, what a rum old chap you are!' there!" exclaimed samuel prodder, suddenly, "i think if i could only once hear her call me uncle, i could go back to sea, and die happy, though i never came ashore again." chapter viii. "he only said, i am a-weary." mr. james conyers found the long summer's days hang rather heavily upon his hands at mellish park, in the society of the rheumatic ex-trainer, the stable-boys, and steeve hargraves the "softy," and with no literary resources except the last saturday's 'bell's life,' and sundry flimsy sheets of shiny, slippery tissue-paper, forwarded him by post from king charles's croft, in the busy town of leeds. he might have found plenty of work to do in the stables, perhaps, if he had had a mind to do it; but after the night of the storm there was a perceptible change in his manner; and the showy pretence of being very busy, which he had made on his first arrival at the park, was now exchanged for a listless and undisguised dawdling and an unconcerned indifference, which caused the old trainer to shake his gray head, and mutter to his hangers-on that the new chap warn't up to mooch, and was evidently too grand for his business. mr. james cared very little for the opinion of these simple yorkshiremen; and he yawned in their faces, and stifled them with his cigar smoke, with a dashing indifference that harmonized well with the gorgeous tints of his complexion and the lustrous splendour of his lazy eyes. he had taken the trouble to make himself very agreeable on the day succeeding his arrival, and had distributed his hearty slaps on the shoulder and friendly digs in the ribs, right and left, until he slapped and dug himself into considerable popularity amongst the friendly rustics, who were ready to be bewitched by his handsome face and flashy manner. but after his interview with mrs. mellish in the cottage by the north gates, he seemed to abandon all desire to please, and to grow suddenly restless and discontented: so restless and so discontented that he felt inclined even to quarrel with the unhappy "softy," and led his red-haired retainer a sufficiently uncomfortable life with his whims and vagaries. stephen hargraves bore this change in his new master's manner with wonderful patience. rather too patiently, perhaps; with that slow, dogged, uncomplaining patience of those who keep something in reserve as a set-off against present forbearance, and who invite rather than avoid injury, rejoicing in anything which swells the great account, to be squared in future storm and fury. the "softy" was a man who could hoard his hatred and vengeance, hiding the bad passions away in the dark corners of his poor shattered mind, and bringing them out in the dead of the night to "kiss and talk to," as the moor's wife kissed and conversed with the strawberry-embroidered cambric. there must surely have been very little "society" at cyprus, or mrs. othello could scarcely have been reduced to such insipid company. however it might be, steeve bore mr. conyers's careless insolence so very meekly that the trainer laughed at his attendant for a poor-spirited hound, whom a pair of flashing black eyes and a lady's toy riding-whip could frighten out of the poor remnant of wit left in his muddled brain. he said something to this effect when steeve displeased him once, in the course of the long, temper-trying summer's day; and the "softy" turned away with something very like a chuckle of savage pleasure in acknowledgment of the compliment. he was more obsequious than ever after it, and was humbly thankful for the ends of cigars which the trainer liberally bestowed upon him, and went into doncaster for more spirits and more cigars in the course of the day, and fetched and carried as submissively as that craven-spirited hound to which his employer had politely compared him. mr. conyers did not even make a pretence of going to look at the horses on this blazing 5th of july, but lolled on the window-sill, with his lame leg upon a chair, and his back against the framework of the little casement, smoking, drinking, and reading his price-lists all through the sunny day. the cold brandy-and-water which he poured, without half an hour's intermission, down his handsome throat, seemed to have far less influence upon him than the same amount of liquid would have had upon a horse. it would have put the horse out of condition, perhaps; but it had no effect whatever upon the trainer. mrs. powell, walking for the benefit of her health in the north shrubberies, and incurring imminent danger of a sun-stroke for the same praiseworthy reason, contrived to pass the lodge, and to see mr. conyers lounging, dark and splendid, on the window-sill, exhibiting a kit-cat of his handsome person framed in the clustering foliage which hung about the cottage walls. she was rather embarrassed by the presence of the "softy," who was sweeping the door-step, and who gave her a glance of recognition as she passed,--a glance which might perhaps have said, "we know his secrets, you and i, handsome and insolent as he is; we know the paltry price at which he can be bought and sold. but we keep our counsel; we keep our counsel till time ripens the bitter fruit upon the tree, though our fingers itch to pluck it while it is still green." mrs. powell stopped to give the trainer good day, expressing as much surprise at seeing him at the north lodge as if she had been given to understand that he was travelling in kamschatka; but mr. conyers cut her civilities short with a yawn, and told her with easy familiarity that she would be conferring a favour upon him by sending him that morning's 'times' as soon as the daily papers arrived at the park. the ensign's widow was too much under the influence of the graceful impertinence of his manner to resist it as she might have done, and returned to the house, bewildered and wondering, to comply with his request. so through the oppressive heat of the summer's day the trainer smoked, drank, and took his ease, while his dependent and follower watched him with a puzzled face, revolving vaguely and confusedly in his dull, muddled brain the events of the previous night. but mr. james conyers grew weary at last even of his own ease; and that inherent restlessness which caused rasselas to tire of his happy valley, and sicken for the free breezes on the hill-tops and the clamour of the distant cities, arose in the bosom of the trainer, and grew so strong that he began to chafe at the rural quiet of the north lodge, and to shuffle his poor lame leg wearily from one position to another in sheer discontent of mind, which, by one of those many subtle links between spirit and matter that tell us we are mortal, communicated itself to his body, and gave him that chronic disorder which is popularly called "the fidgets." an unquiet fever, generated amidst the fibres of the brain, and finding its way by that physiological telegraph, the spinal marrow, to the remotest stations on the human railway. mr. james suffered from this common complaint to such a degree, that as the solemn strokes of the church-clock vibrated in sonorous music above the tree-tops of mellish park in the sunny evening atmosphere, he threw down his pipe with an impatient shrug of the shoulders, and called to the "softy" to bring him his hat and walking-stick. "seven o'clock," he muttered, "only seven o'clock. i think there must have been twenty-four hours in this blessed summer's day." he stood looking from the little casement-window with a discontented frown contracting his handsome eyebrows, and a peevish expression distorting his full, classically-moulded lips, as he said this. he glanced through the little casement, made smaller by its clustering frame of roses and clematis, jessamine and myrtle, and looking like the port-hole of a ship that sailed upon a sea of summer verdure. he glanced through the circular opening left by that scented framework of leaves and blossoms, into the long glades, where the low sunlight was flickering upon waving fringes of fern. he followed with his listless glance the wandering intricacies of the underwood, until they led his weary eyes away to distant patches of blue water, slowly changing to opal and rose-colour in the declining light. he saw all these things with a lazy apathy, which had no power to recognize their beauty, or to inspire one latent thrill of gratitude to him who had made them. he had better have been blind; surely he had better have been blind. he turned his back upon the evening sunshine, and looked at the white face of steeve hargraves, the "softy," with every whit as much pleasure as he had felt in looking at nature in her loveliest aspect. "a long day," he said,--"an infernally tedious, wearisome day. thank god, it's over." strange that, as he uttered this impious thanksgiving, no subtle influence of the future crept through his veins to chill the slackening pulses of his heart, and freeze the idle words upon his lips. if he had known what was so soon to come; if he had known, as he thanked god for the death of one beautiful summer's day, never to be born again, with its twelve hours of opportunity for good or evil,--surely he would have grovelled on the earth, stricken with a sudden terror, and wept aloud for the shameful history of the life which lay behind him. he had never shed tears but once since his childhood, and then those tears were scalding drops of baffled rage and vengeful fury at the utter defeat of the greatest scheme of his life. "i shall go into doncaster to-night, steeve," he said to the "softy," who stood deferentially awaiting his master's pleasure, and watching him, as he had watched him all day, furtively but incessantly; "i shall spend the evening in doncaster, and--and--see if i can pick up a few wrinkles about the september meeting; not that there's anything worth entering amongst this set of screws, lord knows," he added, with undisguised contempt for poor john's beloved stable. "is there a dog-cart, or a trap of any kind, i can drive over in?" he asked of the "softy." mr. hargraves said that there was a newport pagnell, which was sacred to mr. john mellish, and a gig that was at the disposal of any of the upper servants when they had occasion to go into doncaster, as well as a covered van, which some of the lads drove into the town every day for the groceries and other matters required at the house. "very good," said mr. conyers; "you may run down to the stables, and tell one of the boys to put the fastest pony of the lot into the newport pagnell, and to bring it up here, and to look sharp." "but nobody but muster mellish rides in the newport pagnell," suggested the "softy," with an accent of alarm. "what of that, you cowardly hound?" cried the trainer contemptuously. "i'm going to drive it to-night, don't you hear? d--n his yorkshire insolence! am i to be put down by _him?_ it's his handsome wife that he takes such pride in, is it? lord help him! whose money bought the dog-cart, i wonder? aurora floyd's, perhaps. and i'm not to ride in it, i suppose, because it's my lord's pleasure to drive his black-eyed lady in the sacred vehicle. look you here, you brainless idiot, and understand me, if you can!" cried mr. james conyers in a sudden rage, which crimsoned his handsome face, and lit up his lazy eyes with a new fire,--"look you here, stephen hargraves! if it wasn't that i'm tied hand and foot, and have been plotted against and thwarted by a woman's cunning, at every turn, i could smoke my pipe in yonder house, or in a better house, this day." he pointed with his finger to the pinnacled roof, and the reddened windows glittering in the evening sun, visible far away amongst the trees. "mr. john mellish!" he said. "if his wife wasn't such a she-devil as to be too many guns for the cleverest man in christendom, i'd soon make _him_ sing small. fetch the newport pagnell!" he cried suddenly, with an abrupt change of tone; "fetch it, and be quick! i'm not safe to myself when i talk of this. i'm not safe when i think how near i was to half a million of money," he muttered under his breath. he limped out into the open air, fanning himself with the wide brim of his felt hat, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "be quick!" he cried impatiently to his deliberate attendant, who had listened eagerly to every word of his master's passionate talk, and who now stood watching him even more intently than before, "be quick, man, can't you? i don't pay you five shillings a week to stare at me. fetch the trap! i've worked myself into a fever, and nothing but a rattling drive will set me right again." the "softy" shuffled off as rapidly as it was within the range of his ability to walk. he had never been seen to run in his life; but had a slow, side-long gait, which had some faint resemblance to that of the lower reptiles, but very little in common with the motions of his fellow-men. mr. james conyers limped up and down the little grassy lawn in front of the north lodge. the excitement which had crimsoned his face gradually subsided, as he vented his disquietude in occasional impatient exclamations. "two thousand pounds!" he muttered; "a pitiful, paltry two thousand! not a twelvemonth's interest on the money i ought to have had--the money i should have had, if----" he stopped abruptly, and growled something like an oath between his set teeth, as he struck his stick with angry violence into the soft grass. it is especially hard when we are reviling our bad fortune, and quarrelling with our fate, to find at last, on wandering backwards to the source of our ill-luck, that the primary cause of all has been our own evil-doing. it was this that made mr. conyers stop abruptly in his reflections upon his misfortunes, and break off with a smothered oath, and listen impatiently for the wheels of the newport pagnell. the "softy" appeared presently, leading the horse by the bridle. he had not presumed to seat himself in the sacred vehicle, and he stared wonderingly at james conyers as the trainer tumbled about the chocolate-cloth cushions, arranging them afresh for his own ease and comfort. neither the bright varnish of the dark-brown panels, nor the crimson crest, nor the glittering steel ornaments on the neat harness, nor any of the exquisitely-finished appointments of the light vehicle, provoked one word of criticism from mr. conyers. he mounted as easily as his lame leg would allow him, and taking the reins from the "softy," lighted his cigar preparatory to starting. "you needn't sit up for me to-night," he said, as he drove into the dusty high road: "i shall be late." mr. hargraves shut the iron gates with a loud clanking noise upon his new master. "but i shall, though," he muttered, looking askant through the bars at the fast disappearing newport pagnell, which was now little more than a black spot in a white cloud of dust; "but i shall sit up, though. you'll come home drunk, i lay." (yorkshire is so pre-eminently a horse-racing and betting county, that even simple country folk who have never wagered a sixpence in the quiet course of their lives say "i lay" where a londoner would say "i dare say.") "you'll come home drunk, i lay; folks generally do from doncaster; and i shall hear some more of your wild talk. yes, yes," he said in a slow, reflective tone; "it's very wild talk, and i can't make top nor tail of it yet--not yet; but it seems to me somehow as if i knew what it all meant, only i can't put it together--i can't put it together. there's something missin', and the want of that something hinders me putting it together." he rubbed his stubble of coarse red hair with his two strong, awkward hands, as if he would fain have rubbed some wanting intelligence into his head. "two thousand pound!" he said, walking slowly back to the cottage. "two thousand pound! it's a power of money! why it's two thousand pound that the winner gets by the great race at newmarket, and there's all the gentlefolks ready to give their ears for it. there's great lords fighting and struggling against each other for it; so it's no wonder a poor fond chap like me thinks summat about it." he sat down upon the step of the lodge-door to smoke the cigar-ends which his benefactor had thrown him in the course of the day; but he still ruminated upon this subject, and he still stopped sometimes, between the extinction of one cheroot-stump and the illuminating of another, to mutter, "two thousand pound! twenty hundred pound! forty times fifty pound!" with an unctuous chuckle after the enunciation of each figure, as if it was some privilege even to be able to talk of such vast sums of money. so might some doating lover, in the absence of his idol, murmur the beloved name to the summer breeze. the last crimson lights upon the patches of blue water died out beneath the gathering darkness; but the "softy" sat, still smoking, and still ruminating, till the stars were high in the purple vault above his head. a little after ten o'clock he heard the rattling of wheels and the tramp of horses' hoofs upon the high road, and going to the gate he looked out through the iron bars. as the vehicle dashed by the north gates he saw that it was one of the mellish-park carriages which had been sent to the station to meet john and his wife. "a short visit to loon'on," he muttered. "i lay she's been to fetch t' brass." the greedy eyes of the half-witted groom peered through the iron bars at the passing carriage, as if he would have fain looked through its opaque panels in search of that which he had denominated "the brass." he had a vague idea that two thousand pounds would be a great bulk of money, and that aurora would carry it in a chest or a bundle that might be perceptible through the carriage-window. "i'll lay she's been to fetch t' brass," he repeated, as he crept back to the lodge-door. he resumed his seat upon the door-step, his cigar-ends, and his reverie, rubbing his head very often, sometimes with one hand, sometimes with both, but always as if he were trying to rub some wanting sense or power of perception into his wretched brains. sometimes he gave a short restless sigh, as if he had been trying all this time to guess some difficult enigma, and was on the point of giving it up. it was long after midnight when mr. james conyers returned, very much the worse for brandy-and-water and dust. he tumbled over the "softy," still sitting on the step of the open door, and then cursed mr. hargraves for being in the way. "b't s'nc' y' h'v' ch's'n t' s't 'p," said the trainer, speaking a language entirely composed of consonants, "y' m'y dr'v' tr'p b'ck t' st'bl's." by which rather obscure speech he gave the "softy" to understand that he was to take the dog-cart back to mr. mellish's stable-yard. steeve hargraves did his drunken master's bidding, and leading the horse homewards through the quiet night, found a cross boy with a lantern in his hand waiting at the gate of the stable-yard, and by no means disposed for conversation, except, indeed, to the extent of the one remark that he, the cross boy, hoped the new trainer wasn't going to be up to this game every night, and hoped the mare, which had been bred for a racer, hadn't been ill used. all john mellish's horses seemed to have been bred for racers, and to have dropped gradually from prospective winners of the derby, oaks, chester cup, great ebor, yorkshire stakes, leger, and doncaster cup,--to say nothing of minor victories in the way of northumberland plates, liverpool autumn cups, and curragh handicaps, through every variety of failure and defeat,--into the every-day ignominy of harness. even the van which carried groceries was drawn by a slim-legged, narrow-chested, high-shouldered animal called the "yorkshire childers," and bought, in its sunny colt-hood, at a great price by poor john. mr. conyers was snoring aloud in his little bedroom when steeve hargraves returned to the lodge. the "softy" stared wonderingly at the handsome face brutalized by drink, and the classical head flung back upon the crumpled pillow in one of those wretched positions which intoxication always chooses for its repose. steeve hargraves rubbed his head harder even than before, as he looked at the perfect profile, the red, half-parted lips, the dark fringe of lashes on the faintly crimson-tinted cheeks. "perhaps i might have been good for summat if i had been like _you_," he said, with a half-savage melancholy. "i shouldn't have been ashamed of myself then. i shouldn't have crept into dark corners to hide myself, and think why i wasn't like other people, and what a bitter, cruel shame it was that i wasn't like 'em. _you've_ no call to hide yourself from other folks; nobody tells you to get out of the way for an ugly hound, as you told me this morning, hang you! the world's smooth enough for you." so may caliban have looked at prospero with envy and hate in his heart before going to his obnoxious tasks of dish-washing and trencher-scraping. he shook his fist at the unconscious sleeper as he finished speaking, and then stooped to pick up the trainer's dusty clothes, which were scattered upon the floor. "i suppose i'm to brush these before i go to bed," he muttered, "that my lord may have 'em ready when he wakes in th' morning." he took the clothes on his arm and the light in his hand, and went down to the lower room, where he found a brush and set to work sturdily, enveloping himself in a cloud of dust, like some ugly arabian genii who was going to transform himself into a handsome prince. he stopped suddenly in his brushing, by-and-by, and crumpled the waistcoat in his hand. "there's some paper!" he exclaimed. "a paper sewed up between stuff and linin'." he omitted the definite article before each of the substantives, as is a common habit with his countrymen when at all excited. "a bit o' paper," he repeated, "between stuff and linin'! i'll rip t' waistcoat open and see what 'tis." he took his clasp-knife from his pocket, carefully unripped a part of one of the seams in the waistcoat, and extracted a piece of paper folded double,--a decent-sized square of rather thick paper, partly printed, partly written. he leaned over the light with his elbows on the table and read the contents of this paper, slowly and laboriously, following every word with his thick forefinger, sometimes stopping a long time upon one syllable, sometimes trying back half a line or so, but always plodding patiently with his ugly forefinger. when he came to the last word, he burst suddenly into a loud chuckle, as if he had just succeeded in guessing that difficult enigma which had puzzled him all the evening. "i know it all now," he said. "i can put it all together now. his words; and hers; and the money. i can put it all together, and make out the meaning of it. she's going to give him the two thousand pound to go away from here and say nothing about this." he refolded the paper, replaced it carefully in its hiding-place between the stuff and lining of the waistcoat, then searched in his capacious pocket for a fat leathern book, in which, amongst all sorts of odds and ends, there were some needles and a tangled skein of black thread. then, stooping over the light, he slowly sewed up the seam which he had ripped open,--dexterously and neatly enough, in spite of the clumsiness of his big fingers. chapter ix. still constant. mr. james conyers took his breakfast in his own apartment upon the morning after his visit to doncaster, and stephen hargraves waited upon him; carrying him a basin of muddy coffee, and enduring his ill-humour with the long-suffering which seemed peculiar to this hump-backed, low-voiced stable-helper. the trainer rejected the coffee, and called for a pipe, and lay smoking half the summer morning, with the scent of the roses and honeysuckle floating into his close chamber, and the july sunshine glorifying the sham roses and blue lilies that twisted themselves in floricultural monstrosity about the cheap paper on the walls. the "softy" cleaned his master's boots, set them in the sunshine to air, washed the breakfast-things, swept the door-step, and then seated himself upon it to ruminate, with his elbows on his knees and his hands twisted in his coarse red hair. the silence of the summer atmosphere was only broken by the drowsy hum of the insects in the wood, and the occasional dropping of some early-blighted leaf. mr. conyers's temper had been in no manner improved by his night's dissipation in the town of doncaster. heaven knows what entertainment he had found in those lonely streets, that grass-grown market-place and tenantless stalls, or that dreary and hermetically-sealed building, which looks like a prison on three sides and a chapel on the fourth, and which, during the september meeting, bursts suddenly into life and light with huge posters flaring against its gaunt walls, and a bright blue-ink announcement of mr. and mrs. charles mathews, or mr. and mrs. charles kean, for five nights only. normal amusement in the town of doncaster between these two oases in the year's dreary circle, the spring and autumn meetings, there is none. but of abnormal and special entertainment there may be much; only known to such men as mr. james conyers, to whom the most sinuous alley is a pleasant road, so long as it leads, directly or indirectly, to the betting-man's god--money. however this might be, mr. conyers bore upon him all the symptoms of having, as the popular phrase has it, made a night of it. his eyes were dim and glassy; his tongue hot and furred, and uncomfortably large for his parched mouth; his hand so shaky that the operation which he performed with a razor before his looking-glass was a toss-up between suicide and shaving. his heavy head seemed to have been transformed into a leaden box full of buzzing noises; and after getting half through his toilet he gave it up for a bad job, and threw himself upon the bed he had just left, a victim to that biliary derangement which inevitably follows an injudicious admixture of alcoholic and malt liquors. "a tumbler of hochheimer," he muttered, "or even the third-rate chablis they give one at a _table-d'hã´te_, would freshen me up a little; but there's nothing to be had in this abominable place except brandy-and-water." he called to the "softy," and ordered him to mix a tumbler of the last-named beverage, cold and weak. mr. conyers drained the cool and lucid draught, and flung himself back upon the pillow with a sigh of relief. he knew that he would be thirsty again in five or ten minutes, and that the respite was a brief one; but still it was a respite. "have they come home?" he asked. "who?" "mr. and mrs. mellish, you idiot!" answered the trainer fiercely. "who else should i bother my head about? did they come home last night while i was away?" the "softy" told his master that he had seen one of the carriages drive past the north gates at a little after ten o'clock on the preceding night, and that he supposed it contained mr. and mrs. mellish. "then you'd better go up to the house and make sure," said mr. conyers; "i want to know." "go up to th' house?" "yes, coward!--yes, sneak! do you suppose that mrs. mellish will eat you?" "i don't suppose nought o' t' sort," answered the "softy" sulkily; "but i'd rather not go." "but i tell you i want to know," said mr. conyers; "i want to know if mrs. mellish is at home, and what she's up to, and whether there are any visitors at the house, and all about her. do you understand?" "yes, it's easy enough to understand, but it's rare and difficult to do," replied steeve hargraves. "how am i to find out? who's to tell me?" "how do i know?" cried the trainer, impatiently; for stephen hargraves's slow, dogged stupidity was throwing the dashing james conyers into a fever of vexation. "how do i know? don't you see that i'm too ill to stir from this bed? i'd go myself if i wasn't. and can't you go and do what i tell you without standing arguing there until you drive me mad?" steeve hargraves muttered some sulky apology, and shuffled out of the room. mr. conyers's handsome eyes followed him with a dark frown. it is not a pleasant state of health which succeeds a drunken debauch; and the trainer was angry with himself for the weakness which had taken him to doncaster upon the preceding evening, and thereby inclined to vent his anger upon other people. there is a great deal of vicarious penance done in this world. lady's-maids are apt to suffer for the follies of their mistresses, and lady clara vere de vere's french abigail is extremely likely to have to atone for young laurence's death by patient endurance of my lady's ill-temper and much unpicking and remaking of bodices, which would have fitted her ladyship well enough in any other state of mind than the remorseful misery which is engendered of an evil conscience. the ugly gash across young laurence's throat, to say nothing of the cruel slanders circulated after the inquest, may make life almost unendurable to the poor meek nursery-governess who educates lady clara's younger sisters; and the younger sisters themselves, and mamma and papa, and my lady's youthful confidantes, and even her haughtiest adorers, all have their share in the expiation of her ladyship's wickedness. for she will not--or she _cannot_--meekly own that she has been guilty, and shut herself away from the world, to make her own atonement and work her own redemption. so she thrusts the burden of her sins upon other people's shoulders, and travels the first stage to captious and disappointed old-maidism. the commercial gentlemen who make awkward mistakes in the city, the devotees of the turf whose misfortunes keep them away from mr. tattersall's premises on a settling-day, can make innocent women and children carry the weight of their sins, and suffer the penalties of their foolishness. papa still smokes his cabanas at fourpence-halfpenny apiece, or his mild turkish at nine shillings a pound, and still dines at the crown and sceptre in the drowsy summer weather, when the bees are asleep in the flowers at morden college, and the fragrant hay newly stacked in the meadows beyond blackheath. but mamma must wear her faded silk, or have it dyed, as the case may be; and the children must forego the promised happiness, the wild delight, of sunny rambles on a shingly beach, bordered by yellow sands that stretch away to hug an ever changeful and yet ever constant ocean in their tawny arms. and not only mamma and the little ones, but other mothers and other little ones, must help in the heavy sum of penance for the defaulter's iniquities. the baker may have calculated upon receiving that long-standing account, and may have planned a new gown for his wife, and a summer treat for his little ones, to be paid for by the expected money; and the honest tradesman, soured by the disappointment of having to disappoint those he loves, is likely to be cross to them into the bargain; and even to grudge her sunday out to the household drudge who waits at his little table. the influence of the strong man's evil deed slowly percolates through insidious channels of which he never knows or dreams. the deed of folly or of guilt does its fatal work when the sinner who committed it has forgotten his wickedness. who shall say where or when the results of one man's evil doing shall cease? the seed of sin engenders no common root, shooting straight upwards through the earth, and bearing a given crop. it is the germ of a foul running weed, whose straggling suckers travel underground beyond the ken of mortal eye, beyond the power of mortal calculation. if louis xv. had been a conscientious man, terror and murder, misery and confusion, might never have reigned upon the darkened face of beautiful france. if eve had rejected the fatal fruit we might all have been in eden to-day. mr. james conyers, then, after the manner of mankind, vented his spleen upon the only person who came in his way, and was glad to be able to despatch the "softy" upon an unpleasant errand, and make his attendant as uncomfortable as he was himself. "my head rocks as if i was on board a steam-packet," he muttered, as he lay alone in his little bedroom, "and my hand shakes so that i can't hold my pipe steady while i fill it. i'm in a nice state to have to talk to _her_. as if it wasn't as much as i can do at the best of times to be a match for her." he flung aside his pipe half filled, and turned his head wearily upon the pillow. the hot sun and the buzz of the insects tormented him. there was a big bluebottle fly blundering and wheeling about amongst the folds of the dimity bed-curtains; a fly which seemed the very genius of delirium tremens; but the trainer was too ill to do more than swear at his purple-winged tormentor. he was awakened from a half-doze by the treble voice of a small stable-boy in the room below. he called out angrily for the lad to come up and state his business. his business was a message from mr. john mellish, who wished to see the trainer immediately. "_mr._ mellish," muttered james conyers to himself. "tell your master i'm too ill to stir, but that i'll wait upon him in the evening," he said to the boy. "you can see i'm ill, if you've got any eyes, and you can say that you found me in bed." the lad departed with these instructions, and mr. conyers returned to his own thoughts, which appeared to be by no means agreeable to him. to drink spirituous liquors and play all-fours in the sanded taproom of a sporting public is no doubt a very delicious occupation, and would be altogether elysian and unobjectionable if one could always be drinking spirits and playing all-fours. but as the finest picture ever painted by raphael or rubens is but a dead blank of canvas upon the reverse, so there is generally a disagreeable _other_ side to all the pleasures of earth, and a certain reaction after card-playing and brandy-drinking which is more than equivalent in misery to the pleasures which have preceded it. mr. conyers, tossing his hot head from side to side upon a pillow which seemed even hotter, took a very different view of life to that which he had expounded to his boon companions only the night before in the tap-room of the lion and lamb, doncaster. "i should liked to have stopped over the leger," he muttered, "for i meant to make a hatful of money out of the conjuror; for if what they say at richmond is anything like truth, he's safe to win. but there's no going against my lady when her mind's made up. it's take it or leave it--yes or no--and be quick about it." mr. conyers garnished his speech with two or three expletives common enough amongst the men with whom he had lived, but not to be recorded here; and, closing his eyes, fell into a doze; a half-waking, half-sleeping torpidity; in which he felt as if his head had become a ton-weight of iron, and was dragging him backwards through the pillow into a bottomless abyss. while the trainer lay in this comfortless semi-slumber stephen hargraves walked slowly and sulkily through the wood on his way to the invisible fence, from which point he meant to reconnoitre the premises. the irregular faã§ade of the old house fronted him across the smooth breadth of lawn, dotted and broken by particoloured flower-beds; by rustic clumps of gnarled oak supporting mighty clusters of vivid scarlet geraniums, all aflame in the sunshine; by trellised arches laden with trailing roses of every varying shade, from palest blush to deepest crimson; by groups of evergreens, whose every leaf was rich in beauty and luxuriance, whose every tangled garland would have made a worthy chaplet for a king. the "softy," in the semi-darkness of his soul, had some glimmer of that light which was altogether wanting in mr. james conyers. he felt that these things were beautiful. the broken lines of the ivy-covered house-front, gothic here, elizabethan there, were in some manner pleasant to him. the scattered rose-leaves on the lawn; the flickering shadows of the evergreens upon the grass; the song of a skylark too lazy to soar, and content to warble among the bushes; the rippling sound of a tiny waterfall far away in the wood,--made a language of which he only understood a few straggling syllables here and there, but which was not altogether a meaningless jargon to him, as it was to the trainer; to whose mind holborn hill would have conveyed as much of the sublime as the untrodden pathways of the jungfrau. the "softy" dimly perceived that mellish park was beautiful, and he felt a fiercer hatred against the person whose influence had ejected him from his old home. the house fronted the south, and the venetian shutters were all closed upon this hot summer's day. stephen hargraves looked for his old enemy bow-wow, who was likely enough to be lying on the broad stone steps before the hall-door; but there was no sign of the dog's presence anywhere about. the hall-door was closed, and the venetian shutters, under the rose and clematis shadowed verandah which sheltered john mellish's room, were also closed. the "softy" walked round by the fence which encircled the lawn to another iron gate which opened close to john's room, and which was so completely overshadowed by a clump of beeches as to form a safe point of observation. this gate had been left ajar by mr. mellish himself, most likely, for that gentleman had a happy knack of forgetting to shut the doors and gates which he opened; and the "softy," taking courage from the stillness round and about the house, ventured into the garden, and crept stealthily towards the closed shutters before the windows of mr. mellish's apartment, with much of the manner which might distinguish some wretched mongrel cur who trusts himself within ear-shot of a mastiff's kennel. the mastiff was out of the way on this occasion, for one of the shutters was ajar; and when stephen hargraves peeped cautiously into the room, he was relieved to find it empty. john's elbow-chair was pushed a little way from the table, which was laden with open pistol-cases and breech-loading revolvers. these, with two or three silk handkerchiefs, a piece of chamois-leather, and a bottle of oil, bore witness that mr. mellish had been beguiling the morning in the pleasing occupation of inspecting and cleaning the fire-arms, which formed the chief ornament of his study. it was his habit to begin this operation with great preparation, and altogether upon a gigantic scale; to reject all assistance with scorn; to put himself in a violent perspiration at the end of half an hour, and to send one of the servants to finish the business, and restore the room to its old order. the "softy" looked with a covetous eye at the noble array of guns and pistols. he had that innate love of these things which seems to be implanted in every masculine breast, whatever its owner's state or station. he had hoarded his money once to buy himself a gun; but when he had saved the five-and-thirty shillings demanded by a certain pawnbroker of doncaster for an old-fashioned musket, which was almost as heavy as a small cannon, his courage failed him, and he could not bring himself to part with the precious coins, whose very touch could send a shrill of rapture through the slow current of his blood. no, he could not surrender such a sum of money to the doncaster pawnbroker even for the possession of his heart's desire; and as the stern money-lender refused to take payment in weekly instalments of sixpences, stephen was fain to go without the gun, and to hope that some day or other mr. john mellish would reward his services by the gift of some disused fowling-piece by forsythe or manton. but there was no hope of such happiness now. a new dynasty reigned at mellish, and a black-eyed queen, who hated him, had forbidden him to sully her domain with the traces of his shambling foot. he felt that he was in momentary peril upon the threshold of that sacred chamber, which, during his long service at mellish park, he had always regarded as a very temple of the beautiful; but the sight of fire-arms upon the table had a magnetic attraction for him, and he drew the venetian shutter a little way further ajar, and slid himself in through the open window. then, flushed and trembling with excitement, he dropped into john's chair, and began to handle the precious implements of warfare upon pheasants and partridges, and to turn them about in his big, clumsy hands. delicious as the guns were, and delightful though it was to draw one of the revolvers up to his shoulder, and take aim at an imaginary pheasant, the pistols were even still more attractive; for with them he could not refrain from taking imaginary aim at his enemies. sometimes at james conyers, who had snubbed and abused him, and had made the bread of dependence bitter to him; very often at aurora; once or twice at poor john mellish; but always with a darkness upon his pallid face which would have promised little mercy, had the pistol been loaded and the enemy near at hand. there was one pistol, a small one, and an odd one apparently, for he could not find its fellow, which took a peculiar hold upon his fancy. it was as pretty as a lady's toy, and small enough to be carried in a lady's pocket, but the hammer snapped upon the nipple, when the "softy" pulled the trigger, with a sound that evidently meant mischief. "to think that such a little thing as this could kill a big man like you," muttered mr. hargraves, with a jerk of his head in the direction of the north lodge. he had this pistol still in his hand when the door was suddenly opened, and aurora mellish stood upon the threshold. she spoke as she opened the door, almost before she was in the room. "john, dear," she said, "mrs. powell wants to know whether colonel maddison dines here to-day with the lofthouses." she drew back with a shudder that shook her from head to foot, as her eyes met the "softy's" hated face instead of john's familiar glance. in spite of the fatigue and agitation which she had endured within the last few days, she was not looking ill. her eyes were unnaturally bright, and a feverish colour burned in her cheeks. her manner, always impetuous, was restless and impatient to-day, as if her nature had been charged with a terrible amount of electricity, till she were likely at any moment to explode in some tempest of anger or woe. "_you_ here!" she exclaimed. the "softy" in his embarrassment was at a loss for an excuse for his presence. he pulled his shabby hair-skin cap off, and twisted it round and round in his great hands; but he made no other recognition of his late master's wife. "who sent you to this room?" asked mrs. mellish; "i thought you had been forbidden this place. the house at least," she added, her face crimsoning indignantly as she spoke, "although mr. conyers may choose to bring you to the north lodge. who sent you here?" "him," answered mr. hargraves, doggedly, with another jerk of his head towards the trainer's abode. "james conyers?" "yes." "what does he want here, then?" "he told me to come down t' th' house, and see if you and master'd come back." "then you can go and tell him that we have come back," she said contemptuously; "and that if he'd waited a little longer he would have had no occasion to send his spies after me." the "softy" crept towards the window, feeling that his dismissal was contained in these words, and looking rather suspiciously at the array of driving and hunting whips over the mantelpiece. mrs. mellish might have a fancy for laying one of these about his shoulders, if he happened to offend her. "stop!" she said impetuously, as he had his hand upon the shutter to push it open; "since you are here, you can take a message, or a scrap of writing," she said contemptuously, as if she could not bring herself to call any communication between herself and mr. conyers a note, or a letter. "yes; you can take a few lines to your master. stop there while i write." she waved her hand with a gesture which expressed plainly, "come no nearer; you are too obnoxious to be endured except at a distance," and seated herself at john's writing-table. she scratched two lines with a quill-pen upon a slip of paper, which she folded while the ink was still wet. she looked for an envelope amongst her husband's littered paraphernalia of account-books, bills, receipts, and price-lists, and finding one after some little trouble, put the folded paper into it, fastened the gummed flap with her lips, and handed the missive to mr. hargraves, who had watched her with hungry eyes, eager to fathom this new stage in the mystery. was the two thousand pounds in that envelope? he thought. no; surely, such a sum of money must be a huge pile of gold and silver,--a mountain of glittering coin. he had seen cheques sometimes, and bank-notes, in the hands of langley the trainer, and he had wondered how it was that money could be represented by those pitiful bits of paper. "i'd rayther hav't i' goold," he thought: "if 'twas mine, i'd have it all i' goold and silver." he was very glad when he found himself safely clear of the whips and mrs. john mellish, and as soon as he reached the shelter of the thick foliage upon the northern side of the park, he set to work to examine the packet which had been intrusted to him. mrs. mellish had liberally moistened the adhesive flap of the envelope, as people are apt to do when they are in a hurry; the consequence of which carelessness was that the gum was still so wet that stephen hargraves found no difficulty in opening the envelope without tearing it. he looked cautiously about him, convinced himself that he was unobserved, and then drew out the slip of paper. it contained very little to reward him for his trouble, only these few words, scrawled in aurora's most careless hand:-"be on the southern side of the wood, near the turnstile, between half-past eight and nine." the "softy" grinned as he slowly made himself master of this communication. "it's oncommon hard wroitin', t' make out th' shapes o' th' letters," he said, as he finished his task. "whoy can't gentlefolks wroit like ned tiller, oop at th' red lion,--printin' loike? it's easier to read, and a deal prettier to look at." he refastened the envelope, pressing it down with his dirty thumb to make it adhere once more, and not much improving its appearance thereby. "he's one of your rare careless chaps," he muttered as he surveyed the letter; "_he_ won't stop t' examine if it's been opened before. what's insoide were hardly worth th' trouble of openin' it; but perhaps it's as well to know it too." immediately after stephen hargraves had disappeared through the open window aurora turned to leave the room by the door, intending to go in search of her husband. she was arrested on the threshold by mrs. powell, who was standing at the door, with the submissive and deferential patience of paid companionship depicted in her insipid face. "_does_ colonel maddison dine here, my dear mrs. mellish?" she asked meekly; yet with a pensive earnestness which suggested that her life, or at any rate her peace of mind, depended upon the answer. "i am _so_ anxious to know, for of course it will make a difference with the fish,--and perhaps we ought to have some mulligatawny; or at any rate a dish of curry amongst the _entrã©es;_ for these elderly east-indian officers are so----" "i don't know," answered aurora, curtly. "were you standing at the door long before i came out, mrs. powell?" "oh, no," answered the ensign's widow, "not long. did you not hear me knock?" mrs. powell would not have allowed herself to be betrayed into anything so vulgar as an abbreviation by the torments of the rack; and would have neatly rounded her periods while the awful wheel was stretching every muscle of her agonized frame, and the executioner waiting to give the _coup de grã¢ce_. "did you not hear me knock?" she asked. "no," said aurora; "you didn't knock! did you?" mrs. mellish made an alarming pause between the two sentences. "oh, yes, too-wice," answered mrs. powell, with as much emphasis as was consistent with gentility upon the elongated word; "i knocked too-wice; but you seemed so very much preoccupied that----" "i didn't hear you," interrupted aurora; "you should knock rather louder when you _want_ people to hear, mrs. powell. i--i came here to look for john, and i shall stop and put away his guns. careless fellow!--he always leaves them lying about." "shall i assist you, dear mrs. mellish?" "oh, no, thank you." "but pray allow me--guns are _so_ interesting. indeed, there is very little either in art or nature which, properly considered, is not----" "you had better find mr. mellish, and ascertain if the colonel _does_ dine here, i think, mrs. powell," interrupted aurora, shutting the lids of the pistol-cases, and replacing them upon their accustomed shelves. "oh, if you wish to be alone, certainly," said the ensign's widow, looking furtively at aurora's face bending over the breech-loading revolvers, and then walking genteelly and noiselessly out of the room. "who was she talking to?" thought mrs. powell. "i could hear her voice, but not the other person's. i suppose it was mr. mellish; and yet he is not generally so quiet." she stopped to look out of a window in the corridor, and found the solution of her doubts in the shambling figure of the "softy," making his way northwards, creeping stealthily under shadow of the plantation that bordered the lawn. mrs. powell's faculties were all cultivated to a state of unpleasant perfection, and she was able, actually as well as figuratively, to see a great deal farther than most people. john mellish was not to be found in the house, and on making inquiries of some of the servants, mrs. powell learnt that he had strolled up to the north lodge to see the trainer, who was confined to his bed. "indeed!" said the ensign's widow; "then i think, as we really ought to know about the colonel and the mulligatawny, i will walk to the north lodge myself, and see mr. mellish." she took a sun-umbrella from the stand in the hall, and crossed the lawn northwards at a smart pace, in spite of the heat of the july noontide. "if i can get there before hargraves," she thought, "i may be able to find out why he came to the house." the ensign's widow did reach the lodge before stephen hargraves, who stopped, as we know, under shelter of the foliage in the loneliest pathway of the wood, to decipher aurora's scrawl. she found john mellish seated with the trainer, in the little parlour of the lodge, discussing the stable arrangement; the master talking with considerable animation, the servant listening with a listless _nonchalance_ which had a certain air of depreciation, not to say contempt, for poor john's racing stud. mr. conyers had risen from his bed at the sound of his employer's voice in the little room below, and had put on a dusty shooting-coat and a pair of shabby slippers, in order to come down and hear what mr. mellish had to say. "i'm sorry to hear you're ill, conyers," john said heartily, with a freshness in his strong voice which seemed to carry health and strength in its very tone. "as you weren't well enough to look in at the house, i thought i'd come over here and talk to you about business. i want to know whether we ought to take monte christo out of his york engagement, and if you think it would be wise to let northern dutchman take his chance for the great ebor. hey?" mr. mellish's query resounded through the small room, and made the languid trainer shudder. mr. conyers had all the peevish susceptibility to discomfort or inconvenience which go to make a man above his station. is it a merit to be above one's station, i wonder, that people make such a boast of their unfitness for honest employments, and sturdy but progressive labour? the flowers in the fables, that want to be trees, always get the worst of it, i remember. perhaps that is because they can do nothing but complain. there is no objection to their growing into trees, if they can, i suppose; but a great objection to their being noisy and disagreeable because they can't. with the son of the simple corsican advocate who made himself emperor of france the world had every sympathy; but with poor louis philippe, who ran away from a throne at the first shock that disturbed its equilibrium, i fear, very little. is it quite right to be angry with the world because it worships success? for is not success, in some manner, the stamp of divinity? self-assertion may deceive the ignorant for a time; but when the noise dies away, we cut open the drum, and find that it was emptiness that made the music. mr. conyers contented himself with declaring that he walked on a road which was unworthy of his footsteps; but as he never contrived to get an inch farther upon the great highway of life, there is some reason to suppose that he had his opinion entirely to himself. mr. mellish and his trainer were still discussing stable matters when mrs. powell reached the north lodge. she stopped for a few minutes in the rustic doorway, waiting for a pause in the conversation. she was too well bred to interrupt mr. mellish in his talk, and there was a chance that she might hear something by lingering. no contrast could be stronger than that presented by the two men. john, broad-shouldered and stalwart; his short crisp chestnut hair brushed away from his square forehead; his bright open blue eyes beaming honest sunshine upon all they looked at; his loose gray clothes neat and well made; his shirt in the first freshness of the morning's toilet; everything about him made beautiful by the easy grace which is the peculiar property of the man who has been born a gentleman, and which neither all the cheap finery which mr. moses can sell, nor all the expensive absurdities which mr. tittlebat titmouse can buy, will ever bestow upon the _parvenu_ or the vulgarian. the trainer, handsomer than his master by as much as antinous in grecian marble is handsomer than the substantially-shod and loose-coated young squires in mr. millais' designs; as handsome as it is possible for this human clay to be, with every feature moulded to the highest type of positive beauty, and yet, every inch of him, a boor. his shirt soiled and crumpled, his hair rough and uncombed; his unshaven chin, dark with the blue bristles of his budding beard, and smeared with the traces of last night's liquor; his dingy hands, supporting this dingy chin, and his elbows bursting half out of the frayed sleeves of his shabby shooting-jacket, leaning on the table in an attitude of indifferent insolence. his countenance expressive of nothing but dissatisfaction with his own lot, and contempt for the opinions of other people. all the homilies that could be preached upon the time-worn theme of beauty and its worthlessness, could never argue so strongly as this mute evidence presented by mr. conyers himself in his slouching posture and his unkempt hair. is beauty, then, so little, one asks, on looking at the trainer and his employer? is it better to be clean, and well dressed, and gentlemanly, than to have a classical profile and a thrice-worn shirt? finding very little to interest her in john's stable-talk, mrs. powell made her presence known, and once more asked the all-important question about colonel maddison. "yes," john answered; "the old boy is sure to come. let's have plenty of chutnee, and boiled rice, and preserved ginger, and all the rest of the unpleasant things that indian officers live upon. have you seen lolly?" mr. mellish put on his hat, gave a last instruction to the trainer, and left the cottage. "have you seen lolly?" he asked again. "ye-es," replied mrs. powell; "i have only lately left mrs. mellish in your room; she had been speaking to that half-witted person--hargraves, i think he is called." "speaking to _him?_" cried john; "speaking to him in my room? why, the fellow is forbidden to cross the threshold of the house, and mrs. mellish abominates the sight of him. don't you remember the day he flogged her dog, you know, and lolly horse--had hysterics?" added mr. mellish, choking himself with one word and substituting another. "oh, yes, i remember that little--ahem!--unfortunate occurrence perfectly," replied mrs. powell, in a tone which, in spite of its amiability, implied that aurora's escapade was not a thing to be easily forgotten. "then it's not likely, you know, that lolly would talk to the man. you must be mistaken, mrs. powell." the ensign's widow simpered and lifted her eyebrows, gently shaking her head, with a gesture that seemed to say, "did you ever find _me_ mistaken?" "no, no, my dear mr. mellish," she said, with a half-playful air of conviction, "there was no mistake on my part. mrs. mellish was talking to the half-witted person; but you know the person is a sort of servant to mr. conyers, and mrs. mellish may have had a message for mr. conyers." "a message for _him!_" roared john, stopping suddenly and planting his stick upon the ground in a movement of unconcealed passion; "what messages should she have for _him?_ why should she want people fetching and carrying between her and him?" mrs. powell's pale eyes lit up with a faint yellow flame in their greenish pupils as john broke out thus. "it is coming--it is coming--it is coming!" her envious heart cried, and she felt that a faint flush of triumph was gathering in her sickly cheeks. but in another moment john mellish recovered his self-command. he was angry with himself for that transient passion. "am i going to doubt her again?" he thought. "do i know so little of the nobility of her generous soul that i am ready to listen to every whisper, and terrify myself with every look?" they had walked about a hundred yards away from the lodge by this time. john turned irresolutely, as if half inclined to go back. "a message for conyers," he said to mrs. powell;--"ay, ay, to be sure. it's likely enough she might want to send him a message, for she's cleverer at all the stable business than i am. it was she who told me not to enter cherry-stone for the chester cup, and, egad! i was obstinate, and i was licked; as i deserved to be, for not listening to my dear girl." mrs. powell would fain have boxed john's ear, had she been tall enough to reach that organ. infatuated fool! would he never open his dull eyes and see the ruin that was preparing for him? "you _are_ a good husband, mr. mellish," she said with a gentle melancholy. "your wife _ought_ to be happy!" she added, with a sigh which plainly hinted that mrs. mellish was miserable. "a good husband!" cried john, "not half good enough for her. what can i do to prove that i love her? what can i do? nothing, except to let her have her own way; and what a little that seems! why, if she wanted to set that house on fire, for the pleasure of making a bonfire," he added, pointing to the rambling mansion in which his blue eyes had first seen the light, "i'd let her do it, and look on with her at the blaze." "are you going back to the lodge?" mrs. powell asked quietly, not taking any notice of this outbreak of marital enthusiasm. they had retraced their steps, and were within a few paces of the little garden before the north lodge. "going back?" said john; "no--yes." between his utterance of the negative and the affirmative he had looked up, and seen stephen hargraves entering the little garden-gate. the "softy" had come by the short cut through the wood. john mellish quickened his pace, and followed steeve hargraves across the little garden to the threshold of the door. at the threshold he paused. the rustic porch was thickly screened by the spreading branches of the roses and honeysuckle, and john was unseen by those within. he did not himself deliberately listen; he only waited for a few moments, wondering what to do next. in those few moments of indecision he heard the trainer speak to his attendant. "did you see her?" he asked. "ay, sure, i see her." "and she gave you a message?" "no, she gave me this here." "a letter?" cried the trainer's eager voice; "give it me." john mellish heard the tearing of the envelope and the crackling of the crisp paper; and knew that his wife had been writing to his servant. he clenched his strong right hand until the nails dug into the muscular palm; then turning to mrs. powell, who stood close behind him, simpering meekly, as she would have simpered at an earthquake, or a revolution, or any other national calamity not peculiarly affecting herself, he said quietly-"whatever directions mrs. mellish has given are sure to be right; i won't interfere with them." he walked away from the north lodge as he spoke, looking straight before him, homewards; as if the unchanging lode-star of his honest heart were beckoning to him across the dreary slough of despond, and bidding him take comfort. "mrs. powell," he said, turning rather sharply upon the ensign's widow, "i should be very sorry to say anything likely to offend you, in your character of--of a guest beneath my roof; but i shall take it as a favour to myself if you will be so good as to remember, that i require no information respecting my wife's movements from you, or from any one. whatever mrs. mellish does, she does with my full consent, my perfect approbation. cã¦sar's wife must not be suspected, and by jove, ma'am!--you'll pardon the expression,--john mellish's wife must not be watched." "watched!--information!" exclaimed mrs. powell, lifting her pale eyebrows to the extreme limits allowed by nature. "my dear mr. mellish, when i really only casually remarked, in reply to a question of your own, that i believed mrs. mellish had----" "oh, yes," answered john, "i understand. there are several ways by which you can go to doncaster from this house. you can go across the fields, or round by harper's common, an out-of-the-way, roundabout route, but you get there all the same, you know, ma'am. _i_ generally prefer the high road. it mayn't be the shortest way, perhaps; but it's certainly the straightest." the corners of mrs. powell's thin lower lip dropped, perhaps the eighth of an inch, as john made these observations; but she very quickly recovered her habitually genteel simper, and told mr. mellish that he really had such a droll way of expressing himself as to make his meaning scarcely so clear as could be wished. but john had said all that he wanted to say, and walked steadily onwards; looking always towards that quarter in which the pole-star might be supposed to shine, guiding him back to his home. that home so soon to be desolate!--with such ruin brooding above it as in his darkest doubts, his wildest fears, he had never shadowed forth! chapter x. on the threshold of darker miseries. john went straight to his own apartment to look for his wife; but he found the guns put back in their usual places, and the room empty. aurora's maid, a smartly dressed girl, came tripping out of the servants' hall, where the rattling of knives and forks announced that a very substantial dinner was being done substantial justice to, to answer john's eager inquiries. she told him that mrs. mellish had complained of a headache, and had gone to her room to lie down. john went up-stairs, and crept cautiously along the carpeted corridor, fearful of every footfall which might break the repose of his wife. the door of her dressing-room was ajar: he pushed it softly open, and went in. aurora was lying upon the sofa, wrapped in a loose white dressing-gown, her masses of ebon hair uncoiled and falling about her shoulders in serpentine tresses, that looked like shining blue-black snakes released from poor medusa's head to make their escape amid the folds of her garments. heaven knows what a stranger sleep may have been for many a night to mrs. mellish's pillow; but she had fallen into a heavy slumber on this hot summer's day. her cheeks were flushed with a feverish crimson, and one small hand lay under her head twisted in the tangled masses of her glorious hair. john bent over her with a tender smile. "poor girl!" he thought; "thank god that she can sleep, in spite of the miserable secrets which have come between us. talbot bulstrode left her because he could not bear the agony that i am suffering now. what cause had he to doubt her? what cause compared to that which i have had a fortnight ago--the other night--this morning? and yet--and yet i trust her, and will trust her, please god, to the very end." he seated himself in a low easy-chair close beside the sofa upon which his sleeping wife lay, and resting his head upon his arm, watched her, thought of her, perhaps prayed for her; and after a little while fell asleep himself, snoring in bass harmony with aurora's regular breathing. he slept and snored, this horrible man, in the hour of his trouble, and behaved himself altogether in a manner most unbecoming in a hero. but then he is not a hero. he is stout and strongly built, with a fine broad chest, and unromantically robust health. there is more chance of his dying of apoplexy than of fading gracefully in a decline, or breaking a blood-vessel in a moment of intense emotion. he sleeps calmly, with the warm july air floating in upon him from the open window, and comforting him with its balmy breath, and he fully enjoys that rest of body and mind. yet even in his tranquil slumber there is a vague something, some lingering shadow of the bitter memories which sleep has put away from him, that fills his breast with a dull pain, an oppressive heaviness, which cannot be shaken off. he slept until half a dozen different clocks in the rambling old house had come to one conclusion, and declared it to be five in the afternoon; and he awoke with a start to find his wife watching him, heaven knows how intently, with her black eyes filled with solemn thought, and a strange earnestness in her face. "my poor john!" she said, bending her beautiful head and resting her burning forehead upon his hand; "how tired you must have been, to sleep so soundly in the middle of the day! i have been awake for nearly an hour, watching you--" "watching me, lolly!--why?" "and thinking how good you are to me. oh, john, john! what can i ever do--what can i ever do to atone to you for all----" "be happy, aurora," he said huskily, "be happy, and--and send that man away." "i will, john; he shall go soon, dear,--to-night!" "what!--then that letter was to dismiss him?" asked mr. mellish. "you know that i wrote to him?" "yes, darling, it was to dismiss him,--say that it was so, aurora. pay him what money you like to keep the secret that he discovered, but send him away, lolly, send him away. the sight of him is hateful to me. dismiss him, aurora, or i must do so myself." he rose in his passionate excitement, but aurora laid her hand softly upon his arm. "leave all to me," she said quietly. "believe me that i will act for the best. for the best, at least, if you couldn't bear to lose me; and you couldn't bear that, could you, john?" "lose you! my god, aurora! why do you say such things to me? i _wouldn't_ lose you. do you hear, lolly? i _wouldn't_. i'd follow you to the farthest end of the universe, and heaven take pity upon those that came between us!" his set teeth, the fierce light in his eyes, and the iron rigidity of his mouth, gave an emphasis to his words which my pen could never give if i used every epithet in the english language. aurora rose from her sofa, and twisting her hair into a thickly-rolled mass at the back of her head, seated herself near the window, and pushed back the venetian shutter. "these people dine here to-day, john?" she asked listlessly. "the lofthouses and colonel maddison? yes, my darling; and it's ever so much past five. shall i ring for your afternoon cup of tea?" "yes, dear; and take some with me, if you will." i'm afraid that in his inmost heart mr. mellish did not cherish any very great affection for the decoctions of bohea and gunpowder with which his wife dosed him; but he would have dined upon cod-liver oil had she served the banquet; and he strung his nerves to their extreme tension at her supreme pleasure, and affected to highly relish the post-meridian dishes of tea which his wife poured out for him in the sacred seclusion of her dressing-room. mrs. powell heard the comfortable sound of the chinking of the thin egg-shell china and the rattling of the spoons, as she passed the half-open door on her way to her own apartment, and was mutely furious as she thought that love and harmony reigned within the chamber where the husband and wife sat at tea. aurora went down to the drawing-room an hour after this, gorgeous in maize-coloured silk and voluminous flouncings of black lace, with her hair plaited in a diadem upon her head, and fastened with three diamond stars which john had bought for her in the rue de la paix, and which were cunningly fixed upon wire springs, which caused them to vibrate with every chance movement of her beautiful head. you will say, perhaps, that she was arrayed too gaudily for the reception of an old indian officer and a country clergyman and his wife; but if she loved handsome dresses better than simpler attire, it was from no taste for display, but rather from an innate love of splendour and expenditure, which was a part of her expansive nature. she had always been taught to think of herself as miss floyd, the banker's daughter, and she had been taught also to spend money as a duty which she owed to society. mrs. lofthouse was a pretty little woman, with a pale face and hazel eyes. she was the youngest daughter of colonel maddison, and was, "by birth, you know, my dear, far superior to poor mrs. mellish, who, in spite of her wealth, is only," &c. &c. &c., as margaret lofthouse remarked to her female acquaintance. she could not very easily forget that her father was the younger brother of a baronet, and had distinguished himself in some terrific manner by bloodthirsty demolition of sikhs, far away in the untractable east; and she thought it rather hard that aurora should possess such cruel advantages through some pettifogging commercial genius on the part of her glasgow ancestors. but as it was impossible for honest people to know aurora without loving her, mrs. lofthouse heartily forgave her her fifty thousand pounds, and declared her to be the dearest darling in the wide world; while mrs. mellish freely returned her friendliness, and caressed the little woman as she had caressed lucy bulstrode, with a superb yet affectionate condescension, such as cleopatra may have had for her handmaidens. the dinner went off pleasantly enough. colonel maddison attacked the side-dishes specially provided for him, and praised the mellish-park cook. mr. lofthouse explained to aurora the plan of a new schoolhouse which she intended to build for the improvement of john's native parish. she listened patiently to the rather wearisome details, in which a bakehouse and a washhouse and a tudor chimney seemed the leading features. she had heard so much of this before; for there was scarcely a church, or a hospital, or a model lodging-house, or a refuge for any misery or destitution whatever, that had been lately elevated to adorn this earth, for which the banker's daughter had not helped to pay. but her heart was wide enough for them all, and she was always glad to hear of the bakehouse and washhouse and the tudor chimney all over again. if she was a little less interested upon this occasion than usual, mr. lofthouse did not observe her inattention, for in the simple earnestness of his own mind, he thought it scarcely possible that the schoolhouse topic could fail to be interesting. nothing is so difficult as to make people understand that you don't care for what they themselves especially affect. john mellish could not believe that the entries for the great ebor were not interesting to mr. lofthouse, and the country clergyman was fully convinced that the details of his philanthropic schemes for the regeneration of his parish could not be otherwise than delightful to his host. but the master of mellish park was very silent, and sat with his glass in his hand, looking across the dinner-table and mrs. lofthouse's head, at the sunlit tree-tops between the lawn and the north lodge. aurora, from her end of the table, saw that gloomy glance, and a resolute shadow darkened her face, expressive of the strengthening of some rooted purpose deep hidden in her heart. she sat so long at dessert, with her eyes fixed upon an apricot in her plate, and the shadow upon her face deepening every moment, that poor mrs. lofthouse was in utter despair of getting the significant look which was to release her from the bondage of hearing her father's stories of tiger-shooting and pig-sticking for the two or three hundredth time. perhaps she never would have got that feminine signal, had not mrs. powell, with a significant "hem!" made some observation about the sinking sun. the ensign's widow was one of those people who declare that there is a perceptible difference in the length of the days upon the twenty-third or twenty-fourth of june, and who go on announcing the same fact until the long winter evenings come with the twenty-first of december, and it is time for them to declare the converse of their late proposition. it was some remark of this kind that aroused mrs. mellish from her reverie, and caused her to start up suddenly, quite forgetful of the conventional simpering beck to her guest. "past eight!" she said; "no, it's surely not so late?" "yes, it is, lolly," john mellish answered, looking at his watch; "a quarter past." "indeed! i beg your pardon, mrs. lofthouse; shall we go into the drawing-room?" "yes, dear, do," said the clergyman's wife, "and let's have a nice chat. papa will drink too much claret if he tells the pig-sticking stories," she added in a confidential whisper. "ask your dear, kind husband not to let him have too much claret; because he's sure to suffer with his liver to-morrow, and say that lofthouse ought to have restrained him. he always says that it's poor reginald's fault for not restraining him." john looked anxiously after his wife, as he stood with the door in his hand, while the three ladies crossed the hall. he bit his lip as he noticed mrs. powell's unpleasantly-precise figure close to aurora's shoulder. "i think i spoke pretty plainly, though, this morning," he thought, as he closed the door and returned to his friends. a quarter-past eight; twenty minutes past; five-and-twenty minutes past. mrs. lofthouse was rather a brilliant pianist, and was never happier than when interpreting thalberg and benedict upon her friends' collard-and-collards. there were old-fashioned people round doncaster who believed in collard and collard, and were thankful for the melody to be got out of a good honest grand, in a solid rosewood case, unadorned with carved glorification, or ormolu fret-work. at seven-and-twenty minutes past eight mrs. lofthouse was seated at aurora's piano, in the first agonies of a prelude in six flats; a prelude which demanded such extraordinary uses of the left hand across the right, and the right over the left, and such exercise of the thumbs in all sorts of positions,--in which, according to all orthodox theories of the pre-thalberg-ite school, no pianist's thumbs should ever be used,--that mrs. mellish felt that her friend's attention was not very likely to wander from the keys. within the long, low-roofed drawing-room at mellish park there was a snug little apartment, hung with innocent rosebud-sprinkled chintzes, and furnished with maple-wood chairs and tables. mrs. lofthouse had not been seated at the piano more than five minutes when aurora strolled from the drawing-room to this inner chamber, leaving her guest with no audience but mrs. powell. she lingered for a moment on the threshold to look back at the ensign's widow, who sat near the piano in an attitude of rapt attention. "she is watching me," thought aurora, "though her pink eyelids are drooping over her eyes, and she seems to be looking at the border of her pocket-handkerchief. she sees me with her chin or her nose, perhaps. how do i know? she is all eyes! bah! am i going to be afraid of _her_, when i was never afraid of _him?_ what should i fear except"--(her head changed from its defiant attitude to a drooping posture, and a sad smile curved her crimson lips)--"except to make you unhappy, my dear, my _husband_. yes," with a sudden lifting of her head, and re-assumption of its proud defiance, "my own true husband! the husband who has kept his marriage-vow as unpolluted as when first it issued from his lips!" i am writing what she thought, remember, not what she said; for she was not in the habit of thinking aloud, nor did i ever know anybody who was. aurora took up a shawl that she had flung upon the sofa, and threw it lightly over her head, veiling herself with a cloud of black lace, through which the restless, shivering diamonds shone out like stars in a midnight sky. she looked like hecate, as she stood on the threshold of the french window lingering for a moment with a deep-laid purpose in her heart, and a resolute light in her eyes. the clock in the steeple of the village church struck the three-quarters after eight while she lingered for those few moments. as the last chime died away in the summer air, she looked up darkly at the evening sky, and walked with a rapid footstep out upon the lawn towards the southern end of the wood that bordered the park. chapter xi. captain prodder carries bad news to hisniece's house. while aurora stood upon the threshold of the open window, a man was lingering upon the broad stone steps before the door of the entrance hall, remonstrating with one of john mellish's servants, who held supercilious parley with the intruder, and kept him at arm's length with the contemptuous indifference of a well-bred servant. this stranger was captain samuel prodder, who had arrived at doncaster late in the afternoon, had dined at the reindeer, and had come over to mellish park in a gig driven by a hanger-on of that establishment. the gig and the hanger-on were both in waiting at the bottom of the steps; and if there had been anything wanting to turn the balance of the footman's contempt for captain prodder's blue coat, loose shirt-collar, and silver watch chain, the gig from the reindeer would have done it. "yes, mrs. mellish is at home," the gentleman in plush replied, after surveying the sea-captain with a leisurely and critical air, which was rather provoking to poor samuel; "but she's engaged." "but perhaps she'll put off her engagements for a bit when she hears who it is as wants to see her," answered the captain, diving into his capacious pocket. "she'll tell a different story, i dare say, when you take her that bit of pasteboard." he handed the man a card, or rather let me say a stiff square of thick pasteboard, inscribed with his name, so disguised by the flourishing caprices of the engraver as to be not very easily deciphered by unaccustomed eyes. the card bore captain prodder's address as well as his name, and informed his acquaintances that he was part-owner of the _nancy jane_, and that all consignments of goods were to be made to him at &c. &c. the footman took the document between his thumb and finger, and examined it as minutely as if it had been some relic of the middle ages. a new light dawned upon him as he deciphered the information about the _nancy jane_, and he looked at the captain for the first time with some approach to human interest in his countenance. "is it cigars you want to dispose hof?" he asked, "or bandannas? if it's cigars, you might come round to our 'all, and show us the harticle." "cigars!" roared samuel prodder. "do you take me for a smuggler, you----?" here followed one of those hearty seafaring epithets with which polite mr. chucks was apt to finish his speeches. "i'm your missus's own uncle; leastways, i--i knew her mother when she was a little gal," he added, in considerable confusion; for he remembered how far away his sea-captainship thrust him from mrs. mellish and her well-born husband; "so just take her my card, and look sharp about it, will you?" "we've a dinner-party," the footman said, coldly, "and i don't know if the ladies have returned to the drawing-room; but if you're anyways related to missis--i'll go and see." the man strolled leisurely away, leaving poor samuel biting his nails in mute vexation at having let slip that ugly fact of her relationship. "that swab in the same cut coat as lord nelson wore aboard the _victory_, will look down upon her now he knows she's niece to a old sea-captain that carries dry goods on commission, and can't keep his tongue between his teeth," he thought. the footman came back while samuel prodder was upbraiding himself for his folly, and informed him that mrs. mellish was not to be found in the house. "who's that playin' upon the pianer, then?" asked mr. prodder, with sceptical bluntness. "oh, that's the clugyman's wife," answered the man, contemptuously; "a _ciddyvong_ guvness, i should think, for she plays too well for a real lady. missus don't play--leastways only pawlkers, and that sort of think. good night." he closed the two half-glass doors upon captain prodder without farther ceremony, and shut samuel out of his niece's house. "to think that i played hopscotch and swopped marbles for hardbake with this gal's mother," thought the captain, "and that her servant turns up his nose at me and shuts the door in my face!" it was in sorrow rather than in anger that the disappointed sailor thought this. he had scarcely hoped for anything better. it was only natural that those about his niece should flout at and contemptuously treat him. let him get to _her_--let him come only for a moment face to face with eliza's child, and he did not fear the issue. "i'll walk through the park," he said to the man who had driven him from doncaster; "it's a nice evenin', and there's pleasant walks under the trees to win'ard. you can drive back into the high road, and wait for me agen that 'ere turnstile i took notice of as we come along." the driver nodded, smacked his whip, and drove his elderly gray pony towards the park-gates. captain samuel prodder went, slowly and deliberately enough,--the way that it was appointed for him to go. the park was a strange territory to him; but while driving past the outer boundaries he had looked admiringly at chance openings in the wood, revealing grassy amphitheatres enriched by spreading oaks, whose branches made a shadowy tracery upon the sunlit turf. he had looked with a seaman's wonder at the inland beauties of the quiet domain, and had pondered whether it might not be a pleasant thing for an old sailor to end his days amid such monotonous woodland tranquillity, far away from the sound of wreck and tempest, and the mighty voices of the dreadful deep; and, in his disappointment at not seeing aurora, it was some consolation to the captain to walk across the dewy grass in the evening shadows in the direction where, with a sailor's unerring topographical instinct, he knew the turnstile must be situated. perhaps he had some hope of meeting his niece in the pathway across the park. the man had told him that she was out. she could not be far away, as there was a dinner-party at the house; and she was scarcely likely to leave her guests. she was wandering about the park, most likely, with some of them. the shadows of the trees grew darker upon the grass as captain prodder drew nearer to the wood; but it was that sweet summer-time in which there is scarcely one positively dark hour amongst the twenty-four; and though the village clock chimed the half-hour after nine as the sailor entered the wood, he was able to distinguish the outlines of two figures advancing towards him from the other end of the long arcade, that led in a slanting direction to the turnstile. the figures were those of a man and woman; the woman wearing some light-coloured dress, which shimmered in the dusk; the man leaning on a stick, and obviously very lame. "is it my niece and one of her visitors?" thought the captain; "maybe it is. i'll lay by to port of 'em, and let 'em pass me." samuel prodder stepped aside under the shadow of the trees to the left of the grassy avenue through which the two figures were approaching, and waited patiently until they drew near enough for him to distinguish the woman's face. the woman was mrs. mellish, and she was walking on the left of the man, and was therefore nearest to the captain. her head was turned away from her companion, as if in utter scorn and defiance of him, although she was talking to him at that moment. her face, proud, pale, and disdainful, was visible to the seaman in the chill, shadowy light of the newly-risen moon. a low line of crimson behind the black trunks of a distant group of trees marked where the sun had left its last track, in a vivid streak that looked like blood. captain prodder gazed in loving wonder at the beautiful face turned towards him. he saw the dark eyes, with their sombre depth, dark in anger and scorn, and the luminous shimmer of the jewels that shone through the black veil upon her haughty head. he saw her, and his heart grew chill at the sight of her pale beauty in the mysterious moonlight. "it might be my sister's ghost," he thought, "coming upon me in this quiet place; it's a'most difficult to believe as it's flesh and blood." he would have advanced, perhaps, and addressed his niece, had he not been held back by the words which she was speaking as she passed him--words that jarred painfully upon his heart, telling, as they did, of anger and bitterness, discord and misery. "yes, hate you!" she said in a clear voice, which seemed to vibrate sharply in the dusk,----"hate you! hate you! hate you!" she repeated the hard phrase, as if there were some pleasure and delight in uttering it, which in her ungovernable anger she could not deny herself. "what other words do you expect from me?" she cried, with a low mocking laugh, which had a tone of deeper misery, and more utter hopelessness than any outbreak of womanly weeping. "would you have me love you? or respect you? or tolerate you?" her voice rose with each rapid question, merging into an hysterical sob, but never melting into tears. "would you have me tell you anything else than what i tell you to-night? i hate and abhor you! i look upon you as the primary cause of every sorrow i have ever known, of every tear i have ever shed, of every humiliation i have endured; every sleepless night, every weary day, every despairing hour, i have ever passed. more than this,--yes, a thousand, thousand times more,--i look upon _you_ as the first cause of my father's wretchedness. yes, even before my own mad folly in believing in you, and thinking you--what?--claude melnotte, perhaps!--a curse upon the man who wrote the play, and the player who acted in it, if it helped to make me what i was when i met you! i say again, i hate you! your presence poisons my home, your abhorred shadow haunts my sleep--no, not my sleep, for how should i ever sleep knowing that you are near?" mr. conyers, being apparently weary of walking, leaned against the trunk of a tree to listen to the end of this outbreak, looking insolent defiance at the speaker. but aurora's passion had reached that point in which all consciousness of external things passes away in the complete egoism of anger and hate. she did not see his superciliously indifferent look; her dilated eyes stared straight before her into the dark recess from which captain prodder watched his sister's only child. her restless hands rent the fragile border of her shawl in the strong agony of her passion. have you ever seen this kind of woman in a passion? impulsive, nervous, sensitive, sanguine; with such a one passion is a madness--brief, thank heaven! and expending itself in sharply cruel words, and convulsive rendings of lace and ribbon, or coroner's juries might have to sit even oftener than they do. it is fortunate for mankind that speaking daggers is often quite as great a satisfaction to us as using them, and that we can threaten very cruel things without meaning to carry them out. like the little children who say, "won't i just tell your mother!" and the terrible editors who write, "won't i give you a castigation in the market-deeping 'spirit of the times,' or the 'walton-on-the-naze athenã¦um!'" "if you are going to give us much more of this sort of thing," said mr. conyers, with aggravating stolidity, "perhaps you won't object to my lighting a cigar?" aurora took no notice of his quiet insolence; but captain prodder, involuntarily clenching his fist, bounded a step forward in his retreat, and shook the leaves of the underwood about his legs. "what's that?" exclaimed the trainer. "my dog, perhaps," answered aurora; "he's about here with me." "curse the purblind cur!" muttered mr. conyers, with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. he struck a lucifer-match against the back of a tree, and the vivid sulphurous light shone full upon his handsome face. "a rascal!" thought captain prodder;--"a good-looking, heartless scoundrel! what's this between my niece and him? he isn't her husband, surely, for he don't look like a gentleman. but if he aint her husband, who is he?" the sailor scratched his head in his bewilderment. his senses had been almost stupefied by aurora's passionate talk, and he had only a confused feeling that there was trouble and wretchedness of some kind or other around and about his niece. "if i thought he'd done anything to injure her," he muttered, "i'd pound him into such a jelly that his friends would never know his handsome face again as long as there was life in his carcass." mr. conyers threw away the burning match, and puffed at his newly-lighted cigar. he did not trouble himself to take it from his lips as he addressed aurora, but spoke between his teeth, and smoked in the pauses of his discourse. "perhaps, if you've--calmed yourself down--a bit," he said, "you'll be so good as--to come to business. what do you want me to do?" "you know as well as i do," answered aurora. "you want me to leave this place?" "yes; for ever." "and to take what you give me--and be satisfied." "yes." "what if i refuse?" she turned sharply upon him as he asked this question, and looked at him for a few moments in silence. "what if i refuse?" he repeated, still smoking. "look to yourself!" she cried, between her set teeth; "that's all. look to yourself!" "what! you'd kill me, i suppose?" "no," answered aurora; "but i'd tell all; and get the release which i ought to have sought for two years ago." "oh, ah, to be sure!" said mr. conyers; "a pleasant thing for mr. mellish, and our poor papa, and a nice bit of gossip for the newspapers! i've a good mind to put you to the test, and see if you've pluck enough to do it, my lady." she stamped her foot upon the turf, and tore the lace in her hands, throwing the fragments away from her; but she did not answer him. "you'd like to stab me, or shoot me, or strangle me, as i stand here; wouldn't you, now?" asked the trainer, mockingly. "yes," cried aurora, "i would!" she flung her head back with a gesture of disdain as she spoke. "why do i waste my time in talking to you?" she said. "my worst words can inflict no wound upon such a nature as yours. my scorn is no more painful to you than it would be to any of the loathsome creatures that creep about the margin of yonder pool." the trainer took his cigar from his mouth, and struck the ashes away with his little finger. "no," he said with a contemptuous laugh; "i'm not very thin-skinned; and i'm pretty well used to this sort of thing, into the bargain. but suppose, as i remarked just now, we drop this style of conversation, and come to business. we don't seem to be getting on very fast this way." at this juncture, captain prodder, who, in his extreme desire to strangle his niece's companion, had advanced very close upon the two speakers, knocked off his hat against the lower branches of the tree which sheltered him. there was no mistake this time about the rustling of the leaves. the trainer started, and limped towards captain prodder's hiding-place. "there's some one listening to us," he said. "i'm sure of it this time;--that fellow hargraves, perhaps. i fancy he's a sneak." mr. conyers supported himself against the very tree behind which the sailor stood, and beat amongst the undergrowth with his stick, but did not succeed in encountering the legs of the listener. "if that soft-headed fool _is_ playing the spy upon me," cried the trainer, savagely, "he'd better not let me catch him, for i'll make him remember it, if i do." "don't i tell you that my dog followed me here?" exclaimed aurora contemptuously. a low rustling of the grass on the other side of the avenue, and at some distance from the seaman's place of concealment, was heard as mrs. mellish spoke. "_that's_ your dog, if you like," said the trainer; "the other was a man. come on a little way further, and let's make a finish of this business; it's past ten o'clock." mr. conyers was right. the church clock had struck ten five minutes before, but the solemn chimes had fallen unheeded upon aurora's ear, lost amid the angry voices raging in her breast. she started as she looked around her at the summer darkness in the woods, and the flaming yellow moon, which brooded low upon the earth, and shed no light upon the mysterious pathways and the water-pools in the wood. the trainer limped away, aurora walking by his side, yet holding herself as far aloof from him as the grassy pathway would allow. they were out of hearing, and almost out of sight, before the sea-captain could emerge from a state of utter stupefaction so far as to be able to look at the business in its right bearings. "i ought to ha' knocked him down," he muttered at last, "whether he's her husband or whether he isn't. i ought to have knocked him down, and i would have done it, too," added the captain resolutely, "if it hadn't been that my niece seemed to have a good fiery spirit of her own, and to be able to fire a jolly good broadside in the way of hard words. i'll find my skull-thatcher if i can," said captain prodder, groping for his hat amongst the brambles, and the long grass, "and then i'll just run up to the turnstile and tell my mate to lay at anchor a bit longer with the horse and shay. he'll be wonderin' what i'm up to; but i won't go back just yet, i'll keep in the way of my niece and that swab with the game leg." the captain found his hat, and walked down to the turnstile, where he found the young man from the reindeer fast asleep, with the reins loose in his hands, and his head upon his knees. the horse, with his head in an empty nose-bag, seemed as fast asleep as the driver. the young man woke at the sound of the turnstile creaking upon its axis, and the step of the sailor in the road. "i aint going to get aboard just yet," said captain prodder; "i'll take another turn in the wood as the evenin's so pleasant. i come to tell you i wouldn't keep you much longer, for i thought you'd think i was dead." "i did a'most," answered the charioteer candidly. "my word!--aint you been a time!" "i met mr. and mrs. mellish in the wood," said the captain, "and i stopped to have a look at 'em. she's a bit of a spitfire, aint she?" asked samuel, with affected carelessness. the young man from the reindeer shook his head dubiously. "i doan't know about that," he said; "she's a rare favourite hereabouts, with poor folks and gentry too. they do say as she horsewhipped a poor fond chap as they'd got in the stables, for ill-usin' her dog; and sarve him right too," added the young man decisively. "them softies is allus vicious." captain prodder pondered rather doubtfully upon this piece of information. he was not particularly elated by the image of his sister's child laying a horsewhip upon the shoulders of her half-witted servant. this trifling incident didn't exactly harmonize with his idea of the beautiful young heiress, playing upon all manner of instruments, and speaking half a dozen languages. "yes," repeated the driver, "they _do_ say as she gave t' fondy a good whopping; and damme if i don't admire her for it." "ay, ay!" answered captain prodder thoughtfully. "mr. mellish walks lame, don't he?" he asked, after a pause. "lame!" cried the driver; "lord bless your heart! not a bit of it. john mellish is as fine a young man as you'll meet in this riding. ay, and finer too. i ought to know. i've seen him walk into our house often enough, in the race week." the captain's heart sank strangely at this information. the man with whom he had heard his niece quarrelling was not her husband, then. the squabble had seemed natural enough to the uninitiated sailor while he looked at it in a matrimonial light; but seen from another aspect it struck sudden terror to his sturdy heart, and blanched the ruddy hues in his brown face. "who was he, then?" he thought; "who was it as my niece was talking to--after dark,--alone,--a mile off her own home--eh?" before he could seek for a solution to the unuttered question which agitated and alarmed him, the report of a pistol rang sharply through the wood, and found an echo under a distant hill. the horse pricked up his ears, and jibbed a few paces; the driver gave a low whistle. "i thought so," he said. "poachers! this side of the wood's chock full of game; and though squire mellish is allus threatenin' to prosecute 'em, folks know pretty well as he'll never do it." the broad-shouldered, strong-limbed sailor leaned against the turnstile, trembling in every limb. what was that which his niece said a quarter of an hour before, when the man had asked her whether she would like to shoot him? "leave your horse," he said, in a gasping voice; "tie him to the stile, and come with me. if--if--it's poachers, we'll--we'll catch em." the young man looped the reins across the turnstile. he had no very great terror of any inclination for flight latent in the gray horse from the reindeer. the two men ran in the wood; the captain running in the direction in which his sharp ears told him the shot had been fired. the moon was slowly rising in the tranquil heavens, but there was very little light yet in the wood. the captain stopped near a rustic summer-house falling into decay, and half buried amidst the tangled foliage that clustered about the mouldering thatch and the dilapidated woodwork. "it was hereabout the shot was fired," muttered the captain; "about a hundred yards due nor'ard of the stile. i could take my oath as it weren't far from this spot i'm standin' on." he looked about him in the dim light. he could see no one; but an army might have hidden amongst the trees that encircled the open patch of turf on which the summer-house had been built. he listened; with his hat off, and his big hand pressed tightly on his heart, as if to still its tumultuous beating. he listened, as eagerly as he had often listened, far out on a glassy sea, for the first faint breath of a rising wind; but he could hear nothing except the occasional croaking of the frogs in the pond near the summer-house. "i could have sworn it was about here the shot was fired," he repeated. "god grant as it _was_ poachers, after all! but it's given me a turn that's made me feel like some cockney lubber aboard a steamer betwixt bristol and cork. lord, what a blessed old fool i am!" muttered the captain, after walking slowly round the summer-house to convince himself that there was no one hidden in it. "one 'ud think i'd never heerd the sound of a ha'p'orth of powder before to-night." he put on his hat, and walked a few paces forward, still looking about cautiously, and still listening; but much easier in his mind than when first he had re-entered the wood. he stopped suddenly, arrested by a sound which has of itself, without any reference to its power of association, a mysterious and chilling influence upon the human heart. this sound was the howling of a dog,--the prolonged, monotonous howling of a dog. a cold sweat broke out upon the sailor's forehead. that sound, always one of terror to his superstitious nature, was doubly terrible to-night. "it means death!" he muttered, with a groan. "no dog ever howled like that except for death." he turned back, and looked about him. the moonlight glimmered faintly upon the broad patch of stagnant water near the summer-house, and upon its brink the captain saw two figures, black against the summer atmosphere: a prostrate figure, lying close to the edge of the water; and a large dog, with his head uplifted to the sky, howling piteously. * * * * * it was the bounden duty of poor john mellish, in his capacity of host, to sit at the head of his table, pass the claret-jug, and listen to colonel maddison's stories of the pig-sticking and the tiger-hunting, as long as the indian officer chose to talk for the amusement of his friend and his son-in-law. it was perhaps lucky that patient mr. lofthouse was well up in all the stories, and knew exactly which departments of each narrative were to be laughed at, and which were to be listened to with silent and awe-stricken attention; for john mellish made a very bad audience upon this occasion. he pushed the filberts towards the colonel at the very moment when "the tigress was crouching for a spring, upon the rising ground exactly above us, sir, and when, by jove! charley maddison felt himself at pretty close quarters with the enemy, sir, and never thought to stretch his legs under this mahogany, or any other man's, sir;" and he spoiled the officer's best joke by asking him for the claret in the middle of it. the tigers and the pigs were confusion and weariness of spirit to mr. mellish. he was yearning for the moment when, with any show of decency, he might make for the drawing-room, and find out what aurora was doing in the still summer twilight. when the door was opened and fresh wine brought in, he heard the rattling of the keys under mrs. lofthouse's manipulation, and rejoiced to think that his wife was seated quietly, perhaps, listening to those sonatas in c flat, which the rector's wife delighted to interpret. the lamps were brought in before colonel maddison's stories were finished; and when john's butler came to ask if the gentlemen would like coffee, the worthy indian officer said, "yes, by all means, and a cheroot with it. no smoking in the drawing-room, eh, mellish? petticoat government and window-curtains, i dare say. clara doesn't like my smoke at the rectory, and poor lofthouse writes his sermons in the summer-house; for he can't write without a weed, you know, and a volume of tillotson, or some of these fellows, to prig from--eh, george?" said the facetious gentleman, digging his son-in-law in the ribs with his fat old fingers, and knocking over two or three wine-glasses in his ponderous jocosity. how dreary it all seemed to john mellish to-night! he wondered how people felt who had no social mystery brooding upon their hearth; no domestic skeleton cowering in their homely cupboard. he looked at the rector's placid face with a pang of envy. there was no secret kept from _him_. there was no perpetual struggle rending _his_ heart; no dreadful doubts and fears that would not be quite lulled to rest; no vague terror incessant and unreasoning; no mute argument for ever going forward, with plaintiff's counsel and defendant's counsel continually pleading the same cause, and arriving at the same result. heaven take pity upon those who have to suffer such silent misery, such secret despair! we look at our neighbours' smiling faces, and say, in bitterness of spirit, that a is a lucky fellow, and that b can't be as much in debt as his friends say he is; that c and his pretty wife are the happiest couple we know; and to-morrow b is in the 'gazette,' and c is weeping over a dishonoured home, and a group of motherless children, who wonder what mamma has done that papa should be so sorry. the battles are very quiet, but they are for ever being fought. we keep the fox hidden under our cloak, but the teeth of the animal are none the less sharp, nor the pain less terrible to bear; a little more terrible, perhaps, for being endured silently. john mellish gave a long sigh of relief when the indian officer finished his third cheroot, and pronounced himself ready to join the ladies. the lamps in the drawing-room were lighted, and the curtains drawn before the open windows, when the three gentlemen entered. mrs. lofthouse was asleep upon one of the sofas, with a book of beauty lying open at her feet, and mrs. powell, pale and sleepless,--sleepless as trouble and sorrow, as jealousy and hate, as anything that is ravenous and unappeasable,--sat at her embroidery, working laborious monstrosities upon delicate cambric muslin. the colonel dropped heavily into a luxurious easy-chair, and quietly abandoned himself to repose. mr. lofthouse awoke his wife, and consulted her about the propriety of ordering the carriage. john mellish looked eagerly round the room. to him it was empty. the rector and his wife, the indian officer, and the ensign's widow, were only so many "phosphorescent spectralities," "phantasm captains;" in short, they were not aurora. "where's lolly?" he asked, looking from mrs. lofthouse to mrs. powell; "where's my wife?" "i really do not know," answered mrs. powell, with icy deliberation. "i've not been watching mrs. mellish." the poisoned darts glanced away from john's preoccupied breast. there was no room in his wounded heart for such a petty sting as this. "where's my wife?" he cried passionately; "you _must_ know where she is. she's not here. is she up-stairs? is she out of doors?" "to the best of my belief," replied the ensign's widow, with more than usual precision, "mrs. mellish is in some part of the grounds; she has been out of doors ever since we left the dining-room." the french clock upon the mantelpiece chimed the three-quarters after ten as she finished speaking: as if to give emphasis to her words and to remind mr. mellish how long his wife had been absent. he bit his lip fiercely, and strode towards one of the windows. he was going to look for his wife; but he stopped as he flung aside the window-curtain, arrested by mrs. powell's uplifted hand. "hark!" she said, "there is something the matter, i fear. did you hear that violent ringing at the hall-door?" mr. mellish let fall the curtain, and re-entered the room. "it's aurora, no doubt," he said; "they've shut her out again, i suppose. i beg, mrs. powell, that you will prevent this in future. really, ma'am, it is hard that my wife should be shut out of her own house." he might have said much more, but he stopped, pale and breathless, at the sound of a hubbub in the hall, and rushed to the room-door. he opened it and looked out, with mrs. powell and mr. and mrs. lofthouse crowding behind him, and looking over his shoulder. half a dozen servants were clustered round a roughly-dressed, seafaring-looking man, who, with his hat off and his disordered hair falling about his white face, was telling in broken sentences, scarcely intelligible for the speaker's agitation, that a murder had been done in the wood. chapter xii. the deed that had been done in the wood. the bare-headed seafaring man who stood in the centre of the hall was captain samuel prodder. the scared faces of the servants gathered round him told more plainly than his own words, which came hoarsely from his parched white lips, the nature of the tidings that he brought. john mellish strode across the hall, with an awful calmness on his white face; and parting the hustled group of servants with his strong arms, as a mighty wind rends asunder the storm-beaten waters, he placed himself face to face with captain prodder. "who are you?" he asked sternly: "and what has brought you here?" the indian officer had been aroused by the clamour, and had emerged, red and bristling with self-importance, to take his part in the business in hand. there are some pies in the making of which everybody yearns to have a finger. it is a great privilege, after some social convulsion has taken place, to be able to say, "i was there at the time the scene occurred, sir;" or, "i was standing as close to him when the blow was struck, ma'am, as i am to you at this moment." people are apt to take pride out of strange things. an elderly gentleman at doncaster, showing me his comfortably-furnished apartments, informed me, with evident satisfaction, that mr. william palmer had lodged in those very rooms. colonel maddison pushed aside his daughter and her husband, and struggled out into the hall. "come, my man," he said, echoing john's interrogatory, "let us hear what has brought you here at such a remarkably unseasonable hour." the sailor gave no direct answer to the question. he pointed with his thumb across his shoulder towards that dismal spot in the lonely wood, which was as present to his mental vision now as it had been to his bodily eyes a quarter of an hour before. "a man!" he gasped; "a man--lyin' close agen' the water's edge,--shot through the heart!" "dead?" asked some one, in an awful tone. the voices and the questions came from whom they would, in the awe-stricken terror of those first moments of overwhelming horror and surprise. no one knew who spoke except the speakers; perhaps even they were scarcely aware that they had spoken. "dead?" asked one of those eager listeners. "stone dead." "a man--shot dead in the wood!" cried john mellish; "what man?" "i beg your pardon, sir," said the grave old butler, laying his hand gently upon his master's shoulder: "i think, from what this person says, that the man who has been shot is--the new trainer, mr.--mr.----" "conyers!" exclaimed john. "conyers! who--who should shoot him?" the question was asked in a hoarse whisper. it was impossible for the speaker's face to grow whiter than it had been, from the moment in which he had opened the drawing-room door, and looked out into the hall; but some terrible change not to be translated into words came over it at the mention of the trainer's name. he stood motionless and silent, pushing his hair from his forehead, and staring wildly about him. the grave butler laid his warning hand for a second time upon his master's shoulder. "sir--mr. mellish," he said, eager to arouse the young man from the dull, stupid quiet into which he had fallen,--"excuse me, sir; but if my mistress should come in suddenly, and hear of this, she might be upset, perhaps. wouldn't it be better to----" "yes, yes!" cried john mellish, lifting his head suddenly, as if aroused into immediate action by the mere suggestion of his wife's name,--"yes! clear out of the hall, every one of you," he said, addressing the eager group of pale-faced servants. "and you, sir," he added to captain prodder, "come with me." he walked towards the dining-room door. the sailor followed him, still bare-headed, still with a semi-bewildered expression in his dusky face. "it aint the first time i've seen a man shot," he thought; "but it's the first time i've felt like this." before mr. mellish could reach the dining-room, before the servants could disperse and return to their proper quarters, one of the half-glass doors, which had been left ajar, was pushed open by the light touch of a woman's hand, and aurora mellish entered the hall. "ah, ha!" thought the ensign's widow, who looked on at the scene, snugly sheltered by mr. and mrs. lofthouse; "my lady is caught a second time in her evening rambles. what will he say to her goings-on to-night, i wonder?" aurora's manner presented a singular contrast to the terror and agitation of the assembly in the hall. a vivid crimson flush glowed in her cheeks and lit up her shining eyes. she carried her head high, in that queenly defiance which was her peculiar grace. she walked with a light step; she moved with easy, careless gestures. it seemed as if some burden which she had long carried had been suddenly removed from her. but at sight of the crowd in the hall she drew back with a look of alarm. "what has happened, john?" she cried; "what is wrong?" he lifted his hand with a warning gesture,--a gesture that plainly said: whatever trouble or sorrow there may be, let her be spared the knowledge of it; let her be sheltered from the pain. "yes, my darling," he answered quietly, taking her hand and leading her into the drawing-room; "there is something wrong. an accident has happened--in the wood yonder; but it concerns no one whom you care for. go, dear; i will tell you all, by-and-by. mrs. lofthouse, you will take care of my wife. lofthouse, come with me. allow me to shut the door, mrs. powell, if you please," he added to the ensign's widow, who did not seem inclined to leave her post upon the threshold of the drawing-room. "any curiosity which you may have about the business shall be satisfied in due time. for the present, you will oblige me by remaining with my wife and mrs. lofthouse." he paused, with his hand upon the drawing-room door, and looked at aurora. she was standing with her shawl upon her arm, watching her husband; and she advanced eagerly to him as she met his glance. "john," she exclaimed, "for mercy's sake, tell me the truth! _what_ is this accident?" he was silent for a moment, gazing at her eager face,--that face whose exquisite mobility expressed every thought; then, looking at her with a strange solemnity, he said gravely, "you were in the wood just now, aurora?" "i was," she answered; "i have only just left the grounds. a man passed me, running violently, about a quarter of an hour ago. i thought he was a poacher. was it to him the accident happened?" "no. there was a shot fired in the wood some time since. did you hear it?" "i did," replied mrs. mellish, looking at him with sudden terror and surprise. "i knew there were often poachers about near the road, and i was not alarmed by it. was there anything wrong in that shot? was any one hurt?" her eyes were fixed upon his face, dilated with that look of wondering terror. "yes; a--a man was hurt." aurora looked at him in silence,--looked at him with a stony face, whose only expression was an utter bewilderment. every other feeling seemed blotted away in that one sense of wonder. john mellish led her to a chair near mrs. lofthouse, who had been seated, with mrs. powell, at the other end of the room, close to the piano, and too far from the door to overhear the conversation which had just taken place between john and his wife. people do not talk very loudly in moments of intense agitation. they are liable to be deprived of some portion of their vocal power in the fearful crisis of terror or despair. a numbness seizes the organ of speech; a partial paralysis disables the ready tongue; the trembling lips refuse to do their duty. the soft pedal of the human instrument is down, and the tones are feeble and muffled, wandering into weak minor shrillness, or sinking to husky basses, beyond the ordinary compass of the speaker's voice. the stentorian accents in which claude melnotte bids adieu to mademoiselle deschapelles mingle very effectively with the brazen clamour of the marseillaise hymn; the sonorous tones in which mistress julia appeals to her hunchback guardian are pretty sure to bring down the approving thunder of the eighteenpenny gallery; but i doubt if the noisy energy of stage-grief is true to nature, however wise in art. i'm afraid that an actor who would play claude melnotte with a pre-raphaelite fidelity to nature would be an insufferable bore, and utterly inaudible beyond the third row in the pit. the artist must draw his own line between nature and art, and map out the extent of his own territory. if he finds that cream-coloured marble is more artistically beautiful than a rigid presentment of actual flesh and blood, let him stain his marble of that delicate hue until the end of time. if he can represent five acts of agony and despair without once turning his back to his audience or sitting down, let him do it. if he is conscientiously true to his _art_, let him choose for himself how true he shall be to nature. john mellish took his wife's hand in his own, and grasped it with a convulsive pressure that almost crushed the delicate fingers. "stay here, my dear, till i come back to you," he said. "now, lofthouse!" mr. lofthouse followed his friend into the hall, where colonel maddison had been making the best use of his time by questioning the merchant-captain. "come, gentlemen," said john, leading the way to the dining-room; "come, colonel, and you too, lofthouse; and you, sir," he added to the sailor, "step this way." the _dã©bris_ of the dessert still covered the table, but the men did not advance far into the room. john stood aside as the others went in, and entering the last, closed the door behind him, and stood with his back against it. "now," he said, turning sharply upon samuel prodder, "what is this business?" "i'm afraid it's sooicide--or--or murder," answered the sailor gravely. "i've told this good gentleman all about it." this good gentleman was colonel maddison, who seemed delighted to plunge into the conversation. "yes, my dear mellish," he said eagerly; "our friend, who describes himself as a sailor, and who had come down to see mrs. mellish, whose mother he knew when he was a boy, has told me all about this shocking affair. of course the body must be removed immediately, and the sooner your servants go out with lanterns for that purpose the better. decision, my dear mellish, decision and prompt action are indispensable in these sad catastrophes." "the body removed!" repeated john mellish; "the man is dead, then." "quite dead," answered the sailor; "he was dead when i found him, though it wasn't above seven minutes after the shot was fired. i left a man with him--a young man as drove me from doncaster--and a dog,--some big dog that watched beside him,--howling awful, and wouldn't leave him." "did you--see--the man's face?" "yes." "you are a stranger here," said john mellish; "it is useless, therefore, to ask you if you know who the man is." "no, sir," answered the sailor, "i didn't know him; but the young man from the reindeer----" "he recognized him?" "yes; he said he'd seen the man in doncaster only the night before; and that he was your--trainer, i think he called him." "yes, yes." "a lame chap." "come, gentlemen," said john, turning to his friends, "what are we to do?" "send the servants into the wood," replied colonel maddison, "and have the body carried----" "not here," cried john mellish, interrupting him,--"not here; it would kill my wife." "where did the man live?" asked the colonel. "in the north lodge. a cottage against the northern gates, which are never used now." "then let the body be taken there," answered the indian soldier; "let one of your people run for the parish constable; and you'd better send for the nearest surgeon immediately, though, from what our friend here says, a hundred of 'em couldn't do any good. it's an awful business! some poaching fray, i suppose." "yes, yes," answered john quickly; "no doubt." "was the man disliked in the neighbourhood?" asked colonel maddison; "had he made himself in any manner obnoxious?" "i should scarcely think it likely. he had only been with me about a week." the servants, who had dispersed at john's command, had not gone very far. they had lingered in corridors and lobbies, ready at a moment's notice to rush out into the hall again, and act their minor parts in the tragedy. they preferred doing anything to returning quietly to their own quarters. they came out eagerly at mr. mellish's summons. he gave his orders briefly, selecting two of the men, and sending the others about their business. "bring a couple of lanterns," he said; "and follow us across the park towards the pond in the wood." colonel maddison, mr. lofthouse, captain prodder, and john mellish, left the house together. the moon, still slowly rising in the broad, cloudless heavens, silvered the quiet lawn, and shimmered upon the tree-tops in the distance. the three gentlemen walked at a rapid pace, led by samuel prodder, who kept a little way in advance, and followed by a couple of grooms, who carried darkened stable-lanterns. as they entered the wood, they stopped involuntarily, arrested by that solemn sound which had first drawn the sailor's attention to the dreadful deed that had been done--the howling of the dog. it sounded in the distance like a low, feeble wail: a long monotonous death-cry. they followed that dismal indication of the spot to which they were to go. they made their way through the shadowy avenue, and emerged upon the silvery patch of turf and fern, where the rotting summer-house stood in its solitary decay. the two figures--the prostrate figure on the brink of the water, and the figure of the dog with uplifted head--still remained exactly as the sailor had left them three-quarters of an hour before. the young man from the reindeer stood aloof from these two figures, and advanced to meet the newcomers as they drew near. colonel maddison took a lantern from one of the men, and ran forward to the water's edge. the dog rose as he approached, and walked slowly round the prostrate form, sniffing at it, and whining piteously. john mellish called the animal away. "this man was in a sitting posture when he was shot," said colonel maddison, decisively. "he was sitting upon this bench." he pointed to a dilapidated rustic seat close to the margin of the stagnant water. "he was sitting upon this bench," repeated the colonel; "for he's fallen close against it, as you see. unless i'm very much mistaken, he was shot from behind." "you don't think he shot himself, then?" asked john mellish. "shot himself!" cried the colonel; "not a bit of it. but we'll soon settle that. if he shot himself, the pistol must be close against him. here, bring a loose plank from that summer-house, and lay the body upon it," added the indian officer, speaking to the servants. captain prodder and the two grooms selected the broadest plank they could find. it was moss-grown and rotten, and straggling wreaths of wild clematis were entwined about it; but it served the purpose for which it was wanted. they laid it upon the grass, and lifted the body of james conyers on to it, with his handsome face--ghastly and horrible in the fixed agony of sudden death--turned upward to the moonlit sky. it was wonderful how mechanically and quietly they went to work, promptly and silently obeying the colonel's orders. john mellish and mr. lofthouse searched the slippery grass upon the bank, and groped amongst the fringe of fern, without result. there was no weapon to be found anywhere within a considerable radius of the body. while they were searching in every direction for this missing link in the mystery of the man's death, the parish-constable arrived with the servant who had been sent to summon him. he had very little to say for himself, except that he supposed it was poachers as had done it; and that he also supposed all particklars would come out at the inquest. he was a simple rural functionary, accustomed to petty dealings with refractory tramps, contumacious poachers, and impounded cattle, and was scarcely master of the situation in any great emergency. mr. prodder and the servants lifted the plank upon which the body lay, and struck into the long avenue leading northward, walking a little ahead of the three gentlemen and the constable. the young man from the reindeer returned to look after his horse, and to drive round to the north lodge, where he was to meet mr. prodder. all had been done so quietly that the knowledge of the catastrophe had not passed beyond the domains of mellish park. in the summer evening stillness james conyers was carried back to the chamber from whose narrow window he had looked out upon the beautiful world, weary of its beauty, only a few hours before. the purposeless life was suddenly closed. the careless wanderer's journey had come to an unthought-of end. what a melancholy record, what a meaningless and unfinished page! nature, blindly bountiful to the children whom she has yet to know, had bestowed her richest gifts upon this man. she had created a splendid image, and had chosen a soul at random, ignorantly enshrining it in her most perfectly fashioned clay. of all who read the story of this man's death in the following sunday's newspapers, there was not one who shed a tear for him; there was not one who could say, "that man once stepped out of his way to do me a kindness; and may the lord have mercy upon his soul!" shall i be sentimental, then, because he is dead, and regret that he was not spared a little longer, and allowed a day of grace in which he might repent? had he lived for ever, i do not think he would have lived long enough to become that which it was not in his nature to be. may god, in his infinite compassion, have pity upon the souls which he has himself created; and where he has withheld the light, may he excuse the darkness! the phrenologists who examined the head of william palmer declared that he was so utterly deficient in moral perception, so entirely devoid of conscientious restraint, that he could not help being what he was. heaven keep us from too much credence in that horrible fatalism! is a man's destiny here and hereafter to depend upon bulbous projections scarcely perceptible to uneducated fingers, and good and evil propensities which can be measured by the compass or weighed in the scale? the dismal _cortã¨ge_ slowly made its way under the silver moonlight, the trembling leaves making a murmuring music in the faint summer air, the pale glowworms shining here and there amid the tangled verdure. the bearers of the dead walked with a slow but steady tramp in advance of the rest. all walked in silence. what should they say? in the presence of death's awful mystery, life made a pause. there was a brief interval in the hard business of existence; a hushed and solemn break in the working of life's machinery. "there'll be an inquest," thought mr. prodder, "and i shall have to give evidence. i wonder what questions they'll ask me?" he did not think this once, but perpetually; dwelling with a half-stupid persistence upon the thought of that inquisition which must most infallibly be made, and those questions that might be asked. the honest sailor's simple mind was cast astray in the utter bewilderment of this night's mysterious horror. the story of life was changed. he had come to play his humble part in some sweet domestic drama of love and confidence, and he found himself involved in a tragedy; a horrible mystery of hatred, secrecy, and murder; a dreadful maze, from whose obscurity he saw no hope of issue. a beacon-light glimmered in the lower window of the cottage by the north gates,--a feeble ray, that glittered like a gem from out a bower of honeysuckle and clematis. the little garden-gate was closed, but it only fastened with a latch. the bearers of the body paused before entering the garden, and the constable stepped aside to speak to mr. mellish. "is there anybody lives in the cottage?" he asked. "yes," answered john; "the trainer employed an old hanger-on of my own,--a half-witted fellow called hargraves." "it's him as burns the light in there, most likely, then," said the constable. "i'll go in and speak to him first. do you wait here till i come out again," he added, turning to the men who carried the body. the lodge-door was on the latch. the constable opened it softly, and went in. a rushlight was burning upon the table, the candlestick placed in a basin of water. a bottle half filled with brandy, and a tumbler, stood near the light; but the room was empty. the constable took his shoes off, and crept up the little staircase. the upper floor of the lodge consisted of two rooms,--one, sufficiently large and comfortable, looking towards the stable-gates; the other, smaller and darker, looked out upon a patch of kitchen-garden and on the fence which separated mr. mellish's estate from the high road. the larger chamber was empty; but the door of the smaller was ajar; and the constable, pausing to listen at that half-open door, heard the regular breathing of a heavy sleeper. he knocked sharply upon the panel. "who's there?" asked the person within, starting up from a truckle bedstead. "is't thou, muster conyers?" "no," answered the constable. "it's me, william dork, of little meslingham. come down-stairs; i want to speak to you." "is there aught wrong?" "yes." "poachers?" "that's as may be," answered mr. dork. "come down-stairs, will you?" mr. hargraves muttered something to the effect that he would make his appearance as soon as he could find sundry portions of his rather fragmentary toilet. the constable looked into the room, and watched the "softy" groping for his garments in the moonlight. three minutes afterwards stephen hargraves slowly shambled down the angular wooden stairs, which wound in a corkscrew fashion, affected by the builders of small dwellings, from the upper to the lower floor. "now," said mr. dork, planting the "softy" opposite to him, with the feeble rays of the rushlight upon his sickly face,--"now then, i want you to answer me a question. at what time did your master leave the house?" "at half-past seven o'clock," answered the "softy," in his whispering voice; "she was stroikin the half-hour as he went out." he pointed to a small dutch clock in a corner of the room. his countrymen always speak of a clock as "she." "oh, he went out at half-past seven o'clock, did he?" said the constable; "and you haven't seen him since, i suppose?" "no. he told me he should be late, and i wasn't to sit oop for him. he swore at me last night for sitting oop for him. but is there aught wrong?" asked the "softy." mr. dork did not condescend to reply to this question. he walked straight to the door, opened it, and beckoned to those who stood without in the summer moonlight, patiently waiting for his summons. "you may bring him in," he said. they carried their ghastly burden into the pleasant rustic chamber--the chamber in which mr. james conyers had sat smoking and drinking a few hours before. mr. morton, the surgeon from meslingham, the village nearest to the park-gates, arrived as the body was being carried in, and ordered a temporary couch of mattresses to be spread upon a couple of tables placed together, in the lower room, for the reception of the trainer's corpse. john mellish, samuel prodder, and mr. lofthouse remained outside the cottage. colonel maddison, the servants, the constable, and the doctor, were all clustered round the corpse. "he has been dead about an hour and a quarter," said the doctor, after a brief inspection of the body. "he has been shot in the back; the bullet has not penetrated the heart, for in that case there would have been no hã¦morrhage. he has respired after receiving the shot; but death must have been almost instantaneous." before making his examination, the surgeon had assisted mr. dork, the constable, to draw off the coat and waistcoat of the deceased. the bosom of the waistcoat was saturated with the blood that had flowed from the parted lips of the dead man. it was mr. dork's business to examine these garments, in the hope of finding some shred of evidence which might become a clue to the secret of the trainer's death. he turned out the pockets of the shooting coat, and of the waistcoat; one of these packets contained a handful of halfpence, a couple of shillings, a fourpenny-piece, and a rusty watch-key; another held a little parcel of tobacco wrapped in an old betting-list, and a broken meerschaum pipe, black and greasy with the essential oil of bygone shag and bird's-eye. in one of the waistcoat pockets mr. dork found the dead man's silver watch, with a blood-stained ribbon and a worthless gilt seal. amongst all these things there was nothing calculated to throw any light upon the mystery. colonel maddison shrugged his shoulders as the constable emptied the paltry contents of the trainer's pockets on to a little dresser at one end of the room. "there's nothing here that makes the business any clearer," he said; "but to my mind it's plain enough. the man was new here, and he brought new ways with him from his last situation. the poachers and vagabonds have been used to have it all their own way about mellish park, and they didn't like this poor fellow's interference. he wanted to play the tyrant, i dare say, and made himself obnoxious to some of the worst of the lot; and he's caught it hot, poor chap!--that's all i've got to say." colonel maddison, with the recollection of a refractory punjaub strong upon him, had no very great reverence for the mysterious spark that lights the human temple. if a man made himself obnoxious to other men, other men were very likely to kill him. this was the soldier's simple theory; and, having delivered himself of his opinion respecting the trainer's death, he emerged from the cottage, and was ready to go home with john mellish, and drink another bottle of that celebrated tawny port which had been laid in by his host's father twenty years before. the constable stood close against a candle, that had been hastily lighted and thrust unceremoniously into a disused blacking-bottle, with the waistcoat still in his hands. he was turning the blood-stained garment inside out; for while emptying the pockets he had felt a thick substance that seemed like a folded paper, but the whereabouts of which he had not been able to discover. he uttered a suppressed exclamation of surprise presently; for he found the solution of this difficulty. the paper was sewn between the inner lining and the outer material of the waistcoat. he discovered this by examining the seam, a part of which was sewn with coarse stitches and a thread of a different colour to the rest. he ripped open this part of the seam, and drew out the paper, which was so much bloodstained as to be undecipherable to mr. dork's rather obtuse vision. "i'll say naught about it, and keep it to show to th' coroner," he thought; "i'll lay he'll make something out of it." the constable folded the document and secured it in a leathern pocket-book, a bulky receptacle, the very aspect of which was wont to strike terror to rustic defaulters. "i'll show it to th' coroner," he thought; "and if aught particklar comes out, i may get something for my trouble." the village surgeon having done his duty, prepared to leave the crowded little room, where the gaping servants still lingered, as if loth to tear themselves away from the ghastly figure of the dead man, over which mr. morton had spread a patchwork coverlet, taken from the bed in the chamber above. the "softy" had looked on quietly enough at the dismal scene, watching the faces of the small assembly, and glancing furtively from one to another beneath the shadow of his bushy red eyebrows. his haggard face, always of a sickly white, seemed to-night no more colourless than usual. his slow whispering tones were not more suppressed than they always were. if he had a hang-dog manner and a furtive glance, the manner and the glance were both common to him. no one looked at him; no one heeded him. after the first question as to the hour at which the trainer left the lodge had been asked and answered, no one spoke to him. if he got in anybody's way, he was pushed aside; if he said anything, nobody listened to him. the dead man was the sole monarch of that dismal scene. it was to him they looked with awe-stricken glances; it was of him they spoke in subdued whispers. all their questions, their suggestions, their conjectures, were about him, and him alone. there is this to be observed in the physiology of every murder,--that before the coroner's inquest the sole object of public curiosity is the murdered man; while immediately after that judicial investigation the tide of feeling turns; the dead man is buried and forgotten, and the suspected murderer becomes the hero of men's morbid imaginations. john mellish looked in at the door of the cottage to ask a few questions. "have you found anything, dork?" he asked. "nothing particklar, sir." "nothing that throws any light upon this business?" "no, sir." "you are going home, then, i suppose?" "yes, sir, i must be going back now; if you'll leave some one here to watch----" "yes, yes," said john; "one of the servants shall stay." "very well, then, sir; i'll just take the names of the witnesses that'll be examined at the inquest, and i'll go over and see the coroner early to-morrow morning." "the witnesses; ah, to be sure. who will you want?" mr. dork hesitated for a moment, rubbing the bristles upon his chin. "well, there's this man here, hargraves, i think you called him," he said presently; "we shall want him; for it seems he was the last that saw the deceased alive, leastways as i can hear on yet; then we shall want the gentleman as found the body, and the young man as was with him when he heard the shot: the gentleman as found the body is the most particklar of all, and i'll speak to him at once." john mellish turned round, fully expecting to see mr. prodder at his elbow, where he had been some time before. john had a perfect recollection of seeing the loosely-clad seafaring figure standing behind him in the moonlight; but, in the terrible confusion of his mind, he could not remember exactly _when_ it was that he had last seen the sailor. it might have been only five minutes before; it might have been a quarter of an hour. john's ideas of time were annihilated by the horror of the catastrophe which had marked this night with the red brand of murder. it seemed to him as if he had been standing for hours in the little cottage-garden, with reginald lofthouse by his side, listening to the low hum of the voices in the crowded room, and waiting to see the end of the dreary business. mr. dork looked about him in the moonlight, entirely bewildered by the disappearance of samuel prodder. "why, where on earth has he gone?" exclaimed the constable. "we _must_ have him before the coroner. what'll mr. hayward say to me for letting him slip through my fingers?" "the man was here a quarter of an hour ago, so he can't be very far off," suggested mr. lofthouse. "does anybody know who he is?" no; nobody knew anything about him. he had appeared as mysteriously as if he had risen from the earth, to bring terror and confusion upon it with the evil tidings which he bore. stay; some one suddenly remembered that he had been accompanied by bill jarvis, the young man from the reindeer, and that he had ordered the young man to drive his trap to the north gates, and wait for him there. the constable ran to the gates upon receiving this information; but there was no vestige of the horse and gig, or of the young man. samuel prodder had evidently taken advantage of the confusion, and had driven off in the gig under cover of the general bewilderment. "i'll tell you what i'll do, sir," said william dork, addressing mr. mellish. "if you'll lend me a horse and trap, i'll drive into doncaster, and see if this man's to be found at the reindeer. we _must_ have him for a witness." john mellish assented to this arrangement. he left one of the grooms to keep watch in the death chamber, in company with stephen hargraves the "softy;" and, after bidding the surgeon good night, walked slowly homewards with his friends. the church clock was striking twelve as the three gentlemen left the wood, and passed through the little iron gateway on to the lawn. "we had better not tell the ladies more than we are obliged to tell them about this business," said john mellish, as they approached the house, where the lights were still burning in the hall and drawing-room; "we shall only agitate them by letting them know the worst." "to be sure, to be sure, my boy," answered the colonel. "my poor little maggie always cries if she hears of anything of this kind; and lofthouse is almost as big a baby," added the soldier, glancing rather contemptuously at his son-in-law, who had not spoken once during that slow homeward walk. john mellish thought very little of the strange disappearance of captain prodder. the man had objected to be summoned as a witness, perhaps, and had gone. it was only natural. he did not even know his name; he only knew him as the mouthpiece of evil tidings, which had shaken him to the very soul. that this man conyers--this man of all others, this man towards whom he had conceived a deeply-rooted aversion, an unspoken horror--should have perished mysteriously by an unknown hand, was an event so strange and appalling as to deprive him for a time of all power of thought, all capability of reasoning. who had killed this man,--this penniless good-for-nothing trainer? who could have had any motive for such a deed? who----? the cold sweat broke out upon his brow in the anguish of the thought. who had done this deed? it was not the work of any poacher. no. it was very well for colonel maddison, in his ignorance of antecedent facts, to account for it in that manner; but john mellish knew that he was wrong. james conyers had only been at the park a week. he had neither time nor opportunity for making himself obnoxious; and, beyond that, he was not the man to make himself obnoxious. he was a selfish, indolent rascal, who only loved his own ease, and who would have allowed the young partridges to be wired under his very nose. who, then, had done this deed? there was only one person who had any motive for wishing to be rid of this man. one person who, made desperate by some great despair, enmeshed perhaps by some net hellishly contrived by a villain, hopeless of any means of extrication, in a moment of madness, might have--no! in the face of every evidence that earth could offer,--against reason, against hearing, eyesight, judgment, and memory,--he would say, as he said now, _no!_ she was innocent! she was innocent! she had looked in her husband's face, the clear light had shone from her luminous eyes, a stream of electric radiance penetrating straight to his heart,--and he had trusted her. "i'll trust her at the worst," he thought. "if all living creatures upon this wide earth joined their voices in one great cry of upbraiding, i'd stand by her to the very end, and defy them." aurora and mrs. lofthouse had fallen asleep upon opposite sofas; mrs. powell was walking softly up and down the long drawing-room, waiting and watching,--waiting for a fuller knowledge of this ruin which had come upon her employer's household. mrs. mellish sprang up suddenly at the sound of her husband's step as he entered the drawing-room. "oh, john!" she cried, running to him and laying her hands upon his broad shoulders, "thank heaven you are come back! now tell me all! tell me all, john! i am prepared to hear anything, no matter what. this is no ordinary accident. the man who was hurt----" her eyes dilated as she looked at him, with a glance of intelligence that plainly said, "i can guess what has happened." "the man was very seriously hurt, lolly," her husband answered quietly. "what man?" "the trainer recommended to me by john pastern." she looked at him for a few moments in silence. "is he dead?" she asked, after that brief pause. "he is." her head sank forward upon her breast, and she walked away, quietly returning to the sofa from which she had arisen. "i am very sorry for him," she said; "he was not a good man. i am sorry he was not allowed time to repent of his wickedness." "you knew him, then?" asked mrs. lofthouse, who had expressed unbounded consternation at the trainer's death. "yes; he was in my father's service some years ago." mr. lofthouse's carriage had been waiting ever since eleven o'clock, and the rector's wife was only too glad to bid her friends good-night, and to drive away from mellish park and its fatal associations; so, though colonel maddison would have preferred stopping to smoke another cheroot while he discussed the business with john mellish, he was fain to submit to feminine authority, and take his seat by his daughter's side in the comfortable landau, which was an open or a close carriage as the convenience of its proprietor dictated. the vehicle rolled away upon the smooth carriage-drive; the servants closed the hall-doors, and lingered about, whispering to each other, in little groups in the corridors and on the staircases, waiting until their master and mistress should have retired for the night. it was difficult to think that the business of life was to go on just the same though a murder had been done upon the outskirts of the park, and even the housekeeper, a severe matron at ordinary times, yielded to the common influence, and forgot to drive the maids to their dormitories in the gabled roof. all was very quiet in the drawing-room where the visitors had left their host and hostess to hug those ugly skeletons which are put away in the presence of company. john mellish walked slowly up and down the room. aurora sat staring vacantly at the guttering wax candles in the old-fashioned silver branches; and mrs. powell, with her embroidery in full working order, threaded her needles and snipped away the fragments of her delicate cotton as carefully as if there had been no such thing as crime or trouble in the world, and no higher purpose in life than the achievement of elaborate devices upon french cambric. she paused now and then to utter some polite commonplace. she regretted such an unpleasant catastrophe; she lamented the disagreeable circumstances of the trainer's death; indeed, she in a manner inferred that mr. conyers had shown himself wanting in good taste and respect for his employer by the mode of his death; but the point to which she recurred most frequently was the fact of aurora's presence in the grounds at the time of the murder. "i so much regret that you should have been out of doors at the time, my dear mrs. mellish," she said; "and, as i should imagine from the direction which you took on leaving the house, actually near the place where the unfortunate person met his death. it will be so unpleasant for you to have to appear at the inquest." "appear at the inquest!" cried john mellish, stopping suddenly, and turning fiercely upon the placid speaker. "who says that my wife will have to appear at the inquest?" "i merely imagined it probable that----" "then you'd no business to imagine it, ma'am," retorted mr. mellish, with no very great show of politeness. "my wife will not appear. who should ask her to do so? who should wish her to do so? what has she to do with to-night's business? or what does she know of it more than you or i, or any one else in this house?" mrs. powell shrugged her shoulders. "i thought that, from mrs. mellish's previous knowledge of this unfortunate person, she might be able to throw some light upon his habits and associations," she suggested mildly. "previous knowledge!" roared john. "what knowledge should mrs. mellish have of her father's grooms? what interest should she take in their habits or associations?" "stop," said aurora, rising and laying her hand lightly on her husband's shoulder. "my dear, impetuous john, why do you put yourself into a passion about this business? if they choose to call me as a witness, i will tell all i know about this man's death; which is nothing but that i heard a shot fired while i was in the grounds." she was very pale; but she spoke with a quiet determination, a calm resolute defiance of the worst that fate could reserve for her. "i will tell anything that is necessary to tell," she said; "i care very little what." with her hand still upon her husband's shoulder, she rested her head on his breast, like some weary child nestling in its only safe shelter. mrs. powell rose, and gathered together her embroidery in a pretty, lady-like receptacle of fragile wicker-work. she glided to the door, selected her candlestick, and then paused on the threshold to bid mr. and mrs. mellish good night. "i am sure you must need rest after this terrible affair," she simpered; "so i will take the initiative. it is nearly one o'clock. _good_ night." if she had lived in the thane of cawdor's family, she would have wished macbeth and his wife a good night's rest after duncan's murder; and would have hoped they would sleep well; she would have curtsied and simpered amidst the tolling of alarm-bells, the clashing of vengeful swords, and the blood-bedabbled visages of the drunken grooms. it must have been the scottish queen's _companion_ who watched with the truckling physician, and played the spy upon her mistress's remorseful wanderings, and told how it was the conscience-stricken lady's habit to do thus and thus; no one but a genteel mercenary would have been so sleepless in the dead hours of the night, lying in wait for the revelation of horrible secrets, the muttered clues to deadly mysteries. "thank god, she's gone at last!" cried john mellish, as the door closed very softly and very slowly upon mrs. powell. "i hate that woman, lolly." heaven knows i have never called john mellish a hero; i have never set him up as a model of manly perfection or infallible virtue; and if he is not faultless, if he has those flaws and blemishes which seem a constituent part of our imperfect clay, i make no apology for him; but trust him to the tender mercies of those who, not being _quite_ perfect themselves, will, i am sure, be merciful to him. he hated those who hated his wife, or did her any wrong, however small. he loved those who loved her. in the great power of his wide affection, all self-esteem was annihilated. to love her was to love him; to serve her was to do him treble service; to praise her was to make him vainer than the vainest school-girl. he freely took upon his shoulders every debt that she owed, whether of love or of hate; and he was ready to pay either species of account to the uttermost farthing, and with no mean interest upon the sum total. "i hate that woman, lolly," he repeated; "and i sha'n't be able to stand her much longer." aurora did not answer him. she was silent for some moments, and when she did speak, it was evident that mrs. powell was very far away from her thoughts. "my poor john!" she said, in a low soft voice, whose melancholy tenderness went straight to her husband's heart; "my dear, how happy we were together for a little time! how very happy we were, my poor boy!" "always, lolly," he answered,--"always, my darling." "no, no, no!" said aurora suddenly; "only for a little while. what a horrible fatality has pursued us! what a frightful curse has clung to me! the curse of disobedience, john; the curse of heaven upon my disobedience. to think that this man should have been sent here, and that he----" she stopped, shivering violently, and clinging to the faithful breast that sheltered her. john mellish quietly led her to her dressing-room, and placed her in the care of her maid. "your mistress has been very much agitated by this night's business," he said to the girl; "keep her as quiet as you possibly can." mrs. mellish's bedroom, a comfortable and roomy apartment, with a low ceiling and deep bay windows, opened into a morning-room, in which it was john's habit to read the newspapers and sporting periodicals, while his wife wrote letters, drew pencil sketches of dogs and horses, or played with her favourite bow-wow. they had been very childish and idle and happy in this pretty chintz-hung chamber; and going into it to-night in utter desolation of heart, mr. mellish felt his sorrows all the more bitterly for the remembrance of those bygone joys. the shaded lamp was lighted on the morocco-covered writing-table, and glimmered softly on the picture-frames, caressing the pretty modern paintings, the simple, domestic-story pictures which adorned the subdued gray walls. this wing of the old house had been refurnished for aurora, and there was not a chair or a table in the room that had not been chosen by john mellish with a special view to the comfort and the pleasure of his wife. the upholsterer had found him a liberal employer, the painter and the sculptor a noble patron. he had walked about the royal academy with a catalogue and a pencil in his hand, choosing all the "pretty" pictures for the ornamentation of his wife's rooms. a lady in a scarlet riding-habit and three-cornered beaver hat, a white pony, and a pack of greyhounds, a bit of stone terrace and sloping turf, a flower-bed, and a fountain, made poor john's idea of a pretty picture; and he had half a dozen variations of such familiar subjects in his spacious mansion. he sat down to-night, and looked hopelessly round the pleasant chamber, wandering whether aurora and he would ever be happy again: wondering if this dark, mysterious, storm-threatening cloud would ever pass from the horizon of his life, and leave the future bright and clear. "i have not been good enough," he thought; "i have intoxicated myself with my happiness, and have made no return for it. what am i that i should have won the woman i love for my wife, while other men are laying down the best desires of their hearts a willing sacrifice, and going out to fight the battle for their fellow-men? what an indolent good-for-nothing wretch i have been! how blind, how ungrateful, how undeserving!" john mellish buried his face in his broad hands, and repented of the carelessly happy life which he had led for one-and-thirty thoughtless years. he had been awakened from his unthinking bliss by a thunder-clap, that had shattered the fairy castle of his happiness, and laid it level with the ground; and in his simple faith he looked into his own life for the cause of the ruin which had overtaken him. yes, it must be so; he had not deserved his happiness, he had not earned his good fortune. have you ever thought of this, ye simple country squires, who give blankets and beef to your poor neighbours in the cruel winter-time, who are good and gentle masters, faithful husbands, and tender fathers, and who lounge away your easy lives in the pleasant places of this beautiful earth? have you ever thought that, when all our good deeds have been gathered together, and set in the balance, the sum of them will be very small when set against the benefits you have received? it will be a very small percentage which you will yield your master for the ten talents intrusted to your care. remember john howard, fever-stricken and dying; mrs. fry labouring in criminal prisons; florence nightingale in the bare hospital chambers, in the close and noxious atmosphere, amongst the dead and the dying. these are the people who return cent. per cent. for the gifts intrusted to them. these are the saints whose good deeds shine amongst the stars for ever and ever; these are the indefatigable workers who, when the toil and turmoil of the day is done, hear the master's voice in the still even-time; welcoming them to his rest. john mellish, looking back at his life, humbly acknowledged that it had been a comparatively useless one. he had distributed happiness to the people who had come into his way; but he had never gone out of his way to make people happy. i dare say that dives was a liberal master to his own servants, although he did not trouble himself to look after the beggar who sat at his gates. the israelite who sought instruction from the lips of inspiration was willing to do his duty to his neighbour, but had yet to learn the broad signification of that familiar epithet; and poor john, like the rich young man, was ready to serve his master faithfully, but had yet to learn the manner of his service. "if i could save _her_ from the shadow of sorrow or disgrace, i would start to-morrow barefoot on a pilgrimage to jerusalem," he thought. "what is there that i would not do for her? what sacrifice would seem too great? what burden too heavy to bear?" end of vol. ii. [illustration: cover art] [frontispiece: justine sherrod.] [illustration: title page] the sherrods by george barr mccutcheon author of "graustark", "castle craneycrow", etc. with illustrations by c. d. williams grosset & dunlap new york copyright, 1903, by dodd, mead and company _entered at stationers' hall_ _published september, 1903_ hill and leonard new york city, u. s. a. contents chapter i. the soft summer night ii. "let not man put asunder" iii. jud and justine iv. mrs. hardesty's charity v. when the clash came vi. the girl in gray vii. leaving paradise viii. the first was a criminal ix. the encounter with crawley x. the clothes and the man xi. when the wind blows xii. the good of evil xiii. the finding of celeste xiv. "my truest comrade" xv. one heart for two xvi. the fall of the weak xvii. at sea xviii. 'gene crawley's sermon xix. the pure and the poor xx. the sociable xxi. the coming in the night xxii. the first-born xxiii. the tale of tears xxiv. the night out xxv. the letter to crawley xxvi. two women and a babe xxvii. the end of it all xxviii. hearts xxix. crawley's legacy list of illustrations justine sherrod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _frontispiece_ "in a second crawley was rolling up his sleeves" "you must let me pay you for it" "his eyes took in the picture" "'you're a liar--you're all liars'" "'it is not true,' half shrieked celeste" the sherrods chapter i. the soft summer night. through the soft summer night came the sounds of the silence that is heard only when nature sleeps, imperceptible except as one feels it behind the breath he draws or perhaps realizes it in the touch of an unexpected branch or flower. the stillness of a silence that is not silent; a stillness so dead that the croaking of frogs, the chirping of crickets, the barking of dogs, the hooting of owls, the rustling of leaves are not heard, although the air is heavy with those voices of the night--the stillness of a night in the country. all human activity apparently at an end, all sign of life lost in somber shadows. the ceaseless croaking, the chirping, the hooting, the rustling themselves make up this unspeakable silence--this sweet, unconscious solitude. a country lane, dark and gloomy, awaited the moon from the clouded east. lighted only here and there by the twinkling windows in roadside homes, it lay asleep in its bed of dust. far off it straggled into a village, but out there in the country it was lost to the world with the setting of the sun. the faint glow from the window of a cottage poured its feeble but willing self into the night as if seeking to dispel the gloom, dimly conscious that its efforts were unappreciated and undesired. down at the rickety front gate, cloaked in blackness, stood two persons. darkness could not hide the world from them, for the whole world dwelt within the confines of a love-lit garden gate. for them there was no sound of life except their tender voices, no evidence that a world existed beyond the posts between which they stood, his arm about her, her head upon his breast. they spoke softly in the silence about them. "and to-morrow night at this time you will be mine--all mine," he murmured. she looked again into his face, indistinct in the night. "to-morrow night! oh, jud, it does not seem possible. we are both so young and so--so--" "so foolish!" he smiled. "so poor," she finished plaintively. "but, justine, you don't feel afraid to marry me because i am poor, do you?" he asked. "do you think i have been poor only to be afraid of it? we love each other, dear, and we are rich. to-morrow night i shall be the richest girl in the world," she sighed tremulously. "to-morrow night," he whispered. his arm tightened about her, his head dropped until his lips met hers and clung to them until the world was forgotten. far away in the night sounded the steady beat of a galloping horse's hoofs. louder and nearer grew the pounding on the dry roadway until at last the rollicking whistle of the rider could be heard. standing in the gateway, the silent lovers, their happy young hearts beating as one, listened dreamily to the approach. "he has been in the village," said she, at length breaking the silence that had followed their passionate kiss. her slender body trembled slightly in his arms. "and he is going home drunk, as usual," added the youth sententiously. "has he annoyed you lately?" "we must pay no attention to what he says or does," she answered evasively. "then he has said or done something?" "he came to the schoolhouse yesterday morning, dear--just for a moment--and he was not so very rude," she pleaded hurriedly. "what did he say to you; what did he want?" persisted her lover. "oh, nothing--nothing, jud. just the same old thing. he wanted me to give you up and--and--" she hesitated. "and wait for him, eh? if he bothers you again i'll kill him. you're mine, and he knows it, and he's got to let you alone." "but it will all be over to-morrow night, dear. i'll be yours, and he'll have to give up. he's crazy now, and you must not mind what he does. when i'm your wife he'll quit--maybe he'll go away. i've told him i don't love him. don't you see, jud, he has hope now, because i am not married. just as soon as the wedding's over he'll see that it's no use and--and he'll let us alone." "the drunken hound! the idea of him daring to love you! justine, i could kill him!" the horseman swept past the gate, a swift black shadow amid the thunder of hoof-beats, and the lovers drew closer together. just as he roared past them his whistling ceased and a strong, bold voice shouted: "hello, justine!" he was saluting, in drunken gallantry, the girl whom he believed to be asleep beneath a counterpane near some black window in the little house. the horse shied, his whip swished through the air and cut across the animal's flank; the ugly snort of the beast mingled with oaths from the rider. the girl shuddered and placed her hands over her ears; her companion set his teeth and muttered: "the dog! i wish that horse would throw him and break his neck! he's not fit to live. justine, if there is a man who will go to hell when he dies, that man is 'gene crawley. and he wants you--the hound! the sweetest, gentlest, purest girl in the world! he wants you!" they forgot the rider, and the clatter of the horse's hoofs died away in the night. the lovers turned slowly toward the house. at the door he stooped and kissed her. "the last night we are to part like this," he whispered. she laid both hands upon his face. "let us pray to-night, dear, that we may be always as happy as we now are," she said softly. she opened the door, and the two stood for a moment in the fair light from the cottage lamp. from above him on the door-sill, she laid her fingers in his curly brown hair, and said, half timidly, half joyfully: "the last night we shall say good-bye like this." then she kissed him suddenly and was gone, blushing and trembling. he looked at the closed door for an instant, and then dropped to his knees and kissed the step on which she had stood. chapter ii. "let not man put asunder." the next night they were married. in the little cottage there were lights and the revelry known only in country nuptials. the doors and windows were open, and scores of young people in their best clothes flitted in and out, their merry voices ringing with excitement, their faces glowing with pleasure, their eyes sparkling with the mischief peculiar to occasions of the kind. there were the congratulations and the teasings; the timid jests and the coarse ones; the cynical bits of advice from lofty experts; the blushes of prospective brides; the red-faced denials of guilty beaux; the smiles, the winks, and the songs; the feasting and the farewells. "that boy," jud sherrod, and "cap" van's daughter, justine, were to be married. the community would have liked to be glad. everybody had "allowed" they would be married some day. now that the day had come, amid the rejoicing there were doubts, such as this: "they's a mighty nice-appearin' couple, but dinged 'f i see how they're goin' to git along. jud ain't got no more bizness workin' on a farm than a hog hez in a telegraft office. course, his pap was a farmer, but jud's been off to seminary. he don't give a dodgast fer the farm, nohow, an' i perdict that she'll haf to keep on teachin' school fer a livin'. course, that little land o' hern might keep 'em goin', but i bet a barrel o' cider 'at jud won't be wuth a bushel o' corn-husks at runnin' it. he's a dern nice boy, though, an' i'd hate like sam patch to see a morgidge put on the place. what she'd orter done wuz to married some big cuss like link overshine er luther hitchcock. they'd 'a' made somethin' out'n that little eighty up yander, an' she'd never need to worry. dinged if she ain't put' nigh the purtiest girl i ever see. looks jest like her ma. 'member her? don't see what she ever could see in jud sherrod. he cain't do a dasted thing but draw picters. his pap had orter walloped him good an' made him chop wood er somethin', 'stead o' lettin' him go on the way he did. they do say he kin sketch things powerful fine. he tuck off a picter uv sim brookses' sucklin' calves that was a daisy, i've hearn. but that ain't farmin' by a dern sight." even jud and justine had looked forward to the great day with anxious minds. both realized the importance of the step they were to take, for they were possessed of a judgment and a keenness uncommon in young and ardent lovers. justine, little more than a girl in years, knew that jud was not and never could be a farmer; it was not in him. he knew it as well as she, though he was not indolent; he was far from that. he was ambitious and he was an indefatigable toiler--in art, not of the soil. he was a born artist. by force of circumstances he was a farmer. the tan on his hands and face, the hardness in his palms had not been acquired unwillingly, for he was not a sluggard, nor a grumbler. he plowed, though his thoughts were not of the plowing; he reaped, though his thoughts were not of the harvest. they had been sweethearts from childhood. they had played together, read together, studied together, and suffered together. it seemed to them that they just grew up to their wedding day, a perfectly natural growth. had this marriage come five years earlier everything would have been different. instead of the little cottage, clean, cozy, and poor, there would have been the big white house on the hill, surrounded by maples and oaks; instead of the simple gown of white lawn there would have been a magnificent silk or satin; instead of the sympathy and the somber head-shakings of wedding guests there would have been rejoicing; and approval. to-night, as the little clock on justine's bureau struck eight, she left her room and met jud in the narrow hall upstairs. downstairs could be heard the muffled voices of an expectant crowd, an occasional giggle breaking through the buzz. he kissed her and both were silent, thinking of other homes. one remembered the big white house on the hill, the other the old yellow farmhouse, large and rambling, "over on the pike." to-night they faced the minister in the parlor of one of the lowliest dwellings in the neighborhood. the boy had not an acre of all his father's lands; the girl was poor, at the gates of the famous van homestead. they were married not in his house, but in hers. the cottage stood in the corner of a thirty-acre farm that had come to her through her grandmother. this was all except memories that the child had to connect her present life with the comfortable days of the past. old mrs. crane, who lived with justine in the little cot, met them at the foot of the creaking stairway and threw open the door to the parlor. before the boy and girl gleamed the faces of a score or more of eager, excited friends. there was hardly a girl in the crowd who was not dressed more expensively than the bride. justine was proudly aware of the critical, simpering gaze that swept over her simple gown; she could almost read the exultant thoughts of her guests, as they compared her plain lawn to the ridiculous finery that hid their sunburnt necks, scrawny arms, and perspiring bodies. her face was fresh and flushed with happiness, pride--perhaps disdain; their faces had, at least, been washed and lavishly powdered. most of them wore absurd white gloves over their red arms. yet they were the élite of the county. there were red dresses, blue dresses, yellow dresses, and there were other dresses in which the colors of the rainbow shone, all made to fit women other than those who wore them. the men, old and young, bearded and beardless, were the most uncouth aristocrats that ever lorded it over a countryside. true, they had put on their store clothes and had blackened their boots and shoes; they had shaved, and they had plastered their hair faultlessly; they had cast aside their quids of tobacco and they were as circumspect as if they were at church. justine and jud stood with clasped hands before the young minister, listening to his lengthy and timely discourse on the blessedness of matrimony. then came the vows. their eyes met. the answers! they breathed them--the yes and the yes and the yes--almost unconsciously. then the last words--"whom god hath joined together let not man put asunder!" for the next two or three hours they were in a whirl of emotions; everything was hazy, uncertain, misty to them. they had taken up each other's burdens, each other's joys for life; they had begun a new existence. she was no longer justine van, he was no longer the thoughtless boy. they were husband and wife. the laughter, the jests, the quips, and the taunts of their merry friends were a jangle of discordant sounds, unpleasant and untimely, and kindly as they were meant, unkind. there were aimless hand-shakings, palsied kisses, inane responses to crude congratulations, and it was all over. the guests departed, singing, shouting, and laughing. the last to leave was old mrs. crane, justine's companion for four long years. she was going to live with her brother up near the village. jud and justine were to live alone. down at the toll-gate, nearly a mile from justine's home in the direction of the village, a small and select company of loungers spent that evening. the toll-gate, kept by jim hardesty and his wife, matilda, was at the junction of the big gravel pike which led to the county seat and the slim, shady lane that passed justine's cottage. here of evenings the "hired hands" of the neighborhood gathered to gossip, tell lies, and "talk ugly" about the farmers by whom they were employed. on the night of the wedding there were five or six slouchy, sweat-smelling rustics lounging on the porch. the wedding formed the only topic of conversation. they talked of justine's good looks and how "they'd liked to be in jud's boots"; and of the days when old "cap" van lived and the bride of the night had not had to teach school; of the days when she rode horses of her own, and went to the city to make purchases instead of to the humble village as now; they talked of her kindly in their rough way. they discussed jud with enthusiasm. everybody liked him. his two years at college had not "swelled his head." he was "jest the feller fer justine van, an' she got him, too, 'g'inst ever' girl in the township--an' ever' one of 'em had set their caps fer him, too, you bet." the loungers agreed it was "too bad that jud and justine was so derned pore, but mebbe they'd make out somehow er 'nother." they laughed about 'gene crawley's affection for justine van. 'gene crawley! a "hand" over at martin grimes' place--a plain, every-day hired man, working for eighteen dollars a month for the meanest, stingiest farmer in clay township! he was not any better than the rest of the hands on the place, "'s fer as learnin' an' manners wuz concerned. hadn't no more license to be skylarkin' 'round after justine van 'n he had after queen willimeny. 's if she'd notice sech a derned cuss as him; allus cussin' an' drinkin' an' fightin'. no 'spectabull girl would want to be saw with him." about nine o'clock a dark figure approached the toll-gate afoot. it was a man, and he came from the night somewhere to the east, probably from the village of glenville. there was no mistaking his identity. the heavy, swift tread told the watchers that it was 'gene crawley long before he came within the radius of light that shot through the open doorway. someone in the crowd called out: "h' are ye, 'gene! thought you'd be up to the weddin'." 'gene did not reply. he strode up to the porch and threw himself into a vacant chair near the window. the light from within shone fairly upon his dark, sullen face, his scowling brow, and his flushed, unshaven cheeks. an ugly gleam was in his black eyes. he had been drinking, but he was not intoxicated. his hickory shirt, dirty and almost buttonless, was open at the throat as if it had been torn that its wearer might save himself from choking. he wore no coat, and his faded, patched blue overalls were pushed into the tops of his heavy boots. an old straw hat lay where he had cast it behind his chair. the black, coarse hair, rumpled and unkempt, grew low on his scowling forehead. his face was hard and deeply marked, not unlike that of an indian. the jaw was firm, the chin square and defiant, the mouth broad and cruel, the nose large and straight, the eyes coal-black and set far apart, beneath heavy brows. the arm which rested on the sill was bare to the elbow; it was rugged, with cords of muscle that looked like ropes interlaced. a glimpse of the arm revealed, as if he stood stark naked, the strength of this young samson. he was a huge, unwieldy man, a little above medium height; he might have weighed one hundred and seventy pounds; but with his square shoulders, broad chest, and an unusually erect carriage for an overworked farm-boy, he looked larger than he really was. "you ain't got your sunday-go-to-meetin' close on, 'gene," commented jim hardesty, tilting back in his chair and spitting tobacco juice half way across the road. "didn' y' git a bid to the weddin'?" asked harve crose, with mock sympathy. a flush of anger and humiliation reddened the face of grimes' hired man, but it was gone in a second. "no; i didn' git no bid," he answered, a trifle hoarsely. "guess they didn' want me. i ain't good 'nough, 'pears like." "seems to me she'd orter ast you, 'gene. you be'n kinder hangin' 'round an' teasin' her to have you, an' seems no more'n right fer her to have give you a bid to the weddin'," said doc ramsey, meaningly. "she'd orter done that, jest to show you why she wouldn' have you, don't y' see?" crawley's only reply was a baleful glare. "how does it feel to be cut out by another feller, 'gene?" asked crose tauntingly. "i'd never let a feller like jud sherrod beat my time," added joe perkins. "course, jud's been to college and learned how to spoon with the girls, so i guess it's no wonder he ketched justine. she's jest like all girls, i reckon. smooth cuss kin ketch 'em all, b'gosh. never seed it fail yit. trouble with you, 'gene, is 'at you--" 'gene sprang to his feet with an oath so ugly that the jesters shrank back. for several minutes he tramped up and down the porch like a caged animal, cursing hoarsely to himself, his broad shoulders hunched forward as if he were bent on crushing everything before them. finally he came to a standstill in front of the expectant crowd. the devil was in his face. "don't none o' you fellers ever say anything more to me about this. ef you do i'll break somebody's neck. it's none o' your business how i feel, an' i won't have no more of it. do y' hear me?" he snarled. "i on'y ast fer information--" began crose, apologetically. "well, i'll give you some, dang ye! you say i'm cut out, eh! mebbe i am--mebbe i am! but you'll see--you'll see! i'll make him sorry fer it! he's whupped me this time, but i'll win yet! d' y' hear? i'll win yet!" his face was almost white under the coat of tan, his eyes glowed, his voice was low and intense. the loungers waited in suspense. "he thinks he's won! but i'll show him--i'll show him! she's like all women! she kin be won ag'in--she kin love more'n once! you say he's cut me out! mebbe he has--mebbe he has! but this ain't a marker to the way i'll cut him out. i'll take her away from him, i will, so he'p me god! d' y' hear that? she'll shake him fer me some day, sure 's there's a hell, an' then! then where'll he be? she'll be mine! fair 'r foul, i'll have her! i won't give up tell i take her 'way from him! an' she'll come, too; she'll come! she'll leave him, jest like other women have done, an' then who'll be cut out? answer, damn ye! who'll be cut out?" he was facing them and his lips were almost as white as the gleaming teeth beneath them. for a moment no one dared to reply. at last doc ramsey scrambled to his feet. "consarn ye, 'gene crawley!" he exclaimed. "you cain't stan' up there an' say that 'bout justine van! she's a good girl, an' you're a dern hound fer talkin' like thet! they ain't a bad drop o' blood in her body--they ain't a wrong thought in her head, an' you know it. you kin lick me, i know, but dern ef you kin say them things to me. she won't look at you no more'n she'd look at that dog o' jim's over yander." 'gene crawley's arm struck out and doc ramsey crashed to the floor of the porch. he lay motionless for a long time. the dealer of the blow stood over him like a wild beast waiting for its prey to move. not another man in the group lifted a hand against him. at last he stooped and picked up his hat. "that's what you'll all git ef you open your heads," he grated. "what i said about her goes!" he fixed his hat roughly on his head and swung away in the darkness. in the open door of the cottage down the lane jud and justine stood side by side, her hand in his, long after the last guest had departed. it was near midnight and behind them the lamps flickered and sputtered with the last gasps of waning life. silhouetted in the long, bright frame of the doorway, the silent lovers presented a picture of a new life begun, youth on the threshold of a new world. his arm drew her to his breast and her fluttering hands went slowly, gently to his cheeks. he bent and kissed the upturned lips. then the door closed and the picture was gone. across the road, beside the great oak that sent its branches almost to the little gateway, a man fell away from the fence, upon which, with murder in his heart, he had been leaning. his hands were clasped to his eyes, his strong figure writhed convulsively in the damp grass; his breath came almost in sobs. at last, taking his hands from his hot eyes, he raised his head and looked again toward the cottage. one by one the bright windows, grew dark, until at last the house was as black as the night about it. then he sprang to his feet, clutching blindly at the darkness, uttering inarticulate moans and curses. for the first time in his life he knew a sense of loneliness and despair. he turned his back to the cottage and fled across the meadow. chapter iii. jud and justine. dudley sherrod was the only son of john sherrod, who had died about four years before the marriage. up to the day of his death he was considered the wealthiest farmer in clay township. on that day he was a pauper; his lands were no longer his own; his wife and his son were penniless. in an upstairs room of the great old farmhouse, built by his grandfather when the country was new, he blew out his brains, unable to face the ruin that fate had brought to his door. his father had been a member of the legislature, and the boy had spent two years in the city, attending a medical college. when the diploma came he went back to the old home and hung out his shingle in quaint little glenville. in less than a year he brought a bride to the farm--cora bloodgood, the daughter of a banker in the capital city of his state. before the end of another year he was, as heir, owner of all his father's acres. so it was that john and cora sherrod began life rich and happy. their boy was born, grew up a bright and sprightly lad, and was sent to college. from the rude country schoolhouse and its simple teachings he was sent to the busy university, among city boys and city girls, miserable in ungainly self-consciousness, altogether out of place. he left behind him the country lads and lasses, the tow-heads and the barefoots, and his heart was sore. but in the beginning of his second year the simplicity of his rural heart showed signs of giving way to urban improvements. his strength won for him a place on the football team, and the sense of dignity of this position displaced his self-consciousness and taught him to be interested in the world beyond his home. he began to know something besides the memory of green fields and meadows and clear blue skies. all these months he was faithful to a slip of a girl down in the country to whom he had feared to utter a word of love. she knew she loved him because she had cried when he went away and had cried when he came back. letters, stiff and painfully correct as to spelling and chirography, came each week from dear little justine van. to her his long letters, homesickness crowding between the lines, although she could not see it, were like messages from paradise. a dozen times a day she read each letter as she sat in her room, or in the hated schoolroom at glenville, or in the shady orchard, or in the lonely lane. she longed to have him back at home, to hear his merry laugh, to romp with him as they had romped before he went away to school--but here she blushed and remembered that he was tall now, and dreadfully old and grand, and she was--she was fifteen! jud thrashed a fellow student one day because he poked fun at an old tintype of justine that he happened to see in the boy's room. the victim had laughed at the green bonnet, the long pig-tails, and the wide eyes of the girl in the picture--"just as if they were looking for the photographer's bird, you know." near the middle of his second year at college the crash came and the half-dazed boy hurried home. his father was dead and the whole country was telling the stories of his great financial losses. every dollar, every foot of land had been swept away by reverses arising from investments in arizona mines. captain james van went down in the same disaster. when word reached his home of the suicide of john sherrod, he was on his way to the barn with a pistol hidden over his heart. horror and the awakening of courage made him cast the pistol aside and turn to face the blow as a brave man should, with his wife and child behind his back. jud and justine could not at first, and did not for many days, realize the force of the blow. one had lost father as well as home; the other had lost home and had sunk to a depth of poverty that grew more and more appalling as her young mind began to understand. the boy, when he finally grasped the situation, bared his arms and set forth to support himself and his mother by hard work. the shock of the suicide was too great for mrs. sherrod. her reason fled soon after her husband was laid in the grave, but it was a year before death took her to him. during that last year of life she lived in the old place, a helpless invalid, mentally and physically, although the property belonged to another. david strong held a mortgage on the home place, but he did not foreclose it until she was gone. for a year jud cared for his mother, and worked in the fields with david strong's men at wages of twelve dollars a month. half of the year's crop strong gave to the widow of john sherrod, although not a penny's worth of it was hers by right. after her death strong and his family moved into the big old house, and jud sherrod lived in a room in what had been his home. justine van's grandmother, in her will, left to the girl a thirty-acre piece of ground, half timber, half cultivated, about a mile from the white house in which the beneficiary was born and which was swallowed up by the great disaster. bereft of every penny, james van took his wife and daughter to the miserable little cottage. the girl shouldered as much of the burden of poverty as her young and tender shoulders could carry. she begged for an appointment as teacher in the humble schoolhouse where her a-b-abs had been learned, and for two years and a half before her marriage she had taught the little flock of boys and girls. especially necessary did this means of earning a livelihood become when, two years after the failure, her father died. then mrs. van followed him, and justine, not nineteen, was face to face with the world, a trembling, guileless child. her wages at the schoolhouse were twenty-five dollars a month, for six months in a year, and the yield of grain from her poorly tilled farm was barely enough to pay the taxes and the help hire. old jim hardesty farmed the place for her, and he robbed her. for six months after the mother's death she lived alone in the cottage, and then the neighbors finally taking the matter in hand and insisting that she be provided with a companion, her old nurse, mrs. crane, came to the place. she was shrewd from years of adversity and persuaded justine to send jim hardesty packing--and that was the hardest duty justine had ever had to meet. the discouraged boy, over on david strong's place, worn thin with hard work and sickness, deprived of every chance, as he thought, to realize his ambitions, found in the girl a sympathetic comrade. of all the people in his world she was the only one who understood his desires, and could, in a way, share with him the despair that made life as he lived it seem like a narrow cell from which he could look longingly with no hope of escape. tired and sore from misfortune, these two simple, loving natures turned to each other. his first trembling kiss upon her surprised, parted lips was a treasure that never left her memory. the bloom came to her cheeks, lightness touched her flagging heart, happiness shone through the gloom, and the whole countryside marveled at her growing beauty. this slim, budding maid of the meadow and wood was as fair a bit as nature ever perfected. the sweetness and purity of womanhood undefiled dwelt in her body and soul. no taint of worldliness had blighted her. she was a pure, simple, country girl, ignorant of wile, sinless and trustful. justine was like her father, fair faced and straight of form. her hair was long and reddish-brown, her brow was broad and full, her eyes big and brown and soft with love, her cheeks smooth and clear. a trifle above the medium height, straight and strong, of slender mold, she was as graceful as a gazelle. health seemed to glow in the atmosphere about her. with jud, too, the realization of love and the feeling that there was something to live for, brought a change. his stooping shoulders straightened, his eyes brightened, his steps became springy. he whistled and sang at his work, took an interest in life, and presently even resumed his drawing. the country folk winked knowingly. the two were constantly together when opportunity afforded, so it soon became common report that he was her "feller, fer sure," and she was his "girl." one evening, as they sat in the dusk down by the creek, which ran through her bit of pasture land, jud drew his mother's plain gold ring from his little finger and slipped it upon justine's third. they were betrothed. never were such sweethearts as jud and justine. they were lovers, friends, comrades. her sweet, serious face took a new life, new color at his approach, her dreamy eyes grew softer and more wistful, her low voice more musical. her soul was his, her life belonged to him, her heart beat only for him. jud's famished hopes of something beyond the farm found fresh encouragement in her simple, wondering praise. she was his critic, his unconscious mentor. beneath her untrained eye he sketched as he never sketched before. looking over his shoulder as he lay stretched upon the grass, she marveled at the skill with which his pencil transferred the world about them to the dearly bought drawing pads, and her enthusiastic little cries of delight were tributes that brought confidence to the heart of the artist. the girl had scores of admirers. every boy, every man in the township longed to "make up" to her, but she gave no thought to them. half a dozen widowers with children asked her to marry them. she and jud laughed when eversole baker besought her to become mother to his nine children, including two daughters older than herself. but there was one determined suitor, and she feared him with an uncanny dread that knew no rest until she was safely jud's on the wedding night. that one was eugene crawley, drunkard and blasphemer. crawley was born in the dense timber land north of glenville. his father had been a woodchopper, hunter, and fisherman. hard stories came down to town about sam crawley. of 'gene, the boy, nothing against his honesty at least could be said. he was a vile wretch when drinking, little better when sober, but he was as honest as the sun. he had gone to school with jud and justine when they were little "tads," and his rough affection for her began when they were mastering the "first reader." he and jud had fought over her twice and each had been a victor. the girl despised him, from childhood, and he knew it. still, he clung to the hope that he could take her away from his rival. he dogged her footsteps, frightened her with his mad protestations, and finally alarmed her by his threats. the day before the wedding he had met her as she left the schoolhouse and had sworn to kill jud sherrod. she did not tell jud of this, nor did she tell him that she had pleaded with crawley to spare her lover's life. had she told jud all this she would have been obliged to tell him how the brute had suddenly burst into tears and promised he would not harm jud if he could help it. chapter iv. mrs. hardesty's charity. for many days after their marriage jud and justine were obliged to endure coarse jokes, kindly meant if out of tune with their sensitive minds. happy weeks sped by, weeks replete with the fullness of joy known only to the newly wedded. days of toil, that had once been long and irksome, now were flitting seasons of anticipation between real joys. at dusk he came home with eyes glowing in the delight that knows no fatigue, with a heart leaping with the love that is young and eager, and blood carousing under the intoxication of passion's wine. in the kitchen door of the little cot, no longer dismal in its weather-worn plainness, there always stood the slim, supple girl, her heart leaping with the eagerness to be clasped in his arms. she was growing into perfect womanhood, perfect in figure, perfect in love, perfect in all its mysteries. her whole life before now appeared as a dreamless sleep to her; the present was the beginning of a divine dream that softens the rest of life into mellow forgetfulness. she walked with him in the hayfield, from choice, delighted to toil near him, to breathe the same air, to endure the same sun, to enjoy the same moments of rest beneath the great oaks, to drink from the same brown jug of spring water, to sing, to laugh, to play with him. it was not work. then came the harvesting, the thrashing, and the fall sowing. six months were soon gone and still these children played like cupids. other married people in the neighborhood, whose honeymoons had not been more than a week old before they began to show callous spots, wondered dumbly at the beautiful girl who grew prettier and straighter instead of turning sour, frowsy, and bent under the rigors of connubial joy--as they had found it. they could not understand how the husband could be so blithe and cheery, so upstanding and strong, and so devoted. the wives of the neighborhood pondered over the latter condition. the husbands did not deem it worth while or expedient to wonder--they merely called jud a "dinged shif'less boy that'll wake up some time er 'nother an' understan' more 'n he does now." yet they had to admit that jud was conducting the little farm faultlessly, even though he did find time to moon with his wife, to bask in the sunshine of her love, to wander over wood and field with her beside him, sketching, sketching, eternally sketching. rainy days and sundays brought hours of sweet communion to the happy, simple young couple. so thoroughly were they devoted to one another that their lack of attention to the neighbors was the source of more or less indignation on the part of those who "knowed that jud and her hadn't no right to be so infernal stuck-up." and yet these same discontents were won over in the briefest conversation with the pair when they chanced to meet. even the most snappish and envious were overcome by the gentle good humor, the proud simplicity of these young sweethearts, who saw no ugliness, who knew no bitterness, who found life and its hardships no struggle at all. they were desperately poor, but they made no complaint. the vigor of life was theirs, and they sang as they suffered, looking forward with bright, confident eyes to the east of their dreams, in which their sun of fortune was to rise. justine was to have the school another year, beginning in october, after a six-months' vacation. jud's pride revolted at first against this decision of hers, but she overcame every argument, and he loved her more than ever for the share she was taking in the dull battle against poverty. the land he tilled was not fertile; it had been overworked for years. the crops were growing thinner; the timber was slowly falling beneath the stove-wood ax; the meadow plot was almost barren of grass. it was not a productive "thirty," and they knew it. there was a bare existence in it when crops were good, but there was, as yet, no mortgage to face. jud owned a team of horses, and justine two cows and a dozen hogs. they had no other vehicle than a farm wagon, old and rattling. when they went to the village it was in this wagon; when to church, they walked, although the distance was two miles, so tender was their pride. little justine was the politic one. jud was proud, and was ever ready to resent the kindly offices of neighbors. had it been left to him, young henry bossman would have been summarily dismissed when he offered to help jud stack the hay, "jes' fer ole times' sake." it was justine who welcomed poor, awkward henry, and it was she who sent him away rejoicing over a good deed, determined to help "jud and justine ever' time he had a chanst." it was she who accepted the proffer to thrash their thirty acres of wheat, free of charge, from david strong, stopping off one day as his separator and engine passed by. she thanked him so graciously that he went his way wondering whether he was indebted to them or they to him. when harve crose offered to get their mail at the crossroads post-office every day and leave it at the cottage gate as he rode by, she thanked him so beautifully that he felt as though she ought to scold him when he was late on rare occasions. doc ramsey, the man who was knocked down by 'gene crawley at the toll-gate one night, helped jud build a rail fence over half a mile long, and said he "guessed he'd call it square if jud 'd give him that picter he drawed of justine summer 'fore las'. kinder like to have that picter, 'y ginger; skeer the rats away with," ending with a roar of apologetic laughter at his homely excuse. 'gene crawley was never to be seen in the little lane. sullen and savage, he frequented the toll-gate, but not so much as formerly. he drank more than ever, and it was said that martin grimes had taken him out of jail twice at the county seat, both times on a charge of "drunk and disorderly conduct." it seemed that he avoided all possible chance of meeting jud and his wife. curious people speculated on the outcome of his increasing moroseness, and not a few saw something tragic in the scowl that seldom left his swarthy brow. for many weeks after her marriage justine dreamed of the fierce eyes and the desperate threats of this lover, and the only bar to complete happiness was the fear that 'gene crawley would some day wreak vengeance upon her husband. as the weeks wore away, this fear dwindled, until now she felt secure in the hope that he had forgotten her. and yet, when his name was mentioned in her presence, she could not restrain the sudden leaping of her heart or the troubled look that widened her tender brown eyes. when jud bitterly alluded to him and assured her, with more or less boyish braggadocio, that he would whip him if he ever so much as spoke to her or him again, she felt a dread that seemed almost a presentiment of evil. she did not fear crawley for herself, but for jud. 'gene's boast before the men at the toll-gate created a sensation in the usually unruffled community. the blow that felled doc ramsey was universally condemned, yet no man had the courage to take to task the man who delivered it. the story of his mad declaration concerning justine spread like wildfire. of course, no one believed that his boast could be carried out, or attempted, for that matter; but, as gossip traveled, the substance of his vow increased. within a week the tale had grown in vileness until crawley was credited with having given utterance to the most unheard-of assertions. black and foul as his actual words had been, they were tame and weak in comparison with the things the honest farmers and their wives convinced themselves and others that he had said. in the course of time the incident which made historical her wedding night reached the ears of justine sherrod. she had seen 'gene but two or three times in the four months that intervened between that time and the day on which she heard the wretched story from mrs. hardesty--an honest soul who had heard 'gene's words plainly, and was therefore qualified to exaggerate if she saw fit. once the girl passed him in the lane near the toll-gate. he was leaning on the fence at the roadside as she passed. she had seen him looking at her hungrily as she approached, but when she lifted her eyes again, his broad back was toward her and he was looking across the fields. there was something foreboding in the strong shoulders and corded brown arms that bore down upon the fence in an evident effort at self-control. she felt the panic which makes one wish to fly from an unknown danger. not daring to look back, she walked swiftly by, possessed of the fear that he was following, that he was ready to clutch her from behind. but he stood there until she turned into the gate a half mile down the lane. it remained for mrs. hardesty to tell justine the story. the bony wife of the toll-gate keeper carried her busy presence up to the cottage one afternoon late in september, and found the young wife resting after a hard, hot ironing. her pretty face was warm and rosy, her strong arms were bare to the shoulder, her full, deep breast was heaving wearily beneath the loose blue-and-white figured calico. as mrs. hardesty came up the path from the gate she could not resist saying to herself, as she looked admiringly but with womanly envy upon the straight figure leaning against the door-casing, fanning a hot face with an old newspaper: "i don' blame 'gene crawley er enny other man fer wantin' to have her. they ain't no one like her in the hull state, er this country, either, fer that matter." justine greeted her cordially. "how do you do, mrs. hardesty? aren't you almost baked in this sun? come into the shade and sit down. i'll get you a dipper of water and a fan." "don't put yourself out enny--don't trouble yourself a bit now, jestine. jes' git me a sup o' water an' i'll be all hunky-dory. i don't mind the sun very much. my, i'm glad to set down in the shade, though. never saw the roads so dusty, did you? thank ye, jestine--much obliged. you must have a grand spring here to git such fine water. it's as cold, purt' nigh, as the ice water you git up to town. set down, my dear; you look hot an' tired. i know you look nice standin' up like that, but you'll be a heap sight more comfortable if you set down an' rest them tired legs o' your'n. where's jed?" "he's gone over to hawkins's blacksmith shop on the pike to have randy shod. she cast two shoes yesterday," explained the girl, sitting on the doorstep. "do you want to see him about anything in particular, mrs. hardesty? he said he'd be home by six." "no; i jes' ast. thought ef he was aroun' i'd like to see his good-lookin' face fer a minnit er two. i reckon, though, he don't look at other women when you're aroun'," tittered the visitor, who was not a day under sixty. "oh, yes, he does," laughed justine, turning a shade rosier. "he's getting tired of seeing me around all the time. you see, i'm an old married woman now." "good heavens, child, wait tell you've been married thirty-nine years like i have, an' then you kin begin to talk about gittin' tired o' seein' certain people all the time. i know i could see jim hardesty ef i was as blind as a bat. i kin almost tell how menny hairs they is in his whiskers." "well, how many, for instance?" asked justine gaily. "two hundred and ninety-seven," answered mrs. jim, promptly and positively. she regaled the young wife with a long and far from original dissertation on married life as she had encountered it with james. finally she paused and changed the subject abruptly, leaping to a question that had doubtless been on her mind for days. "have you saw much of 'gene crawley lately, jestine?" the question was so unexpected that the girl started, and stammered in replying. "no; very little. i don't believe i've seen him more than twice in several months. is he still working for martin?" "oh, yes. they was some talk o' his goin' over to rumley to work in a saw-mill, but seems as though he can't leave this part o' the country." after a moment's hesitation, she went on boldly, smiling with the awkwardness of one who is determined to learn something at any cost. "i s'posed he'd been comin' 'roun' here quite a little." "coming here, mrs. hardesty?" cried the girl in surprise. "why, he'll never come here. he and jud are not friends and he knows i don't like him. whatever put that into your head?" "oh, i dunno," said mrs. hardesty evasively. "i heerd somethin' 'bout his sayin' he was a great frien' o' your'n, so i thought, like as not, he was--er--that is, he might 'a' drapped in onct in awhile, you know--jes' like fellers will, you know." "well, you may be sure 'gene will never come here." "he wouldn't be welcome, i take it." "i don't like to say that anybody would not be welcome, mrs. hardesty. i hardly think he'd _care_ to come," said the girl nervously. "him an' jed have had some words, hain't they? never been friends sence they was boys, i've heered. do you think he's afeared o' jed?" "why should he be afraid of jud? so long as each attends to his own business there is nothing to be afraid of. they're not good friends, that's all." "well, 'gene's been doin' some ugly talkin'," said the visitor doggedly. "what do you mean?" asked justine. a strange chill seized her heart--a fear for jud. "he's been very unwise to say the things he has. i tole jim hardesty ef they ever got to jed's ears 'gene 'd pay purty dearly fer them. but jim says 'twouldn't be good fer jed ef he tackled 'gene. he's wuss'n pison." "why, mrs. hardesty, i don't--i don't know what you're talking about," cried the poor girl. "what has 'gene been saying?" "oh, it wouldn't be right fer me to git mixed up in it. it's none o' my funeral," said mrs. hardesty, now in the full delight of keeping a listener tortured with suspense. it was a quarter of an hour before she could be induced to relate the very tales she had come to tell in the first place. "'gene tole the boys that night that he'd made love to you ever sence you was children and that he could tell jed sherrod some things ef he was a mind to. he said he could take you away from him any time, an' that jed 'd have to stay 'roun' home purty close ef he wanted to be sure o' you." "oh, oh, oh!" moaned the dumfounded girl. "an' then he went on to say that you'd promised to--to--well--well, to leave jed some time an' go away with him. that's the mildest way to put it. i couldn't say it the way 'gene did. don't look so put-out about it, jestine--really, you look like you want to faint. shell i git you some water?" "did--did he say all of that?" justine whispered hoarsely. "yes, he did. i heered him. i was in the house an'----" "mrs. hardesty, don't tell me any more. i cannot bear it. how could he have said it--how could he have been so mean?" she wailed, struggling to her feet. "of course, they wasn't any truth in what 'gene said," mrs. hardesty volunteered, but the declaration bore distinct marks of a question. justine's eyes blazed, her body trembled, her lips quivered. never had any one seen such a look upon that sweet, gentle face. "no!" burst from her lips so fiercely that mrs. jim's eyes wavered and fell. "no! and everybody knows it! how can you ask?" "i didn't ask--you know i didn't, jestine----" stammered the guest. "you _did_ ask. god forgive 'gene crawley for those awful lies--god forgive him! oh, matilda, how could he--how could he have said such things? i never did him any wrong----" "jed ought to kill him--the mean snake! he ought to go right over to martin grimes's an'----" began mrs. hardesty excitedly. "no, no! he must not know!" cried justine, with a new terror. she clutched mrs. hardesty by the shoulders so that the old lady winced. "jud must never know! don't you see how it would end? there would be a murder--a murder! jud would kill him. let it be as it is; i can stand it--yes, i can! we must keep it from him. you will help me, won't you? you will see that nobody goes to jud with this awful story--i know you will! oh, god! they would fight and--one of them would be killed. how can we keep jud from hearing?" mrs. hardesty stared up at her, and after a moment laid a hand upon the clinging one upon her shoulder. "you are right," she agreed. "jed mus' never be tole. him an' 'gene would settle it, an' i'm afeard fer jed's sake. 'gene's so vicious like." chapter v. when the clash came. despite her apparent cheerfulness, jud could but note the ever-recurring look of trouble in her eyes. those wistful eyes, when they were not merry with smiles, were following him with an anxious look like that of a faithful dog. sometimes he came upon her suddenly and found her staring into space. at such times he saw indignation in the soft brown eyes, or wrath, or terror. he wondered and his soul was troubled. was she unhappy? was she tired of him? he thought of asking her to confide in him, but his simple heart could not find courage to draw forth the confession he feared might hurt him endlessly. early in october she resumed her work in the schoolhouse. there was not an evening or a noon that did not see her hurrying home, dreading that 'gene and jud had met. one day when she saw 'gene gallop past the schoolhouse, coming from the direction of the farm, she dismissed the school early and ran almost all the way home. when jud met her near the gate she was sobbing with joy. he never forgot the kisses she burnt upon his lips. how she loathed and feared 'gene crawley! she had dismal nightmares in which he was strangling her husband. in her waking hours she dreamed of the dreadful boast he had made. one night she was startled by the fear that people might believe the words the wretch had uttered. one friday evening they were coming home across the meadow from the bossman farm. the sun was almost below the ridge of trees in the west and long shadows darkened the edges of the pasture land. the evening was cool and bright, and they were as happy as children. reaching the little creek which ran through a corner of justine's land, not far from the house, they sat down to watch the antics of two sportive calves. peace was in their hearts, quiet in the world about them. she was like a delighted child as she laughed with him at the inane caperings of the calves, those poor little clowns in spots and stripes. he looked more often at her radiant, joyous face than at their entertainers, and his heart throbbed with the pride of possessing her. suddenly she gasped and he felt her hand clasp his arm with the grip of a vise. a glare of horror drove the merriment from her eyes. "it's 'gene crawley!" she whispered. "he's coming this way. oh, jud!" "what's the matter, justine? he won't hurt you while i'm here. let him come. dear, don't look like that!" he laughed. crawley was approaching from down the creek, walking rapidly and glancing covertly toward the house. it was evident he had not seen the couple on the bank. "let us go in, jud. _please_ do! i don't want to see him," she begged. "i'd like to know what in thunder he's doing in our pasture," growled jud, with a sudden flame of anger. "maybe he's drunk and has lost his way. he'll find the way out, jud. come to the house--quick!" she was on her feet and was dragging him up. "you go in, justine, if you want to. i'm going to find out what he's doing here. this isn't a----" "no, no! you must not stay--you must not have words with him. if you stay, i'll stay! won't you please come in, jud?" she implored; but his eyes were not for her. they were glaring angrily at the trespasser, who, seeing them, had stopped in some confusion twenty feet away. "do you think i'm afraid of the derned scoundrel?" he demanded, loud enough for 'gene to hear. the man down on the bank put his hand out and steadied himself against a sapling. for an instant his black eyes shot fire toward sherrod, but turned away when they met the wild, dark eyes of the girl. he had not been drinking and he was truly surprised by the meeting. there was a stillness for a moment. the two men again glared at one another, all the hatred in their hearts coming to the surface. the girl was suffocating with the knowledge that she could do nothing to stay the catastrophe. "get off this place and don't you ever step your foot on here again," said jud savagely. justine's hand fell tremblingly from his rigid arm and she looked a mute appeal to 'gene, who, still holding to the sapling, was trying to control his rage. "i was jest takin' a short cut to bossman's," he began, hoarsely, through his teeth. "i'll git off yer place, if you say so. i didn't think you'd mind my cuttin' off a mile er so. mrs. grimes's baby's sick an'----" "you needn't explain. get out--that's all!" "oh, jud," moaned the girl helplessly. "don't be afraid, justine. i won't hurt your doll baby. i'll git off yer place. if it wasn't fer you, though, i'd pound his head into dog meat," sneered 'gene. "you would, would you? you're a liar, dem you! a liar! are you coward enough to take that?" cried jud, taking a step forward. she threw her arms about him and tried to drag him away. "let go, justine!" he shouted. "how can i protect myself with you hanging--let go, i say!" she was stunned by the first angry words he had ever spoken to her. her arms dropped and she staggered back. "oh, god! oh, god!" she half whispered. "jud, jud, don't! he will kill you!" "let him try it! justine, dear, i'm no coward, and i owe him a licking, anyhow. now's as good a time as any other. go to the house, dear--it won't do for you to see it," said her husband, very pale and breathing heavily. he was throwing his coat to the ground where his hat already lay. "you must not--you shall not fight, jud! do you want to kill me? mrs. hardesty says he is a devil! don't, don't, don't, jud! if you love me, don't fight him, jud!" she threw herself between the men. crawley had not moved from his tracks, but the wild glare of the beast was fighting its way to his eyes. he was fast losing control. try as he would he could not retreat; he could not turn coward before his old enemy. "will you fight, 'gene crawley?" demanded jud, over his shoulder. "or will you run like a whipped pup?" in a second crawley's coat was off and he was rolling up his sleeves. jud pushed justine aside. [illustration: "in a second crawley was rolling up his sleeves."] "you'd better go to the house," 'gene said to her. "it ain't right fer you to see us fight. i didn't want to, remember, but, dern him, he can't call me a coward. i'll fight him till i'm dead." "we'll settle up old scores, too," said jud. "you've annoyed justine and you ain't fit to breathe the same air as she does." "damn you, jud sherrod, i keer as much fer her as you do. i'd die fer her, if she'd let me. you took her from me an' we've got to have it out now. you kin kill me, but you cain't make me say i don't love her!" "i despise you, 'gene crawley! oh, how i hate you!" cried the girl. "i've always hated you!" "i know it! i know it! you needn't throw it up to me! but i'll make you sorry fer it, see if i don't----" "stop that! don't you talk that way to my wife! are you ready to fight?" cried jud, advancing. she made a clutch at his arm and then sank back powerless against the great oak. "as soon as she goes to the house," replied the other. "go to the house, justine," cried jud impatiently, but she did not move. "i'll stay right here!" she said mechanically. "if he murders you, i'll kill him." crawley ground his teeth and backed away. "i won't fight before her. 'tain't right, jud, 'n you know it. le's go over to the lane," he said. "if she's bound to stay, let her stay. and i want her to see me lick you! she's a brave girl; you needn't worry so dern much. why don't you want to fight before her?" "'cause i'll git mad an' i'll say things she ortn't to hear. i don't want her to hear me cuss an' go on like that. i cain't help cussin' an'----" "oh, you're backin' out!" sneered jud, and he made a rush at his adversary. before 'gene could prevent it, a heavy blow landed on his neck and he went to the ground. justine saw and her heart throbbed with joy. as the man fell she turned her back upon the thrilling scene, insanely throwing her arms about the oak as if to claim its protection. but crawley was not conquered by that blow. he was on his feet in an instant, his face livid with rage, his mouth twitching with pain. there were tears in his black eyes, but they were tears of fury. with a bull-like rush he was upon sherrod. the girl heard the renewed straggling and turned her face in alarm, still clinging to the tree. fascinated beyond the power of movement, she watched the combat. her eyes never left jud's white, convulsed face, and she prayed, prayed as she had never prayed in her life. jud was the taller, but 'gene was the heavier. almost at the beginning of the hand-to-hand struggle their shirts were stripped from their bodies. both were well muscled--one clean, wiry, and like a tiger, the other like a greek hercules. one had the advantage of a quick brain and a nimble strength, offsetting the brute-like power and slower mind of the other. never in her life had justine seen two strong men fight. sherrod's coolness returned the instant he dealt the first mad blow. neither knew the first rudiment of the boxer's art, but he was the quicker witted, the more strategic. he knew that 'gene's wild swings would fell him if he allowed them to land, so he avoided a close fight, dodging away and rushing in with the quickness of a cat. he was landing light blows constantly on the face of his foe, and was escaping punishment so surprisingly well that a confident smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. crawley, blinded by anger and half stunned by the constant blows, wasted his strength in impotent rushes. jud was not in reach when he struck those mighty, overbalancing blows. "don't be afraid, justine," panted jud; "he can't hurt me." "i can't, eh?" roared 'gene savagely. "you'll see!" and there followed a storm of oaths. in spite of herself, the girl could not turn her eyes away. the fierceness, the relentless fury of the fighters fascinated her. they were so quick, so strong, so savage that she could see but one end--death for one or the other. their panting sounded like the snarl of dogs, their rushing feet were like the trampling of cattle, in their faces murder alone was dominant. she prayed that some one might come to separate them. in her terror she even feared that her husband might win. jud the victor--a murderer! if only she could call for help! but her tongue was like ice, her voice was gone. murder came into her own heart. could she have moved from the tree she would have tried to kill 'gene crawley. rather be the slayer herself than jud. she even thought of the hanging that would follow jud's deed. gradually 'gene's tremendous strength began to gain ascendency. his face was bleeding from many cuts, his white shoulders were covered with blood from a lacerated lip, but his great muscles retained their power. jud was gasping. the girl began to see in his dulling eyes that the tide was turning. an unconscious shriek came with the conviction that her loved one was losing. she saw the triumphant gleam in 'gene's eyes, recognized the sudden increase of energy in his attack. "'gene! 'gene!" she tried to cry, but her throat was in the clutch of a terror so great that the appeal was no more than a whisper. an instant later crawley succeeded in doing what he had tried to accomplish for ten minutes. he clinched with his tired antagonist, and all jud's skill was beaten down. the big arms closed about his shoulders and waist, and a strong leg locked the loser's knee. jud bent backward. they swayed and writhed in that deadly embrace, jud striking savagely upon the unprotected face of his foe, 'gene forcing a resolute hand slowly toward jud's throat. jud's blows made no impression upon the brutal power of the man, whose burning, wide-staring eyes saw only the coveted throat, as a beast sees its prey. a strangling cry came from jud's lips as the fingers touched his throat. he knew it was all over. he was being crushed--he was helpless. if he could only escape that hand! the fingers closed down upon his neck; the hot breath of his foe poured into his face; the big tree in front of him seemed suddenly to whirl upside down; something was spinning in his head. as they turned he caught a glimpse of justine still standing at the tree. he tried to call out to her to help him--to save him--help! but there was no sound except a gurgle. his hands tore at the merciless thing in his throat. he must tear it away quickly or he would--he was suffocating! he was blind! he felt himself crashing for miles and miles down a precipice. justine saw them plunge to the foot-torn turf, 'gene above. beneath she saw the agonized face of her husband, her life, her world. with a rush those awful dreams came back to her and she screamed aloud. "'gene!" her voice roused the reason of the man, and his blood-shot eyes, for the first time, sought the object that stood paralyzed, immovable against the tree. "i'll kill him!" he panted malignantly. "mercy, 'gene! mercy! for my sake!" she moaned. she tried to throw herself upon her knees before him, but her forces were benumbed. the look in her eyes brought the conqueror to his senses. his eyes, still looking into hers, lost their murderous glare and his knotted fingers drew slowly away from the blue neck. he moved his knee from the other's breast and sank away from him, half lying upon the grass, his heaving body clear of her loved one. the action brought life to the girl. with a cry she threw herself beside jud's rigid figure. "he is dead! jud! jud!" she wailed. "don't look like that!" crawley raised himself from the ground, bewildered and dumb. to his brain came the knowledge that he had killed a man. terror supplanted fury in his closing eyes, a pallor crept over his swarthy face. for the first time he looked into the wide eyes in the strangled face. he did not hear the cries of the woman; he heard only the gasping of that throttled man as they had plunged to the ground. "i hope i haven't--haven't killed him," struggled through his bleeding lips, tremulously. "he's dead!" like a hunted beast he looked about for some place in which to hide, for some way to escape. "they'll hang me! they'll lynch me!" he leaped to his feet and with a yell turned to plunge across the fields toward the woods. but the reaction had come upon him. his strength was gone. his knees gave way beneath him and he dropped helplessly to the ground, his eyes again falling upon the face of his victim. trembling in every nerve, he tried to look away, but could not. suddenly he started as if struck from behind. his intense eyes had seen a quiver on jud's lips, a convulsive twitching of the jaws; his ears caught the sound of a small, choking gasp. the world cleared for him. jud was not dead! "he's alive!" burst from his lips. he flung the convulsed form of the girl from the breast of the man who was struggling back to life. as he raised the prostrate man's head, overjoyed to see the blackness receding, to hear the gasp now grow louder and faster, a heavy body struck him and something like a steel trap tightened on his neck. writhing backward he found the infuriated face of the girl close to his. her hands were upon his throat. "you killed him and i'll kill you!" she hissed in his ear, and he knew she was mad! it was but a short struggle; he overpowered her and held her to the ground. she looked up at him with such a malevolent glare that he cowered and shivered. those tender eyes of justine van! "he ain't dead!" he gasped. "be quiet, justine! for god's sake, be quiet! look! don't you see he's alive? i'll help you bring him to--i won't tech him again! be quiet an' we'll have him aroun' all right in a minute! lookee! he's got his eyes closed! i'll git some water!" he released her and staggered down the bank to the little stream. he heard her scream with the discovery that her husband was breathing. in his nervous haste, inspired by fear that jud might die before he could return, the victor made half a dozen futile efforts before he could scoop up a double handful of water from the creek. when he reached jud's side again, he found that she was holding his head in her lap and was rubbing his throat and breast. the purple face was fast growing white and great heaving gasps came from the contracted throat. 'gene dashed the water in his face, only to receive from her a cry of anger and a look of scorn so bitter that it made her face unrecognizable. he shrank back and in rebellious wonder watched her dry the dripping face. for many minutes they remained as a tableau, she alone speaking. all her heart was pouring itself out in the loving words that were meant for jud's ears alone. his ears could not hear them, but 'gene crawley's did, and his face grew black with jealousy. he could not tear himself away; he stood there, rigid, listening to phrases of love for another that mingled with words of hatred for him. he could not believe it was gentle justine van who was pouring out those wild words. at last he passed his unsteady hand across his eyes and spoke. "i--i guess i'll be goin', justine. hope jud'll not----" he began nervously. she turned upon him. "you! you here? why don't you go? for god's sake, go, and don't let me see your face again as long as i live!" she cried. "don't stand there and let him see you when he comes to. the blood is terrible! go away!" he wiped the blood from his face, conscious for the first time that it was there. then he tore down to the brook and bathed his swollen face, scrubbing the stains from his broad chest and arms. going back, he quickly put on his coat, ashamed of his nakedness. then he picked up jud's coat and threw it to her, feeling a desire, in spite of all, to help her in some way. she did not glance toward him, and he saw the reason. jud's eyes were conscious and were looking up into hers, dumb and bewildered. with a muttered oath 'gene started away, taking a dozen steps down the creek before a sudden reversal of mind came over him. he stopped and turned to her, and something actually imploring sounded in his voice. "cain't i carry him to the house fer you?" he asked. "oh!" she cried, turning a terrified face toward him and shielding jud with her body. "don't you dare come near him! don't you touch him! you dog!" a snarl of rage escaped his lips. "i s'pose you'll try to have me arrested, won't you? he'd 'a' killed me if he could, an' i didn't kill him jest because you ast me not to. but i s'pose that won't make no difference. you'll have the constable after me. well, lookee here! all the constables in clay township cain't take me, an' i won't run from 'em, either. i'll kill the hull crowd! go on an' have me arrested if you want to. you c'n tell that husband o' your'n that i let him go fer your sake, but if he ever forces me into a fight ag'in all hell cain't save him. you tell him to go his way an' i'll go mine. as fer you--well, i won't say what i'll do!" "oh, i'm not afraid of you!" she cried defiantly. he strode away without another word. from afar, long afterwards, he saw her assist jud to his feet and support him as he dragged himself feebly toward the house. chapter vi. the girl in gray. for days after the fight jud caught himself stealing surreptitious glances at his wife, with the miserable feeling that some time he would take her unawares and detect scornful pity in her eyes. he was sure she could not respect a man who had been forced to submit to defeat, especially after he had vaingloriously forced the conflict upon an unwilling foe. but justine loved him more deeply than ever. in her eyes he was a hero. for her sake he had fought a desperate man in the face of certain defeat. at the house as she tenderly bathed his swollen face, "jud," she said, "you won't fight him again, will you?" a lump rose in his throat. he felt that she was begging him to desist merely because she knew his shameful incompetency. "you won't fight him again, will you?" she repeated earnestly. "i can't whip him, justine," he said humbly. "i thought i could. how you must despise me!" "despise you! despise _you_! oh, how i love you, jud!" she cried. he looked into her eyes, fearing to see a flicker of dishonesty, but none was there. "i won't fight him until i know i can lick him fair and square. it may be never, but maybe i'll be man enough some day. he's too much for me now. he'd have killed me if it hadn't been for you, dear. good god, justine, i thought i was dying. you don't know how terrible it was!" the story of the fight was soon abroad. the fact that jud's face bore few signs of the conflict struck the people as strange. 'gene had told wondrous tales of his victory. on the other hand, 'gene's face was a mass of cuts and bruises. it was hard for them to believe, but the farmers soon found themselves saying that jud sherrod had whipped 'gene crawley. even when jud acknowledged that 'gene had whipped him, every one said that jud was so magnanimous that he "couldn't crow over 'gene." "now, mebby 'gene crawley'll take back what he said 'bout jed an' jestine las' spring," said james hardesty, down at the toll-gate, in the presence of a large audience. "he'll keep his dern mouth shet now, i reckon. he cain't go 'roun' here talkin' like that 'bout our women folks. gosh dern him, ef he ever opened his head 'bout my wife i'd knock him over into butter township, indiany. what'n thunder's the use bein' afeared o' 'gene crawley? he's a big blow an' he cain't lick nobody 'nless he gits in a crack 'fore the other feller's ready. good gosh, ef i was as young as some o' you fellers, i'd had him licked forty-seven times 'fore this." so 'gene's reputation as a fighter suffered. but not for long. harve crose, joe perkins, and link overshine undertook, on separate occasions, to "take it out'n his hide" for old-standing grievances, and 'gene reëstablished himself in their estimation. link overshine was in bed for a week afterwards. the winter passed rather uneventfully. in a few of the simpler country gatherings jud and justine took part, but poverty kept them pretty closely at home. the yield of grain had not been up to the average and prices were low. it was only by skimping almost to niggardliness that they managed to make both ends meet during the last months of the winter. justine's school-teaching was their salvation, notwithstanding the fact that the township was usually in arrears. jud chopped wood for an extra dollar now and then. justine made frocks for herself. she wore plain colors and plain material. the other girls wondered why it was that justine van--they always called her justine van--looked "so nice in them cheap little calicos." the trimness and daintiness of her dress was refreshing in a community where the taste of woman ran to ribbons, rainbows, and remnants. no girl in the neighborhood considered herself befittingly gowned for parade unless she could spread sail with a dozen hues in the breeze, the odor of perfume in the air, and unblushable pink in her cheeks. society in clay township could never be accused of color-blindness. the young gallants, in their store clothes, were to be won by ribbons and rouge, and, as the sole object of the girls was to get married and have children, the seasons apparently merged in an ever-lasting eastertide. justine, then, aroused curiosity. in the winter she wore a rough black coat and a featherless fedora. in the spring her modest gowns would have been sniffed at had they covered the person of any one less dainty. a single rose in her dark hair, a white trifle at her throat, or a red ribbon somewhere, made up her tribute to extravagance. jud sketched her adoringly. he had scores of posings even. when spring came and they began to plant, in the midst of privation they found time to be happy. it was on one of their sunday-afternoon sketching expeditions that an incident occurred which was to change the whole course of their lives. they had walked several miles across the hills, through leafy woodland, to proctor's falls. here the creek wriggled through a mossy dell until it came to a sudden drop of twenty feet or more, into a pool whose shimmering surface lay darkly in the shade of great trees that lined the banks. it was one of the prettiest spots in the country, and jud had long meant to try his skill in sketching it. this day he sat far down the ravine, facing the falls, and rested his back against a tree. she nestled beside him, leaning against his shoulder, watching with proud eyes the hand that fashioned the picture. to her, his art was little short of the marvelous; to a critic, it would have shown crudities enough, though even the faults were those of genius. her eye followed his pencil with a half-knowing squint, sending an occasional glance into nature's picture up the glen as if seeing blemishes in the subject rather than in the work of the artist. "what a pity there is not more water coming over the rock," she said regretfully. "and that log would look better if it were turned upside down, don't you think, jud? goodness, how natural you have made it, though. i don't see how you do it." presently she ventured, somewhat timidly: "don't you think you might sell some of your pictures, jud, dear? if i were rich, i know i'd like to have them, and i----" "they're yours, anyway," he interrupted, laughing. "everything i draw is yours. you don't have to be rich." "i mean, i'd like to have them if i was somebody else, somebody who wasn't anything to you. they'd look so nice in frames, jud. honestly, they would. dear me, they're much nicer than those horrid things 'squire roudebush paid a dollar and a quarter apiece for." "nobody would want to buy my things, justine. they're not worth the paper they cover. now, who the dickens is there in this county that would give me a dollar for the whole lot? i couldn't give them away--that is, excepting those i've made of you. everybody wants one of you. i guess i must draw you better than anything else." "you make me look so much prettier than i really am," she expostulated. "no, i don't, either," he responded. for a long time she forgot to look at his pencil. her eyes were bent reflectively upon the brown, smooth face with the studious wrinkle in the forehead, and she was not thinking of the picture. suddenly she patted his cheek and afterwards toyed in silence with the curls that clustered around his ear. an elderly lady, a slender young woman in a modish gown of gray, and a tall, boyish chap slowly approached the point from which proctor's falls could best be viewed. their clothes and manner proclaimed them to be city people. the boy, over whose sullen forehead tilted a rakish traveling cap, seemed to be expostulating with the young woman. from his manner it was easy to be seen that he did not regard further progress into the wilds as pleasant, profitable, or necessary. the elder lady, who was fleshy, evidently supported the youth in his impatience, but the gray gown was enthusiastically in the foreground and was determined to push its very charming self into the heart of the sylvan discovery. when they had come within a hundred feet of the big tree that sheltered the artist and his companion, the little bit of genre in their landscape attracted them. the visitors halted and surveyed the unconscious couple, the young lady showing curiosity, the young man showing disgust, the old lady showing indecision. their brief discussion resolved itself into a separation of forces. the young lady petulantly forsook her companions and picked her way through the trees toward the falls. "let 'em alone, sis," objected the youth, as she persisted in going forward; "it's some country jay and his girl and he'll not thank you for----" "oh, go back to the train, randall," interrupted the young maiden. "he won't eat me, you know, and one can't see that pretty little waterfall unless one gets out there where your lovers sit. if you won't go with me, let me go alone in peace. wait here, mamma, until i come back, and don't let little randall sulk himself into tears." "you make me sick," growled the youth wrathfully. the girl in gray soon came to the edge of the little opening in which jud and justine sat, pausing some twenty feet away to smile admiringly upon the unsuspecting pair. it was a charming picture that lay before her, and she was loth to disturb its quiet beauty. with a sudden feeling that she might be intruding, she turned to steal away as she had come. a twig crackled under her shoe. the other girl, startled, looked up at her with amazement in her eyes, her ripe lips apart as if ready to utter an exclamation that would not come. the youth's eyes also were upon her. the intruder, feeling painfully out of place, laughed awkwardly, her cheeks turning a brilliant pink. "i did not mean to disturb you," she stammered. "i wanted to see the falls and--and--well, you happened to be here." jud recovered himself first and, in visible agitation, arose, not forgetting to assist to her feet his wife, who in all her life had seen no such creature as this. to her the stranger was like a visitor from another world. her own world had been clay township. she did not dream that she was the cause of envy in the heart of the immaculate stranger, who, perhaps for the first time in her short, butterfly life, was looking upon a perfect type of rural health and loveliness. "you don't disturb us," said jud quickly. "i was only trying to draw the falls and i--we don't mind. you can see very well if you will step over here by the tree." "but you must not let me disturb you for the tiniest second. please go on with your drawing," said the stranger, pausing irresolutely. she was waiting for an invitation from the vivid creature at jud's side. "he has it nearly finished," said justine, almost unconsciously. the new arrival was charmed more than ever by the soft, timid voice. "won't you let me see the picture, too?" she asked eagerly. "let me be the critic. i'll promise not to be harsh." but jud, suddenly diffident, put the picture behind him and shook his head with an embarrassed smile. "oh, it's no good," he said. "i don't know anything about drawing and----" "let me judge as to that," persisted gray gown, more eager than before, now that she had found opposition. "i am sure it must be good. your modesty is the best recommendation." she held forth her small gloved hand appealingly. justine looked upon that hand in admiration. it was so unlike her own strong brown hand. "it isn't quite finished," objected jud, pleased and almost at ease. she was charmingly fair and unconventional. "this is the first time he ever tried to get the falls," apologized justine, and her smile bewitched the would-be critic. she was charmed with these healthy, comely strangers, found so unexpectedly in the wilds. they were not like the rustics she had seen or read about. "then i'll watch him finish it," she said decisively. "will it take a very long while?" "just a few more lines," said jud. "but i can't work with any one looking on." "wasn't this young lady looking on?" "oh, but i am different," cried justine. "i know," said the other delightedly, "you are--are sweethearts. of course, that does make a difference. now, aren't you sweethearts?" the two flushed unreasonably and exchanged glances. "i guess it's not hard to guess that," said jud lamely. "you probably saw us before we saw you." "show her the picture," murmured justine, dimly conscious that she and jud had seemed amusing to a stranger. jud reluctantly held up the sketching board. the stranger uttered a little cry of amazement. "why!" she cried, looking from the picture to the falls up the glen, "this is clever!" then a quizzical expression came into her eyes and she looked from one to the other with growing uncertainty. "pardon me, i thought you were--i mean, i thought you lived near here. you must overlook my very strange behavior. but you will admit that you are dressed like country people, and you are tanned, and----" here she checked herself in evident confusion. "and we are country people," said jud blankly. the young lady looked bewildered. "are you in earnest?" she demanded doubtingly. "are you not out here from the city?" "we have lived all our lives within five miles of this spot," said jud, flushing. "and i have never seen a big city," added justine, first to divine the cause of the stranger's mistake. the critic thought herself to be in the presence of a genius from some city studio. it was a pretty and unfeigned compliment to jud's picture. "i cannot believe it," she cried. "you may live here, sir, but you have studied drawing. i have never seen a more perfect sketch." "i have never taken an hour's instruction in my life," said jud, his voice trembling with joy. "oh, now i know you have been trifling with me," she cried, flushing slightly. "it is the truth, isn't it, justine? i thought anybody could see that i know nothing about drawing. i only wish i could go to an art school." "you really are in earnest?" the stranger asked, looking from one to the other. "then you must tell me all about yourself. a man with your talent should not be lost in these wilds. you have a wonderful gift. truly, i can hardly believe even now that you are not deceiving me." the two glanced at each other rather helplessly, not knowing how to reply. "you haven't looked at the falls," stammered jud, at last. the girl in gray laughed and her eyes went to justine's rich, warm face as if expecting her to join in the merriment at his expense. justine, however, was too deep in admiration to think of smiling. caught by the gaze of the stranger, she was at last forced to smile vaguely. "i haven't time for the falls," said the stranger. "i am interested only in you. you are worth cultivating. dear me, if i had you in chicago, i'd make a lion of you. how long have you been hiding this talent out here in the woods?" then jud proceeded to tell her in a disjointed, self-conscious manner how he had been drawing ever since he was a child; how his mother had assisted him; how justine had encouraged him; how much he longed to be an artist. at the end of his brief biography, the listener abruptly asked: "will you sell me this picture?" "i--i--if you'd really like to have it, i--i--will give it to you. i could not ask you anything for it. it's not worth a price. besides, you've been so kind to me. won't you accept it as a gift?" he answered, beginning awkwardly, but ending eagerly. justine's eyes were pleading with the young lady to take it. "but you must let me pay you for it. you don't know me, nor i you; you are under no obligation to me. and i would rather pay you for it. you see, it may be your start in life." [illustration: "you must let me pay you for it."] "it's not worth anything," objected jud. "i know what it is worth. fifty dollars is cheap." before she had finished speaking she was counting the money from her purse. thrusting five bills into jud's hand, she snatched up the picture and said: "it's a bargain, isn't it? you can't take back the picture because you have accepted payment." "good heaven!--i mean, i can't take all of this!" "but you can and shall," she cried delightedly. "it is not enough, i'm sure, but it is all i have with me. some day, when you are famous, i shall have a valuable picture. now i must be going. my mother and brother are probably in convulsions. see them? don't they look angry? our train had to wait three hours over at the other side of the woods until they could repair the engine. we had a breakdown." "i wish you wouldn't force me to----" jud began. "don't object, now!" she cried. "i am the gainer. save that money to give to your sweetheart on your wedding day. that's a very pretty idea, isn't it? i know she will approve." and here she came to justine and kissed her. "i know i should like you very much," she said honestly. justine felt a queer sensation in her throat and her heart went out more than ever to the girl in gray. "remember, it is to be your wedding present when the sweet day comes." jud and justine glanced sheepishly at one another, but before either had found words to tell her they were already married, she was hastening away. "oh, by the way," she cried, turning back, "what is your name?" "dudley sherrod." "it would be well for me to know it when you are famous. good-bye!" she called cheerfully. jud hesitated an instant. "won't you tell me your name?" he cried. justine clasped his arm in mute astonishment. the receding girl turned, smiled, and held up her card, hastily withdrawn from its case. it fluttered to the grass, and she was gone. chapter vii. leaving paradise. jud hurried down the slope and snatched up the piece of cardboard. his eyes sought the name, then the departing enchantress. his heart was full of thankfulness to the stranger, whose gray figure was disappearing among the oaks. "she seems just like the fairy queen in the stories we used to read, jud," said justine. looking over his shoulders, she read aloud: "'miss wood.' oh, dear; it doesn't give her first name. how i wish i knew it!" "and it don't say where she lives," said jud slowly. "chicago, i'm sure. don't you remember what she said about wishing she had you there? dear me, what could she do with a country boy like you in that great place? harve crose says there are more people there than there are in this whole county. but wasn't she nice, jud, wasn't she nice? and did you ever see such a beautiful face?" here jud's sober, thoughtful eyes looked so intently upon his wife's brilliant face that she blushed under the unspoken compliment. "and her clothes, jud! weren't they grand? oh, oh, i never saw any one like her!" the two walked slowly homeward, excitedly discussing the fair stranger and her generosity. all the evening she and the fifty dollars so unexpectedly acquired were the topics of conversation. jud insisted upon buying a new dress for justine--as a "wedding present"--but she demurred. the money was to go into the bank the next day, she insisted; and she ruled. he was lying beneath a big tree in the yard, looking up at the stars, reflectively drawing a long spear of wire grass through his teeth. she sat beside him, her back against the tree, serene, proud, and happy. it was he who broke the long silence, dreamily. "i wonder if i could make it go in chicago." she started from her reverie and her hand fell upon his arm. for an instant her big eyes narrowed as if trying to penetrate some shadow. in another moment they opened wide again, and she was earnestly seeking to convince him that he could succeed in the great city. the months sped by and side by side they toiled, she with love and devotion in her soul, he with ambition added. as the winter came he slaved with his pencil and pen, his heart bound to the new hope. the prediction at proctor's falls had inspired him; the glowing blue eyes had not lied to him even though the lips might have flattered. she had praised his work, and she knew! she must have known what he could do! justine shared the enthusiasm that had been awakened by miss wood. she looked upon that young woman as a goddess who had transformed her husband into a genius whose gifts were to make the world fall down in worship. as the spring drew near jud began to speak more often of the city and his chances for success there. he could see the pride and devotion in his wife's eyes, but he could also see a certain dim, wistful shadow in the depths. he knew she was grieving over the fear that some day he would desert their happy, simple home and rush out into the world, leaving her behind until he had won a place for her. she knew that he could not take her with him at the outset. he was to try his fortune in the strange, big city, and she was to stay in the little cottage and pray for the day to come speedily that would take her to him. with him, ambition was tempered by love for her and the certainty that he could not leave her even to win fame and fortune. when he allowed himself to think of her alone in the cottage, looking sadly at the stars and thinking of him in the rushing city, he said to himself: "i can't leave her!" both knew, although neither spoke it aloud, that if he went, he would have to go alone. justine understood his hesitation and its cause. she knew that she was holding him back, that she alone kept him from making the plunge into the world, and her heart was sore. night after night she lay awake in his arms, her poor heart throbbing against his ambitious heart, writhing beneath the certain knowledge that she was the weight about his neck. one day, late in the fall, when the strain upon her heart had become too great, she broke the fetters. it was at dusk, and, coming around the corner of the cottage, she found him sitting on the doorstep, his gaze far away, his dejection showing in the droop of the broad shoulders. a little gasp of pain came from her lips--pain mingled with love and pity for him. she stood for a moment, reading his thoughts as if they were printed before her eyes--thoughts of fame, honor, success, trial, chance! how good, how handsome, how noble he was! she was the weight, the drag! the hour had come for her to decide. he would never say the word--that much she knew. "jud," she said, standing bravely before him. he looked up, shaking off his dream. "don't you think it about time you were trying your luck in chicago? you surely have worked hard enough at your drawing, and i don't see why you put it off any longer." for a moment he was unable to speak. into his eyes came a blur of tears. "but, justine, dear, how are we to live there? they say it takes a fortune," he said. there was a breath of eagerness in his voice and she detected it. she sat beside him and laid her arm about his shoulder. he turned his face to hers, wondering, and their eyes met. for a long time neither spoke by tongue, but they understood. a sob came into his throat as he lifted her hand from her lap and drew her to him almost convulsively. "justine, i can't do that! i can't go away off there and leave you here alone. why, sweetheart, i'd die without you," he cried. "but when you are able, dear, to take me to you in the great city, we can be the happiest people in the world," she said huskily. "i'll be lonesome and you'll be lonesome, but it won't be for long. you will succeed. i know it, dear, and you must not waste another day in this wilderness----" "it is the sweetest place in the world," he cried, passionately. "wilderness? with you here beside me? oh, justine, it will be wilderness if i go away from you!" "surely, _surely_, jud, it is for the best. i know you can't take me now, but you can come after me some day, and then i'll know that i have lost nothing by letting you go. you will be a great--you _will_ succeed! why, jud, you draw better than any one i ever knew about. your pictures even now are better than any i have ever seen. they can't help liking you in chicago. you must go--you must, jud!" she was talking rapidly, excitedly. "you love me so much that you are blind, dear. up in chicago they have thousands of artists who are better than i am, and they are starving. wait a minute! suppose i should fail! suppose they should laugh at me and i couldn't get work. what then? i have no money, no friends up there. if i don't get on, what is to become of me? did you ever think of that?" "haven't you me and the little farm to come back to, jud? i'll be here and i'll love you more than ever. and i'll die here on this old place with you beside me, and never be sorry that you couldn't do for me everything you wish," she said solemnly. then she went on quickly: "but you won't fail--you can't, jud, you can't. don't you remember what pretty miss wood said about your work? well, didn't she know? of course, she did. she _lives_ in chicago and she knows." "if i knew where to find her or write to her, she might help me," said he, a new animation in his voice. "but there's no one i can write to. i don't know how to go about it." "go about it like other boys have done. lots of them have gone out into the world and won their way. now, jud, when will you go?" the moment of decision came too suddenly. he was not ready to meet it. "i--i--oh, we can talk about this later on," he faltered. "we must settle it now." "do you want me to go?" he asked after a moment. "yes, i do, jud." "how queer you are! i'd rather die than leave you, and yet you want me to go away from you," he said inconsistently. "don't say that! i love you better than my life! don't you see that is why i want you to go? it is because i love you so, oh, so much, and i know it is for the best. it's not like losing you altogether. we'll be with each other soon, i know. you can come home to see me every once in awhile, don't you see? and then, when you feel that you can do so, you will take your poor little country girl into the great city to live with you. you'll be great, then; will you be ashamed of me?" "ashamed of you!" he cried. for a long time he held her in his arms in the twilight, and pleaded with her to let him remain. to her courage, to the breaking of her heart, was due the step which started him out into the world to seek his fortune and hers. the day was set for his departure. she drew from the bank the fifty dollars his first picture had brought, and pressed it into his reluctant hands. it was she who drove him into the village. in the pocket of his sunday clothes he carried the names of newspaper artists, so familiar to him; they were the men he was to see--the strangers who were to be his samaritans. if they lent him a helping hand all might go well. she was to live without him in the little paradise, with old mrs. crane and caleb spangler's boy as companions. they were to conduct the affairs of the farm through the winter months, while he fought for a footing in another universe. it was a sobbing girl who lay all that night in the broad bed, thinking of the boy whose curly head was missing from the pillow beside her, whose loving arms were gone, perhaps forever. 'gene crawley knew of jud's intentions long before his departure. in fact, the whole township was aware of the great undertaking, and there was more or less gossip, and no end of doubt as to the wisdom of the step. it was generally conceded that jud was a bright boy, but still "he wuzn't much to git ahead, even out in the country, so how in tarnation did he expect to make it go in the city?" a few of the evil-minded saw signs of waning love in the sherrod cottage; others slyly winked and intimated that 'gene crawley had something to do with it; and the whole neighborhood solemnly shook hands with jud and "hoped he'd come back richer'n vanderbilt." crawley saw them drive away to the station in the village, and he saw the dejected young wife come slowly homeward at dusk. that night, while she rolled and sobbed in her bed, he sat on the fence across the lane from the dark cottage until long after midnight. chapter viii. the first was a criminal. jud's first night in chicago was sleepless, even bedless. the train rolled into the dearborn street station at ten o'clock and he stumbled out into the smoky, clanging train-sheds among countless strangers. it was all different from the station platform at glenville, or even the more pretentious depot in the town that had seen his short college career. sharp rebuffs, amused smiles, and sarcastic rejoinders met his innocent queries as he wandered aimlessly about the station, carrying his ungainly "telescope." dismayed and resentful, he refrained from asking questions at last, and for more than an hour sat upon one of the unfriendly benches near the gates. once he plucked up enough courage to ask a stranger when he could get a train back to glenville. "never heard of glenville," was the unfeeling response. the crowds did not interest the new arrival; he saw the people and novelties of a great city through dim, homesick eyes, and thought only of the old, familiar, well-beloved fences, lanes, and pastures, and justine's sad face. his ambition waned. he realized that he did not belong in this great, unkind place; he saw that he was an object of curiosity and amusement; keenly he felt the inconsiderate stares of passers-by, and indeed he knew that his own strangeness was an excuse for the smiles which made him shrink with mortification. an old gentleman stopped at the news-stand hard by and selected a magazine. he stood beneath a dazzling arc light and turned the pages, glancing at the pictures. jud was attracted by the honest kindliness of his face, and approached him. the old gentleman looked up. "excuse me, sir, but i am a stranger here, and i'd like to ask a favor," said jud. he found that his voice was hoarse. "i have nothing for you," said the old gentleman, returning to the magazine. "i'm not a beggar," cried jud, drawing back, cut to the quick. "don't you want enough to get a bed or something for a starving mother to eat?" sarcastically demanded the old gentleman, taking another look at the youth. "i have had nothing but hard words since i came into this depot, and god knows i've tried to be respectful. what am i that every one should treat me like a dog? do i look like a beggar or a thief? i know i look just what i am, a country boy, but that oughtn't to turn people against me." jud uttered these words in a voice trembling with pent-up anger and the tears of a long-tried indignation. suddenly his eyes flashed and he blurted forth the real fierceness of his feelings in a savage, and, for him, unusual display of resentment: "for two cents i'd tell the whole crowd to go to hell!" it was this intense and startling expression that convinced the stranger of jud's genuineness. there was no mistaking the sincerity of that wrath. "my boy, you shouldn't say that. this is a big and busy city, and you must get used to the ways of it. i see you are a good, honest lad, and i beg pardon for my unkind words. now, tell me, what can i do for you? my train leaves in ten minutes, so we have no time to spare. tell me what you are doing here." jud's heart leaped at the sound of these, the first kindly tones he had heard, and he poured forth the disjointed story of his ambitions, not once thinking that the stranger could have no personal interest in them. but he had won an attentive listener. "you're the sort of a boy i like," exclaimed the gray-haired chicagoan, grasping the boy's hand. "i'll be back in chicago in three or four days, and i'll do all i can to help you. get along here as best you can till next friday, and then come to see me. here is my card," and he handed forth an engraved piece of cardboard. "don't forget it, now, for i am interested in you. hanged if i don't like a boy who talks as you did awhile ago. i feel that way myself sometimes. good-bye; i must get this train. friday morning, mr.--oh, what is your name?" "dudley sherrod, sir, and i'm much obliged to you. but i wanted to ask a favor of you. where can i find a place to sleep?" "good lord, was that all you wanted?" and then the old gentleman directed him to a nearby hotel. "stay there to-night, and if it's too high-priced, hunt a cheaper place to-morrow. there goes my train!" jud looked after him as he raced down the yard, and drew a breath of relief as he swung upon the rear platform of the last sleeper, awkwardly, but safely. then he read the card. "christopher barlow," it said, "investment broker." it seemed promising, and with a somewhat lighter heart he made his way to his cumbersome valise, so unlike the neat boxes carried by other travelers, and prepared for the walk out into the lamplights of a chicago street. he found the hotel, but had to occupy a chair in the office all night, for the rooms were full. a kind-hearted clerk gave him permission to remain there until morning, observing his fatigue and his loneliness. he even checked the boy's valise for him and told him where he could "wash up." it was tuesday morning when he started forth for his first walk about the streets of chicago. the clerk recommended a cheap lodging-house and he found it without much difficulty, and began to feel more at home. some one told him how to reach the _record_ office, and he was soon asking a youth in the counting-room where he could find a certain artist. here he encountered a peculiar rebuff. he was told that the artists did not go to work until nearly noon. to jud, who had always gone to work at four in the morning, this was almost incomprehensible. in his ignorance, he at once began to see the easy life he might lead if ever he could obtain such a position. all the morning he wandered about state and clark streets, wabash avenue, and the lake front. everything was new and marvelous. from the lowly cot in the lane to the fifteen-story monsters in chicago; from the meadows and cornfields to the miles of bewildering thoroughfares; from the occasional vehicle or passing farmhand of the "pike" to the thousands of rushing men and women on the congested sidewalks; from the hayracks and the side-boarded grain-wagon to the clanging street cars and the "l" trains; from the homely garb of the yokel to the fashionable clothes of the swell. it is a striking transition when it comes suddenly. in the afternoon he was directed to the room of the newspaper artist. he carried with him his batch of drawings, and his heart was in his shoes. already he had begun to learn something of the haste of city life. how could he hope to win more than the passing attention of the busy man? several girls in the counting-room giggled as he strode by, and his ears flamed red. he did not know that more than one of those girls admired his straight, strong figure and sunburnt face. the artist was drawing at his board when jud entered the little room facing fifth avenue. there was no halo of glory hovering over the rumpled head, nor was there a sign of the glorious studio his dreams had pictured. he found himself standing in the doorway of what looked like a junk-shop. desks were strewn with drawing-boards, cardboard, pens, pads, weights, thumb-tacks, unmounted photographs, and a heterogeneous assortment of things he had never seen before. the cartoonist barely glanced at him as he stepped inside the doorway. "morning," remarked the eminent man, and coolly resumed work on the drawing. jud was stricken dumb by this indifference, expected as it was. he forgot the speech he had made up and stood hesitating, afraid to advance or retreat. "is this mr. brush?" he asked at length, after his disappointed eyes had swept the untidy den from floor to ceiling. was this the room of a great artist? shattered dream! the walls were covered with flaring posters, rough sketches, cheaply framed cartoons, and dozens of odd and ends, such as one sees in the junk-shops of art. "yes," was the brief response. "have a chair. i'll talk to you in a minute." jud sat in a chair near the door, his fingers spasmodically gripping the humble package of drawings he had brought all the way from the fields of clay township to show to this surly genius whose work had been his inspiration. "fine day," said mr. brush, his head bent low over the board. "yes, sir," responded the visitor, who thought it one of the most dismal days in his life. after fully ten minutes of awkward silence, during which jud found himself willing to hate the artist and that impolite pen, the artist straightened up in his chair and for the first time surveyed his caller. "do you want to see me about something?" "i want to show you some of my drawings, if you have time to look at 'em--them, sir," said jud timidly. "oh, you're another beginner who wants a job, eh?" said the other, a trifle sardonically. "let's see 'em. i can tell you in advance, however, that you'll have a devil of a time finding an opening in chicago. papers all full and a hundred fellows looking for places. live here? oh, i see--from the country." this after a swift inspection of his visitor's general make-up. "i am a little busy just now. can you come in at six o'clock?" "yes, sir. i'm sorry i bothered you," said jud, glad, in his disillusionment, to find an excuse for leaving the crowded workshop. the artist, whimsical as are all men of his profession, suddenly fell to admiring the young man's face. it was a strong type, distinctly sketchable. "wait a minute. i have an engagement at six, come to think of it. i'll look at 'em now," he said, still gazing. jud reluctantly placed the package on the table and proceeded, with nervous fingers, to untie the string which justine had so lovingly, but so stubbornly, knotted. every expression of the eager, embarrassed face impressed itself upon the keen eye of the watcher. it was with little or no interest, however, that mr. brush took up the little stock of drawings. this boy was but one of a hundred poor, aspiring fellows who had wearied him with their miserable efforts. "did you draw these?" he asked, after he had looked at three or four. even jud in all his embarrassment could see that his face had suddenly turned serious. "yes, sir, certainly," answered jud. "didn't copy them?" "no, sir. they are pictures of places and objects down in glenville." "where is that?" "in indiana. you don't think they are copies, do you?" "drew 'em from life?" asked the other incredulously. "of course i did," said jud with acerbity. "don't get mad, my boy. how long have you been drawing?" "since i was a boy--'knee high to a duck'--as we say down there." "ever have any instructions?" "no, sir. i haven't been able to afford it. i want to go to an art school when i have raised the money." the artist looked through the pack without another word and jud fidgeted under the strain. he was anxious to have the critic condemn his work so that he could flee and have done with it. "here's a pad of paper and a pencil. see how long it will take you to sketch that elevated track and the building across the street. sit up here near the window," commanded the artist. jud's nerve fled as he found himself called upon to draw beneath the eye of an expert, and it was only after some little urging that he was induced to attempt the sketch. he felt uncertain, incompetent, uncomfortable, mainly because he was to draw objects entirely new to his eyes. it was not like sketching the old barns and fences down in clay township. closing his jaws determinedly, however, he began the task, wondering why he was doing so in the face of a decision he had reached but a moment before. he had come to the conclusion that it was not worth while to try for a place in chicago and had made up his mind to go back to the farm, defeated. in twenty minutes he had a good accurate outline of all that met his keen gaze beyond the window-sill, and was beginning to "fill in" when the artist checked him. "that's enough. you can do it, i see. now i believe that you drew all these from life and nature. what's your name?" "dudley sherrod." "well, mr. sherrod, i don't know you, nor do i know where glenville is, but i will say this much to you: a man who can draw such pictures as these is entitled to consideration anywhere. it kind o' paralyzes you, eh? you may rest assured that i am sincere, because we don't praise a man's work unless it is deserving. what are you doing up here? looking for work?" "i want to earn enough at something to give me a start, that's all. do you really think i'll do, mr. brush?" his eyes were actually snapping with excitement. "you can be made to do. it's in you. try your hand at newspaper illustrating and then sail in for magazine work, etching, paintings--thunder, you can do it, if you have the nerve to stick to it!" "but how am i to get work on a paper?" "there are twenty-five applicants ahead of you here, and we are to lose a man next month--mr. kirby, who goes to new york. i'll see that you get his place. in the mean time, you'll have to wait until the first of the month, and, if you like, you may hang around the office and go out with the fellows on some of their assignments, just for practice. you won't get much of a salary to begin with, but you'll work up. i'm darn glad you came here first." "how do you know i came here first?" "because you wouldn't have got away from another paper if you'd gone there. have you any friends in the city?" "no, sir--yes, i did meet a gentleman at the depot last night. i'm to call on him next friday. do you know him?" sherrod gave him christopher barlow's card. the artist glanced at it, and, without a word, picked up a photograph from his desk. "this the man?" "why, yes--isn't it funny you'd have it?" "and here is his daughter." this time he displayed the picture of a beautiful girl. "and his wife, too." jud held the three portraits in his hand, wondering how they came to be in the artist's possession. "mrs. barlow committed suicide this morning." "good heaven! you don't mean it. and has mr. barlow come home?" "that's the trouble, my boy. you'll have a good deal to learn in chicago, and you can't trust very much of anybody. you see, old man barlow, who has been looked upon as the soul of honor, skipped town last night with a hundred thousand dollars belonging to depositors, and he is now where the detectives can't find him." jud was staggered. that kindly old gentleman a thief! the first man to give him a gentle word in the great city a fleeing criminal! he felt a cold perspiration start on his forehead. what manner of world was this? his first day in chicago ended with the long letter he wrote to justine, an epistle teeming with enthusiasm and joy, brimming over with descriptions and experiences, not least of which was the story of christopher barlow. chapter ix. the encounter with crawley. justine received his letter at the end of the week. the three days intervening between his departure and its arrival had seemed almost years. since their marriage day they had not been separated for more than twelve consecutive hours. it was the first night she had spent alone--the night which followed his departure. in her brief, blissful married life it was the only night she had spent without his arm for a pillow. the days were bleak and oppressive; she lived in a daze, almost to the point of unconsciousness. the nights brought dismal forebodings, cruel dreams, and sudden awakenings. she felt lost, in strange and unfriendly surroundings; where love, tenderness, and joy had been the reigning forces there was now only loneliness. no object seemed familiar to her. everything that had given personality to the little farm was gone with the whistle of a locomotive, the clacking of railway coaches, the clanging of a bell. the landscape was not the same, the sky was no longer blue, the moon and stars were somber. yank, the dog, moped about the place, purposeless, sad-eyed, and with no ambition in his erstwhile frisky tail. jud had not been gone more than half a day when curious neighbors pulled up their horses at the gate. "heerd from jud? how's he gittin' 'long in chickawgo?" "i haven't heard, mr. martin, but i am expecting a letter soon. how long does it take mail to get here from chicago?" "depends a good deal on how fer it is." "oh, it's over two hundred miles, i know." "seems to me y'oughter be hearin' 'fore long, then. shell i ast ef they's any mail fer you down to the post-office?" "i have sent charlie spangler to the toll-gate, thank you." "gitep!" mail reached the cross-roads post-office twice a day, carried over by wagon from glenville. little charlie spangler was at the toll-gate morning and evening, at least half an hour before mr. hardesty drove up with the slim pouch, but it was not until the third morning that he was rewarded. then came a thick envelope on which blazed the chicago postmark. every hanger-on about the toll-gate unhesitatingly declared the handwriting to be that of jud sherrod. it was addressed to mrs. dudley sherrod. the letter was passed around for inspection before it was finally delivered to the proud boy, who ran nearly all the way to justine's in his eagerness to learn as much as he could of its contents. jim hardesty had promised him a bunch of yucatan if he brought all the news to the toll-gate before supper-time. justine knew the letter had come when she saw the spindle-shanked boy racing up the lane. she was awaiting the messenger at the gate. "is it from jud?" she cried, hurrying to meet him, her face glowing once more. he was waving the epistle on high. "that's what they all say," he panted, as he drew near. "jim says he'd know jud's writin' if he wrote in chinese." the poor, lonesome girl read the long letter as if it were the most thrilling novel, fascinated by every detail, enthralled by the wonderful experiences of her boy-husband in the great city. his descriptions of places, people, and customs, as they appeared to his untrained, marveling eye, were vivid, though disconnected. then came the narration of his experience with the artist, supplemented by playful boasting, and the welcome news that he was to have employment on the great newspaper. justine had not, from the first, doubted his ability to find work in the city. while she glowed with pride and happiness, there was a little bitterness in her lonely heart. in that moment she realized that there had existed, unknown and unfelt, a hope that he would fail and that the failure would send him back to gladden the little home. afterwards the bitterness gave way to rejoicing. success to him meant success and happiness to both; his struggle was for her as well as for himself, and the end would justify the sacrifice of the beginning. it could not be for long--he had already clutched the standard of fame and she knew him to be a man who would bear it forward as long as there was life and health. she had supreme faith in his ambition--the only rival to his love. she read certain parts of his letter aloud to mrs. crane and charlie, glorying in their astonished ejaculations, widespread eyes, and excited "ohs." within herself she felt a certain wifely superiority, a little disdain for their surprise, a certain pity for their ignorance. with a touch of self-importance, innocently natural, she enjoyed the emotions of her companions, forgetting that she had just begun to break through the chrysalis of ignorance that still bound them. before "supper-time" charlie spangler was in possession of the yucatan and jim hardesty's place was ringing with the news of jud's success. long before the night was over certain well-informed and calculating individuals were prophesying that inside of five years he would be running for the presidency of the united states. "'y gosh!" volunteered mr. hardesty, "thet boy's got it in him to be shuriff of this county, ef he'd a mind to run. 'f he stays up there in chickawgo fer a year er two an' tends to his knittin' like a sensible feller'd oughter, he'll come back here with a reecord so derned hard to beat thet it wouldn't be a whipstitch tell he'd be the most pop'lar man in the hull county. chickawgo puts a feller in the way of big things an' i bet three dollars jed wouldn't have no trouble 't all gittin' the enomination fer shuriff." "shuriff, thunder! what'd he wanter run fer shuriff fer? thet's no office fer a chickawgo man. they run fer jedge or general or senator or somethin' highfalutin'. i heerd it said onct thet there has been more presidents of the united states come from chickawgo than from airy other state in the west. what jed'll be doin' 'fore long will be to come out fer president or vice-president, you mark my words, boys." thus spake uncle sammy godfrey, the sage of clay township. he had been a voter for sixty years and his opinion on things political was next to law. 'gene crawley soon heard the news. he had been awaiting the letter with almost as much impatience as had justine. if such a creature as he could pray, it had been his prayer that justine's husband might find constant employment in chicago. the torture of knowing that she was another man's wife could be assuaged if he were not compelled to see the happiness they found in being constantly together. he could have shouted for joy when he heard that jud was to live in chicago and that she was to remain on the farm, near him, for a time, at least. "well, jed's gone, 'gene," said mrs. hardesty, meaningly, as he leaned over the greasy counter that evening. "'spose you don't keer much, do you?" "don't give a damn, one way or t'other," responded he, darkly, puffing away at his pipe. despite his apparent calmness, his teeth were almost biting the cane pipe-stem in two. "has he got a job?" "he's goin' to draw picters fer a newspaper up there, an' they do say the pay's immense." "how much is he to git?" "he says in his letter he's to start out with $15 a week, an'll soon be gittin' twict as much." "you mean a _month_." "no; a week, 'gene. thet's what the letter said." "aw, what you givin' us! him to git $15 a week? why, goldern it, i'm only gittin' $18 a month, an' i've allus been counted a better hand'n him. who said that was in the letter?" jealousy was getting the better of 'gene. "charlie spangler heerd justine van read it right out loud, an' he's a powerful quick-witted boy. he gen'rally hears things right." "he's the cussedest little liar in clay township," snarled 'gene. "you know better'n that, 'gene crawley. you're jest mad 'cause jed's doin' well, thet's what you air, and you know it," cried she. "mad? what fer?" exclaimed he, trying to recover his temper for the first time in his life. "'cause you're jealous an' 'cause he's got her, thet's what fer," she said, conscious that she was stirring his violent nature to the boiling point. but to her surprise--and to his own, for that matter--he gulped and laughed coarsely. "well, he's welcome to her, ain't he?" he asked. "who's got a better right?" "thet ain't the way you talked a year ago," she said meaningly. "you know too dern much," he said and walked away, leaving behind a thoroughly dissatisfied woman. but mrs. hardesty did not know how deeply she had cut nor how he raged inwardly as he hurried homeward through the night. several days later he boldly climbed the meadow fence, and, for the first time since the fight, started across justine's property on a short cut to the hills. what his object was in going to the hills in the dusk of that evening he himself did not clearly understand, but at the bottom of it all was the desire to intrude upon forbidden ground. beneath the ugliness of his motive, however, there lurked a certain timidity. he was conscious that he was trespassing, and he knew she would not like it. but if she saw him cross the meadow, he never knew. his intention had been, of course, to attract her notice, and he was filled with disappointment. late in the night he walked back from the hills. there was a light in one of her rear windows, and he peered eagerly from the garden fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. when yank began to bark, he threw stones at the faithful brute and stood his ground, trusting that she would come to the door. he cursed when old mrs. crane appeared in the yard, calling in frightened tones to the dog. then he slunk away in the night. the next day and the next he strode through the meadow. with each failure he grew uglier and more set in his purpose, for he had a fair certainty that she saw and avoided him. one evening he ventured across the meadow, his black eyes searching for her. suddenly he came upon her. she was driving a cow home from a far corner of the pasture, leisurely, in the waning daylight, her thoughts of jud and the future. she did not see crawley until he was almost beside her, and she could not restrain the gasp of terror. hoping that he would not speak to her, she hurried on. "have you heerd from jud ag'in, justine?" he asked, his voice trembling in spite of himself. "how dare you speak to me?" she cried, not checking her speed, nor glancing toward him. "well, i guess i've got a voice an' they ain't no law ag'in me usin' it, is there? what's the use bein' so unfriendly, anyhow? i'll drive the cow in fer you, justine," he went on with a strange bashfulness. his stride toward her brought her to a standstill, her eyes flashing with resentment. "'gene crawley, you've been ordered to keep off of our place and i want you to stay off. if you ever put your foot in this pasture again i'll sic' yank on you. don't you ever dare speak to me again." she drew her form to its full height and looked into his face. "if you sic' yank on me i'll kill him, jes' as i could 'a' killed _him_ when we fit over yander by the crick. i let him up fer your sake an' i've been sorry fer it ever sence. say, justine, i want to be your friend----" "friend!" she exclaimed scornfully. "you're a treacherous dog and you don't deserve to have a friend on earth. if you were a man you'd keep off this place and quit bothering me. you know that jud's away and you are coward enough to take the advantage. i want you to _go_--go at once!" "you ain't got no right to call me a coward," he growled. "do you think it brave to say what you did about me and to make your boasts down at the toll-gate? is that the way a man acts?" "somebody's been lyin' to you----" he began confusedly. "no! you did say it and there's no use lying to me. i loathe you worse than a snake, and i wouldn't trust you as far. 'gene crawley, i've got a loaded shotgun in the house. so help me god, i'll kill you if you don't keep away from me." she was in deadly earnest and he knew it. the rage of despair burned away every vestige of the brutal confidence in which he had intruded upon her little domain. "i'm not such a bad feller, justine----" he began, with a mixture of defiance and humbleness in his voice. it was now dark and they were alone, but she commanded the situation despite her quaking heart. "you lie, 'gene crawley!" she exclaimed. "you are a drunken brute, and you don't deserve to be spoken to by any woman. you are not fit to talk to--to--to the hogs!" he clenched his fists and an oath sprang to his lips. "i've a notion to----" he hissed, but could not complete the threat. the suppressed words were "brain you." "i expect you to," she cried. "why don't you do it, you coward?" he glared at her for a moment, baffled. suddenly his eyes fell, his shoulders trembled, and his voice broke. "i wouldn't hurt you for the whole world, justine." he turned and walked away from her without another word. 'gene crawley never touched liquor after that night. "not fit to talk to the hogs," "a drunken brute," were sentences that curdled in his heart, freezing forever the lust of liquor. he was beginning to crave the respect of a woman. deep in his soul lay the hope that if he could only cease drinking he might win more than respect from her. chapter x. the clothes and the man. it was six weeks before jud had saved enough money to make the rather expensive trip to glenville. in that time he found many experiences, novel and soul-trying. the busy city clashed against the rough edges of this unsophisticated youth and quickly wore them off. by the time he was ready to board the train for a two-days' stay with justine he had acquired what it had taken other men years to learn. keen and quick-witted, he easily fell into the ways of strangers, putting forward as good a foot as any country-bred boy who ever went to chicago. the newspaper on which he was employed recognized his worth, and at the end of the month he was pleased beyond all expression to find a twenty dollar gold piece in his envelope instead of a ten and a five. the chief artist told him his salary would improve correspondingly with his work. still, he realized that twenty dollars a week was but little more than it required to keep him "going" in this spendthrift metropolis. the men he met were good fellows and they spent money with the freedom customary among newspaper workers. jud did not spend his foolishly, yet he found he could save but little. he did not touch liquor; the other boys in the office did. his friend, the chief artist, advised him to save what money he could, but to avoid as much as possible the danger of being called a "cheap skate." he was told to be anything but stingy. the young artist would gladly have eaten at lunch counters and slept in the lowliest of flats if he could have followed his own inclinations. but how could he let the other boys spend money on expensive meals without responding as liberally? it was with joy, then, that he welcomed the increase; and besides, it proved to him that there was promise of greater advancement, and that at no far distant day he could bring justine to the city. he took a bright twenty dollar gold piece to her on that first and long-expected visit. she met him at the station. all the way out to the little cottage he beamed with the pleasure and pride of possessing such love as came to him from this glowing girl. he forgot to compare her with the visions of loveliness he had become accustomed to seeing in the city. so overjoyed was he that he did not notice her simple garments, her sunburnt hands, her brown face. to him she was the most beautiful of all beings--the most perfect, the most to be desired. "jud, dear, i am so happy i could die," she whispered as they entered the cottage door after the drive home. he took her in his arms and held her for neither knew how long. "are you so glad to see me, sweetheart?" he asked tenderly. "glad! if you had not come to-day i should have gone to chicago to-night. i could not have waited another day. oh, it is so good to have you here; it is so good to be in your arms! you don't know how i have longed for you, jud;--you don't know how lonely i have been all these years." "years! it has been but a month and a half," he said, smiling. "but each day has been a year. have they not seemed long to you?" she cried, chilled by the fear that they had been mere days to him when they had been such ages to her. "my nights were years, justine. my days were short; it was in the nights that i had time to think, and then i felt i should go wild with homesickness. you will never know how often i was tempted to get up out of bed and come back to you. it can't be long, it must not, till i can have you up there with me. i can't go through many such months as the last one; i'd die, justine, honest i would." "it won't be long, i know. you are getting on so nicely and you'll be able soon to take me with you. maybe this winter?" she asked the question eagerly, dubiously. "this winter? good heavens, if i can't have you up there this winter, what's the use of trying to do anything? i want you right away, but i know i can't do it for a month or two----" "don't hope too strongly, dear. you must not count on it. i don't believe you can do it so soon--no, not for six months," she said, again the loving adviser. "you don't know me," he cried. "i can do it!" "i hope you can, jud, but--but, i am afraid----" "afraid? don't you believe in me?" "don't say that, please. i am afraid you won't be ready to have me up there as a--a----" "a what, sweetheart?" "a very heavy burden." "burden! justine, you will lift the greatest burden i will have to carry--my spirits. i need you, and i'll have you if i starve myself." "when you are ready, jud, i'll go with you. you can tell when the time comes. i'll starve with you, if needs be." that night they received callers in the fire-lit front room. the whole community knew that he was at home, and everybody came to sate legitimate curiosity. some talked, others joked, a few stared; until at length the township was satisfied and hurried home to bed. for days the people talked of the change they had observed in jud--not so much in respect to his clothes as to his advanced ideas. "aleck" cranby was authority for the statement that sherrod was engaged in "drawin' picters fer a dictionary. thet's how he knows so all-fired much." the young artist's brief stay at home was the most blissful period in his life and in hers. they were separated only for moments. when the time came for him to go away he went with a cheerier heart and he left a happier one behind. in their last kiss there was the promise that he would return in a month, and there was, back of all, the conviction that she would go with him to chicago within six months. on the train, however, he allowed gloomy thoughts to drive away the optimism that contact with justine had inspired. he realized that every dollar he possessed in the world was in his pocket, and he had just six dollars and thirty cents. at such a rate, how much could he accumulate in six short months? back on the little farm there was a level-headed thinker who was counting on a year instead of six months, and who was racking her brains for means with which to help him in the struggle. one good crop would be a godsend. for several weeks jud observed the strictest economy. when next he went to the farm for a visit it was with sixty dollars. most of this he gave to justine, who hid it in a bureau drawer. winter was on in full blast now, and he did not forget to purchase a warm coat for her, besides heavy dress-goods, underwear, and many little necessities. thanksgiving saw her dressed in better clothes than she had known since those almost forgotten days of affluence before the mining swindle. jud, himself, was not too warmly clad. he refused to buy clothes for himself until he had supplied justine with all she needed. his suit was old but neat, his shoes were new, his hat was passable, but his overcoat was pitiful in its old age. the night after his return from the farm, he had a few good friends in his room to eat the apples, cakes, and nuts which his wife had given him at home. it was a novel feast for the chicago boys. ned draper, a dramatic critic, had money in the new suit of clothes which graced his person, and he sent out for wine, beer and cigars. the crowd made merry until two o'clock, but not one drop of liquor passed jud's lips. "sherrod, where did you get that overcoat i saw you wearing to-day?" asked draper, in friendly banter. jud flushed, but answered steadily: "in glenville." "the glorious metropolis of clay township--the city of our youth," laughed hennessy, the police reporter. "you ought to pension it and give it a pair of crutches," went on draper. "it has seen service enough and it's certainly infirm. i'll swear, i don't see how it manages to hang alone." "it's the best i can afford," cried the owner, resentfully. "aw, what are you givin' us? you're getting twenty a week and you're to have thirty by christmas--if you're good, you know,--and i would blow myself for some clothes. hang it, old man, i mean it for your own good. people will think more of you if you spruce up and make a showing. those clothes of yours don't fit and they're worn out. you don't know what a difference it will make in your game if you make a flash with yourself. it gets people thinking you're a peach, when you may be a regular stiff. go blow yourself for some clothes, and the next time you chase down to glenville to see that girl she'll break her neck to marry you before you can get out of town. on the level, now, old man, i'm giving it to you straight. tog up a bit. it doesn't cost a mint and it does help. i'll leave it to the crowd." "the crowd" supported draper, and jud could but see the wisdom in their advice, although his pride rebelled against their method of giving it. the sight of the other men in the office dressing well, if not expensively, while he remained as ever the wearer of the rankest "hand-me-downs," had not been pleasing. for weeks he had been tempted to purchase a cheap suit of clothes at one of the big department stores, but the thought of economy prevented. "you haven't any special expense," said colton, the third guest. "nobody depends on your salary but yourself, so why don't you cut loose? your parents are dead, just as mine are, and you are as free as air. i can put you next to one of the best tailors in chicago and he'll fix you out to look like a dream without skinning you to death." jud smiled grimly when colton said that no one but himself depended on his salary. these fellows did not know he was married. an unaccountable fear that they might ridicule him if he posed as a married man who could not support his wife had caused him to keep silent concerning his domestic affairs. besides, he had heard these and other men speak of certain wives, often in the presence of their husbands, in a manner which shocked him. no one had asked him if he were married and he did not volunteer the information. it amused him hugely when his new acquaintances teased him about "his girl down in old clay." some day he would surprise them by introducing them to justine, calmly, in a matter-of-fact way, and then he would laugh at their incredulity. "i can't afford clothes like you fellows wear," he said in response to colton's offer. "of course, you can--just as well as i can," said colton. "or any one of us," added draper. "clothes won't break anybody." "you're a good-looking chap, sherrod, and if you dressed up a bit you'd crack every girl's heart in chicago. 'gad, i can see the splinters flying now," cried hennessy, admiringly. "it's no joke," added colton. "i could tog you out till you'd----" "but i haven't the money, consarn it," cried the victim, a country boy all over again. they laughed at his verdancy, and it all ended by colton agreeing to vouch for him at the tailor's, securing for him the privilege of paying so much a month until the account was settled. jud lay awake nights trying to decide the matter. he knew that he needed the clothes and that it was time to cast aside the shabby curiosities from glenville. he saw that he was to become an object of ridicule if he persisted in wearing them. pride demanded good clothes, that he might not be ashamed to be seen with well-dressed men; something else told him that he should save every penny for a day that was to come as soon as he could bring it about. at last he went to colton and asked him what he thought the clothes would cost, first convincing himself that tailor-made garments were the only kind to be considered. colton hurried him off to the tailor, and within an hour he was on the street again, dazed and aware that he had made a debt of one hundred and thirty dollars. he was to have two suits of clothes, business and dress, and an overcoat. for a week he was miserable, and a dozen times he was tempted to run in and countermand the order. how could he ever pay it? what would justine think? at length the garments were completed and he found them at his hall door. attached was a statement for $130, with the information that he was to pay $10 a month, "a very gracious concession as a favor to our esteemed friend, mr. colton," said the accompanying note. in a fever of excitement he tried them on. the fit was perfect; he looked like other men. still, his heart was heavy. that night, taking up his old cast-off suit, he mourned over the greasy things that he and justine had selected at dave green's store the week before they were married. they were his wedding clothes. "i'll keep them forever," he half sobbed, and he hung them away carefully. the time came for his next visit to the little farm. in his letters he had said nothing about the new clothes, but he had admitted that unexpected expenses had come upon him. he could not bring himself to tell her of that extravagance. he believed that she would have approved, but he shrank from the confession. when he boarded the train for the trip home, he was dressed in the clothes he had first worn to chicago, the greasy wedding garments. he never forgot how guilty he felt when she told him the next evening, as they sat before the old fireplace, that he should buy a new overcoat and a heavy suit of clothes. and after he went away on monday she wondered why he had been so quiet and preoccupied during his visit. chapter xi. when the wind blows. for weeks he hated the new clothes, handsome though they were, and yet he realized the difference they made at the office, where tolerance was turning to respect. he could but appreciate the impression he now made in places where he had had no standing whatever up to the time when he had donned the guilty garments. not a day passed during his residence in the city that did not find him on the look-out for a certain graceful figure and glorious face. he never gave up the hope of some day meeting the vivacious miss wood. when first he had come to chicago there had been no doubt in his mind that he would presently see her in the street, but that hope had been dissipated in a very short time. he did not fear that he would fail to recognize her, but he ceased to believe that she would remember in him the simple boy of proctor's falls. he was also conscious of the fact that she could be friendly with the country lad, but might not so much as give greeting to the new jud sherrod. in one of his conversations with the chief artist he innocently asked if he knew miss wood. the artist said that he did not, but that as there were probably a million and a half of people in the city who were strangers to him, he did not consider it odd. jud looked in a directory. he found 283 persons whose surname was wood. not knowing his friend's christian name, he was unable to select her from the list. he did not know that the names of unmarried girls living with their parents were not to be found in the directory. in the society columns of the newspapers he frequently saw a name that struck his fancy, and he decided that if it did not belong to her she had been imperfectly christened. he began to think of her as celeste wood. a celeste wood lived in the fashionable part of the north side, and he had not been there a month before he found the house and had gazed in awe upon its splendor--from a distance. several times he passed the place, but in no instance did his eye behold the girl of proctor's falls. he told justine of his search for the beautiful stranger, and she was as much interested as he. she, too, came to call her celeste and to inquire as to his progress in every letter. they exchanged merry notes in which the mysterious celeste was the chief topic. christmas came and he spent it with justine. it was a white christmas and a glad one for everyone except jud. he cursed the cowardice that forced him to sneak down to glenville in that tattered suit of clothes, for he still shrank from the confession of what seemed extravagance and vanity. in spite of all he could do to prevent it, the cost of living in the city increased and he could save but little. paying for those hated garments was a hard task each month; it seemed to take the very ten dollars he had intended to save. the clothes he wore home were now bordering on the disreputable, and at christmas time he vowed he would wear them no more. justine had said that she hated to accept the present he brought when she saw how much he needed clothing. not once did he swerve in his fidelity to her. he was the only man in chicago, it seemed to him, who refused to drink liquor. he dined with the fellows, accompanied them on various rounds of pleasure, but he never broke the promise he made to justine: to drink no liquor. the gay crowd into which he was tossed--artists, writers and good fellows--introduced him here and there, to nice people, to gay people and to questionable people. in the cafés he met wine-tippling ladies who smiled on him; in the theatre he met gaily dressed women who smiled on him; in the street he met stylish creatures who smiled on him. he met the wives and sisters of his friends, and was simple, gentle, and gallant; he met the actresses and the gay ones of the midnight hour and was the same; he met the capricious, alluring women of the fashionable world, and was still the abashed, clean-hearted lover of one good girl. she was the only woman. three objects he had to strive for: to succeed in his work, to make a home for justine, and to find celeste. one sin harassed him--the purchase of two suits of clothes and an overcoat. winter struggled on and matters grew worse with justine. she did not tell jud of the privations on the farm; to him she turned a cheerful face. nothing depressive that might happen down there on the over-tilled little farm should come to him; he should be handicapped in no way by the worries which beset her. the fall crop had been poor throughout the entire state. there had been little wheat in the summer, and the corn-huskers of september found but half a crop. the farm was run on half rations after the holidays, simply because the granary was none too full. she had sold but little grain, being obliged to retain most of it for feeding purposes. what little money jud sent to her soon disappeared, despite her frugality. she and old mrs. crane lived alone in the cottage, and together they fought the wolf from the kitchen door and from the barnyard. how justine wished that she might again teach the little school down the lane! she had given it up that fall because the time could not be spared from the farm. she cared for the horses, cows and pigs--few in number, but pigs after all--while mrs. crane looked after the chickens. that winter was the coldest the country had known in thirty years, according to uncle sammy godfrey, who said he had "kep' tab on the therometer fer fifty-three year, an' danged ef he didn't b'lieve this'n wuz the coldest spell in all that time, 'nless it wuz that snap in sixty-two. that wuz the year it fruz the crick so solid 'at it didn't thaw out tell 'long 'bout the fourth of july." january was bitter cold. there were blizzards and snowstorms, and people, as well as stock, suffered intensely. horses were frozen to death and whole flocks of sheep perished. justine, young, strong and humane, worked night and day to keep her small lot of stock comfortable. the barn, the cowshed and the hogpens were protected in every way possible from the blasts, and often she came to the house, half-frozen, her hands numb, her face stinging. but that bravery never knew a faltering moment. she faced the storms, the frosts and the dangers with the hardihood of a man, and she did a man's work. with an ax she chopped wood in the grove back of the pasture until the heavy snows came. she would not ask neighbors to help her; indeed, she refused several kindly offers. there was not a man in the neighborhood who would not have gladly found time to perform some of her more difficult tasks. one morning, cold almost beyond endurance, she awoke to find that in some mysterious manner a large pile of chopped wood lay in her dooryard. how it came there she did not know, nor would she use it until she found by the sled tracks in the snow that it had been hauled from her own piece of timber land. again, in the night time, someone rebuilt a section of fence that had been torn down by the wind. she was grateful to the good neighbors, but there was a feeling of resentment growing out of the knowledge that people were pitying her. so when harve crose drove up one afternoon with a load of pumpkins for the stock, she declined to accept them. but she could not sit up of nights, tired and cold as she was, to drive away those who stole in surreptitiously and befriended her. she could not so much as thank these indefatigable friends. her heart and courage sank to the bottom one morning when she arose to learn that during the night the wind had blown the straw-thatched roof from her cowshed and the two poor beasts were well-nigh dead from exposure. she sat down and cried, nor could mrs. crane comfort her. to replace that roof was a task to try the strength and endurance of the hardiest man; for her it seemed beyond accomplishment. nevertheless, she set about it as soon as the cows were transferred to the crowded barn. the roof, intact, lay alongside the pen, the straw scattered to the winds. there was but one way to replace the timbers, and that was to take them apart and reconstruct the roof, piece by piece. she had battered several rough-hewn supports from their position and was surveying the task before her with a sullen expression in her eyes. the vigorous exercise had put a hot glow in her cheeks, and, as she stood there in the snow, her ax across her shoulder, as straight as an arrow, she was a charming picture. a biting atmosphere chilled the breath as it came from her red, full lips, wafting it away, white and frosty. the man who vaulted the fence behind her and came slowly across the barn lot felt his heart beat fiercely against the rough oilskin jacket. the girl did not see him until she turned at the sound of his hoarse voice. "that ain't no work fer you," he was saying. she found herself looking into the hostile eyes of 'gene crawley. there was real anger in the man's face; he looked contemptuously at the girl's slim figure, then at the wrecked house, then slowly down at his big, mittened hands. justine gasped and moved back a step. "i ain't agoin' to hurt you, missus sherrod," he said, quickly. "i'm goin' to help you, that's all." "i do not require your assistance," she said, coldly. "why do you come here, 'gene, when you know i despise to look at you? why do you persist in annoying me? is it because my husband isn't here to protect me?" "we won't argy about that ag'in," he answered, slowly. "you cain't put that roof on the shed an' i kin, so that's why i'm here. i was jes' goin' past when i seen you out here slashin' away with that ax. thinks i, i'll not 'low her to do that nasty job, an' so i jes' clumb over the fence an'--an'--well, ef helpin' you out of a hard job is annoyin' you, justine, you'll have to put up with it, that's all; i'm goin' to put that roof on, whether you want me to er not. you're damn--i'm sorry i said that--but you're mighty near froze. go in by the fire an' i'll 'tend to this." "i insist that you are not to touch a hand to this lumber. i cannot pay you for the work and i will not accept----" "don't say a word about pay. you k'n have me arrested ef you want to fer trespass, er you k'n go in an' git that shotgun of your'n an' blaze away at me, but i'm not goin' to let you kill yourself workin' out here on a job like this." he drew off his oil jacket and threw it back in the snow. the ax dropped from her shoulder and was buried in the white drift. without a word he strode to her side and fished the implement from the snow. "i'd rather die than to have you do this for me, 'gene crawley," she hissed. "what do you think i'd be if i let you do it? what will the neighbors say if i let you lift a hand to help me? what----" he interrupted with a smothered oath. "they dassent say anything, dang 'em," he grated. "this is my business, an' ef they stick their noses in it they'll git 'em pounded to hell an' gone." "couldn't you have said all that without swearing?" she exclaimed, scornfully. his face actually burned with shame and his bold eyes wavered. "i didn't mean to, justine. i--i jes' fergot. i want to tell you i don't cuss like i used to. only when i git right mad. 'sides, ef you'd gone in the house when i told you to, you wouldn't 'a' heerd." "are you going to get off of my place?" she suddenly demanded. "not tell i've fixed this roof," he replied doggedly. "i don't want it fixed," she said. "what's the use sayin' that? you was trying to do it yourself when i come up here. will you go in the house er will you stand out here an' freeze?" "do you think you're doing me a favor in this? do you think i will thank you after it is done?" "i don't believe i expect to be thanked, an' i'm only doin' it because you hadn't ought to. i'd do it fer any woman." he swung the ax against the restraining timbers and a dozen strokes freed the roof from its twisted fastenings. she stood off at one side and glared at him. she forgot everything except that her enemy--jud's bitterest foe--was deliberately befriending her. a sudden thought came to her, and the sharp exclamation that fell from her lips caused him to pause and glance at her. "ain't you goin' in by the fire?" he demanded, panting from the exertion. "'gene crawley, do you know who has been cutting wood up in the grove and bringing it to my door?" she demanded. "yes," he answered, looking away. "you?" "yes." "if i had known that, i'd have frozen to death before i used a stick," she cried, the tears rushing to her eyes. "an' i fixed your fences an'--an'--an', i might as well tell you, i come around ever' night to see that your stock is all right," he went on. "you! oh, if i had only known! you! you!" she exclaimed, glaring at him with such fury and hatred that his eyes dropped and a miserable laugh of humiliation struggled through his teeth. as if to ward off the fierce, direct stabs of those bitter eyes, he fell to wielding the ax with all his strength. the chips flew and far away through the crisp air rang the song of the steel. he did not look up until the roof lay detached and there was no more chopping to be done. his face was still burning hotly. it was the first real goodness of heart he had ever shown, and it had met repulse. the anger melted when he saw her. she had not moved from the spot, but it was another creature altogether who stood there now. justine's hands were pressed to her eyes and she was crying. her whole body trembled and her thinly clad shoulders heaved convulsively. big 'gene crawley was helpless before this exhibition of feeling. he felt that he was to blame for her grief, and yet a longing to comfort her came over him. she looked forlorn, wretched, cold. he would have liked to pick up the shivering girl and carry her to the house. he tried to speak to her, but there was nothing to say. the fear that she would resent a friendly word from him checked the impulse. unable to control his own feelings and possessed of a wild desire to act in some way, he threw down the ax and performed one of those feats of prodigious strength for which he was noted. stooping, he lifted the edge of the heavy roof until he could work his broad shoulders under the end. then, with an effort, he slowly shifted his load to the side of the low shed. rapidly he went about the little structure and replaced timbers that had been wrenched away, not once turning his face toward her. when all was in readiness for the final effort, he grasped the side of the roof that still touched the ground and prepared for the lift. the cords stood out in his neck, the veins were bursting in his temples, but steadily his heavy shoulders rose and with them the whole weight of the timbers. his great back and powerful legs pushed forward and the roof moved slowly back to its place. then he collapsed against the side of the shed. she had witnessed this frightful display of strength with marveling eyes. once she was on the point of crying out to him to stop, certain that no human power could endure such a strain. when the task was done she gave way to unaccountable tears and fled to the house, leaving him leaning against his support, fagged and trembling. after a few moments his strength returned and he began to fill up the open places under the edge of the roof. at the end of an hour the shed was as good as new. then, with a long look toward the unfriendly house in which she dwelt, he turned and started for the road, defeated but satisfied that he had been of service to her. at the sound of her voice he stopped near the fence. she had come from the house and was following him. "'gene, i can only thank you for what you have done. i did not want you to do it, but--but i know i couldn't have managed it myself," she said, hoarsely. "o, it wasn't much," he growled, looking away. "'gene, you must not come here again and you must not do these things for me. i don't want you to help me. i know what you said about me down at the toll-gate that night, and i know what people will say if you come here. won't you please stay away, 'gene?" he looked steadily into her eyes for the first time and there was a touch of real nobility in his face as he said slowly and with difficulty: "i thought, maybe, justine, ef i kinder slaved aroun' fer you they might see that i am good an' honest, an' that i didn't mean what i said that night. i wisht somebody'd cut my tongue out afore i said them things, er i wisht i'd been doc ramsey an' got knocked down fer standin' up fer you. i cain't see you workin' aroun' like this when i ain't got a thing to do, an' i--i--well, i jes' thought people'd see i was sorry fer what i said." "but they'll say the very worst they can about it," she cried, piteously. "then i'll kill somebody!" he grated, and, clearing the fence, was off down the road. chapter xii. the good of evil. when justine wrote her next letter to jud she purposely neglected to describe the encounter with 'gene. for the first time she wilfully deceived him. in her letter she spoke lightly of the wind's work and casually mentioned the unimportant fact that one of the neighbors had generously helped her to make the repairs. she felt that jud's hatred for crawley would have inspired something rash in him. she was confident that he would throw aside his work, his chances,--everything,--and rush to her protection. and so she found consolation in deception. it was her duty--to god and to herself--to keep these men apart, to prevent the addition of fuel to the flame which smoldered silently, stealthily. there was no doubt in her mind that 'gene was truly penitent. she could not trust him, for she despised him too deeply, but she felt for him a new spirit of fairness. he had served her and he had served like the whipped, beaten dog who loves the hand of a cruel master. for days after the episode at the cowshed she did not see him, and she was glad. every morning, however, she looked forth, fearful that she might see him at work or behold some result of his labor in the night. one morning she found a brace of rabbits and a wild turkey at her door. mrs. crane saw them, too, and she was so full of joy that the girl could not find heart to cast 'gene crawley's offering away. and she herself was hungry. while mrs. crane fried the rabbits, the girl sat back of the stove, out of patience with herself, yet scarcely able to resist the fragrant aroma that arose from the crackling skillet. pride and hunger were struggling and hunger won. jud came and went once more. she wore her best frocks and was cheeriness itself when he was with her. he brought her a few trifles, and she loved him as much as if he had given her jewels, and indeed what pleased her most was the change in his looks. he wore his tailor-made suit. she did not know that he was still in debt to his tailor, and he did not tell her. on the day of jud's departure she met 'gene in the village. her husband had made her happy with the renewed promise that she could come to him in the spring. justine's heart was singing, her lips were burning with the warmth of his love. bundled in shawls and blankets, she drove slowly from the village through the first vicious attacks of a blizzard. her thoughts were of the handsome, well-dressed youth in the warm railway coach. she forgot the cold, blustery weather and saw only the bright garden of paradise which his love had created. her heart sang with the memory of the past two days and nights spent with him. just as her old gray horse fumbled his way into the open lane at the edge of town, she saw a man plodding against the wind, not far ahead along the roadside. it was 'gene and he was starting out upon a long walk to martin grimes's place. with a blow or two of the "gad," she urged the horse past him. the single glance she gave him showed his face red with the cold and his head bent against the wind. as she passed he looked up and spoke. "howdy, justine." "good evening, 'gene," she replied, but she could hardly hear her own voice. "it's a nasty drive you got ahead of you," he called. "o, i'll soon be home," she responded, and he was left behind. for half a mile there rang in her ears the accusing words: "it's a nasty drive you got ahead of you." what of the walk ahead of him? now that she had grown calm she wondered how she could have passed him without asking him to ride home. he had been kind to her, after all; he had redeemed himself to some extent in the past few weeks and--he had not asked her for the ride as she had feared he would. she recalled his cheery greeting and his half-frozen face and then his anxiety concerning the discomfort ahead of her. by no sign did he show a desire to annoy her with his company. she looked back over the road. in the twilight, far behind, she saw him trudging along, a lonely figure against the sky. "it's a shame to make him walk all the way home. he'll freeze, and i can just as well take him in as not," she said to herself, and pulled the horse to a standstill, resolved to wait for him. then came the fear that some one might see him riding home with her. the country would wonder and would gossip. unsophisticated country girl as she was, she knew and abhorred gossip. once a good girl's name is coupled with that of a man in the country, the whole community shuns her; she is lost. in the country they never forget and they never investigate. turning her face resolutely she whipped up, leaving him far behind. while she was stabling her horse, by the light of a lantern, she found herself, amidst warm thoughts of jud, reproaching herself for the unkindness to this man who hated her husband and who had sworn to be her undoing. she might have given him the ride, she argued against herself; it was so little to give and he was so cold. the blizzard was blowing in force by this time, and her conscience smote her fiercely as she thought of him forging along against its blasting chill. in the village jud had purchased several suits of warm underclothes for her and she had placed the package in the seat beside her. groceries and other necessaries were beneath the seat. to her dismay and grief, she found that the package had been in some manner jolted from the seat and was doubtless lost on the road, miles back. the next morning saw the storm still raging. the night just past had been one of the most cruel the country had ever known. her first thought was of her stock, then of 'gene crawley. had he reached home safely or had he been frozen out there on the open road? a chill of fear and remorse seized her and she turned sick at heart. jud would not have allowed the man to face such a storm, and if he were frozen no one would condemn her cruelty more bitterly than tender-hearted jud. she ran to the rear door of her house, from which grimes's home on the hill could be seen, a mile away. the gust of wind drove the door open as she turned the knob. something rolled against her feet. the lost bundle lay before her, left there in the night by--it could have been no other than 'gene crawley. it was a sob of honest thankfulness to the poor wretch she had spurned in the highway that came from her lips as she lifted the package and closed the door. for many minutes she stood by the window, clasping the bundle in her arms, looking out into the bleak morning. a feeling of relief surged up in the multitude of thoughts, and tears stood in her eyes. not only had he braved the blizzard safely, hardily, but he had traveled a mile or more farther through the freezing night to deliver at her door the package she had lost from the seat that might have been shared with him. "did ye hear 'bout 'gene crawley?" asked mrs. crane, later, when justine came in from the barn. the old woman was preparing the frugal breakfast and justine was seated beside the stove, her half-frozen feet near the oven. a sickening terror forced a groan from her lips, for something told her that the news was the worst. his body had been found! "what--what is it?" she whispered. "he whupped the daylights out'n jake smalley an' laz dunbar down to the tollgate day 'fore yest'day. mrs. brown wuz here las' night jest 'fore you got home, an' she says her man says 'twuz the wust fight that ever wuz fit in the county." justine was leaning back in her chair, her heart throbbing with relief. "was--was he hurt?" she asked, indefinitely. "who? 'gene? not a speck! but that big smalley wuz unsensibul when 'gene got off'n him. doc pollister says he won't be able to see out'n them eyes o' his'n fer over a week. laz lit out an' run like a whitehead after 'gene hit him onct. i'm glad he didn't git hurt much, 'cause he's goin' to be babtised down at the crick tomorrer, an' he'd 'a' tuck cold, shore. i tell you, that 'gene crawley's a nasty feller. constable o'brien's afeered to serve the warrant on him." "what was it all about, aunt sue?" "o, nothin' much," answered mrs. crane, evasively, suddenly busying herself about the stove. "i never did see sitch a fire! it jest won't act right. where'd this wood come from, jestine?" "from the jack-oak grove," said justine. for a while she was silent, a new impression forming itself in her brain. stronger and stronger it grew until it became almost a conviction. "tell me what the fight was about," she went on, breaking in upon mrs. crane's chatter. "o, i'd ruther--er--i don't know fer shore what it wuz about. somethin' jake said to 'gene, i reckon. 'gene fights 'thout any real cause, y' know." the old woman was clearly embarrassed and eager to evade the explanation. "you do know and you must tell me," exclaimed justine, now fully convinced. "'twon't do you no special good, jestine, an' i wouldn't mind about it, 'f i wuz you." "tell me: was it--did it have anything to do with me?" "didn't amount to nothin'--not a thing," expostulated the other. "you know how these fool fellers will talk." "did 'gene crawley say anything mean about me?" she insisted. "no. 'twuz jest the other way--er--i mean----" "heavens! what did they say? tell me! what could they say?" "i hadn't orter tell you, but i guess it's best you know. seems like jake an' laz met 'gene down to the tollgate an' wuz a wonderin' how you wuz gittin' along this cold spell. jake, who's a low down feller ef they ever wuz one, give 'gene the wink an' says--now, this is how mrs. brown tells it--he says: 'jud don't git home much, does he?' 'gene said he didn't know an' he didn't give a damn--'scuse me, but them's the words. 'nen laz says: 'now's yer time to cut in, 'gene. do what you said you would. you cain't have a better chanst.' 'nen jake laughed an' said: 'she's all alone up yander an' i reckon she's purty dern lonesome. now's yer oppertunity, 'gene,----' jest then, mrs. brown says her man says, the fight begin. 'fore jake could finish up sayin' what he started out to say, 'gene lit into him right an' left. down went jake an' laz follered him. jake wuz up fust, an' while he wuz tryin' to keep 'gene off, laz broke fer the door an' got away. but the way 'gene did whup that smalley feller wuz a caution. mr. brown says you could 'a' heerd him beller clean down to the mill." "is that all?" asked justine, breathlessly. "wuzn't that almost enough? o, yes; 'gene tole jake an' everybody else there 'at ef ever a word wuz said about you ag'in, in any shape er form that wuzn't jest right, he'd lick the tarnation soul out'n the hull capoodle, men an' women. he said he meant women when he said women, an' ef he ever heerd of one of them talkin' about you er repeatin' what he said there at the tollgate on your weddin' night, he'd jest lay her over his knee an'----" "were there many people at the tollgate when the fight took place?" interrupted justine. she was glowing with excitement. "the place wuz full, an' mr. brown says he never did see sitch a scatterment as they wuz when 'gene sailed into jake. jim hardesty tried to git under the stove, an' uncle sammy godfrey, old as he is, jumped clean over the counter an' upsot a half barrel of sugar. ever'body run, an' nobody tried to help jake, 'cept doc ramsey's mother, an' that's 'cause he goes with liz ramsey. they do tell that that's sure to be a match," and then the voluble mrs. crane branched off into other lanes of gossip. the next sunday a whole township saw eugene crawley walk into the little presbyterian church on the hill and nervously take a seat near the stove. mr. marks, the minister, was reading the first hymn when 'gene plunged into this strange place, and so great was the sensation that the reader, having stared blankly with the remainder of the witnesses, resumed reading on the opposite page and no one was the wiser. at first there was a certain fear in the hearts of all that he had come for no other purpose than to report the death of some loved one. no one dreamed that he had come to attend divine worship. 'gene, himself, was astonished by his own temerity. it had taken all his courage to do it, and he was an humble man as he sat stiffly by the stove and looked at the upper left-hand corner of the organ. if the minister had uttered his name suddenly, 'gene would have swooned. it was the first time he had been inside the church since a certain christmas eve, twenty years before. when deacon asbury asked him, after service, if he intended to come regularly, now that he had begun, 'gene's reserve vanished, and, transfixing the old gentleman with a glare, he roared: "what is it to you, you old skinflint? you don't own the shebang, do you? i'll come ef i want to an' you needn't meddle about it either." in consequence, the whole community said that his conversion was out of the question, and that all the pulpits in indiana could not pull him out of the rut into which he had fallen. 'gene, in truth, felt that he was not wanted in the church, and he went home with the conviction that the deacon's inquiry was inspired by the hope that such a sinner as he might not continue to blight the sanctuary with his presence. a day or so later the word was carried to the tollgate by charlie spangler that justine sherrod was "sick-a-bed" and it "looked as though she was liable to have lung fever." dr. pollister called at her house and found her really ill. he took her in hand at once, and instructed mrs. crane to see that she remained in bed until he said she could get up. "but who is to take care of the stock?" wailed the sick girl. "mrs. crane and i will see to the stock, so don't you worry, justine. you've got to stay in bed or jud'll be coming to a funeral purty soon," observed the doctor, with the best of intentions, but with little tact. she gasped at the thought that she might die and leave jud; her illness had been but a trifling matter to her until the grim old physician so plainly told her the truth. she realized that she was in danger and that she wanted jud to sit by the bedside. "is it so serious, doctor?" she asked, anxiously. "not if you stay in bed. only a bad cold and some fever, but it has to be looked after. you've got good lungs or you'd be a good deal wuss." then he went out and told mrs. crane to look after her, and said that he'd ask some one to drop around every day to care for the horses, cows and hogs, and to chop some wood occasionally. as he drove toward the village in his rattling old buggy, he met 'gene crawley in the road. "whoa!" he said to the horse; and that evening 'gene crawley was living up to a promise to "look out fer justine's stock and to git up some wood whenever she needed it." when mrs. crane told justine that he was to come three times a day while she was sick, to "look after things," the tired, feverish girl shook her head and sighed, but offered no protest against the unwelcome fate. chapter xiii. the finding of celeste. jud received several letters from her, telling him that she was ill, but getting better, and that the neighbors were very kind to her. he replied that he would come home if she needed him, but she insisted that it was not necessary. she penned that letter, sitting up in bed. she wanted him, she hungered for him, she suffered in longing for one touch of his hand. by this time sherrod had formed many acquaintances and had at last been persuaded to join an artists' club. the cost was not much, and he found great pleasure in the meetings. his salary had been increased, but his expenses grew correspondingly. try as he would, he could find no way to curtail the cost of living. sometimes he looked back and wondered how he had existed during the first few months in the city. once he tried the plan of living as humbly as he had at first, but it was an utter impossibility. the worst feature was that he could send justine but little money, nor could he see his way clear for bringing her to the city. he was bitter against himself. he loved her; no other woman tempted him from that devotion. but there seemed to be no way of making a home for her in chicago. the honest fellow did not perceive the fact that selfishness was the weight which drew his intentions out of balance. his companions liked him all the more because he was unswerving in his resolve to touch no liquor. he went with them to bars and wine rooms, but he never touched wines, nor did other vices tempt him. up in his room at the lodging house hung a picture he had drawn after reading the story of a man's downfall. he called it "wine, women, woe." he had now allowed his friends to believe him unmarried so long that it was next to impossible to explain. they alluded frequently to the sweetheart down in the country, and he smiled as if to say: "i don't mind being teased about her." he made no one his confidant and no one asked questions. the boys took it for granted that some day he would marry "the girl down there," and said nothing. he laughed when he thought of the surprise in store for them some day. this thought usually took him back to the day at proctor's falls when celeste had spoken of him and justine as sweethearts and had given him fifty dollars with which to buy her a wedding present. the name and face of the donor had haunted him ever since that day. her card was in his pocketbook. somewhere in this great city she lived and, he was beginning to know, left other cards in the halls of her friends every day--ordinary cards; not like this that had made a man's career. but there seemed to be no chance to tell her the difference. he had not seen her. one of the fellows at the club was converse, a rich young man with a liking for art and the will to cultivate a rather mediocre talent. he took a fancy to the handsome young newspaper man, and invited him to his home on the south side. one evening late in march he dined with converse and his parents. douglass converse was an only child and was little more than a boy in years. the home in michigan avenue was beautiful and its occupants lived luxuriously. the dinner over, the two young men lounged in converse's "den"--a room which astonished and delighted jud--smoking and chatting idly. "funny you don't drink, sherrod," said converse, quizzically. "i took a pledge once, and i expect to keep it." "always?" "always." "pledge to your mother, i suppose?" "no; to a girl who--lives down there." "oho, that's the first bit of sentiment i ever heard from you. a sweetheart, eh?" "well, i can't deny it," said jud, ashamed of his equivocation. "tell me about her," cried his friend, enthusiastically. "there's nothing to tell. i had a letter from her to-day." "then it's still on?" "i hope so," answered jud, smiling mysteriously. "you're devilishly uncommunicative. if i had a sweetheart who could make me live up to a promise like that, i'd be only too glad to sing her praises to the sky." "fall in love with some good, true girl, old fellow, and see how much you'll tell the world about it," said jud, cleverly dodging the point. "i am in love and with the best girl in the world, but what good does it do me? she's not in love with me. confound the luck, i'm younger than she is," cried converse, ruefully. sherrod laughed and puffed dreamily at his cigar for a few moments. "it's a crime to be young, i presume," he said, as if obliged to reopen the conversation. converse was standing at his desk, looking at a photograph. "don't give up because you are young. you'll outgrow it. i was very young when--when--i mean, i was younger than you by several years when i first fell in love," went on jud confusedly. "but, i have no chance, you know," said the other, boyishly. "prefers another?" "don't know; i haven't had the courage to ask. she thinks i'm a nice boy and such good company. girls don't say those things about the fellow they care for seriously. i'd rather be anything than a nice boy." "is that her photograph?" "yes. isn't she a dream?" the owner of the den passed the portrait to his guest. converse was surprised to see him start violently and then pass his hand over his eyes as if brushing away some form of doubt. "this is--this is miss wood?" asked sherrod at last. "do you know her? if you do, you can't wonder that i'm hard hit," cried the other. "i met her once down near my old home. one doesn't forget a face like hers. so i find her, after all, and the sweetheart of my best friend," jud was saying, hazily. "oh, no! don't put it that way. she'd fall dead if any one suddenly intimated that such a relationship existed--keel over with surprise. but have you never seen her more than once?" "just once. she bought the first picture i ever sold." "great cæsar! are you the fellow who drew a picture of a waterfall somewhere and sold it to her for fifty dollars?" converse was staring at jud with eager eyes. "i'm the one who imposed upon her," said jud, lamely. "then, you're the good-looking country boy with the beautiful sweetheart that celeste talked so much about. well, this beats the----" "celeste? is that her name?" cried jud, sitting bolt upright. "yes. her mother is french--she was a countess, by the way. celeste has that picture hanging in her den--and her den is a wonder, too--and she never fails to tell about that little experience down in indiana. she'll be crazy to meet you." jud's heart gave a leap. he was bewildered in a tumult of emotions. the recognition of the portrait, the mysterious coincidence in names--the one his imagination had given her, and the one she bore; the thoughts that she remembered him and justine; that his picture hung in her den; that she might really be glad to see him. impossibilities upon impossibilities! "my picture in her den?" he managed to stammer, feeling sure that his friend could detect an emotion that might require explanation. "sure--most prominent thing in the room. she says the boy who drew it will be a master some day. the trouble is, she forgot your name. she says she'd know your face or the girl's anywhere, but the name is gone. by george, this will please her." the girl's! jud's thoughts flew back to justine, tenderly, even resentfully, for why should this careless city maid speak of her as "the girl"? "i'll take you to call, sherrod. i know she'll be glad to see you, and i'll surprise her. this is great! let's see: i'll say you are a particular friend, but i'll not give up your name. she'd remember it. i can see her now when she first gazes upon your face. great!" jud went home that night in a delightful torture of anticipation. after all these months of waiting and watching, fate--nothing less than fate--was to bring him to her side with the long unspoken words of gratitude and joy. what would she be like? how would she look? how would she be dressed? not in that familiar gray of his memory, to be sure, but--but--and so he wondered, as he tossed in his bed that night. it would be some days before converse could take him to the home of miss wood, and until then he must be content with imaginings. one thing worried him. just before he left his friend, douglass had asked with an unhidden concern in his voice: "you're sure you've got a sweetheart down there?" jud's heart stopped beating for a second. something within him urged him to cry out that he had no sweetheart, but a loving, loyal wife. but the old spirit of timidity conquered. "i am sure i had one," he replied, and his heart throbbed with relief. "and you're the kind of a fellow who'll stick to her, too. i know you well enough to say that," said the other warmly, as if some odd misgiving had passed from his mind. "thanks for the good opinion," said jud, a great lump clogging his throat. and when at last he slept, his dreams were of the old days and justine, and how lonely he was without her--how lonely she must be down there in the cold, dark night--sick, perhaps, and longing for him. in his dream they were at proctor's falls, then in chicago, then she was beside him in the bed. his arm, moved by dream love, stretched out and drew her close to his breast and there were no scores of miles between his tranquil heart and that of the girl he worshiped. chapter xiv. "my truest comrade." he looked forward to the meeting with miss wood as if it were to be one of the epochs in his life. an odd fear took possession of him--cowardice, inspired by the knowledge that he was not of her world. once again he felt like the crude, ignorant country boy, and he trembled at the thought of meeting this beautiful "society girl" in her own realm. in the old days he had interested her as if he were a curiosity; now he was to see her on different grounds. he was to submit to an inspection which he knew he was not yet able to endure. as the night drew near for the visit to her home, as arranged by the glowing converse, self-consciousness overpowered him. what would she think of him? converse rushed in one day and told him that he had just seen miss wood on the street--in fact had ridden several blocks in her carriage--and that a strange coincidence was to be related. she was driving to the art institute with his drawing of proctor's falls. she had, through some influence of her own, obtained permission to hang it for a few weeks. no sooner had his visitor departed than jud, throwing aside his work, dashed from the building and off to the institute. he hoped that he might see her there; at least, he might again look upon that humble sketch as it hung among the aristocratic lordlings of art. she was not there, but he managed to find his picture. a man was placing it in a rather conspicuous place on the wall. "new picture, eh?" jud asked, assuming indifference. "yes. it beats the devil how the management lets cranks, just because they're pretty, come in here and hang chromos. look at that. wouldn't that jar you? lead pencil and crayon, and as cheap as mud. next thing we know they'll be hanging patent medicine ads in here." jud walked away. he never forgot that half minute of impersonal criticism. as he was hurrying from the building he saw a carriage drive swiftly from the curb below. for one brief instant he had a glimpse of a face inside--one that he had never forgotten. she drove toward state street, in the direction of the big stores to the north. hoping for another glimpse of her, he followed. from afar he saw her enter her carriage and whirl away toward the river and her north side home. then he went back to work and to the letter he was writing to justine. it teemed with references to the fairy of proctor's falls. the next evening but one found him ready for the call, but very nervous. he felt that he was taking a step into the world in which he might not be fit to hold a place; a world which would stare curiously at him as a gifted plebeian, and shut its doors upon him when the novelty had died. he dressed himself laboriously for the event. it was to be his introduction into select society, and he must not let that be the occasion for the faintest twinkle of mirth in the eyes of those to the manner born. at the athletic club he met converse, who looked him over admiringly. if converse had purposed exhibiting him to miss wood as a matter of entertainment for one night, the plan was not feasible. instead of the careless artist or the unsophisticated youth, there appeared a straight, strong figure, a clean-cut face, keen and handsome. indeed, converse found himself envying jud's dignity of manner. he did not know that the apathy of the person who rode beside him was the composure of extreme dread. almost before jud was aware of it, he was inside the wood drawing-room, awaiting the appearance of its mistress. through the maze he could barely remember passing an august personage who opened the doors to them and who said that miss wood was expecting mr. converse. then he found himself sitting in a gorgeous apartment, blankly listening to the undertones of his friend, and responding with mechanical calmness, so that converse marveled again at his conventional bearing. that young man was delighted with the surprise he had in store for the girl he loved. she came into the room suddenly and unexpectedly, and the two men arose--one with a laugh, the other with serious, questioning eyes. miss wood gave converse her hand and turned to jud with the smile which precedes an introduction. he detected the instantaneous gleam of inquiry, strengthened presently to perplexity and wonder. "let me present----" began converse, but she restrained him quickly. there was now an intentness in her gaze that brought the blood to jud's face. "i know your face--don't speak, douglass. will you let me guess--let me think? pardon my extraordinary behavior, but i am so sure i know you. i have seen you often, very often, i know. you are--oh, dear, how embarrassing! yes, yes, i know now!" her eyes fairly danced with the joy of discovery and she impulsively came to him with hand outstretched. "you are the artist--the boy who drew the picture!" "yes, you have guessed," said jud. "i knew your face. i am so glad to see you. and you are living out my prophecy, too. where is the country boy now? what did i tell you?" she stood before him, her eyes looking squarely up into his face, bright with smiles. "i am trying to merit the recommendation you gave me, but i am afraid i'll fail," said he. "fail?" cried converse. "you've made a sensational hit, sherrod, and you owe it to this prophet in petticoats. she made you. if it hadn't been for her, you'd be down there in the woods plowing hay and digging cucumbers and nobody'd know you were on earth. if i were you i'd jump up and crack my heels together, and yell like a cannibal. that's how happy i'd feel." the boy's excitement was contagious, and jud began to lose some of his embarrassment. "i am happy, and i'd like to shout my gratification to miss wood," he said. "she fairly drove me to some sort of action. without her encouragement i'm sure nothing could have induced me to try my luck here." "oh, you would have discovered yourself some day. genius like yours would sooner or later become a master and compelled you to obey. i merely poked you until you awoke from the dreams and began to see things as they are. and are you really living in chicago?" then she compelled him to tell her all about himself, his work, and his plans. she was so deeply interested that his heart glowed. as he sat and talked with her, forgetting that converse was present, he felt himself gradually lulled into security, like that of a traveler who has crept along the edge of a precipice for miles and has reached a haven from which he can look back and laugh at the terrors. for an hour they conversed, seriously, merrily about his experiences in the city. he was a true gentleman, therefore modest; the pronoun "i" was used as sparingly as possible, and there was an absence of egotism that charmed his new-found friend. he was beginning to realize the success he had achieved in the city, but one look into his honest gray eyes proved that he was no braggadocio. she saw that she could safely compliment him on his progress; she compared him as he sat before her with the country boy she had first known, when she told him that she knew then that he was a great diamond that needed little polishing. the magnificence of his surroundings, the beauty of his hostess, the subtle influence of splendor, softened his first rough feelings of apprehension into the mellow confidence of ease and urbanity. it was all so strange and sweet that he lived it over and over again in the days that followed, before he could convince himself that he--poor jud sherrod--had not really been in fairyland. there was no questioning the sincerity of her admiration. converse sat back and jealously watched the light in her eyes, and listened to the new fervor in her voice as she talked to the man whose demeanor plainly indicated that he considered her his guiding star in the journey from obscurity to light. "o, yes," she cried, suddenly, a taunting gleam coming to her eyes, "i have forgotten something quite important. what has become of the beautiful sweetheart? i never saw a prettier girl. is she still down there?" for a moment the spell was broken. he caught his breath. he had forgotten justine--his own justine! his composure fled, his eyes wavered before the laughing eyes of his inquisitor. his lips parted with the impulse to blurt out that she was his wife, when he remembered converse. he had led converse with the others to consider him unmarried, unintentionally and innocently he knew down in his heart. his helpless looks from one to the other showed such unmistakable signs of embarrassment that miss wood hastily sought to relieve the situation, fearing she had committed a painful blunder. "i beg your pardon. it is not my affair and i----" she began, but converse, obtuse and rejoicing in jud's discomfiture, interrupted. "o, she's still there, all right, all right. look at his blushes! i wish i had the luck he has." "douglass converse, i'll send you to the library if you don't keep quiet. i hope you will pardon my natural curiosity, mr. sherrod," she said, gravely. sherrod caught his breath again and battled for an instant with something in his throat, then allowed a deeper flush to follow the first--the flush that comes with criminal bravery. "i don't mind telling you about her. she still lives down at my old home and often writes to me about you, wondering whether i have seen you," he said in a hard voice, fully resolved to deceive for the time being. "don't forget to let me know what she says when you tell her you have really seen me. i am so interested in her. what is her name?" without a moment's hesitation he took the plunge. "justine van." "what an odd name. yet she was an odd looking girl. her beauty was so different, so fresh, so pure. i hope the gay life of the city is not turning you away from that jewel down there. o, i know what the city does for young men who come from the country. it usually spoils them. they forget the best, the truest part of their lives, and they let new faces drive out the old and loving ones." "i--i don't think you quite understand the situation," floundered jud, moved to contrition. had she not interrupted at that instant, he would have told the truth. "it is easier to understand than you think," she said. "you are up here, she is there. you are a new man with new ideas, new possibilities, new hopes; she is the same sweet, innocent country girl, no farther advanced than she was the day you left her. you have gone forward, she stands still. you are dudley sherrod, the most promising of young artists, with popularity ready to leap at you; she is the common lass of the fields, honest and true, unknown except to the people who live nearby. you are up here, thrown with bright men, and perhaps with clever women, while she is back there with the farmers and the farmers' wives. you have every opportunity to be somebody; she will always be nobody unless she is lifted from that mire of inactivity. don't you see how well i understand the situation? you have every advantage, she has none. yes, mr. sherrod, you are living out the promise i made for you months ago, and you are winning only what is yours by right. but you must not forget that there are few such jewels here as the one you left behind when you sought treasures in the world." "that's the neatest lecture i ever heard, celeste," cried converse, admiringly. "you musn't forget to go back and polish up the jewel, sherrod. that's what she means, in few words." jud feared that both were laughing at him and resented it. "i am sure miss wood has said nothing that is untrue concerning justine van. she is the noblest girl i ever knew," he said, deliberately. "she is far above me in every way. she has more reason to stoop to me than i to her. she is my best friend." "friend?" echoed miss wood. "my truest comrade," said he. the perspiration started on his forehead. chapter xv. one heart for two. the passing of two months saw sherrod a constant, even a privileged, visitor at the wood home. in that time he visited the cottage in indiana but once, and on that occasion glowingly related to justine the story of his first visit to the goddess and of her subsequent interest in his affairs. just now he was beginning to realize the consequences of his deception. affairs had reached the stage where it seemed next to impossible to acknowledge his marriage to justine, and he certainly could not tell that honest, trusting wife of his unfortunate duplicity. he loved her too deeply to inflict the wound that such a confession would make, and yet he could see that delay would only increase the violence of the shock should she learn of his mistake, innocently conceived, but unwisely fostered. justine also had a secret. when he was ready to take her to the city, she would confess to him that 'gene crawley was to farm the place for her that spring and summer, working it on shares. he was to use his own team, for her horses had died of influenza. so little did jud know of the old home place now that he did not recognize crawley's horses in the stable, nor could he see that a man's hand had performed wonders in the field. he was thinking of chicago and the miserable broil in which his affairs were involved. justine induced crawley to remain away from the farm during jud's stay, an undertaking which required some force of persuasion. crawley wanted to make peace with jud and to assure him of his good faith; he begged her to let him apologize to his old adversary and ask him to shake hands and say quits. but she knew that jud would not understand and that there could be no forgiveness. never in her life had she loved jud as in these days when she was disobeying and deceiving him. while she knew that 'gene was no longer the brute and the blackguard of old, she saw that her husband could look upon him only as he had known him. the farm was bound to do well this year and she was happy to give jud that assurance. once he caught her looking wistfully at him when he was telling of expected triumphs in the city. he knew that she was hoping he would say that she could soon go with him to the city, leaving the farm to care for itself. but how could he take her there now? he groaned with the shame of it. a week of sleepless nights followed this visit to clay township. the young artist's work on the paper suffered and his fellows advised him to take a rest. he had had no vacation since taking the position many months before. but it was not overwork that told on him; it was the lying awake of nights striving to find a way out of his predicament without losing the respect of all these friends, especially that of one whom he admired so deeply. he had permitted her to believe him free and had behaved as a free man behaves to such an extent that explanations were impossible. to tell her the truth concerning the man she had gone to the theatre with, had lunched with in downtown restaurants, had entertained in her own home almost to the exclusion of others, could bring but one end--the scorn and detestation he deserved. poor converse had given up the conflict in despair, but, good fellow that he was, held no grudge against sherrod, for whom he had genuine admiration. they were lunching together a week or two after his trying trip to clay township, and jud was so moody that converse took note of it. as they sat at the table, converse mentally observed that his friend was growing handsomer every day; the moods improved him. after a long silence, the artist said: "i had an offer to-day to do some book illustrating for a publishing house." "good! that's the stuff! book pictures will be your line, old man. will you accept?" "i'm afraid i'd be a failure," said jud, gloomily. "is that what's the matter with you?" "what do you mean?" demanded the other, quickly. "o, your grumpiness. you've been all out of sorts for a couple of weeks, you know--or maybe you don't. but you have, anyway. i never saw a fellow change as you have in--in, well, ten days." "i don't understand why you think so. everything is all right with me," said jud, shortly. "maybe you're off your feed a bit." "never was better in my life." "well, it's darned queer. you act like a man whose liver is turning mongrel. why, you ought to be satisfied. you've made a big hit here and you'll soon be getting the biggest salary of any newspaper artist in town. you have been elected to the athletic club, you have been invited to lecture before some of the clubs, you've got plenty of coin to throw at birds, so why don't you rub those wrinkles from between your eyes?" jud laughed rather mirthlessly, without taking his eyes from the coffee which he was stirring. "wrinkles don't come because you want them, but because you don't." "well, old chap, i'm sure something is worrying you. can i help you in any way?" went on his generous friend. "thanks, doug; you can help me to another lump of sugar." "the devil take you," cried converse, handing him the bowl. "say," he said, a moment later, watching jud as he calmly buttered his bread, "i believe there's a woman in it." "a woman!" exclaimed the other, almost dropping his knife. for an instant his gray eyes seemed to look through the other's brain. "what are you driving at, doug?" he went on, controlling himself. "i'm next to you at last, old man. you're in a deuce of a boat. you're in love." "and if i were, i can't see why i should have to hire a boat." "it's all right to talk that way, but you are in the boat, just the same. maybe it's a raft, though, and maybe you're shipwrecked. you are one of these unlucky dogs who find out that they love the second girl after having promised to marry the first one. the size of it is, you've about forgotten the little indiana girl you were telling me about." for a whole minute jud stared at him, white to the lips. "you have no right to talk like that, converse," he said, hoarsely. "i beg pardon, jud; i didn't mean to offend. honestly now, i was talking to hear myself talk," cried the other. "i have not promised to marry any one in indiana," said jud, slowly, cruelly, deliberately. "then, you are free as air?" asked converse, a chill in his heart. "or as foul," said sherrod. "sherrod, is this girl down in the country in love with you?" "you mean the one i spoke of?" asked jud, his head swimming. "yes, the one you spoke of." "'my dear fellow, the girl i spoke of has been married for three years. i am very sure she loves her husband." "thank god for that, jud. i was afraid you were forgetting her, just as celeste said you might. it wouldn't be right to break her heart, you know." "excellent advice," said jud. "have you seen celeste since sunday? i saw you together at st. james'." sherrod had already dropped four lumps into his coffee and was now adding another. "i saw her last night. why?" "'gad, you're pretty regular, aren't you?" said converse, bitter in spite of himself. "it strikes me you are talking rather queerly." "i presume i am. you'll forgive me, though, when i remind you that i care a great deal for her. it rather hurts to have her forget me entirely," said the poor fellow. "come, come, old man, you're losing your nerve," cried jud, his eye brightening. "i'm sure you can win if you'll only have heart." "win! you know better than that. if you don't know it, i'll tell you something. she's desperately in love with another man at this very minute." "what?" ejaculated jud. "miss wood in love with--with--another man? why--why--i've not seen her pay any especial attention to any one." "you must be blind, then. there's only one man in the world she cares to see any more, or cares to have near her." "good heavens, no! i never suspected--by george, doug, surely you're dreaming!" he could not understand a certain jealousy that came to him. "can't you see that she's in love with you--you?" cried the boy. the two looked at each other intently for a moment, despair in the eyes of one, incredulous joy in those of the other. sherrod could feel the blood rushing swifter and swifter to his heart, to his throat, to his face, to his eyes. something red and hot floated across his vision, turning the whole world a ruddy hue; something strong and light seemed striving to lift his whole being in the air. "well, why don't you say you don't believe it?" said a voice in front of him. "i--i can't say a word. you paralyze me. my heavens, converse, i never dreamed of such a thing and i know you're mistaken. why, it cannot be--it shouldn't be," he almost gasped. "bah! what's the use? women don't ask permission to fall in love, do they? they just fall, that's all. i'm not saying it is absolutely true, but i'm making a pretty fine guess. she is more interested in you than in any man she has ever known. i know that much." "interested, perhaps, yes, but that is not love. hang it, douglass, she cares for you." "no, she doesn't, jud; no, she doesn't. no such luck, i don't appeal to her at all and i never can. i step down and out; you've a clear field so far as i am concerned. if i can't have her, i'd rather see her go to you than to any one in the world. you're good and honest and a man." "impossible! impossible! it can't be that. you don't understand the real situation----" floundered jud. "i understand it as well as you do, my boy,--better, i think. i know celeste wood and that's all there is to it. you've won something that a hundred men have fought for and lost. you're a lucky dog." jud sherrod went to his rooms that night, after a dizzy evening at the theatre and the club, his head whirling with the intoxication coming from a mixture of rejoicing, regret, shame, apprehension, incredulity,--a hundred irrepressible thoughts. what if converse's supposition should be true? then, what a beast he had been! this night he slept not a wink--in fact, he did not go to bed. he even thought of suicide as he paced the floor or buried his face in the cushions on his couch. with it all before him there suddenly came uppermost the thought of his base treatment of justine. here he was earning a handsome salary, living comfortably and cozily, spending his money in the entertainment of another woman, leading that other woman on to what now seemed certain unhappiness, and all the time neglecting the trusting, loving wife even to the point of cruelty. down there in the bleak, uncouth country she was struggling on, loving him, trusting him, believing in him, and he was keeping himself afar off, looking on with selfish, indifferent eyes. all this grew worse and worse as he realized that of all women he loved none but justine--loved and revered her deeper and deeper with every hour and day. as the dawn came, in the eagerness of repentance, he seized pen and paper and wrote two letters, one to justine, one to celeste. to justine he poured forth his confession and urged her to save him, to live with him, to go with him to another city where he could begin anew. to celeste he admitted his shameful behavior, pleaded for forgiveness, and asked her to forget that he had ever come into her sweet, pure life. but he never sent the letters. his courage failed him. with the temporizing weakness of the guilty, he destroyed the bits of honesty his heart had inspired, and planned anew, feverishly, sincerely, almost buoyantly. he would see celeste personally the next day or night, tell her all and face her scorn as best he could. he would see her once more--once more--and then,--justine forever! chapter xvi. the fall of the weak. he had the firmest intention to lay bare before miss wood the miserable facts, without the faintest hope for pardon. he knew this frank, pure girl so well by this time that her reception of the humiliating truth was as plain as day to him. the esteem in which she had held him would vanish with the first recovery from the shock his words would bring; all the honors he had won through her instrumentality would turn to the most despised of memories; all that she had done for him would be regretted; the dear companionship, the cheer, the encouragement, all would go. he had not intended a wrong in the beginning. in his wretched brain there was the persistent cry: "you did not think! you did not know what you were doing! there was no desire to gain by this deception. you did not intend to be dishonest!" it had begun with the sly desire to surprise the "boys" some happy day when he could show to them the wife who was his pride. almost unconsciously he had gone deeper into the mire of circumstances from which he could not now flounder except with sullied honor. without a thought as to the seriousness of the situation, he had allowed this innocent friend to compromise herself by an almost constant association with him. he had intended telling her the secret when first he met her, exacting a promise to keep it from converse for a little while, at least. she was to be his confidante, his and justine's, for he meant to tell her that the brave little woman of proctor's falls cherished her as ideal, unknown but loved. celeste had unconsciously baffled all these good intentions, building a wall about the truth so strong that it could not break through. it went on, this sweet comradeship, until he--a married man--was looked upon by outsiders as the man to whom this unattainable girl had given her love. converse's blunt assertion had given him the first inkling of the consequences the intimacy had engendered. worse than all else, he now realized how dear celeste wood had become to him. on one hand, justine was his ideal; on the other hand, celeste was an ideal. it seemed to him as he rode in a hansom to the north side the next night after his talk with converse that he could not bear to lose one more than the other. both were made for him to adore. he faltered as he mounted the steps at the wood home. at the top he turned and looked out over the lake. a wild desire to rush down and throw himself over the sea-wall into the dark, slashing waters came upon him. to go inside meant the end of happiness so far as celeste wood was concerned; to turn away would mean the end of his honor and his conscience. as he stood debating she opened the door and he was trapped. a dazzling light shone in upon his darkness and he staggered forward deeper into its warm radiance, conscious only that a deadly chill had been cast off and that he was in the glow of her smile. in the dimly lighted hall, red and seductive from the swinging lantern with its antique trappings and scarlet eyes, he removed his overcoat and threw it, with his hat, upon the flemish chair. slim, sweet and graceful, she looked up into his somber face. there was a quizzical smile on hers. and now, for the first time, he saw more than friendship in those violet eyes. plain, too plain, was the glint that brightened the dark pupils; too plain were the roses in her cheeks. "i know you appear very distinguished and important when you wear that expression, but i'd much rather see you smile," she said, gaily. "smiles are too expensive, sometimes," he said, without knowing what he uttered. "i'll buy them at your own price," she laughed, but a shade of anxiety crossed her face. "no; i'll trade my dull smiles for your bright ones. it will be enough to cheat, without robbing you," he said, pulling himself together and allowing a dead smile to come to life. her den was the most seductive of rooms. it was beautiful, quaint, indolent. before he dropped into his accustomed chair his muscles were drawn taut; an instant later he was aware of a long sigh and conscious of relaxation. his brain cleared, his courage revived, and he was framing the sentences which were to lead up to that final confession. he had an eager desire to have it over with and to hurry away from her wrath. she, on the other hand, was all excitement over the report that he was at last to do book-illustrating. she brought a tingling to his heart by her undisguised gladness. her face was so bright with joy, so alive with interest, that he could but defer striking the blow. "but perhaps you'd rather talk about some other subject than yourself," she said, finally. "i want to tell you about my brother. he is in egypt now and he is wild over everything there:--perfectly crazy. a letter came to-day and he gives a wonderful account of a trip to an old town up the nile. those boys must be fairly awakening the mummies if we are to judge by his letters. he has set me wild to go to egypt. shall i read his letter to you?" patiently he listened to an entertaining letter from the boy who was seeing the world with a party of friends. as she read, he watched her face. it was a face to idolize, a face to covet, a face for the memory to subsist upon forever. stealing into his troubled heart came the realization that this girl was enthroned there beside that other loved one, both for him to worship and both to worship him. there grew into shape, positive and strong, the delightful certainty that these two women could love each other and that in so loving could share his honest love, for now he believed that his love was big enough to envelope them both. as she read to him this dream mastered and enslaved him and his heart expanded, letting in the love of this second petitioner, dividing the kingdom fairly that she might reign with the one already there. he convinced himself that he loved two women honestly, purely and with his whole soul. he loved unreservedly and equally justine, his wife, and celeste, his friend. "you're not listening at all," she cried, dropping the letter suddenly. "what are you thinking of?" "of--of the very strangest of things," he stammered. "but not of the letter? i am so sorry i bored you with----" "stop! please, stop! pardon me, i--i--for god's sake, let me think!" he burst out, starting to his feet. he strode to the window and, with his back to her, looked out into the night. the action, sudden and inexplicable, brought flashes of red and white to her face, and then a steady glow--the flush not of indignation, but of joy. a heart throb sent the blood tingling through her veins and a smile flew to her startled face. her eyes melted with a sweet, tender joy and her whole being was suffused with the radiance of understanding. woman's intuition told her all, and, with clasped hands, she looked upon the motionless figure. one hand went out toward him as if to lead him into the light of her love. he loved her! she went to the piano and gently, with a soft smile on her lips, began to play "la paloma," the daintiest of waltzes, for her heart was dancing. at last he turned slowly and looked upon the player. her back was toward him. his eyes took in the picture--the white shoulders and neck, the pretty head, the dark hair and the red rose. all his good resolutions, all his remorse, all his honor fled with the first glance. the dullness left his eyes and in its stead came the flaring spark of passion. he strode impulsively to her side and when she glanced up in confusion, her eyes found the refuge they had sought--the awakened love in his. [illustration: "his eyes took in the picture."] "o, jud!" she murmured, faint and happy. "celeste!" he whispered, hoarsely, his face almost in her hair. "i worship you! i adore you!" he crushed her in his arms and she smiled through her tears. chapter xvii. at sea. even at that moment he thought of the wrong he was doing justine, forgetting that he was blasting the life of the other one. and again, when he asked celeste to be his wife, he thought of the cruel deception he was practicing upon justine. not till afterwards did he fully realize that he had deceived celeste a thousand fold more grossly than justine--for justine was his lawful wife, celeste his victim. and yet that night he gained her promise to be his wife, calmly, remorselessly leading her to the sacrifice of love. it was enough for the moment that he loved her and that she loved him. as he hurried homeward with her kisses tingling on his lips, he whispered joyously to himself that he loved them both and that he could live for them both--worshiping one no more than the other. and he slept that night with a smile of happiness on his lips. the day for the wedding was set, and it was not until then that his eyes were opened to the wrong he was doing celeste. she could not be his wife. all the marriage vows in the land could not bind her to him in law. for the first time he realized that reality. but to his rescue came the assurance that he loved her and that she was his in the holy sight of god, if not in the wretched laws of man. he saw the wrong of it all, but he made his own law and he made his wrong a right. as he made his arrangements for the marriage he was afraid that something like conscience might overthrow him before his desires could be realized. blissfully ignorant and deeply in love, she filled him with joy by naming a day just one month from that on which he told her that he loved her. acceding again to his wishes, for his eager will, urged on by fear, carried her with it, she agreed to a very quiet wedding. the power of his love--the love which shrank and trembled with the fear that it might be thwarted--carried everything before it, sweeping honor and dishonor into a heap which he called the mountain of happiness, and he resolved that it should be strong and enduring. a week before the wedding day he went to justine, utterly conscienceless, glorying in his love for her, rejoicing in his capacity to share it with another. happy were the day and night he spent with her. she gave him the fullness of a love long restrained, long pent-up. she had not seen him in more than three months. all the unhappiness, all the joylessness, all the lonesomeness were swept away by the return of this handsome boy, her husband, her jud. it must be confessed that she felt some uneasiness lest he meet 'gene crawley on the place and lest the long averted catastrophe might occur. she felt guilty in that she was deceiving jud in regard to 'gene. that was her greatest sin! but crawley went to the village on that day. he had seen jud enter the gate the evening before while he was doing the work about the barn, and had slunk back to his lodging place in martin grimes' barn. an ugly hatred came into the soul justine had tempered until it was gentler than one could have supposed 'gene crawley's soul could be. the little farm looked fairly prosperous. jud did not know that the season had turned unproductive and that justine had been forced to observe the utmost frugality in order to make both ends meet. and so he basked in her love and then went away, loving her more deeply than ever. he told her of his hopes and his desires and of his struggles to go ahead. some time, he was sure, he could take her to the city and they could be happy forever. "poor jud," she said, with tears in her eyes. "you are so lonesome, so unhappy! i wish i could be with you. but we are so awfully, awfully poor, aren't we?" "cruelly poor, dear, is better. you haven't had a new dress in a year, and look at these clothes of mine." he was wearing once more the wretched garments in which he was married! down at the tollgate jim hardesty said to the crowd the day after his departure for chicago: "he's made a fizzle uv it, boys. gol-dinged, ef i c'n make it out. 'peared as though he wuz bound to make it go up yander an' i'd 'a' bet my last chaw tebaccer 'at he'd 'a' got to be president er somethin' two year' ago. but he's fell down somehow. i never did see sitch a wreck as him. he don't look 's if he had money 'nough to git a good squar' meal. no wonder he ain't been to see her. it's too dern' fer to walk." a week afterwards justine received a letter from jud. with pale face and crushed heart she read and re-read it. it brought grief and joy, terror and gladness, distress and pride. in her solitude she wept piteously, but whether with joy or sadness she could not have told. "and now i must tell you of the great good luck that has befallen me. it means that poor jud sherrod is to have the greatest opportunity that ever came to a man. i am going to europe, across the ocean, dearest. can you imagine such a thing? think of me going to europe, think of me sailing across the sea. i'll believe it when i find that i am not really dreaming. truly, it is too wonderful to be true. how i wish i could take you with me. but think of the wonderful things i'll have to tell you when i come back. i can tell you of paris, london, rome and all the places we have talked and read about so often together. am i not fortunate to have such a friend as the one who is to give me this unheard of chance? i must tell you that i don't think i deserve it at all. some day my benefactor will learn that kindness can be wasted and that barrenness sometimes follows the best of sowing. this friend, of whom i shall write you more fully when i have obtained consent, is so deeply interested in me and my future that the art schools in europe are to be made accessible to me--poverty-stricken me--because of that interest. there is so much to be gained by a brief tour of europe and by a short stay in the big art schools that my benefactor says it would be criminal for me to be deprived of the chance because i have no money. we are to go together and we are to stay several months, possibly six. i am to have the best of instruction and am to have the additional lessons acquired only by travel. when i come back to this country i shall be ready to startle the world. we sail next week and i don't know just where we are to go after first reaching england. of course, i shall write to you every day, dearest, and i shall think of you every moment. it is for you that i am building all my future. when i am rich and famous, we will go to europe together, you and i. i am so rushed now for time, getting ready and everything, that i cannot come to see you before i go, but you must pray for me and you must love me more than ever. at the end of this week i give up my place on the paper, and when i come back i expect to open a studio of my own. the only thing i hate about the affair is that i must leave you, but it won't be so hard for you to bear, will it, dear? you know it is for my own and your good." when all the misery of losing him for months, when all the dread of losing him forever, perhaps, in that voyage across the awful sea, had been lost in the joy over _his_ good fortune, justine gloried. though her voice trembled and grew faint and her eyes glistened as she read the news to mrs. crane and 'gene, it was from pride and joy. how proud she was of him! a week later dudley sherrod and wife sailed from new york. as the huge ship left the dock, celeste, clasping his arm and looking up into his face, somber with thoughts of the future, exclaimed: "we are at sea! we are at sea!" "yes," he said, slowly. "we are at sea." * * * * * "i see in a chicago paper that a feller named dudley sherrod wuz married t'other day," remarked postmaster hardesty to parson marks while the latter was waiting for his mail at the tollgate a few days later. "cur'os, how derned big this world is, ain't it, parson?" "oh, chicago is a world in itself," said the parson. "kinder startled me when i seen that name," jim went on, pausing in his perusal of a postal card directed to martin grimes. "by ginger, martin's been buyin' hogs up in grant township--i mean--er--i sh'd say that this is a derned big world," he stammered, guiltily dropping the card behind the counter. "i reckon there's a hunderd sherrods in chicago, though." "oh, i daresay you'd find three or four dudley sherrods there if you looked through the directory." "our jud has jist gone to the old country, harve crose tells me." "is it possible?" "goin' to take some drawin' lessons, i believe." "i am very glad to hear that he has such a remarkable opportunity. but i was under the impression that he had little or no money." mr. marks was now deeply interested. "harve said somethin' about a friend payin' all the expenses because he took a likin' to jud." "and what provision has he made for justine?" "well, now you're askin' somethin' i cain't answer. harve's such a derned careless fool he didn't ast anythin' about that part of it." later in the afternoon mr. marks drove back to the tollgate and asked hardesty if he had kept the paper containing the notice of the wedding in chicago. he could not account for the feeling that inspired this act on his part. something indefinable had formed itself in his brain and he could not rest until he had settled it within himself. few chicago papers found their way into this section of indiana. clay township was peculiarly isolated. its people were lowly, and comfortable in the indifference of the lowly to the progress of the world aside from its politics, its wars and its markets. farm papers, family story papers and the _glenville weekly tomahawk_ provided the reading for these busy, homely people. jim hardesty "took" a chicago paper, but he was usually too busy whittling and telling stories to read much more than the headlines. "dinged if i know what i done with it, parson," said jim, scratching his head thoughtfully. "'pears to me i wrapped some bacon up in it fer mis' trimmer yesterday. anythin' pertickler you wanted to see about the weddin'?" "do you remember what it said about the wedding?" "lemme see, what did it say? said the groom wuz from northern indiana--up about fort wayne, i think. the girl's name wuz--hold on a minute--what wuz her name? wood--that's it. swell people, i guess. this feller wuz an artist, too. say, that's kinder queer, ain't it?" "a coincidence--a rare coincidence, i must say." "course, it couldn't 'a' been our jud," said jim, conclusively. "he's already married." "oh, no, no! of course not, mr. hardesty. he is devoted to justine and--and----" "an' a man 'at's got any sense ain't goin' to load hisself down with two when it's so derned hard to git rid of one," grinned jim, referring to his own connubial condition. "and bigamy is a very serious crime. i wonder if any one else in the neighborhood has noticed the similarity of names?" "i ain't heerd no one mention it, mr. marks. by ginger, you ain't got no--er--suspicions, have ye?" asked jim, suddenly acute. mr. marks stammered confusedly and assured him that no such thought had entered his head. "would you mind giving me dudley's chicago address?" he asked, at last, that same indefinable something struggling for recognition. "he's half way to europe by this time," explained jim. "i feel that it would be wise to secure a letter from jud himself in case rumor confuses him with this other man. it would be just to him and to justine, mr. hardesty. if you'll give me his address i'll write to him and we can have his own word for it in case people get to talking." "then you _are_ afraid people will think it's jud?" demanded jim. "you cannot tell what people might think and say," said the parson, sagely. "and, by the way, did mrs. hardesty see that notice in the paper?" "naw! she's too busy readin' that continued story in the _wife's own magazine_. thunder! i wouldn't even hint to her that it might be jud! she's jest the woman to swear it wuz him anyhow, an' she'd peddle it over the country quicker'n scat. but, course, it cain't be jud, so what's the use worryin' about it? this is a thunderin' big world, as i said before, mr. marks, an' they do say that up in indianapolis there is sixty-four fellers named james hardesty. gosh, i hope my wife never gits it into her head that i've got sixty-four other wives, jist because the name's the same. she'd never git tired askin' me about that trip i took to indianapolis six year' ago with the rest o' the g.a.r. boys from glenville." nevertheless, mr. marks wrote to jud sherrod, delicately referring to the strange similarity in names and to the embarrassment he might suffer if the community came to regard him as identical with the chicago bridegroom. the letter was nothing less than a deliberate command for dudley sherrod to say "guilty" or "not guilty." weeks afterwards, from across the sea, came a reply from jud in all the cold dignity of a conscience in defense. he closed with these words: "_i have but one wife--the one whom god and the law has given me. you will greatly oblige me, mr. marks, by informing any inquiring person in your community that justine is my wife and that i am not the sherrod who was married in chicago. thank you for your interest in justine and me._" chapter xviii. 'gene crawley's sermon. "'gene, 'tain't none o' my business, understan', but 'pears to me you ain't doin' a very sensible thing in hirin' out to jestine sherrod like this. she'd oughter have some one else down there 'tendin' to the place. you ain't the feller, take it jest how you please. she's all alone, 'cept ole mis' crane, an' folks is boun' to talk, dang 'em. i don't think it's jest right fer you to be there." "there ain't nothin' wrong in it, martin. there ain't a thing. do you think there is?" "w--e--ll, no, not that, 'zackly, but it gives people a chanst to _say_ there's somethin' wrong," said mr. grimes, shifting his feet uncomfortably. the two men were standing in the farmer's barnyard about a fortnight after it became generally known in the community that jud had gone to europe. "y'see, ever'body reecollects that nasty thing you said down to the tollgate the night o' the weddin'. 'tain't human natur' to fergit sich a brag as that wuz. what a goshamighty fool you wuz to talk like----" "oh, i know i wuz, i know it. don't be a throwin' it up to me, martin. i wish i'd never said it. i wish i'd died while i wuz sayin' it so's i could 'a' gone right straight to hell to pay fer it. i wuz a crazy man, martin, that's what i wuz. ever'body knows i didn't mean it, don't they?" "w--e--ll, mos' ever'body knows you couldn't kerry out yer boast, no matter ef you meant it er not. but, you c'n see fer yerself 'at your workin' over on her place ain't jest the thing, with all the talk 'at went on a couple year ago. like's not ever'thing's all proper an' they ain't no real harm in it, but----" "look here, martin grimes, do you mean to insinyate that it ain't proper? 'cause ef you do, somethin's goin' to drap an' drap all-fired hard," exclaimed 'gene, his brow darkening. "don't be so techy, 'gene. i ain't insinyated a blame thing; cain't you see i'm tryin' to lay the hull case afore you clearly? 'tain't no use beatin' roun' the bush, nuther. she's boun' to be compermised." crawley stared long and silently at a herd of cattle on the distant hillside. "martin," he said, at last, "that girl's made a different man of me. i ain't the same ornery cuss i wuz a couple of year ago. anybody c'n see that. i ain't teched a mouthful of whisky fer purty nigh a year. seems to me i don't keer a damn to swear--i mean i don't keer to swear any more. that one slipped out jest because talkin' to you like this kind o' takes me back to where i used to be. i go to church purty reg'lar, don't i? well, it's all her. she's made a different man of me, i tell you, an' i wouldn't do her no wrong if the hull world depended on it. she's the best woman that ever lived, that's what she is. an' she keers more fer jud sherrod's little finger than fer all the balance of the world put together. there ain't no honester girl in clay township, an' darn me, if ever i hear anybody say anything mean ag'in her, i'll break his neck. i'm helpin' her over on the place, an' she's payin' me wages, jest like she'd pay any hand, an' i don't know whose business it is but her'n an' mine." "i know all that, 'gene, but people don't----" "who in thunder is the people? a lot of old women who belong to church, an' go to sociables jest to run one 'nother down, an' all the time there ain't one-tenth of 'em that ain't jealous of the women they think's goin' wrong. they're so derned selfish an' evil-minded that they cain't even imagine another woman doin' somethin' that ain't right without feelin' jealous as blazes an' gittin' dissatisfied with ever'thing around 'em. you cain't tell me nothin' about these old scarecrows that keep a sign hangin' out all the time--'virtue is its own reward.' say, martin, you don't suppose that i'm the only hired hand workin' around these parts, do you?" snarled 'gene, malevolently. "no, course not, but--what you mean, 'gene?" "i'm not the only man that's workin' on a farm where there's a woman, am i?" grated 'gene. "lookee here, 'gene, 'splain yerself. that don't sound very well," exclaimed martin, turning a shade paler and glancing uneasily toward his own house. "there ain't nothin' to explain, but it's somethin' to think about, martin. you c'n tell that to all the old women you see, too, an' mebby they won't do so much thinkin' about justine van. that's all. if i'd waited fer any of these other women 'round here to do me a good turn, i'd be worse than i ever wuz. 'tain't in 'em, martin; all they c'n do is to cackle an' look around to see if they got wings sproutin' on theirselves. they don't think of nobody else, unless they think bad. justine ain't that sort, i want to tell you. here i wuz, her enemy, an' no friend of her husband's. i'd done a hull lot o' mean things to her an' him. but did she hold it up ag'in me when the chanst come for her to do some good fer me? no, sir, she didn't. she tole me that i had the makin' of a man in me, an' then she tuck holt of me an' give me a new start. she said i wuz a beast an' a drunkard an' a coward, an' a hull lot o' things, but she said i could be a good man if i'd try. so i tried, an' i hadn't no idee it wuz so easy. she done it an' she don't keer no more fer me than she does fer that spotted calf of your'n over yander. now, i want to tell you somethin', martin. she needs me down there on the place an' i'm goin' to stay there till she tells me to quit. then i'm goin' to quit like a man. it don't make no difference what i said two er three year ago, either, 'cause i'm not the same man i wuz then. if clay township don't like the way i'm doin', let 'em say so an' be done with it. then we'll settle some scores." grimes shuffled his feet frequently and expectorated nervously without regard to direction or consequences during this unusually long speech. mrs. grimes was recognized as one of the most ravenous gossips in the neighborhood, and her husband knew it. yet he was too much in dread of crawley's prowess to take up the cudgels in her defense. he had also suspected, years before, that she was in love with one of his "hired men"; hence his uneasiness under 'gene's implications. "you better not talk too much, 'gene," he said at last. "i'm yer friend, but i cain't stave off the hull township fer you. ef it gits out that you're making sich bold talk an' braggin'----" "braggin'! who's braggin'? i mean ever' word i said, an' a heap sight more, too. you jest tell 'em what i said an' let 'em come to me. but if any of 'em goes to justine with their sneakin' tales an' their cussed lies, i'll not stop to see whether it's a man er a woman. i'll wrap 'em up in a knot an' chuck 'em out into the middle of the lane." "now, that wouldn't be a wise thing to do, don't you see?" said grimes, growing more and more uncomfortable. at this point it may be announced that mr. grimes had been deputized by his wife to convince 'gene of the error of his way and of the wrong he was doing justine. "you'd have the constables down here in two shakes of a dead lamb's tail." "old bill higgins an' randy dixon? they wouldn't try to arrest me if i wuz tied hand an' foot an' chloroformed into the bargain. but, say, there ain't no use talkin' about this thing. i want the folks to know that i'm goin' to stick to justine an' help her out as long as i can. i'm doin' it honest an' i'm gittin' paid fer it like anybody else. martin, i don't want to have 'em say anything ag'in her. she's as good as gold an' we all oughter be proud of her. jud's in hard luck, i reckon. leastwise he looked it last time he wuz here. mebby he'll git on his feet over there in europe, an' then he c'n do the right thing by her. but i'll tell you, martin, we all want to stick to her now. she's all broke up an' i c'n see she's discouraged. she wouldn't let on fer the world, allus bright an' happy, but old mrs. crane told me t'other day that she'd ketched her cryin' more'n onct. that gosh-darned little farm of her'n ain't payin' a thing, an' i want to tell you she needs sympathy 'nstead of hard words." "they ain't a soul ever said anything ag'in her, 'gene," broke in the other. "but they're apt to ef it goes on. but go ahead; you know best, 'gene, you know best." "i don't know best, either. that's the trouble. i c'n talk to you an' sweat about it, but i don't know what to do. i'm awful worried about it. of course, if any responsible person ever said anything wrong she could sue him in the courts, somehow er other, but she'd hate to do that," said 'gene, reflectively. plainly, he saw the girl's position better than his loyalty would allow him to admit. martin started violently at the word "sue" and was from that moment silenced. he lived in terror of a lawsuit and its dangers. "d'you suppose she'd go to court?" "she wouldn't want to, but me--me an'--me an' jud could coax her to do it," said 'gene, shrewd in an instant. "i don't reckon folks remember about the courts, do they?" martin pulled his nerves together sufficiently to send a stream of tobacco juice into a knot-hole in the fence fifteen feet away, and said: "well, they'd oughter remember, by ginger!" after a few minutes of rather energetic chewing for him (martin rarely chewed tobacco vigorously because of the extravagance), he calmly reopened the conversation. "when are you liable to git through plantin' over there?" "in a couple of days, if it keeps dry." "i'll let bud jones go over an' help you ef you need him." "oh, i c'n git along, i guess." "i wuz thinkin' a little of sendin' bud over this week with a couple bushels of potaters fer jestine. never seed sich potaters in my born days." "i think she's got a plenty, martin." "you don't say so. well, how's she off fer turnips?" "she could use a few bushels of turnips an' some oats an' little corn, i reckon. dern it, i believe she's purty nigh out of hay, too," said 'gene, soberly. "tell her i'll drive over this week with some," said martin, wiping his brow. "she'll pay you fer the stuff when you take it over." "i didn't 'low to ask fer pay." "well, she ain't askin' fer favors, either." martin stared down the road for some minutes. "but i got more'n i c'n use," he said. "if that's the case you c'n send it over an' she'll be mighty thankful. an' say, i guess i c'n use bud to-morrow an' next day." "we're purty busy an' i don't see how----" "don't send him, then. you said you'd thought of it, you know." "i'll send him, though, come to think of it. you say pore little jestine 'pears to be discouraged?" "kinder so, i should say. poor little girl, she's----" here he leaned over and uttered an almost inaudible bit of information. martin's eyes bulged and he gasped. "the devil you say! well, i'll be danged!" 'gene started down the lane, his jaws set and hard for the moment. suddenly he turned, and, with the first chuckle of mirth grimes had heard from him that day, said: "don't fergit to send over them potaters, too, martin." then he trudged rapidly away, leaving mr. grimes in a state bordering on collapse. between the startling bit of information 'gene had given him, the hint at lawsuits, the insinuation against other women in the locality and his own astounding liberality, he was the most thoroughly confused farmer in clay township. he went to the house and talked it all over with his wife, and the words of advice that he gave to her savored very much of the mandatory. he dreamed that night that some one sued him for damages and got judgment for $96,000. the next day he sent a wagonload of supplies to justine, after which he told his wife she could not have the new "calico" he had been promising for three months. eugene crawley's position on the old van farm was queer. he was a self-appointed slave, as it were. true, he was paid wages and he was given his meals in the little kitchen where justine and mrs. crane ate. that privilege was the one recompense that made slavery a charm. in his undisciplined heart there had grown a feeling of reverence for the wife of jud sherrod that displaced the evil love of the long ago. his love, in these days, was pure and hopeless. he thought only of lifting the burden that another's love had left upon her shoulders. the 'gene crawley of old was no more. in his place was a simple, devoted toiler, a lowly worshipper. against her will he had attached himself to the farm, and at last he had become indispensable. the fear with which she had once regarded him was gone with the wonderful alteration in his nature. innocent, unsuspecting child that she was, she thought that his love had died and that it could never be awakened. she did not know the depths of his silent adoration. at nightfall each day he trudged back to martin grimes's barn to sleep, and in the morning, before sunrise, he was at his post of duty again. so thoughtful was he of her welfare that he never lingered after the night's chores were done, realizing that the least indiscretion would give rise to neighborhood gossip. their conversations were short, but always free and friendly. they met only as necessity obliged and nothing could have been more decorous than their conduct. yet 'gene went to his little room in the barn that night with a troubled heart. "sure they cain't talk about her," he thought. "she's an angel, if there ever wuz one." months before he had said aloud to himself, off in the field, as he looked toward the house in which his fair employer lived: "i wouldn't harm her by word er thought fer all heaven. she's honest an' i'm goin' to be. she's jud's wife an' she loves him, an' i ain't got no right to even think of lovin' her. 'gene crawley, you gotter give up. you gotter be honest." and he was honest. chapter xix. the pure and the poor. for four months mr. and mrs. dudley sherrod wandered over europe. they saw paris, venice, rome, amsterdam, brussels, vienna and quaint german towns, unknown to most american tourists. celeste had visited the old world many times before, but it was all new to her now; she was traveling with the man she loved. to sherrod, the wonders of the land he had never hoped to see were a source of the most intense delight. his artistic, romantic nature leaped under the spur of awakening forces; his love for the beautiful, the glorious, the quaint and the curious was satiated daily. he lived in the perfect glory of the present, doggedly disregarding the past and braving everything that the future might bring forth, good or evil. basking in the love of this fair girl, adoring her and being adored, he lost all vestige of conscience. the shadow that hung over him on the wedding day drifted away into forgetfulness, and he saw nothing but the pleasures of life. a dread that the law would surely find him out and snatch him from the love and respect of two women, devastating the lives of both, was dissipated by degrees until scarcely a line across his brow was left to mark its course within. once a week he sent loving letters home to justine, letters full of tenderness and affection. often a mist of tears came to his eyes as he thought of her, wishing that she, too, might be with them on this happy tour. at times he saw his selfishness and was ashamed, but the brightness of life with celeste overcame these touches of remorse and he sank back into the soft cushions of bliss and--forgot. letters from justine were rare, and he kissed them passionately and read them over and over again--before he destroyed them. here and there the sherrods wandered, the rich and loving wife's purse the provider, dawdling and idling in dreamland. at last she confessed to him that she was tired of the continent and was eager to get back to chicago, where she could have him all to herself in the home over which he was to be master. so deep in luxury and forgetfulness was he, that future pain seemed impossible, and he did not even oppose her wish. but as the steamer drew away from the dock he grasped the rail and for an instant his body turned numb. "back to america!" he gasped, realizing at last. "oh! how long can i hold it off? what will be the end of it?" in the meantime, clay township was in a turmoil of gossip. poor justine was discussed from one prayer service to another, and with each succeeding session of the gossips the stories were magnified. quite unconscious of the storm brewing about her innocent head, she struggled painfully on with her discouraging work, the dullness of life brightened once a week or so by letters from across the sea. every night she prayed for the safe return of that husband-lover, and there was no hour that did not find her picturing the delights of meeting after these months of separation. she heard nothing of the wedding that parson marks and jim hardesty discussed months before. the few glenville and clay township people who saw the account in the papers may have regarded the coincidence in names remarkable, but attached no other significance to the affair. certainly no one mentioned it to justine. jud's letter swept the doubts and fears from the mind of mr. marks and the incident was forgotten. from her face there began to disappear the glorious colors of health; the bright eyes were deep with a new wistfulness. but her strong young figure never drooped. at last 'gene crawley became aware of the gossip. he saw the sly looks, the indirect snubs, the significant pauses in conversation, when he or she drew nigh. for weeks he controlled his wrath, grinding his teeth in secret over the injustice of it all. in the end, after days of indecision, he told himself that but one course was left open to him. he must leave the country. but there was left the task of telling justine of his resolve. would she despise him for deserting her in the hour of greatest need? he could not tell her that scandal was driving him away for her sake. to let her know that the neighbors had accused her of being false to jud would break her heart. to run away surreptitiously would be the act of a coward; to tell her the real reason would be cruel; to leave designedly for a better offer of wages would be base under the circumstances. in the last few weeks she had depended on him for everything; he had become indispensable. while he was striving to evolve some skillful means of breaking the news to her gently, the populace of clay township made ready to take the matter in its own hands. parson marks, to whom nearly every member of his congregation had come with stories of misconduct at the little place down the lane, finally felt obliged to call a general meeting to consider the wisest plan of action in the premises. the word was passed among the leading members of the church, and it was understood that a secret meeting would be held in the pastor's home on a certain thursday night. justine had a few true friends and believers, but they were not asked to be present; no word was permitted to reach the ears of either offender. that thursday night came, and with it also came to 'gene's troubled mind the sudden inspiration to go before the young minister and lay bare his intentions, asking his help and advice. the "neighbors" timed their arrival at the parson's home so thoughtfully that darkness had spread over the land long before the first arrival drew up and hitched his team in the barn-lot. by half-past eight o'clock there were twenty immaculate souls in the parlor and sitting room of the parsonage, and mrs. ed. harbaugh, the president of the woman's home missionary society, was called upon to state the object of the meeting, mr. marks observing that he preferred to sit as a court of appeals. a stiffer-backed gathering of human beings never assembled under the banner of the almighty, ready to do battle for christianity. there was saintly courage in every face and there was determination in every glance of apprehension that greeted the creaking of a door or the nicker of a horse. when jim hardesty, while trying to hitch his horse to a fence post in a dark corner of the barn-lot, exploded as follows: "whoa, damn ye!" everybody shivered, and mrs. bolton said she wondered "how 'gene crawley heerd about the meetin'." mr. hardesty never could understand why his entrance a few minutes later was the signal for such joy. "it's our bounding duty," said mrs. harbaugh in conclusion, "to set right down as a committee an' directate a letter to jud sherrod, tellin' him jest how things is bein' kerried on over to his house. that pore feller is off yander in europe or paris some'ere's, doin' his best to git ahead in the world, an' his wife is back here cuttin' up as if old satan hisself had got into her." "but how air we to git a letter to jed ef we don't know where he's at?" demanded mr. hardesty. "i been workin' fer the gover'ment long enough to know that you cain't git a letter to a feller 'nless it's properly addressed. now, who knows where he's to be found?" the speaker looked very wise and important. the truth is, he was inclined to favor justine, but his wife's stand in the controversy made it imperative for him to express other views. "i sh'd think a postal card would catch him at europe," volunteered ezekiel craig. parson marks stared at the speaker. "but europe is not a city, mr. craig," he said. "no, of course not," exclaimed mr. hardesty, contemptuously. "it's an umpire." "well, i didn't know," murmured mr. craig, and his voice was not heard again until he said good-night to the door post when he left the parson's house. "mebby somebody could find out his address from justine," said mrs. grimes. "needn't let on what it's fer, y' see, an' thataway we couldn't take no chances on wastin' a stamp." "i kin ast her," said mrs. bolton. "i'm goin' over to her house to-morry to see if i c'n borry a couple pounds o' sugar. dear me, i never did have sitch luck with watermillon preserves as i'm havin' this year. silas, i leave it to you if i ain't sp'iled more----" "we ain't yere to talk about preserves, liz, so shet up," interrupted her better half sourly. "that's right, si. i wish to gosh i could shet mine up like that," said mr. hardesty, enviously. "why, jim hardesty, you ain't sayin' that i talk too much," cried his wife, indignantly. "you don't say 'leven words a day, my dove," said he, arising and bowing so low that his suspenders creaked threateningly. then he winked broadly at the assemblage, and the women tittered, whereupon mrs. hardesty glared at them greenly. "we are getting away from the subject, please," came the mild reproof of the pastor. "how fer had we got?" demanded deacon bossman. "we hain't got anywheres yet," said mrs. harbaugh. "that's what we're talkin' about, deacon." "hain't found out where jud's at yet?" "have you been asleep?" demanded the chairman. "i'd like to know how in thund--i mean, how in tarnation--er--how in the world i could go to sleep with all you women talkin' to onct about dresses an' so forth----" "we ain't mentioned dress to-night," snorted the chairman. "you better 'tend to----" "come, come; we must get along with the business," remonstrated the pastor. "i want to make a motion," said the postmaster, rising impressively. when he had secured the attention of the crowd he walked solemnly to the door, opened it and expectorated upon the porch. then, wiping his lips with the back of his hairy hand, he returned to his position in the circle. "i move you, mr. cheerman--er, mrs. cheerman, beggin' your excuse--that we app'int a committee to see how much truth they is in these reports afore we go to puttin' our foot--er, properly speakin'--our feets in it too da--too extry deep." there was a dead silence and jim looked serenely up at the right-hand corner of the parson's clothes-press, expecting the wrath of the virtuous to burst about him at any moment. "i don't think we need any more committee than our own eyes, jim," said his wife, feeling her way. "well, then, if that's the case, i move you we app'int a committee of hearts to work j'intly with the eyes," said james, soberly, still looking at the closet. "i make an amendment," said mrs. bolton sharply. "mrs. cheerman, i amend that we app'int a committee of three to go to justine an' tell her this thing's got to stop an'----" "it seems to me----" began mr. marks. "i think it'd be best if we'd write to her an' sign no name," said mrs. grimes. "that's a good idy," mused mr. bolton. "mrs. cheerman, i withdraw my motion," said hardesty. "i move you now that we app'int a committee composed of mr. bolton, mr. craig an' mr. grimes to go an' notify 'gene crawley 'nstead of her." a shiver swept through the room. the men gasped and the perspiration started on their foreheads. their wives moved a bit closer to them and looked appealingly toward the chairman. postmaster hardesty had considerable difficulty in suppressing a chuckle. "what's the use seein' 'gene?" stammered martin grimes. "he ain't to be reasoned with 't all, jim, an' you know it." "well, you might try it," insisted jim. "i think justine's the most likely to be sensible," said bolton. "course, she'd cry an' take on turrible, while ef you went to 'gene he might do somethin' else, so i guess it'd be best to have a committee go over an' tell her fust. she could break it gentle-like to 'gene, y' see," agreed hardesty, reflectively. "'n'en he could do jest as he liked." "come to think of it," said grimes, "i reckon it's best to write to jud." "then i'll move you, mrs. chairman, that the secretary address a letter to mr. sherrod, setting forth the facts as they exist," said pastor marks. "i can't do it alone," cried meek little miss cunningham, the school teacher. "we c'n all help," said grimes, mightily relieved. "git out yer writin' paper." the secretary nervously prepared to write the letter. her pen scratched and every eye was glued on the holder as it wobbled vigorously above her knuckles. "i've got this far: 'judley sherrod, esq., dear sir,'" she said. "what next?" "his name is dudley," corrected the parson. "oh," murmured the secretary, blushing. then she wrote it all over again on another piece of paper. "you might say something like this," said mr. marks, thoughtfully. "'it is with pain that we feel called upon to acquaint you with the state of affairs in your home.' have you written that?" "'fate of astairs in your home,'" read miss cunningham. mr. hardesty was looking over her shoulder, and at times his unconscious chin-whiskers tickled her rosy ear. "'we are sure that you will forgive the nature of this missive, and yet we know that it will hurt you far beyond the pain of the most cruel sword thrust. you, to whom we all extend the deepest love and respect, must prepare to receive a shock, but you must bear it with christian fortitude.' do i go too fast, miss cunningham?" "'you, who toom'--i mean--'to whom, etc.'" wrote the secretary. "sounds like we're trying to tell him there's a death in the family," said mr. hardesty. "'your wife has been left so long to the mercies of the----' no; please change that, miss secretary. 'your wife has not conducted herself as a good woman should. she has forgotten her wifely honor----'" "good lord!" came a hoarse voice from the hallway. the assemblage turned and saw eugene crawley. jim hardesty afterwards admitted that he did not "breathe fer so long that his lungs seemed air-tight when he finally did try to git wind into 'em." "what's goin' on here?" grated the unwelcome visitor, after a long pause. he was half-stunned by what he had heard, having entered the hall just as the letter was begun. so intent were the others that no one heard his knock or his entrance. "why--why," stammered mr. marks, "we were--ahem--writing to----" "i know what you were doin', so you needn't lie about it, parson. you're writin' a pack o' lies to jud sherrod, a pack o' lies about her. that's what you're doin'. who's the one that started this dirty piece of business? how'd you come to meet here this way? why don't you answer?" snarled crawley, stepping inside the door. "we jest happened to drop in an'----" murmured mr. bolton from behind his wife. "you're a liar, sam bolton. you're all liars. you come here to ruin that poor girl forever, that's all there is to it. i come here, parson, to ask you to help me befriend her. an' what do i find? you--you, a minister of the gospel--helpin' these consarned cats an' dogs here to jest naturally claw that girl to pieces. you git up an' preach about charity an' love an' all that stuff in your pulpit, an' i set down in front an' believe you're an honest man an' mean what you say. that's what you preach; but if god really let such pups as you 'tend to his business down here he'd be a fool, an' a sensible man had better steer clear of him. the size of the matter is, you meal-mouthed sneak, god made a mistake when you was born. he thought you'd be a fish-worm an' he give you a fish-worm's soul. what are you goin' to do with that letter?" [illustration: "'you're a liar--you're all liars.'"] "eugene, will you let me speak earnestly to you for a few moments?" asked the young parson. he felt, uncomfortably, that he might be blushing. "you'll have to speak earnest an' quick, too," returned the other. "don't talk to me about my soul, parson, an' all that stuff. i c'n take care of my soul a heap sight better'n you kin, i've jest found out. so, cut it short. what you got to say fer yourself, not fer me?" "it is time you and she were made to understand the penalty your awful sin will bring down upon----" "stop! you c'n say what you please about me, but if you breathe a sound ag'in her i'll fergit that you're a preacher. it won't do no good to plead with you people, but all i c'n say is that she don't deserve a single harsh word from any one. she's the best woman i ever knowed, that's what she is. she's been one of your best church people an' she's as pure as an angel. that's more'n you c'n say fer another man er woman in your congregation. don't look mad, mrs. grimes. i mean what i say. you are the meanest lot of people that god ever let live, if you keep on tryin' to make her out bad. this thing's gone fer enough. i know i'm not a good man--i ain't fit to live in the same world with her--but she's been my friend after all the ugly things i done to her an' jud. i come here to-night, parson, to tell you i wuz goin' to leave her place an' to ask you to tell her why. now, i'm goin' to stay an' i'm goin' to make you an' all the rest of these folks go over an' tell her you're her friends." "i'll do nothing of the sort," snapped mrs. harbaugh. "yes, you will, mis' harbaugh, an' you'll do it to-morrow," said 'gene, his black eyes narrowing and gleaming at her. "mr. crawley, you must certainly listen to reason," began the preacher, softly. "not until you listen to it yerself," was the answer. "you are committin' an outrage an' you've _got_ to stop it right now." he strode across to where miss cunningham sat. pointing his finger at the partially written letter he said: "tear that letter up! tear it up!" the paper crackled and fluttered to the floor from the secretary's nerveless fingers. he picked it up himself and scattered the pieces about the table. "now, how many of you are goin' to kerry this thing any further?" he demanded, wheeling about and glaring at the speechless crowd. there was not a sign of response. "how many of you are goin' to treat her fair?" he went on. "we intend to treat her fair," said mr. marks. "do you call it fair to write a letter like that?" "'gene's right, by ginger," cried jim hardesty. "shake, 'gene. i've been ag'in this thing all along." "i never did approve of it," said mr. bolton. "nobody could ever make me believe 'at justine ever done anything wrong," said mr. bossman, emphatically. "you know how i objected to this thing, maria." the women looked nervous and ready to weep. "mebby we've been too hasty," said mrs. harbaugh, in a whining tone. "i'm goin' over to justine's to-morry, pore girl," said mrs. bolton. "i'm goin' home now," said 'gene, "but i want to say jest this: i'll see that she gits fair play. now, you mark that, every one of you. an' as fer you, parson, i want to say, bad as i am, that i'm too good a man to go inside your church ag'in." he went out, slamming the door behind him. after a long pause james hardesty exploded: "who in thunder called this meetin', anyhow?" chapter xx. the sociable. on the day following the meeting at the home of parson marks, justine was surprised to receive visits from half a dozen of the leaders in the church society. mrs. harbaugh came first, followed soon afterwards by mrs. grimes. the "chairman" was graciousness itself. crawley, from a field nearby, saw the women drive up, one by one, and a grim smile settled on his face. "i'd like to be in the front room just to hear what the old hens say to justine," he mused; "i'll bet she's the surprisedest girl in the world. i hope they don't say anything 'bout that meetin', an' what i done to 'em last night. it 'u'd hurt her terrible." properly subdued, mrs. harbaugh did a surprising thing--and no one was more surprised than she. on the way over to justine's place the ex-chairman had been racking her brain for a motive to explain the visit--the first she ever had accorded justine. mrs. harbaugh, it may be said, regarded herself as "quality," and was particular about her associates. mrs. sherrod was very uncomfortable and so was mrs. harbaugh during the first five minutes of that visit. they sat in the cold, dark little "front room," facing one another stiffly, uttering disjointed commonplaces. before mrs. harbaugh realized what she was doing, she committed herself to an undertaking that astonished the whole neighborhood. "justine, i've been thinking of giving a sociable an' an oyster supper next week, an' i want you to be sure to come," she said in desperation, after a long and trying silence. now, the truth is, such a thought had not entered mrs. harbaugh's head until that very moment. she felt called upon to do something to prove her friendship for the girl, but, now that she had done it, she would have given worlds to recall the impulse and the words. in her narrow heart she believed the worst of justine. how could she reconcile her conscience to this sudden change of front? she had been the most bitter of denunciators--in fact, she herself had suggested the meeting of the night before. and now she was deliberately planning a "sociable" for the sole purpose of asking the girl to be one of her guests! mrs. harbaugh was beginning to wonder if her mind was affected. justine was speechless for a moment or two. she was not sure that she had heard aright. "a sociable, mrs. harbaugh?" she asked. "and an oyster supper," added the other, desperately. "i--i should like to come, but--i am not sure that i can," said justine, doubtfully. she was thinking of her scant wardrobe. "oh, you must come. i won't take 'no' for an answer," cried mrs. harbaugh, who hoped in her heart that justine would not come. for the first time she bethought herself of the expense, then of her husband's wrath when he heard of the project. next to the grimeses, the harbaughs were the "closest" people in the township. while justine was trying to frame excuses for not attending the party, mrs. harbaugh was just as earnestly explaining that "bad weather," "sickness," "unforeseen acts of providence," and a lot of other emergencies might necessitate a postponement, but, in case nothing happened to prevent, the "sociable" would take place on "friday night a week." mrs. grimes came in while the discussion was still on. when she was told of mrs. harbaugh's plan to entertain the "best people in the neighborhood," mrs. grimes made a remark that promptly decided the giving of the party. "my sakes, mrs. harbaugh, how c'n you afford it? we couldn't, i know, an' i guess martin's 'bout as well off as the next one 'round about here," she said superciliously. mrs. harbaugh bridled. "oh, i guess we c'n afford it an' more, too, mrs. grimes, if we'd a mind to. i know that most people 'bout here is mighty hard up, but who's to give these pleasant little entertainments unless it's them that's in good circumstances? that's the way mr. harbaugh an' me feels about it." mrs. harbaugh was hopelessly committed to the "sociable." other women came in and they soon were in a great flutter of excitement over the coming event. justine was amazed by this exhibition of interest and friendship on the part of her rich neighbors. she did not understand the significant smiles that went among the visitors as each new arrival swelled the crowd in the "front room." the look of surprise that marked each face on entering the room was succeeded almost instantly by one best described as "sheepish." not a woman there but felt herself ashamed to be caught in the act of obeying 'gene crawley's injunction so speedily. bewildered, justine promised to attend the "sociable." the meaning expressed in the sly glances, smirks, and poorly concealed sniffs escaped her notice. she did not know what every one else knew perfectly well--that mrs. harbaugh's party was a peace-offering--and a sacrifice that almost drew blood from the calloused heart of the "chairman." that evening she told 'gene of the visitation from the "high an' mighty" (as crawley termed the clay "aristocrats"), and she made no effort to conceal her distress. "how can i go to the party, 'gene?" she said in despair. "i have nothing to wear--absolutely nothing----" "now, that's the woman all over," scoffed crawley, resorting to badinage. "i wouldn't let that worry me, justine. go ahead an' have a good time. the clothes you've got are a heap sight more becomin' th'n the fine feathers them hens wear. lord 'a' mercy, i think they're sights!" "but, 'gene, it's the first time any one of them has been to see me in months," she protested, dimly conscious of distrust. "well, i--i guess they've been purty busy," said he, lamely. crawley was a poor dissembler. "besides, i don't care to go. jud isn't here, and--and, oh, i can't see how it could give me any pleasure." 'gene shifted from one foot to the other. he was beginning to accuse himself of adding new tribulation to justine's heavy load. he had not anticipated such quick results from his onslaught of the night before, nor had he any means of knowing to what length the women might go in their abasement. that they had surrendered so abjectly had given him no little satisfaction until he had seen that justine was distressed. "you'll have a good time, justine. ever'body does, i reckon. seems like they want you to come purty bad, too," he said encouragingly. "they really did insist," she agreed, smiling faintly. crawley's gaze wavered and then fell. out in the barn-lot, later in the evening, he worked himself into a rare state of indignation. "if them folks don't treat her right over at the 'sociable' they'd oughter be strung up," he was growling to himself. "if i thought they wuz just doin' this to git a chanct to hurt her feelin's some way, i'd--i'd----" but he could think of nothing severe enough to meet the demand. mr. harbaugh did just as his wife expected he would do when she broke the news to him. he stormed and fumed and forgot his position as a deacon of the church. two days passed before he submitted, and she was free to issue her invitations. their social standing in the neighborhood was such that only the "best people" could be expected to enjoy their hospitality. "how air you goin' to invite 'gene crawley 'thout astin' all the other hired men in the township? he ain't no better'n the rest," argued mr. harbaugh sarcastically. "i'm not goin' to invite mr. crawley," said his wife firmly. "well, then, what air you givin' the shindig fer? i thought it was fer the purpose o' squarin' things regardin' them two." "we are under no obligations to 'gene. besides, he's no gentleman. he ain't fit to step inside the parlor." "i noticed he stepped into one t'other night, all right," grinned mr. harbaugh. "i s'pose you are defending him," snapped his wife. "'pears to me he c'n keer fer himse'f purty well. he don't need no defendin'. but, say--don't you think he'll rare up a bit if he don't git a bid to the party?" "well, he won't take it out o' me," she spoke, meaningly. "course not," he exclaimed. "that's the tarnation trouble of it; he'll take it out o' me." mr. harbaugh involuntarily glanced over his shoulder as though expecting crawley to appear in the doorway as mysteriously as he had appeared on the night of the "meeting." "it don't make any difference. you'll have to stand it, that's all. i'm not goin' to have that low-down fool in _my_ house," was mrs. harbaugh's parting shot. the result was that crawley was not invited--he had not expected to be--and harbaugh felt obliged to "dodge" him carefully for the next two or three months. the "harbaugh oyster supper" was the talk of an expectant community for a full and busy week. justine sherrod apparently was the only person in the whole neighborhood who did not know the inside facts concerning the affair. generally, it was said to be a "mighty nice thing in the harbaughs," but every one interested knew that the influence of eugene crawley prompted the good intentions. half-heartedly, the unconscious guest of honor prepared for the event. her ever-neat though well-worn garments were gone over carefully, not to her satisfaction but to the delight of mrs. crane. mr. and mrs. grimes stopped for her on their way over to harbaugh's on the night of the party. trim and straight and graceful in the old black dress that looked new, justine sat beside the fluttering mrs. grimes on the "back seat" of the "canopy top." there was a warm flush in her cheek, a half-defiant gleam in her eyes. she went to the party with the feeling in her breast that every woman there would "tear the old black dress to shreds" and in secret poke fun at her poverty. crawley stood in the barn-door as she drove away with the grimeses. there was something bitterly triumphant in the slow smile that uncovered the gleaming teeth as he waved a farewell to her--not to mrs. grimes, who was responding so eagerly. "i'd like to be there,--just to see how much purtier she looks than the rest," he murmured, wistfully, as he turned away to finish the evening's chores. despite her illness, suffering, and never-ceasing longing for jud, she was by far the prettiest woman in the motley crowd. the men unhesitatingly commented on her "good looks," and not one of them seemed to notice that her dress was old and simple. many a woman went home that night envious and jealous of justine's appealing beauty. hard as they felt toward her, they were compelled to admit that she was "quality." she was a van--were she ever so poor. she was young. the heartiness with which she was received, the gaiety into which she was almost dragged, beat down the shyness that marred her first half-hour. pride retreated before good spirits, and, to her own surprise, she came to enjoy the festivities of the night. glenville supported one newspaper--a weekly. its editor and publisher and general reporter was a big man in the community. he was a much bigger man than his paper. few people in clay township did not know the indefatigable and ubiquitous roscoe boswell, either personally or by reputation. his _weekly tomahawk_, made up largely of "boiler-plate matter" and advertisements in wonderful typography, adorned the pantry-shelves of almost every house in the township. jim hardesty once ironically remarked that he believed more housewives read the paper in the pantry than they did in the parlor. for his own part, he frequently caught himself spelling out the news as he "wrapped up bacon and side-meat" with sections of the _tomahawk_. but mr. boswell was a big man politically and socially. his "local and personal" column and his "country correspondence" column were alive with the gossip of the district. if 'squire higgins painted his barn, the "news" came out in the _tomahawk_; if miss phoebe baker crossed the street to visit mrs. matlock the fact was published to the world--or, at least, to that part of it bounded by the clay township lines; if our old friend and subscriber george baughnacht drove out into the country with his new "side-bar" buggy the whole community was given to understand that it "looked suspicious" and that a "black-haired girl was fond of buggy-riding." mrs. harbaugh's party would not have been complete without the presence of roscoe boswell. he came with his paper-pad, his pencil and his jokes. incidentally, mrs. boswell came. she described the dresses of the ladies. every one was nice to roscoe. the next issue of the _tomahawk_ was carefully read and preserved by the guests at the "sociable," for it contained a glowing account of the "swell affair," and it also had a complete list of names, including those of the children. now, mr. boswell, besides being a big man, was an observing person. he had seen a chicago paper containing the news of the wood-sherrod wedding, but, like others, he was convinced that the groom was not the old clay township boy. nevertheless, he made up his mind to question justine, when he saw her at the "sociable." "how do you do, mrs. sherrod?" he greeted, just before the oysters were served. she was passing through the parlor in search of mrs. harbaugh. "why, mr. boswell," she said gaily. "it is quite an honor to have you with us. is mrs. boswell here?" "yes--she'll be getting a description of your dress pretty soon," he said, glancing at the plain black. "my, but you look fine to-night," he added, observing the embarrassed look in her eyes. "black's my favorite color. always sets a woman off so. what do you hear from jud?" "he has been in paris, mr. boswell, studying art, and he is very well. i heard from him a day or so ago." roscoe boswell breathed a sigh of relief. "how long will he be over there?" he asked. "he is expected back this week. perhaps i'll get a letter from him in a day or two." "say, would you mind letting me have the letter for publication?" cried roscoe, quickly. "it would make great reading for his friends here. he's an awfully bright fellow, and his letter would be a corker. won't you please send it up to me?" "oh, i'm sure it wouldn't be good reading, mr. boswell," cried justine, flushing with pleasure. "they are mostly personal, you know, and would sound very silly to other people." "i'll cut out the love part," he grinned, "and use nothing but the description of paris or whatever he says about the old country." "i don't believe he would like it, mr. boswell," said she, but in her mind she was wishing that one of his interesting letters could be given to the public. she wanted the people to know how splendidly he was doing. "we'll risk that," said roscoe conclusively. "he won't mind, and besides, he won't see it. he don't take the paper, you know. i haven't many subscribers in chicago just now," he added, reflectively. "he will come to see me just as soon as he gets back to chicago and then i'll ask him about it," she said. "is he coming down soon?" asked the editor, going to his original object. "oh, yes. he will be down in a week or two, i am sure." "are you--er--do you expect to go to chicago to live?" he asked, rather nervously for him. "yes--quite soon, i think. mr. sherrod is making arrangements to have me come up very shortly. he says he is getting a home ready for us on the north side. do you know much about the north side?" "er--i--well, not much," murmured roscoe boswell, who had been in chicago but once in his life--he had spent two days at the world's fair. "i'm pretty much acquainted on the south side and the east side, though. great old city, ain't she?" "i have not been there since i was a small baby, but jud says it is wonderful." "it'll be mighty nice for you both when jud takes you up," said he, not knowing how to proceed. he could not bring himself to ask her if she had heard of that strange similarity in names in connection with the chicago wedding. "it will, indeed, and i'll be so happy. jud wants me so much, and he'll be earning enough, soon to keep us both very nicely," she said, simply. roscoe boswell not only believed in the integrity of jud sherrod as she went away smiling, but he swore to himself that the stories about her and 'gene crawley were "infernal lies." he saw her from time to time in the course of the evening, and she seemed so blithe and happy that he knew there was no shadow in her young heart. "i'm glad of it," he mused, forgetting to respond to mrs. harbaugh's question. "it would have been a thundering good story for the _tomahawk_ if it had been our jud, old as the story is by this time, but i'm darned glad there's nothing in it." then aloud, with a jerk: "what's that, mrs. harbaugh?" nevertheless, he could not help saying to parson marks, just before the party came to an end: "mrs. sherrod is having the time of her young life, ain't she? she's a mighty pretty thing. jud ought to be mighty proud of her. every man here's half or dead in love with her." "we all admire her very much," said mr. marks, with great dignity. he did not like the free and easy speech of the editor. "i noticed a curious thing in a chicago paper not long ago," said boswell, whose eyes were following the girl. "fellow with the same name as jud's was married up there. funny, wasn't it?" "not at all, mr. boswell," said mr. marks, stiffly. "there are hundreds of sherrods in chicago; the name is a common one. i saw the same article, i presume. it so impressed me, i confess, that i took the liberty of writing to jud sherrod to inquire if he knew anything about it." "you did?" cried the editor, his eyes snapping eagerly. "and did he answer?" "he did, most assuredly." "well?" asked boswell, as the pastor paused. "what did he say?" "he said that he knew nothing about it except what he had seen in the papers, that's all." "that's just what i thought," said the editor, emphatically. "i knew it wasn't our jud." "how could it be our jud? he has a wife," said the minister, severely. "well, such things do happen, parson," said boswell, somewhat defiantly. "you hear of them every day; papers are full of them." "you may rest assured that jud sherrod is not that sort of a boy. i married him and justine van, and i know them both," said mr. marks, with final scorn, and went away. "these darn-fool preachers think they know everything," muttered boswell. when the grimeses set justine down at her gate just before midnight, 'gene crawley, who stood unseen in the shadow of the lilac bush, waited breathlessly for the sign that might tell him how she had fared among the philistines. all the evening he had been anxious. he could not put away the fear that she might be mistreated or slighted in some way up at harbaugh's. but his heart jumped with joy when he heard her voice. "good-night," called justine, as she sprang lightly to the ground. "i've had such a good time, mrs. grimes. and it was good of you to take me over with you." there was no mistaking the ring in her voice. crawley's deep breath of relief seemed to himself almost audible. "i thought you was having a right good time, justine," said martin grimes, with a laugh. "you cut in pretty free." "well, it was an awfully nice party," said mrs. grimes. "everybody seemed to enjoy it." "i'm so glad i went. thank you, ever so much," justine said, and there was a song in her voice. her step was light and full of life as she sped up the path to the door of the cottage. "thank the lord," thought 'gene, as he strode off into the night, "i guess it was all right for her, after all. she's been happy to-night." chapter xxi. the coming in the night. soon after their return to chicago, celeste began to observe changes in her husband's manner. he gave up newspaper illustrating and went in for water colors and began to take lessons in oil painting. the cleverness of jud sherrod, the boy, was not wanting in the man. in a short time the born artist in him was mastering the difficulties of color and he was painting in a manner that surprised not only his critical friends but himself. he toiled hard and faithfully; his little studio on the top floor of their home was always a place of activity. feverishly he began these first attempts at coloring, celeste his only critic. with loving yet honest eyes she saw the faults, the virtues and the improvement. he worked day and night, despite her expostulations. the bright eyes he turned to her when he took them from the canvas were not the gray, hungry ones that dulled into reverie when he was alone with his pigments. his eyes saw two dancing faces in the colors as he spread them: one dark, distressed, and weary, the other fair, bright, and happy. there came to him a powerful desire to see justine, but with it the fear that he could not leave her if he again felt her presence touching his. for an hour at a time, day after day, he would hold celeste in his arms, uttering no word, stroking her hair, caressing her face, gloomily repentant. the enormity of his mistake--he would not call it crime--had come full upon him. it was not that he had broken the laws of the land, but that he had deceived--deceived. men about town remarked the change and wondered. douglass converse, in anxiety, sought to ascertain the cause, fearing to find celeste unhappy. she was, beyond doubt, blissfully happy, and he fell back upon the old solution: sherrod was not well. the latter, in response to blunt questioning, told him he was not sick, not tired, not worried, but his heart quaked with the discovery that the eyes of his friends were upon him and always questioning. "dudley, dear, let us go to florida next month," said celeste one night as they drove home from the theatre. he had drooped moodily through the play and had been silent as they whirled along in the carriage. in casting about for the cause of his apparent weariness, she ascribed it to overwork. "do you really want to go, celeste?" he asked, tenderly. "will the stay down there do you good?" "i want to get away from chicago for awhile. i want to be where it is bright and warm. why should we stay here through all this wretched winter when it is so easy to go to such a delightful place? you must finish your picture in time to start next month. you don't know how happy it will make me." if he could only take justine with them! that longing swelled his heart almost to the bursting. "if justine could only enjoy it all with me," he groaned to himself. "if she could go! if she could go where it is warm and bright! if i could have them both with me there could be no more darkness, no more chill, no more unhappiness." as the days dragged along, nearer and nearer the date set for the departure for florida, he grew moodier, more dejected. but one thought filled his mind, the abandonment of justine; not regret for the wrong he was doing celeste, but remorse for the wrong he was doing justine. sleepless nights found him seeing her slaving, half-frozen, on that wretched farm, far from the bright world he had enjoyed and she would have enjoyed. at last, a week before the day set for their departure for florida he reached a sudden determination. he would see justine, he would go to her in the night and kiss her and take her up in his arms and bear her to chicago with him, there to--but no! he could not do that! he could only kiss her and take her in his arms and then steal back to the other one, a dastard. there could be but one and it was for him to choose between them. he wondered if he could go back to the farm and live, if he could give up all he had won, if he could confess his error to justine, if he could desert celeste, if he could live without both of them. selfishness told him to relinquish justine, honor told him to strip the shackles from celeste, even though the action broke her heart. then there came to his heart the design of the coward, and he could not get away from its horrible influence. it battled down manly resistance, it overthrew every courageous impulse, it made of him a weak, forceless, unresisting slave. with the fever of this malignant impulse in his blood, he stealthily began the laying of plans that were to end his troubles. but one person would be left to suffer and to wonder and she might never know the truth. one dark night there descended from the railway coach at glenville, a roughly clad man whose appearance was that of a stranger but whose actions were those of one familiar with the dark surroundings. there had been few changes in glenville since the day on which jud sherrod left the place for the big city on the lake, but there had been a wondrous change in the man who was returning, under cover of night, to the quaint, old-fashioned home of his boyhood. he had gone away an eager, buoyant youth, strong and ambitious; he was coming back a heartsick, miserable old man, skulking and crafty. through unused lanes, across dark, almost forgotten fields, frozen and bleak, he sped, his straining eyes bent upon the blackness ahead, fearfully searching for the first faint flicker in a certain window. he did not know how long it took him to cover the miles that lay between the village and the forlorn cottage in the winter-swept lane. he had carefully concealed his face from the station men and there were so few people abroad in that freezing night that no one knew of the return of justine's long-absent husband. his journey across the fields was accomplished almost before he knew it had begun, so full was his mind of the purpose that brought him there. every sound startled and unnerved him, yet he hurried on unswervingly. he was going to the end of it all. at last he came to the fence that separated justine's little farm from the broad acres of david strong. scarce half a mile away stood the cottage, hidden in the night. he knew it was there, and he knew that a light shone from a window on the side of the house farthest from him. it was there that she loved to sit, and, as it was not yet ten o'clock, she could not have gone to bed. he swerved to the south, and by a wide detour came to the garden fence that he had built in the days gone by. as he slunk past the corner of the barn his gaze fell upon the lighted window. he clung to the fence and gazed intently at the square blotch of yellow in the blackness. she was there! in that room! his justine! for a moment his resolution wavered. then he doggedly turned his back upon the kindly glimmer in her window, and looked into the shadow. he did not dare look again upon the loving light that stretched its warmth out to him as he shuddered and cringed on the threshold of his own home, almost within the clasp of those adoring arms. but, with his back to her, his face to the darkness, he waited, waited, waited. it seemed to him that hours passed before he dared again to face the house, fearing that another glimpse of her light would break his resolution. his mind was a blank save for one tense thought--the one great thought that had drawn him from one woman to the other. he thought only of the moment when the light in the window should disappear, when stillness should be in justine's bed-chamber, when no accusing eye could look upon what was to follow. his numb fingers felt for the knife that lay sheathed in his overcoat pocket, and he shuddered as they touched it. his eyes again turned apprehensively toward the house. the window was dark; he could see nothing except the dense outlines of the square little building against the black sky. there was a dead chill in the air. the silence weighed upon him. he made a stealthy way to the weather boards of the house. the touch of his numb fingers against the frosty wood was uncanny, and he drew his hand sharply away. for a moment he paused, and his crouching form straightened with a sudden consciousness of its position. the deepest revulsion swept over him, the most inordinate shame and horror. why was he coming to her in the dead of night, like an assassin, sneaking, cringing, shivering? with a groan he recklessly strode forward to the dark window frame. his fingers touched the glass of two or three panes, then the rags that kept the wind out of others. in there she was lying asleep, alone, breathing softly, dreaming of him perhaps. he was within ten feet of that dear, unconscious body and she was sweetly alive--a tender breathing thing that loved him better than life. alive, and he had come to take life away from her! he had come to steal the only thing that was left to her--her life. with wild eyes he sought to penetrate the darkness beyond the glass. as plainly as if it were broad daylight his imagination revealed to him the interior of the bare room. there were his drawings on the walls; the worn ingrain carpet of green and red; the old rocking-chair and the two cane-bottom chairs; the walnut stand with its simple cover of white muslin, the prayer-book and the kerosene lamp; justine's little work-basket with its yarn, its knitting, its thread, thimble, patch-pieces and the scissors. across the back of a chair hung her pitifully unfashionable dress of calico, her white underskirt, her thick petticoat; beside the bed stood the heavy, well-worn shoes with her black stockings lying limp and lifeless across them. the white coverlet, rumpled and ridged by the lithe figure that snuggled underneath; the brown hair, the sweet, tired face with its closed eyes, sunk in the broad pillow; the gentle breathing, the regular movement of the covers that stretched across the warm, slumbering body; the brown, strong hand that wore his ring resting beside the cheek of the sleeper. a sudden eagerness to clasp the hand, to hold it firm, to protect it from something, came to him. he wondered for a moment why she should need protection--before he remembered. how could he live without her? the folly of trying to do so! better, far better, that he should die and take her with him, leaving the other to wonder and at last find her young way back to happiness through forgetfulness. foresworn to end his own misery and to destroy every possible chance that might convey his faithlessness to the trusting justine, he had slunk away from the city, bidding farewell to the world that had weakened him, and was now clinging to her window sill with love and murder in his heart. he had come to kill her and to kill himself. he must have it over. there was no other way. his legs trembled as he sped on to the kitchen door. the door was bolted and he sought the narrow window. it moved under his effort, creaking treacherously, but he did not pause. a half-dead fire smoldered in the kitchen stove--their kitchen stove--and he sank beside it, craving its friendly warmth. he crouched there for many minutes, steeling himself for what was to come. indecision and weakness assailed him again and again, but he overcame them; the fear of death made him cast glances over his shoulder, but he set his teeth; the terror of crime shook him, but he fought it away. there was but one way to end the tragedy, there was but one way to save justine. it would be over in a moment; there was relief in that. how he crept through the kitchen and the dark sitting-room he did not know, but at last he found himself, breathless and pulseless, at her door. then came the stunning thought: was she alone in the room? was old mrs. crane with her or was she in the little half-story room at the head of the stairs? he shrank back to the kitchen noiselessly. groping his way to the table he ran his hand over its surface until it touched the candlestick that he knew was there as well as if he had seen it. he lighted the candle from the flickering blue flame in the stove, and, shading it with his hand, glided swiftly to her door. after what seemed an hour of irresolution, he softly pressed the latch. the almost imperceptible noise sounded like a crash of thunder in his sensitive ears, but the door swung slowly open and he stood in his wife's room. yes! there was the bed and there was the mass of brown hair and the white, blurred face and---but, what was that noise? his heart stopped beating--his wide eyes saw justine's hand slowly stretch out and, as if its owner were acting in her sleep, apparently tuck in the covers on the side of the bed nearest the wall. a faint, smothered wail came to his ears. there was no mistaking the sound. a baby! as he stood there in the doorway, frozen to the spot, the candle in one hand, the knife in the other, justine moved suddenly and in a moment was staring at him with wide, terrified eyes. chapter xxii. the first-born. slowly she half raised herself from the pillow, her right arm going out as if to shield the tiny bit of life beside her, her great eyes staring at the intruder; the inclination to shriek was met by the paralysis of every faculty and she could do no more than moan once in her fear. the eyes of the tall, gaunt man, upon whose face the fitful light of the candle threw weird shadows, held her motionless. "wha--what do you want?" she finally whispered. "justine, don't you--don't you know me?" he asked, hoarsely, not conscious of the question, motionless in the doorway. "oh, oh," she moaned, tremulously, and then her hand was stretched toward him, wonder, uncertainty, fear in her eyes. "i am jud--jud; don't you know me? don't be frightened," he went on, mechanically. "it is a dream--oh, it is a dream," she whispered. "no, no! i thought you were asleep. don't look at me, justine, don't look at me! oh god, i cannot do it--i cannot!" he fell back against the wall. the knife clattered to the floor. half convinced, now that she was thoroughly awake, justine pressed her hand to her eyes, and then, suddenly with a glad cry, threw back the bed covers and sprang to the floor. "don't come near me," he cried, drawing back. she paused in amazement. "what is it, jud--what is it?" she cried. "why are you here? what has happened?" the candle dropped from his nerveless fingers. "justine!" he groaned, stricken with terror in the darkness. an instant later he felt her warm arms about him and her trembling voice was pleading with him to tell her what had happened. he was next conscious of lying back in the old rocker, listlessly watching her relight the candle. it was freezing cold in the room. his lips and cheeks were warm where she had kissed them. and he had thought to touch her dear, loving lips only after they were cold in the death he was bringing. "tell me, jud, dear jud," she cried, dropping to her knees beside him, her hands clutching his shoulders. even in the dim, uncertain light he could see how thin and wan she had grown--he could see the suffering of months. a muffled wail came from the bed and her face turned instantly in that direction. his hand fell heavily upon hers. "whose child is that?" he demanded, harshly. she looked up into his face with a quick, startled glance, the bewildered expression in her eyes slowly giving way to one of pain. "why, jud!" she cried, shrinking back. her honest brown eyes searched his face. "is it mine?" he asked, blind with suspicion. "how could it be any one's but--oh, jud sherrod! do you mean that--that--you don't think he is--my husband, do you think that of me?" she whispered, slowly shrinking away from him. "i--i--you did not tell me," he muttered, dazed and bewildered. "how was i to know?" "oh, i have loved you so long and so truly," she faltered. a sob of shame and anguish choked her as she arose and turned dizzily toward the bed. she threw herself face downward upon it, her arms across the sleeping babe, and burst out into weeping. startled into sanity by the violence of her grief he cast himself on his knees beside the bed. "i was mad, crazy, justine," he cried. she shuddered as his hands and arms touched her. "oh, god!" he groaned. "my wife, my girl, don't shrink from me like that. i did not mean it, i did not know what i was saying. look up, justine, my justine!" he seized her hand and covered it with kisses. at first she struggled to withdraw it; then suddenly abandoned it to him. presently she pressed it against his lips, and then in an instant her face was turned toward him, the cheeks wet, the eyes swimming. "oh, jud, you did not think it, i know you didn't," she choked out, and sobbed again as he lifted and clasped her to his breast. in that moment he forgot his dreadful mission, forgot the baby and the misery of everything, and she was happier than she had been in months. once more the tender and thoughtful jud, he drew the covers over her shivering body and tucked them in, while she smiled happily up into his wan face. "don't you want to see the baby, dear?" she asked, timidly, after a long time. he had seated himself on the side of the bed, his coat collar turned up about his chilled throat, his red hands clasped under his arms. "he is three months old, jud, and you never knew. it is so strange you did not receive my letter. i could not write, though, for many weeks, i was so weak. oh, jud, you don't know how much i have suffered." it was the first complaint she had ever expressed to him in all those weary, despairing months of loneliness and privation, and he covered his face with his hands. she drew them gently away, so that he might look at the baby. it was with a feeling of shame that he first saw his child. young as it was, it bore the features of its father; there could be no doubt. he gazed upon the little face and the clenched fists, and a deep reverence came to him. pity for the baby, the mother and himself overcame him and he dropped his head upon justine's shoulder. "justine, forgive me, forgive me," he sobbed. "there is nothing to forgive, dear. don't cry," she said, softly. "it will all come right some day and we'll be so proud of the boy. isn't he strong? just feel of his little arms. and isn't he just like you? i hope he will grow up to be as good and as strong as you, jud." he looked dumbly into her eyes, still dewy with tears, and dropped his own, lest she should sec the deceit in them. but she was not looking for deceit. "you are so cold, dear," she went on, "and you look so ill and tired. come to bed and let me get up and make some hot coffee for you. why, jud, it is past midnight, and it is bitterly cold outside. how did you come from glenville?" "i walked," he answered, wearily. "walked?" she cried. "why, jud, what is wrong? why are you here? has anything happened to you?" her voice was sharp with dread. "i am the most wretched man in the world, justine." "tell me all about it, jud; let me help you. don't look like that! it must be all right, dear, now that we are together. all three, jud," she went on, cheerily. "i would not even name him before you came, but i want you to call him dudley." he felt the loving arms tighten about his neck, and there came the eager desire to confess everything and to beg her to hide from the world with him in some place where he could never be found out. the love for celeste was deep, but it was not like this love for justine. he must keep it. the other might go; he and justine and the baby would go away together. but not yet. justine must not know, after all--at least not yet. "everything has gone wrong, dear, and i had nothing to live for," he began, wearily; and then with a skill that surprised him he rushed through with a story that drew the deepest pity from his listener and gave him a breathing spell in which to develop a plan for the future. "you will loathe and despise me, justine, but i couldn't bear the thought of going into the hereafter without you," he said, after he had confessed his object in coming. "i had failed in everything and life wasn't worth living. my position is gone, i have no money and i don't seem to be able to find work. you were everything in the world to me and you were so proud of me. i just couldn't come back here and tell you that i had failed after all the chances i have had. when i opened your door to-night i had that knife in my hand. do not be afraid, dearest; it is all over and we'll live to be happy yet. god help me, i was going to kill you while you slept, kiss you to prove to your departing soul that i loved you and that it was not hate that inspired the deed, and then, the blade, wet with your dear blood, was to find its way to my heart. thank god, you awoke. had it not been for that we would be lying here dead, and our boy, hidden in the bed, would have escaped my hand only to be thrown upon the world, a helpless orphan. but god has helped me to-night and he will not again forget me. with his help and your love, i will go forth again with new courage and i'll win my way." she shuddered and thanked god alternately during his story, and when he paused after the firm declaration to win his way, she cried: "you have been brave so long and i have been brave, too, jud. why should we give up the fight? i have hardly enough to eat in the house, and i have endured more than seemed just from our loving god, but i did not forget that i have you and you are everything. it has been hard, terribly hard, but i did not give up." then she confessed her secret, timorously at first, then eagerly, pleadingly. she told him of 'gene crawley's reformation, his kindness, his real nobility, expecting at the outset that jud would be angry and displeased. but he was thinking of the future, not of the past or the present. after a moment or two of surprise and chagrin, he accepted her course in regard to crawley as a natural condition, and, trusting her implicitly, found no fault with her action. he went so far as to credit crawley with more manhood than he had suspected. a flood of joy enveloped her when she saw that he was reconciled; the weight of her only deception was lifted from her troubled heart. already he was thinking of the ordeal ahead of him: the return to celeste, the confession of his duplicity, his plea for forgiveness and leniency, and then the life of peace and solitude with justine and the boy. he knew that celeste's heart would be crushed, but it was the only way back to the path of honor. justine should never know of his marriage to celeste; that was the one thing the honest, virtuous country girl would not forgive. he even found himself, as he always was in emergencies, impatient to have the ordeal over, to know his fate, to give torture to one that he might be happy with the other. with the arms of the real wife about his neck, he trembled with the desire to be off to the side of the deceived one, there to unmask himself, to grovel at her feet and then to fly from the world. how he could face celeste he knew not, but he must do it. there seemed no way to lighten the blow he must deal and there seemed no escape from it. he was a bigamist, a criminal. to leave her without an explanation would result in a tireless search, inspired by her love; the discovery of his duplicity by the police would mean conviction; even celeste could not save him. shrewdly he brought himself to believe that, though she could not forgive him, she would release him to avoid a scandal. he knew that he must play out to the end his role of the coward and the supplicant and the liar. it was only after the most persistent pleading that justine induced him to remain with her through the night and the day following. she promised to keep his visit a secret, respecting his show of humiliation, and she vouched for the silence of mrs. crane who slept upstairs. and so the would-be murderer and suicide slept and dreamed and plotted for twenty-four hours in the house of his victim, slinking away on the night after, with her kisses on his lips, her voice in his ears, leaving behind brave promises and the vow to come back to her and the boy without murder in his heart. chapter xxiii. the tale of tears. he had told celeste that he would be away from home over one night, and she was alarmed when he did not return on the second night after his departure. on the third day she could not shut out the picture of his despondent face. when she heard his footsteps in the lower hall that afternoon her heart gave a great bound of relief, and all his plans went scattering before her joyous greeting. he entered the house steeled to tell her, but his resolution wavered, and, with the words on his tongue's end, he felt them forced back by her kisses. he let himself procrastinate; every vestige of courage vanished before this attack of love and confidence. if his response to her welcome was lifeless and cold, she did not complain; if he seemed distraught, she overlooked it in the joy of having her apprehensions swept away. "do you know, dear, i was beginning to fear you had been lost in the snow storm and that i should have to send st. bernard dogs out to find you?" she said, gaily, as she drew him into the big chair before the grate and climbed cozily upon the arm beside him. "i can't tell her now," he was groaning to himself. "i can't break her heart to-day--not to-day." "was it so warm and pleasant in milwaukee that you couldn't tear yourself away?" she went on, her hand caressing his hair. "where? mil--oh, yes, milwaukee," he stammered, recalling that he had told her he was going there on business. "no; it was beastly. i had to stay a day longer than i expected." "tell me all about it," she said. "did everything turn out as good as you hoped? will he take the pictures?" he was unable to reply at once. indeed, it was necessary for him to remember just what excuse he had given her for going to milwaukee. slowly it came back to him. without lifting his guilty eyes from the coals, he told her that mr. evans had not given him the order for the five paintings until he had consulted his partner, who was delayed in returning from st. paul. on the partner's return (here jud's twisted heart leaped at a fresh inspiration) the firm promptly agreed to accept all of his paintings and contracted for others to be finished within a very short space of time. "isn't that a very short time in which to do the work, jud?" she inquired, anxiously. a cunning thought had prompted his statement; in it he saw the respite that might be needed. the task of supplying the fictitious order would command his closest thought and energy, and, by preventing the trip to florida, would give him a longer time in which to make ready for the trial at hand. he saw that he would lack the immediate courage to tell her, and that it would require hours and days of torture to bring him to the task. "it means that i'll have to give up the florida trip," he said. "o, no, jud! let the old pictures go! can't they wait? you must go to florida. it will do you so much good, and my heart is so set on it." a new thought struck him sharply and his spirits leaped upward. "you could go without me, celeste. there's no reason why you should give up the pleasure because i have to----" "dudley sherrod," she interrupted, decisively, "you are hateful. i will not go a step without you. it is you who need the rest and the change. write to mr. evans this afternoon and tell him you cannot do the pictures until next spring." "i can't do that, dear. they must be done at once," he said. "but you must have the two months in florida," she persisted in troubled tones. "why, dear, i have made preparations to leave on saturday and this is thursday. won't you, please, for my sake, give up the pictures?" "impossible," he said, firmly, rising suddenly. he pressed her hand softly and passed from the room, afraid to look back into her eyes. she sat perfectly still for many minutes, the puzzled expression deepening in her eyes. "to-morrow i will tell her all," he vowed, as he paced the floor of his studio. the memory of the distressed look in her eyes bore him down. he knew that he could not endure the sight of prolonged pain in those loving eyes, and what little wisdom he had at his command told him that to end the suspense quickly was the most charitable thing to do. "to-morrow, to-morrow," he repeated, feverishly. he groaned aloud with loathing for himself and shame of what the morrow was to bring. "i love her. how can i tell her that she is not my wife? how can i tell her that i deceived her deliberately? and what will she say, what will she do? good god, what is to be the end of it? will she submit or will she cry for the vengeance that is justly hers?" for the first time the agony of this question was beyond his power of suffering. his mind refused to consider it. he was dulled; he felt nothing--and presently there was a relief in feeling nothing. up to that time his sensitive nature had responded to every grief. of a sudden his mind refused grief; and the inspiration came to him to support that refusal. he shut out thoughts of celeste, and let himself look forward to the happiness with justine and his boy. the next day he faltered in his determination to tell celeste, and the day after it was the same. he could not stand before her and look into her eyes and tell her. he was conscious of the fact that her troubled gaze was following him wherever he moved, that she seemed to be reading his thoughts. he grew more apathetic under the scrutiny. he took to good food as a refuge from his thoughts, and surprised her by asking for dainty dishes. he found some poetry, careless with fatalism, and instantly became a fatalist. he would let affairs take their course. the yearning for justine dulled a little. but one day, entering his studio, expecting to find him at work, she was amazed to see him with a picture in his hand. he was looking at it eagerly. she could see the face. it was justine van. justine van! the girl of the meadow; the sweetheart of the old days! the first jealousy tore at her heart and she began vaguely to comprehend the stoop in his shoulders. he had found the picture among some old drawings, and the sight of it enlivened his desire for justine. he wrote her a letter, and then conceived the plan of writing a confession to celeste, and slinking off to his room to await the crash. he knew she would fly to him and--well, it would be like defending himself against an assault. he laughed harshly at himself as he contemplated this last exhibition of cowardice. he wrote not only one but ten confessions, destroying one after the other as the lingering spark of manhood flared up in resistance to this mode of doing battle. one night celeste came to him in the dimly lighted studio. the trouble in her heart revealed itself in her voice and eyes. he sat dreaming before the little grate and started when her hands gently touched his cheeks from behind. "what is the matter, jud, dear?" she asked, softly. "there is something on your mind. won't you confide in me? i love you, dear. tell me everything, jud, and don't try to bear it alone. don't you think i love you enough to share the greatest pain that might come to you?" he tried to speak, but could only reach up and clasp her hands in his. "can you guess, jud, of whom i was thinking to-day?" she went on bravely. "i--i can't guess," he said, with misgiving in his soul. "i was thinking of justine van, that pretty girl down in the country. her face was as clear as if it were before me in reality. do you know, jud, i shall always see her as she appeared on that day at proctor's falls. she was so pretty and you were so handsome. i thought you were sweethearts, you remember. how embarrassed you were, both of you, when i so foolishly told you that the money i paid for the picture was to be her wedding present. i believe i began to love you on that very day." her hands were still pressing his cheeks and her heart suddenly stood still and grew icy cold when something hot and wet trickled over the fingers. without a word she drew away from him, and when he looked up through the mist of tears, she was passing from the room, straight and still. chapter xxiv. the night out. the next morning she telephoned to douglass converse. in response to her somewhat exacting request, he presented himself at the sherrod home in the late afternoon. her manner had impressed him with the fear that something had gone wrong in the little household. they were still the best of friends and he was a frequent, informal visitor. jud admired him immensely--no one could help liking this tall, good-looking, boyish fellow. in the old days celeste had known his love for her, but after her marriage there had been no evidence, by word or deed, that she still lived uppermost in his affections. to douglass converse, she was the wife of his best friend. he had seen, with increasing alarm, the change in jud's manner and appearance. the anxious look in celeste's eyes was but poorly concealed of late; he feared that all was not well with them. there was no mistaking jud's attitude toward the world and the genial friends of old. the newspaper men who had been his boon companions a few months before now saw nothing of him. he and celeste rarely were seen in society, seldom at the theatres and cafés; it was as though they had dropped entirely away from the circle which had known them so well. the excuse that he was busy in his studio was sufficient until even outsiders began to see the change in him. it was impossible to hide the haggardness in his face. converse, sitting opposite celeste in the drawing-room, saw depression under the brave show of cheerfulness in her face. his mind was filled with the possibilities of the moment. over the telephone she had said that she wanted to see him on a matter of considerable importance. his first unuttered query on entering the hall was: where is sherrod? he had expected a greeting from him on the moment of his arrival. before the short visit was over, converse was plying himself with scores of silent and unanswerable questions. "where is jud?" he asked, after the first commonplaces. "at work in the studio," she replied. he noticed the change of tone, but tried to look uninterested. "he's working a trifle hard these days, isn't he?" he asked, casually. somehow, he felt relieved on hearing that jud was at work. he discovered that he had feared--something, he could not define. "what is he doing, celeste?" "something for the milwaukee people i was telling you about not long ago. they insist on having the paintings before the first of february." "before february? why, that's--" but he checked the exhibition of surprise and went on with admirable enthusiasm--"that's a surprisingly nice order. it proves that he has made a hit and that the market for his work is immediate." "but he is working too hard, douglass," she cried, unreservedly. the look in his eyes changed instantly. "i was afraid so," he said. then, eager to dispel any feeling of hesitancy she might have, he broke out, bluntly: "you are very much disturbed about him, aren't you, celeste? i know you are, but i think you should find some comfort in knowing that the work will soon be completed and you can both run away for a good rest." "i can't help being worried," she said, in low tones, as though fearing her words might reach jud's ear in the distant studio. "douglass, i want to talk with you about jud. you will understand, won't you? i wouldn't have asked you to come if it were not that i am very much distressed and need the advice and help of some one." "isn't it possible that you are needlessly alarmed?" he asked, earnestly. "i'm sure it can be nothing serious. you will laugh at your fears some day." "i hope you are right. but it doesn't cheer me a bit to talk like that, douglass. i am not deceiving myself. he is changed, oh, so greatly changed," she cried. "you--you don't mean to say his--his love--" began converse. "there--there isn't any danger of--of _that_?" he substituted. "no, no! you don't understand me," she said, drearily. "he loves me as much as ever--i know he does. it isn't that. douglass, we must get his mind off his work. he thinks of--of nothing else." she would have given anything for the courage to tell him what she had seen the day before. her confidence in this tall friend was sufficient, but she could not acknowledge the pain and terror jud's tears had brought to her. "well, it can't be for long. the work will soon be completed," urged he, knowing as he spoke how futile his words were. "but it makes me so unhappy," she cried, with a woman's logic. "poor girl," he smiled. "let the poor chap work in peace. it will come out all right. i know him. he's ambitious, indefatigable, eager. his soul is in this work. just now he is winning his spurs in a new line, and his mind, his heart is full of it. can't you see it all? put yourself in his place, with his fine temperament, and see how intensely interested you would be. you would be just as much wrapped up in it as he--just as much enraptured, i might say. brace up, dear girl; jud can't help but turn out all right. he's bound to win." "the trouble is--the trouble is--" she hesitated so long, staring with wide eyes at the grate fire, that he feared she would not continue--"his heart doesn't seem to be in the work at all." "you mean----?" "i mean, douglass, that it is not ambition that inspires him just now. there is something on his mind--something else. oh, i don't know what it can be, but it is unmistakable. he is not the same--not the same in anything except his love for me." converse was silent for a long time, his eyes on her pale face, his mind busy with conjecture. "i am glad to hear you say that, celeste," he said at last, a deep sigh escaping involuntarily. "he works feverishly," she went on, as though he had not spoken. "of course, he is doing the work well. he never did anything badly. but i know he is positively driving himself, douglass. there isn't anything like the old inspiration, nothing like the old love for the work." "i see it all," he said, relief in his voice. "his heart is not in the work, simply because he is doing it for some one else and not for himself. they told him what they wanted and he is simply breaking his neck, celeste, to get the job off his hands." "but, listen to me, douglass," she cried, in despair. "he told me they wanted five pictures--a series of studies from life. the series was to represent five periods in the life of a woman, beginning with childhood and ending in extreme old age. but, douglass, dear, he is painting landscapes instead." converse bit his lip. "you must have misunderstood him," he managed to say. she shook her head sadly. "no; he was most precise in explaining the conditions to me the day after his return from milwaukee. i remember that i was very much interested. the work, you know, upset our plan for going to florida, and i was quite resentful at first. you can imagine my astonishment when i found that he was doing landscapes and not the figures the order calls for." converse was dumb in the face of this indisputable evidence. he could muster up no way to relieve her fears. there could be no reassuring her after what she had seen and he wisely forebore. "it was very strange," he said, finally. "he must have a reason for the change, and no doubt he has forgotten to speak to you about it." "i wish i could believe that, douglass," she sighed. "he likes you. you can help me, if you will." "with all my heart. anything in the world, celeste," he cried. "then get him away from his work as much as possible. he won't go out anywhere, you know. i've implored him to go out with me time and again. douglass, can't you think of some way to--to get him away from himself?" she was standing beside him, her hand clasping his as it rested on the arm of the chair. converse looked up into the troubled eyes. "tell me what to do, celeste, and i'll try," he said, earnestly. "make him go out with you--go out among the men he used to know and liked so well. i'm sure he likes them still. he'd enjoy being with them, don't you think? he seldom leaves his studio, much less the house. i want you to take him to luncheons and dinners--where the men are. it will get him out of himself, i know. do, douglass, do for my sake, make him forget his work. take him back to the old life in the club, at the cafés--if only for a little while. don't you understand?" "you mean--oh, celeste, you don't mean to say that he is tired of this happiness?" he cried. "he is unhappy, i'm sure of it. he loves me, i know, but--" she could go no further. "i know what you mean, celeste, but you are wrong--fearfully wrong. poor little woman! god, but you are brave to look at it as you do." they did not hear jud as he stopped on the stairs to look down upon them. he saw them and was still. the pain was almost unbearable. there was no jealousy in it, only remorse and pity. "ah, if only she belonged to him and not to me," he was thinking. "he is straight as a die, and she would never know unhappiness. he loved her, he loves her still, and she--poor darling, loves me, the basest wretch in all the world." he closed his eyes and leaned heavily against the stairway. its creaking attracted the attention of the two in the drawing-room. when he looked again, they were standing and staring at him. slowly he descended, a mechanical smile forcing itself into his face. "hello, doug," he said. "i thought i heard your voice. glad to see you." a quick glance of apprehension passed between converse and celeste. had he heard? "i just inquired for you, jud," said converse, pulling himself together as quickly as possible. "celeste says you're terribly busy. don't overwork yourself, old man. i dropped in to say you are to go to a little dinner with me to-night. some of the boys want to eat something for old times' sake." the shadow that passed over jud's face was disconcerting. "there is nothing else in the way, jud, dear," celeste hastened to say. "it would be awfully jolly, i should think." "vogelsang says you haven't been in his place for months," added converse, reproachfully. "you shouldn't go back on a crowd like this, old man. they'll think you're stuck up because you've made a hit." sherrod smiled wearily, then pulled his nerves together and made a brave show of being pleased and interested. "i don't believe they'll accuse me of that, doug," he said. "they know i'm frightfully busy. who is to be there?" converse, with all his good intentions, had not been foresighted enough to see that he might be asked this natural question. it was impossible to count on any one in particular, and it would be far from politic to mention names and then be obliged to give flimsy excuses if their owners failed to appear. "oh, just some of the old crowd," he replied, evasively, even guiltily. jud's gaze was on the fire in the grate and converse was thankful for the respite. "they'll be mighty glad to see you again. it doesn't seem right to take you away from celeste, but we're talking of doing something like this at least once a week." "can't you have ladies' night occasionally, as they say at the clubs?" asked celeste, merrily entering into the spirit of the conspiracy. "i suppose we could," said converse, with well assumed reluctance. "count me out to-night, douglass," said jud, at this juncture. "i'll come down for the next one, but just now i'm----" "that won't do!" exclaimed converse, peremptorily. "work is no excuse. there was a time when you worked a blamed sight harder than you do now, and yet you found time to eat, drink and be merry--i should say, eat and be merry. you go with us to-night. that's all there is about it. i'm not going down and tell the fellows you couldn't come because you had to stay at home and put on a few dabs of paint that don't have to be on before to-morrow. i'll stop for you on my way down at 7:30, and i'll get him home safe and sound and sober, celeste. don't worry if he's out after nine o'clock." "i shan't sleep a wink," smiled celeste, putting her arm through jud's and laying her cheek against his shoulder. sherrod sighed and smiled and said he would be ready when his friend called. celeste went to the door with her confederate. she pressed his hand warmly and her eyes seemed to exact a promise that could not be broken. "do everything in your power, douglass," she said, softly. "he hates to leave you alone, celeste; that's the worst obstacle to the plan," said converse, his lips whitening. "but we'll try to make him--to--i was going to say forget, but that would be impossible. he can't forget that you are here and loving him all the time." then he was off, confronted by rather arduous conditions. it would be necessary to get together a party of congenial spirits, and it was imperative that it be done in such a way that jud's suspicion might not be aroused. when his hansom stopped for jud at 7:30 converse was thoroughly satisfied with the result of his expedition in search of guests, but he was conscious of a fear that the attempt to take sherrod "out of himself" would be a failure. a half-dozen good fellows of the old days had promised to come to vogelsang's at eight, and, under ordinary circumstances, there was no reason why the night should not be a merry one. it all rested with jud. converse was gratified to find his friend in excellent spirits. his eyes were bright, his face was alive with interest. the change was so marked that converse marveled while celeste rejoiced. if he had any doubts at the beginning, they were dispelled long before the night was over. sherrod's humor was wild, unnatural. to converse it soon became ghastly. to the others, it was merely cause for wonder and the subject for many a sly remark about the "muchly married man who finally gets a night off." going homeward in the hansom, converse, now convinced that jud's mind was disordered, asked in considerable trepidation if he really meant to dine out every evening, as he had said to the others at the table. sherrod's hilarity, worked up for the occasion, had subsided. he was, to the utter bewilderment of his companion, the personification of gloominess. involuntarily converse moved away from his side, unable to conquer the fear that the man was actually mad. "did i say that?" came in slow, mournful tones from the drooping figure beside him. "yes," was all that converse could reply. sherrod's chin was on his breast, his arms hanging limply to the seat. "i don't believe i care much for that sort of thing any more," he said, slowly. "why, jud, i thought you had a bully time to-night," cried converse, in hurt tones. sherrod looked up instantly. after a moment's silence, his hand fell on the other's knee and there was something piteous in his voice when he spoke. "did you, old man? how in the world--" here he brought himself up with a jerk--"i should say, how could i help having a good time?" he cried, enthusiastically. "they are the best lot of fellows in the world. i had the time of my life." chapter xxv. the letter to crawley. justine waited and waited patiently. his midnight visit was the most dramatic event of her life. that he had come to kill her and then himself she was slow in realizing. as the days and nights went by, the real horror of his thought took root and grew. sometimes she awakened in the night cold with perspiration, dreading to see the white-faced man in the doorway. in some of her dreams he stood above her, knife uplifted, his face full of unspeakable malevolence. waking she would scream aloud and instinctively she would draw her baby close to her breast as if seeking protection from this tiny guardian. his letter, intended to inspire confidence and hope, was not skillful enough to deceive even justine. she could read between the lines and there she could see that he was hiding something from her. she could not help feeling that he was facing failure and that he was miserable. with every mail she expected to receive a letter from him in which he would announce that he had given up the fight, and then would come the dispatch bearing the news that he had killed himself. mrs. crane knew, of course, of sherrod's strange visit. 'gene crawley saw him but once on that occasion, looking gloomily from the window. the two men did not speak to each other, although crawley would have called a greeting to him had not the man in the window turned away abruptly as soon as he met the gaze of the one in the barnyard. the only human creature about the little farm who did not feel the oppressiveness was the baby, dudley the second. he was a healthy, happy child, and, birth-gift of tragedy though he was, he brought sunshine to the sombre home. one day, three weeks after jud's visit, justine approached 'gene as he crossed the lot on his way to feed the stock in the sheds. a team of horses occupied stalls in the barn, but they were not justine's. when her horses had died, 'gene, from the savings of many months, had bought a team of his own, and his animals were doing the work on her place. the cow and the hogs and the chickens belonged to justine--and jud. crawley observed an unusual pallor in her face and her eyes were dark with pain and trouble. "'gene, i can't get it out of my mind that everything is not going well with jud," she said, as he came up to her. "wasn't he all right when he was here?" asked he, slowly. she had to hesitate for a moment before she could answer the question. she must choose her words. "he has not been well, 'gene," she said at last. "you know sickness is a dreadfully discouraging thing in a big place like chicago. nobody cares whether you get well or die, and if you get too sick to work some one else takes your place. jud has had a lot of bad luck and i know he's sick and discouraged." "he didn't look right well when he was here," admitted 'gene. "i wouldn't git upset about it, 'f i was you, justine. he'll come out all right." "but maybe he is sick and can't do anything," she persisted. "when he was here he said he'd been out of work and in a hospital for a long time." "out of work?" repeated he, slowly. "yes," she went on, hurriedly, now that she had begun the confession, "and he is in debt, too. it costs so much money to live up there, and if one gets behind it's hard to catch up, he says. oh, 'gene, do you suppose anything has happened to him? i have had no letter since last thursday and this is wednesday, isn't it? i know he is sick, i know it, 'gene." "ain't he on the paper any more?" "he has been off the paper for months." "doin' nothin'?" "some private work, but it hasn't paid well. and, besides, he hasn't been well. that's held him back." "what did he say when he was here? did he have a job in view?" "no," she answered, shame outfacing her pride. neither spoke for a long time. she was looking intently at the frozen ground, nervously clasping and unclasping her fingers. his black eyes were upon the white, drooping face, and his slow mind was beginning to see light. his heart began to swell with rage against the man who had won this prize and could not protect it. with the shrewdness of the countryman, he concluded that jud had not been able to combat the temptations of the great city. he had failed because he had fallen. he cast a slow glance at justine. her head was bent and her hands were clasping and unclasping. he knew what it was costing her to make confession to him and lifted his head with the joy of feeling that she had come to him for sympathy. "why don't he come home if he's sick?" he asked. "he could rest up down here an'--an' mebby that'd git him on his feet ag'in." "he doesn't like to give up, that's all. you know how brave and true he is, 'gene. it would be awful to come back here and admit that--that he couldn't get along up there. o, i wish he would come back, i wish he would come back," she wailed, breaking down completely. the tears forced themselves through the fingers that were pressed to her eyes. "god a'mighty, how she loves him," groaned crawley to himself. in this moment the big blasphemer of other days loved her more deeply than ever before in his dark, hopeless life. "couldn't you--you write an' tell him to come down here fer a couple of weeks or--or a month?" he stammered, after a moment of thought. "he wouldn't come, 'gene, he wouldn't come," she sobbed. "he said he would not give up until he had made a home for me up there. when he came the last time he was discouraged, but--but he got over it and--and--oh, i wish he would write to me! the suspense is killing me." crawley had turned his back and was leaning against the fence. "he needs me, 'gene," she said; "he needs me to cheer him on. i ought to be with him up there." he started sharply and turned to her. she was looking into his eyes, and her hands were half lifted toward him. "he is so lonely and i'm sure he is sick. i must go to him--i must. that's what i want to talk to you about. how am i to go to him? what shall i do? i can't bear it any longer. my place is with him." "if he ain't got a job, justine, you'll--you'll be----" "you want to say that i'll be a burden to him, that's it, isn't it? but i'll work for him. i'll do anything. if he's sick, i'll wash and iron and sew and scrub and--oh, anything. i've been thinking about it since last night, and you must not consider me foolish when i tell you what i want to do. i want to borrow some money on the place." "you mean you want to put a morgidge on the--on the farm?" he asked, slowly. "how else can i get the money, 'gene? a small mortgage won't be so bad, will it? what is the farm worth?" she was feverish with excitement. "it's not the best of land, you know, and there ain't no improvements," he said, still more deliberately. "you might sell the place for $800, but i doubt it." "i won't sell it; it must be kept for my boy. but i can borrow a little on it, can't i? wouldn't david strong let me have $200 on it?" "good lord, justine, don't put a morgidge on the place!" he cried. "that will be the end of it. it's the way it always goes. don't do anything like that." "there is no other way to get the money and i--i am going to jud," she said, determinedly, and he saw the light in her eye. in the end he promised to secure the money for her, and he did. the next day martin grimes loaned eugene crawley $150, taking a chattel mortgage on a farm wagon and harness and the two big bay horses that stood in justine's barn. at first she refused to take the money, but his insistence prevailed, and three days later she and her boy left glenville for chicago and jud. she promised to acquaint crawley with jud's true condition and their plans for the future. crawley said good-bye to her as she climbed into harve crose's wagon on the day of departure. he wished her luck in a harsh, unnatural tone, and abruptly turned to the barn. for hours he sat in the cold mow, disconsolate, exalted. his horses stamping below were mortgaged! lost to him, no doubt, but he gloried in the sacrifice. he had given his fortune to gratify her longing to be with the man she loved. at sunset he trudged to the tollgate. an unreasoning longing filled his lonely heart. when he asked for the mail there was uppermost in his mind the hope of a letter from her, although she had been gone not more than five hours. his loneliness increased when mrs. hardesty said that there was no mail for him or justine. for the first time in months he felt the old longing for drink. "jestine gone to chickago fer a visit er to stay?" asked jim hardesty, when crawley joined the crowd that lounged about the big sheet-iron stove in the store. 'gene did some very quick thinking in the next few minutes. he realized that her departure had been the subject of comment and speculation, and that it would be necessary for him to resort to something he knew nothing about--diplomacy. had he been an observing man he would have noticed the sudden cessation of talk about the stove when he first entered the toll house. the loungers had been discussing her departure, and there would have been a murderer in their midst had 'gene crawley heard the remark that fell from luther hitchcock's lips. "don't know how long she'll stay," responded 'gene, briefly. he leaned against the counter, crossing his legs. "how's jed gittin' 'long up yander?" continued jim. "all right, i reckon." "justine hain't been lookin' very well lately," said link overshine, from the nail-keg. "hain't looked herself sence the kid come," added hitchcock. "when did she last hear from jud?" asked link. "talkin' to me?" asked crawley. "yes." "well, how do you s'pose i know anything about her letters?" "don't you git the mail?" "harve crose leaves it as he goes by, an' you know it, overshine." "she ain't had a letter from him in more'n a week," volunteered the postmaster. "he don't write very reg'lar here of late." "does the gover'ment hire you to tell who gits letters through this office an' when they git 'em?" demanded crawley, sharply. jim hitched back in his chair nervously. "why, they ain't no harm in that," explained he. "you talk too much fer a job like this, jim," said crawley. there followed a few moments of silence. "one of grimes' men says you morgidged your team to the old man," began overshine. "which one of grimes' men said that?" asked 'gene, quietly. "why, i--er--lemme see, who did say it?" floundered link, in distress. "oh, it don't matter," said 'gene, carelessly. "i just asked." the subject was dropped at once. the crowd watched him leave the place and conversation was stagnant until hardesty, who was near the window, remarked that 'gene was walking pretty rapidly down the road. with the knowledge that he was out of sight and hearing, the loungers discussed him and his affairs freely. it was not until the fourth day that he received a letter from chicago, directed in strange handwriting. a number of men were in the store when the epistle was handed out to him by mrs. hardesty. without hesitation he tore open the envelope and began to read. the letter was for him, beyond a doubt, but justine had not addressed the envelope. what had happened to her? he read the letter with at least a dozen eyes watching him closely, but his dark face betrayed no sign of emotion. at the end he calmly replaced the note in the envelope and strolled off homeward. once out of the hearing of the curious, he leaned against a fence, read it again, folded it carefully, opened it and read it again, and then lowered his hands and gazed out over the fields. chapter xxvi. two women and a babe. "mr. sherrod is not working for the paper now," responded a man in the counting room when justine, overawed, applied for information at the office of the newspaper in which her husband's pictures had attracted such widespread notice. at the station a policeman had put her in a cab with directions to the driver. with her baby and her pitiful old satchel, she was jolted over the streets and up to the door of the newspaper office. she felt small, helpless, lost in this vast solitude of noises. the rush of vehicles, cars and people frightened her. every moment she expected there would be a collision and catastrophe. and jud was somewhere in this seething, heartless city, sick, unhappy, discouraged and longing for her. "i know," she responded, thickly, to the clerk, whose glance had been cold and whose tones were curt. "he left here some months ago, but he gets his mail here." "does he?" brusquely. "i address all of my letters to this office and he gets them." "country as can be," thought the clerk, his eye sweeping over her, "but devilish pretty. lord, what eyes she's got." then aloud, with a trifle more cordiality: "i'll ask mr. brokell if he knows where sherrod lives. just wait a minute, please." as he walked away there was one thought in his mind: "sherrod is a lucky dog if he can get this woman to leave her happy home for him." in a few minutes he returned with the information that the address was not known in the office, but that he would be glad to assist her in the search. she thanked him and walked away. somehow she did not like to meet the eye of this man. there was in it an expression she had never seen before, she who had looked only into the honest faces of countrymen. the shock of the clerk's blunt announcement that jud's address was not known to any one then in the office was stupefying. so stunned with surprise was she that her wits did not return until she found herself caught up by the rushing throng on the sidewalk. when she paused in the aimless progress through the crowd she was far from the newspaper office and paralyzed by the realization that she and the baby had nowhere to go. in sheer terror she stopped still and looked about with the manner of one who is aroused from a faint and finds a strange world looking on in sympathetic curiosity. busy men jostled her rudely, thoughtlessly; women arrayed as she had seen but one in her life, stared at her as she stood frightened and undecided in the middle of the sidewalk. there was no friendly face, no kindly hand in all that rushing crowd. scarcely realizing what she did, she asked a man who leaned against the building nearby if he knew dudley sherrod. the man stared at her blankly for an instant, a sarcastic grin flashing across his hard face. the smile faded instantly, however, for, street loafer though he was, he saw the agony in her eyes, and knew that she had lost her way. with a politeness that surprised himself, he answered in the negative and then advised her to consult a directory. she looked so helpless and unhappy that he volunteered to lead her to the nearest drug store. she followed him across the street, her baby on one arm, the big "telescope" bumping against her tired leg as she lugged it with the other hand. the city directory gave dudley sherrod's address as 1837 e---street, but she remembered that he had left this place nearly a year before. her friend, the lounger, advised her to appeal to the police, but she revolted against anything suggestive of the "criminal." to ask the police to look for her husband was to her shocking. a clerk in the store was appealed to by the lounger, and that individual agreed with him that the police alone could find "the man," if he was to be found at all. all this was adding new terror. tears came to justine's eyes and she did not try to dash them away. pride was conquered by despair. the clerk, taking matters in his own hands, called in a passing policeman, and bluntly told her to state the situation to him. "in the fir'rst place, ma'am, d'ye know the felly here?" asked the officer, regarding the lounger with an unfriendly eye. the latter winced a bit but did his best to put up a brave show of resentment. "she never seen me till ten minutes ago, maher, an' i ain't done or said nawthin' wrong to her. leave it to th' girl herself if i ain't been dead square. ain't i, ma'am?" "he's been very kind, policeman," answered justine, eagerly. "sure, sure, maher, dat's right," said the lounger, triumphantly. "did he's thry to touch ye, ma'am?" demanded the officer, still unsatisfied. "no, sir; he did not do anything so rude. he was very kind, and i thank him," responded she, taking the word "touch" literally. "what d'i tell you?" said the suspect in hurt tones. "kape yer gab out, biggs," said the officer. "i mean, ma'am, did he ask yez fer money?" "oh, no, sir," said justine confusedly. "never asked her fer a cent, on the dead----" "that'll do ye, biggs. clear out, onnyhow," said the policeman, unpityingly. "aw, dat's not right----" "g'wan now, will ye?" exclaimed officer maher, roughly shoving mr. biggs toward the door. "oh," cried justine, indignantly. "let him alone!" her eyes were flashing angrily. "it's all right, ma'am," explained the clerk, calmly. "but he's done nothing wrong." "you can't take chances with these bums. they're a bad lot. he's a tough customer, biggs is. don't have anything to do with strangers on the street. it's not safe." by this time the red-faced guardian of the peace was with them again, and justine reluctantly explained her dilemma to him. "he worked here for a long time as a newspaper artist," she said, in conclusion. "i've seen his pictures many a time," said the clerk with new interest. "is he your husband?" "yes, sir." "i guess he's not on the paper now. i haven't seen his pictures for some time." "he's been off the paper for nearly a year." "come wid me to hidquarters, ma'am, an' the chief'll sind some wan out to loca--ate him before night," said the officer. "sthate yer case to the boss. it won't be no thrick to find him." "i hate to have the police look for him," said she imploringly. "will, thin, phat'd yez call me in fer?" demanded the officer, harshly. "i--i didn't call you in, sir," said she, looking helplessly at the clerk. "i called you in, officer," said the clerk. "she didn't know what to do." "will, it's up to you, ma'am. we'll find him if yez say so." "do you know any one else in chicago?" asked the clerk. "maybe there's some one you could go to while they're trying to find your husband." "i don't know any one here," she said, despairingly. "don't you want to leave your grip here? we'll take care of it till you come after it." "that'll be all right, ma'am. it'll be safe here, an' yez don't want to be luggin' it around town wid that kid on yer hands. l'ave it here," said officer maher, and he picked it up and carried it behind the prescription counter before she could remonstrate. the clerk handed her a card containing the name and location of the store. "oh, i do know some one here," she cried suddenly, her face brightening. "miss celeste wood. do you think i could find her?" to her dismay, the name was not in the directory. "does she live with her parents?" asked the clerk. "i--i think so," replied justine, helplessly. "do you know her father's name?" "no, sir. she has a brother named randall. would his name be in the book?" young wood's name and address were readily found by the clerk, and officer maher advised her to take a cab to the place at once. these men unceremoniously took matters in their own hands, and, almost before she knew it, a cab was taking her northward, bound for the home of the girl who had so often sent her love, through jud, to the other girl of proctor's falls. the ride gave her ample time to reflect and she had not gone far before her thoughts were running once more in a straight channel. her pride grew as the situation became plainer, displacing the first dread and confusion. how could she go to a stranger and inflict her with her troubles? what right had she to ask her assistance or even her interest in this hour of need? besides all this, the mere confession that she could not find her husband would be humiliating to her and explanations would be sure to put jud in an unpleasant light. it would mean that she must tell miss wood of his failure in everything, a condition which the young woman might politely deplore, but that was all. her own poor garments now seemed the shabby reflection of jud's poverty, his degradation, his fall from the high pedestal that had been his by promise. she could not look down into the bright, laughing eyes of her boy and go on to the shameful exposition of his father's misfortune. the red of pride mounted to her brown cheeks and the new fire in her eyes burned bright with the resolution to save him and herself from the humiliation of an appeal to miss wood. past rows of magnificent homes she was driven, but they interested her not at all. beneath her pride, however, there battled the fast-diminishing power of reason. try as she would, she could not drive out the stubborn spark which told her that she must call upon some one in her helplessness--but that the "some one" should be a woman was distressing. as she was struggling with pride and reason, the cab turned in and drew up at the curb in front of a handsome house. her heart gave a great bound of dismay. "this is no. ----, ma'am," said the driver, as he threw open the door. "i--i don't believe i'll go in," she stammered, trembling in every nerve. "where shall i take you?" he asked wearily. little he cared for the emotions of his fares. "are you sure this is the place?" she asked. "yes, ma'am. do you want to get out?" fresh courage inspired her, brought about by the sharp realization that it was the only way to find help, humiliating though the method might be. there was no other way, and his question: "where shall i take you?" reminded her forcibly that she had no place to go. "yes," she said, decisively, and with the haste of one who is afraid that hesitation will bring weakness, she stepped to the carriage-block. "shall i wait, ma'am?" "i don't know how long i'll be here," she said, her ignorance confronted by another puzzle. the driver saw in his mind sufficient cause for her uncertainty, and sagely concluded that she was a poor mother who expected to find a home for her babe with the wealthy people who lived at no. ----. "i'll drive into the park and be back in half an hour, ma'am, if you think you'll be there that long," he said, and away he rolled. she mounted the steps quickly and, after a long and embarrassing search, found the electric button and rang the door bell. a trim maid responded. justine had fondly hoped that miss wood herself would come to the door, and her heart sank with disappointment. "is miss wood at home?" she managed to ask. "she does not live here," replied the maid, surveying the caller with a superior and supercilious air. "i thought her brother----" began justine, faintly. she felt as if she were about to fall. "mr. and mrs. wood live here, and they have a married daughter living over in s---place. i have only been here since monday, ma'am, and i can't tell you her address." "it is miss celeste wood i want to see," said poor justine, her lip trembling. "that's the name--celeste. she was here yesterday, and i heard mrs. wood speak the name. won't mrs. wood do as well?" there was kindness in the voice now; justine's eyes had made their usual conquest. "i'd--i'd rather see miss celeste," she said, timidly. "can't you tell me where she lives?" "i'll ask mrs. wood. the butler'd know, but he is sick. will you wait inside the door? what a pretty baby." she was gone but a few minutes, returning before justine's dazed eyes had half accustomed themselves to the attractive place. "she lives at no. 1733 s---place. you go to the next corner and turn west. the house is in the second block." the day was cold and her bare hands were numb. the wind from the lake cut through her thin garments so relentlessly that she longed for the protection of the carriage, which was not to return for half an hour--and then to the wrong place. what if celeste were not at home? she could not ask to be permitted to sit in her house until her return; that would be too much of an imposition. she could only return to the street and wait for half an hour in the freezing winds for the cab, which seemed like a home to her now. a hurrying figure in furs and brown approached from the direction in which she was going. the two drew nearer and nearer, the one walking rapidly against the wind, the other driven along more swiftly than was her wont by the heavy gale at her back. justine was the first to recognize the other. her heart gave a great bound of joy, for there could be no mistaking the face of the woman who faced the wind. the country girl jubilantly uttered in her soul a prayer of gratitude to the providence that had brought her face to face with the one she sought. she half stopped as the other drew near. celeste's eyes met hers. evidently she was surprised to observe a desire to speak with her on the part of a stranger. justine's eyes were wide with relief and her lips were parted as if words were just inside. celeste's eyes narrowed for one brief instant of indecision, and then she knew. there was but one face like justine van's, and it had been in her mind for days and days. she had just come from it, in fact, and her heart was still aching with the pain of seeing it on jud's easel not an hour before. but what could the girl be doing in chicago? was the thought that flashed into her mind. even as she opened her lips to greet her, her hands extended, it was known to her that justine could be going only to the home of jud sherrod. justine's joy was too great for words and celeste's heart went out to her irresistibly. despite the wanness of the face and the dark circles under the eyes, justine's were still the vivid, matchless features that celeste had envied in that other day. though she was sorely troubled by the inexplicable presence of the one woman whom she had been thinking of for days, celeste could but greet her warmly. "this is the greatest surprise in the world," cried celeste. "who would have dreamed of seeing you here?" "i have just come from your old home. they told me you lived on this street," said justine, her voice hoarse with emotion. "and you were going to my home," cried celeste, just as if intuition had not told her so before. "i was on my way to mother's. isn't it lucky we met? i will go back with you at once. you must be very cold. and--a baby? oh, the dear little one! how cold it must be." "i have him well wrapped up," said justine. celeste mentally noted that the child was protected at the sacrifice of the mother's comfort, for justine looked half frozen. "is he--is he your boy?" asked celeste, and a wave of happiness surged over her when the answer came. did it not prove that she was married and forever out of jud's life? "i am sure he must be a handsome little fellow," said she, as they turned from the sidewalk to the steps leading to the door of her home. "he looks like his father--and not a bit like me," said justine, modestly. "have you named him?" "he is named after his father, of course." "a token of real love." "of love, yes--he could have had no other name. i am so happy that he is a boy." the door swung open and they were in the warm hallway. "you must let me see him. bring him to the grate. but, first, take off your hat and coat. mary will relieve you of them. now, let me see him." dudley, the second, was awake, wide-eyed and frightened, when he looked up into the two faces above him. "does he not look like his father?" asked justine, happily. chapter xxvii. the end of it all. celeste started. justine's innocent query rudely tore down the curtain that had hung between her understanding and jud's strange behavior, and it seemed to her, in that one brief, horrible moment, that she saw all that was black and ugly in life. she could take her eyes from the mother's gentle face only to let them rest upon the features of the baby. justine's question--"does he not look like his father?"--could have but one answer. dudley sherrod's likeness was stamped on the face of the boy, unmistakable, accusing. in her terror, the face of the little one seemed to age suddenly until there loomed up before her the features of jud, the man. powerless to answer, she turned abruptly and staggered to a window, leaning heavily against the casing, her heart like lead, her face as white as death. she knew now the cause of everything that had mystified and troubled her in jud's conduct. now she knew why the picture of justine was before him, now she knew why the mention of her name threw him into confusion. the whole wretched truth was plain. "oh, jud! oh, jud!" she cried to herself. "oh, this poor ruined girl! how could he have done such a--oh, god, no, no! i must be wrong. the resemblance is not real--it is my fancy. but--but, why does she ask me if he looks like his father? what other father can there be--what other man is known to both of us? but how young the boy is; jud has not seen her in years. he cannot be the father. why am i afraid? why have i doubted him?" the voice of the other woman came to her from the fireplace, indistinct, jumbled and as if through the swirl of a storm. "pardon me, but i do not know what your name is now," was the apologetic remark from the other side of the room, and celeste turned to her. "my name is--is sherrod, miss van," she said, slowly. justine looked up in surprise and bewilderment. a shadow of unbelief crossed her face. "sherrod?" she asked, curiously. "why, how strange that we should have the same name." "the same name, miss van?" "my name has not been van for a long, long time. we were married before you met us in proctor's falls, i'm--why, what is the matter?" "it is not true--it is not true," half shrieked celeste. justine shrank back as if confronted by a mad woman, instinctively shielding her boy. "do you mean to tell me you were married to jud sherrod?" she continued, scornfully. [illustration: "it is not true, half shrieked celeste.] "of course i was--don't look at me like that! what in the name of heaven is the matter, mrs.--mrs.----" a sickening thought struggled into justine's mind. "your name is--is sherrod, too," she said, dully. "has--has jud anything to do with it?" "he is not your husband," cried celeste, pityingly. "what do you mean?" gasped justine, limp and white. "jud and i married three years ago----" "oh!" moaned celeste. justine's extended arm caught her as she dropped forward. the wild blue eyes looked piteously into the frightened brown ones, and the gray lips repeated hoarsely: "are you sure? are you sure?" "what shall i do?" moaned justine. "i am his wife, i know i am. nobody can deny it. why, why, i have the certificate----" she went on eagerly. celeste struggled to her feet. "then what in the name of heaven has he made of me?" she cried, hoarsely. "i don't understand," murmured justine dully. "do you--do you love him?" "love him? love him? why, woman, he is my husband!" the world went black before justine's eyes. she fell back in the deep chair; her big eyes closed, her hands relaxed their clasp on the boy and he slid to the protecting arm of the chair; her breath clogged her throat. as consciousness fled, she saw celeste sink to the floor at her feet. a man drew aside the curtains a few minutes afterwards and planted a heavy foot inside the room. his sombre eyes were on the floor and it was not until he was well inside the room that his gaze fell upon the still group at the fireplace. he paused, his tired eyes for the moment resting wearily on the scene. slowly his mind, which had been far away, caught up the picture before him. his dull sensibilities became active. celeste was lying on the floor. she had fainted. he stretched forth his arms to lift her and his eyes fell upon the upturned face of the woman in the chair. petrified, he stood for an age, it seemed. comprehension slowly forced its way into his brain. "justine!" a shriek of terror burst in his throat; the sound did not reach his lips. the end had come! it was all over! they knew--they _knew_! they knew him for what he was. he had not the strength to flee; he only knew that he was face to face with the end. he must stand his ground, as well now as any time. he waited. there would be cries, sobs, wails and bitterness. but no sounds came from the lips of the two women. the baby alone stared in wonder at this strange man. the faces of the unconscious girls were deathlike, justine's drawn with pain, celeste's white and weak. unconsciously his hand touched justine's face, then her breast. she did not move, but her heart was beating. with the same mechanical calmness he dropped to one knee and half raised celeste's head, expecting her eyes to open. the lids lay still and dark and her neck was limp. as he rose to his feet stiffly, his eyes fell upon the face of the boy and it was as if he were a child again and looking at himself in the old mirror up at the house "on the pike." he could not meet the smile of that innocent spectator. in a fever of haste lest either woman should revive before he could be hidden from their wretched eyes, he pressed cold lips to their lips, covered the baby's face with kisses and a flood of tears that suddenly burst forth, and then dashed blindly from the room and up the broad staircase, terrified by the sound of his own footfalls, in dread of a piteous call from below, eager to escape the eyes, the condemning eyes that once had loved him. celeste was the first to open her eyes. for many minutes she lay where she had fallen, striving to remember how she came to be there. memory gradually pushed aside the kindly numbness--and she saw clearly. dragging herself to the mantel post, she tried to regain her feet. the effort was vain; her strength had not returned. leaning against the mosaic background, she turned her eyes upon the motionless figure in the chair. she never knew what her thoughts were as she sat there and gazed upon the face of the other woman, justine van--justine van, the girl of proctor's falls. at last a long sigh came from justine's lips, there was a deep shudder and then the fluttering lips parted, two wide, dazed eyes of brown staring into space. minutes passed before the gaze of the two women met. there were no words, nothing but the fixed stare of horror. moved by a desperate impulse, celeste struggled to her feet, her glazed eyes bent upon the face of the baby. steadying herself for an instant against the mantel, she lurched forward, hatred in her heart, her hands outstretched. the fingers locked themselves in the folds of the child's dress and he was raised above the head of the frenzied woman. justine's weak hand went up appealingly; she had not strength to rise and snatch the child from the other's clutches. "then kill me, too," she whispered, closing her eyes. a crowing laugh came from the child. the laugh of an infant who is tossed on high and revels in the fun. a moment later he was lying in his mother's lap and his enemy was sobbing as she laid her hand in the dark hair of the other woman. a distant scream came from somewhere in the house, but the two women did not hear it. a maid came scurrying downstairs, white and excited. she dashed unceremoniously into the room, panting out the single exclamation: "hurry!" celeste slowly turned toward her. "what is it, mary?" she asked, mechanically, almost unconsciously. "mr. sherrod, ma'am--you must come quick. in the studio," gasped the maid. "is jud here?" asked justine, raising herself in the chair. a new light struggled into her eyes. celeste, cold with the certainty of some terrible news, straightened to receive the blow. "is it--bad, mary?" she asked. "oh, ma'am, i--i can't tell you," almost whispered the girl. "it's awful! i'll see him to my dying day." "he--he is dead?" the question came from frozen lips. the maid burst into tears. chapter xxviii. hearts. sherrod's body lay stretched across the rug in front of the grate in his studio. his coat and vest had been hastily thrown aside and his white shirt, covering the deep chest, was saturated with blood. the carved hilt of a malay dagger stood defiantly above the cleft heart. the steel was deep in his body. he had dealt one blow, but he had sent the blade of the kris straight home; so true was its course that death must have been instantaneous. he lay flat on his broad back, his neck twisted as if checked in the supreme moment of agony; death had left its stamp of pain on his ghastly face. on the floor near the body a piece of white paper was found, across which was scrawled: "forgive me." the hand that penciled these words was the same that drove home the blade, but it had trembled only in the writing, not in the blow. the hasty scrawl revealed his eagerness to have over with life while there was yet a chance to escape facing the ruined women below. the last plea of the suicide was not directed to either of the loved ones; it was left for each to take it to her heart and in secrecy hold it as hers alone--cherishing it, if she could. his had been a crime that the law could not sufficiently punish. he had indicted the penalty himself and he had asked forgiveness of those he had wronged in his weakness. they had loved him to the hour of his death; they had trusted him. neither had known him in his baseness or his cowardice--they knew him only as loving, devoted and true. death came just as the joys of being his were shattered; the pains he had given them in life were known only after he had gone from them. they were asked to forgive a dead man who had been everything to them in life, and whom they had loved until his last breath was drawn; he did not wait to receive their reproaches; he had gone away as they had known him and they had not looked upon the face of guilt. * * * * * celeste was the calmer of the two and yet she was the more deeply wronged. after the first grief she arose, bleeding and broken from the wreck of every joy, and she was strong. justine, stunned by grief and horror, lay for hours in the bed to which she had been carried by the maids after the terrible scene in the studio. with the slow return of composure, celeste saw dimly the situation as it existed for her. she was not a widow. the widow was the other woman who had crouched on the opposite side of the corpse, pleading with him to come back to her and the boy. while she could not as yet grasp the full reality of her position, she felt that justine's claim was best. it was she who had justine taken to a room by the maids. there was no rage in her heart; she took that other one into her grief and shared it with her. there was no other way; they had suffered together. there still lingered a faint hope--cruel though it was--that she might be the real wife, and justine the false one. hours after the calamity, far in the night, while her mother bathed her head and sought to soothe her, celeste planned and planned. she knew that if justine's claim were true, jud had deliberately made a wanton of her, even though he loved her. the world would soon know that she was not a wife, and the newspapers would be nauseous with the sensation. she was confident, however, that she was the only one in the house who knew justine's story, and as she lay waiting for the dawn there grew in her mind a steady purpose. the world must never know! justine, pale and dead-eyed, stood looking from the window of the bed-chamber when the knock came at her door the next morning. she did not respond, she did not even turn her head, for her thoughts were of the night before, and the life before that. celeste softly opened the door and came to her side. "justine," she said gently, almost inaudibly. dark, heavy, despairing eyes were turned upon her and she feared for the success of her plan. "am i to go to him now?" came the lifeless voice of the other. "justine," said celeste, taking a cold hand in her own, "we must understand each other, we must know the truth. i don't think anything that can happen now will hurt us; we are dead to all pain. we must talk about--about ourselves." "i don't understand what it all means," moaned justine. "why can't i go to jud? he is mine--he is mine, and--and----" "but, justine, dear, it is of this that we must talk. i--i thought he was mine. oh god, don't you see? i have lived as his wife for months and--and i never knew until you came that i--that i--oh, don't you understand?" justine's unwillingness to believe evil of jud, despite all that had happened to prove the existence of a double life, was a barrier hard to break down, and it was not without long entreaties and explanations that celeste made her see that her claim had some justification. at last these two women brought themselves down to the point from which the situation could be seen plainly in all its unhappy colorings. together in the darkness that he had cast about them they groped their way toward the light of understanding; as they went, the heart of each was bared to the other, and both saw and sought to ease the pain the rents disclosed. there was no denying justine's right to call jud husband. celeste saw her every hope slipping away as she listened to the story of the courtship and marriage in the little country lane. she knew now that she had never been a wife, and she knew that she had to live all the rest of her life beneath an ugly shadow. whatever were her thoughts of the man who had so basely wronged her, she kept them to herself. not one word of reproach did she utter in the presence of the wife and mother. the consequences of his crime were hers to bear, and her only object in life now was to prevent others from sharing them with her, to prevent the world from knowing of their existence. if she loathed the memory of the man who had despoiled her honor, she held that loathing secret. to the world, he was her husband, and the world should see her mourn for him. her proposition to justine was at first indignantly rejected, but so skillfully did she paint the picture of her position in life as jud had left it for her, that the tender, honest girl from the country fell completely under the influence of her pleading. justine was made to see jud's fault in all its blackness, and was urged to share in the effort to protect his memory. no one was to know of the double life he had led; no one was to know of his crime; no one was to curse his memory; two women alone were to--forget, if they could. between them it was agreed that in chicago justine was to appear as a cousin of the dead man, and the funeral obsequies were to be conducted with the real wife in the background, the other as the deepest mourner. the body was to be taken afterwards to clay township for burial, and there justine was to claim her dead, with celeste posing as the good friend in the hour of direst trouble. that was the general plan, the minor but intricate details being intrusted to celeste. "here he was my husband, and the world may never be the wiser," said she, taking the other to her grateful heart. "down there he is yours, and no one there must know how he has served you. you can save me, justine, and i can shield him from the curses of your people. he will lie in the grave you dig for him away down there, and your friends may always look upon his headstone and say: 'he was a good man. we all loved him.' it is fair, justine, and i will love you to my dying day for doing all this for me." "i love you," said justine, and they went forth to play their unhappy parts. it was celeste, keen and bold in her desperation, who wrote the letter to 'gene crawley, signing a fictitious name, justine looking over her shoulder with streaming eyes. it briefly told of a sudden death and ended with the statement that a telegram would follow announcing the time of leaving chicago with the body. the newspapers in the city told the story of the suicide, giving the cause as ill-health, and pictured the grief of the young widow. celeste saw the reporters herself. purposely, deliberately she misinformed them in many of the details regarding his birthplace and his earlier life. this act of shrewdness on her part was calculated to mislead the people of clay township, and it succeeded. no one could connect the identity of the suicide with that of the youth who had gone out from that indiana community long ago. how the two women lived through the funeral service in s---place was past all understanding. the real wife heard the sobs of the other and choked with the grief she was compelled to suppress. the other wept, but who knows whether the tears were tribute of love for the man over whom the clergyman said such gentle, hopeful words? a dead man and two women knew the story that would have shocked the world. one could not speak, the others would not. and so he was eulogized. that night the two women and their dead left chicago for glenville. their only companion was dudley sherrod, the second. chapter xxix. crawley's legacy. the people of clay township were kept in the dark concerning the manner in which jud came to his death. the letter to 'gene merely announced that his sudden death was due to a hemorrhage, and another letter to parson marks from justine's friend in the city bore the same news. naturally jud's friends believed that the hemorrhage was of the lungs, which inspired ninety per cent. of them to say that they had always regarded him as frail. some went so far as to recall predictions made when he was a boy to the effect that he "wouldn't live to see thirty year." crawley and harve crose drove to glenville in harve's wagon to meet the train, prepared to haul the casket to the cemetery, where mr. marks was to conduct short services. there was no hearse in glenville, but there was a carpenter who buried people as a "side line." rich people in the neighborhood sent to an adjoining county seat for embalmers and undertakers; clay township buried its dead at it was able and saw fit. justine would not permit celeste to pay the expenses of the funeral at jud's old home and she herself could not afford the luxury of a hearse and mourners' carriage. the arrangements were in the hands of mr. marks, crawley and crose, and the details were of the simplest character. the aristocratic "two-seated rig" of david strong and martin grimes's surrey were at the station to act as conveyances for justine and the minister and a select few. dozens of buggies, buckboards and not a few spring wagons fell in behind the "mourners' carriages" when the cortege left the depot platform, headed for the cemetery four miles away. justine, her face hidden in a dense veil of black, occupied the back seat in david strong's vehicle, and the whole country-side longed to comfort her. by her side sat a pale, beautiful woman in a simple gown of black--the city friend the community had heard so much about. the baby found a comfortable resting place in the capacious lap of mrs. strong, who sniffled continuously while her husband drove solemnly and imposingly through the streets of the village. the town looked on with sombre gaze and the country spoke in a respectful whisper. sad was the home-coming of the sherrods. the long procession, headed by the wagon containing the casket, wound its slow way out into the country, through the winter-clean lane, past the house in which jud and justine were married, and up to the gate of the dilapidated, weather-worn "burying-ground" on the hill. in oppressive silence, the throng crowded over and about the weed-covered graves in the ill-kept little cemetery to witness every movement in connection with the ceremony. they saw the casket lifted from the wagon bed by six young men and they opened a pathway from the gate to the grave through which the pall-bearers passed with heavy tread; they saw the long black box in which dudley sherrod had come home lowered into the clay-colored gulf; they saw justine, moaning as she stood between old mrs. crane and the stranger from the city; but they could not see the heart of that white-faced stranger, who looked with tear-dimmed eyes into the grave at her feet. justine's grief was pitiful. not a man, woman or child in that assemblage but shed tears of genuine sympathy. the men and women who had gathered at the pastor's home not many months before to condemn her, now stood among the graves and wept with her. not a few cast curious eyes upon the fair stranger and went away to say afterwards that she was the kind of friend to have. the choir of the little church sang several hymns from books that jud and justine had used in days gone by. heads were bared in the biting air, and no man was there who did not do full honor to jud sherrod, the goodliest boy the township had ever produced. the grief of the people was honest. mr. marks, inspired by the opportunity, delivered such a discourse on the goodness, the nobility of the young man, that the community, with one voice, proclaimed it to be a masterpiece of oratory. "and to this devoted young wife, for whom he struggled so manfully, so loyally up to the very hour of his taking away, god gives his boundless pity and will extend his divinest help. dudley sherrod, our departed brother, was the soul of honor. he loved his home and the mistress of it second only to his maker. i voice what is known to the world at large when i say that never lived there a man whose heart was more thoroughly given over to the keeping of woman. and she loved and revered him, and we see her inconsolable, bereft of all earthly joy. we pray god that she may see the brightness beyond this cloud that he has in his wisdom thrown about her. and we pray for the life, the soul of this baby boy who lies fatherless in this--er--this cold world. he will never know the love of a father. we all glory in the privilege of having known this true, honest christian man, a man whose life bore not a single blemish. his life was an example to all mankind. oh, ye who listen to my words in this sad hour, strive to emulate his example. do ye as he has done, live the life he has lived. how many of us are there who might have lived as he--er--did--if we but had the courage to follow the impulses of the soul. he has gone to his reward." * * * * * just before the shades of night fell across the grief-ridden community, justine escaped the kind ministrations of mrs. crane, mrs. hardesty, mrs. bolton and other good dames who had followed her to the cottage after the chill services in the cemetery for the purpose of comforting her. they had gone to the cottage with red eyes, choking whispers and hands eager to lift her up, and she was trying to avoid these good offices. she crept into the bleak little room upstairs to which celeste had long since fled to find solitude for her broken heart. celeste was stretched upon the bed, face downward, and her slim body was as still as jud's had been. the feeling of dread in justine's heart was not dispelled until her hands touched the warm cheek, and her ear caught the sound of a faint, tear-choked sigh. "it is i, celeste," she said, gently. "won't you let me hold you in my arms? see! i am strong again and i must take some one to my heart. it seems so empty, so dead, so cold. you don't hate me for this day, do you?" celeste turned her face to the girl above and stretched forth her hand. "i love you, justine," she sobbed, and their wet faces were pressed close together on the same pillow. after many minutes she asked abruptly: "what are you going to do, justine?" "do?" asked the other, blankly. "i don't know. i haven't thought." "you will not stay here, you cannot stay here where--where----" "but where can i go? what do you mean?" "i want to be with you always--i want to be near his--your boy," said the other. "oh, justine, i must have some one to love, i must have some one to love me. don't you see, can't you see? i want you to love me and i want his boy to love me. you--you cannot stay here--you shall not stay here and suffer alone; you must not bear it all alone. we took the blow together, dearest justine; let us bear it together, let us live through it together." and so it was that the women jud sherrod had made happy and unhappy in his brief, misguided life, found a vacant place each in the heart of the other and filled that place with the love that could not be dishonored. it was a long time before justine could fully comprehend the extent of the other's proposition and it was much longer before she was won over by almost abject pleading on the part of the wretched, lonely girl who had been wife in name only. celeste convinced justine that she was entitled to all that jud had left as a legacy; she deliberately classified herself as a part of his estate, an article among his goods and chattels, and as such she belonged to his widow and heir. the home in s---place was, by right of law, justine's, argued the pleader, and all that jud had died possessed of was in that house. so persistent was she in the desire to obtain her end that she triumphed over justine's objections. it was settled that they were to live together, travel together so long as both found the union agreeable. celeste's plan included a long stay in europe, a complete flight from all that had been laid bare and waste in the world they had known with him. in two weeks they were to sail and there was no time set for their return. justine's most difficult task was to be performed in the interim. it was to be the rewarding of eugene crawley. she had seen him at the grave-side, standing directly opposite her across the narrow opening in the ground. the pallor of his face was so marked that even she had observed it. he had not raised his eyes to look at her, but she had seen his chest rise and fall. the third day after the funeral she faced crawley in the barn-lot. with celeste she was to leave that evening for chicago and the time had come for settlement. she stood near the little gate that led to the barn-lot and he approached slowly, uncertain as to the propriety of addressing this woman in grief. it was to be his first word to her since he said good-by on the day that took her to chicago with his money in her purse, the price of his horses. he had staked his all to give her the means to find sherrod and she had found him. "'gene, i am going away," she said, extending her hand as he came up. "going away?" he repeated, blankly. "yes. miss wood has asked me to accompany her to europe and--and i am going." he was silent for a long time, his dazed eyes looking past her as if sightless. "that's--that's a long ways to go, justine," he said at last, and his voice was husky. the broad hand which had held hers for an instant, shook as he laid it on the gate post. "it is very good of her, 'gene, and i love her so much," she said. she saw again that love was not dead in his heart and the revelation frightened her. "you have been so good to me, 'gene, and i don't know how i am ever to repay you," she hurried on, eager to pass the crisis. "you--you c'n pay me in your own way an' in your own time," he said, looking intently at the ground, uncertain of his own meaning. "we leave to-night," she said, "and i must not go away without--without settling with you." "settlin' with me," he echoed. there was no passing over the bitterness in his voice. "you are goin' to-night. good god!----" he burst out, but the new habit of self-repression was strong. "i beg your pardon, justine," he went on a moment later. "to-night?" "mr. strong will take us to the train at six o'clock," she said. she had not looked for so much emotion. "'gene, i owe you so much that i don't see how i am ever to pay you. not only is it money that i owe, but gratitude. i have thought it all out, 'gene, and there is only one way in which i can pay the smallest part of my debt, for the debt of gratitude can never be paid. i have sent for 'squire rawlings and--and, 'gene, i know you won't misunderstand me--i am going to ask you to accept this farm from me, to be yours and yours only. the 'squire will bring the deed, and----" "justine!" he exclaimed, looking her full in the eyes. "you wouldn't do that--you don't mean that!" the darkest pain she had ever seen was in his eyes. "you deserve it and more----" she began, shrinking before his gaze. he held up his hand piteously and turned his face away, and she could see his struggle for control. at last he turned to her, his face white and drawn, his eyes steady, his voice less husky than before. "you must never say such a thing to me ag'in, justine. i know you meant all right an' you thought i'd be satisfied with the bargain, but you--you mustn't offer to pay me ag'in. you've paid me all that's comin' to me, you've paid me by makin' a good man of me, that's what you've done. i'd die before i'd take this--this land o' your'n an' that little boy's. you're mighty good an'--an'--- oh, cain't you see it's no use in me tryin' to talk about it? wait! you was about to begin beggin' me to take it. i want to ast you as the greatest favor you ever done for me, don't say it. don't say it. i cain't stand it, justine!" "forgive me, 'gene, forgive me," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "you deserve more than i can ever give you, dear friend. i did not mean to hurt you----" "it's all over, so let's say no more about it," he said, breathing deeply and throwing up his head. "i'll take keer o' your farm while you're gone, justine, an' it'll be here in good order when you're ready to come back to it. it'll be kept in good shape for the boy. don't you ever worry about the place. it's your'n an' i'll take good keer of it for you. you're goin' to ketch the evenin' train?" "yes," she said gently, "and i may be gone for a long time, 'gene." "well," he said with difficulty, "i guess we'd better say good--good-bye. you've lots to do in the house an' i want to do some work in the wagon-shed. good-bye, justine; be--be good to yourself." it was the greatest battle that rough 'gene crawley had ever waged, but he came out of it without a scar to be ashamed of. "i want to ask you to--to look after jud's grave, 'gene," she said, her hand in his. "there is no one else i can ask, and i want it kept better--better than the rest up there. will you see to it for me?" "i'll--i'll 'tend to it for you, justine," he said, but his face went pale. for a full minute she looked, speechless, upon the white, averted face of the man whose love was going to its death so bravely, and a great warmth crept into her cold veins--a warmth born in a strange new tenderness that went out to him. a sudden, sharp contraction of the heart told her as plainly as though the message had come in words that the love in this man's heart would never die, never falter. somehow, the drear, chill prospect grew softer, warmer in the discovery that love could still live in this dead, ugly world, that after all fires were burning kindly for her. there was a thrill in her voice as she murmured, brokenly: "good-bye, 'gene, and god bless and keep you." "good-bye," he responded, releasing her hand. he did not raise his eyes until the door of the cottage closed after her. at dusk david strong drove away from the little house in the lane, and the sherrods went with him. 'gene crawley stood in the shadow of the barn, his hopeless eyes fastened on the vehicle until it was lost among the trees. a sharp, choking sound came from his throat as he turned those dark, hungry eyes from the purple haze that screened the carriage from view. about him stretched the poor little farm, as dead as his hopes; at his back stood the almost empty barn; yonder was the deserted house from which no gleam of light shone. he was alone. there was nothing left but the lifeless, unkind shadows. slowly he strode to the little gate through which she had passed. his hands closed over the pickets tenderly and then his lips were pressed to the latch her fingers had touched in closing the gate perhaps for the last time--closing it with him a prisoner until she chose to come back and release him. a moment later his face dropped to his arms as they rested on the post, and he sobbed as though his heart would break. the grosset & dunlap illustrated editions of famous books the following 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environment, rank this novel among the great creations. grosset & dunlap, publishers 52 duane street :: new york * * * * * * the bigamist by f.e. mills young published by john lane company, new york. this edition dated 1916. the bigamist, by f.e. mills young. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ the bigamist, by f.e. mills young. chapter one. in the handsome room, softly lighted with shaded electric lamps, a man sat in a low chair, his legs stretched out compass-wise, his brow resting on his hand. he had the appearance of being asleep, save that every now and again the fingers pressing his brow pressed harder or were momentarily relaxed; he made no other movement: for fully half an hour he had not altered his pose. the only other occupant of the room, a woman, tall and slender, with a wealth of golden hair crowning her small head, stood at the long open window with her back to the room, her pose as still as the man's, but considerably less absorbed. the girl, she was little more than a girl, despite the five years of happy married life, and the tiny mite of four asleep in the nursery overhead, turned from the open window and the soft darkness of the summer night and faced the lighted room. so long the man had sat there silent, motionless, plunged in thought, that she had almost forgotten his presence in a pleasant reverie of her own till roused by the extraordinary quiet, as effectually as though recalled by some unexpected sound. she turned her head and regarded him with surprised, inquiring eyes. "worried, herbert?" she asked. he started at the sound of her voice, and roused himself with an effort. "what makes you ask that?" he said, without looking at her. "i don't know... you are so quiet," she answered. "and at dinner i fancied you seemed a little put out." she crossed to his chair and knelt beside him, resting her clasped hands on his shoulders, her face lifted to his. he put out a hand and touched her hair.--"pamela," he said abruptly, "you've been happy with me? you've--i've made you happy?" he insisted. she looked surprised: a faint questioning showed in the blue eyes and the slight puckering of the finely pencilled brows. "my dear!" she said. "you know that." she pulled his face down to hers and kissed him. "you never doubted me?" she asked. "no," he answered,--"no." suddenly he caught her to him and held her strained against his breast. "oh! but it's good to have you," he cried. "you are the best thing that life has given me. i'd fight till my last breath to keep you." "well, but there isn't any fear of your losing me," she said, and drew back to regard him, perplexed at this unusual demonstration from a man who, save in moments of passionate excess, was habitually rather reserved. "silly person! did you think i was going to run away?" "you couldn't," he answered confidently. "you are chained here to my side with invisible, unbreakable bonds." "oh; there's the divorce court," she remarked with light-hearted flippancy. "i wasn't referring to social laws," he answered gravely. "the bond that holds you is the strength of our love. it is the one invincible power in the world. whatever happened, you would never cease to love me, pamela." he made the statement with a look which seemed to question her. pamela responded to the look. "no," she answered, her sweet face grown suddenly very earnest. "i could never cease to love you. that's the surest thing in heaven or earth to me." he set her aside and stood up. then he lifted her to her feet and put his arm about her and drew her towards the open window. "come into the garden," he said. "the air indoors stifles me. i don't want to talk. i want to be in the open and feel you near." she pressed his hand sympathetically. "there's certainly a little worry of some sort," she said. "yes, there's a little worry," he answered in an evasive tone which discouraged inquiries. "but it needn't concern you." pamela was not naturally curious. her husband seldom discussed his affairs with her. she did not resent this lack of confidence, but attributed it to the disparity of their ages: pamela was twenty-six, and herbert arnott was forty, and rather staid and settled. he had been a widower when he married pamela; but he never spoke of his first wife. he had been married when he was quite young and had made a hash of his early life. she knew that because he had told her when they became engaged: he did not refer to the subject again; and pamela never knew what the first wife was like nor who her people were. arnott was reserved about his past, and, so far as his wife knew, he was without ties or relations. he had put the old life behind him entirely when he quitted his native land; and very early pamela learnt that it was not wise to try to get him to talk about himself and the days before she knew him. he was a man whose past was a closed book to the world, nor would he allow his wife to turn over the pages. he had first met pamela on board the vessel in which he sailed for south africa. she was going out to a post as governess in a girl's college at port elizabeth. he had sat next her at meals in the saloon and found her congenial. when he left the ship at cape town he had asked her to write to him. subsequently he had journeyed round the coast to see her, and shortly afterwards they were married. that was five years ago, and during those five years pamela had been extraordinarily happy. she had never had even a trivial disagreement with her husband; the usual petty domestic worries had not intruded into their pleasant, easy home life. arnott made an admirable husband, and pamela's disposition was naturally sunny and contented. moreover, this life of luxurious comfort as the wife of a wealthy man of independent means formed a delightful contrast to the old days of poverty and constant struggle, with nothing more inspiring ahead than a succession of years of continuous teaching, and then old age and uselessness, and a small pittance at the end. she felt grateful to arnott for having saved her from that. the arnotts lived at wynberg, that beautiful suburb of cape town; a place of tree-lined avenues and shady woods, dominated by the grand old mountain, its bosky slopes presenting every varying shade of colour as the seasons came and passed; its grey summit, gilded by the sunlight or shrouded softly in billowy mists, standing out against the blue remoteness of the heavens, an eternal symbol of imperishable greatness which the sea in its retreat has left in a grand isolation towering over the city and the outlying districts spreading away at its base. pamela was the proud and happy mistress of a fine house, and a staff of inefficient native servants. she had tried the european variety, but found them too superior, and so had fallen back on the native article whose inefficiency was qualified by unfailing good temper, though the system of british training and education was making them fairly independent too. in the years to come the dark man will compete with the white man and question his authority, perhaps even his right to rule in the land which is the heritage of the seed of ham. the early history of africa is written in blood, and its history is still in its infancy. arnott was not particularly popular in wynberg: he was too reserved to make friends easily; but his hospitality was lavish and attracted people to the house; and his wife was a general favourite. men admired her for her sparkling prettiness, and women took to her readily: she was easy to get on with, and she gave pleasant parties. she did not, however, form particular friendships with her own sex; she was a little shy with women and preferred male society, which is not unusual in the case of a woman whose life has been spent in schoolrooms in the unexciting transition from student to teacher, surrounded always with an atmosphere of immature femininity. pamela never quite grasped the feminine mind, and had little sympathy with its restricted outlook. this inability to comprehend the sex of which she was a representative, she attributed to the fact that, having been saturated with feminine principles from her youth up, she had become so confused with its mass of inconsistencies that she failed utterly to realise its finer qualities. the brain of the woman teacher is usually developed on one-sided lines. indeed, the chief failing of the average woman lies in the fact that she refuses to look at life all round, but persists in regarding it from her sole point of view; and the point of the woman is to ignore realities if by chance they happen to affront her. a want of sincerity therefore mars the beautiful vision of life. pamela did not consciously look at life from any particular point. so far the world had treated her well; and she accepted the pleasant condition of things, and was undemonstratively grateful. one cloud there was in her serene sky of happiness, and that was that she had no son; the pretty little girl in the nursery had been a disappointment. arnott, himself, had not desired children: the birth of the baby had vexed him, and pamela's hunger for a male addition was a further aggravation. he could not understand, he told her, why one kid would not suffice. children were a responsibility, and gave more trouble than pleasure. certainly he derived no pleasure from his child, and pamela was very careful that it should not be a trouble to him. she seldom had the child with her when he was present: small children possibly worried him, she decided; when the baby grew older she would make a place for herself in his heart. "and then," she reflected, with a little rueful smile, "my nose will be out of joint." it was odd what a pang this prospective jealousy caused her. she could not bear the thought of sharing her husband's love, even with her child. and yet there was room in her own heart for both. "i am so happy, herbert," she said, as they paced the garden path together in the summer dusk. "it doesn't seem right, somehow, to be so entirely satisfied. i feel at times that it is too good to last. how can it? one can't go on being happy for ever." "why not?" he said gruffly. "so long as one has health one can always enjoy." "ah! but it needs more than health," she returned. "we have such a lot of other things. surely we shall be required to pay back some day?" "rot!" he answered testily. "why should one pay for one's rights? happiness is a right. we've got it. we'll keep it. hold fast to it, little girl, and don't encourage morbid superstition." he stood still in the path, and took her face between his hands, and held it so, imprisoned. "by god!" he cried, with sudden, swift vehemence, "no power on earth shall wrest mine from me. my happiness is bound up in you, and only death can take it from me. you aren't going to escape me that way, pam,--you are so exuberantly alive." pamela laughed softly, and twined her arms about his neck, drawing closer to him. "but you'd love me sick, dear?" she said... "you'd love me sick just the same? if you were bed-ridden i'd only love you the more tenderly." "fishing as usual," he returned, and kissed her. "a fine emotional scene for a middle-aged married man. one would suppose we had been married five months instead of five good years." "five good years!" pamela repeated, and added presently, "and they have been good. i wonder if i had never met you what i should be doing now?" "you'd have met some one else," he answered. "matrimony is so much more your forte than anything else." "and you?" she hazarded. "would you have met some one too?" "no," he replied with a convincing directness which gratified her immensely, so that she desired to kiss him again, and only refrained from fear of irritating him with an excess of emotionalism. "i didn't set out with that idea in my mind. i should be exploring the interior, as i purposed doing--and probably have become a physical wreck with fever and other ills. you saved me from that when you bewitched me on the outward voyage." "i didn't know i was doing it," she returned, with a quiet, satisfied laugh. "you were such a grave, reserved person. i always felt proud when you came and talked with me." "you don't feel that now," he said banteringly. "not proud, no." she slipped a hand into his. "but happy always," she said, pressing his hand. "not so bad an admission after five years of it," he remarked with reflective complacency. "i take it that proves fairly conclusively that we were meant for each other. i don't profess to understand this old riddle of a universe, pam; but i've grasped the human need at least; and it doesn't fit in with the world's decree that the individual should be judged according to established custom. the entire social scheme, with its restrictions and its definite rules, is nothing but a well-intentioned muddle. at the back of the new law stands the great primeval laws which refuse to be set aside." he broke off abruptly with a short, constrained laugh, and added jerkily: "which windy exposition, reduced to bald commonplace, amounts to the certainty that, having discovered my need of you and your need of me, we were bound to come together whatever forces opposed... you believe that, pamela?" "i--don't--know," pamela answered slowly. she turned her face and searched his by the faint light of the stars. "i'm glad there weren't any opposing forces," she said. "little coward!" he responded in lighter tones... "i would face any amount of opposition for you." "now--yes," pamela answered. "so could i for you. but--before we were married... i don't know..." chapter two. it was the fifth anniversary of the arnott's wedding, and arnott had presented his wife with the customary present of jewellery: on this occasion it took the form of a rope of pearls. pamela wore the pearls at the anniversary dinner, which function also had become a custom. it was the one entertainment during the year to which pamela limited her invitations to the guests she especially liked; and with her careful selection was also particular in limiting the numbers. on this day, if on no other, she informed her husband, she insisted upon enjoying herself. arnott was quite satisfied to leave the arrangements to her; and it often transpired that he did not know who his guests were to be until they arrived. but on the day in question he did an entirely unforeseen thing, and astonished pamela with the announcement--made while drinking tea on the stoep, and eating wedding-cake, which pamela considered indispensable to the day--that he had met a man in town he knew and had asked him to dine. "but," gasped pamela, "did you _forget_ what day it is?" "i haven't had a chance of forgetting," he replied, smiling. "dare won't clash with the harmony. i think you'll like him." "oh, like him!" she said. "that isn't the point. he'll be an odd man. i can't possibly ask any one to fill up at the eleventh hour. and--good gracious, herbert!--he'll bring our numbers up to thirteen. what a deplorable thing for you to have done!" he looked amused. "why shouldn't thirteen people be as jolly as twelve?" he asked. "you aren't going to make me believe that you are silly enough to feel superstitious about it; because, if you are, i'll sit out." "that would spoil everything for me," she said. "i don't know that i'm exactly superstitious; but other people are; and some one may not like it. it's--unfortunate." "i'll motor to the mount nelson and put him off, if you like," he suggested. but pamela negatived this. "he'd think it so queer," she objected. "not he. but he would probably conclude i was henpecked." "let him come," said pamela resignedly. "perhaps no one will notice at a round table that we make such an awkward total. but the next time you do a thing like that, do make it a pair." pamela dressed early. she had a new frock for the occasion, white and soft and unrelieved by any colour, and she wore for her sole ornament her husband's gift of pearls. arnott surveyed her with critical appreciation when she entered the drawing-room. he held her by the arms under the electric light. "by jove! pam, you look prettier to-night than i've ever seen you look," he remarked. "i'm proud of you." she lifted her face to be kissed. "just one--on the lips," she said. "you mustn't crumple me." in the dining-room on the other side of the hall the dinner-table was already rearranged to accommodate the additional guest. a caterer from cape town was responsible for everything; so pamela had no anxiety in regard to the entertainment, and felt almost a guest herself. it was such a delightfully easy way of entertaining. she had peeped into the room to inspect the table decorations, and expressed herself charmed with the whole effect. the floral design was perfect. this mode of giving parties without any trouble, and not even being worried with the bills, which she never saw, was very agreeable. pamela's mind reverted often to the schoolroom days, to the prize award functions, and other entertainments of similar dulness, needing much weary preparation, and she wondered if she had ever really enjoyed those things. at the time, though often tired out with the business of organising and assisting, she had thought them pleasant enough. but she could not go back to that sort of thing, not now. prosperity had killed her appreciation of simple pleasures. the guests began to arrive. dare was the last. he was indeed rather late, which pamela thought was rude of him, until he explained that his taxi had broken down on the road. he did not make his apology immediately; it came out later in the course of conversation. at the moment of meeting his hostess the thing slipped from his mind. he showed surprise when first confronted with her. it was a very brief betrayal, just a momentary unexpected flash of something which looked like recognition in his grey-blue eyes. it passed almost immediately before she could be certain it had been there; his face was mask-like in its gravity as he shook hands with her. he murmured something. pamela did not quite catch what he said; but the main drift of the remark was to the effect that he appreciated the kindness which gave him this opportunity of meeting her in her home. she thought him rather abrupt, and decided that he would not add greatly to the general amusement. later, she modified this opinion, because, despite a severe appearance and the slight awkwardness he displayed on entering, he proved an excellent conversationalist. he was a tall man in the early thirties, rather thin, with a clever face, and light keen, extraordinarily penetrating eyes. by profession he was a mining engineer, and arnott had described him as a particularly smart man at his job. he had met him in cape town before his marriage, and had run across him again that day unexpectedly after the lapse of years. the invitation to dinner had been prompted by impulse; he had no particular feeling of friendship for the man. dare, who was often in cape town, was acquainted with some of the guests present. the carruthers, who were neighbours of the arnotts, and with whom pamela was on terms of greater intimacy than with the majority of her large circle of friends, had known him for years. mrs carruthers had once thought of marrying him before she met carruthers, misled by a certain deferential kindliness he displayed towards all women, being naturally fond of the sex, into thinking he cared for her. she still flirted mildly with him on the occasions when they met; but she had grown out of the belief that her marriage mattered to him. "i didn't expect to see you here," she remarked, when he sought her out after dinner and suggested a stroll in the grounds. "i did not think you knew the arnotts." "i knew arnott years ago, before he was married," he answered. "then you haven't met her before? ... they've been married five years." "so long ago as that, was it?" he observed meditatively. "she is very sweet looking." "yes; she is pretty," mrs carruthers allowed. "they are the most devoted couple in the peninsula." "what's amiss between you and dick?" he asked. "oh!" she laughed. "i never worshipped dickie quite so blindly as that. the arnotts' is the only case of perennial courtship i've ever been privileged to witness... but after all five years is but a step of the journey." "i should think a man could continue in love indefinitely with a woman like mrs arnott," he remarked. "if time stood still for her, perhaps," she conceded. "but she won't always be pretty." "she will always be sweet," he returned. "i don't set great store by looks myself. but i like a woman to be amiable; and a sweet expression suggests a sweet disposition." "it may suggest it; it doesn't necessarily prove that it's there." "leave me a few of my pleasant beliefs," he pleaded. "it's an old-fashioned notion, but i like to think that the world is a good place, and human nature on the whole inclined to charity. it's a much more comfortable theory than the deliberately cultivated scepticism towards the disinterestedness of human motives. i like to think that what looks sweet, is sweet; just as i like to believe that when a woman is kind to me it is because she feels kindly. that is why i always enjoy being with you." "by which subtle flattery you force me to sheathe my claws, and make an effort towards being amiable. you haven't altered much." "nor have you," he returned, smiling. "and amiability being one of your many admirable qualities, the effort you propose making on my behalf won't cost you much." since the time of year was unsuited to sitting indoors, the arnotts had had the grounds lighted, and engaged some musicians to play at intervals during the evening. pamela, who possessed a very fine contralto voice, sang once towards the finish of the evening, standing on the brilliantly lighted stoep outside the drawing-room windows, a fair, radiant, girlish figure, singing with extraordinary passion that seductive song from saint-saens' "samson et dalila," "_mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix_." dare, a little apart from the rest, took up his position beside a tall bush of gardenias and listened with absorbed attention until the finish of the song, his keen eyes never leaving the singer's face, lost in a wondering rapture of admiration for the singer as much as for the song. "_ah! reponds a ma tendresse_..." the seductive words, the seductive tones, thrilled him. he was samson listening to delilah,--a delilah sweet and charming and womanly, without the sting of poison in her passionate entreating. when the song ended he still remained motionless, not joining in the applause which followed, heedless of everything about him, conscious only of one fair girlish face, of a pair of limpid eyes, blue as the african sky itself, and of the tender curve of sweet lips made for laughter. for five years he had been searching for this face, and he found it here--the centre jewel in another man's crown of happiness. "_her price is far above rubies; the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her; her children rise up and call her blessed_..." involuntarily the words came to his mind with a sense of their appropriateness. where had he heard them? he did not know. but assuredly they were written for her. he turned his head and glanced at the people near him. with the finish of the song they had started talking again, carrying on the conversations which the music had interrupted. no one seemed to have been impressed, as he had been, with the moving power of the seductive voice. possibly they had heard it often before: he heard it for the first time, and felt profoundly stirred. when he looked round again she had moved away, and formed one of a gay group on the stoep. he waited until she left this group, then, when he saw her alone for a moment, he seized his chance and joined her. her guests had been pressing her to sing again, but she declined. for some reason dare was glad she refused. he wanted no other song, perhaps with an altogether different sentiment, to sweep away the emotions which the first song had produced in his soul. he was oddly stirred and excited, moved out of his ordinary calm by a sensuous love song finely rendered by a woman who was an artist, and yet surprisingly natural. he did not compliment her on her singing. it was the obvious thing to do; but dare seldom did the obvious. if he could have thanked her in his own way for the pleasure she had given, that would have been an altogether different matter. but his way was not consistent with twentieth-century customs, nor was it practicable in the case of a married woman in the company of her husband and friends. "i've been exploring your beautiful grounds, mrs arnott," he said. "what a delightful place you have here." "yes; isn't it?" returned pamela, with ingenuous pride in her home. "i'm so glad you like it. i love it." "i'm sure you must," he replied. "you must come and see the garden in the day time," she added graciously. "from the lawn the view of the mountain is very fine,--if you admire the mountain. i never tire of watching it. it adapts itself to one's mood. or perhaps i should say its varying aspects affect one's mood. i sit out there and study it for hours at a stretch." "i should like to do that," he said. "well, you shall, if you care to. i like to share my mountain." "do you ever visit johannesburg?" he asked. "i haven't been there yet." "you ought to," he said. "it is an interesting city. there are some nice homes there, too--and gardens." "you have a good garden, i suppose?" pamela said. "you must have, because you appreciate them." "ah! there are plenty of things which i appreciate that i haven't got," he replied. "i am a bachelor, and live at hotels--when i'm above ground," he added with a smile. "a fairly unenviable existence, eh?" "why not change all that, and marry?" she suggested. he regarded her contemplatively for a second, and then looked deliberately away. "i don't fancy i belong to the marrying sort," he said. "oh, nonsense!" returned pamela brightly. "every one is the marrying sort when he meets the right person." "yes! then i imagine the right person hasn't revealed herself." "you should go in search of her," she said. "i did once--five years ago." "yes?" pamela looked at him with a gleam of feminine interest in her deep eyes. "five years ago you went in search of her... and then?..." "she had run away," he said, "and was married to some one else." "oh!" her voice had a disappointed ring. this that she was hearing was altogether the wrong kind of a finish to an interesting romance. "then she wasn't the right person after all." "she was for me," he replied with quiet conviction. "but, you see, both sides have a voice in these matters." "but if she didn't care for you, she couldn't have been the right person," she insisted. "believe me, the right person is waiting somewhere." "in that case," he said lightly, "when we meet i shall doubtless recognise her. i won't give her the chance to run away a second time. a man who is dilatory in his love affairs deserves to spend his days underground and his nights in hotels. i'm not complaining." suddenly she laughed. "i don't believe you are the least bit in earnest," she observed. "you are one of these contradictory people who look serious, and are always laughing at life." he scrutinised the smiling face with added interest. "i don't as a rule take life seriously," he returned,--"and a very good rule too. if i am not mistaken, mrs arnott, it is a rule you practise yourself." "i don't know about that," pamela said in her bright, young voice. "i take each day as it comes, and make the most of it. that's the best way, really." "for you, perhaps," he answered. "but some of us would have a dull time if we had no to-morrow in contemplation. i have no quarrel with to-day, for instance; but there are days in my life i could cheerfully wipe off the calendar." "there used to be those kind of days in my life once," she rejoined. she looked up at him, smiling, so radiant in her gladness that he was forced to smile in sympathy with it. "they make the present so much jollier," she said. "you enjoy by comparison," he returned. "i suppose that's it--in a way; yes. when you have followed my advice you will do that too." "the same prescription doesn't fit every case," he ventured. "it doesn't cure every complaint," she allowed; "but it will cure yours." "mine being?" he asked with an uplift of the brows. "loneliness." he laughed at this diagnosis, and pamela laughed with him. "no woman ought to prescribe for that complaint," he said, "unless she is prepared to provide the remedy." "ah! the patient has to find that for himself." "and suppose it happens to be out of his reach?--suppose it runs away?" pamela looked thoughtful. "there's an endless supply of the remedy always at hand," she returned presently. "that's merely another version of the fishes in the sea," he answered. "but when i've shaped my appetite to sole, mackerel is no substitute. i've hauled in my line... i think you might have offered more original advice than that," he added, slightly aggrieved. "i wash my hands of your case," she said. "you aren't needing advice. you are entirely satisfied with your life as it is." "yes," he agreed. "i am borrowing a leaf from your book and enjoying the now." chapter three. the following afternoon dare called upon pamela, and was glad to find her at home and alone. he was returning the next day to johannesburg, he explained, and was not likely to be in cape town again for some time. pamela entertained him in the garden, and gave him tea under the trees on the lawn. she expressed regret for her husband's absence: he had motored into town, and would not be home before seven. "he will be so sorry to miss you," she said. "you had better stay and dine with us." he thanked her, but declined the invitation, pleading a prior engagement. the absence of arnott occurred to him as rather an agreeable accident; mrs arnott's sole company was sufficient for his enjoyment. she chatted inconsequently while she poured out the tea, and he watched her, and admired again, as he had admired on the previous night, the sweet expression of her face, her air of joyous youth. in the daylight she was less radiantly pretty than she had appeared by artificial light; possibly, he decided, evening dress was more becoming to her than day-wear; but she was fair enough in any guise to excite admiration. dare would have admired her sweet expression had she been otherwise plain of feature; it was in his opinion beautiful of itself. "do you know, i've seen you before last night," he said, as he stirred his tea, and contemplated her gravely across the little table that was drawn up beside her chair. "seen me before?" she repeated, surprised. "where?" "were you ever in port elizabeth?" he asked. "yes, of course. i was teaching there. but that was five years ago." "i saw you there," he answered,--"five years ago." pamela's blue eyes opened wide. she scrutinised him closely, and shook her head. "i don't remember," she said. "you wouldn't," he replied. he helped himself to cake, and resumed in a careless manner: "it was at a tennis tournament. you were in the stand, and i was playing in the men's singles." "did you win?" she asked. he smiled. "no; i played rottenly. i came in defeated, and sat in the stand near you." "if you had won," she said, "i might possibly have noticed you." "it would be kinder," he said, "if you spared defeat a few of your glances. you shook hands with the winner." "how horrid of me!" she cried. "oh! well, he was a p.e. man. i expect you were pleased he carried off the honours. i had to go back immediately; i went by the night train. soon afterwards i was back in port elizabeth. i didn't see you on that occasion." pamela looked away from him, and gazed thoughtfully above the trees at the mountain which towered high above them, blue in the afternoon sunlight, with dark purple shadows in its cleft sides that deepened into black. "i married just about that time," she said. "so i heard." she glanced at him curiously. "you seem to have known quite a lot about me," she said. "it's funny hearing all this now." "yes," he agreed. "odd to have run up against you like this! i knew you again at once." "you have a good memory for faces," she observed. "i feel i ought to have recognised you." "ah! but i was defeated," he reminded her smilingly,--"defeated all round. and there was no reason why you should have noticed a stranger particularly. they were pretty well all strange faces to me, you see; and i was amusing myself by picking out a few. it's a habit of mine. i fix on a face and construct a story in connection with it." "did you construct a story about me?" "i forget," he returned evasively. "quite possibly i did... but it was entirely wrong, anyway. when a man constructs a story in connection with a girl's face, he doesn't provide her with a lover, unless--" "unless?" prompted pamela. she was faintly amused with the halting recital which showed a tendency to break off at the most interesting points. she glanced at him with a laugh in her eyes, and repeated encouragingly: "unless?" "well, the answer is fairly obvious," he replied, smiling too. "do you want me to go on?" "no," she said, and flushed and looked away again, but the laughter was still in her eyes. "i think i can imagine the rest." "it shouldn't require a great mental strain," he returned. "if you amuse yourself in that fashion," pamela remarked, "what a lot of exciting adventures you can contrive." "make-believe adventures of that nature aren't exciting," he said. "they're the last word in dulness really,--the substitute for the real thing. sitting talking with you here is infinitely pleasanter than weaving impossible romances. certainly, when one is stage-managing, one can have things all one's own way; but it's a bloodless form of amusement." "do you still visit port elizabeth--for the tennis tournament?" she asked. "no; that defeat of mine sickened me. i've done with competing. it's the younger men's turn now." pamela looked amused. "you are very easily discouraged," she said. "i don't think i altogether admire that easy acquiescence in failure: it's not a british characteristic." "perhaps not," he allowed. "but when one has suffered the knock-out blow it's idiotic to enter the ring again." at this junction pamela's little girl, eluding her coloured nurse, ran across the lawn towards her mother, having espied the tea-table from afar. in her eagerness for cake she overlooked the stranger, until abruptly made aware of his presence as she hurled her plump body into pamela's arms. the sight of the strange man sobered her gladness with surprising suddenness. the bright head dropped swiftly, and the flushed, shy little face buried itself in pamela's dress. dare smiled. there was no doubt as to the child's identity; pamela the second was pamela the first in miniature. "somebody's come for cake," said pamela, and tried to lift the hidden face from its resting place; but the child resisted her attempts. "and somebody's got a nasty shock," dare added, as he cut a slice of the most tempting dainty on the table and held it out invitingly. "won't you come and make friends?" but pamela the second merely peeped at him like a shy, inquisitive bird, and nestled closer in the sheltering arms. experience, in the form of her father, had led her to be distrustful of men. "see, pamela," coaxed her mother; "mr dare has a beautiful slice of cake for you. see!" "don't want it," pamela pouted. "but that's rude," remarked pamela the first. "you mustn't be naughty." "oh, don't!" pleaded dare. "you only prejudice my chances." he leaned over her chair, and placed the slice of cake in the chubby hand which opened and closed upon it shyly. "i'm awfully fond of cake too, pamela," he said. "you eat that piece, and i'll eat a piece; and we'll see who gets through first." "you'll ruin her digestion," pamela the elder observed with smiling reproof, while pamela the younger set her small teeth in the cake and munched it with evident appreciation. while she ate, she kept a suspicious but interested eye on the stranger, who was eating cake also with apparent whole-hearted enjoyment. to pamela the second's delight the stranger's slice failed to disappear as rapidly as her own. "you've won," he cried, as the last mouthful was crammed with unfair haste upon its unmasticated predecessor. pamela the second licked her small fingers and laughed because the stranger was beaten and looked so sorry about it too. she hoped he was going to cry. "let's try again," he suggested, and cut a second and smaller slice. pamela scrambled down from her mother's lap and approached near to him, leaning with her small sticky hands on his knees, and her greedy blue eyes on the cake. "try again!" she repeated delightedly, and held out an eager hand. "it is just as well," remarked pamela the first, "that this doesn't happen often." she met his eyes over the child's bright head and returned their quiet smile. in making his bid for baby favours he was gaining more than he guessed. before the second piece of cake was finished, pamela the second was seated on his knee; and because he was badly beaten this time also, and seemed to mind his defeat even more than before, she rested her head contentedly against his sleeve, and evinced entire satisfaction at his expressions of disappointment. pamela the second was hard-hearted and crowed loudly over her success. "i think you may claim to have won this time," said pamela the first, watching the child's friendly response to his overtures with pleased, surprised eyes. he caught the reference. "through another defeat," he said, "yes." "it is a greater victory than you imagine," she added. "i have never known her won over by your sex before. you are accustomed to children?" "not accustomed,--little people don't come my way; but i'm in sympathy with them. my tastes are infantile, you see." he rose shortly afterwards and took his departure. pamela the second had gone off in pursuit of other diversion: pamela the first accompanied him to the gate. "i am sorry you are going back so soon," she said as she shook hands with him. "i don't feel as though we were new acquaintances. i seem to know you quite well." "five years," he returned... "i regard the friendship as dating from then. we are quite old friends really." "it's odd," she said, and laughed. "i am going to adopt your view. if you have known me for five years, it stands to reason that i must have known you too. good-bye. be sure to look us up when you come this way again." he looked into her eyes with a protracted, earnest gaze, and hesitated. "i don't know when that will be," he answered slowly. "i don't anticipate coming this way again for some while. when i do, you may be very sure of one thing,--that i shall look you up." pamela went back to her seat under the trees, and thought about him for the rest of the afternoon. there was something--she could not define it satisfactorily--in the man's personality that attracted her: she had never met any one before with whom she had felt so quickly at home. he was companionable and sympathetic. the odd mixture of serio-comic in his conversation left her slightly in doubt as to the entire sincerity of all he said; but this only further piqued her interest. it was possible to imagine him clothing in flippant language his deepest feelings with a view to disguising their earnestness. she could not conceive him ever betraying emotion. abruptly she roused herself with a laugh, and consulted the watch at her wrist. "seven o'clock!" she mused. "a nice thing for a married woman to devote nearly two hours in a sentimental reverie about a stranger!" she went indoors to change her dress. arnott returned while she was upstairs. she heard him go to his dressing-room, and after a while he crossed the landing to her room, hesitated at the door, and finally entered. she observed that he was looking worried again. he appeared excited and irritable, and a restlessness most unusual in him kept him constantly on the move. he fingered things on the dressing-table, and brushed aside impatiently any article that came in his way. pamela wondered what it was that worried him so of late, but she did not like to question him. this worry harassed him usually on mail days. she was beginning to connect the trouble with his english letters. but for the fact that he never showed any anxiety with regard to their expenses, she would have concluded that he was financially embarrassed. but not once had he suggested to her that it would be wise to practise economy. he was, as a matter of fact, far more extravagant than she was. he spent money with the careless indifference of a man whose banking account more than sufficed for his needs. "mr dare called this afternoon," remarked pamela, watching her husband as he fidgeted at her dressing-table. "he leaves cape town to-morrow. i thought you might like to see him, so i asked him to dine." he faced round abruptly and stared at her, frowning and displeased. "he isn't coming," she added, meeting his vexed gaze, and feeling for the first time glad that dare had refused the invitation. "he was engaged for to-night." "i'm not sorry," he said, looking immeasurably relieved. "i'd rather have a quiet evening with you, pam. last night tired me; i'm feeling cheap." "it was thoughtless of me to have asked him," said pamela contritely. "but it's all right, as it happens. we'll have a darby and joan dinner, and you shall be as surly as you please, and sit and smoke all the evening. there." he pinched her ear. "i'll take you at your word one of these days; and you'll see what a bear i can be." pamela slipped her hand through his arm and they left the bedroom together. although she had made a joke of the quiet evening they would spend, she knew quite well that he would sit as she had promised he should, silent and abstracted, so lost in gloomy thought that he would seem oblivious of her presence. she had seen him in this mood frequently of late, and had grown familiar with the symptoms. at dinner, quietly observant of him, she noticed that he ate scarcely anything; but he drank more than usual. when he exceeded his customary allowance, it did not loosen his tongue; he became morosely silent, and betrayed a tendency towards irritability if spoken to. pamela was a tactful woman, and knew when to be silent. but she was beginning to resent her husband's want of confidence in her. if there was a secret worry that pressed upon his mind so that it threatened to become a serious trouble, he ought to share it with her. his silence showed a lack of trust. surely by now he ought to realise that her love was sufficiently strong to help her to understand and sympathise with him in any trouble that might overtake him. she desired to share his full confidence, to have the strength of her love put to the test. there was no shadow of doubt in her own mind that it would rise to meet any occasion. a love which is entirely strong has no fear of the fire. "to-morrow," she told herself, and stilled a cowardly impulse to put the date further off, "when he is more himself, i will ask him to trust me." then she got up quietly, moved to the back of his chair, and kissed him on his forehead. he made no direct response, but his eyes, as they followed her from the room, were alight with a passionate hunger that quenched in its fiercer fire the slightly furtive expression of dread which marred their ordinary frankness. chapter four. the morning found arnott recovered from his overnight depression; and pamela's determination to inquire into things was less positive than on the previous evening. on reflection she decided to wait a little longer. perhaps if she waited he would broach the matter himself. it might be that she was exaggerating the importance of this thing. in any case she would exercise patience and see what the next mail day brought forth; if his letters caused him annoyance again she would ask him to confide in her the nature of this worry which, while not allowed to share it, was becoming her trouble too. she could not look on and see him bothered without feeling bothered in a measure also; and her entire ignorance as to the nature of the trouble was worrying of itself. pamela held modern ideas as to a wife's right to share her husband's confidence. marriage unless a mental as well as a physical union was no marriage in her opinion. she desired to face life at her husband's side, and take all that it offered fearlessly, the bad as well as the good. it had been all good up to the present; but no sky is always cloudless: eternal sunshine would dry up the generous fountains of life, as unbroken happiness will narrow the sympathies and shrivel the best emotions of the heart. pamela had a healthy appreciation of the blue skies, but she was not in the least afraid of the rain. so long as she had her husband's love, so long as they were together, she believed that she could meet any trouble, bear any sorrow bravely in the strengthening knowledge of his great love for her. so long as they were together... she dwelt on that thought, smiling and confident. they were together, that was very certain; it seemed equally certain that nothing could happen to separate them. it was indeed such an assured impossibility that she encouraged herself to consider it for the pleasure of proving its absurdity. herbert, himself, had declared that only death could divide them; and at twenty-six death looms very indistinct along the vista of years. wandering in the garden, waiting for her husband who was going to motor her out to sea point, pamela speculated on these things with the easy optimism natural to her, and indulged the happy conceit of creating purely imaginary and highly impossible situations for the satisfaction of filling them effectively,--a habit of make-believe which endured from schoolroom days. the appearance of the postman in the drive awoke her from her dreaming to the realisation that the morning was slipping away. something must be detaining herbert, possibly something to do with the car. she took the letters from the postman and went indoors. one of the letters was for herself. it was addressed to her in her name before she married, the name she had neither signed nor seen written for five years. it puzzled her that the writer of the letter should be familiar with her present address and yet be ignorant of her change of name. she could not recall having seen the handwriting before. the postmark was london. it was doubtless due to the mistake in the name on the envelope that the letter had not found its way into arnott's box at the post office, and so have been collected by him when he fetched his own letters on the previous evening. she went into the sitting-room, and seated herself near the window, and turned the envelope about in her hands. flailing to identify her correspondent from the superscription, she finally opened it, and withdrawing the closely written sheet of foreign paper, glanced first at the signature. "lucy arnott" was written in clear, firm characters at the foot of the page. pamela's amazement was unbounded. who was lucy arnott? and why should a connection of her husband address her as miss horton? she concluded that it must be a connection of her husband; it was such an unlikely accident that a stranger of the same name would write to her. curious, and vaguely troubled, pamela began to read. she read the letter through, read with white, set face, and a mind which failed to grasp the significance of what the cold, formal phrases expressed with perfect lucidity. it occurred to her that the thing was a cruel hoax, a wicked, malicious lie. she could not credit the truth of the writer's assertion that she was herbert arnott's lawful wife, and that therefore pamela was not a wife at all--was not legally married... pamela tried to realise this abomination, and then thrust the horror from her as too terrible for credence. it could not be. she knew that she was married. she had her marriage certificate. everything had been done in order. whoever lucy arnott was, she could not disprove that. "i don't know," the writer said, "whether you were aware of my existence when you consented to pose as herbert's wife. i only heard recently that he was living with a wife at wynberg; therefore i cannot judge whether you have been deceived, or are simply a willing accomplice. if it is a case of deception, you have my sympathy; if the latter, you will not need, and would not appreciate, it. i may state at once, in the event of your cherishing the hope that i will divorce him, that i have no intention of doing so. i have no respect for the divorce laws, which are man-made and for their own convenience, and i have no wish to have my name dragged before the public. i shall take no proceedings against herbert; it is a matter of entire indifference to me what he does, or how he lives. after this letter you will not hear from me again. having informed you of what i felt it right you should know, i leave it to you to act as your conscience dictates. if, as i am inclined to fear from a too intimate knowledge of herbert's character, you have been cruelly duped, you may, if you stand in need of a friend, count on me as a woman who has suffered also at the same hands and can therefore feel for another." pamela sat with the letter in her lap and stared at the page unseeingly. a little choking sound escaped her; it was scarcely a sob, more nearly it resembled a catching of the breath. she made no other sound. for a long while she sat there motionless, holding the letter in her lap between her limp, shaking hands. it wasn't true... it couldn't be true... this thought reiterated itself persistently in her bewildered mind; but behind the thought, companioning it always, a doubt chilled her unbelief in the writer's veracity,--a doubt which came, and came again, until finally it asserted its right to a place in her thoughts; and instead of the reiterated: it can't be true, the phrase shaped itself: suppose this thing were true? suppose this were the secret worry which had troubled herbert's peace of late... and then suddenly she heard his voice calling her name, and, looking up, saw him advancing towards her along the stoep. he was looking hot and slightly out of humour. he had taken off his cap in order to cool his brow; he carried it in his hand. "it's no go, pam," he said; "the drive is off for this morning. there is something wrong with the engine. it's beyond me; the car will have to go into town for repair." he came up to the window, and stood in the aperture, and gazed at her in surprise. never had he seen pamela wear such a look as she wore then. her face was white; the blue eyes, dilated and dark with pain, stared back into his own with the dazed, unseeing look of a sleep-walker. for the moment he believed she was ill; and he stepped through the window hurriedly and bent over her with anxious solicitude. "pam!" he said... "my dear, what is it?" then his eyes fell on the letter in her hands, and his face reddened and then went very white. it was evident that the handwriting was perfectly familiar to him. pamela put the letter into his hand. "read it," she said dully. "good god!" he cried, and turned the thing he held in hands only a little less unsteady than her own. "how did you get hold of this?" "it came by the post--just now." "damn!" he muttered under his breath, and read the letter deliberately. when he had read it he crushed it in his palm and thrust it into his pocket. "i would have died sooner than you had read this," he said. he made no attempt, she observed, to refute the charge. somehow she had not expected him to; from the moment when his eye had fallen upon the letter she realised that the information contained in it was true. his first wife was not dead. "why didn't you tell me?" she said. she looked at him resentfully with her darkened, pain-filled eyes. "it wasn't fair to me... you've cheated me... you--oh!" she broke off piteously, and looked away from him out through the window; and he saw that she was weeping. the tears ran down her cheeks, and splashed unheeded on the hands that lay clenched in her lap and made no move to check the bitter rain. arnott turned his eyes from the piteous face. "i couldn't tell you," he muttered... "i loved you. i dared not risk losing you,--and i believed you would never know." "it's--bigamy," she said, and caught her breath again sharply. "yes." his voice was sullen. "but that's punishable," pamela said, and scrutinised him with wide, distressed eyes... "isn't it?" "yes." he made a sudden movement. before she could stay him he was on his knees beside her, with his arms about her, holding her closely. "i wanted you so badly," he said. "it was the only way. oh! pamela, believe me, i never meant to hurt you... i never meant you to know. my dear--oh! my dear, don't turn from me. forget that you've read that letter,--forget that you ever received it. let things be as they were before." "but they can't be," she insisted. "i'm not--" she broke off and stared at him, frightened and dismayed. "i'm not even _married_," she added, the horror of this truth revealing itself in her tones. "you are," he asserted sullenly. "i married you..." "but you couldn't," she persisted, "with your wife alive. the law can punish you for bigamy." "do you want the law to punish me?" he asked. "no," she said. "that wouldn't help me. and... there's the child." he frowned. "you are distressing yourself unnecessarily, pamela," he said. "there is no difference really. you felt quite secure until to-day. your position is as assured now as it ever was. you are more my wife than the woman who wrote that letter. she has a legal right to my name; but we were never mated as you and i are. my first marriage was a bitter mistake which i have ceased to consider long ago. she stands for nothing in my life. you are everything to me--everything. i'd fight to keep you with my last breath." "you ought not to have done it," pamela said, and wrung her hands. he put his hand over hers and stayed her. "you ought to have left me in peace... what peace is there for me now? any hour this thing may come out. it's not our secret,--yours and mine alone." "it's yours and mine and hers," he said. "she won't speak." "how can you be sure?" pamela cried passionately. "she told me." "yes--damn her!" he returned, and stood up abruptly. "she has been threatening to do that for months. but i thought i could intercept the letter. i never dreamed of her writing to you like this... but she has done what she meant to. she will be silent now." "but things can't go on as they have been," pamela said piteously. "i can't stay here, now i _know_. i--don't you see, herbert?--it wouldn't be right. i should feel--" she shivered suddenly, and broke down again and wept bitterly. "oh, dear heaven!" she wailed. "what am i to do?" "do you mean," he said in a hard voice, "that you think of leaving me?" then, his calmness deserting him, he went to her and took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly. "pamela," he whispered brokenly, "what i have done, i did out of love for you. it may be that i did you a wrong in marrying you; but,--to give you up! ... i couldn't. oh! my dearest, believe me, i have fought hard... i fought against my love for you; but it was too strong; it broke down every barrier. it would have broken me if i could not have had you... dearest, speak to me... tell me that you forgive me,--that you'll stick to me. you can't leave me, pam,--you can't leave me. my dear, i couldn't let you go." pamela freed herself from his embrace, and sat bade looking at him with her miserable tear-blurred eyes. she put up a hand and swept the hair back from her brow. "it wouldn't be right," she said, and stirred restlessly... "i don't know... i must think." she got up and passed him and walked towards the door. he made no attempt to stop her. "i want to be alone," she said slowly... "i want to think..." she passed out, and the man, rising also and looking after her, stood with a heavy frown darkening his face, his shaking hand pulling nervously at his moustache. the blow which he had so long dreaded had fallen like a thunderbolt and threatened to destroy his home. he could not feel sure how pamela would act now that she knew the truth. of her love for him he had no shadow of a doubt; but women like pamela possessed scruples, queer principles of honour which hardened into obstinacy when the question of right manifested itself beyond all argument. when a thing became a matter of conscience with such women, it was all a toss up, he reflected, whether the woman will not deliberately sacrifice herself to her sense of equity. that as a general rule on smaller matters she is less sensitive in regard to points of honour, inclines her in moments of a serious decision to a greater severity. for the life of him he could not determine what pamela would decide to do after reflection. the fact that she had insisted on thinking the thing out alone occurred to him as the first step in a moral victory which might spell disaster to the happiness of both. chapter five. pamela spent the day locked in her room. she held no communication with any one. arnott had no means of discovering how she was passing the time, because on the one occasion when he pleaded for admission she refused to open her door; and he went away troubled and sorely dissatisfied. he left the house and did not return until evening. when she saw him go pamela had a mad impulse to seize the opportunity and escape from him, but she dismissed this idea almost immediately. to run away would be ridiculous: she was quite free to go at any time. and there was the child. the child was her child; it did not belong to its father. that was the one right of the unmarried mother. the child of the dishonoured union belongs as nature intended to the mother. pamela began dimly to understand why herbert had so hated the thought of having children; that at least was a point which counted in his favour. she paced the room at intervals, walking restlessly between the window and the door; but for the greater part of the time she remained seated listlessly in a chair near the open window, staring out at the sunshine, thinking, thinking always, trying to resolve what she ought to do, what she intended doing. the matter rested now between those two points. she had no longer any real doubt as to what she ought to do. every argument she advanced against taking the right step she recognised perfectly as a deliberate oversight of duty in the pursuit of her own happiness. she wanted him so. in despite of the wrong he had done her, she loved him passionately, with a love which attempted to excuse the injury because of the depth of feeling which had moved him to act as he had acted, which held him to her still in defiance of every law. he had sinned out of love for her. was she too going to sin in order to keep him? she realised perfectly that if she went out of his life now, though it might break her heart to leave him, though it would possibly break his, she would save from the wreckage her virtue, her self-respect; to continue to live with him, knowing what she knew, was to become an abandoned woman, a woman of loose morals, the wings of whose happiness would be clipped by the sense of her degradation. she would be a thing in the mire, soiled and ashamed,--arnott's woman, no longer his wife... she broke off in her reflections, weeping passionately. "i couldn't bear it," she moaned. "i couldn't bear it." then, when she grew a little calmer, she faced the alternative. life without him... never to see him again. to live in some place where her story was unknown,--to know that he was alive, in the world somewhere, hungry for her, aching for her, as she would ache for him,--and not be able to go to him,--never to see his face, nor hear his voice again,-never to feel the clasp of his arms, his kisses on her lips... would that be more bearable than the other, she wondered, and shivered at a prospect so utterly bleak and forlorn that she could scarce dwell on it even in her thoughts. how could she face separation from him?--such a death in life for them both? and then began again the struggle, the fight of the soul against the desire of the flesh... that evening pamela went downstairs. she dined with herbert, or rather sat through the meal; she could not eat. neither of them spoke much. once arnott insisted on her drinking a glass of wine. he had noticed her lack of appetite; and he poured the wine into her glass, and stood by her while she drank it. he was keenly observant of her, and careful not to let her see his attentive regard. he wondered whether she had arrived at any decision, whether she would speak about the matter later. he was feverishly anxious to know what was in her mind. if she was bent on leaving him, he was determined to oppose her to the utmost, to exert every art, every argument he could devise to induce her to alter her decision,--to see the thing from his point of view,--to be reasonable. when she left the table, he rose also and followed her from the room. in the hall, at the foot of the stairs, she paused, glanced at him uncertainly, and changing her mind about going upstairs, entered the drawing-room. he followed her and shut the door. "tell me," he said, and stood facing her in the dull glow of the shaded lights, his voice trembling with emotion, body and features tense with the restraint he was bringing to bear on himself, to subdue the anxious desire to hear her speak, to hear her pronounce her verdict, to know the result of that long, miserable, mental struggle which he knew had been taking place in the bedroom from which she had shut him out,--"tell me what you have decided... i can't bear this racking uncertainty any longer, pamela... i can't bear it." pamela looked at him with perplexed, miserable eyes. "i haven't decided," she said, "anything." suddenly her eyes filled with tears, there was a sound of tears in her voice. "i don't know what to do," she moaned. "i've thought, and thought... i can't see a way out." a momentary gleam of triumph leaped into his eyes. he held out his arms. "my dear!" he said. she made no move towards him. she leaned forward, resting her arms on the back of a chair, her gaze fixed on the carpet. "there seems only one thing to do," she resumed in an expressionless voice... "there _is_ only one thing,--no decent minded woman would consider any other course." "you mean parting?" he said, and his face hardened. "yes,--parting," she echoed, and lifted her gaze and scrutinised him intently. "it won't undo the evil; but it sets things right, as far as it is possible to right them now." "look here!" he cried. he went to her and knelt on the chair upon which she leaned and looked up into her face... "could you part from me? ... could you? think what we have been to one another,--all that our love has meant, and then think of being apart,--always,--never seeing one another even... _could_ you do it, pam?" her troubled eyes met his, clouded with a mist of tears. "don't!" she muttered, and put a hand quickly to her throat. "i've been thinking about it--like that all day." "and you can't face it!" he said. he laid a hand firmly upon hers where it rested upon the back of the chair. "my dear... you can't face it... i can't face it. i've looked at the matter all round; and i can't face parting now any better than i could face renunciation five years ago. it's out of the question. it can't be, pamela. we've gone a long way beyond that." "but the other thing,--to stay,--that's impossible too." "no," he asserted. "that's the only thing left us. except for the compunction i feel in the pain this knowledge has brought you, it hasn't altered anything for me. i'm trying to look at it from your point of view. the relative values of our position are not changed for me, you see. when you have recovered from the shock of the revelation, i'm hoping you will see things as i do. nothing is altered really. i have regarded you always sacredly as my dear wife. you will ever remain so to me. nothing can alter that." "but i am not your wife," pamela said. "do you think i can ever forget that, now i know? every time that my eyes meet yours that thought will be in my mind... not you wife,--only your--" "don't say it," he said sharply, and gripped her hand hard. "you are my wife." he spoke with a certain obstinacy, as though his purpose were to insist on her imagination taking hold of realities which she sought to overlook, which were none the less realities to him because he justified them by his own standard in defiance of conventional law. "i'm not going to give you up, pamela. i'm going to keep you. if you left me i should follow you. don't you see that parting for us is impossible? if we loved less it might be easy to talk of parting,--easy to assume a smug respectability, and give up a little for the satisfaction of feeling virtuous. but people don't give up everything for the sake of virtue--and to part now would be giving up everything for you and me." "but i can't," she insisted, "continue to live here--as your wife. it's not only a case of conscience, it's a matter of self-respect. i should _hate_ myself." this was a fresh issue. he had not foreseen this, and he realised his inadequacy to grasp the point; it was too intrinsically feminine for his understanding. he stared at her in baffled perplexity. "do you mean," he began, and paused, scrutinising her tortured face with disconcerted, incredulous eyes. he stood up, and moved away from her, and remained with his back to her, facing the window. then abruptly he faced round again. "what do you want to do?" he asked, his nerves on edge with the intolerable strain. "for god's sake, be reasonable! i can't stand this any longer. do you mean that you want to leave me?" pamela made no answer. she bent forward and leaned her face in her hands and broke into bitter weeping. in a moment he was beside her. he took her in his arms, and drew her head down to his breast, and held her so, still sobbing, with her face hidden in her hands. tenderly he kissed the bright hair. "poor little woman!" he said. she clung to him, sobbing and weeping in his embrace. "oh! i can't," she wailed... "i can't." again the light of victory shone in the man's eyes. he held her more closely. "no," he said; "we couldn't do it... never to meet again! ... we couldn't do it, dear." she drew back from his embrace and, seating herself in the chair, continued to weep hopelessly. he fell on his knees beside her. "i'm a brute to have brought this on you," he muttered. "but i loved you so... dearest heart, say you forgive me." he caught her wrists and pulled her hands from her face and kissed the tear-drenched eyes. "pamela, my darling, forgive me. i meant no harm to you. i never meant you to know." she regarded him with brimming eyes. "oh! i wish," she said, "that i didn't love you so well." he kissed her hands. he had won in this first struggle. with patience, he told himself, he would recover the whole ground. for an hour pamela remained with him, talking the matter threadbare. arnott did most of the talking; pamela listened, acquiescing by her silence to much that he urged in his own defence, occasionally interrupting him, more occasionally disputing a point. gradually he worked round to the subject of their future relations. on this point pamela was more difficult. she held views of her own in regard to that; and the discussion at times took a bitter tone. he pleaded, he argued eloquently, he even offered concessions. he was patient and displayed a tender consideration which moved her to a corresponding tenderness, but did not shake her resolve. they were still at cross purposes when, heavy with fatigue and misery, she arose and announced her intention of going to bed. the discussion, he recognised, would have to be postponed to some future time. this exasperated him; he left that the delay minimised his chances of victory. further wrestling with her conscience might confirm her in her resolution, would inevitably make persuasion more difficult. ultimate victory depended largely on his success in wearing down her scruples before they had time to harden into a conviction of duty. he eyed her resentfully, and bit his lip to keep back the sharp words of reproach which came to his tongue. the puritanical strain in the composition of a good woman was the most baffling factor to cope with; the element of passion became a weak, a futile argument against its frigid strength. "you are punishing me heavily, pamela," he said. she turned towards him slowly. her sad eyes dwelt for a long moment on his face and then looked deliberately away. "my dear, i am not wishing to punish," she said. "it is equally hard for me." "then why..." he began, and paused, irresolute and almost ungovernably angry. "it's monstrous," he muttered. "absurd! we might as well be apart altogether." pamela made no response, but went with a dragging step out of the room, up the stairs to the bedroom where she had spent the tragic hours of that weary day. when he was alone, arnott moved to a chair and seated himself, and remained lost in a gloomy reverie, his sombre gaze fixed sullenly on the floor. the hand of the clock revolved slowly twice round the dial before he roused himself from his bitter reflections. he saw no way out of this muddle. if pamela persisted in her present attitude it meant the end of their happiness together; her daily presence in his home under the conditions she imposed would prove merely an aggravation. arnott's nature was passionate, and his love for pamela was of the quality that refuses to be subdued. he had never practised restraint; the thought was intolerable. the fever of desire which had led to his bigamous marriage still fired his blood, and moved him to passionate rebellion against pamela's decree. he refused to submit to this cold-blooded arrangement. he would have it out with her; he would overcome her scruples; he would,--he must win. he got up, switched off the lights in the room, and passed out into the hall. he switched off the hall light also, and went up the darkened stairs. from beneath the door of pamela's room a thin line of light told him that she was awake. he fancied he heard a movement inside the room, and listened. then deliberately he advanced and tried the door. it was locked. he gritted his teeth, and passed on and entered his dressing-room. for that night at least he had to admit defeat. oddly, at the moment, though smarting with indignation at being thus determinedly denied admittance, he respected her decision, even while bitterly opposed to it,--he respected her. he sat on the edge of his bed and beat softly on the carpet with his foot. a tormenting desire for her gripped him, as it had not gripped him since the days before he had married her--those days when he had recognised how impossible it was for him to do without her, when finally he had flung every consideration aside and gone through the form of a marriage, which he knew was no marriage, because he could not give her up. his need of her now was every whit as insistent as it had been then. its very urgency had broken down every law, razed every barrier: it should, he told himself, surmount also this new obstacle which fate had flung in his path. chapter six. they were difficult days which followed. pamela went about as usual, but she looked white and worn, and evidences of sleepless nights and much weeping disfigured her eyes. arnott, unequal to the tension, decided on a brief separation, and took a trip round the coast. his absence--it was the first time he had gone away without her since their marriage--might bring home to her some realisation of what life would be like if they finally parted. perhaps, when she was alone, when she missed his actual presence, she would relent. if, when he returned, he found her still obdurate he would broach the subject of a more complete separation. he did not seriously believe that she would bring herself to the point of parting irrevocably. as things were, it was more difficult to part now than it would have been in the first shock of revelation. she had had time in which to adjust her mind to the altered conditions, to be called upon to readjust it, to do so late what she had felt she ought to have done at the beginning, and had failed to do, would add a fresh humiliation to the former difficulty, would make the difficulty greater. he felt fairly convinced that she would not willingly leave him, and he meant to force her into compliance by holding out this suggestion as the only possible alternative. pamela received the news of his intended departure with a sense of relief. she too had felt the strain to be well nigh intolerable, more so in view of his increased kindness and consideration for her, which made it so terribly difficult to refuse to listen to his pleading. she welcomed the thought of his absence as a relief from the constant pain and embarrassment of his reproachful presence; but when he was gone she missed him, missed him so sorely that she experienced, as he had hoped she would, a sort of terror at the idea of living without him. almost it seemed to her that the talked-of separation had actually taken place, that he had gone away from her finally, that she would never see him again. a fear took hold of her imagination that he might have gone with the intention of not returning, that this might be his way of avoiding further distresses. perhaps he would write and inform her that he had chosen this means as the best solution of the problem. he had not, she recalled, made any mention of returning. he had stated simply that he couldn't stand it, that he must get away. and she had accepted this without questioning, had felt glad that he should go. she no longer felt glad: she only wanted him back. an aching sense of loneliness oppressed her as the days passed and brought no letter from him. she had expected to hear from him when the boat reached algoa bay. he sent no word until he was as far as durban, then he wrote briefly that he was going on further up the coast. she had no knowledge of his movements after that. he did not write again. in the weeks which followed she had ample time for reflection, time in which to determine her future course of action. she spent long hours in the garden revolving things in her mind, trying to disentangle thoughts and emotions and impulses of right and wrong, trying to sift them and get them into some consecutive order. and always she worked back to the one impassable point, the point which his absence made so distressingly clear, that life apart from him was a sheer impossibility. she could not face it. the long lonely years... and yet to continue to live with him! ... that were to choose evil deliberately. and all their life together would be a lie,--an outward respectability which at any moment was liable to exposure for the sham it was. from the bottom of her heart she wished that she might have remained in ignorance of this horrible truth. then the responsibility of choice would not have been hers. she wanted to keep her happiness and her peace of mind, and that was now impossible. she wanted to continue as herbert's wife, and yet remain virtuous; and she could not; her happiness or her virtue must be sacrificed, the one for the other. pamela prayed for strength and guidance, but her prayers held--as the prayers of many people hold--reservations. she attempted to bargain for the retention of her happiness. she asked to be shown the path of duty clearly, and when it was revealed to her she shut her eyes. there is never great difficulty in seeing the road which is called duty; it shows always direct and straight ahead; but many people turn their backs on it and look in the opposite direction, because the path of duty is an uphill path, and it is not until one has reached the summit that one can appreciate the fairness of the prospect and the exhilarating freshness of the air. pamela stood in the valley, and the steepness and the loneliness of the ascent appalled her. hers was not a nature fashioned for high purposes. the big battles of life require sterner moral principles to bring them to a triumphant issue. she was not gifted with that altruism which enables one to meet a great crisis with the utter self-abnegation by which alone such crises are successfully overcome. pamela fought her great battle handicapped by reason of her limitations. the high ideals which, while unfaced with any great issue, she had cherished with unconscious hypocrisy failed her in the stress of her need. she was just a weak, loving woman, stricken to the heart, and lonely beyond words to describe,--a woman hungry for her lover, whose last scruple of honour faded into nothingness in the period of his absence. arnott came home unexpectedly. he sent no intimation of his return; he had not, as a matter of fact, intended to turn back when he did. he obeyed an odd impulse, prompted by a queer, unaccountable fear that if he prolonged his absence pamela might grow reconciled to doing without him, might grow independent of him. he felt no longer so confident that his temporary separation had been a wise move. he had prolonged it unduly. he had given her time to miss him, and had made the mistake of giving her further time in which to grow used to the idea. with this doubt in his mind he hurried back. he got back in the afternoon rather late for tea. they had met with contrary winds round the coast, and the boat was delayed some hours. arnott took a taxi at the docks and drove out to his home. he dismissed the taxi at the gate and carried his luggage himself up the path and dumped it down on the stoep for one of the servants to take inside. then he looked about him with a strange feeling of unreality, and an unexpected sensation of nervousness that manifested itself chiefly in the dryness of his throat. where, he wondered, was pamela? this return to a silent, unwelcoming house was disconcerting. he forgot that he was not expected, and began to feel unreasonably annoyed. and then abruptly he became aware of pamela, standing in the opening of the drawing-room window, gravely regarding him. he looked round suddenly, and their gaze met. "so you have come back?" she said. her eyes were deep and very intense; the man as he met their shining look felt certain of his welcome. he advanced towards her quickly. "couldn't stick it any longer, pam," he said. "i wanted you." he held out his arms. she went forward unhesitatingly, and put her arms about his neck and drew his face to hers and kissed him. "i am so glad you have come home," she said. arnott's clasp of her tightened. "oh! pam," he said, "how good, how jolly to have you again." he drew her inside the room, looking away from her a little awkwardly, looking about him with an overdone air of ease. pamela also, now that their greeting was over, assumed an outward calm which she certainly was not feeling, and busied herself with the tea things, having an equal difficulty it seemed in meeting his eyes. that, she discovered later, was one of the developments of their adjusted relations, a sort of furtiveness, that comprised a mixture of deprecation and a shamed shyness that was more instinctive than anything else. the realisation of this hurt her; it detracted immensely from the beauty of their love. but just at first she did not recognise it other than as a temporary embarrassment; it did not distress her particularly. "i was just going to have a lonely tea," she said, and rang the bell for a fresh supply; "and now--there's you!" she glanced at him brightly, a swift colour flushing her cheeks. he seated himself on the sofa near the tea-table, and studied her curiously when he believed himself unobserved. he speculated on what might be in her mind, what the actual thoughts and feeling were which she hid so successfully behind her welcoming manner. for the first time within his knowledge of her he realised a subtlety, a certain secretive force, which he had not suspected in her. it was like coming unexpectedly upon a familiar spot and finding the view altered and contracted by surprising innovations. one felt that behind the obstructions the prospect was exactly the same; it was one's own view that was restricted and created these new impressions. "it's good to be home," he said, and dropped into a discursive chat about the places he had visited. "tried all i could to get rid of the thought of you, pam," he said at the finish, and glanced at her with a sudden, faintly deprecating smile. "it wasn't a bit of use. you pursued and brought me back... god! how you haunted me at nights! ... and your face looked back at me from the water whenever i gazed down at the sea." pamela sat down beside him. she slipped a hand into his, but she did not look at him. "it's been the same with me," she said,--"you were always there, somehow. i wonder... i suppose there are lots of people like ourselves who grow dependent on one another... you've never been away from me before." "and you missed me?" he questioned. she looked at him then with grave, perplexed eyes, and nodded. "it was an experiment," he said presently. "i wanted to see if we could do it--and we can't... we can't part." "and we can't," pamela repeated slowly. "no, i don't think we can." suddenly she leaned forward and played nervously with a little fanciful spoon in her saucer. "i meant to," she said,--"at first. i felt--i still feel it's the right thing to do. after you had gone away, i knew i couldn't. i suppose i am not a good woman really." she broke off the jerky sentences, and gazed at him somewhat wistfully. "it's hard to want to be happy, and to know that one ought not to be. i suppose that's why she told me... she wouldn't leave me to be peacefully ignorant. she wanted to stretch me on the rack too." "lord knows!" he answered, and stirred his tea irritably. "she's threatened to tell you," he added, "ever since some fool of an acquaintance, who'd been out here and was struck with the name, told her that i was living here; but i thought i could intercept the letter. i didn't allow for it coming to the house. i knew she would never make an open scandal. she's too proud, for one thing. besides, she is absolutely indifferent. so long as we are not in the same country, it would never trouble her what i did." "but," said pamela, a little shyly, "she must have loved you once." "i don't know," he said. "i am beginning to doubt myself, whether it is really love which brings the greater part of the world together. not infrequently curiosity is at the bottom of it,--or the desire to make a home. the majority of cases, of course, are the result of passion,--the fundamental scheme for the continuance of the race. i don't see that it's much use bothering one's head about these matters. i married when i was a hot-headed young fool; after i found out my mistake--too late. i met love... well, i suppose i ought to have turned my back on love,-and i didn't. there you are." "yes," pamela returned slowly. "that is just the part i find it impossible to excuse. that was your big error; and it is going to be responsible for our further wrong-doing." "look here!" he cried. "life is in one's own hands. one either makes it difficult by moralising, or simple by being philosophical and taking all it has to offer. it holds a lot of good for you and me, pam... why moralise?" "because," pamela answered, and her eyes filled with unexpected tears, "in making a deliberate choice of evil i don't wish to cheat myself into believing that it is the only course open to me; it isn't. if i am a bad woman, i will at least be sincere." he took her two hands and held them between his own and looked with kindly tolerance into the sweet, distressed face. he no longer felt any need to plead with her; he knew his case was won. very tenderly he put her hands to his lips. "you odd inconsistency," he murmured, "how you delight in tormenting yourself! can't you see that in this matter you are entirely blameless? all the evil is mine. you are driven into a corner, poor child. nobody in his senses would hold you responsible. put the blame on to me, pam,--i'm equal to shouldering it." he slipped an arm about her, and drew her closer. "if it had all to be gone through again, i'd do the same." chapter seven. for the first few months after arnott's return pamela enjoyed once more the delirious happiness of a second honeymoon. arnott was very much in love, very grateful to her for her acceptance of her awkward and delicate position. he was bent on making good in every way possible. his love overflowed in floods of grave tenderness: he lavished upon her unexpected and extravagant gifts. pamela appreciated his tenderness; but the gifts--too frequent and haphazard, suggesting that he recognised the necessity for pleasing and propitiating her--hurt her; it seemed to her that they represented the price of her degradation. she was reminded continually that she was no longer a free woman: she was a man's mistress, bought and owned by hire. the price of the jewels he heaped upon her might be taken as an estimate of her value. always he had been generous to her; he had given her many valuable presents, on her birthday, on their marriage day, and such like occasions, not, as he did now, at odd moments as though he had constantly in his mind the humiliation she endured for his sake, as though he felt the necessity to express his gratitude in some fashion, to reward her uncomplaining devotion. pamela endured many hours of secret shame over these glittering evidences of his recognition of their altered relations. but the thing which wounded her most, wounded her whenever she looked into the clear eyes of her child, whenever the sound of little feet, the sweet shrill baby voice, fell upon her ears, was the knowledge that this little innocent creature--her baby--was born out of wedlock, was a bastard. pamela's mind was growing accustomed to the use of ugly terms, which she recognised fully that the world--if the world ever learnt the truth-would connect with her name and with her child's. such terms had once been an offence in her ears,--now they fitted her; they were no less an offence, but she accustomed herself to them. she was brutally frank with herself in the matter of her voluntarily accepted, shameful position. but in one matter she determined she would always remain secretive; the child should never learn the facts of her parents' marriage. neither she nor arnott could ever requite the injury they had done the child. she had sinned in ignorance, his was the greater sin; but now her responsibility, her culpability, exceeded his. her knowledge of the truth made her duty to the child manifestly clear; but duty had fought its unequal battle, and was beaten to the dust. pamela's honour had gone down into the mud, a beaten and trampled thing. she had made her first great mistake, and already her punishment was beginning. in yielding against all her principles of right, though he had fought his hardest to conquer her scruples of honourable decency, she had lost to a great extent arnott's respect. at the moment when knowledge first came to her, when she had so miserably tried to do what was right, his respect for her had stood so high, had been so immense and overwhelming and self-humiliating, that instead of hating her chastity which threatened to part them, he had only loved her the more strongly because of it, had admired and wanted her more insistently; now he recognised that in this weak, yielding woman, whose passion for him equalled his passion for her, subjugated all her finer qualities, he held an easy captive; a captive who shrank from freedom, who had ceded all right to be considered before and above himself. when the first flush of triumph over his victory had worn off, and with it his almost humble gratitude for her tender submissiveness, the quality of his love underwent a change, a change which manifested itself in surprising and disconcerting ways. the sensualism in his nature, which he had never allowed her to suspect hitherto, was no longer kept under; little discourtesies, formerly never practised, became common with him; on occasions he was openly rude to her. he atoned for these lapses afterwards with presents and demonstrations of greater affection. he believed that pamela forgot these occasions as soon as he did; she always forgave readily and responded at once to his kinder moods; but pamela did not forget. each act of discourtesy, each rough word, left its wound in her soul. she realised, despite arnott's reiterated insistence that, save for the distress which this knowledge afforded her, everything remained really unchanged, that this was not so. the whole fabric of their world was changed. their union became a deliberate criminal conspiracy, a furtive defiance of the laws of the land; it had ceased to be a bond of comradeship based on mutual esteem,--it had ceased to be a bond in any sense of the word, save in their dependence on one another. a love which has once been fine and free and frankly expansive contracts in an atmosphere of secrecy and shamed suppressions; it loses vitality. there was in the changed conditions of her life much which influenced very strongly pamela's development. strange new emotions were born in her with all the anguish of new birth; a deeper understanding and at the same time a less generous conception of life grew in her. she lost something of her joyous irresponsibility and acquired a profounder wisdom. it was as though her mind developed while her soul's growth remained temporarily arrested. and during the process the girl in her died for ever and the woman evolved in her stead. no one can pass through a grave crisis and emerge unchanged from the devastating floods that submerge one during the process. it depends entirely on the moral strength of the individual plunged into these deep waters whether he or she rises above them grandly, or merely flounders desperately until an insecure footing results as the waters recede. the calm mind, the braced purpose, of the moral victor, faces the dark hour and conquers it, and gains even from the bitterest struggle much which beautifies and is helpful to the soul, much which makes each succeeding battle to be fought simpler of conquest than the last; on the other hand, to reject the fight from motives of fear or other reluctance leaves one not only a loser in the battle, but shorn of the necessary armour wherewith to face the next fight. pamela had lost her battle; she had thrown aside her armour and surrendered, because victory seemed to promise only an empty reward. she lost more than she knew by her surrender; not only did she forfeit her self-respect, her purity, her great gladness in life; she lost too the clean honest delight in arnott's love for her, in her love for him; the bright pleasant surface of things was smudged and dull; she no longer breathed in the open; it was as though ugly walls enclosed and stifled her soul. inexplicably, she blamed the woman who had enlightened her,--arnott's wife,--more than she blamed arnott himself for these miserable new conditions. she rebelled at being forced to shoulder the responsibility of her own act. if only she had been left in ignorance! ... from the bottom of her stricken, aching heart she wished that she had never received, never opened, that fatal letter. she wanted to go back to the period of her ignorance, wanted intensely to have her unsullied happiness again; and that was impossible. the door which has once stood open no longer conceals what it guards, nor can the surface of a thing that is tarnished attain to the same pristine beauty as before. during those first months of knowledge, pamela passed through many varied phases; from dull misery, to heroic intention, which ended in a passive defeat and an acceptance of the new conditions. there followed a period of shamed, yet glowing, happiness in arnott's return. this phase waned all too speedily, and left only discontent and distressful self-reproach, and a first doubt as to the selflessness of arnott's devotion. after a while these emotions also faded, ceased in time to harass her continually; and she drifted into a state of careless apathy, a comatose condition of the soul, the result of which only future events could determine, according to the influences and impressions that were likely to bear on her life. it was during this period of indifference, of atrophied emotions, and moral inertia, that her second child was born to her,--a son. what once had been the crowning wish of her life was now granted when she had ceased to desire the gift. the birth of the boy was her final humiliation. arnott, himself, awaited the coming of this child with mixed emotions; its birth was at once a source of triumph and of disgust to him. the last remnant of respect he retained for pamela died at the boy's birth. he scorned her weakness, yet he rejoiced at it because of the more complete hold it gave him upon her. she could never reproach him with being the father of their second child; she must even cease to reproach him for the past. she was now equally guilty with him. pamela had made her first great mistake in refusing to part from him; her second greater mistake resulted in the birth of their son. by an odd chance, as though an ironic fate decreed that this child should perpetuate the older shame of his parents' bigamous marriage with the later shame of his own birth, the baby was born on the anniversary of the wedding day. the old custom of keeping up that date as the most festive day in the year would assuredly have lapsed, even had the boy's coming not made it an impossibility. whatever arnott felt about the matter, pamela could not have celebrated with her friends the mock event which formerly had been to her a glad and sacred rite. she deeply regretted that the boy's birth fell on the same date. always she would be reminded of that date, would be compelled to recognise it. with each year of the child's growth it would assume an added importance, call for greater distinctiveness; the child when he grew old enough would insist on its recognition. arnott bought her a diamond bracelet to celebrate the double event; but he had sense enough not to present his offering until she was downstairs again and able to take an interest in things. he gave it to her one afternoon out in the garden. they had had tea together under the trees, and pamela lay in her cane lounge, so still and so unusually silent that he fancied she was drowsy, and remained quiet also in order not to disturb her. but pamela was not asleep; she was lost in thought. suddenly she opened her eyes and looked at him fully. "i have been thinking about a name for baby," she said. "have you any preference in the matter?" "no," he answered. he thought he detected a slight shade of vexation pass across her face, and added, after reflection: "why not herbert? ... we've reproduced you." she flushed faintly. "that was your wish," she said. "but it seems to me confusing when the children are christened after the parents." "well, it was merely a suggestion," he returned easily. "i think i should like him called david, after my father," she added presently. "he was the best man i have ever known." arnott made no response. the expression of her reason for her selection seemed to him in the circumstances uncalled for. "you don't dislike the name, i hope?" she asked. "no. i don't say i'd choose it. it's rather welsh, isn't it?" "it's british," she replied, "anyway." "look here!" he said, dismissing the subject of the baby's name, and fumbling in his pocket for the present which he had brought out with him, "i've something here for a good girl." he leaned forward and dropped the case into her lap. pamela took it up and opened it carelessly. she was growing a little bored with having to express gratitude so frequently for his thought for her. "another!" she said, and held the bracelet in a languid hand. she made no effort to try it on. "you really shouldn't be so extravagant, herbert. i have more jewellery than i can possibly wear." he went round to her chair and slipped the bracelet on her arm and fastened it. "it's pretty," he said... "you like it?" "it's beautiful," she replied. "and my thanks?" he said. he leaned over her. flushed, faintly reluctant pamela lifted her face in response. he kissed her eagerly. she always failed to understand his appreciation of these exacted caresses. it was one of his peculiarities that he enjoyed what he gained masterfully more than what was voluntarily ceded. chapter eight. dare sat on the stoep of his hotel in johannesburg reading a letter from mrs carruthers, who kept up a spasmodic correspondence with him at his own urgent request; her letters, he explained, gave him a sense of living still in the world. one clause in this letter interested him particularly; it was a clause which referred to pamela. "i have just returned," the writer stated, "from the christening of the arnott baby,--a querulous man-child whom i have undertaken to keep uncontaminated from the wiles of the devil,--a preposterous thing to ask one human being to do for another. being a childless woman myself, i am more afraid of my godson than of the devil, the latter being so conveniently unsubstantial. whether it is the added cares of maternity, or due to the fact that the connubial bliss i once dilated upon to you is not so assertive as it was a year ago, your sweet-faced divinity is decidedly less prepossessing in appearance. i would never have believed that a year could age a woman as it has aged pamela arnott. besides looking older, she is considerably less gay. but she is a dear woman, all the same." the writer passed on to other matters, and mentioned that she was glad there was a chance of seeing him shortly. she hoped while he was in cape town he would spare them a few days. dare folded the letter and placed it in his pocket-book; then he sat back in his chair and fell to thinking about pamela. why, he wondered, should a year make such a difference in a woman's appearance that to her intimate friends who saw her continually this change should be so apparent? and what had caused the diminution in the married happiness which, little as he had seen of the arnott's home life, he too had been conscious of? pamela had radiated happiness on the evening he first met her. he recalled mrs carruthers' words, uttered carelessly to him that night in the garden, when she had alluded to the arnotts' marriage as an instance of perennial courtship, and had added, with a touch of sarcasm not altogether innocent of malice: "but, after all, five years is but a step of the journey." that bore out what more than one married man had told him, that it was the silliest mistake man or woman ever made to imagine that because one is violently in love for a period that state of erotic bliss is going to endure. "it's beyond the bounds of possibility," one man had said to him recently in palliation of his own unfaithfulness. "and it's a good thing all round for the race that we are as we are." but dare had a conviction that, given the right woman, his love would endure to the end. the right woman for him, he believed, was pamela; and she was beyond his reach. feeling as he did about pamela, the wisest course for him to pursue was to keep out of her way. he realised this fully; at the same time he desired very earnestly to see her. since she was ignorant of his feeling in regard to her, he argued, there could be no harm in their meeting; he had sufficient self-control to be able to converse with a woman without allowing her to suspect that he was interested in her in any marked degree. indeed, he would have found his interest difficult to explain. to assert that he had fallen in love at sight with the face of a girl he had seen several years ago and never spoken to until he met her later as a married woman, would have lain him open to ridicule; it would have strained the credulity, he felt, of pamela herself. he had heard of cases of love at first sight, but he had not believed in them prior to his own experience. it had always seemed to him that love could be begotten only of some quality of deep attraction in the personality of the individual. certainly had he not found those attractive qualities in pamela when eventually he met her, the romance he had cherished for five years would have gone the way of dreams; but his meeting with her kindled afresh the fires of his sleeping fancy; and the romance, which had promised to remain only a sentimental memory, was quickened into life. what he had loved in the girl's face, he loved again in her personality. he was quite satisfied that pamela was as sweet as she looked; and he determined to play the unobtrusive part of the silent male friend to this woman who was his ideal. he would not deny himself the pleasure of her society merely because he loved her. never from look or word of his should she guess his secret. but if destiny ever offered him the chance of serving her, he would count himself well rewarded for his undeclared devotion. the news concerning pamela in mrs carruthers' letter, quite as much as his own feelings, made him feverishly anxious to see her again. business was taking him to cape town; he decided that when he was through with the business he would put in a little time on his own account; and mrs carruthers' invitation fitted in with his plans. he wrote her a cordial, but guarded, letter, in which he told her that he would take her at her word and bring himself and his suit case along and enjoy himself for a week. he followed shortly after the despatch of his letter. once arrived in cape town, the doubtful wisdom of his action in laying himself open to the direct influence of pamela's personality struck him forcibly for the first time. he stood to lose more than he was ever likely to gain in thus venturing so close to the flame. he was likely to emerge from the conflict scarred pretty badly, he told himself. but no amount of prudent reasoning could overcome his desire to see her again; that desire was paramount; it subdued every argument he brought forward against it. it was not wise, he allowed. but was a man in love ever wise? he had resolved when he first met pamela arnott, and discovered in his friend's wife the girl he had seen years before, to go out of her life finally; he had felt that it would not be safe to continue an acquaintance which could only be disturbing to himself, if indeed it developed no further inconvenience; but that suggestion in mrs carruthers' letter that everything was not as formerly in the conditions of pamela's life shook this resolution, unsettled him. he wanted to judge for himself. if, as mrs carruthers had seemed to insinuate, pamela was no longer happy in her marriage, then perhaps... he broke off in his reverie, frowning at his own unbidden thoughts. if there was a grain of truth in that disquieting statement, it was very plain to him that the position of sympathiser was the last thing for him to take upon himself. the platonic, useful friend was very well in theory, but it didn't answer put into practice as a rule, particularly in the case of the disappointed wife fretting at the conditions of her lot. dare had arrived at mrs carruthers to find her out, but he was sufficiently at home in that house to be equal to settling himself in, even to the ordering of refreshment, which, in the form of a whisky and soda, was brought to him on the stoep. mrs carruthers returned to find him reading the english papers, and quietly smoking. "you look as though you had been sitting there for years," she remarked, as she came up the steps. "when did you get here?" he came forward with alacrity and took her extended hands. each displayed unaffected pleasure in the other. "oh, about an hour ago! how well you look!" "i've been enjoying myself. i suppose that's why... dickie's late." she seated herself and began drawing off her gloves. dare returned to his former chair. "tell me how you have contrived to get so much pleasurable excitement out of the afternoon," he said. "oh, bridging," she said,--"and i won--enormously. but never mind me. what i want to know is, what has abruptly shaken your obduracy? you have persistently refused my pressing invitations for over a year,--and now suddenly you arrive." he sat forward and regarded her inquiring face with a faintly amused smile. ever since he had known her she had subjected him to this kind of suggestive inquiry. she was always reading a motive in his simplest act. "your last invitation arrived at a moment when it was possible, as well as agreeable, to accept it," he explained. "i couldn't get away before." "umph!" she returned, and laughed. "i thought perhaps--but no matter. your sex always suits its own convenience. now tell me exactly what you want to do while you are here, and i'll lay myself out to be obliging. that's a prerogative of my sex, and i've not noticed that you ever attempt to check it." "why should one discourage anything so commendable?" he asked. "that's no answer to my question," she observed. "no," he returned. "but, you see, the question scarcely needs answering from my point of view. what should i want to do, but enjoy your society, and loaf delightfully?" "never at a loss," she said, and smiled at him approvingly. "i hope your ideas of loafing will fit in with my evening's arrangement i have asked the arnotts and three others in to make a couple of tables for bridge. i had a feeling at the back of my mind that you would wish to see something of your sweet-faced madonna during your stay, so i wasted no time. considering that i am three parts in love with you myself, that is rather magnanimous on my side." "in any one else it might be," he returned; "but you were made like that. besides, you are fully assured that no one on earth could shake my intense admiration for yourself. i wonder why you married dick?" he added speculatively. "all the nicest women are married." "i wasn't married when i met you first," she reminded him. "the truth of the matter is, you, like the majority of middle-aged bachelors, only appreciate the fruit which grows beyond your reach." "middle-aged!" he protested. "come now! i'm only thirty-five." "and seventy is the limit the psalmist gives us. you have wasted your time, my friend." "yes," he agreed abruptly, and sat a little straighten, "i'll have to go the pace," he said, "in order to catch up." "you can make the most of the years that are left you," mrs carruthers replied crushingly, "but you can never catch up. if people realised that in their youth, they wouldn't waste their time as they do." "i wish you wouldn't be so depressing," he expostulated. "i'm not i'm merely lamenting your lost opportunities. i'm for early marriages, and big families, and bother the cost." "that's all very fine. but big families can't be launched indiscriminately, and flung on the state." "people are so prudent nowadays," she said; "they miss a lot of happiness. a jolly struggle is preferable to discreet luxury, with a will at the finish, leaving everything to the stranger or organised charities. i was one of fourteen, and there wasn't a jollier or a poorer home in the colony." she laughed, and thrust forward a small, misshapen foot. "that comes of having to wear my elder sister's outgrown shoes. but if i had had my footgear made for me, my feet would probably have been flat and large; and the sight of an incipient bunion brings back glorious memories of childhood's makeshifts, and the joy of trying on coveted and outgrown clothes. we weren't proud as children. and the bread and butter and onions we ate for supper tasted lots better than the eight-o'clock dinner i take now with dickie." she sighed deeply, and became suddenly grave. "all the rest have big families themselves," she added wistfully. "i'm just out of it." "children are mixed blessings," he said consolingly. "they aren't," she asserted. "they give one the satisfied feeling of carrying on. when we haven't children, we just finish with our own little lives." she sat up and smiled at him with cheerful encouragement. "i have invited a girl for you this evening. she is young and fresh and--" "oh, don't!" he interposed hastily. "she is quite nice to look at," mrs carruthers resumed, not heeding his interruption. "she comes of good stock, and is amiable, and not too clever. she dances well, and plays games well, and is thoroughly domesticated,--an orphan, poor,--the eldest of a family of seven." "ye gods!" he murmured. "why didn't you invite the other six?" "they aren't out," replied mrs carruthers. he repressed a desire to smile. "it is my particular wish that you pay her special attention," she continued calmly, "with a view to an early and suitable marriage. now don't make up your mind against it straightway. it will be an admirable thing for you, and i've set my heart on it." he laughed outright. "oh, you woman!" he said. "you inveterate matchmaker! if your girl is all you profess, why can't you find her some one younger and more human? as my wife, she would have the devil of a time--you know she would." "i think you are rather severe in your judgment of yourself," she returned imperturbably. "you are quite agreeable. and you could provide handsomely for a woman, and--other things." "oh, yes; fourteen of them, if necessary," he returned sarcastically. "but i don't want them, really. i should feel horribly embarrassed with them." "oh, you would get over that!" she answered easily. "you mustn't think so much of yourself." he got up and passed round to the back of her chair and laid his two hands on her shoulders. "you scheming little fiend!" he said. "you have had this in your mind all along when you have asked me repeatedly to come down." "i have always wanted you to marry," she allowed, smiling up at him. "you will make a delightful husband." "well, i'm not going to marry," he said. "if you air any more of your matrimonial plans, i'll make love to you. i'll wreck your home." "you couldn't," she said. "dickie would never trouble to be jealous of any one." she put up her two hands and laid them upon his where they rested upon her shoulders. "you will be nice to her, george, won't you?" she said. "you'll like her immensely, if only you let yourself." "of course i shall," he replied, and smiled grimly. "i like every eve's daughter of you, worse luck!" chapter nine. change in a person's appearance when it is due to mental conditions varies according to mood and outside influences. when dare was face to face with pamela arnott he decided that mrs carruthers had exaggerated the want of look about which she had written: there was nothing to excite sympathy, or even comment, in the faintly flushed, pleasantly excited face which turned eagerly to greet him, as, on entering the carruthers' drawing-room, pamela's eyes singled him out with a smiling welcome in their blue depths. when he had talked with her a little while he did notice that she looked older; the girlishness, with its expression of frank gaiety, had faded during the past eighteen months. there was a more perceptible change he considered in arnott himself. the man had coarsened, in manner as much as appearance. he was more noisy and assertive, and inclined to be offhand when addressing his wife. dare hated him for that,--hated him for his lack of courtesy, and the absence of those small but significant attentions which had formerly been so noticeable in his bearing towards her. he seldom looked at her now, never with the old tender, almost absurdly chivalrous regard which one associates more with the lover than with the husband of some years' standing. dare decided that he had put off the lover finally; that was about what it amounted to. but that, after all, cannot be reckoned a calamity: men do not remain always obviously their wives' lovers. "so glad to see you again," murmured pamela, and her smile seemed to demand that he should recall the length of the friendship he had once insisted upon, with its consequent intimacy. "i began to think you were becoming a mere memory." "so long as you didn't forget altogether!" he said, and looked earnestly into her eyes. "but i didn't think you would." "one doesn't forget--pleasant things," she returned. "besides, it is only a little over a year and a half since we met, isn't it?" "a long year and a half ago," he replied enigmatically. pamela acquiesced with unusual gravity. his speech broke in upon her happy mood, disturbing the careless tenor of her thoughts. a long year and a half! ... truly it had been a long year and a half for her. so much had happened in the time: her whole life was altered with the changing of the months. "it has been a long year and a half," she replied abstractedly, not thinking of the man at her side, nor of the interpretation he might put upon her words, upon the weary discontent of her tones: she thought only of the crowded events of the past eighteen months,--of the pain, the sickening disillusion, the constant humiliation. in certain circumstances a year and a half may seem a lifetime. he scrutinised her intently. there was something, after all, in mrs carruthers' report. the discontent in her voice, the sadness of her face, arrested his attention. had it been merely discontent, it would have failed to move him particularly, but her look of sadness roused his deepest sympathy. he rebelled at the thought that any sorrow should touch, should perhaps spoil, her life. she lifted her glance to his swiftly, on her guard, he fancied, against himself. "i have had rather a dull time," she added, assuming a lighter manner. "dulness is depressing," he allowed. "i have more experience of it than you, i expect. you've not been my way yet?" "no," she returned slowly. "i don't go from home much. you see, there are the children." "true!" he said, and kept the conversation in the safer channel into which she had directed it. "and how is my little friend?" "oh, growing big--and naughty! i am beginning to think of schoolroom discipline for her." "oh, lord!" he said. "that baby! let her run wild for a bit longer." "you haven't to live with her," she said. "but i only mean a nursery governess. she is getting beyond the control of coloured nurses. i am hoping i shall get blanche maitland. she is so nice with children." "blanche... oh, i know," he said. his glance followed hers across the room to where the girl mrs carruthers was bent on his marrying was talking with their host. so pamela's domestic arrangements were to clash with his. he smiled at the fancy. blanche maitland was a tall girl, with a noticeably good figure, a clear skin, and fine, dark, slumbrous eyes. her face in repose was calm and unemotional and difficult to read; when she smiled it lighted wonderfully. she did not smile readily, but she looked really handsome and delightfully shy when surprised into laughter. she was laughing at the moment dare looked at her: he did not immediately remove his gaze. "she is handsome," he observed. "is she?" pamela regarded the subject of their talk with renewed interest. "i never thought her that--but i suppose she is." "she is," he affirmed. "it isn't a necessary qualification in a governess," she said. "it would be, if i were engaging one," he returned. "i should make that and an agreeable voice the principal requirements. personally, i am interested in good-looking faces. and plain people haven't a monopoly of the virtues, you know." "no," she answered. "but they occasionally more than make up the deficit in looks in agreeable qualities." "the wise make the most of what they have," he replied. "and sometimes nature is lavish and adds kindliness and a sweet disposition to physical perfection... may i come and see you to-morrow?" he asked somewhat abruptly. "do. come and dine--informally. i'll ask the carruthers." he looked slightly dissatisfied. "but i want you all to myself," he objected. "i'm a selfish fellow; i hate sharing. i prefer rather to see my friends singly than in batches. and carruthers always wants to play bridge. one can't talk. he's fussing about the tables already. let me come and look at the mountain with you, and gossip, and drink tea. we don't meet very often." pamela, if she felt a little surprised, was not displeased at his cool readjustment of her invitation. she returned his steady gaze with a faint uplift of her brows and the hint of a smile in her eyes. "if you really prefer that, of course you shall," she said. "i've only a week," he said. "i want to make the most of it." "and when the week is up?" "i return to my mole-like habits," he replied. "and you haven't followed my advice?" she said. "what was that?" he asked... "oh! i remember. mrs carruthers is always giving me the same. no; i don't think there is much chance of my doing that." carruthers sauntered towards them with every intention, dare realised, of ending the tete-a-tete. "you play at my table, mrs arnott," he said. he glanced at dare. "the wife has put you at the no-stakes table," he added, grinning. "she thinks it is good for your morals to play for love on occasions." dare regarded the speaker coolly. "that sounds like your joke, rather than mrs carruthers'," he remarked; "it's so feeble." carruthers chuckled. "ask her," he returned. pamela looked back at dare over her shoulder as she moved away beside her host. "it's quite the best game, really," she said, and smiled at him. "i admit it," he answered quietly, "when one is allowed to choose one's partner." bridge without stakes was not much of a game, in dare's opinion; but he was obliged to acknowledge that blanche maitland played remarkably well. he had never seen a girl play with such skill; and she held good cards. they were partners. this might have been due to chance, since they cut; but he had a suspicion that mrs carruthers manipulated the cards. she was clever enough, and deep enough, to do it, he reflected. he did his best to oblige her in the matter of being agreeable; but, as he complained to her later, when discussing the evening after the guests had left, had he been the vainest of men he could not have flattered himself that he had created a favourable impression in the quarter in which she insisted he should exert his powers of fascination. "she thought me a stick," he said. "i'm not at all comfortably assured in my mind that she didn't think me a fool. i had an exhausting time racking my brain for agreeable conversation. she wouldn't help me. it isn't a ha'p'orth of use, my dear, trying to interest me in these sphinx-like young women with no small talk. you said she wasn't clever." "she isn't." "you are mistaken. no one who isn't clever dare be so deadly dull. she is profound. i don't think i like your selection of a wife." "you can't judge on a first acquaintance like that," she insisted. "there you are entirely out. all my loves have been at first sight." "then why haven't you married one of them?" "because they have all been provided with husbands," he answered. "when it is a matter of transgressing the moral law, one naturally hesitates." "you seem singularly unfortunate," mrs carruthers observed sarcastically. "i believe you have only been in love once in your life. you are true to that first love still." "and who is that?" he inquired, looking down at her with mild curiosity in his eyes. "george dare," she answered. he laughed. "poor devil!" he remarked. "if i didn't show him some affection, who would? besides, it's a proof that there are lovable qualities in him. if a man can't tolerate himself, he must be a fairly bad egg." "you are not justified in making a virtue of egoism," she argued. "and you ought to marry. it's a duty you owe the state... men are so selfish!" "oh, come!" he remonstrated. "one can't place all the big questions of life on such a brutally practical basis. there's the human side to be considered. your argument lowers the beautiful to a mere matter of essentials. there is a spiritual element in marriage, after all." mrs carruthers turned a frankly wondering, inquisitive gaze upon him, with the disconcerting observation: "if you were not in love, you wouldn't talk in that exalted strain. it's unlike you." "i didn't know i was such a material beast," he retorted. his eyes met hers for a second or so, and then, to her increasing amazement, avoided her gaze. he thrust his hands in his pockets and looked everywhere save at this woman whom he liked immensely, but whom he hoped to keep comfortably outside his confidence. he was afraid of mrs carruthers' powers of divination. when a woman takes an affectionate interest in a man, she can become an embarrassment as much as a pleasure. "you _are_ in love!" she cried triumphantly. "it's no use... own up that i'm right." "i believe that i have already admitted to you that it is a state which frequently overtakes me," he replied. but his manner, despite its banter, lacked assurance. he felt that she was not in the least deceived. "and you never told me!" she said reproachfully. "there is nothing to tell. my love affairs never lead anywhere. besides, it's such an old story." "old!" she echoed. he smiled at the indignant incredulity in her voice. "it's running jacob's romance pretty close now," he said. "you are trying to put me off the scent," she declared,--"if there is any scent. you won't persuade me that you have been in love for seven years, and that i knew nothing about it." "six years and nearly nine months, to be exact," he answered. "and who, may i ask, was fortunate enough to win your unswerving devotion six years and nine months ago?" she demanded, with fine sarcasm. "she hadn't a personality for me," he replied. "i fell in love with a face." his listener eyed him derisively. "she hadn't any body, i suppose?" she said. "oh, yes, i believe so. the body was there, all right. but if it had been misshapen, or even, as you suggest, non-existent, that wouldn't have made the slightest difference to my affections." "oh, don't try to humbug me!" mrs carruthers exclaimed. "you can't convince me, after all you have said, that you are in love with nothing more substantial than a face. where is the girl now?" "she disappeared," he answered vaguely. "i took the trouble to inquire, believe me. they told me she had married." "that disposes of her," mrs carruthers responded, with that touch of finality which convention brings to bear upon romance that can have no legitimate ending. "it is not decent of you to talk as though you were in love with her still. that's all finished, anyhow." "one cannot regulate one's feelings," he protested, "to satisfy a silly prejudice like that." "but it's not fair to the girl," she urged. "good lord!" he ejaculated. "the girl doesn't know... how should she? didn't i tell you that i fell in love with a face?--its owner was a stranger to me. i intended to effect an introduction; but some fellow got ahead of me, and carried her off." "oh!" said mrs carruthers, manifestly relieved. "a stranger! then she doesn't count. you have simply been wearying me with your nonsense." "i'm sorry," he said. "i thought you were genuinely interested. when you are bored you shouldn't appear so eager for details. in a desire to be obliging one is apt to become prosy." carruthers entered the room at the moment with a syphon of soda and glasses. dare eyed the syphon discontentedly. "i hope you are for offering me something more heartening than that," he remarked. "your wife has reduced me to a state bordering on nervous collapse. she is starting a matrimonial agency. i wish you would bear me out in the lie that i've got a wife somewhere. i fancy she thinks it is not respectable to be unmarried." "the whisky is on the table behind you," returned carruthers, unmoved. "as for bearing you out in the lie, how do i know it is one? it isn't to be credited that every man who poses as a bachelor is single." "if you are going to talk in that strain," mrs carruthers observed, "i'm going to bed. it is past two." she paused beside her husband, and pointed at dare with a gesture that conveyed a mixture of derision and tolerant amusement and a certain affectionate malice. "he has been treating me to a resuscitation of his dead and gone love affairs," she explained, "because i am desirous of interesting him in blanche maitland." "blanche maitland! why not?" quoth carruthers, squirting soda-water into a glass. "devilish fine girl. what!" dare held the door open for mrs carruthers. "you've entrusted it to quite capable hands, you see," he said. "the worst of it is, old dick is so hopelessly frank. that is exactly how a man would describe her, and that is exactly how i wouldn't choose to have my wife described. you'll have to try again, connie." she placed her hand affectionately on his sleeve. "you are rather a dear, george," she said softly, and passed out, leaving the astonished man to close the door behind her. it took a clever woman to accept defeat gracefully, he reflected. chapter ten. the week dare had promised himself at wynberg overlapped and ran into the better part of three weeks. he gave as his reason for this extension of his holiday that he was enjoying himself, and that he felt he needed the rest. "i suppose it is restful," mrs carruthers remarked to him once, "mooning about the arnott's garden all day. of course it is more of a change for you than using this garden... you do sleep here." he looked at her oddly. they were standing on the stoep together. he was just about to visit next door to take mrs arnott a book he had promised her. he had explained all this to mrs carruthers rather elaborately, and had failed to meet her steady, disconcerting gaze with his usual candour. these daily explanations of his informal visits next door called for much ingenuity, and were growing increasingly embarrassing. he disliked having to account for his doings; at the same time courtesy to his hostess demanded something; he rather fancied that it demanded more than it received. "i admit the justice of that box on the ears," he said. he held the book towards her. "we dine there to-night, i know; but i promised her she should have this this afternoon. perhaps you wouldn't mind sending it in with my compliments," he suggested. "pamela would be disappointed," she said. "i believe she would," he agreed. "george," she looked at him very gravely, and her tone was admonishing, "i don't wish to annoy you,--but do you think you are acting wisely?" "you couldn't annoy me," he answered. "and i haven't considered the question in that light... what do you think?" "i think you are growing too interested in pamela," she replied. he was silent for a second or so, turning the book he held in his hand and gazing absently at its title. abruptly he looked up. "you haven't overstated the truth," he said quietly, a little defiantly, she fancied. she shook her head seriously. "i am sorry to hear you admit it. from my knowledge of you, i should have thought that, realising that you would at least have avoided her." "i am not doing her any harm," he said. "how can you be sure of that? two years ago i should have felt confident that you couldn't. i am not so positive now." "you mean she cares less for her husband than she did?" the eager light in his eyes as he put the question troubled her. it was not consistent with her opinion of dare that he should behave other than strictly honourably towards any woman. "i don't think you ought to have asked that," she returned. he changed colour. "no," he said; "perhaps not. in any case, there wasn't any need. it's fairly obvious." "leave her alone," she counselled. "look here!" he took a step nearer to her, and spoke quickly and with a kind of repressed excitement that conveyed more than his actual words how deeply he was moved. "don't start getting a lot of false ideas into your head. i'm not playing the despicable game you think i'm after. i'm not amusing myself. amusing myself! god! there isn't much amusement in it. i'm leaving on saturday,--i've made up my mind to that. but i'm going to see as much of her as i can in the interval. it's the last time... i sha'n't come back, unless i can feel perfectly sure of myself. but i'm going to leave her with the knowledge that i am her friend,--to be counted on if she needs me. i only ask to serve her. if she doesn't want my service, i will stand outside her life altogether." "my dear boy," she returned disapprovingly, "you are talking arrant nonsense. a married woman can have no need for a male friend such as you propose to be. he is either an object of ridicule to her, or she grows too fond of him. i am afraid you would not become an object for ridicule with pamela; she hasn't a sufficient sense of humour. you had far better give up going there." "i can't do that," he said. "but i promise you when i leave here i won't come back." "then leave to-morrow," she advised. "not unless you turn me out." "you know i won't do that," she said. "but i don't like it, george. i am--disappointed in you." "i'm sorry," he said, and having nothing more to add, he left her, and walked away down the path. she watched the tall figure disappear in the sunshine, and turned and went indoors, feeling justly aggrieved with this man whom she liked because he had fallen below the standard she believed him capable of attaining to. love is either an elevating or a destructive factor; it is the supreme test of the qualities of the individual. she had believed that george dare was made of stouter stuff. but the human being does not exist, she philosophised, on whom one can count absolutely. one may be able to answer for a person's actions in relation to most human events, then the unexpected event befalls and one's calculations are entirely at fault. dare, as he walked away from her, was fully alive to the criticism his behaviour evoked. he had been aware of her unspoken disapproval for days, had anticipated the inevitable remonstrance. he admitted the justice and the wisdom of her reproof, none the less it irritated him intensely. it is usually the self-acknowledged wrong that one most resents the detection of by another. when a man knows that his steps are tending crookedly he likes to be assured that he is walking straight; even though he recognises the assurance to be mistaken, it gives him a comfortable sense of secure deception. "after all," he reflected savagely, as though his conscience needed reassuring on the point, "i am intending her no harm. it's my soul that gets scorched." but he knew, as he crossed the arnotts' lawn to where pamela sat under the trees waiting for him, that he was to a certain extent disturbing her peace. he filled the newly created blank in her life, added an agreeable atmosphere of romance and excitement which for the time caused her to cease to miss the happiness she was conscious of missing of late. his homage was gratifying; it reinstated her in her own regard. in these ways he was securing a place for himself, making himself necessary to her. she looked round at his approach, and a light came into her eyes, a smile to her lips, as he drew near. with his critical faculties keenly alert, following the recent interview, he noted more particularly the gladness of her welcome, and felt the inexplicable something that was like a mute bond of sympathy and understanding between them, perceived the furtive shyness of her glance, the quick change of colour as their hands met; and his mind became extraordinarily clear and active. he roused himself from his mental attitude of personal engrossment, and forced himself to an impartial consideration of her position. there was not a shadow of a doubt about it, though she had possibly not discovered the fact herself; she was becoming interested in him--in the man, not merely the friend. there wasn't any danger, he told himself,--not yet; but there might be. he recalled how every day since he had been in wynberg he had seen her on some pretext or other: they had aided one another in the invention of trivial reasons for meeting. he had not always had her to himself as now: sometimes she had the children with her; on occasions arnott was present. arnott always seemed glad when dare came in; he contrived generally to monopolise the conversation, and was manifestly entirely unaware of dare's preference for his wife's society. it simply did not occur to him. his friends always admired pamela; he was never jealous, perhaps because he felt so certain that this woman who had cleaved to him in defiance of her principles of honour, would cleave to him always. although he was conscious of a waning of his own passion, it did not strike him that any change in himself could possibly weaken her love. he felt absolutely sure of her. pamela had been sewing before dare joined her. when he sauntered across the lawn and drew up beside her chair, she dropped the work into her lap and gave him her undivided attention. "you've brought the book," she said, and took it from him with a pleased smile. "i rather wondered if you would come to-day." "didn't you feel fairly certain i would?" he asked, and fetched a chair for himself, which he placed close to hers, facing her. he seated himself. pamela did not answer his question. she opened the book and turned its pages idly. it was a beautifully bound volume of "paolo and francesca." he had wished her to read it. but she understood quite well that the poem was a secondary matter; the bringing it to her was the primary motive. "i am glad to have this," she said. "i think i shall like it. the outside is beautiful, anyway." "so is the inside," he answered. "but it is a bit on the tragic side. you mustn't look for the happy ending." "no," replied pamela gravely. she put the book down and gazed beyond him at the sunshine that lay warmly on the garden, the golden mantle of gaiety which mocks the sadness of the world. "life isn't all happy ending, is it?" "for many of us, no," he allowed. "i think the really happy people," observed pamela, wrinkling her brows while she pursued her reflections, "are the people who feel least." "you mean," he said, watching her, "the people who never love?" "i didn't mean that exactly... and yet, in a way, i suppose i did. i meant the people of moderate passions,--self-disciplined people whose emotions are under control, whose minds are like a well ordered establishment in which nothing is ever out of place. they don't admit disturbing elements, and so their lives run on in an even content. there are no big joys and no big sorrows. i have known several women like that. they suggest twilight somehow,--never the sunlight, and never blank darkness. they are restful." "i prefer the glowing beauty of vivid contrasts myself," he said. "a world in which there is only twilight would be a prison house." "and yet you can spend a good portion of your time in the mines!" she said, bringing her face round and smiling at him. he was glad she had introduced a lighter note into their talk. "i get my contrasts that way," he returned. "besides, you can't imagine how jolly it is to drop down into the warm darkness on a broiling sunny day. come along to the mines some time, and i'll take you down." "i should be scared to death," she declared. quite unexpectedly he put his strong, thin hand over hers. "i don't think so," he answered. "i wouldn't take you where there was any danger. you would be safe with me." pamela flushed deeply. there was in the strong, steady pressure of the nervous fingers which closed upon her hand so much of latent force, of protective power, of sex, that she felt strangely frightened. she wanted to withdraw her hand, and could not; some influence stronger than her own will prevented her. she felt oddly stirred, and immensely troubled and disconcerted. with an effort she lifted her eyes, disturbed and faintly questioning, to his. he was leaning forward, looking into the flushed face with earnest, compelling gaze. "i'm going back to-morrow," he said jerkily, and was quick to see the startled expression which darkened her eyes as he made the announcement. "this is the last chance i have of seeing you alone. will you write to me?" "i don't think--i couldn't," she stammered nervously. "then will you promise me that if ever you are in any trouble, no matter what, in which a friend who has your well-being at heart might perhaps be useful, you will write to me? ... you know that i am your friend?" he inquired. "i believe you are--yes." "and will you promise what i have asked?" he persisted. pamela hesitated, and stared at him with perplexed, embarrassed gaze. "but there isn't any need," she began... "not now; no. i pray there never will be. but you will promise?" "yes--oh! yes," she whispered, and, to her own intense dismay, burst into sudden tears. she dashed them hastily away with her disengaged hand. "you're--frightening me," she gasped. "i don't know what you mean." "don't cry," he said. "i didn't mean to frighten you. i'm not a beast. i'm not making love to you. but i just wanted you to know that everything i possess, myself included, is at your service at any time, and in any way you choose to command. perhaps you may never require my services; but at least you know that i wish to be useful. don't misunderstand me,--that is all i wish to convey." he released her hand and sat back. pamela dabbed her eyes furtively, ashamed of her emotional outburst, and angry with herself beyond measure for behaving like a simpleton. "how silly i am!" she murmured. "i don't know what you must think of me. i don't know why i am crying." "i think you are very sweet," he said gently, "and beautifully natural. i probably startled you. the unexpected is often disconcerting. if you had been one of the temperamentally even people of whom we have been talking you wouldn't have been startled; but then, in that case, neither should i have been offering knightly service after the manner of a hero of romance. as a sign that i am forgiven, will you sing this evening the song you delighted us with on the night i first met you?" "what was that?" pamela asked, still too confused to meet his eyes. "mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix." "oh! saint-saens... yes, of course i will." when dare returned next door, which he did earlier than mrs carruthers expected, he amazed her with the abrupt announcement of his intended departure on the morrow. "you were right," he said, "and i was wrong. i obey your marching orders. and now naturally," he added, smiling at her grimly, "you'll enjoy the feminine satisfaction in a moral victory--which is a euphony for getting your own way." she approached him with a glad look on her face, which had in it a good deal of admiration, and held out her hand as a man might do. "i knew it," she cried triumphantly. "boy, you're straight." he made a wry face as he shook hands with her. then suddenly he stooped and kissed her. "it's the least you can offer me," he said in explanation. she laughed, well satisfied. she had not been mistaken; he had vindicated her belief in him. chapter eleven. dare, as he sat at the arnotts' dinner-table that evening, making the extra man, the odd number, as he had done on a former occasion, was conscious of two discrepant facts; namely, that he had not decided a moment too soon to quit the danger zone of pamela's seductive influence, and that he was sincerely sorry he was leaving on the morrow. the regret was, perhaps, the keener sensation of the two; it balanced his sense of moral satisfaction to a nicety. the dinner was the funeral feast of his only real love affair. he intended, when he parted from pamela that night, never to see her again. "i was a fool to come," he told himself. "no one can handle fire and expect to escape unhurt. and i knew it was fire i was playing with." yet he would gladly have continued to act foolishly. the strongest inducement towards wisdom was the fear that pamela herself might get singed; fire which spreads ends in a conflagration. one thing he noticed after the women had withdrawn, and it was not the first time he had observed the same thing, was that arnott drank more than was good for him. this possibly accounted for the coarsening so evident in the man's general deportment. it disgusted him; though probably had he not been in love with the man's wife it would not have struck him so unpleasantly. it was revolting to think of a sweet, refined woman contaminated by close association with a man of intemperate habits. arnott was inclined to be offensive when he had been drinking; it was on these occasions that he displayed discourtesy towards his wife. it enraged dare to see how readily she recognised these symptoms, and how tactful she was in her avoidance of friction. it was as much as he could do at times to be civil to his host. arnott's self-indulgence was, he supposed, the cause of the cloud which had disturbed the domestic peace. if the man persistently made a beast of himself, it was not surprising that his wife should lose her affection for him. he was thankful to escape from the dining-room and join pamela and mrs carruthers on the stoep. mrs carruthers, doubtless as a sign of her approval of the decision he had arrived at, acted that evening with a considerate kindness of which he was keenly sensible and gratefully appreciative: she contrived with admirable skill to engage her host and her husband in a political discussion which bored her exceedingly, and which roused arnott to a heated denunciation of the hertzog faction. like many men sufficiently indifferent to public affairs to take no active part in them, arnott was a fiery critic of anti-imperialism, indeed of any opinions which failed to accord with his own way of thinking. mrs carruthers threw in the necessary challenge at intervals in order to keep the talk from flagging, and, to her own amazement, found herself defending some of the backveld ideals. "i am a staunch believer in race preservation," she announced. "i admire the dutch for defending their principles, and insisting on the recognition of their language." "language!" arnott sneered. "oh! it's a language of sorts, though we may not consider it exactly important. but it's a kind of instinct with them, like the family bible, and a contempt for the natives. i don't see why they shouldn't uphold these things." dare, talking a little apart with pamela, gazed thoughtfully at the quiet darkness of the garden and proposed walking in it. she hesitated for the fraction of a second, and then complied. he noted the slight hesitation, and felt glad that she conquered her reluctance. to have refused his request would have seemed to suggest a want of confidence in him. nevertheless, some impulse, prompted by the recollection of that slight hesitation, impelled him to turn before they got beyond view of the others on the lighted stoep, and confine their walking to the limit of the path in front of the house. he had not intended this at the start; he longed for darkness and solitude. the murmur of voices, the little disjointed scraps of conversation overheard as they passed and repassed, disturbed him irritatingly; arnott's frequently raised, assertive tones sounded intrusive, broke upon the quiet of the garden discordantly, reminding the two who walked in it of his presence with a needlessly aggressive insistence. dare tried to ignore these things, but they jarred his nerves none the less. he had not suspected until recently that he possessed any nerves; but they had made many disquieting manifestations of their actuality of late. "i can't grow accustomed to the thought that you are leaving to-morrow," pamela said to him presently. her voice was low, and betrayed unmistakable regret. the back of her hand brushed his lightly as they paced the gravel slowly side by side. the contact gave him immense satisfaction; he was grateful to her for not increasing the space between them and thus denying him this small pleasure. "of course i knew you were only down for a short while; but your departure is a little unexpected, isn't it?" "i came for a week," he answered with a brief laugh. "it's been a long one as days are reckoned, but time skips along when one is enjoying oneself... it was sweet of you to say that, to allow me to think that you will miss me a little. we have had some pleasant times together. the worst of these things is there always has to be an end. i shall miss you more than you will miss me." "i wonder!" said pamela. he turned his head suddenly and looked her squarely in the eyes. the light from the stoep shone on her face and showed it very fair and pale and pure. she turned aside as though unwilling to bear his earnest scrutiny. "one grows used to people," she said. "somehow, i have always felt at home with you. when you go away i have a feeling that you won't come back. i had that feeling last time." "yet here i am," he said in a lighter tone. "yes," she said. "i know. it's stupid of me. i hate losing sight of friends. i have so few." "few!" he echoed. "i expect if i had half the number i should reckon myself rich." "you don't use the word in the sense i do," she returned. "i meant the friends one can depend upon... who wouldn't fail one under any circumstances." "i understand," he said, and added quietly: "i am glad you place me in that category." "you head the list," she answered with a faint smile. "i'm not quite sure your name doesn't stand alone." while she was speaking the belief was suddenly confirmed in her that this man was entirely sincere in his protestations of friendship, that even if he heard the shameful story of her life with arnott, he would not withdraw his friendship. she felt that she could rely on him, trust him implicitly. she also knew that if she needed help at any time he was the one person in the world she would ask for it. he was so sympathetic that she believed he would understand, as no one else without a similar experience could understand, her position. he, at least, would recognise that she had not acted solely from base motives. "i shouldn't like to believe that," he said gently; "but i am proud to top the list. i have a feeling to-night," he added slowly, unconsciously watching arnott as the latter leaned forward in excited argument with mrs carruthers, "that we shall yet prove our belief in one another's sincerity. don't think i am suggesting all manner of unnameable tragedies in your life,--the proof of loyal friendship is to be helpful also in little things. it's rather a rotten idea--isn't it?--that a man can't be pals with a married woman." "i think so," pamela answered. "besides, you've disproved that in your friendship with connie." dare was silent for a moment. there was, he knew, a very substantial difference in the quality of his friendship with mrs carruthers and his friendship with pamela; sentiment was entirely absent in his feeling for the one; in the latter case the whole fabric of his regard was built upon it. he had a fairly strong conviction that he would throw, over connie, throw over the whole world if need be, for this other woman. but he also realised with an equal certainty that the one thing he would not do was to allow her fair name to be sullied through his indiscretion. if it were necessary to the maintenance of a platonic friendship to remain at a distance, he would avoid any future possibility of their paths crossing. that much he could do for her. it was the strongest proof of his regard. "men and women disprove that theory continually," he returned. "but we only hear of the failures, and that brings discredit on the idea. one might as reasonably argue that the divorce court brings discredit on the married state. the whole thing is absurd." "i wonder why you never married," pamela said suddenly. "somehow, i can't think of you as a married man; and yet you must surely have contemplated marriage. most men do at some time or another." "i suppose," he said, "that you, like connie, regard me as an old fogey and past such things?" "no," she answered simply. "my husband was older than you when i-when--" she floundered helplessly, and paused in swift confusion. it was impossible, she found, to refer to her marriage; the word stuck in her throat. always, it seemed to her in her distress, this galling knowledge that she was not legally married was being forced upon her realisation to her further humiliation. unable to complete the sentence, she added lamely: "a man is never too old." he laughed. "you think i might find some one to take pity on me even now?" "i think," she returned warmly, "that the woman who wins you will be very fortunate. and you are only quizzing me in respect of age; you are quite young yet." "only recently," he explained, "i have been called middle-aged, and it hurt my vanity. age, like most things, is relative. when one is in one's teens forty appears senility; when one approaches forty it wears quite another aspect,--a comfortably matured, youthful aspect compared with which the teens are puerile. the heart defies wrinkles. i resent being described as middle-aged: it tempts me to the committal of youthful follies." they had reached the end of the path and were beyond the circle of light from the stoep. dare brought up abruptly, and instead of turning, halted, and faced her in the gloom of the overhanging trees. his eyes scrutinised her face in the dimness with tender intensity. "this is the last lap," he said. "i'm going to take you back now, and you'll sing for me. `mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix.' ... don't you love the words? they express better than any words in our language could just exactly how the dear particular voice affects one... oh! little friend, i wish that fate did not decree that our paths in life must diverge just here, and so seldom cross." "that bears out what i have felt," said pamela slowly, gazing steadily bade at him. "you won't come again." "who can say?" he returned. "i feel--and i think you do too, though you are too wise and sweet to say so--that it is better i should stay away. i want you to bear me always kindly in your thoughts. and when i am near you i am never quite confident that i shall not say something which may lower me in your esteem. i shouldn't like to do that. man is but human, and humanity has some of the brute instincts, though we flatter ourselves we are only a little lower than the angels,--that little makes all the difference. shall we turn back?" pamela acquiesced in silence, and walked in silence to the house. she was conscious that dare talked, but she scarcely heard what he said in her troubled preoccupation. what he had said beyond there in the shadow of the trees was repeating itself over and over in her mind. she could not misunderstand the purport of his words; and she felt sorry. she liked him so well. she wanted to keep and enjoy his friendship,--wanted him to be in her life, not forced by a recognition of the weakness he hinted at to stand always outside. why could they not have remained friends in the real sense of the word, as he had first suggested? his admission made it impossible. she felt angry with him. she wanted his friendship so urgently. "you are not offended with me?" he asked presently, struck by her unheeding silence which insensibly conveyed a hurt resentment. he put the question twice before she answered him. "no," she replied. "but--" "but?" he prompted gently. "i want your friendship," she said quickly, with a little nervous catch of her breath. "i thought i had it... and you are making it impossible." "oh! no," he answered. "i am making it very possible. it is because i feel i may perhaps be useful as a friend that i have been so honest with you. don't make any mistake about that." she made no response. they were approaching within hearing of the others, and mrs carruthers was leaning on the rail of the stoep, watching their slow advance, observing them, it occurred to pamela, from the concentrated earnestness of her look, with an unaccountable interest. she leaned towards them as they came up. "i'm on the verge of quarrelling with every one," she said with remarkable cheerfulness. "you've only arrived in time to prevent bloodshed. if you have tired of doing the romantic, come in and let us have some music." "sing to us, mrs arnott," pleaded carruthers,--"something soothing. my wife has been most extraordinarily aggravating." pamela made some laughing response, and joined him. mrs carruthers turned towards dare, who remained standing alone at the top of the steps. "i have saved the situation for you this evening," she said, "and lost my own temper. but i am thankful for three things." "and they are?" he inquired. "that there is no moon,--that you turned back when you did,--and that to-morrow is not many hours off." "i never believed before," he returned drily, "that it was in your nature to be unpleasant." she smiled encouragingly. "you are only beginning," she said, "to gauge my possibilities." chapter twelve. of the beauty of friendship much has been said and written, but little of its danger. in a friendship between the sexes there is always danger; for a friendship between a man and a woman is based on an entirely different sentiment from any other relation. the danger may not be apparent; in many cases it is latent; but the spark which will ignite it is present in the attribute of sex, and the unforeseen accident of circumstance may fire it at any moment. men realise this more readily than women, perhaps because they are less given to subduing these qualities. dare's resolve to act on mrs carruthers' advice and flee the danger was the result of his recognition of it. his sudden departure was an acknowledgment of his own weakness, and at the same time a proof of strength of purpose. to act contrary to one's inclination for the sake of principle entails sacrifice. the sacrifice did not affect him solely. this abrupt cessation of their pleasant intercourse made a fresh break in pamela's life. for some weeks after he had gone she missed his society greatly; his frequent, unexpected visits had added a pleasurable excitement to her days; she had grown used to his dropping in at all hours, had grown to look for him. until he was gone she had not realised how much she had enjoyed these visits; now that they had ceased she felt unaccountably lonely. she sought distraction from the dulness of her home by going out a good deal, and took up again with feverish energy the old round of social pleasures which the tragic discovery of the deception of her marriage had interrupted. she had had little heart for such things of late, and had made the baby's advent an excuse for retirement. she started entertaining again in the lavish manner of happier days, and so filled in the blank which dare's departure had created. she had not suspected until he left how much she had grown to depend on him. it distressed her not a little to discover that she missed him so greatly; she felt ashamed to acknowledge it even to herself. arnott was on the whole rather pleased to observe what he believed to be pamela's reawakened interest in life. he had resented her persistent avoidance of all save a favoured few of her former friends. her attitude had struck him as a tacit reproach to himself, and this had annoyed him. her resumption of neglected duties won him over to greater amiability, and kept him more at home. since the birth of the boy, the care of whom had been a tie upon pamela, he had fallen into the habit of motoring alone into cape town and spending much of his time at his club. the parental role was not at all in his line. he could not understand why pamela refused to engage a capable european nurse, and hand the care of the children over to her. nevertheless, when pamela suggested having a governess for them, he opposed the idea vigorously. a nurse was reasonable, he argued; but a governess was not a servant, and would be continually in the way. he disliked the idea of admitting a stranger into the household. pamela allowed the matter to drop for a time, but she did not give it up entirely. she discussed it with mrs carruthers, and mrs carruthers made inquiries for her, and ascertained that blanche maitland would be quite willing to undertake the position. after the lapse of a few months pamela broached the project with greater determination. in the interval she invited blanche to the house on several occasions with a view to accustoming arnott to her. it was following one of these occasions that she opened the subject again. "that girl seems to be here fairly often," arnott remarked. "what is the attraction?" "i like her," said pamela. "she is quiet, and nice." "she's quiet enough," he admitted. "i want you to agree to my engaging her as nursery governess," she said. "pamela is growing big enough to begin easy lessons, and both the children need a white woman's care. they must have an educated person with them. it is impossible for me to be with them all day." "i don't see why a good european nurse," he began. but she interrupted him firmly. "there are very few good european nurses to be had out here," she declared, and urged her reasons more strongly. arnott was not easily won over. he resented the idea of a stranger in the household, whom he could not ignore as he might a nurse, to whom it would be necessary, he complained, to be civil. "i don't see why a nurse shouldn't be good enough for our kids as well as for other people's," he grumbled. "a governess is always in the way." "i will take very good care she doesn't get in your way," pamela returned. "and i don't fancy you will find it difficult to be civil to blanche." "you can't treat a girl like that as if she were a nursemaid," he objected. "of course not. one need not go to extremes either way." he looked at her with some displeasure, made an impatient sound between his teeth, muttered: "damn the kids!" and finally gave in. "you'll never leave off pestering until you get what you want," he said. "you can try the experiment, but as soon as it becomes a nuisance you will have to make other arrangements." "all right," pamela agreed cheerfully, satisfied at having gained her point, and feeling very little anxiety as to the result of her venture. "you'll see; it will work admirably. and i shall have far more leisure to devote to your exacting self." he suddenly smiled. "i'm glad you recognise that you have neglected me of late," he observed. "i've been of no greater account in this household than a piece of waste paper since the boy came." pamela flushed painfully. it was the first time arnott had made any direct allusion to the change that was gradually alienating their sympathies. the knowledge that he too recognised it added to the distress of her own unwilling acceptance of the inevitable estrangement. "i too have felt that we were--were growing a little apart," she faltered. "you don't seem to need me quite so much as you did." "what's the use of needing you when i can't have you?" he grumbled. "the kids always come first with you." "you don't mean that," she said quickly. arnott laughed, and put a careless arm about her shoulders. "i'm only teasing, pam," he said. "you don't stand chaff like you used to. you were rare sport at one time. what's changing you?" "life," she answered quietly. "oh, rot!" he ejaculated irritably. "that's talking heroics. your life runs on fairly even lines. don't be melodramatic." he kissed her lightly, and released her. the next day he brought her a present out from town. in this manner he believed he smoothed away unpleasantness. pamela settled the matter of the governess by engaging her immediately, thus giving arnott no opportunity for reconsidering his reluctant acquiescence. within the month blanche maitland was established in the house, and very quickly made herself indispensable to pamela. she was not only useful with the children; she took over many domestic duties which she contrived to fit in without interfering with her legitimate occupation. pamela stood out for a time against this encroachment on her province. she was not altogether satisfied to have her home run by a stranger. but blanche seemed so anxious to prove helpful, and was so excellent with the children, that little by little she gave way, until practically the entire control passed into miss maitland's capable hands. after a while pamela decided that it was rather agreeable to have the housekeeping worries lifted from her shoulders. she increased miss maitland's salary in recognition of her worth, and became a mere cipher in the management of her home. the arrangement pleased arnott. miss maitland was more efficient as a housekeeper than pamela had ever been; and her release from these ties enabled his wife to devote more of her time and attention upon himself. she too was happier in the new arrangement. arnott showed a renewed pleasure in her society. being a man who did not make friends, his wife's companionship was to a great extent necessary to him; now that he could enjoy it freely whenever he desired he fell into the habit of wanting her and became somewhat exacting in his demands upon her leisure. but in this selfish dependency on her company there remained little of the eager gladness in each other, the perfect understanding of happier days. pamela was sensible of the difference, though she tried to ignore it. it was, she felt largely her own fault. in the difficult time following her enlightenment she had lost her influence over arnott; had allowed the power she had possessed to slip away from her in her timid shrinking from ugly realities, and her newly acquired distrust of himself. she had strained his love and patience often in those days, and she was reaping the result now. these things troubled her no longer to the extent they once had done. she was becoming reconciled to the changes in her life. although she strove to fight against an increasing indifference in her own feeling towards him, she knew that her love was not as perfect as it had been: it had gone down under the shock, and come out of the wreckage of her happiness a crippled thing. when pamela allowed her mind to dwell on these matters she became frightened. it was terrifying to contemplate what might result if they ceased finally to care for one another. life together in such circumstances would become unendurable. plenty of people lived together who were mutually antipathetic, but not in the dishonoured relations of her union with arnott. a real love alone offered any extenuation--if extenuation could be urged--in defence of their sin against society. she dared not admit a doubt of her loyal devotion, dared not cease to struggle to retain herbert's affection. her life became an endless fight to keep alive the shrunken image of the old love. a love which needs constant tending and guarding and encouraging is a difficult plant to keep flourishing: when one is compelled to resort to artificial stimulus it is a proof that the nature has gone out of it. pamela had at one time regarded the carruthers' married life as a rather prosy affair; now she was inclined to envy the humdrum content of this eminently well-mated couple. if there was not much actual romance in connie carruthers' life, there was solid satisfaction and entire trust. she and dick carruthers had been comrades rather than lovers, and they remained comrades still. "don't you think," pamela observed to her one day, when she came in to see her godson, and take tea, as she often did, with the children, "that babies make a big difference? ... they seem to come between the parents... they make a break. i suppose it's because they claim so much of one's time and attention." "yours don't get it, whatever they may claim," mrs carruthers answered. "and children are the only decent excuse for marriage. i wish i had a dozen." she looked at pamela curiously, not quite sure what to make of her speech, and not liking it particularly. the children had just been taken away by miss maitland. pamela had let them go reluctantly. whatever her opinion as to the desirability of children, she was unquestionably devoted to her own. "they make a difference," pamela insisted. "of course they do. they interfere with one's comfort. it's good discipline for selfish people. why, you silly person, you would be miserable without your babies." pamela smiled drearily. "i suppose i should--now. but i sometimes wish they hadn't come... especially the boy," she added wistfully. mrs carruthers felt slightly uncomfortable. she had an instinctive dread of intimate confidences; and the tone of pamela's plaint occurred to her as significant of a desire to unburden herself. if babies in the house upset arnott's temper, she did not wish to hear about it. arnott was a man whom she cordially disliked. it was not in the least surprising to her that pamela was finding life with him less of an idyll than she had once believed it; the mystery was that she had not suffered disillusion earlier; the man was so absolutely selfish. "it isn't any use wishing," she replied with a downright commonsense that damped pamela's disposition to be confidential. "and blanche relieves you of all trouble. you were lucky to secure that girl. i knew she was a treasure. she is the kind of girl who deserves to have a home of her own to run. but men usually marry the helpless, ornamental women; they are connoisseurs merely in exteriors. not that there is anything amiss with blanche's exterior. dickie admires her tremendously." "she is very useful," pamela said. "the children like her." "don't you?" "oh! yes, of course." pamela's tone was a little uncertain; it qualified her words, mrs carruthers thought. "one can't have everything," she went on, in the manner of one weighing advantages against disadvantages, and finding the balance fairly even. "she is an enormous help to me--indeed, i am growing to depend too much on her. but i don't see enough of the children since she came. when i am home and able to have them, she has some reason which interferes. it is always a sound reason. but there is so much discipline in the nursery now; it robs me of a good deal of enjoyment. the children don't belong to me any more." "well," said mrs carruthers, "you can soon alter that." "it isn't so simple as it sounds," pamela replied. "i tried at first; but one has to give way. it is all for the benefit of the children. it's no good employing any one like that, and interfering with her authority. she has to be with them always, and i only see them at odd moments." she broke off with a laugh. "it's a shame to inflict all this grumbling on you; but i needed an outlet. it wouldn't do to grumble to herbert because he was so greatly against having a governess. he would say it was what he foresaw, and advise me to get rid of her. i shouldn't like to do that. i always feel easy in my mind about them when i leave them now. she is entirely trustworthy." "i think i should put my foot down upon that point," mrs carruthers advised. "that sort of thing can become annoying. some people are greedy for authority, and if you give in to them they become arbitrary. if you want the children any hour of the day, have them, whether it is the time for their rest or any other legitimate exercise." "and spoil their tempers," laughed pamela. "rubbish!" scoffed mrs carruthers. "temper in the human animal develops naturally. one has to spank it out of them. all children are not brought up by rule, you know; it isn't possible in some households. we were dragged up; but i must add that our tempers on the whole did not suffer as a result. keep their little bodies nourished, and their minds will develop of themselves. the one thing, i suppose, every mother strives to do is to develop her baby on the lines she considers the most admirable; and the baby invariably develops on its own lines, because it is an individual. it is difficult to regard the infant as an individual. we imagine we form its character; but nature forms its character in the embryo stage; we merely advance its development by the aid of our own experience. see more of your children, pamela, my dear; nothing will ever make up to you, nor to them, the enjoyment you forego in your present separation." she rose abruptly, and approached pamela's side. stooping, she took the wistful face between her hands and kissed it. "i am a stony-hearted, philosophical lunatic," she said. "go and put on your hat, you blessed infant, and come out for a walk with me." chapter thirteen. miss maitland had been some months in the house before arnott became in any degree alive to her actual presence. he met her occasionally coming in or going out. usually she had the children with her, and a coloured girl in charge of the boy. he always passed them, thankful that politeness demanded nothing further than the raising of his hat. sometimes he encountered her on the stairs, when he felt constrained to make a remark. but she was exceedingly retiring, and appeared quite as anxious as he was to avoid these encounters. she had a habit of effacing herself when he was at home. but one day when he had been lunching with some men at his club, and returned unexpectedly early in the afternoon with the intention of running pamela out to camps bay in the motor, he found that pamela had gone visiting; and miss maitland, who supplied this information, ceased amazingly to stand as a mere cog in the wheel of his domestic machinery, and assumed a distinct feminine personality that caught and held his attention. she was, he noted, and felt surprised that he noticed this for the first time, a striking, fine-looking girl. he had run upstairs to look for pamela, and was calling for her loudly when quite unexpectedly a door in the corridor opened, and miss maitland appeared, closing the door softly behind her, and keeping her hand on the knob. "the children are asleep," she said, which he recognised was a warning to him not to disturb them. instead of feeling annoyed, he stopped short and stared at her apologetically. "sorry i was so inconsiderate," he said. "i forgot. can you tell me where mrs arnott is?" blanche explained. "what a bore," he said. "i particularly wanted her." he surveyed the calm face turned gravely in his direction, with its serene eyes and unsmiling lips, and was amused to see it change colour under his scrutiny. his interest was immediately aroused. she assumed from that moment an individuality that excited his curiosity. why, he wondered, had he been so entirely unaware of her before?--not unaware of her actual bodily presence in his home, but of her separate existence as a sentient human being,--a feminine human being with possibilities of engaging developments. he held her for a few minutes in conversation; then, quite pleasantly excited, he went downstairs, and sat on the stoep and smoked until pamela returned. pamela found him in a mood of high good humour, notwithstanding his announcement that he had spent a solitary afternoon, chafing at her absence. the period of solitude had been less irksome than he allowed. she leaned against the rail of the stoep near his chair, and gave an account of her afternoon's doings, which had been fairly dull on the whole. "i would rather have been motoring," she finished. miss maitland appeared with the children at this moment. she had waited until pamela returned home, not caring to pass arnott, for some inexplicable reason, and fully alive to the fact that he was seated on the stoep near the door. it was late for their walk. for the first time since her arrival the rigid rule of regular hours was relaxed. pamela looked round in surprise. "going out?" she exclaimed, catching up pamela, the younger, who had flown towards her and flung herself into her arms. arnott sat up, regarding the governess under his eyes. she had no look for him. "baby slept late," she explained to pamela. "i thought we might manage a short walk before tea." "you come too," the little girl pleaded, tugging at pamela's hand. "nonsense!" interposed arnott. "you have got miss maitland. daddy wants mummy." the child pouted her disappointment. "you can have miss maitland," she said, with unflattering generosity. "pamela wants her mummy." arnott laughed. "suppose i come instead, kiddie?" he suggested. but his small daughter was decided in her opinions, and unblushingly frank in the expression of them. "i want mummy," she announced. "i don't want any one else." "i'll tell you what i will do," he said, rising abruptly, to pamela's wondering amazement. "the car is all ready for going out i'll take the whole lot for a spin." he tried not to look as though he were conscious of acting in an altogether unprecedented manner, and added: "you can nurse the boy between you." "that will be jolly," said pamela. little pamela clapped her hands. "that will be jolly," she echoed. "i feel quite the family man," arnott remarked later, when he had settled miss maitland in the back with the children,--an arrangement against which pamela, the younger, at first protested loudly. she wanted her mummy. why couldn't miss maitland sit in front with daddy? pamela touched his arm affectionately as he seated himself beside her and grasped the steering wheel. "i love you in the role," she said softly. "i wish you played it more often." he laughed constrainedly. "we'll see how it works," he answered guardedly. it worked well on the whole. david howled lustily part of the time, for no apparent reason, after the manner of small people; but he ceased his cries when pamela took him on her lap and coaxed him into a good temper. that hour was the happiest she had spent for a long while. it was the first occasion on which arnott had taken the children out, or evinced any interest in them whatever. she wondered what impulse had moved him to act in this wholly unexpected and delightful way. she understood him sufficiently to realise that it was an impulse, and entertained no great hope that it would develop into a practice; but even as an isolated instance of parental affection it presented him in a new and more kindly light. aware that he was giving her pleasure, arnott experienced an agreeable sense of virtuous complacency. he speculated upon what the girl in the tonneau was thinking, as she sat in her silent fashion, responding only when necessary to pamela's ceaseless prattle. he looked round occasionally to make some joking remark to the child, and once he deliberately addressed himself to the governess. she started when he spoke to her, and answered briefly, and with faint embarrassment. after that one attempt at conversation he did not look round again. "i like going out in the car," remarked little pamela, when she was lifted out on their return home. "why don't we go every day?" "daddy wouldn't be bothered with such a small fidget every day," he answered. "but you shall go again, if you are good." "to-morrow?" demanded pamela. "we'll see," he returned, and drove the car round to the garage. pamela carried the boy upstairs to the nursery, and remained for the nursery tea. then she changed her dress and went downstairs. arnott was in the drawing-room when she entered. she went to him and put her arms about his neck and kissed him. "thank you, dear, for a very happy drive," she said. he laughed awkwardly. "odd ideas of happiness some people have," he commented. "it gave the children a lot of pleasure," she said. "and it was a change for miss maitland. i have often wished to take her in the car, but i haven't liked to suggest it." "why not?" he asked. "i was afraid you might think it a nuisance. it was one of the conditions, you know, that i wasn't to let her get in your way." "oh, that!" he returned... "yes. but you've taken me rather more literally than i intended. she is a very self-effacing young woman. what on earth does she do with herself? it must be fairly dull for her to be always with the kids. why don't you have her down for an hour of an evening? ... i don't see why she shouldn't dine with us." "i don't think that's necessary," she said. "just as you like," he answered. "i only thought it would make it brighter for her." she considered the matter for a second or so, not altogether liking the idea, and half wishing that he had not made the suggestion. a third person sharing their quiet evenings would end finally the pleasant companionable home life which had once meant so much to both of them, but which pamela was forced to recognise was no longer all it had been. perhaps the addition of a third person would make the increasing strain of these domestic evenings less apparent, might, by introducing a fresh note, rouse them both from the apathy of indifference into which they were drifting. people could have too much of one another's undiluted society; the presence of a third person, even if sometimes irksome, stimulates the interest afresh. and, as arnott had remarked, it would certainly be brighter for blanche. "if you are sure you don't mind," she said. "why should i mind? the girl is harmless enough," he replied. "i don't like the idea of her spending her evenings alone." "no," pamela said, perching herself on the arm of his chair, and turning a smiling face to his. "i don't like it either. but i am just a little reluctant to admit her altogether as one of the family. it's going to put a finish to this comfortable state of affairs." he laughed, and got an arm about her waist. "i suppose it is," he allowed. "but if you will introduce strange young women into the happy home you must put up with that. it was your doing, remember." "i know," pamela assented. "but you must admit, herbert, that it has been a success." "i don't deny it," he returned. "so far as i am able to judge, the arrangement has worked towards the greater comfort of the establishment all round. that's one reason why i think we ought to study the girl. at present she is being treated like an upper servant. that won't do. a girl needs some society outside the nursery." "very well," agreed pamela. "we will inaugurate the new system to-morrow." accordingly on the morrow miss maitland joined them at dinner. although arnott himself had suggested, and practically insisted on this extension of privileges, he made very little effort in helping pamela in the laborious task of sustaining conversation during the meal, or later when they sat on the stoep. the governess occupied herself with some sewing, and arnott sat under the electric light and read the papers, only very occasionally throwing in a remark. pamela found the evening very tedious, and was relieved when punctually at nine-thirty miss maitland retired. never very talkative, miss maitland's powers of conversation seemed to dry up in arnott's presence. she seldom looked at him, and never addressed him spontaneously. "bit dull, isn't she?" arnott observed, when she had left them and gone indoors. he dropped his paper on to the floor and yawned. then he got up. "you don't seem to have the knack of setting her at her ease," he said irritably. "i don't see what more i can be expected to do," pamela returned, a little nettled. "she is shy--i think of you. when we are alone she is more companionable." "well, i'm going in for a whisky," he said. "dull people always give me a thirst." he went inside. miss maitland was mounting the stairs as he crossed the hall. he paused at the foot of the stairs and looked after her. "good-night,--mouse," he called softly. she looked back over her shoulder and flushed warmly. "good-night," she answered, and gave him one of her rare smiles, and hurried on. he entered the dining-room, drank off a glass of whisky, and poured himself out a second, which he carried with him on to the stoep and placed in the armhole of his chair. he had quite recovered his good humour. he smiled a trifle self-consciously, and leaned over the back of pamela's chair, and rallied her on her silence. "am i to sit through the rest of the evening with another speechless young woman?" he inquired. pamela, who felt unaccountably depressed, made no direct reply to this. instead she observed: "blanche plays wonderfully. would it bore you if i suggested a little music occasionally? i think she would enjoy it, and it would relieve the strain." "it wouldn't bore me," he answered. "i'm fond of music when it's good. if she would like to strum, let her. there was a time when you used to sing to me. but i haven't heard you sing for months, and then only when we had people here." pamela remembered perfectly. the last time she had sung was the night dare dined with them. "you never seemed to care much," she said. "not care! you didn't think that when i used to hang over you and the piano on board ship," he laughed. "well, you don't take the trouble to hang over the piano any longer," she replied. he straightened himself, and moved away, frowning impatiently. why, he wondered, did a woman always demand open demonstration of a man's affection? as a sex they were tiresomely exacting. "i'll get a gramophone," he said. pamela laughed. "some one has to hang over that. that will be my job, i suppose?" "no. i will make myself independent of you. miss maitland shall work it." "it seems," pamela observed, "that she is to be a person of many avocations,--nurse to the children, housekeeper for me, and companion to you." "why not?" he said. "she'll find the last job the most amusing." "if this evening was a sample of your mutual interest, i should doubt that," pamela retorted. "i never knew you could be so absolutely wooden. you did not make the least attempt to be agreeable. after all, it was your idea to have her down." "it's no use, pam," he answered coolly. "i refuse to make a social effort in my own home after eight o'clock. i expect to be amused,--or at least left in peace. i didn't lay myself out to be entertaining when i proposed her joining us. she will fit in, in time. don't you worry." he raised his glass, and took a long drink. "if one is obliged to admit the stranger within one's gate, i prefer she should err on the quiet side," he added. he recalled the swift, surprised flush, and the smile which the girl, pausing on the landing, had given him; and he wondered whether in her own room she was thinking, as he was, of that unexpected encounter, and the confidential half-whisper of his murmured good-night. it had, he felt, established a sort of understanding between them. odd, he reflected, that he had lived in the same house with her for months, and only now discovered in her that quality of the essential feminine which made her an interesting problem to the male mind. chapter fourteen. it seemed as though arnott, after years of indifference, had abruptly awoke to his duties as a father. he began to take a quite extraordinary interest in his children. exercise in the car ceased to be an astounding treat and became an almost daily custom. he even penetrated into the nursery, usually when the children were in bed. he bought sweets for them, and chose this hour for presenting his gifts. pamela looked on, puzzled. she refrained from any comment; she was on the whole pleased; but she was not confident as to the staying qualities of this sudden show of interest; and she awaited developments with a doubt as to his entire sincerity in the new pose. not for a long time did she connect the change in his attitude with the presence of miss maitland in the nursery. it spoke eloquently for arnott's discretion that pamela was so blind to his intimacy with her children's governess; had he been at all indiscreet in his conduct before the children they would have carried tales. it was in order to avoid the disconcerting evidence of sharp eyes and small ears that he usually visited the nursery when they were in bed. during these visits he contrived to snatch a few minutes alone with blanche in the playroom, having previously closed the door between it and the night-nursery. these interviews began by being entirely commonplace. arnott was carefully feeling his way; he had no desire to precipitate matters; and the girl was shy. he was satisfied that this was not a pose; the girl really was shy. she was also, he perceived, pleasantly flattered by his attentions. he began his overtures towards a greater familiarity by addressing her by fanciful names. he bought her elaborate boxes of chocolates, which he gave her with some jesting remark about all little girls liking sweets. one day he gave her a brooch. blanche looked utterly confused at receiving this present, and pushed it back hastily into his hand. "oh, no, please! i can't take it," she said. for a moment he looked disconcerted. "why not?" he asked. the rich blood was showing under her skin in the way he enjoyed seeing it, and the dark, mystery-eyes, as he called them, were lowered in quick embarrassment. she was obviously much distressed. his annoyance vanished. "please don't think me ungracious," she pleaded; "but i would rather you didn't give me things like that." he slipped the trinket into his pocket, and possessed himself of her hand. "then i won't," he said. "but i am sorry you won't let me." he hesitated for a moment, studying her downcast face; then he bent forward and kissed her lips. she looked more confused than before, but she did not draw back. he kissed her again. "just to show that you are not vexed," he said. after which he released her, and went downstairs with an air of elation, and his pulses beating at a great rate with pleasurable excitement. he walked on to the stoep, whistling softly. she didn't seem to mind, he reflected. he wondered why he had not kissed her before. that evening, when she came downstairs, he spoke very little to her, and studiously avoided looking at her. she played accompaniments for pamela part of the time; and he sat alone on the stoep and smoked and watched them through the french windows. once pamela put her arm round the girl's shoulders, and remained in this position while she sang. inexplicably her attitude jarred arnott. the girl sat very stiffly. she did not, he observed, once lift her eyes from the sheet of music she was reading. shortly before her usual time for retiring he left his seat, and went upstairs, and waited on the landing until she appeared. he heard the drawing-room door open and close. then the piano sounded again, and pamela's voice, rich, and full, and sweet, came to his ears as he stood there in the gloom of the landing, listening for blanche's light ascending footfall. presently she appeared, and stood, a dusky figure in the half light, her simple white dress revealing soft full throat and rounded arms, and a surprisingly graceful form. she paused, startled at seeing him there, and instinctively threw out a protesting hand. he caught her to him, and kissed her passionately, holding her strained against his breast. "oh, don't!" she gasped, a little frightened at the steel-like pressure of his arms. she was trembling from head to foot. never had she been kissed like this in all her life before. his passion scorched her, terrified her, left her quivering with shame and mortification. and yet she was not angry. these hot kisses raining upon her lips, his kisses earlier in the day, roused in her the desire to be kissed. an unemotional, loveless girlhood had repressed, but not slain, the inherent qualities of a passionate nature; arnott's virile love-making was calling these repressed emotions to life. she wanted to be loved; she wanted to be kissed; wanted to be made to feel that she counted in some one's life,-was important,--necessary to some one. at the moment of offering her feeble protest, when she yet yielded to his caresses, it did not occur to her that arnott had no right to make her of account in his life. that aspect of the case appealed to her later, when she lay in bed unable to sleep for the unwholesome excitement which fired her brain and quickened the beating of her heart. when she considered arnott in the light of a married man, and realised that his making love to her was an insult, it sickened her. she felt angry--angry with him, and fiercely jealous of pamela. she hated pamela,--hated her for having all the things which she desired and had not got,--hated her for her fair smiling prettiness, her kindness, her utter lack of appreciation--as it seemed to blanche--of all the good she possessed. why should pamela have everything, and she only the stealthy kisses of a man whose kisses were an insult? as she felt again in imagination the close pressure of his lips upon hers, the grip of his arms, which had hurt her, frightened her, and yet given her a thrill of sensuous pleasure, she turned her face to the pillow and pressed her mouth against its coolness and cried weakly. how dared he kiss her like that? ... how dared he endeavour to make her love him when he could never be anything closer in her life than at present? it was cruel and mean of him... yet, despite her realisation of his baseness, she could not hate the man. already he had succeeded beyond his expectation in rousing in her a hungry craving for him, which, if he persisted in his selfish persecution, could only end disastrously for her. and he had no intention to desist. the game which he had started idly for his own amusement was becoming absorbingly interesting. that was how he regarded the affair. in his ungenerous pursuit of amusement he lost sight of the girl's youth, of her helpless position in his household, exposed to the evil influence of his attentions, and unable to protect herself save by giving up her post, which he was comfortably assured from the moment she suffered his caresses she would not have the strength of mind to do. he was not in love with her. he was merely gratifying a sensual impulse to take advantage of the moment. it seemed absurd, he told himself, to have a girl, eager for initiation, at hand and refrain from using the opportunity. she could stop him if she chose. when she broke away from him on the landing, he went downstairs and returned quietly to his seat on the stoep. pamela was still singing. she ceased presently, and closed the piano and joined him. "i believe you were asleep," she said, and perched herself on his knee. his eyes flashed open instantly. he had been leaning back with them closed, lost in a comfortable reverie; her unexpected action startled him into sudden alertness. "something very near it," he admitted. "i believe, myself, i've been dreaming." "pleasant dreams?" she demanded. he took her chin in his hand. "confused," he answered. "i'm not fully awake now... am i an old fogey, pam?" "no," she replied, smiling. "but you are not exactly a boy." "not a dashing hero," he rejoined. "then my dreams were deceptive. dreaming after dinner suggests age. i'll have to buck up." "buck up now, and talk to me," pamela said. "you've been very slow this evening." "have i?" he took hold of her wrist and spanned it with his fingers. "you are growing abominably thin," he remarked irrelevantly. involuntarily, he compared her slimness with blanche maitland's generous lines, and decided that thinness was unbecoming. "i never was plump," pamela answered calmly, quite satisfied with her own proportions, and unconscious of his comparison. "no... `a rag and a bone and a hank of hair' ... how does the thing go?" "i don't think i want to hear any more of it," she said. he laughed. "then don't grow any thinner. you are getting to be all angles." she got off his knee and took a chair some little distance from him. "these unflattering remarks are not soothing," she said. "i think i prefer your silence." arnott felt carelessly amused. "you needn't get ratty," he returned. "it is only concern for your well-being that is responsible for my criticisms. the fact is, you need a change, pam. i have half a mind to shut up the house and cart the lot of you off to the seaside for a fortnight--muizenberg, or somewhere handy, so that i can get in every day and see that things here are going on all right. miss maitland could look after the kiddies, and you and i could motor around, and forget all about wynberg. what do you say to my plan?" pamela sat forward in her chair, her face alight with pleasure. "oh! that would be good," she said. "i should love it? let it be muizenberg, herbert. the sea is so safe and warm there. you could teach pamela to swim. she hasn't a scrap of fear." the suggestion took arnott's fancy. it occurred to him that he might derive a good deal of pleasure in this way. surf bathing at muizenberg was noted. he would have them all in the sea, and teach the governess as well as pamela aquatic accomplishments. "then that's settled," he said. "i will secure rooms at the hotel before the holiday rush. if we get bored, we can return and leave the children there." "i shan't get bored," she said. "i shall sit on the sands all day and revel in idleness. you can't think what a joy it will be to me to have the children always. i shan't want to go motoring. one can do that any time." "you shall please yourself," he returned with unusual good humour. "it's your holiday. if you want to build castles in the sand, i'll help you. you must get yourself a bathing dress--we must all have bathing dresses, and we will become amphibious." "i really believe," observed pamela, looking at him with a quiet smile, "that you are actually keen on this adventure." "i am," he replied. "i told you i was dreaming myself youthful again. i want to roll in the surf, and do all manner of foolish things... why have we never done these things before?" "it never occurred to me that you would agree to an annual seaside trip," she answered. "and i shouldn't care to go without you. it is only lately," she added thoughtfully, "that you have shown any disposition to be bothered with the children. you wouldn't let yourself get interested in them before; and now i believe you realise that you have missed a lot. they are dear wee things." "oh! they are jolly little cards," he answered carelessly. "i am grateful to them in a sense. they are the raison d'etre for this excursion after all. an old fogey like myself couldn't submit to the indignity of paddling in the surf without the legitimate excuse of the necessity for his presence in order to smack the little arnotts with their own spades when they become unruly. it won't be all heaven, i expect." pamela spent the next few days in preparing for the wonderful holiday, assisted by her small excited family, and a silent and detached governess, who looked on, while pamela shopped extensively for every one, with a furtive disapproval in her dark eyes, as though disliking the idea of this change to the sea, and her compulsory participation in it. when pamela presented her with a smart bathing costume she at first declined the gift. "i can't swim," she protested. "and i'm afraid of the sea. i shouldn't like to bathe--really." "oh! but," said pamela, feeling unaccountably disappointed, "we shall all bathe. you won't be afraid with mr arnott; he will teach you to swim in no time. it will be half the fun." blanche blushed at this suggestion that arnott should teach her to swim, and looked with greater disfavour than ever at the ridiculous garment in pamela's hand. "i'm too big a coward to learn," she said. "i should hate it. please don't ask me." miss maitland was, pamela decided, a most unsatisfactory girl to deal with. she told arnott of the difficulty, and held up the amazing garment of navy alpaca and white braid for his inspection. "it is so pretty," she said. "and she looked at it as though it were indecent." he laughed. "as a sex you are all more or less mock modest," he announced. "you will half undress of an evening, and blush to be discovered in a perfectly decorous petticoat. pack the thing in with your own clothes, and i'll undertake to state when she sees every one else in the water she will yearn to get in too. we will cure her of her distaste for salt water." and so the bathing dress went to muizenberg in pamela's trunk. chapter fifteen. with their arrival in muizenberg pamela took entirely upon herself the care of the children. she informed miss maitland that she was to regard her stay there in the light of a holiday; she was to go and come as she chose, and leave the children with her. "but that won't be any holiday for you," objected blanche. "it is my holiday being with them," pamela answered. robbed of her occupation, miss maitland sat on the sands alone and read a book; while pamela, with the aid of maggie, the coloured nurse, bathed and put to bed two very weary and rather fretful little people, tired out with the excitement of the day, with a surfeit of undiluted sunlight, and strong salt air. they had rebelled at going to bed. the boy had howled his hardest when he was forcibly removed from the beach. they had been naughty over tea, and cross at being undressed. pamela had to be coaxed into saying her prayers. but eventually they were put into bed, and within five minutes of being there were sleeping soundly. arnott came in when they were asleep, and expressed surprise at finding pamela there. she raised a cautious finger. "why don't you let miss maitland do this?" he asked. "because i like to do it myself," she replied in an undertone. "aren't you coming out?" "no." he left the room quietly, and strolled down to the beach. the sun had set, and the turquoise of the sea had deepened; its waves no longer shone with glancing lights. the long stretch of white sand was almost deserted; one or two people loitered on it, and down by the water's edge, watching the incoming tide, the solitary figure of a girl in a blue linen frock lent an unexpected touch of harmonious colour against the silvery background of sand. arnott's glance fell on the girl, and, his interest quickening at sight of her, he hastened his steps. she looked up at his approach, flushed warmly, and made a movement as if to rise. he stayed her. "don't move," he said, and dropped on the sands beside her. "you looked deliciously lazy. what were you pondering over when i interrupted that deep train of thought?" she had been thinking about him, but she did not say so. she kept her gaze fixed on the long waves, rolling in in ceaseless regularity and sweeping lazily up the beach, as she answered: "i was thinking how beautiful it is here." "so you like muizenberg?" he said. "i hoped you would. doesn't the sea look jolly?" "i'm afraid of the sea," she said slowly. he was watching her intently, admiring the rich colour under her skin, and the way in which the little tendrils of dark hair curled over the small ears, admiring too the long line of her shoulder, and the soft contour of the partly averted face. at her admission he suddenly smiled. "so i heard," he replied. "you must get better acquainted with it, and then you will lose your fear. i brought the gown along in my suit case. we will christen it to-morrow." "no," she said, startled, and flashed a quick, almost terrified look at him. there was a strong appeal in her tones. "i don't wish to bathe-really." "not to please me--blanche?" he said, and dropped on his elbow on the sand and possessed himself of her hand. "oh, don't!" she cried. "some one will see us." "there is no one to see," he answered, with a cautious look about him. "what a timid little mouse it is!" he ran his hand up the loose sleeve of her blouse and caressed her elbow with his fingers. "your skin is like satin," he said, and smiled into her shrinking eyes. "you mustn't be angry with me, blanche. i have a very great affection for you. and i want you to be very happy with us,--i want you to consider yourself as one of the family. what would you say to my adopting you?" "that you are talking nonsense," she answered. he laughed quietly. "i'll adopt you informally," he said. "we needn't particularise the relationship,--only you must understand that it places me in authority. we will start with the order for sea-bathing. to-morrow i give you your first swimming lesson." she made no verbal response to this. with her disengaged hand she played nervously with the sand, piling it in small heaps, and scattering these to pile them anew. he watched her in idle amusement. "she is going to be good," he murmured. "i think," blanche said abruptly, "i ought to go in now. the children will be in bed." "they are asleep," he replied. "you know quite well you aren't wanted. there is half an hour yet before we need bother about returning. talk to me, you silent person. give me the benefit of all those repressed thoughts of yours. whenever i watch you, you are always dreaming. do you never tell your dreams?" "they aren't worth telling," she answered coldly, with difficulty restraining a desire to cry. she wanted to beg him to desist from tormenting her, to leave her alone, to ignore her as he used to do. this persistent persecution worried her. she was no match for a man of his years and ripe experience. she was attracted by his personality, and at the same time afraid of him, a dangerous combination of emotions for a girl of twenty-two. "i would like to judge that for myself," he said. "i incline to believe i should find those day dreams interesting. is it love you think about so much?" "no," she answered bluntly. "love doesn't come my way. i have no time for it." "it seems to me," he said, "that it comes very much your way... you are turning your shoulder on it now. come! let me see your face--dear." "you must not talk to me like that," blanche exclaimed with sudden passion. "you would not dare if your wife were here." "my wife!" he echoed, and laughed. "thank god! she isn't here. i don't want any one just now but you,--you, with the sea and the salt wind and that delicious shy look in your eyes... you aren't angry, really? i so want to enjoy my holiday--here with you. i don't believe you are angry, but i think you are a little afraid of me." she kept her face averted, and gazed steadily out to sea. the waves were sweeping up the wet sands until they almost reached her feet. when they came near enough to force her to move, she determined that she would then return to the hotel. she felt that she could not, while he still held her hand, make an effort of herself to rise. "yes, i am afraid," she muttered. "i am afraid." her lip quivered, and the hand lying unresponsively in his was icy cold. he gripped it hard. "you need not be afraid," he said. "i have only a very kindly feeling for you,--a tender feeling. i want to give you pleasure. one day you will understand. i do not wish you to be frightened of me. i want you to trust me. there isn't the slightest reason why we shouldn't be the closest of chums." "there is every reason," she answered; "the secrecy of it alone proves that. you dare not give me your friendship openly." "but it's the secrecy which makes it so jolly," he insisted. "scuffling in the dark!" she said scornfully. he fondled her hand. "it isn't dark now," he said. "no. but there is no one to heed us. presently we shall go back. i shall walk on ahead,--or follow--whichever suits you; and for the rest of the evening we shall be distantly formal." she faced him with an expression of hard resentment in her eyes. "you may find it amusing," she added bitterly; "but to me it is only humiliating. i wish you would leave me alone." he sat up, and drawing his knees up, clasped them with his arms. "perverse!" he murmured, watching the encroachment of the waves with a seemingly absorbed interest, and evading the girl's scornful, accusative gaze. "and i believed she was going to be sweet... my dear girl," he exclaimed, suddenly facing about, "you have made two misstatements which it behoves me to correct. we are not going to spend a formal evening,-we are going for a walk in the moonlight. you are not going to precede me, nor will i permit you to follow me off the beach now. we return together. it would be far more indiscreet to pursue the tactics you have laid down, as it will be far pleasanter to adopt mine. better leave yourself in my hands, my dear. my knowledge of the world is more profound than yours. the greater length of time i have lived in it justifies that assumption. and my experience of life has taught me that to deny oneself a single pleasure for the sake of some foolish scruple is wasteful; it only brings regret, and profits one nothing. the moral is obvious." "that is an unworkable theory," she answered. "not so," he returned. "take our own case, for instance. we enjoy being together. what do we gain by denying ourselves that pleasure? nothing. what do we lose by making the most of these opportunities? nothing. it is absurd to lead a life of suppressions, to deny one's self enjoyment, for purely imaginary reasons. i delight in your friendship. i like you, your quiet, dark-eyed thoughtfulness. i think you would be kind to me, only you won't allow yourself to be kind. why? can't you see that i stand in need of your friendship?" "there is your wife," she reminded him. he made an impatient sound, and looked annoyed. "haven't you discovered yet that the children are more to her than i am?" he demanded. "i don't like second place. i want to stand first in some one's life. i have no right to say such things to you, of course. but that is how i feel." he turned to her quickly, and spoke in swift impassioned tones. "blanche, be a little kind to me. it will cost you nothing, and it will mean so much to me... will you try?" "you don't consider me," she said, in a low, tremulous voice. "can't you see how difficult it is for me to refuse? ... i made a great mistake in ever allowing you to kiss me. i blame myself greatly for that i didn't consider... be generous, and leave me alone." her appeal would have moved any one less deliberately selfish to desist; its effect upon arnott, to whom it appeared tantamount to a confession of weakness, was merely gratifying. he felt pleasantly confident, and was satisfied for the present to rest at this stage in the development of his pursuit. it was beginning to matter to him more than he realised, the subjugation of this girl's will to his own. the quest he had begun in idle amusement was becoming a serious business; it was a game no longer, but a matter of deadly earnest. its very importance to him was hourly increasing her value and desirability in his eyes. he rose without a word, and offered her his hand and assisted her to her feet. they tramped back over the fine white sand in silence. the girl walked with her gaze fixed on the far horizon, where one blue expanse melted into the other as sea and sky took on the grey shades of evening. her calm face masked successfully the whirl of emotions which stirred her, but the eyes, staring out to sea, were eloquent of many unquiet thoughts. when they left the beach and stepped upon the firm road, he broke the silence abruptly. "don't be too hard on me, blanche," he said. "i'm a lonely sort of fellow. you fit into the blanks, somehow. i've been happier since you came into my life. don't begrudge me any scrap of comfort i derive from your society, my dear." she made no response to this. she crossed the road with heightened colour and entered the hotel. he followed her, and stood at the foot of the stairs, looking after her as she slowly mounted and passed on to her room. then he went to his own room to change. he surveyed himself in the glass, and twisted the ends of his moustache, and smiled complacently. the glass told him that he had passed his first youth; but it further assured him that he was still a good-looking man, and that the lines which showed between his brows and about the corners of his eyes, added the weight of a matured dignity which might very well prove attractive in the eyes of a girl. a girl would naturally feel flattered by attentions from him. blanche, he knew, was flattered. she was interested in him; but she was fighting against the influence he exercised over her. when she ceased to fight she would prove an easy conquest, he told himself. chapter sixteen. men of arnott's type are most dangerous on account of their unscrupulousness. a man who will commit bigamy because he recognises that the virtue of the woman he desires is proof against any relationship save the honourably married state, is capable of the further infamy of unfaithfulness to the woman he has wronged. faithfulness is an unknown quality in such natures; it is at variance with every other predominant quality that goes to the making of such men. arnott was already unfaithful to pamela in his thoughts. his sudden infatuation for the governess of his children developed surprisingly until it became an obsession. in his preference for her society ordinary caution was disregarded, and little by little the last decent pretences were allowed to slip away. pamela began to be dimly aware of certain things during their stay at muizenberg. arnott spent a great deal of time in miss maitland's company. he took her motoring, while pamela remained with the children, and in the evenings, when she and the children were at tea, they went for long walks together, returning only in time for dinner. pamela thought little of this at first. she had elected to be with the children, and had refused to motor with herbert; she was pleased when he asked blanche to accompany him. but after a while these excursions became a daily practice; the morning bathe was merely a pretext for teaching blanche to swim arnott pleased himself without any reference whatever to pamela's wishes or convenience. she felt indignant. it was time, she decided, to remonstrate with him on the impropriety of paying such marked attention to the girl. she particularly disliked his conduct towards her in the water. after all, blanche was in a sense in her charge; she was responsible for her while she remained in her family. she informed arnott on one occasion, when they were alone together, that he spent too much time with miss maitland, and was unnecessarily familiar. she objected to his addressing her by her christian name. he lost his temper at that. he didn't see any harm in it, he told her; she often called her blanche. "that's different," pamela answered. "it is scarcely a reason for your doing so. i don't like it." after that he was rather more careful, and indulged in these familiarities only when he felt certain that pamela could not overhear. but his conduct in other respects continued to affront her, and spoilt her enjoyment entirely of the holiday which had promised so much pleasure at the beginning. she felt only anxious to return home. had it not been for the disappointment it would have occasioned the children, she would have curtailed the holiday. when the fortnight was nearly expired, arnott proposed remaining at muizenberg for another week, but pamela refused to do this. he did not urge her. he had put forward the suggestion in an offhand, self-conscious manner; and when she objected, he merely remarked that he thought it would be nice for the children, and then dropped the subject. but her refusal incensed him. opposition to his wishes always made him angry. it exasperated him to be forced to submit to her decision; but he swallowed his annoyance, and said nothing. he went for a walk with blanche, and confided to her that he was sick of his life. he derived immense consolation from her sympathetic silence, and the return pressure of her fingers when he sought her hand,--the first time she had responded in this way. there being no one in sight, he stooped and kissed her. "you can't imagine what a help you are to me," he said. "i am glad," she answered. "no one has ever wanted my help before." "i want it," he said. "just now,--because you are unhappy. but it won't always be like that." "it will," he insisted. "i shall always want you. you are necessary to me. you make life bearable." "i don't think it very likely that i shall be with you much longer," she said. "why?" he asked quickly. she shook her head, and gave him one of her sphinx-like smiles. "i can't explain," she replied. "but i think it will be as i say." "you don't want to leave us?" he asked. she hesitated, and looked straight ahead along the hot white road. the expression of her face was difficult to read; the man, watching it closely, learned nothing from it. he was conscious only of the sudden hardening of the lines about her mouth. "do i?" she murmured, rather to herself than to him, and added slowly:--"i don't know." "that's nonsense," he exclaimed impatiently. "you must know whether you are happy with us." "i am not happy," she returned, without looking at him. "i don't think it should be difficult for you to realise that... i don't think mine is a happy nature," she continued in low, dispassionate tones. "i can't remember being ever really happy--as most people are happy--even as a child. there has been little enough of love or brightness in my life." "i want to show you something of both," he said. "i could, if you would let me. i care a lot for you, you know." she smiled drearily. "that's not of any use to me," she replied... "you know that." "i'll wait," he said confidently. "you'll change your mind about that some day." the sun was sinking low towards the west, disappearing in a crimson glory which reflected its red glow in their faces, and splashed the girl's white skirt with vivid colour. she stared at the dying splendour of the day with discontented eyes, which read in the vision of this royal withdrawal the melancholy inevitableness of destiny,--the futility of striving against the combined forces of nature and habit and inclination. why, as arnott argued, should one refuse what life offered from some unprofitable idea of right? life had offered her so little: the only gladness she had known came to her through this man's disloyal affection. nothing could result from their intercourse. already it caused her more pain than pleasure. but the unwholesome flattery of his attentions held her captive to the intoxicating excitement of the senses. each new licence he permitted himself, against which she offered the vain resistance of a half-heartened remonstrance, left her more unguarded to his persistent attack. she despised herself for accepting his caresses, for allowing him to talk to her as he did. always she resolved that each time should be the last; and on the next occasion she yielded to him again. when the mind becomes subordinated to the senses moral victory is impossible. "let us rest here a while," arnott said. he drew her aside from the road, and spread his coat for her under the shade of a tree. he seated himself beside her, and smoked and talked disconnectedly about himself,--of the aimlessness of his life, of his unrealised hopes, his disappointments, and the unsatisfying nature of his married life. he did not speak to her of love; he contented himself with trying to arouse her sympathy, and to place the disloyalty of his conduct in a less condemnatory light. he was the misunderstood, unappreciated husband, whose sole function in his wife's eyes was to provide her with the agreeable and comfortable things of life. if this description was not altogether consistent with the home life as she had observed it when she first came to live with them, blanche ascribed the discrepancy to her want of perception, or to the decent deceptions he had practised in order to keep up before the world a pretence of domestic amiability. she was convinced he was quite sincere in what he told her. he was, as a matter of fact, talking himself into a belief in pamela's coldness. he began to feel genuinely sorry for himself in the role of the unappreciated husband divorced from the sympathies of an indifferent wife. pamela was indifferent of late, he reflected; she had grown strangely independent of him. "you see how it is?" he said, and gazed appealingly into the dark calm eyes that were watching him in wondering earnestness, while their owner listened compassionately to this tale of married infelicity. "it's all the children with her. i don't count in the ordinary sense. god knows why i married! i've half a mind to chuck it--to disappear. there are times when i feel things can't go on like this much longer. a man hates being thwarted. that's what i am,--thwarted continually." he dug his heel into the ground and uprooted little tufts of grass and kicked them irritably aside. "if it wasn't for you," he said, "i couldn't stick it. you are so sweet and understanding and considerate. when i am with you i can let myself out, and that eases the strain. don't you ever marry, blanche," he added abruptly. "it's the very devil to be tied hand and foot for life... the very devil." "i am never likely to have the opportunity," she answered in her cool, indifferent manner. "i don't get on with men. they always want to be amused, and i have nothing to say to them. no man, save you, has ever troubled to talk to me." "i'm glad of that," he said. "it's selfish of me; but i like to feel that i have your undisputed friendship. i'm a monopolist. a woman who held me alone in her thoughts could have the best of me,--the whole of me. i would give up everything for her." "i suppose most men think that of themselves," observed blanche. "but a man's world holds other things than love--a woman's world also, for that matter, though it is not generally considered to. no person gets the whole of another person; at most one only shares." "that's a frigid philosophy," he said. "you are too young to be cynical." "i am young only in years," she answered. "i've never had any youth. i don't know what it is to feel girlish. all my life has been spent in looking after other people's babies, with an insufficient education to fit me for anything else. that sort of life doesn't tend to make one youthful." "it's a rotten shame," he declared. "i'd like to take you out of it, and give you a right good time. i'd teach you how to be young." "i believe you could," she said, and smiled suddenly. "do you know what i covet," she asked abruptly, "more than anything in the world? money." she emitted a bitter little laugh. "now, confess, you don't think that altogether nice of me." "well, i don't know," he replied. "life without money would be fairly dull. i had rather you had owned to a more feminine desire; it would seem more natural." "not really," she contradicted. "where will you find a woman who will marry a poor man if a richer offers? every one wants wealth. it is the only thing which gives one power, and is never disappointing. if one is wealthy one can snap one's fingers at the world." "by jove!" he muttered. he looked at her oddly, removing the cigar from his mouth and waving aside the smoke rings for his better observation of the intent, inscrutable face, which in its earnest concentration appeared wholly unaware of his scrutiny and the criticism in his eyes. he was busy taking stock of her, summing up from this unexpected admission to the secrecy of her innermost thoughts, the nature of this surprisingly new feminine type who imagined herself symbolic of all womanhood. like himself, she was thorough egoist, hugging to her embittered, discontented soul the sense of her own importance and the world's callous neglect. all the submissiveness, the gentle deferential manner which had won for her mrs carruthers' patronage, and the confidence of pamela, fell from her like a soft garment which has concealed effectively the deformities it cloaked. the passionate, hungry, dissatisfied soul of the girl was bared to the man's gaze. he recognised her true self for the first time, and smiled to himself at the revelation. he took pleasure in the knowledge that he was a wealthy man. "if a rich man offered, i suppose you would marry him?" he said, brutally outspoken. she did not resent the grossness of the question, neither did she give him a direct answer. she plucked the head from a wild flower growing in the grass, and pulled it to pieces abstractedly while she talked. "wealth, when it is a personal possession, brings one absolute power," she said slowly. "when one benefits through another's wealth one can only enjoy what it gives. if i had money of my own, i should be glad; but i shall never have it. if i were a man i would get it--somehow." he laughed. "that kind of reckless ambition leads men occasionally into awkward scrapes," he said. "finance with a disregard for the methods of acquirement is folly. your feminine logic disqualifies you for the profession." she looked at him a little contemptuously. "a man always considers a woman a fool in business matters," she said. "you've a good deal as a sex to learn yet," he returned, unmoved. "ah, well!" she threw away the petals of the flower and stood up. "it's all idle talk, anyway. i suppose if i had even a moderate fortune i'd do as other women occasionally do, invest it in something absolutely safe." she glanced at his recumbent figure, and at the coat lying on the ground. "if we don't turn back, we shall be late; and mrs arnott will be displeased with me... i am sorry my holiday is drawing to an end." "so am i," he said. he picked up his coat, and vainly endeavoured to shake out the creases. "it tells a tale," he said. blanche held it for him while he got into it. she straightened the collar and pressed it into shape. he swung round suddenly and caught her round the waist and kissed her. "one day," he said, still holding her with his arm, "you shall have a right royal holiday, and do as much spending as your avarice dictates. i'd enjoy being your banker." she flushed hotly and withdrew from the encircling arm. "you must never say a thing like that to me again," she said. arnott merely smiled. the cloak once discarded can never be resumed as an effective disguise. he had summed her up in his mind and placed her to his entire satisfaction. she was no more sincere and no less vulnerable than the rest of her sex. arnott held women cheaply in his thoughts, as men of his disposition are wont to do. the only woman whose cold virtue had opposed his libertine nature was his wife in england; and he hated her memory even. chapter seventeen. that night blanche sat up late in the little bedroom leading out from the room where the children slept. she sat at the open window, leaning with her arms on the sill, looking out at the sea. the moon silvered the waters and touched the lazy waves where they folded over before breaking upon the sands with a white darting flame, like liquid fire glancing from wave to wave. the murmur of the sea was in her ears, and a warm salt breeze blew in through the opening and stirred the heavy tresses of dark hair that, unloosened, fell about her bare shoulders in becoming disarray. seen thus, with the light of the moon upon it, the calm face, in its dark setting, was strangely alluring, almost disturbingly beautiful. the discontent in the sombre eyes, the weary droop of her pose, lent a pathos that harmonised with the surroundings, with the serene lonely beauty of the night, and the restless murmur of the sea. beneath the outward quiet of her bearing, a ferment of passionate emotions stirred incessantly. the girl's spirit was in fierce revolt; all the pride in her nature was up in arms. certain things which arnott had said to her on their walk that evening brought the angry blood surging to her cheeks merely to recall. she realised clearly that to remain in her present position in his household and keep her self-respect was impossible; to do so after what had passed were to give him the right to insult her. and yet she did not want to leave. the man exercised a hypnotic fascination over her. he was the only man who had ever made love to her,--who possessed the power to quicken her pulses, and bring a gladness and a softened look into her eyes. she believed she loved him. in an undisciplined, passionate way she did love him. he satisfied the hunger-ache in her heart. he was the sole human being to discover in her qualities to admire and like. no one, man or woman, had found her sufficiently attractive to desire her friendship. blanche hated her own sex, and for the greater part despised men. for arnott she experienced a kind of shrinking respect. she admired his strength and virility, his temperamental and intellectual force; even his position as a man of wealth and social standing appealed to the latent ambition of her avaricious nature. because of these advantages which she enjoyed as his wife, she envied pamela bitterly. in the next room the boy awoke and broke into fitful crying at finding himself alone. the girl frowned impatiently, but she did not move immediately from her position at the window. the arnotts' room was immediately opposite, with only the narrow space of the landing separating the bedroom doors. if the children cried in the night-time it was not her business to attend to them. nevertheless, as the sobbing continued, she roused herself and went softly into the room, and bent over the child's bed, across which the moonlight fell wanly, bathing the little rounded limbs in its white light. blanche picked up the sheet which had fallen to the floor and spread it over the boy. her face, as she hung over him, and patted the tiny shoulder soothingly, was infinitely womanly. the child was only half awake, and at her touch, lulled into a sense of security by her presence, he sunk quickly back into slumber. as the sobbing died away the door of the room opened and arnott entered. seeing the girl there, he closed the door softly behind him and advanced to the bed and stood beside it, watching her as she bent over the child, with the moonlight falling upon her, revealing the white arms and bare shoulders, and the disarray of her hair. she had taken off her dress because the night was oppressive; her deshabille, and the consciousness of his gaze brought the hot colour to her cheeks. she straightened herself, and, satisfied that the child slept, turned and faced him in quick embarrassment. "why are you here?" she whispered. "you shouldn't come in here. go back." "i heard the child cry," he answered. "i didn't suppose i should find you here. why are you not in bed?" "i couldn't rest," she said. "i was sitting at my window looking out at the sea. then the boy awoke... you shouldn't have come in. your wife--" "she is asleep," he returned... "besides, what does it matter?" he made a movement towards her, but she drew back quickly. "blanche!" he muttered. she swept the hair from her face with a weary gesture, and stood, a drooping, dejected figure in the dim light, regarding the man with cold, resentful eyes. "you are making life very hard for me," she said. "why don't you leave me alone? to-day you have made me almost hate you. you said things which made me mad." "i love you," he whispered sullenly. "i can't help that, can i?" "_love_!" the scorn in her voice stung him. she pointed to the closed door. "in pity's name, go now, before you compromise me utterly. let your love show that much consideration for me." without a word he turned and left the room, and she heard him enter his own room and shut the door softly behind him. cautious as had been his movements, pamela was fully aroused. she lifted herself in bed, and surveyed him as he entered with wide, surprised eyes: their regard disconcerted him enormously. he had not anticipated her wakefulness; and he lied awkwardly in answer to her inquiries. she lay back again on the pillow without making any response. he wondered how long she had been awake, and whether she had heard the opening and shutting of the children's door. he would have been wiser, he decided, had he made a truthful statement of his excursion; the unconvincing falsehood had suggested a sinister motive for his midnight wandering. for neither blanche nor pamela was there any further sleep; arnott alone slumbered dreamlessly throughout the hot hours of the brief night. the following day they left muizenberg. they did not return in the order in which they had arrived. arnott motored home alone. he left earlier than the others. at breakfast he announced his intention of starting immediately, and asked pamela if she was driving with him. to his immense relief she decided to return by train with the children. although no reference had been made to the previous night, he was uncomfortably aware that he was convicted of lying. he resented this. he was angry with himself for having told that unnecessary lie; he was more angry with pamela for having, as he realised she had done, detected the lie. he did not feel at his ease with her. had she accused him openly he would have blustered and asserted his right to act as it pleased him; since she chose to ignore the matter, he felt himself at a disadvantage. she was placing him deliberately in the wrong. this incensed him. why, he asked himself with an oath, should she adopt this self-righteous pose and snub him by her silence? he was not going to tolerate that sort of thing. he would put his foot down, put it down pretty effectively, and make her realise that he was master in his own home. that was the attitude he assumed when absent from her; when confronted with her gentle, dignified presence he was considerably less bold. he shuffled and dissembled, and endeavoured by fitful bursts of kindness, too forced to be convincing, to sustain the fiction of his unalterable affection. pamela was a woman who believed in the power of silence. to upbraid a man, however deserving he were of reproof, was wasted effort; it gave him an excuse for anger,--an angry person being unreasonable, nothing is gained by exciting his ire. nevertheless, her distrust once aroused, she became watchful and suspicious. what she observed during the next few weeks decided her that blanche must go. she could no longer doubt that between her husband and the governess existed a secret understanding prejudicial to the happiness of all concerned. the thing was an amazing revelation to pamela. though she had realised for a long while that herbert's love for her was no longer of the ardent quality that at one time, when separation had seemed imminent, had made their parting impossible, she had not supposed, despite the warning in his wife's letter, despite her own bitter experience in watching the waning of his love, that he was a man of loose principles who pursued women idly for the gratification of a sensual nature. the discovery was a shock to her. she felt wounded and humiliated. it was an added degradation for her to reflect that the man she had loved so well, who had ruined her life, for whose sake she was living, according to the world's judgment, in sin, was not the fine character she had believed him to be,--was merely a selfish profligate, hunting women for his pleasure, and carelessly breaking their lives. at least she would save blanche from him, if that were possible. it was no easy task for pamela to undertake. she lacked the power of the wife's authority; and she realised perfectly that it was the lack of this power which made arnott so brutally indifferent to her disapproval. when she lodged her complaint he flew into a rage. it was at night when, blanche having retired, they were alone together in the drawing-room. arnott had been out of the room when blanche left it; he was frequently absent from the room about that hour; pamela knew quite well that he was in the habit of waylaying the girl on the stairs. when he entered, carrying the glass of whisky which was the ostensible reason for his absence, she met him with the announcement that she intended to part with blanche and revert to the system of a coloured nurse for the children. "what for?" he demanded, and reddened awkwardly. pamela regarded him steadily. "i do not think it wise to have her in the house," she answered. "you don't need to ask my reason. you are quite aware why i consider her an unfit companion for my children." "look here!" he said. he placed the glass he carried on a table, and approached the sofa on which she was seated, and stood leaning against the head of it, looking at her angrily. "you're fond of taking that tone lately. i don't like it. what the devil do you mean by your insinuations?" "need we discuss," she said, "what is so flagrant and abominable? you know what i mean. you have given me every occasion lately for distrusting you." "i suppose you are jealous?" he said. "good lord!" he tapped the floor irritably with his foot, and eyed her for a second or so in silence. then he leaned suddenly towards her. "suppose i insist on her remaining?" he asked, his face on a level with hers. "suppose i put my foot down? ... you've no right to object." pamela's expression froze as she stared bade into his angry eyes. not at once did she grasp the magnitude of the insult he flung at her; as his meaning broke fully upon her, she whitened to the lips. "ah! dear heaven!" she cried, and drew bade as though he had struck her. "to think that you should say that to me,--that you should hold me so cheaply in your thoughts! how dare you?" "cheap!" he sneered. "women are cheap--and ungrateful. i've given you everything you wanted; i've denied you nothing... i've been generous. it has been a fair exchange. if there are things you don't like, you've got to put up with them. you've got to stand this sort of thing." he worked himself into a rage. "you and your damned jealousy!" he shouted. "i've had enough of it. i can't be decently civil to a girl but you take it in the light of a personal slight. i won't hear any more of this tom-foolery. the girl stays. i won't be brow-beaten in this fashion." "very well," pamela said. despite her quiet manner, her voice broke; she was trembling from head to foot. "in that case, it is i who will go. if i had realised three years ago the position in which you held me, i would have left you then. although to part then would have caused me pain, it would have left untarnished my faith in you. you've killed that." he made a grab at her and caught her by the shoulder and shook her roughly. "by heaven!" he cried. "you tempt me to strike you. so you would leave me, would you? what do you suppose will become of you and the children without my protection? ... you've lived with me for eight years,-you've had everything i could give you; and in a moment of beastly jealousy you talk as lightly of leaving me as though i were nothing to you. what are you going to do if you leave my protection?" "i earned my own living before i met you," she answered. "you hadn't the children then," he reminded her. "no," pamela admitted, and her eyes filled with tears. "don't you think they have a right to be considered?" he demanded. "you are not so damned selfish as to deny that, i imagine. if you leave my home, you ruin their future." he was quick to see his advantage. he did not wish her to take the step she threatened. social ostracism in two countries was rather much for a man, who has passed his youth, to face complacently. he had come to a time of life when the comforts of a home are indispensable; knocking about the world, even if accompanied by a mistress, did not appeal to his fastidiousness. her threat had taken him by surprise; he had not considered this possibility; it found him unprepared. he pressed his point more insistently. "you've got to consider them," he persisted. "if things leak out it will be beastly awkward for them when they are older. you've no right to make them suffer. you've no right to force poverty on them as well as disgrace. and it will be poverty. if you leave me, i will do nothing for you, nor for them." at that she turned her face and regarded him fixedly. "if i leave you," she said, "i wouldn't desire you to do anything for me,--but i can compel you to provide for the children." he stared at her. he apprehended her meaning fully, and his face went a dull red. "so you've sunk to that?" he said. "you'd show up well--wouldn't you?-as prosecutrix in a case of bigamy." he moved away, and stood with his back to her, trying to master his anger, trying to resist the devil in him which tempted him to murder her. at that moment he hated her as passionately as at one time he had loved her. it would have given him immense satisfaction to have hurt her, to have seen her wince under his hands. "oh! you hold a trump card in that knowledge," he muttered. "it was clever of you to have thought of that." pamela made no response. she remained perfectly motionless, looking miserably away from him, staring unseeingly straight before her. arnott glanced at her contemptuously, and flung out of the room. chapter eighteen. pamela rose the next morning with a dumb anger in her heart. she had passed a sleepless night,--a night of anguish, such as she had not experienced since the time following her discovery of the existence of arnott's wife. she did not know how to act. she needed advice sorely, and knew of no one to whom she could turn in her trouble. the delicacy of her position made it impossible for her to seek outside help. whatever difficulty arose through her relations with arnott, she must face it alone. on one thing she was resolved; the night's reflection had confirmed her on this point; blanche must go at once. arnott's insistence that the girl should remain weighed with her very lightly, and failed to shake her determination. she went downstairs with her decision arrived at, with no intention of discussing the matter again. there was no one to discuss it with she found on descending; arnott had breakfasted and left the house, taking a small amount of luggage with him. this, she realised, was his way of evading unpleasantness. possibly the recognition that he dared not further assert his authority, coupled with a dislike for admitting defeat had moved him to this course as the only dignified way out of a dilemma. he left her to act on her own responsibility. pamela breakfasted alone. for the first time since their marriage she experienced a relief in his absence. she lingered over the meal, encouraging a sense of independence which this solitariness gave her. had she known that he had gone away for ever it would not have troubled her at the moment. she did not wish him back. realising this with a faint touch of surprise, she set herself to analyse her feelings in regard to him. it caused her something of a shock to discover from this analysis that in three years her love for him had shrunk to inconsiderable dimensions. she was conscious of a feeling of contempt for him which came dangerously near to repulsion. the scene of the previous night had killed her respect for him finally. further, it had convinced her that he had ceased entirely to care for her. this man of uncontrolled passions had wearied of her, as doubtless he had wearied of his first wife. possibly, if she had left him three years ago before his passion had begun to wane, his love would have endured longer. with men of arnott's temperament the inaccessible is always the most desired. when she had finished breakfast she went upstairs to the nursery for her difficult interview with the governess. she had expected miss maitland to come down with the children. it was past the hour for their morning walk. to her amazement, when she entered the nursery, maggie was in sole charge, endeavouring with the willing incapacity of her type to get the children into their walking things. pamela was helping her by amusing the boy while she fitted his cap over the unruly curls. at sight of his mother the boy fought vigorously to go to her, while pamela darted gleefully forward with the news that there was no miss maitland anywhere; she had looked in the bed and under the bed, and maggie had hunted too. but miss maitland had gone, and her clothes had gone. some one had come quite early and carried her trunk away. "perhaps," pamela ended cheerfully, "some one came and fetched her away in the night." her mother turned white while she listened to the child's excited explanation. she took the boy from maggie, and while she proceeded with his dressing, asked in a low voice what the girl knew about the matter. maggie's information was not more lucid than the child's. no one, it appeared, had seen miss maitland leave; but a strange boy had come for her luggage at seven, and john had carried it downstairs. the strange boy had left a note for the missis. pamela asked for the note. maggie had not seen it, but she believed it had been left in the hall. pamela finished dressing the children, and led little david downstairs. she told maggie to take them in the garden and let them play in the shade; she would come out later and join them. then she turned back, white and trembling, an ugly doubt haunting her mind, and searched for the note that had been left for her. would the note, she wondered, explain this horrible mystery, or merely increase her doubt? it was lying where the boy had left it on the hall table, and it was addressed, she saw, in blanche's handwriting. she opened it and read it where she stood. the writer had omitted the formality of the customary mode of address, she had also omitted to sign her name at the end. "when you read this," she had written, "you will probably have heard of my departure, and you will feel less surprise at the abrupt manner of my leaving when i say that i was an unwilling listener to what passed between you and mr arnott after i left the drawing-room last night. for the sake of my reputation i could not remain beneath your roof an hour longer than was necessary. i made my preparations last night and left early this morning. i warn you, by the knowledge i possess, to be careful how you discuss me and my actions. if my reputation suffers i shall know where to attach the blame." pamela folded the note carefully, and carried it with her into the sitting-room, and sat down to think. this girl held the dangerous knowledge of her false position as arnott's wife. she meant to make use of the knowledge if at any time it suited her to use it. the thought was bitterly humiliating. for the time it swamped every other consideration, even the doubt which had haunted her before reading the note was lost sight of in the shock of this discovery. she tried to recall what had been said on the previous evening that had revealed their secret to this girl, who from her own admission had been eavesdropping. but of that interview no clear recollection remained. she could not recall the scraps of actual talk; only the bitterness of that monstrous duologue lingered in her memory, and the insults herbert had flung at her in his anger, and her own threat to leave him. reviewing the scene now, the sordidness of it gripped her, disgusted her. and to think that a third person should have deliberately listened to that painful, miserable interview. the thought of blanche's duplicity enraged her; the veiled threat conveyed in the note angered her more than it alarmed her. how dared she threaten her with the disclosure of her infamously acquired knowledge? she read the note carefully a second time. there was no suggestion in it that the writer's flight were in any sense connected with arnott's sudden departure. and yet that veiled threat at the end... pamela pondered over this doubt for a long while; and the longer she considered it the greater the doubt grew. it occurred to her that blanche had had some motive in penning those offensive words. could it be possible that after his angry exit last night herbert had gone to this girl and arranged with her the manner of her leaving? pamela wished she knew. better the ugly truth than the horror of this uncertainty. at least she would know how to act if she knew the worst. possibly he would write, she reflected. he could scarcely behave so outrageously as to leave home in this secret fashion and tender no explanation of his whereabouts, or his purpose in leaving. there was nothing for it but to wait and see what the days brought forth. but this waiting in utter ignorance was galling. it forced home to her to the full the degradation of her false position. had it not been for the children she would have quitted his home finally. but, as arnott had reminded her, the children were her first consideration; she had forfeited the right to consider herself. she allowed an hour to slip by in these unprofitable and bitter reflections before she recollected her promise to the children, and rising, went out into the garden to join them. it caused her a shock of dismay to discover mrs carruthers sitting under the trees with them--a puzzled, perturbed mrs carruthers, fully informed by pamela, the younger, of the governess' mysterious disappearance. she looked up when pamela came towards them, rose, and advanced to meet her. "my dear," she said, "you look worried. whatever is this i've been hearing from pamela? she tells me blanche has gone." it was impossible, pamela realised, to keep mrs carruthers in ignorance of obvious domestic events; but she would have preferred to delay talking over these disturbing matters until she was better prepared. it had not occurred to her, until confronted with the actual difficulty, that she would be called upon to discuss with any interested inquirer the mysterious details of the absconding of her children's governess, which, in conjunction with arnott's unexpected departure on the same day, might very easily give rise to gossip. arnott's interest in the governess had aroused attention at muizenberg, as pamela was perfectly aware. she could only hope to avert scandal in regard to this event by the caution with which she explained it. so far as mrs carruthers was concerned she felt that she could rely upon her absolute discretion; she was the one woman she knew in whom she could have confided, had it been possible to confide in any one. but the nature of her trouble sealed her lips; it was too sordid and shameful a story to impart to other ears. "yes; she has gone," she answered. "but why?" demanded mrs carruthers, who felt, through having recommended blanche, in a sense responsible for the girl. "she ran away," piped pamela junior's shrill treble. "go and play," said pamela. "mummy wants to talk business." "but you said you'd come and play too," the child protested. "so i will presently. run away now, like a good girlie." mrs carruthers drew a hand through pamela's arm and strolled with her along the path. "i don't understand," she said. "why should blanche leave you in this manner? it's such a mad thing to do. what can the girl have been thinking of? it ruins her prospects. one couldn't recommend her after such extraordinary behaviour. maggie tells me she went before any one was up. but why, pamela? she must have had a reason." "i suppose she had," pamela agreed. "the only thing i can think of is that she knew i was going to dismiss her and simply forestalled me." mrs carruthers looked perplexed. "i thought you were entirely satisfied with her," she remarked. "no," pamela returned. "in many respects she was admirable. but i never cared much for her; and as you know i found her system in the nursery very trying. she had too much authority. i meant to try a nurse again." "well, i am astonished," mrs carruthers exclaimed. "i believed she was a perfect treasure. but the fact of your intention to dismiss her is no warrant for her extraordinary behaviour. to run away like that! my dear pamela, it's absurd. what does mr arnott think about it?" at this sudden and wholly unforeseen question pamela's composure forsook her. she flushed red, and then went so very pale that mrs carruthers, watching her, could not fail to detect her agitation. she did not know what to make of these signs of distress. had pamela been guilty of making away with the governess she could not have appeared more conscience-stricken. her eyes refused to meet mrs carruthers' steady gaze: they shifted uneasily and sought the gravel of the path. "i don't know," she stammered. the answer, as much as her manner of uttering it, sounded disingenuous even in her own ears. she made an effort to collect her scattered wits, conscious that she was conveying a suggestion to her friend's mind of the very suspicions she was anxious to avert. "herbert had left before we knew about blanche," she explained with nervous haste. "he went away this morning immediately after breakfast. you see," she looked at mrs carruthers quickly, with wide apprehensive eyes which appealed mutely for sympathy, "that makes it so much more difficult for me,--his not being here to advise me. oh! connie, i am so bothered. i don't know how to act." "that's awkward," said mrs carruthers, feeling too bewildered to detect that the remark was scarcely tactful. she thought for a moment. "i'll ask dickie when he gets home this evening what he thinks you ought to do. he'll come in and have a chat with you, if you like. after all, it isn't your business to bother about the girl if she chooses to serve you such a trick. i should put her out of my mind, if i were in your place. i am disappointed in that girl." suddenly tears rose in pamela's eyes. she tried hard to blink them away unseen; but they welled bigger and bigger until they overflowed and rolled down her white cheeks. mrs carruthers slipped an arm about her waist. "you poor dear!" she said. "it's stupid of me," murmured pamela apologetically. "but i'm so worried. i feel all unstrung. it seems so odd for blanche to have gone away like that. it's so difficult to explain." "i shouldn't attempt explanations," mrs carruthers advised. "when do you expect mr arnott home?" she asked. again the distressing change of colour showed in pamela's face, and again her embarrassed, reluctant admission that she did not know when to expect him puzzled her listener anew. the whole business was incomprehensible. mrs carruthers' knowledge of the arnott's affairs was greater than pamela realised. being fairly astute, her perception had led her to detect more of the breach than was obvious to the ordinary observer. had she not already suspected it, pamela's manner would have convinced her that the governess' flight was not alone responsible for her present distress. a more personal trouble could alone account for the unhinged state of her mind. to avoid adding to her embarrassment, she left the subject with the reflection that dwelling on annoyances merely aggravated them, and proposed joining the children. but pamela's face haunted her for the rest of the day. despite a strong disinclination to allow the suspicion, the belief that arnott's absence and the girl's flight were in some way connected, and not merely coincident, as his wife had so lamely endeavoured to convey, was difficult to banish. pamela's very anxiety to disprove the connection suggested to the unbiassed mind that the connection was there. mrs carruthers did not like arnott. she threw that fact into the balance of her judgment, and resolved to give him the benefit of the doubt. chapter nineteen. desire to be perfectly fair in her judgment of arnott did not prevent mrs carruthers from imparting her views to her husband, when discussing with him that evening the mysterious happenings next door. she first acquainted him with the bare details, and asked for his opinion; since he had no opinion to offer she proceeded to unfold hers. carruthers was astounded; he was also, to his wife's amazement, annoyed with her. "perhaps you won't be so ready to recommend people in future," he remarked. "this is what comes of interfering in other people's concerns." "don't be so unreasonable," she expostulated. "the girl appeared to be all right. she was with the smiths for years." "smith's dead, you see," he answered. mrs carruthers stared. "you think she was that sort of girl?" she asked. "well, i don't know," he returned, and looked a trifle sheepish. "but arnott got her talked about pretty badly at muizenberg. a fellow who was there at the same time told me it was scandalous the way he went on." mrs carruthers regarded her husband for a second or two in meditative silence. there was something in her suspicion after all; it was not merely prejudice which had been responsible for connecting arnott's absence with the girl's flight in her mind. "dickie," she said, "i believe they have gone away together." "i shouldn't wonder." "i believe she knows it," mrs carruthers pursued. she recalled pamela's stricken face, the evasive, frightened look in her eyes, her halting admission of ignorance as to her husband's movements. "the brute!" she murmured, and added abruptly, "what a horrible thing to have happened. how is it going to end?" "the usual way, i imagine," carruthers replied. "unless of course she decides to keep quiet for the sake of the kids." a pause followed. carruthers bit the end off a cigar and lighted it irritably. he was wishing that the arnott's affairs would not intrude themselves on his domestic peace. from his knowledge of his wife he realised that, however disinclined, he would be dragged into the business somehow. he anticipated her proposal that he should act as adviser to the deserted wife. in general he was not abnormally selfish; but he disliked being mixed up in other people's scandals; and he did not see how he could keep out of this very well. he smoked energetically, and maintained a non-committal silence. in the meanwhile mrs carruthers rapidly reviewed the situation. "but the girl..." she said suddenly, and broke off with a thoughtful puckering of her brows. "and i wanted george dare to marry that girl," she added, ending the pause. "it's a let off for him anyway," remarked carruthers. "i would never have believed her capable of such wickedness," she observed presently. "i don't see why you should believe it of her now," he ventured. "after all, you know nothing. there may be quite a different explanation of arnott's absence. didn't his wife say where he had gone?" "i didn't like to ask her. she seemed to be in entire ignorance as to his movements. and she was so upset. it was her manner that made me suspicious. she was dazed, and--oh! hopeless. no one would take the disappearance of a governess to heart like that. i told her you would run in for a chat and advise her what to do." he groaned. "why couldn't you leave me out of it?" he protested. "i can't advise her. i've no experience in these things. you can tell her from me not to bother her head about the matter. i'll make inquiries to-morrow, and find out what i can. i don't suppose it will lead to much. the girl is old enough to look after herself, and arnott's movements are no concern of mine." "well, really! dickie, you might be more helpful," she said. "that is being helpful," he insisted. "it's a much more reasonable idea than yours, and more discreet in the circumstances. if things are anything like so bad as you are trying to make out, the less i run in there the better." mrs carruthers laughed. "you nice chivalrous person!" she scoffed. "a fine friend you make for a woman in distress." "distressed women aren't my forte," he said. "you should enlist the sympathies of an unmarried man. these bachelors in their sublime ignorance are bolder." "i would enlist the help of george dare," she said, "if it wasn't for the unfortunate circumstance of his being--" she broke off abruptly. to finish the sentence would have been to abuse dare's confidence, and she had no wish to do that. "of his being what?" carruthers inquired, looking up. "so far away," she finished lamely. "you see, you are on the spot." "yes," he admitted. "i wish i wasn't. as though a man's own domestic troubles aren't sufficient without his being expected to shoulder another man's neglected responsibilities. there are people whose business it is to undertake these cases. if mrs arnott wants advice she knows where to procure it." "oh! a woman never goes to a lawyer until she has exhausted every other resource," mrs carruthers interposed. "you are letting your imagination run away with your commonsense," carruthers resumed. "it is more than possible that you have discovered the proverbial mare's nest. because arnott leaves home a few hours after the governess has done a bunk is no reason for concluding that they have eloped together. the explanation is probably much more simple." "then i wish you would explain it," she said with mild exasperation. "very likely they had a row," he returned; "and arnott cleared out. it's the male equivalent for feminine hysteria. a jealous woman can make things fairly uncomfortable." "he shouldn't give her cause for jealousy." "well, there of course," replied carruthers, amused, "your argument is unassailable. but these things will happen. man was born to be a hunter, you know; and throughout the ages woman has remained his favourite quarry. it's pure instinct with us; and occasionally, as in arnott's case, instinct and opportunity occur simultaneously. in employing a good-looking underling, a married woman courts disaster." "dickie," exclaimed his disgusted wife, "how dare you talk like that? i am ashamed of you." he laughed good-humouredly, and rose from his seat. "and now," he said, "since you really wish it, i'll go in and comfort pamela. i'm in the mood for it." she gave him a bright look, in which a smiling sarcasm strove with her satisfaction in having gained this concession. "you have just time before dinner, my fine hunter," she observed. "if pamela is in the humour, bring her back with you." pamela was in no mood to accept an invitation to dine out. she was indeed so distraught in manner and so extraordinarily depressed that carruthers did not propose it. he did not know what to make of her; but he was of his wife's opinion that the unceremonious departure of the governess was not a sufficient cause for her obvious distress. rather than adopt her theory, however, he clung to his belief that the arnotts had had a domestic difference of more than ordinary seriousness, and that arnott's sudden absence was the result. the contemporaneous disappearance of the governess was an awkward development. had he known where to address the man, he would have wired to him and suggested the propriety of his immediate return. but having in mind what his wife had confided to him, and baffled by pamela's extraordinary reticence, it was not in carruthers to bring himself to the point of asking outright for the address. when he hinted at the advisability of summoning arnott home, pamela ignored the suggestion. he inclined to the view that she actually did not know where he was. very much perplexed, carruthers returned home. he had relieved pamela of further responsibility in regard to blanche maitland, by promising to look up the girl's friends and discover, if he could, what had become of her. that was as much as he could do, he informed his wife; and reluctantly confessed, when she dragged the admission from him, that pamela had not appeared anxious for him to undertake the task. the interview had been most unsatisfactory. "that bears out my suspicion," mrs carruthers declared. "they have gone off together, and pamela knows it." "well, in that case," carruthers remarked, as he went in to dinner, "we shall all of us know it quite soon enough." carruthers' subsequent inquiries concerning blanche maitland elicited very little information. her friends, if they knew anything definite, were evidently pledged to secrecy. they were aware that she had left her late employment, but her present whereabouts were unknown to them; they understood she was travelling. that seemed to strengthen his wife's suspicion, carruthers decided; but reflecting that it was no business of his, he dismissed the matter from his thoughts, having first informed pamela that the girl's friends appeared satisfied as to her well-being, and that therefore there was no need for her to concern herself further about her. pamela took the news very quietly. she thanked him for the trouble he had been to on her behalf; and it seemed to him that by her manner of thanking him she intimated that there was nothing further he could do. if, as mrs carruthers insisted, she knew the two had eloped, it was plain she did not intend to move in the matter for the present. he admired her reserve. whatever the trouble between herself and her husband might be it was manifest she had no wish to discuss it. her attitude he considered was highly correct and discreet. pamela passed an anxious week waiting for news of arnott, but no letter arrived from him. a fortnight passed, a month, without bringing any news. this neglect confirmed her worst fears. she began seriously to consider her position. if herbert had deserted her she could not continue living as she was doing in his house. it was monstrous to allow herself to be kept in this manner by a man who no longer wanted her. but the difficulty was how to act. to seek outside advice, it would be necessary to disclose the shameful secret of her marriage. that, she realised, with its consequent disgrace and imprisonment for herbert, would seem to him a paltry act of revenge on her part. she experienced as great a shrinking from punishing him, as from the thought of publishing her own shame, and bringing ostracism on her children. the expedient of writing to dare and making the demand on his friendship which he had asked her so urgently to make, crossed her mind more than once. she could consult him without fear that he would reveal her secret to others. his insistent request that she should appeal to him if in any difficulty, seemed almost as though he had foreseen this trouble looming ahead for her. could it be that he knew something of arnott's past? impossible! no one, save themselves and lucy arnott, knew of his bigamous second marriage. she sat down to write to dare one day at arnott's desk in the room he called his study. save that he kept it for his exclusive use and wrote his letters there, it had no pretence at being a study; no one, least of all arnott, ever studied there. pamela opened the desk and searched for writing materials. then she began a letter to dare. "you told me once," she reminded him, "that if ever i was in need of help such as a friend only could render, i was to write to you. my friend, i am in need of help now. i am in great trouble..." here she broke off, dissatisfied with this attempt, and tore the paper into minute fragments and threw them into the waste-paper basket. then she started again. she got a little further with the second letter before this too occurred to her as unsatisfactory and followed the fate of the former attempt. in all she wrote six letters, none of which pleased her, and were each in turn consigned to the basket. then, having exhausted the note-paper, she paused and sat back in the chair and thought. was it wise after all to write to him? what could he, or any one, do to help her in her present distress? it was a matter which could only be settled between herself and herbert, unless she was prepared to face the ordeal of a public scandal. but the memory of dare's face as he had pleaded with her in the garden, the sympathy of the strong kindly voice, the earnest insistence of his manner when he spoke of his desire to be helpful, and his right as her sincere friend to the privilege of her confidence, awoke in her a craving for his help, for the comfort of his advice. she was conscious also of a wish for his presence; it would be an immense relief merely to talk with him. quickly she resolved to make a further attempt to write to him, and searched in the desk for another sheet of paper. she opened the drawers, and turned over their contents,--bills principally, and old letters of arnott's. from among a pile of loose papers a cablegram fell out, face upward, with a cutting from a newspaper pinned to the back of it. the writing caught pamela's eye; the brief message on the little yellow form was fully exposed. "lucy arnott died this morning." and the cablegram was dated ten months ago. pamela took it up and stared at the message with dull, comprehending eyes. ten months earlier arnott had received this news of his wife's death, and he had withheld the knowledge from her. ten months ago he had it in his power to legalise their union, and he had not done it. he had wilfully deceived her in the matter of his wife's death. there was only one interpretation to put upon his conduct: he had no wish, no intention, to right the wrong he had done her. pamela shivered, and laid the cablegram down on the desk and stared at it, faint and sick with the pain and anger, the shamed resentment with which this knowledge filled her. arnott's infamous conduct showed her plainly how lightly he regarded her, how little of honour, of love or respect he felt for the girl he had cheated into marrying him, and had made the mother of his children. free now to marry her, he was satisfied to keep her in the shameful position of a mistress, and to follow lightly after illicit loves. she recalled his words uttered on the last evening before he left home: "cheap! women are cheap." that probably had been his attitude always in regard to women. she turned back the cablegram and looked at the printed form attached to it. it was a cutting from an english newspaper containing a brief notice of lucy arnott's death. why, she wondered, had he kept the thing lying about loose in his drawer where any one might read it? she took it up, closed the desk, forgetting dare and her intention to write to him, forgetting everything in face of this horrible ugly proof of herbert's treachery; and going up to her own room, she locked the cablegram away in the safe where she kept her jewels. chapter twenty. oddly enough the first news of blanche maitland came to mrs carruthers through dare. he mentioned in a letter that he had been to a music-hall entertainment where to his amazement the sphinx-like young person, who was a paragon of all the virtues, was playing accompaniments for the members of a musical troupe, to which she apparently belonged. "i understood she was fostering the arnott babies," he wrote. "you don't keep me fully posted as to events, as you promised. i tried to get hold of her, but learnt that she had gone on to pretoria. it is an odd life for a girl, but more amusing, possibly, than tending the future generation." further on in the letter he said: "i ran across arnott in town--another surprise. he was very surly, and seemed to wish to avoid me, so i reconsidered my hospitable intention to ask him to lunch with me. how is she? if you don't mention her in your next letter i shall run down and pursue my own inquiries." mrs carruthers was highly perplexed. why, she wondered, if blanche had gone away with arnott should she have joined a troupe of strolling singers? and if she had not gone away with arnott, why was he in johannesburg at the same time? carruthers could not explain this also as a coincidence. he did not attempt to. he remarked that it looked fishy, and asked his wife if she intended to inform pamela. mrs carruthers was undecided. "i don't know what to do," she confessed. "i think i'll write to george, and tell him to find out what he can about them. it will be necessary to explain certain things to him; i am sorry to be obliged to do that." "why?" inquired carruthers. she looked at him for a moment uncertainly. dickie was a well-meaning person, but he was not astute. she possessed a beautiful contempt for his perspicacity. "george admires pamela," she said. carruthers received this intelligence unmoved. "he would be a little unusual if he didn't," he returned. "i don't see why that fact should make you hesitate to enlist his services; it's much more likely to make him of use. dare is cut out for the role of knight to distressed beauty; it suits his proportions; a stout man looks absurd in the cast." mrs carruthers showed impatience. "if you can't help, don't make fatuous remarks," she said. "george takes it too seriously. we don't want to complicate the present muddle. if i felt that he might make a fool of himself over this business i would sooner bite out my tongue than inform him." "then we aren't any forrader," carruthers returned imperturbably, "except that we have a clue to arnott's whereabouts, which in my opinion you have no right to keep from his wife." "we don't know positively that she isn't fully informed," she replied. mrs carruthers was worried, and felt consequently irritated. dare's letter had reopened a subject which had been slipping comfortably into the background of her thoughts. she was sorry for pamela, whom she would willingly have helped had it lain in her power; but pamela made no offer to confide in her. she never referred to arnott's absence,--never spoke of him now. mrs carruthers formed the opinion that she still had no knowledge of his movements, that she did not know when to expect him back. an unpleasant sense of mystery hung over the affair, which imposed a painful constraint on their friendly relations. pamela avoided intercourse with her neighbours, and was seldom to be seen without the children; it was as though she used them as a shield to guard against awkward encounters. but that she was unhappy was very obvious. she had become transformed into a thoughtful, care-worn woman, in whose eyes there lurked always a haunting expression of dread. it was this expression which, in spite of pamela's aloofness, kept mrs carruthers' sympathies alight, and moved her, against her very earnest desire to keep george dare from mixing himself up in pamela's affairs, to write to him, and request him to discover if he could what arnott was doing in johannesburg. her letter brought dare to wynberg. he descended upon her in his usual informal manner, announcing his intended visit by telegram, and following the announcement as speedily as circumstances permitted. this course was a practice with him of many years' standing, and never before the present occasion had mrs carruthers resented it. the receipt of the telegram annoyed her. she had asked him to find out certain things about arnott, and in response he had come away from the centre where he could have instigated inquiries which might have elicited useful information, led by some wild, unaccountable impulse which he ought, she felt, to have resisted. that he would come down had been the last thought in her mind. dare received a frigid welcome. he was in a way prepared for this. the letter she had written had been so vague and guarded in its wording that he had read between the lines her desire to keep him in the dark as far as possible as to the reason for the inquiries she wished him to make. dare had no intention of being kept in the dark in any matter relating to pamela. he intended to find out things for himself. "you don't appear overjoyed to see me," he observed to his unwelcoming hostess, whose greeting of him lacked the warmth and kindliness he was accustomed to from her. "i am not," she answered severely. "whatever did you come for?" "to see pamela," he replied unhesitatingly. "why?" "because from your mysterious communication i judged she was in some difficulty. you gave me a few insufficient facts. i want details. if you won't give them to me, she will." mrs carruthers deliberated. "i asked you to find out what arnott was doing in johannesburg," she said presently. "i fail to see what there was in that request to bring you to wynberg." "arnott is not in johannesburg any longer. he was leaving on the day i met him," he returned. "why should you concern yourself about his movements? presumably your request was not based on anxiety on his account; therefore i concluded your concern must be for mrs arnott. i came down to find out." "i hope you are not going to give me cause to regret having written that letter," she said seriously. "i hope not," he responded with equal gravity. "why should you imagine anything of the sort? as i told you before, i only wish to be helpful to her." she turned the subject, and talked to him on other matters; but dare, after a brief interval, brought the conversation back to the topic which most interested him. he got very little satisfaction from mrs carruthers. carruthers was more communicative. from him dare heard the whole story, embellished with details which mrs carruthers had not heard. arnott was pretty freely discussed at the club, of which he and carruthers were members. carruthers had come round to believe in his wife's theory that arnott had eloped with the governess. the fact that she was touring with a musical troupe, was in his opinion merely a blind. when he tired of the girl, doubtless he would chuck it and come home. "well," said dare, "i'm glad you told me. but i don't believe a word of it. he wasn't with the girl in johannesburg, save in the sense of being in the same town. i'm going to clear up this business for my own satisfaction. to-morrow i shall call on mrs arnott." "i supposed that was your object," carruthers answered. "but you won't get much out of her. it's my belief she is as ignorant as the rest of us. she's feeling this, dare. it makes me feel sloppily sentimental merely to look at her. the chap wants kicking. you be careful what you are doing, my boy. i am rather of connie's opinion that you'd be wiser to keep out of this. it's the devil of a business to attempt comforting a pretty married woman. stick to widows and spinsters, i say. what!" "you're an awful old ass, dickie," was all dare said in response. dare experienced a curious exasperation in the knowledge that the carruthers both doubted the disinterestedness of his purpose in seeking to be of use to pamela. a man may befriend the woman he loves without any base thought in connection with her. in coming to wynberg to see pamela, dare had no other intention than to be of service to her. the doubtful possibility of being able to serve a woman whose husband has presumably deserted her, did not strike him. once in possession of the facts he would be in a position at least to advise her; might, if things were not as carruthers represented them, assist in putting a stop to the scandal that was afloat. it was abominable to reflect that pamela's name was being bandied about at the clubs. pamela was in the garden when dare called in the morning. the boy was asleep on a kaross spread under the trees, and she was seated in a chair near him, sewing, when dare opened the gate and entered. the sound of his footsteps on the hard gravel caused her to look up; and an expression of quick alarm showed in her face as her eyes met his. he advanced swiftly towards her; and, as he crossed the lawn, she rose and stood, flushed, embarrassed, painfully self-conscious, looking at him in a dismayed silence which she seemed unable to break. dare spoke first. "i've sprung a surprise on you," he said, and took her proffered hand and held it firmly gripped in his. "i'm staying next door." "i didn't know you were expected," pamela returned, recovering herself with an effort, and giving him a welcoming smile. "i haven't seen connie for days." "it was a surprise for her too," he admitted. "i came self-invited. are you busy? i should like to stay for a chat, if i may." "that's my only business at present," she said, and pointed towards the sleeping child. "i'm on guard." dare looked down at the child. "the little chap grows," he remarked. "he was only a baby when last i saw him. how's the girlie?" "oh! very well. if you stay you will see her later. she is out at present. sit down, won't you?" he drew a chair forward facing hers on the side farthest away from the child, and sat down. it recalled, save for the boy's unconscious presence, the afternoon when he had last sat there with her, and had wrung from her the promise which she had failed to keep. "it is like old times, this," he observed, and scrutinised her thoughtfully as he sat back in his seat. despite the flush in her cheeks which the sight of him had brought there, he could not fail to detect traces of the trouble which had wrought such a marked change in her appearance that, had he needed assurance there was something in what carruthers had told him, her face would have supplied the necessary proof. "i'm awfully glad to see you again. i came with that object," he said. "to see me!" pamela looked puzzled. "to see you," he repeated. "do you remember something i asked you to do in this garden, the last time we sat here?" pamela did not immediately answer. that she followed his question he realised by the deepening of the flush in her cheeks. she lay back in her chair, very still and quiet, the long lashes drooping above her eyes, veiling the trouble in their depths. dare sat forward now, regarding her steadily. "what was that?" she asked presently; and he knew that she put the question merely to gain time. she understood perfectly to what he referred. "you promised me that if ever you were in a position in which a friend might prove helpful, you would extend to me a friend's privilege," he said earnestly. "have you kept that promise?" "i have not been in that position," pamela replied without looking at him. dare laid a hand on her dress. "pamela," he said quietly, "i think i deserve that you should be honest with me." she turned very white. how he had learnt of the trouble which she believed was known only to herself, she had no means of judging, but that he was in possession of certain information his manner assured her. she wondered how he had come by his knowledge,--how much he knew. suddenly she experienced again the longing to confide in him, the intense desire for his sympathy and counsel which had moved her to the point of writing to him on the day when she had discovered the further proof of arnott's treachery. since that day until now she had not thought of appealing to him. "i did write," she confessed in a low voice, "over a month ago; but i tore the letter up. then something happened, and i felt i couldn't write." he looked at her for a moment or so in silence. the flush had come back to her cheeks, and the blue of her eyes as they met his darkened almost, to black. the pathos, and the wistfulness of them wrung his heart. "i'm glad you thought of writing," he said; "that was something towards it anyway. i want you to go a little further and confide in me fully." "i've thought of doing that,--i've wanted to," she said. "but--" she glanced at her sleeping child, and from him back into the strong, sympathetic face of this man who sought to serve her, whose help she so sorely needed. "if i only knew what to do!" she cried. "i'm telling you what to do," he answered. "it seems to me perfectly simple. whatever the difficulty is it can't make it easier hugging it to yourself; and if it lies within the scope of human power to help you, you know i'll do anything for you." he leaned towards her suddenly and grasped her hand. "pamela, don't you trust me?" "yes," she said, troubled and hesitating... "yes. but i can't talk to you here." "no," he said. "but later..." "when maggie comes for the child," she answered in a whisper, "we will go indoors... i--will trust you..." chapter twenty one. no matter how great a control a man exercises over himself in ordinary circumstances, brought face to face with the painfully unexpected it is frequently the self-contained man who loses the grip on his emotions, and with it his more extended outlook in favour of an immense concentration upon the personal factor created by the new development. the story which pamela unfolded produced some such effect on dare. the emotions which moved him while listening to the sordid, pitiful tale were varied. the story of arnott's bigamous marriage enraged him. the personal factor crept into that. the man had not only cheated the girl, he had cheated him,--robbed him of the only woman he had ever wished to marry. he had stolen her from him, having no right to her. this thought filled him with a bitter sense of personal loss, of personal injury. the element of self threw his imagination out of focus for the time. he had a very strong feeling that he wanted to, that he had to, punish arnott for that mean deception. he would have enjoyed coming to grips with the man. then he became acutely aware that pamela was still talking, telling him other things of an equally painful nature. with an effort he brought his mind back to the subject. this part of the story was more difficult to tell. pamela told it in short fragmentary sentences. she concealed nothing. she spoke of her enlightenment, of the difficult choice offered her, and her inability to choose the right course, in low strained tones and with downcast eyes. she did not look at dare while she spoke. he was standing in front of the window, with his back to the opening, watching her with grave intent face which betrayed little of what he was feeling as he listened to the difficult recital. he was endeavouring, despite the disappointment her confession caused him, to excuse, even to defend, her choice. as she urged, there had been the child to consider, and at that time she loved the man. then she spoke of the waning of arnott's love, of his frequent unkindness, and her own increasing indifference. again dare was conscious of his personal interest in this part of the story. the self-confessed decrease in her love for the man who was not her husband, affected him directly. he felt glad that she had told him that. she passed on to arnott's infatuation for the girl, who was her children's governess, of their disappearance on the same day, and the inevitable conclusion which, against her own will, she had arrived at in connection with that circumstance, and the fact that he had not written, nor sent any explanation of his absence. then came the most difficult part of the whole narrative. pamela had fetched the cablegram, which she had found in arnott's desk and transferred to the safe, and this she placed in dare's hand as the simplest way of explaining the duplicity she found impossible to put into words. "you see," she said, "that cablegram is a year old. he received that ten months before he left home... and he never told me. i found it after he had gone. he did not intend to take advantage of that knowledge... he didn't care." tears, the first she had shed, came into her eyes. she wiped them away quietly. "he doesn't care," she said, "what becomes of me and the children." dare, as he held in his hands the cablegram which assured him that the man who had tricked this woman to whom he was not lawfully married, was now free to fulfil his obligation, realised perfectly that of all people calculated to be of service to her in the present crisis he was the worst chosen. he was only conscious of a feeling of regret that the barrier had been removed. it swamped for the time the more chivalrous emotion of pity for pamela in her helpless position. he stared at the cablegram for a long while without speaking. then he said, still without looking at her-"i am afraid there isn't any reason for doubting the correctness of your deduction in this instance. the evidence is damning." he lifted his eyes from the paper suddenly and fixed them upon her. "this matter wants thinking over carefully," he said. "i wasn't prepared for this. it's worse than anything i had anticipated." the sight of her distressed face, of the slow tears raining over her cheeks, unnerved him, and at the same time called forth his better qualities. he forgot himself in the more worthy emotion of compassion for her in her affliction. "i hadn't any idea that things were as bad as this," he said. "thank god! you told me. i'll have to think out what's best to be done. i'm unprepared, you see... but we've got to straighten the muddle somehow." he had in his mind a plan, which had presented itself when she confessed to the bogus nature of her marriage, whereby the muddle could be straightened in, what seemed to him in the circumstances, the simplest way; but in view of her present distress he hesitated to speak of that now. the knowledge of the death of arnott's wife complicated things. "oh!" she cried, with soft vehemence. "the comfort of having some one to confide in,--some one i can trust! i've been eating my heart out these last two months. the carruthers are very kind,--but i couldn't tell them what i have told you. and mr carruthers wouldn't be able to advise me. he would wish me to consult a lawyer." she clasped her hands tightly in her lap. "i couldn't have all these intimate, disgraceful details publicly exposed." "no," he said reassuringly; "of course not." but he did not see how without publicity the matter could possibly be satisfactorily arranged. she might, he decided, have to agree to that later. but he refrained from troubling her at the present stage with any such alternative. "it appears to me," he said slowly, "that the first thing to be done is to find arnott. until i have seen him it is impossible to come to any decision... have i your permission to let him know that i am in full possession of the facts you have related?" she looked a little frightened. "oh!" she said. "must you tell him that? he will never forgive me." "do you think that matters?" he tapped the cablegram he still held. "in face of this, i don't think you have much to expect from him save what is gained through compulsion. we shall be forced to use our knowledge." she gazed up at him, faintly perplexed. "what do you mean to do?" she asked. "what do you want me to do?" pamela hesitated. any love which had remained from the wreckage of the past had died with the finding of the cablegram after arnott's desertion. it seemed to her that all sense of feeling had died with it, except only the jealous maternal love, which gathered strength with the decline of the rest. "i want only one thing from him," she answered presently, her eyes evading his without however falling... "i've a right to that--his name. don't you think i am within my right in demanding that?" "yes," he agreed, "but--" pamela glanced at him swiftly. "you think he won't consent?" she asked. "i wasn't thinking that. i imagine if it came to the point, we could oblige him to consent. but are you quite sure that course would be wise? wouldn't it, perhaps, entail fresh suffering on you?" "i was not considering myself," she said. "it doesn't seem to matter much what becomes of me." he approached her, and stood over her, all the love that was in his heart revealed in his earnest eyes. he had not intended to speak of his love then; the time occurred to him as ill chosen; but while she discussed in such calm, dispassionate tones the only solution which presented itself to her mind, it seemed to him, if he delayed showing her another way out of her present trouble, the opportunity might not offer itself again. "won't you," he said very quietly, "take my name instead?" he seated himself on the sofa beside her, and possessed himself of her hands, which he held in both his. pamela made no attempt to withdraw them. white and distressed and manifestly disconcerted, she averted her gaze from his and stared past him out at the sunshine. her sole reason for hesitating to write to dare had resulted from the conviction that his regard for her was deeper than that of a friend. her feeling for him did not bear analysis either. he was a man whom from the first she had liked and respected; the respect remained unaltered, but the liking had increased insensibly until it assumed an importance in her thoughts which she found it best to discourage. not for a moment did it strike her that he made this offer out of pity for her. she knew that he loved her,--that he wanted her. his proposal filled her less with surprise than concern. she was sorry to know that her own broken life might embitter his. "won't you," he repeated in the same quiet voice as before, "accept my name? i think you know that i love you. i have loved you for a great many years. i shouldn't speak of that now; only it seems to me such a tragic mistake you are making. the life you contemplate would be a wretched business. you will spoil the happiness of two lives--yours and mine--if you persist in it... i think i could make you happy, pamela, if you would let me try." deliberately she faced round and met his gaze with sad blue eyes which seemed to have lost entirely their old happy expression. "i know you could," she answered, her voice almost a whisper. "if it is any sort of satisfaction to you to hear it, i love you too. but i can't do what you ask. for the sake of my children i must marry their father. don't you see the difference it makes to them?" "i thought it might be that," he said. "but consider, pamela,--they are so young. don't you think they would be as happy and as safe under my guardianship?" "that isn't the point to consider," she answered steadily. "when a woman has been circumstanced as i have been she realises the enormous difference these things make. i've felt the sting of it,--the dread of discovery,--the overwhelming sense of shame. i should be a selfish mother if i exposed my children to that. in whatever light you stood to them, you could never make good the position which they have a right to as their father's children. later, when they grow up, the world will make them feel that loss. if there were only myself to think of i wouldn't hesitate. but we take upon ourselves a great responsibility when we bring a life into the world... it's for the sake of the children... oh! believe me, dear, it's only for their sakes i refuse." the earnestness of her manner, the tears which dimmed her eyes and were with difficulty restrained, affected him deeply. he realised that the barrier which stood between them was insuperable as she saw it; but he was far from satisfied that she was right. why in later years should the question of the children's parentage arise? he would take them away from africa, and adopt them legally. he endeavoured to explain this to her. pamela listened quietly; but he felt that he failed in convincing her. "it is dear of you," she said, and pressed his hand. "but there is only one way in which i can hope to retrieve my mistake. i can't help thinking that it is best for your sake that i cannot do what you ask. the past clings to a woman. she never succeeds in burying it. i love you for loving me. i love you for wanting to marry me in spite of all you know. it is difficult for me to refuse; but it is better so." "oh! pamela," he said; "you are just racking me. my happiness is bound up in you. i've nursed my love for you hopelessly for years, until everything else has become subordinated to it. it's part of myself. and now that you have it in your power to grant what i ask, you refuse. i want you, and you won't come to me." "don't make it harder for me," she pleaded. "it isn't easy to refuse. can't you see, dear, i don't belong to myself any longer? i belong to the man who took my life and threw it aside when he had no further use for it. he has had the best of me,--my youth--my love." he winced. "yes. i loved him once--passionately. i didn't believe it possible that i could ever love any one as i loved him. but i love you... not in the same way." she leaned towards him, and her eyes shone mistily, like sapphires gleaming in some translucent pool. "i was always a little afraid of him. perfect love does not know fear. i wish i could marry you; but it isn't possible... i belong to him--the father of my children. i've got to live for the children now. their claim on me counts above every other consideration." he drew her nearer to him by the hands he still held clasped in his, and looked steadily into her face. "and if he refuses?" he said hoarsely... "pamela, if he refuses to agree to your demand?" pamela's eyes lingered on his for a while, the doubt which his question aroused calling up a dread of numberless possibilities. "oh!" she said, and paused dismayed. "he can't refuse," she added in strained sharpened tones. she turned her head aside, and quite suddenly, without premonition, she was weeping in a furtive, frightened fashion that was immensely disconcerting to dare. her tears stabbed him. he got up and wandered away to the window and stood with his back to her in an attitude of deep dejection. a tormenting remorse gripped him. "he can't refuse," he said reassuringly. "that will be all right. he can't on the face of things refuse..." chapter twenty two. dare lunched alone with mrs carruthers. he was a little unpunctual; but she waited for him, and they sat down as soon as he came in. she did not ply him with questions; she kept her curiosity within bounds until the meal was well advanced. he was strangely quiet and preoccupied. she did not know what to make of his dejected silence. mysteries were worrying to connie carruthers' practical nature. it was the flavour of mystery which clung about the happenings next door that caused her, despite the warmth of her affection for pamela, to avoid the house of late. she had the keen dislike of a healthy minded person for anything in the way of concealment. discreet reticence was praiseworthy, but furtive silence bred distrust. his visit next door had, it seemed to her, given george dare the air of a conspirator. whatever shadow hung over the house had enveloped him in its gloom. it was absurd in her opinion for a man to allow his feeling for a married woman to swamp him in this fashion; it betrayed a lack of dignity and self-respect. dare did not wait for her to question him; he looked across at her towards the finish of the meal, and plunged of his own accord into the subject. "that man, arnott, is a double-dyed scoundrel," he said. "he has left that poor girl without a word. she doesn't know where he is even. he doesn't write to her." "i suppose," mrs carruthers observed calmly, "if he has eloped with some one else he would be little likely to write to her. why, in the name of commonsense, did she confide her troubles to you? you will become obsessed with the thought of the divorce court, and carry a ring in your waistcoat pocket in anticipation of the decree absolute. i wish i had eaten my pen before i wrote that letter to you." she became aware of the offence in dare's look, and was instantly contrite. "george," she said, "i didn't mean to be an unfeeling beast. but you ought not to have come down. you ought not to mix yourself up in the arnott's affairs. you can't do any good." "some one's got to see her through," he said. "you haven't done much in the way of helping." "she doesn't confide in me," mrs carruthers retorted drily. "perhaps you haven't given her the opportunity," he returned. "i don't think you have shown a particularly friendly spirit. why don't you see more of her? she is moped to death." "my dear boy," she replied, wholly unruffled, "it is bad form to push one's self forward where one is obviously not wanted. forcing confidences is not in my line." she sipped her coffee, and regarded him with interest over the rim of the cup. "i have asked her in here repeatedly, but she invariably pleads the same excuse; she cannot leave the children. i am beginning to think with you that the possession of children is a qualified blessing." dare made an unexpected exclamation. "oh, damn the children!" he was so entirely sincere that he omitted to apologise. she smiled faintly, and continued her scrutiny of him and the sipping of her coffee. "smoke," she said, "and give me a cigarette. it assists the reasoning faculties." he got up, and went round the table to her with his open case in his hand. when he had lighted her cigarette he returned to his seat. "i don't wish to appear inhospitable--" she began... "i am leaving to-morrow," he interrupted her shortly. she blew a cloud of smoke and followed it as it curled upward with her eyes. then she looked again at dare. he was leaning with his elbows on the tablecloth, his expression gloomily abstracted, his sombre eyes as they met hers conveying a mute resentment. her attitude struck him as peculiarly unsympathetic. "you must not go in there again," she said. he stared in some surprise. "i have no intention of doing so," he answered. "i didn't come down to fool about, but to gain information. i've learnt all i came to learn." "and what use are you going to make of your information?" she asked. she could not, despite the utmost caution, disguise her strong curiosity. that he would rest satisfied in the inactive role of sympathiser she did not for a moment believe. he would want to do things, want to concern himself actively in what was after all no business of his. these lean men generally had a reserve of energy which broke forth at awkward seasons, and manifested itself in disquieting ways. he knocked the ash from his cigarette against the rim of a saucer, and refrained from looking at her as he replied. "i don't know yet i suppose the immediate thing is to find arnott, and discover what the fellow is really up to... i wish he were dead." "that would certainly simplify matters," she said. "but people don't die merely to be obliging. you'll find him very much alive, i expect." he nodded in gloomy acquiescence. "and while you are ransacking the country for arnott, what about your own affairs?" she inquired. "oh! that's all right. i'm entitled to leave." he emitted a short laugh. "i believe you regard me in the light of an irresponsible person." "i've met wiser people," she allowed. "quixotism is a form of benevolent insanity. look at it how you will, your undertaking is quixotic in the last degree." "so long as it is only that," he returned, "i don't see why you need set your face against it." "it's the futility of it," she said, "that appeals to me. what you purpose doing is a job for the supreme court; and even the law cannot force a man to return to his wife against his will." dare made no answer to this. had the position of affairs been simply as she believed it to be, he would not be undertaking this quest. an act of plain desertion would, as she had stated, have been a matter for the law to deal with. but the arnotts' case had to be kept out of the courts if possible for pamela's sake. he was very clear on that point. pamela's mistake in continuing to live with arnott after her discovery of the truth made secrecy vitally important. that was a point which arnott had probably taken into consideration. "you are a big fool, george," she said; "but i love you for your folly. i suppose most women admire quixotic men. i am going to be amenable now. i'll do my part, never fear. i'll stick to pamela like a limpet. there's a difficult time ahead for her,--a storm of scandal to be faced; but we'll win through. thank heaven! no one has ever been able to fling any mud at her!" he gave her a quick look; she met it with a little uncertain laugh, and a light of indulgent affection in her eyes. "we are creatures of circumstance," she added; "but we are not ruled by our passions,--not all of us." to which dare had nothing to say. he was very conscious at the moment of the dominating quality of his own passion; that he was not ruled by it was due rather to circumstances being against him than to any particular self-restraint. had pamela been willing to accept his proposal, he would have allowed no consideration to bar the way to their immediate marriage. as the case stood, however, his love was sufficiently strong and unselfish to move him to act as a disinterested friend who had at heart only an earnest desire to be of service to her. he meant to find arnott, and persuade the man if possible to fulfil his obligation. the quickest means of discovering arnott's whereabouts, carruthers suggested, and dare considered the advice sound enough to follow, was to find blanche maitland, whose movements, if she were still in her professional capacity, would be easier to trace. "though what on earth he expects to do when he does run across them," carruthers remarked to his wife, "beats me. old george is off his balance." "this business of sex is a big muddle," he commented later, philosophising while he undressed, to his wife's sleepy amusement. "odd how it takes some fellows! ... seems to knock the brains out of an average sensible chap. never thought old george would go silly over somebody else's wife. it's in some fellows, that sort of thing." he fussed about at the glass, and got into difficulties with his tie. "jolly glad he didn't develop a tender passion for you, old girl... damn the thing!" the tie came away in his hand and was flung into a drawer. he banged the drawer to with noisy impatience. "it's just giving rein to one's feelings," he said, "that is the cause of it. one can't do that sort of thing,--it's not decent. it's like taking too much to drink because one enjoys the sensation of being drugged. we've got to observe the decencies of life; it's a social obligation. pretty mess we'd make of things, if every one yielded to his impulses." he approached the bed and seated himself on the side of it and stared at his wife with a perturbed expression on his usually good-humoured face. she blinked an eyelid open, and returned his gaze with a kind of one-sided attention, and a drowsy smile that mocked his serious mood. dickie in the role of moralist was unfamiliar and mildly diverting. "george isn't yielding to his impulses," she said; "he's acting in direct opposition to them." "he's moonstruck over another man's wife," carruthers returned; "and the other man is moonstruck over somebody else. what's that but encouraging one's fool sentimentalities? some fellows enjoy messing about, and imagining themselves in love with every fresh face." "the hunter's instinct," she murmured sleepily. carruthers grunted. "it's abnormal vanity," he replied... "that, and suggestion... just giving rein to unwholesome thoughts. i suppose, if i wanted to, i could work up that sort of feeling in respect to lots of women." she opened both eyes at this, and regarded him with wide curiosity. then she laughed. "silly old duffer!" she said. "i don't think george's influence is good for you. you had better get to bed, and leave off talking nonsense. i want to go to sleep." carruthers got off the bed and repaired to his dressing-room, there to continue his reflections on the sex problem while he proceeded with the business of undressing. "it's nosing about for the scent of these things," he mused, taking off a shoe, and holding it in his hand with a contemplative eye upon it, as though the sight of this familiar object presented aspects hitherto unobserved. "if a man trains his mind to think along commonsense lines, his feelings don't run amok." he dropped the shoe on to the carpet, and focussed his attention on the pattern of his socks. "gods! what a muddle it is!" he muttered... "a beastly lot of sentiment,--a beastly uncomfortable time of it,--and then,--reaction. and men go out of their way to tumble into these kind of messes. hanged if i can understand it!" the following morning he surprised his wife with the inquiry: "connie, were you ever in love before you met me?" "lots of times," she answered cheerfully. "how was it you never married one of the crowd?" he asked, a trifle nettled by the unexpectedly frank reply. "because none of them asked me," she replied with extraordinary candour. "oh!" he said. he pondered this for a second or so. "i suppose you married me as a sort of substitute?" he added. she gave a little amused laugh. "guess again," she said. he went to her and put an awkward arm about her neck. "tell me," he entreated. "i'm a duffer at guessing." "my reason for marrying you was precisely the same as yours for marrying me," she answered provokingly, and pulled the encircling arm closer. carruthers bent his head and kissed her. "there isn't a better reason," he affirmed in satisfied tones. "i guess we're all right." that before breakfast talk had the effect on carruthers of inducing a kindly mood which inclined him to view dare's folly with greater toleration. he was even conscious of a certain sympathy with the man; his overnight impatience had moderated considerably. he threw out a few suggestions, intended to be helpful; and promised, without being asked, to keep dare informed if anything transpired at that end. carruthers' cheerfulness had an irritating effect upon dare. he had passed a sleepless night, kept awake by the worried thoughts which had harassed him throughout the long hours; by the passion of longing which possessed him, which refused, despite his utmost effort, to be subdued. he wanted pamela, wanted her urgently,--and he was fool enough to be about to assist in bringing off a marriage between her and the villain who had spoilt her life. the irony of the situation struck him in its full absurdity. it was the consummation of a tragedy wearing comedy's mask,--the enforced marriage of a man and woman who had ceased to care for one another, for the sake of the new generation which had arisen as the result of their one-time passion. her decision was right, of course. it was the one unquestionably right step she had taken in the whole miserable affair. because of its unanswerable equity he could only acquiesce. chapter twenty three. dare made inquiries in respect to the movements of the "exotics," the musical troupe with which blanche maitland had associated herself, and without much trouble traced them to bloemfontein, and came up with them there. on the evening of his arrival in the town he attended a performance at which they were advertised to appear. he wondered as he took his seat in the hall whether he should find the girl he sought among the performers, or if she had severed her connection with the troupe in favour of a more private mode of life. he gazed round the well-filled room with the object of ascertaining whether arnott was present. he was not. it was not very likely, dare decided, that he would be; to show up at these performances would suit neither his inclination nor his policy. still, there was just a chance. the room was very full. it was a popular entertainment at popular prices. dare resolved to satisfy his curiosity and then leave; he could gain nothing from sitting through the entertainment, and the night was extraordinarily close. fortunately the "exotics" came on early in the performance. they were billed to appear again between the pictures toward the finish. songs and character dances formed their repertoire. dare looked expectantly towards the platform as they came on. there were nine of them, men and women; the ninth being the accompanist. she walked on behind the others, and went straight to the piano, a tall, striking-looking figure, clad in blue and silver which scintillated a cold brilliance where the lights caught the filmy draperies. it was blanche maitland. the calm, unsmiling face, set off by the stage finery, and crowned with the dark glossy hair, aglitter with sham diamonds, looked handsomer than he had ever seen it; but there was something repellant, he thought, in its cold, unyielding beauty, something unyouthful in her air of composed aloofness. she moved and acted like some handsome automaton. not once did he observe her smile, or display interest in what she was doing. she was wonderfully inanimate. and yet her performance at the piano was extraordinarily skilful, far and away above he ordinary run of talent heard at these entertainments. one felt one wanted to hear her in something worthier of her gifts. dare kept his seat until the performance came to an end; then he made his way behind, and sent his card in to her. he was not admitted to the dressing-rooms; but she came out and interviewed him in the passage, to the curious interest of one or two people who loitered there. she was manifestly surprised to see him, and pretended to have forgotten his name, and when and where they had met. he recalled the circumstances to her. "it was so long ago," she said; "i had forgotten." "i don't call that kind," he returned. "you see, i didn't forget i saw you in johannesburg last month." "yes!" she looked at him with increased interest. "we were there, of course. we have been to several places since. we are working down towards the coast." "it is a change for you, this life," he said. "do you find it agreeable?" "oh! i don't know. it amused me at first. but i leave them at the coast. i came in as a stop-gap because their regular accompanist was ill." her voice sounded a little weary, her face, too, underneath the rouge, looked tired. "i'd like to call on you to-morrow, if i may," he said, and paused expectantly. she hesitated, regarding him with vague suspicion in her eyes. then she mentioned the boarding establishment at which they were staying, and gave a reluctant permission. it was not a fashionable hostelry; presumably the "exotics" were not flourishing in respect to funds. "we might go for a drive," he suggested, "if you care about it." she acquiesced, but without enthusiasm. it occurred to dare that her manner was a little distrustful. he smiled encouragingly. "that's kind of you," he observed. "i'm at loose ends in this place. then i'll be round about three, if that suits." he did not feel quite satisfied when he parted from her that she would keep the engagement; but on the following afternoon when he motored up to the house, she came out dressed for the drive and met him at the gate. he was aware, as he helped her into the car, of several curious faces watching them from the doorway and behind the dingy curtains of the front room windows. the "exotics" were frankly interested in the proceeding, and watched the car and its occupants with eager, envious eyes until they were out of sight. "i am glad you are giving up this life," dare remarked to his silent companion, as they spun along in the sunshine with the light wind in their faces. "it's all very well in its way, i don't doubt; but it's just a trifle sordid, isn't it?" "what is one to do?" she asked. "one must live. there isn't a wide choice for women, as you know." "that's true," he acknowledged, and was silent for a moment. "why did you give up teaching?" he asked abruptly. she reddened and appeared distinctly annoyed. "that isn't a vastly amusing, nor particularly lucrative form of earning a livelihood," she returned with sarcasm. "how do you know i was teaching?" "i have recently been staying with the carruthers," he replied. "mrs carruthers spoke of you. i told her i had seen you in johannesburg." blanche looked deliberately away. "mrs carruthers! was she... she was my very kind friend formerly," she remarked in an embarrassed, hesitating way. "i should be sorry if she thought less kindly of me now." "why should she?" he asked. she brought her face round again, and her eyes, steady and inquiring, met his fully. "i don't think you are being quite sincere with me," she said. dare was unprepared for this direct attack. he felt at a decided disadvantage. she was much more shrewd than he had expected. "now, i wonder why you should think that?" he asked. "oh!" she exclaimed sharply. "do you suppose i don't know that while you were in wynberg you heard me discussed? i've got relations there; they write to me. the things people say!" so already the gossip that was being circulated had reached her on her journeying. dare scrutinised her closely, uncertain whether to treat her frankly as she seemed to wish, or to attempt to acquire the information he needed by less straightforward methods. in the end he resolved to be frank. despite all that he had heard relative to her flight and her previous relations with arnott, he had a strong persuasion that the stories concerning her were mostly lies. he discredited entirely the tale of her elopement. a girl does not run away with a man and leave him immediately to follow the kind of life she was at present leading. the fact that arnott had been in johannesburg at the same time that she was there called for some other explanation, he decided. "don't you think that perhaps you have your own indiscretion to blame for the stories that are being floated?" he asked. his question seemed to surprise her. "in what way should you say i have been indiscreet?" she inquired. "the manner of your leaving is an open secret," he replied. "there is no secret about it," she returned with some impatience. "i just went. in my opinion i was quite justified in acting as i did." "quite possibly you were," he allowed. "but unfortunately mr arnott acted in the same ill-considered manner. when people do these things they must expect gossip." she did not reply to this. dare judged from her silence that she was fully informed as to the manner of arnott's leaving home. this seeming knowledge of the man's movements shook his faith in her somewhat. "i suppose you think, with others, that circumstance had something to do with me?" she said presently. "i would only believe that," he replied quietly, "if you told me so yourself." she looked at him quickly, and then turned her face aside, unwilling that he should detect the shame in her eyes, and the gratitude that strove with other emotions at his unexpected answer. she knew so little of this man, who was but a chance acquaintance; and yet already he appeared inexplicably mixed up in her life, acquainted with all the most intimate details concerning her. it puzzled her why he should display this interest in her affairs. she felt that she ought to resent his unwarranted interference; and yet oddly she did not feel resentful. it was after all rather a relief to have some one with whom to discuss these matters, which were too private and difficult to speak of with other people. his knowledge of events seemed to constitute a reason, if not a right, for his discussion of them. but his intimacy with the arnotts, and with mrs carruthers, inclined her to be somewhat on her guard with him. "i don't know why you should be less ready than others to believe the reports that are spread," she remarked. "your knowledge of me is so slight. we've met--three times, is it?" "i am not judging from my knowledge of you, but from my knowledge of human nature," he returned. she laughed cynically. "has human nature revealed only its amiable qualities to you?" she asked. "oh! no. not by any means. but humanity is not without a moral sense. the baseness which some natures reveal is a form of degeneracy,--a sign of mental abnormality. in the case of man or woman, deliberate viciousness denotes a kink somewhere." she pondered this. "yes," she allowed; "you are probably right. but there are a good many people with kinks. i may have a kink myself... i believe i have." "then straighten it out," he advised. "oh!" she said in a voice of weary irritation. "what's the use of talking? words are easy enough. it's easy enough, perhaps, to act, as well as think, finely when life runs smoothly. but life is terribly difficult for some of us--and dull. the dulness, i think, is the worst." she stared out at the sunny landscape with hard, dissatisfied eyes, and the bitterness in her voice increased as she continued: "i took up this kind of thing--touring and playing--because i thought i might find it brighter. it seemed so at first... the lights, and the people, and the noisy excitement of constant moving, constant change. now i find that too unutterably dull. the tawdry dresses,--the limelight,--the sea of white faces, staring, always staring,--cold, unsympathetic, scarcely interested even. i hate them. i hate playing those ridiculous airs on timeless, indifferent pianos. i want something... i don't know... i'm a fool to say all this. i hope you didn't invite me to drive with you in the belief that you would find me an amusing companion?" "i invited you to drive with me," he answered candidly, "because i wanted to talk to you on the subject which you, yourself, started. i am very anxious, for mrs arnott's sake, as well as in your own interest, to put a stop to a scandal which is none the less harmful because i believe it to be a tissue of falsehoods. since you have heard the scandal, i am spared the unpleasant task of paining you further by repeating it. if you choose, i believe you can help me in stopping the thing. will you tell me, if you can, where mr arnott is to be got at?" "how should i know?" she asked, flushing. "i thought you might know," he answered, unconvinced by her words of her ignorance as to arnott's whereabouts. "he was in johannesburg when you were there. i could have settled this matter then, had i known of it. but i've only just heard the talk. i want to see him. he ought to be informed of the report that is going about, which his own indiscretion is mainly responsible for. i think, if he knew, he would see the wisdom of putting an end to it." "i don't," she replied unexpectedly. "i don't think it would make the least impression on him." "oh, come!" he said, surprised. "what grounds have you for supposing that?" she glanced at the chauffeur's impassive back, and from it into dare's curious, perplexed face. "do you think this quite the place for discussing these matters?" she asked. dare was obliged to admit the reasonableness of her remonstrance. although they had spoken in lowered voices, they could not be positive that no part of their talk reached the driver's ears. "we'll have tea somewhere," he said. "then we will drive out into the country where we can get out and walk." he leaned forward and gave the chauffeur his directions. when he turned to the girl again he was conscious of a new reserve which betrayed itself in her manner. she raised no objection to his arrangements; but a marked constraint showed in her speech. she fell back more and more upon silence and left the talking to dare. chapter twenty four. during tea, though there was ample opportunity for private talk at the little table where they sat alone, dare was careful to avoid any reference to the business which had moved him to seek her out. he exerted himself to entertain her; and for the time it seemed as though blanche actually forgot her discontent in enjoyment of the moment. but when on paying the score dare would have bought her a box of chocolates, to his surprise the girl with hasty ungraciousness declined the gift. she hated sweets, she said. his action in purchasing chocolates for her had reminded her of arnott and the similar gifts he had showered on her in the past. the incident jarred upon her; and a return of her former reserve ensued. already she regretted having accepted the invitation for this outing. it was not that she disliked the man, or that she mistrusted him; but she had a presentiment that he would urge her to tell him things which it might be against her own interests to disclose. she sought to reassure herself with the thought that he could not force her confidence. nevertheless she experienced a doubt as to her powers of reticence; she had already allowed him against her better judgment to discover that she was to a certain extent acquainted with arnott's doings. and she had confessed to some authority as to his actions. that positive affirmation of the line he would be likely to take had been an indiscretion. dare was himself so quietly confident that the girl, having nothing to conceal, would aid him with any information which it lay in her power to give that he did not anticipate difficulty in persuading her to disclose her knowledge. he believed that she also would wish to have the scandal in which her name was concerned allayed finally. it could not be agreeable for her to know the opprobrious things that were being said of her in connection with the man. for her own sake she would wish that stopped. they re-entered the car and continued the journey. when they were well out into the country, blanche said, turning to him suddenly: "don't let us stop... what's the use? i don't want to walk; it's pleasanter driving. and i must not be late in getting back." "i will see that you are back in ample time," he answered. "but i want you to get out here. you needn't walk far. i'll tell the man to wait for us at the bottom of this hill." he spoke to the chauffeur, and the car stopped. dare got out and helped the girl to alight. she looked at him with faint resentment in her eyes, as they remained standing together beside the road while the car drove swiftly away. "i asked you not to," she said protestingly. "i know," he said. "forgive me for disregarding the request. i wanted to talk with you more privately. plainly we couldn't discuss this matter before a third person." "i don't wish to discuss it," she returned, getting off the road and beginning to walk in the direction taken by the car. "i fail to see why you, who are almost a stranger to me, should persist in discussing a subject which you must know is unpleasant for me to listen to. it is ungenerous of you to have brought me out with such an object." "oh! no," he replied. "i can't see it in that light. it is to your interest, as well as to mrs arnott's, to clear up this matter." "please leave me out of it. would you," she asked, looking at him deliberately, "have taken so much trouble on my account?" "possibly not," he admitted. "but since it is my intention to get to the bottom of this business, i could wish at the same time to be of service to you. it is not good for a girl to have her name coupled with that of a married man. you would be well advised in helping me to stop the thing." "it is easier to float a scandal than to stop one," she returned impassively. she glanced up at him as they strolled along over the coarse grass, and smiled strangely. "if you are acting for mrs arnott," she said, "you will have quite enough to do in covering the traces of an older scandal." he looked down at her quickly, and their eyes met in a long gaze of challenge and inquiry. there was so much of significance in the girl's tones, in her eyes, and in her peculiarly malicious smile, that dare had an uncomfortable conviction that she knew more of the arnotts' affairs than he had supposed. he began to think that she was not as guileless as he had believed. "to what do you refer?" he asked. she stopped abruptly and confronted him with an air of sullen defiance, an increase of angry colour in her cheeks. dare, perforce, halted also, and faced her, perplexed beyond measure and distinctly annoyed. this sudden change of mood, with its suggestion of open antagonism, took him aback. he was conscious of a revulsion of feeling which amounted almost to disgust. he regretted that he had wasted his time in seeking her. "i don't know by what right you question me," she said. "if you want me to tell you certain things, you must explain your reasons. confidence for confidence, mr dare." "very good," he answered coolly. "i want you to furnish me with mr arnott's present address, to save me trouble in discovering it for myself." "why do you want his address?" she inquired. "i thought we had gone into that already," he replied. "i wish to persuade him to return to his home as the best and quickest means of ending this scandal." she shook her head. "he won't," she answered positively. "he can't... he's ill." this information moved dare to a show of surprise. for a moment he was inclined to discredit the announcement; but the girl's manner gave no indication that she was attempting to impose on him, and he accepted the statement as true. it was just possible that his illness accounted for arnott's silence. "i left him at pretoria," she said, starting to walk again. "he is in a nursing home." she furnished the address. "they won't let you see him, if you go there," she added abruptly. he made a note of the address on the back of an envelope, and scrutinised her with puzzled uncertainty as he returned the envelope to his pocket. "what's the matter with him?" he asked. "paralysis." she spoke curtly, with a kind of hard anger in her voice. "he will get better, but he will never be quite well. it will be a case for nursing--always." he observed a rush of tears to her eyes, but there was no softening in her manner as she went on in dull, resentful tones: "everything that happens to me ends like that. if it hadn't been for this we were to have been married." "married!" he repeated, amazed. "you! ... but--" "oh! don't pretend," she interrupted impatiently, "that you don't know they aren't properly married... his wife is dead. i made him show me proofs of that when he asked me to marry him... he thinks i am going to marry him still." "and are you?" he asked. "i don't know... i hate sickness. but--he's rich. money makes things so much easier." he made a gesture of repulsion. "you couldn't do a thing so vile as that, surely?" he said. the horror and disgust he experienced at her callous reasoning revealed itself in his voice, in his eyes as he stared down at her, scarce able to credit what he heard. she looked back at him fiercely. "how dare you talk to me like that? ... can't you see all that such a marriage means to a girl like me? why shouldn't i consider myself?" "i was thinking of the woman who for years believed herself to be his wife," he replied coldly. "now that he is free to marry her she has a right to demand that he should fulfil his obligation." "he won't," she declared. "i think he will," he answered confidently. "you mean--" she began, and stopped, eyeing him with quick suspicion. "i wish i hadn't told you where he is," she cried passionately. "but they won't let you see him. he's not in a condition to be worried. you can't bully a man in his condition." "i have no intention of bullying him," he answered, placing considerable restraint upon himself. "i am going to offer him the choice between two alternatives. if he is wise he will accept the only decent course open to him. the consequences of refusal will be awkward for him." "you don't take into consideration," she said, with bitter anger in her voice, "that the threat with which you would intimidate him for your purpose is one which i also can use to oblige him to oppose you, if i wish. you are overlooking me." "i simply never dreamed of insulting you by harbouring such a thought," he returned. "even though you have flung the challenge, i couldn't believe you capable of that." "you will need to reconstruct your theories on human nature," she said cynically. "oh! no. one instance of failure doesn't damn the race. i am not going to take up your challenge. i am going to regard it as a thing uttered with ill-considered haste. how you came by your knowledge puzzles me; but one point i feel fairly confident on is that you won't use it. women don't do these things, miss maitland, whatever they may say in moments of anger." "oh! women!" she exclaimed contemptuously. "you are fond of generalising. but in this case, it isn't women; it's just myself. i have got the chance i have always longed for. do you think i am likely to let it slip? ... when he was taken ill so suddenly, and i feared he was going to die, i was nearly mad with anxiety. then they told me he wouldn't die, that he would probably live for many years--with care... it was almost as great a shock to know that he was going to live and be--like that always. do you think that woman, who calls herself his wife, will want him like that? ... will be ready to devote her life to nursing him? i don't... not when she learns the whole story." "we will leave it to her to decide," he answered quietly. the picture she drew of arnott as a helpless invalid was not pleasant to dwell upon. it appealed to dare in the light of a horrible injustice that pamela should sacrifice herself to the care of an invalid husband, a man who had deceived and deserted her, who needed to be urged even then to return to her,--might possibly refuse to return. she would be wiser to yield to his entreaties and become his wife. he was not quite clear what legal relationship existed between pamela and the man who had married her bigamously; but he had an idea that before she could be free of him it would be necessary for her to instigate divorce proceedings. he was not at all sure she would do that, even if arnott refused to return to her. the whole affair was horribly complicated. "the decision won't rest with her, nor with you," blanche observed after a brief pause. "you can't coerce a man like mr arnott. he won't allow you to arrange his life." she spoke with a sort of furtive admiration of the man whose dominating qualities and virile personality had first attracted her to him, and ultimately conquered her reluctance to the extent of gaining her consent to his proposal of marriage. she had left his home to protect herself from his less honourable intentions, had fled because she was afraid of him and uncertain of herself; and he had followed, determined to possess her at all costs. finding her still obdurate, and less accessible than when she had lived beneath his roof, he had suggested marriage. his passion for her had become so imperative that it would brook no denial. no argument which prudence suggested could deter him from carrying out his purpose. he flung every consideration aside, as he had done once before when inflamed with his desire for pamela; and blanche, tempted by all that he could give her, as much as by the reciprocal passion he inspired, consented readily to his proposal. his sudden illness had interfered with the plan, had made it for the time being impracticable; but though she hesitated, appalled at the thought of a querulous invalid, husband in place of the vigorous man whose imperious strength had formed a large part of his attractiveness, blanche had by no means abandoned the intention of marrying him. the worldly considerations which had influenced her in the past proved a strong inducement still. with a sudden desire to end the talk, she increased the pace at which they were proceeding. dare, as he kept step with her, maintained a constrained silence. he felt inadequate to cope with the ugly, sinister turn this affair had taken. he did not know what to say to the girl. there was nothing he could say that might not give fresh offence. she glanced up at him frowningly, incensed at this show of mute disapproval, and remarked: "i've told you things it would have been wiser to have kept to myself. i don't know why i told you. you must treat what i have said as confidential, please." "i can't promise that," he answered. "but i will keep your name out of this business as far as it is possible to do so. after all, there is nothing that you have told me that was not bound to come out. you couldn't marry a man who is known to have a wife and family, without the whole story coming to light. as soon as the facts are known arnott will have to take his trial on a charge of bigamy." she turned pale as she listened to him. it was borne in upon her that this man was going to prove a determined and implacable enemy. she felt instinctively that he meant to oppose her with all his strength. "she will never prosecute him," she said, sullenly defiant. "she won't need to," he answered convincingly. "the crown will do that." "you are trying to intimidate me," she exclaimed with sudden passion. "you have no right to threaten me." he looked at her deliberately with a faint uplift of his brows. "i am doing nothing of the sort," he answered. "i am merely making a plain statement of facts in order to show you what you will bring on the man you talk of marrying if you carry out your determination to encourage him in his cruel desertion of the woman he married. only through you will the story of his crime ever come to be known." she walked on with lowered gaze, making no reply. chapter twenty five. dare paced the little balcony outside his room that night for many hours, plunged in a gloomy reverie so made up of confused conjecture, of scraps of that afternoon's talk, of memories of other talks he had had with pamela, and of doubts of arnott, whose poor remnant of life she might still insist on linking with her own, that connected thought became impossible. his mind was a confusion of conflicting ideas that vied and strove with one another, and offered no solution of the complicated muddle of the human tragedy in which he was so inextricably involved. on one point alone he was very clear: he did not wish pamela to consolidate her marriage with arnott. his love for her assumed proportions of vast magnitude, so that he lost sight of every other consideration save his own longing for her, and his repugnance for the idea of her bright life being passed at the side of the moral and physical wreck who did not want her, who would in all probability make her life with him a perfect hell. dare chafed at the picture his imagination conjured up, the picture which blanche's words had brought vividly before him, of arnott paralysed, helpless, dependent as a child upon the care of the woman he had treated so abominably, with nothing of love between them to help in lightening the strain. the idea was intolerable. he brushed it aside with a sense of intense disgust. he felt that something must be done to prevent the horrible injustice of this useless sacrifice on her part. he must bring reason to bear with her, must use every argument to induce her to relinquish this vain belief in a personal sacrifice as the only means of retrieving her former mistake. the thing was monstrous, unthinkable; it must not be. he went inside, switched on the light, and sat down to write to her. "my dear," he began, and found it impossible to address her by name, so let it stand at that. "i hardly know what to say to you,--how to tell you what i have learnt since my arrival here. things are pretty much as you suspected--worse, indeed. it may be a shock to you, but i don't feel that it can greatly distress you to hear that your husband is ill. he is never likely to be quite well again, if my information is correct i have yet to verify this account, though i have no reason for doubting its accuracy. i am going on to pretoria, where he is, to find out what i can. i will write to you again when i am more fully informed." he paused, and read the letter through with some dissatisfaction. then he bent over the paper again, and wrote quickly, with a certain eagerness, as though the impulse which dictated what he wrote were irresistible in the flood of emotions that inspired it. "it is not a bit of use your thinking of going on with this. the thing is impossible. my dear, it is not just for my own sake i urge you to reconsider your purpose. you can't do it. i can't bear the thought of your throwing away all chance of happiness for a man who has left you finally, and is now paralysed and practically helpless. it is self-murder. i won't permit it. i love you, and i want you badly..." suddenly dare flung down the pen, and tore the letter into fragments, and burnt them with the aid of matches in the fireless grate. "i can't write to her," he muttered. "it reads all wrong somehow. i must go to her. things don't sound the same on paper. i've got to see her and speak to her. i must see her." he went out on the balcony again, and resumed his walk and his troubled reflections, which helped not a whit in the solving of the muddle, but only aggravated his sense of the absurd futility of the sacrifice pamela contemplated. her resolve was the outcome, he was convinced, of purely intellectual reasoning. if she would only admit the factor of passion, the cold wisdom of her logic would go down before it, as the hardest of glaciers will dissolve adrift in tropic seas. it remained for him to go to her, and make her feel the powerful influence of human love,--force her to realise that, however much other considerations weighed in the great social scheme, love counted above everything, mattered more than anything else,--was the only thing really which did matter. it was the great fundamental principle of the entire universe. he never doubted that he could persuade her into seeing this thing as he saw it. the circumstances he felt justified him in the attempt. the following day he took train for pretoria. before seeing pamela it was necessary to investigate the truth of blanche maitland's story. unless he faced her with facts he could not hope to prevail with her, and his facts must be acquired at first hand. dare was essentially a man of action. to decide on a certain course with him was to pursue it without delay to the finish. he meant, if possible, to see arnott himself. but when he arrived at pretoria, and applied at the address which blanche had given, he was confronted with the first difficulty; without the doctor's sanction he could not be admitted to the invalid's presence. arnott's condition was sufficiently grave to make the most stringent rules with regard to the sick-room absolutely imperative. it being near the time for the doctor's visit, he decided to wait in order to see him. he had given up the hope of an interview with arnott. clearly the man was not in a condition to discuss the painful subject of his domestic complications. that matter would have to be left in abeyance until he was well enough to cope with such things. the delay irked dare, but it was unavoidable. he sat in the little waiting-room at the open window, and read a book of epitaphs, intended to be humorous, but which struck him as dreary reading, and an odd selection for the waiting-room of a nursing home. he was relieved when the doctor came in,--a young man with an energetic manner, and a display of haste. his greeting of dare was somewhat curt: the interviewing of his patients' friends was not in his opinion part of his day's work; and he was obviously anxious not to be delayed. he did not sit down. dare, who had risen, remained standing also. "i understand," the doctor said, "that you are a friend of mr arnott,-that you wish to see him?" "i called with the purpose of seeing him," dare answered, carefully ignoring the first part of the speech. "his people are anxious for news of him." the doctor looked doubtfully at the speaker. he had wondered why, save for the young woman who had called repeatedly during the first days after the patient's admission to the home, and had manifested great distress at his condition, no one belonging to him had troubled even to make inquiries as to his progress. he had concluded that there was no one sufficiently interested in him to feel concern on his account. "i am reluctant to allow any one to see him for the present," he said. "he is getting on; but we have to avoid anything that might be likely to excite him. there is trouble with the brain unfortunately." "that is worse than i had anticipated," dare said, shocked and disconcerted by this intelligence. "will you please tell me, so far as it is possible to judge at this stage, what the result of this illness is likely to be? is he to be an invalid for life?" "well, it is paralysis, you know," the doctor answered, "and a bad case. chronic alcoholism is mainly responsible. he will be able to walk, we hope--with the aid of sticks, of course. but his brain will never be quite clear. he may, however, live a long while." "that is to be regretted in the circumstances," dare observed drily. the doctor agreed with him, but he did not say so. his business was to patch the man up, and he was doing his best to attend to it. he furnished a few more details, and held out vague hopes of an improvement in the mental condition. the patient had a good constitution, though he had done his utmost to ruin it; and if not crossed or excited, or worried with business matters, the brain would become stronger, though it would never be normally active again. dare gathered from the fragmentary talk that arnott was to be a semi-imbecile, just able to crawl about,--a reversion, in short, to childhood with the hideous defects of decrepit age to make the reversion more horrible. the information turned him sick. he was thankful to leave the place and get out again into the sunshine. he no longer desired to see arnott. to reason with a man in that condition was impossible. arnott had become a mere cipher in the drama, the finishing act of which had to be decided between pamela and himself. it was unthinkable that she should persist in devoting the future to his wreck of humanity, to whom she owed no debt of duty, who had merely used her for his pleasure, and discarded her when he tired through his infatuation for a younger woman, which obsession possibly his failing mental faculties were responsible for. dare left pretoria the same day, and started on the long return journey to the coast. he was impatient to see pamela, and at the same time extremely nervous at the prospect of his interview with her. he did not know what to say to her, how to break to her the brutal fact of arnott's contemplated marriage, his determined and ruthless desertion of herself. the man's actions, before his illness prevented the carrying out of his designs, pointed conclusively to a deranged intellect. with the cunning of latent insanity he had arranged his plans, counting on pamela's silence in respect to his bigamous marriage with her, utterly regardless of the stir which the scandal of his marriage with blanche must create in circles where he was known to have a wife and children already. to a man in full possession of his faculties the impossibility of concealing the crime of bigamy would have been apparent, unless he fled the country and married under an assumed name. what, he wondered, would pamela decide upon doing when she learnt the entire truth? he could not tell. the uncertainty was nerve-racking. he fretted and worried himself with conjectures all through that tedious, seemingly unending journey,--during the hot dusty days as the train rushed through the karroo, and throughout the long sleepless nights when, kept awake by his thoughts, he turned in weary discomfort in his narrow berth in the darkened compartment, and longed for the coming of day. when he reached the terminus he despatched a telegram to pamela to inform her of his arrival, and his intention of calling upon her the following morning. then he took a taxi and drove to the mount nelson. he dined and went to bed, and slept soundly for the first time since leaving pretoria. pamela did not sleep at all. the unexpected receipt of dare's telegram excited her, and kept her on the rack of expectation. she had not looked for him to return. the telegram was the only communication she had received from him, and it told her nothing, save that he was back and wished to see her. she knew that he must have something of importance to tell her or he would not have turned back so soon. the thought of the coming interview was vaguely disquieting. so much had passed between her and this man of a painful and intimate nature that all the barriers of conventional friendship were down, and left her exposed, as he was, to the onslaught of each new emotion inspired by their mutual feeling. she had thought of him so much since he had pleaded his cause with her, and she had admitted her own love for him,-had reviewed all their pleasant intercourse of the past, his kind, patient, and unselfish devotion which later, in accepting her decision, had yet lent itself to aid her in her unprotected and difficult position, that the love which she had confessed to bearing for him had strengthened considerably. she looked up to him as to some one strong and fine and worthy of a woman's entire trust. never for the man she had believed to be her husband had she felt this reverence of love. she had admired him, had felt grateful to him for his passionate ardour for herself. their marriage had proved a delirious period of excitement and delight, until his passion cooled; but it had never roused in her a lofty conception of love, or helped her to realise the seriousness of life's responsibilities. her life as arnott's wife had tended rather to lower the standard of fine thinking, and reduce the principles of living to the sensuous indolence of self-gratification, and an immense concentration upon the importance of purely personal things. she had lived for herself, detached in sympathy from the wider world about her, careless of the joys and sorrows of others as something altogether outside her life. and now sorrow had brought her into touch with the world, had broadened her sympathies and her understanding, and decreased proportionately the sense of her personal significance. what is any life, however important to itself, however aggrandised by the world's recognition, however necessary it may appear to others--to one other even, but a breath which expands the lungs of the universe and leaves them temporarily deflated as it passes on into the beyond? chapter twenty six. pamela was alone and waiting for dare when he presented himself at the house on the following morning. she turned slowly when the door of the room opened, and advanced to meet him with a look of inquiry and of welcome in her eyes. she looked better, he observed, than when he had last seen her; the anxiety that had sharpened her features and shadowed her face with an expression of dread had yielded to a new calm, which suggested a mind braced and prepared to meet and accept whatever offered. her composure helped him enormously in quieting his nervousness, which before, and at the moment of, his entry had been excessive. he took her extended hand and held it. "you bring me bad news?" she said, observing his grave face with a watchful scrutiny, and speaking in that quiet, level voice that one uses sometimes in discussing things too serious and strange for ordinary emotion. "i felt it must be bad news when your telegram arrived... you've seen him?" "no," he answered. he led her to the sofa near the french window on which he had sat with her before when they had had their last interview. the memory of that former occasion was present in his mind. it was possibly present in pamela's mind also; but the recollection caused no sense of embarrassment. her love for, and confidence in, him had swept all feeling of constraint away. he seated himself beside her. "i wrote to you," he said; "but i decided not to send the letter. i felt it was best to come down and explain. mr arnott is in pretoria. i went there for the purpose of seeing him; but he is ill, and unable to see any one. i had an interview with the doctor who is attending his case. i thought you would wish to know exactly how matters are with him." he paused. pamela was gazing at him with wide serious eyes. she showed less surprise than he had expected. she appeared somehow prepared, and extraordinarily calm. it made the telling easier. it was as though she had passed the final stage of emotionalism, had come through all the stresses of anguished uncertainty, of distressed and tormented doubt and wounded love, and emerged calm-eyed and efficient, amazingly controlled, and clear as to her judgment. she listened attentively without interrupting him. when he paused, she said: "you are not preparing me to hear that he is dead?" "no," he answered. his feelings got the better of him, and he added bluntly,--"i would to god i were! life--all that is left of it for him--isn't worth the having. and anyway, living or dead, he isn't worthy of one thought of your compassion." "then he did go away with blanche?" she said quietly. "he followed her. he meant to marry her--means to marry her still, if her statement is to be believed. i saw her in bloemfontein. it was she who told me of his illness." "what is the matter with him?" she asked, her earnest eyes holding his, questioning his, refusing, it occurred to him, to allow what he was telling her to bias her ultimate judgment. she had accustomed herself to ugly truths; she was not shocked or dismayed any longer, only anxious to have her worst fears confirmed or disproved. she desired to hear the whole truth, whatever it held of pain or humiliation. at least it could hold no disillusion for her. "he has had a stroke of paralysis, they tell me," dare answered, avoiding her eyes. he was conscious of a sudden movement on her part, of a quick, inaudible exclamation which was followed by a sharp indrawing of her breath. he did not look at her; he felt, without seeing them, that there were tears of pity and of horror shining in her eyes. he counted for something to her still. she was sorry for the man. dare felt unreasonably incensed. "there is hope of a partial recovery," he continued dully, trying to keep under the sudden sharp jealousy that gripped him as nothing he had experienced in all their former talks had gripped and hurt. "he'll get about again, they think... walk a little. his brain is affected-slightly. that will never be quite clear again..." he broke off abruptly, and turned to her in protesting surprise. she was weeping. the tears were welling in her eyes and coursing down her cheeks. arnott ill--broken--touched the deepest springs of her compassion. all the bitterness in her heart against the man who had so cruelly wronged her melted into sorrow for him in his terrible affliction. she no longer experienced any anger against him, only a great pity,--pity for the miserable wreckage of his health, which stood, it seemed to her, as a symbol of the wreckage of their love,--all the promise and the strength and the beauty gone for evermore,--only the dead ashes remaining in the furnace of life. "your tears are a big return for his cruelty to you," he said, trying with ill success to hide the twinge of jealousy which caused him to wince at sight of her grief. "some people might consider his condition a perfectly just retribution. you owe him nothing--not even pity." "one doesn't only render what is due," she said, wiping her eyes slowly. "that would make life too hard. could you expect me to hear unmoved what you have just told me? i thought i had schooled myself to bear anything; but this is too awful. i would rather have heard that he was well and happy--with her." "she is going to him," he said, bluntly. "going to him? ... now?" pamela's tone expressed wonder. "you mean, she loves him sufficiently to marry him--ill--like that?" "i mean," he returned, watching her narrowly, "that she loves herself sufficiently to put up with his condition on account of his wealth. she admitted that almost in as many words. it's as much as he has any right to expect." "oh! no," she said quickly. "he is giving her more than that." she was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully beyond him towards the garden which showed through the aperture of the long window, a fair and peaceful background, in striking contrast to the tension within the room and the unquiet of her mind. dare's gaze never left her face. he was watching her continually, trying to gauge her intention from his study of her expression. the slow tears still fell at intervals; but they became fewer, and she wiped them mechanically with a small drenched handkerchief, making no effort at concealment from him. it seemed as if in her preoccupation she was scarcely conscious of his presence. "it's a sordid story," he said. "i am sorry to have to distress you with it; but you had to know... it closes everything, you see,--puts a finish to your part in his life. he has flung aside his responsibilities deliberately. a man like that, devoid of all moral sense, cannot be influenced. i doubt you would accomplish anything, if you went to him." "at least, i must make the effort," she said slowly. she turned to him, a look of sad entreaty in her eyes, as though she would appeal to him to help, instead of making things more difficult for her. "don't try to dissuade me," she pleaded earnestly. "don't fail me. i am relying so much on your help." "but," he urged gently, "don't you realise how impossible this thing has become? think, even if you succeeded in persuading him to return--which i doubt strongly you could succeed in doing--what would your life be like with him,--half-imbecile, helpless, an invalid always? ... it's too horrible to contemplate." she shuddered at the picture of arnott which he drew, and hid her white face in her hands and said nothing. "it's not as though you owe him anything," he insisted. "it's not as though you love him any longer, or can even give him what he wants--that girl, however little she brings him, can give him more than you. you are for defeating happiness all round, you see. it's not worth it. i understand your reason for wishing to do this, but i can't feel it justifies it in any sense." he put an arm about her and drew her to him and held her close. "cut it, pamela," he said. "i'll take you home to england. we'll be married quietly over there--or in europe somewhere. it will be better for the children in the long run, dear, believe me. i can't get reconciled anyhow to the idea of giving you up. you belong to me. i've a right to you. i have loved you always, from the day i saw you first at that tournament so many years ago. arnott robbed me of you then. i can't let him step in a second time and take you from me... believe me, pamela, i wouldn't try to stand between you and what you consider to be a duty if i saw any possible chance of happiness in it for you at all,-if even i could feel that the result might justify the sacrifice. it won't. it will be just death in life for you both. and it's going to be pretty hard on me too. i could put up with that, if it spelt happiness for you; but it doesn't. pamela, is it worth it? cheating ourselves for a principle that isn't going to work any solid good for any one?" he drew her head to his shoulder, and gathered her closer in his arms and kissed her, keeping his face pressed to the tear-wet cheek, feeling the trembling of her body lying passive in his arms, and the little choking sobs which escaped her as she wept in his embrace. would she yield, he wondered? had she not in surrendering to his caresses partly yielded already? "it is asking too much of human nature to expect us to give up everything," he said. "i want you. i am lonely without you. it isn't a case of making love,--a phase of feverish emotions. i love you honestly, earnestly. i want you day after day. i want your companionship. i want you to fill my life, as i shall hope to fill yours. i want you at my side--always. pamela, my dearest, you are not going to snatch my hope away from me for no more solid reason than the fulfilment of an imaginary duty which is going to benefit no one? life--without you--is empty for me." "oh! my dear!" she sobbed. she lifted her face to his and kissed his lips. "i want to do as you wish. i want to take the easy course; but the other is the right course. it isn't just happiness that is at stake. it is neither love for him, nor any sense of obligation to him, that makes me desire to marry the father of my children... it's just the knowledge of what is due to them. they count first. they have to be considered. do you think i don't realise," she added passionately, withdrawing herself from his arms, "that i shall hate my life with him,--that--god forgive me i--i shall possibly hate him? ... hate him more every year, until even pity for him dies beneath the strain of constant weariness, daily resentment. what you offer tempts me sorely. it's just dragging me to pieces to refuse you. life with you would be a good and happy thing. i want it, and i can't have it. but it is denying you which hurts more than denying myself. my dear!--my dear! i wish you didn't care so much. what can i do? ... what can i say?" "you can do," he answered, looking at her steadily, "what i ask you to do, and leave the future of the children more safely in my hands than in their father's. his example can be no possible guide for them. his influence in the home will tend neither towards their happiness nor their good. at most, you can give them his name--they have a right to that, as it is. think, pamela... isn't your idea of what is right for them merely a morbid fancy? let the man go. you've lost your hold on him. leave him to finish the muddle he has made of his life in his own way. he has proved himself incapable of faithfulness. it isn't decent that you should continue to live with him. i show you a way out,--take it. put yourself unreservedly in my hands." "that's shirking," she said. "i've always shirked." "what else is there for you to do?" he asked. "you can't straighten a muddle which is none of your making. there's a duty you owe to yourself,--you're overlooking that shake yourself free of this life which is hurtful to you in every sense, and give me the right to protect you, to act and think for you. i can't countenance what you think of doing. i'm going to use my utmost effort to dissuade you. see here," he said. he took a note-book from his pocket, and wrote the address of the pretoria home upon a page which he tore out and handed to her. "write to the doctor there, and ask him to give you all particulars of arnott's case. he will possibly tell you more than he told me." "his condition makes no difference," she answered, reading the address he handed to her before putting the paper away. "ill or well, it doesn't affect the main point." "i know," he said. "but you ought to ascertain what you can before taking any decisive step. then, if you wish to see him, i will take you there." at this suggestion, which she had not before considered, she glanced at him in quick dismay. "i don't think--i could go to him," she said, hesitating nervously. "i... he must come home." "that, of course," dare answered, infinitely relieved, "is as you wish." the possibility of arnott consenting to return occurred to him as very unlikely. "you've got to face the chance of his refusal," he added abruptly. he leaned towards her. "if he refuses, pamela?--he may, you know." she turned to him and laid a hand impulsively upon his arm. "don't tempt me to hope he will do that," she said. "be strong for both of us... i want you to be strong." he took her face in his hands and held it for a moment looking deeply into her eyes. "aren't you demanding rather much of me," he asked, "to insist that i should aid you in my own defeat? i'm only human, pamela." she answered nothing, but placing her hands on his wrists, she pulled his hands from her face and carried them to her lips. at this unexpected act on her part dare coloured awkwardly. the next moment he had seized her in his arms and covered her face with kisses. as abruptly as he had seized her, he released her and stood up. he pulled himself together with an effort, and walked as far as the window, where he paused for a second or so, and then turned and came slowly bade, and stood above her, looking down into the sweet, upturned face. "when i came to you this morning," he said, "i had only one purpose,--to win you,--to make you see that the only thing that really matters is our love for one another. i feel that still. it's the only thing that counts with me. but i'm not going to worry you any more. you've got to follow your conscience in this. i think you're wrong... time may prove you wrong. if it does, or if you fail in this, i count on you to let me know. i shall always be at hand--waiting. you'll summon me, pamela, when the time comes?" "yes," she whispered. she gazed into the strong face above her, sad now, and rather stern; and the thought of all that she was losing in sending him out of her life gripped her heart like icy fingers closing about the happiness of life. and while she sat there, and he stood over her, gravely silent, the gay sound of childish laughter broke upon the stillness, followed by the quick patter of little feet along the stoep. dare looked round. "well, at any rate," he said, "you've got them." the bitterness in his voice did not escape her. she understood what he was feeling, and, rising, she went to him and placed a hand gently on his arm. "the best thing that life has given me is your love," she said. "there is no sting of bitterness in that at all." chapter twenty seven. dare remained in cape town for a while. pamela had written to the doctor at pretoria; and he waited to learn the result of his report, and hear what she decided upon doing. if she changed her mind about going up he meant to make the journey with her. the report when it came differed very slightly from what he had told her. arnott was making steady progress: it would be possible to move him shortly if mrs arnott wished. the doctor intimated that if she desired to see her husband there was no reason against it. pamela showed the letter to dare, and discussed with him the question of whether she ought to go, whether in the circumstances it might not do more harm than good. she was obviously reluctant to follow the doctor's suggestion, and at the same time convinced that it was little less than a duty. dare felt himself inadequate to advise her. "in any case," he said, "you will need to explain to the doctor that your presence might be likely to excite the patient. you can't keep him in the dark." pamela considered this. "i think," she said presently, looking at him a little uncertainly, "it would be easier to explain things personally,--easier than writing. i think perhaps it would be best to go. you think that, don't you?" "yes," he answered. "if you are going through with the thing, it's no good jibbing at obstacles. when you have made up your mind i'll see about tickets, and make all arrangements for the journey." "you are going with me?" she asked. "of course," he answered. "you don't suppose i would allow you to go alone? i'm seeing you through to the finish." she looked at him with grateful eyes. "i am so dreading this," she said. "i don't know how i should manage alone. i'm growing altogether to depend on you. it isn't fair to you." but dare would not allow this. "it's the one return you can make me," he insisted,--"if there is any return called for. i am glad to be of any little service to you." to be of service to her was the only thing left him. this journey which he proposed making with her was the last opportunity, he supposed, that he would have of enjoying her society; the end of the journey meant the parting of the ways for them. he had no idea how the prospect of the future appealed to her, but for him it held little in the way of hope or interest. he would go on with his work, and get what satisfaction he could out of that,--it offered scope, and interest of one sort. had she consented to marry him he would have retired and gone home; there was no necessity for him to follow his profession; but without her, work became a necessity of itself. too much leisure would only conduce to thought. he supposed that in time he would become reconciled to his disappointment; but for the present he could only realise the bitterness of the loss of a happiness which fate had seemed to place within his grasp, and had then wrested from him again with wanton caprice. he still held to it that pamela was wrong in her decision; but while he could not persuade her into recognising her mistake, he was obliged to acquiesce in it. in his brain there lingered a faint hope that the journey to pretoria would accomplish what he had failed to do,--that the meeting with arnott would convince her of the impossibility of reuniting their severed lives. since it was a matter of principle only with her, against which her nature revolted, he did not feel that there was any disloyalty in desiring her defeat. it would be best for her in the long run, and her good mattered to him equally with his own. if occasionally a doubt crept into pamela's mind as to the ultimate result of her journey, she did not encourage it. there were certainly moments when she shrank from her self-imposed task, moments when she longed to give in, to take the happiness dare offered and let the rest go. but reflection invariably induced a calmer mood, in which the impossibility of surrendering to love, with the past like a black shadow of disgrace between her and the happiness this man could give her, was painfully manifest. she had married arnott, had clung to him when she knew she was not legally his wife; to refuse her obligation now were to degrade herself to the level of the women who subordinate honour to pleasure, who have neither a sense of responsibility nor any sort of pride. she had trailed her flag in the mud once; it was given to her now to raise it and cleanse it from the mire. she trusted that she would have the strength to go through with her undertaking to the finish. the question that presented the greatest difficulty in leaving home was how to arrange about the children. to leave them to the sole care of coloured servants was impossible. mrs carruthers solved this difficulty as soon as she heard of pamela's intended journey. she carried them off to her own home, rather pleased to be enabled by some practical form of usefulness to salve a conscience which reproached her for her hasty and, as she believed, unjust suspicions of arnott, whose illness, explaining the mystery of his silence, had closed the scandal attending on his disappearance. dare, in supplying her with details of the illness, had carefully omitted all mention of blanche, and her part in arnott's life. it would come with all the shock of a fresh scandal if by their subsequent acts they revived the talk which had coupled their names already, and still reflected discreditably on the girl. he felt that the girl had yet to be reckoned with. she might prove a more formidable obstacle in pamela's path than the miserable wreck who had deserted her. since her sole purpose was gain it would perhaps be possible to buy her off. but that eventuality would be a last consideration; purchased silence is expensive, and often dangerous. dare had no intention of exposing pamela to blackmail. any money transaction that passed must be made through himself, and kept from the arnotts' knowledge. in the matter of blanche maitland he meant to exercise his own discretion. he desired if possible to keep her and pamela from meeting. it formed one of his reasons for accompanying pamela on her journey. mrs carruthers, when she heard of this purpose of dare's, pronounced it the maddest of the many mad acts he had committed in connection with this affair. he was acting, in her opinion, with amazing indiscretion. "does it never occur to you that you are likely to get pamela talked about?" she asked him. "what is there to cause talk?" he inquired, feeling oddly irritated at her persistent opposition. "well, your devotion isn't exactly normal." "normal?" he said. "usual, if you prefer it," she conceded. "it's practically the same thing. disinterested service is a virtue ordinary human intelligence cannot grasp." "that is, perhaps, less the fault of human intelligence," he returned, "than the misuse of service." "no doubt," she allowed. "nevertheless, we suffer vicariously through that same misuse. but it's no good talking. you have made up your mind. if it wasn't for how you feel about her the thing wouldn't be so outrageous; but under the circumstances..." she broke off and looked at him with perplexed, baffled eyes. dare realised dimly what a puzzle and a disappointment he had become to her. she had at one time, he was aware, regarded herself as an influence in his life. he almost smiled at the thought influences are only powerful so long as one is satisfied to submit to them; with the first sign of breaking away, control ends. "i'll bring her to the station and see you off, anyway," she finished. "that will," he assured her, smiling openly now, "add an air of immense respectability to the adventure." the arrival of the little arnotts, with their nurse, a considerable amount of luggage, and numerous toys, gave mrs carruthers something else to think of, and detached her mind successfully from dare and his misplaced affections. she had suggested that the children should come to her the day before pamela left in order to see how the plan worked, and also with the object of allowing their mother leisure in which to make her own hurried preparations for the journey. when carruthers got back that evening he found them already installed in his home; and his wife, who, in making her arrangements, had not consulted him, was reminded at sight of his amazed face that what she regarded in the light of an agreeable duty he might view altogether differently. "i believe i actually forgot that i possessed a husband," she said. she regarded him for a second with bright, amused eyes. "they've come to stay," she announced. "i've adopted them-indefinitely." carruthers demanded an explanation, and emitted a low dismayed whistle when he learnt that their mother was going to pretoria and might be away some weeks. "but she hasn't gone already?" he said, collapsing into a chair on the stoep, and reluctantly submitting to having his foot used for the unnatural purpose of equestrian exercise by pamela's small son, who with his sister was enjoying amazingly this unexpected change of residence. "no. but i thought it advisable to have them on trial before she left. they go to-morrow." "they!" carruthers ejaculated. "george is going with her," she explained, with a smiling shrug of her shoulders. she watched the children, who were sprawling all over her husband to his manifest discomfort, and, surveying the grouping, laughed. "you look quite nice as the father of a family," she observed. "i wish they belonged here by right." "i don't," he answered fervently. "i kept them up for a romp with you before they go to bed; but i am going to bundle them off now," she said. "if you make a practice of coming home a little earlier you will have a longer time with them." "i shall make a practice of getting back half an hour later in future," he returned grimly, and rose from his seat in order to shake off his tormentors. mrs carruthers laughed brightly. "pamela will be in presently," she said, and stooped and lifted the boy in her arms. "tell her to come upstairs to us. she and george dine here to-night." she held the boy up for a good-night kiss. carruthers very unexpectedly put his arm about her shoulders, and drew her with the boy in her arms close to him, and kissed them both. he stared after her as she went inside with the children, and then turned thoughtfully away and sat down again in his former seat. "god forgive me for a miserable sinner!" he mused. "but i'm not cut out for a family man. though i suppose if the little beggars really belonged here i'd get accustomed to it." pamela, coming up the garden path a few minutes later, discovered him sitting there with the same lugubrious expression of face, and his hands deep in his pockets, a perplexed and very much worried man. he rose when she came near, and went to meet her, scrutinising her with greater attentiveness than usual as she advanced, a little pale and preoccupied, but looking surprisingly pretty and sweet and composed. he detected a new quality in her manner, a certain quiet force that was restful rather than assertive, and in her wistful eyes, behind the sorrow that dwelt there lately, shone a tender gleam of happiness that had its secret springs in the realisation and support of an unselfish human love which opened for her a door that had long been closed, and let in a new light and sweetness upon her life. carruthers supposed, unable otherwise to account for the change in her bearing, that the news of her husband's illness had softened her, and healed the breach between them. "come in to have a look how the creche you have started here is getting along?" he asked, shaking hands. "my authority in this house is seemingly a negligible quantity, judging from my wife's act in setting up an orphanage during the brief hours of my absence. she wants to stick to them too." "i do hope," pamela said, laughing, "that you won't find them a great nuisance. it is such a comfort to me to leave them here. but i had qualms about you when connie proposed it." "that's more than she had," he replied. "they are fairly good on the whole, you will find," she said dubiously. "every mother thinks that," he retorted. "i don't doubt they are as troublesome as the general run of youngsters. they were here five minutes ago, and all over me. blest, if they don't seem more at home than i am. your daughter is a forward little hussy, and as pretty as-well, as her mother. what!" he smiled at her encouragingly, and leaned with his back against the rail of the stoep, observing her as she stood bareheaded beside him, with only a light wrap over her thin dress. "so you are going to pretoria?" he said. "i hope you will find your husband better when you get there. if you want any arrangements made at this end, i'll see to it. i suppose you intend to bring him down?" "i hope to," pamela answered a little doubtfully. "it depends on--on circumstances." "of course," he agreed. "no good hurrying him. we'll look after the youngsters all right. you need not have them on your mind, anyway." "no," she said, with a quick look of gratitude at him. "you have relieved me of that worry entirely." "my share in it isn't much," he answered, smiling. "as you may have noticed, my wife generally gets her own way. she has always wanted babies, and now she has got 'em. she's upstairs with them now. i was to tell you to go up. the invitation, i understand, does not extend to me." pamela made a move towards the entrance. at the door she paused and looked back at him over her shoulder. "you're a dear," she said softly, and went inside. "that's the worst of these ingratiating women," carruthers reflected. "they always contrive to get round one somehow." chapter twenty eight. the mood in which dare started on the journey to pretoria was one of mingled sensations. a persuasion of irreparable loss qualified the immediate satisfaction he experienced in being uninterruptedly alone with pamela. the joy he felt in having her to himself, withdrawn from outside influences, from ties and conventional restrictions, was considerably reduced when he reflected that this present close companionship was the forerunner of a more complete separation than any they had previously known. they were acting in deliberate concert in closing all the tracks which had led to the converging of their life paths, making it impossible that they should ever cross again. in doing this together they lost sight for the time of the reality of parting. there was a flavour of adventure in the proceeding which dare at least appreciated; although it foreshadowed the inevitable parting, it seemed to set it further apart,--a vague forbidding cloud which threatened to break and deluge them later, but loomed remotely on the horizon of the present, a misfortune that some unforeseen agency might yet avert. pamela remained very quiet and still during the first hour of the journey. the excitement and bustle of departure, with mrs carruthers and the children, a noisy and somewhat unmanageable group about the door of the compartment which dare had secured to themselves, left her slightly depressed when it subsided. she leaned from the window as the train glided out of the station, waving her handkerchief to the children, whom mrs carruthers grasped determinedly one by either hand, until the train bore her from their view; then, dispirited, conscious of the abrupt reaction, she sank back in her seat, the sudden tears smarting under her eyelids at the sense of loneliness which the fading of the bright faces, the cessation of the gay childish voices, induced. dare busied himself with the disposition of the baggage and refrained from noticing her. it occurred to him that she might feel some slight embarrassment in the first moments of realising how completely she was cut off from outside things in this solitude of days to be passed in his sole company. he believed that she had not taken into consideration the fact of this uninterrupted intercourse to which he had looked forward with such eagerness; that aspect of the journey had probably never presented itself to her mind. in which surmise he was entirely right; pamela had not considered the matter of their complete isolation. when it dawned upon her it did not, however, cause her any embarrassment. she was less self-conscious than dare in respect to their relations. it never occurred to her to disguise from herself or from him the comfort and pleasure she derived from his friendship. when one is facing serious issues the smaller concerns of life assume a proportionate insignificance; and the appearance of one's actions ceases to disturb the mind confident that its motives are right. when dare, having settled things in their places, sat down opposite to her and offered her a pile of periodicals to help pass the time, she put them down on the seat beside her, and evinced a disposition to talk. pamela had done so little travelling in the colony that she was interested in the scenery, and immensely impressed with its magnificence, as any traveller must be, seeing it for the first time. had it not been for the serious object of the journey, she would have enjoyed the experience thoroughly; but the thought of arnott, of meeting him, of the possible difficulty of persuading him to return with her, as well as the shock of his illness, damped her spirit, hung over her like a nightmare. she was terribly afraid that this man who had treated her so infamously would refuse her request even now. the contemplation of enforcing the fulfilment of his obligation by a threat of proceeding against him chilled her. if it came to the point, she could not, she felt, do that. "it's wonderful--this," she said, gazing out of the window at the wide sweep of country through which they were passing. "i've never been up the line before. it's new to me, travelling through sunlit spaces like this. see the flowers in the veld. i can smell them as we pass." he looked from the window with her, sharing her pleasure in the unexpected beauty which developed and changed surprisingly, became more assertive, more strikingly characteristic with every mile they traversed, as leaving the green fertility of the peninsula, and the blue line of the atlantic, behind, the train plunged into the rugged open country, where the long lush grass was splashed with vivid colour, with the orange and purple and crimson of the wild flowers that struggled amid the tangled growth; where the mountain ranges showed blue in the blue distance, which like an azure veil spread itself over the golden riot of the sunshine. "i've dwelt in fancy on this often," he said,--"travelling with you,-seeing new places with you. i'm fond of scenery. i like going about. but always i take you with me in imagination. i knew you'd enjoy it. i enjoy it as i never enjoyed before--because of you." pamela did not remove her gaze from the landscape, but she slipped her hand along the ledge of the window until it met his; and for a while they remained in silence, watching the view together. "i have often had a feeling that some day we should do this journey, you and i," he said presently. "but i didn't suppose it would be under these conditions... god knows what i thought! i've always been a dreamer... i pictured breaking the journey with you. there are one or two places along the line that are well worth a visit. it makes the journey easier. you will be pretty well tired out before we reach pretoria." she nodded. "yes," she said. "but we couldn't do that." "no; i suppose we can't. that's the pity of it. but it is good as it is," he added, glancing at her with a smile. "we'll make the most of this... why not? it's the finish. it will be something for me to look back upon anyway, when you are just a memory to me." her face clouded at his words, suggesting in their quiet finality the complete separation which the end of the journey promised. in their frank acknowledgement of their mutual love, both realised that meeting in the future was impossible, at any rate for many years. perhaps when time had reconciled them to parting they might meet again as friends. "i have secured a berth for myself in the next compartment," he observed, after a pause. "i've got it to myself. so if you require anything when i am not with you, you have only to knock in to me, and i shall hear. when you want to be alone, just say the word, and i'll dear out." pamela smiled at him gravely. that was just what she did not want--to be alone. his presence was an immense comfort to her. she doubted whether she could have undertaken this difficult journey without him,-have faced, without his support, the still more difficult task which awaited her at the journey's end. he inspired her with confidence and courage. she knew that as long as she needed him he would not fail her,--he would see her through to the finish. they lunched at a little table together in the dining-car, and afterwards dare insisted that she should rest for a while; for the day was hot, and the compartment, with all the windows open, was oppressively close. he settled her comfortably, and went out into the corridor to smoke. and pamela, drowsy with the heat and the motion, fell asleep, and did not wake until nearly four. when she opened her eyes again, dare was standing in the doorway of the compartment, looking down at her. he smiled as their glances met. then he came forward and bent and kissed her. she flushed brightly, and sat up. "by all the rules of the game i ought not to have done that," he said. "but--may i?" she rose, and put her two hands on his shoulders and looked him squarely in the eyes. "why not?" she said. her hands slipped round his neck until they met behind. "we are hungry for love, and we are giving up everything. why should we deny ourselves the bare crumbs? and it will be ended so soon. i don't see any harm in it at all... do you?" "no," he said, with his arms about her. "i suppose i view it in much the same way as yourself. but the world wouldn't, you know." "oh, the world!" pamela pressed closer to him. "we are out of the world, dear, just for this journey. we have left it behind... we're away from it all--alone--you and i. we are going to have this time together,--a glimpse of heaven to brighten the drab world when we get back to earth. i want to make the most of it--of every minute. i don't want to sleep away the hours, as i did this afternoon. it wasn't kind of you to send me to sleep. afterwards, when we are back in the world, then i'll sleep, but not now. to-night i shall sit up quite late. i shall keep you with me. we'll watch the night close down upon the veld, and look out upon the moving darkness together, and forget the world entirely and all this weary business of life... my dear! ... oh, my dear!" he bent his head lower until their lips met. the long hot day drew to its close, and the brief twilight descended. they dined as they had lunched at the little table together. there were very few passengers on the train; the seats in the dining-car, save for one or two, were unoccupied. this was due to the season. it was a satisfaction to dare, as it insured their greater privacy. he had secured their compartments at the end of the corridor so that they should not be disturbed with people passing; each detail had been carefully considered and carried out, and everything that experience had taught him as necessary to the comfort of a long train journey in the hot weather had been provided. pamela lacked nothing which forethought could devise. fruit there was in abundance, and cooling drinks suspended from the carriage window in dare's canvas water-bag. the dry air of the karroo induces thirst. pamela, who had come away entirely unprovided, was grateful to him for his thought for her. "you are a wonderful person; you've forgotten nothing," she said. "i am an old hand," he replied. "i do not travel with a beautiful trust in providence, and a blind faith in the commissariat of the railway, like this other wonderful person. to-morrow and the next day you will know what thirst means." "i think we shall be able to satisfy it," she said, regarding the hamper of fruit on the opposite seat. "it's like a huge picnic, isn't it? i feel--excited." he laughed, and passed an arm about her, holding her comfortably against his shoulder. she rested so for a while quietly. "i have drunk of the waters of lethe," she said, looking up at him after a silence. "i am like a woman whose memory has gone. everything is a blank, save the present. it's good, isn't it?" "it's more than good," he replied. he gazed down into the sweet face resting against his shoulder, and smiled into the deep, serious eyes. "tired?" he asked. "no," she answered. "we've been travelling over nine hours," he said. "we shall reach matjesfontein shortly." "do we stop there?" "only for a minute or two. then you will see the karroo at night." "it's night now," she said. "but it isn't dark." "it's a clear night," he answered. "it won't get darker than this. see the stars, pamela?" she turned to look from the window. "there is too much light in the carriage," she said, leaning out into the warm dusk, and gazing upon the shadowed landscape which gave an impression of movement, as though it swept past the lighted train. dare got up and switched off the light. she turned her head quickly. "oh! i didn't know you could do that," she said. "that's much nicer." he returned and seated himself beside her, and leaned from the broad window with his face close to hers. she touched his cheek with her own caressingly. "night on the veld," she whispered,--"and just we two alone--watching. all those other people... they don't count. i love it--don't you? do you notice the scents? they are stronger than in the daytime. what is it. i can smell as we go along? something... it's like heliotrope." "the night convolvulus," he answered. "the veld is smothered with it in places. all the best scents in africa are night scents. the night is the best time of all." "yes; it's the best time," she agreed. "a night like this! ... isn't it perfect? i am alive as i have never felt before. it's as though all my senses were quickened. i didn't know it was possible to enjoy so intensely. i wish this could last for ever... i wish that i might fall asleep presently, and wake no more... don't let us talk... let us watch together--like this,--and just feel..." and so they remained, this man and woman who loved hopelessly, silent in the darkened carriage, with faces pressed close against each other,-intent on one another to the exclusion of every other thought,--clinging together in a mute sympathy, and a love which had gone beyond utterance, got above and outside ordinary physical passion, and stood for what it was,--the supreme thing in their lives,--the best that life had offered them, which neither separation nor sorrow could filch from their possession. and the train rushed on through the clear, luminous night that, warm still and fragrant with the hundred different scents of the karroo, never darkened beyond a twilight duskiness, in which the veld showed darkly defined against the deepening purple of the sky, where a young moon rode like a white sickle amid the countless stars. chapter twenty nine. pamela awoke with the sun flashing in her eyes as the heavy lids lifted reluctantly to the flush of the new day. she sat up and looked from the window which had remained open and unshuttered through the night. dare had left her shortly before two o'clock, and she had slept soundly until roused by the sun, which newly risen shone golden in a cloudless sky. already its fiery heat penetrated into the carriage, and struck fiercely on her hands and face, and upon the cushions of the seat which felt warm under her touch. she wondered whether dare had slept, whether he slept still? involuntarily her thoughts turned back to the overnight vigil. she reviewed with a regretful sense as of something past, gone irrevocably, the quiet hours of intimate companionship, silent hours for the greater part,--silent with that eloquence of wordlessness more assertive than speech. a raised voice would have sounded intrusive, breaking the stillness of the darkened carriage where they had sat close together, gazing out upon the dusk, and whispering at intervals the thoughts which sprang straight from the heart to the lips. that night with its beauty; its stirrings of complex emotions, seeking and evading articulate expression; its untellable happiness, made up mainly of physical nearness and assimilated thoughts and feelings, had rolled back into the past,--was curtained off for ever behind the obnubilating folds of yesterday's mantle. only memory remained; the vivid hours had faded away in the dawn. would any night ever mean so much to them again? pamela rose and made her toilet with the primitive arrangements provided in the carriage. she felt crumpled and unrefreshed, the effects of sleeping fully dressed. there was grit and sand in her hair. she brushed and rearranged it by the aid of the tiny suspended mirror. then she dusted the compartment as well as she was able with a handkerchief; the fine red sand of the karroo penetrated everywhere, and lay thick upon the baggage and the cushions of the seats. she heard dare moving in the next compartment; and felt glad that he too was up early. when he joined her they would have an early breakfast of fruit and biscuits. she was ready for him when he tapped on the door. he slid the door back in response to her permission to enter, and came in quietly and kissed her. "sleep well?" he asked. she nodded brightly. "like a top," she answered. "you did it in a hurry then," he remarked. "it's only six now." "only six!" she repeated. "and feel how hot it is. what will it be like at noon?" "if you travel through the karroo in february," he said, "you must expect to find it sultry. you will have to keep the shutters closed on the sunny side." "but that shuts out the view," she objected. "i'm just loving this. i never imagined anything so desolate and grand and inspiring." "it's desolate enough," he admitted, glancing through the window out on the wide scene. they were in the heart of the karroo now. the arid sandy soil was sparsely covered with scrub and stunted mimosa bushes, and at intervals low hills sprang unexpectedly to the view, giving the effect of dark excrescences on the flat face of the land. nothing green was visible; everywhere the eye rested on parched, powdered soil and dry scrub, beneath a brazen sky of hard, relentless blue. they opened their baskets and broke their fast. pamela was frankly hungry; the clear light air of the karroo stimulates the appetite; and this early morning breakfast, with the warm sunlight streaming in through the windows, with the light warm breeze on her face, stirring the hair at her temples, was a new experience. she felt as she had felt on the previous night, alive in every nerve and centre of her being,-alert with the instinct of sheer gladness and joy in life; keenly appreciative of each fresh sensation, each fresh aspect in the constantly changing landscape as it unfolded itself to the view. the stark barrenness of these vast tracks of no man's land appealed to her senses acutely, stirred the imagination; contrasting sombrely with the greater fertility which occasionally started up amid the desolation, emphasising the sterility of the great plain which nursed these oases in its bare bosom, and supplied them from sources denied itself. here, where the land was richer, where the rivers, dry at this season, had their beds between wooded banks, were to be seen small isolated groups of native huts, reed thatched, and patched with sacking and pieces of tin; and little naked piccaninnies ran forward to meet the train, and danced and shrieked excitedly, holding out little dark supplicating hands in greedy anticipation. pamela snatched a handful of fruit and threw it to them, and leaning from the window, watched the eager race of these children of the sun who scampered to get the prize. "they are just sweet," she said, laughing. "at a distance, yes," agreed dare. "they are characteristic of the country anyway--healthy, untrammelled, uncivilised." he got up and leaned from the window beside her. they had left the fertility behind. the ground became more stony, more strikingly naked. the railway wound in and out among the hills,--brown hills, covered with scrub, and strewn with huge boulders. there was no sight of a tree or of any living thing. the wind blew fitfully and more strongly; hot breaths of it were wafted in their faces, carrying with it a fine red grit which made the eyes sore. dare watched the eager, intent face with a slightly amused smile. pamela's keen enjoyment of everything reduced the discomfort of the long tiring journey to a minimum. she was making of it a picnic, and he was glad to fall in with her mood. "we will take advantage of the next stop," he said, "and make our way to the breakfast-car. i need something more substantial than fruit to face the day upon." he was wise in insisting upon a substantial breakfast; the heat, later in the day, deprived them both of appetite. pamela refused to go to lunch, and dare, equally disinclined for food, remained with her in the compartment, sitting opposite her on the shady side of the stifling carriage, keenly observant of her as she sat, limp and pale with the heat, but still interested; noting everything with languid, amazed blue eyes while the train rushed onward across the burning plain, through miles of uncultivated land, vast tracks of sun-drenched, treeless desert, where in patches of startling green, showing vividly amid the blackened scrub, its pale fingers pointing skyward, the milkbush flourished, hardy plant of the dry karroo, which like the cactus draws its sustenance from the dews. bleached bones of cattle strewed the ground in places, and about the farms, springing up occasionally out of the barrenness, the lean stock moved listlessly, feeding on the insufficient vegetation. farther on, in the dry bed of a river, a few hollow-flanked oxen lay, too weak to rise, their big soft eyes dim with suffering; and on the banks starved sheep were dying on the blackened veld, victims of the merciless drought that had swept the land bare as though devastated by fire. the aasvogels, perched on the telegraph poles along the railway, waited sombrely; grim birds of prey, with their bare ugly necks and gloomy eyes, ready to swoop when the last faint flicker of life died out. little whirlpools of dust rose on the flats, small, detached, yellow clouds, disturbed by some local puff of wind; and across the hard blue of the sky a few fleecy clouds floated lazily, throwing moving shadows of dense black upon the kopjes that appeared at frequent and unexpected intervals parallel with the line. lonely graves of british soldiers, reminiscent of the ugly past, lay thickly at the foot of these deadly hills. "this," pamela said, bringing her face round and looking with troubled eyes at dare, "makes my heart ache. this is truly the desolate way. but it's impressive,--it's amazing. i feel all stirred." "yes," he said; "one can't help feeling that. it's the actuality of life struggling with death, an everlasting grapple with indeterminate result. one sees here the forces of nature incessantly warring, the elements of productiveness and destruction constantly opposed. one day these elements will be brought into subjection. the railway is the first step in linking up these waste places with our tentative civilisation. this country is in the lap of the future." "i would sooner see it as it is," she said. "so would i," he agreed. "civilisation could never excite one's imagination as this untamed land does. it's a fine country,--worth the sacrifice of a good deal." "but not worth that," she said, and pointed to the cairns of stones with the little wooden crosses standing above them. there were so many of these relics along the route. "that's the part that shows," he returned. "it has cost more than that." she was silent for a while, gazing from the window as she leaned back in her seat dare had bought some pineapples at de aar that the natives were selling on the platform, and he cut one of the fruit in half, and gave it to her with a spoon, that being, he assured her, the only way in which a pineapple should be eaten. "if i had come alone," pamela said, "i should have fared badly." "you couldn't have made this journey alone," he said decidedly. "it's unthinkable." the wind was rising steadily, a hot wind, that stirred the sticky red sand and carried it in clouds towards them till it covered everything. whirlpools of red dust, rising skyward like tongues of furiously swirling flame, travelled with extraordinary velocity along the ground. there were farms here too, and cultivated patches of grain, and more lean sheep; and at infrequent intervals, marking a spot of beauty in this sterile waste, grew low, spiky, darkly green bushes starred with white blossom resembling cherry blossom, and straggling clumps of the prickly pear. "and people live on these lonely farms," pamela said. "i wonder what their lives are like? think of it, day after day--only this." "fairly dull," dare commented. "but it's extraordinary how little they regard it. i've stayed on some of these karroo farms. it isn't half bad." "as an experience, perhaps not... but to live there!" "there are conditions," he returned, "in which such isolation might be agreeable." "they would be quite extraordinary conditions," she rejoined. "most of those people are probably ordinary folk with ordinary feelings. i can't imagine it myself. it appears to me depressingly monotonous. how tired they must grow of one another." he looked amused. "it is possible to attain to that state of boredom even in big centres," he argued. "well, yes, of course. but there are distractions. one isn't so entirely dependent on one another." "that's the strongest argument in favour of these cut off places," he returned. "such absolute dependence must develop qualities of kindliness and toleration which would encourage the companionable spirit. i don't think it would irk me under the right conditions. the heart of the karroo would be heaven with the right person to share one's life." "i suppose any exile might be acceptable in that case," pamela said, gravely returning his look. "but i don't fancy it happens often in life that the right people come together." "that is sometimes their own fault," he answered quietly. he leaned suddenly towards her, and took and held her hand. "we are in a fair way to commit that blunder, pamela. we are stumbling forward, following blindly the leading of a blind fate, and cutting the ground behind us, closing every retreat. i'm gripped with a conviction at times that we are acting foolishly,--that afterwards we shall regret." "regret!" she echoed a little bitterly. "life is one long regret." "it is in our own hands," he said. "the choice is always ours." "no," she said, "no!" she drew her hand gently from his and turned her face aside quickly, afraid to meet the love in his eyes, afraid of the earnest persuasion of his manner as he presented their case anew for her consideration. it was hard to withstand him. but free choice, she realised, was the one thing which was not permitted them; for her it was not a question of choice at all; it was a matter of controlled and unquestionable necessity. if she turned back now it would be to own herself beaten at every point along the road of life. that would insure regret also--more than regret. a shameful consciousness of failure would stultify any satisfaction that love would bring them; and in watching her children grow up about her she would be reminded continually of how completely she had failed in her duty to them. they would be to her always a lasting reproach. "you are bent on making a hard business of life," he said. his voice held a dissatisfied ring; his eyes, as they rested on her half-averted face, wore a look of baffled perplexity. it had not been his intention to make this further appeal; he was vexed with himself for troubling her; but at the moment he could not have kept the words back. "whatever course i took the path would be difficult," she answered, "because i took the wrong step years ago. one can't go back, you see, and start again. one has to make the best of one's mistakes. that's why we are parting now, dear,--you and i. there isn't any choice in it at all." he moved to her side of the compartment and sat down close to her. "i've got to submit to your ruling," he said; "i know that... and i'm doing it, doing it with an ill grace, perhaps; but you can't expect too much. there's just one little ray of comfort left me, pamela... shall i tell you what that is?" she slipped a hand into his. "tell me," she said softly. "it's that i have a presentiment at the back of my mind that one day in the future--how far off or how near, i cannot say--we shall come together--be together always. i don't feel that we are parting. we aren't parting--not finally. this is an ugly phase in our intercourse-a rude breaking away of vital things that entails a certain loss-temporary loss. afterwards we shall meet again, farther along the journey. then we'll finish the journey together." she made no answer. she turned to him in silence, and drew his face to hers and kissed him with grave tenderness upon the mouth. after that they did not talk again for some considerable time. chapter thirty. night! ... night on the veld once more--another luminous night of stars and sweet scents, and the haunting sense of mystery and isolation and intimate companionship, interrupted at intervals of ever greater frequency as the train ran into some wayside station, and hurrying forms moved along the platform, and gazed with faint curiosity into the unlighted carriage, as they passed the open windows and caught a momentary glimpse of the dim faces of a man and woman watching together in the night. "ghosts!" pamela said once, pressing closer against dare. "shadows of the night,--flitting in the darkness, and swallowed up in it again. i wonder what they make of us, those ghosts?--two live people alone in a shadow world." she shivered slightly as the train sped onward again. dare took a wrap from the seat and placed it about her shoulders. the temperature had fallen perceptibly. the fierce heat of the day was succeeded by the cold of the transvaal night,--the cold of a high bracing altitude, following with surprising suddenness on the dry, burning heat of the karroo. the fierceness and the desolation lay behind. the country presented here a fertile wooded beauty, startling in its greenness, following upon the arid desert through which they had passed. "don't leave me to-night," pamela said presently, gripping his hand tightly. "stay, and let us see it out together. it's the finish... our last night. to-morrow..." "there is no to-morrow," he interposed quickly. "we have no concern with anything but the present i'll stay... i want to stay. lean against me, and sleep if you feel like it. i'd like you to sleep, pamela." she laughed softly. "i don't want to lose one precious moment in sleep," she said. "now talk to me." "last night," he reminded her, "you didn't want to talk." "i know. but to-night it's different. there is so little time left. we have got to crowd everything into to-night. i want a store of memories,--a little harvest of summer thoughts to draw upon when the winter comes. we've talked so little." "we've managed to express a lot without words," he said. "yes," she said... "feelings. we've expressed ourselves somehow mutely. we get near to one another mentally. when i can't see you any more i shall still have that sense of nearness. you'll be there--somewhere." the arm with which he supported her held her more closely. he looked down at the shadowy outline of her face in the darkness where it rested against his shoulder, and his lips tightened suddenly. why, in the name of all that was absurd, were they parting like this? ... parting without a sufficient reason,--for a scruple. the impulse to plead with her once more, to urge her more insistently than he had yet done, moved him strongly. he bent his face to hers quickly; but the words he would have uttered died on his lips, as the soft, low-pitched voice that he loved fell again on the silence, with a new note of tenderness in its tone. "i think it is because of the trust you inspire that i love you so well." when we perceive, or imagine we perceive, certain qualities in another, it is possible to inspire those qualities which we admire. as he listened to her, dare was silent; the impulse to plead with her faded. to deliberately shake her faith in him was a thing he could not do. there must be no painful memories of those last hours together. "there is no accounting for love,--love like ours," he said after a brief pause. "it's not a thing of reasons,--it's instinctive,--a common bond of sympathy, of mental understanding, uniting us as no law could unite us. if we never meet again you will still belong to me, as i belong to you. no lesser love could ever come into my life,--it wouldn't satisfy me. i've given you everything. you fill all the crevices of my heart and brain. you've succeeded in crowding out the rest. when we have gone our separate ways, following out our different lives, as we shall be doing shortly, it will be some consolation to reflect that we hold one another constantly in our thoughts. you'll write to me,--you can't refuse me this time. i shall write,--often, whenever the impulse moves me. i am not going to lose touch with you again. if life gets too difficult for you, you will let me know. i'm always behind you, remember. i'm there when you want me. the time may come, pamela." "yes," she said. "but you mustn't encourage me to become too dependent on you. i'm not going to be afraid of difficulties, dear. life _is_ difficult. it has been difficult for me for some while past. you know... you knew that time you stayed with connie. i think it was at that time when things were so hard i first learnt how much i cared,--how much you were to me i leaned on your strength then without realising it; and when you left i missed you so. it hurt--like hunger." "it's like that with me always," he said. "it is easier to bear now," she added, "since we've talked it over together. it is keeping it all pent up that frets one so. it is wrong,--don't you think?--to be afraid of loving,--to attempt to suppress it as though it were something shameful. there is nothing shameful in love when one loves straight. i'm proud of loving you,-proud to know your love is mine. it's an immense help to me, that knowledge. the world wouldn't see it as we see it. i know. that's where the need for secrecy comes in. but secrecy is just a little-dishonouring, don't you think?" he smiled faintly. "the world is old in experience," he said. "we couldn't go on meeting and stay at this point, my dear. love between man and woman, however steady and restrained, has its element of passion. there must come moments when one's feelings get out of hand. the demand of love increases. you have only just accustomed yourself to the idea of loving; when one grows familiar with the idea one has to explore further. that is why i am going out of your life, dear one, until i can enter into it fully. for you and for me there can be no half measures." she was silent for a while, a little troubled at the flood of light he had let in upon the situation which she had been viewing through the haze of an impossible idealism. she realised the truth of what he said; and she felt suddenly ashamed, not at his having stripped away the sham coverings ruthlessly, but for having wilfully blinded herself to obvious realities. she felt that she had been convicted of deliberate dishonesty of thought. if he saw this thing clearly, why had not she also seen it without the need of his pointing it out? "we are lovers, dear; we've admitted that," he resumed. "we can't stop at that unless we give up seeing one another. i want you. you are free to come to me,--free, that is, save for your own scruples. that is why i feel that in making love to you i have not acted dishonourably. i've fought for our love,--it was a square fight, and i've lost. you may be right... i can't say. anyway the decision rests with you. i'm not going against it. i am going to remain in the background until your need of me is as great as my need of you; then you'll send for me. in the meantime you need not be afraid to trust me. i shall never seek to persuade you against your will." there was a further silence. pamela dared not venture upon speech because of the tears which would have choked her utterance had she attempted to express her feelings aloud. he was so much more honest than she was, so much finer and stronger. she held him in her thoughts so highly placed that dare would have been amazed and considerably embarrassed could he have realised the pinnacle to which he was elevated in the opinion of this woman, whom he was conscious of looking up to as infinitely better and simpler and altogether nobler of intention than himself. compared with her direct and decent conceptions of life, her quiet acceptance of duty, and sense of responsibility, his ideas appeared carnal and extraordinarily limited and self-centred. he did not want to give up anything. he rebelled at the sacrifice demanded of him. it was only because he recognised the impossibility of shaking her resolution that he submitted at all. had she weakened for a single moment he would have set himself to wear down her resistance with the first sign of faltering on her part. he had watched jealously for some sign of her yielding from the hour when they were alone together, away from the influences that had surrounded her in her home. during the past two days of intimacy and close companionship his hopes had run high. he did not understand how, loving him as she did, and admitting her love so freely, she could yet persist in her determination to marry the man who had wronged her so grievously. it was beyond his powers of comprehension entirely. the day would come, he believed, when she would recognise her mistake, would possibly even acknowledge it. it was for that day he would wait. when it dawned, as dawn it surely must, he would be ready. the night grew colder as it advanced. dare unstrapped the rugs and wrapped them about their knees. pamela was enveloped in his overcoat, with nothing of herself visible but the dim outline of her face showing above the collar, crowned by the pale masses of her hair. she felt wonderfully comfortable and wakeful. this rushing through the windy starlight, through unfamiliar country shrouded in the dusk and mystery of night, darkly revealed in silhouette against the lighter sky, exhilarated her, filled her with a sense of beauty and ever deepening wonder, as mile after mile was passed in the noisy rush of that symbol of modern activity through the heart of a partially developed country. black objects, shapes of trees and outlines of scattered homesteads, started up out of the surrounding obscurity, flashed darkly for a second on the landscape, and vanished, and were succeeded by other shapes, formless, vaguely distinct outlines, distorted and magnified in the gloom. the quiet remote beauty of night lay like a softening shadow upon the face of the land. "i have always loved the night," pamela said, speaking softly as though wishful to avoid disturbing the tranquillity by raising her tones; "but i have never loved it so well before, felt so at one with it. it shuts out the world, doesn't it? ... shuts out everything." "it's you in the night i love," he said. "that's where the magic for me comes in. if i hadn't you beside me i should probably be sleeping. place and time don't count, pamela,--it's companionship that matters. see the dawn, dear,--just breaking. in a short while it will be light." "yes." she stirred restlessly. the thought of what the new day held for her troubled her insistently, filled her with a shrinking sensation of dread. before another dawn should break she would be faced with gigantic issues; the biggest crisis of her life would have been met. what did the future hold for her, she wondered. had it lain in her power to lift the veil she would not have dared to look. "i'm dreading the day, dear," she said, a little tremulously. "i'm such a coward... i'm afraid,--of him." "he's a sick man, pamela," he said, desirous of reassuring her. "illness changes a man." "i know," she said. she was quiet for a while, watching the paling stars in the slowly brightening heavens, observant of the gradual definement of the landscape, as the light revealed it, first as a clear colourless picture in the grey dawn, and later as a wonder of separate distinct shades of green and amber beneath a sky already flushing with the promise of the day. he tried to distract her thoughts by speaking on impersonal topics, by bringing the talk back again after a while to themselves. he did not speak of love. that was all past and done with. he assumed a new attitude, was quietly protective and helpful and reassuring. he drew up her plans for her, and settled where they would stay. it was pamela's wish that they should go to the same hotel. he had suggested separate hotels; but he gave in to her pleading. after all what did it matter? he was there to advise and help her; it was better that he should be at hand. "i am leaving everything to you," she said, regarding him wistfully. "of course," he answered. "that's what i'm here for." "there's one thing,"--she paused, then completed the sentence--"i want you to do, if you don't mind... it's been troubling me. would you tell the doctor,--what you think necessary to make him understand? i shouldn't know how to explain..." he smiled down into the distressed blue eyes, and laid his hand warmly upon hers. "i never intended you should explain," he answered. "that's my job too." chapter thirty one. they reached pretoria shortly after nine. dare drove with pamela to the grand hotel where he engaged rooms. they breakfasted together at a small table in the public room. a rather silent meal it proved; pamela was tired, and somewhat depressed now that they were arrived at their destination; the fatigue of the long journey told upon her; and her eyes were heavy, the result of insufficient rest. all the glamour was ended; the pleasurable excitement, the sense of adventure, of happy forgetfulness, was as a dream of the night which the daylight dispelled utterly, leaving only a vague regret of glowing memories dimly recalled and greatly missed. she _felt_ as a woman might feel who had been pleasantly drugged and wakes painfully in a bleak, unlovely world. dare prescribed a warm bath and bed. she could do nothing that morning. he would see her again at the lunch hour, when she was rested, and tell her what arrangements he had been able to make in the interval. she acquiesced silently, too weary and depressed to care whether she saw arnott that day or the next. now that the meeting loomed so imminent all her courage was oozing away. she realised with a sense of horror at herself that she shrank almost with repulsion from the thought of standing beside the sick bed of the man she once had loved, for whom she now felt nothing but a cold resentment, a bitter anger for the evil part he had played in her life. she did not desire to see him. but the reason which had led her to him governed her still. her future course was none the less plain because it was difficult to follow. the much needed rest brought with its refreshment a greater tranquillity of mind; and when she met dare at luncheon she was herself again, quiet and composed, a little nervous obviously, but equal to facing the ordeal when the moment for doing so arrived. she was relieved to hear that she was not expected to visit the invalid until the following morning. she might not, dare informed her, see him even then. it depended entirely upon how he received the news of her presence whether she was admitted to his room. he was making good progress, and the doctors had no wish to retard his recovery by risking the excitement of an emotional scene. "i have vouched for your absolute discretion," he said, meeting the wistful eyes with a reassuring smile. "i don't fancy you are the sort of woman who indulges in scenes." "no," she said quietly. "i've got beyond that." she lowered her gaze to the flowers in the centre of the table, contemplating their beauty with a kind of tired relief. dare watched her intently. "i feel," she added after a pause, "rather as though i had become frozen. i don't seem to care much what happens. you'll go with me in the morning, i suppose?" "naturally," he answered. she raised her eyes again to his swiftly. "after i have seen him once," she said, "it won't be so difficult. i'll be able to release you then from your kind office. you mustn't waste your time any longer on my account." "i don't reckon it time wasted," he returned. "not wasted,--no. i couldn't have managed without you. but i feel it is very selfish of me to have accepted so much from you. you've set me in the path. i'll be able to walk it now unaided." "we will talk of that," he said easily, "after you have seen him. in the meantime i am not going to let you dwell on the matter. you are going to drive with me this afternoon. it's beautiful country about here, and the roads are excellent. we'll forget the painful purpose of this journey, pamela, and enjoy ourselves. i claim that as my fee for the services you insist on recognising." "you are so good to me," she said. her voice was low and tenderly tremulous, and her eyes, lifted to his, shone misty and soft and confiding. dare gripped the table with both hands, and stared back at her across the flowers which divided them in their slender crystal vase. his face was tense. "it is easy to be that," he answered gruffly, oblivious of the people in the room, oblivious of everything but the sweet, tired beauty of her face, and the trustful affection in the earnest eyes. "i say," he added, recollecting himself, "let's get out of this." she rose; and he followed her from the room, aware of the glances she attracted in passing, and not indifferent to the covert looks directed at himself. he was well known in pretoria; one or two faces there were not unfamiliar to him. he heard his name pronounced distinctly as he passed through the doors in pamela's wake. it might be well after all, he decided, to leave her as she suggested on the morrow. it was difficult to have continually in mind the necessity for playing the discreet part of disinterested friend under observant eyes. he had not intended to leave so soon; but in the circumstances it was wiser; and from johannesburg he would have only a two hours' journey if the necessity for his presence arose. he would extract a promise from her to wire to him if she found herself in any difficulty. he did not unfold his plans to her then. he decided to leave matters as they stood until the morrow. so much depended on the result of the morning's interview. it seemed to him that his own fate, being inseparable from hers, hung in the balance of the next twenty-four hours. he felt almost as nervous as pamela the following day, when he accompanied her to the home, and waited in the little room where he had waited before to learn the doctor's verdict. the matron came in and talked hopefully with pamela of her husband's progress. mr arnott had been informed that his wife was there, and had expressed the wish to see her. she thought that very possibly the visit would cheer him; he had shown a growing tendency towards depression of late, which was not unusual in the early stages of convalescence. pamela listened very quietly to the amiable chatter of this pleasant, capable looking woman, whose clear eyes were curiously observant of the white-faced stranger, so tardy in her duty to her sick husband, so little concerned, it seemed to her, about his condition now that she was here. the doctor had let fall some vague intimation of domestic estrangement in instructing her as to the precautions necessary to take in regard to this visit; but in view of the man's serious illness the other woman looked on the wife's unforgiving attitude as heartless in the extreme. she did not know of the agony of suspense hidden behind the quiet manner, the fear which the calm eyes concealed. she noticed only the stranger's wonderful composure, the utter lack of spontaneous inquiry into her husband's case. the only questions that were asked were put by the man who accompanied her, and who appeared more interested in the patient, if not more sympathetic, than the wife. when the doctor entered the matron withdrew; and the medical man, an older man than the junior partner whom dare had interviewed on his first visit, drew a chair forward and sat down opposite to pamela. he scrutinised her intently, with kindly interested gaze, thinking her over in the light of the information he had received from dare on the previous day, which, meagre as it had been, had conveyed the impression that the wife was much to be pitied. dare's version had explained the young woman whose connection with arnott had puzzled the doctor when first called upon to attend this case. confronted with pamela, he found the situation difficult of comprehension. "you must be prepared," he warned her, "for a terrible change in your husband. he's been very ill--he is very ill still. but his recovery is more satisfactory than we had hoped for. you must be very careful not to excite him." "yes," said pamela gravely; and he felt that the warning was unnecessary. "he is expecting you," he added. "i believe he is anxious to see you. it is quite possible that this illness of his has wiped a good deal of the near past from his memory. i would advise you not to recall anything of a painful nature. approach him if possible only on present matters. and cheer him up a little. you can possibly do more for him than i can at this stage." pamela smiled at him bravely. "i have come with the intention of doing all that is in my power," she answered gently. "if he will let me, i will devote myself to him. i want to help him--if i can." "i don't think there should be any difficulty about that," he replied. "for a while you will have to be satisfied to leave him here. later, if you wish, he can be moved to where you are staying. he could not undertake the journey to cape town yet." "no?" pamela said, thinking abruptly of connie and the children. "i had thought--" "too great a risk," he said decidedly. "we'll err on the side of caution, mrs arnott. he is making such a splendid recovery, i should be sorry if we did anything to retard it now. i think you will have to make up your mind to remain in pretoria for a time. i will let you know as soon as i consider it safe for him to travel. in any case the hot weather would prohibit a long journey. didn't you find it very trying coming up?" "i don't think i mind the heat very much," she answered, evading a more direct reply. "that's fortunate," he returned, smiling, "because there is no getting away from it out here." he rose. "now, if you are ready, i will direct you to mr arnott's room." he glanced at dare. "you'll remain here?" he said. dare nodded. under his brows he was observing pamela, who, with the old nervous light in her eyes, was waiting near the door. she did not look at him as she passed out. in silence she accompanied the doctor along the passage to arnott's room which was situated at the end of it. the door stood open, and a nurse who was standing inside came forth, and took up her position in the passage within call in case she were needed. the doctor motioned to pamela to enter. "i've brought mrs arnott to see you," he said. his words broke the dead stillness that reigned in the room abruptly; but as soon as he had uttered them and quietly withdrawn, the stillness descended again, more deadly, more paralysing than before, it seemed to pamela, left alone for the first time with the man who when last she had seen him had flung out of her presence in anger, and who now, moving his head feebly on the pillow, turned a pallid, eager, so old face towards her, and held out his hand to her, and broke into pitiful frying. pamela felt inexpressibly shocked. she had prepared herself for a change, but not so great a change as this. his hair had whitened during his illness; it was quite white, like a very old man's; his chin was unshaven, and the unfamiliar beard was white also; his moustache alone retained a few dark hairs. his face was thin, and so altered that, but for the eyes, she would have failed in recognising it. and the sight of him lying there, weak and helpless and so feebly crying, hurt her beyond measure, moved her to an almost terrified compassion, so that for a second she could not stir or speak. something seemed to clutch at her heart and stop its beating. she had never seen arnott cry before. the thought of tears in connection with him would have occurred to her as impossible. and here he lay,--crying,--holding out a trembling hand to her, and sobbing like a child. with a swift, sudden movement, as though her limbs relaxed abruptly and responded automatically to the rush of pity that leapt up within her, submerging for the time all other feeling, she approached the bed and knelt beside it and put her arms about him, as she might have put them about a suffering child, appealing for sympathy. she drew his head to her shoulder, and with the so sadly altered face hidden from her sight against her breast, felt her courage returning, and was able to articulate his name, and murmur soothing words to him as she caressed the silvered hair. "herbert!--my dear," she said; "it's pamela. it's all right, dear... don't cry... don't cry." "i've been ill," he said, speaking thickly, with a slight impediment that made the words difficult to understand. "i've wanted you, pam... you've been a long time coming." he spoke querulously, and sobbed again with a sort of complaining self-pity, as though he felt she had been neglectful, that she ought to have known and come to him before. pamela would have realised without the doctor's preparation that the enfeebled mind had lost its power to remember recent events. it was quite possible that he did not realise even where he was, that, had he been told, he would have failed to recall the circumstances of his coming to pretoria. the subject of their differences, of his desertion of her, had faded entirely from his recollection. he only knew that he was ill, that he had wanted her, and that she had been long in coming. he took up his complaint again. "i've wanted you," he reiterated. "i've kept on wanting you. why didn't you come sooner?" "i came as soon as i could," she answered soothingly. "they would not let me see you before. you've been very ill. you are getting better now. soon you will be much stronger, and then we will go home." he lay still for a second or so, taking in the significance of her words. "home!" he repeated vaguely... "yes." he drew in his breath quiveringly like a tired child, and lay back on the pillow and stared at her with the familiar eyes set in the unfamiliar face. pamela felt oddly disconcerted by his gaze, and only with difficulty forced herself to meet it. she wished that he would not look at her, wished that he had remained with his face hidden against her breast. "i should like to go home," he said. he spoke with a puzzled intonation as though not quite dear in his mind as to where home was; but very sure of one thing, that home meant being with pamela, and that he wanted to be with her. "you'll stay with me?" he asked presently. "i will come and see you often," she answered, "every day. i have come to be with you. as soon as you are able to be moved i will take you away. you must make haste and get strong." "yes," he said, "get strong. i have had funny dreams," he added, still keeping his eyes on her face. "i get funny dreams now occasionally,-when i'm awake. that's strange, isn't it? why do i dream when i am awake?" "that is only weakness," she replied gently. "now i am here you won't dream any more." "no," he said, and seemed satisfied with her reply. "i've thought sometimes you were dead," he said; "but you aren't." he stroked her hand softly. "i'm glad you're all right, pam." his eyes, still puzzled, still striving vainly to recall facts which seemed to hover on the borderland of memory, and which always eluded him, wandered from her face, wandered aimlessly about the room, and came back to her face again with the same perplexed, inquiring look which was so difficult to meet. she felt that she wanted to push away the hand that so loosely held hers, wanted to get upon her feet and rush from the room,--away from the haunting sight of the grey, drawn face, and the insistent, puzzled eyes,--away from the presence of this man who seemed like a stranger to her, between whom and herself there yet existed an ugly and dishonouring bond. she controlled herself with a great effort and continued talking soothingly to him, obeying mechanically the will power that had governed her actions throughout. but how much the effort cost her, only she, herself, could ever realise. while she stayed there with him, listening to his thick, disconnected utterances, and replying with a gentleness born of pity only, it seemed to her that something within her, something that was vital and necessary to the appreciation of life, died utterly, and left her apathetic and indifferent, a woman denuded of all the best warm impulses of the heart. the best of herself was dead; there only remained the dull, unloving semblance of her former self. chapter thirty two. on leaving arnott's room, when comforted by her presence he fell asleep and so freed her from the painful necessity of remaining beside him, pamela returned swiftly to the waiting-room, where dare was, and, entering, closed the door behind her, and stood leaning against it, with her hand on the knob, as though fearful that if she released it some one might intrude upon them, might perhaps induce her to return to the room from which, as soon as she had seen he slept, she had fled in cautious haste. her face was flushed, her eyes were bright and hard, and her breath came with painful quickness, in short, spasmodic gasps. dare looked at her in some concern, and advancing, stood close to her, and laid his hand upon her sleeve. "don't excite yourself," he said. "sit down, pamela. there's no hurry. get a grip on yourself." she laughed shrilly. and the next moment she was crying, holding to his arm, and weeping on his shoulder. "i'm a fool," she sobbed, "a fool... i don't know why i'm crying. please, don't take any notice of me. i'll be all right in a minute." "oh! my dear," she cried presently, raising her face, and looking up at him through tear-blurred eyes, "you can't imagine... he's an old man, and childish. he doesn't seem to remember--anything. he was just glad to see me... and all the time i was only conscious of an eagerness, a horrible eagerness, to get away,--to run from the room. if it's going to be like that always--" "it won't," he interposed quietly. "you've had a shock, i wish now i had persuaded you not to come. sit down, pamela. shall i ask for anything for you?" "no," she said, "i don't want any one to come in here. i'm all unnerved. i don't know how i am going through with this." "then don't go through with it," he said. "chuck it. it's not too late now." he led her to a chair and put her into it. "what's the use of making yourself miserable, like this?" he said. she looked at him in consternation, as he stood over her and made this astounding suggestion in the quiet ordinary tones of a man offering quite simple, commonplace advice. he met her gaze steadily. "you've tried," he said. "it's not your fault if the job is too big for your undertaking. i've felt all along that you didn't appreciate fully the difficulty of the task. give in, pamela, and admit yourself beaten." "give in _now_?" she cried. "why not?" he said. she leaned back in the chair, her face paling; and for a second or so neither spoke. dare remained waiting with a certain confidence for her answer. it occurred to him that she knew herself to be beaten. all the fight was gone out of her. she had the air of a creature trapped and frantically seeking a way of escape. if he pointed the way in all probability she would take it. what decision she came to, or if she came to any decision, he had no means then of knowing. while he waited for her to speak the door of the room opened, and the matron appeared, and stood on the threshold, surveying the scene with manifest surprise. dare glanced over his shoulder at her, but he did not move. "mrs arnott is feeling a little upset," he said. she came forward quickly. "shall i fetch anything?--water?" "i don't think that is necessary," he replied. and pamela sat up with a quickly uttered protest. "it is nothing," she said. "just shock. i wasn't prepared to see such a change. i've never seen any one ill,--really ill, like that, before. i'm all right now. it was stupid of me to be so foolish. but," she looked at the matron piteously, with quivering lips, "he is so altered," she said pathetically. "he is quite old." the matron felt puzzled. in her long experience of sickness she had never known the patient's appearance to be the chief concern of the relatives. she felt a little unsympathetic towards mrs arnott's attitude. "an illness like mr arnott's would change any one," she answered. "the difference will be less marked as he gains strength. your visit seems to have done him good already. he is sleeping quite quietly and comfortably." "i am glad," pamela said simply. she rose and turned appealingly to dare. "shall we go now?" "if you are ready," he said. the matron held the door open. "you are quite sure?" she asked, as she shook hands, and looked searchingly into the frightened blue eyes of this surprising visitor, "that you won't have something before you leave?" "quite sure, thank you," pamela summoned a wintry smile to her aid. "i am sorry to have given so much trouble," she added. "i won't be so foolish again." the matron repudiated the suggestion of trouble, and inquired if she was to expect the visitor on the morrow. pamela hesitated for a barely perceptible moment, during which dare looked as though he would have suggested the wisdom of refraining from making a definite arrangement. he did not, however, speak; and pamela answered reluctantly, after a pause: "to-morrow... yes, i will come to-morrow." out in the open air again, driving bade to their hotel, dare asked her why she had made the arrangement. "there wasn't any need," he said. "you might not feel up to it. besides, there's the point to be settled first. if you are going to draw back it has to be now." "i can't draw back," she answered nervously... "i can't." "can you go through with it?" he asked. "that's the question. to draw back is quite ample. in my opinion, it is what you ought to do. your heart isn't in this, pamela." "no," she admitted. she frowned faintly. "before i came my one fear was that he would be difficult; now that i find him wanting me i'm holding back. it's paltry of me. i think if i had come alone i should have found it easier." "you mean," he said, "that i am trying to influence you?" "not trying... i mean that your presence influences me. it makes me hate the thought of living with him. there is no love in my heart for him--not any. when i saw him lying there so ill, so terribly altered, i didn't want to go near him,--didn't want to touch him. it was horrible. i had to force myself to touch him. that is how it will be, i suppose, always. it wasn't the sight of him so much as that thought which so unnerved me. and that woman thinks me an unfeeling brute. dear heaven! if she only knew!" "look here!" he said. "i can't stand this. if you feel all that about it you have no right to go on. it's no fairer on him than on you. it's no kindness to him." "i am not acting from any motive of kindness towards him," she answered. "i'm paying the debt--and making him pay--which we owe to the children we brought into the world. that is my only reason for going on with this. i can't draw back. i wish i could--even now." the motor stopped before the hotel entrance. dare got out and helped her to descend. "i'm coming up to the balcony," he said. "i want to talk." pamela went inside and passed up the stairs to her room. she took off her hat and gloves, and went out on to the balcony, and sat in the shade, waiting for him. he was not long in joining her. he drew a chair up close to hers and sat down. "now," he said, "we'll dispose of this matter finally. my time is short. i intend to take the evening train to johannesburg, unless, of course, you change your mind; and then--" "you'll take the evening train, dear," she said quietly. he glanced at her sharply. "you mean that?" he said. "that's your final answer, pamela?" "yes; that's my final answer." "so be it," he replied, and looked away again, out across the busy, sunny street. "it doesn't alter anything," he added presently, speaking in sharp, crisp tones that disguised whatever emotion swayed him at the moment. "matters stand between us as they were. when you find life too hard, you'll send for me. i shall be able to judge from the tone of your letters how things go with you. in the meantime--save for one occasion--we shall not meet again." pamela drew a deep breath, and for a time sat very still, her white face tense and miserable, her eyes staring blankly into space. in her mind, like a refrain, his words were repeating themselves again and again, conveying, somehow, little sense of meaning: "in the meantime--save for one occasion--we shall not meet again." abruptly their full significance broke upon her. she turned to him quickly. "what occasion?" she asked. dare sat back in his seat, contemplating her gravely. "i've been thinking," he said, "all the way coming up, and again this morning, about the girl--blanche maitland. we haven't finished with her," he added, noting pamela's startled look. "of course if you had decided differently, that would have been a matter we need not have concerned ourselves with. as things are, however, we have got to put it beyond her power to do you any injury. there is only one way that i can see to prevent that. your marriage must take place as soon as possible." "but," pamela began, and paused dismayed... "i couldn't bear--" "no," he interposed quickly. "i know what you are feeling. we'll manage it as secretly as possible. it may be necessary to move him from that place. i think it will be necessary. we'll need to take the doctor into our confidence--to a certain extent. we'll suppress the former marriage altogether, i think." "oh!" she said, and covered her eyes with her hand, and remained quiet. he watched her keenly. "if you leave it to me," he said, "i think i can manage it so that you won't find it very humiliating. then, if the girl turns up, you are better prepared to face her. i fancy there won't be much difficulty in squaring her. she isn't out for revenge." he leaned forward and laid a hand warmly upon hers. "is it too much altogether to face, dear?" he asked. "i think it will be best for you... god knows, i don't wish you to do it! i'd rather a thousand times you followed my suggestion. if you won't do that, then the other course it seems to me is the only means of safeguarding your position. after all, it is merely hastening things a bit. you always intended legalising the marriage." "yes," she said, and was silent, thinking. "i know you are right," she added after reflection. "i'll do whatever you think wise. but i feel that i ought not to let you undertake this too. i am fairly heavily in your debt already; and there is no return that i can make." dare smiled at her. "there is no question of debt or gratitude between us," he replied. "i promised to see you through. i am going to do that. afterwards..." the sound of the luncheon gong filled in the pause. dare got up, without completing the sentence, and putting his hand within her arm walked with her through her room into the corridor. "i have to go out after lunch," he said. though he did not explain his reason for going, she felt that it was about her business. "i shall probably only get back in time to fetch my suit case, and say good-bye. i wonder--will you be on the balcony, so that i shall be able to find you?" "i'll be there," she answered, "in the same place, outside my room." and so, with the imminent prospect of coming separation hanging over them, they went into luncheon together, and loitered over the meal, talking fragmentally, as people do who have discussed everything of vital interest and have come down to the bedrock of commonplace things. "you'll wire me," he said once, returning to the subject occupying both their minds, "if you find yourself in any doubt or difficulty? it's nothing of a journey between this and johannesburg." she promised; and dare, satisfied on this point, went on with his meal pamela could not eat. she trifled with the food which the waiter put on her plate, and watched dare, thinking of the many meals she would take in that room without him; thinking of the lonely hours she would spend, missing his companionship, missing him,--the lonely years, when the only link between them would be the chain of letters she had promised to interchange... those, and memory. the future loomed so bleak and empty that she was afraid to look forward. always she pictured herself shrinking, shrinking ever from the pathetic sight of suffering,--from the shadow of the man that had been, and the duty that would tie her continually to his side. pamela had yet to learn that there is no path, upon the fingerpost of which duty is clearly inscribed, so difficult for the traveller's reluctant steps but that beauty is to be met along the road, and peace waits at the finish. chapter thirty three. many emotions stirred pamela while she waited through the sunny warmth of the summer day for dare's return. the horror of the morning had passed. she was quite collected now, and able to dwell dispassionately on the changed life that confronted her. dare had told her, and she had inclined to believe him, that only love mattered. now, while she sat alone, thinking quietly, and reviewing all her past life as it stood in relation to the future, she realised that love is not the principal factor in life; it is merely a beautiful adornment, a quality which tends to gladden, and sometimes to ennoble, life; but it is not the base on which the structure is supported. love is a separate emotion, a distinctly personal attribute. of itself it is frankly selfish. only when it teaches self-abnegation can it be termed a wholly beautiful thing. to sacrifice everything for love, is to lower love to a purely physical emotion; and love stripped of its spiritual element becomes an ephemeral passion, a thing of mean delights, an excitement, a quality shorn of all fineness and dragged down to the commonplace of physical necessity. that was the quality of the love she had known in her married life; and that was why to-day, when she needed the strength of love to support her, nothing of it remained but the gaunt spectre of a long dead passion. but to love warmly and intensely, in a quite human fashion--and to part! ... that was not easy. it made a greater demand on her fortitude than anything she had yet been faced with. but difficulties met courageously present the weapons for their own defeat. the power of conquest comes of the determination to conquer. when dare returned, and came up to the balcony in search of her, he discovered her, as he believed, asleep. she was sitting so still, with closed eyes, and was so deeply plunged in thought that she did not hear him until he was close upon her. then her eyelids flashed open abruptly, and a flush suffused the pallor of her cheeks. "i've only got a minute," he said, pausing in front of her. "the taxi is waiting. come inside, pamela. we can't part here." she was seated outside the windows of her room, and she rose as he spoke and entered the room without answering him. he followed her quickly. "i've been seeing to things," he said. "i'll write you. there isn't time to go into it now. but it will be all right. don't bother your head about anything until you hear from me." he held her by the shoulders and looked steadily into her eyes. "it won't be long before i'm back. but this is our real parting. this is the last time i shall hold you so,--the last time i shall kiss your lips... my dear!" she drew near to him. her face as she lifted it to his was transfigured. never had he seen it so beautiful, so gravely tender. a yearning light of love lit her eyes, made them melting and wondrously soft. for a moment they remained looking at one another. then he gathered her close in his arms, crushed her to him, and kissed her mouth again and again. "we're parting," he muttered, drawing back his head, and staring at her without releasing her. "i don't feel i can go somehow. i feel i'm a fool to go. why don't i stay and fight it out with you, pamela? you little woman, the strength that is in you! you don't answer. your eyes just tell me i must go. well, i am taking part of you away with me--and leaving the best of myself with you... we'll go on... we'll get used to it in time, i daresay. but it hurts, pamela." "yes." she touched his cheek softly with her hand. "these last few days," she said, "they're something to remember..." "something," he said, "yes." "we've been very close," she whispered. "nothing--no bodily separation can alter that. the memory of your love will remain with me always. i'm glad we've talked of love, dear,--that we haven't tried to hide things from each other." "oh! we've talked," he said. "but talking..." he broke off, and caught her to him again. then he held her a little way off, and scrutinised her long and earnestly. "i don't understand," he muttered... suddenly his face softened. he bent his head and kissed her again quietly, and, releasing her, turned away. "good-bye," he said, a little abruptly, and opened the door of the room and stepped into the corridor. pamela remained standing where he had left her, her arms hanging loosely at her sides, her face strained and curiously set; and in her eyes, glowing darkly in the white face, a shadowed look of suffering too deep for utterance or the relief of tears. when we stand at the parting of the ways how difficult seems the road, how bitter the moment of farewell. but sorrow is no longer enduring than any other emotion. we take our lives again, and go on. chapter thirty four. some years later dare sat in his room before an untidy desk with a letter spread out before him among the litter of papers and things lying about. the letter was from pamela, between whom and himself, since the occasion when he had been present at her marriage in pretoria, these regular but infrequent communications formed the sole link. this letter in its quiet reflective tone differed from any other he had received from her. it breathed through every line of it a calm satisfaction, a resigned acceptance of the conditions of her life, that was in no wise morbid, that held, indeed, a note of hope, of quiet gladness even. clearly for her the turbulent discontent was past. she had glided into some forgotten backwater, and discovered there beauties that lie unsuspected in these restful retreats of the mind. "i am thinking much of you to-day," she wrote. "there is nothing unusual in that; but to-day my thoughts are more intent on you than at other times. your friendship means so much to me. i doubt if any woman has ever received more unselfish service than i have had from you. it has been a tremendous help to me. "life has been very difficult often since we parted,--it is difficult still at times; but each year brings some compensation. and in waiting on him, in caring for the straining thread of life,--it is straining very fine now,--i have learnt to understand him better, and to get back some of the old kindly feeling which i believed was dead. he is very dependent on me, and, despite the querulousness of ill health, truly grateful. i am so glad we acted as we did, my dear,- that we didn't shirk. plainly this is the work it was intended i should do. it is irksome to me no longer. and if in doing it i have lost my youth, and that which was infinitely more precious, at least i have the satisfaction of knowing that the happiness we both relinquished remains a beautiful, untarnished memory, which for me, at least, lightens the burden of these weary years. "i am growing old now, dear. you would scarcely know me. my hair is turning grey. i looked in the glass to-day and saw many little lines in my face which used not to be there. what does it matter? the outward semblance of youth, like the restless fever of love, is something which remains with us only for a short while. but these things live on in our hearts, warm and glowing, like the fires on the hearth of winter when the glory of summer is gone. to me you will always seem as i knew you first, as you will ever remain in my thoughts--a king among men. i hope my son will grow up brave and strong, like yourself. in my children i renew my youth." dare rested his elbow on the desk, and supported his head on his hand, and fell to thinking. "the straining thread of life,--it is straining very fine now..." when, he wondered, with his gaze fixed on the closely written lines, would his summons come? -----------------------------------------------------------------------the end. transcriber's notes: 1. page scan source: http://books.google.com/books?id=szqpaaaaqaaj 2. the diphthong oe is represented by [oe]. a duel by the same author the beetle: a mystery garnered a metamorphosis the twickenham peerage both sides of the veil the seen and the unseen marvels and mysteries miss arnott's marriage the goddess: a demon the joss: a reversion the crime and the criminal a duel by richard marsh methuen & co. 36 essex street w.c. london _first published_, 1904 contents book i.--wife chapter i the end of the honeymoon. chapter ii an offer of marriage. chapter iii whom god hath joined. chapter iv a second honeymoon. chapter v a conversation with the doctor. chapter vi husband and wife. chapter vii a tug of war. chapter viii the miniature. chapter ix the sliding panel. chapter x the girl at the door. chapter xi hot water. chapter xii signing the will. chapter xiii the encounter in the wood. chapter xiv in cuthbert grahame's room. book ii.--the widow chapter xv "the gordian knot". chapter xvi margaret is puzzled. chapter xvii an unexpected visitor. chapter xviii cronies. chapter xix in council. chapter xx the impending sword. chapter xxi out of the blue. chapter xxii margaret settles the question. chapter xxiii margaret resolves to fight. chapter xxiv the interior. chapter xxv alarums and excursions. chapter xxvi solicitor and client. chapter xxvii pure ether. chapter xxviii mr. lamb in a communicative mood. chapter xxix margaret pays a call. chapter xxx mrs. lamb in search of advice. chapter xxxi mrs. lamb returns to pitmuir. chapter xxxii at the gate. chapter xxxiii at the door. chapter xxxiv towards judgment. chapter xxxv judges. chapter xxxvi pleasant dreams! book i wife a duel chapter i the end of the honeymoon isabel waited till the rat-tat was repeated a second time, then she went down to the front door. since mrs. macconichie and her husband were both out, and she had the house to herself, there was nothing else for her to do, unless she wished the postman to depart with the letters. as it was, when she appeared at the door, he grumbled at being delayed. "these scotchmen are all boors," she told herself, in her bitterness. she looked at the letter which had been thrust into her hand. it was addressed to "mr. g. lamb". the sight of it reopened the fountains of her scorn. "they might at least have put g. lamb, esq. g. lamb! what a fool i've been!" further consideration of the envelope led her to the conclusion that it was the letter they had both been waiting for--the answer to her husband's plea for help. she pressed it between her fingers to learn, if possible by the sense of touch, what the envelope contained. "i believe there's only a letter--no cheque, nor anything. if there isn't, then we are done." she hesitated a moment, then tore it open. it contained merely a sheet of common writing-paper, on the front page of which was this brief note:-"dear gregory, "i like the idea of your asking me to help you. you've had all the help you'll ever have from me. the shop won't bear it; business is getting worse. if it weren't, you'd get no more money out of me. "you'd better get your wife to keep you. "susan lamb." susan lamb! that was his mother, the mother of the man she had married. so the truth was out at last. his mother kept a shop; he had been sponging on her for the money he had scattered broadcast. there was neither address nor date upon the letter, but the postmark on the envelope was islington. islington! his mother was a small shopkeeper in that haunt of the needy clerk! and she had believed him when he had posed before her as a "swell"--an aristocrat; when he had talked about his "coin" and his "gees". he had jockeyed her into supposing that money was a matter of complete indifference to him; that, as she boasted to her friends and rivals, "he rolled in it". so successfully had he hoodwinked her that she married him within a month of their first meeting--she, belle burney, the queen of song and dance! had thrown up all her engagements to do it, too; and she was beginning to get some engagements which were not to be despised. at the commencement he had done things in style: had taken her up to edinburgh, leisurely, in a motor. she had imagined that the motor was his own. at edinburgh it vanished; he told her to receive some trifling repairs. but she, having already discovered he was a liar, suspected him of having sold it. later she learned that the machine had only been hired for a fortnight. already, at edinburgh, money began to run short. he did his best to conceal from her the state of the case, but the thing was so obvious that his attempts at concealment were vain. he had lied bravely, protesting that, in some inexplicable way, his remittances had gone wrong; that in the course of a post or two he would be in possession of an indefinitely large sum of money. the posts came and went, but they brought no money. so they drifted hither and thither, each time to humbler quarters. now, within six weeks of marriage, they were stranded at a remote spot in forfarshire, within a drive of carnoustie. isabel had reason to suspect that, at the time of their marriage, her husband had less than two hundred pounds in the world. he had squandered more than that already; the motor had made a hole in it. the pawnbroker had come to the rescue when the coin was gone. they were penniless; owed for a week's food and lodging; their landlady was already showing signs of anxiety. now the much-talked-of and long-expected letter had arrived which was to bring the munificent remittance. it turned out to be half-a-dozen lines from his shopkeeping mother, who declined to advance him a single stiver! when the young wife realised, or thought she realised, all that the curt epistle meant, she told herself that now indeed the worst had come. she had just had another bitter scene with her husband; had, in fact, driven him out into the night before the tempest of her scorn and opprobrium. the landlady had departed on an errand of her own. isabel told herself that now, if ever, an opportunity presented itself to cut herself free from the bonds in which she had foolishly allowed herself to be entwined. she went upstairs, put on her hat and jacket, crammed a few of her scanty possessions into a leather handbag, and then--and only then--paused to think. it was nearly nine o'clock, late for that part of the world. the nearest railway station was at carnoustie, more than seven miles away. she knew that there was an early train which would take her to dundee, and thence to london; but, supposing she caught it, how about the fare? the fare to london was nearly two pounds; she had not a shilling. she did not doubt that, once in london, she could live, as she always had lived; but she had to get there first, across five hundred miles of intervening country. she arrived at a sudden resolution, one, however, which had probably been at the back of her mind from the first. yesterday, going suddenly into the landlady's own sitting-room, she had taken the old lady unawares. mrs. macconichie had what isabel felt sure were coins--gold coins--in one hand, and in the other the lid of a tobacco jar which stood in a corner of the china cupboard. although seeming to notice nothing, mrs. lamb, struck by the old lady's state of fluster, leaped to the conclusion that that tobacco jar was her cash-box. now, bag in hand, she came downstairs to learn if her surmise had been correct. although she was aware that the sitting-room was empty, she was conscious of an odd disinclination to enter, dallying for some seconds with the handle in her hand. once in, she lost no time in ascertaining what she wished to learn, meeting, however, with an unlooked-for obstacle. the china cupboard was locked; no doubt mrs. macconichie had the key in her pocket. she took out her own keys; not one of them was any use. she could see the tobacco jar on the other side of the glass door. she did not hesitate long; moments were precious. taking a metal paper-weight off the mantelshelf she smashed the pane, breaking it right away to enable her to gain free access to the jar. she removed the lid. the jar was full of odds and ends; she did not examine them closely enough to gather what they were. at the bottom, under everything else, was a canvas bag. she took it out. it was tied round the neck with pink tape. it undoubtedly contained coins; perhaps twenty or thirty. should she open it, and borrow two or three? or should she take it as it was? the answer was acted, not spoken. slipping the bag between the buttons of her bodice, she passed from the room and from the house. so soon as she was in the open air she thought she heard the sound of approaching footsteps; as if involuntarily she shrank back into the doorway, listening. she had been mistaken; there was not a sound. she came out into the street again, drawing a long breath. she looked to the right and left; not a creature was in sight. she set off in the direction of carnoustie. her knowledge of the surrounding country was of the vaguest kind. she had not gone far before it began to dawn on her that this was a foolhardy venture in which she was engaged. it was a habit of hers to act first and think afterwards, or she would never have become mrs. gregory lamb. hard-headed enough when she chose to give her wits fair play, she was, at that period of her career, too much inclined to become a creature of impulse. the impulses to which she was prone to yield were only too apt to be wrong ones. for instance, she had not long left mrs. macconichie's before she perceived clearly enough that the chances were possibly a hundred to one against her reaching carnoustie in the darkness on foot. houses were few and far between; the road was a lonely one; it was quite on the cards that she might not meet a soul from whom to make inquiries. if she had given the thing any thought at all, she would have perceived from the first how slight her chances were, in which case, since it was no use jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire, she would certainly have postponed her departure. now it was too late to return. the pane of glass in the china cupboard was broken; the canvas bag was inside her bodice. with the best will in the world she might find it difficult to conceal what had happened, not to speak of the possibility of mrs. macconichie's having already discovered her loss. so she pressed on. indeed, shortly she could not have gone back if she had wished. she had not started half an hour before she was forced to admit that she had lost her bearings utterly; that she had not the faintest notion in which direction carnoustie lay, nor whereabouts she was. she was on a black road; that was all she knew. a rough, uneven road, which apparently straggled over open moorland. she could make out trees here and there, but the road itself seemed to have no boundaries. so far as she could make out, there was nothing on either side in the shape of a hedge or landmark. soon she was not at all sure that she was not off the road; that she was not roaming, blindly, over the open country. it seemed impossible that any road could be so uneven. she kept stumbling over unseen obstacles. once she caught herself descending what seemed to be the steep sides of some sort of pit. with a sense of shock she drew back in time. she listened; she seemed to hear the sound of running waters. could she be standing on the bank of some stream or river, into which, in another second, she might have descended? anxious, even a little alarmed, turning right about face, she moved forward in what she supposed was the opposite direction. she seemed to be stumbling over a succession of hillocks. this could not be the road; she must have gone entirely astray. if she did not take care she would be running into some serious danger. all at once her foot caught in some trailing root or plant; she went headforemost to the ground. fortunately, she came down lightly enough. the fall was of little consequence, but when she tried to regain her perpendicular she learned, to her dismay, that her ankle refused to support her. willy-nilly, she had to remain squatted where she had fallen. "i seem to be in for a real good thing," she groaned. "am i to stay here all night? i shall be frozen to the bone before the morning, to say nothing of waiting like a rat in a trap for mrs. macconichie to catch me." she had to wait there for probably more than an hour, not exactly on the same spot. she managed, at intervals, to half hobble, half crawl across, perhaps another couple of hundred yards of ground. but the labour was thrown away. at that rate she would not have covered a mile before daybreak. yielding to necessity, still clutching her bag, crouching on the turf, she watched for the light to come. she felt no need for sleep; she was only consumed by a great impatience, in that all things seemed to be against her. the skies were clouded like her fate. nowhere was there a glimmer of a star. a cool breeze was coming from what she judged to be the sea. it made itself more and more felt as the time stole on. by degrees it began to bring a mist with it. as she had foreseen, she became chilled to the marrow of her bones. "if this goes on i shall freeze to death." the idea recurred to her like a sort of formula. she kept telling herself again and again that that night would be the end of her. when her vitality seemed at its lowest point the stillness of the night was broken by a sound--the sound of wheels. chapter ii an offer of marriage she raised her head to listen, thinking that her senses must be playing her a trick. no; it certainly was the sound of wheels, coming nearer and nearer. some one was driving fast through the darkness, so fast that in what seemed to her to be less than a minute the driver was close upon her. apparently nearly in front of her, although she could not see it, was a road along which the vehicle was approaching. it carried no lights; nothing broke the shadows; but, if her ears could be trusted, within a stone's-throw of where she was some wheeled conveyance was hurrying past. she stood upon her one sound foot and shouted:-"hallo!--hallo-o!--hallo-o-o!" again and again. her first shouts went unheeded. possessed by a wild fear that she might remain unnoticed, raising her voice to a desperate yell, she started to scream herself hoarse. this time her tones travelled. suddenly the vehicle ceased to move. an answering shout came back to her:-"who's there? what's the matter with you?" the accent was broad scotch. had it been the purest cockney it could not have seemed more welcome. she replied to the inquiry:-"i've sprained my ankle so that i can hardly move". this time in the other voice there was an unmistakable suggestion of surprise. "is it a woman?" "yes." her tone was fainter. "and what might you be doing here at this hour of the morning?" "i'm going to carnoustie." "carnoustie! you're going to carnoustie!--along this road? you're joking! can you get as far as this, so that i can have a look at you?" "i'll try." she did try. it was a distance of barely a hundred yards, but traversing it was a work of time. when the space was covered it was only by clutching at the wheel of the trap that she saved herself from subsiding in a heap upon the ground. in an instant the driver was off his seat, and with his arm about her. "is it so bad as that?" "it is pretty bad," she stammered. "for the lord's sake, don't faint! we've no time to waste upon such trifles." "i'm not going to faint." at any rate the tone was faint enough. suddenly she seemed to pull herself together, as if stirred by a spirit of resentment. "i never have fainted in my life--i'm not going to begin to do it now." he laughed--that is, the little husky sound he made might have been intended for a laugh. "if you'll keep quite still i'll lift you up into the trap somehow, though, by the feel of you, you're as big as i am, and, maybe, heavier. the mare won't move. she's one of the few female things i ever met that wasn't troubled with the fidgets." as he put it, "somehow" he did get her up into the trap, then climbed on to the seat beside her. presently they were bowling along together. for some seconds neither spoke. she was endeavouring to accustom herself to her new position. he, possibly--as his questions immediately showed--was wondering who it was that he had chanced upon. "you're english?" "i am." "staying in these parts?" "i'm on a walking tour." "a walking tour at one o'clock in the morning!" "it wasn't one o'clock when i started. i've been where you found me for hours and hours." "where were you making for?" "i've told you, i was going to carnoustie." "going from carnoustie, you mean. you'll never be finding it in this part of the country." "i daresay. since it became dark i've been hobbling round about just anywhere. i don't know where i am; i've lost myself completely." he was silent, as if he found something in her words which made him think. then she took up the _rã´le_ of questioner: "where are you going?" "to a man that's dying." "are you a doctor?" "it's my trade." "then you'll be able to look at my ankle. i hope it's nothing serious, but it seems to be getting worse instead of better." "i'll look at your ankle, never fear. i'll find you an easier patient than the one i'm bound for." little more was said on either side. the doctor seemed to be by nature a taciturn man, or perhaps he was too preoccupied for speech. isabel was feeling too miserable to talk. she was cold and wet; her ankle was occasioning her no little pain. she could hardly have been less inclined for conversation, and she, also, had at times a gift of silence. during the twenty or thirty minutes the drive continued probably not half-a-dozen words were exchanged. at last the doctor brought his mare to a standstill. "i suppose you couldn't get down and open a gate? there's one right in front of us. i can see it's closed." his eyes must have had the cat's quality of being able to penetrate the darkness; she could see nothing. "i might be able to get down--if i had to tumble, but i doubt if i'd ever be able to get up again." he grunted as if in disapprobation. "can you hold the reins while i get down?" "i daresay i could do that." he passed her the reins and descended. she heard a gate swing back upon its hinges. he reappeared at the horse's head. "i'd better lead her through and up to the house; it's as black as the devil's painted under the trees. i ought to have brought my lamps, but i came away in such a hurry. when some folks are dying they will not wait." they passed through a darkness which was so intense that she could not see the horse which was drawing her on. the avenue seemed a long one. it was some minutes before, drawing clear of the overhanging foliage, they stopped in front of a house which loomed grim and ominous in the shadows. apparently their approach had been heard. no sooner had they stopped than the door was thrown wide open. the figure of a woman was seen peering out into the darkness, with a lamp in her hand. "is it the doctor?" she demanded. "yes, it's the doctor. and how is he now?" "he's as near to death as he can be to be still alive. i believe he's only keeping the breath in his body till he gets a sight of you." "to be sure that's uncommonly good of him. now, madam, will that ankle of yours permit you to tumble down with the help of a hand from me?" without answering isabel commenced a laborious and painful descent. at sight of her the woman on the doorstep evinced a lively curiosity. "why, doctor, who is it you're bringing with you?" "it's a visitor for you, and another patient for me, nannie. you'll have to find her a corner somewhere while i go up to see the laird. when i've done with him i'll have to start with her. i'm hoping that she'll be the easier job of the two. come, lend a hand. it's beyond my power to get her into the house alone, and it seems that by herself she'll never do it." between them they got her up the steps, through the door and into a room which, immediately after passing it, was entered on the right. they placed her on a couch. "now, madam," observed the doctor, "here you'll have to stay until i've seen my other patient. and since heaven only knows how long he'll keep me, you'll have to make the best of it until i come. so keep up the character you told me of and don't you faint, or any silliness of that kind, but just make yourself as comfortable as ever you can." with that the speaker left her, the woman going with him. she had placed on a table the lamp which she had borne in her hand. it was a common glass affair, which did not give too good a light. for some minutes isabel showed no inclination to avail herself of its assistance to learn in what manner of place she was. by degrees, however, as the time continued to pass, and there were still no signs of any one appearing, she began to show a languid interest in her surroundings. she was dimly conscious that the room was not a large one; that it was sparely, even austerely, furnished. she was aware that the couch on which she lay was of the old-fashioned horsehair kind, both slippery and uncomfortable. she had a vague suspicion that if she was not careful she would slip right off it, and her misty imaginings became mistier still. before she knew it she was asleep. she slept for two good hours before she was disturbed; at least that period of time had elapsed before the doctor made his reappearance in the room. the sight of the sleeping woman seemed to occasion him surprise. he observed her with a slight smile adding another pucker to his wrinkled cheeks. he was a little, thin man, clean shaven and bald-headed. he had a big, aquiline nose. his eyes were sunk deep in his head, looking out from overhanging shaggy eyebrows. his lips were drawn so tightly together as to hint at a paucity of teeth. "who are you, i wonder? you've youth, health, good looks--three good things for a woman to have. you're not ill-dressed. and yet there's that about you, as you lie sleeping there--we're all of us apt to give ourselves away when we're asleep--which makes me wonder who you are, and how you came to sprain your ankle on crag moor when going to carnoustie. however that may be, there's an adventure lying ready to your hand--if you've a fancy for adventures. and, unless i'm much mistaken, i think you have." he laid his hand upon the sleeper's shoulder. the touch was a light one, but it was sufficient to arouse her. with a start she sprang up to a sitting posture, crying-"you shan't! it's a lie! you shan't." she put her hand to her bodice, as if to guard something which was hidden there. the doctor said nothing; he stood and watched. waking to a clearer sense of her surroundings, she perceived him standing by her side. "oh, it's you. how long have i been asleep?" "sufficiently long, i hope, to rest you. will you allow me to introduce myself? my name is twelves--david twelves, m.d., of edinburgh. may i ask if you have any objection to introduce yourself to me, and tell me your name?" "not the least; why should i have? i'm not ashamed of my name. why do you want to know it?" "because the immediate object of my presence here is to make you what is to all intents and purposes an offer of, say, twenty thousand pounds, and i have a not unnatural desire to know to whom i am offering it." she sat more upright on the couch, swinging round so as to bring her feet upon the floor, looking at him with eyes which were now wide open. "what do you mean? you are making fun of me." "i am doing nothing of the kind. this is likely to be one of the most serious moments of your life. i am not disposed to lighten it by misplaced attempts at playfulness." yet even as he spoke again that nebulous smile seemed to add another pucker to his cheeks. "what i say is said very much in earnest. there is a man upstairs who's dying. perhaps he is already dead while i stand here talking to you. if he's not dead, before he dies he wants another curious thing--a wife." "a wife!--and you say he's dying!" "it's because he's dying that he wants her. he has had no need of such an encumbrance living. i have come to ask you if you'll be his wife." "i be his wife!" instinctively she doubled up the finger on which was the wedding-ring. she still wore her gloves, so it had remained unnoticed. "yes, you. you're the only woman within reach, except old nannie, who hardly counts, or i wouldn't trouble you. answer me shortly--yes or no--will you be his wife?" "marry a perfect stranger!--a man i've never seen!--who you say is dying!" "precisely; it is a mere formula to which i'm asking your subscription. he'll certainly be dead inside two hours, possibly in very much less. you'll be a widow in one of the shortest times on record; in possession of a wife's share of all his worldly goods--and that, by all accounts, should be worth fully twenty thousand pounds." "twenty thousand pounds! but why should he want to marry any one if he's dying?" "there's not much time for explanation, but i'll explain this much. he's made a will in favour of a certain person. that will he is anxious to revoke. if he marries it will become invalid. as matters stand it will be easier for him to take a wife than to make another will." "you are sure he will be dead within two hours?" "quite. i shall not be surprised to learn that he's dead already. you are losing your chances of becoming a well-to-do widow by lingering here." "you are certain he will leave me twenty thousand pounds?" "the simple fact of his death will make it yours. so soon as the breath is out of his body you will become entitled to a wife's inheritance--if you are his wife." "you are not playing me any trick? it is all just as you say?" "on my honour, it is all just as i say. there is no trick. if you will come with me upstairs you will be able to judge for yourself." "but how can we be married at a moment's notice? is there a clergyman in the house?" "you forget you are in scotland. neither notice nor clergyman is needed. it will be sufficient for you to recognise each other as husband and wife in the presence of witnesses; that act of mutual recognition will in itself constitute a legal marriage which all the lawyers will not be able to break. that is why it will be easier for him to marry than to make another will." "there is not the least doubt that he will be dead within two hours?" "not the least--unless a miracle intervenes." she was sitting with her hands clenched in her lap, a perceptible interval of silence intervening before the words burst from her lips-"then i'll marry him!" chapter iii whom god hath joined dr. twelves showed no sign of either surprise or gratification. he looked at her dispassionately, almost apathetically, from under his overhanging eyebrows. "can you walk upstairs without assistance?" "i'm afraid not. i don't think my ankle is any better." he stooped down. "it's swollen; it looks as if it were going to be an awkward business. your boot and stocking will have to be cut away; but there's no time to do it now--moments are precious. you will have to wait until you're married. it's only on the first floor. do you think you'll be able to get up with the aid of my arm and of the baluster?" "i'll try." "might i suggest, before we start, that it would do no harm if you were to remove your hat and jacket. it would seem more in keeping." she acted on his suggestion. "i ought to wash and tidy myself; i know i'm all anyhow." "now you will do very well. your future husband is too far gone to be able to tell if your hair is straight or crooked; at the point he's reached that sort of thing doesn't matter." when they had reached the landing at the top of the stairs the doctor said to her: "by the way, the name of your future husband is grahame--cuthbert grahame. may i ask what yours is? it is just as well that he should know it." she hesitated a moment. "my name is isabel burney." "miss burney, allow me to introduce you to mr. grahame's room." he threw open the door of the room in front of which they had been standing. as he did so isabel slipped off her left-hand glove, bringing with it, at the same time, her wedding-ring. crumpling up her glove she squeezed it into her waistband, the ring inside it. on the doctor's arm she hobbled to a big armchair, into which she sank with a sigh of unmistakable relief. the room in which she found herself, although low-ceilinged, was a spacious one. it seemed to her that all the furniture it contained was old-fashioned, a fact which, although she did not know it, increased its value perhaps a hundred-fold. she thought it simply dowdy. a huge chippendale bed was in the centre of the room. in it, propped up on pillows, was the figure of a man which, if only from the point of size, fitly matched the bed. leaning over him, on the other side, was nannie, the old woman who had admitted them into the house. the doctor addressed himself to her. "how is he?" "about the same." although they had both spoken in a whisper their voices were audible to the man in the bed. "is that that old devil twelves come back again?" the tone was harsh, and it was obvious that the speaker spoke with difficulty, but the words themselves were plain enough. the doctor evinced no sign of annoyance at the other's somewhat uncomplimentary reference to himself; on the contrary, he chose to apply to himself the other's epithet as he answered:-"yes, it's the old devil back again, and, what's more, he's brought the young devil too--begging your pardon, miss burney, for speaking of you in such a manner. but it's the fashion in this house to use strong language, and always has been. laird, i've brought the lady." "where is she?" "at this moment she's sitting in your armchair. as i told you, she's sprained her ankle, which makes it difficult for her to walk, or even stand." "damn her ankle!" "by all means. you should know more about that sort of thing than i do. you're nearer to it than i am." "you think that hurts me?" "not i. i know that nothing hurts you. i doubt if even the torments of hell will trouble you much. you're past all hurting. shall i tell miss burney she isn't wanted, and can go again?" "what's her name?" "burney--isabel burney. at least, she says so." "isabel burney, you are my wife; you're mrs. cuthbert grahame. i acknowledge you as my wife, and i wish all men to acknowledge you also. are you content that it should be so?" "i am." "you hear, nannie? you hear, twelves? you're both witnesses. i take isabel burney to be my wife, and she agrees." "i hear. but does she take you for her husband--eh, miss burney?" "i do. i take cuthbert grahame to be my husband in the sight of god and man." isabel had returned to one of her old faults--overemphasis. there was a theatrical intensity about both her manner and her words which was singularly out of place when compared with the matter-of-fact ribaldry which seemed to mark the husky utterance of the man in the bed. its inappropriateness seemed to strike the others. after a perceptible pause the man in the bed wheezed-"leave god out of it". presently he added, still more wheezily, "come here, mrs. cuthbert grahame". the doctor moved towards her. "can i assist you, mrs. grahame, to your husband's side?" with the doctor's aid she gained the bed. "laird, here's your wife; can you see her?" isabel saw the man whom she had taken to be her husband. the sight of him shocked her. she told herself that she had never seen a more dreadful object even in her dreams. his size was abnormal. not only was he naturally a big man, but his frame had become swollen and bloated till it was monstrous--a horror to look upon. his head and face were covered with scanty red hair, which needed cutting. he had a huge head, and his neck was so short and thick that it conveyed a grotesque impression that his head sprang directly from his trunk. his whole form seemed to be afflicted with some sort of tetanus, so that he was rigid, immovable. he lay on his back, with his arms straight down at his sides. through his parted lips came jerky, stertorous breaths. his eyelids were partially open, but only the whites of his eyes were visible; his own words made it clear that they were of little use to him as organs of sight. "see her? no, i can't see her. i don't want to." as he spoke a tremor passed all over him. his whole frame heaved; as if seized by a sudden convulsion he began fighting for his life. the doctor spoke to her. "you had better go, unless you'd like to see the last of him. this is likely to be the end. he'll hardly win through another bout." he moved towards the bed, nannie joining him. isabel was left to her own devices. powerless to move far unaided it was all she could do to stagger to the nearest chair. in it she sat, waiting, watching, listening, like an unwilling spectator in some bad dream. it was a scene which she never wholly forgot. the dim light, the quaintly furnished room, the figures of the old man and woman bending this way, then that, as they struggled with the creature on the bed. what ailed him she did not know; she vaguely surmised that he might be in the throes of some kind of epileptic fit. his contortions shook the bed, indeed the room. he kept uttering sounds which had a disagreeable resemblance to the half-strangled yelps of some wild beast. how long it lasted she did not know. long enough to strain her already highly strung nerves almost beyond endurance. at last there came a lull. the man on the bed was first quieter, then still. she took advantage of the silence to exclaim:-"can't you take me away somewhere? you know i can't move. if i have to stay here much longer i--i shall make a fool of myself." the doctor and nannie paid her no heed. side by side they were stooping together over the silent figure. after affording them what she deemed a more than sufficient opportunity to answer, she appealed to them again. "can't you hear me? take me away somewhere--i don't care where! i'll go mad if you don't." the doctor did not answer her directly; he spoke to nannie. "do as she bids you; take her away." "where'll i take her?" the woman asked. "take her and put her to bed in the best bedroom. remember that she's now the mistress of this house." nannie moved towards isabel. for a woman, she was tall and brawny, but she was probably well past fifty, and isabel certainly had not credited her with the capacity to do what she immediately did. she eyed the stranger for a moment in silence, then she asked, in the broadest scotch:-"can't you walk by your own self?" isabel resented both the tone and the scrutiny. "you know i can't." without more ado the woman, stooping, put her arms about her and lifted her bodily from the chair as if she were some great child. isabel was taken by surprise, and a little alarmed. "you'll drop me!" she cried. "i'll not drop you; you're nothing of a weight." as if to prove it, the old woman bore her from the room, across the landing, to another room on the other side, one which was in darkness. but nannie seemed to know its geography by instinct. she deposited her burden on what isabel realised was a bed. striking a match on a box which she took from her pocket, she lit some candles which stood on the mantelshelf. isabel, remaining where she had been placed, eyed her as she moved about. "you're very strong." "i'm not so strong as once i was. there was a time when i'd have carried four of you, and thought nothing of it either. now can you undress yourself, or will you be needing me to do it for you?" "thank you, i think i can undress myself; but if you would help me take the boot off my bad foot." nannie bent over the foot which the other extended. she regarded it in silence, then, still without a word, she left the room. so soon as she was gone isabel dragged the glove which contained her wedding-ring out of her belt, and the canvas bag which had come out of mrs. macconichie's tobacco jar from her bodice, and thrust them as far as possible under the bolster which was beneath the pillow on which she was reclining. scarcely had she done this when nannie reappeared, in her hands a pair of large scissors. with their aid she proceeded, still speechless, to cut, first, the laces of isabel's boot, and then the boot itself, till it came away from her foot. as it came away she did what she boasted she had never before done in her life--she fainted. when she came to herself again she found that nannie, who had apparently remained indifferent to the fact that her senses had left her, having bathed her foot and ankle, was putting the finishing touches to the bandages in which she had swathed it. when the bandage was completed the old woman, still without vouchsafing a word, began to undress her, and did it with a deftness and neatness which would have done her credit had she played the part of lady's-maid her whole life long. almost before she knew it, she was ready for the sheets, and so soon as she was ready she was placed between them. "you're very good to me," she murmured, with a luxurious sigh, as she recognised what a delicious feeling it was to be between them. "i'm not good to you--anyway i'm not wanting to be good to you." isabel looked up with surprise; the tone was almost savage. "why not? don't you think that you will like me?" "like you!--like you!" the emphasis with which the words were repeated was unmistakable. it would have been difficult for scorn to have been more eloquent. without condescending to further speech, as if everything had been said which could be said, nannie moved towards the door. isabel put a question to her as she reached it. "is my husband dead?" nannie turned swiftly round to her. "your--what?" "my husband." "your husband!--your husband!" again the repetition was marked by the same wealth of scorn. isabel was moved to some show of resentment. "he is my husband--you know he's my husband." "oh, he's your husband, mrs. cuthbert grahame. i'm not doubting it, ma'am, or that you're a fit and proper wife for him. i'm ready to tell to any one that you're a well-matched pair." "is he dead?" as she repeated her inquiry isabel's manner was a trifle more subdued; she was finding nannie a difficult person to contend with. "you'd better be asking dr. twelves if your husband's dead, ma'am; he's a surer judge of dead folk than i am. you'll be feeling anxious till you know, and so i'll tell the doctor. when a woman's been acquainted with a man so long as you've been acquainted with your man, so that you've come to know all the secrets of his heart, and the very shape and fashion of the soul which god has lent him, to be sure all her nature stirs within her when she begins to fear he's near to dying. it's hard to lose the husband to whom you've only been married a couple of minutes, so i'll tell the doctor to hurry and let you know if you're a widow before you're a wife." without giving isabel a chance to retort, nannie opened the door with a swishing movement, which was in harmony with her state of mind, and vanished from the chamber. chapter iv a second honeymoon she had slept well; isabel admitted so much. she suspected something else, that the morning was far advanced. there was that in the atmosphere which conveyed that impression. apparently some one had been in while she still slept and put the room in order. the blinds were up, the curtains drawn back, the sun streamed in through the small square windows which were set deep in the thickness of the wall. as she looked about her, from her vantage place on the pillow, she felt that this was the queerest place she ever had been in. everything, including the room itself, seemed to her to be hundreds of years old. the paper on the walls was like nothing she had ever seen before. the furniture was of the oddest shapes; indeed, what some of the articles might be intended for was beyond her comprehension. as she gradually absorbed it all, she began to be conscious of an almost eerie feeling that she had woke up in some ancient habitation and in some bygone age of which she had no knowledge. then something else forced itself on her attention, she felt that she was helpless. as she tried to turn in bed, the better to enable her to see what was to be seen, a spasm of pain passed over her, which was so acute that she had to shut her eyes and bite her lips to prevent herself from crying out. for some moments she lay quite still, waiting for the pain to go. it was some time before it diminished; even when it was easier she learnt, to her dismay, that she would have to be very careful in her movements if she did not wish it to return with probably increasing violence. her foot seemed, from the feel of it, to be about as bad as it could be. it was not only useless, it held her prisoner. the slightest attempt to move it in any direction resulted in the keenest anguish. it seemed that relief from almost unendurable torment could only be obtained by remaining entirely quiescent. that meant, in effect, that she was chained, possibly for an indefinite period, to the bed in which she was lying. an agreeable prospect! as the true inwardness of the position began to dawn on her, in phantasmagoric procession the events of the previous night flashed across her mind. the letter to her husband--to gregory lamb--which she had opened and read, the letter with the islington post-mark, containing the curt refusal to accord him further help; the resolution to leave him, which she had instantly arrived at after its perusal; her visit to mrs. macconichie's sitting-room; her forcible entry into the china cupboard; her abstraction of the canvas bag from the tobacco jar. at this point, her thoughts branching off in another direction, she felt, gingerly enough, for it seemed that movement of any sort meant pain, under the bolster, and produced from it the bag in question and the glove in which she had secreted the wedding-ring. the sight of the ring started her thoughts travelling again. to her flight through the darkness, with the leather handbag. by the way, what had become of that bag? she had no recollection of having done anything with it. possibly she had put it down when she had sprained her ankle, and, in her trouble, had forgotten its existence; in which case it might be still upon the moor. if it were found, and nothing could be learned of her, what deductions would be drawn? she wondered. one thing was certain, it contained all her worldly possessions. without it she had not so much as a pocket-handkerchief, not to speak of such a necessity of existence as a brush and comb. then the trap had come through the night, and borne her to the house in which she lay. there she had been married to a man upon his death-bed. such a man and such a death-bed! could it be possible? she clenched her fists, and asked herself if the whole business had not been the wild imaginings of some disordered dream. even to herself she could not furnish a satisfactory answer. why had she suffered herself to be dragged through such a farce?--to play a part in such an odious scene? because that old man who called himself a doctor had told her that the creature would be dead within two hours, and that then she would be richer by twenty thousand pounds. twenty thousand pounds! could that part of the tale be possible? why, in that case, this house, the very room in which she was, the queer furniture which filled it, all might be hers. she would be a wealthy woman, who had won her wealth so easily without incurring risk worth mention. because, even in the storm and stress of the moment, she had understood that bigamy was bigamy, even though one of the marriages into which she had entered was a scotch one. of course, nothing could make that marriage of the night before a real one, since she was a wife already. but, as the man was dead, and she was supposed to be his widow, if fortune favoured her the truth never need come out. she believed that she was clever enough to conceal it--at any rate from whom it was worth her while to do so. only let her get hold of the twenty thousand pounds, or so much of it as could be turned into ready cash--let them find out afterwards what they chose--they would find it hard to get the money back from her. twenty thousand pounds! she fancied herself letting go of such a sum as that if she once had it in her grip! the first thing she had to do was to inform herself as fully as possible as to the actual situation. if she was a widow, and her husband had died without a will--he had certainly not made one after marrying her, while the doctor had assured her that marriage had rendered nugatory any he might have made before--then this house, and all that it contained, if it had been his property, was now hers. at least she hoped it was, because, after a little muddled consideration, it began to occur to her that, by english law, a wife did not necessarily inherit all that a husband who had died intestate left behind him. exactly what share was hers she was not sure, but she had a more or less dim conviction that it was less than the whole. the same objectionable law might obtain in scotland, or even a worse one. the sooner she ascertained exactly how the ground lay the better it would be for her peace of mind. so she began to call attention to the fact that she was wide awake. since there was apparently no bell within reach, she had to make the best use of her voice. "nannie!" she called. "nannie! nannie!" and she kept on calling, because there was none that answered. her voice was a strong one--she exerted it to the utmost--but it seemed that it was not strong enough to reach any one outside that room. she shouted till she was hoarse, and angry too, quite in vain; nothing resulted. "if there's any one in the house they must hear me, and i expect they do, only they don't choose to come. oh, if it weren't for this foot of mine! that nannie's an insolent hag. she knows perfectly well that i can't move, and thinks she can treat me as she likes. if i could move i'd soon show her. nannie! nannie!" she shouted till she could really shout no longer. no one came; nor was there anything to show that she was heard. she began to be possessed by a fresh alarm. "i wonder if the house is empty? suppose that old hag has gone off and left me alone in the house with that--that dead man. i'll be bound she's quite capable of doing it--old wretch! i shall starve to death! nannie! nannie!" but all the strength had gone out of her voice--it was not strange that those muffled tones remained unheeded--a fact of which she herself was conscious. at last, wholly exhausted, she lay and thought hard things of every one. she was genuinely hungry. she told herself that if some one did not come soon and bring her food something would have to be done, though she had not the faintest notion what. self-help was out of the question; she was as powerless to move as if she had been riveted to the bed. she was rapidly reaching a despairing stage when nannie entered with a tray in her hand, quite calmly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that she should come just then and not before. isabel broke into angry expostulation. "why have you kept me waiting. why didn't you come before? you must have heard me long ago--you're not stone deaf. i've screamed myself hoarse." nannie placed the tray upon a table. then, with the most matter-of-fact air, putting her arms about the angry woman, she raised her to a sitting posture, arranging the pillows so that they formed a prop for her back. divided between indignation and bewilderment, isabel submitted in silence; she was so helpless, the old woman's manner was so masterful, that to expostulate seemed vain. the tray was put beside her on the coverlet, nannie observing-"when you've eaten your fill i'll come and take a look at that foot of yours". "it's ever so much worse. i've been in agony--and am still. i believe i've broken a bone." "not you; it's no but a sprain." "it's more than a sprain--much more, i'm convinced of it. where's dr. twelves? he ought to attend to it at once. he said he would come and see me. why hasn't he been?" "he's been and gone hours ago." "been and gone! why didn't you let me know that he was here?" "what for should i let you know?" "you knew that i wished to see him." "you never said it; and, anyway, he never said that he was wishing to see you." "you're taking advantage of me! you think i'm at your mercy, and that you can do as you like with me because i can't move! you're a wicked old woman!" "am i? then i'm reckoning that age is the only difference there is between us." burning words flamed to isabel's lips, but she had enough prudence and self-control not to allow them to go any farther. she was at the other's mercy, and she knew it. the only way to obtain from her some slight consideration was to endeavour to appease, not anger her. instead of giving her anger vent, she put to her a question, the one she had put the night before. "is my husband dead?" she received what was practically the same answer. "didn't i tell you that for that you must ask dr. twelves, since he's knowing when folks are dead better than me?" without affording isabel another opportunity to speak nannie left the room. if the new mrs. grahame could have got out of bed there would have been some lively doings. it is not impossible that nannie would have found that she had met her match. when that lady was really roused, and had a fair chance to show it, she was a difficult person to deal with. but she was, literally, held by the leg; as incapable of doing what she would have liked to have done as if she had been an infant in arms. when, after an interval of no long duration, the ancient servitor returned, isabel did treat her to what she meant to be a taste of her claws. for all the effect she produced she might have saved herself the trouble. the scotchwoman evinced a serene indifference to anything she might say or do, which influenced her more than she would have cared to own. then the pain she endured was exquisite. nannie's ministrations were deft enough. she set about her task like one who understood well what she had to do, and was capable of doing it. she removed the bandages, bathed the injured foot, applied hot poultices; so far as isabel was able to judge, did all that could be done. but the most delicate touches could not prevent her suffering agony. by the time the other had finished her anger was forgotten. all she desired was rest--peace--to be left alone. for seven days isabel remained, willy-nilly, in bed. all the time the only person she saw was nannie. dr. twelves never came near her. whether the fault was his or her attendant's was more than she could determine. she heard no news of any sort or kind. nothing could be got out of nannie. no answers to any of her questions; only the fewest possible words on unimportant subjects. it is true that during the first two or three days her ankle gave her so much trouble, her sufferings from it were so intense, that she was, in a measure, content to be left alone and in ignorance. but as the pain lessened her impatience, and indignation, grew apace. more than once she attempted to get out of bed and to start on a voyage of exploration through the house to acquire information on her own account. since, however, her attempts only resulted in disaster, and it was made plain that they only postponed her convalescence, common-sense gained the upper hand. she resolved to endure with as much calmness as she could command till the time arrived when, at least to some extent, she should again be mistress of her own powers of locomotion. after the longest week she had ever known she decided that that time was not far off. she informed nannie that, since her foot was now on the high road to recovery, on the morrow she would be capable of getting out of bed, and that, therefore, get out of bed she would. nannie, as was her wont, kept silence when this piece of information was vouchsafed to her. but that she was impressed by it was evident when on the morrow in question, instead of the old woman, dr. twelves came into the room. it seemed as if nannie must have told him that the time had now come when it was desirable that he should make his re-entry on the scene. at least that was the conclusion at which, at sight of him, the lady in the bed instantly arrived. chapter v a conversation with the doctor "so you've come, have you, at last! i suppose that old hag told you you had better before i came to you? i should have come in half an hour." that was the greeting the angry lady accorded her tardy visitor. dr. twelves seemed to be in no haste to answer. coming to within a foot or two of her bed-side he stood and eyed her. he looked very old in the daylight, older than she had thought he was. short; thin to the point of emaciation. there was something almost sinister in his attitude, in the way in which, inclining his head a little forward, his arms held close to his sides, he examined her keenly, as if he were some bird of prey, and she an object on which he was doubtful whether or not to pounce. as she gave him glance for glance she understood that this was a person who was not so frail as he might at first sight appear. but want of courage was not a deficiency which could justly be laid to the lady's charge. when he did reply it was with a question. "why do you speak to me like that?" "you know very well why! you promised that first night that you would attend to my foot; but though i've asked for you again and again you've never been near me once, till you were afraid that i should be after you." "you've been in good hands. nannie has done all for you that i could have done." "i don't doubt that." "then of what do you complain?" "you've kept me a prisoner." "kept you a prisoner! i! madam, you jest. has not your foot had something to do with your confinement? is it not holding you a prisoner still?" "it won't do long, so don't you think it. i'll be out and about before the day's over, and when i am i'll make things hum. is my husband dead?" "your husband?" "my husband! are you deaf?" "no, madam, not yet. so far age has not robbed me of my hearing. but to whom do you refer when you speak of your husband?" there was that in the fashion in which he asked the question which caused her to clench her fists, tighten her lips and descend to vulgarity--unfortunately an easy descent for her to make when her temper waxed warm. "what are you playing at? do you think you're clever, or that i'm an utter fool? you're wrong if you do, you may take it from me. is my husband, cuthbert grahame, dead? i've not been able to get an answer out of that old harridan, but i'll get one out of you." "then is cuthbert grahame your husband?" "is he! isn't he? didn't he marry me the other night in front of you and that old woman?" "have you a certificate or any writing to show it?" "a certificate! what do i want with a certificate? you said nothing about a certificate! look here, old man, don't you try to play any fool-tricks with me, or you'll be sorry. are you trying to make out that he's not my husband?" "not at all; i am trying to do nothing. i should like to ask you a question, to which, before you answer it, i would suggest that you should give a little careful consideration. would you rather be cuthbert grahame's wife or not?" "i am his wife, and you very well know it, so it's no use talking, and that's enough said. i ask you again, is my husband dead?" "your husband? that is the point which i am gradually approaching. mr. cuthbert grahame is not dead." her jaw dropped open. "not dead?" "not dead." "but you told me----" "precisely; i am aware that i told you. you will, however, remember that i made an express reservation in favour of a miracle. the miracle has happened." "how long will he live?" "madam, i am not omniscient. i have once, within your knowledge, failed as a prophet; i should not care to fail again." "is he dying?" "i may venture to say that, at the present moment, to the best of my knowledge and belief, he is not." "you are beating about the bush. you can at least say if he is likely to live long." "it is possible, madam, that he may outlive me--even you." "then you have cheated me!--cheated me! you have got me into this mess by your lies." "any injustice i may have done you was unintentional. you will also be so good as to observe that i have just now offered you something which was intended to be in the nature of a loophole out of the dilemma in which you are placed." "you mean when you asked me if i wanted to be his wife. am i his wife, or am i not?" "it might present a pretty point for the lawyers. if you had chosen to repudiate the connection, it might not have been easy to establish. nannie and i can hold our tongues--that i beg you to believe. the occasion for a wife having passed, he might have preferred to hold his too." "would he rather be unmarried?" "that is not a matter on which i should care to positively pronounce." "then why was he so eager?" "i explained at the time. he had made a will in favour of a certain person, which he desired to render ineffective; marriage makes null and void any will which a man may have previously made; under the circumstances that seemed to be the easiest and the shortest way out of it. as matters have turned out the measure seems to have been a little drastic, since he can now, if he chooses, make a dozen new wills each day." "is he so far recovered as that?" the doctor seemed desirous to consider before he answered. he put up his long, thin hand to stroke his bristly chin. moving a few steps, he leaned over the foot of the bed, and from that point attentively regarded her. "madam, i do not wish to trouble you with the medical names of all the complicated diseases with which mr. grahame is afflicted. i am not sure that i am myself acquainted with them all; some of them puzzle even me. among other troubles he is paralysed. he cannot move hand or foot of his own volition, or crook a finger. again, straying into the paths of prophecy, i dare assert that he never will be able to. he has his senses--after a fashion; he is sane--also after a fashion. that is, he is legally capable of making a will, or of taking a wife. but if he desires to affix his signature to a document a pen will have to be placed between his fingers, his hand will have to be guided. to that extent he has recovered, beyond that he almost certainly will never go." "but he is not dying?" "no, madam, he is not dying." "nor likely to die?" "no office would insure his life for four-and-twenty hours, though it is quite within the range of possibility that the breath may continue in his body for years. such cases have been known. some people death takes at the first call; some have to be called again and again; some seem to go beyond the portal and yet return. cuthbert grahame is one of them. he'll not go till death is very much in earnest; when that will be i cannot say. i mistook death's mood the other night--the oldest of us make such mistakes at times. in this case my mistake may seem to press a little hardly upon you." she looked at him askance. there was a whimsical gravity in his tone which was a little beyond her comprehension, a something which was almost sympathetic. she changed the subject; a fresh intonation had come into her voice also. "i wish you'd look at my foot. it's better. i think that before long i'll be able to get about again as usual. i want to very much; it's awful being a prisoner in bed. i'm not good at keeping still." he did as she requested, then pronounced a verdict. "your foot is better--much better, as you say. there is no reason why you should not get up, though it may be some little time before you have the entire use of it again." "at any rate i'll get out of bed--at once." "and, then, what do you propose to do when you are up?" "i'm going to see my husband." "your husband?" "can't i? why can't i?" "mrs. grahame!--if it is your wish that you should be mrs. grahame." "aren't i mrs. grahame? if i am, what's the good of pretending that i'm not? i am mrs. grahame, so there's an end of it." "mrs. grahame, haven't you any friends?" "what do you mean by friends?" "haven't you any relatives? is there no one to whom you are near and dear? no one to whom you are in any sense responsible for your actions; with whom in a measure your happiness or unhappiness must be shared?" "no one in this world!" he smiled at her vehemence, observing her closely all the time. "since i am, in a degree, responsible for the--we will call it situation--you are in, i am not unnaturally desirous of having my conscience as clear as i conveniently can. i would, therefore, beg you earnestly to let the first thing you do be this: if you have--we will say an acquaintance--on whose judgment you can rely, write to him; lay the facts before him clearly, and await his response before you take any further step whatever--certainly before you seek to have an interview with mr. grahame." "there is no such person." "it is unfortunate, since you are so young, and, therefore necessarily, so inexperienced, that you should be so entirely alone in the world. will you allow me to offer you some advice?" "what's the use? i've had enough of your advice already--too much." "how do you make out your case? i am unconscious of having offered you any advice." "you advised me to marry that man." "i advised you!" "of course you did. there are more ways than one of offering advice; you chose the roundabout way. you told me that if i married him he'd be dead inside two hours, then i'd be richer by twenty thousand pounds. this is what comes of acting on your tip! no thank you. i've had enough and to spare of your advice; now and henceforward i'm going to act upon my own." "none the less i'm going to give you a piece of advice--of very sincere advice. you have been subjected to some slight inconvenience--though, perhaps, inconvenience is hardly the proper word." "i should think not." "my advice to you is: when your foot permits leave this house--i assure you it is not a pleasant one to live in; accept a reasonable sum by way of compensation; then blot the whole episode from your memory." "what do you call a reasonable sum?" "say a hundred pounds." "a hundred pounds?--the idea! when you talked of twenty thousand! none of your kid's talk for me! look here, dr. twelves, you're an old fox. don't you think i don't know it however hard you try to play the lamb? you've got some game of your own on. i don't know what it is, but i soon will. if you offer me a hundred pounds to go, i'm dead sure it'll be worth a good deal more than that to me to stay--and i'm going to stay! this is my house; i'm the mistress here; and all the more the mistress because my husband's a rich man who can't look after himself. i'll look after him! i'll show you who's who and what's what!--and every one else as well!--you can take that straight from me!" as he rubbed his chin, as if he found comfort in the feel of the bristles, the doctor's smile grew more pronounced. "content, mrs. grahame, content! only--still a further scrap of advice!--postpone your first call on your husband till you are able to move about as you please." this piece of advice the lady did act upon, for the simple reason that she was powerless to do otherwise. when she did get out of bed it was agony to hop even as far as the couch. three more days passed before she was able to stand without flinching overmuch; another whole week had gone before she was able to hobble unaided to the door. during that time she perhaps suffered more than she had done while she was still in bed. to her restless nature the compulsory inaction was almost unendurable. her desire to attack the problem which confronted her, to solve it if she could--at any rate to learn what really was the position in which she stood--possessed her like a consuming fever. nothing could be got out of nannie; she was impervious to questions of every sort and kind. arguments, coaxing, threats, alike were unavailing. the old woman could scarcely have been more taciturn had she taken on herself a vow of silence. and after that one visit she saw no more of dr. twelves; she could even hear nothing of him from nannie. that angered her almost more than anything, that he should seem to ignore her so completely! she swore to herself that he should smart for it before very long. during that week she laid up a fund of resentment against both the doctor and nannie which she promised herself she would pour forth upon their heads at the earliest possible moment. only let her be able to get about again as of old, and they should see! on the eighth day she decided that her time had come, or, at least, that it had begun to come. she said nothing to nannie, but having proved by actual experiment that she could move about with comparative ease, she dressed herself, waited till the old woman had paid her her usual morning call, then set out on a voyage of exploration. hobbling to the door, she opened it as quietly as possible, then stood and listened she could hear nannie moving about downstairs. then she moved towards the door which was on the opposite side of the landing. had she had a stick on which to lean her progress might have been quicker. in spite of her reiterated requests nannie had failed to provide her with one. without support of any sort she moved very slowly. but she did get to her destination at last. she laid her hand upon the handle, paused a moment to learn if her movements had been observed, then turned it as quietly as she could. chapter vi husband and wife she stood just inside the threshold of the room, with the handle of the open door between her fingers, and listened. she had moved so noiselessly that, quite possibly, to the ear alone her entry had been imperceptible. she looked about her, recalling the picture which it had presented to her mind on that first night. for some reason which she would have found it hard to explain a shiver passed all over her; a sudden chill seemed to penetrate to her very bones. the room looked different by daylight, the windows wide open, the sun sending wide, warm splashes of yellow light from wall to wall. one of them came right at her as she remained there motionless. as she lifted her face she was blinded by the glare. it was odd that she should shiver in that glow of sunshine. everything was so neat and orderly; there was such an absence of any signs of occupation, such complete stillness prevailed, that her first impression was that she had in some way made a mistake; that the room was empty. it was only when her wandering glance reached the great bed, which stood in such a position that it was partially screened by the door which she still held open, that she understood. its occupant was asleep, or--he was so motionless, so silent, her own heart seemed to cease beating--could he be dead? with unexpected ease she moved closer to the bed. no, he certainly was not dead; he merely slept, to all appearance, as peacefully as a little child. sleep produced no improvement in his looks. she went still nearer, so that, by leaning over, she could examine him in detail. the conviction which she had had at first sight of him recurred with, if anything, even greater force. beyond a doubt she had never seen a more unprepossessing-looking man. she had an almost morbid liking for good looks in a man. gregory lamb's handsome face had had almost as much to do with winning her as his lying tongue, which dowered him with splendid wealth. her ideas of good looks were probably her own--gregory was there to show it. but her attachment to them was so marked that she could with difficulty be civil to a man who was positively plain. an absolutely ugly man was to her an object of aversion; her first feeling towards such an one was actual physical repulsion, as if he were some unclean thing. there could be no sort of doubt as to the ugliness of the man in the bed. his huge size was in itself a sufficiently unpleasant feature. it lent to him an uncomfortable aspect which was almost inhuman. he seemed to have swelled and swelled till his skin had become as tight as a drum. one had a disagreeable notion that if one pricked him, like some distended bladder, he would burst. he was all bloated, not only his body, but his head as well, and, above all, his neck. she had once had an aunt who had died of dropsy. this man seemed dropsical from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe--monstrously dropsical. nor was his appearance improved by the manner in which his head and face were covered with long sandy red hair, growing in scanty tufts, with bare spaces in between. the hair matched ill with his complexion, which was brick red, tinged, as it were, with a suggestion of pallid blue. he slept so quietly that it was difficult to be sure, at first sight, that his condition was one of slumber, not death. as isabel bent over, she did not hesitate to tell herself that she wished he was as dead as he seemed. the sight of him afflicted her with such a sensation of aversion that she was then and there filled with an almost irresistible desire to crush him out of existence, as if he had been some loathsome reptile. she was possessed by a shrewd suspicion that she had only to strike him a hearty blow--anywhere!--to bring him to an end upon the spot. it would be so easy. she had been tricked; he ought to have been dead ere then. what was the use of such a creature living, and what enjoyment could he get out of life? where should she strike him? she clenched her fist as if it had been actuated by an involuntary tightening of the muscles. as she did so, he opened his eyes, and looked at her. it was a curious moment for both of them--so both of them seemed to think. there was in his gaze such a take-it-for-granted air that one could not but wonder if he had not been conscious of her presence even while he slept. the sight of a strange woman leaning over his bed, with such a queer expression on her countenance, did not seem to surprise him in the least. that she was strange to him was plain. he seemed to be searching in his muddy brain for some clue which would tell him who she was. the search did not seem to be meeting with much success. for probably more than a minute they continued to look at each other, the contrast between the fashion of their looks being almost grotesque in its completeness. her bold, handsome face was, at the same time, illuminated by keen intelligence, and marked by an expression of vindictiveness which gave it an unpleasanter effect than if it had been actually ugly. his face, on the other hand, was vacuous, expressionless; more, it was incapable of expression. it reminded one, in some uncomfortable way, of a piece of blubber, without form and void. the eyes, particularly in comparison with the rest of him, were small; with the exception of the pupils they were blood-shot. one wondered how much, or how little, they could see; they regarded isabel blankly, as if she had been a wooden doll. after an inspection which lasted, as it seemed, an unnatural length of time, it was he who broke the silence. his voice was a little clearer than when she had heard it first, but not much. it still had the peculiar quality of appearing to belong to some one who was at a distance. "who are you?" there was a significant pause before she answered. in her tone was significance of another kind. "i'm your wife." either her words took him by surprise, or he did not gather what she meant, or disliked what he did gather. he was still again, as if ruminating on what she had said. when he did speak the remark he made was a little startling. "damn you!" the unparliamentary utterance, especially as addressed to a lady, was accentuated by the matter-of-fact stolidity which marked it. it was not impossible that for a moment or two she was moved to give him back as good as he sent--and better. possibly, however, the impulse was changed, as regards form, in the making. instead of imitating the vigour of his epithet, she cut at him with a lash of her own. "you're my husband." it would have been difficult for the strongest language to have been more scathing than her plain pronouncement of a simple fact. as if desirous of driving her dart still further home, she repeated her own words, with an even added bitterness--"you're my husband!--you!" it would appear that the man, object as he was, was not without some sense of humour, and, also, that his feelings were not of the kind which are unduly sensitive. after what seemed to be due consideration of her words, he endorsed their correctness with a brevity which in itself was eloquent. "i am." there was something in the two little monosyllables which seemed to sting her more than his curse had done. she gave a movement, as if she were disposed to let her resentment take some active and visible form. but, again, maybe, her impulse changed in the making; she endeavoured to put a meaning into her repetition of a simple statement, which should make it strike him with greater force than a blow could have done. "i am your wife." once more he showed himself to be her match in the game of give and take. hardly were the words out of her mouth than he endorsed them again, with what was almost like the semblance of a grin upon his blubber-like face. "you are." "and i propose to let you see that i'm your wife." "no doubt." "your real, actual wife, not a puppet, a thing you can pull by a string." "quite so." "you may imagine, perhaps, that i'm a mere dummy, an automaton, which can be set in movement only when you choose. if you do, you're wrong, as i intend to show you, mr. cuthbert grahame." "precisely, mrs. cuthbert grahame." it seemed, for an instant, as if a torrent of words was trembling at the tip of her tongue, needing but a touch to set them loose; if so, the touch did not come. turning, she went and stood by an open window; resting her hand on the sill she leaned out, as if she needed fresh air. she looked out on to a garden which was evidently of considerable size, but which sadly needed attention. the grass could not have been cut for months; it competed with weeds for possession of the footpaths. there were flowers, but they needed pruning; the weeds threatened to choke them in their own beds. beyond, the ground rose; everywhere the slopes were covered with trees, pines for the most part--scarcely a cheerful framework to what was already bidding fair to become a scene of desolation. in spite of the sweet, clean air and of the brilliant sunshine, in her surroundings, as she saw them, there was a hint of something uncongenial, unfriendly, which did not tend to make her mood a gayer one. while she still seemed to be absorbing the spirit of the landscape, mr. grahame's voice came to her out of the bed. "i want to speak to you." she heard him, but it was not until he had repeated the same sentence three times that she chose to favour him with her attention. bringing her head back into the room she turned her face slightly towards the speaker. "well?" "why did you marry me?" "because i was told that you would be dead inside two hours." although the reply was brutal in its plainness, it did not seem to hurt him in the least--indeed, it seemed rather to amuse him. "that's a poor reason. what were you to gain by my death?" "dr. twelves told me that i should have twenty thousand pounds." "did he? i see. that was the bait. you're a ready-witted young woman." "you mean that you think i'm a fool." "not at all; no more than the rest of your sex, or, for the matter of that, of mine. we're all fools; only some of us are fools of a special brand. who are you?" "i'm your wife." "you've told me that already. i mean who were you before you were my wife?" she moved her hand to and fro, restlessly, upon the window sill. "i've half a mind to tell you." "make it a whole one. yours should be a story not without features of interest. besides, a husband ought to know something about his wife." she stood up straighter, her back to the window, looking towards the bed with gleaming eyes. it was evidently easier to provoke her to an exhibition of temper than him. "i'll tell you nothing. i'm your wife; that's all i'll tell you; and that ought to be enough." "it is--more than enough. you're an embodied epigram. i think i can guess at part of your story." the indifferent, almost assured tone in which he said it brought her near to wincing. "my eyes are not so bright as they were--no, not so bright--but they're bright enough to enable me to perceive that you're young, and not bad-looking--after a sufficiently common type. you appear to be one of those big, bouncing, blusterous, bonny--four b's--young females who spring out of the gutter by the mere force of their own vitality; who push and elbow themselves through life with but one thing continually in view--self. you're probably ill-bred, ignorant, impudent and imbecile--four i's--four which are apt to go together--and, in consequence, blundering along rather than advancing by any reasonable method of progression, you'll keep tumbling into ditches and scrambling out again, until you tumble into one which will be too deep for you to scramble out of, and in that you'll lie for ever." to hear him, in his dim, distant, uninterested tones, mapping out, as it were, a chart of her life and conduct, affected her unpleasantly. when he had finished she had to pull herself together before she could deliver a retort which she was conscious was sufficiently futile. "i daresay you think yourself clever." "i'm afraid you're disappointed. if i'm not altogether to be congratulated on having you for a wife, neither are you to be altogether congratulated on having me for a husband." "congratulated! my stars!" "exactly--your lucky stars. come, i've drawn a little fancy sketch of the kind of wife you appear to me to be; tell me, what kind of husband do you think i am?" "think! i don't think; i'm sure you're a monster. you ought to be in barnum's show--that's where you ought to be." "that is your candid opinion? your tone has the ring of genuine candour. it's an illustration of how one changes. would you believe that once--not so long ago--i was remarkable for my good looks as well as my figure?" "tell that for a tale!" "i'm telling it for a tale that is told--and over. it must have been a disappointment when you learned that i was not dead." "it was. i could have shook old twelves when he told me. perhaps i'll do it yet." "will you? that will be nice for twelves. i should like to be present at the shaking. you look as if you could shake him." "i should think i could--shake the bones right out of his body. i'm as strong as a horse--stronger than most men. i once thought of coming out as a strong woman, only i didn't fancy the training." "didn't you? by training do you mean clean and healthy living? is that what you disliked?" she had already repented her lapse into the autobiographical. "never you mind what i mean." "we won't; why should we? may i take it that you have got over the disappointment of not finding me dead, and have become reconciled to the idea of my living?" "you don't look to me as if you would live long, considering that you're as good as dead already." "you think so. we've not been long at arriving at that stage of perfect candour which, i fancy, marks the career of the average husband and wife. i think you're wrong. i am one of those beings who are very tenacious of life. i'm only fifty, whatever i may look. there's no real reason--your friend dr. twelves will tell you--why i shouldn't live another five-and-twenty years." "i don't care what he says after what he told me. i'll bet you don't." "suppose i do, would you propose to spend them with me?" "i should do as i like." "i begin to suspect you'd try to. let me put the case in another way. what would you want to leave this house and never re-enter it again?" "twenty thousand pounds." "is that your lowest figure?" "it is." "thank you. i will give the matter my careful consideration. in the meanwhile may i ask you to leave me for a time? my conversational powers soon become exhausted; with them i am apt to become exhausted too. a little rest might do you good." "listen to me. i came here so that you and i might understand each other." "we have gone some distance in that direction, haven't we?" "i don't think you have, or you wouldn't talk to me like that. it may be clever, and cutting, and that kind of thing, but i don't like it. i'm your wife, your equal, more than your equal, since you're lying there like a log, already more than three parts dead. i'm the mistress of this house; this room is as much mine as yours." "is it?" "it is. that's what you've got to understand. when i choose to leave it i will, but not a moment before. so don't you order me about, because i don't intend to let you, and there'll be trouble if you try." "am i to understand when i ask you to leave the room, my bedroom, in spite of your courteous hint of a moment back, that you refuse?" "you are; you bet you are. and you're to understand more than that; you're to understand that if you're not careful what airs and graces you take on with me, i'll stuff a handkerchief into your mouth. then we'll see what you'll do next. a helpless lump like you to talk to me--your lawful wife!--as if i were nothing and no one. i'll soon show you." "will you? maybe you'll first be shown a thing or two yourself, my lady!" the tones were familiar. they were not those of the man in the bed. looking round isabel found that nannie was glaring at her from the other side of the room. chapter vii a tug of war perceiving that isabel made no reply, nannie addressed her again, with both in her manner and her words perhaps a superfluity of truculence. "what for have you left your room and come here disturbing mr. grahame, you bold-faced hussy?" nannie's appearance and the vigour of her speech, both of which were probably a trifle unexpected, seemed to take isabel somewhat aback. it was not unlikely that a rapid debate was taking place in her mind as to what exactly was the _rã´le_ it was most advisable that she should play. one point was obvious, that the moment had come when it would have to be decided, possibly finally, just what position in the household hers was going to be. if she was to be its real mistress--as she had boasted that she was, and would be!--then it was out of the question that nannie should be allowed to speak to her in such terms as she had just employed. how was she to be prevented? in her own way isabel was not a bad judge of character. in the course of her short life her adventures had been so many and various that it had grown to be a habit to measure herself against nearly every one with whom she was brought in contact. nannie was a dour old scotchwoman. isabel was perfectly conscious that she was not likely to be subdued--to the point to which she desired to bring her--by words alone. she herself was wholly devoid of scruples. as to self-respect, she was incapable of realising what it meant. she had been brought up in a school in which that sort of thing was not taught. her early days had been spent among women who were quite as ready to resort to physical force as the men, which was saying not a little. as she had grown older she had never hesitated to use her muscles when her tongue was beaten. she was quick to perceive that this was a case in which she would have to use her muscles again, if she did not wish to degenerate into something worse than a figure-head in the house which she aspired to rule. the only question she had to decide was whether she would be a match for the scotchwoman. it would be worse than vain to challenge conclusions if she was likely to be proved the weaker. brief consideration, however, persuaded her that there was but little fear of that. her ankle was against her, and the fact that she had been inactive for a fortnight. but, on the other hand, though tough and brawny, nannie might be old enough to be her grandmother. even though handicapped by her ankle, isabel did not doubt that she excelled her both in sheer strength and in agility, while as to knowledge of how to make the best of her powers she was convinced that, as compared with her, the other was nowhere. she resolved to bring the question as to who was to be mistress to an issue then and there--if necessary, in the presence of the man in the bed. instead of answering nannie she put a question to him. "who is this objectionable old woman?" "my housekeeper." "then, perhaps, you'll tell your housekeeper that, where i'm concerned, if she can't keep a civil tongue in her head and mend her manners, she won't be your housekeeper long--or mine either." "hadn't you better tell her so yourself?" "does that mean you're afraid to?" "never interfered in the housekeeping since the day i was born, nor with nannie either. she's always run this house as if it were her own." "then the sooner she understands that she's not going to do so any longer the better it will be. if you won't make that plain to her, then i will. now, my woman, remember that i'm your mistress, and that i'll stand impertinence from no one--least of all from a servant of mine. leave this room at once; i'll talk to you when we're alone." nannie seemed to be surprised almost into speechlessness by the other's attitude and manner of addressing her. it was a second or two before she could find words with which to illustrate her feelings. "of all the brazen impudence! that a nameless besom, picked up from the roadside in the middle of the night, should have the face to speak to me like that! and you to call yourself mr. cuthbert's wife! why, you're nothing but a shameless trollop! and though the doctor said that mr. cuthbert was to be kept as quiet as possible, if needs be i'll take you out of this room in my two arms, as you well know i did before. so out you come before i make you!" "go it, nannie!" the mocking encouragement from the man in the bed was to isabel as the final straw. she did not allow him to range himself, before her face, on the woman's side. from words she proceeded to measures. traversing the room with a rapidity which wholly ignored the twinges which proceeded from her injured ankle, she planted herself immediately in front of nannie. "are you going to leave this room, or am i to put you out of it?" "me to leave mr. cuthbert's room, and ordered out of it by you! it'll be you that'll be put out of it, and that pretty quick, you----" isabel did not wait for her to finish; she anticipated the volley of compliments which had no doubt been intended to follow by straightening her left arm in the most approved fashion, and striking the other full on the nose with a vigour and unexpectedness which caused the old woman to lose her balance and go toppling over on to the floor. before she had a chance to recover, isabel had the door wide open, and began bundling the still prostrate nannie unceremoniously through it. she was conscious that words were proceeding from the man in the bed, but what they were she neither knew nor cared. it was not her intention, if she could help it, to continue the proceedings in his room. having got the other out of the room somehow, she shut the door behind her, determined to let him know as little of what was to follow as circumstances would permit, at any rate till all was over. then she waited for nannie to rise, which she did with an agility which did credit to her years. as the other had possibly foreseen, the old woman was beside herself with rage. she rushed blindly at her opponent, who was at once cooler and more experienced in little discussions of the kind. although hampered by her ankle she had no difficulty in evading the other's mad onrush, at least sufficiently long to enable her to receive her with a hail of blows directed impartially at her face and body. the proceedings had only lasted a few seconds, and were waxing momentarily warmer, when they were interrupted by some one who ascended the stairs. it was dr. twelves. as was only natural, being very far from edified by the spectacle by which he was confronted, he raised his voice to remonstrate. "what does this mean? have you two women gone mad, that you behave like drunken fishwives? nannie!--mrs. grahame!--shame on you!" nannie, who had been severely pommelled, and had so far got much the worst of it, abstained, for the moment, from her attempts to return some of the marks of esteem with which she had been presented, and proceeded to vouchsafe some sort of explanation. as, however, she talked at the top of her voice, which failed her badly, and had to stop at uncomfortably short intervals to gasp, it was rather difficult to make out what she said, and when that was done it was not easy to join her observations with each other and supply them with a meaning. "put me out of mr. cuthbert's room!--ordered me out!--hit me in the face, that had never been laid hands on by any but my mother!--knocked me about as if i were an old rag-bag!--a bold-faced besom that's nothing in the world but the clothes she stands in!--and less character than that!--before i've done with her i'll strip her to her impudent skin!" nannie proceeded to do it. the attempt could scarcely have been called successful, because no sooner had she brought herself within the reach of the other's dangerous left arm than she received a smashing blow in the face which sent her staggering backwards. the course of the combat had brought her near the head of the stairs, uncomfortably near, as the event immediately showed. before she was able to recover herself, reaching the topmost stair, she went crashing down it on to the doctor who stood remonstrating below. luckily for him he was on the bottom step but one, so that he had time to move somewhat aside before she was in his immediate neighbourhood. as it was she sent him cannoning with uncomfortable violence against the wall, while she herself came toppling on to the landing with a bang which shook the house. silence followed--a speaking silence. above was isabel, a really striking figure, as, with flushed cheeks, flaming eyes, clenched fists, straightened arms, she stared down on her victim in the depths below. the doctor, more startled than hurt, seemed to be in two minds what to do or say. with one eye, as it were, he looked at isabel up above, and with the other at nannie down below. at last he spoke, addressing himself to the triumphant figure up above. "for all you know you may have killed her." "it will serve her right if i have!" came the defiant response. that she was not killed was soon made plain by nannie herself. "she's broken my leg!--and i'll be bound half the bones in my body!--the she-devil! oh, doctor, what'll i do?" there came the voice from above. "you'll stop that noise! and if you're wise you'll cut out your tongue! because the next time you say a rude thing to me, or of me, as sure as you're lying there, i'll have you dragged into the road, and there you shall be left; you shall never set foot inside this house again--i promise you that!" the doctor had been leaning over her, as if to ascertain the nature of her injuries. "i believe you have broken her leg." "to be sure she has! oh, doctor, doctor, i told you we'd rue the day you brought her into the house!" "next time i'll not be content with breaking half the bones in her body--i'll break them all!" "hush, woman! you forget yourself; have you no pity?" "i've pity for those who deserve it, but not for an unmannerly servant who tries to bully her mistress, and then whines when she herself gets thrashed instead! and look here, dr. twelves, don't you think that i'm an ordinary woman, because i'm not----" "that i am rapidly beginning to believe." "don't you interrupt me when i'm speaking, not even by attempts to be smart, especially as you happen to be one of those silly old men who are not meant to shine in that line. if you'd got an ordinary woman into the mess you've got me by your lies and humbug, i daresay you'd have been able to do as you liked with her. i suppose that's what you and that old woman have been reckoning on. but i want you to understand just once, and once for all, that you're mistaken. it's going to be the other way round; i'm going to play this game, in my way, not yours; i'm going to do as i like with you. you'll take your instructions from me, and from me only. if you want to be allowed on these premises you'll treat me as a lady and as the mistress of the house ought to be treated. who's that down there? i heard you sneaking about and listening! come up here and let me look at you." a shock-headed young woman appeared, followed, at a respectful distance, by one still younger. "if you two are my servants--and i suppose you are, or you wouldn't be there--if that old woman can't walk alone pick her up, carry her to her room and put her to bed, and leave her there; then go on with your work and let me have no nonsense." all this time nannie, who still lay motionless, had been groaning in what was evidently genuine pain. the doctor, who had been bending over her, remarked a little dryly:-"i trust you will pardon me, mrs. grahame, but i think her leg is broken". "well, what of it? it's her fault, not mine; she's brought it on herself. she may think herself lucky that her neck's not broken after the way she's behaved. i'd have thrown her out of a window if there'd been one handy, and it would have served her thoroughly well right. i suppose you don't want her to lie there, littering up the stairs, even if her leg is broken. she carried me to my room as if i were a sack of potatoes, now they shall carry her. do you hear what i say, you two?" so nannie was borne to her room with anything but the honours of war. chapter viii the miniature like some other persons, so long as she had her own way, and nothing occurred to annoy her, isabel could be quite agreeable. now that nannie was laid low, and dr. twelves accorded her the respect she demanded--at least outwardly, for she continually suspected him of having his tongue in his cheek--she proceeded to show that there was a side to her character which was not altogether unpleasant. the household--what remained of it--consisted of two raw damsels, whose english was of such a quality that isabel not infrequently found herself at a loss to understand what they were saying. they made no secret of the fact that they were by no means heart-broken at nannie's discomfiture. she had ruled them with a rod of iron, and they were by no means sorry that some one had tried her hand at ruling her--with distinctly solid results. especially was this the case when they learned that the new mistress was inclined to be as lax as the dethroned one had been rigid. so long as the work of the house was done--and there was not much of it as isabel managed things--they were free to do pretty well as they chose, even to the extent of there being practically no watch kept on their outgoings and incomings. the truth was that the new mrs. grahame was above all things desirous that no watch should be kept on her. most of her time was spent in ransacking the house from top to bottom--an occupation she enjoyed immensely, and found no little to her profit. now that nannie was laid on her back, and--since at her time of life a broken leg is no small matter--promised to remain there for some time, there was no one to say her nay. isabel turned out every cupboard and every drawer; waded through every scrap of writing they contained; appraised every article she found--and, indeed, assembled quite a nice collection of what she deemed the more valuable trifles in her own apartment, for her personal use and consolation. she lighted on what, to her, was a considerable sum of money. on this, she learned, nannie had been accustomed to draw for various current expenses. she, of course, regarded it, there and then, as her own personal property. her first appearance out of doors took the form of a visit to a neighbouring small town--not carnoustie--where she purchased such articles of attire as she imagined she required, together with a trunk to contain them. these she paid for out of nannie's store. she did not think it necessary to inform mr. grahame how she had used what was, after all, his money. she did not seem to think it worth her while to tell him anything. her mind was occupied with various problems. first and foremost, she was extremely anxious to ascertain how much money the man she called her husband actually had, where it was, and how it could be got at, say by one who had a right to get at it. almost as if he were conscious of what was transpiring in her brain, cuthbert grahame took advantage of an opportunity which arose, or which he, perhaps, made himself, to volunteer some information on the subject on his own account. the afternoon on which the conversation took place would have been memorable for something else, even if he had not seen fit to make her the receptacle of some very interesting confidences. isabel was an active young woman; healthy, full-blooded, vigorous, one in whose veins the blood ran strong. inaction to her was punishment. so soon as her ankle permitted, and it proceeded to a rapid and complete recovery, she spent a portion of each day in taking the air--that portion of the day which was not spent in prying into everything the house contained. as her researches drew to a conclusion--as even the most thorough investigation allowed them to do in time--that unoccupied portion became more and more. so, having examined the inside of the house she turned her attention to the outside, to learn that her husband's estate was of considerable extent. she wandered up and down it, to and fro, till she began to be almost as intimately acquainted with it as with the contents of the residence. one afternoon she was indulging in one of these rambles when she received what really amounted to a shock. she was passing through one of the woods of which her husband's property seemed chiefly to consist, and was resting on the bole of a tree, when she heard the sound of wheels. she was perhaps in a peculiar mood, because it immediately brought back to her that night on which she had listened--with what an anxious heart!--to the wheels of dr. twelves' approaching trap. passers-by, thereabouts, were few and far between; for days together she would not encounter any. she had grown to love seclusion, possibly for sufficient reasons of her own. she was seated on a slope. the road began at the foot, perhaps thirty feet away. she instinctively altered her position, so that, while she could see herself, the trunk of the tree almost entirely screened her from observation. she wondered who was coming, peeping round to see. when she did see she drew back with a start. in the dogcart which presently appeared was her husband--her real husband--gregory lamb. the sight of him took her wholly by surprise, and filled her with unwonted perturbation. what was he doing there? what could have brought him to that neighbourhood? she had taken it for granted that he had long since returned to london. even mrs. macconichie's--supposing he was still there, which seemed unlikely--was a good twelve miles away. she was conscious that he was not alone in the trap. who his companion was she had not noticed; she had not time. the vehicle drew rapidly level with the tree on which she rested. she decided that she might venture to peep again, and was just doing so when the horse shied so violently that the cart was almost overturned. recovering itself, apparently getting the bit between its teeth, it bolted like a thing possessed, and vanished from her sight, though not before she had nearly convinced herself that the man with her husband--the one who was driving--was dr. twelves. she had only seen him from the back, and then had had but occasional glimpses through intervening trees for half-a-dozen seconds, but she was almost sure that it was he. there was, however, just a possibility that she was mistaken, and it was that possibility which worried her. she would have liked to have been certain, either one way or the other. then, in the case of the worst, she might have been prepared. for the juxtaposition could but mean trouble for her. she was too clear-sighted to delude herself with the notion that the doctor was anxious to be a friend of hers. he had, to outward seeming, accepted the situation; probably, in part, because, as she herself put it, she was no ordinary woman; and partly because, under the circumstances, considering the part which he himself had played, he did not see what else there was for him to do. let him, however, learn how wholly baseless was her claim to occupy the place which she had arrogated to herself, and she did not for a moment doubt that he would use that knowledge to oust her from it in the shortest possible space of time. the only two points on which she had her doubts were: was it really the doctor who was driving gregory lamb? and, if so, had gregory lamb given him cause to even suspect the relation in which she stood to him? on a third point there was no doubt--the dogcart had been moving from, not towards the house, so that in any case the peril was not actually approaching her now. another thought suddenly occurred to her, one which set her heart beating faster than was altogether agreeable. the doctor and her husband might have been to the house already, in which case danger might be awaiting her return to what she had learned to call her home. that was a question which might be quickly resolved--she would resolve it quickly. she started off homewards then and there, telling herself as she went that, whatever had happened, or might happen, they should only be rid of her on terms of her own. it turned out that, so far, nothing had happened; to that extent, at least, her agitation had been uncalled for. no one had been near the house since she had left it; nothing had happened which was in any way out of the common. the relief she felt at learning even so much showed how real she had imagined the danger was. with some vague idea of subjecting him to cross-examination and learning if he had suspicions of her of any sort or kind, so soon as she had removed her hat she paid a visit to cuthbert grahame's room. as usual, he lay immobile between the sheets, preserving that death-in-life rigidity which, it seemed, was to continue his condition to the end. the sight of him struck in her an unwonted note. "don't you get tired of lying there?--especially on a day like this, when the sun is shining and the breeze is stealing among the trees and flowers?" she did not strike a responsive note in him. he was silent for some seconds, then he asked, in his strange, far-away voice, which was like a husky whisper-"aren't you well?" "oh yes, i'm well enough. i'm only wondering if you're not tired of being ill. it seems to me that you might as well be dead as keep on lying there with only your voice alive--and that's pretty nearly done for." she had returned to her more familiar mood. "tired!--tired!" he repeated the word twice, then after an interval went on: "what's the use of being tired of what has to be? i'm tired of you, but it seems you have to be--so what's the use?" "i don't see why you need be tired of me. i'm no more to you than a chair or table." "you're my wife." "your wife! it's because i'm your wife that i'm likely to get tired instead of you. i'm not a helpless statue--i'm a woman; i don't want a dead log--i want a man." "i was once a man." "you a man!" "seems queer, doesn't it?" "i don't believe it." "yet i was, physically, not a bad sample of a man. now the lord knows what i am!--a husk, i suppose. there's a man inside me somewhere still." "you look as if there were, and you sound it." she laughed, not pleasantly. it was one of her defects that her laughter seldom had a pleasant sound, as if it were only the spirit of malice which had power to move her to mirth. "you've confessed why you married me. do you know why i wanted to marry you, or any one? i'd have married your friend nannie if she'd agreed, but she refused point-blank." "is that true?" "quite. it was only when she persisted in her refusal that the doctor thought of the woman he'd found in a ditch. since anything in the shape of a woman would serve he hauled you up the stairs." she was still. she was standing in her favourite position by the open window, looking out at the woods on the slope of the hill. "shall i tell you why, when already looking into hell--and i had a good look, i promise you!--i wanted to marry any one?" "i know." "who told you?" "dr. twelves." "he seems to have imparted to you a good deal of useful information. what did he tell you?" "that you'd made a will in some one's favour, which you wanted to break, and that was the easiest way to break it." "did he tell you who the some one was?" "no." "it was a woman. do you hear--it was a woman!" "i hear." "a young woman--younger than you and prettier. prettier? my god! you're not bad-looking in a way, but there's a streak of the vulgar in you now. no one could ever mistake you for a lady. you're one of the blowzy sort; you'll become impossible; hard-featured; flame-coloured cheeks; bold, staring eyes; huge, unwieldy, gross. she!--she's the most perfect woman god ever made, and she'll only improve as the years go by." "i've met that kind of woman before." "not you. she's not to be found in the sort of society in which you've moved." "she's to be found in the penny novelettes--never out of them. you and your perfect women! in spite of her perfection you don't seem to have found her all milk and honey, or you wouldn't have been so keen to break that will of yours." "do you know why i wanted to break it?" "some silly nonsense. because she tried to scratch your eyes out, i daresay--serve you right if she did." "because she wouldn't marry me." "because----!" she stopped to burst into noisy, strident laughter. "she must have been a fool. i should have thought any one would have married you if you'd made it worth their while." "i told you that she was not the kind of woman you have ever met; she's clean beyond your understanding. put your hand underneath my pillow--gently. you'll find a case; take it out." isabel looked at him, hesitating, as if in doubt of his meaning, then she did as he had told her. he was propped up on a nicely graduated series of pillows. as she withdrew her hand, the case between her fingers, she dragged one of the pillows with it right from under the one on which his head reposed, so that, denuded of its support, his head fell back. in a second he began to choke before her eyes. his face grew bluer and bluer; the veins stood out through his skin; he fought for breath; his stertorous gasps shook him from head to foot. she raised his head to its normal position, returning the pillow to its place. as she watched him struggle back to what--to him--was life, she laughed. "it wouldn't take long to make an end of you." by degrees he regained the use of his attenuated voice. "i do want careful handling--that's so. still i wouldn't murder me if i were you--it would be murder. murder has to be paid for in full. it would be hardly worth your while to be compelled to render full payment for such a remnant as i am. have you got the case? open it." she held a square russia leather case, in corn-flower blue. she looked for a spring or for something which would enable her to get at its interior, but found nothing. "does it open? i don't see how." "it's a little idea of my own that spring. i didn't want any one to see what is inside but me. but it's so long since i've seen that i have grown hungry for a look, so you shall have one too. i think i should like you to have one. hold the case between your finger and thumb, one of them exactly in the centre of each side, then press firmly." obeying him, immediately one of the sides flew open in the middle, revealing, framed in the other, the miniature of a young girl. isabel was no artist; she was incapable of appreciating the artistic value of the portrait which confronted her. what struck her instantly was that it was surrounded by what looked like three rows of precious stones--pearls, sapphires, diamonds. "are they real?" she inquired. "do you mean the stones in the setting? they are. the pearls are there because she is the queen of pearls; the sapphires, because they are her favourite stones; the diamonds, because i chose to have them." "they must be very valuable." "they cost a lot of money, and they'd fetch a lot. that is the girl i wanted to marry me. what do you think of her?" "she is pretty." "pretty! she's beautiful." "she's too fair for me." "that's because you're dark. i hate dark women--always have done. hold the case open in front of me. let me look at her." she did as he asked. no change took place in his expression; none could take place. his voice remained the same; that also was incapable of modulation. yet she knew that an alteration had taken place in him; that as he gazed the man of whom he had spoken, who was inside him somewhere, was stirred to his inmost depths. "not beautiful! she's the most beautiful creature in the world. she always has been; she always will be. god bless her! though he has been hard on me." then, after a pause, "take the case away and shut it, and put it back beneath my pillow--gently. that glimpse will last me a long time, thank you. though i may never look at her again, her face will be with me always to the end. before you close the case you might look at her again more carefully. perhaps, after you have gazed at her attentively, understanding may come to you; you may begin to perceive the beauty which was hidden from you at the first." she returned, the case still open in her hand, to the window in front of which she had been standing. chapter ix the sliding panel the silence remained unbroken for some seconds. then he asked-"well, what do you think of her now?" "i think she's pretty, as i said. you may think her beautiful. i daresay plenty of men would; that sort of thing's a question of taste. i tell you what i do think beautiful--that's these diamonds. the sapphires and the pearls are all very well, but the diamonds are the stones for me." "you would think that. you're the sort of woman who'd admire a gaudy frame, and have no eyes for the picture that was in it. if you like i'll tell you who she is and all about her. it may seem like sacrilege to talk of her to you, but i think i'll tell you all the same." "tell away. i suppose it's the old, old story: she met some one she fancied more than you. men always do think that sort of thing is wonderful. but i don't mind listening." "yes, there was some one she liked better than me. that was the trouble." "it generally is, while it lasts; then it turns out to be a blessing. but, of course, you've never had the chance." "as you say, i've never had the chance. her name--i won't tell you her name--though why shouldn't i? her name is margaret wallace." "scotch, is she?" "her father was scotch, her mother english. he was my dearest friend. when he died----" "he left his only daughter, then a mere child, and that was all." "that was all, and as you say she was a mere child. you seem to have had some experiences of your own." "one or two. i'm more than seven." "so i should imagine." "you took her to your own home, found her in food and washing, and pocket-money now and then. as she grew older her wondrous beauty and her many virtues--especially the first lot--warmed your withered heart. when she attained to womanhood you breathed to her the secret of your passion, which she had spotted about eighteen years before; but as she didn't happen to be taking any, of course the band began to play. isn't that the sort of story you were going to tell, only i daresay you wouldn't have told it in quite that way?" "i certainly shouldn't have told it in quite that way." "you had expended on her two hundred and forty-nine pounds nineteen and sixpence ha'penny, besides any amount of fuss, so her ingratitude stung you to the marrow. still you might have borne with her; you might not even have altered the will which you had made in her favour, and which you kept shaking in her face; only when she took up with another chap she seemed to be coming it a bit too thick. you cried in your anger, 'i'll make you smart for this, my beauty!' so you started to make her smart; but it seems to me that you've done most of the smarting up to now. was it her cruelty which made you the pretty sight you are?" "not altogether." "not altogether! you don't mean to say that when you wanted her to be your wife you were anything like what you are now? a nice kind of love yours must have been!" "i appear to have acquired a really delightful wife." "if you weren't a dead log it might be that you'd find out how true that was. any man with a touch of spice in him would give the eyes out of his head for a wife like me, and there have been plenty who were ready to do it." "as you yourself observed, these things are a question of taste. so you think she was justified in treating me as she did?" "justified for not wanting to marry a thing like you! you ought to have been drowned for hinting at it." "i am myself beginning to think that your point of view may not be wholly incorrect, and that, therefore, it was fortunate that i did not die on the night we were married." "i don't." "you wouldn't--you have, of course, your own point of view. from mine it is fortunate that i have been spared to enable me to make another will." "how are you going to make a will, when you can't move so much as a finger?" "i can have one drawn up according to my instructions. you will find that i'm capable of signing it. would you have any objection?" "it would depend on what there was in it." "i see. may i ask if you are under the impression that if i die without a will--even supposing our marriage is valid----" "it's valid enough, don't you be afraid." "i'm not afraid; you, i fancy, have the cause to fear. but i say, supposing our marriage is a marriage--as to which i say nothing either one way or the other--if i die intestate do you imagine that you will necessarily come into possession of all i have?" "have you any relatives?" "not one in the whole wide world." "then you bet i shall." "you may bet you won't." "who's got more right to what you leave behind than your lawful wife?" "it depends. under no circumstances would you inherit more than half of my personal property, and a third of my real estate; the rest would go to the crown." "half's something! look here, dr. twelves told me that if i married you i should have twenty thousand pounds. have you got as much?" there was an interval before an answer came. possibly the man in the bed was considering what answer he should make to such a very leading question. "i cannot tell you exactly what i have got, but i may safely venture to assert this much: if all i possess--land, houses, shares and so on--were to be turned into cash to-morrow, i should find myself with at least two hundred thousand pounds." "two hundred thousand pounds! go on!" "this is a curious world, and fortune is a curious jade; she bestows her gifts with feminine irresponsibility. she gives one health and strength and youth--and empty pockets--just when he could get enjoyment out of full ones. to another, crippled limbs, physical helplessness, premature old age--and pockets brimming over--just when money is of as little use to him as pictures to the blind. i have been denied most things except fortune. sounds ironical, doesn't it? as with midas, everything i have touched has turned to gold--in my case a thing wholly worthless. i never made a bad money speculation in my life. i doubt if i ever made an investment which did not pay me ten per cent. some of my investments have paid me forty and fifty per cent, for years, and are worth ten times what i gave for them. i wasn't worth twenty thousand pounds when i began life; now, to adopt your phraseology, i'll bet i'm worth more than a quarter of a million." "and yet you live in a place like this, without a horse in the stable, and the garden like a wilderness!" "why shouldn't i? where would you have me live? in a castle? with an array of servants who would take my money and from whom i should have to hide. a well-bred servant wouldn't be able to endure the sight of such an object as i am. all i need is a bed to lie on, some one to put food between my lips, money to pay for it. since here i have those things, here i have all i need. besides, you should bear in mind that, as nothing is being spent, there will be all the more to leave behind." she was silent; her face turned towards the open window, the miniature in its jewelled case still in her hand. his words had fired her imagination. a quarter of a million!--this man worth a quarter of a million!--and he supposed himself to be her husband! not long ago she had told herself that a certain and clear five pounds a week earned by singing and dancing at the minor music halls would be her idea of fortune. she had married that deceitful humbug, gregory lamb, because she believed that he might possibly have as much as a thousand a year. what was a thousand a year compared to a quarter of a million! if he died without a will half of it would be hers, or was it a third? why shouldn't she have more than that? if he had no relatives to make a fuss, why shouldn't she have it all? even as she asked herself the question an answer came to her dimly, yet with sufficient clearness to start her trembling. it was born of an idea which would have disposed most women to do more than tremble. her breath came faster; her eyes brightened; something like a smile wrinkled her lips; the vista presented to her imagination, which would have appalled most persons, titillated her. after a while she asked, without turning her head-"if you were to make a will, what would you put in it?" "i'll show you." "when?" "now. there's a secret hiding-place in this room. if you tried do you think that you could find it?" "i'd find it fast enough." "then find it." "what sort of place is it?" "that's asking for assistance. i'll give you this much. it's in the wall, concealed by a panel of wood. now i've given you the scent, follow it to a finish--if you can." "in a room like this there might be fifty hiding-places." "there might." "it would take days to examine it thoroughly; however long it might take me i'd find it. i'd strip the walls of everything before i'd give it up." "i don't think you need go so far as that just yet. look round; you've hawk's eyes; i've given you a hint; can't you make a likely guess, like the sharp-witted child who is playing hide-and-seek?" isabel's glances were travelling round the room searchingly, resting here and there, allowing nothing to escape them. when they had traversed the whole apartment from floor to ceiling in one direction they returned in another. "you are not tricking me? there really is a secret hiding-place?" "there really is." "and you say it's behind a panel in the wall?" "that's it." her eyes in their return journey had reached the great wooden fireplace. although she did not know it, it was a fine specimen of old carving. what she did notice were the rounded posts which served as pillars. there were four, two longer and two shorter, each supporting a shelf on which there were ornaments. she wondered if the posts would turn. probably something recurred to her mind which she had read about a movable post, though she could not have said just what it was or where she had read it. she had a notion that she would try if the posts in the fireplace turned, when she was stopped by a remark which came from the man in the bed. "you're looking in the wrong place; so as i don't want your search to occupy you days, i'll tell you where it is." even as he spoke it struck her--rather as a vague suspicion than anything else--that he did not want her to pay too much attention to the fireplace. she waited for him to continue, which he did at once. "you see the bracket in the corner on my left. go to it. take down the vase which stands upon it, then lift the bracket out of its socket." she did as he told her. "you see the boss just at the top of the socket. that releases the catch. press it, then slide upwards that part of the panel which is immediately at your right." again she followed his directions. a portion of the woodwork, three or four inches wide, and about a foot in length, yielding to her touch, disclosed an open space behind. "there's an envelope in it, a blue envelope; take it out." there was an envelope, apparently nothing else. on the front was an inscription, whose crabbed characters had apparently been written by a feminine hand. "this envelope contains cuthbert grahame's will, and is not to be opened till after his death." the two flaps at the back were secured by big red seals. "never mind what it says. i'm cuthbert grahame, and i tell you to open the envelope, although i don't happen to be dead. take out the paper which you'll find inside. read it; you can read it aloud if you like." she read it aloud. the handwriting was identical with the cramped caligraphy on the envelope. "'i give and bequeath all the property of which i die possessed, both in real and personal estate, to margaret wallace, absolutely, for her sole use and benefit.--cuthbert grahame. witnesses, nannie foreshaw, david twelves, m.d., edin.'" with the exception of a date at the top that was all the paper contained. "that is the will you broke by marrying me, or, if you prefer it, which i broke by marrying you. there isn't much to be said for the phraseology--it wasn't drafted in a lawyer's office. nannie wrote it down to my dictation--at that table over by the window there. she doesn't write a very excellent fist, but it'll serve. that's as sound a will as if it had been drawn by a council of lawyers, and, to the lay mind, a good deal plainer than they'd have made it." "do you mean to say that what's on this paper is enough to put margaret wallace into undisputed possession of a quarter of a million of money?" "it would have been if i hadn't married you; my marriage has made it so much waste-paper. you may tear it up, or keep it if you please; it makes no difference. i intend to make another will." "what are you going to put in it?" "exactly what's in that, only the date will be different. it's the date in that which renders it nugatory." "aren't you going to leave me anything?" "why should i?" "dr. twelves told me that if i married you i should have twenty thousand pounds." "i'm not responsible for what dr. twelves may assert." "you are--in a way, and you know it. because he only brought me up so that you might die in peace, and, i expect, at your own express command." mr. grahame was silent, possibly considering her words. "a cheque for a hundred pounds would amply repay you for what you've done--or i might make it a hundred guineas." "a hundred guineas! listen to me--you're my husband." "you've observed that on some previous occasion." "and i'm your wife." "that also has already become ancient history." "i want you to understand just the way in which i see it. i'm the mistress of this house, and no one sets foot in it--or in your room--without my express sanction and approval." "won't any one? we shall see." "we _shall_ see! i'll write you just the will you want, as nannie did, if you'll let me add a sentence leaving me--say, five thousand pounds. it ought to be more--twenty thousand was what dr. twelves promised--and you can make it as much more as you like, but i'll do it if you make it that." as, when she stopped, he was silent, she again went on: "if you don't let me add such a sentence you shall make no will at all--as sure as i'm alive i swear you shan't. i'll have my bed brought in here to stop you doing it at night--you may trust me to take care you don't do it by day. as your wife i've my rights, and you're a helpless man. i mean to take advantage of my rights--to the fullest possible extent!--and of your helplessness. you ought to know by now that in such a matter i'm the sort of woman that keeps her word." "i have a sort of notion that you might do your best in that direction--from what i've seen--and heard--of you." "you can bet on it!" "let me follow you clearly. am i to understand that you will draw up yourself a will identical in all respects with the one you have in your hand, if i allow you to add an additional clause by which you are to benefit to the extent of five thousand pounds?" "that's what you're to understand--just that." "and that you'll assist me to sign it in the presence of two witnesses?" "i'll assist you all i can." "i'll think it over. five thousand pounds is a deal of money for what you've done, and for the sort of woman you are; but--i'll think it over. when would you do it?" "if you say the word i'll do it right now." there was a considerable pause, then he repeated his former observation:-"i'll think it over." after a pause he added: "put back that miniature underneath my pillow--this time gently, if you please. close the panel; replace the bracket and the vase. you may take the will with you if you like, so that you may get it well into your head. i'm tired--i've talked enough. i want to be still--and think." chapter x the girl at the door when isabel left cuthbert grahame's room her brain was in a tumult. she had so much of which to think that she found it hard to think at all. the discovery that his wealth was so altogether beyond anything of which she had dreamed as possible; the unearthing of his will--from such a hiding-place; the facts she had learned of margaret wallace, and which she had herself embroidered--these things were in themselves enough to occupy her mind to its full capacity for some time to come. yet they were far from being all she had to think about. the miniature, in its jewelled setting--especially the jeweled setting!--was likely to be a subject of covetous contemplation until--well, until something had happened to it, or to her. then there were the pillars in the fireplace. something--she could not have told what--had filled her with the conviction that the recess behind the sliding panel was not the only hiding-place the room contained. she was possessed by a desire to examine those four rounded posts--to examine them closely--to ascertain whether in their construction there was anything peculiar. but beyond and above all these sufficient causes for mental agitation there was still another, one far greater--the will she might have to draft, which she felt certain she would be asked to draft. the idea which she had at the back of her head, which had prompted her suggestion, was of such a character that it almost frightened her. like cuthbert grahame, she wanted time and opportunity for thought. she had it in contemplation to risk everything upon the hazard of a single throw--everything, in the widest sense of that comprehensive word. to put her notion into execution needed courage of a diabolical kind. failure involved utter and eternal ruin. success, on the other hand, would bring in its train all the pleasures of which she had scarcely dared to dream. on her return from her walk, having learned that gregory lamb had not put in the appearance she had feared, she had sent the two maids on an errand. they were raw, country wenches, ignorant, slow-witted. it seemed hardly likely that, under any circumstances, she would find them dangerous, yet she was strongly of opinion that it was advisable, if, as was possible, the deserted gregory did call, that she should be the person to receive him. nannie was still confined to her room, so that isabel had but to be rid of the underlings to have practically the whole house at her mercy. it has been said that small things make great generals, since it is the eye for trivial details which wins big battles. the little act of foresight which prompted isabel lamb to clear the premises of that pair of scotch wenches not impossibly changed the whole course of her life--not because what she had foreseen happened; what actually occurred she had not even looked for. the dining-room had a large bay window which commanded the path leading to the front door. as she stood there, with her brain in a state of almost chaotic confusion, something caught her eye--a figure on the carriage drive. it was still at some distance; it disappeared nearly as soon as she saw it. she kept her glance fixed on its vanishing point. as for some moments nothing was visible, she was beginning to suppose that she must have been mistaken, when she saw it again. it was still to a great extent hidden by the trees and brushwood, but it certainly was there. isabel instinctively drew back, although in any case she must have been entirely invisible. instantly her brain became clear. the perception of approaching danger, which had on her the effect of bracing her up, restored to her at once the full use of her faculties. "is it gregory?" she asked herself. if it had been he would have had a warm reception. but it was not, as was immediately made clear. the figure was that of a woman--reaching a point where the ground was clearer, she could be plainly seen. she was walking very fast, with long, even strides. "who is it?" the woman at the window asked herself. "it can't be one of the girls--they won't be back for a couple of hours or more. i know them! besides, they don't move like that. nothing feminine's been near the place since i've been in it. so far as i know, there's nothing feminine hereabouts to come. as for callers, we don't have them. what's likely to attract a woman to a house like this? why, i do believe it's a lady--that dress was never made in this parish. and--she's young! where on earth have i seen her before? i have seen her, but where? my stars!--the miniature! it's margaret wallace!--come to see the man she jilted! here's a nice to-do!" the approaching figure had come clear of the carriage drive, and was now in full sight. as isabel had acknowledged to herself, it was unmistakably that of a lady. the dress might be proof itself to another woman's keen perception, but there was other evidence as well. the way in which the stranger bore herself--her carriage, the easy grace which marked her movements, at least suggested breeding. as the face became visible all doubt was at an end. this was certainly a lady who, as it seemed, was coming to call. was the purport of her presence here merely to pay a passing call? did she simply wish to make a few inquiries, and then return from whence she came? would she be content with a few more or less civil words being spoken to her at the partly open door, or would she insist on entering and being allowed to visit cuthbert grahame in his room? in that case isabel's domination would be at an end. the chances were that those two had but to exchange half-a-dozen words, and the castle which she had already in imagination builded would resolve itself into an edifice even less substantial than a house of cards. the wild scheme of which she had conceived the embryo would never move from that condition. the situation out of which she had determined to wrest a great opportunity would be there and then at an end if margaret wallace won her way past that front door. but would she win it? the fates were on isabel's side. nannie upstairs helpless in her bed; cuthbert grahame still more helpless in his; the two girls out--margaret wallace would have to reckon with her. isabel overrated herself if, in such a contest as was likely to ensue, she did not prove the better of the pair. a sudden thought occurring to her she hurried into the hall. by some fortunate chance the front door was closed, so that she remained unseen by the approaching visitor. she remembered that she had closed it when she herself had come in; as a rule it stood wide open. if it had been then it would have been impossible for her to perform the part she proposed to play. as soon as she reached it she turned the key--only just in time. within thirty seconds the handle was tried by some one on the other side. "that settles it," observed isabel to herself. "i didn't look at the face in the miniature so closely as all that, it was the setting which occupied me. i might have mistaken the likeness, and it mightn't have been margaret wallace after all. but the style in which she turned that handle gives her away. she's come in and out of this house too often not to be aware that, even if the door does happen to be shut, you've only got to turn the handle to come in. when she found that it wouldn't open, i'll bet that she had a bit of a shock. holloa! it seems that she can't believe it now. i daresay it's the first time in all her life that she's found that door closed against her." something of the kind did seem possible. the person on the other side was giving the handle various twists and turns, as if unable to credit that the door was actually locked. it was only after continued efforts that the fact was realised. there was an interval, as if the person without was considering the position. "now what'll she do?" wondered isabel. "go round to the back, and see if she can't get in that way? she won't think it a possible thing that both doors can be locked. the odds are that she's come in one way as often as the other. she won't come in that way this time, and so i'll show her." on stealthy feet isabel, stealing to the back of the house, both locked and bolted the door which gave ingress to the house on that side. as she was ramming the top bolt home a bell clanged through the house followed by the rat-tat-tat of a knocker. "so she's concluded not to give herself the trouble of trying the back door, at least for the present. now what'll i do? one thing's sure, i'm not going to be in any haste to answer either her ringing or her knocking. possibly if no one does answer she'll be tricked into thinking the house is empty." the bell and knocker were audible again. "she's pretty impatient; she doesn't give a person over-much time to answer, even if one wanted to. what a row that bell does make--sounds as if it were rusty. i daresay it isn't rung more than once a year. it'll startle those two upstairs--it's a time since they heard it. there she is again. she'll hurt that bell if she isn't careful. i'd like to hurt her--if she doesn't watch out i will before she's finished. that's right, my dear, give another pull at it! pretty rough on grahame. if he only knew who was ringing what wouldn't he give to get at her--especially if he understood that this is the only chance he'll ever have; and to have to lie there like a log, and let it slip between his fingers! as for nannie--that old woman's got the nose of a bloodhound--i shouldn't be surprised if she smells who's at the door. if she does i shouldn't wonder if, broken leg or no broken leg, she tumbles out of bed and tries to get down somehow to open it. she hadn't better. she'll break it again if she does--if i have to help her do it! no one's going to interfere with that door but me! i'm not going to have her hammering and clanging till those two girls come back, that won't suit my book at all. and as she looks like doing it the sooner i get rid of her the better." the upper panels of the front door were of coloured glass, the panes, which were of different hues, shapes and sizes, being set in leaden frames. while it was possible for whoever was within to obtain a vague impression of some one without, it was impossible for whoever was without to see anything of the person within. it was of this fact that the quick-witted isabel proposed to take advantage. among the various accomplishments which fitted her, in her opinion, to shine in the halls was that of mimicry. drawing close up to the glass panels she exclaimed, in tones which were intended to represent the broken-legged nannie's-"who's that as wants to break the bell of a decent body's house?" that the assumption was not entirely unsuccessful was shown by the response which came instantly from the other side of the door. "is that you, nannie? you silly old thing! where have you been? what have you been doing? and why have you locked this door?--open it at once!" "and to whom will i open it, please?" there came a peal of girlish laughter as a prelude to this reply. "nannie, you are an old stupid! do you mean to say that you don't recognise my voice as well as i do yours? why, i'm meg come back to see you again!--open the door at once, you goose!" "i'll no open the door this day." "nannie!" "margaret wallace, i tell you i'll no open the door for you this day, so back you go from where you came." "nannie! how can you speak to me like that! how dare you!" "i'm but obeying mr. cuthbert's orders, and it's not fear of you that'll stay me from doing that." "do you mean to tell me that cuthbert grahame forbade you to let me into the house?" "he did a great deal more. he said that if you ever came near it he'd bring half-a-dozen dogs to set them at you. so take yourself off, and be quick about it." "but, nannie, i don't understand." "none of your lies! it's plain enough! so be off to where you're wanted--if it's anywhere." "but, nannie, what have i done that you should speak to me like this? you always used to take my part." "it's no part of yours i'll ever take again. are you going?" "i only want to talk to you. if you'll only open the door i promise you i won't try to get in if you don't want me to." "i can have all the talk i want with you as we are. will you be off?" "won't you let me have one look at you, nannie, and give you just one kiss?" "i'll have none of your kisses, and i never want to look at you again till you're lying in your coffin." "nannie! there's something about the way you talk which i don't understand. it's not you to speak to me like this. i insist upon your opening the door. i don't believe cuthbert grahame ever told you not to--i know him too well to think that's possible. i shall keep on ringing and knocking till you do open, and so i tell you." "then you'll keep on some time, i promise you that. i know what mr. cuthbert's orders are better than you. if i was to empty his gun at you i'd only do what he'd wish me to." "nannie! but, nannie, i've come all the way from london. it's a very long way, and costs a deal of money, and nowadays i haven't much money, as you know. you're not going to send me back like this." "is it the fare back to london that you're wanting? if it's to beg you've come, i'll give you the fare out of my own pocket, so that mr. cuthbert may be rid of you in peace." this time in the girlish voice there was a ring of unmistakable indignation. "nannie! you're a wicked old woman! i believe that you've some wicked scheme in your head of which cuthbert grahame knows nothing. you sound as if you were capable of anything. if you don't let me in this moment i'll get in without your help." "how are you going to do that, pray?" "do you think i can't? i'll soon show you! if you think i'm still a foolish girl to be tyrannised over by you, you're very much mistaken. i won't believe that cuthbert grahame doesn't wish to see me till he tells me so with his own lips." chapter xi hot water a hand was raised on the other side of the door and brought smartly against the glass. the whole panel shivered; the blow would only have to be repeated two or three times to destroy it altogether. whipping the key out of the lock, isabel hurried up the staircase, slipping it into her pocket as she went. although she had no fear of an entry being made, she was very far from desirous of being seen. that would involve the discovery of the fraud she had been practising. if miss wallace learned that it was not nannie who had been addressing her in such uncompromising terms, it was scarcely likely, even if driven by force from the house, that she would leave the neighbourhood without effecting her purpose of seeing cuthbert grahame. so isabel, determined that that should not happen, resolved to adopt extreme measures. when she gained the top of the stairs she could already hear the glass shivering in the door below. rushing into the bath-room, snatching up a couple of pails which the not too tidy maids had left there, and filling them at the tap, she strode with them to the landing-window which overlooked the entrance. she had filled them at the hot-water tap, and the steam came against her hand. "it isn't very hot," she told herself. "there's just enough sting in it to make her a little warmer than she is already." the window was wide open. she peeped out to see that the girl was immediately below. balancing both pails on the sill she turned them over together. that the contents had reached the mark was immediately made plain by the cries which ascended from below. "nannie! nannie! you've scalded me! you've scalded me!" isabel replied, still taking care not to allow so much as the tip of her nose to be seen through the window-"i'll scald you again in half a minute--you'll find the water's boiling next time, i promise you. what's more, i'll take mr. cuthbert's gun to you, as he bade me. you shameless hussy! to go breaking his windows because he won't have you set your foot inside the house that you've disgraced!" this diatribe from the supposititious nannie was followed by silence below. isabel, who found the suspense a little trying, was half disposed to venture on a glance to learn what was taking place. unmistakable sounds, however, arose just as she had made up her mind to run the risk. margaret wallace was crying. presently she exclaimed, in tones which were broken by her sobs-"i'm going, nannie. you needn't trouble to get mr. cuthbert's gun, nor to wait till the water's boiling. whatever mr. cuthbert's orders may have been--and i know i've used him badly, and deserve anything from him--i never thought you'd have treated me like this. i've never done you any harm, and you've always pretended that you loved me. i hope you'll never regret driving me away like this from the house that has always been a home to me! oh, nannie! nannie!" the girl uttered the last two words in such poignant tones that isabel thought it extremely possible that they penetrated to the woman to whom they were actually addressed. after a moment's interval footsteps were audible below. then, as isabel drew back behind the curtain, she could see through the loophole that margaret wallace was returning whence she came. she moved with a very different step to that which had marked her approach. her feet seemed to lag, her head hung down, and she kept putting her hand up to her eyes to relieve them of blinding tears. her attitude was significant of the most extreme despondency. apparently some remnants of her pride still lingered. it was probably those fragments of her self-respect which prevented her from once looking round to glance at the house from whose precincts she was being so contemptuously dismissed. isabel watched the defeated mien which characterised the girl's whole bearing in the moment of her humiliation with a smile of triumph. "that's one to me. it's on the cards that it's the one that's going to win the game. i guess she's feeling pretty bad. it can't be nice, if your pockets aren't too well lined, to come all the way from london just for this. i daresay she meant to do the conscience-stricken act--tell him how sorry she was, ask his forgiveness, have an affecting reconciliation, and all that kind of thing. i expect she was drawing pictures of how it all was going to be as she came along in the train. i rather fancy those pictures won't get beyond the outline. she'll be trying her hand at sketches of another kind as she goes back again. i wonder how she'd feel if she knew how she's been bluffed by an insolent adventuress, and that nannie hadn't had a hand in the game at all. she'd feel pretty mad! i wonder how nannie feels if she so much as guesses at what's been going on. i'll give the old lady a call; and i'll call on mr. cuthbert grahame. but before i do that i think i'll write a few lines on a sheet of paper--on a couple of sheets." before she quitted her post of observation the unhappy girl had vanished from sight. isabel waited for some minutes after she had disappeared lest something should transpire which might cause her to change her mind and return. as time passed and nothing more was seen of her, isabel decided that she had gone for good. descending to the dining-room, seating herself at a writing-table, isabel drew from a drawer two large sheets of paper, similar to the one contained in the envelope which cuthbert grahame had instructed her to take from behind the sliding panel. on one of these sheets she wrote, in her large, bold, round hand, a facsimile of the will which marriage had rendered invalid. "i give and bequeath all the property of which i die possessed, both in real and personal estate, to margaret wallace, absolutely, for her sole use and benefit." when she had finished she surveyed what she had written, then added--"with the exception of five thousand pounds in cash, which i give and bequeath to isabel burney, and which it is my wish shall be paid to her, free of legacy duty, within seven days of my being buried". "that only needs his signature and the signatures of the witnesses. shall i date it, or leave the date open? i think i'll be safe in dating it to-morrow. now for another document very much like it, but not quite, though as far as appearance goes it must be as exactly like it as it can be conveniently made." she then wrote on the second sheet what was, with some slight, but important, differences, an exact reproduction of the words she had written on the other. "i give and bequeath all the property of which i die possessed, both in real and personal estate, to isabel burney"--she hesitated, then wrote--"whom i have acknowledged to be my wife, in the presence of dr. twelves and nannie foreshaw, absolutely, for her sole use and benefit"--she hesitated again, and this time added--"with the exception of five farthings in cash, which i give and bequeath to margaret wallace, and which it is my wish shall be paid to her, free of legacy duty, within seven days of my being buried." "that also needs but the signatures and--a little ingenuity." she had made them, in all respects, so much alike, fitting into the same space the extra words on the second sheet that at a little distance it was easy to mistake one for the other. "now we'll tear up that old thing, which my appearance on the scene was so unfortunate as to spoil, and we'll put the new will in its place--with its brother." she did as she said, folding up the two sheets in precisely the same creases, putting them into the one envelope. then she went upstairs to see nannie. the old lady's leg bade fair to be a long time healing, nor was a cure likely to be hastened by her impatience and general unwillingness to take things easily. so soon as isabel put her head inside the room, nannie, sitting up in bed, aimed at her a volley of questions. "why haven't you been here before? what's all the clatter been about--like as if the house was coming down? such ringing and hammering i never heard the likes of. what's been the meaning of it all? where's them two girls? why didn't one of you open the door, like as if it was a christian house? why did you suffer such a hubbub--enough to disturb the countryside? who's been talking in a voice like a cracked tin trumpet?" it occurred to isabel that the last analogy was unfortunate, since a "cracked tin trumpet" was a not inadequate description of the screech in which nannie herself was even then indulging. the old lady presented a peculiar spectacle--in a huge, ancient nightcap, tied in a big bow beneath her chin; a vivid tartan shawl about her shoulders. the visitor replied to the whole of the inquiries with an unhesitating lie. "nannie, do you know that a dreadful man's been begging, and trying to force his way into the house. if i hadn't turned the key just in time i don't know what would have happened." she did not, but the happenings would have run on different lines to those which she suggested. "as it was he broke the front-door window, and i had to pour a couple of buckets of water over him before he'd go." "a man been begging, and trying to force his way into the house! such a thing's never happened in all the days i've known the place." "i daresay i expect it was some one who's heard that you were confined to your bed, and thought that i might be easily tackled. he's found out his mistake." "where's them two girls?" "i've sent them on an errand. perhaps he knew that too, and that made him bolder." "i thought i heard a voice i knew." "that must have been mine." "yours! i haven't heard a sound of you. who was it screeching?" "that was me. i was imitating your voice, nannie. you see i thought it might frighten him more than mine--and it did." "my voice! do you mean to tell me that that rasping, creaking screech was meant to be an imitation of my voice? i'd like to know whoever heard me talk in that way." "why, nannie, i'm hearing you talk that way now. don't you know your own musical accents when you hear them?--and me giving you a taste of them to your face!" laughingly, isabel treated nannie to another imitation of her curious nasal utterance then and there, and was out of the room before the old lady had recovered sufficiently from her astonishment to pronounce a candid criticism of the impertinent performance. from nannie isabel descended to the master of the house, to be greeted by some very similar inquiries. "what's been the meaning of all this uproar?" isabel repeated the lie she had told nannie. "that was no man's voice i heard. it was a woman's, and i could have sworn one i knew." "i expect the voice you thought you knew was nannie. i was favouring the ruffian with as close an imitation of her genial tongue as i could manage." "that's not what i mean. i heard you imitating nannie. will you swear it was a man at the door?" "of course i'll swear it. whatever do you mean?" "what was he like?" she seemed to consider. "he was rather tall and very broad, with a big red beard. he had a cloth cap on the back of his head; his coat over his arm; and he carried a huge stick--about as undesirable-looking a person to encounter on a lonely road as you could very well imagine. i should know him anywhere if i saw him again. do you recognise him from my description?" "i do not. i heard nothing of any man speaking, the voice i heard was a woman's." "of course it was; i tell you that that was me imitating nannie. don't you understand?" "it was neither your voice nor nannie's. it was one i have heard too often, and know too well, ever to mistake for another. i could have sworn it was hers; i could have sworn i heard her pronounce my name. i was not dreaming--i could not have been. that i should lie here, chained and helpless, and she almost within touch of me! why didn't nannie go down to the door?" "nannie?--she's as helpless as you are." "where are those two servants?" "i sent them out on an errand long ago." "so that you've had me at your mercy, and if it was her, you've had her also. that god should permit it! if you are lying to me--and i believe you can lie like truth!--may you soon be consigned to hell fire, to rot there to all eternity." "if the worst comes to the worst, that's a trip on which i hope to follow you." "swear to me by all that you hold sacred--if there's anything!--that it wasn't margaret wallace at the door." "margaret wallace!--are you stark mad?" "i believe you're tricking me! i believe i heard her voice! i believe i heard her pronounce my name!" "if i had thought that you could have got such an idea into your head as that, i'd have thrown the door wide open, and invited that murderous ruffian to walk upstairs to you. then you would have seen how much he was like margaret wallace--that is, if she's anything like the picture which you showed me. you've been talking and thinking so much about margaret wallace that you've got her on the brain. do you think that if it had been her i wouldn't have brought her right up to you? you're very much mistaken if you do. i'm no saint, any more than you are, but i'd no more rob a woman of her happiness than you would--perhaps not so much. you did try to rob her, and you got me to be your accomplice--blindfold, as it were. if i'd known what you've told me this afternoon i'd have seen you--and old twelves!--the other side of jordan before i'd let you make a tool of me. now that i do know, i won't rest quiet till you've put her back into the position in which she was before. here's that will i spoke to you about. it's the same as the one which was spoilt, except that it leaves me five thousand pounds. five thousand pounds will be of no consequence to her, while it will make all the difference in the world to me. after the way in which you've treated me i ought to have something, and that's the something i mean to have." taking out the will which left everything to margaret wallace except the â£5,000, she held it out in front of cuthbert grahame. he read it through. "that seems all right. will you help me sign it?" "of course i'll help you sign it--now if you choose, though i've dated it to-morrow, because i thought that would give you a chance to think things over. i tell you that i shan't rest till that girl's back into her own again." for some moments he was silent, then he said-"perhaps i was mistaken." "mistaken about what?" "perhaps it wasn't her voice i heard." "man, i tell you you were dreaming." "perhaps i was. if you'd driven her from the door you'd hardly bring me a will like that directly after. even if you'd let her in, you might have guessed that she wouldn't have wanted to rob you of your five thousand." "of course she wouldn't, any more than i wanted to rob her. we women are not so bad as that, whatever you men may think." "put the will under my pillow--gently--with her miniature. as you say, i'll think things over. maybe i'll sign it to-morrow." chapter xii signing the will cuthbert grahame did sign his last will and testament on the morrow, though hardly in the fashion he intended. the way in which he was tricked was this. before the woman who called herself his wife went down to her breakfast she paid him a morning call. he had had a more restful night than usual, so that he was in an exceptional good-humour. the sight of her seemed almost to give him pleasure. she was all smiles and sweetness, which were real enough, since she hoped to be shortly in possession of a boundless stock of happiness. he began on the subject directly he saw her. "i'll sign that will of yours." "that's right; so you shall. but won't you wait till after breakfast, then we can have up jane and martha to be witnesses." jane and martha were the two serving-maids whose absence yesterday had been so opportune. "i'll wait. you'll have to have me propped up a little higher; i shan't be able to sign like this." "i'll see to that; i'll do everything i can." and she did. she communed with herself as she ate a substantial meal. "propped up? i'll see he's propped up high enough, i promise him--the higher the better. he can't be propped up high enough for me. it seems a dangerous game to try to change one paper for the other right under his very nose, but i fancy i know how it can be done--and with complete impunity. if he could move so much as a finger it might be difficult, but propped up as he'll be he'll be wholly at the mercy of my two hands. i think they're skilful enough for the job they've got to do." spreading out the second sheet of paper on the breakfast-table in front of her, she studied it carefully, with every appearance of complacency. "such a little difference and yet so much--only the substitution of one word for another, and all the world is changed. i think 'whom i have acknowledged to be my wife in the presence of dr. twelves and nannie foreshaw' is a positive stroke of genius. it commits me to nothing, and establishes my position, because while he admits his desire to claim me for his wife, there is no reference to any wish on my part to have him for a husband. the only trouble will be to prevent his noticing the difference in the appearance of the two papers, which, however neatly i've done it, is the necessary consequence of inserting those few words. but i think i know how to manage that." she did; she credited herself with no capacity which she did not possess. in every respect she proved herself to be fully equal to all the requirements of the occasion. she returned to cuthbert grahame's bedroom so soon as she had finished breakfast, the personification of brisk, hearty good-humour. "now are you ready? shall we get to business? is the will still underneath your pillow? shall i get it out?" she took from its resting-place the paper which he supposed himself to be about to sign. with the aid of some pillows she raised him to a more upright position. then she spread the paper out in front of him. "you see, there's the will. is that just as you want it to be?" he read it through. "that's all right." "then i'll call up martha and jane to act as witnesses, and then you'll be able to sign it in their presence." she called up the two girls, who came up rubbing their hands on their aprons. she said to him, "hadn't you better explain to them what it is you want them to do?" he explained. "i'm going to make a new will. mrs. grahame,"--he paused; one almost suspected him of a desire to give the name satiric emphasis--"has been drawing up a will at my dictation. i'm going to sign it. i want you to act as witnesses of my signature. stand close to the bed so that you can see what i am doing. my dear"--this was to isabel; again there was the hint of an ironical intention--"if you will bring me the will which you have been so good as to draft for me i won't keep these young women a moment longer than i can help." she brought him the will--or, rather, a will. it was spread out on a slope, and covered with a sheet of blotting-paper on which she kept her fingers to prevent it slipping. only the last four lines were visible--"it is my wish shall be paid to her, free of legacy duty, within seven days of my being buried". what went before was hidden; the familiar conclusion seemed to be all that he cared to see. leaning over him, raising his right arm, as gingerly as if it had been a piece of delicate porcelain, she placed his dreadful, helpless fingers somehow about a pen. he spoke to the two girls. "as you know, i can do nothing by myself, so mrs. grahame, at my request, is going to guide my hand so as to enable me to sign my will. you understand, it is i who am signing it, not she." it was a strange signature--"cuthbert grahame," in big, sprawling letters; some of them unattached to each other, all slanting in different directions. the owner of the name, however, seemed to view the result with undiluted satisfaction. "that's my signature--clear enough for any one to read. now i want you two girls to attach your names as witnesses to the fact that i have signed my will in your presence." isabel removed the slope to the writing-table against the wall. then each of the girls wrote her name in turn. when they had done so they left the room. so soon as they had gone cuthbert grahame spoke to isabel. "now let me have a look at that will of mine in its finished condition. thank goodness it is done. it's a weight off my mind--a relief for which i have to thank you." isabel stood at the writing-table, looking down, with a smile on her face, at the paper he had signed. "do you say that you want to see your will now that it's all signed, sealed and finished?" "yes; didn't you hear what i said? then i want you to put it under my pillow. i'll show it twelves when he comes. he'll laugh when he sees it." "i expect he will laugh. is dr. twelves coming to-day?" "he said something about it. if not, then he'll be here to-morrow. it will keep till then." "oh yes; it will keep till then." "what are you waiting for? why don't you bring the will? don't i tell you i want to read it again?" she went to the bed, the sheet of paper extended between her two hands. "here's your will, mr. grahame; by all means read it again." he read it, once, twice, then again. then he tried to speak. it seemed that his voice failed him. it was not pleasant to notice the stammer which seemed to mark his struggles for breath. "what--what folly's this? that's not the will i signed." her eyes were dancing with laughter. there was a merry ring in her voice, as if she was in the enjoyment of an excellent joke. "oh yes, it is." "it's not the one you drafted." "oh yes, it is." "it isn't the one you showed me just now." "isn't it? are you quite, quite sure?" "of course i'm sure! it's a trick!--a fraud! this is not my will!" "but, dear mr. grahame--i noticed how you called me your dear!--it is your will. here's your signature, attested by two witnesses. after all, there's only a slight difference between the one you saw and this." "a slight difference, you--you----!" in his efforts to find an expletive to fit the occasion, his struggles for breath became greater. she went gaily on. "the only difference is that i get everything instead of margaret wallace, and that instead of my five thousand pounds she gets five farthings. surely the trifling substitution of a few words won't matter to you in the least, mr. grahame." it seemed that it mattered a good deal. after a tremendous effort he regained some portion of his voice, enough to enable him to burst into a string of expletives. "you--you----! you----! it's a fraud! a----fraud! it's a swindle! don't you flatter yourself that it will stand! don't you think i'll let it stand! wait till twelves comes, then i'll show you!" "wait till dr. twelves comes? suppose he never comes?" "what do you mean? what are you doing with that pillow?" "suppose dr. twelves never comes, what is to prevent this will from standing?" "what are you doing with that pillow, you----!" "i'm going to stop your saying such dreadful things. it pains me to have to listen to such language." she snatched away one pillow from beneath his head, and then a second. she had propped him in such a way that when he was deprived of their support his head fell back, and there recurred the scene of the previous afternoon. he began to choke; his unwieldy frame was shaken by convulsive efforts to breathe; stertorous gasps proceeded from the region of his chest. he presented a dreadful spectacle. the sight did not seem to in any way affect the woman who was standing by his bed, with the pillows still in her hand. she pressed the bolster farther up his back so that his head declined at an acute angle; applying her palm to the point of his chin she forced it lower still. then she said-"i'll place the will as you wished me, mr. grahame, under your pillow". she placed it there, under the single pillow which remained; then she left the room. chapter xiii the encounter in the wood isabel crossed to her own room, put on her hat, smiling at herself in the looking-glass as she arranged it to her satisfaction, then went downstairs, and out of the house without a word to any one. it was perhaps because she was conscious that martha was peeping at her through the stillroom window that she began to whistle. she was still whistling one of the latest possible melodies when, entering the drive, she turned off among the trees and struck into the woods. whistling was one of her accomplishments: she whistled very well. the sound of her clear pipe travelled far and wide. no one to hear her, or, for the matter of that, to look at her either, would have supposed that she had a care upon her mind. she bore herself like some lighthearted, happy girl, who, with unstained conscience, looks the whole world in the face, thinking what a delightful place it was for a pretty girl to be in. as a matter of fact it was the bright side of the picture which presented itself to her--the bright side only. in imagination she saw herself, as she would herself have phrased it, with "tons of money" and "heaps of friends"; the bright particular star of a radiant circle. everywhere she was greeted with outstretched hands, glad faces and pã¦ans of welcome. her frocks were the most numerous and the "sweetest," her carriages and horses were the finest, everything she had was of the very best, and she had everything the heart--her heart!--could desire. with that union of the practical with the imaginative which was not the least prominent of her characteristics she there and then began to inquire of herself what exactly in her new position she should do. to begin with, there was the delicate question of what she should call herself. should she be mrs. lamb or mrs. grahame? should she revert to her maiden patronymic, or should she start life again, with a fresh name altogether, one more in consonance with her new position? these were points she felt which would depend largely upon circumstances; she might not have so much freedom in the matter as she might desire. then there was the question of domicile. where should she reside? one thing was certain, she would not stay where she was--nothing would induce her. if she had her own way she would never come near the place again--never! as for living in his house!--in the middle of her brilliant imaginings the mere thought of such a thing seemed to make her blood run cold. on the instant her mood was changed. she stood still, amid the trees and bushes. with clenched fists, a new expression in her eyes, she looked behind her, first over one shoulder, then the other, then to the right and to the left, as if in search of something she had no desire to see. a sudden, strange reluctance seemed to clog her limbs. she listened: there was only the cawing of some distant rooks and the whisper of the breeze among the pines. with a laugh at her stupidity, breaking through the something which constrained her, she went striding on. but she had not gone far when a very genuine sound brought her to a halt. in itself a commonplace, there it was the most unusual of noises: it was the sound of footsteps, of some one tramping through the forest. in all the time she had known the place she had never heard a step except her own. could it be margaret wallace, still lingering about the haunts she probably knew well and loved? it would be disconcerting if it were. if they met--but that was hardly a woman's step. could it be the doctor? what was he doing in the forest on foot? besides, she had noticed what little pattering steps he took; this person was striding. the walker was hidden from her by a clump of bracken which rose to a height of some six or seven feet. he was moving in her direction. should she retreat? it could probably be done, and before he caught a glimpse of her. should she advance and meet him? or should she wait until he came to her? while she hesitated, the decision was taken out of her hands. the walker, threading his way among the bracken, reached a point where the stalks were shorter. all at once she found herself confronted by--gregory lamb. she stared at him with as much amazement as he stared at her, and her amazement was unbounded. possibly he was the last person with whom she would have associated the advancing footsteps; no thought of him had crossed her mind. not improbably, since she at least had cause to suspect that he might be in the neighbourhood, his surprise was even greater than hers. he stood looking at her in bewildered silence, as if unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes. when he did speak the observation which he made was characteristic. "well, i'm hanged!" her retort was equally in character. "i wish you were!" "i daresay; but i rather fancy that when it does come to hanging, where you and i are concerned, it will be a case of the lady first. where the deuce have you been all this time? and what on earth are you doing here?" "what business is that of yours? do you know you're trespassing?" "what business is it of mine? and do i know i'm trespassing? well, that's pretty good, considering you're my wife, and the way you've behaved. do you happen to know that the police are scouring the country for you, and that they're only lying low because they think you're dead, or something?" "it's a lie! you're a natural born liar; you tell nothing but lies." "don't you think you've a little gift of you're own in that direction? i do! it was bad enough to sneak off from me like that; but to steal the old girl's money was playing it too low down!" "what are you talking about? what do you mean?" "you know very well what i'm talking about! do you think that i don't know--and that everybody doesn't know--that you broke into mrs. macconichie's cupboard and stole her savings? a pretty mess i got into because you were a thief! you don't happen to know, i suppose, that they locked me up for what you'd done, and that they only let me go when i proved that that sort of thing wasn't quite in my line." "serve you right!" "what served me right?--locking me up, or letting me go?" "anything would serve you right, you brute!" "brute, am i? all right, my lady! if that's the way you're going to talk to me i'll soon let the police know whereabouts you are, and then they'll serve you right. a good taste of prison would do you good, you dirty thief!" "don't shout like that!" "then don't you call me names. i'm not a thief whatever else i am." "i'm not so sure of that. what are you doing here?" "what do you mean, what am i doing here?" "i thought you'd gone back to london long ago." "then you're wrong, because i haven't; and what's more, i'm not likely to go. i've been having a real bad time, that's what i've been having." "haven't those rich friends of yours sent that remittance you were always gassing about?" "no, they haven't." after a pause, he added, sullenly, "my old mother's allowing me a pound a week, and i'm living on that. so now you know." "honest?" "it's the gospel truth. so you'll be able to judge for yourself how likely i am to be able to get back to london on that, especially as she won't let me have a penny in advance." "a nice sort you are!--after the lies you told me about the tons of money you'd got yourself, and the other tons your friends had got!--a pound a week!" "anyhow i'm not a thief." "and i shouldn't have been a thief if i hadn't listened to your lies; and very well you know it. i've had enough of you; take yourself off!" "take myself off?" "yes, take yourself off, before i tell some one to take you." "well! you've got a face! if i do go i'll put the police on to you, and then you'll sing a different song." "you dare!" "dare!" he laughed, not pleasantly. "what is there to dare? i'd think as little of putting the police on to you as i would of putting a dog on to a cat. they'd soon show you your place, you thief!" there was an interval of silence, during which she looked at him over the intervening bracken. if looks could kill he would have dropped dead where he stood. "well, are you going to take yourself off, or am i to tell them to take you?" "who's them?--tell away! i think that when i tell them you're my wife, and that the police have been looking for you for quite a while, they--whoever they may be!--won't be so keen to interfere with me as you perhaps fancy. there's another thing: you seem to be forgetting that you're my wife. when i do go you'll go with me." "will i? we'll see." "we will see; or, if you prefer it, it shall be the other way about, i'll go with you." "will you?" "it'll have to be one or the other, you may take it from me. well, are you going to call those friends of yours? are you coming with me, or am i to go with you? which is it to be? i'm in no hurry; take your time. i'll have a pipe while you're thinking it over." he filled a pipe which he took from his pocket, while she glared at him. "i'm as strong as you; i believe i'm stronger; i believe i could kill you if i chose." "be a murderer as well as a thief, would you? i shouldn't be surprised. you mightn't find it so easy to bring off this job as you did the other; killing a man is not so simple as killing a pig, take my word for it." "listen to me, gregory lamb." "i'm listening, mrs. lamb, and it gives me real pleasure to do it." "i'll make a rich man of you if you'll take yourself off." he stayed the lighted match on its passage to his pipe. "you'll make a rich man of me? now you're singing in quite another key. how are you going to do it?" "i'm staying in the house of a man who's dying." "dying is he? then what does he want you in the house for? have you turned nurse? is that your latest caper?" "never mind what i've turned. he's a rich man." "what do you call rich?--like me?" "you fool! he owns all this"--she threw out her arms--"and ever so much besides." "owns all this? is it cuthbert grahame you're talking about?" "what do you know about cuthbert grahame?" "only that i happen to be living in one of his cottages--just over there--and a nice hole it is. but you can't expect much in the way of board and lodging for a pound a week, especially when you want some change left out of it. you're living in cuthbert grahame's house? why, then--great scot!--you must be the woman they're talking about who dropped from the skies." a change took place in the expression of his countenance which in its way was comical. "a pretty sort of she-devil you must be!" "now what are you talking about?" "i know everything. why, one of the servants up at cuthbert grahame's--martha blair--is the daughter of the people i'm lodging with. they talk of nothing else but you. you've been passing yourself off as cuthbert grahame's wife." "well, what of it?" "what of it?--that's good! first theft, then bigamy!" "you fool! he's dying." "i don't see what difference that makes; from what i understand he's been dying for years." "he's made a will in my favour." "did he tell you?" "he did. he's left me everything--every shilling he has in the world." "you're a beauty, upon my soul you are!" "and i tell you that he's dying while we are standing here. the odds are that he'll be dead by the time that i get back." "how do you know?" "then everything he has will be mine--ours." "ours?" "ours!--yours and mine!--if you can keep a still tongue in your head, and keep on pretending that you know nothing about me." he was trembling. "what about the mrs. grahame?" "stuff the mrs. grahame! after he's dead i can soon be mrs. lamb again. what's to stop me?" "shall we have to live here?" she shuddered, involuntarily. "live here?--not much! we'll clear out of this in double quick time. we'll take a house in london, and live like princes." he moistened his lips with his tongue. "you'll act on the square with me?" "of course i will, if you'll act on the square with me. look here, there's a ten-pound note for you. it's all i've got about me, but as you seem hard up you may find it useful. you go back, and unless i'm mistaken by to-morrow morning you'll hear he's dead. it won't take me long to put things ship-shape. don't you write or try to see me, unless i give you the office. i'll keep you posted in how things are going. and so soon as i can lay hands on a good lot of the ready, if you like we'll go up to town together, and we'll have a real old spree as we go." "belle, you--you're----" he stopped, as if his vocabulary failed him altogether. "yes, i know i am; i'm all that, and more besides." she laughed, and he laughed. in the laughter of neither of them was there any merriment. the sounds they emitted were merely mechanical. chapter xiv in cuthbert grahame's room on isabel's return to the house she was greeted on the threshold by martha, the martha blair whose connection with gregory lamb's present place of residence seemed destined to have a considerable bearing on isabel's future life, and, at least, to settle the debated question of what her future name and title were to be. martha's whole attitude was significant of some great happening. her hands were raised; it seemed that if possible her hair would have been raised too; her eyebrows were elevated to quite a perceptible degree. her eyes and mouth were wide open; agitation, of a not unpleasant kind, streamed from every pore of her. behind was jane, every whit as interested as her companion; but as she happened to be both the younger and the smaller her opportunities for display were less pronounced. outside stood dr. twelves' dogcart; the horse, untended and untethered, apparently content to stand still as long as any one desired. martha broke into speech before isabel had a chance to plant her foot upon the doorstep. "oh, mrs. grahame, the master! mr. cuthbert, ma'am!" "mr. cuthbert, ma'am!" echoed jane from the rear. "mr. cuthbert? well, what's the matter with mr. cuthbert? let me come in, don't stand there blocking up the way! do you hear, what's the matter with mr. cuthbert?" "he's dead, ma'am--he's dead." the words broke from both the girls in chorus. "dead? what do you mean? what nonsense are you talking? he was well enough when i went out. i've never seen him better." "he's had an accident, ma'am, and it's killed him." "accident? how could he have an accident? is dr. twelves in the house? where is he?" "the doctor is in mr. cuthbert's room. he's been there this half-hour and more." she went upstairs to mr. cuthbert's room. her pulse did not quicken; inwardly as well as outwardly she remained calm; she was a woman whose self-control was above the average; yet she was reluctant to enter that room. it was with an effort she induced herself to grip the handle; when she had done so she had to force herself to give it the necessary twist. even then she lingered on the threshold. "who's there?" came the doctor's voice, in accents of inquiry. she showed herself. "what's happened? what's the matter?" the doctor was standing at the head of the bed. he had something in either hand. instead of replying to her inquiries he looked at her from beneath his overhanging brows, as if he had been her accuser. "why do you look at me like that? do you hear me ask you what has happened? have you all lost your senses? why don't you answer?" he waved his hand towards the bed. her gaze followed his gesture, with an effort. she knew what she would see; she did not want to see it. instantly her glance returned to the doctor. "is he--is he dead?" "quite dead." "but i don't understand. when i left him he seemed brighter and better than i have ever seen him before." "he's been killed." "killed! what do you mean, he's been killed?" "come here, i'll show you." she went a little closer, unwillingly. "come this side of the bed." she did as he bade her, with leaden feet. "you see, the pillows have fallen; he's been choked." "but how can they have fallen? they were all right when i left him. has any one been in since?" "are you sure they were all right when you left him?" "perfectly sure. i tell you i have never seen him in better health or in brighter spirits." "he could not have pushed them from under him himself." "he might have done it in a fit." "perhaps; but it would have had to be a singular sort of a fit. you say you are sure they were in their usual position when you left him?" "why do you ask me that again? why do you look at me like that, and speak in such a tone? are you suggesting that i have had a hand in his death?" "i am suggesting nothing." "it seems to me that you are suggesting a good deal, which you dare not say right out. at least your manner is peculiar--but that it generally is. if you have anything to say, say it--like a man!--at once! don't hint it, like a sneak. i hate your underhanded ways." "i found this under his pillow--his one remaining pillow." "it's his will. he made it this morning." "so i am told by the two servants. i perceive it is in your writing. did he dictate to you this document?" "he did. i wrote it from his dictation, word for word as he told me. i wrote it yesterday afternoon. he read it through, and kept it under his pillow all night. he signed it this morning." "it seems odd that, after completing such a will as this, he should have immediately died--in such a manner. if he could come to life again i wonder what he'd say." "give me that will, if you please, dr. twelves." "hadn't i better hand it to his lawyer for safe keeping?" "his lawyer? his lawyer is now my lawyer; i will give all necessary instructions. the will will be in safe keeping with me. give it me at once." he gave it her. "what have you in your other hand? some more property of mine?" "it is the miniature of the woman he loved best in the world. don't you think it might go with him, in his coffin, to the grave?" "give it me. i will give all necessary instructions, as i have already told you. your interference is not desired, nor will it be tolerated. to be quite frank with you, dr. twelves--it is always my desire to be frank and open--i have endured too much from you already; i will endure nothing more. the less i see, or hear, of you in the future the better i shall be pleased, since you are, in all respects, the most objectionable person i ever met. don't you venture to intrude yourself again; if medical attendance is required it will be obtained elsewhere. i am now the mistress of this house--since there is no master, its mistress in the most literal sense. everything is mine--everything. be so good as to bear that in mind." he looked at her, and smiled. "i am not likely to forget that--ever." she did not know which she liked least--his tone, his look, or his smile. book ii the widow chapter xv "the gordian knot" mr. talfourd twiddled the bunch of la france roses between his fingers with a smile which was scarcely one of satisfaction. they were very fine roses--in just that stage of bursting bud in which the la france is seen at its best. in london la france roses cost money, even when they are poor examples of their kind; those were good enough for exhibition. there were a great many of them, and they were tied about with a beautiful green ribbon, in charming contrast with the blooms. they had probably cost some one at least half a sovereign. they were for him; they had cost him nothing; yet they did not seem to afford him pleasure. the fact was he was puzzled. he did not quite know what to make of the situation; what he did understand he did not like. "this gets beyond a jest," he told himself. "because i happened to mention, accidentally, that la france roses were my favourite flowers, i didn't expect to find a bouquet of them on my table every morning awaiting my arrival. either it means something or it doesn't; either way i don't like it. i'm getting three hundred pounds a year in cash for doing i don't quite know what, and apparently half as much again in flowers. it won't do--it will not do." he gave the unoffending roses an impatient twirl. "the point of the joke is that when i said la france roses were my favourite flowers i was speaking a little beside the mark. i don't know that i have a favourite flower. they're meg's--i was thinking of her at the time, as i generally am. i don't want mrs. lamb to think that she is giving me flowers, when she is really giving them to meg, to whom i invariably pass them on. i don't know that she would really relish the notion of my giving her flowers to some one else. confound her impudence!" he threw the roses from him on to the table with a show of roughness which they, at any rate, had done nothing to deserve. as if conscious that his temper was being vented in the wrong quarter, picking them up again he regarded them with looks of whimsical self-reproach. while he was still eyeing them the door was opened, and a masculine voice inquired from without-"may i come in?" without waiting for a reply the inquirer entered. it was mr. gregory lamb. a much more resplendent gregory lamb than the one whose acquaintance we have previously made. the gregory lamb we met in the wood was purely an affair of make-believe--not of very plausible make-believe. his attire then looked as if it wished you to think it had cost a great deal of money--but the trained eye knew better. there could be no doubt that everything about this gregory lamb was the most expensive of its kind--only the trained eye knew really how expensive. the impression he conveyed was that he had got as much on him in the way of money as he conveniently could--probably that impression was not far wrong. yet the result was scarcely satisfactory. especially was this shown to be the case when he brought himself into comparison with the man who was already in the room. both were young; both bore themselves well; both were good-looking; yet there could not be a moment's doubt as to which was the pleasanter to look upon. it was not only that one was obviously a gentleman, and the other just as obviously was not; nor was it that one looked a clever, an intellectual, man, and the other emphatically did not; still less was it an affair of costume, since gregory lamb was overdressed and harry talfourd's attire was simply plain and neat. it was something subtler than any of these things which made the one attractive and the other the reverse. gregory lamb had never made a friend worth having in all his life--and never would; talfourd made friends wherever he went. he could not himself have said why; it was certainly not because he tried. to begin with, mr. lamb's manner was unfortunate. his intention was to be on terms of hail-fellow-well-met with every one; to be no respecter of persons; to be "my dear chap" with tom, dick and harry. as a matter of fact, there was an air of patronage about everything he said and did which was perhaps the more insufferable because unconscious. he came into the room with what he meant to be an air of jaunty geniality. "all alone? i thought you would be. it's not your time for receiving visitors, is it? just come; i heard you knock; must have time to breathe before you let them in--eh? those are fine roses." "they are not bad ones." "bad ones!--i should think they weren't. they oughtn't to be; i happen to know what my wife paid for them." he laughed, as if he sneered. "sends you them every morning, doesn't she? standing order, i hear. talfourd, you're in luck." mr. talfourd's manner was as cold as the other's was warm. "mrs. lamb is very kind--kinder than i deserve." "perhaps she knows what you deserve better than you do--trust her, she's no simpleton. when she takes a fancy she has her reasons. i say, old man, i want you to do me a favour." "i shall be happy to do you a service if i can." "there's no doubt about the can--not the least in the world--you'll find that it's as easy as winking. i want you to get my wife to let me go for a little run to monte carlo." "i beg your pardon?--i don't understand." "it's this way. i'll be frank with you, talfourd. i look upon you as a friend, my boy. i can't go without cash; i'm stony-broke; my wife holds the money-bags. you tell her--you know how!"--mr. lamb winked--"that you think the run would do me good, and tell her to give me a thousand to do it with, and--i'll do as much for you one day, upon my soul i will." mr. talfourd stared at the speaker in undisguised amazement. "you credit me with powers of persuasion which are altogether beyond any i possess." "oh no, i don't"--mr. lamb laughed again--"i know better than that! you tell her what i've asked you to tell her, and i bet you anything i cross by to-night's boat, with notes for a thousand in my pocket. she'd send me to the north pole at a hint from you." there was scarcely such a friendly expression on mr. talfourd's face as on the other's. "are you not forgetting that mrs. lamb is my employer? that i am merely her servant since i receive her wages?" "her servant?"--the laugh again--"i hope she doesn't overwork you. come, talfourd, be the good sort you are, help a lame dog over a stile. i'm spoiling for a flutter, and i'm dead sure that the only chance i have of getting it is by means of a helping word from you." "you must excuse me, mr. lamb. i am engaged to do clerical work for mrs. lamb. i should not presume to speak to her on the subject you have mentioned." "presume?--what ho! now talfourd, you're no kid any more than i am. you know as well as i do that you can twist my wife round your finger. all i want you to do is to give her a twist for my particular benefit." "i can give you no answer but the one i have already given." "oh yes, you can--and you will. i'll look in for it to-morrow morning--by that time you'll have thought it over. you're not so crusty as you make yourself out to be. that'll be four-and-twenty hours clean thrown away; and when you're spoiling for a burst like i am, that's a deuce of time. but i shall have every confidence in your kind offices when you've had a chance to see just what i'm driving at." when mr. lamb had retired mr. talfourd seemed unhappy. "every time that man talks to me i want to kick him. i wonder if he affects other people in the same way--the unmentionable animal! if, as the husband of his wife, he thinks himself entitled to talk to me like that, it's time for me to think things over. i must know where i am moving. three hundred pounds are three hundred pounds--i know that as well as any one--but they may be earned too dearly. it is one thing to be mrs. lamb's secretary, quite another to be----" he did not finish the sentence even mentally. sitting down to the table he drew towards him the little heap of correspondence which was supposed to justify his secretarial existence. there were about a dozen envelopes, mostly containing circulars of different kinds. "i believe that the letters are examined, and any of the slightest importance retained, before they are sent to me. the idea of my receiving three hundred pounds a year for opening circulars is too thin." while he sat with both elbows on the table, staring ruefully in front of him, the door opened again, and mrs. lamb came in. "at work? i hope i'm not disturbing you." she had changed more than her husband, whether for the better or for the worse was not easy to determine. so far as appearance went she had become a much better imitation of a lady. society, or what with her passed as society, had smoothed away some of the angles. she had the air of a woman who had to do with many persons of different sorts, and had learned to adapt herself to them all. one felt that she was probably a popular character on the stage on which she had chosen to perform--successful, at least within certain limits. one did not wonder that it was so, if only because, in her own way, she was good to look at. that way, however, did not happen to be mr. talfourd's--which was unfortunate. indeed, she inspired him with a curious feeling. he was afraid of her. it seemed absurd, but he was. for one thing, he realised that she was not only a clever, an unusually clever woman, but that her cleverness lay in a direction in which he was incompetent, and would perhaps prefer to be. again, he felt that she read him like an open book, knew him to his finger-tips, while she was beyond his comprehension--where, again, he would possibly prefer her to remain. he had an uncomfortable suspicion that she saw in him something which was not savoury; that her keenest glances were continually directed on his weakest points; that it would please her to find him an undesirable creature. he had no overt cause to suppose this was so. so far she had been to him nothing but a friend--a friend in need. but on such a point even the vaguest shadow of a doubt was disquieting. he rose as she came in. "it is not possible for you to disturb me--i wish it were." "you wish it were? why?" "because in that case i should be really doing some genuine work--which i never am. my post is too much of a sinecure; my conscience will not allow me to remain your secretary much longer if there continues to be nothing to do." "you want something to do? you shall have it--very soon--at least, i think so. i have been reading your play." "my play?" he had noticed that she was carrying in her hand what looked like some typewritten mss., in brown-paper covers. now, with a start, he recognised them as his own. "'the gordian knot.' mr. winton gave it me to read." "winton! what right----" he was about to ask what right winton had to do anything of the kind, but perceiving that that would scarcely be a civil inquiry, he stopped, not, however, before she understood what had been on the tip of his tongue. "mr. winton had every right to give it me to read, as, i think, you will yourself admit when i explain. i have, of course, known for a long time that mr. winton would like to commence management on his own account. the other afternoon he told me that he had a play which he would produce at once if he could only find some one who would furnish at any rate part of the necessary capital. i asked by whom it was. he said, 'it's by a man named talfourd--harry talfourd'. you may easily believe that that did arouse my interest." she said this in a tone which seemed to make him go all over pins and needles; it was almost as if she had caressed him. "i mentioned to mr. winton that, given certain conditions, it was possible that i might be tempted to enter into such a speculation. he offered to send me the ms. it reached me yesterday. i read it last night and again this morning--not once, but three or four times. mr. talfourd, it's first-rate." "it's very good of you to say so." "it's not good of me. it's a simple statement of a simple fact. if it were rubbish i should tell you so plainly--if you were the dearest friend i have in the world. on such matters i have no hesitation; and i think you will confess that this is a matter on which i do know something. your play's first-rate. if we can agree about terms it shall have an immediate production." "i hardly know what to say to you." he did not. on that play he had founded more hopes than he would have cared to mention to that friendly lady. its success would mean so much to him, and to the woman he loved. it had gone the usual round of the untried dramatist's play. hope deferred again and again had made his heart sick. he had begun almost to despair that it would ever see the light. yet now that he was told that if there was only an agreement about terms--as if there was any likelihood of a disagreement!--it should have an immediate production, he was not at all sure that his feelings were what, under the circumstances, he had supposed they would have been. it was perfectly true, he did not know what to say to her. she was glib enough. "say?--say nothing. let's talk business, and stick to that. i mean to. you understand that this is purely a business proposition which i am about to make to you, and absolutely nothing else. if i go into this matter it will be on strictly commercial grounds, and on those only." "i wish i were sure of it." "it's not nice of you to doubt my word, mr. talfourd; before i have finished you will be sorry for having done so. before entering into negotiations for the production of your play, do you know what would be one of the preliminary conditions i should be disposed to make?" "i have not a notion." "that i should be your leading lady." "mrs. lamb!" "mr. talfourd! i presume you are aware that i can act?" "i know that you have made some successful appearances in--in amateur theatricals." "mr. winton will inform you that those amateur theatricals were not greatly below the standard of any professional representations you have seen. apart from that--this is strictly between ourselves--i may mention that once upon a time i was professionally connected with the stage." she did not think it necessary to mention with what branch of it. "your heroine, lady glover----" "lady glover is hardly my heroine." "she is the leading feminine character--the pivotal character; the one about whom the whole thing turns. to my mind the one creature of real flesh and blood." "i had hoped that agnes eliot was a character of some importance." "agnes eliot?--pooh!--namby-pamby, bread-and-butter miss! she's not bad in her way, and, i suppose, in a pit-and-gallery sense, she's the heroine--and not an ineffective one either; but i assure you i have not the slightest wish to play agnes eliot. susan stone, who becomes lady glover, is a woman who, in the face of all obstacles, achieves success; continually confronted by difficulties, she treats them as so many gordian knots; she cuts them and walks straight on. quite indifferent as to the means she employs, she always gets there. considering the present craze among actresses for what they are pleased to call sympathetic parts, i think you will agree that that is not a character which would appeal to every one." "certainly. winton is of opinion that in casting the play the chief difficulty would be to find an adequate representative. as you say, many actresses don't like to act wicked women." "i don't know about an adequate representative, but i'm quite willing to act lady glover, and, although i say it myself, i think you'll find that i shall be equal to the occasion. indeed, i am ready to make a sporting bet with you that, in my hands, lady glover will take the town by storm. there's a popular fallacy that people don't like wicked women--it is a fallacy. when they're of the right brand, they love 'em--especially men. give me a chance, and i'll prove it. i'll guarantee that seventy-five per cent, of masculine playgoers shall fall in love with lady glover--if i play her. what do you say?" "i don't understand why you should wish to play her." "how's that?" "the answer seems so obvious. you--a lady of position, of fortune, with troops of friends!" "change, mr. talfourd, is the salt of life. i'm very fond of salt. before i read your play i had no more idea of doing anything of the kind than i had of flying to the moon. but lady glover went straight to my heart. i saw at once what magnificent fun it would be to give to the stage a really adequate representation of the naughty feminine. i knew i could do it--and i can. so why shouldn't i?" "you understand that mr. winton has the refusal of the play, and that i should first have to consult him." "of course i understand that winton has the refusal of the play, and of course i understand that you will have to consult him. i'm not afraid of winton. he shall be the leading man, and cast the other parts as he pleases. i'll be lady glover, and find the money. i'll be an ideal lady glover. i believe in your heart you know it. winton and i between us will make of the play a monstrous success, and so your fortune will be made, and a few shillings added to my own. i should dearly like to make your fortune, if only for one reason--because you don't like me." "mrs. lamb!" "which is the more odd, because men generally do. do you remember our first meeting?" "i'm never likely to forget it." "you don't say that in a tone which suggests an unsophisticated compliment. i had read that thing of yours in the _cornhill_. frank staines said that he had the honour of your acquaintance; that you were clever on quite unusual lines--as he put it, 'a cut above the market'--and that in consequence you'd been having a pretty rough time. you recollect that it was at an early stage of our acquaintance that i offered you the post of private secretary." "i wonder if, when you did so, you knew that i'd nearly reached my last shilling?" "i'd an inkling. if you hadn't you'd have said no." this was so literally the truth that he was silent. she understood him so much better than he did her. he had an irritating feeling that she was treating him as if he were some plastic material, which she was gradually fashioning into the shape she desired. "i've done you nothing else than good turns----" "i know it, quite well." "and yet, actually, i believe, on that account, you seem to dislike me more and more." "i do assure you, mrs. lamb, that you are wrong. i do hope i'm not the blackguard you seem to imagine." "i am not wrong, mr. talfourd--in a matter of that sort i seldom am. and you're not a blackguard; you're altogether the other way. it's a case of dr. fell--the reason why you don't like me you cannot tell. it's not your fault at all--it's sort of congenital. don't worry! but that being so, since i have already done you one or two good turns, it would be delightful to be able to do you a crowning good turn--to make your fortune; to make you the most successful man of the day--you, the only man i ever met who really did, and does, dislike me. "mrs. lamb, i--i can't tell you how you make me feel." "i wouldn't try." he did not. she looked at him and smiled, while he stood before her, with flushed cheeks and downcast eyes, like some shamefaced schoolboy. chapter xvi margaret is puzzled miss dorothy johnson, balancing herself on the edge of the table, was playing catch-ball with a pair of gloves. "margaret wallace, you're one of the sillies!" "evidently you are not the only person who is of that opinion." "that's right--put the worst construction on everything i say, and think yourself smart." "it's just as well that some one should think so. dollie, sometimes i'm very near to the conviction that it's no good--that nothing's any good, and, especially, that i'm no good; that i might as well own myself beaten right away." "well, you are beaten this time, that's sure. what ought to be just as sure is that you don't mean to be beaten every time--there's the whole philosophy of life for you in a nutshell." "but suppose i'm dragging harry down? i shouldn't be surprised if it's all through me that his mss. keep on being returned. i said to him, 'let me make drawings to illustrate your stories--i'd love to'. and i do love to! 'then we'll send the stories and the drawings to the editors together.' but they nearly all come back. i've a horrid feeling that it's my drawings which ruin them." "stuff! it's harry's work that's no good." "no good? how dare you! you've said yourself over and over again that it's splendid." "that's what's against it--it's splendid." miss johnson, stretching her right arm to its extreme length, dangled her gloves between the tips of her fingers. "margaret wallace, literature means to me at least three pounds a week, it may be four, if possible, five. i can live on three, be comfortable on four, a swell on five. the problem being thus stated in all its beautiful simplicity, it only remains for me to discover the quickest and easiest solution. i have learned, from experience, that the _home muddler_ is willing to give me half a guinea for a column of drivel, and the _hearthstone smasher_ fifteen shillings for another. the _family flutterer_ prints eight or ten thousand words of an endless serial at five shillings a thousand--one of these days i mean to strike for seven-and-six. but in the meantime there you are--the pursuit of literature has brought me bread and cheese. why doesn't your harry tread the same path?" "the idea!" "of course!--the idea!--and that's where he gets left. it's my experience that in literature----" "literature!" "i said literature. i was observing, when you interrupted, that it is my experience that in literature"--miss johnson paused, miss wallace was contemptuously silent--"men always get paid at least twice as much as the women. i don't know why; it seems to be one of the rules of the game. it therefore follows that if your harry did as i do he would earn six, eight, ten pounds a week, which, with management, would keep two--not to speak of your drawings, which ought to bring in something. i believe the _family flutterer_ pays as much as seven-and-six for a full page." "my dear dollie, you know as well as i do that we both of us would rather starve." "sweet meg, i'm not saying you're right or wrong, only, if you have resolved to eschew the easily earned loaves and fishes, don't revile because, having set out on the track of the rarer creatures, you discover--what every one knows, and you know!--that they are difficult to find. my private opinion is that harry will find them one day--if he keeps on long enough--though i don't know when." "you're a comforting sort of person." "i'm a practical sort of person, which is better. cheer up, meg! he'll get there--and perhaps you will too--though of course his stories are better than your drawings." "i don't need you to tell me that." miss johnson, descending from the table, put her arm round the girl who was seated on the other side. "you poor darling! i'm a perfect pig! i say, meg, are you hard up?" "i always am." "beyond the ordinary, i mean?" "if you mean, can you lend me, or give me, any money, you can't--thank you very much. i'm going to hoe my own furrow, right to the end." "how about harry? he gets some of his stuff accepted; then there's the three hundred pounds a year certain which he gets for being that party's secretary. i call that practicality, if you like! he ought to be getting on first-rate." "he doesn't seem to think so, anyhow. as for what you call the three hundred pounds a year certain, i doubt if anything could be more uncertain, the engagement may terminate any day. i believe that harry is really more worried than i am, and--and that's saying a good deal." "then the marriage is not coming off just yet?" "marriage!--and you call yourself a practical person!--how can you be so absurd?" "i am not sure that i am absurd. if i ever loved a man--which i am never likely to do, men are such beings!--really loved him, and knew that he loved me, i shouldn't hesitate to marry him on a pound a week. marriage, properly understood, is a spur; it's not, necessarily, anything like the clog romantic people like you seem to think it is." when miss johnson had gone margaret wallace went and stood before a photograph which hung over the mantelpiece--the photograph of a man. "i think, cuthbert grahame, it's possible that you'll shortly be revenged; if you knew just how things are i fancy you'd be of opinion that you're revenged already. if you'd been even a shadowy semblance of the father you once professed to be, i--i shouldn't be wondering where i'm to get my dinner from." she examined the physiognomy of the man in front of her as if, instead of being the most familiar of faces, she saw it now for the first time. going back to her seat at the table, she was examining the drawings which had accompanied the returned ms., as if desirous of learning what improvement she could make in them, when there came a tap at the door. "come in." mr. talfourd entered. in a moment she was in his arms. "harry!" "meg!--more roses for you." he handed her the la france roses which had been presented to him by mrs. lamb. "what are you doing?" she was eyeing the roses, without any great show of enthusiasm, which was possibly lacking because she knew from whom they had originally come. "harry, i've more bad news for you--i never seem to have anything else. the story's back from the _searchlight_." "what does it matter?" "i don't like to hear you talk like that, because, you see, we both know that it matters, dear. harry, do you think that it may have been returned because my drawings aren't up to the mark--honestly?" "honestly, i am certain it has not. your drawings are at least as good as my story. i have never met any one who can illustrate me as well as you do." "you mean that? if i weren't margaret wallace would you say so still?" "i should. i should congratulate myself on having met some one who could illustrate me as i like to be illustrated. you misunderstood me just now. i said what does it matter, because it doesn't matter, in view of something of much greater importance which i have to say to you." "harry! what is it?" "i hardly know how to begin, it's such a queer position. it's this--in a way, my play's accepted." "'the gordian knot'?--by mr. winton?" "no, not by winton, by mrs. lamb." "mrs. lamb?--harry!" he told her how the play had come into mrs. lamb's hands, and how that lady had expressed her willingness to give it immediate production, on the understanding that she was to create lady glover. "but i didn't know she could act. why should she want to anyhow?--she a rich woman!--especially such a part! lady glover's a horrible creature! i suppose you think she'd make a mess of it--and of course she would. she must be a very conceited person." "sweetheart, shall i tell you, quite frankly, what i really think?" "you hadn't better tell me anything else." "then i'll make you my father confessor. i've a strong feeling, amounting to a positive conviction, that she'd make a magnificent lady glover. that's one reason why i hesitate." "now i don't understand. if she makes a success of the part, what else do you want?" "i'll endeavour to explain. for one thing, i think it possible that she'll make it the part of the play, and so put winton in the shade entirely. in the theatre he proposes to manage i'm certain he's no intention to be overshadowed by any one. not that, in such a matter, i'm likely to be too sensitive about his feelings--but there it is. what, from my point of view, would be more serious, is that it is extremely probable that, by her rendition of lady glover, she'll warp the play out of what i intended to be its setting. as she was talking just now it dawned upon me that, in her hands, the play might become transformed--something altogether different to what i meant it to be." "but if it's a success?" "meg, i find it difficult to put into words just what's in my mind. of course if it's successful it will mean----" "it will mean everything." "it will mean a good deal; but it will mean everything i'd rather it didn't mean if the success is owing to her." "but it will be your play. in one sense its success will always be dependent upon others. really, harry, i don't follow you. what is your objection to mrs. lamb? she's never done you any harm." "no, she hasn't done me any harm--as yet." "as yet! do you think she means to? considering that she proposes to produce your play, and bids fair to make a great success of it, it doesn't look as if she did." "meg--you'll laugh at me--i'm afraid of her." "afraid of her?--of mrs. lamb!--harry!" "i've never been comfortable in her presence since the first moment i've met her. when she's there i have the sort of feeling which i imagine a nervous person might have in the neighbourhood of a dangerous lunatic. i don't know when or how she will break out, but i feel that sometime, somehow, she will, and that then i shall have to struggle with her for my life." "harry! are you in earnest?" he laughed oddly. "meg, upon my word, i can't tell you. she hypnotises me, that woman--she hypnotises me. her influence is on me even after i have left her." "she must be a curious person. i should like to meet her." "meet her?" he shuddered, involuntarily. "rather than that you should meet her i'd---if i can prevent it you shall not meet her." "why not? i know plenty of people who have met her, and who seem to think her a distinctly agreeable person--hospitable, good company, amusing, kindhearted, generous to a degree. tell me, harry, has she ever behaved to you in any way as she ought not to have done?" "she has not, in one jot or tittle." "to your knowledge has she ever done, or even said, anything wrong?" "no. still, i would rather she did not produce my play, especially if she is to act lady glover." "will she produce it if she doesn't?" "i doubt it." "there is something at the back of your mind which you're keeping to yourself. when i think of all that the success of 'the gordian knot' would mean to us, of how you've looked forward to its production, of how we've talked and talked of it, your present attitude is incomprehensible. it doesn't follow that because mrs. lamb produces your play--and even acts in it!--that you need therefore make of her a bosom friend if you'd rather not. i don't suppose it's only generosity which impels her; i daresay she has an axe of her own to grind." "you may be sure of it." "then so have you. i don't see how it matters if it's a, b, or c who grinds it, so long as it's ground--properly ground; and you seem sure that it will be that." "i have little doubt of it." "then tell me, harry, what is the real, downright reason why you don't wish mrs. lamb to produce your play, and act in it?" "because, meg, i'm afraid of her." "afraid of her!--of a woman!--who you yourself admit has never done you anything but good! harry, you're beyond my comprehension." before he could answer there was a knock at the door. a servant entered with a card on a tray. "a gentleman wishes to see you, miss." she looked at the card. "'david twelves, m.d., edin.'. it can't be dr. twelves of pitmuir?" a voice came from the door. "it's that same man." chapter xvii an unexpected visitor in appearance the doctor had altered but little since we saw him last. he was the same little wizened old man, with the slight stoop, and the sunken eyes which looked out so keenly from under the thick, overhanging thatch of his shaggy eyebrows. when she heard his voice, and saw him, margaret, running to him--before harry, before the servant--put her arms about his neck (she could easily do it, since he was the shorter), and, after looking at him fixedly, as if to make sure that he was still the same man, kissed him on the lips. "dr. twelves, to think of your coming to see me after all these years!" "and whose fault is it that i haven't come before? whose fault i'd like to know?" "it certainly isn't mine." "not yours? when i hadn't a notion where to look for you, and you took care that i hadn't? it's only by the grace of god i've chanced upon you now. i was looking in a bit of a magazine, at an illustration which seemed to me to be pretty fair, when i saw your name in the corner--margaret wallace--in your own handwriting. i can tell you i jumped--there, in the railway carriage--so that i daresay my fellow-passengers thought that i'd a sudden gouty twinge or, maybe, rheumatism, for none can say that i look like a gouty subject. i went straight to the office where the magazine is published, and i asked them to tell me where you might be found. i believe they thought i'd designs upon your life, or, at least, upon your purse. i had to tell them such a yarn before they'd tell me. then i took care to follow the girl up the stairs, so that, if you meant to deny yourself, you shouldn't have a chance." "deny myself?--to you?--doctor! what a notion!--as if i should!" by now the servant had retired; miss wallace, who still retained a hand upon her visitor's shoulder, had brought him into the room. "harry, this is dr. twelves, of whom you have so often heard me speak. doctor, this is mr. talfourd, whose wife i hope one day to be." "i trust, young gentleman, that your deserts are equal to your good fortune, and that you're properly conscious how great that is. i've known this lassie since the time she seemed all hair and legs, for those were the parts of her you noticed most, and there hasn't been a day on which i haven't wanted her to be my wife." "now, doctor, that's contrary to the fact; you know you told me more than once that providence had marked you out to be a bachelor." "and wasn't that self-evident, since you wouldn't have me? now, margaret wallace, what have you been doing?" "doing? i was talking to harry when you came in." "i'll be bound that it's plenty of talking to harry that you do, and will do--particularly later on, when you're mrs. harry." "doctor!" "what i mean was, have you made your fortune? or are you drawing pictures for your daily bread?" she looked at mr. talfourd quizzically. "i have one eye upon my daily bread." "and it isn't too much of it you see, by the looks of you. you're peaked, and you're thin." "oh, doctor! i'm sure i'm not." "and i'm sure you are, and by virtue of my profession i ought to know. it's a pretty market to which you've brought your pigs. you might be one of the richest women in england, instead of being half-starved--with white cheeks and tired eyes." "doctor, how dare you say such things! it's not true! you've not improved!" "i'm thinking you've not improved either. you've a stubborn heart. why, all this time, haven't you let some of us know something about you?--if it was only where a line might reach you." "you know very well why, and i did go to see mr. grahame." "you went to see cuthbert grahame? when?" she mentioned the date. "girl, you're dreaming. it was the day after that he died." "the day after that he died? i knew he was dead. i heard of it long afterwards by a side wind; but i have never heard any particulars. you none of you told me anything." "how were we to, when you'd hidden yourself from us in this great city?" "of what did he die?" "if you ask what was on the certificate i can tell you; but if you want to know how death came to him you must inquire of his wife." "his wife?" "when he died he was a married man, according to the law of scotland." "dr. twelves, are you jesting?" "i'm not. on the day he died he made a will leaving her all that he had in the world--and she had it." "who was she?" "beyond saying that she was no better than she ought to be, i can tell you nothing." "was she some one from the neighbourhood?" "she was not; she was from england. she dropped from the clouds. i should say--if i may be allowed to do so in this company--on her road to hell. what passed between you and cuthbert grahame when you saw him on that day before he died?" "i didn't see him. nannie wouldn't let me." "nannie wouldn't let you?" "she would not. she said that mr. grahame had forbidden her to admit me into the house." "she's never spoken a word to me about it. what's been the matter with the woman? but there's something ails your story. that day, and for many days afterwards, she was lying in bed with a broken leg. was it from her bedroom that she shouted out to you?" "from her bedroom?--nothing of the kind. she told me through the front door that mr. grahame had forbidden her to let me in. when i said that i would come in, and began to break the window to show that i was in earnest, she went to the window above, and poured two buckets of boiling water over me." "margaret wallace! it's dreaming you must have been." "it was a curious kind of dream. the water scalded my neck, and left a scar which was visible for weeks--wasn't it?" she turned to mr. talfourd, as if for corroboration. "it was. when i saw it i was disposed to go straight off to scotland, and give the old harridan a taste of my quality." "it's as queer a story as any i've heard. seeing that nannie was as if she had been glued to her bed, how could she walk about the house as you say, and pour buckets of boiling water on to you through a window?" "i only know that she did." "did you see her?" she considered a moment. "no, i didn't. she took care not to show herself." "she took care not to show herself?" "she hadn't the courage to let me see her face, but she let me hear her voice, and plenty of it. it was not necessary for me to see her when i heard her. i've been acquainted with nannie foreshaw's voice for too many years to be likely to mistake it for any one else's." "you're sure? i doubt----" the doctor seemed to be considering in his turn. "i can't put the pieces of the puzzle together so that they just fit, but i've a notion that i'm on the way. margaret wallace, i've a suspicion that i've been a greater fool even than i thought. after the chances i've had to get wisdom, to get understanding, that's not a nice feeling to have. between us--you've had a hand!--we've muddled things to a marvel. i'll communicate with nannie with reference to that little conversation you say you had with her; when i've heard from her i'll talk to you again." he turned to mr. talfourd. "and you, sir, do you make drawings?" "no; i write stories." the doctor looked him up and down as if he were a specimen of a species which was new to him. "stories? oh! and is that a man's work? i come of a good old scottish stock. my forebears have always held that a man should do a man's work. is writing stories that?" "it isn't easy, if that's what you mean." "not easy? i should have thought you would have found it as easy as lying. i've written them myself; i didn't find it hard. it's just a waste of time. however, i'm not judging you. is that all you do, write stories?" "just at present i'm doing something else as well. i'm acting as private secretary to a lady." "private secretary to a lady? you've your own notions of what's a man's work, mr. talfourd." harry flushed; margaret laughed. "and you country scotchmen have your own ideas of what you're entitled to say." "you're scotch yourself, my lassie, on the best side of you; don't gird at your own birth. i ask your pardon, mr. talfourd, if i've said anything i ought not to say; but i've known this lassie all her days. she's been to me as the apple of my eye, and--she tells me that you're to be her husband. would it be going too far, mr. talfourd, if i were to ask you what's the name of the lady to whom you're acting as private secretary?" "mrs. lamb--mrs. gregory lamb." "mrs. gregory lamb? that's odd." "how is it odd? i hope there's nothing improper about the name." "it's not that it's improper; it's that i once met a gregory lamb. what sort's your gregory lamb?" "he's about my own age, perhaps a little older; not ill-looking; not, i should imagine, a bad fellow in his way." "is he a poor man?" "i believe his wife is very rich." "his wife? of course, there's the wife--and she's very rich. the rich woman who married the gregory lamb i know would be a very foolish female." "mrs. lamb is certainly not that." "then her gregory's not mine, though it's an unusual conjunction of names. i'm thinking that none but a fool of a woman would ever have married him." chapter xviii cronies that evening dr. twelves dined with a fellow scot, j. andrew mctavish, of mctavish & brown. mr. mctavish lived in mecklenberg square. although a bachelor he liked plenty of house room, and in mecklenberg square he had it. his house was perhaps the largest in the square, and certainly not the least comfortable. comfort was to mr. mctavish a sort of fetish: excepting money he set it above everything. he looked as if he did. of medium height, he was of more than average size, his waist measurement was approaching a significant figure; his neck loved a generous collar, his chin overlapped; he had slight side whiskers, dark gray in hue, and the top of his head was so completely bald that one wondered if it could ever have been anything else. he and his guest presented an amazing contrast: three or four replicas of dr. twelves could have been contained in mr. mctavish. they dined _tãªte-ã -tãªte_ at a small round table which stood in the centre of a big room. mr. mctavish liked big rooms; he was never comfortable in a small one. during the meal the conversation was of a desultory character, principally hovering around pitmuir, where mr. mctavish had lived till he came to london. questions were asked and answered touching every soul in the parish mr. mctavish could think of, and his memory was extensive. there was hardly a man, woman or child about pitmuir whose name had not been mentioned before dinner was finished. if the inquiries were slightly acid, so were the replies. it seemed as if these two gentlemen had made it a point of honour to say nothing nice of any one. according to them the folk about pitmuir were a very human lot--at least they had most of humanity's failings. after dinner they retired to the study, another fine apartment. there they had a cup of coffee, a liqueur, and a cigar apiece. the doctor seemed lost in the huge chair which he had been invited to fill. his host regarded him with twinkling eyes. "have you had a good dinner, david?" "you feed yourself too well; you're a hundred years behind the age." "how do you show it?" "our great-grandfathers pampered their bellies. we know better; we have learnt that it is the part of wisdom to starve them. you're still where our grandsires were." "and where are you?" "i'm on the high road to as fine an attack of indigestion as a man need have, and live." "i can give you the name of one of the greatest authorities on indigestion." "i dare swear you can give me the names of one or two. i shouldn't be surprised if that sucking-pig proves to be the death of me, beyond the skill of all your authorities." "it was cooked to a turn." "i ought to know how it was cooked, considering the way that i behaved to it. it's wicked to set such meat before a man. and now, i've something which i wish to say to you." "you've said one or two things already--what's the other?" the doctor, taking the cigar out of his mouth, regarded the ash on the tip. "you remember wallace's daughter?" "cuthbert grahame's girl?" the doctor nodded. "i've seen her this afternoon." "no? i wondered what had become of her, more than once. i've seen and heard nothing of her since he turned her out." "he didn't turn her out, she turned herself out. i had the story from his own lips." "so had i. to all intents and purposes he turned her out, however he may have put it to himself or to you." "he asked her to marry him, and she wouldn't." "he asked her not once or twice, but again and again, until he made it plain that his house was no place for her unless she meant to be his wife. so, as she didn't, there was nothing for her but to go." "it was a fool business." "on both sides. why he wanted to marry her i don't know. i never do know why a man wants to marry. i'd sooner have a buzz saw in every room in the house than a wife in one. why she wouldn't marry him, i know still less." "there was the difference in their years. then he was already threatening to be what he afterwards became--physically, i mean." "well, what of it? if a girl in her position has to marry, i should say that there are two things which she ought to look for first of all--money, and a sick husband; if possible, one who is already sick unto death. in grahame she'd have had both." there was silence, as if both parties were giving to mr. mctavish's words the consideration due to a profound aphorism. it was the doctor who spoke next. "he always believed that she would come back again, saying yes." "i'd no patience with the man, he was all kinds of a fool. if he wanted her to be his wife, he didn't go the right way to get her. when she said no, instead of thanking god for his undeserved escape, he stormed and raved, fretted and fumed, until he became only fit to be exhibited in a booth at a fair." "when he heard that she was in love with some one else, it was that that was the death of him." "a good thing too. it'd have been a good thing if it had been the death of both of them. i've no bowels for such tomfoolery. where is she? what's she doing? is she married to the other fool? if she is, don't they both wish that they were dead?" "you've a sharp tongue, andrew--if your wits were like it! not all married folks wish that they were dead; there's just as much desire to live among the married as among the single--maybe more. to hear you talk one would suppose that one had only to remain single to be happy. you and i know better than that." "speak for yourself, david, speak for yourself--i'm happy enough." "then your looks belie you." "what's the matter with my looks, you old croaker?" "i'm a doctor of medicine, andrew mctavish; i've learned to turn the smoothest side to a patient; so you must excuse me if to your inquiry i return no answer." "after the dinner i've given him!" "it's the ill-assorted food you have caused me to cram down my throat that i'm beginning to fancy has given me a touch of the spleen." "something has. the next time you dine in this house it will be off porridge." "we'll leave the next time till it comes. to return to margaret wallace. she's not married yet, and, so far as i can judge, she's not likely to be. it's want of pence, both with him and with her. if she had some of cuthbert grahame's money, as she ought to have, it'd make all the difference." "it's in part your fault that she hasn't." "i'm not denying it, and i'm not forgetting it. if i've been guilty of the unforgivable sin, it was when i brought that woman to cuthbert grahame's bedside. i sometimes think that i'll see it chalked up against me in letters of fire when i'm brought up before the throne." "stuff!" "maybe--to you. you're devoid of decent feeling, andrew mctavish; to you all's stuff. what's become of the woman?" "what woman?" "she who calls herself mrs. grahame?" "she calls herself mrs. grahame no longer." "how's that?" "she's married again." "the creature! the poor fool she's married! what is his name?" "gregory lamb." dr. twelves rose from his chair as if impelled by a spring. opening his mouth in apparent forgetfulness of what was between his lips, his cigar fell to the floor, where it remained apparently unnoticed. "what's that?" "what's what?" "what name was that you said?" "why, man, what's the matter now? i'm wondering whether the sucking-pig's mounted to your head instead of descending to your stomach. david, you're easily upset these days. pick up your cigar, it's burning a hole in my floor covering." "damn the cigar!" "and welcome! it's not that i mind. what i object to is your cigar damning my carpet. pick it up at once, sir." "you're fussy about your old carpet." "old carpet! it cost me a guinea a yard not twelve months since." "you're wasteful with your money." "i am, when i spend it entertaining such as you." "what's the name of the man you say that woman married?" "gregory lamb." "it's past believing!" "is it? i haven't found it so." "that's because you're walking in darkness. do you know that the youngster margaret's plighted to is private secretary to mrs. gregory lamb?" "is he? then i should say that that's presumptive evidence that he's not bad looking. she has an eye for a good-looking man." "gregory lamb was staying at pitmuir when she was at cuthbert grahame's, calling herself his wife. a half-bred, ill-conditioned young scamp he was." "i should imagine that mr. lamb was not born in the caste of vere de vere." "were they acquainted then? what was there between them? how come they to be married now?--he without a penny, to my knowledge, she with all that money. she'd not marry such a creature as he was--for love, that i'll swear. they were birds of a feather, only he was more fool than knave, and she more knave than fool." "that about describes them now--if a lawyer may say as much--under privilege." "andrew, can you keep a still tongue?" "if i couldn't i shouldn't be sitting here." "i've always had a suspicion that there was something wrong about that will." "do you mean the one under which she inherits? you needn't confine yourself to suspicion upon that point--it's about as wrong as it could be. if there had been substantial opposition she'd have found it hard to bring it in." "i'm not meaning it in your sense. i know that grahame signed it in the presence of those two daft lassies; but i don't believe that he knew what he was signing, although the evidence is all the other way. i've kept my doubts to myself until this moment, and even now i can't tell you just why i don't believe it--but i don't." "quite possibly you're right, but you can't prove it." "i know i can't, and there's something else that i can't prove." "what's that?" "i believe she murdered him." "david!" "she was equal to it; and i'm beginning to see more clearly how she brought herself to the sticking point. the day before his death margaret wallace called----" "margaret wallace? you don't say!" "she told me so herself this afternoon. she was refused admission as she supposed by nannie foreshaw. i happen to know that nannie couldn't have got out of bed and gone downstairs to save her life--that woman had taken care of that. before i came to you i wrote to nannie asking if she did, to make sure. i believe that woman played at being nannie, imitating her voice. she may have known margaret's story, probably grahame had told her, and was aware that if she returned and saw him her reign was at an end. so she precipitated matters. she juggled that will into existence, and, directly she had done so, killed him." "it's a weighty charge you're making, david; be careful how you make it." "do you think i don't know that it's a weighty charge? i'm not making it. i'm only telling you what's in my mind, as between friends. i'll not breathe a word of the matter to any one but you till i can bring it into court, and prove it. at present, in your lawyer's sense, i've not proof enough to cover a pin's point. but, andrew, though the mills of god grind slowly, they grind surely, and exceeding fine. maybe one day god's finger will press her in between the stones, then you'll know that the conviction which is implanted in my breast is of the nature of the prophetic vision. god has shown me, though i cannot tell you how." there was silence. the doctor, still standing, bent over the table on which stood the coffee and liqueurs, pointing with one skinny finger upwards. he continued in that attitude for a perceptible period after he had ceased to speak. then mr. mctavish's voice broke the spell which he seemed to have cast upon the air. "david, you use big words. i don't--it's not my way. but confidence begets confidence. i'll tell you something in return--and that without insulting you by asking if you can keep a still tongue--because i know you can." the doctor returned to a more normal attitude, seeming to do so with an effort, as if he were shaking something from him. he spoke in his ordinary tones. "let me light another cigar before you begin. this sort of talk's disquieting, especially after such a dinner as i've had. i think a tonic might not be amiss." he sipped his liqueur. "andrew, this is not bad brandy." "a hogshead wouldn't hurt you." "wouldn't it? is it your custom to drink brandy by the hogshead? i thought you didn't use big words." "it's a figure of speech, david--a figure of speech. if you have that cigar properly lighted, and will sit down like a decent creature, i'll have my say--that is, if you have not had enough of the matter under discussion." "you're not more ready to talk than i am to listen. now, andrew, i'm at your service." "well, you suspect this lady of something more than misdemeanour. i may tell you that i doubt if she would have done what she did do--if she did it!--if she had known what she knows now." "you speak in parables." "i'll be plain enough. did you know anything about cuthbert grahame's affairs?--his financial affairs, i mean." "something." "had you any idea how much he was worth?" "he told me himself, not once but frequently, that he was worth nearer three hundred thousand pounds than two hundred thousand. he said, moreover, that his investments brought him in an average interest of over ten per cent. he had made several lucky hits." "that's what he told us; it seems that that's what he told her. did you see on what amount probate duty was paid?" "not i; i took no interest in the matter then. i was too disgusted with myself and everything. my one desire was to get the whole business out of my head; the trouble is that i haven't been able to do it." "under forty thousand pounds; and i may tell you that it was well under forty thousand pounds." "what's become of the rest?" "that's the mystery which we should like to solve--which she especially would like to solve; and what she's subjected us to in her efforts to arrive at a solution no language at my command is adequate to describe. she's a remarkable woman--a very remarkable woman. because she has long since passed the limits of our endurance is one reason why i am rounding on her to you. it is not often that i am conscious of such a yearning, but we have arrived at a position in which i should actually like to have your advice. that's why i asked you here tonight." "then it wasn't just for old friendship's sake." the doctor glowered from the recesses of the huge chair, expelling the smoke of his cigar from his lips and nostrils. mr. mctavish laughed. "well--in a measure. did you ever think he was romancing when he talked about his moneys?" "i did not--and i don't. he was in earnest. i never knew him tell a lie when he was in earnest. i'd match his veracity against my own." "then it's queer--it's queer. at the time of his death we held securities for him representing some ten thousand pounds lent on mortgage; the bankers held about as much more. his widow turned into cash everything that there was to turn, with the exception of the house, which she will neither sell nor let." "i know. it's going to rack and ruin; they say no one's set foot in it since the day he was buried." "i daresay--it's one of her notions--she'll let no one even talk of it; it's her bogey. altogether she's had scarcely thirty thousand pounds." "it's in the house." "not it. it's been thoroughly searched by competent hands; she herself has overhauled it more than once." "the money must be somewhere; i'm convinced he had it." "have you any notion where it is? can you give me any sort of clue as to its possible whereabouts?" "not i. i know no more about it than--this cigar. is it likely? i wasn't his man of business--you were." "she says we have it." "no!" "yes. she says we have it, or that we know where it is, and are joined in a conspiracy to keep it out of her possession. the way she's talked--and treated us! david, she's a remarkable woman." "she is that. don't i know it?--to my cost!" "we've had to change the lock on our office door. she let herself into it with a pass-key--my own, i fear, for i lost it, though i don't know how; i've never seen it since. she ransacked everything the place contained. got into the safe. by some extraordinary mischance, in which it is quite possible she had a hand, that night it wasn't locked. she went right through it. she saw a good deal we had rather she hadn't seen, but she saw nothing of grahame's money." "did you catch her in the act?" "catch her! we've never been able to prove it against her yet, but the presumption's as strong as hercules. she went to brown's, and made him swear by all his gods that he knew nothing about it; then she made him open his safe, and went through all his private papers." "brown must be a fine sort of a man." "she's a fine sort of a woman. she drugged me in my own house." "no?" "i say yes! she came here one night. i offered her a little something to drink--i was having something to drink, and i couldn't see her sitting dry. i've no doubt that when my back was turned she put something into my glass which took away my senses in a flash. when i came to it was early morning; the daylight was streaming through the blinds; she was gone; the whole place was upside down." "you're a lawyer: didn't you give her a taste of the law?" "what was the use? she'd pose as an injured woman--her grievance is real enough. we'd get no good; it might do us harm. the mischief is that she's got what she chooses to regard as some sort of groundwork for her suspicions. it's this way. she met the secretary of the hardwood company. the hardwood company's paid dividends averaging thirty per cent, ever since it started. the fellow got friendly with her--as plenty of men do get within five minutes of their meeting her. he told her that only one original shareholder remained on their lists, and, since the shares rushed to a premium directly the issue was made, that therefore he was the only person who received the full benefit of the thirty per cent. he added that the shareholder's name was grahame--cuthbert grahame (you may see her pricking her ears at that!)--and (she always leading him by the nose!) that the dividends had not been paid to him direct, but to his solicitors, messrs. mctavish & brown, of southampton row. he was a talkable body, that secretary man--men are apt to be talkative when she gets them alone with her in a corner. he told her something else: that the queerest part of the business was that while the shares still stood in grahame's name, the dividends had remained unclaimed for quite a while, so that a considerable sum was waiting for some one to take it. the next morning she came to us running over with the story. now i remembered those shares--an investment which returns thirty per cent, these hard times one has to remember. he had ten thousand of them; they were in our charge; we did collect the dividends. but one day he wrote asking us to send them to him, which we did do. my lady of course wanted proof. do you know we couldn't give it her." "i don't see why." "under ordinary circumstances nothing could have been simpler. such a thing has never before happened in the whole course of my experience, but by some infernal accident we couldn't lay our hands on either his letter of instructions, or his acknowledgment of receipt." "there was still the letter advising their despatch." "david, ever since that woman appeared on the scene we have been persecuted by a malignant fate." "big words, andrew, big words." "she moves me to them. on the day grahame's letter came i happened to be going abroad. brown sent a clerk here with his letter and the shares, so that i might check them and see that they were right. i packed the clerk back, and sent the shares myself; but in my haste--i was running the boat train pretty close!--i was idiot enough not to take a copy of my own letter, and what i did with grahame's i have not the dimmest recollection." "very unbusiness-like." "don't i know it, man! of course she declined to credit a word of the story; said that she believed it was a fabrication from beginning to end; and that she was more than ever convinced that she was dealing with a set of rogues. the climax is to come! the day after she had drugged me she came to my office, and produced a hardwood company's share, which she had the assurance to assert that she had taken out of my own safe when i was in a state of unconsciousness!--think of it! she had taken it round to the company's offices, and it had there been identified as one of the shares which were standing in cuthbert grahame's name." "was it one of his shares?" "it was, beyond a doubt." "and had she taken it out of your safe?" "david, i can only tell you that she swore she had; and i'm bound to admit that if she hadn't, i don't know where she got it from. on the other hand, if she did i have not the vaguest notion how it got there. plague take the thing!" mr. mctavish, emptying his liqueur glass, immediately refilled it. "don't you know what's in your own safe?" "do you take me for a feather-brain? i knew every trifle it contained, or thought i did. she says that she took up a bundle of papers, and that the share dropped out of one of them. if it did, no one knows less than i do who put it there. the only conclusion at which i can arrive is that, in returning the shares to grahame, i overlooked one of them, and that, in my hurry, it got mixed up with some of the papers which i keep in my safe, and which were lying on my table at the time. of all the evil chances that ever befel a man!" "and what was the inference she drew?" "the inference she drew! what do you suppose? why, of course, that the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine shares were hidden somewhere in my house, exactly as that one had been. she had brought a solicitor with her to the office--think of it, david!--a pettifogging rascal of the name of luker, who'd do anything for six-and-eightpence; and in his presence--picture it, david!--she told me that if i didn't permit her to subject my private premises to a thorough examination she should immediately commence proceedings for the recovery of the missing shares. and the creature luker had the audacity to advise me to accede to her reasonable request--he called it her reasonable request! and i complied!--i complied! she, the wretched luker, brown, and myself, we went through every nook and cranny in the house, all of us together. the humiliation of it!--the maddening humiliation!" with his handkerchief mr. mctavish wiped his capacious brow, which was moist with indignant sweat. "and did they find the missing shares?" "david! do you want me to make an end of you? the reptile luker wrote that if restitution of the shares was not made at once he was instructed to immediately commence proceedings for their recovery. and that's only the beginning! if something isn't done to stop her it's very possible that she'll try to jockey us, by legal process, out of all the money that she supposes cuthbert grahame to have had. the law on such matters is in such a state--when twisted by such as luker!--that there's no knowing what may be the issue; the one thing certain being that she may be the occasion to us of the gravest injury." the doctor emitted a sound which forced a startled inquiry from the other. "what's the matter with you, man?" "i was laughing, to think that a couple of lawyers should be so mishandled by one of the laity! it's the funniest thing that ever i heard." "it's no laughing matter, david, i can tell you that. think of the scandal--that at the age to which i'm come i should be used as if i were a misbegotten rogue! she's a devil of a woman! and what's driving her is that she's come to the end of her tether." "do you mean that she's spent all her cash?" "i've reason to know she has, or nearly all. she lives in a great house, has an expensive establishment, spends money like a queen. she took it for granted that long before this the bulk of grahame's money would turn up. now that it hasn't she's desperate. she means to get it out of somebody, somehow--or as much of it as she can--if it's only out of such poor creatures as mctavish and brown." "you're a pair of weans, you and brown." "so you see, david, how it is i have come to you for help--to you, my oldest friend. why it is that i ask you to search your brain and see if you can give us no clue as to what cuthbert grahame did with his money. no one was more intimate with him than you, and on such a point there is no one who is more likely to be able to give us help." "if that's so then you'll get help from no one, for it's certain you'll get none from me. i tell you i know nothing of the matter." "do you think miss wallace could help us? she had an intimate knowledge of grahame and of his peculiarities. she might be able to tell us something which would prove to be of assistance." "i'll ask her, if you wish it. but i doubt if you'll gain." "do, david, do. and"--mr. mctavish tapped his forefinger on the arm of his chair--"the sooner the better. as to advice, david, you know this woman; you've had dealings with her before; in a sense, so far as we're concerned, you're responsible for her existence. you see the dilemma we are in. what advice have you to offer?" "none--not a ha'porth. i'm not advising." "david!" "i tell you i'm not, and it's just because i've had dealings with the woman already. i've tried one fall with her, and i'm suffering from it still." "she's an awful creature!--awful!" "there's only one thing i can say to you, andrew, and that i've said already, and then you sort of sniggered. but to my mind it's a comfortable thought when we come to deal with persons like mrs. cuthbert grahame, or mrs. gregory lamb, or whatever she calls herself, and it's this, that if the mills of god do grind slowly, they also do grind surely, and they grind exceeding small." chapter xix in council there were five of them assembled in margaret wallace's sitting-room. margaret herself, in a linen gown of cornflower-blue, the product of her own deft fingers, which became her hugely. miss dorothy johnson, from the rooms below, who indulged her fondness for unconventional attitudes by perching herself on the back of one chair and her feet on the seat of another. bertram winton, one of the handsomest of our actors, tall and dark, with big eyes and curly hair, whose clothes fitted him with a creaseless perfection which won the admiration of that considerable feminine public which bought his photographs and wrote for his autograph. frank staines, who was something of a mystery. he wrote a little, and painted a little, and drew a little, and sang a little, and played a little, and talked so much that there were people who said that he could do that better than he could do anything else. he had money. the exact quantity was not generally known, but there appeared to be enough of it to enable him to live in very considerable comfort, without rendering it necessary for him, to adopt his own phraseology, to descend into the market-place and "huckster" his brain. between miss johnson and him there was a state of continual war, tempered by peaceful intervals of the briefest duration. it was commonly understood that he was very much in love with her, had frequently proposed to her and had been accepted several times, but that on each occasion a rupture had followed before they were able to make an interesting announcement to their friends and acquaintances. miss johnson made a remark to harry talfourd, who stood leaning against the window with an air of almost sombre gloom, which caused hostilities to break out upon the spot. "let's get to the bed-rock of common-sense. it always seems to me that in matters of this sort commonsense is the one thing needed. harry, what is it you want? you want your play to be successful--that is, you want it to bring you cash and kudos; and that is all you want. the question, therefore, which you have to ask yourself is, if mrs. lamb produces 'the gordian knot' will it bring me those two things? to that question you have only to supply a simple yes or no, and the problem's solved." to which mr. staines replied-"that is exactly the sort of remark one expects you to make--utilitarian, material, sordid. i opine that the one thing harry requires you have not mentioned--that is, satisfaction for his artistic soul." "artistic tommy-rot." "my dear dollie, it is not necessary for you to be vulgar in order to inform us that you know nothing about the soul--we are aware of it." "my dear frankie, don't be under the delusion that you need open your mouth to let the world know that you drivel--it is written on your countenance." "thank you, miss johnson." "don't mention it, mr. staines." margaret interposed. "while those two are thinking of some more nice things to say to each other, i should like to know, mr. winton, what you really think." "i am afraid, miss wallace, that my point of view would be described by staines as utilitarian. i propose to conduct my theatre--when i get it--on a commercial basis." "one takes it for granted that an actor-manager is commercial or nothing." "if he isn't commercial, my dear staines, he's less than nothing--he's a bankrupt. no one loves a bankrupt, not even your artistic soul. my intention is to get a theatre; to have it properly equipped; to give the public as good plays as i can get; to have them as well acted as circumstances permit. if mrs. lamb is willing to place me in a position to carry out my intention--on my own terms--i don't know that i have any serious objection to her playing a part in my initial venture, particularly as that happens to be a part which, as talfourd is aware, i have not hitherto been able to fit with a quite adequate representative. i realise that the position is not so simple as it appears, and am conscious that i run the risk of being overshadowed by the lady's personality. but that is certainly my risk rather than talfourd's, and i am willing to run it in order to gain the end i have in view." "then you say, let mrs. lamb play lady glover?" "i do, since i incline to the opinion that she would not play it in a fashion which would militate against the success of the piece." "you hear, harry?" "i do; i have heard winton on the point before." "then why don't you leave matters entirely in his hands, and let him arrange everything?" harry exchanged glances with the actor. he said, dryly-"i am willing. if i am allowed to--say, run abroad, or remove myself into the country well out of reach, until, at any rate, the play's produced, i am content to let winton do just as he pleases." "i doubt if that would meet mrs. lamb's views. i imagine that she might regard your withdrawal as a personal affront. talfourd, will you allow me to explain to miss wallace what i imagine is your exact position in this matter?" miss johnson addressed a question to mr. staines before margaret could reply. "frank, you can be honest sometimes, and you can be sensible. try to be both of them now. what do you think of mrs. lamb?" "it is a delicate subject, on which i should not presume to offer an opinion." "that means that you don't love her." "i have only loved one person in my life, and it certainly was not her." miss johnson looked straight in front of her, as if she desired to convey the impression that she had no idea that any allusion was intended. margaret urged mr. winton. "come, tell me what harry's position really is, since i am quite unable to get it out of him." "shall i, talfourd?" "you may say what you choose, only give me leave to doubt if you are so well informed as you yourself imagine. i don't understand myself as well as i should like to." "i fancy i understand pretty well. the truth is, miss wallace, mrs. lamb is fonder of talfourd than he is of her." "i am quite aware of that." "i don't think you altogether appreciate my meaning. if there were no mr. lamb, mrs. lamb would not object to being mrs. talfourd--which is why she wants to produce 'the gordian knot,' and why talfourd doesn't want her to." "do you mean that she's in love with him? harry! is this true? you told me that she had never said anything to you she ought not to have done." "nor has she. winton speaks crudely. i don't know what is his authority for his statement, he certainly has had none from me." "is it simply because--she feels for you like that--that she wants to produce your play?" "honestly, meg, i don't know what her reasons are. i wish i did." "does she know that you're--engaged?" "not that i am aware of. so far as possible i have carefully avoided speaking to her of myself. frankly, meg, it's no use blinking the fact that as mrs. lamb's private secretary there's nothing for me to do; that she has not the slightest real need for such a functionary; and that i am very much exercised in my mind as to the motives which would actuate her in the production of 'the gordian knot'. although i am quite aware that he meant well, i should have been obliged to winton if he hadn't said a word to her about the thing." "at that time i had no actual knowledge of how the land was lying." "but you guessed." this was margaret. "well, if you will permit me to be quite plain, miss wallace, i don't know that i regarded it as a drawback even if i did guess. an actor depends for his existence on personal favour. he has to please the public in the mass, and, also, as individuals. when a woman tells me she admires me i expect her to take a stall to see me act; if she admires me very much, i expect her to take two or three, or a box. there have been women who have admired me so much that they have booked seats for an entire season. now proceed a step farther. i can conceive of it as possible that a woman might provide me with the means to take a theatre because her admiration for me was so great. i shouldn't stop to ask myself trivial questions as to whether she was married or single, i should regard the matter as purely one of business--one proof of my success--and take the good the gods provided, while, at the same time, my position in the affair would be entirely a platonic one. i want talfourd to treat the matter from my point of view, but it seems he can't." "i'm sorry." "i'm not sorry!" the first remark came from harry, the second from margaret. she went on: "now i begin to understand. of course it's quite inconceivable, harry, how any one could fall in love with you; but supposing any woman to be so foolish, i certainly don't want you to trade on her affection. i'm not saying it with any desire to wound you, mr. winton." "don't be afraid, i'm not easily wounded." "but, you see, in this case there are other circumstances to be considered--there's me. i'm a factor in the question. and shall i tell you to what conclusion i'm drifting?" "let's have it." "i should like to see mrs. lamb. you men know her, but i don't. she hasn't even come within range of my vision, and though i've the highest respect for you, as men, when it comes to your opinion of a woman, i don't think a man's opinion worth anything." "you're quite right--it isn't." this was miss johnson. "i used to have a high opinion of you." this was mr. staines. "you used to have!--that i should ever have been so belittled!" miss johnson turned disdainfully from mr. staines to margaret. "what you say is perfectly correct, my dear, only a woman's opinion of a woman is of the slightest value." "the other day i heard a woman express her opinion of you in terms which, if i repeated them to you, might cause you to change your views." "some women!" "i don't know that i go quite so far as dollie, and there is something in what mr. staines hints, for, of course, there are women whose opinions of each other are merely so many libels." "hear! hear!" "do be still! will somebody sit on mr. staines?" "but this appears to be a case in which a woman's opinion should be the only thing which ought to count--especially if i'm the woman; and, lest you accuse me of overweening conceit, let me hasten to explain. mrs. lamb is, i presume, a lady of beauty----" "she's not bad-looking." this was mr. staines to, of course, dolly. "much you know about a woman's looks!" "i used to admire yours." "pooh!" "apparently of fortune, conceivably of taste. she is supposed to entertain certain sentiments towards a certain gentleman which she ought not to entertain. actuated by those sentiments she proposes to play the part of a feminine mã¦cenas and pose as a patron of the drama. these are the allegations which are made against her. introduce me to her; let me talk to her for half an hour, and i will engage to settle there and then--and finally!--the question as to whether she is a fit and proper person to produce 'the gordian knot' and play lady glover." "i'm content!" cried harry. mr. winton was more deliberate. "well, under ordinary circumstances, i should be inclined to do more than hesitate before accepting a lady as arbitrator in such a matter, but i have such a high opinion of miss wallace, though she herself appraises a masculine estimate of such a subject at less than nothing----" "i make an exception in your case, mr. winton--thank you very much." "if she will allow me to say so, i esteem her wide-minded liberality so greatly, and set such value on her keen-sighted appreciation of character----" "dear! dear! margaret, bow!" "dollie! don't interrupt!" "that i am quite willing to go so far as this: if, after talking the matter over with mrs. lamb, fully and frankly, and weighing all the pros and cons, you tell me that you think it would be better, for all parties interested, that she should have nothing to do with the play, then, so far as i am concerned, the question will be settled--she shan't." "the point is," struck in dollie, "how is the poor dear child to become acquainted with this wonderful woman, who ought to be immensely flattered if she knows how much you have her in your thoughts?" "there will be no difficulty about that. the lady has an 'at home' to-morrow evening, to which, practically, all the world is welcome. i'll tell her, meg, that you'd like to make her acquaintance, and ask her permission to bring you." "you'll ask her?" mr. staines looked at mr. talfourd with, in his glance, a satirical intention which the other ignored. "why not? nothing could be simpler." "no--nothing could be simpler--only i thought you said she didn't know you were engaged. do you propose to tell her in what relation miss wallace stands to you?" "certainly! why do you look at me like that?" "i should like to see her face when she receives the communication, and, again, when she meets miss wallace. i know something of mrs. gregory lamb. i fancy they may both of them be rather dramatic moments." margaret told him, laughing-"dear mr. staines, you may study the expression of her countenance when she meets me to your heart's content, if you choose. suppose we all of us go together?" mr. winton rose from his chair. "thank you; that is a proposal which i am afraid i must decline. mrs. lamb might suspect us of conspiracy if we bore down on her in force. i will be in connaught square to-morrow evening, but perhaps a little late, when i think it possible, miss wallace, that one glance at your countenance will be sufficient to tell me exactly how the matter stands. remember the arbitrament of my fate--as a manager, an issue of no slight consequence--is in your hands." "poor, innocent, ignorant mrs. lamb!" exclaimed miss johnson. "meg, if she only knew what issues of life and death you are bringing with you, i don't believe she'd let you into her house--however nicely harry might ask her permission to bring you." the young lady spoke much truer than she knew. chapter xx the impending sword "i must have ten thousand pounds, and"--mrs. j. lamb paused--"within a week." "must!" mr. isaac luker folded his hands together with a gesture which suggested the act of prayer. he seemed singularly out of place in his environment. they were in the apartment which mrs. lamb called her boudoir, a word which has a different meaning in the mouths of different women. in this case it stood for a room which represented what was possibly the last word in gorgeous decoration. everything was of the costliest. if the result was a trifle vivid, it was not altogether unpleasing. it was a room in which one could be very much at one's ease--in certain moods--if one were of a certain constitution. there was something in its atmosphere which made a not ineffective appeal to the senses, not so much to the sense of beauty or of intellect, as to that of physical well-being. in some subtle way the owner's strong personality impregnated the whole place. on crossing the threshold a person of delicate perception might have become immediately conscious of something which could scarcely have been called healthy. but the prevailing note was gorgeousness, and anything less gorgeous than mr. isaac luker one could hardly conceive. mrs. lamb's costume harmonised with the apartment, it was so evidently the product of one of those artists in dress to whom expense is no object. and it became her very well. in it she looked not only a handsome woman, but almost a real great lady. mr. luker's apparel, on the other hand, was not only unbecoming and ill-fitting, but it was apparently in the last stage of decay. none of the garments seemed to have been made for him, and they were all of them odd ones. he was tall and thin. he wore an old pair of black-and-white checked trousers, which were too short in the leg and too big everywhere else; an old black frock-coat, which he kept closely buttoned, and which must certainly have been intended for some one who was both shorter and broader. his long thin neck was surrounded by a suspicious-looking collar, which was certainly not made of linen, and he wore by way of a necktie something which might have once done duty as a band on a bowler hat. one understood, after a very cursory inspection, why a gentleman who had such a keen regard for appearances as mr. andrew mctavish should object to being brought into involuntary, and unsatisfactory, professional contact with mr. isaac luker. yet those who knew had reason to believe that mr. luker did a considerable business of a kind--though it was emphatically of a kind. he had one or two peculiarities. he was an habitual gin drinker, and though he could seldom be said to be positively drunk, he could just as rarely be called entirely sober. to all intents and purposes he lived on gin. he had it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and for afternoon tea and supper, and he did not seem to find it a very nourishing food. then, perhaps partially owing to the monotonous regularity of his diet, he seemed to be incapable of saying what he meant, while his yeas and his nays were as worthless as his oaths. for a solicitor to be a notorious liar and drunkard one would suppose would be a serious handicap in his profession. oddly enough, with mr. luker it was, if anything, the other way. the sort of clients he courted wanted just the sort of man he was. he, speaking generally, never did any clean business; he was only at home when dealing with what was unclean; and as there is more of that kind of commerce about than might be imagined--and some of it is amazingly lucrative--he did tolerably well. indeed, there were those who declared that, although he did not look it, he was uncommonly well-off, it being one of his characteristics that he was as incapable of spending money as he was of telling the truth or giving up gin. as he stood there, with his hands folded in front of him in an attitude of prayer, mrs. lamb regarded him with what could hardly be regarded as glances of admiration. when she addressed him it was with a frankness which was hardly in keeping with her _rã´le_ of great lady, and which is not usual when one deals with one's legal adviser. "listen to me, luker. i want none of your humbug, and i want none of your lies. i want ten thousand pounds inside a week--and you've got to get them. i'll give fifteen thousand for the ten, so there won't be a bad profit for some one." "how long do you want the money for?" "oh--three months." "on what security?" "what security? on the security of my property." "your property?" mr. luker did not smile--a smile was probably another thing of which he was incapable--but his wizened features assumed a curious aspect. "of what does your property consist?" "none of your nonsense. to begin with, there are those ten thousand shares in the hardwood company. as you know very well, they're worth over fifty thousand pounds at the present moment." "they would be if you had them--but you haven't." "mctavish & brown have got them, and you're going to make them disgorge." "we've first of all to prove that they've got them." "oh no, we haven't; they have to prove that they handed them over to cuthbert grahame, which is a very different thing, as you know very well." "my dear isabel, you're a very clever woman; your fault is that, if anything, you're too clever." "i've heard you called too clever before to-day." "my dear----" "don't you call me your dear! i won't have it." "very well, although it is possible that few men have a better right----" "right! don't you dare to talk to me about right!--you!--don't you talk to me like that, mr. luker! you just simply listen to me. i want ten thousand pounds before this day week, and you've got to get it. no one in london knows better than you from whom and how to get it." "mrs. lamb--by the way, how is your worthy husband?" "never mind my worthy husband--you keep to the point." "even supposing we are able to saddle mctavish & brown with the responsibility for the hardwood shares--which is problematical--it'll take a good deal more than three months to do it. it is not to be supposed that they'll accept an adverse decision without taking the case through every court available. that may take years. if in the end it is decided that they will have to pay, it is not by any means certain that they will be able to. costs will have swollen the original total enormously; it all will have to come from them. there is nothing to show that they are in a position to pay such a huge sum as that will be." "oh yes, there is; they're rolling in money; i've seen enough of them to know so much." "you think you have. i doubt if that is a matter on which your judgment can be trusted. if the case ultimately goes against them, the possibilities--i should say the probabilities--are that they will declare themselves bankrupt. then where will you be? you will have to pay your own costs, and, instead of getting the amount adjudged, after another interval of dreary waiting, you may receive, as a final quittance, perhaps sixpence, or a shilling, in the pound. and in the meantime, you must remember, you will have to live." "you old croaker!" "let me make a suggestion." "your suggestions!" she brought her fist down on the back of an armchair with an emphasis which almost suggested that she would have liked that chair to have been some portion of his body. "let me lay the whole case before a friend of mine, and, after he has given it careful consideration, it is possible that he may make you a proposition." "what sort of proposition?" "that i cannot tell you--the best he can." "you understand that i must have ten thousand pounds within a week?" "i hear you say so. if my friend can see his way no doubt he will let you have them." "mind he does see his way!" "as to that----" mr. gregory lamb's sudden appearance in the doorway perhaps allowed to serve as an excuse for his sentence to remain unfinished. "you here!" exclaimed mr. lamb, as if he were not too well pleased to see him. "i didn't know." mr. luker's greeting, although well meant, was a little peculiar. "my dear mr. lamb, how well you are always looking!--and always so beautifully dressed. what a lovely pin you have in your pretty necktie! now i know a friend who would give you----" "i don't want to know what your friend would give me! confound it, luker, i never see you but you tell me what some one you know would give me for something i have on. you might be a marine store-dealer." "there are worse trades, mr. lamb--there are worse trades. now with regard to that exquisite pair of trousers----" "look here, luker, if you're going to tell me what some one you know will give me for my trousers, i'll throw something at you." "you mustn't do that, mr. lamb, it might be something worth money--everything in the room is so very beautiful. mrs. lamb, i wish you good-morning." "now, no nonsense, luker. i want that within a week--and you've got to see i have it--if you don't want trouble!" "i understand perfectly, and will bear what you have said well in mind. you shall hear from me again very shortly." "i will see i do!" "i have had clients, mr. lamb, who would have conveyed that pin without paying for it--it presents such temptations to an honest man. i do hope it's properly secured. good-morning!" when mr. luker had retired mr. lamb turned to his wife, with knitted brows. "isabel, it's beyond my comprehension why you have anything to do with that animal. he's got scoundrel written large all over him." "i shouldn't have thought that would have prejudiced him in your eyes." "i suppose you think that's smart. i know there was a time when we both of us had to sail pretty close to the wind, but i thought that time had gone for ever. you've told me so over and over again. you're a woman of large fortune, of assured position, a person of importance. i should have thought that from the point of view of policy alone it would have been worth your while to have dealings with solicitors of standing only, and to have nothing to do with such a brute as that. aren't you ashamed to have him seen going in and out of the house, or to have the servants know that he is here?" "i'm not easily ashamed--you ought to know that. is that all you've come for?--to tell me what you think about what is no concern of yours?" "what's this i hear about your bringing out a play, and acting in it yourself?" "who told you that?" "winton--to my amazement!" "what did he tell you?" "something about your producing a play of talfourd's--talfourd's, of all people in the world! my hat! he said that you proposed to act one of the principal parts in it yourself. isabel, that's going too far; i won't stand it." "you won't what?" there was something in the lady's tone and in her attitude before which he obviously quailed. "i don't think that it's becoming in a woman of your position, as--as my wife." "it's not my fault that i'm your wife." "still the fact remains that you are. by the way, has talfourd been saying anything to you about me?" "what should he say?--except to advise me to sew you in a sack and drop you into the river." "that's just what he'd like--he's that sort of man." "is he? he's what you never were, never will be, never could be--a gentleman. why you don't even begin to understand what a gentleman is." "'pon my word, i wonder that i let you talk to me like this. i don't want to quarrel with you--i hate quarrelling!--i really do. you couldn't treat me worse if i were a shoeblack." "i never met any one yet whose shoes you were worthy to black. why, luker's a man compared to you. he doesn't sponge upon a woman." "it's not fair of you to speak to me like this--it is not! i know you're not fond of me----" "fond of you!--fond!" the lady flung out her arm, as if the idea of her entertaining any feeling of that kind for her husband was a grotesque one, and she laughed. as he continued his tone suggested a snarl. "i don't know that i'm particularly fond of you. you don't go out of your way to make yourself agreeable to a fellow. you've only got to say the word to be rid of me for--well, at any rate, a good long time." "what's the word? l.s.d.?" mr. lamb coughed. "a fellow can't go away with empty pockets." "i thought so. out with it! what are you at?" "the truth is, isabel, i'm not feeling very well." "if you were feeling as i'd like you to feel you'd be feeling very much worse." "that's frank! a nice thing for a wife to say to her husband! i believe you're capable of anything." "i am--i always have been--and i always shall be, you bear that constantly in mind. why can't you say what you want? if it is prussic acid to use upon yourself i'll give you money enough to buy a barrelful." the expression of mr. lamb's countenance was sullen, so also was the tone of his voice, which perhaps on the whole was not to be wondered at. "i want to go to the riviera." "that means monte carlo. well go--at once--and never come back again." "if you'll give me the coin i'll start in a jiffy." "how much do you want?" "i daresay i could manage with a thousand. i've hit upon a system." "you've hit upon a system!" "if you'll only keep still for a moment i'll tell you what it is, and then you'll see for yourself it's an absolute cert. i'll turn the thou. into fifty in less than no time. i can't help doing it!--you see!--and then i'll give you half." "you'll give me half! then am i to understand that you won't go unless i give you a thousand pounds?" "i couldn't do it on less--the system i mean. i've worked out all the details and i really couldn't. i'll show you if you like. it's want of capital that wrecks a man in a thing like this. if you haven't got the proper amount--the lowest possible amount that's absolutely necessary--you might as well throw your money into the sea." "then you'll never go at all, because i haven't a thousand pounds to give you." "what do you mean?" "it's simple. i don't think i've fifty pounds at my bankers, and i'm pretty sure that they won't honour my cheque if i overdraw." "isabel!" "you owe money, don't you?" "i daresay i owe a bit here and there." "so i've been given to understand. i also owe a bit. and my creditors, like yours, won't wait." "mine will have to." "will they? i thought that was just what they wouldn't do." "who's been telling you tales about me?" "a little bird. so you see, gregory, i'm more in want of a thousand pounds, because you can't carry on a house like this for long on fifty pounds, even if i have so much at the bank, which, as i say, i doubt." "fifty pounds! you're playing the fool with me--it's a favourite game of yours. what's become of the quarter of a million you told me that man grahame had left you?" "that's what i should like to know." "you don't mean you've spent it? you can't have done--not in the time." "i've never had it to spend." "what rot are you talking? what game are you playing? have you all along been telling me nothing but lies?" "cuthbert grahame told me himself that he was worth more than a quarter of a million; soon after he died i told you that only a small portion of the money could be found." "you told me nothing of the kind--you've never told me anything. whenever i asked you a question you've always shut me up. you've kept me all along in the dark." "then i tell you now. only a small sum was ever found, and that's been spent--and more than spent." "then am i to understand that he was fooling you when he talked about his quarter of a million?" "i don't believe that he was. i believe he was telling the truth; that he was worth what he said; only it's never been found, and no one seems to know where it is." she held out her clenched fists in front of her, shaking them, as if she were endeavouring, by the exercise of sheer physical force, to assist her mental process. "sometimes i feel that i know--that i am very near to knowing--that if i could do something i should know quite. it's as if i'd been told something in a dream, and, on waking, had forgotten what it was. i don't like to think of the time he died--i can't." she looked about her, as if unconscious of his presence, with something on her face, in her eyes, which startled him. "yet if i could--if i could! i believe it would all come back to me what i have forgotten, and i should know where the money is. but i can't! i can't! since--since the pillow slipped from under him, i--i've never been the same." she dropped into a chair, looking straight in front of her, with her hands dangling at her sides, as if she saw--she alone knew what. this was such a new mood for her that its very novelty scared mr. lamb. "don't look like that, belle! what are you looking at?" "god knows! god knows!" mr. lamb squirmed. "don't! i say, drop it! you're a cheerful sort of person, upon my word! i come here to get a pound or two, and you go on like this! do you mean to tell me straight that we're hard up?" "there are three things that can save us, and three things only. if i could think i might find the money." "then, for the lord's sake, think! only don't think like that; it gives me the creeps to hear you." "i can't think, anyhow, about that; i've tried, and i can't. if i could get the money out of mctavish & brown, that would be something." "get it out of any one, but please remember that sharp's the word." "then there's the play--harry talfourd's play--i believe there's fame and fortune in that--and safety. do you know what that means--safety?" "gracious, isabel! don't shout at me like that! my nerves were all mops and brooms when i came; you've made them ever so much worse. i'm all of a twitter. i'll talk to you when you're in a more reasonable mood; you'll upset me altogether if i stay much longer." mr. lamb withdrew, to return immediately, at least so far as his head and shoulders were concerned, the rest of his body he kept on the other side of the door. "deal fairly with a chap--do! i must have cash from somewhere, or i shall be in a deuce of a hole. can you let me have fifty?" "i can't." "can you make it twenty-five?" "i can't. i can't let you have anything. do you want me to yell at you? i--can't--let--you--have--anything! do you hear that?" "all right! don't shout at a man like that! i should think you must be going off your head. i never saw you in such a cranky mood before." mr. lamb beat a precipitate retreat, this time finally. his wife, left alone, remained seated on her chair in that very curious attitude, with that very curious look upon her face. "it must be imagination--what they call an optical delusion. perhaps, as he says, i'm going off my head. one thing's certain, it can't be real. this is not his room; that's not his bed; that's not----" she veiled her eyes with the palms of her hands. "no! no!--i'm too much alone. i shall go mad if i'm so much alone--mad!" she sat silent for some moments, with her features all contorted, as if she were wrestling with actual physical pain. then, rising, she took out of a small cupboard in an ormolu cabinet a decanter containing some colourless liquid. pouring some of it into a wineglass she swallowed it at a draught. it was pure ether. she resorted to it to minister to a mind diseased. when, later, she descended to the apartment which was called, as it almost seemed ironically, mr. talfourd's workroom, that gentleman rose to greet her with a smile. she also smiled. to all outward seeming she was herself again--self-possessed, satisfied with herself and with the world, at peace with every one. they exchanged a few banal sentences, both remaining on their feet, she looking at him with eyes which, to phrase it diplomatically, flattered, he meeting her glance with an appearance of serene unconsciousness that there was anything in it which was singular. presently she touched on the topic which was to the front in both their minds. "about the play--have you thought it over? am i to play lady glover?" he still was diplomatic. "you will understand that i, being a conceited and self-centred author, the matter of my play bulges out until it assumes for me what you will probably, and correctly, consider exaggerated proportions. will you let me think it over a little longer? in the first place, i have settled nothing with mr. winton, and, in the second, i want to ask you to do me a favour." "you are aware that between you and me for you it is but to ask and to have--anything, everything, i have to give." if her words were significant, the manner in which they were spoken underlined them. neither the manner nor the matter of his reply could be termed sympathetic. "i don't know if you are aware that i am engaged to be married." if something flickered across her face which was not there a moment before, it went as quickly as it came. "no, i wasn't. are you?" "i, of course, don't expect you to be interested in the trivialities of my life, and i only mention it as a mere detail, but--the lady would very much like to know you. may she?" "my dear mr. talfourd! hadn't you better put it the other way? may i know her? and when? may i call on her? or will she pay me the great compliment of coming to see me?" "you're very kind. with your permission she will come and see you to-night." "to-night? i'm at home--of course! do you know i'd almost forgotten it. bring her by all means. tell her she's to come early, before the people, and that she's to stop late, after the crowd has gone." of such clay are we constituted. she had not the dimmest notion that in giving that very warm invitation she was hanging up over her own head a sword of damocles, which, in this case, was suspended by something which was almost less than a single hair. chapter xxi out of the blue mrs. gregory lamb's "at home" was crowded by rather a nondescript gathering. the lady's hospitality was scarcely of the kind which discriminates. had she set herself to pick and choose her acquaintances, their number might have been considerably less. she had learnt that the people she wished to know were apt not to be anxious to know her; rather the other way. she had to be content with the society of those who did wish to know her. whether she was particularly desirous of the honour of their acquaintance was another matter altogether. as she wished to know somebody, using the word in the sense of a noun of multitude, she had to put up with what she could get. the result was a little confusing. this is not to say that there were no decent persons among the hordes which thronged her rooms: there were. possibly the chief objection which could be urged against them was that, for the most part, they were hungry. not only as regards the physical appetite; though a large proportion of them were quite willing to consume all the food they could obtain, and all the drink. they were hungry in every sense of the word. to use a significant euphemism, a very great majority of mrs. lamb's guests were "on the make". they all wanted something. many wanted a great many things, and wanted them very badly. there was a generous fringe of what is called the "literary, musical and artistic world"--those excellent people who will go into every house into which they can gain admittance. singers who are looking for people who will listen while they sing, and who will pay for listening. authors in search of an "opening," victims of that quaint delusion that in order to achieve popularity it is necessary to keep one's person well in the public eye, as if it were not easier for the novelist who lives in the centre of timbuctoo to gain, and keep, a circulation of a hundred thousand copies--that consummation so devoutly to be desired!--than for the pet of london drawing-rooms. composers who wanted some one to hear their "works"; musicians who were apparently content to play on their various instruments, and keep on playing, whether they were listened to or not; artists who nourished more or less timid hope that, having provided them with food, and drink, and house-room, their hostess would purchase half a dozen of their "sketches," by way of providing a pleasant climax to their evening's entertainment; actors--and actresses!--who were willing to do anything, from the "splits" to "hamlet," and to do it then and there; dramatists, who could have told you tales--and tried to!--of managerial incompetence which would have made your blood run cold, if they had not been so monotonously alike. these worthy folk, foredoomed to failure, were at mrs. lamb's in force. there were others. birds, some of them, of the same plumage, who had achieved a more successful flight, and promised to sustain it, and perhaps fly even higher. men and women who had won for themselves prominent places in their several callings--perhaps not quite in the front rank, but still near enough--who, having been in many such, understood what kind of house it was that they were in. it is to be feared that they regarded their hostess at best with but amusement, wondering, if she really had as much money as people said, how it was that she was willing to get so little for it. then there were the nondescripts--that large battalion. some actually with titles, though probably a trifle smirched. people who were the lord alone knew who, or what they did for a living. persons who claimed to be something in the city, and no doubt were; whose wives, if they had them, gave you the impression that their husbands were in the same line of business as the rothschilds. there was probably no trade or profession, from the highest to the lowest, which went unrepresented that night in connaught square. and besides all these there were the score or so of individuals whom the hostess really knew, or thought she did. and among them moved mrs. lamb, as if she knew them all. beautifully dressed, probably the best, without doubt the most expensively, dressed woman there. there were diamonds on her fingers, her wrists, on her bosom, about her neck, in her hair. if they were real, and it were blasphemy to doubt it, she would have been reduced into something worth having if she had been put up to auction as she stood. she looked, if not exactly divine, then certainly not unprepossessing. there were many present, both male and female, who thought her lovely, one of the loveliest women they had ever seen. that was just the assemblage to which such charms as hers would make their most strenuous appeal, so that, since a woman loves appreciation, in her generation she was wise. for one so young, and in years she still was very young, she bore herself with singular ease. she had cast herself for the _rã´le_ of great lady. if the type on which she had fashioned herself smacked somewhat of the theatre, her success was none the less, but rather all the more, on that account. in her way she really and truly was irresistible. so full of smiles and of sweetness, so good to look upon. so tall and well set, with such splendid arms and shoulders, such a rounded neck, such good-humour in her face. there was such a suggestion of youth about her--the youth which must prevail, of vital force, of physical vigour. she presented in herself such a striking example of the creed that's all for the best in this best of all possible worlds. she was such an excellent product of that great and shining god, success. he had showered on her all his gifts, and she on her part seemed quite willing to divide them with whoever would. she seemed to have the knack of saying the right thing to the right person, being possessed either of a wonderful memory for names and faces, or, in an almost miraculous degree, of the trick of arriving, on the instant, at just conclusions from the scantiest data. she knew who wrote songs; what songs they had written; even what songs they were about to write; and who liked it to be thought that they were distant connections of the rothschilds. she either had this information stored away in innumerable cells in her illimitable brain, or she picked it from people while they talked to her, out of their eyes, lips, pockets, without their suspecting that she was doing anything of the kind. she might have stood as the personification of human happiness, as the possessor of everything that the heart could desire. there were many there who credited her with being both these things, envying her more or less, admiring her perhaps even more. they would have readily believed that in her bed of roses there was not one crumpled leaf. her radiant bearing, her beaming visage, seemed to suggest that she lived, and moved, and had her being in the lotus-land of happy dreams, which, for her, had grown realities. as the evening advanced she seemed to become, if anything, more light-hearted--gayer still--as if the success of her gathering, the happy looks with which she everywhere was greeted, had inoculated her with some subtle essence which raised her out of herself. harry talfourd and margaret wallace came, in a "growler," when she was at her best and brightest. although it was late, and some of the earliest comers were going, others were still arriving. a long line of vehicles were slowly depositing their occupants at the front door. in this line mr. talfourd's cab took its proper place, in the rear, and in that line it bade fair to continue for some considerable time. the lady and gentleman soon grew impatient. "are we going to stay in this cab all night?" inquired margaret. the gentleman put his head out of the window. "it looks as if we were. we're about half a mile from the house, and there seems to be no end of confusion; people are both coming and going, and there's a fine old muddle. i say, meg, it's quite fine and dry; do you think you could get out and walk the rest of the way? or would it make a mess of you?" "make a mess of me! what do you mean? open that door; i'll soon show you." he opened the door, and she showed him. getting through the wide open portals of mrs. lamb's residence, and then up the staircase, on which people were ascending and descending in a continual stream, occupied some time. "i feel," observed margaret, when they had reached the drawing-room door, "as if i had gone through a course of the 'home-exerciser,' or whatever they call the thing which is guaranteed to give employment to every muscle in your body. if all these persons are mrs. lamb's friends she must be a well-loved woman." in the drawing-rooms themselves there was room to move slowly, if one observed a few necessary precautions. at their first entrance nothing could be seen of their hostess. as harry piloted her through the room margaret found sufficient occupation in the spectacle presented by her fellow-guests. in the course of her somewhat varied experiences she had met some curiosities, but never before had she encountered such specimens of humanity as were about her now. while she was wondering who they could be, and where they could have come from, harry gently pressed her arm. "there's mrs. lamb in the other room; i'll introduce you." margaret looked, and saw, in the smaller room which was beyond, a woman standing, with her back towards her, whom she became instinctively conscious was her hostess. not only was she the most striking figure in that great crowd, but she was surrounded by a number of people, to all of whom she seemed to be talking at once. her head being turned away, her face was not visible from where they were, so that it could have told her nothing; yet so singular sometimes is feminine human nature, that harry had hardly finished speaking when margaret replied-"please don't introduce me to that woman; i'd rather you didn't. take me away at once." there was something so unusual in the girl's tone that harry stared at her in amazement. "meg! is there anything wrong?" "thank you, there is nothing wrong, only--i want to go." "go! you can't go now--it's impossible--before i've introduced you, since you're here for that special purpose." "i don't want to be introduced. i'd rather you didn't. harry, you mustn't!" "meg, don't look like that. she's not an ogre; she won't bite you. child, what's gone wrong with you all of a sudden? you needn't stop more than five minutes--and this atmosphere's enough to asphyxiate any one; but, after what i said to her this morning, and since you have come, the commonest courtesy compels me to introduce you; afterwards we can go at once; any excuse will serve. anyhow it's too late now for us to think of going before i've made you known to her." what mr. talfourd said seemed to be the fact. the current had borne them so close to their hostess that she had but to turn round to find herself within arm's length of them. margaret was silent. harry did not look at her face; he was careful not to do so. the sudden curious change in the girl's manner had affected him more than he would have cared to admit. he knew that she was not a person who was liable to be beset by fantastic whims and fancies, and that there was probably some substantial reason for the alteration which had taken place in her. his wish was to get through the ceremony of introduction with as much speed, and as little ostentation, as he could, and then depart, if the feat were possible, more quickly than they had come. with this intention, taking the bull a little by the horns, he addressed their hostess while her back was still turned towards them. "mrs. lamb!" at the sound of the voice, for whose accents she had been listening all the evening, the lady moved round with quite a little swirl of her draperies; there was just sufficient open space about her to enable her to do it. "mr. talfourd! i thought you had forgotten me, and were never coming. and--have you brought the lady?" "i have. permit me to introduce to you miss margaret wallace." there have possibly been moments in most of our lives when we have been visited by something of the nature of a thunderbolt, and sometimes it has seemed to drop out of the clearest of blue skies. that was the moment in her life in which the thunderbolt descended on mrs. lamb, and with such crushing force that, for a too perceptible period of time, it left her literally bereft of her right senses. its utter unexpectedness was no slight factor in the havoc which it wrought. possibly more than she had been able to do for a considerable interval she had succeeded in putting behind her matters which were wont to press too closely; for the moment she had forgotten pitmuir--all that it meant. this was a case in which forgetfulness meant happiness, or a very tolerable substitute. if only for a few fleeting minutes her mind was at peace. and, on a sudden, without a moment's warning, not dreaming that such a meeting was even within the range of possibility, she found herself confronted by the one person in the world whom she would have traversed the universe to avoid. there, in her own drawing-room, within two feet of her was the girl who was the only living creature whose image haunted her, both awake and asleep. she had had communion of late with ghosts--unwillingly enough, for she had resorted to every means with which she was acquainted to drive them from her. yet come they would. therefore it was not, after all, so strange, that in the first moments of what practically amounted to delirium, she supposed that this bonny, fair-haired, blue-eyed girl, whom she so hated and so feared, was one of them. when she heard her name, and saw her face, she moved back upon the people who were behind, oblivious that they were there. the whole fashion of her countenance was changed. she held out her arms, as if to ward off something whose approach she feared. and she exclaimed, in a voice which none of those about had heard from her before-"you can't come in!--you can't! he says you're not to--and you shan't! go away! go away!" not one person in the throng which was around her had a notion what she meant, margaret no more than any of them. she herself drew back and clung to mr. talfourd's arm, as if in fear. but her fear was as nothing to the other's. their hostess offered in herself a picture for her guests' inspection which it was not pleasant to behold. she seemed to have all at once become transformed into a gibbering idiot. while she persistently drew farther and farther back, she kept repeating-"you shan't come in!--you shan't! he says you're not to--and you shan't! you shan't! i say you shan't!" there was among the onlookers a medical man, one who had had experience of different phases of lunacy. perceiving that this was a case which entered into his domain, he forced himself to the front. he put his hand upon his hostess' bare shoulder. "mrs. lamb! what has affected you? there is nothing here to cause you the slightest disturbance. control yourself, i beg." his tone of calm authority had instant effect. mrs. lamb was still, she ceased to gibber. her arms fell to her sides. she remained motionless, staring in front of her, as one in a dream. putting her hands up to her face, a convulsion seemed to pass all over her. when she removed her hands she was awake, and understood, and knew what she had done. the knowledge was more than she could bear. "let me pass," she cried. they let her pass. she swept through her guests, who huddled themselves together to let her go, like some incensed wild creature, out of the room, from their sight. chapter xxii margaret settles the question harry talfourd hurried margaret wallace into the street as fast as circumstances permitted, while the guests at mrs. lamb's were looking at each other, exchanging whispers, asking what had happened, what the thing which had happened meant. a few seconds after the hostess' departure the crowded rooms were filled with the buzz of voices, which rose higher and higher until it became a pandemonium of noise. mrs. lamb's "at home" had resolved itself into chaos. outside in the street mr. talfourd did not find it easy to get a cab; the chaos within was already beginning to make itself felt without. the whole roadway was a confusion of vehicles. perceiving that it was inadvisable to stand still, since they immediately became the cynosure of curious, and even impertinent, eyes, harry marched resolutely onward, holding the girl tightly by the arm. they had to go some little distance before they could find a four-wheeled cab which would condescend to give them shelter. so soon as they were in, margaret drew back into the corner of her seat with a movement so eloquent that harry seemed to hear her shiver. he was silent, trying to collect his thoughts. he was as much at a loss as any of the excited people they were leaving behind. when he spoke it was lightly, as if he desired to make as little of the matter as might be. he was conscious that in the farther corner, as far away from him as she could get, was the girl he loved, in a mood wholly unlike any that he had known before. he was fearful of what might be coming next. so he endeavoured not to be serious. "this promises to be a night of adventure. did you ever see such a scramble for cabs? people were rushing out of the house as if it were on fire. we'll hope there'll be no accident before they've finished. what did you think of mrs. gregory lamb? something must have occurred to upset her equilibrium; she showed quite a new side of her character." margaret was still. he seemed to hear her breathe; he wondered if it were possible that she was crying. he put out his hand, touching hers gently with his finger-tips. although she did not repulse him she remained impassive, not in any way acknowledging his caress. "meg, i hope you're not worrying yourself about that woman's behaviour. she's not quite responsible, i fancy. she certainly wasn't to-night, but there was nothing that need trouble you." "i am wondering what she meant." "meant? my dear child, she meant nothing, absolutely nothing. she's a trifle mad, that's all." "i'm not so sure. i believe she did mean something." "what on earth makes you think that? what could she mean?" "i can't explain. at present i don't understand myself; but i shall--i know i shall. only i'm afraid." "afraid! sweetheart, don't talk like that! you make me feel as if i had done something i oughtn't to have done." "you have done nothing. still i wish you hadn't introduced me. i asked you not to." "but, meg! the whole thing was your own proposition; the whole idea was yours from first to last." "yes, i know; but then i didn't understand." "what didn't you understand?" "i hadn't seen her." "you hadn't seen her? meg, have you ever seen mrs. lamb before?" "never." "has she ever seen you?" "that's what i'm wondering; that's what i'm trying to make out." "it's a very mysterious business altogether; and the way you're taking it seems to me to be not the least mysterious part of the whole affair--and i can't say that i'm fond of mysteries. however, as some one or other says in a play, though i'm afraid i can't tell you what play, 'time will show'." when they reached margaret's rooms they found that frank staines and mr. winton had arrived already, and were waiting for them at the street door. they all went up together. so soon as they were in the room mr. winton asked his question-"well, miss wallace, is mrs. lamb to create lady glover?" had he put to her an inquiry on the answer to which the whole happiness of her life was dependent, it could hardly have moved her more. "never! never! never!" she repeated the word three times over, with each time an additional emphasis. mr. winton, probably accustomed to strenuous utterances on the part of ladies to whom the theatre was the chief end and aim of their existence, appeared to be entertained by her intensity. putting his hands behind his back he regarded her with smiling face. "and isn't she to produce the play?--that is, if she's willing to do so if she's not to be allowed to play in it?" "she is to have nothing to do with it--nothing." "you appear to have arrived, miss wallace, at a decision which is final and conclusive, and to have done so in a very short space of time." "i have." "the matter is placed beyond the pale of my discussion?" "it is." mr. winton turned to harry with a little gesture of amusement. "then, talfourd, we shall have to seek for another capitalist, and as that is not a bird which is easy to find, 'the gordian knot' will have to be shelved for a still further indefinite period. let's trust that some of us will live to see it produced." in her turn margaret faced harry with an air of penitence. "i'm so sorry, but i would rather that it were never produced at all than that it should owe anything to that woman--and you know how i have set my heart on its success." he tried to comfort her, as if the loss were hers. "'the gordian knot' won't spoil by keeping; don't let it trouble you a little bit; dismiss mrs. lamb from your mind as if she had never been. she's nothing to you, or to me, or to any of us; she's just--like that!" he snapped his fingers in the air, as if by the action he expressed her valuation. margaret answered with an enigmatic smile. "like that? i don't think she'll be to me like that--ever." "but, my dear girl, why not? why not?" "ah! that i cannot tell you, because i don't know. but i shall know, and, when i do, i daresay i shall wish i didn't." harry threw up his hands in the air as if it were a case which baffled him. frank staines, who had been listening with a twinkle in his eyes, observed-"i understand, miss wallace, that your appearance at mrs. lamb's furnished the occasion for quite a dramatic interlude". margaret moved her shoulders, as if the recollection made her shudder. "i'd rather not talk about it, if you don't mind--thank you very much. i'm awfully sorry to turn you people out, but--i think i'd like to go to bed, if i may." when the three men found themselves in the street winton said to harry-"miss wallace's idea does not seem to have been altogether a success". harry did not reply at once; when he did his tone was a little grim. "i'm not so sure. my own impression is--though if you were to ask me i could not tell you in so many set terms on what it's founded--that we're well rid of the lady, and that we are rid of her i think there's very little doubt." frank staines remarked-"if the lady's mad, or if she's subject to fits of madness--and if she isn't i don't know what she is--it's just as well that you've discovered it before it was too late". judging from their silence that seemed to be the opinion of the others also. the next morning miss wallace was distinctly in an uncommunicative mood, as miss johnson, who paid her a very matutinal call, found, whereupon the young lady expressed herself with characteristic frankness. "really, meg, i've known you for quite a time, and i was just beginning to think that you were a really christian person, but now it's actually bursting on me that you can be nothing of the kind. you sit there, mumchance, looking all sorts of things and saying nothing; and if there can be anything more exasperating than that, i should like to know what, it is. you promised, last night, before you went to mrs. lamb, that you would tell me everything that happened--i'm sure something did happen, by the looks of you--yet the more i ask you questions, the more you won't answer them. do you call that being as good as your word? i don't--so that's plain. i'm disappointed in you, margaret wallace." margaret smiled, a little wanly. "i hope you'll forgive me, dollie, please! but i can't talk to you just now, and especially about last night. ask harry, or mr. staines, they'll tell you everything, and perhaps a little later i will myself, but just now i really and truly can't." dollie, eyeing her shrewdly, perceiving she was in earnest, bowed to the inevitable. "very well; i shouldn't dream of asking anything of mr. frank staines, he might treat me even worse than you are doing. but it's possible that i may put a few questions to your harry. the fact is that if some one doesn't tell me something soon i shall simply burst with curiosity. i have never concealed from any one that curiosity's my ruling passion--it's the case with all literary persons, my dear! meg!"--she went and put her arm about the girl's neck, and the tone of her voice was changed--"if anything horrid happened at that woman's, never mind; after all, horrid things don't really matter, they generally turn out much better than they seem. i once had thirteen mss. rejected in one week, and yet i bore up, and i planted them all before i'd done with them. i've never seen you look like this before, and i don't half like it. i always make you the heroine of all my stories, because you're the best plucked girl i ever met; so buck up, and stop it as soon as you conveniently can." miss johnson had not departed very long before margaret had another visitor--dr. twelves. he found her much more talkative than dollie had done. chapter xxiii margaret resolves to fight so soon as the doctor appeared in the doorway margaret ran to him with outstretched hands, in her voice a curious, eager note. "i knew you'd come!--i knew it!" the doctor took her soft hands in his well-worn ones, regarding her from under the pent-house of his overhanging brows with his keen hawk's eyes, which age had not perceptibly dimmed, as if he sought for something which he fancied might be hidden in some corner of her face. "did you? how did you know it?" "i don't know; but i did--i was sure." "maybe you've the gift of second sight. i've heard it said it was in your father's family." "i wish i had; it would be the most useful gift i could have just now." "would it? how's that? maybe you knew i'd come because you wanted me." "wanted you! doctor, don't you feel unduly flattered! but there's no one in the world i wanted half so much as you." "is that so? then it's queer, because i just happen to be wanting you nearly as much. but before we fall to talking come to the light, and let me see your face. there's something there which puzzles me, which i've never seen on it before; it's sure i am it wasn't there the other day." taking her by the arm he would have led her to the window, but she placed her hand against his chest and stopped him. "no, no, doctor, you mustn't take me to the light, and you mustn't look at my face either. i'd rather you turned right round and look at the wall. there's quite a pretty paper on the wall, and some drawings of mine which you'll find deserve your very closest attention. i just want to talk to you, and i want you to talk to me, and answer some questions which i'm going to ask--and that's all." "and that's all? i see. and i'm not to look at your face? good. it's prettier than the paper, and far more deserving of attention than the drawings, but far be it from me to quiz a lady when she'd rather i didn't. yet before you start the talking--perhaps when you've started you'll be slow to finish--let me say a word. you remember what you told me about that visit you paid to cuthbert grahame--that last visit when they wouldn't let you in?" "it's exactly about that i wish to speak to you." "then that's queerer still, because it's about that i've come to talk. you told me that it was nannie foreshaw who refused you admission, and that she poured some water on you; and i told you that i didn't see how she could have very well done that, since, at that very time, she was lying, with her leg broken, in bed. when i left i wrote and asked her what she had to say. i've had an answer from her, and here it is." he took an envelope from his pocket, and from the envelope a letter, speaking all the time. "you'll bear in mind that nannie's not so young as she was, and that, of late, things have fared ill with her, as they have a trick of doing when one grows old. she's had a broken leg, and that's no trifle when the marrow's getting dry in the bone; and her master--whom she'd had in her arms even before he'd lain in his mother's--had come to his death in a way that wasn't so plain as it might have been. she's never quite got the better of that broken leg; she walks with a stick, and she'll never walk without one; and she'll never be rid of the thought that, when cuthbert grahame died, though she was only just above, she couldn't get down to him, or shut his eyes, or see him before he was put in his coffin, or stand by his grave when he was buried. that thought troubles her more than the other. between the one and the other, and the stress of advancing years, she's not so good a penwoman as she used to be. and so it comes about that this letter which i have here was not written by her own hand, though i have no doubt that they're just her own words which are set down in it." unfolding the sheet of paper he proceeded to read aloud. "'dear mr. david'--she's called me that these forty years, and before that it was master david, and it doesn't seem as if she could break herself of the habit, though, mind you, i'm an m.d. of edinburgh university, and legally entitled to the prefix 'doctor,' which is more than can be said for a good many that's called it. 'it's beyond my thinking'--it's very colloquially written is this letter, which makes me the more sure that it's just her words which are set down in it--'it's beyond my thinking how you could have supposed that i could ever have turned my darling away from the door?--i never supposed anything of the kind, but that's by the way--'and refuse to let her in? my dear miss margaret! mr. david, if i were dying i'd open the door if i knew that she was there--ay, i believe i would climb out of my grave to do it.' you observe what exaggerated language the woman uses? that's her all over. 'and to think that it should have been her on the day of which you speak--that awful day! i'll never forgive myself now that i know it.' that's her again. 'and, mr. david, i'll find it hard to forgive you either.' that's the woman to a t--logical. 'if you'd never brought the creature to the house none of it would ever have happened, and my darling would never have been denied the door. and hot water thrown on her sweet head! how slow is the judgment of god!' observe how she flies off at a tangent. 'now i'll tell you the whole story. that day as i was lying in my bed, where she had laid me, i heard a great clatter in the house. when, after it was over, she came up to see me, i asked her what it was about. she said that a strange man had come begging to the house, and had tried to force himself into it, but that she had had to imitate my voice, to make him think it was me that was talking to him, before he would go. the insolence of her, that she should try to imitate her betters, and tell me of it to my face. and now it seems that it was no strange man at all, but just my darling who had come begging to be let into her own home. that wicked woman! tell my sweet, when you see her, mr. david, just how it was. and tell her if i had known it was she i would have crawled down, if it had been on my hands and knees, to undo the door, and bid her welcome. and say to her that there's none dearer to me in all the world than she is, and well she ought to know it. there is one prayer i offer constantly, that i may be spared to see her sweet face again, and hold her in my arms, and listen to her dear, soft voice. there is much more that i would say, but it cannot be written; it is only for her and for me.' then the old woman goes off rambling; there is more, but nothing to the point. here is her letter; you may read it for yourself if you like; there are tender messages by the yard. you'll see that that is not the epistle of a woman who would drive you from her door." "but i don't understand. who does she mean imitated her voice?" "the woman who called herself mrs. cuthbert grahame." "who called herself mrs. cuthbert grahame? i've heard something about some woman, but nothing that was at all plain. tell me who she was, and how she came to call herself by his name." the doctor told, as succinctly as he could, the story of the woman he had picked up by the wayside; how, though he had found her helpless, she had proved herself to be more than a match for them all. margaret listened with eyes which grew wider and wider open. when he had finished she broke into exclamation. "then nannie is right; it was through you that it all happened." he resorted to his favourite trick--he stroked his bristly chin, as if the action assisted him in the search for an appropriate answer. "in a measure, young lady--in a measure. my original intention was to perform an act of mercy. you would not have had me leave the creature there in the night to perish. the whole business is but an illustration of the truth of how great events from little causes spring." "to give her assistance, shelter--that was right enough; but, according to your own statement, you were responsible for that mockery of marriage." the rubbing of the bristles went on with redoubled energy. "i might say something on that point, but i'll not; i'll just admit i'm guilty. and i'll do it the more willingly because there hasn't been a day on which i haven't told myself that if there's a creature on god's earth that needed well and regular hiding that creature's me, because of what i did that night. i did a great wrong, a great folly, and a great sin. margaret, though i am old and you are young, i am ready, if you wish it--and you'll be right to wish it--to humble myself in the dust at your feet. my only consolation is that in his infinite mercy, ultimately, there may be forgiveness even for me." he paused, then added, with in his voice and manner a suggestion of utter self-abasement which was in itself pathetic, "and the worst i've still to add". "the worst?" she shrank from him, with what seemed to be a gesture of involuntary and almost unconscious repulsion. "ay, the very worst. only don't draw yourself from me like that, lassie--for the love of christ; for i'm but a poor old man that's sinned, and that's very near his end, and that would do all he can to repair his sin before death has him by the throat." "i--i didn't mean to be unkind, but--what were you going to say?" "one thing's about his money--cuthbert grahame's money. several times he spoke to me about you--more than kindly. i believe he had it in his mind--as i had, and have it, in mine--to repair the wrong he'd done you. i have reason to think that it was his intention to leave you at least a large portion of his fortune, to re-make the will i had helped him break. i believe that, with one of his cranky notions to be revenged on her for the part she'd played, he communicated his intention to her; that he went so far as to instruct her to draw up such a form of will as he required. my own impression is that she either actually did do this, or pretended to, and that, when the time came for him to affix his signature, she performed some feat of jugglery, which, under the circumstances, was easy enough, and so got him to sign a document which expressed the exact opposite of his wishes." "do you mean that he thought he was leaving me his money when actually he was leaving it to her?" "that's about the truth of it--i believe it strongly. i am persuaded that the will she produced she got from him by means of a trick. but that is not the worst." "doctor, you're--you're like the old fable, you pile pelion on ossa." "i believe that when she had got the will into her possession, all signed and witnessed, she was confronted by the fact that exposure of its contents might render it invalid at any moment. that is probably what would have happened, and in a very short time, so that to make sure, she killed him then and there." "killed him!" "i am convinced that cuthbert grahame was killed by the woman who called herself his wife, and that within ten minutes of the signing of his will. she propped him up with pillows, then, by suddenly withdrawing those which supported his head, she let it hang down, and so choked him. in order to avoid suffocation it was always necessary to keep his head well raised, a fact with which no doubt she had made herself acquainted." "doctor! but was there no inquest?" "certainly; and i gave evidence. but what could i say? i had no proof--not an iota. i could only express my conviction that it was impossible for him to have moved the pillows himself; and i did. i doubt if that bare statement had any effect upon the verdict. she was a very clever woman." "clever! you call her!--clever! if you are right she was an awful woman--you mustn't call her clever. that sort of thing's not cleverness." "isn't it? i don't know what it is then. if we had realised her cleverness from the first we might have been prepared for her; she might have met her match. it is only by fully recognising the fact that we have to deal with an uncommonly clever woman that we shall have the slightest chance of getting the better of her, and bringing her to book." "bringing her to book! doctor! where is she? is she at pitmuir?" "that's not the least strange part of the whole strange business--where she is. i've been wondering if it's a sign that god's finger has been slowly moving to set on her his brand. the young gentleman in whom, i presume, you take a certain amount of interest, since, one day, you design to honour him by allowing him to make of you his wife--mr. harry talfourd--told me that he acts as secretary to a lady." "i know." "the lady's name is lamb--mrs. gregory lamb." "yes." margaret, as she uttered the word, was conscious of a catching in her breath; she herself did not know why. "mrs. gregory lamb is the woman i found by the roadside; who told me that her name was isabel burney; who called herself mrs. cuthbert grahame; who juggled into existence the will under which she inherits; who murdered the man out of whom she got it by a trick." margaret was silent, curiously silent. then she drew a long breath, and she said-"now i understand". the doctor was struck by something in her intonation which was odd. "just what is it you understand?" she repeated her own words. "now i understand. the veil which seemed to obscure my sight is being torn away; things are getting plainer and plainer. she was not mad, as we thought; it was we who were ignorant. doctor, i believe that the finger of god, of which you spoke just now, has moved already." "it is likely. it is some time since i looked for it to move, but he chooses his own time. as for what you say about your understanding, to me your words are cryptic--unriddle them, young lady, if you please." margaret, in her turn, told her tale: of her visit to mrs. gregory lamb; of its abrupt and singular termination. the doctor listened with every sign of the liveliest interest. "as you observe," he cried, when she had done, "it would seem that the finger of god has moved already. she knew you although you did not know her, and the sight of you was as though one had risen from the grave; it filled her with unescapable terror." "it's difficult to explain--i've not been able to explain it to myself until this minute--but i did know her, that is, i felt as if i ought to know her. directly harry pointed her out to me, something struck at my heart and set me trembling. i don't often tremble, but i did then. it was as if i were confronted by some dreadful danger, which had threatened me before, and from which i had then only escaped by the skin of my teeth. and yet i don't know that the feeling which affected me most strongly was terror. no, i don't think it was. it was something else--something which i can't describe. i believe--doctor, i believe it was hatred. i hated that woman with a hatred which was altogether beyond anything of which i had dreamed as possible, of which i had supposed myself to be capable. i don't hate people as a rule; i don't remember ever having met any one whom i seriously disliked. i do think that in almost every one i have come across i have seen something which i liked. but--in her! i didn't want harry to introduce me, to take me nearer, because i was filled with what seemed even to me an insane, indeed a demoniacal desire to kill her where she stood." while the girl was speaking her appearance seemed to gradually change, till, when she stopped, she seemed to stand before the old man like some rhadamanthine, accusatory spirit, ready to pronounce judgment and to execute the judgment which she herself pronounced. the doctor watched her with a visage which remained immobile, almost expressionless. "your words suggest a kind of justice which has become extinct--in politer circles." "yet justice shall be done!--it shall be done! i will see to it. i never did her a harm, nor wished her one. yet she has done me all the mischief that she could, for wickedness' sake. if she killed cuthbert grahame, she should have killed me also, for, if i live, i will bring her to the judgment-seat. you say she is in enjoyment of the money which she won from him by a trick, and whose safe possession she insured to herself by murder----" "pardon me; to her that's the fly in the ointment. it's precisely the money which she hasn't got--which is doubly hard, since, to gain it, she did all that she did." "i thought you said that she had it." "she has the will under which she inherits, but, so far, she has inherited comparatively little. did grahame ever talk to you about his money?" "in those latter days, when i began to be a woman, there were only two things about which he would talk, one was his money, the other his desire that i should be his wife. i loved him dearly! no daughter ever loved her father better than i loved him, but not like that!--not like that! when i said no, he would talk of his money, holding it out as a bait." "did he ever tell you how much of it there was?" "he was always saying all sorts of things; i cannot remember all he said. i know he told me again and again that he had been saving his money for years for my sake, for me to use when i became his wife--his wife! he said more than once that there were fifty thousand pounds a year waiting for me if--if i would only say the word." "fifty thousand pounds a year? a nice little bait with which to cover the hook. some girls would have swallowed the bait and never minded the hook." "doctor!" "calm yourself, young lady; don't blast me with the lightning of your eyes. i'm but saying what's well known to all the world. and did he say where that snug little income came from?" "from his investments. he was always boasting of the lucky investments he had made." "did he ever tell you in what?" "he wanted to often, but i wouldn't listen. i daresay he did mention some of the names, but i paid no attention and have forgotten them if he did. i hated to hear of his money. i knew what it meant to him, and i couldn't get him to understand that it didn't--and never would!--mean the same to me. his talk about his money helped to poison my life." "one knows that to a young girl money has a way of not meaning so much as to some of us older folk, so i humbly ask your pardon if i seem to dwell on it too long. yet i would ask you to cast back in your mind and think if he ever dropped a hint as to where the securities, the documents which represented these investments, might be found?" "weren't they at the bank? or with his lawyers?" "they were not. cannot you recall a hint which he may at sometime have let fall as to their whereabouts?" she put her hands up to her temples, either to ease her throbbing temples or to aid her memory in its task of looking back. "i can't think! i can't think!--not now! there are so many things of which i have to think, that they seem to have left me no power to think of anything else. some day something which he once said may come back; i haven't forgotten much he did say to me; it's all somewhere in my brain, only i can't tell you just where--not at this very moment. at this moment i can only think of her." "of whom?" the voice which made the inquiry was harry talfourd's. he stood in the open doorway with his hat in his hand. perceiving that his appearance seemed to have taken them by surprise he proceeded to explain. "i did knock--twice; but i presume that you were so much engrossed by what you were saying to each other that my modest raps went unheeded. i heard you say, meg, in tragic, not to say melodramatic tones, that you can only think of her. shall i be impertinent if i venture to ask who is the lucky person who so fully occupies your thoughts?" "the lucky person, as you call her, is mrs. gregory lamb. harry, they say that in england the duelling days are over. they may be--that is, so far as so-called 'affairs of honour' are concerned--but for duels of another sort the day is never over. i am going to engage in a duel with mrs. gregory lamb. you and dr. twelves here will be my seconds. i shall need all the assistance that seconds may honourably give to their principal, for it will be a duel to the death." chapter xxiv the interior rather a curious state of things prevailed in mrs. lamb's residence in connaught square. the largest and best regulated establishments are apt to be disorganised when festival has been kept the night before--that is true enough. but in this case the disorganisation was something altogether out of the common. mr. lamb, who never attended his wife's receptions, and so pleased himself and the lady, had come home with the milk, just sober enough to wonder why the place was in such a state of singular confusion. the servants seemed to be occupying the reception rooms, enjoying themselves in a fashion in which servants are not supposed to do. he had a vague recollection of having a drink with a footman or some such menial while endeavouring to ascertain what was the meaning of the proceedings, and of pledging a housemaid's health in what he was convinced was a glass of his wife's champagne. but as, later, he was only too glad to be assisted upstairs by any one and every one, his memory of what took place was scarcely to be relied upon. his wife had shut herself in her room, constraining her guests to take their departure without affording them an opportunity of saying good-bye to their hostess, and offering her their thanks for a very pleasant evening. exactly what occurred behind that locked door she alone knew. when her senses returned she was still in her splendour of the previous night. she half lay, half sat, upon her boudoir floor, with her head upon a couch. a broken wine-glass was at her side. a decanter which had held ether was overturned on a buhl table. the day streamed through the windows. it was some seconds before she recognised these facts. then she rose to her feet and looked about her. the first thing she did was to go to the boudoir door and try if it was locked. when she found that it was, and that the key was nicely adjusted in the keyhole, so as to prevent any one peeping in from without, she strode through another door, which stood ajar, into her bedroom, which adjoined. she tried the outer door of that, to find that it also was locked. she glanced at a silver clock which stood upon the mantelpiece. according to it the time was twenty minutes to one, so that more than half of the day had already gone. then she went to a cheval glass, which mirrored her from head to foot, and glanced at herself. what she saw seemed to afford her a grim sort of amusement. her hair was all in disorder, one long tress trailed down her neck. her eyes were dull and heavy. her cheeks were smeared; such "aids to beauty" as she patronised had become misplaced. her gown was all creased and crumpled; a stain straggled right across the bodice. in a few curt words she recognised the situation so far as the dress was concerned. "that's done for." it looked as if it were, it might have been worn twenty times instead of only once. she removed her jewels--her bracelets from her wrists, rings from her fingers, her necklace, ornaments from her hair. when they were all off she took them in her hands and stared at them. "at any rate, you're worth money. i daresay i could get something on you if i tried, though perhaps not so much as some might think." she tossed them on to the dressing-table with a mirthless laugh. disrobing herself, donning her nightdress, she ensconced herself between the sheets. there she tossed and tumbled about in such a fashion that one was almost disposed to suspect her of indulging in some new form of physical exercise. when she had got the bed into a condition which suggested that it had been occupied throughout the entire night by some peculiarly restless person, ceasing to turn and twist, for some minutes she lay quite still, as if she listened. "those servants of mine don't seem to be making much noise; there aren't many sounds of their moving about the house. i should like to know where stephanie is; she ought to have woke me long before this." stretching out her arm she pressed the electric button which was by her bedside--once, twice, thrice, indeed half-a-dozen times, on each occasion for an unusual length of time, and with a fair interval between each pressure. nothing, however, transpired to show that she had rung at all, certainly no one answered her summons. as she began to realise that apparently she was not meeting with attention of any sort or kind, her temper did not improve. she kept up a continuous ringing; still no one answered, nor was there aught to show that there was any that heard. she began to be concerned. "has every one taken french leave, and am i alone in the house? what's it mean?" she kept her finger on the button for another good five minutes, then she decided that the moment had arrived when it would probably be desirable that she should make some inquiries on her own account. rising, she put on some clothes, over them a dressing-gown. then, unlocking the bedroom door, she went out on to the landing. nothing could be heard. she descended to the floor below, on which were the drawing-rooms. no attempt to tidy them had been made since the guests departed; they were in a state of almost picturesque confusion. not even the electric lights had been turned off; they were blazing away as merrily as if it were still the middle of the night. the apartments contained certain articles which, as refreshments were provided in the dining-room, could scarcely have been there when the guests retired. bottles and glasses were everywhere--all kinds of bottles and all kinds of glasses, indeed mrs. lamb had nearly stumbled over what looked like an empty brandy bottle as she came out of her bedroom door. to mrs. lamb the sight of those various empty receptacles was pregnant with meaning. "the beauties! i suppose they're sleeping it off. they shall smart for this, every one of them." she turned towards the staircase which led to the servants' quarters, with the intention, no doubt, of making them smart, when she encountered one of them. an unkempt, untidy figure, clad in a nondescript costume, consisting of checked tweed trousers, carpet slippers, dress-coat and waistcoat, crumpled shirt and collar and no necktie, came strolling leisurely down the stairs as mrs. lamb was about to ascend them. it was james cottrell, the butler, in general, so far as appearances went, the most immaculate of beings. his mistress stared at him in not unnatural surprise. "cottrell!--you!--in that state!--at this time of day!--why, you're not even dressed." so far from showing any signs of being ashamed or disconcerted, mr. cottrell's manner was not only self-possessed, it was affability itself. thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets, he tilted himself on his heels, till his legs touched the stair behind, and he smiled. "no, mrs. lamb, i am not dressed--that is, my costume is not in that perfect state of completeness which i prefer. it is not my habit to make personal remarks, but since we are on the subject, i may observe that you're not dressed either. i shouldn't call that dressing-gown full dress--would you? your hair don't look--to me--as if it had been done for days, and you really must excuse my mentioning that your complexion seems to have got itself all mixed up anyhow." "cottrell, you're drunk; how dare you speak to me like that?" "no, mrs. lamb, i am not drunk; i do assure you that i am at least as sober as you are. if you want to know what drink can do for a man, i recommend you to go and look at your husband--there is a drunkard, if you like; he's like a perambulating sponge. last night it took six of us to get him upstairs; that man ought to be black-listed. as for daring to speak to you, mrs. lamb, there may be some folks whom you inspire with awe, but you don't inspire me with any." "don't you think i'll let you speak to me like that, although you are a man and i'm a woman. you'll leave my service at once--and without a character." "as for a character, any character which you might give me, mrs. lamb, would, in all human probability, do me more harm than good. it will be my constant endeavour to conceal the fact that i ever occupied a position in your establishment; it might do me a serious injury were it to become known. as to leaving your service, i shall be only too glad to do so inside sixty seconds; only there's a little formality which i should like to have completed before i go. i should like to have my overdue wages, mrs. lamb. they are more than three months overdue, and i should like to see the colour of my money, mrs. lamb." "you shall have your wages; you needn't be afraid." "thank you; that is good news. because, to be quite frank, i was beginning to be afraid--in fact, we all were." "you impertinent brute! where are those other creatures?" "other creatures? you refer to my colleagues, male and female? we are all of us creatures, mrs. lamb--including you. i believe that two or three of them have already quitted your service, including the young frenchwoman who was supposed to be your own particular maid. she said that she never bargained to wait on a woman of your class, so she's gone. i noticed two young women in the kitchen when i was down there just now. they seemed to be in a more or less tearful condition. poor wretches! perhaps they never expected to find themselves in such a place as this. as for the rest of my colleagues, i fancy they are still in bed. i do not doubt that if you take them their overdue wages they'll get up, and get out of the house also, as quickly as you like. i imagine they'll be only too glad of the chance." mrs. lamb looked at mr. cottrell as if she were meditating measures of a distinctly active kind. although he might not have been conscious of it, for some seconds he stood in imminent peril of realising that, at least physically, his mistress was more than a match for the average man. but, apparently, after thinking things over she changed her mind and postponed hostilities. "you shall be paid for this, my man--they all shall--just wait a bit." she moved, as if to return to her bedroom, then paused. "there's some one at the door." there did seem to be some one at the front door, some one who saluted with equal vigour both the bell and the knocker. mr. cottrell was philosophical. "ah! there's been one or two already this morning. you've perhaps been in such a queer state yourself that you didn't hear them, though they made noise enough; but there have been several visitors. jones the fishmonger wants his little account, and franks the butcher wants his, and murphy the greengrocer, and the baker, and the grocer, and the milkman, and, i think, the laundry, and three or four more besides. they all want their little accounts--good big ones some of them are. i peeped through the dining-room window, but i didn't notice just who was there, and i didn't open to them either. i've had about enough of opening to those kind of people; they won't go round to the side entrance, and it's no use asking them to. but that sounds as if it was the landlord come to put the brokers in for rent. a landlord always thinks himself entitled to make as much noise as he likes at his own front door." some one seemed to consider himself at liberty to make as much clatter as he liked. "cottrell, go down at once and see who is at the door." "wouldn't you like to go and see yourself, mrs. lamb?" "if you don't obey my orders and go at once i'll throw you out of the house with my own hands, and you shall whistle for your wages." "like this? do i look as if i were in a fit state of attire to open the door of even such a lady as yourself, mrs. lamb?" "are you going?" the lady mounted two or three steps; there was something so significant in her manner that mr. cottrell temporised. "i shall be only too happy to open the door as i am!--if you will allow me to pass." she allowed him, and he passed, firing a passing shot as he went. "you must understand that i intend to be perfectly frank with whoever's there--perfectly frank, and truthful. i have had more than sufficient of telling lies on your account, mrs. lamb." at this point, throwing the hall-door wide open, he addressed some unseen individuals who were without in tones which were perhaps unnecessarily loud. "if any of you people want money--and by the look of you i can see you do--it's no use your asking me, and so i may tell you at once, because i want money too, and from the same person, and that's mrs. lamb; and as mrs. lamb happens to be standing at this moment at the top of the staircase, in her dressing-gown and with her hair all over the place, perhaps you'll step in right away, and just say to her what you've got to say. well, sir, and what might you happen to be wanting? oh, it's mr. luker, is it? may i ask, sir, what you mean by pushing me about as if i was a mechanical toy?" it was indeed mr. isaac luker, who had come into the hall with complete disregard of the fact that mr. cottrell was standing in the doorway. being in, the visitor regarded the voluble butler with characteristic impassivity. then, stretching out the forefinger of his right hand, he tapped at the centre of mr. cottrell's crumpled shirt-front, and he delivered himself thus:-"my advice to you is to put your head under the pump if there is one, and under the tap if there isn't, and let the water run for a good half-hour, for a complaint like yours it's the best medicine you can possibly have". it seemed that mr. cottrell was so taken aback by the proffer of this very handsome advice that for a moment or two he was at a loss for a retort; before he found one his mistress had interposed. "luker, come up here!" mr. luker looked at the lady at the head of the staircase, at mr. cottrell, at the invisible persons who still remained without. he seemed to hesitate, as if in doubt whether or not to take a hand in the game just where he was; then, arriving at a sudden resolution, he did as the lady requested: he went upstairs, followed by the retort which mr. cottrell had found at last. "perhaps if you were to try a little of that medicine you recommend on your own account it mightn't do you any harm." the observation went unheeded. mr. luker was captured by the lady the moment he reached the topmost stair. she pointed to the flight in front. "up you go!" up he went, with her at his heels. on the next landing she called his attention to the open bedroom door. "in you go." perceiving what the apartment was he favoured her with what he perhaps meant for a whimsical glance, and in he went. "go straight through into the next room--that's my boudoir." he went straight through, and she also. closing the door of her bedroom she stood with her back to it, putting to him a question almost as if she were aiming a pistol at his head. "have you brought that money?" mr. luker did not at once give her the answer she so imperatively demanded. instead, holding his ancient top-hat in front of him as if it were some precious possession, he ventured on a remark of his own. "things seem a little at sixes and sevens; they almost suggest that domestic relations are a trifle strained. that man who calls himself a butler is not behaving as if he were a butler; and i regret to notice something about the establishment which one hardly expects to find in a lady's high-class mansion." "cottrell's going--at once. all the servants are going--lot of drunken brutes! i'm only waiting for the money to pay them their wages." "oh, i see. and--those other persons on the doorstep, do they want money also?" "i don't know who's there, and i don't care; but i daresay every one wants money. i do! did you hear me ask if you've brought that money i told you to bring?" "to what money are you alluding?" "you know very well! none of your fooling! have you brought that ten thousand pounds?" "ten thousand pounds!" he held up his hands, with his top-hat between them. "ten thousand pounds! she speaks of that great sum as if it were a mere nothing!" "have you brought it?" "i certainly have not." "then what have you brought?" "i have brought--nothing." "look here, luker, i'm in an ugly temper. you ought to know the signs of it as well as any man, so i advise you to take care. i told you you were to bring me ten thousand pounds. when i said it i meant it; why haven't you brought it?" "my dear isabel----" "haven't i told you not to call me that?" "very well; it's a matter of utter indifference to me what i call you--utter! i was merely about to remark that i have laid your proposition before my friend, and, as i anticipated, he has decided that he doesn't care to lend money except on adequate security." "adequate security! don't you call a quarter of a million adequate security?" "certainly, if you had it, but you haven't. and you have nothing tangible to show that you ever will have, or any part of it." "there are those hardwood company shares--ten thousand of them." "you tell me that you are in an ugly temper, and i can perceive for myself that you are not so calm as i should wish, otherwise i should ask for permission to be quite frank with you." "you had better be frank! never you mind about my temper; it won't be improved by your shuffling. out with what you've got to say!" "remember, it will only be said at your express invitation." "do you hear? out with it!" "then briefly and plainly it's this: if you were anybody else it's possible that money--some money--might be got on your expectation of the hardwood company's shares, but, as things are, it's out of the question." "why? what's the matter with my being me?" "a good deal, as you're as well aware as i am. in a matter of this sort it's character which tells, and, unfortunately--i say it with deep sorrow!--your character's against you." "what's my character got to do with a thing of this kind?" "everything. suppose my friend were to advance you money upon your expectation of these shares, from your point of view you'd have him between your finger and thumb, and you'd keep him there." "how do you make that out?" "the process of extracting compensation from messrs. mctavish & brown would be, at best, both a lengthy and a tiresome one, one, moreover, in which not a step could be taken without your active assistance. you'd find that out, and you'd say, 'if you won't let me have so much more i won't move a finger, then you'll lose all that you've advanced already'. and you'd mould your conduct on those lines to the bitter end--my friend might find it a very bitter end. that would not suit him at all." "you----! i've half a mind to kill you!" "keep it at half a mind; many of my friends and clients have found it wiser to stop right there." "then do you mean to tell me that i can't get money out of any one--anyhow?" "not at all; money can always be obtained upon security. you have personal property--the furniture of this house, jewels, and so on." "what i might get out of that sort of thing would be gone before i got it." "then you might get money out of messrs. mctavish & brown." "you've told me over and over again that it would take no end of a time to do that. i can't wait; i want money--a lot of it!--now." "there's such a thing as compromise." "compromise? what do you mean?" "if you insist on receiving the full amount of your demand, no doubt messrs. mctavish & brown will keep you waiting as long as they can--if you ever succeed in getting it at all. but, supposing you agree to accept half----" "or three-quarters." "or three-quarters. the major sum might be mentioned first; but, if time is of importance, i should advise you to allow yourself to be persuaded to accept half, or even a trifle less, and to give a full quittance for all claims, on condition, say, that the amount agreed upon is paid within four-and-twenty hours." "they shall pay it!--i'll see to that! and then when i've got it i'll go at 'em for the rest." "ahem! i cannot allow myself to be associated with any such scheme as that." "can't you? we'll see! you stop where you are. i'll dress, and then you shall go with me to messrs. mctavish & brown as my legal adviser! and when i leave them i'll be richer than when i started, or they'll be sorry!" mrs. lamb passed into her bedroom, through the partially open door of which her voice proceeded: "don't you go meddling with any of the things in there; i know exactly what there is, so don't you think i don't. if i suspected you of taking so much as a paper-knife, i'd have it out of you if i had to strip every rag of clothing off you to get at it." chapter xxv alarums and excursions messrs. mctavish & brown, solicitors, of southampton row, london, w.c., had a large, sound and lucrative family connection. they numbered among their clients several people of really excellent position, persons whose names ought to have been in the _doomsday book_, and were in burke's _landed gentry_, and in various other places in which one would desire one's name to be found. among those names was that of dykes--lady julia dykes, relict of sir eastman dykes, third baronet of fennington park, essex. sir eastman had himself been one of the firm's clients, one whom they had every reason to value highly. his testamentary dispositions had been of such a kind that the administration of his estate had practically been left in the hands of messrs. mctavish & brown until the coming of age of his eldest son. a handsome income had been left to his well-beloved wife, together with the nominal guardianship of everything which once was his; actually, however, she did nothing of the slightest importance except with the cognisance and approval of the gentlemen in southampton row. lady dykes was a lady of a certain age, and of almost more than a certain presence. she was one of those persons who are constitutionally prone to lean--metaphorically!--upon some one or something, and she leaned upon messrs. mctavish & brown rather more than they altogether cared for. she consulted them not only every week, but sometimes on each day of the week; often on matters which had no connection with the law, and had nothing to do with them either. she had been known to ask their advice on the question of the retention or dismissal of a cook. on one memorable occasion she had actually written to them to learn if they thought that it would be becoming for her to attend a drawing-room in a scarlet satin gown. to make the matter worse, that letter was addressed to mr. mctavish in person. as it was a standing joke with mr. brown, who allowed himself an indecorous latitude in matters of real importance, that her ladyship had matrimonial designs upon that well-seasoned bachelor, it was a painful moment to mr. mctavish when he learned that she requested his advice upon what, to his thinking, was a matter of such singular delicacy. on the afternoon on which mrs. gregory lamb set out with mr. luker to visit messrs. mctavish & brown, lady dykes was paying one of her very numerous visits to her solicitors. she was closeted with both partners in mr. mctavish's private room, the senior partner having insisted on summoning the junior to take part in the inevitable conference, he having an almost morbid disinclination to be left alone with her. mctavish had an uncomfortable feeling, however much he might try to hide the fact from brown, that her ladyship was disposed to show herself much more friendly when he had no one to keep him in countenance. had they dared, both men would have made it a general rule to put her off on to one of their managing clerks, but they had learned from experience that though the soul of generosity she was quick to take offence, and, therefore, if she would talk nonsense, all they could do was to make her pay for it--which they did. the time had arrived for her eldest hope, eastman, to take up his residence at the university. on the present occasion she had called to renew, for the fiftieth time, the interminable discussion as to what was the exact annual amount he was to be allowed while there, and what exactly he was to do with it. "i am particularly anxious," she explained, as she had done over and over and over again (some ladies think that the more they repeat themselves the more emphatic they become--which is a mistake), "that he should not waste his money, and worse than waste his money, on what i cannot but consider, and every mother would consider--every mother who cares for her child (and how many mothers do!)--extremely undesirable connections. for instance"--she started on a little story which her legal advisers had heard from her lips more than a dozen times--"mrs. adams was telling me only a few weeks ago that her second son, bernard, who is at cambridge, at caius college, or trinity, or keble, or st. john's--it's one or the other--i'm not sure which, though i know he's in some part of the building"--she always spoke of a university as if it consisted of one large building, though she must have known better--"has been lavishing--positively lavishing!--articles of various kinds, gifts, presents of every description, from bon-bons to gloves, and from shoes to ribbons, and i don't know what else beside--it seems he kept a list of them, i don't know why, and she found it--it made me dizzy to hear her merely read it through, it was that long!--upon, of all creatures in the world--it seems inconceivable, for i've known the boy from a baby, and so did sir eastman--but it was a young woman in a tobacconist's shop. picture what his mother's feelings were; picture what mine would be if i made a similar discovery. if there is one rule to which i have adhered through life it is to allow no one connected with me to have anything to do with females of questionable antecedents. and a tobacconist shop! am i not right?" she looked directly at mr. mctavish, who coughed, and answered-"certainly, lady dykes; quite right". mr. brown said nothing; he looked the more. "you yourselves, although of the opposite sex, know perfectly well how necessary it is to have such a rule. you would not have built up this great business were it not universally known that you invariably refuse to accept as clients persons--especially when they are of the feminine gender--who are not of the highest respectability. i myself should not be here at the present moment were i not assured that was the case--of course that you understand. you would no more allow a woman of a certain class to enter your private office, mr. mctavish, than i should allow a navvy to enter my drawing-room." it was perhaps a trifle unfortunate that mrs. gregory lamb, attended by mr. isaac luker, should have chosen that particular moment to introduce herself into the premises of messrs. mctavish & brown. on the road mr. luker had endeavoured to persuade the lady to leave the negotiations as much as possible in his hands, a suggestion which she had repudiated with scorn. "if any one can play this sort of game better than i can, i've never met them. all you have to do is to chime in when i tell you. if i fail to jockey some coin out of them somehow, then it will be time for you to try your hand." "i am not so sure of that. it occurs to me as at least possible that if you fail it won't be worth any one's while to take a hand." it was not in consonance with the lady's plan of campaign to resort, throughout the entire proceedings, to any of the minor civilities of life. for instance she deemed it neither necessary nor advisable to announce her presence by knocking at the outer door. she simply swung it right back on to its hinges, and strode straight in, not with the lightest strides. in the outer office it was customary for visitors to mention who it was they wished to see, possibly, also, the nature of their business, and then wait in patience till it was intimated to them that they were at liberty to penetrate farther. no such formula was likely to suit mrs. lamb, for one reason if for no other. she was well aware that if the heads of the firm had their way nothing would induce them to suffer her to enter their presence. indeed so soon as the clerks in the outer office recognised who it was, one of them, starting up, prepared to rush to his principals to warn them of her coming. but the lady was too quick for him. while he was already half-way through the farther door, the lady, catching him by the shoulder, swung him round in a fashion which was a sufficient testimony to the fact that her arm still retained at least a good deal of its pristine vigour. before he had a chance to recover she was in the apartment which was reserved as a sanctum for the senior clerks, her appearance causing a sensation among those respectable elderly gentlemen, which was both ludicrous and surprising. the senior engrossing clerk, mr. riseley, was the only one among them who retained even a fragment of presence of mind. he endeavoured to interpose his person between the lady and the approach to mr. mctavish's private sitting-room. "mrs. lamb, what is the meaning of this behaviour? such conduct is not to be endured; i must ask you to leave this room at once!" "get out of the way," was the only answer which mrs. lamb vouchsafed. "i shall do nothing of the kind--certainly not; my duty to my employers forbids it. you can see neither mr. mctavish nor mr. brown, they--they are both of them most particularly engaged." mrs. lamb condescended to waste no more words on him. he was rather larger than the other clerk, so she used both arms, darting them out in front of her as if they were battering-rams, dashing her half-open palms against him with such force as to drive him against a neighbouring table, overturning both it and its proper occupant with a clatter on to the ground. then she went rushing into the senior partner's holy of holies as if she had been some mad bull, crying "come along, luker," as she rushed. mr. luker went along, not quite so demonstratively as she did, still, considering his build and the difference in his methods, he managed pretty well. yet he did not move fast enough for his energetic client. as he was coming through the door, seizing him by the arm, she gave it a jerk which sent him whirling half across the room and his hat flying into a corner. the instant she was in she slammed the door behind her, snapped the lock, and pocketed the key. as lady dykes had just been dwelling on her consciousness of the fact that under no consideration whatever would messrs. mctavish & brown allow doubtful female persons to set foot inside their offices, it was rather an unfortunate moment for her to make her entry. so both the partners decidedly seemed to think. as for lady dykes, she started from her chair with as much agility as her figure would permit, and stared at the intruder open-eyed. "good gracious!" she exclaimed. "who is this person? and what does she want?" mr. brown, having his wits about him, made for the second door (most lawyers have at least two entrances to their own particular preserves), observing as he moved-"lady dykes, might i ask you to----" he got no farther; mrs. lamb cut him short. her wits were even more on the alert than his. perceiving, on the instant, his objective, dashing after him, pushing him aside as if he were some insignificant thing, she gained the second door, banged it to, locked it, and pocketed that key also. then, turning, she confronted her victims with a laugh which did not by any means ring pleasantly in their ears. "it seems as if i had arrived in the very nick of time. i couldn't have bagged the pair of you more neatly if i'd had an appointment with you--could i?" lady dykes, who was the most nervous of her sex, was trembling almost as if she were a species of human jelly-fish. "dear! dear!" she gasped. "who is this person? and what does she want? make her open the door at once, and let me out! my footman will be wondering what has become of me." mrs. lamb favoured her with an answer--of a kind. "i'll tell you who i am. i'm one of their clients! i'm one of the helpless, ignorant women whom they've robbed and plundered, but before all's finished they'll find that i'm not so helpless and ignorant as they thought. and i'll tell you what i want: i want back some of the money they've stolen, and before anybody leaves this room i'll have it. i've stood their shuffling long enough, but i won't stand it any longer, as i'm here to show them." mr. brown, who still seemed to have most control over his tongue, addressed himself to mr. luker. "mr. luker, i believe you are a fully admitted solicitor. as such i call on you to notice that mrs. lamb's words are actionable. and i request you, unless you wish to get yourself and her into serious trouble, to insist on her opening the two doors which she has improperly locked, and on her leaving these premises at once. surely it is not necessary for me to point out that, otherwise, the consequences to both of you will be of the gravest possible kind." mrs. lamb placed herself in front of the irate mr. brown. "don't you waste your breath talking to mr. luker; he's not on in this scene--not just at present, anyhow. if you've anything to say, you say it to me; it's me you have to deal with, not him." "mrs. lamb, i will have nothing to do with you of any sort or kind; after the monstrous fashion in which you have behaved it is the sheerest absurdity to suppose that we can have any communication with you except through a properly accredited representative." "so i've behaved in a monstrous fashion, have i? i'll teach you to talk to me like that." she began the lesson then and there. gripping him by both shoulders she shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. he was a slightly built man, not physically strong; had he been a rat he could scarcely have seemed more helpless in her hands. when, presumably, she was of opinion that the first lesson had lasted long enough, she honoured him with a few remarks. "you take from me everything on which you can lay your claws; you strip me of every shilling i possess; and then, when i ask for some of it back, you insult me. you--dirty--thief!" here there was another bout of shaking. "there are men doing penal servitude who aren't half such mean, sneaking scamps as you are--and plenty of them." she flung him from her against the wall, leaving him to struggle for breath as best he might. lady dykes, in an armchair, was developing what promised to be a very fine attack of hysterics. she was beginning to make as much noise as mrs. lamb herself. mr. mctavish, who, judging from his appearance, had been in imminent peril of a stroke of apoplexy, seemed all at once to regain his power of speech. "upon my word, you're--you're--you're the most dangerous woman i ever heard of!" "and you're the most dangerous thief! perhaps before i've done with you you'll find that thieving's almost as dangerous to yourself as to those on whom you practise." there came a smart rapping on one of the doors, and a voice from without. "shall we send for a policeman, sir?" "by all means!--at once! let him break down the door if he can't get in any other way! this--this woman's--positively dangerous." "you're right there; i am--you've made me dangerous. and don't you think that a policeman, or ten policemen, will keep me from being even with you if i once get started; not all the policemen in london couldn't do it!" mr. luker, seemingly under the impression that his client was going a little too far, even for her, ventured on an interposition. "pardon me, mrs. lamb, but, if you will allow me to say so, i think this matter can be settled on a perfectly peaceful basis. if these gentlemen are disposed to be reasonable, and i feel sure they are, everything can be arranged without unpleasantness of any sort or kind. the point is----" mrs. lamb took the words out of his mouth, substituting, that is, words of her own. "the point is, that, among other things, you've robbed me of ten thousand hardwood company's shares." "it's an infamous falsehood! we've done nothing of the kind!" "haven't you? i know you have, and so do you; but you're one of those brazen-faced old sinners who would go to the gallows with a lie on your lips. those shares are worth fifty thousand pounds, and more; but as you've robbed me of every penny i have in the world, and left me with nothing but starvation staring me in the face----" "it's--it's incredible how any one should dare to say such things!--incredible!" "so there's nothing left for me but to try to come to terms with the robbers, and that's what i have come for. if you'll give me a cheque for forty thousand pounds--now!--this minute!--you may keep the other ten, and much good may it do you. so just you move yourself. sit down at that table and write me a cheque for forty thousand pounds." "forty thousand pounds! do you suppose----" "i suppose nothing. you do as i tell you, or you'll be sorry." again mr. luker ventured on an interposition. "if, once more, you will excuse me, mrs. lamb, if you will permit me i will point out to mr. mctavish how much more than moderate you are disposed to be in your demands. i have mrs. lamb's permission to inform you, mr. mctavish, that she is in absolute want of ready cash; that she is practically in a state of destitution; and that therefore she is willing to waive her lawful claims to such an extent that she is prepared to accept the sum of five-and-twenty thousand pounds; a fair proportion to be paid at once, and the balance on a given date; and to give you in exchange a discharge in full for all her claims against you respecting the hardwood company's shares." mrs. lamb's manner, as she acquiesced in her solicitor's modification of her terms, was not precisely gracious. "if i take twenty-five thousand pounds that will be going halves. if i am to be robbed i suppose i may as well be properly robbed; but i'll have at least ten thousand pounds in cash. so, now, mr. mctavish, without any more fuss, perhaps you'll let me have a cheque for that ten thousand." "ten thousand pounds! i'll not give you a cheque for tenpence." "you're two men, and i'm only a woman, but you'll find that i'm much more than a match for the pair of you; and if you're not careful i'll thrash you both till within an inch of your lives; i'll leave marks on you which you'll carry to your graves. as for you, you bloated old whisky barrel, i've only got to give you one or two smart ones in the proper place, and you'll be in your grave before you think. so if you want to keep on living, you'll make no more bones about handing me that cheque." "this--this is worse than highway robbery! in my own office you--you positively threaten----" "threaten! i'll do more than threaten! quick! are you going to fork up or am i to break every bone in your body?" "i--i--i will not be bullied----" "bullied! i'll show you!" she snatched up a stout malacca cane which stood by mr. mctavish's table, and which was that gentleman's property. "to start with, i'll splinter this over your bodies, then i'll smash everything else in the place, and you into the bargain. now is it going to be the coin or----" the hand holding the stick went up into the air, the gesture rounding off the sentence with sufficient significance. "you wicked woman! how dare you threaten me with my own stick? help! where is that policeman?" "policeman! do you think i care for a policeman? not that much!" down came the stick with a swishing sound through the air. as it descended mr. luker caught the lady by the wrist. "mrs. lamb, i do implore you to pause a moment for consideration. i reiterate my conviction that if you will only exercise a little patience this matter can be settled amicably and without violence." "luker, if you don't want to let yourself in for a little handling on your own account you'll let go of my wrist." "on the contrary, mr. luker, i beg you will keep a tight hold--the woman must be stark mad." "mad!" with a sudden twist mrs. lamb wrenched herself loose from mr. luker, and that same moment there was a smart rapping at the door, and an authoritative voice was heard without. "i'm a police constable. what's going on in there? open this door at once." "break it open, constable, break it open. i'm mr. mctavish, and i authorise you. we're--we're in actual danger of our lives." there must have been some one on the other side who knew how to deal with a locked door, for in a surprisingly short space of time it was open. a constable was revealed, supported by a considerable body of clerks, of all ages, in the background. the representative of law and order advanced into the room. "what's taking place in here?" "i'm mr. mctavish, officer, the senior partner in this firm. this--this woman has been endeavouring to extract money by means of threats. i must request you to eject her from these premises at once." "do you charge her?" "not at this moment, though, no doubt, later proceedings will be taken which will bring home to her a sense of her misconduct. at present all i want you to do is to turn her out." "and this woman also?" the allusion was to lady dykes. mr. mctavish was shocked. "dear me, no; that is lady dykes, of fennington park, one of our most esteemed clients, who has already been subjected to the most terrible annoyance. the man"--pointing to mr. luker--"you will turn out with the woman." the constable touched mr. luker on the arm. "now, sir, offer the lady a good example, and show her the way out." mr. luker put his hat on, and, without a word, prepared to act on the officer's advice. mrs. lamb caught him by the shoulder. "you cur! don't be a fool, luker, and do as he tells you." the constable smiled, good-humouredly. "if you're a wise man, sir, you will do as i tell you, and you'll talk the matter over with the lady afterwards." mr. luker seemed to incline to the opinion that the policeman's was the voice of wisdom. withdrawing himself from the lady's detaining fingers, still without a word, he left the room. the constable addressed himself to mrs. lamb. "now, madam, we policemen hate to have to be rude to a lady; might i ask you to oblige me by following your friend's very excellent example? that's the way out." he jerked his thumb towards the open door. mrs. lamb looked at him and at the others. apparently what she saw forced her to the conclusion that what she called "the game" was "up". she brought mr. mctavish's malacca cane on to a writing-table with a resounding thwack. "you couple of thieves! i'll wring your necks for you yet before i've done!" she dashed the stick upon the floor and went, the clerks treading on each others' toes in their anxiety to give her as much room as she required. chapter xxvi solicitor and client a pseudo-historical utterance was paraphrased by mr. luker when the lady joined him in the street without. "it may have been magnificent, but it wasn't war." it is possible that mrs. lamb knew very little about the charge at balaclava. it is certain that she had never heard of the phrase with which the critical french general has been credited. and she was in a red-hot temper, so that in any case she was in no mood to appreciate her legal adviser's recondite allusions. the lady's own remark was idiomatic in the extreme. "luker, i'd like to knock your head clean off your shoulders. if it hadn't been for you i'd have got all the ready i wanted out of that couple of cripples, or----" "or you'd have been on your road to the lock-up. there's no 'or' about it; if it hadn't been for me you would have been. my dear isabel----" "don't call me----" "all right; i won't. if i were to call you all that i think you ought to be called, you mightn't like it. i was merely about to remark that your methods are too primitive. in london you can't go into an office and get all the money you want out of a couple of lawyers, old or young, with the aid of a stick. it can't be done. if it could be done people would be doing it all day long." "can't i?" mrs. lamb's tone was grim. "you don't know me yet. you wait till i get them to myself, either together or singly, and i'll lay you the national debt to sixpence that i don't leave 'em till i've got what i want. i've my own methods, and i've found them pay me very well up to now." "i don't doubt your capacity; when i think of where you were and of where you are i've no reason to. but in dealing with people like mctavish & brown, with a strong case like yours, diplomacy pays better than violence. if you'd left the conduct of the affair to me i'd have at any rate exacted from them the promise of a satisfactory sum in settlement of all claims. as it is, where are you?" he held out his hand, palm uppermost, as if to show that there was nothing in it. she walked by his side for some little distance in silence; when she spoke her tone was still grim. "i'll tell you where i am--i'm with you. and i tell you what it is--as i couldn't get any money out of them, i'm going to get it out of you." "are you? i don't see how." "don't you? i do." "you can't get blood out of a stone." "no; because there's no blood in a stone. but i can get money out of you, because you've plenty." "i wish i had." "don't you worry; your wish was granted before it was uttered. i'll show you where some of it is, if you like." in his turn mr. luker for a while was still. then stopping, he held out his hand. "i wish you good-afternoon, mrs. lamb." "you needn't; i'm coming with you." "i'm afraid i have an appointment which will prevent my enjoying the pleasure of your company any longer." "oh no, you haven't. besides, it will make no difference if you have--i'm coming with you." "you are coming with me? what do you mean?" "i mean that i'm going to accompany you to your private residence, mr. luker. i want to have a quiet chat with you. i can have it there better than anywhere else. we shall be snug, and all by ourselves." he looked at her with his bleared, half-open eyes--he seemed to be physically incapable of opening them to their full extent--with an expression which some ladies would not have considered flattering, nor were his words exactly complimentary. "i would as soon go home with a tigress as with you in your present mood--indeed, of the two, i think i would prefer the tigress. i have been in too many tight places to feel inclined to walk, with my eyes open, into quite such a tight place as that would be. once more i have to inform you that i have an appointment which will prevent my having the pleasure of your company any farther, so i wish you good-afternoon." "and once more i tell you that i'm coming home with you." "oh no, you're not." "oh yes, i am." "i think you are mistaken." he beckoned to a policeman who happened to be standing by the kerb at a little distance from where they were. "what do you want with him?" she demanded. "i am going to appeal to that officer for protection, and i don't think you will find that i shall do so in vain. you will compel people to summon the police--it is extremely unwise." the constable was sauntering towards them. recognising, apparently, that there was logic in what mr. luker said, without waiting for the policeman to approach, also without going through the empty formula of wishing the solicitor good-afternoon, she marched off and left mr. luker alone. when she had gone, perhaps, a hundred yards, she stopped and looked back. mr. luker, who was still where she had left him, was seemingly enjoying a little friendly converse with the constable. she continued her progress for, possibly, another hundred yards, and then again looked back. this time mr. luker had vanished. she could distinguish the stalwart figure of the constable striding along in solitary state in the distance. she signalled to a hansom. "stamford street, blackfriars bridge end," was the direction she gave the driver. when the vehicle had brought her to the point she desired, descending, she dismissed it. she stood for two or three minutes, scanning the passers-by, keenly observing, so far as she was able, every one in sight. then, turning into stamford street, she presently turned again into a street on her right. she was coming into a very shady neighbourhood, in which one opined that women of her appearance were very occasional visitants. she twisted and turned, however, with the unerring rapidity of one who knew it uncommonly well, until at last she found herself in what was rather an alley than a street, and a cul-de-sac at that, for at the end was nothing but a high blank wall. here the tenements were not only extremely small, apparently consisting of five or six rooms at most, they were also of disreputable appearance. pausing in front of one she regarded it with an attentive eye. the fact that the blinds were down gave it a deserted look. she knocked once, twice--there was no bell. when no one answered she drew a conclusion of her own. "he's not come yet; i'll wait." she did wait, for a good half-hour, with exemplary patience, in spite of the fact that long before the period of waiting was at an end she had become an object of much interest to a large number of curious eyes. just as the observers were beginning to wonder how long she did intend to stop, the object of her flattering quest came into sight, in the shape of the legal gentleman from whom she had so lately parted--mr. isaac luker. contrary to her hopes and expectations he was not alone; once more her wily old friend had proved equal to the needs of the occasion. on either side of him were men whose character, or, rather, want of character, was written large all over them--two more unmistakable ruffians one would have to go far to see. at sight of her mr. luker came to a standstill. "i thought i should find you waiting for me here; your presence is not at all unexpected. so, as in this neighbourhood the police are not much protection, and i suspected that i might stand in need of protection, i brought my two friends here with me. they think little of putting a woman of your sort into the river, as gentlemen of their profession generally do, so i'll leave them to deal with you after the mode with which they are most familiar." "is this 'er?" inquired one of the friends, a beetle-browed person, with an open gash running right down his filthy cheek. "that's her, my good friend. you talk to her, in any way you please, while i go inside." as he produced his latch-key mrs. lamb moved towards him in a forlorn-hope sort of spirit. "let me come in! there's something which i must say to you." without giving her a hint of his intention the beetle-browed person struck her with his clenched fist on the shoulder in such fashion that, had she not lurched against the wall, mrs. lamb would have gone headlong to the ground. mr. luker stood to comment on the action. "that's right, my friend; that's how she likes to talk to others." he disappeared into the house; they heard him locking and bolting the door. the beetle-browed person placed himself in unpleasant proximity to mrs. lamb; his manner was, if possible, even more eloquent than his words. "now then, are you going to take yourself off, or have we got to move you? make up your mind, because our time's valuable." she made up her mind, there and then. realising that she was doomed to still another disappointment, she took herself off, with mr. luker's two "friends" at her heels. when she was back again into stamford street she stopped and spoke to them. "there are police here, as, if you try to follow me another step, you'll find." "we don't want to follow you--not much! we only want to keep you off the governor, that's all. you can go where you like, and you can do what you like, but if you come near his crib again we'll mark you." hailing another hansom mrs. lamb left mr. luker's two "friends" standing on the pavement. chapter xxvii pure ether at the house in connaught square mrs. lamb had to knock and ring four times without, apparently, attracting the attention of any one inside. she was meditating gaining admittance through the area door, when a fifth assault upon the bell and knocker was productive of a more definite result. after a good deal of what seemed unnecessary fumbling with the handle, the door was opened sufficiently wide to admit of cottrell, the butler, being seen within. he was attired in the same extremely undignified costume in which he had greeted his mistress in the morning, which, however, showed certain signs of what might be called degeneration. the shirt-front was, if possible, more crumpled than before; the collar was gone; the waistcoat had, in some mysterious way, strayed out of the straight, so that while it was on one side of his body the shirt was on the other; his hair was rumpled; the whole man looked as if a plentiful application of cold, clean water might do him a great deal of good. he held the door just wide enough open to enable him to display his person and to see who was there, seeming to be not at all abashed when he perceived that it was his mistress. "so it's you, is it! so you've come at last; it's about time; we thought you never were coming. i hope you've brought some money--everybody hopes so. it's no good your coming into this house if you haven't--not the least." mrs. lamb was in a bad temper, which, perhaps, on the whole was not surprising. she had been in a bad temper when she had started to visit messrs. mctavish & brown. the incidents which had marked the afternoon had not tended to sweeten it. on the contrary, for quite a time she had been looking for somebody on whom, to use an expressive euphemism, she might "let herself go". had mr. cottrell been aware of the lady's state of mind, even in his then peculiar condition, he might have realised that there are occasions on which discretion is the better part of valour. he would certainly hardly have afforded her not only so excellent an opportunity of giving expression to her feelings, but also so capital an occasion of making her quarrel just. she looked at mr. cottrell with something in her eyes which should in itself have been sufficient to serve as a warning; there was still time for him to perform a strategic retreat. without a word she went quickly up the steps, flung the door wide open, seized him by the shoulders, and sent him spinning into the street. he sat, for some moments, on the kerb, as if overcome. then, exceeding rash, he retraced his way up the steps as best he could, with the apparent intention of inquiring why he had been handled in such unceremonious fashion. before, however, he had gained the actual summit, he went flying backwards, with the lady's assistance, in such summary fashion that it was only the back of his head being brought into contact with the pavement that stopped him. when he understood, dimly, what had happened, he began to raise an agreeable hullabaloo, mingling imprecations on all and sundry, with curses on the lady in particular, and cries of help to the public and the police. mrs. lamb, for the third time that day, was brought into contact with a constable. a policeman appearing round the corner, perceiving mr. cottrell gesticulating on the pavement, came sauntering up to learn what was wrong. the butler explained. "i give her into custody, that's what i do!--tried to murder me, that's what she's done!--broken my brains out!--assault and battery, that's what it is; and that's what i charge her with, policeman. you put the handcuffs on her, and take her to the station, and i'll come round and give all the evidence that's wanted." the officer was calmer than mr. cottrell. he heard the butler to an end, then he glanced at his mistress. "what's wrong?" she explained. "that man's my butler, although you would not think it to look at him. he has taken advantage of my absence to get into that condition. he kept me waiting for more than twenty minutes on the doorstep, and then when he opened he was not only drunk but insolent. i have dismissed him from my service, and put him into the street, and out in the street he stops. i should be obliged by your moving him away, and preventing his making a disturbance in front of the house." the policeman, who was young, leaped to the conclusion that right was on the side of the lady. he was disposed to give the butler but a short shrift. "now, then, move on! away you go! we don't want any of your nonsense here!" mr. cottrell vehemently objected. "don't talk to me like that, policeman! she owes me three months' wages; there's another nearly due, and another instead of notice. you let her pay me five months' wages before she talks of putting me out into the street." the policeman looked up at the lady. "is what he says true?" "it's an entire falsehood. any claim he may have to make must be made in the proper quarter." she threw the door wide open. by now other members of the household had, unwisely enough, come up to see what the discussion was about. her action revealed them. "you see, officer, here are some more of my servants. they, also, have taken advantage of my absence, and are like that man--drunk. i dismiss them all--now. perhaps you won't mind coming in and seeing their boxes packed; i suspect them of having property of mine in their possession." the policeman went in--mr. cottrell went in also, with his assistance; he saw their boxes packed. it was a process in which the packers fared badly, the butler in particular. each servant in the house, almost without exception, was shown to be in possession of property which was indisputably mrs. lamb's. their mistress' attitude was one of magnanimity. she declined to prefer a charge against them, at any rate just then, whatever she might do later. though, of course, under the circumstances, to pay them anything in the shape of wages was altogether out of the question. all she wanted to do was to see their backs. and she saw them. a shamefaced, miserable, draggle-tailed crew they looked, as, one after the other, under the policeman's cold official glance, they took their boxes out into the street. then mrs. lamb presented that zealous young officer with a sovereign. he made short work of clearing the debris away from the front. so mrs. lamb was left alone in that great mansion without a servant to wait on her of any sort or kind. she went into the boudoir; that and her bedroom, and indeed the whole house, was exactly in the same condition in which she had found it in the morning. it seemed as if no one had moved a finger to put anything in order. removing her hat, she sat down and tried to think. the result was a failure. her thoughts would not travel on the lines she wished; they would launch out in undesirable directions. she had scarcely been there a minute before she began to become conscious of an unpleasant feeling that she was not alone, when, all the time, she knew she was. an odd, morbid obsession began to overpower her, as, directly she was alone, it had shown an uncomfortable aptitude to do of late. putting her hands up to her eyes she rubbed them with her palms, as if she were endeavouring to rub something away from them. then, removing her hands again, she looked about her, queerly. "of course it's ridiculous, and i suppose the real explanation is that i'm not so well as i ought to be; but it's funny how i'm always seeming to be back in his room, and how plainly i can see it all; and the bed--the bed." there was a rigid expression on her face which it was not agreeable to observe, as she herself seemed to understand. standing up she gave herself a little shake, as if she were trying to shake something from off her. "this won't do--it won't do. it's not healthy. and yet there's something which i ought to look at--to see; to understand. it's something in the room. it's not the bed--not only the bed; it's something else. i wish i could think what it was; i wish i could understand; then perhaps it might go." the overturned decanter which had been on the buhl table in the morning was still there. she picked it up, holding it up to the light. it was empty. she went to what seemed to be a buhl liqueur case which stood on the floor in a corner. it was locked. she went to her bedroom to look for the key. it was not in its usual place. "i can't think where i put it; those brutes can't have had it. i had it myself last night, i know. where did i put it? i can't wait to think--i can't wait; besides it doesn't matter. anything will do to open it." she took a polished brass poker. with it she made a hole in the lid of the case large enough to enable her to insert her fingers. then, with her hands, she tore the lid away--a sufficiently easy task, since the wood proved to be less than an eighth of an inch in thickness. the case contained six bottles. she took out one; it was labelled "pure ether--poison". withdrawing the stopper, paying no attention to the statement on the label, she poured out nearly a wineglassful, which she instantly swallowed, coupling with it, as it were, a somewhat gruesome sentiment. "here's to isaac luker! i wish he was in reach; i'd like to kill him." scarcely were the words out of her lips than the door opened to admit her husband. he stared at her. "belle, there doesn't seem to be a servant in the place--not a creature. where are they all off to? what's it mean?" she replied to his question with another. "gregory, doesn't there seem to you to be something singular about this bedroom?" "bedroom? it's not a bedroom; it's a boudoir. what do you mean? belle, what's the matter with the house? what have you got in your hand? what are you drinking?" mrs. lamb was looking round her in a fashion which induced her husband to draw back, as if in doubt. "have you ever seen it before--anywhere? isn't there something strange about it?--especially the bed?" mr. lamb seemed to be of opinion that his wife's manner was distinctly disagreeable; apparently he did not know what to make of it. "bed?--what bed? there's no bed here. you're--you're not well. don't talk like that; you make me go all over creeps. i say, belle, i do wish you'd give me some coin--if it's only a tenner. i'm broke to the wide." "gregory!" "well?" "come here; i want to speak to you." "thank you, i'm awfully sorry, but i've got an appointment with a man; i can't stop. about that money--belle! now, what's up?" with a swift, unexpected movement, interposing herself between him and the door, his wife had slipped her arm through his, and was looking at him with something in her big black eyes which made him more uncomfortable than he would have cared to admit. considering the bold, ringing, almost blusterous tones in which she was wont to speak, there was something unpleasantly significant in the half-whisper in which she addressed him now. "gregory, you must stop--you mustn't go. there's something which i wish to say to you--a great deal which i wish to say to you, and i must say it to you now--here"--her voice sank still lower--"in cuthbert grahame's bedroom." chapter xxviii mr. lamb in a communicative mood in the evening of that day margaret wallace and harry talfourd dined with dr. twelves. the young lady, who throughout the day had remained in a curious mood, was indisposed to avail herself of the doctor's hospitality; but she was over-persuaded by the doctor, who was insistent, and by mr. talfourd, who was on his side. throughout the day they had talked and talked and talked. harry was of opinion that, on a certain theme, they had talked too much. there was something about margaret which was new to him; which he did not understand. it troubled him. so when the doctor changed the subject by asking them to dine with him he accepted, for himself, at once; and when margaret hummed and hawed, and began to make excuses, for her also. he told her that she would have to dine with the doctor--and she had to. the two men bore her off with them in triumph. the doctor entertained his guests at the holborn restaurant. in his youth he had known the place when it was a dancing-hall; had visited it while undergoing various transformations during his recurrent trips to town, and, whenever he came to london, made a point of patronising it still. the meal was hardly a jovial one. the host and harry did all they could to keep the conversation on impersonal and frivolous lines, but margaret would have none of it. she could scarcely be induced to open her lips to put food between them; talk she would not. the colloquial gifts for which she was famous seemed to have deserted her entirely; she was tongue-tied. when, in a dinner party of three, the lady, who is both young and charming, cannot be persuaded to speak, the meal is apt to prove but a qualified success. the doctor's little festive gathering turned out to be not quite so festive as it might have been. as chance, or fate, had it, the two men's well-meant efforts to keep the conversation in exhilarating channels were doomed to meet with complete fiasco. after the meal was finished, as they strolled along holborn, enjoying the fine evening, considering whether to take a cab, and if so, where to tell the cabman to take them to--for the doctor was firm in his conviction that this was an occasion on which they were bound to make a night of it--the issue was taken out of their hands in a wholly unexpected fashion. a gentleman, who did not seem to be so capable of seeing where he was going as he ought to have been, all but cannoned against mr. talfourd, drawing back to apologise just in time. "beg pardon! why, it's talfourd! hollo, talfourd! who's the lady? and who's----" the speaker was staring at the doctor. "hollo! i've seen you somewhere before!" the doctor was returning him look for look. "and i've seen you. you're mr. gregory lamb, who lodged one time at david blair's over the other side of pitmuir, to whom i was foolish enough to loan a brace of sovereigns, for four-and-twenty hours, as i understood, but which you've never paid me back unto this day." mr. lamb was not at all abashed; he never was by reminders of that kind--they were legion. "why, of course, it's the doctor--the cranky old doctor. i remember you quite well. how are you, old chap? you haven't--you haven't a brace of sovereigns on you now?" "i have not a brace which you are likely to be able to bag, mr. lamb. i understand that you have married since i saw you last." "since you saw me! i was married then." "indeed? but i gathered that you had since married the widow of an old friend of mine--mrs. cuthbert grahame." "widow? she wasn't his widow; she never was his wife." "pardon me, but she went through the scotch form of marriage with him in my presence." "that was all her dashed impudence. she was my wife long before that; before she ever knew that he was in the world. doctor, my wife's a devil of a woman, and she's been treating me in a devil of a way. if i were to tell you all that she's been doing, so far as i can understand, mind you--it's quite between ourselves--you'd go straight to a police station, and you'd ask for a warrant; but i'm her husband, so i can't. listen to me--this is between ourselves--if you'll come to a place i know, and where they know me--most respectable place--and do me the pleasure of having a drink with me--and talfourd, and the lady--never leave out a lady when it's a question of a little refreshment--i'll tell you what she's just been telling me, not five minutes ago. it'll surprise you. good as confessed to committing murder; half expected her to murder me--give you my word it's a fact. come and have a little something and i'll tell you all about it--between ourselves, you know." the doctor exchanged glances with mr. talfourd and with margaret. "it seems to me, mr. lamb, that you've had more than a little something already." "you're wrong, old chap--quite wrong; do assure you. it's ether--beastly ether." "ether?" "ever heard of the stuff before? i never did. seems she lives on it; takes it in quarts. she crammed some of it down my throat--fairly took me by the throat and crammed it down. i'm like a child in her hands--give you my word. she's a devil of a woman. never tasted anything like it before; seems to have sent me stark staring mad. don't know whether i'm standing on my head or heels. let's go and have some christian liquor, and i'll tell you all about it." again the doctor exchanged glances with his companions. "if you'll allow me to offer you a seat in my cab i'll take you to a friend who'll be able to give you some of the finest whisky in england, and there, at your leisure, you can tell us all about it." "my dear old chap, when they called you cranky i always said that there was more in you than they might think, and i stand to it to the present moment. i say----" the doctor did not wait to hear what he said; he bundled him into a four-wheeled cab after margaret and harry. when the cab had started margaret asked-"where are you taking us?" "i am taking you to my friend, andrew mctavish, who has a commodious residence in mecklenburg square--just handy. there, over a glass of whisky, mr. lamb will be able to tell us just what his wife told him. he'll find us interested listeners." there was a dryness in the doctor's tone which was lost upon the gentleman at his side, who occupied the short distance they had to traverse by protestations of the regard he had always felt for the old acquaintance whom fortune, or destiny, had again thrown across his path. that night mr. brown was his partner's guest at dinner. both gentlemen were still smarting from the outrage to which mrs. gregory lamb had subjected them that afternoon. dinner was finished; they were in the library, planning schemes of vengeance, when the servant announced that dr. twelves was outside, and was desirous of seeing mr. mctavish. before the servant was able to explain that the visitor was not alone, the doctor himself marched in with his retinue. the partners rose from their chairs in surprise. "mctavish--brown--i have the honour to introduce you to miss margaret wallace, a young lady of whom you have heard a good deal, and whom i am sure you'll be delighted to know. this is mr. harry talfourd, of whom you may have also heard something. and this, gentlemen--this is mr. gregory lamb, the husband of the lady of whom, i fancy, you have perhaps heard rather too much." if the look upon the partners' faces meant anything, there could be no doubt upon the latter point. both mr. mctavish and mr. brown stared at mr. lamb as if he were not only the strangest, but also the most unwelcome, object they had ever beheld. then mr. mctavish turned to the doctor, with a gasp. "i'd have you to know, dr. twelves, that you're taking a great liberty. you're presuming on our friendship in venturing to bring this individual to my house, and at this time of night. brown, i'll trouble you to ring the bell. mr. lamb shall be shown to the door, before we have him behaving as his wife did this afternoon." mr. mctavish had become rubicund with agitation; the doctor remained placid. "in less than five minutes, andrew, you'll be acknowledging that i've done you a very considerable service in bringing mr. lamb to this house, and you'll be begging my pardon for the remarks which you have just made." mr. brown, obedient to his partner's request, had rung the bell. a servant appeared. him dr. twelves addressed before mr. mctavish had a chance of speaking. "you'll have the goodness to bring a decanter of whisky, and the other necessaries, at once." when the man looked at his master for an endorsement of this order the doctor explained. "andrew, mr. lamb has a communication to make which i think you will find of interest; he proposes to make it while enjoying a glass of prime whisky." "i cannot imagine what mr. lamb has to say which can be of interest to me, but, since you wish it--john, bring the whisky." a decanter being placed upon a table, the doctor prepared a potent mixture which he handed to mr. lamb. "i think, mr. lamb, i understood you to say that mrs. lamb was married to you before she met cuthbert grahame?" "of course she was--ever so long. she was never his wife; that was only her bluff. this is something like whisky. gentlemen, your very good health, and the lady's--never overlook a lady." "you perceive, andrew, that mrs. lamb was already mrs. lamb when she encountered your late client, mr. cuthbert grahame, and, therefore, any document in which she is described as his wife is, i believe, on the face of it, null and void." mr. mctavish made as if about to speak, but a movement of the doctor's left eyelid seemed to act as a check. the doctor turned to mr. lamb, grimly affable. "you like this whisky, mr. lamb?" judging from the fact that that gentleman had already emptied his tumbler it seemed as if he did. "allow me to fill your glass." the speaker suited the action to the word; he did very nearly fill the glass with neat spirit. "from what you said i should imagine that you have recently had rather a singular scene with your wife, mr. lamb. you were about to tell us what occurred. was it anything very remarkable?" "i should think it was remarkable. your very good health, gentlemen. after the stuff she forced down my throat this is something like whisky; ether she forced down my throat--rank poison. why, do you know she sees things--actually sees things--give you my word--makes your blood cold to hear her talking. she made out we were in a bedroom--cuthbert grahame's bedroom she called it; it was only the boudoir. she talked about the things which were in it just as if they were in it, when of course they were nothing of the kind--just the ordinary furniture! 'you see that bed?' she said. of course i didn't; there wasn't a bed to see; not even the ghost of a bed. 'that's cuthbert grahame lying in it. you see how he's propped up by pillows?' the idea of such a thing in a boudoir! 'now i'm going to pull away those pillows from under his head.' she actually pretended to be pulling at pillows, or something--positive fact! 'now,' she said, 'you see how his head's fallen? you hear what a noise he makes in trying to breathe? he's choking. i've only got to leave him like that for a time and he'll be dead. he almost choked to death when a pillow slipped the other day, so i know.' quite serious she was all the time--frightfully serious; made me all over creeps to hear her--give you my word." "do we understand you to tell us that she said, 'now i'm going to pull away those pillows from under his head,' and that then, in pantomime, she went through the action of pulling them?" "certainly; that's just what she did do--just exactly. then she pretended to drop them on to the floor, and talked about the noise he made in trying to breathe. awful!--really awful!" "was that all she said? or did?" "i should think not; there were all sorts of things; she kept on for a devil of a time. but i can't remember just what they were just now--strange how you do forget things. oh yes! there was one thing--i remember one thing!--most extraordinary thing. she said, 'you see that fireplace'. of course there wasn't a fireplace; she was standing right back in front of a window. absurd! but she saw it--stake my life she saw it--you could tell. 'there's something about that fireplace which i ought to see, but i can't think what it is; something which i ought to understand, but i can't. if i only could!' you never heard anything like the way she said it; you never heard anything more impressive on the stage--positive fact! 'you see those two wooden posts,' she went on. of course i saw nothing of the kind, because, as i've told you, there was nothing to see--i don't see things. 'those two pillar things, i mean, which have been carved out of the woodwork of the mantelpiece, one on either side, just near the bottom. do you know, gregory, i believe that there's something about those two posts which i ought to see, which i ought to understand! but i can't! i can't!' give you my word that she began to cry; twisted her hands together and went on like anything--actually. seemed so silly! 'i believe,' she cried,' that if i could only see, if i could only understand, i should know where cuthbert grahame's money is, that i should find the quarter of a million which is lost.'" as mr. lamb gave a dramatic imitation of his wife's manner, which, considering all the circumstances, was not so bad, margaret, who hitherto had remained in the background, came to the front with a question. "are you sure she said that there was something about those two posts which--if she saw, if she understood it--would make known to her where cuthbert grahame's money was?" mr. lamb had something of an aggrieved air as he replied. "am i sure? of course i'm sure; i shouldn't say she said it if i wasn't sure. my statements are absolutely to be relied upon, miss whoever-you-are." the doctor glanced from mr. lamb to margaret. "what's he mean, or what's she mean about two wooden posts? it's all double dutch to me; i don't understand in the least. is it any plainer to you?" "i think that it is all quite plain to me; that i can understand what she doesn't; that i can see what she can't." her voice sank. although she spoke gently her tones, to adopt mr. lamb's word, were most "impressive". "i believe that, unwittingly, she has delivered herself into my hands; that the duel which she and i are fighting has advanced another stage; that soon we shall be exchanging shots; and that then there will be but one of us two left to tell how it all fell out." chapter xxix margaret pays a call the next morning, between eleven o'clock and noon, margaret went out visiting. she had paid much attention to her costume, more than she was wont to do. her mind travelled back to the day on which she had been repulsed from cuthbert grahame's door; she endeavoured to recall what on that occasion she had worn. women have a mnemonic system of their own; with them clothes and events are inseparably associated. they recall one by a reference to the other. miss wallace had no difficulty in recollecting precisely what garments she had worn; she had even a fair perception of how she had looked in them. she made it her immediate purpose to look again as much as possible as she had looked then. almost providentially, as it seemed, the dress itself was still in existence, hidden away at the bottom of a box. she had never worn it since. first, because, although cheap enough, it was fashioned of very delicate material, and the hot water which had been poured upon her had blotched it here and there with stains which she had found it impossible to attempt to conceal. then it was connected with an episode which, whenever she saw it, would instantly recur. the recurrence afforded her no pleasure. as, after excavating it, she surveyed its many creases, she meditated. "it almost looks as if, from the first, i had preserved it with a particular end in view, with the intention of producing it, when the mathematical moment arrived, as what the french call a _piã¨ce de conviction_. it's ages behind the fashion, but that will only serve to impress its significance more forcibly on her." she contrived something in the way of head-gear which was reminiscent of the hat she had worn that day. her nimble fingers reproduced the various trifles which in a woman's attire are of such capital importance; she even dressed her hair in a fashion which was obsolete. when, fully costumed, she surveyed herself in a looking-glass, it seemed to her that the results were most surprising. "wonderful how the modes do change! it is not so many years ago, and i am sure that then i was up-to-date; but now i look as if i had come out of the ark; i might be in fancy-dress. i shall have to take a cab; i should never dare to walk through the streets like this; they'd take me for a guy. when mrs. gregory lamb sees me, if she's still in anything like the state of mind which that charming husband of hers described last night, it won't be wonderful if she takes me for a ghost." she put in a portfolio certain drawings which she had risen at a very matutinal hour to make; the portfolio she placed beneath her arm, and, thus equipped, she sallied forth upon her errand. the street in which she had her lodging being of modest pretensions, was but little frequented by cabs. she had a five minutes' walk before she found one. and during that short promenade she was the object of so much attention, especially from the females as she passed, that she was glad when, seated in a hansom, she was at least partially concealed by the friendly apron. she found the door of mrs. lamb's residence in connaught square wide open. on the steps stood a shabbily dressed man, with his hands in his trouser pockets, an ancient bowler pressed tightly down upon his head, and a clay pipe between his lips. when margaret addressed him he moved neither his hat, nor himself, nor his pipe. "is mrs. lamb in?" "from what the governor told me i shouldn't be surprised but what she's gone back to bed." margaret considered the man's words. his manner was not exactly rude, it was peculiar. "which is her bedroom?" "that's more than i can tell you. i ain't been upstairs myself. i've got a bad leg, and ain't too fond of going up and down stairs, especially when there ain't no need of it. but you'll find it somewhere that way, i expect." "may i ask who you are?" "me?" taking his pipe out, the man drew the back of his hand across his lips. "i'm representing the landlord; that's what i am." "representing the landlord? do you mean that you're a bailiff?" "a bailiff--that's it! i'm in possession; three quarters' rent--nearly four. my governor was only just in time. seems there's a bill of sale on the furniture. they came up with their vans as my governor was going over the place; wanted to clear everything out, they did. of course my governor soon put a stopper on that. there was a bit of a talk. i shouldn't be surprised if they was to pay my governor out. it's a queer business from what i hear." "please let me pass, i want to see mrs. lamb." the man drew well back into the house. "certainly; any lady can see mrs. lamb for what i care. i expect you'll find her somewhere about upstairs." as she ascended the staircase miss wallace indulged in inward comments. "the house looked very different the night before last; nobody would have guessed then that the shadow of ruin was already hovering over it. she must be a curious person to give a party to all that crowd of people when she knew that at any hour the brokers might be in for rent. and to talk of financing harry's play! and paying him three hundred a year for doing nothing! but then she is a curious person. the house looks as if nothing had been touched in it since mrs. lamb's reception came to a premature conclusion--it smells like it too. what have we here? what a state of things!" she glanced into the drawing-rooms, which remained in a state of amazing confusion. mounting to the floor above she found herself confronted by two closed doors. "i wonder if one of these is her bedroom. i'll try this." she turned the handle of the door which was directly in front of her, softly, and walked right in. it was the lady's bedroom, and the lady was in bed. margaret had entered so quietly that apparently not the slightest sound had informed the mistress of the house that any one was there. the girl stood still. "pah! what an atmosphere! i'd sooner have every pane of glass broken than breathe air like this. i shouldn't think the windows have been open for days." she glanced at the bed. "is she asleep?--at this hour?--with the broker's man downstairs?" laying her portfolio on a small table, she moved closer to the bed. its occupant continued motionless. the girl, leaning forward, touched her, lightly, on the shoulder. still no sign of life. the girl exchanged the light touch for a sudden, vigorous grip, giving the shoulder a wrench which must have roused the soundest sleeper. the woman started up in bed. "luker! is that you?" she cried. when freshly roused from slumber, she saw who it was; her first impression seemed to be that she was still the victim of some haunting dream. speechless, she stared at the girl, drawing farther and farther back the longer she stared. her whole frame--her pose, her limbs, the muscles of her face--seemed to become rigid, set, as if she were afflicted by some new and awful form of tetanus. she appeared to be incapable of twitching a lip or of moving an eyelid. even when margaret spoke she persisted in her fixed and dreadful glare, as if she were some unpleasant statue. "i am margaret wallace--as you are aware. i am she whom you drove from cuthbert grahame's door, pretending you were nannie foreshaw. these are the clothes i was wearing when you drove me away with lies and with hot water. see--here are the stains of that hot water still. your sin has found you out; judgment is pronounced; your punishment has already begun. between you and me it is a duel to the death. it is your choice, not mine, but since you have forced it on me, i will fight you to the end, and i shall win. i know all about you--who you are, what you've done. i know that you were already a wife when you pretended to marry cuthbert grahame; that you committed bigamy. i know that you got that will from him by means of a trick. i know that so soon as you had got it you murdered him. you snatched the pillows from under his head--see! like that!" she caught up the two pillows which lay upon the bolster and dropped them on the floor. "can't you hear the noise he makes in trying to breathe? he's choking. you've only to leave him like that for a little while, and he'll be dead. and you left him! i know--i know." the woman listened to the hot, eager words which streamed from the girl's lips as if the speaker were some supernatural visitor, and the accusations were being hurled at her from on high; and still she never moved a muscle, she even seemed to cease to breathe. "you see!--we are in cuthbert grahame's bedroom, you and i. i know it as well as you do--better--and you know it very well. you'll never forget it--never!--to the last moment of your life. there is the mantelpiece; it is made of wood--carved wood. it is old; old as the house itself; beautifully carved. you see there are two wooden pillars, one on either side, carved so that they stand out. you are quite right in supposing that there is something about them which you ought to see, to understand. i have come to tell you--to show you--what it is." taking from her portfolio two drawings she held first one and then the other in front of the motionless woman. "i have made a drawing of the mantelpiece, just as you see it, and as i see it, and as it is. is it not like it? here are the two side-posts; but here"--exchanging one drawing for the other--"is only one of them. that is a picture of the pillar which is on the left-hand side of the mantelpiece as you stand in front of it--you will remember, on the left-hand side. i have written down an exact description of it in case you should forget, because there is only one thing which you will never forget, and that is on the bed. look closely at the drawing; it represents the pillar exactly. this long, slender part, which runs from here to here, is called the shaft. you hold it with both hands, or, as you are very strong, you will perhaps be able to manage with one, and you turn it right round in its socket--completely round. it will probably be a little stiff, as it has not been touched for so long; but you'll find that you'll be able to make it move. this narrow piece at the top is called the neck. after you have turned the column you pull it to the left. it slides in two grooves. it may be a little stiff, like the column, but if you push, or pull, hard enough, and long enough, it will yield. this still narrower piece near the foot of the column, just above the plinth--the plinth in the bottom of a column is called the _torus_, or the _tore_ (_torus_ is a latin word which architects use, and it just means swelling)--when you have turned the pillar, and slipped the neck, you get as firm a grip on the top of the torus as you can, give a smart jerk, and it will fall over on a hinge. have you ever read _the arabian nights?_ you don't look as if you had read anything. if you haven't, you never will; you'll never have a chance. but i suppose you've heard of ali baba and the forty thieves; the cave in which they kept their treasure; the password, 'open sesame,' which caused the cave to open. all these man[oe]uvres of which i have been telling you--turning the shaft, sliding the neck, pulling forward the torus--are the 'open sesame' which will lead you to the place where the treasure is--greater treasure than was in the cave of the forty thieves. these performances which you will have gone through will have unlocked, unbolted and unbarred. all that remains is that you slide that whole side of the mantelpiece to the left. you'll have no difficulty. behind you'll discover a cupboard, deep though narrow, going far back into the wall, with shelves laden with treasures. on those shelves is the quarter of a million of money--i daresay more--which once was cuthbert grahame's, waiting for some one to carry it away! here are the two drawings which are the key to the riddle. i present them to you freely. they were made specially for you. although the broker's man is in for rent, and the bill of sale men clamour at the door, and you are penniless, and ruin stares you in the face--ruin utter and complete--though your need of it's so great, you'll not get that money which is hidden in the mantelpiece--you'll not dare! you'll not dare! because the bed still stands in the room--you can see it now!--the bed on which you murdered cuthbert grahame; and cuthbert grahame still lies on it--you can see him too!--waiting and watching for you to return to where you threw the pillows on the floor--waiting and watching for you. you'll not dare go back into that room again, because in it the dead hand is waiting to grip you by the throat. and after to-morrow it will be too late--cuthbert grahame's money will be there no longer. here are the drawings. i will leave them with you, as i said. you will be able to study them at your leisure, conscious of who is looking over your shoulder." margaret laid the drawings on the coverlet. with her portfolio again beneath her arm she quitted the room, as noiselessly as she had entered. all the time mrs. gregory lamb had not moved or spoken a word. chapter xxx mrs. lamb in search of advice on the evening of that same day, at the door of mr. isaac luker's little house in that _cul-de-sac_ near stamford street, some one knocked, in a rather unusual manner, as if after a prescribed fashion, then whistled half-a-dozen sharp, shrill notes up the scale. this performance was repeated thrice before anything happened to show that it had attracted attention within. then a window was opened above; the solicitor's head came out. "who's there?" a feminine voice replied-"it's me--isabel. i want to speak to you. don't keep me waiting out here. come down! let me in at once." there was a brief pause before the answer came, as if the man of law was endeavouring to see as much of his visitor as he could. "not much--i won't have you in this house; don't you think it; i'm not a fool. if you won't go without a fuss i'll soon get those who'll shift you." "you are a fool. i don't want money from you, or anything of that kind. i want to tell you something--that's all." "then tell it me from where you are; i'm listening." mrs. lamb's voice dropped, so that her words were only just audible to the man above. "cuthbert grahame's money's found." another pause, possibly of doubt. "is that a lie?" "i'll swear it isn't; it's as true as i stand here." "where is it?" "it's in his house" "his house? what house? i didn't know he'd got a house." "his house at pitmuir--where i met him--where he died." "how do you know it's there?" "i'll tell you all about it if you'll let me in." "you'll tell me before i let you in." "margaret wallace--that girl--you know--she came this morning and told me it was there." "i don't believe it. why should she, of all people, come and tell you a thing like that? tell that for a tale." "she did; i swear she did. the money's there--i know just where--a quarter of a million at least." "a quarter of a million?" "at least! if i was there i'd have it in my hands inside two minutes. i'm as sure of it as i am that i'm alive. don't be silly; let me in, and let's talk where we can be alone. i'm on the square--i swear it. i don't want anything from you; i just want your advice--that's all." there was another pause. "mrs. lamb, i've got a telephone installed in these premises. i'm going to telephone to a friend that you're here; i'm going to ask him to step round in a few minutes. if, when he comes, you've been making trouble, there'll be trouble for you--you'll be the sorriest woman that ever lived. i give you my word; when i give you my word on a point like that you know it goes. you wait there until i'm ready." the head was withdrawn; the window closed; the lady waited, impatiently enough. her patience was sufficiently tried. it seemed to her that she waited an hour; she certainly did wait twenty minutes. more than once she was on the point of sounding a loud rat-a-tat on the knocker by way of a little reminder. it was only with an effort she restrained herself, being conscious that possibly mr. luker's decision still hung in the balance, and that it needed but little to turn the balance against her. she had just arrived at a final conclusion that he had played her false, or, at any rate, intended to ignore her existence, when the door was opened, on the chain. "i've telephoned to my friend; he's coming; so, if you're in an argumentative frame of mind, you'd better take my strong advice and stay outside. no argument will be allowed in here." it seemed to mrs. lamb that the wary mr. luker was carrying his wariness almost a trifle too far. she was unable to altogether conceal that this was her feeling. "bless the man! i don't want to argue! i just want to explain exactly how the matter stands. when you've opened that door you'll find that i mean just what i say, neither more nor less." "my friend, when he arrives, will see that you don't mean more; you can take my word for that. come inside!" mr. luker removed the chain; the lady entered; he led the way to a room on the ground floor at the back. it was much better furnished than the exterior of the house, and its occupant's appearance, might have led one to expect. a telephone, on its bracket against the wall, was one of the most prominent objects the room contained. mr. luker called her attention to its presence. "you see? i'm not so much alone here as you might think; i'm in constant communication with my friend; and as he'll be here very shortly, perhaps you'll say what you have to say as quickly as you can." "it'd have been said already, if you hadn't kept me cooling my heels outside while you were playing the fool in here with your telephone." as clearly and succinctly as possible--she could keep to the point when she liked--mrs. lamb told her tale, exhibiting margaret's drawings, partly by way of corroboration and partly to elucidate certain points which needed explanation. "and you believe it?" "believe that the money's inside that mantelpiece? i'm as certain of it as i am that i see you." "what makes you so sure?" "his will was hidden in one corner of the room. all along i've felt sure that there were more hiding-places in it than one. i shouldn't be surprised if there were half a dozen. it's just the kind of room, and he's just the kind of man. as for the mantelpiece, i've been bothered all along by a feeling that there was something about it which i ought to understand, and didn't. now i know what it is. cuthbert grahame's money's there as certainly as you are here. i tell you he was just the sort of curiosity--he wasn't a man when i knew him!--who might be expected to play a trick like that." "but why should the girl come and tell you the tale when it was to her advantage to keep it dark--especially from you?" "that's more than i can say. i know she's a white-faced little devil, and that i hate her. i lay she didn't do it out of any love for me." "that, i think, we may take for granted--which makes the puzzle more. it looks to me as if she expects you to walk headlong into a trap which she has carefully baited." "curse her traps! what do i care for her traps? she can't set one which will catch me. the money's there, and the money's mine--and i'll get it." "then get it. it will be useful to you just now, even if there's less than a quarter of a million." "useful!--my god!--useful!" stretching out her arms on either side, she drew a long breath. "but, luker--that's the mischief!--it's in his room; the one in which he died." "well; you've told me that already--what of it?" "what of it? why!"--she laughed; there was something in the sound of her laughter which caused him to bunch himself together, as if touched by a sudden chill--"i daren't go in it." "you daren't go in it? what do you mean? the house is your own, isn't it? what's there to be afraid of? who's to keep you out?" "that's it!--i don't know! i don't know! luker, there's something come over me lately; i didn't used to be troubled with nerves." "you didn't." "i never was afraid of anything--or any one." "you weren't; you've always had the devil's own courage since you were a girl." "there's been nothing i daren't do." "it would have been better for you, perhaps, if there had been something; there's such a thing as daring to do too much." "you think so? perhaps that's it; perhaps i have dared to do too much." "as to that you know better than i do; i'm not your father confessor, nor wish to be. the lord forbid!" "i don't know how it is, but, lately, i've gone all to pieces. i'm afraid of all sorts of things. when that girl came this morning i was afraid of her; she frightened me out of my senses. i thought she was a ghost; i couldn't have moved or spoken to save my life; i listened to her like a stuck pig. luker, things have upset me more than i thought anything could have done. i'm--i'm all a bundle of nerves." "it's that stuff you've been drinking." "stuff? what stuff?" "when i was at your place yesterday i saw a decanter lying on the table; some of the contents had been spilled. i dipped my finger into the stuff and tasted it. it was ether. when women of your temperament take to drinking ether, that's an end of them." "but i've got to drink it!--i've got to! i never touch it unless i'm forced! luker, if i didn't, sometimes, i should go stark, staring mad." "then you'll go stark, staring mad. ether's a royal road to madness for such as you. better stick to gin." "gin!--gin's no good; a barrelful would be no good when i'm like that." "i see--that's the point you've got to." he was eyeing her intently. "is there any particular reason why you should be afraid of going into the room where that man died?" she became instantly conscious of the keenness of his scrutiny, perceiving that in it there was a new quality. her manner changed. "any particular reason? no; there's only the general reason that i'm all mops and brooms; that i start at shadows. besides, i'm going into it, and you're going with me." "am i? that's news." "luker, if you'll come with me to pitmuir, and stick to me while i find cuthbert grahame's money, i'll give you five hundred pounds." "hard cash?--before we start?" "i can't do that; you know i can't do that. but, luker, i'll give you a thousand when i've found the money. i'll set down my promise in writing; give you any sort of undertaking you like." "yes; but suppose you don't find the money; suppose what that girl told you is nothing but a cock-and-bull story? i tell you plainly that i can't make head or tail of the whole business. i've no faith in the girl, or her story, or her motives. and i'm pretty sure that she has no intention, under any circumstances or on any conditions, of presenting you with cuthbert grahame's fortune, or of putting you in the way of getting it for yourself either." "but i know it's there. i can't explain to you how i know it--i don't understand myself--but i do. and though it seems queer, at the back of my head i've known it all the time. luker, as sure as you are living, that money's there." "then, in that case, instead of going yourself, why not instruct some one on the spot to examine the premises on your behalf; to pull down this famous mantelpiece, or the whole house if necessary, and report the results to you?" "who shall i instruct? before they move they'll perhaps want money--i expect my position is pretty generally known--and where am i to find it? in any case, they'll take their own time, and time is precious. besides, there are enough fingers meddling in my affairs already. and who am i to trust? i don't want any one except myself to know how much i find. to speak of nothing else, shouldn't i have to pay succession duty if it were known?" "i suppose you would. isabel, you're a curious person; a little too fond, perhaps, of doing things for yourself; yet, in delicate matters--in very delicate matters--it's a fault on the right side. how do you know you can trust me?" "you and i have seen too much of each other for me not to know when, and where, and how far i can trust you. i'm not afraid." "you're right; you needn't be. i don't think i am likely to round on you. but, on the other hand, frankly, i'm afraid of you." "nor need you be afraid of me. it's only when i'm upset that--that i'm trying--that's all." "even if it is all, it's a pretty big all." "about the thousand pounds. as i said, i'll give you any sort of bond you like, undertaking, if you stick to me, to pay you the moment i get the money in my hands. anyhow you know that you'll be safe. it's not bad pay for what i'm asking you to do." "i don't say it is. when do you propose to start?" "to-morrow morning, by the ten o'clock train from king's cross. i planned it all out before i came." "that's quick work." "it'll have to be quick work. if i don't have money, and plenty of it, within forty-eight hours, i'm undone." "i understand. by the way, i presume that you're prepared to pay all out-of-pocket expenses, for both parties, as we go on. for instance, i shall require you to hand me a return ticket to wherever we are going before i set foot inside the train. i'm a poor man, although you sometimes amuse yourself by pretending to think otherwise, and i, at any rate, can afford to take no risks." "you shall have your ticket, and i'll pay everything. i've the money to do it--but it's about as much as i have got." "ah, but by to-morrow, about this time, you'll be more than a millionaire. i've always understood that that wonderful quarter of a million of mr. grahame's produced, on an average, more than twenty per cent.; so that if you had a million, averaging a modest three per cent.--and some millionaires would be glad to get as much--your income would be less. then there are the arrears, which have been accruing! think of the arrears, mrs. lamb--on a quarter of a million, at twenty per cent.! now if you will sit down here, and will give me, on this sheet of paper, that little undertaking you mentioned, i think that, on my part, i can undertake to accompany you on your little trip to the north." chapter xxxi mrs. lamb returns to pitmuir when mr. isaac luker and his client, mrs. gregory lamb, arrived at the small roadside station, in the county of forfar, towards which they had been journeying throughout the day, they were neither of them in the best of tempers. it had been a long day's journey. there had been some misunderstanding about the connection of the trains at dundee. they had missed the one by which they had meant to travel; there had been a dreary wait for the next. when at last they started on the last stage of their journey the engine went dawdling along the branch line in a style which both, in their then frame of mind, found equally trying. they would hardly, at any time, have been called a sympathetic couple. neither, for instance, would have selected the other as an only companion on a desert island. by the time the train paused for, so far as they were concerned, its final stoppage, either would have been almost willing to fly to a desert island to escape the other's society. it was between nine and ten at night--a misty night. the damp seemed to be rising out of the ground, and to be covering the country with a corpse-like pallor. there was a faint movement in the air, which it did not need a very imaginative mind to compare to a whisper of death. they were the only passengers who alighted at the station, which seemed to consist of but a narrow strip of bare earth, about the centre of which was constructed what looked like a ramshackle shed. illumination was given by two or three oil lamps, and by a lantern which the only visible official carried in his hand. to this personage mrs. lamb addressed herself. "is any one waiting for me?" the official proved to be a scotsman of a peculiarly scotch type; his manners and his temper were both his own. no attempt is made to reproduce the dialect in which he spoke. "and who might you happen to be?" "i'm mrs. gregory lamb." "never heard the name. pass out! tickets!" mr. luker nudged the lady's arm. "i thought you telegraphed under the name of mrs. cuthbert grahame?" she made a somewhat ill-considered attempt to correct the error she had made. "i mean that i'm mrs. cuthbert grahame." "mrs. cuthbert grahame? you said just now that you were mrs. gregory lamb." "i spoke without thinking. i telegraphed some instructions to the station-master in the name of mrs. cuthbert grahame." "in the name of mrs. cuthbert grahame? a body can't have two names." "i ordered a close carriage to meet mrs. cuthbert grahame by the train before this, then, when i found i'd missed it, i sent a wire from dundee to order the carriage to wait for the next." "there's no carriage within miles." "no carriage? then what is there?" "there's what they call a fly." "and is the fly here?" "sam harris wouldn't let it come." "who's sam harris?" "he's the man that owns it." "and pray why wouldn't mr. harris let it come?" "you'd better be asking him instead of me. he lives about two miles from here--perhaps a trifle over." "two miles! then is there nothing here to meet us?" "there's a cart." "a cart!--an open cart!--in this weather! what kind of cart?" "he was outside the gate when i saw him last, but maybe by now he's grown tired of waiting, and he's gone. if you go outside you'll be able to see for yourself what kind of cart it is better than i can tell you. any way, you can't stop here; i'm off home. tickets!--and if you haven't your tickets you'll have to pay your fare--that's all." the two passengers surrendered their tickets. with such dignity as she could muster the lady strode towards the little wooden gate, mr. luker following limply behind. he made no attempt to feign a sense of dignity which he did not possess. to judge from his appearance and his attitude he had not only sunk into the lowest stage of depression, but he was willing that all the world should know it. a very woebegone figure he looked: so tall and so thin, with the pronounced stoop; in the old familiar garments which he had worn for so many years in town, a costume which seemed singularly out of place on that spot just then; the frayed, shabby frock-coat, tightly buttoned up the front, the collar of which he now wore turned up about his chin; the trousers which were at once too baggy and too short; the ancient top-hat, which had seen so many better days. outside the gate was what, in the semi-darkness, looked uncommonly like an ordinary farmer's cart, and not too comfortable, or cleanly, an example of its class. mrs. lamb stared at it in disgust. "have you brought that thing for me?" as regards manners the driver seemed to be a near relation of the railway official's, if anything his were more pronounced. "i don't know who you are. how am i to know?" "i'm mrs. cuthbert grahame of pitmuir." "oh; that's what you call yourself--ah!" "you appear to be an impudent fellow." "and you appear to be a free-spoken woman." "how dare you talk to me like that? i ask you again, have you brought this thing for me?" "i've brought this thing, as you call it, which is as decent a cart as ever you saw, and more decent maybe than you deserve to sit in, to carry the person as calls herself mrs. cuthbert grahame to pitmuir, and i'm beginning to wish i hadn't." "why is there no fly here?" "because sam harris wouldn't let his come." "why not? i ordered it." "you ordered it! mr. harris said that he wasn't going to have the likes of you sitting in a fly of his--that's why. so he sent this cart instead. if this cart isn't good enough, i'll take it back at once. i'll take it back anyhow if there's much more talking." the lady and her solicitor exchanged glances. while they were apparently seeking for words the driver volunteered another remark, in keeping with those which had gone before. "there's another thing. i'm to be paid before i started; mr. harris said i was." "you'll be paid when you reach pitmuir." "shall i? then i'll say good-night." the man gathered up his reins as if about to depart. "stop! what are you doing? you appear to be a pleasant character." "from all accounts, ma'am, that's more than can be said of you." under other circumstances the fellow might perhaps have regretted his temerity. mrs. lamb was not a lady to quietly endure impertinence from any one. as matters stood she was at his mercy, a fact of which he was evidently aware. she had to choke back her resentment as best she could. "how much do you mean to charge?" "there's twelve shillings for driving you; there's three for waiting; there's five for myself--that's a sovereign." "a sovereign!--monstrous!" "very well; there's no call for you to pay it. i tell you again, i'll say good-night." mr. luker interposed. "how far is it?" "better than five miles." "and how long will it take, in this delectable vehicle of yours, to get us there?" "an hour or thereabouts. the road's none so good, and it's not easy going on a night like this. it's thicker over yonder." "and for an hour, or thereabouts, i'm to be jolted, over a bad road, through this death-like mist. thank you; the prospect is not inviting. i think we had better go over in the morning. where, in the neighbourhood, can we get a night's lodging?" "nowhere." "nowhere? are you sure?" "if you think you know better than me you'd better go and look for yourself. i tell you there's not a house round here where they'd have you under the roof--nor her either. i wouldn't, nor yet mr. harris, nor any one else." "this is delightful--thoroughly delightful." anything less suggestive of delight than his tone could hardly be imagined. the lady spoke. "i telegraphed to an old servant of mine, martha blair, to go up to the house and to take some one with her, or if she couldn't go herself then to get two other girls to go, to light fires and to make things ready for my coming. do you know who has gone?" "no one's gone; i do know that. you'd get no woman from round here to go up to pitmuir at night, especially if it was known that you were coming." "prospects grow more and more delightful." this was a groan from mr. luker. the lady, taking him by the coat sleeve, began to talk to him in an undertone. the driver promptly interrupted. "if you two are going to talk things over between yourselves you can do it after i'm gone. i'm off; i've had enough of waiting, so i'll wish you both good-night." the lady stopped him; she drew out her purse. "here's a sovereign. now drive us to pitmuir, and be as quick as you can." the man examined the coin as well as he could in such a light; he even tested its quality with his teeth. drawing a bag from some mysterious receptacle inside his waistcoat, he untied a piece of cord which tied it round the neck, placed the coin carefully within, feeling it to make sure that it was, retied the bag, and returned it to its place. these operations took some time; before they were concluded his two passengers were more tired of waiting than he was. mrs. lamb mounted to the seat beside the driver. mr. luker scrambled into the vehicle itself. there was nothing for him to do but to squat upon the floor, making himself as comfortable as he could by leaning his back against the side. then the cart started. the driver had been perfectly correct in stating that it was not a very good road. so far as could be judged in the mist and the darkness, when one had to rely entirely on the sense of feeling, it consisted for the most part of ruts and ditches. the springs upon which the body of the cart was hung were not very resilient, indeed they were rudimentary. mrs. lamb had all she could do to keep on the seat; the gentleman behind was shaken in such a style that he had traversed the whole interior of the vehicle before he had gone two miles. considering all things, it was perhaps as well that the rate of progress was not more rapid, though the driver had a somewhat disconcerting knack when the road was excruciatingly bad of seeming to move faster than was absolutely necessary, and when it was comparatively smooth of going slower than he need. more than once mrs. lamb tried to engage him in conversation, putting questions to him on subjects on which she was particularly anxious to obtain information. she desired to know if nannie foreshaw was still in the flesh; how dr. twelves was getting on; if he yet practised, and so on. but the man either paid no heed at all, or, if he replied, his answers were of such an unsatisfactory nature, conveying such extremely unflattering allusions, that the lady was finally convinced that she had better remain, however unwillingly, in ignorance than attempt to obtain enlightenment from such an impossible quarter. she would have liked to have taken the fellow suddenly by the shoulders and flung him out of the cart. he would possibly have found her capable of doing it. more than once she was on the point of making the effort, only an overwhelming consciousness of the greatness of the issue which was at stake restrained her. at last, after what seemed very much more than an hour's drive, he brought the vehicle to a sudden stop. "you'll get out here," he intimated to them curtly. "get out?" the lady peered about her through the mist and darkness. "this is not the house." "yon's pitmuir." "pitmuir? but i paid you to drive us to the house; i can see no signs of it." "you did not. i'd not drive you to the house for a pocketful of money." "what fresh trick are you going to try on now? and what tomfoolery are you talking?" "it's tomfoolery maybe, and maybe it isn't. you said, carry you to pitmuir, and i've carried you. do you know they say that cuthbert grahame's walking about among the trees, waiting in the avenue, looking for the woman who called herself his wife. do you think i'll take you to meet him? not while i've my senses. if you are set on meeting him, you'll not meet him in my company--that's my last word. yon's pitmuir. that's the gate in front, not a dozen yards from where we are--that's nearer than i care for. you'll just both of you get out." chapter xxxii at the gate verbal discussion was plainly useless; it was soon made sufficiently clear that nothing short of physical force would persuade that driver. situated as they were it was not easy to see how they could resort to that method of convincing him of the error of his ways. mrs. lamb told him, with the lucidity of which under such circumstances she was past mistress, what she thought of him, and what treatment she would have accorded him if the conditions had only been a little different. in a tongue fight the man proved to be her match; he could pack at least as many disagreeable allusions into a sentence as she could. for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour they wrangled, then the driver delivered himself of an ultimatum. "i'm not going to stay here all night listening to you. if you won't get down i'll drive you back. now which is it to be? i'm off!" "off! yes, you are off, as i'll soon show you." she showed him there and then. whirling round on her seat, she gave the driver a sudden push; over he went on to the road. snatching the reins in one hand, the whip in the other, before he quite knew what had happened, she was urging the horse to pursue its onward career. "stop! stop!" he yelled. "i'm under the wheel! you're driving over me!" "then if you don't want me to drive over you, you'll get from under the wheel; i'm going on." "are you? i'll teach you, you----!" the fellow's language was full-blooded. scrambling up as best he could, he made a vigorous attempt to board the vehicle and expel her from the seat she had usurped. she was not disposed to yield. down came the whip upon his head and shoulders. there ensued a lively few moments. "when you two have quite finished your little conversation perhaps you'll let me know," groaned mr. luker from the rear. the "little conversation" came to a rapid, and, perhaps on the whole, not surprising termination. the quadruped between the shafts, an animal apparently of the cart-horse kind, was, also apparently, a creature of an extremely patient disposition. but even the most enduring patience has its limits; that horse reached the end of his. mrs. lamb and the driver were, between them, tugging at the reins in a fashion to which he was, no doubt, entirely unaccustomed, while the whip-lash, when it missed the driver, occasionally alighted on the animal's flanks. probably wholly at a loss to understand what was happening, not unreasonably the creature finally made up his mind that he had had enough of it, whatever it was. suddenly the vehicle was set in motion; both parties persisting in sticking to the reins, and also, in a sense, to each other, the course steered was of the most erratic kind. before the horse had gone very far there was a lurch which was more ominous than any which had gone before, and they had been pregnant with meaning; the cart was turned clean over; the three persons concerned were thrown out of it. mr. luker was the first to give expression to his feelings. clinging to the side as the thing went over, he had alighted with comparative gentleness on the ground. "i'm alive," he announced. "i don't know if any one else is." it seemed that the lady was in the same, so far as it went, satisfactory condition. "there's not much the matter with me. i'm a bit shaken, and my clothes are all anyhow; my hat's torn right off my head--but that doesn't matter." "where's the driver? driver, where are you?" there was no answer. "that extremely civil gentleman seems disposed to be a little more silent than he was just now. driver!" "it'll serve him right if he's killed. hollo, i've just stepped on him; he's lying on the road. driver!" still no answer. "stunned; lost his senses or something--not that he'd many senses to lose--cantankerous brute!" "it's to be hoped that he hasn't lost them for ever, it'll be awkward for us if he has--especially for you. your popularity in this neighbourhood does not appear to be so great that you can afford to throw any of it away." "confound my popularity! what do i care if i'm popular? if that brute is killed he brought it on himself; if i'd wrung his neck for him it'd have been no more than he deserved. i've got a lantern in my bag. i knew what sort of a hole, and what sort of beasts, i was coming to, and guessed that i'd better be prepared for the worst. if it isn't smashed to splinters i'll light it and have a look at him--you can see nothing in this darkness." the lantern was not broken. presently its rays were illuminating the surrounding gloom. she turned them on to the recumbent figure, not showing too much sympathy as she did so. "now then--move yourself! don't pretend you're dead--i know better." possibly by way of exhibiting her superior knowledge, she shook him by the shoulder. he groaned; she chose to interpret the sound as having a favourable significance. "he's not dead; he's all right. broken a bone, or put his shoulder out, or something. he won't hurt if we leave him here; we could do nothing for him if we wanted to. let's see what's happened to the cart." it was not difficult to do that; the explanation of what had occurred was almost painfully simple. the horse, influenced by such eccentric guidance, had conducted the vehicle into a ditch. the jolt of the sudden descent had loosened one of the wheels; it lay in one direction, the cart in another. the question as to whether they were or were not to drive in it up to the house was finally settled. the horse, seemingly none the worse for his little experience, making no attempt to get up, reclined at his ease between the shafts, apparently under the not erroneous impression that he was as comfortable there as anywhere else. mrs. lamb recognised that, so far as any more riding was concerned, the fates were against her. "we shall have to walk," she observed. "it's not so very far from here, along the avenue. here's the gate." she went to the gate, revealing its whereabouts by the light of her lantern. mr. luker moving towards her, spoke in lowered tones. "without wishing to alarm you unnecessarily, or endorsing your coachman's remarks about mr. cuthbert grahrame's singular habits, i may tell you that my impression is that if he isn't walking about among the trees, somebody is." "luker, don't talk like that! don't be a fool." "if i weren't a fool i doubt if i should be here with you now; but, apart from that, i can only inform you that for some time i have had a suspicion that our movements were being observed by some one among the trees, who can see us better than we could see him, and who was taking a lively interest in all that was occurring." "luker, how do you know? how could you tell?" "by the sense of sound; i wasn't so absorbed in fighting the driver. that some one, or something, has been moving among the trees, keeping pace with us as we went, i'll swear, and i don't think it was an animal." "speak plainly; what do you mean?" "i think it possible that you and i are the objects of a conspiracy--especially you. every step you take you are walking farther and farther into the trap which miss margaret wallace has set for you." "don't talk rubbish! have you got that old bee in your bonnet again? i'm not afraid of miss margaret wallace." "aren't you? then that's all right, because i fancy that her agents are about you on every side." "her agents? what do you mean by her agents?" "i imagine that miss margaret wallace is more popular in this part of the world than you are. i can put two and two together. from what i've seen, and heard, since our arrival, i shouldn't be surprised to learn that she has nobbled every creature in the neighbourhood. the station-master has received a hint from her--that explains the peculiarity of his manner; nothing else could. that poor wretch lying on the ground has been acting on her instructions. don't you make any mistake; i'm sure of it. i'm equally sure that other friends of hers are waiting for you in there." he pointed over the gate, along the avenue. his words, far from causing her alarm, seemed to act as a fillip. "friends of hers upon my property!--if they dare! do you think that i'm afraid of what you call her friends?--of any number of them?--of the tricks they've set themselves to play? i'd like to see them; i'd like to meet them. this is my property--mine!--every stick and stone on it! neither margaret wallace nor any one else has a right to set foot upon it without my sanction. if i do find any trespassers i promise you that it won't be me who'll come off worst. are you coming? you understand, if you're to earn that thousand pounds you're to stick to me through thick and thin--to the end! if you show the white feather, the bond is cancelled." "are you going to accept the invitation of the spider to the fly? you intend to walk into the trap?" "trap! do you think that any trap was ever set that could catch me? i believe you're talking the purest piffle; but if there is a trap, and i do walk into it, it'll be to smash it all to pieces. once more, are you coming?" "oh, i'm coming. i'll do my best to earn the thousand, though i'm beginning to perceive that it wants more earning than i supposed. lead on; where you lead i'll not only follow, i'll keep as close to your side as circumstances permit." she threw the gate wide open. it swung back on its rusty hinges with a harsh, creaking sound. then they entered the avenue, the lantern swinging in her hand. chapter xxxiii at the door between the trees the darkness was as if you might have cut it. where the lantern looked there were momentary revelations as they strode along. its rays seemed to cut pieces out of the surrounding gloom. but the pieces were small. its penetrating power was slight; where its penetration ceased the darkness was blacker than before. the silence which prevailed had its own peculiar property; it served to exaggerate the slightest disturbance. their very footsteps were differentiated with an almost morbid clearness. the firm, resolute descent of the woman's foot, the loose, indeterminate shuffle of the man's; the sounds seemed to set themselves against each other and to ring through the trees. they gradually became conscious of the movements of unseen creatures among the grasses and the herbage, disturbed by their approach. once she observed, as she swung the lantern to one side-"that's a rabbit. there used to be thousands of them when i was here. i expect there are more now. i daresay the whole place is overrun with them." "it may be a rabbit, though, with due deference to your superior woodcraft, i doubt if there are many rabbits abroad at this hour of the night----but that's not!" "what? where?" "are there deer about the place as well?" "deer? i don't think so. i don't remember seeing any." "then give me the lantern!" mrs. lamb was holding the lantern out in front of her. snatching it, he swung it slightly round. as he did so it went out. "luker!" she exclaimed. "how did you manage that? what a clumsy fool you are!" there was a new intonation in his voice. "some one blew it out. hollo, where are you coming to? who the devil, sir, are you? confound the man, where's he gone?" "luker, what's the matter?" "some one was walking behind us--didn't you hear him? i not only heard but i felt him; he was as close as that. when i swung the lantern round i almost dashed it against his face. he blew it out. he tried to snatch it from me; i felt his fingers. can you hear him?" "is that a footstep?" "he stepped upon a twig. there's more than one. i tell you they're all round us. the lantern serves as a beacon; they can see us though we can't see them." they were speaking in whispers. "is that another footstep?" "curse the fellow, i believe he's still within three or four feet of us. i believe i heard him breathe. i've a revolver in my pocket; i've half a mind----" "i also have a revolver, and i've a whole mind. look out! i'm going to fire!" there was a flash; a report which seemed to wake the echoes of the forest for miles and miles; then a scream which rose high above the echoes, and seemed to hang quivering in, and rending, the silent air. the stillness which again ensued was rendered the more striking by its contrast with the previous turmoil. "you've shot some one." "not i!--that wasn't a man. i shouldn't be surprised if it was some kind of a bird. there are birds in these woods which make noises at night which go right through you. where's your friend?" "i'll strike a match and try to get a light again. you cover me while i'm doing it." the instant the match flickered into flame there was a crashing sound among the bushes as of a heavy object in headlong flight. "there he is! he's making off! i'll have another pop at him!" again a revolver clamoured, but this time there was no answering sound, only stillness followed. luker had succeeded in lighting the lantern. he held it well out. together they peered into the cave of light which it hollowed out in front of them. it was broken by trees, by bushes, by bracken, but, so far as they could see, by nothing else. luker spoke in a whisper. "he's gone. they're too much for us, and too many. for all we can tell there's some one behind each of those trees; they're all of them big enough to shelter a man. this kind of thing's a new experience to me--altogether out of my usual line. it's a job for which i have no sort of stomach. what the game is i don't know, but it's one in which all the odds are against us--i do know that. i wish to the devil i'd stayed in town!" "you didn't; you've come down into the country with me, and in the country for the present you've got to stay. give me that lantern, and don't you snatch at it again. whoever blows it out while i've got hold of it will be clever. pretend to be a man, even if you aren't one. as for that game about which you're talking, if there is one on, i promise you that whoever scores in it, i shall." they continued their progress, the lady again holding the lantern, moving onwards with her long, regular strides, swinging it a little as she walked. mr. luker, shuffling alongside, seemed to be unwilling to drop behind, and to find it difficult to keep up with her. as he went he glanced continually from side to side, and over his shoulder at the darkness which followed them. there was no attempt on either side at conversation, they simply went straight on. they had gone some distance without anything happening to occasion them further concern, when the lady came to a sudden stop. "here we are!" she exclaimed. "that's the house in front of us." she held out the lantern, so that its farthest rays just touched a building which loomed mysteriously in the blackness. there was a note of triumph in her voice as she went on. "luker, you're nearer to that thousand pounds than you perhaps think, and in a very few minutes i'll be within reach of that quarter of a million. then i'll show them!--all the lot of them!" quite what she meant by that last vague threat she only knew. before she had a chance to offer an explanation, if it was her intention to offer one, she was interrupted by mr. luker, who seemed destined that night to act as a harbinger of coming evil. "what's that?" he cried. "who--my god!--who is this coming along the path?" he was not only shrinking as close to her as he could get, he was gripping her arm with convulsive fingers, which she could feel were trembling. he was looking in one direction, she in another. she turned to see what he was staring at; when she saw, it is possible that she began to be in a less exultant mood. some one, something, was moving along the avenue and coming towards them. it was not easy to determine what it was; it came and went. it was rendered visible by a light which seemed to emanate from its own body, as if it were a kind of phosphorescence. when the light gleamed it was there plainly, if dimly, to be seen; when the light ceased to gleam, it--the something!--seemed to go with it; there was nothing but the black darkness. this continued, this coming and going, for perhaps thirty seconds. then, suddenly, the light not only grew brighter, it remained. they could see what the something was--it was a man. but what a man! a huge, unwieldy, bloated, shapeless creature, covered from head to foot with some white garment which was swathed round him like a sheet. he seemed to be floating, rather than walking. they could see no movement of his limbs, and yet he came steadily towards them until he was within five or six feet of where they were standing, when the light faded as suddenly as it had come, and there was nothing but darkness there. for some instants they remained motionless, both being probably under the impression that though the figure was no longer visible it still was advancing towards them. while they waited, on the alert to discover what was next about to happen, the silence was broken by a curious noise, as by a series of quick, broken gasps, as if some one panted, struggled, for breath. when all again was still, mr. luker asked, in a tone of voice in which was what sounded uncommonly like a note of banter-"well, my friend, aren't we to see any more of you? is that the end of the performance? won't you favour us with another private view?" in mrs. lamb's voice, on the other hand, there was a suggestion of preternatural gravity. "it was cuthbert grahame." "what?" "it was cuthbert grahame. didn't you hear him fighting for breath?" "cuthbert fiddlesticks! it was some damned trick, and not over well done either. this entertainment has been prepared for our special benefit; it occurs to me that it has been insufficiently rehearsed. we've been treated to the first part up to now; the second part is waiting for us inside the house--if we ever get as far. the prelude's been mere foolery. i imagine that the serious business is to come." "it was cuthbert grahame." "nonsense! where were your eyes, not to speak of your senses? didn't you notice----" "he is waiting for us inside the house." "mrs. lamb, if you'll exercise a little common-sense and allow me to finish, i think i shall be able to prove, even to your satisfaction, that what you've just now witnessed----" "don't you see him? he beckons to us. can't you hear how hard he fights for his breath?" "no; nor you either. aren't you well? is this one of those fits of which you were telling me trying to come back, in which you see things? if so, keep it off as long as you conveniently can. so far as i'm concerned it will only need that to put a crown and climax on my night's enjoyment. listen to me, isabel----" "come!" taking him by the arm, she led him up to the house. when they reached the front door she took a key out of the bag which she still carried. after a momentary hesitation she held it up, as if to call his attention to something that was taking place within. "listen! don't you hear? he calls to us! let us go to him. i've often heard him calling to me like that in the night--often." during the last few seconds, for some occult reason, a change had taken place in her which had apparently revolutionised the whole woman externally as well as internally; her bearing, her manner, her voice, and especially her face, had changed. the alteration in the latter was nothing short of amazing. just now its predominating expression was one of boldness, defiance, reckless rage. she had looked as if she feared neither man nor devil; her looks had probably only mirrored her actual feelings. this air of wildness, of careless contempt for the unknown, unseen perils, which, according to her companion, hemmed her in on every side, had been accentuated by the fact that, having lost her hat when the cart was overturned, her thick black hair had broken loose from its fastenings and hung in tangled masses about her face. she had looked what she emphatically was, a dangerous woman in a dangerous frame of mind. now all that had changed. she looked no longer angry or defiant; all traces of boldness had vanished altogether. instead, a stolid, fixed expression had come upon her face, one which, as it were, was void of all expression. in her wide-open eyes there was a strained, staring look, which conveyed an uncomfortable impression that she was gazing at something which only she could see, gazing with a fixed intensity of vision as if she was bent on not losing even the minutest details. as she stood there, with uplifted face, the rays of the lantern lighting up her rigid features, mr. luker observed her with an appearance of unmistakable discomfort. the significance of the change which had taken place in her was borne in on him with uncomfortable force. the change in her affected him; he was obviously becoming each second more uneasy. he seemed to make a desperate attempt to conquer his own increasing apprehension, and to restore her to her former state of mind. "isabel, you didn't use to be an utter fool. before you put that key into the lock, before you move another step, rub that look of stark, staring midsummer madness off your face. it doesn't become you, god knows. listen to what i have to say; try not to be a fool. don't you understand----" before he could explain what was the appeal he was about to make to her understanding, some one, or something, came swirling at them from the side of the house. the light disappeared in the lantern; the lantern itself was snatched from the lady's hands. she made no effort to regain it, nor to ascertain how the thing had happened. she stood in the darkness, motionless. presently she said-"luker! luker!" there was no answer. she put out her hand to feel for her companion who, a moment before, had been standing close at her side. he was not there. chapter xxxiv towards judgment for possibly a couple of minutes she continued on the doorstep immobile, as if she not only did not understand what had happened, but as if she also still failed to realise that her legal adviser was at least no longer where he was. she repeated his name, at intervals--"luker! luker!"--almost as if she was a child who repeated, parrot-like, a meaningless formula. then, after a while, when still there came no answer, she thrust her hand, as if mechanically, into the bosom of her dress, feeling for something. presently it emerged, holding a flask. in the same odd, automatic fashion, as if her actions were not the product of her own volition, unscrewing the stopper, she placed the neck between her lips. after a perceptible interval, suddenly slipping between her fingers, it dropped on to the step with a clatter. it had contained ether; she had swallowed its entire contents. what were the exact physical or mental results of what would have been a poison to an unaccustomed subject, it would be difficult to say. one fact may be baldly stated, it robbed her of her senses. her capacity of judging between the real and the unreal had been trembling in the balance. when she emptied that flask unreality became all that was real. not perhaps on the instant, but certainly after the expiration of a very few seconds. at first she stood trembling, so that one might almost have expected to see her sink to the ground from sheer inability to stand. she stretched out her arms into the darkness, as if seeking for support, and found none. then, putting her hands up to her face, she began to rub them up and down before her eyes, as if endeavouring to rub away some film which obscured her sight, and she began to cry, softly, beneath her breath. then, dropping her hands to her sides, she began to see the things which were not, those visions which, in some form, are the inseparable companions of a mind diseased. "i am coming!--i heard you!--you need not call so loud!" the words were uttered not loudly, but with such clearness of intonation that, proceeding from her as she stood there all alone in the outer darkness, and addressed apparently to the circumambient air, they might have produced on unintentional listeners not an agreeable effect. she turned, making as if to insert the key which she still held into the lock of the door behind her, to find that the door already stood wide open, and that in the hall beyond there was a faint light which was just sufficient to render objects visible. in her normal condition the fact that the door had seemingly opened of its own accord would have occasioned her something more than wonder; she would at least have taken it for granted that somewhere in its immediate neighbourhood were helping hands; and she would promptly have set herself to discover to whom they belonged, and just where their owners might be found. in her then state no notion of the kind seemed to enter her brain. that the fact that the door was open occasioned her surprise was obvious; but it was surprise of a singular quality, and it was accompanied by abject terror. the woman seemed all at once to become stunted, to shrink into sheer physical insignificance. "cuthbert grahame," she muttered, "why did you open the door? how did you get out of your bed to open the door?" with a sound which was part wail, part sob, she stumbled across the threshold into the hall. "where shall i go? shall i go into the room into which i first went on that first night? perhaps i'll be safe in there--perhaps i'll be safe. i don't want to go upstairs--not yet--not just yet. i daren't--i daren't. listen! how he calls to me--how he calls." she glanced up the staircase, which she approached even while she shrank from it, and she saw, in the dim, mysterious light, leaning over the banister, looking down at her from above, a woman's face--nannie foreshaw. she did not stop to ask herself if the appearance might by any chance be real, a creature of warm flesh and blood. it was some moments before she realised who it was that looked at her. when she did, the presence there was so unexpected, so wholly unforeseen, and thrust so deeply at her conscience, that it is not impossible that the mere shock which resulted from the sight was sufficient to disintegrate her few remaining wits. she at once took it for granted that she was gazing at a spectre, a shade returned from the tomb to afflict her before her time. cowering back against the wall, she broke into screams of agony. "nannie! nannie!--i didn't kill you!--i didn't kill you! don't look at me like that!--don't! don't! don't!" covering her face with her hands, she began to sob with such violence that one could see her shaking as she leaned against the wall. when, removing her hands, she again ventured to look up, there was no one there. "she's gone! she's gone!" the words were uttered with a gasp of relief which it was not pleasant to hear. for a moment it seemed as if she might be restored to something like her proper self. then, while she seemed to waver, without apparent rhyme or reason, all her tremors returned. again she broke into shrieks and cries. "she's waiting for me in his room! in his room! in his room!--she's waiting for me! my god! what am i to do?--help me! help me! i'll have to go to him. listen how he calls to me!--listen how he calls! i'm coming!--don't call so loud!" she began stumbling up the staircase, blunderingly, blindly, as if she could not see where she was going. stopping every two or three steps, clutching at the wall, the rails; glancing back, looking as though if she could she would descend. but each time, just as she was about to beat a retreat, there came to her that insistent voice, summoning her to her fate. she gasped out expostulations even as she stumbled upwards. "don't call so loud! don't call so loud! i'm coming." and she did come. a singular spectacle she presented as she went. no one would have recognised in that ill-shaped, mouthing, struggling woman--though she alone knew what it was with which she struggled; who seemed unable to stand up straight, and to experience as much difficulty in ascending an ordinary staircase as if it had been the scarred surface of some precipitous cliff which she was forced, very much against her will, to climb--the flamboyant and somewhat overwhelming lady who was known among a certain set in london as the handsome mrs. lamb. there were no traces of beauty about her then. when she had gained the landing her terror seemed, if the thing were possible, to increase. descending to her knees, clutching the railing with both hands, she crawled, as if drawn by some invisible force, against which all the strength of her resistance was in vain, towards the room, the bedroom, in which cuthbert grahame had passed so much of the latter part of his life, and in which, through her action, he had died. and all the while she protested. "i won't come! i won't come!" for an instant she would cling not only with her hands, but, as it were, with her whole body, to the railings, as if she had finally resolved that nothing should constrain her to advance another inch. then again she was possessed by a paroxysm of terror. "i will come!--don't call so loud! i am coming!" when she was in front of the door of the room she did halt for perhaps more than a minute, crouching in a heap on the floor, covering her face with her hands, overtaken by such a fury of weeping that the violence of her sobs seemed as if it would tear her to pieces. then, as if actuated by some sudden irresistible impulse, she rose to her feet, and exclaimed, still weeping-"cuthbert grahame, i hear you calling--i am here". she threw open the dead man's bedroom door. chapter xxxv judges in the room was the same faint, luminous glow which had been noticeable in the hall and on the stairs. there could have been no more eloquent testimony of her condition than the fact that she accepted its presence as a matter of course; that it never seemed to occur to her that there was something about it which required elucidation; still less that a few shrewd, well-directed inquiries might result in a very simple explanation. she stood on the threshold, all dishevelled, bent, weeping; always before her eyes the things which she alone could see, stricken with a mad agony of fear by the horror of the sight. she came a little farther towards the room, staring towards the bed. when she had taken a step or two it seemed as if her legs refused to uphold her any longer. down she sank on to her knees again; again she covered her face with her hands, as if by such means she could shut off from herself the hideous imaginings of her haunted brain. "don't! don't! don't!" she wailed. while still she remained in that attitude of humility and penitence there came a voice which called her by what had once been her name. "isabel burney!" that she heard it there could be no doubt. at the sound of it she shivered more than ever. but it may be that she was in doubt whether it was a material voice, or whether it was a fresh manifestation of those too-well remembered tones, which kept calling to her all the time. for it is possible that a disordered mind may be conscious that there is a difference between the real and the imaginary without being capable of satisfactorily perceiving what it is. she did not answer. it came again, not loud, yet distinct and dominating. "isabel burney." this time she repeated her former wail, with renewed force of entreaty. "don't! don't!" if it was intended for a cry of appeal to be left alone, it went unheeded. the voice returned, asking what was emphatically a leading question. "did you murder cuthbert grahame?" she made not the slightest attempt to shirk the very weighty responsibility which attended the reply to such a question. an affirmative was bursting from her lips almost before it was asked. "yes! yes! yes!" "how did you murder him?" again the wail-"don't! don't! don't!" "how did you murder him?" the wail became hysterical cries. "oh! oh! oh!" but the voice persisted. "how did you murder him?" confused words came stumbling from her lips, as if they were being forcibly extracted. "the pillows--dragged---from under--he choked." "you dragged the pillows from under him, so that his head fell down, and he was choked." "yes." "why did you murder him?" here again the answer came rapidly and clearly. "because i didn't want him to destroy the will which i had tricked him into signing." "how did you trick him?" "he made me draw up a will which left all his property to margaret wallace." "and then?" "i drew up a will in which he left everything to me." "and then?" "i covered it with a sheet of paper, and got him to sign it, thinking that he was signing the other." "did he know what you had done?" "yes; i killed him before he could tell any one else and have the will destroyed." the voice was still. there was silence, broken by the sound of some one moving. the room was filled with a bright light. the voice came again. "isabel burney!" the woman on her knees, dropping her hands, looked round. by a lighted lamp which rested on a writing-table stood margaret wallace. whether mrs. lamb realised that she was looking at the girl herself, or supposed that she was confronted by a materialised phantom, has never been certainly known. she stared at her surlily, unblinkingly, affrightedly, as one might stare at some unpleasing object in a dream. the girl repeated the questions which had already been answered. as one listened the last remnants of doubt vanished as to whose was the voice which had already made itself so prominent. "did you trick cuthbert grahame into signing a will in which he left all that he had to you, when he supposed himself to be signing one in which he left it all to me?" there was a momentary hesitation, then the answer, spoken sullenly, half beneath her breath, yet plain enough. "yes; i did." "and did you then kill him because you feared discovery of what you had done?" "yes; i did." there was another movement on the other side of the room. when mrs. lamb looked round she found herself looking at dr. twelves, who put a question to her on his own account. "so you lied to me when you said those pillows must have slipped--you knew better. as i suspected, you dragged them away--you female fiend!" his invective went unnoticed; there came the rather monotonous refrain-"yes; i did". there were other movements proceeding from all parts of the room. on one side of her were andrew mctavish and his partner, mr. brown. mr. mctavish was evidently very angry. "and you lied to us when you pretended that you suspected us of robbing you! you knew all along that the only robbery you yourself had committed--you impudent swindler!" he only received the same reply-"yes; i did". dr. twelves wagged his finger at her, gruesomely. "you shall hang for it, isabel burney--you shall hang by the neck until you're dead!" mr. mctavish cried-"at any rate, you shall be sent to penal servitude for the fraud you have committed on us!" she showed no signs of resentment, as only a very short time before she undoubtedly would have done, when her resentment would probably have taken a sufficiently active turn. from her demeanour it was difficult to determine if she comprehended what was being said to her. she gazed stolidly about the room. near a window stood nannie foreshaw, leaning on a stick, holding with one hand the curtain from behind which she had just emerged. at sight of her she shrank backwards, as if she would withdraw herself as far as she could. before the door, as if he would bar her retreat, was harry talfourd. when she saw him she seemed to be moved more than she had been by any of the others; she turned aside, with a low cry, and covered her face. possibly, in some tangled fashion, she remembered how, so recently, she had played to him the _rã´le_ of the great lady, the benefactress; how willing she had been to be something more to him than that; and she was vaguely conscious of what a contrast she was exhibiting to him now. margaret had been seated at a table writing. now, rising, she turned to the woman who was still on her knees upon the floor. "i have set down upon this sheet of paper a short confession of your guilt. if you will sign it you shall not hang; you shall not be sent to prison. you shall receive your only punishment from your own conscience. i think that is to condemn you to the greater punishment. i will read to you what i have written." she read aloud from the paper which she took in her hand:-"'i confess that cuthbert grahame instructed me to draw up a will in which he left all that he had in the world to margaret wallace; that, without his knowledge, i substituted for it another form of will, according to which he left his property to me, and that i induced him to sign this fraudulent form by means of a trick. i also confess that i murdered cuthbert grahame in order to avoid an exposure of the trick by means of which i had induced him to sign the substituted fraudulent form of will.' if you will attach your name to this confession you shall receive no punishment beyond that which you award yourself--that will be a sufficient one. come here and sign." as if automatically, mrs. lamb rose to her feet, moved towards the table, seated herself on the chair which margaret had occupied, accepted the pen which the girl offered, and wrote her name in full on the sheet of paper which was set before her. when she had signed, leaning back, she looked from one to the other. they waited for her to speak, expecting perhaps some burst of tardy anger. then, on a sudden, without a word or a movement, she slid from the chair on to the floor. when they gathered round her she lay still. chapter xxxvi pleasant dreams! the duel had been fought to a finish, and margaret had won. when mrs. gregory lamb was brought back out of that fit by which she had been overtaken she was lying on cuthbert grahame's bed, on which he had lived for so long, and died at her hand; the bed whose image had been borne in upon her phantom-haunted brain with such horrible persistency. dr. twelves was bending over her, standing where he had stood many a time to bend over the man she slew. she was little better than a babbling idiot. she is not much more than that now. she is a certified lunatic, under kindly, yet watchful, guardianship, the expense of which is paid by the girl whom she so cruelly wronged. the physical and mental strain which had been placed upon her during that period of increasing financial pressure had been great; her attempts to relieve it by a resort to ether had made it ten times greater. how much of the spirit she drank has not been exactly ascertained. she must have consumed large quantities. probably only the natural strength of her constitution enabled her to resist its effects so long as she did. undoubtedly the habit of ether drinking had increased in her to such an extent that in any case it would ultimately have produced insanity. her reason was already tottering when she was brought face to face with margaret wallace on the night of her reception, and was put to such dire confusion. it is believed that she touched no solid food afterwards, subsisting solely upon ether. isaac luker asserted that she carried a large bottle of it in her bag when they journeyed together from london, and was sipping its contents throughout the day. it was not strange that when the moment came she was ripe to fall a ready victim to margaret's carefully laid lures. the girl fought her with weapons to which she was incapable of offering resistance. cuthbert grahame's money, which had been searched for so long in vain, was found deposited in the hiding-place the secret of which she had revealed to mrs. lamb, intending, by working on her guilty conscience and so extorting from her a confession, which it was certain could never be obtained from her by any other means, to destroy her when she went to seek it. margaret is now mrs. henry talfourd. she is married to one who loved and loves her, and for the love of whom she was willing to sacrifice all. she is a rich woman. bearing in mind the singularity of the circumstances under which it has come into her possession, she was desirous of having nothing to do with the dead man's money. but it was pointed out that, excepting herself, there was no possible claimant. she regards herself as an almoner, as a steward of cuthbert grahame's great possessions rather than their owner, and employs by far the larger portion of the income they produce in works of benefaction. she still produces pictures in black and white and in colour; there are few women artists who have achieved a more substantial success. her husband has not realised his dreams. "the gordian knot" has never been produced. he burnt the play with his own hands, and has never written another. he alone knows why, though his wife may have a shrewd suspicion. so far he has been content to act as his wife's right-hand man, an occupation which hitherto has kept him fully employed. dr. twelves lives and flourishes. he has been heard to declare that never again will he proffer assistance to any strange woman whom he finds by the wayside. nannie foreshaw is dead. messrs. mctavish & brown have, if anything, improved their standing as family solicitors of undoubted integrity; mrs. talfourd is one of their most valued clients. mrs. talfourd presented mr. gregory lamb with a passage to south africa, and with a sum of money when he landed. as he has never asked for any more money, and nothing has been heard of him since, the presumption is that he has perished in that grave of many reputations. his wife's solicitor continues to exist, and is still a very well-known gentleman in certain extremely crooked walks of life. cuthbert grahame's home has been turned into a sanatorium and holiday home for children. it could hardly be employed for a better purpose. boys and girls scamper among the trees; their voices and their laughter ring through the house. they people it with fresh associations; the old ghosts are gone. they find health and happiness in the place where once was neither. and when, at night, they lay their tired heads upon their pillows, they dream only pleasant dreams. when they wake in the morning, whether actually the skies be fair or clouded, to them it is always as if the sun was shining. the aberdeen university press limited lady audley's secret by mary elizabeth braddon chapter i. lucy. it lay down in a hollow, rich with fine old timber and luxuriant pastures; and you came upon it through an avenue of limes, bordered on either side by meadows, over the high hedges of which the cattle looked inquisitively at you as you passed, wondering, perhaps, what you wanted; for there was no thorough-fare, and unless you were going to the court you had no business there at all. at the end of this avenue there was an old arch and a clock tower, with a stupid, bewildering clock, which had only one hand�and which jumped straight from one hour to the next�and was therefore always in extremes. through this arch you walked straight into the gardens of audley court. a smooth lawn lay before you, dotted with groups of rhododendrons, which grew in more perfection here than anywhere else in the county. to the right there were the kitchen gardens, the fish-pond, and an orchard bordered by a dry moat, and a broken ruin of a wall, in some places thicker than it was high, and everywhere overgrown with trailing ivy, yellow stonecrop, and dark moss. to the left there was a broad graveled walk, down which, years ago, when the place had been a convent, the quiet nuns had walked hand in hand; a wall bordered with espaliers, and shadowed on one side by goodly oaks, which shut out the flat landscape, and circled in the house and gardens with a darkening shelter. the house faced the arch, and occupied three sides of a quadrangle. it was very old, and very irregular and rambling. the windows were uneven; some small, some large, some with heavy stone mullions and rich stained glass; others with frail lattices that rattled in every breeze; others so modern that they might have been added only yesterday. great piles of chimneys rose up here and there behind the pointed gables, and seemed as if they were so broken down by age and long service that they must have fallen but for the straggling ivy which, crawling up the walls and trailing even over the roof, wound itself about them and supported them. the principal door was squeezed into a corner of a turret at one angle of the building, as if it were in hiding from dangerous visitors, and wished to keep itself a secret�a noble door for all that�old oak, and studded with great square-headed iron nails, and so thick that the sharp iron knocker struck upon it with a muffled sound, and the visitor rung a clanging bell that dangled in a corner among the ivy, lest the noise of the knocking should never penetrate the stronghold. a glorious old place. a place that visitors fell in raptures with; feeling a yearning wish to have done with life, and to stay there forever, staring into the cool fish-ponds and counting the bubbles as the roach and carp rose to the surface of the water. a spot in which peace seemed to have taken up her abode, setting her soothing hand on every tree and flower, on the still ponds and quiet alleys, the shady corners of the old-fashioned rooms, the deep window-seats behind the painted glass, the low meadows and the stately avenues�ay, even upon the stagnant well, which, cool and sheltered as all else in the old place, hid itself away in a shrubbery behind the gardens, with an idle handle that was never turned and a lazy rope so rotten that the pail had broken away from it, and had fallen into the water. a noble place; inside as well as out, a noble place�a house in which you incontinently lost yourself if ever you were so rash as to attempt to penetrate its mysteries alone; a house in which no one room had any sympathy with another, every chamber running off at a tangent into an inner chamber, and through that down some narrow staircase leading to a door which, in its turn, led back into that very part of the house from which you thought yourself the furthest; a house that could never have been planned by any mortal architect, but must have been the handiwork of that good old builder, time, who, adding a room one year, and knocking down a room another year, toppling down a chimney coeval with the plantagenets, and setting up one in the style of the tudors; shaking down a bit of saxon wall, allowing a norman arch to stand here; throwing in a row of high narrow windows in the reign of queen anne, and joining on a dining-room after the fashion of the time of hanoverian george i, to a refectory that had been standing since the conquest, had contrived, in some eleven centuries, to run up such a mansion as was not elsewhere to be met with throughout the county of essex. of course, in such a house there were secret chambers; the little daughter of the present owner, sir michael audley, had fallen by accident upon the discovery of one. a board had rattled under her feet in the great nursery where she played, and on attention being drawn to it, it was found to be loose, and so removed, revealed a ladder, leading to a hiding-place between the floor of the nursery and the ceiling of the room below�a hiding-place so small that he who had hid there must have crouched on his hands and knees or lain at full length, and yet large enough to contain a quaint old carved oak chest, half filled with priests' vestments, which had been hidden away, no doubt, in those cruel days when the life of a man was in danger if he was discovered to have harbored a roman catholic priest, or to have mass said in his house. the broad outer moat was dry and grass-grown, and the laden trees of the orchard hung over it with gnarled, straggling branches that drew fantastical shadows upon the green slope. within this moat there was, as i have said, the fish-pond�a sheet of water that extended the whole length of the garden and bordering which there was an avenue called the lime-tree walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky, so screened from observation by the thick shelter of the over-arching trees that it seemed a chosen place for secret meetings or for stolen interviews; a place in which a conspiracy might have been planned, or a lover's vow registered with equal safety; and yet it was scarcely twenty paces from the house. at the end of this dark arcade there was the shrubbery, where, half buried among the tangled branches and the neglected weeds, stood the rusty wheel of that old well of which i have spoken. it had been of good service in its time, no doubt; and busy nuns have perhaps drawn the cool water with their own fair hands; but it had fallen into disuse now, and scarcely any one at audley court knew whether the spring had dried up or not. but sheltered as was the solitude of this lime-tree walk, i doubt very much if it was ever put to any romantic uses. often in the cool of the evening sir michael audley would stroll up and down smoking his cigar, with his dogs at his heels, and his pretty young wife dawdling by his side; but in about ten minutes the baronet and his companion would grow tired of the rustling limes and the still water, hidden under the spreading leaves of the water-lilies, and the long green vista with the broken well at the end, and would stroll back to the drawing-room, where my lady played dreamy melodies by beethoven and mendelssohn till her husband fell asleep in his easy-chair. sir michael audley was fifty-six years of age, and he had married a second wife three months after his fifty-fifth birthday. he was a big man, tall and stout, with a deep, sonorous voice, handsome black eyes, and a white beard�a white beard which made him look venerable against his will, for he was as active as a boy, and one of the hardest riders in the country. for seventeen years he had been a widower with an only child, a daughter, alicia audley, now eighteen, and by no means too well pleased at having a step-mother brought home to the court; for miss alicia had reigned supreme in her father's house since her earliest childhood, and had carried the keys, and jingled them in the pockets of her silk aprons, and lost them in the shrubbery, and dropped them into the pond, and given all manner of trouble about them from the hour in which she entered her teens, and had, on that account, deluded herself into the sincere belief, that for the whole of that period, she had been keeping the house. but miss alicia's day was over; and now, when she asked anything of the housekeeper, the housekeeper would tell her that she would speak to my lady, or she would consult my lady, and if my lady pleased it should be done. so the baronet's daughter, who was an excellent horsewoman and a very clever artist, spent most of her time out of doors, riding about the green lanes, and sketching the cottage children, and the plow-boys, and the cattle, and all manner of animal life that came in her way. she set her face with a sulky determination against any intimacy between herself and the baronet's young wife; and amiable as that lady was, she found it quite impossible to overcome miss alicia's prejudices and dislike; or to convince the spoilt girl that she had not done her a cruel injury by marrying sir michael audley. the truth was that lady audley had, in becoming the wife of sir michael, made one of those apparently advantageous matches which are apt to draw upon a woman the envy and hatred of her sex. she had come into the neighborhood as a governess in the family of a surgeon in the village near audley court. no one knew anything of her, except that she came in answer to an advertisement which mr. dawson, the surgeon, had inserted in the times. she came from london; and the only reference she gave was to a lady at a school at brompton, where she had once been a teacher. but this reference was so satisfactory that none other was needed, and miss lucy graham was received by the surgeon as the instructress of his daughters. her accomplishments were so brilliant and numerous, that it seemed strange that she should have answered an advertisement offering such very moderate terms of remuneration as those named by mr. dawson; but miss graham seemed perfectly well satisfied with her situation, and she taught the girls to play sonatas by beethoven, and to paint from nature after creswick, and walked through a dull, out-of-the-way village to the humble little church, three times every sunday, as contentedly as if she had no higher aspiration in the world than to do so all the rest of her life. people who observed this, accounted for it by saying that it was a part of her amiable and gentle nature always to be light-hearted, happy and contented under any circumstances. wherever she went she seemed to take joy and brightness with her. in the cottages of the poor her fair face shone like a sunbeam. she would sit for a quarter of an hour talking to some old woman, and apparently as pleased with the admiration of a toothless crone as if she had been listening to the compliments of a marquis; and when she tripped away, leaving nothing behind her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her benevolence), the old woman would burst out into senile raptures with her grace, beauty, and her kindliness, such as she never bestowed upon the vicar's wife, who half fed and clothed her. for you see, miss lucy graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination, by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. every one loved, admired, and praised her. the boy who opened the five-barred gate that stood in her pathway, ran home to his mother to tell of her pretty looks, and the sweet voice in which she thanked him for the little service. the verger at the church, who ushered her into the surgeon's pew; the vicar, who saw the soft blue eyes uplifted to his face as he preached his simple sermon; the porter from the railway station, who brought her sometimes a letter or a parcel, and who never looked for reward from her; her employer; his visitors; her pupils; the servants; everybody, high and low, united in declaring that lucy graham was the sweetest girl that ever lived. perhaps it was the rumor of this which penetrated into the quiet chamber of audley court; or, perhaps, it was the sight of her pretty face, looking over the surgeon's high pew every sunday morning; however it was, it was certain that sir michael audley suddenly experienced a strong desire to be better acquainted with mr. dawson's governess. he had only to hint his wish to the worthy doctor for a little party to be got up, to which the vicar and his wife, and the baronet and his daughter, were invited. that one quiet evening sealed sir michael's fate. he could no more resist the tender fascination of those soft and melting blue eyes; the graceful beauty of that slender throat and drooping head, with its wealth of showering flaxen curls; the low music of that gentle voice; the perfect harmony which pervaded every charm, and made all doubly charming in this woman; than he could resist his destiny! destiny! why, she was his destiny! he had never loved before. what had been his marriage with alicia's mother but a dull, jog-trot bargain made to keep some estate in the family that would have been just as well out of it? what had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful, smoldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? but this was love�this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain, miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an insurmountable barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his white beard; this frenzied wish to be young again, with glistening raven hair, and a slim waist, such as he had twenty years before; these, wakeful nights and melancholy days, so gloriously brightened if he chanced to catch a glimpse of her sweet face behind the window curtains, as he drove past the surgeon's house; all these signs gave token of the truth, and told only too plainly that, at the sober age of fifty-five, sir michael audley had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love. i do not think that, throughout his courtship, the baronet once calculated upon his wealth or his position as reasons for his success. if he ever remembered these things, he dismissed the thought of them with a shudder. it pained him too much to believe for a moment that any one so lovely and innocent could value herself against a splendid house or a good old title. no; his hope was that, as her life had been most likely one of toil and dependence, and as she was very young nobody exactly knew her age, but she looked little more than twenty, she might never have formed any attachment, and that he, being the first to woo her, might, by tender attentions, by generous watchfulness, by a love which should recall to her the father she had lost, and by a protecting care that should make him necessary to her, win her young heart, and obtain from her fresh and earliest love, the promise of her hand. it was a very romantic day-dream, no doubt; but, for all that, it seemed in a very fair way to be realized. lucy graham appeared by no means to dislike the baronet's attentions. there was nothing whatever in her manner that betrayed the shallow artifices employed by a woman who wishes to captivate a rich man. she was so accustomed to admiration from every one, high and low, that sir michael's conduct made very little impression upon her. again, he had been so many years a widower that people had given up the idea of his ever marrying again. at last, however, mrs. dawson spoke to the governess on the subject. the surgeon's wife was sitting in the school-room busy at work, while lucy was putting the finishing touches on some water-color sketches done by her pupils. "do you know, my dear miss graham," said mrs. dawson, "i think you ought to consider yourself a remarkably lucky girl?" the governess lifted her head from its stooping attitude, and stared wonderingly at her employer, shaking back a shower of curls. they were the most wonderful curls in the world�soft and feathery, always floating away from her face, and making a pale halo round her head when the sunlight shone through them. "what do you mean, my dear mrs. dawson?" she asked, dipping her camel's-hair brush into the wet aquamarine upon the palette, and poising it carefully before putting in the delicate streak of purple which was to brighten the horizon in her pupil's sketch. "why, i mean, my dear, that it only rests with yourself to become lady audley, and the mistress of audley court." lucy graham dropped the brush upon the picture, and flushed scarlet to the roots of her fair hair; and then grew pale again, far paler than mrs. dawson had ever seen her before. "my dear, don't agitate yourself," said the surgeon's wife, soothingly; "you know that nobody asks you to marry sir michael unless you wish. of course it would be a magnificent match; he has a splendid income, and is one of the most generous of men. your position would be very high, and you would be enabled to do a great deal of good; but, as i said before, you must be entirely guided by your own feelings. only one thing i must say, and that is that if sir michael's attentions are not agreeable to you, it is really scarcely honorable to encourage him." "his attentions�encourage him!" muttered lucy, as if the words bewildered her. "pray, pray don't talk to me, mrs. dawson. i had no idea of this. it is the last thing that would have occurred to me." she leaned her elbows on the drawing-board before her, and clasping her hands over her face, seemed for some minutes to be thinking deeply. she wore a narrow black ribbon round her neck, with a locket, or a cross, or a miniature, perhaps, attached to it; but whatever the trinket was, she always kept it hidden under her dress. once or twice, while she sat silently thinking, she removed one of her hands from before her face, and fidgeted nervously with the ribbon, clutching at it with a half-angry gesture, and twisting it backward and forward between her fingers. "i think some people are born to be unlucky, mrs. dawson," she said, by-and-by; "it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to become lady audley." she said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the surgeon's wife looked up at her with surprise. "you unlucky, my dear!" she exclaimed. "i think you are the last person who ought to talk like that�you, such a bright, happy creature, that it does every one good to see you. i'm sure i don't know what we shall do if sir michael robs us of you." after this conversation they often spoke upon the subject, and lucy never again showed any emotion whatever when the baronet's admiration for her was canvassed. it was a tacitly understood thing in the surgeon's family that whenever sir michael proposed, the governess would quietly accept him; and, indeed, the simple dawsons would have thought it something more than madness in a penniless girl to reject such an offer. so, one misty august evening, sir michael, sitting opposite to lucy graham, at a window in the surgeon's little drawing-room, took an opportunity while the family happened by some accident to be absent from the room, of speaking upon the subject nearest to his heart. he made the governess, in a few but solemn words, an offer of his hand. there was something almost touching in the manner and tone in which he spoke to her�half in deprecation, knowing that he could hardly expect to be the choice of a beautiful young girl, and praying rather that she would reject him, even though she broke his heart by doing so, than that she should accept his offer if she did not love him. "i scarcely think there is a greater sin, lucy," he said, solemnly, "than that of a woman who marries a man she does not love. you are so precious to me, my beloved, that deeply as my heart is set on this, and bitter as the mere thought of disappointment is to me, i would not have you commit such a sin for any happiness of mine. if my happiness could be achieved by such an act, which it could not�which it never could," he repeated, earnestly�"nothing but misery can result from a marriage dictated by any motive but truth and love." lucy graham was not looking at sir michael, but straight out into the misty twilight and dim landscape far away beyond the little garden. the baronet tried to see her face, but her profile was turned to him, and he could not discover the expression of her eyes. if he could have done so, he would have seen a yearning gaze which seemed as if it would have pierced the far obscurity and looked away�away into another world. "lucy, you heard me?" "yes," she said, gravely; not coldly, or in any way as if she were offended at his words. "and your answer?" she did not remove her gaze from the darkening country side, but for some moments was quite silent; then turning to him, with a sudden passion in her manner, that lighted up her face with a new and wonderful beauty which the baronet perceived even in the growing twilight, she fell on her knees at his feet. "no, lucy; no, no!" he cried, vehemently, "not here, not here!" "yes, here, here," she said, the strange passion which agitated her making her voice sound shrill and piercing�not loud, but preternaturally distinct; "here and nowhere else. how good you are�how noble and how generous! love you! why, there are women a hundred times my superiors in beauty and in goodness who might love you dearly; but you ask too much of me! remember what my life has been; only remember that! from my very babyhood i have never seen anything but poverty. my father was a gentleman: clever, accomplished, handsome�but poor�and what a pitiful wretch poverty made of him! my mother�but do not let me speak of her. poverty�poverty, trials, vexations, humiliations, deprivations. you cannot tell; you, who are among those for whom life is so smooth and easy, you can never guess what is endured by such as we. do not ask too much of me, then. i cannot be disinterested; i cannot be blind to the advantages of such an alliance. i cannot, i cannot!" beyond her agitation and her passionate vehemence, there is an undefined something in her manner which fills the baronet with a vague alarm. she is still on the ground at his feet, crouching rather than kneeling, her thin white dress clinging about her, her pale hair streaming over her shoulders, her great blue eyes glittering in the dusk, and her hands clutching at the black ribbon about her throat, as if it had been strangling her. "don't ask too much of me," she kept repeating; "i have been selfish from my babyhood." "lucy�lucy, speak plainly. do you dislike me?" "dislike you? no�no!" "but is there any one else whom you love?" she laughed aloud at his question. "i do not love any one in the world," she answered. he was glad of her reply; and yet that and the strange laugh jarred upon his feelings. he was silent for some moments, and then said, with a kind of effort: "well, lucy, i will not ask too much of you. i dare say i am a romantic old fool; but if you do not dislike me, and if you do not love any one else, i see no reason why we should not make a very happy couple. is it a bargain, lucy?" "yes." the baronet lifted her in his arms and kissed her once upon the forehead, then quietly bidding her good-night, he walked straight out of the house. he walked straight out of the house, this foolish old man, because there was some strong emotion at work in his breast�neither joy nor triumph, but something almost akin to disappointment�some stifled and unsatisfied longing which lay heavy and dull at his heart, as if he had carried a corpse in his bosom. he carried the corpse of that hope which had died at the sound of lucy's words. all the doubts and fears and timid aspirations were ended now. he must be contented, like other men of his age, to be married for his fortune and his position. lucy graham went slowly up the stairs to her little room at the top of the house. she placed her dim candle on the chest of drawers, and seated herself on the edge of the white bed, still and white as the draperies hanging around her. "no more dependence, no more drudgery, no more humiliations," she said; "every trace of the old life melted away�every clew to identity buried and forgotten�except these, except these." she had never taken her left hand from the black ribbon at her throat. she drew it from her bosom, as she spoke, and looked at the object attached to it. it was neither a locket, a miniature, nor a cross; it was a ring wrapped in an oblong piece of paper�the paper partly written, partly printed, yellow with age, and crumpled with much folding. chapter ii. on board the argus. he threw the end of his cigar into the water, and leaning his elbows upon the bulwarks, stared meditatively at the waves. "how wearisome they are," he said; "blue and green, and opal; opal, and blue, and green; all very well in their way, of course, but three months of them are rather too much, especially�" he did not attempt to finish his sentence; his thoughts seemed to wander in the very midst of it, and carry him a thousand miles or so away. "poor little girl, how pleased she'll be!" he muttered, opening his cigar-case, lazily surveying its contents; "how pleased and how surprised? poor little girl. after three years and a half, too; she will be surprised." he was a young man of about five-and-twenty, with dark face bronzed by exposure to the sun; he had handsome brown eyes, with a lazy smile in them that sparkled through the black lashes, and a bushy beard and mustache that covered the whole lower part of his face. he was tall and powerfully built; he wore a loose gray suit and a felt hat, thrown carelessly upon his black hair. his name was george talboys, and he was aft-cabin passenger on board the good ship argus, laden with australian wool and sailing from sydney to liverpool. there were very few passengers in the aft-cabin of the argus. an elderly wool-stapler returning to his native country with his wife and daughters, after having made a fortune in the colonies; a governess of three-and-thirty years of age, going home to marry a man to whom she had been engaged fifteen years; the sentimental daughter of a wealthy australian wine-merchant, invoiced to england to finish her education, and george talboys, were the only first-class passengers on board. this george talboys was the life and soul of the vessel; nobody knew who or what he was, or where he came from, but everybody liked him. he sat at the bottom of the dinner-table, and assisted the captain in doing the honors of the friendly meal. he opened the champagne bottles, and took wine with every one present; he told funny stories, and led the life himself with such a joyous peal that the man must have been a churl who could not have laughed for pure sympathy. he was a capital hand at speculation and vingt-et-un, and all the merry games, which kept the little circle round the cabin-lamp so deep in innocent amusement, that a hurricane might have howled overhead without their hearing it; but he freely owned that he had no talent for whist, and that he didn't know a knight from a castle upon the chess-board. indeed, mr. talboys was by no means too learned a gentleman. the pale governess had tried to talk to him about fashionable literature, but george had only pulled his beard and stared very hard at her, saying occasionally, "ah, yes, by jove!" and "to be sure, ah!" the sentimental young lady, going home to finish her education, had tried him with shelby and byron, and he had fairly laughed in her face, as if poetry were a joke. the woolstapler sounded him on politics, but he did not seem very deeply versed in them; so they let him go his own way, smoke his cigars and talk to the sailors, lounge over the bulwarks and stare at the water, and make himself agreeable to everybody in his own fashion. but when the argus came to be within about a fortnight's sail of england everybody noticed a change in george talboys. he grew restless and fidgety; sometimes so merry that the cabin rung with his laughter; sometimes moody and thoughtful. favorite as he was among the sailors, they were tired at last of answering his perpetual questions about the probable time of touching land. would it be in ten days, in eleven, in twelve, in thirteen? was the wind favorable? how many knots an hour was the vessel doing? then a sudden passion would seize him, and he would stamp upon the deck, crying out that she was a rickety old craft, and that her owners were swindlers to advertise her as the fast-sailing argus. she was not fit for passenger traffic; she was not fit to carry impatient living creatures, with hearts and souls; she was fit for nothing but to be laden with bales of stupid wool, that might rot on the sea and be none the worse for it. the sun was drooping down behind the waves as george talboys lighted his cigar upon this august evening. only ten days more, the sailors had told him that afternoon, and they would see the english coast. "i will go ashore in the first boat that hails us," he cried; "i will go ashore in a cockle-shell. by jove, if it comes to that, i will swim to land." his friends in the aft-cabin, with the exception of the pale governess, laughed at his impatience; she sighed as she watched the young man, chafing at the slow hours, pushing away his untasted wine, flinging himself restlessly about upon the cabin sofa, rushing up and down the companion ladder, and staring at the waves. as the red rim of the sun dropped into the water, the governess ascended the cabin stairs for a stroll on deck, while the passengers sat over their wine below. she stopped when she came up to george, and, standing by his side, watched the fading crimson in the western sky. the lady was very quiet and reserved, seldom sharing in the after-cabin amusements, never laughing, and speaking very little; but she and george talboys had been excellent friends throughout the passage. "does my cigar annoy you, miss morley?" he said, taking it out of his mouth. "not at all; pray do not leave off smoking. i only came up to look at the sunset. what a lovely evening!" "yes, yes, i dare say," he answered, impatiently; "yet so long, so long! ten more interminable days and ten more weary nights before we land." "yes," said miss morley, sighing. "do you wish the time shorter?" "do i?" cried george. "indeed i do. don't you?" "scarcely." "but is there no one you love in england? is there no one you love looking out for your arrival?" "i hope so," she said gravely. they were silent for some time, he smoking his cigar with a furious impatience, as if he could hasten the course of the vessel by his own restlessness; she looking out at the waning light with melancholy blue eyes�eyes that seemed to have faded with poring over closely-printed books and difficult needlework; eyes that had faded a little, perhaps, by reason of tears secretly shed in the lonely night. "see!" said george, suddenly, pointing in another direction from that toward which miss morley was looking, "there's the new moon!" she looked up at the pale crescent, her own face almost as pale and wan. "this is the first time we have seen it." "we must wish!" said george. "i know what i wish." "what?" "that we may get home quickly." "my wish is that we may find no disappointment when we get there," said the governess, sadly. "disappointment!" he started as if he had been struck, and asked what she meant by talking of disappointment. "i mean this," she said, speaking rapidly, and with a restless motion of her thin hands; "i mean that as the end of the voyage draws near, hope sinks in my heart; and a sick fear comes over me that at the last all may not be well. the person i go to meet may be changed in his feelings toward me; or he may retain all the old feeling until the moment of seeing me, and then lose it in a breath at sight of my poor wan face, for i was called a pretty girl, mr. talboys, when i sailed for sydney, fifteen years ago; or he may be so changed by the world as to have grown selfish and mercenary, and he may welcome me for the sake of my fifteen years' savings. again, he may be dead. he may have been well, perhaps, up to within a week of our landing, and in that last week may have taken a fever, and died an hour before our vessel anchors in the mersey. i think of all these things, mr. talboys, and act the scenes over in my mind, and feel the anguish of them twenty times a day. twenty times a day," she repeated; "why i do it a thousand times a day." george talboys had stood motionless, with his cigar in his hand, listening to her so intently that, as she said the last words, his hold relaxed, and the cigar dropped in the water. "i wonder," she continued, more to herself than to him, "i wonder, looking back, to think how hopeful i was when the vessel sailed; i never thought then of disappointment, but i pictured the joy of meeting, imagining the very words that would be said, the very tones, the very looks; but for this last month of the voyage, day by day, and hour by hour my heart sinks and my hopeful fancies fade away, and i dread the end as much as if i knew that i was going to england to attend a funeral." the young man suddenly changed his attitude, and turned his face full upon his companion, with a look of alarm. she saw in the pale light that the color had faded from his cheek. "what a fool!" he cried, striking his clenched fist upon the side of the vessel, "what a fool i am to be frightened at this? why do you come and say these things to me? why do you come and terrify me out of my senses, when i am going straight home to the woman i love; to a girl whose heart is as true as the light of heaven; and in whom i no more expect to find any change than i do to see another sun rise in to-morrow's sky? why do you come and try to put such fancies in my head when i am going home to my darling wife?" "your wife," she said; "that is different. there is no reason that my terrors should terrify you. i am going to england to rejoin a man to whom i was engaged to be married fifteen years ago. he was too poor to marry then, and when i was offered a situation as governess in a rich australian family, i persuaded him to let me accept it, so that i might leave him free and unfettered to win his way in the world, while i saved a little money to help us when we began life together. i never meant to stay away so long, but things have gone badly with him in england. that is my story, and you can understand my fears. they need not influence you. mine is an exceptional case." "so is mine," said george, impatiently. "i tell you that mine is an exceptional case: although i swear to you that until this moment, i have never known a fear as to the result of my voyage home. but you are right; your terrors have nothing to do with me. you have been away fifteen years; all kinds of things may happen in fifteen years. now it is only three years and a half this very month since i left england. what can have happened in such a short time as that?" miss morley looked at him with a mournful smile, but did not speak. his feverish ardor, the freshness and impatience of his nature were so strange and new to her, that she looked at him half in admiration, half in pity. "my pretty little wife! my gentle, innocent, loving little wife! do you know, miss morley," he said, with all his old hopefulness of manner, "that i left my little girl asleep, with her baby in her arms, and with nothing but a few blotted lines to tell her why her faithful husband had deserted her?" "deserted her!" exclaimed the governess. "yes. i was an ensign in a cavalry regiment when i first met my little darling. we were quartered at a stupid seaport town, where my pet lived with her shabby old father, a half-pay naval officer; a regular old humbug, as poor as job, and with an eye for nothing but the main chance. i saw through all his shallow tricks to catch one of us for his pretty daughter. i saw all the pitiable, contemptible, palpable traps he set for us big dragoons to walk into. i saw through his shabby-genteel dinners and public-house port; his fine talk of the grandeur of his family; his sham pride and independence, and the sham tears of his bleared old eyes when he talked of his only child. he was a drunken old hypocrite, and he was ready to sell my poor, little girl to the highest bidder. luckily for me, i happened just then to be the highest bidder; for my father, is a rich man, miss morley, and as it was love at first sight on both sides, my darling and i made a match of it. no sooner, however, did my father hear that i had married a penniless little girl, the daughter of a tipsy old half-pay lieutenant, than he wrote me a furious letter, telling me he would never again hold any communication with me, and that my yearly allowance would stop from my wedding-day. "as there was no remaining in such a regiment as mine, with nothing but my pay to live on, and my pretty little wife to keep, i sold out, thinking that before the money was exhausted, i should be sure to drop into something. i took my darling to italy, and we lived there in splendid style as long as my two thousand pounds lasted; but when that began to dwindle down to a couple of hundred or so, we came back to england, and as my darling had a fancy for being near that tiresome old father of hers, we settled at the watering-place where he lived. well, as soon as the old man heard that i had a couple of hundred pounds left, he expressed a wonderful degree of affection for us, and insisted on our boarding in his house. we consented, still to please my darling, who had just then a peculiar right to have every whim and fancy of her innocent heart indulged. we did board with him, and finally he fleeced us; but when i spoke of it to my little wife, she only shrugged her shoulders, and said she did not like to be unkind to her 'poor papa.' so poor papa made away with our little stock of money in no time; and as i felt that it was now becoming necessary to look about for something, i ran up to london, and tried to get a situation as a clerk in a merchant's office, or as accountant, or book-keeper, or something of that kind. but i suppose there was the stamp of a heavy dragoon about me, for do what i would i couldn't get anybody to believe in my capacity; and tired out, and down-hearted, i returned to my darling, to find her nursing a son and heir to his father's poverty. poor little girl, she was very low-spirited; and when i told her that my london expedition had failed, she fairly broke down, and burst in to a storm of sobs and lamentations, telling me that i ought not to have married her if i could give her nothing but poverty and misery; and that i had done her a cruel wrong in making her my wife. by heaven! miss morley, her tears and reproaches drove me almost mad; and i flew into a rage with her, myself, her father, the world, and everybody in it, and then ran out of the house. i walked about the streets all that day, half out of my mind, and with a strong inclination to throw myself into the sea, so as to leave my poor girl free to make a better match. 'if i drown myself, her father must support her,' i thought; 'the old hypocrite could never refuse her a shelter; but while i live she has no claim on him.' i went down to a rickety old wooden pier, meaning to wait there till it was dark, and then drop quietly over the end of it into the water; but while i sat there smoking my pipe, and staring vacantly at the sea-gulls, two men came down, and one of them began to talk of the australian gold-diggings, and the great things that were to be done there. it appeared that he was going to sail in a day or two, and he was trying to persuade his companion to join him in the expedition. "i listened to these men for upward of an hour, following them up and down the pier, with my pipe in my mouth, and hearing all their talk. after this i fell into conversation with them myself, and ascertained that there was a vessel going to leave liverpool in three days, by which vessel one of the men was going out. this man gave me all the information i required, and told me, moreover, that a stalwart young fellow, such as i was, could hardly fail to do well in the diggings. the thought flashed upon me so suddenly, that i grew hot and red in the face, and trembled in every limb with excitement. this was better than the water, at any rate. suppose i stole away from my darling, leaving her safe under her father's roof, and went and made a fortune in the new world, and came back in a twelvemonth to throw it into her lap; for i was so sanguine in those days that i counted on making my fortune in a year or so. i thanked the man for his information, and late at night strolled homeward. it was bitter winter weather, but i had been too full of passion to feel cold, and i walked through the quiet streets, with the snow drifting in my face, and a desperate hopefulness in my heart. the old man was sitting drinking brandy-and-water in the little dining-room; and my wife was up-stairs, sleeping peacefully, with the baby on her breast. i sat down and wrote a few brief lines, which told her that i never had loved her better than now, when i seemed to desert her; that i was going to try my fortune in the new world, and that if i succeeded i should come back to bring her plenty and happiness; but that if i failed i should never look upon her face again. i divided the remainder of our money�something over forty pounds�into two equal portions, leaving one for her, and putting the other in my pocket. i knelt down and prayed for my wife and child, with my head upon the white counterpane that covered them. i wasn't much of a praying man at ordinary times, but god knows that was a heartfelt prayer. i kissed her once, and the baby once, and then crept out of the room. the dining-room door was open, and the old man was nodding over his paper. he looked up as he heard my step in the passage, and asked me where i was going. 'to have a smoke in the street,' i answered; and as this was a common habit of mine he believed me. three nights after i was out at sea, bound for melbourne�a steerage passenger, with a digger's tools for my baggage, and about seven shillings in my pocket." "and you succeeded?" asked miss morley. "not till i had long despaired of success; not until poverty and i had become such old companions and bed-fellows, that looking back at my past life, i wondered whether that dashing, reckless, extravagant, luxurious, champagne-drinking dragoon could have really been the same man who sat on the damp ground gnawing a moldy crust in the wilds of the new world. i clung to the memory of my darling, and the trust that i had in her love and truth was the one keystone that kept the fabric of my past life together�the one star that lit the thick black darkness of the future. i was hail-fellow-well-met with bad men; i was in the center of riot, drunkenness, and debauchery; but the purifying influence of my love kept me safe from all. thin and gaunt, the half-starved shadow of what i once had been, i saw myself one day in a broken bit of looking-glass, and was frightened by my own face. but i toiled on through all; through disappointment and despair, rheumatism, fever, starvation; at the very gates of death, i toiled on steadily to the end; and in the end i conquered." he was so brave in his energy and determination, in his proud triumph of success, and in the knowledge of the difficulties he had vanquished, that the pale governess could only look at him in wondering admiration. "how brave you were!" she said. "brave!" he cried, with a joyous peal of laughter; "wasn't i working for my darling? through all the dreary time of that probation, her pretty white hand seemed beckoning me onward to a happy future! why, i have seen her under my wretched canvas tent sitting by my side, with her boy in her arms, as plainly as i had ever seen her in the one happy year of our wedded life. at last, one dreary foggy morning, just three months ago, with a drizzling rain wetting me to the skin, up to my neck in clay and mire, half-starved, enfeebled by fever, stiff with rheumatism, a monster nugget turned up under my spade, and i was in one minute the richest man in australia. i fell down on the wet clay, with my lump of gold in the bosom of my shirt, and, for the first time in my life, cried like a child. i traveled post-haste to sydney, realized my price, which was worth upward of £20,000, and a fortnight afterward took my passage for england in this vessel; and in ten days�in ten days i shall see my darling." "but in all that time did you never write to your wife?" "never, till the night before i left sydney. i could not write when everything looked so black. i could not write and tell her that i was fighting hard with despair and death. i waited for better fortune, and when that came i wrote telling her that i should be in england almost as soon as my letter, and giving her an address at a coffee-house in london where she could write to me, telling me where to find her, though she is hardly likely to have left her father's house." he fell into a reverie after this, and puffed meditatively at his cigar. his companion did not disturb him. the last ray of summer daylight had died out, and the pale light of the crescent moon only remained. presently george talboys flung away his cigar, and turning to the governess, cried abruptly, "miss morley, if, when i get to england, i hear that anything has happened to my wife, i shall fall down dead." "my dear mr. talboys, why do you think of these things? god is very good to us; he will not afflict us beyond our power of endurance. i see all things, perhaps, in a melancholy light; for the long monotony of my life has given me too much time to think over my troubles." "and my life has been all action, privation, toil, alternate hope and despair; i have had no time to think upon the chances of anything happening to my darling. what a blind, reckless fool i have been! three years and a half and not one line�one word from her, or from any mortal creature who knows her. heaven above! what may not have happened?" in the agitation of his mind he began to walk rapidly up and down the lonely deck, the governess following, and trying to soothe him. "i swear to you, miss morley," he said, "that till you spoke to me to-night, i never felt one shadow of fear, and now i have that sick, sinking dread at my heart which you talked of an hour ago. let me alone, please, to get over it my own way." she drew silently away from him, and seated herself by the side of the vessel, looking over into the water. george talboys walked backward and forward for some time, with his head bent upon his breast, looking neither to the right nor the left, but in about a quarter of an hour he returned to the spot where the governess was seated. "i have been praying," he said�"praying for my darling." he spoke in a voice little above a whisper, and she saw his face ineffably calm in the moonlight. chapter iii. hidden relics. the same august sun which had gone down behind the waste of waters glimmered redly upon the broad face of the old clock over that ivy-covered archway which leads into the gardens of audley court. a fierce and crimson sunset. the mullioned windows and twinkling lattices are all ablaze with the red glory; the fading light flickers upon the leaves of the limes in the long avenue, and changes the still fish-pond into a sheet of burnished copper; even into those dim recesses of brier and brushwood, amidst which the old well is hidden, the crimson brightness penetrates in fitful flashes till the dank weeds and the rusty iron wheel and broken woodwork seem as if they were flecked with blood. the lowing of a cow in the quiet meadows, the splash of a trout in the fish-pond, the last notes of a tired bird, the creaking of wagon-wheels upon the distant road, every now and then breaking the evening silence, only made the stillness of the place seem more intense. it was almost oppressive, this twilight stillness. the very repose of the place grew painful from its intensity, and you felt as if a corpse must be lying somewhere within that gray and ivy-covered pile of building�so deathlike was the tranquillity of all around. as the clock over the archway struck eight, a door at the back of the house was softly opened, and a girl came out into the gardens. but even the presence of a human being scarcely broke the silence; for the girl crept slowly over the thick grass, and gliding into the avenue by the side of the fish-pond, disappeared in the rich shelter of the limes. she was not, perhaps, positively a pretty girl; but her appearance was of that order which is commonly called interesting. interesting, it may be, because in the pale face and the light gray eyes, the small features and compressed lips, there was something which hinted at a power of repression and self-control not common in a woman of nineteen or twenty. she might have been pretty, i think, but for the one fault in her small oval face. this fault was an absence of color. not one tinge of crimson flushed the waxen whiteness of her cheeks; not one shadow of brown redeemed the pale insipidity of her eyebrows and eyelashes; not one glimmer of gold or auburn relieved the dull flaxen of her hair. even her dress was spoiled by this same deficiency. the pale lavender muslin faded into a sickly gray, and the ribbon knotted round her throat melted into the same neutral hue. her figure was slim and fragile, and in spite of her humble dress, she had something of the grace and carriage of a gentlewoman, but she was only a simple country girl, called phoebe marks, who had been nursemaid in mr. dawson's family, and whom lady audley had chosen for her maid after her marriage with sir michael. of course, this was a wonderful piece of good fortune for phoebe, who found her wages trebled and her work lightened in the well-ordered household at the court; and who was therefore quite as much the object of envy among her particular friends as my lady herself to higher circles. a man, who was sitting on the broken wood-work of the well, started as the lady's-maid came out of the dim shade of the limes and stood before him among the weeds and brushwood. i have said before that this was a neglected spot; it lay in the midst of a low shrubbery, hidden away from the rest of the gardens, and only visible from the garret windows at the back of the west wing. "why, phoebe," said the man, shutting a clasp-knife with which he had been stripping the bark from a blackthorn stake, "you came upon me so still and sudden, that i thought you was an evil spirit. i've come across through the fields, and come in here at the gate agen the moat, and i was taking a rest before i came up to the house to ask if you was come back." "i can see the well from my bedroom window, luke," phoebe answered, pointing to an open lattice in one of the gables. "i saw you sitting here, and came down to have a chat; it's better talking out here than in the house, where there's always somebody listening." the man was a big, broad-shouldered, stupid-looking clod-hopper of about twenty-three years of age. his dark red hair grew low upon his forehead, and his bushy brows met over a pair of greenish gray eyes; his nose was large and well-shaped, but the mouth was coarse in form and animal in expression. rosy-cheeked, red-haired, and bull-necked, he was not unlike one of the stout oxen grazing in the meadows round about the court. the girl seated herself lightly upon the wood-work at his side, and put one of her hands, which had grown white in her new and easy service, about his thick neck. "are you glad to see me, luke?" she asked. "of course i'm glad, lass," he answered, boorishly, opening his knife again, and scraping away at the hedge-stake. they were first cousins, and had been play fellows in childhood, and sweethearts in early youth. "you don't seem much as if you were glad," said the girl; "you might look at me, luke, and tell me if you think my journey has improved me." "it ain't put any color into your cheeks, my girl," he said, glancing up at her from under his lowering eyebrows; "you're every bit as white as you was when you went away." "but they say traveling makes people genteel, luke. i've been on the continent with my lady, through all manner of curious places; and you know, when i was a child, squire horton's daughters taught me to speak a little french, and i found it so nice to be able to talk to the people abroad." "genteel!" cried luke marks, with a hoarse laugh; "who wants you to be genteel, i wonder? not me, for one; when you're my wife you won't have overmuch time for gentility, my girl. french, too! dang me, phoebe, i suppose when we've saved money enough between us to buy a bit of a farm, you'll be parleyvooing to the cows?" she bit her lip as her lover spoke, and looked away. he went on cutting and chopping at a rude handle he was fashioning to the stake, whistling softly to himself all the while, and not once looking at his cousin. for some time they were silent, but by-and-by she said, with her face still turned away from her companion: "what a fine thing it is for miss graham that was, to travel with her maid and her courier, and her chariot and four, and a husband that thinks there isn't one spot upon all the earth that's good enough for her to set her foot upon!" "ay, it is a fine thing, phoebe, to have lots of money," answered luke, "and i hope you'll be warned by that, my lass, to save up your wages agin we get married." "why, what was she in mr. dawson's house only three months ago?" continued the girl, as if she had not heard her cousin's speech. "what was she but a servant like me? taking wages and working for them as hard, or harder, than i did. you should have seen her shabby clothes, luke�worn and patched, and darned and turned and twisted, yet always looking nice upon her, somehow. she gives me more as lady's-maid here than ever she got from mr. dawson then. why, i've seen her come out of the parlor with a few sovereigns and a little silver in her hand, that master had just given her for her quarter's salary; and now look at her!" "never you mind her," said luke; "take care of yourself, phoebe; that's all you've got to do. what should you say to a public-house for you and me, by-and-by, my girl? there's a deal of money to be made out of a public-house." the girl still sat with her face averted from her lover, her hands hanging listlessly in her lap, and her pale gray eyes fixed upon the last low streak of crimson dying out behind the trunks of the trees. "you should see the inside of the house, luke," she said; "it's a tumbledown looking place enough outside; but you should see my lady's rooms�all pictures and gilding, and great looking-glasses that stretch from the ceiling to the floor. painted ceilings, too, that cost hundreds of pounds, the housekeeper told her, and all done for her." "she's a lucky one," muttered luke, with lazy indifference. "you should have seen her while we were abroad, with a crowd of gentlemen hanging about her; sir michael not jealous of them, only proud to see her so much admired. you should have heard her laugh and talk with them; throwing all their compliments and fine speeches back at them, as it were, as if they had been pelting her with roses. she set everybody mad about her, wherever she went. her singing, her playing, her painting, her dancing, her beautiful smile, and sunshiny ringlets! she was always the talk of a place, as long as we stayed in it." "is she at home to-night?" "no; she has gone out with sir michael to a dinner party at the beeches. they've seven or eight miles to drive, and they won't be back till after eleven." "then i'll tell you what, phoebe, if the inside of the house is so mighty fine, i should like to have a look at it." "you shall, then. mrs. barton, the housekeeper, knows you by sight, and she can't object to my showing you some of the best rooms." it was almost dark when the cousins left the shrubbery and walked slowly to the house. the door by which they entered led into the servants' hall, on one side of which was the housekeeper's room. phoebe marks stopped for a moment to ask the housekeeper if she might take her cousin through some of the rooms, and having received permission to do so, lighted a candle at the lamp in the hall, and beckoned to luke to follow her into the other part of the house. the long, black oak corridors were dim in the ghostly twilight�the light carried by phoebe looking only a poor speck in the broad passages through which the girl led her cousin. luke looked suspiciously over his shoulder now and then, half-frightened by the creaking of his own hob-nailed boots. "it's a mortal dull place, phoebe," he said, as they emerged from a passage into the principal hall, which was not yet lighted; "i've heard tell of a murder that was done here in old times." "there are murders enough in these times, as to that, luke," answered the girl, ascending the staircase, followed by the young man. she led the way through a great drawing-room, rich in satin and ormolu, buhl and inlaid cabinets, bronzes, cameos, statuettes, and trinkets, that glistened in the dusky light; then through a morning room, hung with proof engravings of valuable pictures; through this into an ante-chamber, where she stopped, holding the light above her head. the young man stared about him, open-mouthed and open-eyed. "it's a rare fine place," he said, "and must have cost a heap of money." "look at the pictures on the walls," said phoebe, glancing at the panels of the octagonal chamber, which were hung with claudes and poussins, wouvermans and cuyps. "i've heard that those alone are worth a fortune. this is the entrance to my lady's apartments, miss graham that was." she lifted a heavy green cloth curtain which hung across a doorway, and led the astonished countryman into a fairy-like boudoir, and thence to a dressing-room, in which the open doors of a wardrobe and a heap of dresses flung about a sofa showed that it still remained exactly as its occupants had left it. "i've got all these things to put away before my lady comes home, luke; you might sit down here while i do it, i shan't be long." her cousin looked around in gawky embarrassment, bewildered by the splendor of the room; and after some deliberation selected the most substantial of the chairs, on the extreme edge of which he carefully seated himself. "i wish i could show you the jewels, luke," said the girl; "but i can't, for she always keeps the keys herself; that's the case on the dressing-table there." "what, that?" cried luke, staring at the massive walnut-wood and brass inlaid casket. "why, that's big enough to hold every bit of clothes i've got!" "and it's as full as it can be of diamonds, rubies, pearls and emeralds," answered phoebe, busy as she spoke in folding the rustling silk dresses, and laying them one by one upon the shelves of the wardrobe. as she was shaking out the flounces of the last, a jingling sound caught her ear, and she put her hand into the pocket. "i declare!" she exclaimed, "my lady has left her keys in her pocket for once in a way; i can show you the jewelry, if you like, luke." "well, i may as well have a look at it, my girl," he said, rising from his chair and holding the light while his cousin unlocked the casket. he uttered a cry of wonder when he saw the ornaments glittering on white satin cushions. he wanted to handle the delicate jewels; to pull them about, and find out their mercantile value. perhaps a pang of longing and envy shot through his heart as he thought how he would have liked to have taken one of them. "why, one of those diamond things would set us up in life, phoebe, he said, turning a bracelet over and over in his big red hands. "put it down, luke! put it down directly!" cried the girl, with a look of terror; "how can you speak about such things?" he laid the bracelet in its place with a reluctant sigh, and then continued his examination of the casket. "what's this?" he asked presently, pointing to a brass knob in the frame-work of the box. he pushed it as he spoke, and a secret drawer, lined with purple velvet, flew out of the casket. "look ye here!" cried luke, pleased at his discovery. phoebe marks threw down the dress she had been folding, and went over to the toilette table. "why, i never saw this before," she said; "i wonder what there is in it?" there was not much in it; neither gold nor gems; only a baby's little worsted shoe rolled up in a piece of paper, and a tiny lock of pale and silky yellow hair, evidently taken from a baby's head. phoebe's eyes dilated as she examined the little packet. "so this is what my lady hides in the secret drawer," she muttered. "it's queer rubbish to keep in such a place," said luke, carelessly. the girl's thin lip curved into a curious smile. "you will bear me witness where i found this," she said, putting the little parcel into her pocket. "why, phoebe, you're not going to be such a fool as to take that," cried the young man. "i'd rather have this than the diamond bracelet you would have liked to take," she answered; "you shall have the public house, luke." chapter iv. in the first page of "the times." robert audley was supposed to be a barrister. as a barrister was his name inscribed in the law-list; as a barrister he had chambers in figtree court, temple; as a barrister he had eaten the allotted number of dinners, which form the sublime ordeal through which the forensic aspirant wades on to fame and fortune. if these things can make a man a barrister, robert audley decidedly was one. but he had never either had a brief, or tried to get a brief, or even wished to have a brief in all those five years, during which his name had been painted upon one of the doors in figtree court. he was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing fellow, of about seven-and-twenty; the only son of a younger brother of sir michael audley. his father had left him £400 a year, which his friends had advised him to increase by being called to the bar; and as he found it, after due consideration, more trouble to oppose the wishes of these friends than to eat so many dinners, and to take a set of chambers in the temple, he adopted the latter course, and unblushingly called himself a barrister. sometimes, when the weather was very hot, and he had exhausted himself with the exertion of smoking his german pipe, and reading french novels, he would stroll into the temple gardens, and lying in some shady spot, pale and cool, with his shirt collar turned down and a blue silk handkerchief tied loosely about his neck, would tell grave benchers that he had knocked himself up with over work. the sly old benchers laughed at the pleasant fiction; but they all agreed that robert audley was a good fellow; a generous-hearted fellow; rather a curious fellow, too, with a fund of sly wit and quiet humor, under his listless, dawdling, indifferent, irresolute manner. a man who would never get on in the world; but who would not hurt a worm. indeed, his chambers were converted into a perfect dog-kennel, by his habit of bringing home stray and benighted curs, who were attracted by his looks in the street, and followed him with abject fondness. robert always spent the hunting season at audley court; not that he was distinguished as a nimrod, for he would quietly trot to covert upon a mild-tempered, stout-limbed bay hack, and keep at a very respectful distance from the hard riders; his horse knowing quite as well as he did, that nothing was further from his thoughts than any desire to be in at the death. the young man was a great favorite with his uncle, and by no means despised by his pretty, gipsy-faced, light-hearted, hoydenish cousin, miss alicia audley. it might have seemed to other men, that the partiality of a young lady who was sole heiress to a very fine estate, was rather well worth cultivating, but it did not so occur to robert audley. alicia was a very nice girl, he said, a jolly girl, with no nonsense about her�a girl of a thousand; but this was the highest point to which enthusiasm could carry him. the idea of turning his cousin's girlish liking for him to some good account never entered his idle brain. i doubt if he even had any correct notion of the amount of his uncle's fortune, and i am certain that he never for one moment calculated upon the chances of any part of that fortune ultimately coming to himself. so that when, one fine spring morning, about three months before the time of which i am writing, the postman brought him the wedding cards of sir michael and lady audley, together with a very indignant letter from his cousin, setting forth how her father had just married a wax-dollish young person, no older than alicia herself, with flaxen ringlets, and a perpetual giggle; for i am sorry to say that miss audley's animus caused her thus to describe that pretty musical laugh which had been so much admired in the late miss lucy graham�when, i say, these documents reached robert audley�they elicited neither vexation nor astonishment in the lymphatic nature of that gentleman. he read alicia's angry crossed and recrossed letter without so much as removing the amber mouth-piece of his german pipe from his mustached lips. when he had finished the perusal of the epistle, which he read with his dark eyebrows elevated to the center of his forehead (his only manner of expressing surprise, by the way) he deliberately threw that and the wedding cards into the waste-paper basket, and putting down his pipe, prepared himself for the exertion of thinking out the subject. "i always said the old buffer would marry," he muttered, after about half an hour's revery. alicia and my lady, the stepmother, will go at it hammer and tongs. i hope they won't quarrel in the hunting season, or say unpleasant things to each other at the dinner-table; rows always upset a man's digestion. at about twelve o'clock on the morning following that night upon which the events recorded in my last chapter had taken place, the baronet's nephew strolled out of the temple, blackfriarsward, on his way to the city. he had in an evil hour obliged some necessitous friend by putting the ancient name of audley across a bill of accommodation, which bill not having been provided for by the drawer, robert was called upon to pay. for this purpose he sauntered up ludgate hill, with his blue necktie fluttering in the hot august air, and thence to a refreshingly cool banking-house in a shady court out of st. paul's churchyard, where he made arrangements for selling out a couple of hundred pounds' worth of consols. he had transacted this business, and was loitering at the corner of the court, waiting for a chance hansom to convey him back to the temple, when he was almost knocked down by a man of about his own age, who dashed headlong into the narrow opening. "be so good as to look where you're going, my friend!" robert remonstrated, mildly, to the impetuous passenger; "you might give a man warning before you throw him down and trample upon him." the stranger stopped suddenly, looked very hard at the speaker, and then gasped for breath. "bob!" he cried, in a tone expressive of the most intense astonishment; "i only touched british ground after dark last night, and to think that i should meet you this morning." "i've seen you somewhere before, my bearded friend," said mr. audley, calmly scrutinizing the animated face of the other, "but i'll be hanged if i can remember when or where." "what!" exclaimed the stranger, reproachfully. "you don't mean to say that you've forgotten george talboys?" "no i have not!" said robert, with an emphasis by no means usual to him; and then hooking his arm into that of his friend, he led him into the shady court, saying, with his old indifference, "and now, george tell us all about it." george talboys did tell him all about it. he told that very story which he had related ten days before to the pale governess on board the argus; and then, hot and breathless, he said that he had twenty thousand pounds or so in his pocket, and that he wanted to bank it at messrs. ��, who had been his bankers many years before. "if you'll believe me, i've only just left their counting-house," said robert. "i'll go back with you, and we'll settle that matter in five minutes." they did contrive to settle it in about a quarter of an hour; and then robert audley was for starting off immediately for the crown and scepter, at greenwich, or the castle, at richmond, where they could have a bit of dinner, and talk over those good old times when they were together at eton. but george told his friend that before he went anywhere, before he shaved or broke his fast, or in any way refreshed himself after a night journey from liverpool by express train, he must call at a certain coffee-house in bridge street, westminster, where he expected to find a letter from his wife. as they dashed through ludgate hill, fleet street, and the strand, in a fast hansom, george talboys poured into his friend's ear all those wild hopes and dreams which had usurped such a dominion over his sanguine nature. "i shall take a villa on the banks of the thames, bob," he said, "for the little wife and myself; and we'll have a yacht, bob, old boy, and you shall lie on the deck and smoke, while my pretty one plays her guitar and sings songs to us. she's for all the world like one of those what's-its-names, who got poor old ulysses into trouble," added the young man, whose classic lore was not very great. the waiters at the westminster coffee-house stared at the hollow-eyed, unshaven stranger, with his clothes of colonial cut, and his boisterous, excited manner; but he had been an old frequenter of the place in his military days, and when they heard who he was they flew to do his bidding. he did not want much�only a bottle of soda-water, and to know if there was a letter at the bar directed to george talboys. the waiter brought the soda-water before the young men had seated themselves in a shady box near the disused fire-place. no; there was no letter for that name. the waiter said it with consummate indifference, while he mechanically dusted the little mahogany table. george's face blanched to a deadly whiteness. "talboys," he said; "perhaps you didn't hear the name distinctly�t, a, l, b, o, y, s. go and look again, there must be a letter." the waiter shrugged his shoulders as he left the room, and returned in three minutes to say that there was no name at all resembling talboys in the letter rack. there was brown, and sanderson, and pinchbeck; only three letters altogether. the young man drank his soda-water in silence, and then, leaning his elbows on the table, covered his face with his hands. there was something in his manner which told robert audley that his disappointment, trifling as it may appear, was in reality a very bitter one. he seated himself opposite to his friend, but did not attempt to address him. by-and-by george looked up, and mechanically taking a greasy times newspaper of the day before from a heap of journals on the table, stared vacantly at the first page. i cannot tell how long he sat blankly staring at one paragraph among the list of deaths, before his dazed brain took in its full meaning; but after considerable pause he pushed the newspaper over to robert audley, and with a face that had changed from its dark bronze to a sickly, chalky grayish white, and with an awful calmness in his manner, he pointed with his finger to a line which ran thus: "on the 24th inst., at ventnor, isle of wight, helen talboys, aged 22." chapter v. the headstone at ventnor. yes, there it was in black and white�"helen talboys, aged 22." when george told the governess on board the argus that if he heard any evil tidings of his wife he should drop down dead, he spoke in perfect good faith; and yet, here were the worst tidings that could come to him, and he sat rigid, white and helpless, staring stupidly at the shocked face of his friend. the suddenness of the blow had stunned him. in this strange and bewildered state of mind he began to wonder what had happened, and why it was that one line in the times newspaper could have so horrible an effect upon him. then by degrees even this vague consciousness of his misfortune faded slowly out of his mind, succeeded by a painful consciousness of external things. the hot august sunshine, the dusty window-panes and shabby-painted blinds, a file of fly-blown play-bills fastened to the wall, the black and empty fire-places, a bald-headed old man nodding over the morning advertizer, the slip-shod waiter folding a tumbled table-cloth, and robert audley's handsome face looking at him full of compassionate alarm�he knew that all these things took gigantic proportions, and then, one by one, melted into dark blots and swam before his eyes, he knew that there was a great noise, as of half a dozen furious steam-engines tearing and grinding in his ears, and he knew nothing more�except that somebody or something fell heavily to the ground. he opened his eyes upon the dusky evening in a cool and shaded room, the silence only broken by the rumbling of wheels at a distance. he looked about him wonderingly, but half indifferently. his old friend, robert audley, was seated by his side smoking. george was lying on a low iron bedstead opposite to an open window, in which there was a stand of flowers and two or three birds in cages. "you don't mind the pipe, do you, george?" his friend asked, quietly. "no." he lay for some time looking at the flowers and the birds; one canary was singing a shrill hymn to the setting sun. "do the birds annoy you, george? shall i take them out of the room?" "no; i like to hear them sing." robert audley knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid the precious meerschaum tenderly upon the mantelpiece, and going into the next room, returned presently with a cup of strong tea. "take this, george," he said, as he placed the cup on a little table close to george's pillow; "it will do your head good." the young man did not answer, but looked slowly round the room, and then at his friend's grave face. "bob," he said, "where are we?" "in my chambers, dear boy, in the temple. you have no lodgings of your own, so you may as well stay with me while you're in town." george passed his hand once or twice across his forehead, and then, in a hesitating manner, said, quietly: "that newspaper this morning, bob; what was it?" "never mind just now, old boy; drink some tea." "yes, yes," cried george, impatiently, raising himself upon the bed, and staring about him with hollow eyes. "i remember all about it. helen! my helen! my wife, my darling, my only love! dead, dead!" "george," said robert audley, laying his hand gently upon the young man's arm, "you must remember that the person whose name you saw in the paper may not be your wife. there may have been some other helen talboys." "no, no!" he cried; "the age corresponds with hers, and talboys is such an uncommon name." "it may be a misprint for talbot." "no, no, no; my wife is dead!" he shook off robert's restraining hand, and rising from the bed, walked straight to the door. "where are you going?" exclaimed his friend. "to ventnor, to see her grave." "not to-night, george, not to-night. i will go with you myself by the first train to-morrow." robert led him back to the bed, and gently forced him to lie down again. he then gave him an opiate, which had been left for him by the medical man whom they had called in at the coffee-house in bridge street, when george fainted. so george talboys fell into a heavy slumber, and dreamed that he went to ventnor, to find his wife alive and happy, but wrinkled, old, and gray, and to find his son grown into a young man. early the next morning he was seated opposite to robert audley in the first-class carriage of an express, whirling through the pretty open country toward portsmouth. they landed at ventnor under the burning heat of the midday sun. as the two young men came from the steamer, the people on the pier stared at george's white face and untrimmed beard. "what are we to do, george?" robert audley asked. "we have no clew to finding the people you want to see." the young man looked at him with a pitiful, bewildered expression. the big dragoon was as helpless as a baby; and robert audley, the most vacillating and unenergetic of men, found himself called upon to act for another. he rose superior to himself, and equal to the occasion. "had we not better ask at one of the hotels about a mrs. talboys, george?" he said. "her father's name was maldon," george muttered; "he could never have sent her here to die alone." they said nothing more; but robert walked straight to a hotel where he inquired for a mr. maldon. yes, they told him, there was a gentleman of that name stopping at ventnor, a captain maldon; his daughter was lately dead. the waiter would go and inquire for the address. the hotel was a busy place at this season; people hurrying in and out, and a great bustle of grooms and waiters about the halls. george talboys leaned against the doorpost, with much the same look in his face, as that which had frightened his friend in the westminister coffee-house. the worst was confirmed now. his wife, captain maldon's daughter was dead. the waiter returned in about five minutes to say that captain maldon was lodging at lansdowne cottage, no. 4. they easily found the house, a shabby, low-windowed cottage, looking toward the water. was captain maldon at home? no, the landlady said; he had gone out on the beach with his little grandson. would the gentleman walk in and sit down a bit? george mechanically followed his friend into the little front parlor�dusty, shabbily furnished, and disorderly, with a child's broken toys scattered on the floor, and the scent of stale tobacco hanging about the muslin window-curtains. "look!" said george, pointing to a picture over the mantelpiece. it was his own portrait, painted in the old dragooning days. a pretty good likeness, representing him in uniform, with his charger in the background. perhaps the most animated of men would have been scarcely so wise a comforter as robert audley. he did not utter a word to the stricken widower, but quietly seated himself with his back to george, looking out of the open window. for some time the young man wandered restlessly about the room, looking at and sometimes touching the nick-nacks lying here and there. her workbox, with an unfinished piece of work; her album full of extracts from byron and moore, written in his own scrawling hand; some books which he had given her, and a bunch of withered flowers in a vase they had bought in italy. "her portrait used to hang by the side of mine," he muttered; "i wonder what they have done with it." by-and-by he said, after about an hour's silence: "i should like to see the woman of the house; i should like to ask her about�" he broke down, and buried his face in his hands. robert summoned the landlady. she was a good-natured garrulous creature, accustomed to sickness and death, for many of her lodgers came to her to die. she told all the particulars of mrs. talboys' last hours; how she had come to ventnor only ten days before her death, in the last stage of decline; and how, day by day, she had gradually, but surely, sunk under the fatal malady. was the gentleman any relative? she asked of robert audley, as george sobbed aloud. "yes, he is the lady's husband." "what!" the woman cried; "him as deserted her so cruel, and left her with her pretty boy upon her poor old father's hands, which captain maldon has told me often, with the tears in his poor eyes?" "i did not desert her," george cried out; and then he told the history of his three years' struggle. "did she speak of me?" he asked; "did she speak of me�at�at the last?" "no, she went off as quiet as a lamb. she said very little from the first; but the last day she knew nobody, not even her little boy, nor her poor old father, who took on awful. once she went off wild-like, talking about her mother, and about the cruel shame it was to leave her to die in a strange place, till it was quite pitiful to hear her." "her mother died when she was quite a child," said george. "to think that she should remember her and speak of her, but never once of me." the woman took him into the little bedroom in which his wife had died. he knelt down by the bed and kissed the pillow tenderly, the landlady crying as he did so. while he was kneeling, praying, perhaps, with his face buried in this humble, snow-white pillow, the woman took something from a drawer. she gave it to him when he rose from his knees; it was a long tress of hair wrapped in silver paper. "i cut this off when she lay in her coffin," she said, "poor dear?" he pressed the soft lock to his lips. "yes," he murmured; "this is the dear hair that i have kissed so often when her head lay upon my shoulder. but it always had a rippling wave in it then, and now it seems smooth and straight." "it changes in illness," said the landlady. "if you'd like to see where they have laid her, mr. talboys, my little boy shall show you the way to the churchyard." so george talboys and his faithful friend walked to the quiet spot, where, beneath a mound of earth, to which the patches of fresh turf hardly adhered, lay that wife of whose welcoming smile george had dreamed so often in the far antipodes. robert left the young man by the side of this newly-made grave, and returning in about a quarter of an hour, found that he had not once stirred. he looked up presently, and said that if there was a stone-mason's anywhere near he should like to give an order. they very easily found the stonemason, and sitting down amidst the fragmentary litter of the man's yard, george talboys wrote in pencil this brief inscription for the headstone of his dead wife's grave: sacred to the memory of helen, the beloved wife of george talboys, "who departed this life august 24th, 18�, aged 22, deeply regretted by her sorrowing husband. chapter vi. anywhere, anywhere out of the world. when they returned to lansdowne cottage they found the old man had not yet come in, so they walked down to the beach to look for him. after a brief search they found him, sitting upon a heap of pebbles, reading a newspaper and eating filberts. the little boy was at some distance from his grandfather, digging in the sand with a wooden spade. the crape round the old man's shabby hat, and the child's poor little black frock, went to george's heart. go where he would he met fresh confirmation of this great grief of his life. his wife was dead. "mr. maldon," he said, as he approached his father-in-law. the old man looked up, and, dropping his newspaper, rose from the pebbles with a ceremonious bow. his faded light hair was tinged with gray; he had a pinched hook nose; watery blue eyes, and an irresolute-looking mouth; he wore his shabby dress with an affectation of foppish gentility; an eye-glass dangled over his closely buttoned-up waistcoat, and he carried a cane in his ungloved hand. "great heaven!" cried george, "don't you know me?" mr. maldon started and colored violently, with something of a frightened look, as he recognized his son-in-law. "my dear boy," he said, "i did not; for the first moment i did not. that beard makes such a difference. you find the beard makes a great difference, do you not, sir?" he said, appealing to robert. "great heavens!" exclaimed george talboys, "is this the way you welcome me? i come to england to find my wife dead within a week of my touching land, and you begin to chatter to me about my beard�you, her father!" "true! true!" muttered the old man, wiping his bloodshot eyes; "a sad shock, a sad shock, my dear george. if you'd only been here a week earlier." "if i had," cried george, in an outburst of grief and passion, "i scarcely think that i would have let her die. i would have disputed for her with death. i would! i would! oh god! why did not the argus go down with every soul on board her before i came to see this day?" he began to walk up and down the beach, his father-in-law looking helplessly at him, rubbing his feeble eyes with a handkerchief. "i've a strong notion that that old man didn't treat his daughter too well," thought robert, as he watched the half-pay lieutenant. "he seems, for some reason or other, to be half afraid of george." while the agitated young man walked up and down in a fever of regret and despair, the child ran to his grandfather, and clung about the tails of his coat. "come home, grandpa, come home," he said. "i'm tired." george talboys turned at the sound of the babyish voice, and looked long and earnestly at the boy. he had his father's brown eyes and dark hair. "my darling! my darling!" said george, taking the child in his arms, "i am your father, come across the sea to find you. will you love me?" the little fellow pushed him away. "i don't know you," he said. "i love grandpa and mrs. monks at southampton." "georgey has a temper of his own, sir," said the old man. "he has been spoiled." they walked slowly back to the cottage, and once more george talboys told the history of that desertion which had seemed so cruel. he told, too, of the twenty thousand pounds banked by him the day before. he had not the heart to ask any questions about the past, and his father-in-law only told him that a few months after his departure they had gone from the place where george left them to live at southampton, where helen got a few pupils for the piano, and where they managed pretty well till her health failed, and she fell into the decline of which she died. like most sad stories it was a very brief one. "the boy seems fond of you, mr. maldon," said george, after a pause. "yes, yes," answered the old man, smoothing the child's curling hair; "yes. georgey is very fond of his grandfather." "then he had better stop with you. the interest of my money will be about six hundred a year. you can draw a hundred of that for georgey's education, leaving the rest to accumulate till he is of age. my friend here will be trustee, and if he will undertake the charge, i will appoint him guardian to the boy, allowing him for the present to remain under your care." "but why not take care of him yourself, george?" asked robert audley. "because i shall sail in the very next vessel that leaves liverpool for australia. i shall be better in the diggings or the backwoods than ever i could be here. i'm broken for a civilized life from this hour, bob." the old man's weak eyes sparkled as george declared this determination. "my poor boy, i think you're right," he said, "i really think you're right. the change, the wild life, the�the�" he hesitated and broke down as robert looked earnestly at him. "you're in a great hurry to get rid of your son-in-law, i think, mr. maldon," he said, gravely. "get rid of him, dear boy! oh, no, no! but for his own sake, my dear sir, for his own sake, you know." "i think for his own sake he'd much better stay in england and look after his son," said robert. "but i tell you i can't," cried george; "every inch of this accursed ground is hateful to me�i want to run out of it as i would out of a graveyard. i'll go back to town to-night, get that business about the money settled early to-morrow morning, and start for liverpool without a moment's delay. i shall be better when i've put half the world between me and her grave." "before he left the house he stole out to the landlady, and asked some more questions about his dead wife. "were they poor?" he asked, "were they pinched for money while she was ill?" "oh, no!" the woman answered; "though the captain dresses shabby, he has always plenty of sovereigns in his purse. the poor lady wanted for nothing." george was relieved at this, though it puzzled him to know where the drunken half-pay lieutenant could have contrived to find money for all the expenses of his daughter's illness. but he was too thoroughly broken down by the calamity which had befallen him to be able to think much of anything, so he asked no further questions, but walked with his father-in-law and robert audley down to the boat by which they were to cross to portsmouth. the old man bade robert a very ceremonious adieu. "you did not introduce me to your friend, by-the-bye, my dear boy," he said. george stared at him, muttered something indistinct, and ran down the ladder to the boat before mr. maldon could repeat his request. the steamer sped away through the sunset, and the outline of the island melted in the horizon as they neared the opposite shore. "to think," said george, "that two nights ago, at this time, i was steaming into liverpool, full of the hope of clasping her to my heart, and to-night i am going away from her grave!" the document which appointed robert audley as guardian to little george talboys was drawn up in a solicitor's office the next morning. "it's a great responsibility," exclaimed robert; "i, guardian to anybody or anything! i, who never in my life could take care of myself!" "i trust in your noble heart, bob," said george. "i know you will take care of my poor orphan boy, and see that he is well used by his grandfather. i shall only draw enough from georgey's fortune to take me back to sydney, and then begin my old work again." but it seemed as if george was destined to be himself the guardian of his son; for when he reached liverpool, he found that a vessel had just sailed, and that there would not be another for a month; so he returned to london, and once more threw himself upon robert audley's hospitality. the barrister received him with open arms; he gave him the room with the birds and flowers, and had a bed put up in his dressing-room for himself. grief is so selfish that george did not know the sacrifices his friend made for his comfort. he only knew that for him the sun was darkened, and the business of life done. he sat all day long smoking cigars, and staring at the flowers and canaries, chafing for the time to pass that he might be far out at sea. but just as the hour was drawing near for the sailing of the vessel, robert audley came in one day, full of a great scheme. a friend of his, another of those barristers whose last thought is of a brief, was going to st. petersburg to spend the winter, and wanted robert to accompany him. robert would only go on condition that george went too. for a long time the young man resisted; but when he found that robert was, in a quiet way, thoroughly determined upon not going without him, he gave in, and consented to join the party. what did it matter? he said. one place was the same to him as another; anywhere out of england; what did he care where? this was not a very cheerful way of looking at things, but robert audley was quite satisfied with having won his consent. the three young men started under very favorable circumstances, carrying letters of introduction to the most influential inhabitants of the russian capital. before leaving england, robert wrote to his cousin alicia, telling her of his intended departure with his old friend george talboys, whom he had lately met for the first time after a lapse of years, and who had just lost his wife. alicia's reply came by return post, and ran thus: "my dear robert�how cruel of you to run away to that horrid st. petersburg before the hunting season! i have heard that people lose their noses in that disagreeable climate, and as yours is rather a long one, i should advise you to return before the very severe weather sets in. what sort of person is this mr. talboys? if he is very agreeable you may bring him to the court as soon as you return from your travels. lady audley tells me to request you to secure her a set of sables. you are not to consider the price, but to be sure that they are the handsomest that can be obtained. papa is perfectly absurd about his new wife, and she and i cannot get on together at all; not that she is disagreeable to me, for, as far as that goes, she makes herself agreeable to every one; but she is so irretrievably childish and silly. "believe me to be, my dear robert. "your affectionate cousin, "alicia audley." chapter vii. after a year. the first year of george talboys' widowhood passed away, the deep band of crepe about his hat grew brown and dusty, and as the last burning day of another august faded out, he sat smoking cigars in the quiet chambers of figtree court, much as he had done the year before, when the horror of his grief was new to him, and every object in life, however trifling or however important, seemed saturated with his one great sorrow. but the big ex-dragoon had survived his affliction by a twelvemonth, and hard as it may be to have to tell it, he did not look much the worse for it. heaven knows what wasted agonies of remorse and self-reproach may not have racked george's honest heart, as he lay awake at nights thinking of the wife he had abandoned in the pursuit of a fortune, which she never lived to share. once, while they were abroad, robert audley ventured to congratulate him upon his recovered spirits. he burst into a bitter laugh. "do you know, bob," he said, "that when some of our fellows were wounded in india, they came home, bringing bullets inside them. they did not talk of them, and they were stout and hearty, and looked as well, perhaps, as you or i; but every change in the weather, however slight, every variation of the atmosphere, however trifling, brought back the old agony of their wounds as sharp as ever they had felt it on the battle-field. i've had my wound, bob; i carry the bullet still, and i shall carry it into my coffin." the travelers returned from st. petersburg in the spring, and george again took up his quarters at his old friend's chambers, only leaving them now and then to run down to southampton and take a look at his little boy. he always went loaded with toys and sweetmeats to give to the child; but, for all this, georgey would not become very familiar with his papa, and the young man's heart sickened as he began to fancy that even his child was lost to him. "what can i do?" he thought. "if i take him away from his grandfather, i shall break his heart; if i let him remain, he will grow up a stranger to me, and care more for that drunken old hypocrite than for his own father. but then, what could an ignorant, heavy dragoon like me do with such a child? what could i teach him, except to smoke cigars and idle around all day with his hands in his pockets?" so the anniversary of that 30th of august, upon which george had seen the advertisement of his wife's death in the times newspaper, came round for the first time, and the young man put off his black clothes and the shabby crape from his hat, and laid his mournful garments in a trunk in which he kept a packet of his wife's letters, her portrait, and that lock of hair which had been cut from her head after death. robert audley had never seen either the letters, the portrait, or the long tress of silky hair; nor, indeed, had george ever mentioned the name of his dead wife after that one day at ventnor, on which he learned the full particulars of her decease. "i shall write to my cousin alicia to-day, george," the young barrister said, upon this very 30th of august. "do you know that the day after to-morrow is the 1st of september? i shall write and tell her that we will both run down to the court for a week's shooting." "no, no, bob; go by yourself; they don't want me, and i'd rather�" "bury yourself in figtree court, with no company but my dogs and canaries! no, george, you shall do nothing of the kind." "but i don't care for shooting." "and do you suppose i care for it?" cried robert, with charming naivete. "why, man, i don't know a partridge from a pigeon, and it might be the 1st of april, instead of the 1st of september, for aught i care. i never hurt a bird in my life, but i have hurt my own shoulder with the weight of my gun. i only go down to essex for the change of air, the good dinners, and the sight of my uncle's honest, handsome face. besides, this time i've another inducement, as i want to see this fair-haired paragon�my new aunt. you'll go with me, george?" "yes, if you really wish it." the quiet form his grief had taken after its first brief violence, left him as submissive as a child to the will of his friend; ready to go anywhere or do anything; never enjoying himself, or originating any enjoyment, but joining in the pleasures of others with a hopeless, uncomplaining, unobtrusive resignation peculiar to his simple nature. but the return of post brought a letter from alicia audley, to say that the two young men could not be received at the court. "there are seventeen spare bed-rooms," wrote the young lady, in an indignant running hand, "but for all that, my dear robert, you can't come; for my lady has taken it into her silly head that she is too ill to entertain visitors (there is no more the matter with her than there is with me), and she cannot have gentlemen (great, rough men, she says) in the house. please apologize to your friend mr. talboys, and tell him that papa expects to see you both in the hunting season." "my lady's airs and graces shan't keep us out of essex for all that," said robert, as he twisted the letter into a pipe-light for his big meerschaum. "i'll tell you what we'll do, george: there's a glorious inn at audley, and plenty of fishing in the neighborhood; we'll go there and have a week's sport. fishing is much better than shooting; you've only to lie on a bank and stare at your line; i don't find that you often catch anything, but it's very pleasant." he held the twisted letter to the feeble spark of fire glimmering in the grate, as he spoke, and then changing his mind, deliberately unfolded it, and smoothed the crumpled paper with his hand. "poor little alicia!" he said, thoughtfully; "it's rather hard to treat her letter so cavalierly�i'll keep it;" upon which mr. robert audley put the note back into its envelope, and afterward thrust it into a pigeon-hole in his office desk, marked important. heaven knows what wonderful documents there were in this particular pigeon-hole, but i do not think it likely to have contained anything of great judicial value. if any one could at that moment have told the young barrister that so simple a thing as his cousin's brief letter would one day come to be a link in that terrible chain of evidence afterward to be slowly forged in the only criminal case in which he was ever to be concerned, perhaps mr. robert audley would have lifted his eyebrows a little higher than usual. so the two young men left london the next day, with one portmanteau and a rod and tackle between them, and reached the straggling, old-fashioned, fast-decaying village of audley, in time to order a good dinner at the sun inn. audley court was about three-quarters of a mile from the village, lying, as i have said, deep down in the hollow, shut in by luxuriant timber. you could only reach it by a cross-road bordered by trees, and as trimly kept as the avenues in a gentleman's park. it was a lonely place enough, even in all its rustic beauty, for so bright a creature as the late miss lucy graham, but the generous baronet had transformed the interior of the gray old mansion into a little palace for his young wife, and lady audley seemed as happy as a child surrounded by new and costly toys. in her better fortunes, as in her old days of dependence, wherever she went she seemed to take sunshine and gladness with her. in spite of miss alicia's undisguised contempt for her step-mother's childishness and frivolity, lucy was better loved and more admired than the baronet's daughter. that very childishness had a charm which few could resist. the innocence and candor of an infant beamed in lady audley's fair face, and shone out of her large and liquid blue eyes. the rosy lips, the delicate nose, the profusion of fair ringlets, all contributed to preserve to her beauty the character of extreme youth and freshness. she owned to twenty years of age, but it was hard to believe her more than seventeen. her fragile figure, which she loved to dress in heavy velvets, and stiff, rustling silks, till she looked like a child tricked out for a masquerade, was as girlish as if she had just left the nursery. all her amusements were childish. she hated reading, or study of any kind, and loved society. rather than be alone, she would admit phoebe marks into her confidence, and loll on one of the sofas in her luxurious dressing-room, discussing a new costume for some coming dinner-party; or sit chattering to the girl with her jewel-box beside her, upon the satin cushions, and sir michael's presents spread out in her lap, while she counted and admired her treasures. she had appeared at several public balls at chelmsford and colchester, and was immediately established as the belle of the county. pleased with her high position and her handsome house; with every caprice gratified, every whim indulged; admired and caressed wherever she went; fond of her generous husband; rich in a noble allowance of pin-money; with no poor relations to worry her with claims upon her purse or patronage; it would have been hard to find in the county of essex a more fortunate creature than lucy, lady audley. the two young men loitered over the dinner-table in the private sitting-room at the sun inn. the windows were thrown wide open, and the fresh country air blew in upon them as they dined. the weather was lovely; the foliage of the woods touched here and there with faint gleams of the earliest tints of autumn; the yellow corn still standing in some of the fields, in others just falling under the shining sickle; while in the narrow lanes you met great wagons drawn by broad-chested cart-horses, carrying home the rich golden store. to any one who has been, during the hot summer months, pent up in london, there is in the first taste of rustic life a kind of sensuous rapture scarcely to be described. george talboys felt this, and in this he experienced the nearest approach to enjoyment that he had ever known since his wife's death. the clock struck five as they finished dinner. "put on your hat, george," said robert audley; "they don't dine at the court till seven; we shall have time to stroll down and see the old place and its inhabitants." the landlord, who had come into the room with a bottle of wine, looked up as the young man spoke. "i beg your pardon, mr. audley," he said, "but if you want to see your uncle, you'll lose your time by going to the court just now. sir michael and my lady and miss alicia have all gone to the races up at chorley, and they won't be back till nigh upon eight o'clock, most likely. they must pass by here to go home." under these circumstances of course it was no use going to the court, so the two young men strolled through the village and looked at the old church, and then went and reconnoitered the streams in which they were to fish the next day, and by such means beguiled the time until after seven o'clock. at about a quarter past that hour they returned to the inn, and seating themselves in the open window, lit their cigars and looked out at the peaceful prospect. we hear every day of murders committed in the country. brutal and treacherous murders; slow, protracted agonies from poisons administered by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows, inflicted with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose every shadow promised�peace. in the county of which i write, i have been shown a meadow in which, on a quiet summer sunday evening, a young farmer murdered the girl who had loved and trusted him; and yet, even now, with the stain of that foul deed upon it, the aspect of the spot is�peace. no species of crime has ever been committed in the worst rookeries about seven dials that has not been also done in the face of that rustic calm which still, in spite of all, we look on with a tender, half-mournful yearning, and associate with�peace. it was dusk when gigs and chaises, dog-carts and clumsy farmers' phaetons, began to rattle through the village street, and under the windows of the sun inn; deeper dusk still when an open carriage and four drew suddenly up beneath the rocking sign-post. it was sir michael audley's barouche which came to so sudden a stop before the little inn. the harness of one of the leaders had become out of order, and the foremost postillion dismounted to set it right. "why, it's my uncle," cried robert audley, as the carriage stopped. "i'll run down and speak to him." george lit another cigar, and, sheltered by the window-curtains, looked out at the little party. alicia sat with her back to the horses, and he could perceive, even in the dusk, that she was a handsome brunette; but lady audley was seated on the side of the carriage furthest from the inn, and he could see nothing of the fair-haired paragon of whom he had heard so much. "why, robert," exclaimed sir michael, as his nephew emerged from the inn, "this is a surprise!" "i have not come to intrude upon you at the court, my dear uncle," said the young man, as the baronet shook him by the hand in his own hearty fashion. "essex is my native county, you know, and about this time of year i generally have a touch of homesickness; so george and i have come down to the inn for two or three day's fishing." "george�george who?" "george talboys." "what, has he come?" cried alicia. "i'm so glad; for i'm dying to see this handsome young widower." "are you, alicia?" said her cousin, "then egad, i'll run and fetch him, and introduce you to him at once." now, so complete was the dominion which lady audley had, in her own childish, unthinking way, obtained over her devoted husband, that it was very rarely that the baronet's eyes were long removed from his wife's pretty face. when robert, therefore, was about to re-enter the inn, it needed but the faintest elevation of lucy's eyebrows, with a charming expression of weariness and terror, to make her husband aware that she did not want to be bored by an introduction to mr. george talboys. "never mind to-night, bob," he said. "my wife is a little tired after our long day's pleasure. bring your friend to dinner to-morrow, and then he and alicia can make each other's acquaintance. come round and speak to lady audley, and then we'll drive home." my lady was so terribly fatigued that she could only smile sweetly, and hold out a tiny gloved hand to her nephew by marriage. "you will come and dine with us to-morrow, and bring your interesting friend?" she said, in a low and tired voice. she had been the chief attraction of the race-course, and was wearied out by the exertion of fascinating half the county. "it's a wonder she didn't treat you to her never-ending laugh," whispered alicia, as she leaned over the carriage-door to bid robert good-night; "but i dare say she reserves that for your delectation to-morrow. i suppose you are fascinated as well as everybody else?" added the young lady, rather snappishly. "she is a lovely creature, certainly," murmured robert, with placid admiration. "oh, of course! now, she is the first woman of whom i ever heard you say a civil word, robert audley. i'm sorry to find you can only admire wax dolls." poor alicia had had many skirmishes with her cousin upon that particular temperament of his, which, while it enabled him to go through life with perfect content and tacit enjoyment, entirely precluded his feeling one spark of enthusiasm upon any subject whatever. "as to his ever falling in love," thought the young lady sometimes, "the idea is preposterous. if all the divinities on earth were ranged before him, waiting for his sultanship to throw the handkerchief, he would only lift his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead, and tell them to scramble for it." but, for once in his life, robert was almost enthusiastic. "she's the prettiest little creature you ever saw in your life, george," he cried, when the carriage had driven off and he returned to his friend. "such blue eyes, such ringlets, such a ravishing smile, such a fairy-like bonnet�all of a-tremble with heart's-ease and dewy spangles, shining out of a cloud of gauze. george talboys, i feel like the hero of a french novel: i am falling in love with my aunt." the widower only sighed and puffed his cigar fiercely out of the open window. perhaps he was thinking of that far-away time�little better than five years ago, in fact; but such an age gone by to him�when he first met the woman for whom he had worn crape round his hat three days before. they returned, all those old unforgotten feelings; they came back, with the scene of their birth-place. again he lounged with his brother officers upon the shabby pier at the shabby watering-place, listening to a dreary band with a cornet that was a note and a half flat. again he heard the old operatic airs, and again she came tripping toward him, leaning on her old father's arm, and pretending (with such a charming, delicious, serio-comic pretense) to be listening to the music, and quite unaware of the admiration of half a dozen open-mouthed cavalry officers. again the old fancy came back that she was something too beautiful for earth, or earthly uses, and that to approach her was to walk in a higher atmosphere and to breathe a purer air. and since this she had been his wife, and the mother of his child. she lay in the little churchyard at ventnor, and only a year ago he had given the order for her tombstone. a few slow, silent tears dropped upon his waistcoat as he thought of these things in the quiet and darkening room. lady audley was so exhausted when she reached home, that she excused herself from the dinner-table, and retired at once to her dressing-room, attended by her maid, phoebe marks. she was a little capricious in her conduct to this maid�sometimes very confidential, sometimes rather reserved; but she was a liberal mistress, and the girl had every reason to be satisfied with her situation. this evening, in spite of her fatigue, she was in extremely high spirits, and gave an animated account of the races, and the company present at them. "i am tired to death, though, phoebe," she said, by-and-by. "i am afraid i must look a perfect fright, after a day in the hot sun." there were lighted candles on each side of the glass before which lady audley was standing unfastening her dress. she looked full at her maid as she spoke, her blue eyes clear and bright, and the rosy childish lips puckered into an arch smile. "you are a little pale, my lady," answered the girl, "but you look as pretty as ever." "that's right, phoebe," she said, flinging herself into a chair, and throwing back her curls at the maid, who stood, brush in hand, ready to arrange the luxuriant hair for the night. "do you know, phoebe, i have heard some people say that you and i are alike?" "i have heard them say so, too, my lady," said the girl, quietly "but they must be very stupid to say it, for your ladyship is a beauty, and i am a poor, plain creature." "not at all, phoebe," said the little lady, superbly; "you are like me, and your features are very nice; it is only color that you want. my hair is pale yellow shot with gold, and yours is drab; my eyebrows and eyelashes are dark brown, and yours are almost�i scarcely like to say it, but they're almost white, my dear phoebe. your complexion is sallow, and mine is pink and rosy. why, with a bottle of hair-dye, such as we see advertised in the papers, and a pot of rouge, you'd be as good-looking as i, any day, phoebe." she prattled on in this way for a long time, talking of a hundred different subjects, and ridiculing the people she had met at the races, for her maid's amusement. her step-daughter came into the dressing-room to bid her good-night, and found the maid and mistress laughing aloud over one of the day's adventures. alicia, who was never familiar with her servants, withdrew in disgust at my lady's frivolity. "go on brushing my hair, phoebe," lady audley said, every time the girl was about to complete her task, "i quite enjoy a chat with you." at last, just as she had dismissed her maid, she suddenly called her back. "phoebe marks," she said, "i want you to do me a favor." "yes, my lady." "i want you to go to london by the first train to-morrow morning to execute a little commission for me. you may take a day's holiday afterward, as i know you have friends in town; and i shall give you a five-pound note if you do what i want, and keep your own counsel about it." "yes, my lady." "see that that door is securely shut, and come and sit on this stool at my feet." the girl obeyed. lady audley smoothed her maid's neutral-tinted hair with her plump, white, and bejeweled hand as she reflected for a few moments. "and now listen, phoebe. what i want you to do is very simple." it was so simple that it was told in five minutes, and then lady audley retired into her bed-room, and curled herself up cozily under the eider-down quilt. she was a chilly creature, and loved to bury herself in soft wrappings of satin and fur. "kiss me, phoebe," she said, as the girl arranged the curtains. "i hear sir michael's step in the anteroom; you will meet him as you go out, and you may as well tell him that you are going up by the first train to-morrow morning to get my dress from madam frederick for the dinner at morton abbey." it was late the next morning when lady audley went down to breakfast�past ten o'clock. while she was sipping her coffee a servant brought her a sealed packet, and a book for her to sign. "a telegraphic message!" she cried; for the convenient word telegram had not yet been invented. "what can be the matter?" she looked up at her husband with wide-open, terrified eyes, and seemed half afraid to break the seal. the envelope was addressed to miss lucy graham, at mr. dawson's, and had been sent on from the village. "read it, my darling," he said, "and do not be alarmed; it may be nothing of any importance." it came from a mrs. vincent, the schoolmistress with whom she had lived before entering mr. dawson's family. the lady was dangerously ill, and implored her old pupil to go and see her. "poor soul! she always meant to leave me her money," said lucy, with a mournful smile. "she has never heard of the change in my fortunes. dear sir michael, i must go to her." "to be sure you must, dearest. if she was kind to my poor girl in her adversity, she has a claim upon her prosperity that shall never be forgotten. put on your bonnet, lucy; we shall be in time to catch the express." "you will go with me?" "of course, my darling. do you suppose i would let you go alone?" "i was sure you would go with me," she said, thoughtfully. "does your friend send any address?" "no; but she always lived at crescent villa, west brompton; and no doubt she lives there still." there was only time for lady audley to hurry on her bonnet and shawl before she heard the carriage drive round to the door, and sir michael calling to her at the foot of the staircase. her suite of rooms, as i have said, opened one out of another, and terminated in an octagon antechamber hung with oil-paintings. even in her haste she paused deliberately at the door of this room, double-locked it, and dropped the key into her pocket. this door once locked cut off all access to my lady's apartments. chapter viii. before the storm. so the dinner at audley court was postponed, and miss alicia had to wait still longer for an introduction to the handsome young widower, mr. george talboys. i am afraid, if the real truth is to be told, there was, perhaps, something of affectation in the anxiety this young lady expressed to make george's acquaintance; but if poor alicia for a moment calculated upon arousing any latent spark of jealousy lurking in her cousin's breast by this exhibition of interest, she was not so well acquainted with robert audley's disposition as she might have been. indolent, handsome, and indifferent, the young barrister took life as altogether too absurd a mistake for any one event in its foolish course to be for a moment considered seriously by a sensible man. his pretty, gipsy-faced cousin might have been over head and ears in love with him; and she might have told him so, in some charming, roundabout, womanly fashion, a hundred times a day for all the three hundred and sixty-five days in the year; but unless she had waited for some privileged 29th of february, and walked straight up to him, saying, "robert, please will you marry me?" i very much doubt if he would ever have discovered the state of her feelings. again, had he been in love with her himself, i fancy that the tender passion would, with him, have been so vague and feeble a sentiment that he might have gone down to his grave with a dim sense of some uneasy sensation which might be love or indigestion, and with, beyond this, no knowledge whatever of his state. so it was not the least use, my poor alicia, to ride about the lanes around audley during those three days which the two young men spent in essex; it was wasted trouble to wear that pretty cavalier hat and plume, and to be always, by the most singular of chances, meeting robert and his friend. the black curls (nothing like lady audley's feathery ringlets, but heavy clustering locks, that clung about your slender brown throat), the red and pouting lips, the nose inclined to be retrousse, the dark complexion, with its bright crimson flush, always ready to glance up like a signal light in a dusky sky, when you came suddenly upon your apathetic cousin�all this coquettish espiegle, brunette beauty was thrown away upon the dull eyes of robert audley, and you might as well have taken your rest in the cool drawing-room at the court, instead of working your pretty mare to death under the hot september sun. now fishing, except to the devoted disciple of izaak walton, is not the most lively of occupations; therefore, it is scarcely, perhaps, to be wondered that on the day after lady audley's departure, the two young men (one of whom was disabled by that heart wound which he bore so quietly, from really taking pleasure in anything, and the other of whom looked upon almost all pleasure as a negative kind of trouble) began to grow weary of the shade of the willows overhanging the winding streams about audley. "figtree court is not gay in the long vacation," said robert, reflectively: "but i think, upon the whole, it's better than this; at any rate, it's near a tobacconist's," he added, puffing resignedly at an execrable cigar procured from the landlord of the sun inn. george talboys, who had only consented to the essex expedition in passive submission to his friend, was by no means inclined to object to their immediate return to london. "i shall be glad to get back, bob," he said, "for i want to take a run down to southampton; i haven't seen the little one for upward of a month." he always spoke of his son as "the little one;" always spoke of him mournfully rather than hopefully. he accounted for this by saying that he had a fancy that the child would never learn to love him; and worse even than this fancy, a dim presentiment that he would not live to see his little georgey reach manhood. "i'm not a romantic man, bob," he would say sometimes, "and i never read a line of poetry in my life that was any more to me than so many words and so much jingle; but a feeling has come over me, since my wife's death, that i am like a man standing upon a long, low shore, with hideous cliffs frowning down upon him from behind, and the rising tide crawling slowly but surely about his feet. it seems to grow nearer and nearer every day, that black, pitiless tide; not rushing upon me with a great noise and a mighty impetus, but crawling, creeping, stealing, gliding toward me, ready to close in above my head when i am least prepared for the end." robert audley stared at his friend in silent amazement; and, after a pause of profound deliberation, said solemnly, "george talboys, i could understand this if you had been eating heavy suppers. cold pork, now, especially if underdone, might produce this sort of thing. you want change of air, my dear boy; you want the refreshing breezes of figtree court, and the soothing air of fleet street. or, stay," he added, suddenly, "i have it! you've been smoking our friend the landlord's cigars; that accounts for everything." they met alicia audley on her mare about half an hour after they had come to the determination of leaving essex early the next morning. the young lady was very much surprised and disappointed at hearing her cousin's determination, and for that very reason pretended to take the matter with supreme indifference. "you are very soon tired of audley, robert," she said, carelessly; "but of course you have no friends here, except your relations at the court; while in london, no doubt, you have the most delightful society and�" "i get good tobacco," murmured robert, interrupting his cousin. "audley is the dearest old place, but when a man has to smoke dried cabbage leaves, you know, alicia�" "then you are really going to-morrow morning?" "positively�by the express train that leaves at 10.50." "then lady audley will lose an introduction to mr. talboys, and mr. talboys will lose the chance of seeing the prettiest woman in essex." "really�" stammered george. "the prettiest woman in essex would have a poor chance of getting much admiration out of my friend, george talboys," said robert. "his heart is at southampton, where he has a curly-headed little urchin, about as high as his knee, who calls him 'the big gentleman,' and asks him for sugar-plums." "i am going to write to my step-mother by to-night's post," said alicia. "she asked me particularly in her letter how long you were going to stop, and whether there was any chance of her being back in time to receive you." miss audley took a letter from the pocket of her riding-jacket as she spoke�a pretty, fairy-like note, written on shining paper of a peculiar creamy hue. "she says in her postcript, 'be sure you answer my question about mr. audley and his friend, you volatile, forgetful alicia!'" "what a pretty hand she writes!" said robert, as his cousin folded the note. "yes, it is pretty, is it not? look at it, robert." she put the letter into his hand, and he contemplated it lazily for a few minutes, while alicia patted the graceful neck of her chestnut mare, which was anxious to be off once more. "presently, atalanta, presently. give me back my note, bob." "it is the prettiest, most coquettish little hand i ever saw. do you know, alicia, i have no great belief in those fellows who ask you for thirteen postage stamps, and offer to tell you what you have never been able to find out yourself; but upon my word i think that if i had never seen your aunt, i should know what she was like by this slip of paper. yes, here it all is�the feathery, gold-shot, flaxen curls, the penciled eyebrows, the tiny, straight nose, the winning, childish smile; all to be guessed in these few graceful up-strokes and down-strokes. george, look here!" but absent-minded and gloomy george talboys had strolled away along the margin of the ditch, and stood striking the bulrushes with his cane, half a dozen paces away from robert and alicia. "nevermind," said the young lady, impatiently; for she by no means relished this long disquisition upon my lady's note. "give me the letter, and let me go; it's past eight, and i must answer it by to-night's post. come, atalanta! good-by, robert�good-by, mr. talboys. a pleasant journey to town." the chestnut mare cantered briskly through the lane, and miss audley was out of sight before those two big, bright tears that stood in her eyes for one moment, before her pride sent them, back again, rose from her angry heart. "to have only one cousin in the world," she cried, passionately, "my nearest relation after papa, and for him to care about as much for me as he would for a dog!" by the merest of accidents, however, robert and his friend did not go by the 10.50 express on the following morning, for the young barrister awoke with such a splitting headache, that he asked george to send him a cup of the strongest green tea that had ever been made at the sun, and to be furthermore so good as to defer their journey until the next day. of course george assented, and robert audley spent the forenoon in a darkened room with a five-days'-old chelmsford paper to entertain himself withal. "it's nothing but the cigars, george," he said, repeatedly. "get me out of the place without my seeing the landlord; for if that man and i meet there will be bloodshed." fortunately for the peace of audley, it happened to be market-day at chelmsford; and the worthy landlord had ridden off in his chaise-cart to purchase supplies for his house�among other things, perhaps, a fresh stock of those very cigars which had been so fatal in their effect upon robert. the young men spent a dull, dawdling, stupid, unprofitable day; and toward dusk mr. audley proposed that they should stroll down to the court, and ask alicia to take them over the house. "it will kill a couple of hours, you know, george: and it seems a great pity to drag you away from audley without having shown you the old place, which, i give you my honor, is very well worth seeing." the sun was low in the skies as they took a short cut through the meadows, and crossed a stile into the avenue leading to the archway�a lurid, heavy-looking, ominous sunset, and a deathly stillness in the air, which frightened the birds that had a mind to sing, and left the field open to a few captious frogs croaking in the ditches. still as the atmosphere was, the leaves rustled with that sinister, shivering motion which proceeds from no outer cause, but is rather an instinctive shudder of the frail branches, prescient of a coming storm. that stupid clock, which knew no middle course, and always skipped from one hour to the other, pointed to seven as the young men passed under the archway; but, for all that, it was nearer eight. they found alicia in the lime-walk, wandering listlessly up and down under the black shadow of the trees, from which every now and then a withered leaf flapped slowly to the ground. strange to say, george talboys, who very seldom observed anything, took particular notice of this place. "it ought to be an avenue in a churchyard," he said. "how peacefully the dead might sleep under this somber shade! i wish the churchyard at ventnor was like this." they walked on to the ruined well; and alicia told them some old legend connected with the spot�some gloomy story, such as those always attached to an old house, as if the past were one dark page of sorrow and crime. "we want to see the house before it is dark, alicia," said robert. "then we must be quick." she answered. "come." she led the way through an open french window, modernized a few years before, into the library, and thence to the hall. in the hall they passed my lady's pale-faced maid, who looked furtively under her white eyelashes at the two young men. they were going up-stairs, when alicia turned and spoke to the girl. "after we have been in the drawing-room, i should like to show these gentlemen lady audley's rooms. are they in good order, phoebe?" "yes, miss; but the door of the anteroom is locked, and i fancy that my lady has taken the key to london." "taken the key! impossible!" cried alicia. "indeed, miss, i think she has. i cannot find it, and it always used to be in the door." "i declare," said alicia, impatiently, "that is not at all unlike my lady to have taken this silly freak into her head. i dare say she was afraid we should go into her rooms, and pry about among her pretty dresses, and meddle with her jewelry. it is very provoking, for the best pictures in the house are in that antechamber. there is her own portrait, too, unfinished but wonderfully like." "her portrait!" exclaimed robert audley. "i would give anything to see it, for i have only an imperfect notion of her face. is there no other way of getting into the room, alicia?" "another way?" "yes; is there any door, leading through some of the other rooms, by which we can contrive to get into hers?" his cousin shook her head, and conducted them into a corridor where there were some family portraits. she showed them a tapestried chamber, the large figures upon the faded canvas looking threatening in the dusky light. "that fellow with the battle-ax looks as if he wanted to split george's head open," said mr. audley, pointing to a fierce warrior, whose uplifted arm appeared above george talboys' dark hair. "come out of this room, alicia," added the young man, nervously; "i believe it's damp, or else haunted. indeed, i believe all ghosts to be the result of damp or dyspepsia. you sleep in a damp bed�you awake suddenly in the dead of the night with a cold shiver, and see an old lady in the court costume of george the first's time, sitting at the foot of the bed. the old lady's indigestion, and the cold shiver is a damp sheet." there were lighted candles in the drawing-room. no new-fangled lamps had ever made their appearance at audley court. sir michael's rooms were lighted by honest, thick, yellow-looking wax candles, in massive silver candlesticks, and in sconces against the walls. there was very little to see in the drawing-room; and george talboys soon grew tired of staring at the handsome modern furniture, and at a few pictures of some of the academicians. "isn't there a secret passage, or an old oak chest, or something of that kind, somewhere about the place, alicia?" asked robert. "to be sure!" cried miss audley, with a vehemence that startled her cousin; "of course. why didn't i think of it before? how stupid of me, to be sure!" "why stupid?" "because, if you don't mind crawling upon your hands and knees, you can see my lady's apartments, for that passage communicates with her dressing-room. she doesn't know of it herself, i believe. how astonished she'd be if some black-visored burglar, with a dark-lantern, were to rise through the floor some night as she sat before her looking-glass, having her hair dressed for a party!" "shall we try the secret passage, george?" asked mr. audley. "yes, if you wish it." alicia led them into the room which had once been her nursery. it was now disused, except on very rare occasions when the house was full of company. robert audley lifted a corner of the carpet, according to his cousin's directions, and disclosed a rudely-cut trap-door in the oak flooring. "now listen to me," said alicia. "you must let yourself down by the hands into the passage, which is about four feet high; stoop your head, walk straight along it till you come to a sharp turn which will take you to the left, and at the extreme end of it you will find a short ladder below a trap-door like this, which you will have to unbolt; that door opens into the flooring of my lady's dressing-room, which is only covered with a square persian carpet that you can easily manage to raise. you understand me?" "perfectly." "then take the light; mr. talboys will follow you. i give you twenty minutes for your inspection of the paintings�that is, about a minute apiece�and at the end of that time i shall expect to see you return." robert obeyed her implicitly, and george submissively following his friend, found himself, in five minutes, standing amidst the elegant disorder of lady audley's dressing-room. she had left the house in a hurry on her unlooked-for journey to london, and the whole of her glittering toilette apparatus lay about on the marble dressing-table. the atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not been replaced. a bunch of hot-house flowers was withering upon a tiny writing-table. two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within. jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite china were scattered here and there about the apartment. george talboys saw his bearded face and tall, gaunt figure reflected in the glass, and wondered to see how out of place he seemed among all these womanly luxuries. they went from the dressing-room to the boudoir, and through the boudoir into the ante-chamber, in which there were, as alicia had said, about twenty valuable paintings, besides my lady's portrait. my lady's portrait stood on an easel, covered with a green baize in the center of the octagonal chamber. it had been a fancy of the artist to paint her standing in this very room, and to make his background a faithful reproduction of the pictured walls. i am afraid the young man belonged to the pre-raphaelite brotherhood, for he had spent a most unconscionable time upon the accessories of this picture�upon my lady's crispy ringlets and the heavy folds of her crimson velvet dress. the two young men looked at the paintings on the walls first, leaving this unfinished portrait for a bonne bouche. by this time it was dark, the candle carried by robert only making one nucleus of light as he moved about holding it before the pictures one by one. the broad, bare window looked out upon the pale sky, tinged with the last cold flicker of the twilight. the ivy rustled against the glass with the same ominous shiver as that which agitated every leaf in the garden, prophetic of the storm that was to come. "there are our friend's eternal white horses," said robert, standing beside a wouvermans. "nicholas poussin�salvator�ha�hum! now for the portrait." he paused with his hand on the baize, and solemnly addressed his friend. "george talboys," he said, "we have between us only one wax candle, a very inadequate light with which to look at a painting. let me, therefore, request that you will suffer us to look at it one at a time; if there is one thing more disagreeable than another, it is to have a person dodging behind your back and peering over your shoulder, when you're trying to see what a picture's made of." george fell back immediately. he took no more interest in any lady's picture than in all the other wearinesses of this troublesome world. he fell back, and leaning his forehead against the window-panes, looked out at the night. when he turned round he saw that robert had arranged the easel very conveniently, and that he had seated himself on a chair before it for the purpose of contemplating the painting at his leisure. he rose as george turned round. "now, then, for your turn, talboys," he said. "it's an extraordinary picture." he took george's place at the window, and george seated himself in the chair before the easel. yes, the painter must have been a pre-raphaelite. no one but a pre-raphaelite would have painted, hair by hair, those feathery masses of ringlets, with every glimmer of gold, and every shadow of pale brown. no one but a pre-raphaelite would have so exaggerated every attribute of that delicate face as to give a lurid brightness to the blonde complexion, and a strange, sinister light to the deep blue eyes. no one but a pre-raphaelite could have given to that pretty pouting mouth the hard and almost wicked look it had in the portrait. it was so like, and yet so unlike. it was as if you had burned strange-colored fires before my lady's face, and by their influence brought out new lines and new expressions never seen in it before. the perfection of feature, the brilliancy of coloring, were there; but i suppose the painter had copied quaint mediaeval monstrosities until his brain had grown bewildered, for my lady, in his portrait of her, had something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend. her crimson dress, exaggerated like all the rest in this strange picture, hung about her in folds that looked like flames, her fair head peeping out of the lurid mass of color as if out of a raging furnace. indeed the crimson dress, the sunshine on the face, the red gold gleaming in the yellow hair, the ripe scarlet of the pouting lips, the glowing colors of each accessory of the minutely painted background, all combined to render the first effect of the painting by no means an agreeable one. but strange as the picture was, it could not have made any great impression on george talboys, for he sat before it for about a quarter of an hour without uttering a word�only staring blankly at the painted canvas, with the candlestick grasped in his strong right hand, and his left arm hanging loosely by his side. he sat so long in this attitude, that robert turned round at last. "why, george, i thought you had gone to sleep!" "i had almost." "you've caught a cold from standing in that damp tapestried room. mark my words, george talboys, you've caught a cold; you're as hoarse as a raven. but come along." robert audley took the candle from his friend's hand, and crept back through the secret passage, followed by george�very quiet, but scarcely more quiet than usual. they found alicia in the nursery waiting for them. "well?" she said, interrogatively. "we managed it capitally. but i don't like the portrait; there's something odd about it." "there is," said alicia; "i've a strange fancy on that point. i think that sometimes a painter is in a manner inspired, and is able to see, through the normal expression of the face, another expression that is equally a part of it, though not to be perceived by common eyes. we have never seen my lady look as she does in that picture; but i think that she could look so." "alicia," said robert audley, imploringly, "don't be german!" "but, robert�" "don't be german, alicia, if you love me. the picture is�the picture: and my lady is�my lady. that's my way of taking things, and i'm not metaphysical; don't unsettle me." he repeated this several times with an air of terror that was perfectly sincere; and then, having borrowed an umbrella in case of being overtaken by the coming storm, left the court, leading passive george talboys away with him. the one hand of the stupid clock had skipped to nine by the time they reached the archway; but before they could pass under its shadow they had to step aside to allow a carriage to dash past them. it was a fly from the village, but lady audley's fair face peeped out at the window. dark as it was, she could see the two figures of the young men black against the dusk. "who is that?" she asked, putting out her head. "is it the gardener?" "no, my dear aunt," said robert, laughing; "it is your most dutiful nephew." he and george stopped by the archway while the fly drew up at the door, and the surprised servants came out to welcome their master and mistress. "i think the storm will hold off to-night," said the baronet looking up at the sky; "but we shall certainly have it tomorrow." chapter ix. after the storm. sir michael was mistaken in his prophecy upon the weather. the storm did not hold off until next day, but burst with terrible fury over the village of audley about half an hour before midnight. robert audley took the thunder and lightning with the same composure with which he accepted all the other ills of life. he lay on a sofa in the sitting-room, ostensibly reading the five-days-old chelmsford paper, and regaling himself occasionally with a few sips from a large tumbler of cold punch. but the storm had quite a different effect upon george talboys. his friend was startled when he looked at the young man's white face as he sat opposite the open window listening to the thunder, and staring at the black sky, rent every now and then by forked streaks of steel-blue lightning. "george," said robert, after watching him for some time, "are you frightened of the lightning?" "no," he answered, curtly. "but, dear boy, some of the most courageous men have been frightened of it. it is scarcely to be called a fear: it is constitutional. i am sure you are frightened of it." "no, i am not." "but, george, if you could see yourself, white and haggard, with your great hollow eyes staring out at the sky as if they were fixed upon a ghost. i tell you i know that you are frightened." "and i tell you that i am not." "george talboys, you are not only afraid of the lightning, but you are savage with yourself for being afraid, and with me for telling you of your fear." "robert audley, if you say another word to me, i shall knock you down," cried george, furiously; having said which, mr. talboys strode out of the room, banging the door after him with a violence that shook the house. those inky clouds, which had shut in the sultry earth as if with a roof of hot iron, poured out their blackness in a sudden deluge as george left the room; but if the young man was afraid of the lightning, he certainly was not afraid of the rain; for he walked straight down-stairs to the inn door, and went out into the wet high road. he walked up and down, up and down, in the soaking shower for about twenty minutes, and then, re-entering the inn, strode up to his bedroom. robert audley met him on the landing, with his hair beaten about his white face, and his garments dripping wet. "are you going to bed, george?" "yes." "but you have no candle." "i don't want one." "but look at your clothes, man! do you see the wet streaming down your coat-sleeves? what on earth made you go out upon such a night?" "i am tired, and want to go to bed�don't bother me." "you'll take some hot brandy-and-water, george?" robert audley stood in his friend's way as he spoke, anxious to prevent his going to bed in the state he was in; but george pushed him fiercely aside, and, striding past him, said, in the same hoarse voice robert had noticed at the court: "let me alone, robert audley, and keep clear of me if you can." robert followed george to his bedroom, but the young man banged the door in his face, so there was nothing for it but to leave mr. talboys to himself, to recover his temper as best he might. "he was irritated at my noticing his terror of the lightning," thought robert, as he calmly retired to rest, serenely indifferent to the thunder, which seemed to shake him in his bed, and the lightning playing fitfully round the razors in his open dressing-case. the storm rolled away from the quiet village of audley, and when robert awoke the next morning it was to see bright sunshine, and a peep of cloudless sky between the white curtains of his bedroom window. it was one of those serene and lovely mornings that sometimes succeed a storm. the birds sung loud and cheerily, the yellow corn uplifted itself in the broad fields, and waved proudly after its sharp tussle with the tempest, which had done its best to beat down the heavy ears with cruel wind and driving rain half the night through. the vine-leaves clustering round robert's window fluttered with a joyous rustling, shaking the rain-drops in diamond showers from every spray and tendril. robert audley found his friend waiting for him at the breakfast-table. george was very pale, but perfectly tranquil�if anything, indeed, more cheerful than usual. he shook robert by the hand with something of that hearty manner for which he had been distinguished before the one affliction of his life overtook and shipwrecked him. "forgive me, bob," he said, frankly, "for my surly temper of last night. you were quite correct in your assertion; the thunderstorm did upset me. it always had the same effect upon me in my youth." "poor old boy! shall we go up by the express, or shall we stop here and dine with my uncle to-night?" asked robert. "to tell the truth, bob, i would rather do neither. it's a glorious morning. suppose we stroll about all day, take another turn with the rod and line, and go up to town by the train that leaves here at 6.15 in the evening?" robert audley would have assented to a far more disagreeable proposition than this, rather than have taken the trouble to oppose his friend, so the matter was immediately agreed upon; and after they had finished their breakfast, and ordered a four o'clock dinner, george talboys took the fishing-rod across his broad shoulders, and strode out of the house with his friend and companion. but if the equable temperament of mr. robert audley had been undisturbed by the crackling peals of thunder that shook the very foundations of the sun inn, it had not been so with the more delicate sensibilties of his uncle's young wife. lady audley confessed herself terribly frightened of the lightning. she had her bedstead wheeled into a corner of the room, and with the heavy curtains drawn tightly round her, she lay with her face buried in the pillow, shuddering convulsively at every sound of the tempest without. sir michael, whose stout heart had never known a fear, almost trembled for this fragile creature, whom it was his happy privilege to protect and defend. my lady would not consent to undress till nearly three o'clock in the morning, when the last lingering peal of thunder had died away among the distant hills. until that hour she lay in the handsome silk dress in which she had traveled, huddled together among the bedclothes, only looking up now and then with a scared face to ask if the storm was over. toward four o'clock her husband, who spent the night in watching by her bedside, saw her drop off into a deep sleep, from which she did not awake for nearly five hours. but she came into the breakfast-room, at half-past nine o'clock, singing a little scotch melody, her cheeks tinged with as delicate a pink as the pale hue of her muslin morning dress. like the birds and the flowers, she seemed to recover her beauty and joyousness in the morning sunshine. she tripped lightly out onto the lawn, gathering a last lingering rosebud here and there, and a sprig or two of geranium, and returning through the dewy grass, warbling long cadences for very happiness of heart, and looking as fresh and radiant as the flowers in her hands. the baronet caught her in his strong arms as she came in through the open window. "my pretty one," he said, "my darling, what happiness to see you your own merry self again! do you know, lucy, that once last night, when you looked out through the dark-green bed-curtains, with your poor, white face, and the purple rims round your hollow eyes, i had almost a difficulty to recognize my little wife in that terrified, agonized-looking creature, crying out about the storm. thank god for the morning sun, which has brought back the rosy cheeks and bright smile! i hope to heaven, lucy, i shall never again see you look as you did last night." she stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and then was only tall enough to reach his white beard. she told him, laughing, that she had always been a silly, frightened creature�frightened of dogs, frightened of cattle, frightened of a thunderstorm, frightened of a rough sea. "frightened of everything and everybody but my dear, noble, handsome husband," she said. she had found the carpet in her dressing-room disarranged, and had inquired into the mystery of the secret passage. she chid miss alicia in a playful, laughing way, for her boldness in introducing two great men into my lady's rooms. "and they had the audacity to look at my picture, alicia," she said, with mock indignation. "i found the baize thrown on the ground, and a great man's glove on the carpet. look!" "she held up a thick driving glove as she spoke. it was george's, which he had dropped looking at the picture. "i shall go up to the sun, and ask those boys to dinner," sir michael said, as he left the court upon his morning walk around his farm. lady audley flitted from room to room in the bright september sunshine�now sitting down to the piano to trill out a ballad, or the first page of an italian bravura, or running with rapid fingers through a brilliant waltz�now hovering about a stand of hot-house flowers, doing amateur gardening with a pair of fairy-like, silver-mounted embroidery scissors�now strolling into her dressing-room to talk to phoebe marks, and have her curls rearranged for the third or fourth time; for the ringlets were always getting into disorder, and gave no little trouble to lady audley's maid. my dear lady seemed, on this particular september day, restless from very joyousness of spirit, and unable to stay long in one place, or occupy herself with one thing. while lady audley amused herself in her own frivolous fashion, the two young men strolled slowly along the margin of the stream until they reached a shady corner where the water was deep and still, and the long branches of the willows trailed into the brook. george talboys took the fishing-rod, while robert stretched himself at full length on a railway rug, and balancing his hat upon his nose as a screen from the sunshine, fell fast asleep. those were happy fish in the stream on the banks of which mr. talboys was seated. they might have amused themselves to their hearts' content with timid nibbles at this gentleman's bait without in any manner endangering their safety; for george only stared vacantly in the water, holding his rod in a loose, listless hand, and with a strange, far-away look in his eyes. as the church clock struck two he threw down his rod, and, striding away along the bank, left robert audley to enjoy a nap which, according to that gentleman's habits, was by no means unlikely to last for two or three hours. about a quarter of a mile further on george crossed a rustic bridge, and struck into the meadows which led to audley court. the birds had sung so much all the morning, that they had, perhaps, by this time grown tired; the lazy cattle were asleep in the meadows; sir michael was still away on his morning's ramble; miss alicia had scampered off an hour before on her chestnut mare; the servants were all at dinner in the back part of the house; and my lady had strolled, book in hand, into the shadowy lime-walk; so the gray old building had never worn a more peaceful aspect than on that bright afternoon when george talboys walked across the lawn to ring a sonorous peal at the sturdy, iron-bound oak door. the servant who answered his summons told him that sir michael was out, and my lady walking in the lime-tree avenue. he looked a little disappointed at this intelligence, and muttering something about wishing to see my lady, or going to look for my lady (the servant did not clearly distinguish his words), strode away from the door without leaving either card or message for the family. it was full an hour and a half after this when lady audley returned to the house, not coming from the lime-walk, but from exactly the opposite direction, carrying her open book in her hand, and singing as she came. alicia had just dismounted from her mare, and stood in the low-arched doorway, with her great newfoundland dog by her side. the dog, which had never liked my lady, showed his teeth with a suppressed growl. "send that horrid animal away, alicia," lady audley said, impatiently. "the brute knows that i am frightened of him, and takes advantage of my terror. and yet they call the creatures generous and noble-hearted! bah, caesar! i hate you, and you hate me; and if you met me in the dark in some narrow passage you would fly at my throat and strangle me, wouldn't you?" my lady, safely sheltered behind her step-daughter, shook her yellow curls at the angry animal, and defied him maliciously. "do you know, lady audley, that mr. talboys, the young widower, has been here asking for sir michael and you?" lucy audley lifted her penciled eyebrows. "i thought they were coming to dinner," she said. "surely we shall have enough of them then." she had a heap of wild autumn flowers in the skirt of her muslin dress. she had come through the fields at the back of the court, gathering the hedge-row blossoms in her way. she ran lightly up the broad staircase to her own rooms. george's glove lay on her boudoir table. lady audley rung the bell violently, and it was answered by phoebe marks. "take that litter away," she said, sharply. the girl collected the glove and a few withered flowers and torn papers lying on the table into her apron. "what have you been doing all this morning?" asked my lady. "not wasting your time, i hope?" "no, my lady, i have been altering the blue dress. it is rather dark on this side of the house, so i took it up to my own room, and worked at the window." the girl was leaving the room as she spoke, but she turned around and looked at lady audley as if waiting for further orders. lucy looked up at the same moment, and the eyes of the two women met. "phoebe marks," said my lady, throwing herself into an easy-chair, and trifling with the wild flowers in her lap, "you are a good, industrious girl, and while i live and am prosperous, you shall never want a firm friend or a twenty-pound note." chapter x. missing. when robert audley awoke he was surprised to see the fishing-rod lying on the bank, the line trailing idly in the water, and the float bobbing harmlessly up and down in the afternoon sunshine. the young barrister was a long time stretching his arms and legs in various directions to convince himself, by means of such exercise, that he still retained the proper use of those members; then, with a mighty effort, he contrived to rise from the grass, and having deliberately folded his railway rug into a convenient shape for carrying over his shoulder, he strolled away to look for george talboys. once or twice he gave a sleepy shout, scarcely loud enough to scare the birds in the branches above his head, or the trout in the stream at his feet: but receiving no answer, grew tired of the exertion, and dawdled on, yawning as he went, and still looking for george talboys. by-and-by he took out his watch, and was surprised to find that it was a quarter past four. "why, the selfish beggar must have gone home to his dinner!" he muttered, reflectively; "and yet that isn't much like him, for he seldom remembers even his meals unless i jog his memory." even a good appetite, and the knowledge that his dinner would very likely suffer by this delay, could not quicken mr. robert audley's constitutional dawdle, and by the time he strolled in at the front door of the sun, the clocks were striking five. he so fully expected to find george talboys waiting for him in the little sitting-room, that the absence of that gentleman seemed to give the apartment a dreary look, and robert groaned aloud. "this is lively!" he said. "a cold dinner, and nobody to eat it with!" the landlord of the sun came himself to apologize for his ruined dishes. "as fine a pair of ducks, mr. audley, as ever you clapped eyes on, but burnt up to a cinder, along of being kep' hot." "never mind the ducks," robert said impatiently; "where's mr. talboys?" "he ain't been in, sir, since you went out together this morning." "what!" cried robert. "why, in heaven's name, what has the man done with himself?" he walked to the window and looked out upon the broad, white high road. there was a wagon laden with trusses of hay crawling slowly past, the lazy horses and the lazy wagoner drooping their heads with a weary stoop under the afternoon's sunshine. there was a flock of sheep straggling about the road, with a dog running himself into a fever in the endeavor to keep them decently together. there were some bricklayers just released from work�a tinker mending some kettles by the roadside; there was a dog-cart dashing down the road, carrying the master of the audley hounds to his seven o'clock dinner; there were a dozen common village sights and sounds that mixed themselves up into a cheerful bustle and confusion; but there was no george talboys. "of all the extraordinary things that ever happened to me in the whole course of my life," said mr. robert audley, "this is the most miraculous!" the landlord still in attendance, opened his eyes as robert made this remark. what could there be extraordinary in the simple fact of a gentleman being late for his dinner? "i shall go and look for him," said robert, snatching up his hat and walking straight out of the house. but the question was where to look for him. he certainly was not by the trout stream, so it was no good going back there in search of him. robert was standing before the inn, deliberating on what was best to be done, when the landlord came out after him. "i forgot to tell you, mr. audley, as how your uncle called here five minutes after you was gone, and left a message, asking of you and the other gentleman to go down to dinner at the court." "then i shouldn't wonder," said robert, "if george talboys has gone down to the court to call upon my uncle. it isn't like him, but it's just possible that he has done it." it was six o'clock when robert knocked at the door of his uncle's house. he did not ask to see any of the family, but inquired at once for his friend. yes, the servant told him; mr. talboys had been there at two o'clock or a little after. "and not since?" "no, not since." was the man sure that it was at two mr. talboys called? robert asked. yes, perfectly sure. he remembered the hour because it was the servants' dinner hour, and he had left the table to open the door to mr. talboys. "why, what can have become of the man?" thought robert, as he turned his back upon the court. "from two till six�four good hours�and no signs of him!" if any one had ventured to tell mr. robert audley that he could possibly feel a strong attachment to any creature breathing, that cynical gentleman would have elevated his eyebrows in supreme contempt at the preposterous notion. yet here he was, flurried and anxious, bewildering his brain by all manner of conjectures about his missing friend; and false to every attribute of his nature, walking fast. "i haven't walked fast since i was at eton," he murmured, as he hurried across one of sir michael's meadows in the direction of the village; "and the worst of it is, that i haven't the most remote idea where i am going." here he crossed another meadow, and then seating himself upon a stile, rested his elbows upon his knees, buried his face in his hands, and set himself seriously to think the matter out. "i have it," he said, after a few minutes' thought; "the railway station!" he sprang over the stile, and started off in the direction of the little red brick building. there was no train expected for another half hour, and the clerk was taking his tea in an apartment on one side of the office, on the door of which was inscribed in large, white letters, "private." but mr. audley was too much occupied with the one idea of looking for his friend to pay any attention to this warning. he strode at once to the door, and rattling his cane against it, brought the clerk out of his sanctum in a perspiration from hot tea, and with his mouth full of bread and butter. "do you remember the gentleman that came down to audley with me, smithers?" asked robert. "well, to tell you the real truth, mr. audley, i can't say that i do. you came by the four o'clock, if you remember, and there's always a good many passengers by that train." "you don't remember him, then?" "not to my knowledge, sir." "that's provoking! i want to know, smithers, whether he has taken a ticket for london since two o'clock to-day. he's a tall, broad-chested young fellow, with a big brown beard. you couldn't well mistake him." "there was four or five gentlemen as took tickets for the 3.30 up," said the clerk rather vaguely, casting an anxious glance over his shoulder at his wife, who looked by no means pleased at this interruption to the harmony of the tea-table. "four or five gentlemen! but did either of them answer to the description of my friend?" "well, i think one of them had a beard, sir." "a dark-brown beard?" "well, i don't know, but it was brownish-like." "was he dressed in gray?" "i believe it was gray; a great many gents wear gray. he asked for the ticket sharp and short-like, and when he'd got it walked straight out onto the platform whistling." "that's george," said robert. "thank you, smithers; i needn't trouble you any more. it's as clear as daylight," he muttered, as he left the station; "he's got one of his gloomy fits on him, and he's gone back to london without saying a word about it. i'll leave audley myself to-morrow morning; and for to-night�why, i may as well go down to the court and make the acquaintance of my uncle's young wife. they don't dine till seven; if i get back across the fields i shall be in time. bob�otherwise robert audley�this sort of thing will never do; you are falling over head and ears in love with your aunt." chapter xi. the mark upon my lady's wrist. robert found sir michael and lady audley in the drawing-room. my lady was sitting on a music-stool before the grand piano, turning over the leaves of some new music. she twirled upon the revolving seat, making a rustling with her silk flounces, as mr. robert audley's name was announced; then, leaving the piano, she made her nephew a pretty, mock ceremonious courtesy. "thank you so much for the sables," she said, holding out her little fingers, all glittering and twinkling with the diamonds she wore upon them; "thank you for those beautiful sables. how good it was of you to get them for me." robert had almost forgotten the commission he had executed for lady audley during his russian expedition. his mind was so full of george talboys that he only acknowledged my lady's gratitude by a bow. "would you believe it, sir michael?" he said. "that foolish chum of mine has gone back to london leaving me in the lurch." "mr. george talboys returned to town?" exclaimed my lady, lifting her eyebrows. "what a dreadful catastrophe!" said alicia, maliciously, "since pythias, in the person of mr. robert audley, cannot exist for half an hour without damon, commonly known as george talboys." "he's a very good fellow," robert said, stoutly; "and to tell the honest truth, i'm rather uneasy about him." "uneasy about him!" my lady was quite anxious to know why robert was uneasy about his friend. "i'll tell you why, lady audley," answered the young barrister. "george had a bitter blow a year ago in the death of his wife. he has never got over that trouble. he takes life pretty quietly�almost as quietly as i do�but he often talks very strangely, and i sometimes think that one day this grief will get the better of him, and he will do something rash." mr. robert audley spoke vaguely, but all three of his listeners knew that the something rash to which he alluded was that one deed for which there is no repentance. there was a brief pause, during which lady audley arranged her yellow ringlets by the aid of the glass over the console table opposite to her. "dear me!" she said, "this is very strange. i did not think men were capable of these deep and lasting affections. i thought that one pretty face was as good as another pretty face to them; and that when number one with blue eyes and fair hair died, they had only to look out for number two, with dark eyes and black hair, by way of variety." "george talboys is not one of those men. i firmly believe that his wife's death broke his heart." "how sad!" murmured lady audley. "it seems almost cruel of mrs. talboys to die, and grieve her poor husband so much." "alicia was right, she is childish," thought robert as he looked at his aunt's pretty face. my lady was very charming at the dinner-table; she professed the most bewitching incapacity for carving the pheasant set before her, and called robert to her assistance. "i could carve a leg of mutton at mr. dawson's," she said, laughing; "but a leg of mutton is so easy, and then i used to stand up." sir michael watched the impression my lady made upon his nephew with a proud delight in her beauty and fascination. "i am so glad to see my poor little woman in her usual good spirits once more," he said. "she was very down-hearted yesterday at a disappointment she met with in london." "a disappointment!" "yes, mr. audley, a very cruel one," answered my lady. "i received the other morning a telegraphic message from my dear old friend and school-mistress, telling me that she was dying, and that if i wanted to see her again, i must hasten to her immediately. the telegraphic dispatch contained no address, and of course, from that very circumstance, i imagined that she must be living in the house in which i left her three years ago. sir michael and i hurried up to town immediately, and drove straight to the old address. the house was occupied by strange people, who could give me no tidings of my friend. it is in a retired place, where there are very few tradespeople about. sir michael made inquiries at the few shops there are, but, after taking an immense deal of trouble, could discover nothing whatever likely to lead to the information we wanted. i have no friends in london, and had therefore no one to assist me except my dear, generous husband, who did all in his power, but in vain, to find my friend's new residence." "it was very foolish not to send the address in the telegraphic message," said robert. "when people are dying it is not so easy to think of all these things," murmured my lady, looking reproachfully at mr. audley with her soft blue eyes. in spite of lady audley's fascination, and in spite of robert's very unqualified admiration of her, the barrister could not overcome a vague feeling of uneasiness on this quiet september evening. as he sat in the deep embrasure of a mullioned window, talking to my lady, his mind wandered away to shady figtree court, and he thought of poor george talboys smoking his solitary cigar in the room with the birds and canaries. "i wish i'd never felt any friendliness for the fellow," he thought. "i feel like a man who has an only son whose life has gone wrong with him. i wish to heaven i could give him back his wife, and send him down to ventnor to finish his days in peace." still my lady's pretty musical prattle ran on as merrily and continuously as the babble in some brook; and still robert's thoughts wandered, in spite of himself, to george talboys. he thought of him hurrying down to southampton by the mail train to see his boy. he thought of him as he had often seen him spelling over the shipping advertisements in the times, looking for a vessel to take him back to australia. once he thought of him with a shudder, lying cold and stiff at the bottom of some shallow stream with his dead face turned toward the darkening sky. lady audley noticed his abstraction, and asked him what he was thinking of. "george talboys," he answered abruptly. she gave a little nervous shudder. "upon my word," she said, "you make me quite uncomfortable by the way in which you talk of mr. talboys. one would think that something extraordinary had happened to him." "god forbid! but i cannot help feeling uneasy about him." later in the evening sir michael asked for some music, and my lady went to the piano. robert audley strolled after her to the instrument to turn over the leaves of her music; but she played from memory, and he was spared the trouble his gallantry would have imposed upon him. he carried a pair of lighted candles to the piano, and arranged them conveniently for the pretty musician. she struck a few chords, and then wandered into a pensive sonata of beethoven's. it was one of the many paradoxes in her character, that love of somber and melancholy melodies, so opposite to her gay nature. robert audley lingered by her side, and as he had no occupation in turning over the leaves of her music, he amused himself by watching her jeweled, white hands gliding softly over the keys, with the lace sleeves dropping away from, her graceful, arched wrists. he looked at her pretty fingers one by one; this one glittering with a ruby heart; that encircled by an emerald serpent; and about them all a starry glitter of diamonds. from the fingers his eyes wandered to the rounded wrists: the broad, flat, gold bracelet upon her right wrist dropped over her hand, as she executed a rapid passage. she stopped abruptly to rearrange it; but before she could do so robert audley noticed a bruise upon her delicate skin. "you have hurt your arm, lady audley!" he exclaimed. she hastily replaced the bracelet. "it is nothing," she said. "i am unfortunate in having a skin which the slightest touch bruises." she went on playing, but sir michael came across the room to look into the matter of the bruise upon his wife's pretty wrist. "what is it, lucy?" he asked; "and how did it happen?" "how foolish you all are to trouble yourselves about anything so absurd!" said lady audley, laughing. "i am rather absent in mind, and amused myself a few days ago by tying a piece of ribbon around my arm so tightly, that it left a bruise when i removed it." "hum!" thought robert. "my lady tells little childish white lies; the bruise is of a more recent date than a few days ago; the skin has only just begun to change color." sir michael took the slender wrist in his strong hand. "hold the candle, robert," he said, "and let us look at this poor little arm." it was not one bruise, but four slender, purple marks, such as might have been made by the four fingers of a powerful hand, that had grasped the delicate wrist a shade too roughly. a narrow ribbon, bound tightly, might have left some such marks, it is true, and my lady protested once more that, to the best of her recollection, that must have been how they were made. across one of the faint purple marks there was a darker tinge, as if a ring worn on one of those strong and cruel fingers had been ground into the tender flesh. "i am sure my lady must tell white lies," thought robert, "for i can't believe the story of the ribbon." he wished his relations good-night and good-by at about half past ten o'clock; he should run up to london by the first train to look for george in figtree court. "if i don't find him there i shall go to southampton," he said; "and if i don't find him there�" "what then?" asked my lady. "i shall think that something strange has happened." robert audley felt very low-spirited as he walked slowly home between the shadowy meadows; more low-spirited still when he re-entered the sitting room at sun inn, where he and george had lounged together, staring out of the window and smoking their cigars. "to think," he said, meditatively, "that it is possible to care so much for a fellow! but come what may, i'll go up to town after him the first thing to-morrow morning; and, sooner than be balked in finding him, i'll go to the very end of the world." with mr. audley's lymphatic nature, determination was so much the exception rather than the rule, that when he did for once in his life resolve upon any course of action, he had a certain dogged, iron-like obstinacy that pushed him on to the fulfillment of his purpose. the lazy bent of his mind, which prevented him from thinking of half a dozen things at a time, and not thinking thoroughly of any one of them, as is the manner of your more energetic people, made him remarkably clear-sighted upon any point to which he ever gave his serious attention. indeed, after all, though solemn benchers laughed at him, and rising barristers shrugged their shoulders under rustling silk gowns, when people spoke of robert audley, i doubt if, had he ever taken the trouble to get a brief, he might not have rather surprised the magnates who underrated his abilities. chapter xii. still missing. the september sunlight sparkled upon the fountain in the temple gardens when robert audley returned to figtree court early the following morning. he found the canaries singing in the pretty little room in which george had slept, but the apartment was in the same prim order in which the laundress had arranged it after the departure of the two young men�not a chair displaced, or so much as the lid of a cigar-box lifted, to bespeak the presence of george talboys. with a last, lingering hope, he searched upon the mantelpieces and tables of his rooms, on the chance of finding some letter left by george. "he may have slept here last night, and started for southampton early this morning," he thought. "mrs. maloney has been here, very likely, to make everything tidy after him." but as he sat looking lazily around the room, now and then whistling to his delighted canaries, a slipshod foot upon the staircase without bespoke the advent of that very mrs. maloney who waited upon the two young men. no, mr. talboys had not come home; she had looked in as early as six o'clock that morning, and found the chambers empty. "had anything happened to the poor, dear gentleman?" she asked, seeing robert audley's pale face. he turned around upon her quite savagely at this question. happened to him! what should happen to him? they had only parted at two o'clock the day before. mrs. maloney would have related to him the history of a poor dear young engine-driver, who had once lodged with her, and who went out, after eating a hearty dinner, in the best of spirits, to meet with his death from the concussion of an express and a luggage train; but robert put on his hat again, and walked straight out of the house before the honest irishwoman could begin her pitiful story. it was growing dusk when he reached southampton. he knew his way to the poor little terrace of houses, in a full street leading down to the water, where george's father-in-law lived. little georgey was playing at the open parlor window as the young man walked down the street. perhaps it was this fact, and the dull and silent aspect of the house, which filled robert audley's mind with a vague conviction that the man he came to look for was not there. the old man himself opened the door, and the child peeped out of the parlor to see the strange gentleman. he was a handsome boy, with his father's brown eyes and dark waving hair, and with some latent expression which was not his father's and which pervaded his whole face, so that although each feature of the child resembled the same feature in george talboys, the boy was not actually like him. mr. maldon was delighted to see robert audley; he remembered having had the pleasure of meeting him at ventnor, on the melancholy occasion of�he wiped his watery old eyes by way of conclusion to the sentence. would mr. audley walk in? robert strode into the parlor. the furniture was shabby and dingy, and the place reeked with the smell of stale tobacco and brandy-and-water. the boy's broken playthings, and the old man's broken clay pipes and torn, brandy-and-water-stained newspapers were scattered upon the dirty carpet. little georgey crept toward the visitor, watching him furtively out of his big, brown eyes. robert took the boy on his knee, and gave him his watch-chain to play with while he talked to the old man. "i need scarcely ask the question that i come to ask," he said; "i was in hopes i should have found your son-in-law here." "what! you knew that he was coming to southampton?" "knew that he was coming?" cried robert, brightening up. "he is here, then?" "no, he is not here now; but he has been here." "when?" "late last night; he came by the mail." "and left again immediately?" "he stayed little better than an hour." "good heaven!" said robert, "what useless anxiety that man has given me! what can be the meaning of all this?" "you knew nothing of his intention, then?" "of what intention?" "i mean of his determination to go to australia." "i know that it was always in his mind more or less, but not more just now than usual." "he sails to-night from liverpool. he came here at one o'clock this morning to have a look at the boy, he said, before he left england, perhaps never to return. he told me he was sick of the world, and that the rough life out there was the only thing to suit him. he stayed an hour, kissed the boy without awaking him, and left southampton by the mail that starts at a quarter-past two." "what can be the meaning of all this?" said robert. "what could be his motive for leaving england in this manner, without a word to me, his most intimate friend�without even a change of clothes; for he has left everything at my chambers? it is the most extraordinary proceeding!" the old man looked very grave. "do you know, mr. audley," he said, tapping his forehead significantly, "i sometimes fancy that helen's death had a strange effect upon poor george." "pshaw!" cried robert, contemptuously; "he felt the blow most cruelly, but his brain was as sound as yours or mine." "perhaps he will write to you from liverpool," said george's father-in-law. he seemed anxious to smooth over any indignation that robert might feel at his friend's conduct. "he ought," said robert, gravely, "for we've been good friends from the days when we were together at eton. it isn't kind of george talboys to treat me like this." but even at the moment that he uttered the reproach a strange thrill of remorse shot through his heart. "it isn't like him," he said, "it isn't like george talboys." little georgey caught at the sound. "that's my name," he said, "and my papa's name�the big gentleman's name." "yes, little georgey, and your papa came last night and kissed you in your sleep. do you remember?" "no," said the boy, shaking his curly little head. "you must have been very fast asleep, little georgey, not to see poor papa." the child did not answer, but presently, fixing his eyes upon robert's face, he said abruptly: "where's the pretty lady?" "what pretty lady?" "the pretty lady that used to come a long while ago." "he means his poor mamma," said the old man. "no," cried the boy resolutely, "not mamma. mamma was always crying. i didn't like mamma�" "hush, little georgey!" "but i didn't, and she didn't like me. she was always crying. i mean the pretty lady; the lady that was dressed so fine, and that gave me my gold watch." "he means the wife of my old captain�an excellent creature, who took a great fancy to georgey, and gave him some handsome presents." "where's my gold watch? let me show the gentleman my gold watch," cried georgey. "it's gone to be cleaned, georgey," answered his grandfather. "it's always going to be cleaned," said the boy. "the watch is perfectly safe, i assure you, mr. audley," murmured the old man, apologetically; and taking out a pawnbroker's duplicate, he handed it to robert. it was made out in the name of captain mortimer: "watch, set with diamonds, £11." "i'm often hard pressed for a few shillings, mr. audley," said the old man. "my son-in-law has been very liberal to me; but there are others, there are others, mr. audley�and�and�i've not been treated well." he wiped away some genuine tears as he said this in a pitiful, crying voice. "come, georgey, it's time the brave little man was in bed. come along with grandpa. excuse me for a quarter of an hour, mr. audley." the boy went very willingly. at the door of the room the old man looked back at his visitor, and said in the same peevish voice, "this is a poor place for me to pass my declining years in, mr. audley. i've made many sacrifices, and i make them still, but i've not been treated well." left alone in the dusky little sitting-room, robert audley folded his arms, and sat absently staring at the floor. george was gone, then; he might receive some letter of explanation perhaps, when he returned to london; but the chances were that he would never see his old friend again. "and to think that i should care so much for the fellow!" he said, lifting his eyebrows to the center of his forehead. "the place smells of stale tobacco like a tap-room," he muttered presently; "there can be no harm in my smoking a cigar here." he took one from the case in his pocket: there was a spark of fire in the little grate, and he looked about for something to light his cigar with. a twisted piece of paper lay half burned upon the hearthrug; he picked it up, and unfolded it, in order to get a better pipe-light by folding it the other way of the paper. as he did so, absently glancing at the penciled writing upon the fragment of thin paper, a portion of a name caught his eye�a portion of the name that was most in his thoughts. he took the scrap of paper to the window, and examined it by the declining light. it was part of a telegraphic dispatch. the upper portion had been burnt away, but the more important part, the greater part of the message itself, remained. "�alboys came to �� last night, and left by the mail for london, on his way to liverpool, whence he was to sail for sydney." the date and the name and address of the sender of the message had been burnt with the heading. robert audley's face blanched to a deathly whiteness. he carefully folded the scrap of paper, and placed it between the leaves of his pocket-book. "my god!" he said, "what is the meaning of this? i shall go to liverpool to-night, and make inquiries there!" chapter xiii. troubled dreams. robert audley left southampton by the mail, and let himself into his chambers just as the dawn was creeping cold and gray into the solitary rooms, and the canaries were beginning to rustle their feathers feebly in the early morning. there were several letters in the box behind the door, but there was none from george talboys. the young barrister was worn out by a long day spent in hurrying from place to place. the usual lazy monotony of his life had been broken as it had never been broken before in eight-and-twenty tranquil, easy-going years. his mind was beginning to grow confused upon the point of time. it seemed to him months since he had lost sight of george talboys. it was so difficult to believe that it was less than forty-eight hours ago that the young man had left him asleep under the willows by the trout stream. his eyes were painfully weary for want of sleep. he searched about the room for some time, looking in all sorts of impossible places for a letter from george talboys, and then threw himself dressed upon his friend's bed, in the room with the canaries and geraniums. "i shall wait for to-morrow morning's post," he said; "and if that brings no letter from george, i shall start for liverpool without a moment's delay." he was thoroughly exhausted, and fell into a heavy sleep�a sleep which was profound without being in any way refreshing, for he was tormented all the time by disagreeable dreams�dreams which were painful, not from any horror in themselves, but from a vague and wearying sense of their confusion and absurdity. at one time he was pursuing strange people and entering strange houses in the endeavor to unravel the mystery of the telegraphic dispatch; at another time he was in the church-yard at ventnor, gazing at the headstone george had ordered for the grave of his dead wife. once in the long, rambling mystery of these dreams he went to the grave, and found this headstone gone, and on remonstrating with the stonemason, was told that the man had a reason for removing the inscription; a reason that robert would some day learn. in another dream he saw the grave of helen talboys open, and while he waited, with the cold horror lifting up his hair, to see the dead woman rise and stand before him with her stiff, charnel-house drapery clinging about her rigid limbs, his uncle's wife tripped gaily out of the open grave, dressed in the crimson velvet robes in which the artist had painted her, and with her ringlets flashing like red gold in the unearthly light that shone about her. but into all these dreams the places he had last been in, and the people with whom he had last been concerned, were dimly interwoven�sometimes his uncle; sometimes alicia; oftenest of all my lady; the trout stream in essex; the lime-walk at the court. once he was walking in the black shadows of this long avenue, with lady audley hanging on his arm, when suddenly they heard a great knocking in the distance, and his uncle's wife wound her slender arms around him, crying out that it was the day of judgment, and that all wicked secrets must now be told. looking at her as she shrieked this in his ear, he saw that her face had grown ghastly white, and that her beautiful golden ringlets were changing into serpents, and slowly creeping down her fair neck. he started from his dream to find that there was some one really knocking at the outer door of his chambers. it was a dreary, wet morning, the rain beating against the windows, and the canaries twittering dismally to each other�complaining, perhaps, of the bad weather. robert could not tell how long the person had been knocking. he had mixed the sound with his dreams, and when he woke he was only half conscious of other things. "it's that stupid mrs. maloney, i dare say," he muttered. "she may knock again for all i care. why can't she use her duplicate key, instead of dragging a man out of bed when he's half dead with fatigue." the person, whoever it was, did knock again, and then desisted, apparently tired out; but about a minute afterward a key turned in the door. "she had her key with her all the time, then," said robert. "i'm very glad i didn't get up." the door between the sitting-room and bed-room was half open, and he could see the laundress bustling about, dusting the furniture, and rearranging things that had never been disarranged. "is that you, mrs. maloney?" he asked. "yes, sir," "then why, in goodness' name, did you make that row at the door, when you had a key with you all the time?" "a row at the door, sir?" "yes; that infernal knocking." "sure i never knocked, mister audley, but walked straight in with my kay�" "then who did knock? there's been some one kicking up a row at that door for a quarter of an hour, i should think; you must have met him going down-stairs." "but i'm rather late this morning, sir, for i've been in mr. martin's rooms first, and i've come straight from the floor above." "then you didn't see any one at the door, or on the stairs?" "not a mortal soul, sir." "was ever anything so provoking?" said robert. "to think that i should have let this person go away without ascertaining who he was, or what he wanted! how do i know that it was not some one with a message or a letter from george talboys?" "sure if it was, sir, he'll come again," said mrs. maloney, soothingly. "yes, of course, if it was anything of consequence he'll come again," muttered robert. the fact was, that from the moment of finding the telegraphic message at southampton, all hope of hearing of george had faded out of his mind. he felt that there was some mystery involved in the disappearance of his friend�some treachery toward himself, or toward george. what if the young man's greedy old father-in-law had tried to separate them on account of the monetary trust lodged in robert audley's hands? or what if, since even in these civilized days all kinds of unsuspected horrors are constantly committed�what if the old man had decoyed george down to southampton, and made away with him in order to get possession of that £20,000, left in robert's custody for little georgey's use? but neither of these suppositions explained the telegraphic message, and it was the telegraphic message which had filled robert's mind with a vague sense of alarm. the postman brought no letter from george talboys, and the person who had knocked at the door of the chambers did not return between seven and nine o'clock, so robert audley left figtree court once more in search of his friend. this time he told the cabman to drive to the euston station, and in twenty minutes he was on the platform, making inquiries about the trains. the liverpool express had started half an hour before he reached the station, and he had to wait an hour and a quarter for a slow train to take him to his destination. robert audley chafed cruelly at this delay. half a dozen vessels might sail for australia while he roamed up and down the long platform, tumbling over trucks and porters, and swearing at his ill-luck. he bought the times newspaper, and looked instinctively at the second column, with a morbid interest in the advertisements of people missing�sons, brothers, and husbands who had left their homes, never to return or to be heard of more. there was one advertisement of a young man found drowned somewhere on the lambeth shore. what if that should have been george's fate? no; the telegraphic message involved his father-in-law in the fact of his disappearance, and every speculation about him must start from that one point. it was eight o'clock in the evening when robert got into liverpool; too late for anything except to make inquiries as to what vessel had sailed within the last two days for the antipodes. an emigrant ship had sailed at four o'clock that afternoon�the victoria regia, bound for melbourne. the result of his inquiries amounted to this�if he wanted to find out who had sailed in the victoria regia, he must wait till the next morning, and apply for information of that vessel. robert audley was at the office at nine o'clock the next morning, and was the first person after the clerks who entered it. he met with every civility from the clerk to whom he applied. the young man referred to his books, and running his pen down the list of passengers who had sailed in the victoria regia, told robert that there was no one among them of the name of talboys. he pushed his inquiries further. had any of the passengers entered their names within a short time of the vessel's sailing? one of the other clerks looked up from his desk as robert asked this question. yes, he said; he remembered a young man's coming into the office at half-past three o'clock in the afternoon, and paying his passage money. his name was the last on the list�thomas brown. robert audley shrugged his shoulders. there could have been no possible reason for george's taking a feigned name. he asked the clerk who had last spoken if he could remember the appearance of this mr. thomas brown. no; the office was crowded at the time; people were running in and out, and he had not taken any particular notice of this last passenger. robert thanked them for their civility, and wished them good-morning. as he was leaving the office, one of the young men called after him: "oh, by-the-by, sir," he said, "i remember one thing about this mr. thomas brown�his arm was in a sling." there was nothing more for robert audley to do but to return to town. he re-entered his chambers at six o'clock that evening, thoroughly worn out once more with his useless search. mrs. maloney brought him his dinner and a pint of wine from a tavern in the strand. the evening was raw and chilly, and the laundress had lighted a good fire in the sitting-room grate. after eating about half a mutton-chop, robert sat with his wine untasted upon the table before him, smoking cigars and staring into the blaze. "george talboys never sailed for australia," he said, after long and painful reflection. "if he is alive, he is still in england; and if he is dead, his body is hidden in some corner of england." he sat for hours smoking and thinking�trouble and gloomy thoughts leaving a dark shadow upon his moody face, which neither the brilliant light of the gas nor the red blaze of the fire could dispel. very late in the evening he rose from his chair, pushed away the table, wheeled his desk over to the fire-place, took out a sheet of fools-cap, and dipped a pen in the ink. but after doing this he paused, leaned his forehead upon his hand, and once more relapsed into thought. "i shall draw up a record of all that has occurred between our going down to essex and to-night, beginning at the very beginning." he drew up this record in short, detached sentences, which he numbered as he wrote. it ran thus: "journal of facts connected with the disappearance of george talboys, inclusive of facts which have no apparent relation to that circumstance." in spite of the troubled state of his mind, he was rather inclined to be proud of the official appearance of this heading. he sat for some time looking at it with affection, and with the feather of his pen in his mouth. "upon my word," he said, "i begin to think that i ought to have pursued my profession, instead of dawdling my life away as i have done." he smoked half a cigar before he had got his thoughts in proper train, and then began to write: "1. i write to alicia, proposing to take george down to the court." "2. alicia writes, objecting to the visit, on the part of lady audley." "3. we go to essex in spite of that objection. i see my lady. my lady refuses to be introduced to george on that particular evening on the score of fatigue." "4. sir michael invites george and me to dinner for the following evening." "5. my lady receives a telegraphic dispatch the next morning which summons her to london." "6. alicia shows me a letter from my lady, in which she requests to be told when i and my friend, mr. talboys, mean to leave essex. to this letter is subjoined a postscript, reiterating the above request." "7. we call at the court, and ask to see the house. my lady's apartments are locked." "8. we get at the aforesaid apartments by means of a secret passage, the existence of which is unknown to my lady. in one of the rooms we find her portrait." "9. george is frightened at the storm. his conduct is exceedingly strange for the rest of the evening." "10. george quite himself again the following morning. i propose leaving audley court immediately; he prefers remaining till the evening." "11. we go out fishing. george leaves me to go to the court." "12. the last positive information i can obtain of him in essex is at the court, where the servant says he thinks mr. talboys told him he would go and look for my lady in the grounds." "13. i receive information about him at the station which may or may not be correct." "14. i hear of him positively once more at southampton, where, according to his father-in-law, he had been for an hour on the previous night." "15. the telegraphic message." when robert audley had completed this brief record, which he drew up with great deliberation, and with frequent pauses for reflection, alterations and erasures, he sat for a long time contemplating the written page. at last he read it carefully over, stopping at some of the numbered paragraphs, and marking some of them with a pencil cross; then he folded the sheet of foolscap, went over to a cabinet on the opposite side of the room, unlocked it, and placed the paper in that very pigeon-hole into which he had thrust alicia's letter�the pigeon-hole marked important. having done this, he returned to his easy-chair by the fire, pushed away his desk, and lighted a cigar. "it's as dark as midnight from first to last," he said; "and the clew to the mystery must be found either at southampton or in essex. be it how it may, my mind is made up. i shall first go to audley court, and look for george talboys in a narrow radius." chapter xiv. phoebe's suitor. "mr. george talboys.�any person who has met this gentleman since the 7th inst., or who possesses any information respecting him subsequent to that date, will be liberally rewarded on communicating with a.z., 14 chancery lane." sir michael audley read the above advertisement in the second column of the times, as he sat at breakfast with my lady and alicia two or three days after robert's return to town. "robert's friend has not yet been heard of, then," said the baronet, after reading the advertisement to his wife and daughter. "as for that," replied my lady, "i cannot help wondering that any one can be silly enough to advertise for him. the young man was evidently of a restless, roving disposition�a sort of bamfyld moore carew of modern life, whom no attraction could ever keep in one spot." though the advertisement appeared three successive times, the party at the court attached very little importance to mr. talboys' disappearance; and after this one occasion his name was never again mentioned by either sir michael, my lady, or alicia. alicia audley and her pretty stepmother were by no means any better friends after that quiet evening on which the young barrister had dined at the court. "she is a vain, frivolous, heartless little coquette," said alicia, addressing herself to her newfoundland dog caesar, who was the sole recipient of the young lady's confidences; "she is a practiced and consummate flirt, caesar; and not contented with setting her yellow ringlets and her silly giggle at half the men in essex, she must needs make that stupid cousin of mine dance attendance upon her. i haven't common patience with her." in proof of which last assertion miss alicia audley treated her stepmother with such very palpable impertinence that sir michael felt himself called upon to remonstrate with his only daughter. "the poor little woman is very sensitive, you know, alicia," the baronet said, gravely, "and she feels your conduct most acutely." "i don't believe it a bit, papa," answered alicia, stoutly. "you think her sensitive because she has soft little white hands, and big blue eyes with long lashes, and all manner of affected, fantastical ways, which you stupid men call fascinating. sensitive! why, i've seen her do cruel things with those slender white fingers, and laugh at the pain she inflicted. i'm very sorry, papa," she added, softened a little by her father's look of distress; "though she has come between us, and robbed poor alicia of the love of that dear, generous heart, i wish i could like her for your sake; but i can't, i can't, and no more can caesar. she came up to him once with her red lips apart, and her little white teeth glistening between them, and stroked his great head with her soft hand; but if i had not had hold of his collar, he would have flown at her throat and strangled her. she may bewitch every man in essex, but she'd never make friends with my dog." "your dog shall be shot," answered sir michael angrily, "if his vicious temper ever endangers lucy." the newfoundland rolled his eyes slowly round in the direction of the speaker, as if he understood every word that had been said. lady audley happened to enter the room at this very moment, and the animal cowered down by the side of his mistress with a suppressed growl. there was something in the manner of the dog which was, if anything, more indicative of terror than of fury; incredible as it appears that caesar should be frightened by so fragile a creature as lucy audley. amicable as was my lady's nature, she could not live long at the court without discovering alicia's dislike to her. she never alluded to it but once; then, shrugging her graceful white shoulders, she said, with a sigh: "it seems very hard that you cannot love me, alicia, for i have never been used to make enemies; but since it seems that it must be so, i cannot help it. if we cannot be friends, let us be neutral. you won't try to injure me?" "injure you!" exclaimed alicia; "how should i injure you?" "you'll not try to deprive me of your father's affection?" "i may not be as amiable as you are, my lady, and i may not have the same sweet smiles and pretty words for every stranger i meet, but i am not capable of a contemptible meanness; and even if i were, i think you are so secure of my father's love, that nothing but your own act will ever deprive you of it." "what a severe creature you are, alicia!" said my lady, making a little grimace. "i suppose you mean to infer by all that, that i'm deceitful. why, i can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily to them. i know i'm no better than the rest of the world; but i can't help it if i'm pleasantér. it's constitutional." alicia having thus entirely shut the door upon all intimacy between lady audley and herself, and sir michael being chiefly occupied in agricultural pursuits and manly sports, which kept him away from home, it was perhaps natural that my lady, being of an eminently social disposition, should find herself thrown a good deal upon her white-eyelashed maid for society. phoebe marks was exactly the sort of a girl who is generally promoted from the post of lady's maid to that of companion. she had just sufficient education to enable her to understand her mistress when lucy chose to allow herself to run riot in a species of intellectual tarantella, in which her tongue went mad to the sound of its own rattle, as the spanish dancer at the noise of his castanets. phoebe knew enough of the french language to be able to dip into the yellow-paper-covered novels which my lady ordered from the burlington arcade, and to discourse with her mistress upon the questionable subjects of these romances. the likeness which the lady's maid bore to lucy audley was, perhaps, a point of sympathy between the two women. it was not to be called a striking likeness; a stranger might have seen them both together, and yet have failed to remark it. but there were certain dim and shadowy lights in which, meeting phoebe marks gliding softly through the dark oak passages of the court, or under the shrouded avenues in the garden, you might have easily mistaken her for my lady. sharp october winds were sweeping the leaves from the limes in the long avenue, and driving them in withered heaps with a ghostly rustling noise along the dry gravel walks. the old well must have been half choked up with the leaves that drifted about it, and whirled in eddying circles into its black, broken mouth. on the still bosom of the fish-pond the same withered leaves slowly rotted away, mixing themselves with the tangled weeds that discolored the surface of the water. all the gardeners sir michael could employ could not keep the impress of autumn's destroying hand from the grounds about the court. "how i hate this desolate month!" my lady said, as she walked about the garden, shivering beneath her sable mantle. "every thing dropping to ruin and decay, and the cold flicker of the sun lighting up the ugliness of the earth, as the glare of gas-lamps lights the wrinkles of an old woman. shall i ever grow old, phoebe? will my hair ever drop off as the leaves are falling from those trees, and leave me wan and bare like them? what is to become of me when i grow old?" she shivered at the thought of this more than she had done at the cold, wintry breeze, and muffling herself closely in her fur, walked so fast that her maid had some difficulty in keeping up with her. "do you remember, phoebe," she said, presently, relaxing her pace, "do you remember that french story we read�the story of a beautiful woman who had committed some crime�i forget what�in the zenith of her power and loveliness, when all paris drank to her every night, and when the people ran away from the carriage of the king to flock about hers, and get a peep at her face? do you remember how she kept the secret of what she had done for nearly half a century, spending her old age in her family chateau, beloved and honored by all the province as an uncanonized saint and benefactress to the poor; and how, when her hair was white, and her eyes almost blind with age, the secret was revealed through one of those strange accidents by which such secrets always are revealed in romances, and she was tried, found guilty, and condemned to be burned alive? the king who had worn her colors was dead and gone; the court of which she had been a star had passed away; powerful functionaries and great magistrates, who might perhaps have helped her, were moldering in the graves; brave young cavaliers, who would have died for her, had fallen upon distant battle-fields; she had lived to see the age to which she had belonged fade like a dream; and she went to the stake, followed by only a few ignorant country people, who forgot all her bounties, and hooted at her for a wicked sorceress." "i don't care for such dismal stories, my lady," said phoebe marks with a shudder. "one has no need to read books to give one the horrors in this dull place." lady audley shrugged her shoulders and laughed at her maid's candor. "it is a dull place, phoebe," she said, "though it doesn't do to say so to my dear old husband. though i am the wife of one of the most influential men in the county, i don't know that i wasn't nearly as well off at mr. dawson's; and yet it's something to wear sables that cost sixty guineas, and have a thousand pounds spent on the decoration of one's apartments." treated as a companion by her mistress, in the receipt of the most liberal wages, and with perquisites such as perhaps lady's maid never had before, it was strange that phoebe marks should wish to leave her situation; but it was not the less a fact that she was anxious to exchange all the advantages of audley court for the very unpromising prospect which awaited her as the wife of her cousin luke. the young man had contrived in some manner to associate himself with the improved fortunes of his sweetheart. he had never allowed phoebe any peace till she had obtained for him, by the aid of my lady's interference, a situation as undergroom of the court. he never rode out with either alicia or sir michael; but on one of the few occasions upon which my lady mounted the pretty little gray thoroughbred reserved for her use, he contrived to attend her in her ride. he saw enough, in the very first half hour they were out, to discover that, graceful as lucy audley might look in her long blue cloth habit, she was a timid horsewoman, and utterly unable to manage the animal she rode. lady audley remonstrated with her maid upon her folly in wishing to marry the uncouth groom. the two women were seated together over the fire in my lady's dressing-room, the gray sky closing in upon the october afternoon, and the black tracery of ivy darkening the casement windows. "you surely are not in love with the awkward, ugly creature are you, phoebe?" asked my lady sharply. the girl was sitting on a low stool at her mistress feet. she did not answer my lady's question immediately, but sat for some time looking vacantly into the red abyss in the hollow fire. presently she said, rather as if she had been thinking aloud than answering lucy's question: "i don't think i can love him. we have been together from children, and i promised, when i was little better than fifteen, that i'd be his wife. i daren't break that promise now. there have been times when i've made up the very sentence i meant to say to him, telling him that i couldn't keep my faith with him; but the words have died upon my lips, and i've sat looking at him, with a choking sensation, in my throat that wouldn't let me speak. i daren't refuse to marry him. i've often watched and watched him, as he has sat slicing away at a hedge-stake with his great clasp-knife, till i have thought that it is just such men as he who have decoyed their sweethearts into lonely places, and murdered them for being false to their word. when he was a boy he was always violent and revengeful. i saw him once take up that very knife in a quarrel with his mother. i tell you, my lady, i must marry him." "you silly girl, you shall do nothing of the kind!" answered lucy. "you think he'll murder you, do you? do you think, then, if murder is in him, you would be any safer as his wife? if you thwarted him, or made him jealous; if he wanted to marry another woman, or to get hold of some poor, pitiful bit of money of yours, couldn't he murder you then? i tell you you sha'n't marry him, phoebe. in the first place i hate the man; and, in the next place i can't afford to part with you. we'll give him a few pounds and send him about his business." phoebe marks caught my lady's hand in hers, and clasped them convulsively. "my lady�my good, kind mistress!" she cried, vehemently, "don't try to thwart me in this�don't ask me to thwart him. i tell you i must marry him. you don't know what he is. it will be my ruin, and the ruin of others, if i break my word. i must marry him!" "very well, then, phoebe," answered her mistress, "i can't oppose you. there must be some secret at the bottom of all this." "there is, my lady," said the girl, with her face turned away from lucy. "i shall be very sorry to lose you; but i have promised to stand your friend in all things. what does your cousin mean to do for a living when you are married?" "he would like to take a public house." "then he shall take a public house, and the sooner he drinks himself to death the better. sir michael dines at a bachelor's party at major margrave's this evening, and my step-daughter is away with her friends at the grange. you can bring your cousin into the drawing-room after dinner, and i'll tell him what i mean to do for him." "you are very good, my lady," phoebe answered with a sigh. lady audley sat in the glow of firelight and wax candles in the luxurious drawing-room; the amber damask cushions of the sofa contrasting with her dark violet velvet dress, and her rippling hair falling about her neck in a golden haze. everywhere around her were the evidences of wealth and splendor; while in strange contrast to all this, and to her own beauty; the awkward groom stood rubbing his bullet head as my lady explained to him what she intended to do for her confidential maid. lucy's promises were very liberal, and she had expected that, uncouth as the man was, he would, in his own rough manner, have expressed his gratitude. to her surprise he stood staring at the floor without uttering a word in answer to her offer. phoebe was standing close to his elbow, and seemed distressed at the man's rudeness. "tell my lady how thankful you are, luke," she said. "but i'm not so over and above thankful," answered her lover, savagely. "fifty pound ain't much to start a public. you'll make it a hundred, my lady?" "i shall do nothing of the kind," said lady audley, her clear blue eyes flashing with indignation, "and i wonder at your impertinence in asking it." "oh, yes, you will, though," answered luke, with quiet insolence that had a hidden meaning. "you'll make it a hundred, my lady." lady audley rose from her seat, looked the man steadfastly in the face till his determined gaze sunk under hers; then walking straight up to her maid, she said in a high, piercing voice, peculiar to her in moments of intense agitation: "phoebe marks, you have told this man!" the girl fell on her knees at my lady's feet. "oh, forgive me, forgive me!" she cried. "he forced it from me, or i would never, never have told!" chapter xv. on the watch. upon a lowering morning late in november, with the yellow fog low upon the flat meadows, and the blinded cattle groping their way through the dim obscurity, and blundering stupidly against black and leafless hedges, or stumbling into ditches, undistinguishable in the hazy atmosphere; with the village church looming brown and dingy through the uncertain light; with every winding path and cottage door, every gable end and gray old chimney, every village child and straggling cur seeming strange and weird of aspect in the semi-darkness, phoebe marks and her cousin luke made their way through the churchyard of audley, and presented themselves before a shivering curate, whose surplice hung in damp folds, soddened by the morning mist, and whose temper was not improved by his having waited five minutes for the bride and bridegroom. luke marks, dressed in his ill-fitting sunday clothes, looked by no means handsomer than in his every-day apparel; but phoebe, arrayed in a rustling silk of delicate gray, that had been worn about half a dozen times by her mistress, looked, as the few spectators of the ceremony remarked, "quite the lady." a very dim and shadowy lady, vague of outline, and faint of coloring, with eyes, hair, complexion and dress all melting into such pale and uncertain shades that, in the obscure light of the foggy november morning a superstitious stranger might have mistaken the bride for the ghost of some other bride, dead and buried in the vault below the church. mr. luke marks, the hero of the occasion, thought very little of all this. he had secured the wife of his choice, and the object of his life-long ambition�a public house. my lady had provided the seventy-five pounds necessary for the purchase of the good-will and fixtures, with the stock of ales and spirits, of a small inn in the center of a lonely little village, perched on the summit of a hill, and called mount stanning. it was not a very pretty house to look at; it had something of a tumble-down, weather-beaten appearance, standing, as it did, upon high ground, sheltered only by four or five bare and overgrown poplars, that had shot up too rapidly for their strength, and had a blighted, forlorn look in consequence. the wind had had its own way with the castle inn, and had sometimes made cruel use of its power. it was the wind that battered and bent the low, thatched roofs of outhouses and stables, till they hung over and lurched forward, as a slouched hat hangs over the low forehead of some village ruffian; it was the wind that shook and rattled the wooden shutters before the narrow casements, till they hung broken and dilapidated upon their rusty hinges; it was the wind that overthrew the pigeon house, and broke the vane that had been imprudently set up to tell the movements of its mightiness; it was the wind that made light of any little bit of wooden trellis-work, or creeping plant, or tiny balcony, or any modest decoration whatsoever, and tore and scattered it in its scornful fury; it was the wind that left mossy secretions on the discolored surface of the plaster walls; it was the wind, in short, that shattered, and ruined, and rent, and trampled upon the tottering pile of buildings, and then flew shrieking off, to riot and glory in its destroying strength. the dispirited proprietor grew tired of his long struggle with this mighty enemy; so the wind was left to work its own will, and the castle inn fell slowly to decay. but for all that it suffered without, it was not the less prosperous within doors. sturdy drovers stopped to drink at the little bar; well-to-do farmers spent their evenings and talked politics in the low, wainscoted parlor, while their horses munched some suspicious mixture of moldy hay and tolerable beans in the tumble-down stables. sometimes even the members of the audley hunt stopped to drink and bait their horses at the castle inn; while, on one grand and never-to-be-forgotten occasion, a dinner had been ordered by the master of the hounds for some thirty gentlemen, and the proprietor driven nearly mad by the importance of the demand. so luke marks, who was by no means troubled with an eye for the beautiful, thought himself very fortunate in becoming the landlord of the castle inn, mount stanning. a chaise-cart was waiting in the fog to convey the bride and bridegroom to their new home; and a few of the villagers, who had known phoebe from a child, were lingering around the churchyard gate to bid her good-by. her pale eyes were still paler from the tears she had shed, and the red rims which surrounded them. the bridegroom was annoyed at this exhibition of emotion. "what are you blubbering for, lass?" he said, fiercely. "if you didn't want to marry me you should have told me so. i ain't going to murder you, am i?" the lady's maid shivered as he spoke to her, and dragged her little silk mantle closely around her. "you're cold in all this here finery," said luke, staring at her costly dress with no expression of good-will. "why can't women dress according to their station? you won't have no silk gownds out of my pocket, i can tell you." he lifted the shivering girl into the chaise, wrapped a rough great-coat about her, and drove off through the yellow fog, followed by a feeble cheer from two or three urchins clustered around the gate. a new maid was brought from london to replace phoebe marks about the person of my lady�a very showy damsel, who wore a black satin gown, and rose-colored ribbons in her cap, and complained bitterly of the dullness of audley court. but christmas brought visitors to the rambling old mansion. a country squire and his fat wife occupied the tapestried chamber; merry girls scampered up and down the long passages, and young men stared out of the latticed windows, watching for southerly winds and cloudy skies; there was not an empty stall in the roomy old stables; an extempore forge had been set up in the yard for the shoeing of hunters; yelping dogs made the place noisy with their perpetual clamor; strange servants herded together on the garret story; and every little casement hidden away under some pointed gable, and every dormer window in the quaint old roof, glimmered upon the winter's night with its separate taper, till, coming suddenly upon audley court, the benighted stranger, misled by the light, and noise, and bustle of the place, might have easily fallen into young marlowe's error, and have mistaken the hospitable mansion for a good, old-fashioned inn, such as have faded from this earth since the last mail coach and prancing tits took their last melancholy journey to the knacker's yard. among other visitors mr. robert audley came down to essex for the hunting season, with half a dozen french novels, a case of cigars, and three pounds of turkish tobacco in his portmanteau. the honest young country squires, who talked all breakfast time of flying dutchman fillies and voltigeur colts; of glorious runs of seven hours' hard riding over three counties, and a midnight homeward ride of thirty miles upon their covert hacks; and who ran away from the well-spread table with their mouths full of cold sirloin, to look at that off pastern, or that sprained forearm, or the colt that had just come back from the veterinary surgeon's, set down robert audley, dawdling over a slice of bread and marmalade, as a person utterly unworthy of any remark whatsoever. the young barrister had brought a couple of dogs with him; and the country gentleman who gave fifty pounds for a pointer; and traveled a couple of hundred miles to look at a leash of setters before he struck a bargain, laughed aloud at the two miserable curs, one of which had followed robert audley through chancery lane, and half the length of holborn; while his companion had been taken by the barrister vi et armis from a coster-monger who was ill-using him. and as robert furthermore insisted on having these two deplorable animals under his easy-chair in the drawing-room, much to the annoyance of my lady, who, as we know, hated all dogs, the visitors at audley court looked upon the baronet's nephew as an inoffensive species of maniac. during other visits to the court robert audley had made a feeble show of joining in the sports of the merry assembly. he had jogged across half a dozen ploughed fields on a quiet gray pony of sir michael's, and drawing up breathless and panting at the door of some farm-house, had expressed his intention of following the hounds no further that morning. he had even gone so far as to put on, with great labor, a pair of skates, with a view to taking a turn on the frozen surface of the fishpond, and had fallen ignominously at the first attempt, lying placidly extended on the flat of his back until such time as the bystanders should think fit to pick him up. he had occupied the back seat in a dog-cart during a pleasant morning drive, vehemently protesting against being taken up hill, and requiring the vehicle to be stopped every ten minutes in order to readjust the cushions. but this year he showed no inclination for any of these outdoor amusements, and he spent his time entirely in lounging in the drawing-room, and making himself agreeable, after his own lazy fashion, to my lady and alicia. lady audley received her nephew's attentions in that graceful half-childish fashion which her admirers found so charming; but alicia was indignant at the change in her cousin's conduct. "you were always a poor, spiritless fellow, bob," said the young lady, contemptuously, as she bounced into the drawing-room in her riding-habit, after a hunting breakfast, from which robert had absented himself, preferring a cup of tea in my lady's boudoir; "but this year i don't know what has come to you. you are good for nothing but to hold a skein of silk or read tennyson to lady audley." "my dear, hasty, impetuous alicia, don't be violent," said the young man imploringly. "a conclusion isn't a five-barred gate; and you needn't give your judgment its head, as you give your mare atalanta hers, when you're flying across country at the heels of an unfortunate fox. lady audley interests me, and my uncle's county friends do not. is that a sufficient answer, alicia?" miss audley gave her head a little scornful toss. "it's as good an answer as i shall ever get from, you, bob," she said, impatiently; "but pray amuse yourself in your own way; loll in an easy-chair all day, with those two absurd dogs asleep on your knees; spoil my lady's window-curtains with your cigars and annoy everybody in the house with your stupid, inanimate countenance." mr. robert audley opened his handsome gray eyes to their widest extent at this tirade, and looked helplessly at miss alicia. the young lady was walking up and down the room, slashing the skirt of her habit with her riding-whip. her eyes sparkled with an angry flash, and a crimson glow burned under her clear brown skin. the young barrister knew very well, by these diagnostics, that his cousin was in a passion. "yes," she repeated, "your stupid, inanimate countenance. do you know, robert audley, that with all your mock amiability, you are brimful of conceit and superciliousness. you look down upon our amusements; you lift up your eyebrows, and shrug your shoulders, and throw yourself back in your chair, and wash your hands of us and our pleasures. you are a selfish, cold-hearted sybarite�" "alicia! good�gracious�me!" the morning paper dropped out of his hands, and he sat feebly staring at his assailant. "yes, selfish, robert audley! you take home half-starved dogs, because you like half-starved dogs. you stoop down, and pat the head of every good-for-nothing cur in the village street, because you like good-for-nothing curs. you notice little children, and give them halfpence, because it amuses you to do so. but you lift your eyebrows a quarter of a yard when poor sir harry towers tells a stupid story, and stare the poor fellow out of countenance with your lazy insolence. as to your amiability, you would let a man hit you, and say 'thank you' for the blow, rather than take the trouble to hit him again; but you wouldn't go half a mile out of your way to serve your dearest friend. sir harry is worth twenty of you, though he did write to ask if my m-a-i-r atalanta had recovered from the sprain. he can't spell, or lift his eyebrows to the roots of his hair; but he would go through fire and water for the girl he loves; while you�" at this very point, when robert was most prepared to encounter his cousin's violence, and when miss alicia seemed about to make her strongest attack, the young lady broke down altogether, and burst into tears. robert sprang from his easy-chair, upsetting his dogs on the carpet. "alicia, my darling, what is it?" "it's�it's�it's the feather of my hat that got into my eyes," sobbed his cousin; and before he could investigate the truth of this assertion alicia had darted out of the room. robert audley was preparing to follow her, when he heard her voice in the court-yard below, amidst the tramping of horses and the clamor of visitors, dogs, and grooms. sir harry towers, the most aristocratic young sportsman in the neighborhood, had just taken her little foot in his hand as she sprung into her saddle. "good heaven!" exclaimed robert, as he watched the merry party of equestrians until they disappeared under the archway. "what does all this mean? how charmingly she sits her horse! what a pretty figure, too, and a fine, candid, brown, rosy face: but to fly at a fellow like that, without the least provocation! that's the consequence of letting a girl follow the hounds. she learns to look at everything in life as she does at six feet of timber or a sunk fence; she goes through the world as she goes across country�straight ahead, and over everything. such a nice girl as she might have been, too, if she'd been brought up in figtree court! if ever i marry, and have daughters (which remote contingency may heaven forefend!) they shall be educated in paper buildings, take their sole exercise in the temple gardens, and they shall never go beyond the gates till they are marriageable, when i will walk them straight across fleet street to st. dunstan's church, and deliver them into the hands of their husbands." with such reflections as these did mr. robert audley beguile the time until my lady re-entered the drawing-room, fresh and radiant in her elegant morning costume, her yellow curls glistening with the perfumed waters in which she had bathed, and her velvet-covered sketch-book in her arms. she planted a little easel upon a table by the window, seated herself before it, and began to mix the colors upon her palette, robert watching her out of his half-closed eyes. "you are sure my cigar does not annoy you, lady audley?" "oh, no indeed; i am quite used to the smell of tobacco. mr. dawson, the surgeon, smoked all the evening when i lived in his house." "dawson is a good fellow, isn't he?" robert asked, carelessly. my lady burst into her pretty, gushing laugh. "the dearest of good creatures," she said. "he paid me five-and-twenty pounds a year�only fancy, five-and-twenty pounds! that made six pounds five a quarter. how well i remember receiving the money�six dingy old sovereigns, and a little heap of untidy, dirty silver, that came straight from the till in the surgery! and then how glad i was to get it! while now�i can't help laughing while i think of it�these colors i am using cost a guinea each at winsor & newton's�the carmine and ultramarine thirty shillings. i gave mrs. dawson one of my silk dresses the other day, and the poor thing kissed me, and the surgeon carried the bundle home under his cloak." my lady laughed long and joyously at the thought. her colors were mixed; she was copying a water-colored sketch of an impossibly turneresque atmosphere. the sketch was nearly finished, and she had only to put in some critical little touches with the most delicate of her sable pencils. she prepared herself daintily for the work, looking sideways at the painting. all this time mr. robert audley's eyes were fixed intently on her pretty face. "it is a change," he said, after so long a pause that my lady might have forgotten what she had been talking of, "it is a change! some women would do a great deal to accomplish such a change as that." lady audley's clear blue eyes dilated as she fixed them suddenly on the young barrister. the wintry sunlight, gleaming full upon her face from a side window, lit up the azure of those beautiful eyes, till their color seemed to flicker and tremble betwixt blue and green, as the opal tints of the sea change upon a summer's day. the small brush fell from her hand, and blotted out the peasant's face under a widening circle of crimson lake. robert audley was tenderly coaxing the crumbled leaf of his cigar with cautious fingers. "my friend at the corner of chancery lane has not given me such good manillas as usual," he murmured. "if ever you smoke, my dear aunt (and i am told that many women take a quiet weed under the rose), be very careful how you choose your cigars." my lady drew a long breath, picked up her brush, and laughed aloud at robert's advice. "what an eccentric creature you are, mr. audley i do you know that you sometimes puzzle me�" "not more than you puzzle me, dear aunt." my lady put away her colors and sketch book, and seating herself in the deep recess of another window, at a considerable distance from robert audley, settled to a large piece of berlin-wool work�a piece of embroidery which the penelopes of ten or twelve years ago were very fond of exercising their ingenuity upon�the olden time at bolton abbey. seated in the embrasure of this window, my lady was separated from robert audley by the whole length of the room, and the young man could only catch an occasional glimpse of her fair face, surrounded by its bright aureole of hazy, golden hair. robert audley had been a week at the court, but as yet neither he nor my lady had mentioned the name of george talboys. this morning, however, after exhausting the usual topics of conversation, lady audley made an inquiry about her nephew's friend; "that mr. george�george�" she said, hesitating. "talboys," suggested robert. "yes, to be sure�mr. george talboys. rather a singular name, by-the-by, and certainly, by all accounts, a very singular person. have you seen him lately?" "i have not seen him since the 7th of september last�the day upon which he left me asleep in the meadows on the other side of the village." "dear me!" exclaimed my lady, "what a very strange young man this mr. george talboys must be! pray tell me all about it." robert told, in a few words, of his visit to southampton and his journey to liverpool, with their different results, my lady listening very attentively. in order to tell this story to better advantage, the young man left his chair, and, crossing the room, took up his place opposite to lady audley, in the embrasure of the window. "and what do you infer from all this?" asked my lady, after a pause. "it is so great a mystery to me," he answered, "that i scarcely dare to draw any conclusion whatever; but in the obscurity i think i can grope my way to two suppositions, which to me seem almost certainties." "and they are�" "first, that george talboys never went beyond southampton. second, that he never went to southampton at all." "but you traced him there. his father-in-law had seen him." "i have reason to doubt his father-in-law's integrity." "good gracious me!" cried my lady, piteously. "what do you mean by all this?" "lady audley," answered the young man, gravely, "i have never practiced as a barrister. i have enrolled myself in the ranks of a profession, the members of which hold solemn responsibilities and have sacred duties to perform; and i have shrunk from those responsibilities and duties, as i have from all the fatigues of this troublesome life. but we are sometimes forced into the very position we have most avoided, and i have found myself lately compelled to think of these things. lady audley, did you ever study the theory of circumstantial evidence?" "how can you ask a poor little woman about such horrid things?" exclaimed my lady. "circumstantial evidence," continued the young man, as if he scarcely heard lady audley's interruption�"that wonderful fabric which is built out of straws collected at every point of the compass, and which is yet strong enough to hang a man. upon what infinitesimal trifles may sometimes hang the whole secret of some wicked mystery, inexplicable heretofore to the wisest upon the earth! a scrap of paper, a shred of some torn garment, the button off a coat, a word dropped incautiously from the overcautious lips of guilt, the fragment of a letter, the shutting or opening of a door, a shadow on a window-blind, the accuracy of a moment tested by one of benson's watches�a thousand circumstances so slight as to be forgotten by the criminal, but links of iron in the wonderful chain forged by the science of the detective officer; and lo! the gallows is built up; the solemn bell tolls through the dismal gray of the early morning, the drop creaks under the guilty feet, and the penalty of crime is paid." faint shadows of green and crimson fell upon my lady's face from the painted escutcheons in the mullioned window by which she sat; but every trace of the natural color of that face had faded out, leaving it a ghastly ashen gray. sitting quietly in her chair, her head fallen back upon the amber damask cushions, and her little hands lying powerless in her lap, lady audley had fainted away. "the radius grows narrower day by day," said robert audley. "george talboys never reached southampton." chapter xvi. robert audley gets his conge. the christmas week was over, and one by one the country visitors dropped away from audley court. the fat squire and his wife abandoned the gray, tapestried chamber, and left the black-browed warriors looming from the wall to scowl upon and threaten new guests, or to glare vengefully upon vacancy. the merry girls on the second story packed, or caused to be packed, their trunks and imperials, and tumbled gauze ball-dresses were taken home that had been brought fresh to audley. blundering old family chariots, with horses whose untrimmed fetlocks told of rougher work than even country roads, were brought round to the broad space before the grim oak door, and laden with chaotic heaps of womanly luggage. pretty rosy faces peeped out of carriage windows to smile the last farewell upon the group at the hall door, as the vehicle rattled and rumbled under the ivied archway. sir michael was in request everywhere. shaking hands with the young sportsmen; kissing the rosy-cheeked girls; sometimes even embracing portly matrons who came to thank him for their pleasant visit; everywhere genial, hospitable, generous, happy, and beloved, the baronet hurried from room to room, from the hall to the stables, from the stables to the court-yard, from the court-yard to the arched gateway to speed the parting guest. my lady's yellow curls flashed hither and thither like wandering gleams of sunshine on these busy days of farewell. her great blue eyes had a pretty, mournful look, in charming unison with the soft pressure of her little hand, and that friendly, though perhaps rather stereotyped speech, in which she told her visitors how she was so sorry to lose them, and how she didn't know what she should do till they came once more to enliven the court by their charming society. but however sorry my lady might be to lose her visitors, there was at least one guest whose society she was not deprived of. robert audley showed no intention of leaving his uncle's house. he had no professional duties, he said; figtree court was delightfully shady in hot weather, but there was a sharp corner round which the wind came in the summer months, armed with avenging rheumatisms and influenzas. everybody was so good to him at the court, that really he had no inclination to hurry away. sir michael had but one answer to this: "stay, my dear boy; stay, my dear bob, as long as ever you like. i have no son, and you stand to me in the place of one. make yourself agreeable to lucy, and make the court your home as long as you live." to which robert would merely reply by grasping his uncle's hand vehemently, and muttering something about "a jolly old prince." it was to be observed that there was sometimes a certain vague sadness in the young man's tone when he called sir michael "a jolly old prince;" some shadow of affectionate regret that brought a mist into robert's eyes, as he sat in a corner of the room looking thoughtfully at the white-bearded baronet. before the last of the young sportsmen departed, sir harry towers demanded and obtained an interview with miss alicia audley in the oak library�an interview in which considerable emotion was displayed by the stalwart young fox-hunter; so much emotion, indeed, and of such a genuine and honest character, that alicia fairly broke down as she told him she should forever esteem and respect him for his true and noble heart, but that he must never, never, unless he wished to cause her the most cruel distress, ask more from her than this esteem and respect. sir harry left the library by the french window opening into the pond-garden. he strolled into that very lime-walk which george talboys had compared to an avenue in a churchyard, and under the leafless trees fought the battle of his brave young heart. "what a fool i am to feel it like this!" he cried, stamping his foot upon the frosty ground. "i always knew it would be so; i always knew that she was a hundred times too good for me. god bless her! how nobly and tenderly she spoke; how beautiful she looked with the crimson blushes under her brown skin, and the tears in her big, gray eyes�almost as handsome as the day she took the sunk fence, and let me put the brush in her hat as we rode home! god bless her! i can get over anything as long as she doesn't care for that sneaking lawyer. but i couldn't stand that." that sneaking lawyer, by which appellation sir harry alluded to mr. robert audley, was standing in the hall, looking at a map of the midland counties, when alicia came out of the library, with red eyes, after her interview with the fox-hunting baronet. robert, who was short-sighted, had his eyes within half an inch of the surface of the map as the young lady approached him. "yes," he said, "norwich is in norfolk, and that fool, young vincent, said it was in herefordshire. ha, alicia, is that you?" he turned round so as to intercept miss audley on her way to the staircase. "yes," replied his cousin curtly, trying to pass him. "alicia, you have been crying." the young lady did not condescend to reply. "you have been crying, alicia. sir harry towers, of towers park, in the county of herts, has been making you an offer of his hand, eh?" "have you been listening at the door, mr. audley?" "i have not, miss audley. on principle, i object to listen, and in practice i believe it to be a very troublesome proceeding; but i am a barrister, miss alicia, and able to draw a conclusion by induction. do you know what inductive evidence is, miss audley?" "no," replied alicia, looking at her cousin as a handsome young panther might look at its daring tormentor. "i thought not. i dare say sir harry would ask if it was a new kind of horse-ball. i knew by induction that the baronet was going to make you an offer; first, because he came downstairs with his hair parted on the wrong side, and his face as pale as a tablecloth; secondly, because he couldn't eat any breakfast, and let his coffee go the wrong way; and, thirdly, because he asked for an interview with you before he left the court. well, how's it to be, alicia? do we marry the baronet, and is poor cousin bob to be the best man at the wedding?" "sir harry towers is a noble-hearted young man," said alicia, still trying to pass her cousin. "but do we accept him�yes or no? are we to be lady towers, with a superb estate in hertfordshire, summer quarters for our hunters, and a drag with outriders to drive us across to papa's place in essex? is it to be so, alicia, or not?" "what is that to you, mr. robert audley?" cried alicia, passionately. "what do you care what becomes of me, or whom i marry? if i married a chimney-sweep you'd only lift up your eyebrows and say, 'bless my soul, she was always eccentric.' i have refused sir harry towers; but when i think of his generous and unselfish affection, and compare it with the heartless, lazy, selfish, supercilious indifference of other men, i've a good mind to run after him and tell him�" "that you'll retract, and be my lady towers?" "yes." "then don't, alicia, don't," said robert audley, grasping his cousin's slender little wrist, and leading her up-stairs. "come into the drawing-room with me, alicia, my poor little cousin; my charming, impetuous, alarming little cousin. sit down here in this mullioned window, and let us talk seriously and leave off quarreling if we can." the cousins had the drawing-room all to themselves. sir michael was out, my lady in her own apartments, and poor sir harry towers walking up and down upon the gravel walk, darkened with the flickering shadows of the leafless branches in the cold winter sunshine. "my poor little alicia," said robert, as tenderly as if he had been addressing some spoiled child, "do you suppose that because people don't wear vinegar tops, or part their hair on the wrong side, or conduct themselves altogether after the manner of well-meaning maniacs, by way of proving the vehemence of their passion�do you suppose because of this, alicia audley, that they may not be just as sensible of the merits of a dear little warm-hearted and affectionate girl as ever their neighbors can be? life is such a very troublesome matter, when all is said and done, that it's as well even to take its blessings quietly. i don't make a great howling because i can get good cigars one door from the corner of chancery lane, and have a dear, good girl for my cousin; but i am not the less grateful to providence that it is so." alicia opened her gray eyes to their widest extent, looking her cousin full in the face with a bewildered stare. robert had picked up the ugliest and leanest of his attendant curs, and was placidly stroking the animal's ears. "is this all you have to say to me, robert?" asked miss audley, meekly. "well, yes, i think so," replied her cousin, after considerable deliberation. "i fancy that what i wanted to say was this�don't marry the fox-hunting baronet if you like anybody else better; for if you'll only be patient and take life easily, and try and reform yourself of banging doors, bouncing in and out rooms, talking of the stables, and riding across country, i've no doubt the person you prefer will make you a very excellent husband." "thank you, cousin," said miss audley, crimsoning with bright, indignant blushes up to the roots of her waving brown hair; "but as you may not know the person i prefer, i think you had better not take upon yourself to answer for him." robert pulled the dog's ears thoughtfully for some moments. "no, to be sure," he said, after a pause. "of course, if i don't know him�i thought i did." "did you?" exclaimed alicia; and opening the door with a violence that made her cousin shiver, she bounced out of the drawing-room. "i only said i thought i knew him," robert called after her; and, then, as he sunk into an easy-chair, he murmured thoughtfully: "such a nice girl, too, if she didn't bounce." so poor sir harry towers rode away from audley court, looking very crestfallen and dismal. he had very little pleasure in returning to the stately mansion, hidden among sheltering oaks and venerable beeches. the square, red brick house, gleaming at the end of a long arcade of leafless trees was to be forever desolate, he thought, since alicia would not come to be its mistress. a hundred improvements planned and thought of were dismissed from his mind as useless now. the hunter that jim the trainer was breaking in for a lady; the two pointer pups that were being reared for the next shooting season; the big black retriever that would have carried alicia's parasol; the pavilion in the garden, disused since his mother's death, but which he had meant to have restored for miss audley�all these things were now so much vanity and vexation of spirit. "what's the good of being rich if one has no one to help spend one's money?" said the young baronet. "one only grows a selfish beggar, and takes to drinking too much port. it's a hard thing that a girl can refuse a true heart and such stables as we've got at the park. it unsettles a man somehow." indeed, this unlooked for rejection had very much unsettled the few ideas which made up the small sum of the baronet's mind. he had been desperately in love with alicia ever since the last hunting season, when he had met her at the county ball. his passion, cherished through the slow monotony of a summer, had broken out afresh in the merry winter months, and the young man's mauvaise honte alone had delayed the offer of his hand. but he had never for a moment supposed that he would be refused; he was so used to the adulation of mothers who had daughters to marry, and of even the daughters themselves; he had been so accustomed to feel himself the leading personage in an assembly, although half the wits of the age had been there, and he could only say "haw, to be sure!" and "by jove�hum!" he had been so spoiled by the flatteries of bright eyes that looked, or seemed to look, the brighter when he drew near, that without being possessed of one shadow of personal vanity, he had yet come to think that he had only to make an offer to the prettiest girl in essex to behold himself immediately accepted. "yes," he would say complacently to some admiring satellite, "i know i'm a good match, and i know what makes the gals so civil. they're very pretty, and they're very friendly to a fellow; but i don't care about 'em. they're all alike�they can only drop their eyes and say, 'lor', sir harry, why do you call that curly black dog a retriever?' or 'oh sir harry, and did the poor mare really sprain her pastern shoulder-blade?' i haven't got much brains myself, i know," the baronet would add deprecatingly; "and i don't want a strong-minded woman, who writes books and wears green spectacles; but, hang it! i like a gal who knows what she's talking about." so when alicia said "no," or rather made that pretty speech about esteem and respect, which well-bred young ladies substitute for the obnoxious monosyllable, sir harry towers felt that the whole fabric of the future he had built so complacently was shivered into a heap of dingy ruins. sir michael grasped him warmly by the hand just before the young man mounted his horse in the court-yard. "i'm very sorry, towers," he said. "you're as good a fellow as ever breathed, and would have made my girl an excellent husband; but you know there's a cousin, and i think that�" "don't say that, sir michael," interrupted the fox-hunter, energetically. "i can get over anything but that. a fellow whose hand upon the curb weighs half a ton (why, he pulled the cavalier's mouth to pieces, sir, the day you let him ride the horse); a fellow who turns his collars down, and eats bread and marmalade! no, no, sir michael; it's a queer world, but i can't think that of miss audley. there must be some one in the background, sir; it can't be the cousin." sir michael shook his head as the rejected suitor rode away. "i don't know about that," he muttered. "bob's a good lad, and the girl might do worse; but he hangs back as if he didn't care for her. there's some mystery�there's some mystery!" the old baronet said this in that semi-thoughtful tone with which we speak of other people's affairs. the shadows of the early winter twilight, gathering thickest under the low oak ceiling of the hall, and the quaint curve of the arched doorway, fell darkly round his handsome head; but the light of his declining life, his beautiful and beloved young wife, was near him, and he could see no shadows when she was by. she came skipping through the hall to meet him, and, shaking her golden ringlets, buried her bright head on her husband's breast. "so the last of our visitors is gone, dear, and we're all alone," she said. "isn't that nice?" "yes, darling," he answered fondly, stroking her bright hair. "except mr. robert audley. how long is that nephew of yours going to stay here?" "as long as he likes, my pet; he's always welcome," said the baronet; and then, as if remembering himself, he added, tenderly: "but not unless his visit is agreeable to you, darling; not if his lazy habits, or his smoking, or his dogs, or anything about him is displeasing to you." lady audley pursed up her rosy lips and looked thoughtfully at the ground. "it isn't that," she said, hesitatingly. "mr. audley is a very agreeable young man, and a very honorable young man; but you know, sir michael, i'm rather a young aunt for such a nephew, and�" "and what, lucy?" asked the baronet, fiercely. "poor alicia is rather jealous of any attention mr. audley pays me, and�and�i think it would be better for her happiness if your nephew were to bring his visit to a close." "he shall go to-night, lucy," exclaimed sir michael. "i am a blind, neglectful fool not to have thought of this before. my lovely little darling, it was scarcely just to bob to expose the poor lad to your fascinations. i know him to be as good and true-hearted a fellow as ever breathed, but�but�he shall go tonight." "but you won't be too abrupt, dear? you won't be rude?" "rude! no, lucy. i left him smoking in the lime-walk. i'll go and tell him that he must get out of the house in an hour." so in that leafless avenue, under whose gloomy shade george talboys had stood on that thunderous evening before the day of his disappearance, sir michael audley told his nephew that the court was no home for him, and that my lady was too young and pretty to accept the attentions of a handsome nephew of eight-and-twenty. robert only shrugged his shoulders and elevated his thick, black eyebrows as sir michael delicately hinted all this. "i have been attentive to my lady," he said. "she interests me;" and then, with a change in his voice, and an emotion not common to him, he turned to the baronet, and grasping his hand, exclaimed, "god forbid, my dear uncle, that i should ever bring trouble upon such a noble heart as yours! god forbid that the slightest shadow of dishonor should ever fall upon your honored head�least of all through agency of mine." the young man uttered these few words in a broken and disjointed fashion in which sir michael had never heard him speak, before, and then turning away his head, fairly broke down. he left the court that night, but he did not go far. instead of taking the evening train for london, he went straight up to the little village of mount stanning, and walking into the neatly-kept inn, asked phoebe marks if he could be accommodated with apartments. chapter xvii. at the castle inn. the little sitting-room into which phoebe marks ushered the baronet's nephew was situated on the ground floor, and only separated by a lath-and-plaster partition from the little bar-parlor occupied by the innkeeper and his wife. it seemed as though the wise architect who had superintended the building of the castle inn had taken especial care that nothing but the frailest and most flimsy material should be used, and that the wind, having a special fancy for this unprotected spot, should have full play for the indulgence of its caprices. to this end pitiful woodwork had been used instead of solid masonry; rickety ceilings had been propped up by fragile rafters, and beams that threatened on every stormy night to fall upon the heads of those beneath them; doors whose specialty was never to be shut, yet always to be banging; windows constructed with a peculiar view to letting in the draft when they were shut, and keeping out the air when they were open. the hand of genius had devised this lonely country inn; and there was not an inch of woodwork, or trowelful of plaster employed in all the rickety construction that did not offer its own peculiar weak point to every assault of its indefatigable foe. robert looked about him with a feeble smile of resignation. it was a change, decidedly, from the luxurious comforts of audley court, and it was rather a strange fancy of the young barrister to prefer loitering at this dreary village hostelry to returning to his snug chambers in figtree court. but he had brought his lares and penates with him, in the shape of his german pipe, his tobacco canister, half a dozen french novels, and his two ill-conditioned, canine favorites, which sat shivering before the smoky little fire, barking shortly and sharply now and then, by way of hinting for some slight refreshment. while mr. robert audley contemplated his new quarters, phoebe marks summoned a little village lad who was in the habit of running errands for her, and taking him into the kitchen, gave him a tiny note, carefully folded and sealed. "you know audley court?" "yes, mum." "if you'll run there with this letter to-night, and see that it's put safely in lady audley's hands, i'll give you a shilling." "yes, mum." "you understand? ask to see my lady; you can say you've a message�not a note, mind�but a message from phoebe marks; and when you see her, give this into her own hand." "yes, mum." "you won't forget?" "no, mum." "then be off with you." the boy waited for no second bidding, but in another moment was scudding along the lonely high road, down the sharp descent that led to audley. phoebe marks went to the window, and looked out at the black figure of the lad hurrying through the dusky winter evening. "if there's any bad meaning in his coming here," she thought, "my lady will know of it in time, at any rate." phoebe herself brought the neatly arranged tea-tray, and the little covered dish of ham and eggs which had been prepared for this unlooked-for visitor. her pale hair was as smoothly braided, and her light gray dress fitted as precisely as of old. the same neutral tints pervaded her person and her dress; no showy rose-colored ribbons or rustling silk gown proclaimed the well-to-do innkeeper's wife. phoebe marks was a person who never lost her individuality. silent and self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no color from the outer world. robert looked at her thoughtfully as she spread the cloth, and drew the table nearer to the fireplace. "that," he thought, "is a woman who could keep a secret." the dogs looked rather suspiciously at the quiet figure of mrs. marks gliding softly about the room, from the teapot to the caddy, and from the caddy to the kettle singing on the hob. "will you pour out my tea for me, mrs. marks?" said robert, seating himself on a horsehair-covered arm-chair, which fitted him as tightly in every direction as if he had been measured for it. "you have come straight from the court, sir?" said phoebe, as she handed robert the sugar-basin. "yes; i only left my uncle's an hour ago." "and my lady, sir, was she quite well?" "yes, quite well." "as gay and light-hearted as ever, sir?" "as gay and light-hearted as ever." phoebe retired respectfully after having given mr. audley his tea, but as she stood with her hand upon the lock of the door he spoke again. "you knew lady audley when she was miss lucy graham, did you not?" he asked. "yes, sir. i lived at mrs. dawson's when my lady was governess there." "indeed! was she long in the surgeon's family?" "a year and a half, sir." "and she came from london?" "yes, sir." "and she was an orphan, i believe?" "yes, sir." "always as cheerful as she is now?" "always, sir." robert emptied his teacup and handed it to mrs. marks. their eyes met�a lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers. "this woman would be good in a witness-box," he thought; "it would take a clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination." he finished his second cup of tea, pushed away his plate, fed his dogs, and lighted his pipe, while phoebe carried off the tea-tray. the wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames. "there's a triangular draught from those two windows and the door that scarcely adds to the comfort of this apartment," murmured robert; "and there certainly are pleasantér sensations than that of standing up to one's knees in cold water." he poked the fire, patted his dogs, put on his great coat, rolled a rickety old sofa close to the hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway rug, and stretching himself at full length upon the narrow horsehair cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the bluish-gray wreaths curling upward to the dingy ceiling. "no," he murmured, again; "that is a woman who can keep a secret. a counsel for the prosecution could get very little out of her." i have said that the bar-parlor was only separated from the sitting-room occupied by robert by a lath-and-plaster partition. the young barrister could hear the two or three village tradesmen and a couple of farmers laughing and talking round the bar, while luke marks served them from his stock of liquors. very often he could even hear their words, especially the landlord's, for he spoke in a coarse, loud voice, and had a more boastful manner than any of his customers. "the man is a fool," said robert, as he laid down his pipe. "i'll go and talk to him by-and-by." he waited till the few visitors to the castle had dropped away one by one, and when luke marks had bolted the door upon the last of his customers, he strolled quietly into the bar-parlor, where the landlord was seated with his wife. phoebe was busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim work-box, with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed place. she was darning the coarse gray stockings that adorned her husband's awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had been my lady's delicate silken hose. i say that she took no color from external things, and that the vague air of refinement that pervaded her nature clung to her as closely in the society of her boorish husband at the castle inn as in lady audley's boudoir at the court. she looked up suddenly as robert entered the bar-parlor. there was some shade of vexation in her pale gray eyes, which changed to an expression of anxiety�nay, rather of almost terror�as she glanced from mr. audley to luke marks. "i have come in for a few minutes' chat before i go to bed," said robert, settling himself very comfortably before the cheerful fire. "would you object to a cigar, mrs. marks? i mean, of course, to my smoking one," he added, explanatorily. "not at all, sir." "it would be a good 'un her objectin' to a bit o' 'bacca," growled mr. marks, "when me and the customers smokes all day." robert lighted his cigar with a gilt-paper match of phoebe's making that adorned the chimney-piece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before he spoke. "i want you to tell me all about mount stanning, mr. marks," he said, presently. "then that's pretty soon told," replied luke, with a harsh, grating laugh. "of all the dull holes as ever a man set foot in, this is about the dullest. not that the business don't pay pretty tidy; i don't complain of that; but i should ha' liked a public at chelmsford, or brentwood, or romford, or some place where there's a bit of life in the streets; and i might have had it," he added, discontentedly, "if folks hadn't been so precious stingy." as her husband muttered this complaint in a grumbling undertone, phoebe looked up from her work and spoke to him. "we forgot the brew-house door, luke," she said. "will you come with me and help me put up the bar?" "the brew-house door can bide for to-night," said mr. marks; "i ain't agoin' to move now. i've seated myself for a comfortable smoke." he took a long clay pipe from a corner of the fender as he spoke, and began to fill it deliberately. "i don't feel easy about that brew-house door, luke," remonstrated his wife; "there are always tramps about, and they can get in easily when the bar isn't up." "go and put the bar up yourself, then, can't you?" answered mr. marks. "it's too heavy for me to lift." "then let it bide, if you're too fine a lady to see to it yourself. you're very anxious all of a sudden about this here brew-house door. i suppose you don't want me to open my mouth to this here gent, that's about it. oh, you needn't frown at me to stop my speaking! you're always putting in your tongue and clipping off my words before i've half said 'em; but i won't stand it." "do you hear? i won't stand it!" phoebe marks shrugged her shoulders, folded her work, shut her work-box, and crossing her hands in her lap, sat with her gray eyes fixed upon her husband's bull-like face. "then you don't particularly care to live at mount stanning?" said robert, politely, as if anxious to change the conversation. "no, i don't," answered luke; "and i don't care who knows it; and, as i said before, if folks hadn't been so precious stingy, i might have had a public in a thrivin' market town, instead of this tumble-down old place, where a man has his hair blowed off his head on a windy day. what's fifty pound, or what's a hundred pound�" "luke! luke!" "no, you're not goin' to stop my mouth with all your 'luke, lukes!'" answered mr. marks to his wife's remonstrance. "i say again, what's a hundred pound?" "no," answered robert audley, with wonderful distinctness, and addressing his words to luke marks, but fixing his eyes upon phoebe's anxious face. "what, indeed, is a hundred pounds to a man possessed of the power which you hold, or rather which your wife holds, over the person in question." phoebe's face, at all times almost colorless, seemed scarcely capable of growing paler; but as her eyelids drooped under robert audley's searching glance, a visible change came over the pallid hues of her complexion. "a quarter to twelve," said robert, looking at his watch. "late hours for such a quiet village as mount stanning. good-night, my worthy host. good-night, mrs. marks. you needn't send me my shaving water till nine o'clock to-morrow morning." chapter xviii. robert receives a visitor whom he had scarcely expected. eleven o'clock struck the next morning, and found mr. robert audley still lounging over the well ordered little breakfast table, with one of his dogs at each side of his arm-chair, regarding him with watchful eyes and opened mouths, awaiting the expected morsel of ham or toast. robert had a county paper on his knees, and made a feeble effort now and then to read the first page, which was filled with advertisements of farming stock, quack medicines, and other interesting matter. the weather had changed, and the snow, which had for the last few days been looming blackly in the frosty sky, fell in great feathery flakes against the windows, and lay piled in the little bit of garden-ground without. the long, lonely road leading toward audley seemed untrodden by a footstep, as robert audley looked out at the wintry landscape. "lively," he said, "for a man used to the fascinations of temple bar." as he watched the snow-flakes falling every moment thicker and faster upon the lonely road, he was surprised by seeing a brougham driving slowly up the hill. "i wonder what unhappy wretch has too restless a spirit to stop at home on such a morning as this," he muttered, as he returned to the arm-chair by the fire. he had only reseated himself a few moments when phoebe marks entered the room to announce lady audley. "lady audley! pray beg her to come in," said robert; and then, as phoebe left the room to usher in this unexpected visitor, he muttered between his teeth�"a false move, my lady, and one i never looked for from you." lucy audley was radiant on this cold and snowy january morning. other people's noses are rudely assailed by the sharp fingers of the grim ice-king, but not my lady's; other people's lips turn pale and blue with the chilling influence of the bitter weather, but my lady's pretty little rosebud of a mouth retained its brightest coloring and cheeriest freshness. she was wrapped in the very sables which robert audley had brought from russia, and carried a muff that the young man thought seemed almost as big as herself. she looked a childish, helpless, babyfied little creature; and robert looked down upon her with some touch of pity in his eyes, as she came up to the hearth by which he was standing, and warmed her tiny gloved hands at the blaze. "what a morning, mr. audley!" she said, "what a morning!" "yes, indeed! why did you come out in such weather?" "because i wished to see you�particularly." "indeed!" "yes," said my lady, with an air of considerable embarrassment, playing with the button of her glove, and almost wrenching it off in her restlessness�"yes, mr. audley, i felt that you had not been well treated; that�that you had, in short, reason to complain; and that an apology was due to you." "i do not wish for any apology, lady audley." "but you are entitled to one," answered my lady, quietly. "why, my dear robert, should we be so ceremonious toward each other? you were very comfortable at audley; we were very glad to have you there; but, my dear, silly husband must needs take it into his foolish head that it is dangerous for his poor little wife's peace of mind to have a nephew of eight or nine and twenty smoking his cigars in her boudoir, and, behold! our pleasant little family circle is broken up." lucy audley spoke with that peculiar childish vivacity which seemed so natural to her, robert looking down almost sadly at her bright, animated face. "lady audley," he said, "heaven forbid that either you or i should ever bring grief or dishonor upon my uncle's generous heart! better, perhaps, that i should be out of the house�better, perhaps, that i had never entered it!" my lady had been looking at the fire while her nephew spoke, but at his last words she lifted her head suddenly, and looked him full in the face with a wondering expression�an earnest, questioning gaze, whose full meaning the young barrister understood. "oh, pray do not be alarmed, lady audley," he said, gravely. "you have no sentimental nonsense, no silly infatuation, borrowed from balzac or dumas fils, to fear from me. the benchers of the inner temple will tell you that robert audley is troubled with none of the epidemics whose outward signs are turn-down collars and byronic neckties. i say that i wish i had never entered my uncle's house during the last year; but i say it with a far more solemn meaning than any sentimental one." my lady shrugged her shoulders. "if you insist on talking in enigmas, mr. audley," she said, "you must forgive a poor little woman if she declines to answer them." robert made no reply to this speech. "but tell me," said my lady, with an entire change of tone, "what could have induced you to come up to this dismal place?" "curiosity." "curiosity?" "yes; i felt an interest in that bull-necked man, with the dark-red hair and wicked gray eyes. a dangerous man, my lady�a man in whose power i should not like to be." a sudden change came over lady audley's face; the pretty, roseate flush faded out from her cheeks, and left them waxen white, and angry flashes lightened in her blue eyes. "what have i done to you, robert audley," she cried, passionately�"what have i done to you that you should hate me so?" he answered her very gravely: "i had a friend, lady audley, whom i loved very dearly, and since i have lost him i fear that my feelings toward other people are strangely embittered." "you mean the mr. talboys who went to australia?" "yes, i mean the mr. talboys who i was told set out for liverpool with the idea of going to australia." "and you do not believe in his having sailed for australia?" "i do not." "but why not?" "forgive me, lady audley, if i decline to answer that question." "as you please," she said, carelessly. "a week after my friend disappeared," continued robert, "i posted an advertisement to the sydney and melbourne papers, calling upon him if he was in either city when the advertisement appeared, to write and tell me of his whereabouts, and also calling on any one who had met him, either in the colonies or on the voyage out, to give me any information respecting him. george talboys left essex, or disappeared from essex, on the 6th of september last. i ought to receive some answer to this advertisement by the end of this month. to-day is the 27th; the time draws very near." "and if you receive no answer?" asked lady audley. "if i receive no answer i shall think that my fears have been not unfounded, and i shall do my best to act." "what do you mean by that?" "ah, lady audley, you remind me how very powerless i am in this matter. my friend might have been made away with in this very inn, and i might stay here for a twelvemonth, and go away at the last as ignorant of his fate as if i had never crossed the threshold. what do we know of the mysteries that may hang about the houses we enter? if i were to go to-morrow into that commonplace, plebeian, eight-roomed house in which maria manning and her husband murdered their guest, i should have no awful prescience of that bygone horror. foul deeds have been done under the most hospitable roofs; terrible crimes have been committed amid the fairest scenes, and have left no trace upon the spot where they were done. i do not believe in mandrake, or in bloodstains that no time can efface. i believe rather that we may walk unconsciously in an atmosphere of crime, and breathe none the less freely. i believe that we may look into the smiling face of a murderer, and admire its tranquil beauty." my lady laughed at robert's earnestness. "you seem to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects," she said, rather scornfully; "you ought to have been a detective police officer." "i sometimes think i should have been a good one." "why?" "because i am patient." "but to return to mr. george talboys, whom we lost sight of in your eloquent discussion. what if you receive no answer to your advertisements?" "i shall then consider myself justified in concluding my friend is dead." "yes, and then�?" "i shall examine the effects he left at my chambers." "indeed! and what are they? coats, waistcoats, varnished boots, and meerschaum pipes, i suppose," said lady audley, laughing. "no; letters�letters from his friends, his old schoolfellows, his father, his brother officers." "yes?" "letters, too, from his wife." my lady was silent for some few moments, looking thoughtfully at the fire. "have you ever seen any of the letters written by the late mrs. talboys?" she asked presently. "never. poor soul! her letters are not likely to throw much light upon my friend's fate. i dare say she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. there are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as yours, lady audley." "ah, you know my hand, of course." "yes, i know it very well indeed." my lady warmed her hands once more, and then taking up the big muff which she had laid aside upon a chair, prepared to take her departure. "you have refused to accept my apology, mr. audley," she said; "but i trust you are not the less assured of my feelings toward you." "perfectly assured, lady audley." "then good-by, and let me recommend you not to stay long in this miserable draughty place, if you do not wish to take rheumatism back to figtree court." "i shall return to town to-morrow morning to see after my letters." "then once more good-by." she held out her hand; he took it loosely in his own. it seemed such a feeble little hand that he might have crushed it in his strong grasp, had he chosen to be so pitiless. he attended her to her carriage, and watched it as it drove off, not toward audley, but in the direction of brentwood, which was about six miles from mount stanning. about an hour and a half after this, as robert stood at the door of the inn, smoking a cigar and watching the snow falling in the whitened fields opposite, he saw the brougham drive back, empty this time, to the door of the inn. "have you taken lady audley back to the court?" he said to the coachman, who had stopped to call for a mug of hot spiced ale. "no, sir; i've just come from the brentwood station. my lady started for london by the 12.40 train." "for town?" "yes, sir." "my lady gone to london!" said robert, as he returned to the little sitting-room. "then i'll follow her by the next train; and if i'm not very much mistaken, i know where to find her." he packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, fastened his dogs together with a couple of leathern collars and a chain, and stepped into the rumbling fly kept by the castle inn for the convenience of mount stanning. he caught an express that left brentwood at three o'clock, and settled himself comfortably in a corner of an empty first-class carriage, coiled up in a couple of railway rugs, and smoking a cigar in mild defiance of the authorities. chapter xix. the writing in the book. it was exactly five minutes past four as mr. robert audley stepped out upon the platform at shoreditch, and waited placidly until such time as his dogs and his portmanteau should be delivered up to the attendant porter who had called his cab, and undertaken the general conduct of his affairs, with that disinterested courtesy which does such infinite credit to a class of servitors who are forbidden to accept the tribute of a grateful public. robert audley waited with consummate patience for a considerable time; but as the express was generally a long train, and as there were a great many passengers from norfolk carrying guns and pointers, and other paraphernalia of a critical description, it took a long while to make matters agreeable to all claimants, and even the barrister's seraphic indifference to mundane affairs nearly gave way. "perhaps, when that gentleman who is making such a noise about a pointer with liver-colored spots, has discovered the particular pointer and spots that he wants�which happy combination of events scarcely seems likely to arrive�they'll give me my luggage and let me go. the designing wretches knew at a glance that i was born to be imposed upon; and that if they were to trample the life out of me upon this very platform, i should never have the spirit to bring an action against the company." suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he left the porter to struggle for the custody of his goods, and walked round to the other side of the station. he heard a bell ring, and looking at the clock, had remembered that the down train for colchester started at this time. he had learned what it was to have an earnest purpose since the disappearance of george talboys; and he reached the opposite platform in time to see the passengers take their seats. there was one lady who had evidently only just arrived at the station; for she hurried on to the platform at the very moment that robert approached the train, and almost ran against that gentleman in her haste and excitement. "i beg your pardon," she began, ceremoniously; then raising her eyes from mr. audley's waistcoat, which was about on a level with her pretty face, she exclaimed, "robert, you in london already?" "yes, lady audley; you were quite right; the castle inn is a dismal place, and�" "you got tired of it�i knew you would. please open the carriage door for me: the train will start in two minutes." robert audley was looking at his uncle's wife with rather a puzzled expression of countenance. "what does it mean?" he thought. "she is altogether a different being to the wretched, helpless creature who dropped her mask for a moment, and looked at me with her own pitiful face, in the little room at mount stanning, four hours ago. what has happened to cause the change?" he opened the door for her while he thought this, and helped her to settle herself in her seat, spreading her furs over her knees, and arranging the huge velvet mantle in which her slender little figure was almost hidden. "thank you very much; how good you are to me," she said, as he did this. "you will think me very foolish to travel upon such a day, without my dear darling's knowledge too; but i went up to town to settle a very terrific milliner's bill, which i did not wish my best of husbands to see; for, indulgent as he is, he might think me extravagant; and i cannot bear to suffer even in his thoughts." "heaven forbid that you ever should, lady audley," robert said, gravely. she looked at him for a moment with a smile, which had something defiant in its brightness. "heaven forbid it, indeed," she murmured. "i don't think i ever shall." the second bell rung, and the train moved as she spoke. the last robert audley saw of her was that bright defiant smile. "whatever object brought her to london has been successfully accomplished," he thought. "has she baffled me by some piece of womanly jugglery? am i never to get any nearer to the truth, but am i to be tormented all my life by vague doubts, and wretched suspicions, which may grow upon me till i become a monomaniac? why did she come to london?" he was still mentally asking himself this question as he ascended the stairs in figtree court, with one of his dogs under each arm, and his railway rugs over his shoulder. he found his chambers in their accustomed order. the geraniums had been carefully tended, and the canaries had retired for the night under cover of a square of green baize, testifying to the care of honest mrs. maloney. robert cast a hurried glance round the sitting-room; then setting down the dogs upon the hearth-rug, he walked straight into the little inner chamber which served as his dressing-room. it was in this room that he kept disused portmanteaus, battered japanned cases, and other lumber; and it was in this room that george talboys had left his luggage. robert lifted a portmanteau from the top of a large trunk, and kneeling down before it with a lighted candle in his hand, carefully examined the lock. to all appearance it was exactly in the same condition in which george had left it, when he laid his mourning garments aside and placed them in this shabby repository with all other memorials of his dead wife. robert brushed his coat sleeve across the worn, leather-covered lid, upon which the initials g. t. were inscribed with big brass-headed nails; but mrs. maloney, the laundress, must have been the most precise of housewives, for neither the portmanteau nor the trunk were dusty. mr. audley dispatched a boy to fetch his irish attendant, and paced up and down his sitting-room waiting anxiously for her arrival. she came in about ten minutes, and, after expressing her delight in the return of "the master," humbly awaited his orders. "i only sent for you to ask if anybody has been here; that is to say, if anybody has applied to you for the key of my rooms to-day�any lady?" "lady? no, indeed, yer honor; there's been no lady for the kay; barrin' it's the blacksmith." "the blacksmith!" "yes; the blacksmith your honor ordered to come to-day." "i order a blacksmith!" exclaimed robert. "i left a bottle of french brandy in the cupboard," he thought, "and mrs. m. has been evidently enjoying herself." "sure, and the blacksmith your honor tould to see to the locks," replied mrs. maloney. "it's him that lives down in one of the little streets by the bridge," she added, giving a very lucid description of the man's whereabouts. robert lifted his eyebrows in mute despair. "if you'll sit down and compose yourself, mrs. m.," he said�he abbreviated her name thus on principle, for the avoidance of unnecessary labor�"perhaps we shall be able by and by to understand each other. you say a blacksmith has been here?" "sure and i did, sir." "to-day?" "quite correct, sir." step by step mr. audley elicited the following information. a locksmith had called upon mrs. maloney that afternoon at three o'clock, and had asked for the key of mr. audley's chambers, in order that he might look to the locks of the doors, which he stated were all out of repair. he declared that he was acting upon mr. audley's own orders, conveyed to him by a letter from the country, where the gentleman was spending his christmas. mrs. maloney, believing in the truth of this statement, had admitted the man to the chambers, where he stayed about half an hour. "but you were with him while he examined the locks, i suppose?" mr. audley asked. "sure i was, sir, in and out, as you may say, all the time, for i've been cleaning the stairs this afternoon, and i took the opportunity to begin my scouring while the man was at work." "oh, you were in and out all the time. if you could conveniently give me a plain answer, mrs. m., i should be glad to know what was the longest time that you were out while the locksmith was in my chambers?" but mrs. maloney could not give a plain answer. it might have been ten minutes; though she didn't think it was as much. it might have been a quarter of an hour; but she was sure it wasn't more. it didn't seem to her more than five minutes, but "thim stairs, your honor;" and here she rambled off into a disquisition upon the scouring of stairs in general, and the stairs outside robert's chambers in particular. mr. audley sighed the weary sigh of mournful resignation. "never mind, mrs. m.," he said; "the locksmith had plenty of time to do anything he wanted to do, i dare say, without your being any the wiser." mrs. maloney stared at her employer with mingled surprise and alarm. "sure, there wasn't anything for him to stale, your honor, barrin' the birds and the geran'ums, and�" "no, no, i understand. there, that'll do, mrs. m. tell me where the man lives, and i'll go and see him." "but you'll have a bit of dinner first, sir?" "i'll go and see the locksmith before i have my dinner." he took up his hat as he announced his determination, and walked toward the door. "the man's address, mrs. m?" the irishwoman directed him to a small street at the back of st. bride's church, and thither mr. robert audley quietly strolled, through the miry slush which simple londoners call snow. he found the locksmith, and, at the sacrifice of the crown of his hat, contrived to enter the low, narrow doorway of a little open shop. a jet of gas was flaring in the unglazed window, and there was a very merry party in the little room behind the shop; but no one responded to robert's "hulloa!" the reason of this was sufficiently obvious. the merry party was so much absorbed in its own merriment as to be deaf to all commonplace summonses from the outer world; and it was only when robert, advancing further into the cavernous little shop, made so bold as to open the half-glass door which separated him from the merry-makers, that he succeeded in obtaining their attention. a very jovial picture of the teniers school was presented to mr. robert audley upon the opening of this door. the locksmith, with his wife and family, and two or three droppers-in of the female sex, were clustered about a table, which was adorned by two bottles; not vulgar bottles of that colorless extract of the juniper berry, much affected by the masses; but of bona fide port and sherry�fiercely strong sherry, which left a fiery taste in the mouth, nut-brown sherry�rather unnaturally brown, if anything�and fine old port; no sickly vintage, faded and thin from excessive age: but a rich, full-bodied wine, sweet and substantial and high colored. the locksmith was speaking as robert audley opened the door. "and with that," he said, "she walked off, as graceful as you please." the whole party was thrown into confusion by the appearance of mr. audley, but it was to be observed that the locksmith was more embarrassed than his companions. he set down his glass so hurriedly, that he spilt his wine, and wiped his mouth nervously with the back of his dirty hand. "you called at my chambers to-day," robert said, quietly. "don't let me disturb you, ladies." this to the droppers-in. "you called at my chambers to-day, mr. white, and�" the man interrupted him. "i hope, sir, you will be so good as to look over the mistake," he stammered. "i'm sure, sir, i'm very sorry it should have occurred. i was sent for to another gentleman's chambers, mr. aulwin, in garden court; and the name slipped my memory; and havin' done odd jobs before for you, i thought it must be you as wanted me to-day; and i called at mrs. maloney's for the key accordin'; but directly i see the locks in your chambers, i says to myself, the gentleman's locks ain't out of order; the gentleman don't want all his locks repaired." "but you stayed half an hour." "yes, sir; for there was one lock out of order�the door nighest the staircase�and i took it off and cleaned it and put it on again. i won't charge you nothin' for the job, and i hope as you'll be as good as to look over the mistake as has occurred, which i've been in business thirteen years come july, and�" "nothing of this kind ever happened before, i suppose," said robert, gravely. "no, it's altogether a singular kind of business, not likely to come about every day. you've been enjoying yourself this evening i see, mr. white. you've done a good stroke of work to-day, i'll wager�made a lucky hit, and you're what you call 'standing treat,' eh?" robert audley looked straight into the man's dingy face as he spoke. the locksmith was not a bad-looking fellow, and there was nothing that he need have been ashamed of in his face, except the dirt, and that, as hamlet's mother says, "is common;" but in spite of this, mr. white's eyelids dropped under the young barrister's calm scrutiny, and he stammered out some apologetic sort of speech about his "missus," and his missus' neighbors, and port wine and sherry wine, with as much confusion as if he, an honest mechanic in a free country, were called upon to excuse himself to robert audley for being caught in the act of enjoying himself in his own parlor. robert cut him short with a careless nod. "pray don't apologize," he said; "i like to see people enjoy themselves. good-night, mr. white good-night, ladies." he lifted his hat to "the missus," and the missus' neighbors, who were much fascinated by his easy manner and his handsome face, and left the shop. "and so," he muttered to himself as he went back to his chambers, "'with that she walked off as graceful as you please.'who was it that walked off; and what was the story which the locksmith was telling when i interrupted him at that sentence? oh, george talboys, george talboys, am i ever to come any nearer to the secret of your fate? am i coming nearer to it now, slowly but surely? is the radius to grow narrower day by day until it draws a dark circle around the home of those i love? how is it all to end?" he sighed wearily as he walked slowly back across the flagged quadrangles in the temple to his own solitary chambers. mrs. maloney had prepared for him that bachelor's dinner, which, however excellent and nutritious in itself, has no claim to the special charm of novelty. she had cooked for him a mutton-chop, which was soddening itself between two plates upon the little table near the fire. robert audley sighed as he sat down to the familiar meal, remembering his uncle's cook with a fond, regretful sorrow. "her cutlets a la maintenon made mutton seem more than mutton; a sublimated meat that could scarcely have grown upon any mundane sheep," he murmured sentimentally, "and mrs. maloney's chops are apt to be tough; but such is life�what does it matter?" he pushed away his plate impatiently after eating a few mouthfuls. "i have never eaten a good dinner at this table since i lost george talboys," he said. "the place seems as gloomy as if the poor fellow had died in the next room, and had never been taken away to be buried. how long ago that september afternoon appears as i look back at it�that september afternoon upon which i parted with him alive and well; and lost him as suddenly and unaccountably as if a trap-door had opened in the solid earth and let him through to the antipodes!" mr. audley rose from the dinner-table and walked over to the cabinet in which he kept the document he had drawn up relating to george talboys. he unlocked the doors of his cabinet, took the paper from the pigeon-hole marked important, and seated himself at his desk to write. he added several paragraphs to those in the document, numbering the fresh paragraphs as carefully as he had numbered the old ones. "heaven help us all," he muttered once; "is this paper with which no attorney has had any hand to be my first brief?" he wrote for about half an hour, then replaced the document in the pigeon-hole, and locked the cabinet. when he had done this, he took a candle in his hand, and went into the room in which were his own portmanteaus and the trunk belonging to george talboys. he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and tried them one by one. the lock of the shabby old trunk was a common one, and at the fifth trial the key turned easily. "there'd be no need for any one to break open such a lock as this," muttered robert, as he lifted the lid of the trunk. he slowly emptied it of its contents, taking out each article separately, and laying it carefully upon a chair by his side. he handled the things with a respectful tenderness, as if he had been lifting the dead body of his lost friend. one by one he laid the neatly folded mourning garments on the chair. he found old meerschaum pipes, and soiled, crumpled gloves that had once been fresh from the parisian maker; old play-bills, whose biggest letters spelled the names of actors who were dead and gone; old perfume-bottles, fragrant with essences, whose fashion had passed away; neat little parcels of letters, each carefully labeled with the name of the writer; fragments of old newspapers; and a little heap of shabby, dilapidated books, each of which tumbled into as many pieces as a pack of cards in robert's incautious hand. but among all the mass of worthless litter, each scrap of which had once had its separate purpose, robert audley looked in vain for that which he sought�the packet of letters written to the missing man by his dead wife helen talboys. he had heard george allude more than once to the existence of these letters. he had seen him once sorting the faded papers with a reverent hand; and he had seen him replace them, carefully tied together with a faded ribbon which had once been helen's, among the mourning garments in the trunk. whether he had afterward removed them, or whether they had been removed since his disappearance by some other hand, it was not easy to say; but they were gone. robert audley sighed wearily as he replaced the things in the empty box, one by one, as he had taken them out. he stopped with the little heap of tattered books in his hand, and hesitated for a moment. "i will keep these out," he muttered, "there may be something to help me in one of them." george's library was no very brilliant collection of literature. there was an old greek testament and the eton latin grammar; a french pamphlet on the cavalry sword-exercise; an odd volume of tom jones with one half of its stiff leather cover hanging to it by a thread; byron's don juan, printed in a murderous type, which must have been invented for the special advantage of oculists and opticians; and a fat book in a faded gilt and crimson cover. robert audley locked the trunk and took the books under his arm. mrs. maloney was clearing away the remains of his repast when he returned to the sitting-room. he put the books aside on a little table in a corner of the fire-place, and waited patiently while the laundress finished her work. he was in no humor even for his meerschaum consoler; the yellow-papered fictions on the shelves above his head seemed stale and profitless�he opened a volume of balzac, but his uncle's wife's golden curls danced and trembled in a glittering haze, alike upon the metaphysical diablerie of the peau de chagrin, and the hideous social horrors of "cousine bette." the volume dropped from his hand, and he sat wearily watching mrs. maloney as she swept up the ashes on the hearth, replenished the fire, drew the dark damask curtains, supplied the simple wants of the canaries, and put on her bonnet in the disused clerk's office, prior to bidding her employer good-night. as the door closed upon the irishwoman, he arose impatiently from his chair, and paced up and down the room. "why do i go on with this," he said, "when i know that it is leading me, step by step, day by day, hour by hour, nearer to that conclusion which, of all others, i should avoid? am i tied to a wheel, and must i go with its every revolution, let it take me where it will? or can i sit down here to-night and say i have done my duty to my missing friend, i have searched for him patiently, but i have searched in vain? should i be justified in doing this? should i be justified in letting the chain which i have slowly put together, link by link, drop at this point, or must i go on adding fresh links to that fatal chain until the last rivet drops into its place and the circle is complete? i think, and i believe, that i shall never see my friend's face again; and that no exertion of mine can ever be of any benefit to him. in plainer, crueler words i believe him to be dead. am i bound to discover how and where he died? or being, as i think, on the road to that discovery, shall i do a wrong to the memory of george talboys by turning back or stopping still? what am i to do?�what am i to do?" he rested his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands. the one purpose which had slowly grown up in his careless nature until it had become powerful enough to work a change in that very nature, made him what he had never been before�a christian; conscious of his own weakness; anxious to keep to the strict line of duty; fearful to swerve from the conscientious discharge of the strange task that had been forced upon him; and reliant on a stronger hand than his own to point the way which he was to go. perhaps he uttered his first earnest prayer that night, seated by his lonely fireside, thinking of george talboys. when he raised his head from that long and silent revery, his eyes had a bright, determined glance, and every feature in his face seemed to wear a new expression. "justice to the dead first," he said; "mercy to the living afterward." he wheeled his easy-chair to the table, trimmed the lamp, and settled himself to the examination of the books. he took them up, one by one, and looked carefully through them, first looking at the page on which the name of the owner is ordinarily written, and then searching for any scrap of paper which might have been left within the leaves. on the first page of the eton latin grammar the name of master talboys was written in a prim, scholastic hand; the french pamphlet had a careless g.t. scrawled on the cover in pencil, in george's big, slovenly calligraphy: the tom jones had evidently been bought at a book-stall, and bore an inscription, dated march 14th, 1788, setting forth that the book was a tribute of respect to mr. thos. scrowton, from his obedient servant, james anderley; the don juan and the testament were blank. robert audley breathed more freely; he had arrived at the last but one of the books without any result whatever, and there only remained the fat gilt-and-crimson-bound volume to be examined before his task was finished. it was an annual of the year 1845. the copper-plate engravings of lovely ladies, who had flourished in that day, were yellow and spotted with mildew; the costumes grotesque and outlandish; the simpering beauties faded and commonplace. even the little clusters of verses (in which the poet's feeble candle shed its sickly light upon the obscurities of the artist's meaning) had an old-fashioned twang; like music on a lyre, whose strings are slackened by the damps of time. robert audley did not stop to read any of the mild productions. he ran rapidly through the leaves, looking for any scrap of writing or fragment of a letter which might have been used to mark a place. he found nothing but a bright ring of golden hair, of that glittering hue which is so rarely seen except upon the head of a child�a sunny lock, which curled as naturally as the tendril of a vine; and was very opposite in texture, if not different in hue, to the soft, smooth tresses which the landlady at ventnor had given to george talboys after his wife's death. robert audley suspended his examination of the book, and folded this yellow lock in a sheet of letter paper, which he sealed with his signet-ring, and laid aside, with the memorandum about george talboys and alicia's letter, in the pigeon-hole marked important. he was going to replace the fat annual among the other books, when he discovered that the two blank leaves at the beginning were stuck together. he was so determined to prosecute his search to the very uttermost, that he took the trouble to part these leaves with the sharp end of his paper-knife, and he was rewarded for his perseverance by finding an inscription upon one of them. this inscription was in three parts, and in three different hands. the first paragraph was dated as far back as the year in which the annual had been published, and set forth that the book was the property of a certain miss elizabeth ann bince, who had obtained the precious volume as a reward for habits of order, and for obedience to the authorities of camford house seminary, torquay. the second paragraph was dated five years later, and was in the handwriting of miss bince herself, who presented the book, as a mark of undying affection and unfading esteem (miss bince was evidently of a romantic temperament) to her beloved friend, helen maldon. the third paragraph was dated september, 1853, and was in the hand of helen maldon, who gave the annual to george talboys; and it was at the sight of this third paragraph that mr. robert audley's face changed from its natural hue to a sickly, leaden pallor. "i thought it would be so," said the young man, shutting the book with a weary sigh. "god knows i was prepared for the worst, and the worst has come. i can understand all now. my next visit must be to southampton. i must place the boy in better hands." chapter xx. mrs. plowson. among the packet of letters which robert audley had found in george's trunk, there was one labeled with the name of the missing man's father�the father, who had never been too indulgent a friend to his younger son, and who had gladly availed himself of the excuse afforded by george's imprudent marriage to abandon the young man to his own resources. robert audley had never seen mr. harcourt talboys; but george's careless talk of his father had given his friend some notion of that gentleman's character. he had written to mr. talboys immediately after the disappearance of george, carefully wording his letter, which vaguely hinted at the writer's fear of some foul play in the mysterious business; and, after the lapse of several weeks, he had received a formal epistle, in which mr. harcourt talboys expressly declared that he had washed his hands of all responsibility in his son george's affairs upon the young man's wedding-day; and that his absurd disappearance was only in character with his preposterous marriage. the writer of this fatherly letter added in a postscript that if george talboys had any low design of alarming his friends by this pretended disappearance, and thereby playing on their feelings with a view to pecuniary advantage, he was most egregiously deceived in the character of those persons with whom he had to deal. robert audley had answered this letter by a few indignant lines, informing mr. talboys that his son was scarcely likely to hide himself for the furtherance of any deep-laid design on the pockets of his relatives, as he had left twenty thousand pounds in his bankers' hands at the time of his disappearance. after dispatching this letter, robert had abandoned all thought of assistance from the man who, in the natural course of things, should have been most interested in george's fate; but now that he found himself advancing every day some step nearer to the end that lay so darkly before him, his mind reverted to this heartlessly indifferent mr. harcourt talboys. "i will run into dorsetshire after i leave southampton," he said, "and see this man. if he is content to let his son's fate rest a dark and cruel mystery to all who knew him�if he is content to go down to his grave uncertain to the last of this poor fellow's end�why should i try to unravel the tangled skein, to fit the pieces of the terrible puzzle, and gather together the stray fragments which, when collected, may make such a hideous whole? i will go to him and lay my darkest doubts freely before him. it will be for him to say what i am to do." robert audley started by an early express for southampton. the snow lay thick and white upon the pleasant country through which he went; and the young barrister had wrapped himself in so many comforters and railway rugs as to appear a perambulating mass of woollen goods, rather than a living member of a learned profession. he looked gloomily out of the misty window, opaque with the breath of himself and an elderly indian officer, who was his only companion, and watched the fleeting landscape, which had a certain phantom-like appearance in its shroud of snow. he wrapped himself in the vast folds of his railway rug, with a peevish shiver, and felt inclined to quarrel with the destiny which compelled him to travel by an early train upon a pitiless winter's day. "who would have thought that i could have grown so fond of the fellow," he muttered, "or feel so lonely without him? i've a comfortable little fortune in the three per cents.; i'm heir presumptive to my uncle's title; and i know of a certain dear little girl who, as i think, would do her best to make me happy; but i declare that i would freely give up all, and stand penniless in the world to-morrow, if this mystery could be satisfactorily cleared away, and george talboys could stand by my side." he reached southampton between eleven and twelve o'clock, and walked across the platform, with the snow drifting in his face, toward the pier and the lower end of the town. the clock of st. michael's church was striking twelve as he crossed the quaint old square in which that edifice stands, and groped his way through the narrow streets leading down to the water. mr. maldon had established his slovenly household gods in one of those dreary thoroughfares which speculative builders love to raise upon some miserable fragment of waste ground hanging to the skirts of a prosperous town. brigsome's terrace was, perhaps, one of the most dismal blocks of building that was ever composed of brick and mortar since the first mason plied his trowel and the first architect drew his plan. the builder who had speculated in the ten dreary eight-roomed prison-houses had hung himself behind the parlor door of an adjacent tavern while the carcases were yet unfinished. the man who had bought the brick and mortar skeletons had gone through the bankruptcy court while the paper-hangers were still busy in brigsome's terrace, and had whitewashed his ceilings and himself simultaneously. ill luck and insolvency clung to the wretched habitations. the bailiff and the broker's man were as well known as the butcher and the baker to the noisy children who played upon the waste ground in front of the parlor windows. solvent tenants were disturbed at unhallowed hours by the noise of ghostly furniture vans creeping stealthily away in the moonless night. insolvent tenants openly defied the collector of the water-rate from their ten-roomed strongholds, and existed for weeks without any visible means of procuring that necessary fluid. robert audley looked about him with a shudder as he turned from the waterside into this poverty-stricken locality. a child's funeral was leaving one of the houses as he approached, and he thought with a thrill of horror that if the little coffin had held george's son, he would have been in some measure responsible for the boy's death. "the poor child shall not sleep another night in this wretched hovel," he thought, as he knocked at the door of mr. maldon's house. "he is the legacy of my best friend, and it shall be my business to secure his safety." a slipshod servant girl opened the door and looked at mr. audley rather suspiciously as she asked him, very much through her nose, what he pleased to want. the door of the little sitting room was ajar, and robert could hear the clattering of knives and forks and the childish voice of little george prattling gayly. he told the servant that he had come from london, that he wanted to see master talboys, and that he would announce himself; and walking past her, without further ceremony he opened the door of the parlor. the girl stared at him aghast as he did this; and as if struck by some sudden and terrible conviction, threw her apron over her head and ran out into the snow. she darted across the waste ground, plunged into a narrow alley, and never drew breath till she found herself upon the threshold of a certain tavern called the coach and horses, and much affected by mr. maldon. the lieutenant's faithful retainer had taken robert audley for some new and determined collector of poor's rates�rejecting that gentleman's account of himself as an artful fiction devised for the destruction of parochial defaulters�and had hurried off to give her master timely warning of the enemy's approach. when robert entered the sitting-room he was surprised to find little george seated opposite to a woman who was doing the honors of a shabby repast, spread upon a dirty table-cloth, and flanked by a pewter beer measure. the woman rose as robert entered, and courtesied very humbly to the young barrister. she looked about fifty years of age, and was dressed in rusty widow's weeds. her complexion was insipidly fair, and the two smooth bands of hair beneath her cap were of that sunless, flaxen hue which generally accompanies pink cheeks and white eyelashes. she had been a rustic beauty, perhaps, in her time, but her features, although tolerably regular in their shape, had a mean, pinched look, as if they had been made too small for her face. this defect was peculiarly noticeable in her mouth, which was an obvious misfit for the set of teeth it contained. she smiled as she courtesied to mr. robert audley, and her smile, which laid bare the greater part of this set of square, hungry-looking teeth, by no means added to the beauty of her personal appearance. "mr. maldon is not at home, sir," she said, with insinuating civility; "but if it's for the water-rate, he requested me to say that�" she was interrupted by little george talboys, who scrambled down from the high chair upon which he had been perched, and ran to robert audley. "i know you," he said; "you came to ventnor with the big gentleman, and you came here once, and you gave me some money, and i gave it to gran'pa to take care of, and gran'pa kept it, and he always does." robert audley took the boy in his arms, and carried him to a little table in the window. "stand there, georgey," he said, "i want to have a good look at you." he turned the boy's face to the light, and pushed the brown curls off his forehead with both hands. "you are growing more like your father every day, georgey; and you're growing quite a man, too," he said; "would you like to go to school?" "oh, yes, please, i should like it very much," the boy answered, eagerly. "i went to school at miss pevins' once�day-school, you know�round the corner in the next street; but i caught the measles, and gran'pa wouldn't let me go any more, for fear i should catch the measles again; and gran'pa won't let me play with the little boys in the street, because they're rude boys; he said blackguard boys; but he said i mustn't say blackguard boys, because it's naughty. he says damn and devil, but he says he may because he's old. i shall say damn and devil when i'm old; and i should like to go to school, please, and i can go to-day, if you like; mrs. plowson will get my frocks ready, won't you, mrs. plowson?" "certainly, master georgey, if your grandpapa wishes it," the woman answered, looking rather uneasily at mr. robert audley. "what on earth is the matter with this woman," thought robert as he turned from the boy to the fair-haired widow, who was edging herself slowly toward the table upon which little george talboys stood talking to his guardian. "does she still take me for a tax-collector with inimical intentions toward these wretched goods and chattels; or can the cause of her fidgety manner lie deeper still. that's scarcely likely, though; for whatever secrets lieutenant maldon may have, it's not very probable that this woman has any knowledge of them." mrs. plowson had edged herself close to the little table by this time, and was making a stealthy descent upon the boy, when robert turned sharply round. "what are you going to do with the child?" he said. "i was only going to take him away to wash his pretty face, sir, and smooth his hair," answered the woman, in the most insinuating tone in which she had spoken of the water-rate. "you don't see him to any advantage, sir, while his precious face is dirty. i won't be five minutes making him as neat as a new pin." she had her long, thin arms about the boy as she spoke, and she was evidently going to carry him off bodily, when robert stopped her. "i'd rather see him as he is, thank you," he said. "my time in southampton isn't very long, and i want to hear all that the little man can tell me." the little man crept closer to robert, and looked confidingly into the barrister's gray eyes. "i like you very much," he said. "i was frightened of you when you came before, because i was shy. i am not shy now�i am nearly six years old." robert patted the boy's head encouragingly, but he was not looking at little george; he was watching the fair-haired widow, who had moved to the window, and was looking out at the patch of waste ground. "you're rather fidgety about some one, ma'am, i'm afraid," said robert. she colored violently as the barrister made this remark, and answered him in a confused manner. "i was looking for mr. maldon, sir," she said; "he'll be so disappointed if he doesn't see you." "you know who i am, then?" "no, sir, but�" the boy interrupted her by dragging a little jeweled watch from his bosom and showing it to robert. "this is the watch the pretty lady gave me," he said. "i've got it now�but i haven't had it long, because the jeweler who cleans it is an idle man, gran'pa says, and always keeps it such a long time; and gran'pa says it will have to be cleaned again, because of the taxes. he always takes it to be cleaned when there's taxes�but he says if he were to lose it the pretty lady would give me another. do you know the pretty lady?" "no, georgey, but tell me about her." mrs. plowson made another descent upon the boy. she was armed with a pocket-handkerchief this time, and displayed great anxiety about the state of little george's nose, but robert warded off the dreaded weapon, and drew the child away from his tormentor. "the boy will do very well, ma'am," he said, "if you'll be good enough to let him alone for five minutes. now, georgey, suppose you sit on my knee, and tell me all about the pretty lady." the child clambered from the table onto mr. audley's knees, assisting his descent by a very unceremonious manipulation of his guardian's coat-collar. "i'll tell you all about the pretty lady," he said, "because i like you very much. gran'pa told me not to tell anybody, but i'll tell you, you know, because i like you, and because you're going to take me to school. the pretty lady came here one night�long ago�oh, so long ago," said the boy, shaking his head, with a face whose solemnity was expressive of some prodigious lapse of time. "she came when i was not nearly so big as i am now�and she came at night�after i'd gone to bed, and she came up into my room, and sat upon the bed, and cried�and she left the watch under my pillow, and she�why do you make faces at me, mrs. plowson? i may tell this gentleman," georgey added, suddenly addressing the widow, who was standing behind robert's shoulder. mrs. plowson mumbled some confused apology to the effect that she was afraid master george was troublesome. "suppose you wait till i say so, ma'am, before you stop the little fellow's mouth," said robert audley, sharply. "a suspicious person might think from your manner that mr. maldon and you had some conspiracy between you, and that you were afraid of what the boy's talk may let slip." he rose from his chair, and looked full at mrs. plowson as he said this. the fair-haired widow's face was as white as her cap when she tried to answer him, and her pale lips were so dry that she was compelled to wet them with her tongue before the words would come. the little boy relieved her embarrassment. "don't be cross to mrs. plowson," he said. "mrs. plowson is very kind to me. mrs. plowson is matilda's mother. you don't know matilda. poor matilda was always crying; she was ill, she�" the boy was stopped by the sudden appearance of mr. maldon, who stood on the threshold of the parlor door staring at robert audley with a half-drunken, half-terrified aspect, scarcely consistent with the dignity of a retired naval officer. the servant girl, breathless and panting, stood close behind her master. early in the day though it was, the old man's speech was thick and confused, as he addressed himself fiercely to mrs. plowson. "you're a prett' creature to call yoursel' sensible woman?" he said. "why don't you take th' chile 'way, er wash 's face? d'yer want to ruin me? d'yer want to 'stroy me? take th' chile 'way! mr. audley, sir, i'm ver' glad to see yer; ver' 'appy to 'ceive yer in m' humbl' 'bode," the old man added with tipsy politeness, dropping into a chair as he spoke, and trying to look steadily at his unexpected visitor. "whatever this man's secrets are," thought robert, as mrs. plowson hustled little george talboys out of the room, "that woman has no unimportant share of them. whatever the mystery may be, it grows darker and thicker at every step; but i try in vain to draw back or to stop short upon the road, for a stronger hand than my own is pointing the way to my lost friend's unknown grave." chapter xxi. little georgey leaves his old home. "i am going to take your grandson away with me, mr. maldon," robert said gravely, as mrs. plowson retired with her young charge. the old man's drunken imbecility was slowly clearing away like the heavy mists of a london fog, through which the feeble sunshine struggles dimly to appear. the very uncertain radiance of lieutenant maldon's intellect took a considerable time in piercing the hazy vapors of rum-and-water; but the flickering light at last faintly glimmered athwart the clouds, and the old man screwed his poor wits to the sticking-point. "yes, yes," he said, feebly; "take the boy away from his poor old grandfather; i always thought so." "you always thought that i should take him away?" scrutinizing the half-drunken countenance with a searching glance. "why did you think so, mr. maldon?" the fogs of intoxication got the better of the light of sobriety for a moment, and the lieutenant answered vaguely: "thought so�'cause i thought so." meeting the young barrister's impatient frown, he made another effort, and the light glimmered again. "because i thought you or his father would fetch 'm away." "when i was last in this house, mr. maldon, you told me that george talboys had sailed for australia." "yes, yes�i know, i know," the old man answered, confusedly, shuffling his scanty limp gray hairs with his two wandering hands�"i know; but he might have come back�mightn't he? he was restless, and�and�queer in his mind, perhaps, sometimes. he might have come back." he repeated this two or three times in feeble, muttering tones; groping about on the littered mantle-piece for a dirty-looking clay pipe, and filling and lighting it with hands that trembled violently. robert audley watched those poor, withered, tremulous fingers dropping shreds of tobacco upon the hearth rug, and scarcely able to kindle a lucifer for their unsteadiness. then walking once or twice up and down the little room, he left the old man to take a few puffs from the great consoler. presently he turned suddenly upon the half-pay lieutenant with a dark solemnity in his handsome face. "mr. maldon," he said, slowly watching the effect of every syllable as he spoke, "george talboys never sailed for australia�that i know. more than this, he never came to southampton; and the lie you told me on the 8th of last september was dictated to you by the telegraphic message which you received on that day." the dirty clay pipe dropped from the tremulous hand, and shivered against the iron fender, but the old man made no effort to find a fresh one; he sat trembling in every limb, and looking, heaven knows how piteously, at robert audley. "the lie was dictated to you, and you repeated your lesson. but you no more saw george talboys here on the 7th of september than i see him in this room now. you thought you had burnt the telegraphic message, but you had only burnt a part of it�the remainder is in my possession." lieutenant maldon was quite sober now. "what have i done?" he murmured, hopelessly. "oh, my god! what have i done?" "at two o'clock on the 7th of september last," continued the pitiless, accusing voice, "george talboys was seen alive and well at a house in essex." robert paused to see the effect of these words. they had produced no change in the old man. he still sat trembling from head to foot, and staring with the fixed and solid gaze of some helpless wretch whose every sense is gradually becoming numbed by terror. "at two o'clock on that day," remarked robert audley, "my poor friend was seen alive and well at ��, at the house of which i speak. from that hour to this i have never been able to hear that he has been seen by any living creature. i have taken such steps as must have resulted in procuring the information of his whereabouts, were he alive. i have done this patiently and carefully�at first, even hopefully. now i know that he is dead." robert audley had been prepared to witness some considerable agitation in the old man's manner, but he was not prepared for the terrible anguish, the ghastly terror, which convulsed mr. maldon's haggard face as he uttered the last word. "no, no, no, no," reiterated the lieutenant, in a shrill, half-screaming voice; "no, no! for god's sake, don't say that! don't think it�don't let me think it�don't let me dream of it! not dead�anything but dead! hidden away, perhaps�bribed to keep out of the way, perhaps; but not dead�not dead�not dead!" he cried these words aloud, like one beside himself, beating his hands upon his gray head, and rocking backward and forward in his chair. his feeble hands trembled no longer�they were strengthened by some convulsive force that gave them a new power. "i believe," said robert, in the same solemn, relentless voice, "that my friend left essex; and i believe he died on the 7th of september last." the wretched old man, still beating his hands among his thin gray hair, slid from his chair to the ground, and groveled at robert's feet. "oh! no, no�for god's, no!" he shrieked hoarsely. "no! you don't know what you say�you don't know what your words mean!" "i know their weight and value only too well�as well as i see you do, mr. maldon. god help us!" "oh, what am i doing? what am i doing?" muttered the old man, feebly; then raising himself from the ground with an effort, he drew himself to his full height, and said, in a manner which was new to him, and which was not without a certain dignity of his own�that dignity which must be always attached to unutterable misery, in whatever form it may appear�he said, gravely: "you have no right to come here and terrify a man who has been drinking, and who is not quite himself. you have no right to do it, mr. audley. even the�the officer, sir, who�who�." he did not stammer, but his lips trembled so violently that his words seemed to be shaken into pieces by their motion. "the officer, i repeat, sir, who arrests a�thief, or a�." he stopped to wipe his lips, and to still them if he could by doing so, which he could not. "a thief or a murderer�" his voice died suddenly away upon the last word, and it was only by the motion of those trembling lips that robert knew what he meant. "gives him warning, sir, fair warning, that he may say nothing which shall commit himself�or�or�other people. the�the�law, sir, has that amount of mercy for a�a�suspected criminal. but you, sir,�you come to my house, and you come at a time when�when�contrary to my usual habits�which, as people will tell you, are sober�you take the opportunity to�terrify me�and it is not right, sir�it is�" whatever he would have said died away into inarticulate gasps, which seemed to choke him, and sinking into a chair, he dropped his face upon the table, and wept aloud. perhaps in all the dismal scenes of domestic misery which had been acted in those spare and dreary houses�in all the petty miseries, the burning shames, the cruel sorrows, the bitter disgraces which own poverty for their father�there had never been such a scene as this. an old man hiding his face from the light of day, and sobbing aloud in his wretchedness. robert audley contemplated the painful picture with a hopeless and pitying face. "if i had known this," he thought, "i might have spared him. it would have been better, perhaps, to have spared him." the shabby room, the dirt, the confusion, the figure of the old man, with his gray head upon the soiled tablecloth, amid the muddled débris of a wretched dinner, grew blurred before the sight of robert audley as he thought of another man, as old as this one, but, ah! how widely different in every other quality! who might come by and by to feel the same, or even a worse anguish, and to shed, perhaps, yet bitterer tears. the moment in which the tears rose to his eyes and dimmed the piteous scene before him, was long enough to take him back to essex, and to show him the image of his uncle, stricken by agony and shame. "why do i go on with this?" he thought; "how pitiless i am, and how relentlessly i am carried on. it is not myself; it is the hand which is beckoning me further and further upon the dark road, whose end i dare not dream of." he thought this, and a hundred times more than this, while the old man sat with his face still hidden, wrestling with his anguish, but without power to keep it down. "mr. maldon," robert audley said, after a pause, "i do not ask you to forgive me for what i have brought upon you, for the feeling is strong within me that it must have come to you sooner or later�if not through me, through some one else. there are�" he stopped for a moment hesitating. the sobbing did not cease; it was sometimes low, sometimes loud, bursting out with fresh violence, or dying away for an instant, but never ceasing. "there are some things which, as people say, cannot be hidden. i think there is truth in that common saying which had its origin in that old worldly wisdom which people gathered from experience and not from books. if�if i were content to let my friend rest in his hidden grave, it is but likely that some stranger who had never heard the name of george talboys, might fall by the remotest accident upon the secret of his death. to-morrow, perhaps; or ten years hence, or in another generation, when the�the hand that wronged him is as cold as his own. if i could let the matter rest; if�if i could leave england forever, and purposely fly from the possibility of ever coming across another clew to the secret, i would do it�i would gladly, thankfully do it�but i cannot! a hand which is stronger than my own beckons me on. i wish to take no base advantage of you, less than of all other people; but i must go on; i must go on. if there is any warning you would give to any one, give it. if the secret toward which i am traveling day by day, hour by hour, involves any one in whom you have an interest, let that person fly before i come to the end. let them leave this country; let them leave all who know them�all whose peace their wickedness has endangered; let them go away�they shall not be pursued. but if they slight your warning�if they try to hold their present position in defiance of what it will be in your power to tell them�let them beware of me, for, when the hour comes, i swear that i will not spare them." the old man looked up for the first time, and wiped his wrinkled face upon a ragged silk handkerchief. "i declare to you that i do not understand you," he said. "i solemnly declare to you that i cannot understand; and i do not believe that george talboys is dead." "i would give ten years of my own life if i could see him alive," answered robert, sadly. "i am sorry for you, mr. maldon�i am sorry for all of us." "i do not believe that my son-in-law is dead," said the lieutenant; "i do not believe that the poor lad is dead." he endeavored in a feeble manner to show to robert audley that his wild outburst of anguish had been caused by his grief for the loss of george; but the pretense was miserably shallow. mrs. plowson re-entered the room, leading little georgey, whose face shone with that brilliant polish which yellow soap and friction can produce upon the human countenance. "dear heart alive!" exclaimed mrs. plowson, "what has the poor old gentleman been taking on about? we could hear him in the passage, sobbin' awful." little george crept up to his grandfather, and smoothed the wet and wrinkled face with his pudgy hand. "don't cry, gran'pa," he said, "don't cry. you shall have my watch to be cleaned, and the kind jeweler shall lend you the money to pay the taxman while he cleans the watch�i don't mind, gran'pa. let's go to the jeweler, the jeweler in high street, you know, with golden balls painted upon his door, to show that he comes from lombar�lombardshire," said the boy, making a dash at the name. "come, gran'pa." the little fellow took the jeweled toy from his bosom and made for the door, proud of being possessed of a talisman, which he had seen so often made useful. "there are wolves at southampton," he said, with rather a triumphant nod to robert audley. "my gran'pa says when he takes my watch that he does it to keep the wolf from the door. are there wolves where you live?" the young barrister did not answer the child's question, but stopped him as he was dragging his grandfather toward the door. "your grandpapa does not want the watch to-day, georgey," he said, gravely. "why is he sorry, then?" asked georgey, naively; "when he wants the watch he is always sorry, and beats his poor forehead so"�the boy stopped to pantomime with his small fists�"and says that she�the pretty lady, i think he means�uses him very hard, and that he can't keep the wolf from the door; and then i say, 'gran'pa, have the watch;' and then he takes me in his arms, and says, 'oh, my blessed angel! how can i rob my blessed angel?' and then he cries, but not like to-day�not loud, you know; only tears running down his poor cheeks, not so that you could hear him in the passage." painful as the child's prattle was to robert audley, it seemed a relief to the old man. he did not hear the boy's talk, but walked two or three times up and down the little room and smoothed his rumpled hair and suffered his cravat to be arranged by mrs. plowson, who seemed very anxious to find out the cause of his agitation. "poor dear old gentleman," she said, looking at robert. "what has happened to upset him so?" "his son-in-law is dead," answered mr. audley, fixing his eyes upon mrs. plowson's sympathetic face. "he died, within a year and a half after the death of helen talboys, who lies buried in ventnor churchyard." the face into which he was looking changed very slightly, but the eyes that had been looking at him shifted away as he spoke, and mrs. plowson was obliged to moisten her white lips with her tongue before she answered him. "poor mr. talboys dead!" she said; "that is bad news indeed, sir." little george looked wistfully up at his guardian's face as this was said. "who's dead?" he said. "george talboys is my name. who's dead?" "another person whose name is talboys, georgey." "poor person! will he go to the pit-hole?" the boy had that notion of death which is generally imparted to children by their wise elders, and which always leads the infant mind to the open grave and rarely carries it any higher. "i should like to see him put in the pit-hole," georgey remarked, after a pause. he had attended several infant funerals in the neighborhood, and was considered valuable as a mourner on account of his interesting appearance. he had come, therefore, to look upon the ceremony of interment as a solemn festivity; in which cake and wine, and a carriage drive were the leading features. "you have no objection to my taking georgey away with me, mr. maldon?" asked robert audley. the old man's agitation had very much subsided by this time. he had found another pipe stuck behind the tawdry frame of the looking-glass, and was trying to light it with a bit of twisted newspaper. "you do not object, mr. maldon?" "no, sir�no, sir; you are his guardian, and you have a right to take him where you please. he has been a very great comfort to me in my lonely old age, but i have been prepared to lose him. i�i may not have always done my duty to him, sir, in�in the way of schooling, and�and boots. the number of boots which boys of his age wear out, sir, is not easily realized by the mind of a young man like yourself; he has been kept away from school, perhaps, sometimes, and occasionally worn shabby boots when our funds have got low; but he has not been unkindly treated. no, sir; if you were to question him for a week, i don't think you'd hear that his poor old grandfather ever said a harsh word to him." upon this, georgie, perceiving the distress of his old protector, set up a terrible howl, and declared that he would never leave him. "mr. maldon," said robert audley, with a tone which was half-mournful, half-compassionate, "when i looked at my position last night, i did not believe that i could ever come to think it more painful than i thought it then. i can only say�god have mercy upon us all. i feel it my duty to take the child away, but i shall take him straight from your house to the best school in southampton; and i give you my honor that i will extort nothing from his innocent simplicity which can in any manner�i mean," he said, breaking off abruptly, "i mean this. i will not seek to come one step nearer the secret through him. i�i am not a detective officer, and i do not think the most accomplished detective would like to get his information from a child." the old man did not answer; he sat with his face shaded by his hand, and with his extinguished pipe between the listless fingers of the other. "take the boy away, mrs. plowson," he said, after a pause; "take him away and put his things on. he is going with mr. audley." "which i do say that it's not kind of the gentleman to take his poor grandpa's pet away," mrs. plowson exclaimed, suddenly, with respectful indignation. "hush, mrs. plowson," the old man answered, piteously; "mr. audley is the best judge. i�i haven't many years to live; i sha'n't trouble anybody long." the tears oozed slowly through the dirty fingers with which he shaded his blood-shot eyes, as he said this. "god knows, i never injured your friend, sir," he said, by-and-by, when mrs. plowson and georgey had returned, "nor even wished him any ill. he was a good son-in-law to me�better than many a son. i never did him any wilful wrong, sir. i�i spent his money, perhaps, but i am sorry for it�i am very sorry for it now. but i don't believe he is dead�no, sir; no, i don't believe it!" exclaimed the old man, dropping his hand from his eyes, and looking with new energy at robert audley. "i�i don't believe it, sir! how�how should he be dead?" robert did not answer this eager questioning. he shook his head mournfully, and, walking to the little window, looked out across a row of straggling geraniums at the dreary patch of waste ground on which the children were at play. mrs. plowson returned with little georgey muffled in a coat and comforter, and robert took the boy's hand. the little fellow sprung toward the old man, and clinging about him, kissed the dirty tears from his faded cheeks. "don't be sorry for me, gran'pa," he said; "i am going to school to learn to be a clever man, and i shall come home to see you and mrs. plowson, sha'n't i?" he added, turning to robert. "yes, my dear, by-and-by." "take him away, sir�take him away," cried mr. maldon; "you are breaking my heart." the little fellow trotted away contentedly at robert's side. he was very well pleased at the idea of going to school, though he had been happy enough with his drunken old grandfather, who had always displayed a maudlin affection for the pretty child, and had done his best to spoil georgey, by letting him have his own way in everything; in consequence of which indulgence, master talboys had acquired a taste for late hours, hot suppers of the most indigestible nature, and sips of rum-and-water from his grandfather's glass. he communicated his sentiments upon many subjects to robert audley, as they walked to the dolphin hotel; but the barrister did not encourage him to talk. it was no very difficult matter to find a good school in such a place as southampton. robert audley was directed to a pretty house between the bar and the avenue, and leaving georgey to the care of a good-natured waiter, who seemed to have nothing to do but to look out of the window, and whisk invisible dust off the brightly polished tables, the barrister walked up the high street toward mr. marchmont's academy for young gentlemen. he found mr. marchmont a very sensible man, and he met a file of orderly-looking young gentlemen walking townward under the escort of a couple of ushers as he entered the house. he told the schoolmaster that little george talboys had been left in his charge by a dear friend, who had sailed for australia some months before, and whom he believed to be dead. he confided him to mr. marchmont's especial care, and he further requested that no visitors should be admitted to see the boy unless accredited by a letter from himself. having arranged the matter in a very few business-like words, he returned to the hotel to fetch georgey. he found the little man on intimate terms with the idle waiter, who had been directing master georgey's attention to the different objects of interest in the high street. poor robert had about as much notion of the requirements of a child as he had of those of a white elephant. he had catered for silkworms, guinea-pigs, dormice, canary-birds, and dogs, without number, during his boyhood, but he had never been called upon to provide for a young person of five years old. he looked back five-and-twenty years, and tried to remember his own diet at the age of five. "i've a vague recollection of getting a good deal of bread and milk and boiled mutton," he thought; "and i've another vague recollection of not liking them. i wonder if this boy likes bread and milk and boiled mutton." he stood pulling his thick mustache and staring thoughtfully at the child for some minutes before he could get any further. "i dare say you're hungry, georgey?" he said, at last. the boy nodded, and the waiter whisked some more invisible dust from the nearest table as a preparatory step toward laying a cloth. "perhaps you'd like some lunch?" mr. audley suggested, still pulling his mustache. the boy burst out laughing. "lunch!" he cried. "why, it's afternoon, and i've had my dinner." robert audley felt himself brought to a standstill. what refreshment could he possibly provide for a boy who called it afternoon at three o'clock? "you shall have some bread and milk, georgey," he said, presently. "waiter, bread and milk, and a pint of hock." master talboys made a wry face. "i never have bread and milk," he said, "i don't like it. i like what gran'pa calls something savory. i should like a veal cutlet. gran'pa told me he dined here once, and the veal cutlets were lovely, gran'pa said. please may i have a veal cutlet, with egg and bread-crumb, you know, and lemon-juice you know?" he added to the waiter: "gran'pa knows the cook here. the cook's such a nice gentleman, and once gave me a shilling, when gran'pa brought me here. the cook wears better clothes than gran'pa�better than yours, even," said master georgey, pointing to robert's rough great-coat with a depreciating nod. robert audley stared aghast. how was he to deal with this epicure of five years old, who rejected bread and milk and asked for veal cutlets? "i'll tell you what i'll do with you, little georgey," he exclaimed, after a pause�"i'll give you a dinner!" the waiter nodded briskly. "upon my word, sir," he said, approvingly, "i think the little gentleman will know how to eat it." "i'll give you a dinner, georgey," repeated robert�"some stewed eels, a little julienne, a dish of cutlets, a bird, and a pudding. what do you say to that, georgey?" "i don't think the young gentleman will object to it when he sees it, sir," said the waiter. "eels, julienne, cutlets, bird, pudding�i'll go and tell the cook, sir. what time, sir?" "well, we'll say six, and master georgey will get to his new school by bedtime. you can contrive to amuse the child for this afternoon, i dare say. i have some business to settle, and sha'n't be able to take him out. i shall sleep here to-night. good-by, georgey; take care of yourself and try and get your appetite in order against six o'clock." robert audley left the boy in charge of the idle waiter, and strolled down to the water side, choosing that lonely bank which leads away under the moldering walls of the town toward the little villages beside the narrowing river. he had purposely avoided the society of the child, and he walked through the light drifting snow till the early darkness closed upon him. he went back to the town, and made inquiries at the station about the trains for dorsetshire. "i shall start early to-morrow morning," he thought, "and see george's father before nightfall. i will tell him all�all but the interest which i take in�in the suspected person, and he shall decide what is next to be done." master georgey did very good justice to the dinner which robert had ordered. he drank bass' pale ale to an extent which considerably alarmed his entertainer, and enjoyed himself amazingly, showing an appreciation of roast pheasant and bread-sauce which was beyond his years. at eight o'clock a fly was brought out for his accommodation, and he departed in the highest spirits, with a sovereign in his pocket, and a letter from robert to mr. marchmont, inclosing a check for the young gentleman's outfit. "i'm glad i'm going to have new clothes," he said, as he bade robert good-by; "for mrs. plowson has mended the old ones ever so many times. she can have them now, for billy." "who's billy?" robert asked, laughing at the boy's chatter. "billy is poor matilda's little boy. he's a common boy, you know. matilda was common, but she�" but the flyman snapping his whip at this moment, the old horse jogged off, and robert audley heard no more of matilda. chapter xxii. coming to a standstill. mr. harcourt talboys lived in a prim, square, red-brick mansion, within a mile of a little village called grange heath, in dorsetshire. the prim, square, red-brick mansion stood in the center of prim, square grounds, scarcely large enough to be called a park, too large to be called anything else�so neither the house nor the grounds had any name, and the estate was simply designated squire talboys'. perhaps mr. harcourt talboys was the last person in this world with whom it was possible to associate the homely, hearty, rural old english title of squire. he neither hunted nor farmed. he had never worn crimson, pink, or top-boots in his life. a southerly wind and a cloudy sky were matters of supreme indifference to him, so long as they did not in any way interfere with his own prim comforts; and he only cared for the state of the crops inasmuch as it involved the hazard of certain rents which he received for the farms upon his estate. he was a man of about fifty years of age, tall, straight, bony and angular, with a square, pale face, light gray eyes, and scanty dark hair, brushed from either ear across a bald crown, and thus imparting to his physiognomy some faint resemblance to that of a terrier�a sharp, uncompromising, hard-headed terrier�a terrier not to be taken in by the cleverest dog-stealer who ever distinguished himself in his profession. nobody ever remembered getting upon what is popularly called the blind side of harcourt talboys. he was like his own square-built, northern-fronted, shelterless house. there were no shady nooks in his character into which one could creep for shelter from his hard daylight. he was all daylight. he looked at everything in the same broad glare of intellectual sunlight, and would see no softening shadows that might alter the sharp outlines of cruel facts, subduing them to beauty. i do not know if i express what i mean, when i say that there were no curves in his character�that his mind ran in straight lines, never diverging to the right or the left to round off their pitiless angles. with him right was right, and wrong was wrong. he had never in his merciless, conscientious life admitted the idea that circumstances might mitigate the blackness of wrong or weaken the force of right. he had cast off his only son because his only son had disobeyed him, and he was ready to cast off his only daughter at five minutes' notice for the same reason. if this square-built, hard-headed man could be possessed of such a weakness as vanity, he was certainly vain of his hardness. he was vain of that inflexible squareness of intellect, which made him the disagreeable creature that he was. he was vain of that unwavering obstinacy which no influence of love or pity had ever been known to bend from its remorseless purpose. he was vain of the negative force of a nature which had never known the weakness of the affections, or the strength which may be born of that very weakness. if he had regretted his son's marriage, and the breach of his own making, between himself and george, his vanity had been more powerful than his regret, and had enabled him to conceal it. indeed, unlikely as it appears at the first glance that such a man as this could have been vain, i have little doubt that vanity was the center from which radiated all the disagreeable lines in the character of mr. harcourt talboys. i dare say junius brutus was vain, and enjoyed the approval of awe-stricken rome when he ordered his son off for execution. harcourt talboys would have sent poor george from his presence between the reversed fasces of the lictors, and grimly relished his own agony. heaven only knows how bitterly this hard man may have felt the separation between himself and his only son, or how much the more terrible the anguish might have been made by that unflinching self-conceit which concealed the torture. "my son did me an unpardonable wrong by marrying the daughter of a drunken pauper," mr. talboys would answer to any one who had the temerity to speak to him about george, "and from that hour i had no longer a son. i wish him no ill. he is simply dead to me. i am sorry for him, as i am sorry for his mother who died nineteen years ago. if you talk to me of him as you would talk of the dead, i shall be ready to hear you. if you speak of him as you would speak of the living, i must decline to listen." i believe that harcourt talboys hugged himself upon the gloomy roman grandeur of this speech, and that he would like to have worn a toga, and wrapped himself sternly in its folds, as he turned his back upon poor george's intercessor. george never in his own person made any effort to soften his father's verdict. he knew his father well enough to know that the case was hopeless. "if i write to him, he will fold my letter with the envelope inside, and indorse it with my name and the date of its arrival," the young man would say, "and call everybody in the house to witness that it had not moved him to one softening recollection or one pitiful thought. he will stick to his resolution to his dying day. i dare say, if the truth was known, he is glad that his only son has offended him and given him the opportunity of parading his roman virtues." george had answered his wife thus when she and her father had urged him to ask assistance from harcourt talboys. "no my darling," he would say, conclusively. "it's very hard, perhaps, to be poor, but we will bear it. we won't go with pitiful faces to the stern father, and ask him to give us food and shelter, only to be refused in long, johnsonian sentences, and made a classical example for the benefit of the neighborhood. no, my pretty one; it is easy to starve, but it is difficult to stoop." perhaps poor mrs. george did not agree very heartily to the first of these two propositions. she had no great fancy for starving, and she whimpered pitifully when the pretty pint bottles of champagne, with cliquot's and moet's brands upon their corks, were exchanged for sixpenny ale, procured by a slipshod attendant from the nearest beer-shop. george had been obliged to carry his own burden and lend a helping hand with that of his wife, who had no idea of keeping her regrets or disappointments a secret. "i thought dragoons were always rich," she used to say, peevishly. "girls always want to marry dragoons; and tradespeople always want to serve dragoons; and hotel-keepers to entertain dragoons; and theatrical managers to be patronized by dragoons. who could have ever expected that a dragoon would drink sixpenny ale, smoke horrid bird's-eye tobacco, and let his wife wear a shabby bonnet?" if there were any selfish feelings displayed in such speeches as these, george talboys had never discovered it. he had loved and believed in his wife from the first to the last hour of his brief married life. the love that is not blind is perhaps only a spurious divinity after all; for when cupid takes the fillet from his eyes it is a fatally certain indication that he is preparing to spread his wings for a flight. george never forgot the hour in which he had first become bewitched by lieutenant maldon's pretty daughter, and however she might have changed, the image which had charmed him then, unchanged and unchanging, represented her in his heart. robert audley left southampton by a train which started before daybreak, and reached wareham station early in the day. he hired a vehicle at wareham to take him over to grange heath. the snow had hardened upon the ground, and the day was clear and frosty, every object in the landscape standing in sharp outline against the cold blue sky. the horses' hoofs clattered upon the ice-bound road, the iron shoes striking on the ground that was almost as iron as themselves. the wintry day bore some resemblance to the man to whom robert was going. like him, it was sharp, frigid, and uncompromising: like him, it was merciless to distress and impregnable to the softening power of sunshine. it would accept no sunshine but such january radiance as would light up the bleak, bare country without brightening it; and thus resembled harcourt talboys, who took the sternest side of every truth, and declared loudly to the disbelieving world that there never had been, and never could be, any other side. robert audley's heart sunk within him as the shabby hired vehicle stopped at a stern-looking barred fence, and the driver dismounted to open a broad iron gate which swung back with a clanking noise and was caught by a great iron tooth, planted in the ground, which snapped at the lowest bar of the gate as if it wanted to bite. this iron gate opened into a scanty plantation of straight-limbed fir-trees, that grew in rows and shook their sturdy winter foliage defiantly in the very teeth of the frosty breeze. a straight graveled carriage-drive ran between these straight trees across a smoothly kept lawn to a square red-brick mansion, every window of which winked and glittered in the january sunlight as if it had been that moment cleaned by some indefatigable housemaid. i don't know whether junius brutus was a nuisance in his own house, but among other of his roman virtues, mr. talboys owned an extreme aversion to disorder, and was the terror of every domestic in his establishment. the windows winked and the flight of stone steps glared in the sunlight, the prim garden walks were so freshly graveled that they gave a sandy, gingery aspect to the place, reminding one unpleasantly of red hair. the lawn was chiefly ornamented with dark, wintry shrubs of a funereal aspect which grew in beds that looked like problems in algebra; and the flight of stone steps leading to the square half-glass door of the hall was adorned with dark-green wooden tubs containing the same sturdy evergreens. "if the man is anything like his house," robert thought, "i don't wonder that poor george and he parted." at the end of a scanty avenue the carriage-drive turned a sharp corner (it would have been made to describe a curve in any other man's grounds) and ran before the lower windows of the house. the flyman dismounted at the steps, ascended them, and rang a brass-handled bell, which flew back to its socket, with an angry, metallic snap, as if it had been insulted by the plebeian touch of the man's hand. a man in black trousers and a striped linen jacket, which was evidently fresh from the hands of the laundress, opened the door. mr. talboys was at home. would the gentleman send in his card? robert waited in the hall while his card was taken to the master of the house. the hall was large and lofty, paved with stone. the panels of the oaken wainscot shone with the same uncompromising polish which was on every object within and without the red-bricked mansion. some people are so weak-minded as to affect pictures and statues. mr. harcourt talboys was far too practical to indulge in any foolish fancies. a barometer and an umbrella-stand were the only adornments of his entrance-hall. robert audley looked at these while his name was being submitted to george's father. the linen-jacketed servant returned presently. he was a square, pale-faced man of almost forty, and had the appearance of having outlived every emotion to which humanity is subject. "if you will step this way, sir," he said, "mr. talboys will see you, although he is at breakfast. he begged me to state that everybody in dorsetshire was acquainted with his breakfast hour." this was intended as a stately reproof to mr. robert audley. it had, however, very small effect upon the young barrister. he merely lifted his eyebrows in placid deprecation of himself and everybody else. "i don't belong to dorsetshire," he said. "mr. talboys might have known that, if he'd done me the honor to exercise his powers of ratiocination. drive on, my friend." the emotionless man looked at robert audley with a vacant stare of unmitigated horror, and opening one of the heavy oak doors, led the way into a large dining-room furnished with the severe simplicity of an apartment which is meant to be ate in, but never lived in; and at top of a table which would have accommodated eighteen persons robert beheld mr. harcourt talboys. mr. talboys was robed in a dressing-gown of gray cloth, fastened about his waist with a girdle. it was a severe looking garment, and was perhaps the nearest approach to the toga to be obtained within the range of modern costume. he wore a buff waistcoat, a stiffly starched cambric cravat, and a faultless shirt collar. the cold gray of his dressing gown was almost the same as the cold gray of his eyes, and the pale buff of his waistcoat was the pale buff of his complexion. robert audley had not expected to find harcourt talboys at all like george in his manners or disposition, but he had expected to see some family likeness between the father and the son. there was none. it would have been impossible to imagine any one more unlike george than the author of his existence. robert scarcely wondered at the cruel letter he received from mr. talboys when he saw the writer of it. such a man could scarcely have written otherwise. there was a second person in the large room, toward whom robert glanced after saluting harcourt talboys, doubtful how to proceed. this second person was a lady, who sat at the last of a range of four windows, employed with some needlework, the kind which is generally called plain work, and with a large wicker basket, filled with calicoes and flannels, standing by her. the whole length of the room divided this lady from robert, but he could see that she was young, and that she was like george talboys. "his sister!" he thought in that one moment, during which he ventured to glance away from the master of the house toward the female figure at the window. "his sister, no doubt. he was fond of her, i know. surely, she is not utterly indifferent as to his fate?" the lady half rose from her seat, letting her work, which was large and awkward, fall from her lap as she did so, and dropping a reel of cotton, which rolled away upon the polished oaken flooring beyond the margin of the turkey carpet. "sit down, clara," said the hard voice of mr. talboys. that gentleman did not appear to address his daughter, nor had his face been turned toward her when she rose. it seemed as if he had known it by some social magnetism peculiar to himself; it seemed, as his servants were apt disrespectfully to observe, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. "sit down, clara," he repeated, "and keep your cotton in your workbox." the lady blushed at this reproof, and stooped to look for the cotton. mr. robert audley, who was unabashed by the stern presence of the master of the house, knelt on the carpet, found the reel, and restored it to its owner; harcourt talboys staring at the proceeding with an expression of unmitigated astonishment. "perhaps, mr. ��, mr. robert audley!" he said, looking at the card which he held between his finger and thumb, "perhaps when you have finished looking for reels of cotton, you will be good enough to tell me to what i owe the honor of this visit?" he waved his well-shaped hand with a gesture which might have been admired in the stately john kemble; and the servant, understanding the gesture, brought forward a ponderous red-morocco chair. the proceeding was so slow and solemn, that robert had at first thought that something extraordinary was about to be done; but the truth dawned upon him at last, and he dropped into the massive chair. "you may remain, wilson," said mr. talboys, as the servant was about to withdraw; "mr. audley would perhaps like coffee." robert had eaten nothing that morning, but he glanced at the long expanse of dreary table-cloth, the silver tea and coffee equipage, the stiff splendor, and the very little appearance of any substantial entertainment, and he declined mr. talboys' invitation. "mr. audley will not take coffee, wilson," said the master of the house. "you may go." the man bowed and retired, opening and shutting the door as cautiously as if he were taking a liberty in doing it at all, or as if the respect due to mr. talboys demanded his walking straight through the oaken panel like a ghost in a german story. mr. harcourt talboys sat with his gray eyes fixed severely on his visitor, his elbows on the red-morocco arms of his chair, and his finger-tips joined. it was the attitude in which, had he been junius brutus, he would have sat at the trial of his son. had robert audley been easily to be embarrassed, mr. talboys might have succeeded in making him feel so: as he would have sat with perfect tranquility upon an open gunpowder barrel lighting his cigar, he was not at all disturbed upon this occasion. the father's dignity seemed a very small thing to him when he thought of the possible causes of the son's disappearance. "i wrote to you some time since, mr. talboys," he said quietly, when he saw that he was expected to open the conversation. harcourt talboys bowed. he knew that it was of his lost son that robert came to speak. heaven grant that his icy stoicism was the paltry affectation of a vain man, rather than the utter heartlessness which robert thought it. he bowed across his finger-tips at his visitor. the trial had begun, and junius brutus was enjoying himself. "i received your communication, mr. audley," he said. "it is among other business letters: it was duly answered." "that letter concerned your son." there was a little rustling noise at the window where the lady sat, as robert said this: he looked at her almost instantaneously, but she did not seem to have stirred. she was not working, but she was perfectly quiet. "she's as heartless as her father, i expect, though she is like george," thought mr. audley. "if your letter concerned the person who was once my son, perhaps, sir," said harcourt talboys, "i must ask you to remember that i have no longer a son." "you have no reason to remind me of that, mr. talboys," answered robert, gravely; "i remember it only too well. i have fatal reason to believe that you have no longer a son. i have bitter cause to think that he is dead." it may be that mr. talboys' complexion faded to a paler shade of buff as robert said this; but he only elevated his bristling gray eyebrows and shook his head gently. "no," he said, "no, i assure you, no." "i believe that george talboys died in the month of september." the girl who had been addressed as clara, sat with work primly folded upon her lap, and her hands lying clasped together on her work, and never stirred when robert spoke of his friend's death. he could not distinctly see her face, for she was seated at some distance from him, and with her back to the window. "no, no, i assure you," repeated mr. talboys, "you labor under a sad mistake." "you believe that i am mistaken in thinking your son dead?" asked robert. "most certainly," replied mr. talboys, with a smile, expressive of the serenity of wisdom. "most certainly, my dear sir. the disappearance was a very clever trick, no doubt, but it was not sufficiently clever to deceive me. you must permit me to understand this matter a little better than you, mr. audley, and you must also permit me to assure you of three things. in the first place, your friend is not dead. in the second place, he is keeping out of the way for the purpose of alarming me, of trifling with my feelings as a�as a man who was once his father, and of ultimately obtaining my forgiveness. in the third place, he will not obtain that forgiveness, however long he may please to keep out of the way; and he would therefore act wisely by returning to his ordinary residence and avocations without delay." "then you imagine him to purposely hide himself from all who know him, for the purpose of�" "for the purpose of influencing me," exclaimed mr. talboys, who, taking a stand upon his own vanity, traced every event in life from that one center, and resolutely declined to look at it from any other point of view. "for the purpose of influencing me. he knew the inflexibility of my character; to a certain degree he was acquainted with me, and knew that all attempts at softening my decision, or moving me from the fixed purpose of my life, would fail. he therefore tried extraordinary means; he has kept out of the way in order to alarm me, and when after due time he discovers that he has not alarmed me, he will return to his old haunts. when he does so," said mr. talboys, rising to sublimity, "i will forgive him. yes, sir, i will forgive him. i shall say to him: you have attempted to deceive me, and i have shown you that i am not to be deceived; you have tried to frighten me, and i have convinced you that i am not to be frightened; you did not believe in my generosity, i will show you that i can be generous." harcourt talboys delivered himself of these superb periods with a studied manner, that showed they had been carefully composed long ago. robert audley sighed as he heard them. "heaven grant that you may have an opportunity of saying this to your son, sir," he answered sadly. "i am very glad to find that you are willing to forgive him, but i fear that you will never see him again upon this earth. i have a great deal to say to you upon this�this sad subject, mr. talboys; but i would rather say it to you alone," he added, glancing at the lady in the window. "my daughter knows my ideas upon this subject, mr. audley," said harcourt talboys; "there is no reason why she should not hear all you have to say. miss clara talboys, mr. robert audley," he added, waving his hand majestically. the young lady bent her head in recognition of robert's bow. "let her hear it," he thought. "if she has so little feeling as to show no emotion upon such a subject, let her hear the worst i have to tell." there was a few minutes' pause, during which robert took some papers from his pocket; among them the document which he had written immediately after george's disappearance. "i shall require all your attention, mr. talboys," he said, "for that which i have to disclose to you is of a very painful nature. your son was my very dear friend�dear to me for many reasons. perhaps most of all dear, because i had known him and been with him through the great trouble of his life; and because he stood comparatively alone in the world�cast off by you who should have been his best friend, bereft of the only woman he had ever loved." "the daughter of a drunken pauper," mr. talboys remarked, parenthetically. "had he died in his bed, as i sometimes thought he would," continued robert audley, "of a broken heart, i should have mourned for him very sincerely, even though i had closed his eyes with my own hands, and had seen him laid in his quiet resting-place. i should have grieved for my old schoolfellow, and for the companion who had been dear to me. but this grief would have been a very small one compared to that which i feel now, believing, as i do only too firmly, that my poor friend has been murdered." "murdered!" the father and daughter simultaneously repeated the horrible word. the father's face changed to a ghastly duskiness of hue; the daughter's face dropped upon her clasped hands, and was never lifted again throughout the interview. "mr. audley, you are mad!" exclaimed harcourt talboys; "you are mad, or else you are commissioned by your friend to play upon my feelings. i protest against this proceeding as a conspiracy, and i�i revoke my intended forgiveness of the person who was once my son!" he was himself again as he said this. the blow had been a sharp one, but its effect had been momentary. "it is far from my wish to alarm you unnecessarily, sir," answered robert. "heaven grant that you may be right and i wrong. i pray for it, but i cannot think it�i cannot even hope it. i come to you for advice. i will state to you plainly and dispassionately the circumstances which have aroused my suspicions. if you say those suspicions are foolish and unfounded i am ready to submit to your better judgment. i will leave england; and i abandon my search for the evidence wanting to�to confirm my fears. if you say go on, i will go on." nothing could be more gratifying to the vanity of mr. harcourt talboys than this appeal. he declared himself ready to listen to all that robert might have to say, and ready to assist him to the uttermost of his power. he laid some stress upon this last assurance, deprecating the value of his advice with an affectation that was as transparent as his vanity itself. robert audley drew his chair nearer to that of mr. talboys, and commenced a minutely detailed account of all that had occurred to george from the time of his arrival in england to the hour of his disappearance, as well as all that had occurred since his disappearance in any way touching upon that particular subject. harcourt talboys listened with demonstrative attention, now and then interrupting the speaker to ask some magisterial kind of question. clara talboys never once lifted her face from her clasped hands. the hands of the clock pointed to a quarter past eleven when robert began his story. the clock struck twelve as he finished. he had carefully suppressed the names of his uncle and his uncle's wife in relating the circumstances in which they had been concerned. "now, sir," he said, when the story had been told, "i await your decision. you have heard my reasons for coming to this terrible conclusion. in what manner do these reasons influence you?" "they don't in any way turn me from my previous opinion," answered mr. harcourt talboys, with the unreasoning pride of an obstinate man. "i still think, as i thought before, that my son is alive, and that his disappearance is a conspiracy against myself. i decline to become the victim of that conspiracy." "and you tell me to stop?" asked robert, solemnly. "i tell you only this: if you go on, you go on for your own satisfaction, not for mine. i see nothing in what you have told me to alarm me for the safety of�your friend." "so be it, then!" exclaimed robert, suddenly; "from this moment i wash my hands of this business. from this moment the purpose of my life shall be to forget it." he rose as he spoke, and took his hat from the table on which he had placed it. he looked at clara talboys. her attitude had never changed since she had dropped her face upon her hands. "good morning, mr. talboys," he said, gravely. "god grant that you are right. god grant that i am wrong. but i fear a day will come when you will have reason to regret your apathy respecting the untimely fate of your only son." he bowed gravely to mr. harcourt talboys and to the lady, whose face was hidden by her hands. he lingered for a moment looking at miss talboys, thinking that she would look up, that she would make some sign, or show some desire to detain him. mr. talboys rang for the emotionless servant, who led robert off to the hall-door with the solemnity of manner which would have been in perfect keeping had he been leading him to execution. "she is like her father," thought mr. audley, as he glanced for the last time at the drooping head. "poor george, you had need of one friend in this world, for you have had very few to love you." chapter xxiii. clara. robert audley found the driver asleep upon the box of his lumbering vehicle. he had been entertained with beer of so hard a nature as to induce temporary strangulation in the daring imbiber thereof, and he was very glad to welcome the return of his fare. the old white horse, who looked as if he had been foaled in the year in which the carriage had been built, and seemed, like the carriage, to have outlived the fashion, was as fast asleep as his master, and woke up with a jerk as robert came down the stony flight of steps, attended by his executioner, who waited respectfully till mr. audley had entered the vehicle and been turned off. the horse, roused by a smack of his driver's whip and a shake of the shabby reins, crawled off in a semi-somnambulent state; and robert, with his hat very much over his eyes, thought of his missing friend. he had played in these stiff gardens, and under these dreary firs, years ago, perhaps�if it were possible for the most frolicsome youth to be playful within the range of mr. harcourt talboys' hard gray eyes. he had played beneath these dark trees, perhaps, with the sister who had heard of his fate to-day without a tear. robert audley looked at the rigid primness of the orderly grounds, wondering how george could have grown up in such a place to be the frank, generous, careless friend whom he had known. how was it that with his father perpetually before his eyes, he had not grown up after the father's disagreeable model, to be a nuisance to his fellow-men? how was it? because we have some one higher than our parents to thank for the souls which make us great or small; and because, while family noses and family chins may descend in orderly sequence from father to son, from grandsire to grandchild, as the fashion of the fading flowers of one year is reproduced in the budding blossoms of the next, the spirit, more subtle than the wind which blows among those flowers, independent of all earthly rule, owns no order but the harmonious law of god. "thank god!" thought robert audley; "thank god! it is over. my poor friend must rest in his unknown grave; and i shall not be the means of bringing disgrace upon those i love. it will come, perhaps, sooner or later, but it will not come through me. the crisis is past, and i am free." he felt an unutterable relief in this thought. his generous nature revolted at the office into which he had found himself drawn�the office of spy, the collector of damning facts that led on to horrible deductions. he drew a long breath�a sigh of relief at his release. it was all over now. the fly was crawling out of the gate of the plantation as he thought this, and he stood up in the vehicle to look back at the dreary fir-trees, the gravel paths, the smooth grass, and the great desolate-looking, red-brick mansion. he was startled by the appearance of a woman running, almost flying, along the carriage-drive by which he had come, and waving a handkerchief in her uplifted hand. he stared at this singular apparition for some moments in silent wonder before he was able to reduce his stupefaction into words. "is it me the flying female wants?" he exclaimed, at last. "you'd better stop, perhaps," he added, to the flyman. "it is an age of eccentricity, an abnormal era of the world's history. she may want me. very likely i left my pocket-handkerchief behind me, and mr. talboys has sent this person with it. perhaps i'd better get out and go and meet her. it's civil to send my handkerchief." mr. robert audley deliberately descended from the fly and walked slowly toward the hurrying female figure, which gained upon him rapidly. he was rather short sighted, and it was not until she came very near to him that he saw who she was. "good heaven!" he exclaimed, "it's miss talboys." it was miss talboys, flushed and breathless, with a woolen shawl thrown over her head. robert audley now saw her face clearly for the first time, and he saw that she was very handsome. she had brown eyes, like george's, a pale complexion (she had been flushed when she approached him, but the color faded away as she recovered her breath), regular features, with a mobility of expression which bore record of every change of feeling. he saw all this in a few moments, and he wondered only the more at the stoicism of her manner during his interview with mr. talboys. there were no tears in her eyes, but they were bright with a feverish luster�terribly bright and dry�and he could see that her lips trembled as she spoke to him. "miss talboys," he said, "what can i�why�" she interrupted him suddenly, catching at his wrist with her disengaged hand�she was holding her shawl in the other. "oh, let me speak to you," she cried�"let me speak to you, or i shall go mad. i heard it all. i believe what you believe, and i shall go mad unless i can do something�something toward avenging his death." for a few moments robert audley was too much bewildered to answer her. of all things possible upon earth he had least expected to behold her thus. "take my arm, miss talboys," he said. "pray calm yourself. let us walk a little way back toward the house, and talk quietly. i would not have spoken as i did before you had i known�" "had you known that i loved my brother?" she said, quickly. "how should you know that i loved him? how should any one think that i loved him, when i have never had power to give him a welcome beneath that roof, or a kindly word from his father? how should i dare to betray my love for him in that house when i knew that even a sister's affection would be turned to his disadvantage? you do not know my father, mr. audley. i do. i knew that to intercede for george would have been to ruin his cause. i knew that to leave matters in my father's hands, and to trust to time, was my only chance of ever seeing that dear brother again. and i waited�waited patiently, always hoping for the best; for i knew that my father loved his only son. i see your contemptuous smile, mr. audley, and i dare say it is difficult for a stranger to believe that underneath his affected stoicism my father conceals some degree of affection for his children�no very warm attachment perhaps, for he has always ruled his life by the strict law of duty. stop," she said, suddenly, laying her hand upon his arm, and looking back through the straight avenue of pines; "i ran out of the house by the back way. papa must not see me talking to you, mr. audley, and he must not see the fly standing at the gate. will you go into the high-road and tell the man to drive on a little way? i will come out of the plantation by a little gate further on, and meet you in the road." "but you will catch cold, miss talboys," remonstrated robert, looking at her anxiously, for he saw that she was trembling. "you are shivering now." "not with cold," she answered. "i am thinking of my brother george. if you have any pity for the only sister of your lost friend, do what i ask you, mr. audley. i must speak to you�i must speak to you�calmly, if i can." she put her hand to her head as if trying to collect her thoughts, and then pointed to the gate. robert bowed and left her. he told the man to drive slowly toward the station, and walked on by the side of the tarred fence surrounding mr. talboys' grounds. about a hundred yards beyond the principal entrance he came to a little wooden gate in the fence, and waited at it for miss talboys. she joined him presently, with her shawl still over her head, and her eyes still bright and tearless. "will you walk with me inside the plantation?" she said. "we might be observed on the high-road." he bowed, passed through the gate, and shut it behind him. when she took his offered arm he found that she was still trembling�trembling very violently. "pray, pray calm yourself, miss talboys," he said; "i may have been deceived in the opinion which i have formed; i may�" "no, no, no," she exclaimed, "you are not deceived. my brother has been murdered. tell me the name of that woman�the woman whom you suspect of being concerned in his disappearance�in his murder." "that i cannot do until�" "until when?" "until i know that she is guilty." "you told my father that you would abandon all idea of discovering the truth�that you would rest satisfied to leave my brother's fate a horrible mystery never to be solved upon this earth; but you will not do so, mr. audley�you will not be false to the memory of your friend. you will see vengeance done upon those who have destroyed him. you will do this, will you not?" a gloomy shadow spread itself like a dark veil over robert audley's handsome face. he remembered what he had said the day before at southampton: "a hand that is stronger than my own is beckoning me onward, upon the dark road." a quarter of an hour before, he had believed that all was over, and that he was released from the dreadful duty of discovering the secret of george's death. now this girl, this apparently passionless girl, had found a voice, and was urging him on toward his fate. "if you knew what misery to me may be involved in discovering the truth, miss talboys," he said, "you would scarcely ask me to pursue this business any farther?" "but i do ask you," she answered, with suppressed passion�"i do ask you. i ask you to avenge my brother's untimely death. will you do so? yes or no?" "what if i answer no?" "then i will do it myself," she exclaimed, looking at him with her bright brown eyes. "i myself will follow up the clew to this mystery; i will find this woman�though you refuse to tell me in what part of england my brother disappeared. i will travel from one end of the world to the other to find the secret of his fate, if you refuse to find it for me. i am of age; my own mistress; rich, for i have money left me by one of my aunts; i shall be able to employ those who will help me in my search, and i will make it to their interest to serve me well. choose between the two alternatives, mr. audley. shall you or i find my brother's murderer?" he looked in her face, and saw that her resolution was the fruit of no transient womanish enthusiasm which would give way under the iron hand of difficulty. her beautiful features, naturally statuesque in their noble outlines, seemed transformed into marble by the rigidity of her expression. the face in which he looked was the face of a woman whom death only could turn from her purpose. "i have grown up in an atmosphere of suppression," she said, quietly; "i have stifled and dwarfed the natural feelings of my heart, until they have become unnatural in their intensity; i have been allowed neither friends nor lovers. my mother died when i was very young. my father has always been to me what you saw him to-day. i have had no one but my brother. all the love that my heart can hold has been centered upon him. do you wonder, then, that when i hear that his young life has been ended by the hand of treachery, that i wish to see vengeance done upon the traitor? oh, my god," she cried, suddenly clasping her hands, and looking up at the cold winter sky, "lead me to the murderer of my brother, and let mine be the hand to avenge his untimely death." robert audley stood looking at her with awe-stricken admiration. her beauty was elevated into sublimity by the intensity of her suppressed passion. she was different to all other women that he had ever seen. his cousin was pretty, his uncle's wife was lovely, but clara talboys was beautiful. niobe's face, sublimated by sorrow, could scarcely have been more purely classical than hers. even her dress, puritan in its gray simplicity, became her beauty better than a more beautiful dress would have become a less beautiful woman. "miss talboys," said robert, after a pause, "your brother shall not be unavenged. he shall not be forgotten. i do not think that any professional aid which you could procure would lead you as surely to the secret of this mystery as i can lead you, if you are patient and trust me." "i will trust you," she answered, "for i see that you will help me." "i believe that it is my destiny to do so," he said, solemnly. in the whole course of his conversation with harcourt talboys, robert audley had carefully avoided making any deductions from the circumstances which he had submitted to george's father. he had simply told the story of the missing man's life, from the hour of his arriving in london to that of his disappearance; but he saw that clara talboys had arrived at the same conclusion as himself, and that it was tacitly understood between them. "have you any letters of your brother's, miss talboys?" he asked. "two. one written soon after his marriage, the other written at liverpool, the night before he sailed for australia." "will you let me see them?" "yes, i will send them to you if you will give me your address. you will write to me from time to time, will you not, to tell me whether you are approaching the truth. i shall be obliged to act secretly here, but i am going to leave home in two or three months, and i shall be perfectly free then to act as i please." "you are not going to leave england?" robert asked. "oh no! i am only going to pay a long-promised visit to some friends in essex." robert started so violently as clara talboys said this, that she looked suddenly at his face. the agitation visible there, betrayed a part of his secret. "my brother george disappeared in essex," she said. he could not contradict her. "i am sorry you have discovered so much," he replied. "my position becomes every day more complicated, every day more painful. good-bye." she gave him her hand mechanically, when he held out his; but it was cold as marble, and lay listlessly in his own, and fell like a log at her side when he released it. "pray lose no time in returning to the house," he said earnestly. "i fear you will suffer from this morning's work." "suffer!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "you talk to me of suffering, when the only creature in this world who ever loved me has been taken from it in the bloom of youth. what can there be for me henceforth but suffering? what is the cold to me?" she said, flinging back her shawl and baring her beautiful head to the bitter wind. "i would walk from here to london barefoot through the snow, and never stop by the way, if i could bring him back to life. what would i not do to bring him back? what would i not do?" the words broke from her in a wail of passionate sorrow; and clasping her hands before her face, she wept for the first time that day. the violence of her sobs shook her slender frame, and she was obliged to lean against the trunk of a tree for support. robert looked at her with a tender compassion in his face; she was so like the friend whom he had loved and lost, that it was impossible for him to think of her as a stranger; impossible to remember that they had met that morning for the first time. "pray, pray be calm," he said: "hope even against hope. we may both be deceived; your brother may still live." "oh! if it were so," she murmured, passionately; "if it could be so." "let us try and hope that it may be so." "no," she answered, looking at him through her tears, "let us hope for nothing but revenge. good-by, mr. audley. stop; your address." he gave her a card, which she put into the pocket of her dress. "i will send you george's letters," she said; "they may help you. good-by." she left him half bewildered by the passionate energy of her manner, and the noble beauty of her face. he watched her as she disappeared among the straight trunks of the fir-trees, and then walked slowly out of the plantation. "heaven help those who stand between me and the secret," he thought, "for they will be sacrificed to the memory of george talboys." chapter xxiv. george's letters. robert audley did not return to southampton, but took a ticket for the first up town train that left wareham, and reached waterloo bridge an hour or two after dark. the snow, which had been hard and crisp in dorsetshire, was a black and greasy slush in the waterloo road, thawed by the flaring lamps of the gin-palaces and the glaring gas in the butchers' shops. robert audley shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the dingy streets through which the hansom carried him, the cab-man choosing�with that delicious instinct which seems innate in the drivers of hackney vehicles�all those dark and hideous thoroughfares utterly unknown to the ordinary pedestrian. "what a pleasant thing life is," thought the barrister. "what an unspeakable boon�what an overpowering blessing! let any man make a calculation of his existence, subtracting the hours in which he has been thoroughly happy�really and entirely at his ease, without one arriere pensée to mar his enjoyment�without the most infinitesimal cloud to overshadow the brightness of his horizon. let him do this, and surely he will laugh in utter bitterness of soul when he sets down the sum of his felicity, and discovers the pitiful smallness of the amount. he will have enjoyed himself for a week or ten days in thirty years, perhaps. in thirty years of dull december, and blustering march, and showery april, and dark november weather, there may have been seven or eight glorious august days, through which the sun has blazed in cloudless radiance, and the summer breezes have breathed perpetual balm. how fondly we recollect these solitary days of pleasure, and hope for their recurrence, and try to plan the circumstances that made them bright; and arrange, and predestinate, and diplomatize with fate for a renewal of the remembered joy. as if any joy could ever be built up out of such and such constituent parts! as if happiness were not essentially accidental�a bright and wandering bird, utterly irregular in its migrations; with us one summer's day, and forever gone from us on the next! look at marriages, for instance," mused robert, who was as meditative in the jolting vehicle, for whose occupation he was to pay sixpence a mile, as if he had been riding a mustang on the wild loneliness of the prairies. "look at marriage! who is to say which shall be the one judicious selection out of nine hundred and ninety-nine mistakes! who shall decide from the first aspect of the slimy creature, which is to be the one eel out of the colossal bag of snakes? that girl on the curbstone yonder, waiting to cross the street when my chariot shall have passed, may be the one woman out of every female creature in this vast universe who could make me a happy man. yet i pass her by�bespatter her with the mud from my wheels, in my helpless ignorance, in my blind submission to the awful hand of fatality. if that girl, clara talboys, had been five minutes later, i should have left dorsetshire thinking her cold, hard, and unwomanly, and should have gone to my grave with that mistake part and parcel of my mind. i took her for a stately and heartless automaton; i know her now to be a noble and beautiful woman. what an incalculable difference this may make in my life. when i left that house, i went out into the winter day with the determination of abandoning all further thought of the secret of george's death. i see her, and she forces me onward upon the loathsome path�the crooked by-way of watchfulness and suspicion. how can i say to this sister of my dead friend, 'i believe that your brother has been murdered! i believe that i know by whom, but i will take no step to set my doubts at rest, or to confirm my fears'? i cannot say this. this woman knows half my secret; she will soon possess herself of the rest, and then�and then�" the cab stopped in the midst of robert audley's meditation, and he had to pay the cabman, and submit to all the dreary mechanism of life, which is the same whether we are glad or sorry�whether we are to be married or hung, elevated to the woolsack, or disbarred by our brother benchers on some mysterious technical tangle of wrong-doing, which is a social enigma to those outside the forum domesticum of the middle temple. we are apt to be angry with this cruel hardness in our life�this unflinching regularity in the smaller wheels and meaner mechanism of the human machine, which knows no stoppage or cessation, though the mainspring be forever hollow, and the hands pointing to purposeless figures on a shattered dial. who has not felt, in the first madness of sorrow, an unreasoning rage against the mute propriety of chairs and tables, the stiff squareness of turkey carpets, the unbending obstinacy of the outward apparatus of existence? we want to root up gigantic trees in a primeval forest, and to tear their huge branches asunder in our convulsive grasp; and the utmost that we can do for the relief of our passion is to knock over an easy-chair, or smash a few shillings' worth of mr. copeland's manufacture. madhouses are large and only too numerous; yet surely it is strange they are not larger, when we think of how many helpless wretches must beat their brains against this hopeless persistency of the orderly outward world, as compared with the storm and tempest, the riot and confusion within�when we remember how many minds must tremble upon the narrow boundary between reason and unreason, mad to-day and sane to-morrow, mad yesterday and sane to-day. robert audley had directed the cabman to drop him at the corner of chancery lane, and he ascended the brilliantly-lighted staircase leading to the dining-saloon of the london, and seated himself at one of the snug tables with a confused sense of emptiness and weariness, rather than any agreeable sensation of healthy hunger. he had come to the luxurious eating-house to dine, because it was absolutely necessary to eat something somewhere, and a great deal easier to get a very good dinner from mr. sawyer than a very bad one from mrs. maloney, whose mind ran in one narrow channel of chops and steaks, only variable by small creeks and outlets in the way of "broiled sole" or "boiled mack'-rill." the solicitous waiter tried in vain to rouse poor robert to a proper sense of the solemnity of the dinner question. he muttered something to the effect that the man might bring him anything he liked, and the friendly waiter, who knew robert as a frequent guest at the little tables, went back to his master with a doleful face, to say that mr. audley, from figtree court, was evidently out of spirits. robert ate his dinner, and drank a pint of moselle; but he had poor appreciation of the excellence of the viands or the delicate fragrance of the wine. the mental monologue still went on, and the young philosopher of the modern school was arguing the favorite modern question of the nothingness of everything, and the folly of taking too much trouble to walk upon a road that went nowhere, or to compass a work that meant nothing. "i accept the dominion of that pale girl, with the statuesque features and the calm brown eyes," he thought. "i recognize the power of a mind superior to my own, and i yield to it, and bow down to it. i've been acting for myself, and thinking for myself, for the last few months, and i'm tired of the unnatural business. i've been false to the leading principle of my life, and i've suffered for the folly. i found two gray hairs in my head the week before last, and an impertinent crow has planted a delicate impression of his foot under my right eye. yes, i'm getting old upon the right side; and why�why should it be so?" he pushed away his plate and lifted his eyebrows, staring at the crumbs upon the glistening damask, as he pondered the question. "what the devil am i doing in this galere?" he asked. "but i am in it, and i can't get out of it; so i better submit myself to the brown-eyed girl, and do what she tells me patiently and faithfully. what a wonderful solution to life's enigma there is in petticoat government! man might lie in the sunshine, and eat lotuses, and fancy it 'always afternoon,' if his wife would let him! but she won't, bless her impulsive heart and active mind! she knows better than that. who ever heard of a woman taking life as it ought to be taken? instead of supporting it as an unavoidable nuisance, only redeemable by its brevity, she goes through it as if it were a pageant or a procession. she dresses for it, and simpers and grins, and gesticulates for it. she pushes her neighbors, and struggles for a good place in the dismal march; she elbows, and writhes, and tramples, and prances to the one end of making the most of the misery. she gets up early and sits up late, and is loud, and restless, and noisy, and unpitying. she drags her husband on to the woolsack, or pushes him into parliament. she drives him full butt at the dear, lazy machinery of government, and knocks and buffets him about the wheels, and cranks, and screws, and pulleys; until somebody, for quiet's sake, makes him something that she wanted him to be made. that's why incompetent men sometimes sit in high places, and interpose their poor, muddled intellects between the things to be done and the people that can do them, making universal confusion in the helpless innocence of well-placed incapacity. the square men in the round holes are pushed into them by their wives. the eastern potentate who declared that women were at the bottom of all mischief, should have gone a little further and seen why it is so. it is because women are never lazy. they don't know what it is to be quiet. they are semiramides, and cleopatras, and joans of arc, queen elizabeths, and catharines the second, and they riot in battle, and murder, and clamor and desperation. if they can't agitate the universe and play at ball with hemispheres, they'll make mountains of warfare and vexation out of domestic molehills, and social storms in household teacups. forbid them to hold forth upon the freedom of nations and the wrongs of mankind, and they'll quarrel with mrs. jones about the shape of a mantle or the character of a small maid-servant. to call them the weaker sex is to utter a hideous mockery. they are the stronger sex, the noisier, the more persevering, the most self-assertive sex. they want freedom of opinion, variety of occupation, do they? let them have it. let them be lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, soldiers, legislators�anything they like�but let them be quiet�if they can." mr. audley pushed his hands through the thick luxuriance of his straight brown hair, and uplifted the dark mass in his despair. "i hate women," he thought, savagely. "they're bold, brazen, abominable creatures, invented for the annoyance and destruction of their superiors. look at this business of poor george's! it's all woman's work from one end to the other. he marries a woman, and his father casts him off penniless and professionless. he hears of the woman's death and he breaks his heart�his good honest, manly heart, worth a million of the treacherous lumps of self-interest and mercenary calculation which beats in women's breasts. he goes to a woman's house and he is never seen alive again. and now i find myself driven into a corner by another woman, of whose existence i had never thought until this day. and�and then," mused mr. audley, rather irrelevantly, "there's alicia, too; she's another nuisance. she'd like me to marry her i know; and she'll make me do it, i dare say, before she's done with me. but i'd much rather not; though she is a dear, bouncing, generous thing, bless her poor little heart." robert paid his bill and rewarded the waiter liberally. the young barrister was very willing to distribute his comfortable little income among the people who served him, for he carried his indifference to all things in the universe, even to the matter of pounds, shillings and pence. perhaps he was rather exceptional in this, as you may frequently find that the philosopher who calls life an empty delusion is pretty sharp in the investment of his moneys, and recognizes the tangible nature of india bonds, spanish certificates, and egyptian scrip�as contrasted with the painful uncertainty of an ego or a non-ego in metaphysics. the snug rooms in figtree court seemed dreary in their orderly quiet to robert audley upon this particular evening. he had no inclination for his french novels, though there was a packet of uncut romances, comic and sentimental, ordered a month before, waiting his pleasure upon one of the tables. he took his favorite meerschaum and dropped into his favorite chair with a sigh. "it's comfortable, but it seems so deuced lonely to-night. if poor george were sitting opposite to me, or�or even george's sister�she's very like him�existence might be a little more endurable. but when a fellow's lived by himself for eight or ten years he begins to be bad company." he burst out laughing presently as he finished his first pipe. "the idea of my thinking of george's sister," he thought; "what a preposterous idiot i am!" the next day's post brought him a letter in a firm but feminine hand, which was strange to him. he found the little packet lying on his breakfast-table, beside the warm french roll wrapped in a napkin by mrs. maloney's careful but rather dirty hands. he contemplated the envelope for some minutes before opening it�not in any wonder as to his correspondent, for the letter bore the postmark of grange heath, and he knew that there was only one person who was likely to write to him from that obscure village, but in that lazy dreaminess which was a part of his character. "from clara talboys," he murmured slowly, as he looked critically at the clearly-shaped letters of his name and address. "yes, from clara talboys, most decidedly; i recognized a feminine resemblance to poor george's hand; neater than his, and more decided than his, but very like, very like." he turned the letter over and examined the seal, which bore his friend's familiar crest. "i wonder what she says to me?" he thought. "it's a long letter, i dare say; she's the kind of woman who would write a long letter�a letter that will urge me on, drive me forward, wrench me out of myself, i've no doubt. but that can't be helped�so here goes!" he tore open the envelope with a sigh of resignation. it contained nothing but george's two letters, and a few words written on the flap: "i send the letters; please preserve and return them�c.t." the letter, written from liverpool, told nothing of the writer's life except his sudden determination of starting for a new world, to redeem the fortunes that had been ruined in the old. the letter written almost immediately after george's marriage, contained a full description of his wife�such a description as a man could only write within three weeks of a love match�a description in which every feature was minutely catalogued, every grace of form or beauty of expression fondly dwelt upon, every charm of manner lovingly depicted. robert audley read the letter three times before he laid it down. "if george could have known for what a purpose this description would serve when he wrote it," thought the young barrister, "surely his hand would have fallen paralyzed by horror, and powerless to shape one syllable of these tender words." chapter xxv. retrograde investigation. the dreary london january dragged its dull length slowly out. the last slender records of christmas time were swept away, and robert audley still lingered in town�still spent his lonely evenings in his quiet sitting-room in figtree court�still wandered listlessly in the temple gardens on sunny mornings, absently listening to the children's babble, idly watching their play. he had many friends among the inhabitants of the quaint old buildings round him; he had other friends far away in pleasant country places, whose spare bedrooms were always at bob's service, whose cheerful firesides had snugly luxurious chairs specially allotted to him. but he seemed to have lost all taste for companionship, all sympathy with the pleasures and occupations of his class, since the disappearance of george talboys. elderly benchers indulged in facetious observations upon the young man's pale face and moody manner. they suggested the probability of some unhappy attachment, some feminine ill-usage as the secret cause of the change. they told him to be of good cheer, and invited him to supper-parties, at which "lovely woman, with all her faults, god bless her," was drunk by gentlemen who shed tears as they proposed the toast, and were maudlin and unhappy in their cups toward the close of the entertainment. robert had no inclination for the wine-bibbing and the punch-making. the one idea of his life had become his master. he was the bonden slave of one gloomy thought�one horrible presentiment. a dark cloud was brooding above his uncle's house, and it was his hand which was to give the signal for the thunder-clap, and the tempest that was to ruin that noble life. "if she would only take warning and run away," he said to himself sometimes. "heaven knows, i have given her a fair chance. why doesn't she take it and run away?" he heard sometimes from sir michael, sometimes from alicia. the young lady's letter rarely contained more than a few curt lines informing him that her papa was well; and that lady audley was in very high spirits, amusing herself in her usual frivolous manner, and with her usual disregard for other people. a letter from mr. marchmont, the southampton schoolmaster, informed robert that little georgey was going on very well, but that he was behindhand in his education, and had not yet passed the intellectual rubicon of words of two syllables. captain maldon had called to see his grandson, but that privilege had been withheld from him, in accordance with mr. audley's instructions. the old man had furthermore sent a parcel of pastry and sweetmeats to the little boy, which had also been rejected on the ground of indigestible and bilious tendencies in the edibles. toward the close of february, robert received a letter from his cousin alicia, which hurried him one step further forward toward his destiny, by causing him to return to the house from which he had become in a manner exiled at the instigation of his uncle's wife. "papa is very ill," alicia wrote; "not dangerously ill, thank god; but confined to his room by an attack of low fever which has succeeded a violent cold. come and see him, robert, if you have any regard for your nearest relations. he has spoken about you several times; and i know he will be glad to have you with him. come at once, but say nothing about this letter. "from your affectionate cousin, alicia." a sick and deadly terror chilled robert audley's heart, as he read this letter�a vague yet hideous fear, which he dared not shape into any definite form. "have i done right?" he thought, in the first agony of this new horror�"have i done right to tamper with justice; and to keep the secret of my doubts in the hope that i was shielding those i love from sorrow and disgrace? what shall i do if i find him ill, very ill, dying perhaps, dying upon her breast! what shall i do?" one course lay clear before him; and the first step of that course was a rapid journey to audley court. he packed his portmanteau, jumped into a cab, and reached the railway station within an hour of his receipt of alicia's letter, which had come by the afternoon post. the dim village lights flickered faintly through the growing dusk when robert reached audley. he left his portmanteau with the station-master, and walked at a leisurely pace through the quiet lanes that led away to the still loneliness of the court. the over-arching trees stretched their leafless branches above his head, bare and weird in the dusky light. a low moaning wind swept across the flat meadow land, and tossed those rugged branches hither and thither against the dark gray sky. they looked like the ghostly arms of shrunken and withered giants, beckoning robert to his uncle's house. they looked like threatening phantoms in the chill winter twilight, gesticulating to him to hasten upon his journey. the long avenue so bright and pleasant when the perfumed limes scattered their light bloom upon the pathway, and the dog-rose leaves floated on the summer air, was terribly bleak and desolate in the cheerless interregnum that divides the homely joys of christmas from the pale blush of coming spring�a dead pause in the year, in which nature seems to lie in a tranced sleep, awaiting the wondrous signal for the budding of the flower. a mournful presentiment crept into robert audley's heart as he drew nearer to his uncle's house. every changing outline in the landscape was familiar to him; every bend of the trees; every caprice of the untrammeled branches; every undulation in the bare hawthorn hedge, broken by dwarf horse-chestnuts, stunted willows, blackberry and hazel bushes. sir michael had been a second father to the young man, a generous and noble friend, a grave and earnest adviser; and perhaps the strongest sentiment of robert's heart was his love for the gray-bearded baronet. but the grateful affection was so much a part of himself, that it seldom found an outlet in words, and a stranger would never have fathomed the depth of feeling which lay, a deep and powerful current, beneath the stagnant surface of the barrister's character. "what would become of this place if my uncle were to die?" he thought, and he drew nearer to the ivied archway, and the still water-pools, coldly gray in the twilight. "would other people live in the old house, and sit under the low oak ceilings in the homely familiar rooms?" that wonderful faculty of association, so interwoven with the inmost fibers of even the hardest nature, filled the young man's breast with a prophetic pain as he remembered that, however long or late, the day must come on which the oaken shutters would be closed for awhile, and the sunshine shut out of the house he loved. it was painful to him even to remember this; as it must always be painful to think of the narrow lease the greatest upon this earth can ever hold of its grandeurs. is it so wonderful that some wayfarers drop asleep under the hedges, scarcely caring to toil onward on a journey that leads to no abiding habitation? is it wonderful that there have been quietists in the world ever since christ's religion was first preached upon earth. is it strange that there is a patient endurance and tranquil resignation, calm expectation of that which is to come on the further shore of the dark flowing river? is it not rather to be wondered that anybody should ever care to be great for greatness' sake; for any other reason than pure conscientiousness; the simple fidelity of the servant who fears to lay his talents by in a napkin, knowing that indifference is near akin to dishonesty? if robert audley had lived in the time of thomas à kempis, he would very likely have built himself a narrow hermitage amid some forest loneliness, and spent his life in tranquil imitation of the reputed author of the imitation. as it was, figtree court was a pleasant hermitage in its way, and for breviaries and books of hours, i am ashamed to say the young barrister substituted paul de kock and dumas, fils. but his sins were of so simply negative an order, that it would have been very easy for him to have abandoned them for negative virtues. only one solitary light was visible in the long irregular range of windows facing the archway, as robert passed under the gloomy shade of the rustling ivy, restless in the chill moaning of the wind. he recognized that lighted window as the large oriel in his uncle's room. when last he had looked at the old house it had been gay with visitors, every window glittering like a low star in the dusk; now, dark and silent, it faced the winter's night like some dismal baronial habitation, deep in a woodland solitude. the man who opened the door to the unlooked-for visitor, brightened as he recognized his master's nephew. "sir michael will be cheered up a bit, sir, by the sight of you," he said, as he ushered robert audley into the fire-lit library, which seemed desolate by reason of the baronet's easy-chair standing empty on the broad hearth-rug. "shall i bring you some dinner here, sir, before you go up-stairs?" the servant asked. "my lady and miss audley have dined early during my master's illness, but i can bring you anything you would please to take, sir." "i'll take nothing until i have seen my uncle," robert answered, hurriedly; "that is to say, if i can see him at once. he is not too ill to receive me, i suppose?" he added, anxiously. "oh, no, sir�not too ill; only a little low, sir. this way, if you please." he conducted robert up the short flight of shallow oaken stairs to the octagon chamber in which george talboys had sat long five months before, staring absently at my lady's portrait. the picture was finished now, and hung in the post of honor opposite the window, amidst claudes, poussins and wouvermans, whose less brilliant hues were killed by the vivid coloring of the modern artist. the bright face looked out of that tangled glitter of golden hair, in which the pre-raphaelites delight, with a mocking smile, as robert paused for a moment to glance at the well-remembered picture. two or three moments afterward he had passed through my lady's boudoir and dressing-room and stood upon the threshold of sir michael's room. the baronet lay in a quiet sleep, his arm laying outside the bed, and his strong hand clasped in his young wife's delicate fingers. alicia sat in a low chair beside the broad open hearth, on which the huge logs burned fiercely in the frosty atmosphere. the interior of this luxurious bedchamber might have made a striking picture for an artist's pencil. the massive furniture, dark and somber, yet broken up and relieved here and there by scraps of gilding, and masses of glowing color; the elegance of every detail, in which wealth was subservient to purity of taste; and last, but greatest in importance, the graceful figures of the two women, and the noble form of the old man would have formed a worthy study for any painter. lucy audley, with her disordered hair in a pale haze of yellow gold about her thoughtful face, the flowing lines of her soft muslin dressing-gown falling in straight folds to her feet, and clasped at the waist by a narrow circlet of agate links might have served as a model for a mediaeval saint, in one of the tiny chapels hidden away in the nooks and corners of a gray old cathedral, unchanged by reformation or cromwell; and what saintly martyr of the middle ages could have borne a holier aspect than the man whose gray beard lay upon the dark silken coverlet of the stately bed? robert paused upon the threshold, fearful of awaking his uncle. the two ladies had heard his step, cautious though he had been, and lifted their heads to look at him. my lady's face, quietly watching the sick man, had worn an anxious earnestness which made it only more beautiful; but the same face recognizing robert audley, faded from its delicate brightness, and looked scared and wan in the lamplight. "mr. audley!" she cried, in a faint, tremulous voice. "hush!" whispered alicia, with a warning gesture; "you will wake papa. how good of you to come, robert," she added, in the same whispered tones, beckoning to her cousin to take an empty chair near the bed. the young man seated himself in the indicated seat at the bottom of the bed, and opposite to my lady, who sat close beside the pillows. he looked long and earnestly at the face of the sleeper; still longer, still more earnestly at the face of lady audley, which was slowly recovering its natural hues. "he has not been very ill, has he?" robert asked, in the same key as that in which alicia had spoken. my lady answered the question. "oh, no, not dangerously ill," she said, without taking her eyes from her husband's face; "but still we have been anxious, very, very anxious." robert never relaxed his scrutiny of that pale face. "she shall look at me," he thought; "i will make her meet my eyes, and i will read her as i have read her before. she shall know how useless her artifices are with me." he paused for a few minutes before he spoke again. the regular breathing of the sleeper the ticking of a gold hunting-watch at the head of the bed, and the crackling of the burning logs, were the only sounds that broke the stillness. "i have no doubt you have been anxious, lady audley," robert said, after a pause, fixing my lady's eyes as they wandered furtively to his face. "there is no one to whom my uncle's life can be of more value than to you. your happiness, your prosperity, your safety depend alike upon his existence." the whisper in which he uttered these words was too low to reach the other side of the room, where alicia sat. lucy audley's eyes met those of the speaker with some gleam of triumph in their light. "i know that," she said. "those who strike me must strike through him." she pointed to the sleeper as she spoke, still looking at robert audley. she defied him with her blue eyes, their brightness intensified by the triumph in their glance. she defied him with her quiet smile�a smile of fatal beauty, full of lurking significance and mysterious meaning�the smile which the artist had exaggerated in his portrait of sir michael's wife. robert turned away from the lovely face, and shaded his eyes with his hand; putting a barrier between my lady and himself; a screen which baffled her penetration and provoked her curiosity. was he still watching her or was he thinking? and of what was he thinking? robert had been seated at the bedside for upward of an hour before his uncle awoke. the baronet was delighted at his nephew's coming. "it was very good of you to come to me, bob," he said. "i have been thinking of you a good deal since i have been ill. you and lucy must be good friends, you know, bob; and you must learn to think of her as your aunt, sir; though she is young and beautiful; and�and�you understand, eh?" robert grasped his uncle's hand, but he looked down as he answered: "i do understand you, sir," he said, quietly; "and i give you my word of honor that i am steeled against my lady's fascinations. she knows that as well as i do." lucy audley made a little grimace with her pretty little lips. "bah, you silly robert," she exclaimed; "you take everything au serieux. if i thought you were rather too young for a nephew, it was only in my fear of other people's foolish gossip; not from any�" she hesitated for a moment, and escaped any conclusion to her sentence by the timely intervention of mr. dawson, her late employer, who entered the room upon his evening visit while she was speaking. he felt the patient's pulse; asked two or three questions; pronounced the baronet to be steadily improving; exchanged a few commonplace remarks with alicia and lady audley, and prepared to leave the room. robert rose and accompanied him to the door. "i will light you to the staircase," he said, taking a candle from one of the tables, and lighting it at the lamp. "no, no, mr. audley, pray do not trouble yourself," expostulated the surgeon; "i know my way very well indeed." robert insisted, and the two men left the room together. as they entered the octagon ante-chamber the barrister paused and shut the door behind him. "will you see that the door is closed, mr. dawson?" he said, pointing to that which opened upon the staircase. "i wish to have a few moments' private conversation with you." "with much pleasure," replied the surgeon, complying with robert's request; "but if you are at all alarmed about your uncle, mr. audley, i can set your mind at rest. there is no occasion for the least uneasiness. had his illness been at all serious i should have telegraphed immediately for the family physician." "i am sure that you would have done your duty, sir," answered robert, gravely. "but i am not going to speak of my uncle. i wish to ask you two or three questions about another person." "indeed." "the person who once lived in your family as miss lucy graham; the person who is now lady audley." mr. dawson looked up with an expression of surprise upon his quiet face. "pardon me, mr. audley," he answered; "you can scarcely expect me to answer any questions about your uncle's wife without sir michael's express permission. i can understand no motive which can prompt you to ask such questions�no worthy motive, at least." he looked severely at the young man, as much as to say: "you have been falling in love with your uncle's pretty wife, sir, and you want to make me a go-between in some treacherous flirtation; but it won't do, sir, it won't do." "i always respected the lady as miss graham, sir," he said, "and i esteem her doubly as lady audley�not on account of her altered position, but because she is the wife of one of the noblest men in christendom." "you cannot respect my uncle or my uncle's honor more sincerely than i do," answered robert. "i have no unworthy motive for the questions i am about to ask; and you must answer them." "must!" echoed mr. dawson, indignantly. "yes, you are my uncle's friend. it was at your house he met the woman who is now his wife. she called herself an orphan, i believe, and enlisted his pity as well as his admiration in her behalf. she told him that she stood alone in the world, did she not?�without a friend or relative. this was all i could ever learn of her antecedents." "what reason have you to wish to know more?" asked the surgeon. "a very terrible reason," answered robert audley. "for some months past i have struggled with doubts and suspicions which have embittered my life. they have grown stronger every day; and they will not be set at rest by the commonplace sophistries and the shallow arguments with which men try to deceive themselves rather than believe that which of all things upon earth they most fear to believe. i do not think that the woman who bears my uncle's name, is worthy to be his wife. i may wrong her. heaven grant that it is so. but if i do, the fatal chain of circumstantial evidence never yet linked itself so closely about an innocent person. i wish to set my doubts at rest or�or to confirm my fears. there is but one manner in which i can do this. i must trace the life of my uncle's wife backward, minutely and carefully, from this night to a period of six years ago. this is the twenty-fourth of february, fifty-nine. i want to know every record of her life between to-night and the february of the year fifty-three." "and your motive is a worthy one?" "yes, i wish to clear her from a very dreadful suspicion." "which exists only in your mind?" "and in the mind of one other person." "may i ask who that person is?" "no, mr. dawson," answered robert, decisively; "i cannot reveal anything more than what i have already told you. i am a very irresolute, vacillating man in most things. in this matter i am compelled to be decided. i repeat once more that i must know the history of lucy graham's life. if you refuse to help me to the small extent in your power, i will find others who will help me. painful as it would become, i will ask my uncle for the information which you would withhold, rather than be baffled in the first step of my investigation." mr. dawson was silent for some minutes. "i cannot express how much you have astonished and alarmed me, mr. audley." he said. "i can tell you so little about lady audley's antecedents, that it would be mere obstinacy to withhold the small amount of information i possess. i have always considered your uncle's wife one of the most amiable of women. i cannot bring myself to think her otherwise. it would be an uprooting of one of the strongest convictions of my life were i compelled to think her otherwise. you wish to follow her life backward from the present hour to the year fifty-three?" "i do." "she was married to your uncle last june twelvemonth, in the midsummer of fifty-seven. she had lived in my house a little more than thirteen months. she became a member of my household upon the fourteenth of may, in the year fifty-six." "and she came to you�" "from a school at brompton, a school kept by a lady of the name of vincent. it was mrs. vincent's strong recommendation that induced me to receive miss graham into my family without any more special knowledge of her antecedents." "did you see this mrs. vincent?" "i did not. i advertised for a governess, and miss graham answered my advertisement. in her letter she referred me to mrs. vincent, the proprietress of a school in which she was then residing as junior teacher. my time is always so fully occupied, that i was glad to escape the necessity of a day's loss in going from audley to london to inquire about the young lady's qualifications. i looked for mrs. vincent's name in the directory, found it, and concluded that she was a responsible person, and wrote to her. her reply was perfectly satisfactory;�miss lucy graham was assiduous and conscientious; as well as fully qualified for the situation i offered. i accepted this reference, and i had no cause to regret what may have been an indiscretion. and now, mr. audley, i have told you all that i have the power to tell." "will you be so kind as to give me the address of this mrs. vincent?" asked robert, taking out his pocketbook. "certainly; she was then living at no. 9 crescent villas, brompton." "ah, to be sure," muttered mr. audley, a recollection of last september flashing suddenly back upon him as the surgeon spoke. "crescent villas�yes, i have heard the address before from lady audley herself. this mrs. vincent telegraphed to my uncle's wife early in last september. she was ill�dying, i believe�and sent for my lady; but had removed from her old house and was not to be found." "indeed! i never heard lady audley mention the circumstance." "perhaps not. it occurred while i was down here. thank you, mr. dawson, for the information you have so kindly and honestly given me. it takes me back two and a-half years in the history of my lady's life; but i have still a blank of three years to fill up before i can exonerate her from my terrible suspicion. good evening." robert shook hands with the surgeon and returned to his uncle's room. he had been away about a quarter of an hour. sir michael had fallen asleep once more, and my lady's loving hands had lowered the heavy curtains and shaded the lamp by the bedside. alicia and her father's wife were taking tea in lady audley's boudoir, the room next to the antechamber in which robert and mr. dawson had been seated. lucy audley looked up from her occupation among the fragile china cups and watched robert rather anxiously as he walked softly to his uncle's room and back again to the boudoir. she looked very pretty and innocent, seated behind the graceful group of delicate opal china and glittering silver. surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea. the most feminine and most domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her every glance. the floating mists from the boiling liquid in which she infuses the soothing herbs; whose secrets are known to her alone, envelope her in a cloud of scented vapor, through which she seems a social fairy, weaving potent spells with gunpowder and bohea. at the tea-table she reigns omnipotent, unapproachable. what do men know of the mysterious beverage? read how poor hazlitt made his tea, and shudder at the dreadful barbarism. how clumsily the wretched creatures attempt to assist the witch president of the tea-tray; how hopelessly they hold the kettle, how continually they imperil the frail cups and saucers, or the taper hands of the priestess. to do away with the tea-table is to rob woman of her legitimate empire. to send a couple of hulking men about among your visitors, distributing a mixture made in the housekeeper's room, is to reduce the most social and friendly of ceremonies to a formal giving out of rations. better the pretty influence of the tea cups and saucers gracefully wielded in a woman's hand than all the inappropriate power snatched at the point of the pen from the unwilling sterner sex. imagine all the women of england elevated to the high level of masculine intellectuality, superior to crinoline; above pearl powder and mrs. rachael levison; above taking the pains to be pretty; above tea-tables and that cruelly scandalous and rather satirical gossip which even strong men delight in; and what a drear, utilitarian, ugly life the sterner sex must lead. my lady was by no means strong-minded. the starry diamonds upon her white fingers flashed hither and thither among the tea-things, and she bent her pretty head over the marvelous indian tea-caddy of sandal-wood and silver, with as much earnestness as if life held no higher purpose than the infusion of bohea. "you'll take a cup of tea with us, mr. audley?" she asked, pausing with the teapot in her hand to look up at robert, who was standing near the door. "if you please." "but you have not dined, perhaps? shall i ring and tell them to bring you something a little more substantial than biscuits and transparent bread and butter?" "no, thank you, lady audley. i took some lunch before i left town. i'll trouble you for nothing but a cup of tea." he seated himself at the little table and looked across it at his cousin alicia, who sat with a book in her lap, and had the air of being very much absorbed by its pages. the bright brunette complexion had lost its glowing crimson, and the animation of the young lady's manner was suppressed�on account of her father's illness, no doubt, robert thought. "alicia, my dear," the barrister said, after a very leisurely contemplation of his cousin, "you're not looking well." miss audley shrugged her shoulders, but did not condescend to lift her eyes from her book. "perhaps not," she answered, contemptuously. "what does it matter? i'm growing a philosopher of your school, robert audley. what does it matter? who cares whether i am well or ill?" "what a spitfire she is," thought the barrister. he always knew his cousin was angry with him when she addressed him as "robert audley." "you needn't pitch into a fellow because he asks you a civil question, alicia," he said, reproachfully. "as to nobody caring about your health, that's nonsense. i care." miss audley looked up with a bright smile. "sir harry towers cares." miss audley returned to her book with a frown. "what are you reading there, alicia?" robert asked, after a pause, during which he had sat thoughtfully stirring his tea. "changes and chances." "a novel?" "yes." "who is it by?" "the author of follies and faults," answered alicia, still pursuing her study of the romance upon her lap. "is it interesting?" miss audley pursed up her mouth and shrugged her shoulders. "not particularly," she said. "then i think you might have better manners than to read it while your first cousin is sitting opposite you," observed mr. audley, with some gravity, "especially as he has only come to pay you a flying visit, and will be off to-morrow morning." "to-morrow morning!" exclaimed my lady, looking up suddenly. though the look of joy upon lady audley's face was as brief as a flash of lightning on a summer sky, it was not unperceived by robert. "yes," he said; "i shall be obliged to run up to london to-morrow on business, but i shall return the next day, if you will allow me, lady audley, and stay here till my uncle recovers." "but you are not seriously alarmed about him, are you?" asked my lady, anxiously. "you do not think him very ill?" "no," answered robert. "thank heaven, i think there is not the slightest cause for apprehension." my lady sat silent for a few moments, looking at the empty teacups with a prettily thoughtful face�a face grave with the innocent seriousness of a musing child. "but you were closeted such a long time with mr. dawson, just now," she said, after this brief pause. "i was quite alarmed at the length of your conversation. were you talking of sir michael all the time?" "no; not all the time?" my lady looked down at the teacups once more. "why, what could you find to say to mr. dawson, or he to say to you?" she asked, after another pause. "you are almost strangers to each other." "suppose mr. dawson wished to consult me about some law business." "was it that?" cried lady audley, eagerly. "it would be rather unprofessional to tell you if it were so, my lady," answered robert, gravely. my lady bit her lip, and relapsed into silence. alicia threw down her book, and watched her cousin's preoccupied face. he talked to her now and then for a few minutes, but it was evidently an effort to him to arouse himself from his revery. "upon my word, robert audley, you are a very agreeable companion," exclaimed alicia at length, her rather limited stock of patience quite exhausted by two or three of these abortive attempts at conversation. "perhaps the next time you come to the court you will be good enough to bring your mind with you. by your present inanimate appearance, i should imagine that you had left your intellect, such as it is, somewhere in the temple. you were never one of the liveliest of people, but latterly you have really grown almost unendurable. i suppose you are in love, mr. audley, and are thinking of the honored object of your affections." he was thinking of clara talboys' uplifted face, sublime in its unutterable grief; of her impassioned words still ringing in his ears as clearly as when they were first spoken. again he saw her looking at him with her bright brown eyes. again he heard that solemn question: "shall you or i find my brother's murderer?" and he was in essex; in the little village from which he firmly believed george talboys had never departed. he was on the spot at which all record of his friend's life ended as suddenly as a story ends when the reader shuts the book. and could he withdraw now from the investigation in which he found himself involved? could he stop now? for any consideration? no; a thousand times no! not with the image of that grief-stricken face imprinted on his mind. not with the accents of that earnest appeal ringing on his ear. chapter xxvi. so far and no farther. robert left audley the next morning by an early train, and reached shoreditch a little after nine o'clock. he did not return to his chambers, but called a cab and drove straight to crescent villas, west brompton. he knew that he should fail in finding the lady he went to seek at this address, as his uncle had failed a few months before, but he thought it possible to obtain some clew to the schoolmistress' new residence, in spite of sir michael's ill-success. "mrs. vincent was in a dying state, according to the telegraphic message," robert thought. "if i do find her, i shall at least succeed in discovering whether that message was genuine." he found crescent villas after some difficulty. the houses were large, but they lay half imbedded among the chaos of brick and rising mortar around them. new terraces, new streets, new squares led away into hopeless masses of stone and plaster on every side. the roads were sticky with damp clay, which clogged the wheels of the cab and buried the fetlocks of the horse. the desolations�that awful aspect of incompleteness and discomfort which pervades a new and unfinished neighborhood�had set its dismal seal upon the surrounding streets which had arisen about and intrenched crescent villas; and robert wasted forty minutes by his watch, and an hour and a quarter by the cabman's reckoning, in driving up and down uninhabited streets and terraces, trying to find the villas; whose chimney-tops were frowning down upon him black and venerable, amid groves of virgin plaster, undimmed by time or smoke. but having at last succeeded in reaching his destination, mr. audley alighted from the cab, directed the driver to wait for him at a certain corner, and set out upon his voyage of discovery. "if i were a distinguished q.c., i could not do this sort of thing," he thought; "my time would be worth a guinea or so a minute, and i should be retained in the great case of hoggs vs. boggs, going forward this very day before a special jury at westminster hall. as it is, i can afford to be patient." he inquired for mrs. vincent at the number which mr. dawson had given him. the maid who opened the door had never heard that lady's name; but after going to inquire of her mistress, she returned to tell robert that mrs. vincent had lived there, but that she had left two months before the present occupants had entered the house, "and missus has been here fifteen months," the girl added emphatically. "but you cannot tell where she went on leaving here?" robert asked, despondingly. "no, sir; missus says she believes the lady failed, and that she left sudden like, and didn't want her address to be known in the neighborhood." mr. audley felt himself at a standstill once more. if mrs. vincent had left the place in debt, she had no doubt scrupulously concealed her whereabouts. there was little hope, then, of learning her address from the tradespeople; and yet, on the other hand, it was just possible that some of her sharpest creditors might have made it their business to discover the defaulter's retreat. he looked about him for the nearest shops, and found a baker's, a stationer's, and a fruiterer's a few paces from the crescent. three empty-looking, pretentious shops, with plate-glass windows, and a hopeless air of gentility. he stopped at the baker's, who called himself a pastrycook and confectioner, and exhibited some specimens of petrified sponge-cake in glass bottles, and some highly-glazed tarts, covered with green gauze. "she must have bought bread," robert thought, as he deliberated before the baker's shop; "and she is likely to have bought it at the handiest place. i'll try the baker." the baker was standing behind his counter, disputing the items of a bill with a shabby-genteel young woman. he did not trouble himself to attend to robert audley until he had settled the dispute, but he looked up as he was receipting the bill, and asked the barrister what he pleased to want. "can you tell me the address of a mrs. vincent, who lived at no. 9 crescent villas a year and a half ago?" mr. audley inquired, mildly. "no, i can't," answered the baker, growing very red in the face, and speaking in an unnecessarily loud voice; "and what's more, i wish i could. that lady owes me upward of eleven pound for bread, and it's rather more than i can afford to lose. if anybody can tell me where she lives, i shall be much obliged to 'em for so doing." robert audley shrugged his shoulders and wished the man good-morning. he felt that his discovery of the lady's whereabouts would involve more trouble than he had expected. he might have looked for mrs. vincent's name in the post-office directory, but he thought it scarcely likely that a lady who was on such uncomfortable terms with her creditors, would afford them so easy a means of ascertaining her residence. "if the baker can't find her, how should i find her?" he thought, despairingly. "if a resolute, sanguine, active and energetic creature, such as the baker, fail to achieve this business, how can a lymphatic wretch like me hope to accomplish it? where the baker has been defeated, what preposterous folly it would be for me to try to succeed." mr. audley abandoned himself to these gloomy reflections as he walked slowly back toward the corner at which he had left the cab. about half-way between the baker's shop and this corner he was arrested by hearing a woman's step close at his side, and a woman's voice asking him to stop. he turned and found himself face to face with the shabbily-dressed woman whom he had left settling her account with the baker. "eh, what?" he asked, vaguely. "can i do anything for you, ma'am? does mrs. vincent owe you money, too?" "yes, sir," the woman answered, with a semi-genteel manner which corresponded with the shabby gentility of her dress. "mrs. vincent is in my debt; but it isn't that, sir. i�i want to know, please, what your business may be with her�because�because�" "you can give me her address if you choose, ma'am. that's what you mean to say, isn't it?" the woman hesitated a little, looking rather suspiciously at robert. "you're not connected with�with the tally business, are you, sir?" she asked, after considering mr. audley's personal appearance for a few moments. "the what, ma'am?" asked the young barrister, staring aghast at his questioner. "i'm sure i beg your pardon, sir," exclaimed the little woman, seeing that she had made some awful mistake. "i thought you might have been, you know. some of the gentlemen who collect for the tally shops do dress so very handsome; and i know mrs. vincent owes a good deal of money." robert audley laid his hand upon the speaker's arm. "my dear madam," he said, "i want to know nothing of mrs. vincent's affairs. so far from being concerned in what you call the tally business, i have not the remotest idea what you mean by that expression. you may mean a political conspiracy; you may mean some new species of taxes. mrs. vincent does not owe me any money, however badly she may stand with that awful-looking baker. i never saw her in my life; but i wish to see her to-day for the simple purpose of asking her a few very plain questions about a young lady who once resided in her house. if you know where mrs. vincent lives and will give me her address, you will be doing me a great favor." he took out his card-case and handed a card to the woman, who examined the slip of pasteboard anxiously before she spoke again. "i'm sure you look and speak like a gentleman, sir," she said, after a brief pause, "and i hope you will excuse me if i've seemed mistrustful like; but poor mrs. vincent has had dreadful difficulties, and i'm the only person hereabouts that she's trusted with her addresses. i'm a dressmaker, sir, and i've worked for her for upward of six years, and though she doesn't pay me regular, you know, sir, she gives me a little money on account now and then, and i get on as well as i can. i may tell you where she lives, then, sir? you haven't deceived me, have you?" "on my honor, no." "well, then sir," said the dressmaker, dropping her voice as if she thought the pavement beneath her feet, or the iron railings before the houses by her side, might have ears to hear her, "it's acacia cottage, peckham grove. i took a dress there yesterday for mrs. vincent." "thank you," said robert, writing the address in his pocketbook. "i am very much obliged to you, and you may rely upon it, mrs. vincent shall not suffer any inconvenience through me." he lifted his hat, bowed to the little dressmaker, and turned back to the cab. "i have beaten the baker, at any rate," he thought. "now for the second stage, traveling backward, in my lady's life." the drive from brompton to the peckham road was a very long one, and between crescent villas and acacia cottage, robert audley had ample leisure for reflection. he thought of his uncle lying weak and ill in the oak-room at audley court. he thought of the beautiful blue eyes watching sir michael's slumbers; the soft, white hands tending on his waking moments; the low musical voice soothing his loneliness, cheering and consoling his declining years. what a pleasant picture it might have been, had he been able to look upon it ignorantly, seeing no more than others saw, looking no further than a stranger could look. but with the black cloud which he saw brooding over it, what an arch mockery, what a diabolical delusion it seemed. peckham grove�pleasant enough in the summer-time�has rather a dismal aspect upon a dull february day, when the trees are bare and leafless, and the little gardens desolate. acacia cottage bore small token of the fitness of its nomenclature, and faced the road with its stuccoed walls sheltered only by a couple of attenuated poplars. but it announced that it was acacia cottage by means of a small brass plate upon one of the gate-posts, which was sufficient indication for the sharp-sighted cabman, who dropped mr. audley upon the pavement before the little gate. acacia cottage was much lower in the social scale than crescent villas, and the small maid-servant who came to the low wooden gate and parleyed with mr. audley, was evidently well used to the encounter of relentless creditors across the same feeble barricade. she murmured the familiar domestic fiction of the uncertainty regarding her mistress's whereabouts; and told robert that if he would please to state his name and business, she would go and see if mrs. vincent was at home. mr. audley produced a card, and wrote in pencil under his own name: "a connection of the late miss graham." he directed the small servant to carry his card to her mistress, and quietly awaited the result. the servant returned in about five minutes with the key of the gate. her mistress was at home, she told robert as she admitted him, and would be happy to see the gentleman. the square parlor into which robert was ushered bore in every scrap of ornament, in every article of furniture, the unmistakable stamp of that species of poverty which is most comfortless because it is never stationary. the mechanic who furnishes his tiny sitting-room with half-a-dozen cane chairs, a pembroke table, a dutch clock, a tiny looking-glass, a crockery shepherd and shepherdess, and a set of gaudily-japanned iron tea-trays, makes the most of his limited possessions, and generally contrives to get some degree of comfort out of them; but the lady who loses the handsome furniture of the house she is compelled to abandon and encamps in some smaller habitation with the shabby remainder�bought in by some merciful friend at the sale of her effects�carries with her an aspect of genteel desolation and tawdry misery not easily to be paralleled in wretchedness by any other phase which poverty can assume. the room which robert audley surveyed was furnished with the shabbier scraps snatched from the ruin which had overtaken the imprudent schoolmistress in crescent villas. a cottage piano, a chiffonier, six sizes too large for the room, and dismally gorgeous in gilded moldings that were chipped and broken; a slim-legged card-table, placed in the post of honor, formed the principal pieces of furniture. a threadbare patch of brussels carpet covered the center of the room, and formed an oasis of roses and lilies upon a desert of shabby green drugget. knitted curtains shaded the windows, in which hung wire baskets of horrible-looking plants of the cactus species, that grew downward, like some demented class of vegetation, whose prickly and spider-like members had a fancy for standing on their heads. the green-baize covered card-table was adorned with gaudily-bound annuals or books of beauty, placed at right angles; but robert audley did not avail himself of these literary distractions. he seated himself upon one of the rickety chairs, and waited patiently for the advent of the schoolmistress. he could hear the hum of half-a-dozen voices in a room near him, and the jingling harmonies of a set of variations in deh conte, upon a piano, whose every wire was evidently in the last stage of attenuation. he had waited for about a quarter of an hour, when the door was opened, and a lady, very much dressed, and with the setting sunlight of faded beauty upon her face, entered the room. "mr. audley, i presume," she said, motioning to robert to reseat himself, and placing herself in an easy-chair opposite to him. "you will pardon me, i hope, for detaining you so long; my duties�" "it is i who should apologize for intruding upon you," robert answered, politely; "but my motive for calling upon you is a very serious one, and must plead my excuse. you remember the lady whose name i wrote upon my card?" "perfectly." "may i ask how much you know of that lady's history since her departure from your house?" "very little. in point of fact, scarcely anything at all. miss graham, i believe, obtained a situation in the family of a surgeon resident in essex. indeed, it was i who recommended her to that gentleman. i have never heard from her since she left me." "but you have communicated with her?" robert asked, eagerly. "no, indeed." mr. audley was silent for a few moments, the shadow of gloomy thoughts gathering darkly on his face. "may i ask if you sent a telegraphic dispatch to miss graham early in last september, stating that you were dangerously ill, and that you wished to see her?" mrs. vincent smiled at her visitor's question. "i had no occasion to send such a message," she said; "i have never been seriously ill in my life." robert audley paused before he asked any further questions, and scrawled a few penciled words in his note-book. "if i ask you a few straightforward questions about miss lucy graham, madam," he said. "will you do me the favor to answer them without asking my motive in making such inquiries?" "most certainly," replied mrs. vincent. "i know nothing to miss graham's disadvantage, and have no justification for making a mystery of the little i do know." "then will you tell me at what date the young lady first came to you?" mrs. vincent smiled and shook her head. she had a pretty smile�the frank smile of a woman who had been admired, and who has too long felt the certainty of being able to please, to be utterly subjugated by any worldly misfortune. "it's not the least use to ask me, mr. audley," she said. "i'm the most careless creature in the world; i never did, and never could remember dates, though i do all in my power to impress upon my girls how important it is for their future welfare that they should know when william the conqueror began to reign, and all that kind of thing. but i haven't the remotest idea when miss graham came to me, although i know it was ages ago, for it was the very summer i had my peach-colored silk. but we must consult tonks�tonks is sure to be right." robert audley wondered who or what tonks could be; a diary, perhaps, or a memorandum-book�some obscure rival of letsome. mrs. vincent rung the bell, which was answered by the maid-servant who had admitted robert. "ask miss tonks to come to me," she said. "i want to see her particularly." in less than five minutes miss tonks made her appearance. she was wintry and rather frost-bitten in aspect, and seemed to bring cold air in the scanty folds of her somber merino dress. she was no age in particular, and looked as if she had never been younger, and would never grow older, but would remain forever working backward and forward in her narrow groove, like some self-feeding machine for the instruction of young ladies. "tonks, my dear," said mrs. vincent, without ceremony, "this gentleman is a relative of miss graham's. do you remember how long it is since she came to us at crescent villas?" "she came in august, 1854," answered miss tonks; "i think it was the eighteenth of august, but i'm not quite sure that it wasn't the seventeenth. i know it was on a tuesday." "thank you, tonks; you are a most invaluable darling," exclaimed mrs. vincent, with her sweetest smile. it was, perhaps, because of the invaluable nature of miss tonks' services that she had received no remuneration whatever from her employer for the last three or four years. mrs. vincent might have hesitated to pay from very contempt for the pitiful nature of the stipend as compared with the merits of the teacher. "is there anything else that tonks or i can tell you, mr. audley?" asked the schoolmistress. "tonks has a far better memory than i have." "can you tell me where miss graham came from when she entered your household?" robert inquired. "not very precisely," answered mrs. vincent. "i have a vague notion that miss graham said something about coming from the seaside, but she didn't say where, or if she did i have forgotten it. tonks, did miss graham tell you where she came from?" "oh, no!" replied miss tonks, shaking her grim little head significantly. "miss graham told me nothing; she was too clever for that. she knows how to keep her own secrets, in spite of her innocent ways and her curly hair," miss tonks added, spitefully. "you think she had secrets?" robert asked, rather eagerly. "i know she had," replied miss tonks, with frosty decision; "all manner of secrets. i wouldn't have engaged such a person as junior teacher in a respectable school, without so much as one word of recommendation from any living creature." "you had no reference, then, from miss graham?" asked robert, addressing mrs. vincent. "no," the lady answered, with some little embarrassment; "i waived that. miss graham waived the question of salary; i could not do less than waive the question of reference. she quarreled with her papa, she told me, and she wanted to find a home away from all the people she had ever known. she wished to keep herself quite separate from these people. she had endured so much, she said, young as she was, and she wanted to escape from her troubles. how could i press her for a reference under these circumstances, especially when i saw that she was a perfect lady. you know that lucy graham was a perfect lady, tonks, and it is very unkind for you to say such cruel things about my taking her without a reference." "when people make favorites, they are apt to be deceived in them," miss tonks answered, with icy sententiousness, and with no very perceptible relevance to the point in discussion. "i never made her a favorite, you jealous tonks," mrs. vincent answered, reproachfully. "i never said she was as useful as you, dear. you know i never did." "oh, no!" replied miss tonks, with a chilling accent, "you never said she was useful. she was only ornamental; a person to be shown off to visitors, and to play fantasias on the drawing-room piano." "then you can give me no clew to miss graham's previous history?" robert asked, looking from the schoolmistress to her teacher. he saw very clearly that miss tonks bore an envious grudge against lucy graham�a grudge which even the lapse of time had not healed. "if this woman knows anything to my lady's detriment, she will tell it," he thought. "she will tell it only too willingly." but miss tonks appeared to know nothing whatever; except that miss graham had sometimes declared herself an ill-used creature, deceived by the baseness of mankind, and the victim of unmerited sufferings, in the way of poverty and deprivation. beyond this, miss tonks could tell nothing; and although she made the most of what she did know, robert soon sounded the depth of her small stock of information. "i have only one more question to ask," he said at last. "it is this: did miss graham leave any books or knick-knacks, or any other kind of property whatever, behind her, when she left your establishment?" "not to my knowledge," mrs. vincent replied. "yes," cried miss tonks, sharply. "she did leave something. she left a box. it's up-stairs in my room. i've got an old bonnet in it. would you like to see the box?" she asked, addressing robert. "if you will be so good as to allow me," he answered, "i should very much like to see it." "i'll fetch it down," said miss tonks. "it's not very big." she ran out of the room before mr. audley had time to utter any polite remonstrance. "how pitiless these women are to each other," he thought, while the teacher was absent. "this one knows intuitively that there is some danger to the other lurking beneath my questions. she sniffs the coming trouble to her fellow female creature, and rejoices in it, and would take any pains to help me. what a world it is, and how these women take life out of her hands. helen maldon, lady audley, clara talboys, and now miss tonks�all womankind from beginning to end." miss tonks re-entered while the young barrister was meditating upon the infamy of her sex. she carried a dilapidated paper-covered bonnet-box, which she submitted to robert's inspection. mr. audley knelt down to examine the scraps of railway labels and addresses which were pasted here and there upon the box. it had been battered upon a great many different lines of railway, and had evidently traveled considerably. many of the labels had been torn off, but fragments of some of them remained, and upon one yellow scrap of paper robert read the letters, turi. "the box has been to italy," he thought. "those are the first four letters of the word turin, and the label is a foreign one." the only direction which had not been either defaced or torn away was the last, which bore the name of miss graham, passenger to london. looking very closely at this label, mr. audley discovered that it had been pasted over another. "will you be so good as to let me have a little water and a piece of sponge?" he said. "i want to get off this upper label. believe me that i am justified in what i am doing." miss tonks ran out of the room and returned immediately with a basin of water and a sponge. "shall i take off the label?" she asked. "no, thank you," robert answered, coldly. "i can do it very well myself." he damped the upper label several times before he could loosen the edges of the paper; but after two or three careful attempts the moistened surface peeled off, without injury to the underneath address. miss tonks could not contrive to read this address across robert's shoulder, though she exhibited considerable dexterity in her endeavors to accomplish that object. mr. audley repeated his operations upon the lower label, which he removed from the box, and placed very carefully between two blank leaves of his pocket-book. "i need intrude upon you no longer, ladies," he said, when he had done this. "i am extremely obliged to you for having afforded me all the information in your power. i wish you good-morning." mrs. vincent smiled and bowed, murmuring some complacent conventionality about the delight she had felt in mr. audley's visit. miss tonks, more observant, stared at the white change, which had come over the young man's face since he had removed the upper label from the box. robert walked slowly away from acacia cottage. "if that which i have found to-day is no evidence for a jury," he thought, "it is surely enough to convince my uncle that he has married a designing and infamous woman." chapter xxvii. beginning at the other end. robert audley walked slowly through the leafless grove, under the bare and shadowless trees in the gray february atmosphere, thinking as he went of the discovery he had just made. "i have that in my pocket-book," he pondered, "which forms the connecting link between the woman whose death george talboys read of in the times newspaper and the woman who rules in my uncle's house. the history of lucy graham ends abruptly on the threshold of mrs. vincent's school. she entered that establishment in august, 1854. the schoolmistress and her assistant can tell me this but they cannot tell me whence she came. they cannot give me one clew to the secrets of her life from the day of her birth until the day she entered that house. i can go no further in this backward investigation of my lady's antecedents. what am i to do, then, if i mean to keep my promise to clara talboys?" he walked on for a few paces revolving this question in his mind, with a darker shadow than the shadows of the gathering winter twilight on his face, and a heavy oppression of mingled sorrow and dread weighing down his heart. "my duty is clear enough," he thought�"not the less clear because it leads me step by step, carrying ruin and desolation with me, to the home i love. i must begin at the other end�i must begin at the other end, and discover the history of helen talboys from the hour of george's departure until the day of the funeral in the churchyard at ventnor." mr. audley hailed a passing hansom, and drove back to his chambers. he reached figtree court in time to write a few lines to miss talboys, and to post his letter at st. martin's-le-grand off before six o'clock. "it will save me a day," he thought, as he drove to the general post office with this brief epistle. he had written to clara talboys to inquire the name of the little seaport town in which george had met captain maldon and his daughter; for in spite of the intimacy between the two young men, robert audley knew very few particulars of his friend's brief married life. from the hour in which george talboys had read the announcement of his wife's death in the columns of the times, he had avoided all mention of the tender history which had been so cruelly broken, the familiar record which had been so darkly blotted out. there was so much that was painful in that brief story! there was such bitter self-reproach involved in the recollection of that desertion which must have seemed so cruel to her who waited and watched at home! robert audley comprehended this, and he did not wonder at his friend's silence. the sorrowful story had been tacitly avoided by both, and robert was as ignorant of the unhappy history of this one year in his schoolfellow's life as if they had never lived together in friendly companionship in those snug temple chambers. the letter, written to miss talboys by her brother george, within a month of his marriage, was dated harrowgate. it was at harrowgate, therefore, robert concluded, the young couple spent their honeymoon. robert audley had requested clara talboys to telegraph an answer to his question, in order to avoid the loss of a day in the accomplishment of the investigation he had promised to perform. the telegraphic answer reached figtree court before twelve o'clock the next day. the name of the seaport town was wildernsea, yorkshire. within an hour of the receipt of this message, mr. audley arrived at the king's-cross station, and took his ticket for wildernsea by an express train that started at a quarter before two. the shrieking engine bore him on the dreary northward journey, whirling him over desert wastes of flat meadow-land and bare cornfields, faintly tinted with fresh sprouting green. this northern road was strange and unfamiliar to the young barrister, and the wide expanse of the wintry landscape chilled him by its aspect of bare loneliness. the knowledge of the purpose of his journey blighted every object upon which his absent glances fixed themselves for a moment, only to wander wearily away; only to turn inward upon that far darker picture always presenting itself to his anxious mind. it was dark when the train reached the hull terminus, but mr. audley's journey was not ended. amidst a crowd of porters and scattered heaps of that incongruous and heterogeneous luggage with which travelers incumber themselves, he was led, bewildered and half asleep, to another train which was to convey him along the branch line that swept past wildernsea, and skirted the border of the german ocean. half an hour after leaving hull, robert felt the briny freshness of the sea upon the breeze that blew in at the open window of the carriage, and an hour afterward the train stopped at a melancholy station, built amid a sandy desert, and inhabited by two or three gloomy officials, one of whom rung a terrific peal upon a harshly clanging bell as the train approached. mr. audley was the only passenger who alighted at the dismal station. the train swept on to the gayer scenes before the barrister had time to collect his senses, or to pick up the portmanteau which had been discovered with some difficulty amid a black cavern of baggage only illuminated by one lantern. "i wonder whether settlers in the backwoods of america feel as solitary and strange as i feel to-night?" he thought, as he stared hopelessly about him in the darkness. he called to one of the officials, and pointed to his portmanteau. "will you carry that to the nearest hotel for me?" he asked�"that is to say, if i can get a good bed there." the man laughed as he shouldered the portmanteau. "you can get thirty beds, i dare say, sir, if you wanted 'em," he said. "we ain't over busy at wildernsea at this time o' year. this way, sir." the porter opened a wooden door in the station wall, and robert audley found himself upon a wide bowling-green of smooth grass, which surrounded a huge, square building, that loomed darkly on him through the winter's night, its black solidity only relieved by two lighted windows, far apart from each other, and glimmering redly like beacons on the darkness. "this is the victoria hotel, sir," said the porter. "you wouldn't believe the crowds of company we have down here in the summer." in the face of the bare grass-plat, the tenantless wooden alcoves, and the dark windows of the hotel, it was indeed rather difficult to imagine that the place was ever gay with merry people taking pleasure in the bright summer weather; but robert audley declared himself willing to believe anything the porter pleased to tell him, and followed his guide meekly to a little door at the side of the big hotel, which led into a comfortable bar, where the humbler classes of summer visitors were accommodated with such refreshments as they pleased to pay for, without running the gantlet of the prim, white-waistcoated waiters on guard at the principal entrance. but there were very few attendants retained at the hotel in the bleak february season, and it was the landlord himself who ushered robert into a dreary wilderness of polished mahogany tables and horsehair cushioned chairs, which he called the coffee-room. mr. audley seated himself close to the wide steel fender, and stretched his cramped legs upon the hearth-rug, while the landlord drove the poker into the vast pile of coal, and sent a ruddy blaze roaring upward through the chimney. "if you would prefer a private room, sir�" the man began. "no, thank you," said robert, indifferently; "this room seems quite private enough just now. if you will order me a mutton chop and a pint of sherry, i shall be obliged." "certainly, sir." "and i shall be still more obliged if you will favor me with a few minutes' conversation before you do so." "with very great pleasure, sir," the landlord answered, good-naturedly. "we see so very little company at this season of the year, that we are only too glad to oblige those gentlemen who do visit us. any information which i can afford you respecting the neighborhood of wildernsea and its attractions," added the landlord, unconsciously quoting a small hand-book of the watering-place which he sold in the bar, "i shall be most happy to�" "but i don't want to know anything about the neighborhood of wildernsea," interrupted robert, with a feeble protest against the landlord's volubility. "i want to ask you a few questions about some people who once lived here." the landlord bowed and smiled, with an air which implied his readiness to recite the biographies of all the inhabitants of the little seaport, if required by mr. audley to do so. "how many years have you lived here?" robert asked, taking his memorandum book from his pocket. "will it annoy you if i make notes of your replies to my questions?" "not at all, sir," replied the landlord, with a pompous enjoyment of the air of solemnity and importance which pervaded this business. "any information which i can afford that is likely to be of ultimate value�" "yes, thank you," robert murmured, interrupting the flow of words. "you have lived here�" "six years, sir." "since the year fifty-three?" "since november, in the year fifty-two, sir. i was in business at hull prior to that time. this house was only completed in the october before i entered it." "do you remember a lieutenant in the navy, on half-pay, i believe, at that time, called maldon?" "captain maldon, sir?" "yes, commonly called captain maldon. i see you do remember him." "yes, sir. captain maldon was one of our best customers. he used to spend his evenings in this very room, though the walls were damp at that time, and we weren't able to paper the place for nearly a twelvemonth afterward. his daughter married a young officer that came here with his regiment, at christmas time in fifty-two. they were married here, sir, and they traveled on the continent for six months, and came back here again. but the gentleman ran away to australia, and left the lady, a week or two after her baby was born. the business made quite a sensation in wildernsea, sir, and mrs.�mrs.�i forgot the name�" "mrs. talboys," suggested robert. "to be sure, sir, mrs. talboys. mrs. talboys was very much pitied by the wildernsea folks, sir, i was going to say, for she was very pretty, and had such nice winning ways that she was a favorite with everybody who knew her." "can you tell me how long mr. maldon and his daughter remained at wildernsea after mr. talboys left them?" robert asked. "well�no, sir," answered the landlord, after a few moments' deliberation. "i can't say exactly how long it was. i know mr. maldon used to sit here in this very parlor, and tell people how badly his daughter had been treated, and how he'd been deceived by a young man he'd put so much confidence in; but i can't say how long it was before he left wildernsea. but mrs. barkamb could tell you, sir," added the landlord, briskly. "mrs. barkamb." "yes, mrs. barkamb is the person who owns no. 17 north cottages, the house in which mr. maldon and his daughter lived. she's a nice, civil spoken, motherly woman, sir, and i'm sure she'll tell you anything you may want to know." "thank you, i will call upon mrs. barkamb to-morrow. stay�one more question. should you recognize mrs. talboys if you were to see her?" "certainly, sir. as sure as i should recognize one of my own daughters." robert audley wrote mrs. barkamb's address in his pocket-book, ate his solitary dinner, drank a couple of glasses of sherry, smoked a cigar, and then retired to the apartment in which a fire had been lighted for his comfort. he soon fell asleep, worn out with the fatigue of hurrying from place to place during the last two days; but his slumber was not a heavy one, and he heard the disconsolate moaning of the wind upon the sandy wastes, and the long waves rolling in monotonously upon the flat shore. mingling with these dismal sounds, the melancholy thoughts engendered by his joyless journey repeated themselves in never-varying succession in the chaos of his slumbering brain, and made themselves into visions of things that never had been and never could be upon this earth, but which had some vague relation to real events remembered by the sleeper. in those troublesome dreams he saw audley court, rooted up from amidst the green pastures and the shady hedgerows of essex, standing bare and unprotected upon that desolate northern shore, threatened by the rapid rising of a boisterous sea, whose waves seemed gathering upward to descend and crush the house he loved. as the hurrying waves rolled nearer and nearer to the stately mansion, the sleeper saw a pale, starry face looking out of the silvery foam, and knew that it was my lady, transformed into a mermaid, beckoning his uncle to destruction. beyond that rising sea great masses of cloud, blacker than the blackest ink, more dense than the darkest night, lowered upon the dreamer's eye; but as he looked at the dismal horizon the storm-clouds slowly parted, and from a narrow rent in the darkness a ray of light streamed out upon the hideous waves, which slowly, very slowly, receded, leaving the old mansion safe and firmly rooted on the shore. robert awoke with the memory of this dream in his mind, and a sensation of physical relief, as if some heavy weight, which had oppressed him all the night, had been lifted from his breast. he fell asleep again, and did not awake until the broad winter sunlight shone upon the window-blind, and the shrill voice of the chambermaid at his door announced that it was half-past eight o'clock. at a quarter-before ten he had left victoria hotel, and was making his way along the lonely platform in front of a row of shadowless houses that faced the sea. this row of hard, uncompromising, square-built habitations stretched away to the little harbor, in which two or three merchant vessels and a couple of colliers were anchored. beyond the harbor there loomed, gray and cold upon the wintry horizon, a dismal barrack, parted from the wildernsea houses by a narrow creek, spanned by an iron drawbridge. the scarlet coat of the sentinel who walked backward and forward between two cannons, placed at remote angles before the barrack wall, was the only scrap of color that relieved the neutral-tinted picture of the gray stone houses and the leaden sea. on one side of the harbor a long stone pier stretched out far away into the cruel loneliness of the sea, as if built for the especial accommodation of some modern timon, too misanthropical to be satisfied even with the solitude of wildernsea, and anxious to get still further away from his fellow-creatures. it was on that pier george talboys had first met his wife, under the blazing glory of a midsummer sky, and to the music of a braying band. it was there that the young cornet had first yielded to that sweet delusion, that fatal infatuation which had exercised so dark an influence upon his after-life. robert looked savagely at this solitary watering-place�the shabby seaport. "it is such a place as this," he thought, "that works a strong man's ruin. he comes here, heart whole and happy, with no better experience of women than is to be learned at a flower-show or in a ball-room; with no more familiar knowledge of the creature than he has of the far-away satellites or the remoter planets; with a vague notion that she is a whirling teetotum in pink or blue gauze, or a graceful automaton for the display of milliners' manufacture. he comes to some place of this kind, and the universe is suddenly narrowed into about half a dozen acres; the mighty scheme of creation is crushed into a bandbox. the far-away creatures whom he had seen floating about him, beautiful and indistinct, are brought under his very nose; and before he has time to recover his bewilderment, hey presto, the witchcraft has begun; the magic circle is drawn around him! the spells are at work, the whole formula of sorcery is in full play, and the victim is as powerless to escape as the marble-legged prince in the eastern story." ruminating in this wise, robert audley reached the house to which he had been directed as the residence of mrs. barkamb. he was admitted immediately by a prim, elderly servant, who ushered him into a sitting-room as prim and elderly-looking as herself. mrs. barkamb, a comfortable matron of about sixty years of age, was sitting in an arm-chair before a bright handful of fire in the shining grate. an elderly terrier, whose black-and-tan coat was thickly sprinkled with gray, reposed in mrs. barkamb's lap. every object in the quiet sitting-room had an elderly aspect of simple comfort and precision, which is the evidence of outward repose. "i should like to live here," robert thought, "and watch the gray sea slowly rolling over the gray sand under the still, gray sky. i should like to live here, and tell the beads upon my rosary, and repent and rest." he seated himself in the arm-chair opposite mrs. barkamb, at that lady's invitation, and placed his hat upon the ground. the elderly terrier descended from his mistress' lap to bark at and otherwise take objection to this hat. "you were wishing, i suppose, sir, to take one�be quiet, dash�one of the cottages," suggested mrs. barkamb, whose mind ran in one narrow groove, and whose life during the last twenty years had been an unvarying round of house-letting. robert audley explained the purpose of his visit. "i come to ask one simple question," he said, in conclusion, "i wish to discover the exact date of mrs. talboys' departure from wildernsea. the proprietor of the victoria hotel informed me that you were the most likely person to afford me that information." mrs. barkamb deliberated for some moments. "i can give you the date of captain maldon's departure," she said, "for he left no. 17 considerably in my debt, and i have the whole business in black and white; but with regard to mrs. talboys�" mrs. barkamb paused for a few moments before resuming. "you are aware that mrs. talboys left rather abruptly?" she asked. "i was not aware of that fact." "indeed! yes, she left abruptly, poor little woman! she tried to support herself after her husband's desertion by giving music lessons; she was a very brilliant pianist, and succeeded pretty well, i believe. but i suppose her father took her money from her, and spent it in public houses. however that might be, they had a very serious misunderstanding one night; and the next morning mrs. talboys left wildernsea, leaving her little boy, who was out at nurse in the neighborhood." "but you cannot tell me the date of her leaving?" "i'm afraid not," answered mrs. barkamb; "and yet, stay. captain maldon wrote to me upon the day his daughter left. he was in very great distress, poor old gentleman, and he always came to me in his troubles. if i could find that letter, it might be dated, you know�mightn't it, now?" mr. audley said that it was only probable the letter was dated. mrs. barkamb retired to a table in the window on which stood an old-fashioned mahogany desk, lined with green baize, and suffering from a plethora of documents, which oozed out of it in every direction. letters, receipts, bills, inventories and tax-papers were mingled in hopeless confusion; and among these mrs. barkamb set to work to search for captain maldon's letter. mr. audley waited very patiently, watching the gray clouds sailing across the gray sky, the gray vessels gliding past upon the gray sea. after about ten minutes' search, and a great deal of rustling, crackling, folding and unfolding of the papers, mrs. barkamb uttered an exclamation of triumph. "i've got the letter," she said; "and there's a note inside it from mrs. talboys." robert audley's pale face flushed a vivid crimson as he stretched out his hand to receive the papers. "the persons who stole helen maldon's love-letters from george's trunk in my chambers might have saved themselves the trouble," he thought. the letter from the old lieutenant was not long, but almost every other word was underscored. "my generous friend," the writer began�mr. maldon had tried the lady's generosity pretty severely during his residence in her house, rarely paying his rent until threatened with the intruding presence of the broker's man�"i am in the depths of despair. my daughter has left me! you may imagine my feelings! we had a few words last night upon the subject of money matters, which subject has always been a disagreeable one between us, and on rising this morning i found i was deserted! the enclosed from helen was waiting for me on the parlor table. "yours in distraction and despair, "henry maldon. "north cottages, august 16th, 1854." the note from mrs. talboys was still more brief. it began abruptly thus: "i am weary of my life here, and wish, if i can, to find a new one. i go out into the world, dissevered from every link which binds me to the hateful past, to seek another home and another fortune. forgive me if i have been fretful, capricious, changeable. you should forgive me, for you know why i have been so. you know the secret which is the key to my life. "helen talboys." these lines were written in a hand that robert audley knew only too well. he sat for a long time pondering silently over the letter written by helen talboys. what was the meaning of those two last sentences�"you should forgive me, for you know why i have been so. you know the secret which is the key to my life?" he wearied his brain in endeavoring to find a clew to the signification of these two sentences. he could remember nothing, nor could he imagine anything that would throw a light upon their meaning. the date of helen's departure, according to mr. maldon's letter, was the 16th of august, 1854. miss tonks had declared that lucy graham entered the school at crescent villas upon the 17th or 18th of august in the same year. between the departure of helen talboys from the yorkshire watering-place and the arrival of lucy graham at the brompton school, not more than eight-and-forty hours could have elapsed. this made a very small link in the chain of circumstantial evidence, perhaps; but it was a link, nevertheless, and it fitted neatly into its place. "did mr. maldon hear from his daughter after she had left wildernsea?" robert asked. "well, i believe he did hear from her," mrs. barkamb answered; "but i didn't see much of the old gentleman after that august. i was obliged to sell him up in november, poor fellow, for he owed me fifteen months' rent; and it was only by selling his poor little bits of furniture that i could get him out of my place. we parted very good friends, in spite of my sending in the brokers; and the old gentleman went to london with the child, who was scarcely a twelvemonth old." mrs. barkamb had nothing more to tell, and robert had no further questions to ask. he requested permission to retain the two letters written by the lieutenant and his daughter, and left the house with them in his pocket-book. he walked straight back to the hotel, where he called for a time-table. an express for london left wildernsea at a quarter past one. robert sent his portmanteau to the station, paid his bill, and walked up and down the stone terrace fronting the sea, waiting for the starting of the train. "i have traced the histories of lucy graham and helen talboys to a vanishing point," he thought; "my next business is to discover the history of the woman who lies buried in ventnor churchyard." chapter xxviii. hidden in the grave. upon his return from wildernsea, robert audley found a letter from his cousin alicia, awaiting him at his chambers. "papa is much better," the young lady wrote, "and is very anxious to have you at the court. for some inexplicable reason, my stepmother has taken it into her head that your presence is extremely desirable, and worries me with her frivolous questions about your movements. so pray come without delay, and set these people at rest. your affectionate cousin, a.a." "so my lady is anxious to know my movements," thought robert audley, as he sat brooding and smoking by his lonely fireside. "she is anxious; and she questions her step-daughter in that pretty, childlike manner which has such a bewitching air of innocent frivolity. poor little creature; poor unhappy little golden-haired sinner; the battle between us seems terribly unfair. why doesn't she run away while there is still time? i have given her fair warning, i have shown her my cards, and worked openly enough in this business, heaven knows. why doesn't she run away?" he repeated this question again and again as he filled and emptied his meerschaum, surrounding himself with the blue vapor from his pipe until he looked like some modern magician seated in his laboratory. "why doesn't she run away? i would bring no needless shame upon that house, of all other houses upon this wide earth. i would only do my duty to my missing friend, and to that brave and generous man who has pledged his faith to a worthless woman. heaven knows i have no wish to punish. heaven knows i was never born to be the avenger of guilt or the persecutor of the guilty. i only wish to do my duty. i will give her one more warning, a full and fair one, and then�" his thoughts wandered away to that gloomy prospect in which he saw no gleam of brightness to relieve the dull, black obscurity that encompassed the future, shutting in his pathway on every side, and spreading a dense curtain around and about him, which hope was powerless to penetrate. he was forever haunted by the vision of his uncle's anguish, forever tortured by the thought of that ruin and desolation which, being brought about by his instrumentality, would seem in a manner his handiwork. but amid all, and through all, clara talboys, with an imperious gesture, beckoned him onward to her brother's unknown grave. "shall i go down to southampton," he thought, "and endeavor to discover the history of the woman who died at ventnor? shall i work underground, bribing the paltry assistants in that foul conspiracy, until i find my way to the thrice guilty principal? no! not till i have tried other means of discovering the truth. shall i go to that miserable old man, and charge him with his share in the shameful trick which i believe to have been played upon my poor friend? no; i will not torture that terror-stricken wretch as i tortured him a few weeks ago. i will go straight to that arch-conspirator, and will tear away the beautiful veil under which she hides her wickedness, and will wring from her the secret of my friend's fate, and banish her forever from the house which her presence has polluted." he started early the next morning for essex, and reached audley before eleven o'clock. early as it was, my lady was out. she had driven to chelmsford upon a shopping expedition with her step-daughter. she had several calls to make in the neighborhood of the town, and was not likely to return until dinner-time. sir michael's health was very much improved, and he would come down stairs in the afternoon. would mr. audley go to his uncle's room? no; robert had no wish to meet that generous kinsman. what could he say to him? how could he smooth the way to the trouble that was to come?�how soften the cruel blow of the great grief that was preparing for that noble and trusting heart? "if i could forgive her the wrong done to my friend," robert thought, "i should still abhor her for the misery her guilt must bring upon the man who has believed in her." he told his uncle's servant that he would stroll into the village, and return before dinner. he walked slowly away from the court, wandering across the meadows between his uncle's house and the village, purposeless and indifferent, with the great trouble and perplexity of his life stamped upon his face and reflected in his manner. "i will go into the churchyard," he thought, "and stare at the tombstones. there is nothing i can do that will make me more gloomy than i am." he was in those very meadows through which he had hurried from audley court to the station upon the september day in which george talboys had disappeared. he looked at the pathway by which he had gone upon that day, and remembered his unaccustomed hurry, and the vague feeling of terror which had taken possession of him immediately upon losing sight of his friend. "why did that unaccountable terror seize upon me," he thought. "why was it that i saw some strange mystery in my friend's disappearance? was it a monition, or a monomania? what if i am wrong after all? what if this chain of evidence which i have constructed link by link, is woven out of my own folly? what if this edifice of horror and suspicion is a mere collection of crotchets�the nervous fancies of a hypochondriacal bachelor? mr. harcourt talboys sees no meaning in the events out of which i have made myself a horrible mystery. i lay the separate links of the chain before him, and he cannot recognize their fitness. he is unable to put them together. oh, my god, if it should be in myself all this time that the misery lies; if�" he smiled bitterly, and shook his head. "i have the handwriting in my pocket-book which is the evidence of the conspiracy," he thought. "it remains for me to discover the darker half of my lady's secret." he avoided the village, still keeping to the meadows. the church lay a little way back from the straggling high street, and a rough wooden gate opened from the churchyard into a broad meadow, that was bordered by a running stream, and sloped down into a grassy valley dotted by groups of cattle. robert slowly ascended the narrow hillside pathway leading up to the gate in the churchyard. the quiet dullness of the lonely landscape harmonized with his own gloom. the solitary figure of an old man hobbling toward a stile at the further end of the wide meadow was the only human creature visible upon the area over which the young barrister looked. the smoke slowly ascending from the scattered houses in the long high street was the only evidence of human life. the slow progress of the hands of the old clock in the church steeple was the only token by which a traveler could perceive that a sluggish course of rustic life had not come to a full stop in the village of audley. yes, there was one other sign. as robert opened the gate of the churchyard, and strolled listessly into the little inclosure, he became aware of the solemn music of an organ, audible through a half-open window in the steeple. he stopped and listened to the slow harmonies of a dreamy melody that sounded like an extempore composition of an accomplished player. "who would have believed that audley church could boast such an organ?" thought robert. "when last i was here, the national schoolmaster used to accompany his children by a primitive performance of common chords. i didn't think the old organ had such music in it." he lingered at the gate, not caring to break the lazy spell woven about him by the monotonous melancholy of the organist's performance. the tones of the instrument, now swelling to their fullest power, now sinking to a low, whispering softness, floated toward him upon the misty winter atmosphere, and had a soothing influence, that seemed to comfort him in his trouble. he closed the gate softly, and crossed the little patch of gravel before the door of the church. the door had been left ajar�by the organist, perhaps. robert audley pushed it open, and walked into the square porch, from which a flight of narrow stone steps wound upward to the organ-loft and the belfry. mr. audley took off his hat, and opened the door between the porch and the body of the church. he stepped softly into the holy edifice, which had a damp, moldy smell upon week-days. he walked down the narrow aisle to the altar-rails, and from that point of observation took a survey of the church. the little gallery was exactly opposite to him, but the scanty green curtains before the organ were closely drawn, and he could not get a glimpse of the player. the music still rolled on. the organist had wandered into a melody of mendelssohn's, a strain whose dreamy sadness went straight to robert's heart. he loitered in the nooks and corners of the church, examining the dilapidated memorials of the well-nigh forgotten dead, and listening to the music. "if my poor friend, george talboys, had died in my arms, and i had buried him in this quiet church, in one corner of the vaults over which i tread to-day, how much anguish of mind, vacillation and torment i might have escaped," thought robert audley, as he read the faded inscriptions upon tablets of discolored marble; "i should have known his fate�i should have known his fate! ah, how much there would have been in that. it is this miserable uncertainty, this horrible suspicion which has poisoned my very life." he looked at his watch. "half-past one," he muttered. "i shall have to wait four or five dreary hours before my lady comes home from her morning calls�her pretty visits of ceremony or friendliness. good heaven! what an actress this woman is. what an arch trickster�what an all-accomplished deceiver. but she shall play her pretty comedy no longer under my uncle's roof. i have diplomatized long enough. she has refused to accept an indirect warning. to-night i will speak plainly." the music of the organ ceased, and robert heard the closing of the instrument. "i'll have a look at this new organist," he thought, "who can afford to bury his talents at audley, and play mendelssohn's finest fugues for a stipend of sixteen pounds a year." he lingered in the porch, waiting for the organist to descend the awkward little stair-case. in the weary trouble of his mind, and with the prospect of getting through the five hours in the best way he could, mr. audley was glad to cultivate any diversion of thought, however idle. he therefore freely indulged his curiosity about the new organist. the first person who appeared upon the steep stone steps was a boy in corduroy trousers and a dark linen smock-frock, who shambled down the stairs with a good deal of unnecessary clatter of his hobnailed shoes, and who was red in the face from the exertion of blowing the bellows of the old organ. close behind this boy came a young lady, very plainly dressed in a black silk gown and a large gray shawl, who started and turned pale at sight of mr. audley. this young lady was clara talboys. of all people in the world she was the last whom robert either expected or wished to see. she had told him that she was going to pay a visit to some friends who lived in essex; but the county is a wide one, and the village of audley one of the most obscure and least frequented spots in the whole of its extent. that the sister of his lost friend should be here�here where she could watch his every action, and from those actions deduce the secret workings of his mind, tracing his doubts home to their object, made a complication of his difficulties that he could never have anticipated. it brought him back to that consciousness of his own helplessness, in which he had exclaimed: "a hand that is stronger than my own is beckoning me onward on the dark road that leads to my lost friend's unknown grave." clara talboys was the first to speak. "you are surprised to see me here, mr. audley," she said. "very much surprised." "i told you that i was coming to essex. i left home day before yesterday. i was leaving home when i received your telegraphic message. the friend with whom i am staying is mrs. martyn, the wife of the new rector of mount stanning. i came down this morning to see the village and church, and as mrs. martyn had to pay a visit to the school with the curate and his wife, i stopped here and amused myself by trying the old organ. i was not aware till i came here that there was a village called audley. the place takes its name from your family, i suppose?" "i believe so," robert answered, wondering at the lady's calmness, in contradistinction to his own embarrassment. "i have a vague recollection of hearing the story of some ancestor who was called audley of audley in the reign of edward the fourth. the tomb inside the rails near the altar belongs to one of the knights of audley, but i have never taken the trouble to remember his achievements. are you going to wait here for your friends, miss talboys?" "yes; they are to return here for me after they have finished their rounds." "and you go back to mount stanning with them this afternoon?" "yes." robert stood with his hat in his hand, looking absently out at the tombstones and the low wall of the church yard. clara talboys watched his pale face, haggard under the deepening shadow that had rested upon it so long. "you have been ill since i saw you last, mr. audley," she said, in a low voice, that had the same melodious sadness as the notes of the old organ under her touch. "no, i have not been ill; i have been only harassed, wearied by a hundred doubts and perplexities." he was thinking as he spoke to her: "how much does she guess? how much does she suspect?" he had told the story of george's disappearance and of his own suspicions, suppressing only the names of those concerned in the mystery; but what if this girl should fathom this slender disguise, and discover for herself that which he had chosen to withhold. her grave eyes were fixed upon his face, and he knew that she was trying to read the innermost secrets of his mind. "what am i in her hands?" he thought. "what am i in the hands of this woman, who has my lost friend's face and the manner of pallas athene. she reads my pitiful, vacillating soul, and plucks the thoughts out of my heart with the magic of her solemn brown eyes. how unequal the fight must be between us, and how can i ever hope to conquer against the strength of her beauty and her wisdom?" mr. audley was clearing his throat preparatory to bidding his beautiful companion good-morning, and making his escape from the thraldom of her presence into the lonely meadow outside the churchyard, when clara talboys arrested him by speaking upon that very subject which he was most anxious to avoid. "you promised to write to me, mr. audley," she said, "if you made any discovery which carried you nearer to the mystery of my brother's disappearance. you have not written to me, and i imagine, therefore, that you have discovered nothing." robert audley was silent for some moments. how could he answer this direct question? "the chain of circumstantial evidence which unites the mystery of your brother's fate with the person whom i suspect," he said, after a pause, "is formed of very slight links. i think that i have added another link to that chain since i saw you in dorsetshire." "and you refuse to tell me what it is that you have discovered?" "only until i have discovered more." "i thought from your message that you were going to wildernsea." "i have been there." "indeed! it was there that you made some discovery, then?" "it was," answered robert. "you must remember, miss talboys that the sole ground upon which my suspicions rest is the identity of two individuals who have no apparent connection�the identity of a person who is supposed to be dead with one who is living. the conspiracy of which i believe your brother to have been the victim hinges upon this. if his wife, helen talboys, died when the papers recorded her death�if the woman who lies buried in ventnor churchyard was indeed the woman whose name is inscribed on the headstone of the grave�i have no case, i have no clew to the mystery of your brother's fate. i am about to put this to the test. i believe that i am now in a position to play a bold game, and i believe that i shall soon arrive at the truth." he spoke in a low voice, and with a solemn emphasis that betrayed the intensity of his feeling. miss talboys stretched out her ungloved hand, and laid it in his own. the cold touch of that slender hand sent a shivering thrill through his frame. "you will not suffer my brother's fate to remain a mystery, mr. audley," she said, quietly. "i know that you will do your duty to your friend." the rector's wife and her two companions entered the churchyard as clara talboys said this. robert audley pressed the hand that rested in his own, and raised it to his lips. "i am a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, miss talboys," he said; "but if i could restore your brother george to life and happiness, i should care very little for any sacrifice of my own feeling, fear that the most i can do is to fathom the secret of his fate and in doing that i must sacrifice those who are dearer to me than myself." he put on his hat, and hurried through the gateway leading into the field as mrs. martyn came up to the porch. "who is that handsome young man i caught tête-a-tête with you, clara?" she asked, laughing. "he is a mr. audley, a friend of my poor brother's." "indeed! he is some relation of sir michael audley, i suppose?" "sir michael audley!" "yes, my dear; the most important personage in the parish of audley. but we'll call at the court in a day or two, and you shall see the baronet and his pretty young wife." "his young wife!" replied clara talboys, looking earnestly at her friend. "has sir michael audley lately married, then?" "yes. he was a widower for sixteen years, and married a penniless young governess about a year and a half ago. the story is quite romantic, and lady audley is considered the belle of the county. but come, my dear clara, the pony is tired of waiting for us, and we've a long drive before dinner." clara talboys took her seat in the little basket-carriage which was waiting at the principal gate of the churchyard, in the care of the boy who had blown the organ-bellows. mrs. martyn shook the reins, and the sturdy chestnut cob trotted off in the direction of mount stanning. "will you tell me more about this lady audley, fanny?" miss talboys said, after a long pause. "i want to know all about her. have you heard her maiden name?" "yes; she was a miss graham." "and she is very pretty?" "yes, very, very pretty. rather a childish beauty though, with large, clear blue eyes, and pale golden ringlets, that fall in a feathery shower over her throat and shoulders." clara talboys was silent. she did not ask any further questions about my lady. she was thinking of a passage in that letter which george had written to her during his honeymoon�a passage in which he said: "my childish little wife is watching me as i write this�ah! how i wish you could see her, clara! her eyes are as blue and as clear as the skies on a bright summer's day, and her hair falls about her face like the pale golden halo you see round the head of a madonna in an italian picture." chapter xxix. in the lime-walk. robert audley was loitering upon the broad grass-plat in front of the court as the carriage containing my lady and alicia drove under the archway, and drew up at the low turret-door. mr. audley presented himself in time to hand the ladies out of the vehicle. my lady looked very pretty in a delicate blue bonnet and the sables which her nephew had bought for her at st. petersburg. she seemed very well pleased to see robert, and smiled most bewitchingly as she gave him her exquisitely gloved little hand. "so you have come back to us, truant?" she said, laughing. "and now that you have returned, we shall keep you prisoner. we won't let him run away again, will we, alicia?" miss audley gave her head a scornful toss that shook the heavy curls under her cavalier hat. "i have nothing to do with the movements of so erratic an individual," she said. "since robert audley has taken it into his head to conduct himself like some ghost-haunted hero in a german story, i have given up attempting to understand him." mr. audley looked at his cousin with an expression of serio-comic perplexity. "she's a nice girl," he thought, "but she's a nuisance. i don't know how it is, but she seems more a nuisance than she used to be." he pulled his mustaches reflectively as he considered this question. his mind wandered away for a few moments from the great trouble of his life to dwell upon this minor perplexity. "she's a dear girl," he thought; "a generous-hearted, bouncing, noble english lassie; and yet�" he lost himself in a quagmire of doubt and difficulty. there was some hitch in his mind which he could not understand; some change in himself, beyond the change made in him by his anxiety about george talboys, which mystified and bewildered him. "and pray where have you been wandering during the last day or two, mr. audley?" asked my lady, as she lingered with her step-daughter upon the threshold of the turret-door, waiting until robert should be pleased to stand aside and allow them to pass. the young man started as she asked this question and looked up at her suddenly. something in the aspect of her bright young beauty, something in the childish innocence of her expression, seemed to smite him to the heart, and his face grew ghastly pale as he looked at her. "i have been�in yorkshire," he said; "at the little watering place where my poor friend george talboys lived at the time of his marriage." the white change in my lady's face was the only sign of her having heard these words. she smiled, a faint, sickly smile, and tried to pass her husband's nephew. "i must dress for dinner," she said. "i am going to a dinner-party, mr. audley; please let me go in." "i must ask you to spare me half an hour, lady audley," robert answered, in a low voice. "i came down to essex on purpose to speak to you." "what about?" asked my lady. she had recovered herself from any shock which she might have sustained a few moments before, and it was in her usual manner that she asked this question. her face expressed the mingled bewilderment and curiosity of a puzzled child, rather than the serious surprise of a woman. "what can you want to talk to me about, mr. audley?" she repeated. "i will tell you when we are alone," robert said, glancing at his cousin, who stood a little way behind my lady, watching this confidential little dialogue. "he is in love with my step-mother's wax-doll beauty," thought alicia, "and it is for her sake he has become such a disconsolate object. he's just the sort of person to fall in love with his aunt." miss audley walked away to the grass-plat, turning her back upon robert and my lady. "the absurd creature turned as white as a sheet when he saw her," she thought. "so he can be in love, after all. that slow lump of torpidity he calls his heart can beat, i suppose, once in a quarter of a century; but it seems that nothing but a blue-eyed wax-doll can set it going. i should have given him up long ago if i'd known that his idea of beauty was to be found in a toy-shop." poor alicia crossed the grass-plat and disappeared upon the opposite side of the quadrangle, where there was a gothic gate that communicated with the stables. i am sorry to say that sir michael audley's daughter went to seek consolation from her dog caesar and her chestnut mare atalanta, whose loose box the young lady was in the habit of visiting every day. "will you come into the lime-walk, lady audley?" said robert, as his cousin left the garden. "i wish to talk to you without fear of interruption or observation. i think we could choose no safer place than that. will you come there with me?" "if you please," answered my lady. mr. audley could see that she was trembling, and that she glanced from side to side as if looking for some outlet by which she might escape him. "you are shivering, lady audley," he said. "yes, i am very cold. i would rather speak to you some other day, please. let it be to-morrow, if you will. i have to dress for dinner, and i want to see sir michael; i have not seen him since ten o'clock this morning. please let it be to-morrow." there was a painful piteousness in her tone. heaven knows how painful to robert's heart. heaven knows what horrible images arose in his mind as he looked down at that fair young face and thought of the task that lay before him. "i must speak to you, lady audley," he said. "if i am cruel, it is you who have made me cruel. you might have escaped this ordeal. you might have avoided me. i gave you fair warning. but you have chosen to defy me, and it is your own folly which is to blame if i no longer spare you. come with me. i tell you again i must speak to you." there was a cold determination in his tone which silenced my lady's objections. she followed him submissively to the little iron gate which communicated with the long garden behind the house�the garden in which a little rustic wooden bridge led across the quiet fish-pond into the lime-walk. the early winter twilight was closing in, and the intricate tracery of the leafless branches that overarched the lonely pathway looked black against the cold gray of the evening sky. the lime-walk seemed like some cloister in this uncertain light. "why do you bring me to this horrible place to frighten me out of my poor wits?" cried my lady, peevishly. "you ought to know how nervous i am." "you are nervous, my lady?" "yes, dreadfully nervous. i am worth a fortune to poor mr. dawson. he is always sending me camphor, and sal volatile, and red lavender, and all kinds of abominable mixtures, but he can't cure me." "do you remember what macbeth tells his physician, my lady?" asked robert, gravely. "mr. dawson may be very much more clever than the scottish leech, but i doubt if even he can minister to the mind that is diseased." "who said that my mind was diseased?" exclaimed lady audley. "i say so, my lady," answered robert. "you tell me that you are nervous, and that all the medicines your doctor can prescribe are only so much physic that might as well be thrown to the dogs. let me be the physician to strike to the root of your malady, lady audley. heaven knows that i wish to be merciful�that i would spare you as far as it is in my power to spare you in doing justice to others�but justice must be done. shall i tell you why you are nervous in this house, my lady?" "if you can," she answered, with a little laugh. "because for you this house is haunted." "haunted?" "yes, haunted by the ghost of george talboys." robert audley heard my lady's quickened breathing, he fancied he could almost hear the loud beating of her heart as she walked by his side, shivering now and then, and with her sable cloak wrapped tightly around her. "what do you mean?" she cried suddenly, after a pause of some moments. "why do you torment me about this george talboys, who happens to have taken it into his head to keep out of your way for a few months? are you going mad, mr. audley, and do you select me as the victim of your monomania? what is george talboys to me that you should worry me about him?" "he was a stranger to you, my lady, was he not?" "of course!" answered lady audley. "what should he be but a stranger?" "shall i tell you the story of my friend's disappearance as i read that story, my lady?" asked robert. "no," cried lady audley; "i wish to know nothing of your friend. if he is dead, i am sorry for him. if he lives, i have no wish either to see him or to hear of him. let me go in to see my husband, if you please, mr. audley, unless you wish to detain me in this gloomy place until i catch my death of cold." "i wish to detain you until you have heard what i have to say, lady audley," answered robert, resolutely. "i will detain you no longer than is necessary, and when you have heard me you shall take your own course of action." "very well, then; pray lose no time in saying what you have to say," replied my lady, carelessly. "i promise you to attend very patiently." "when my friend, george talboys, returned to england," robert began, gravely, "the thought which was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife." "whom he had deserted," said my lady, quickly. "at least," she added, more deliberately, "i remember your telling us something to that effect when you first told us your friend's story." robert audley did not notice this observation. "the thought that was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife," he repeated. "his fairest hope in the future was the hope of making her happy, and lavishing upon her the pittance which he had won by the force of his own strong arm in the gold-fields of australia. i saw him within a few hours of his reaching england, and i was a witness to the joyful pride with which he looked forward to his re-union with his wife. i was also a witness to the blow which struck him to the very heart�which changed him from the man he had been to a creature as unlike that former self as one human being can be unlike another. the blow which made that cruel change was the announcement of his wife's death in the times newspaper. i now believe that that announcement was a black and bitter lie." "indeed!" said my lady; "and what reason could any one have for announcing the death of mrs. talboys, if mrs. talboys had been alive?" "the lady herself might have had a reason," robert answered, quietly. "what reason?" "how if she had taken advantage of george's absence to win a richer husband? how if she had married again, and wished to throw my poor friend off the scent by this false announcement?" lady audley shrugged her shoulders. "your suppositions are rather ridiculous, mr. audley," she said; "it is to be hoped that you have some reasonable grounds for them." "i have examined a file of each of the newspapers published in chelmsford and colchester," continued robert, without replying to my lady's last observation, "and i find in one of the colchester papers, dated july the 2d, 1857, a brief paragraph among numerous miscellaneous scraps of information copied from other newspapers, to the effect that a mr. george talboys, an english gentleman, had arrived at sydney from the gold-fields, carrying with him nuggets and gold-dust to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, and that he had realized his property and sailed for liverpool in the fast-sailing clipper argus. this is a very small fact, of course, lady audley, but it is enough to prove that any person residing in essex in the july of the year fifty-seven, was likely to become aware of george talboys' return from australia. do you follow me?" "not very clearly," said my lady. "what have the essex papers to do with the death of mrs. talboys?" "we will come to that by-and-by, lady audley. i say that i believe the announcement in the times to have been a false announcement, and a part of the conspiracy which was carried out by helen talboys and lieutenant maldon against my poor friend." "a conspiracy!" "yes, a conspiracy concocted by an artful woman, who had speculated upon the chances of her husband's death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk of committing a crime; a bold woman, my lady, who thought to play her comedy out to the end without fear of detection; a wicked woman, who did not care what misery she might inflict upon the honest heart of the man she betrayed; but a foolish woman, who looked at life as a game of chance, in which the best player was likely to hold the winning cards, forgetting that there is a providence above the pitiful speculators, and that wicked secrets are never permitted to remain long hidden. if this woman of whom i speak had never been guilty of any blacker sin than the publication of that lying announcement in the times newspaper, i should still hold her as the most detestable and despicable of her sex�the most pitiless and calculating of human creatures. that cruel lie was a base and cowardly blow in the dark; it was the treacherous dagger-thrust of an infamous assassin." "but how do you know that the announcement was a false one?" asked my lady. "you told us that you had been to ventnor with mr. talboys to see his wife's grave. who was it who died at ventnor if it was not mrs. talboys?" "ah, lady audley," said robert, "that is a question which only two or three people can answer, and one or other of those persons shall answer it to me before long. i tell you, my lady, that i am determined to unravel the mystery of george talboy's death. do you think i am to be put off by feminine prevarication�by womanly trickery? no! link by link i have put together the chain of evidence, which wants but a link here and there to be complete in its terrible strength. do you think i will suffer myself to be baffled? do you think i shall fail to discover those missing links? no, lady audley, i shall not fail, for i know where to look for them! there is a fair-haired woman at southampton�a woman called plowson, who has some share in the secrets of the father of my friend's wife. i have an idea that she can help me to discover the history of the woman who lies buried in ventnor churchyard, and i will spare no trouble in making that discovery, unless�" "unless what?" asked my lady, eagerly. "unless the woman i wish to save from degradation and punishment accepts the mercy i offer her, and takes warning while there is still time." my lady shrugged her graceful shoulders, and flashed bright defiance out of her blue eyes. "she would be a very foolish woman if she suffered herself to be influenced by any such absurdity," she said. "you are hypochondriacal, mr. audley, and you must take camphor, or red lavender, or sal volatile. what can be more ridiculous than this idea which you have taken into your head? you lose your friend george talboys in rather a mysterious manner�that is to say, that gentleman chooses to leave england without giving you due notice. what of that? you confess that he became an altered man after his wife's death. he grew eccentric and misanthropical; he affected an utter indifference as to what became of him. what more likely, then, than that he grew tired of the monotony of civilized life, and ran away to those savage gold-fields to find a distraction for his grief? it is rather a romantic story, but by no means an uncommon one. but you are not satisfied with this simple interpretation of your friend's disappearance, and you build up some absurd theory of a conspiracy which has no existence except in your own overheated brain. helen talboys is dead. the times newspaper declares she is dead. her own father tells you that she is dead. the headstone of the grave in ventnor churchyard bears record of her death. by what right," cried my lady, her voice rising to that shrill and piercing tone peculiar to her when affected by any intense agitation�"by what right, mr. audley, do you come to me, and torment me about george talboys�by what right do you dare to say that his wife is still alive?" "by the right of circumstantial evidence, lady audley," answered robert�"by the right of that circumstantial evidence which will sometimes fix the guilt of a man's murder upon that person who, on the first hearing of the case, seems of all other men the most unlikely to be guilty." "what circumstantial evidence?" "the evidence of time and place. the evidence of handwriting. when helen talboys left her father's at wildernsea, she left a letter behind her�a letter in which she declared that she was weary of her old life, and that she wished to seek a new home and a new fortune. that letter is in my possession." "indeed." "shall i tell you whose handwriting resembles that of helen talboys so closely, that the most dexterous expert could perceive no distinction between the two?" "a resemblance between the handwriting of two women is no very uncommon circumstance now-a-days," replied my lady carelessly. "i could show you the caligraphies of half-a-dozen female correspondents, and defy you to discover any great difference in them." "but what if the handwriting is a very uncommon one, presenting marked peculiarities by which it may be recognized among a hundred?" "why, in that case the coincidence is rather curious," answered my lady; "but it is nothing more than a coincidence. you cannot deny the fact of helen talboys death on the ground that her handwriting resembles that of some surviving person." "but if a series of such coincidences lead up to the same point," said robert. "helen talboys left her father's house, according to the declaration in her own handwriting, because she was weary of her old life, and wished to begin a new one. do you know what i infer from this?" my lady shrugged her shoulders. "i have not the least idea," she said; "and as you have detained me in this gloomy place nearly half-an-hour, i must beg that you will release me, and let me go and dress for dinner." "no, lady audley," answered robert, with a cold sternness that was so strange to him as to transform him into another creature�a pitiless embodiment of justice, a cruel instrument of retribution�"no, lady audley," he repeated, "i have told you that womanly prevarication will not help you; i tell you now that defiance will not serve you. i have dealt fairly with you, and have given you fair warning. i gave you indirect notice of your danger two months ago." "what do you mean?" asked my lady, suddenly. "you did not choose to take that warning, lady audley," pursued robert, "and the time has come in which i must speak very plainly to you. do you think the gifts which you have played against fortune are to hold you exempt from retribution? no, my lady, your youth and beauty, your grace and refinement, only make the horrible secret of your life more horrible. i tell you that the evidence against you wants only one link to be strong enough for your condemnation, and that link shall be added. helen talboys never returned to her father's house. when she deserted that poor old father, she went away from his humble shelter with the declared intention of washing her hands of that old life. what do people generally do when they wish to begin a new existence�to start for a second time in the race of life, free from the incumbrances that had fettered their first journey. they change their names, lady audley. helen talboys deserted her infant son�she went away from wildernsea with the predetermination of sinking her identity. she disappeared as helen talboys upon the 16th of august, 1854, and upon the 17th of that month she reappeared as lucy graham, the friendless girl who undertook a profitless duty in consideration of a home in which she was asked no questions." "you are mad, mr. audley!" cried my lady. "you are mad, and my husband shall protect me from your insolence. what if this helen talboys ran away from her home upon one day, and i entered my employer's house upon the next, what does that prove?" "by itself, very little," replied robert audley; "but with the help of other evidence�" "what evidence?" "the evidence of two labels, pasted one over the other, upon a box left by you in possession of mrs. vincent, the upper label bearing the name of miss graham, the lower that of mrs. george talboys." my lady was silent. robert audley could not see her face in the dusk, but he could see that her two small hands were clasped convulsively over her heart, and he knew that the shot had gone home to its mark. "god help her, poor, wretched creature," he thought. "she knows now that she is lost. i wonder if the judges of the land feel as i do now when they put on the black cap and pass sentence of death upon some poor, shivering wretch, who has never done them any wrong. do they feel a heroic fervor of virtuous indignation, or do they suffer this dull anguish which gnaws my vitals as i talk to this helpless woman?" he walked by my lady's side, silently, for some minutes. they had been pacing up and down the dim avenue, and they were now drawing near the leafless shrubbery at one end of the lime-walk�the shrubbery in which the ruined well sheltered its unheeded decay among the tangled masses of briery underwood. a winding pathway, neglected and half-choked with weeds, led toward this well. robert left the lime-walk, and struck into this pathway. there was more light in the shrubbery than in the avenue, and mr. audley wished to see my lady's face. he did not speak until they reached the patch of rank grass beside the well. the massive brickwork had fallen away here and there, and loose fragments of masonry lay buried amidst weeds and briars. the heavy posts which had supported the wooden roller still remained, but the iron spindle had been dragged from its socket and lay a few paces from the well, rusty, discolored, and forgotten. robert audley leaned against one of the moss-grown posts and looked down at my lady's face, very pale in the chill winter twilight. the moon had newly risen, a feebly luminous crescent in the gray heavens, and a faint, ghostly light mingled with the misty shadows of the declining day. my lady's face seemed like that face which robert audley had seen in his dreams looking out of the white foam-flakes on the green sea waves and luring his uncle to destruction. "those two labels are in my possession, lady audley," he resumed. "i took them from the box left by you at crescent villas. i took them in the presence of mrs. vincent and miss tonks. have you any proofs to offer against this evidence? you say to me, 'i am lucy graham and i have nothing whatever to do with helen talboys.' in that case you will produce witnesses who will declare your antecedents. where had you been living prior to your appearance at crescent villas? you must have friends, relations, connections, who can come forward to prove as much as this for you? if you were the most desolate creature upon this earth, you would be able to point to someone who could identify you with the past." "yes," cried my lady, "if i were placed in a criminal dock i could, no doubt, bring forward witnesses to refute your absurd accusation. but i am not in a criminal dock, mr. audley, and i do not choose to do anything but laugh at your ridiculous folly. i tell you that you are mad! if you please to say that helen talboys is not dead, and that i am helen talboys, you may do so. if you choose to go wandering about in the places in which i have lived, and to the places in which this mrs. talboys has lived, you must follow the bent of your own inclination, but i would warn you that such fancies have sometimes conducted people, as apparently sane as yourself, to the life-long imprisonment of a private lunatic-asylum." robert audley started and recoiled a few paces among the weeds and brushwood as my lady said this. "she would be capable of any new crime to shield her from the consequences of the old one," he thought. "she would be capable of using her influence with my uncle to place me in a mad-house." i do not say that robert audley was a coward, but i will admit that a shiver of horror, something akin to fear, chilled him to the heart as he remembered the horrible things that have been done by women since that day upon which eve was created to be adam's companion and help-meet in the garden of eden. "what if this woman's hellish power of dissimulation should be stronger than the truth, and crush him? she had not spared george talboys when he stood in her way and menaced her with a certain peril; would she spare him who threatened her with a far greater danger? are women merciful, or loving, or kind in proportion to their beauty and grace? was there not a certain monsieur mazers de latude, who had the bad fortune to offend the all-accomplished madam de pompadour, who expiated his youthful indiscretion by a life-long imprisonment; who twice escaped from prison, to be twice cast back into captivity; who, trusting in the tardy generosity of his beautiful foe, betrayed himself to an implacable fiend? robert audley looked at the pale face of the woman standing by his side; that fair and beautiful face, illumined by starry-blue eyes, that had a strange and surely a dangerous light in them; and remembering a hundred stories of womanly perfidy, shuddered as he thought how unequal the struggle might be between himself and his uncle's wife. "i have shown her my cards," he thought, "but she has kept hers hidden from me. the mask that she wears is not to be plucked away. my uncle would rather think me mad than believe her guilty." the pale face of clara talboys�that grave and earnest face, so different in its character to my lady's fragile beauty�arose before him. "what a coward i am to think of myself or my own danger," he thought. "the more i see of this woman the more reason i have to dread her influence upon others; the more reason to wish her far away from this house." he looked about him in the dusky obscurity. the lonely garden was as quiet as some solitary grave-yard, walled in and hidden away from the world of the living. "it was somewhere in this garden that she met george talboys upon the day of his disappearance," he thought. "i wonder where it was they met; i wonder where it was that he looked into her cruel face and taxed her with her falsehood?" my lady, with her little hand resting lightly upon the opposite post to that against which robert leaned, toyed with her pretty foot among the long weeds, but kept a furtive watch upon her enemy's face. "it is to be a duel to the death, then, my lady," said robert audley, solemnly. "you refuse to accept my warning. you refuse to run away and repent of your wickedness in some foreign place, far from the generous gentleman you have deceived and fooled by your false witcheries. you choose to remain here and defy me." "i do," answered lady audley, lifting her head and looking full at the young barrister. "it is no fault of mine if my husband's nephew goes mad, and chooses me for the victim of his monomania." "so be it, then, my lady," answered robert. "my friend george talboys was last seen entering these gardens by the little iron gate by which we came in to-night. he was last heard inquiring for you. he was seen to enter these gardens, but he was never seen to leave them. i believe that he met his death within the boundary of these grounds; and that his body lies hidden below some quiet water, or in some forgotten corner of this place. i will have such a search made as shall level that house to the earth and root up every tree in these gardens, rather than i will fail in finding the grave of my murdered friend." lucy audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair, but she made no answer to the ghastly charge of her accuser. her arms slowly dropped, and she stood staring at robert audley, her white face gleaming through the dusk, her blue eyes glittering and dilated. "you shall never live to do this," she said. "i will kill you first. why have you tormented me so? why could you not let me alone? what harm had i ever done you that you should make yourself my persecutor, and dog my steps, and watch my looks, and play the spy upon me? do you want to drive me mad? do you know what it is to wrestle with a mad-woman? no," cried my lady, with a laugh, "you do not, or you would never�" she stopped abruptly and drew herself suddenly to her fullest hight. it was the same action which robert had seen in the old half-drunken lieutenant; and it had that same dignity�the sublimity of extreme misery. "go away, mr. audley," she said. "you are mad, i tell you, you are mad." "i am going, my lady," answered robert, quietly. "i would have condoned your crimes out of pity to your wretcheness. you have refused to accept my mercy. i wished to have pity upon the living. i shall henceforth only remember my duty to the dead." he walked away from the lonely well under the shadow of the limes. my lady followed him slowly down that long, gloomy avenue, and across the rustic bridge to the iron gate. as he passed through the gate, alicia came out of a little half-glass door that opened from an oak-paneled breakfast-room at one angle of the house, and met her cousin upon the threshold of the gateway. "i have been looking for you everywhere, robert," she said. "papa has come down to the library, and will be glad to see you." the young man started at the sound of his cousin's fresh young voice. "good heaven!" he thought, "can these two women be of the same clay? can this frank, generous-hearted girl, who cannot conceal any impulse of her innocent nature, be of the same flesh and blood as that wretched creature whose shadow falls upon the path beside me!" he looked from his cousin to lady audley, who stood near the gateway, waiting for him to stand aside and let her pass him. "i don't know what has come to your cousin, my dear alicia," said my lady. "he is so absent-minded and eccentric as to be quite beyond my comprehension." "indeed," exclaimed miss audley; "and yet i should imagine, from the length of your tête-a-tête, that you had made some effort to understand him." "oh, yes," said robert, quietly, "my lady and i understand each other very well; but as it is growing late i will wish you good-evening, ladies. i shall sleep to-night at mount stanning, as i have some business to attend to up there, and i will come down and see my uncle to-morrow." "what, robert," cried alicia, "you surely won't go away without seeing papa?" "yes, my dear," answered the young man. "i am a little disturbed by some disagreeable business in which i am very much concerned, and i would rather not see my uncle. good-night, alicia. i will come or write to-morrow." he pressed his cousin's hand, bowed to lady audley, and walked away under the black shadows of the archway, and out into the quiet avenue beyond the court. my lady and alicia stood watching him until he was out of sight. "what in goodness' name is the matter with my cousin robert?" exclaimed miss audley, impatiently, as the barrister disappeared. "what does he mean by these absurd goings-on? some disagreeable business that disturbs him, indeed! i suppose the unhappy creature has had a brief forced upon him by some evil-starred attorney, and is sinking into a state of imbecility from a dim consciousness of his own incompetence." "have you ever studied your cousin's character, alicia?" asked my lady, very seriously, after a pause. "studied his character! no, lady audley. why should i study his character?" said alicia. "there is very little study required to convince anybody that he is a lazy, selfish sybarite, who cares for nothing in the world except his own ease and comfort." "but have you never thought him eccentric?" "eccentric!" repeated alicia, pursing up her red lips and shrugging up her shoulders. "well, yes�i believe that is the excuse generally made for such people. i suppose bob is eccentric." "i have never heard you speak of his father and mother," said my lady, thoughtfully. "do you remember them?" "i never saw his mother. she was a miss dalrymple, a very dashing girl, who ran away with my uncle, and lost a very handsome fortune in consequence. she died at nice when poor bob was five years old." "did you ever hear anything particular about her?" "how do you mean 'particular?'" asked alicia. "did you ever hear that she was eccentric�what people call 'odd?'" "oh, no," said alicia, laughing. "my aunt was a very reasonable woman, i believe, though she did marry for love. but you must remember that she died before i was born, and i have not, therefore, felt very much curiosity about her." "but you recollect your uncle, i suppose." "my uncle robert?" said alicia. "oh, yes, i remember him very well, indeed." "was he eccentric�i mean to say, peculiar in his habits, like your cousin?" "yes, i believe robert inherits all his absurdities from his father. my uncle expressed the same indifference for his fellow-creatures as my cousin, but as he was a good husband, an affectionate father, and a kind master, nobody ever challenged his opinions." "but he was eccentric?" "yes; i suppose he was generally thought a little eccentric." "ah," said my lady, gravely, "i thought as much. do you know, alicia, that madness is more often transmitted from father to daughter, and from mother to daughter than from mother to son? your cousin, robert audley, is a very handsome young man, and i believe, a very good-hearted young man, but he must be watched, alicia, for he is mad!" "mad!" cried miss audley, indignantly; "you are dreaming, my lady, or�or�you are trying to frighten me," added the young lady, with considerable alarm. "i only wish to put you on your guard, alicia," answered my lady. "mr. audley may be as you say, merely eccentric; but he has talked to me this evening in a manner that has filled me with absolute terror, and i believe that he is going mad. i shall speak very seriously to sir michael this very night." "speak to papa," exclaimed alicia; "you surely won't distress papa by suggesting such a possibility!" "i shall only put him on his guard, my dear alicia." "but he'll never believe you," said miss audley; "he will laugh at such an idea." "no, alicia; he will believe anything that i tell him," answered my lady, with a quiet smile. chapter xxx. preparing the ground. lady audley went from the garden to the library, a pleasant, oak-paneled, homely apartment in which sir michael liked to sit reading or writing, or arranging the business of his estate with his steward, a stalwart countryman, half agriculturalist, half lawyer, who rented a small farm a few miles from the court. the baronet was seated in a capacious easy-chair near the hearth. the bright blaze of the fire rose and fell, flashing now upon the polished carvings of the black-oak bookcase, now upon the gold and scarlet bindings of the books; sometimes glimmering upon the athenian helmet of a marble pallas, sometimes lighting up the forehead of sir robert peel. the lamp upon the reading-table had not yet been lighted, and sir michael sat in the firelight waiting for the coming of his young wife. it is impossible for me ever to tell the purity of his generous love�it is impossible to describe that affection which was as tender as the love of a young mother for her first born, as brave and chivalrous as the heroic passion of a bayard for his liege mistress. the door opened while he was thinking of this fondly-loved wife, and looking up, the baronet saw the slender form standing in the doorway. "why, my darling!" he exclaimed, as my lady closed the door behind her, and came toward his chair, "i have been thinking of you and waiting for you for an hour. where have you been, and what have you been doing?" my lady, standing in the shadow rather than the light, paused a few moments before replying to this question. "i have been to chelmsford," she said, "shopping; and�" she hesitated�twisting her bonnet strings in her thin white fingers with an air of pretty embarrassment. "and what, my dear?" asked the baronet�"what have you been doing since you came from chelmsford? i heard a carriage stop at the door an hour ago. it was yours, was it not?" "yes, i came home an hour ago," answered my lady, with the same air of embarrassment. "and what have you been doing since you came home?" sir michael audley asked this question with a slightly reproachful accent. his young wife's presence made the sunshine of his life; and though he could not bear to chain her to his side, it grieved him to think that she could willingly remain unnecessarily absent from him, frittering away her time in some childish talk or frivolous occupation. "what have you been doing since you came home, my dear?" he repeated. "what has kept you so long away from me?" "i have been�talking�to�mr. robert audley." she still twisted her bonnet-string round and round her fingers. she still spoke with the same air of embarrassment. "robert!" exclaimed the baronet; "is robert here?" "he was here a little while ago." "and is here still, i suppose?" "no, he has gone away." "gone away!" cried sir michael. "what do you mean, my darling?" "i mean that your nephew came to the court this afternoon. alicia and i found him idling about the gardens. he stayed here till about a quarter of an hour ago talking to me, and then he hurried off without a word of explanation; except, indeed, some ridiculous excuse about business at mount stanning." "business at mount stanning! why, what business can he possibly have in that out-of-the-way place? he has gone to sleep at mount stanning, then, i suppose? "yes; i think he said something to that effect." "upon my word," exclaimed the baronet, "i think that boy is half mad." my lady's face was so much in shadow, that sir michael audley was unaware of the bright change that came over its sickly pallor as he made this very commonplace observation. a triumphant smile illuminated lucy audley's countenance, a smile that plainly said, "it is coming�it is coming; i can twist him which way i like. i can put black before him, and if i say it is white, he will believe me." but sir michael audley in declaring that his nephew's wits were disordered, merely uttered that commonplace ejaculation which is well-known to have very little meaning. the baronet had, it is true, no very great estimate of robert's faculty for the business of this everyday life. he was in the habit of looking upon his nephew as a good-natured nonentity�a man whose heart had been amply stocked by liberal nature with all the best things the generous goddess had to bestow, but whose brain had been somewhat overlooked in the distribution of intellectual gifts. sir michael audley made that mistake which is very commonly made by easy-going, well-to-do-observers, who have no occasion to look below the surface. he mistook laziness for incapacity. he thought because his nephew was idle, he must necessarily be stupid. he concluded that if robert did not distinguish himself, it was because he could not. he forgot the mute inglorious miltons, who die voiceless and inarticulate for want of that dogged perseverance, that blind courage, which the poet must possess before he can find a publisher; he forgot the cromwells, who see the noble vessels of the state floundering upon a sea of confusion, and going down in a tempest of noisy bewilderment, and who yet are powerless to get at the helm; forbidden even to send out a life-boat to the sinking ship. surely it is a mistake to judge of what a man can do by that which he has done. the world's valhalla is a close borough, and perhaps the greatest men may be those who perish silently far away from the sacred portal. perhaps the purest and brightest spirits are those who shrink from the turmoil of the race-course�the tumult and confusion of the struggle. the game of life is something like the game of écarte, and it may be that the very best cards are sometimes left in the pack. my lady threw off her bonnet, and seated herself upon a velvet-covered footstool at sir michael's feet. there was nothing studied or affected in this girlish action. it was so natural to lucy audley to be childish, that no one would have wished to see her otherwise. it would have seemed as foolish to expect dignified reserve or womanly gravity from this amber-haired siren, as to wish for rich basses amid the clear treble of a sky-lark's song. she sat with her pale face turned away from the firelight, and with her hands locked together upon the arm of her husband's easy-chair. they were very restless, these slender white hands. my lady twisted the jeweled fingers in and out of each other as she talked to her husband. "i wanted to come to you, you know, dear," said she�"i wanted to come to you directly i got home, but mr. audley insisted upon my stopping to talk to him." "but what about, my love?" asked the baronet. "what could robert have to say to you?" my lady did not answer this question. her fair head dropped upon her husband's knee, her rippling, yellow curls fell over her face. sir michael lifted that beautiful head with his strong hands, and raised my lady's face. the firelight shining on that pale face lit up the large, soft blue eyes and showed them drowned in tears. "lucy, lucy!" cried the baronet, "what is the meaning of this? my love, my love! what has happened to distress you in this manner?" lady audley tried to speak, but the words died inarticulately upon her trembling lips. a choking sensation in her throat seemed to strangle those false and plausible words, her only armor against her enemies. she could not speak. the agony she had endured silently in the dismal lime-walk had grown too strong for her, and she broke into a tempest of hysterical sobbing. it was no simulated grief that shook her slender frame and tore at her like some ravenous beast that would have rent her piecemeal with its horrible strength. it was a storm of real anguish and terror, of remorse and misery. it was the one wild outcry, in which the woman's feebler nature got the better of the siren's art. it was not thus that she had meant to fight her terrible duel with robert audley. those were not the weapons which she had intended to use; but perhaps no artifice which she could have devised would have served her so well as this one outburst of natural grief. it shook her husband to the very soul. it bewildered and terrified him. it reduced the strong intellect of the man to helpless confusion and perplexity. it struck at the one weak point in a good man's nature. it appealed straight to sir michael audley's affection for his wife. ah, heaven help a strong man's tender weakness for the woman he loves! heaven pity him when the guilty creature has deceived him and comes with her tears and lamentations to throw herself at his feet in self-abandonment and remorse; torturing him with the sight of her agony; rending his heart with her sobs, lacerating his breast with her groans�multiplying her sufferings into a great anguish for him to bear! multiplying them by twenty-fold; multiplying them in a ratio of a brave man's capacity for endurance. heaven forgive him, if maddened by that cruel agony, the balance wavers for a moment, and he is ready to forgive anything; ready to take this wretched one to the shelter of his breast, and to pardon that which the stern voice of manly honor urges must not be pardoned. pity him, pity him! the wife's worst remorse when she stands without the threshold of the home she may never enter more is not equal to the agony of the husband who closes the portal on that familiar and entreating face. the anguish of the mother who may never look again upon her children is less than the torment of the father who has to say to those little ones, "my darlings, you are henceforth motherless." sir michael audley rose from his chair, trembling with indignation, and ready to do immediate battle with the person who had caused his wife's grief. "lucy," he said, "lucy, i insist upon your telling me what and who has distressed you. i insist upon it. whoever has annoyed you shall answer to me for your grief. come, my love, tell me directly what it is." he seated himself and bent over the drooping figure at his feet, calming his own agitation in his desire to soothe his wife's distress. "tell me what it is, my dear," he whispered, tenderly. the sharp paroxysm had passed away, and my lady looked up. a glittering light shone through the tears in her eyes, and the lines about her pretty rosy mouth, those hard and cruel lines which robert audley had observed in the pre-raphaelite portrait, were plainly visible in the firelight. "i am very silly," she said; "but really he has made me quite hysterical." "who�who has made you hysterical?" "your nephew�mr. robert audley." "robert," cried the baronet. "lucy, what do you mean?" "i told you that mr. audley insisted upon my going into the lime-walk, dear," said my lady. "he wanted to talk to me, he said, and i went, and he said such horrible things that�" "what horrible things, lucy?" lady audley shuddered, and clung with convulsive fingers to the strong hand that had rested caressingly upon her shoulder. "what did he say, lucy?" "oh, my dear love, how can i tell you?" cried my lady. "i know that i shall distress you�or you will laugh at me, and then�" "laugh at you? no, lucy." lady audley was silent for a moment. she sat looking straight before her into the fire, with her fingers still locked about her husband's hand. "my dear," she said, slowly, hesitating now and then between her words, as if she almost shrunk from uttering them, "have you ever�i am so afraid of vexing you�have you ever thought mr. audley a little�a little�" "a little what, my darling?" "a little out of his mind?" faltered lady audley. "out of his mind!" cried sir michael. "my dear girl, what are you thinking of?" "you said just now, dear, that you thought he was half mad." "did i, my love?" said the baronet, laughing. "i don't remember saying it, and it was a mere façon de parler, that meant nothing whatever. robert may be a little eccentric�a little stupid, perhaps�he mayn't be overburdened with wits, but i don't think he has brains enough for madness. i believe it's generally your great intellects that get out of order." "but madness is sometimes hereditary," said my lady. "mr. audley may have inherited�" "he has inherited no madness from his father's family," interrupted sir michael. "the audleys have never peopled private lunatic asylums or fed mad doctors." "nor from his mother's family?" "not to my knowledge." "people generally keep these things a secret," said my lady, gravely. "there may have been madness in your sister-in-law's family." "i don't think so, my dear," replied sir michael. "but, lucy, tell me what, in heaven's name, has put this idea into your head." "i have been trying to account for your nephew's conduct. i can account for it in no other manner. if you had heard the things he said to me to-night, sir michael, you too might have thought him mad." "but what did he say, lucy?" "i can scarcely tell you. you can see how much he has stupefied and bewildered me. i believe he has lived too long alone in those solitary temple chambers. perhaps he reads too much, or smokes too much. you know that some physicians declare madness to be a mere illness of the brain�an illness to which any one is subject, and which may be produced by given causes, and cured by given means." lady audley's eyes were still fixed upon the burning coals in the wide grate. she spoke as if she had been discussing a subject that she had often heard discussed before. she spoke as if her mind had almost wandered away from the thought of her husband's nephew to the wider question of madness in the abstract. "why should he not be mad?" resumed my lady. "people are insane for years and years before their insanity is found out. they know that they are mad, but they know how to keep their secret; and, perhaps, they may sometimes keep it till they die. sometimes a paroxysm seizes them, and in an evil hour they betray themselves. they commit a crime, perhaps. the horrible temptation of opportunity assails them; the knife is in their hand, and the unconscious victim by their side. they may conquer the restless demon and go away and die innocent of any violent deed; but they may yield to the horrible temptation�the frightful, passionate, hungry craving for violence and horror. they sometimes yield and are lost." lady audley's voice rose as she argued this dreadful question, the hysterical excitement from which she had only just recovered had left its effects upon her, but she controlled herself, and her tone grew calmer as she resumed: "robert audley is mad," she said, decisively. "what is one of the strangest diagnostics of madness�what is the first appalling sign of mental aberration? the mind becomes stationary; the brain stagnates; the even current of reflection is interrupted; the thinking power of the brain resolves itself into a monotone. as the waters of a tideless pool putrefy by reason of their stagnation, the mind becomes turbid and corrupt through lack of action; and the perpetual reflection upon one subject resolves itself into monomania. robert audley is a monomaniac. the disappearance of his friend, george talboys, grieved and bewildered him. he dwelt upon this one idea until he lost the power of thinking of anything else. the one idea looked at perpetually became distorted to his mental vision. repeat the commonest word in the english language twenty times, and before the twentieth repetition you will have begun to wonder whether the word which you repeat is really the word you mean to utter. robert audley has thought of his friend's disappearance until the one idea has done its fatal and unhealthy work. he looks at a common event with a vision that is diseased, and he distorts it into a gloomy horror engendered of his own monomania. if you do not want to make me as mad as he is, you must never let me see him again. he declared to-night that george talboys was murdered in this place, and that he will root up every tree in the garden, and pull down every brick in the house in search for�" my lady paused. the words died away upon her lips. she had exhausted herself by the strange energy with which she had spoken. she had been transformed from a frivolous, childish beauty into a woman, strong to argue her own cause and plead her own defense. "pull down this house?" cried the baronet. "george talboys murdered at audley court! did robert say this, lucy?" "he said something of that kind�something that frightened me very much." "then he must be mad," said sir michael, gravely. "i'm bewildered by what you tell me. did he really say this, lucy, or did you misunderstand him?" "i�i�don't think i did," faltered my lady. "you saw how frightened i was when i first came in. i should not have been so much agitated if he hadn't said something horrible." lady audley had availed herself of the very strongest arguments by which she could help her cause. "to be sure, my darling, to be sure," answered the baronet. "what could have put such a horrible fancy into the unhappy boy's head. this mr. talboys�a perfect stranger to all of us�murdered at audley court! i'll go to mount stanning to-night, and see robert. i have known him ever since he was a baby, and i cannot be deceived in him. if there is really anything wrong, he will not be able to conceal it from me." my lady shrugged her shoulders. "that is rather an open question," she said. "it is generally a stranger who is the first to observe any psychological peculiarity." the big words sounded strange from my lady's rosy lips; but her newly-adopted wisdom had a certain quaint prettiness about it, which charmed and bewildered her husband. "but you must not go to mount stanning, my dear darling," she said, tenderly. "remember that you are under strict orders to stay in doors until the weather is milder, and the sun shines upon this cruel ice-bound country." sir michael audley sank back in his capacious chair with a sigh of resignation. "that's true, lucy," he said; "we must obey mr. dawson. i suppose robert will come to see me to-morrow." "yes, dear. i think he said he would." "then we must wait till to-morrow, my darling. i can't believe that there really is anything wrong with the poor boy�i can't believe it, lucy." "then how do you account for this extraordinary delusion about this mr. talboys?" asked my lady. sir michael shook his head. "i don't know, lucy�i don't know," he answered. "it is always so difficult to believe that any one of the calamities that continually befall our fellow-men will ever happen to us. i can't believe that my nephew's mind is impaired�i can't believe it. i�i'll get him to stop here, lucy, and i'll watch him closely. i tell you, my love, if there is anything wrong i am sure to find it out. i can't be mistaken in a young man who has always been the same to me as my own son. but, my darling, why were you so frightened by robert's wild talk? it could not affect you." my lady sighed piteously. "you must think me very strong-minded, sir michael," she said, with rather an injured air, "if you imagine i can hear of these sort of things indifferently. i know i shall never be able to see mr. audley again." "and you shall not, my dear�you shall not." "you said just now you would have him here," murmured lady audley. "but i will not, my darling girl, if his presence annoys you. good heaven! lucy, can you imagine for a moment that i have any higher wish than to promote your happiness? i will consult some london physician about robert, and let him discover if there is really anything the matter with my poor brother's only son. you shall not be annoyed, lucy." "you must think me very unkind, dear," said my lady, "and i know i ought not to be annoyed by the poor fellow; but he really seems to have taken some absurd notion into his head about me." "about you, lucy!" cried sir michael. "yes, dear. he seems to connect me in some vague manner�which i cannot quite understand�with the disappearance of this mr. talboys." "impossible, lucy! you must have misunderstood him." "i don't think so." "then he must be mad," said the baronet�"he must be mad. i will wait till he goes back to town, and then send some one to his chambers to talk to him. good heaven! what a mysterious business this is." "i fear i have distressed you, darling," murmured lady audley. "yes, my dear, i am very much distressed by what you have told me; but you were quite right to talk to me frankly about this dreadful business. i must think it over, dearest, and try and decide what is best to be done." my lady rose from the low ottoman on which she had been seated. the fire had burned down, and there was only a faint glow of red light in the room. lucy audley bent over her husband's chair, and put her lips to his broad forehead. "how good you have always been to me, dear," she whispered softly. "you would never let any one influence you against me, would you, dear?" "influence me against you?" repeated the baronet. "no, my love." "because you know, dear," pursued my lady, "there are wicked people as well as mad people in the world, and there may be some persons to whose interest it would be to injure me." "they had better not try it, then, my dear," answered sir michael; "they would find themselves in rather a dangerous position if they did." lady audley laughed aloud, with a gay, triumphant, silvery peal of laughter that vibrated through the quiet room. "my own dear darling," she said, "i know you love me. and now i must run away, dear, for it's past seven o'clock. i was engaged to dine at mrs. montford's, but i must send a groom with a message of apology, for mr. audley has made me quite unfit for company. i shall stay at home and nurse you, dear. you'll go to bed very early, won't you, and take great care of yourself?" "yes, dear." my lady tripped out of the room to give her orders about the message that was to be carried to the house at which she was to have dined. she paused for a moment as she closed the library door�she paused, and laid her hand upon her breast to check the rapid throbbing of her heart. "i have been afraid of you, mr. robert audley," she thought; "but perhaps the time may come in which you will have cause to be afraid of me." chapter xxxi. phoebe's petition. the division between lady audley and her step-daughter had not become any narrower in the two months which had elapsed since the pleasant christmas holiday time had been kept at audley court. there was no open warfare between the two women; there was only an armed neutrality, broken every now and then by brief feminine skirmishes and transient wordy tempests. i am sorry to say that alicia would very much have preferred a hearty pitched battle to this silent and undemonstrative disunion; but it was not very easy to quarrel with my lady. she had soft answers for the turning away of wrath. she could smile bewitchingly at her step-daughter's open petulance, and laugh merrily at the young lady's ill-temper. perhaps had she been less amiable, had she been more like alicia in disposition, the two ladies might have expended their enmity in one tremendous quarrel, and might ever afterward have been affectionate and friendly. but lucy audley would not make war. she carried forward the sum of her dislike, and put it out at a steady rate of interest, until the breach between her step-daughter and herself, widening a little every day, became a great gulf, utterly impassable by olive-branch-bearing doves from either side of the abyss. there can be no reconciliation where there is no open warfare. there must be a battle, a brave, boisterous battle, with pennants waving and cannon roaring, before there can be peaceful treaties and enthusiastic shaking of hands. perhaps the union between france and england owes its greatest force to the recollection of cressy and waterloo, navarino and trafalgar. we have hated each other and licked each other and had it out, as the common phrase goes; and we can afford now to fall into each others' arms and vow eternal friendship and everlasting brotherhood. let us hope that when northern yankeedom has decimated and been decimated, blustering jonathan may fling himself upon his southern brother's breast, forgiving and forgiven. alicia audley and her father's pretty wife had plenty of room for the comfortable indulgence of their dislike in the spacious old mansion. my lady had her own apartments, as we know�luxurious chambers, in which all conceivable elegancies had been gathered for the comfort of their occupant. alicia had her own rooms in another part of the large house. she had her favorite mare, her newfoundland dog, and her drawing materials, and she made herself tolerably happy. she was not very happy, this frank, generous-hearted girl, for it was scarcely possible that she could be altogether at ease in the constrained atmosphere of the court. her father was changed; that dear father over whom she had once reigned supreme with the boundless authority of a spoiled child, had accepted another ruler and submitted to a new dynasty. little by little my lady's petty power made itself felt in that narrow household; and alicia saw her father gradually lured across the gulf that divided lady audley from her step-daughter, until he stood at last quite upon the other side of the abyss, and looked coldly upon his only child across that widening chasm. alicia felt that he was lost to her. my lady's beaming smiles, my lady's winning words, my lady's radiant glances and bewitching graces had done their work of enchantment, and sir michael had grown to look upon his daughter as a somewhat wilful and capricious young person who had behaved with determined unkindness to the wife he loved. poor alicia saw all this, and bore her burden as well as she could. it seemed very hard to be a handsome, gray-eyed heiress, with dogs and horses and servants at her command, and yet to be so much alone in the world as to know of not one friendly ear into which she might pour her sorrows. "if bob was good for anything i could have told him how unhappy i am," thought miss audley; "but i may just as well tell caesar my troubles for any consolation i should get from cousin robert." sir michael audley obeyed his pretty nurse, and went to bed a little after nine o'clock upon this bleak march evening. perhaps the baronet's bedroom was about the pleasantést retreat that an invalid could have chosen in such cold and cheerless weather. the dark-green velvet curtains were drawn before the windows and about the ponderous bed. the wood fire burned redly upon the broad hearth. the reading lamp was lighted upon a delicious little table close to sir michael's pillow, and a heap of magazines and newspapers had been arranged by my lady's own fair hands for the pleasure of the invalid. lady audley sat by the bedside for about ten minutes, talking to her husband, talking very seriously, about this strange and awful question�robert audley's lunacy; but at the end of that time she rose and bade her husband good-night. she lowered the green silk shade before the reading lamp, adjusting it carefully for the repose of the baronet's eyes. "i shall leave you, dear," she said. "if you can sleep, so much the better. if you wish to read, the books and papers are close to you. i will leave the doors between the rooms open, and i shall hear your voice if you call me." lady audley went through her dressing-room into the boudoir, where she had sat with her husband since dinner. every evidence of womanly refinement was visible in the elegant chamber. my lady's piano was open, covered with scattered sheets of music and exquisitely-bound collections of scenas and fantasias which no master need have disdained to study. my lady's easel stood near the window, bearing witness to my lady's artistic talent, in the shape of a water-colored sketch of the court and gardens. my lady's fairy-like embroideries of lace and muslin, rainbow-hued silks, and delicately-tinted wools littered the luxurious apartment; while the looking-glasses, cunningly placed at angles and opposite corners by an artistic upholsterer, multiplied my lady's image, and in that image reflected the most beautiful object in the enchanted chamber. amid all this lamplight, gilding, color, wealth, and beauty, lucy audley sat down on a low seat by the fire to think. if mr. holman hunt could have peeped into the pretty boudoir, i think the picture would have been photographed upon his brain to be reproduced by-and-by upon a bishop's half-length for the glorification of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood. my lady in that half-recumbent attitude, with her elbow resting on one knee, and her perfect chin supported by her hand, the rich folds of drapery falling away in long undulating lines from the exquisite outline of her figure, and the luminous, rose-colored firelight enveloping her in a soft haze, only broken by the golden glitter of her yellow hair�beautiful in herself, but made bewilderingly beautiful by the gorgeous surroundings which adorn the shrine of her loveliness. drinking-cups of gold and ivory, chiseled by benvenuto cellini; cabinets of buhl and porcelain, bearing the cipher of austrian marie-antoinette, amid devices of rosebuds and true-lovers' knots, birds and butterflies, cupidons and shepherdesses, goddesses, courtiers, cottagers, and milkmaids; statuettes of parian marble and biscuit china; gilded baskets of hothouse flowers; fantastical caskets of indian filigree-work; fragile tea-cups of turquoise china, adorned by medallion miniatures of louis the great and louis the well-beloved, louise de la valliere, athenais de montespan, and marie jeanne gomard de vaubernier: cabinet pictures and gilded mirrors, shimmering satin and diaphanous lace; all that gold can buy or art devise had been gathered together for the beautification of this quiet chamber in which my lady sat listening to the mourning of the shrill march wind, and the flapping of the ivy leaves against the casements, and looking into the red chasms in the burning coals. i should be preaching a very stale sermon, and harping upon a very familiar moral, if i were to seize this opportunity of declaiming against art and beauty, because my lady was more wretched in this elegant apartment than many a half-starved seamstress in her dreary garret. she was wretched by reason of a wound which lay too deep for the possibility of any solace from such plasters as wealth and luxury; but her wretchedness was of an abnormal nature, and i can see no occasion for seizing upon the fact of her misery as an argument in favor of poverty and discomfort as opposed to opulence. the benvenuto cellini carvings and the sevres porcelain could not give her happiness, because she had passed out of their region. she was no longer innocent; and the pleasure we take in art and loveliness being an innocent pleasure, had passed beyond her reach. six or seven years before, she would have been happy in the possession of this little aladdin's palace; but she had wandered out of the circle of careless, pleasure seeking creatures, she had strayed far away into a desolate labyrinth of guilt and treachery, terror and crime, and all the treasures that had been collected for her could have given her no pleasure but one, the pleasure of flinging them into a heap beneath her feet and trampling upon them and destroying them in her cruel despair. there were some things that would have inspired her with an awful joy, a horrible rejoicing. if robert audley, her pitiless enemy, her unrelenting pursuer, had lain dead in the adjoining chamber, she would have exulted over his bier. what pleasures could have remained for lucretia borgia and catharine de medici, when the dreadful boundary line between innocence and guilt was passed, and the lost creatures stood upon the lonely outer side? only horrible, vengeful joys, and treacherous delights were left for these miserable women. with what disdainful bitterness they must have watched the frivolous vanities, the petty deceptions, the paltry sins of ordinary offenders. perhaps they took a horrible pride in the enormity of their wickedness; in this "divinity of hell," which made them greatest among sinful creatures. my lady, brooding by the fire in her lonely chamber, with her large, clear blue eyes fixed upon the yawning gulfs of lurid crimson in the burning coals, may have thought of many things very far away from the terribly silent struggle in which she was engaged. she may have thought of long-ago years of childish innocence, childish follies and selfishness, of frivolous, feminine sins that had weighed very lightly upon her conscience. perhaps in that retrospective revery she recalled that early time in which she had first looked in the glass and discovered that she was beautiful; that fatal early time in which she had first begun to look upon her loveliness as a right divine, a boundless possession which was to be a set-off against all girlish shortcomings, a counterbalance of every youthful sin. did she remember the day in which that fairy dower of beauty had first taught her to be selfish and cruel, indifferent to the joys and sorrows of others, cold-hearted and capricious, greedy of admiration, exacting and tyrannical with that petty woman's tyranny which is the worst of despotism? did she trace every sin of her life back to its true source? and did she discover that poisoned fountain in her own exaggerated estimate of the value of a pretty face? surely, if her thoughts wandered so far along the backward current of her life, she must have repented in bitterness and despair of that first day in which the master-passions of her life had become her rulers, and the three demons of vanity, selfishness, and ambition, had joined hands and said, "this woman is our slave, let us see what she will become under our guidance." how small those first youthful errors seemed as my lady looked back upon them in that long revery by the lonely hearth! what small vanities, what petty cruelties! a triumph over a schoolfellow; a flirtation with the lover of a friend; an assertion of the right divine invested in blue eyes and shimmering golden-tinted hair. but how terribly that narrow pathway had widened out into the broad highroad of sin, and how swift the footsteps had become upon the now familiar way! my lady twisted her fingers in her loose amber curls, and made as if she would have torn them from her head. but even in that moment of mute despair the unyielding dominion of beauty asserted itself, and she released the poor tangled glitter of ringlets, leaving them to make a halo round her head in the dim firelight. "i was not wicked when i was young," she thought, as she stared gloomingly at the fire, "i was only thoughtless. i never did any harm�at least, wilfully. have i ever been really wicked, i wonder?" she mused. "my worst wickednesses have been the result of wild impulses, and not of deeply-laid plots. i am not like the women i have read of, who have lain night after night in the horrible darkness and stillness, planning out treacherous deeds, and arranging every circumstance of an appointed crime. i wonder whether they suffered�those women�whether they ever suffered as�" her thoughts wandered away into a weary maze of confusion. suddenly she drew herself up with a proud, defiant gesture, and her eyes glittered with a light that was not entirely reflected from the fire. "you are mad, mr. robert audley," she said, "you are mad, and your fancies are a madman's fancies. i know what madness is. i know its signs and tokens, and i say that you are mad." she put her hand to her head, as if thinking of something which confused and bewildered her, and which she found it difficult to contemplate with calmness. "dare i defy him?" she muttered. "dare i? dare i? will he stop, now that he has once gone so far? will he stop for fear of me? will he stop for fear of me, when the thought of what his uncle must suffer has not stopped him? will anything stop him�but death?" she pronounced the last words in an awful whisper; and with her head bent forward, her eyes dilated, and her lips still parted as they had been parted in her utterance of that final word "death," she sat blankly staring at the fire. "i can't plot horrible things," she muttered, presently; "my brain isn't strong enough, or i'm not wicked enough, or brave enough. if i met robert audley in those lonely gardens, as i�" the current of her thoughts was interrupted by a cautious knocking at her door. she rose suddenly, startled by any sound in the stillness of her room. she rose, and threw herself into a low chair near the fire. she flung her beautiful head back upon the soft cushions, and took a book from the table near her. insignificant as this action was, it spoke very plainly. it spoke very plainly of ever-recurring fears�of fatal necessities for concealment�of a mind that in its silent agonies was ever alive to the importance of outward effect. it told more plainly than anything else could have told how complete an actress my lady had been made by the awful necessity of her life. the modest rap at the door was repeated. "come in," cried lady audley, in her liveliest tone. the door was opened with that respectful noiselessness peculiar to a well-bred servant, and a young woman, plainly dressed, and carrying some of the cold march winds in the folds of her garments, crossed the threshold of the apartment and lingered near the door, waiting permission to approach the inner regions of my lady's retreat. it was phoebe marks, the pale-faced wife of the mount stanning innkeeper. "i beg pardon, my lady, for intruding without leave," she said; "but i thought i might venture to come straight up without waiting for permission." "yes, yes, phoebe, to be sure. take off your bonnet, you wretched, cold-looking creature, and come sit down here." lady audley pointed to the low ottoman upon which she had herself been seated a few minutes before. the lady's maid had often sat upon it listening to her mistress' prattle in the old days, when she had been my lady's chief companion and confidante. "sit down here, phoebe," lady audley repeated; "sit down here and talk to me; i'm very glad you came here to-night. i was horribly lonely in this dreary place." my lady shivered and looked round at the bright collection of bric-a-brac, as if the sevres and bronze, the buhl and ormolu, had been the moldering adornments of some ruined castle. the dreary wretchedness of her thoughts had communicated itself to every object about her, and all outer things took their color from that weary inner life which held its slow course of secret anguish in her breast. she had spoken the entire truth in saying that she was glad of her lady's maid's visit. her frivolous nature clung to this weak shelter in the hour of her fear and suffering. there were sympathies between her and this girl, who was like herself, inwardly as well as outwardly�like herself, selfish, and cold, and cruel, eager for her own advancement, and greedy of opulence and elegance; angry with the lot that had been cast her, and weary of dull dependence. my lady hated alicia for her frank, passionate, generous, daring nature; she hated her step-daughter, and clung to this pale-faced, pale-haired girl, whom she thought neither better nor worse than herself. phoebe marks obeyed her late mistress' commands, and took off her bonnet before seating herself on the ottoman at lady audley's feet. her smooth bands of light hair were unruffled by the march winds; her trimly-made drab dress and linen collar were as neatly arranged as they could have been had she only that moment completed her toilet. "sir michael is better, i hope, my lady," she said. "yes, phoebe, much better. he is asleep. you may close that door," added lady audley, with a motion of her head toward the door of communication between the rooms, which had been left open. mrs. marks obeyed submissively, and then returned to her seat. "i am very, very unhappy, phoebe," my lady said, fretfully; "wretchedly miserable." "about the�secret?" asked mrs. marks, in a half whisper. my lady did not notice that question. she resumed in the same complaining tone. she was glad to be able to complain even to this lady's maid. she had brooded over her fears, and had suffered in secret so long, that it was an inexpressible relief to her to bemoan her fate aloud. "i am cruelly persecuted and harassed, phoebe marks," she said. "i am pursued and tormented by a man whom i never injured, whom i have never wished to injure. i am never suffered to rest by this relentless tormentor, and�" she paused, staring at the fire again, as she had done in her loneliness. lost again in the dark intricacies of thoughts which wandered hither and thither in a dreadful chaos of terrified bewilderments, she could not come to any fixed conclusion. phoebe marks watched my lady's face, looking upward at her late mistress with pale, anxious eyes, that only relaxed their watchfulness when lady audley's glance met that of her companion. "i think i know whom you mean, my lady," said the innkeeper's wife, after a pause; "i think i know who it is who is so cruel to you." "oh, of course," answered my lady, bitterly; "my secrets are everybody's secrets. you know all about it, no doubt." "the person is a gentleman�is he not, my lady?" "yes." "a gentleman who came to the castle inn two months ago, when i warned you�" "yes, yes," answered my lady, impatiently. "i thought so. the same gentleman is at our place to-night, my lady." lady audley started up from her chair�started up as if she would have done something desperate in her despairing fury; but she sank back again with a weary, querulous sigh. what warfare could such a feeble creature wage against her fate? what could she do but wind like a hunted hare till she found her way back to the starting-point of the cruel chase, to be there trampled down by her pursuers? "at the castle inn?" she cried. "i might have known as much. he has gone there to wring my secrets from your husband. fool!" she exclaimed, suddenly turning upon phoebe marks in a transport of anger, "do you want to destroy me that you have left those two men together?" mrs. marks clasped her hands piteously. "i didn't come away of my own free will, my lady," she said; "no one could have been more unwilling to leave the house than i was this night. i was sent here." "who sent you here?" "luke, my lady. you can't tell how hard he can be upon me if i go against him." "why did he send you?" the innkeeper's wife dropped her eyelids under lady audley's angry glances, and hesitated confusedly before she answered this question. "indeed, my lady," she stammered, "i didn't want to come. i told luke that it was too bad for us to worry you, first asking this favor, and then asking that, and never leaving you alone for a month together; but�but�he bore me down with his loud, blustering talk, and he made me come." "yes, yes," cried lady audley, impatiently. "i know that. i want to know why you have come." "why, you know, my lady," answered phoebe, half reluctantly, "luke is very extravagant; and all i can say to him, i can't get him to be careful or steady. he's not sober; and when he's drinking with a lot of rough countrymen, and drinking, perhaps even more than they do, it isn't likely that his head can be very clear for accounts. if it hadn't been for me we should have been ruined before this; and hard as i've tried, i haven't been able to keep the ruin off. you remember giving me the money for the brewer's bill, my lady?" "yes, i remember very well," answered lady audley, with a bitter laugh, "for i wanted that money to pay my own bills." "i know you did, my lady, and it was very, very hard for me to have to come and ask you for it, after all that we'd received from you before. but that isn't the worst: when luke sent me down here to beg the favor of that help he never told me that the christmas rent was still owing; but it was, my lady, and it's owing now, and�and there's a bailiff in the house to-night, and we're to be sold up to-morrow unless�" "unless i pay your rent, i suppose," cried lucy audley. "i might have guessed what was coming." "indeed, indeed, my lady, i wouldn't have asked it," sobbed phoebe marks, "but he made me come." "yes," answered my lady, bitterly, "he made you come; and he will make you come whenever he pleases, and whenever he wants money for the gratification of his low vices; and you and he are my pensioners as long as i live, or as long as i have any money to give; for i suppose when my purse is empty and my credit ruined, you and your husband will turn upon me and sell me to the highest bidder. do you know, phoebe marks, that my jewel-case has been half emptied to meet your claims? do you know that my pin-money, which i thought such a princely allowance when my marriage settlement was made, and when i was a poor governess at mr. dawson's, heaven help me! my pin-money has been overdrawn half a year to satisfy your demands? what can i do to appease you? shall i sell my marie antoinette cabinet, or my pompadour china, leroy's and benson's ormolu clocks, or my gobelin tapestried chairs and ottomans? how shall i satisfy you next?" "oh, my lady, my lady," cried phoebe, piteously, "don't be so cruel to me; you know, you know that it isn't i who want to impose upon you." "i know nothing," exclaimed lady audley, "except that i am the most miserable of women. let me think," she cried, silencing phoebe's consolatory murmurs with an imperious gesture. "hold your tongue, girl, and let me think of this business, if i can." she put her hands to her forehead, clasping her slender fingers across her brow, as if she would have controlled the action of her brain by their convulsive pressure. "robert audley is with your husband," she said, slowly, speaking to herself rather than to her companion. "these two men are together, and there are bailiffs in the house, and your brutal husband is no doubt brutally drunk by this time, and brutally obstinate and ferocious in his drunkenness. if i refuse to pay this money his ferocity will be multiplied by a hundredfold. there's little use in discussing that matter. the money must be paid." "but if you do pay it," said phoebe, earnestly, "i hope you will impress upon luke that it is the last money you will ever give him while he stops in that house." "why?" asked lady audley, letting her hands fall on her lap, and looking inquiringly at mrs. marks. "because i want luke to leave the castle." "but why do you want him to leave?" "oh, for ever so many reasons, my lady," answered phoebe. "he's not fit to be the landlord of a public-house. i didn't know that when i married him, or i would have gone against the business, and tried to persuade him to take to the farming line. not that i suppose he'd have given up his own fancy, either; for he's obstinate enough, as you know, my lady. he's not fit for his present business. he's scarcely ever sober after dark; and when he's drunk he gets almost wild, and doesn't seem to know what he does. we've had two or three narrow escapes with him already." "narrow escapes!" repeated lady audley. "what do you mean?" "why, we've run the risk of being burnt in our beds through his carelessness." "burnt in your beds through his carelessness! why, how was that?" asked my lady, rather listlessly. she was too selfish, and too deeply absorbed in her own troubles to take much interest in any danger which had befallen her some-time lady's-maid. "you know what a queer old place the castle is, my lady; all tumble-down wood-work, and rotten rafters, and such like. the chelmsford insurance company won't insure it; for they say if the place did happen to catch fire of a windy night it would blaze away like so much tinder, and nothing in the world could save it. well, luke knows this; and the landlord has warned him of it times and often, for he lives close against us, and he keeps a pretty sharp eye upon all my husband's goings on; but when luke's tipsy he doesn't know what he's about, and only a week ago he left a candle burning in one of the out-houses, and the flame caught one of the rafters of the sloping roof, and if it hadn't been for me finding it out when i went round the house the last thing, we should have all been burnt to death, perhaps. and that's the third time the same kind of thing has happened in the six months we've had the place, and you can't wonder that i'm frightened, can you, my lady?" my lady had not wondered, she had not thought about the business at all. she had scarcely listened to these commonplace details; why should she care for this low-born waiting-woman's perils and troubles? had she not her own terrors, her own soul-absorbing perplexities to usurp every thought of which her brain was capable? she did not make any remark upon that which poor phoebe just told her; she scarcely comprehended what had been said, until some moments after the girl had finished speaking, when the words assumed their full meaning, as some words do after they have been heard without being heeded. "burnt in your beds," said the young lady, at last. "it would have been a good thing for me if that precious creature, your husband, had been burnt in his bed before to-night." a vivid picture had flashed upon her as she spoke. the picture of that frail wooden tenement, the castle inn, reduced to a roofless chaos of lath and plaster, vomiting flames from its black mouth, and spitting blazing sparks upward toward the cold night sky. she gave a weary sigh as she dismissed this image from her restless brain. she would be no better off even if this enemy should be for ever silenced. she had another and far more dangerous foe�a foe who was not to be bribed or bought off, though she had been as rich as an empress. "i'll give you the money to send this bailiff away," my lady said, after a pause. "i must give you the last sovereign in my purse, but what of that? you know as well as i do that i dare not refuse you." lady audley rose and took the lighted lamp from her writing-table. "the money is in my dressing-room," she said; "i will go and fetch it." "oh, my lady," exclaimed phoebe, suddenly, "i forgot something; i was in such a way about this business that i quite forgot it." "quite forgot what?" "a letter that was given me to bring to you, my lady, just before i left home." "what letter?" "a letter from mr. audley. he heard my husband mention that i was coming down here, and he asked me to carry this letter." lady audley set the lamp down upon the table nearest to her, and held out her hand to receive the letter. phoebe marks could scarcely fail to observe that the little jeweled hand shook like a leaf. "give it me�give it me," she cried; "let me see what more he has to say." lady audley almost snatched the letter from phoebe's hand in her wild impatience. she tore open the envelope and flung it from her; she could scarcely unfold the sheet of note-paper in her eager excitement. the letter was very brief. it contained only these words: "should mrs. george talboys really have survived the date of her supposed death, as recorded in the public prints, and upon the tombstone in ventnor churchyard, and should she exist in the person of the lady suspected and accused by the writer of this, there can be no great difficulty in finding some one able and willing to identify her. mrs. barkamb, the owner of north cottages, wildernsea, would no doubt consent to throw some light upon this matter; either to dispel a delusion or to confirm a suspicion. "robert audley. "march 3, 1859. "the castle inn, mount stanning." chapter xxxii. the red light in the sky. my lady crushed the letter fiercely in her hand, and flung it from her into the flames. "if he stood before me now, and i could kill him," she muttered in a strange, inward whisper, "i would do it�i would do it!" she snatched up the lamp and rushed into the adjoining room. she shut the door behind her. she could not endure any witness of her horrible despair�she could endure nothing, neither herself nor her surroundings. the door between my lady's dressing-room and the bed-chamber in which sir michael lay, had been left open. the baronet slept peacefully, his noble face plainly visible in the subdued lamplight. his breathing was low and regular, his lips curved into a half smile�a smile of tender happiness which he often wore when he looked at his beautiful wife, the smile of an all-indulgent father, who looks admiringly at his favorite child. some touch of womanly feeling, some sentiment of compassion softened lady audley's glance as it fell upon that noble, reposing figure. for a moment the horrible egotism of her own misery yielded to her pitying tenderness for another. it was perhaps only a semi-selfish tenderness after all, in which pity for herself was as powerful as pity for her husband; but for once in a way, her thoughts ran out of the narrow groove of her own terrors and her own troubles to dwell with prophetic grief upon the coming sorrows of another. "if they make him believe, how wretched he will be," she thought. but intermingled with that thought there was another�there was the thought of her lovely face, her bewitching manner, her arch smile, her low, musical laugh, which was like a peal of silvery bells ringing across a broad expanse of flat meadow-land and a rippling river in the misty summer evening. she thought of all these things with a transient thrill of triumph, which was stronger even than her terror. if sir michael audley lived to be a hundred years old, whatever he might learn to believe of her, however he might grow to despise her, would he ever be able to disassociate her from these attributes? no; a thousand times no. to the last hour of his life his memory would present her to him invested with the loveliness that had first won his enthusiastic admiration, his devoted affection. her worst enemies could not rob her of that fairy dower which had been so fatal in its influence upon her frivolous mind. she paced up and down the dressing-room in the silvery lamplight, pondering upon the strange letter which she had received from robert audley. she walked backward and forward in that monotonous wandering for some time before she was able to steady her thoughts�before she was able to bring the scattered forces of her narrow intellect to bear upon the one all-important subject of the threat contained in the barrister's letter. "he will do it," she said, between her set teeth�"he will do it, unless i get him into a lunatic-asylum first; or unless�" she did not finish the thought in words. she did not even think out the sentence; but some new and unnatural impulse in her heart seemed to beat each syllable against her breast. the thought was this: "he will do it, unless some strange calamity befalls him, and silences him for ever." the red blood flashed up into my lady's face with as sudden and transient a blaze as the flickering flame of a fire, and died as suddenly away, leaving her more pale than winter snow. her hands, which had before been locked convulsively together, fell apart and dropped heavily at her sides. she stopped in her rapid pacing to and fro�stopped as lot's wife may have stopped, after that fatal backward glance at the perishing city�with every pulse slackening, with every drop of blood congealing in her veins, in the terrible process that was to transform her from a woman into a statue. lady audley stood still for about five minutes in that strangely statuesque attitude, her head erect, her eyes staring straight before her�staring far beyond the narrow boundary of her chamber wall, into dark distances of peril and horror. but by-and-by she started from that rigid attitude almost as abruptly as she had fallen into it. she roused herself from that semi-lethargy. she walked rapidly to her dressing-table, and, seating herself before it, pushed away the litter of golden-stoppered bottles and delicate china essence-boxes, and looked at her reflection in the large, oval glass. she was very pale; but there was no other trace of agitation visible in her girlish face. the lines of her exquisitely molded lips were so beautiful, that it was only a very close observer who could have perceived a certain rigidity that was unusual to them. she saw this herself, and tried to smile away that statue-like immobility: but to-night the rosy lips refused to obey her; they were firmly locked, and were no longer the slaves of her will and pleasure. all the latent forces of her character concentrated themselves in this one feature. she might command her eyes, but she could not control the muscles of her mouth. she rose from before her dressing-table, and took a dark velvet cloak and bonnet from the recesses of her wardrobe, and dressed herself for walking. the little ormolu clock on the chimney-piece struck the quarter after eleven while lady audley was employed in this manner; five minutes afterward she re-entered the room in which she had left phoebe marks. the innkeeper's wife was sitting before the low fender very much in the same attitude as that in which her late mistress had brooded over that lonely hearth earlier in the evening. phoebe had replenished the fire, and had reassumed her bonnet and shawl. she was anxious to get home to that brutal husband, who was only too apt to fall into some mischief in her absence. she looked up as lady audley entered the room, and uttered an exclamation of surprise at seeing her late mistress in a walking-costume. "my lady," she cried, "you are not going out to-night?" "yes, i am, phoebe," lady audley answered, very quietly. "i am going to mount stanning with you to see this bailiff, and to pay and dismiss him myself." "but, my lady, you forget what the time is; you can't go out at such an hour." lady audley did not answer. she stood with her finger resting lightly upon the handle of the bell, meditating quietly. "the stables are always locked, and the men in bed by ten o'clock," she murmured, "when we are at home. it will make a terrible hubbub to get a carriage ready; but yet i dare say one of the servants could manage the matter quietly for me." "but why should you go to-night, my lady?" cried phoebe marks. "to-morrow will do quite as well. a week hence will do as well. our landlord would take the man away if he had your promise to settle the debt." lady audley took no notice of this interruption. she went hastily into the dressing-room, and flung off her bonnet and cloak, and then returned to the boudoir, in her simple dinner-costume, with her curls brushed carelessly away from her face. "now, phoebe marks, listen to me," she said, grasping her confidante's wrist, and speaking in a low, earnest voice, but with a certain imperious air that challenged contradiction and commanded obedience. "listen to me, phoebe," she repeated. "i am going to the castle inn to-night; whether it is early or late is of very little consequence to me; i have set my mind upon going, and i shall go. you have asked me why, and i have told you. i am going in order that i may pay this debt myself; and that i may see for myself that the money i give is applied to the purpose for which i give it. there is nothing out of the common course of life in my doing this. i am going to do what other women in my position very often do. i am going to assist a favorite servant." "but it's getting on for twelve o'clock, my lady," pleaded phoebe. lady audley frowned impatiently at this interruption. "if my going to your house to pay this man should be known," she continued, still retaining her hold of phoebe's wrist, "i am ready to answer for my conduct; but i would rather that the business should be kept quiet. i think that i can leave this house without being seen by any living creature, if you will do as i tell you." "i will do anything you wish, my lady," answered phoebe, submissively. "then you will wish me good-night presently, when my maid comes into the room, and you will suffer her to show you out of the house. you will cross the courtyard and wait for me in the avenue upon the other side of the archway. it may be half an hour before i am able to join you, for i must not leave my room till the servants have all gone to bed, but you may wait for me patiently, for come what may i will join you." lady audley's face was no longer pale. an unnatural luster gleamed in her great blue eyes. she spoke with an unnatural rapidity. she had altogether the appearance and manner of a person who has yielded to the dominant influence of some overpowering excitement. phoebe marks stared at her late mistress in mute bewilderment. she began to fear that my lady was going mad. the bell which lady audley rang was answered by the smart lady's-maid who wore rose-colored ribbons, and black silk gowns, and other adornments which were unknown to the humble people who sat below the salt in the good old days when servants wore linsey-woolsey. "i did not know that it was so late, martin," said my lady, in that gentle tone which always won for her the willing service of her inferiors. "i have been talking with mrs. marks and have let the time slip by me. i sha'n't want anything to-night, so you may go to bed when you please." "thank you, my lady," answered the girl, who looked very sleepy, and had some difficulty in repressing a yawn even in her mistress' presence, for the audley household usually kept very early hours. "i'd better show mrs. marks out, my lady, hadn't i?" asked the maid, "before i go to bed?" "oh, yes, to be sure; you can let phoebe out. all the other servants have gone to bed, then, i suppose?" "yes, my lady." lady audley laughed as she glanced at the timepiece. "we have been terrible dissipated up here, phoebe," she said. "good-night. you may tell your husband that his rent shall be paid." "thank you very much, my lady, and good-night," murmured phoebe as she backed out of the room, followed by the lady's maid. lady audley listened at the door, waiting till the muffled sounds of their footsteps died away in the octagon chamber and on the carpeted staircase. "martin sleeps at the top of the house," she said, "half a mile away from this room. in ten minutes i may safely make my escape." she went back into her dressing-room, and put on her cloak and bonnet for the second time. the unnatural color still burnt like a flame in her cheeks; the unnatural light still glittered in her eyes. the excitement which she was under held her in so strong a spell that neither her mind nor her body seemed to have any consciousness of fatigue. however verbose i may be in my description of her feelings, i can never describe a tithe of her thoughts or her sufferings. she suffered agonies that would fill closely printed volumes, bulky with a thousand pages, in that one horrible night. she underwent volumes of anguish, and doubt, and perplexity; sometimes repeating the same chapters of her torments over and over again; sometimes hurrying through a thousand pages of her misery without one pause, without one moment of breathing time. she stood by the low fender in her boudoir, watching the minute-hand of the clock, and waiting till it should be time for her to leave the house in safety. "i will wait ten minutes," she said, "not a moment beyond, before i enter on my new peril." she listened to the wild roaring of the march wind, which seemed to have risen with the stillness and darkness of the night. the hand slowly made its inevitable way to the figures which told that the ten minutes were past. it was exactly a quarter to twelve when my lady took her lamp in her hand, and stole softly from the room. her footfall was as light as that of some graceful wild animal, and there was no fear of that airy step awakening any echo upon the carpeted stone corridors and staircase. she did not pause until she reached the vestibule upon the ground floor. several doors opened out of the vestibule, which was octagon, like my lady's ante-chamber. one of these doors led into the library, and it was this door which lady audley opened softly and cautiously. to have attempted to leave the house secretly by any of the principal outlets would have been simple madness, for the housekeeper herself superintended the barricading of the great doors, back and front. the secrets of the bolts, and bars, and chains, and bells which secured these doors, and provided for the safety of sir michael audley's plate-room, the door of which was lined with sheet-iron, were known only to the servants who had to deal with them. but although all these precautions were taken with the principal entrances to the citadel, a wooden shutter and a slender iron bar, light enough to be lifted by a child, were considered sufficient safeguard for the half-glass door which opened out of the breakfast-room into the graveled pathway and smooth turf in the courtyard. it was by this outlet that lady audley meant to make her escape. she could easily remove the bar and unfasten the shutter, and she might safely venture to leave the window ajar while she was absent. there was little fear of sir michael's awaking for some time, as he was a heavy sleeper in the early part of the night, and had slept more heavily than usual since his illness. lady audley crossed the library, and opened the door of the breakfast-room, which communicated with it. this latter apartment was one of the later additions to the court. it was a simple, cheerful chamber, with brightly papered walls and pretty maple furniture, and was more occupied by alicia than any one else. the paraphernalia of that young lady's favorite pursuits were scattered about the room�drawing-materials, unfinished scraps of work, tangled skeins of silk, and all the other tokens of a careless damsel's presence; while miss audley's picture�a pretty crayon sketch of a rosy-faced hoyden in a riding-habit and hat�hung over the quaint wedgewood ornaments on the chimneypiece. my lady looked upon these familiar objects with scornful hatred flaming in her blue eyes. "how glad she will be if any disgrace befalls me," she thought; "how she will rejoice if i am driven out of this house!" lady audley set the lamp upon a table near the fireplace, and went to the window. she removed the iron-bar and the light wooden shutter, and then opened the glass-door. the march night was black and moonless, and a gust of wind blew in upon her as she opened this door, and filled the room with its chilly breath, extinguishing the lamp upon the table. "no matter," my lady muttered, "i could not have left it burning. i shall know how to find my way through the house when i come back. i have left all the doors ajar." she stepped quickly out upon the smooth gravel, and closed the glass-door behind her. she was afraid lest that treacherous wind should blow-to the door opening into the library, and thus betray her. she was in the quadrangle now, with that chill wind sweeping against her, and swirling her silken garments round her with a shrill, rustling noise, like the whistling of a sharp breeze against the sails of a yacht. she crossed the quadrangle and looked back�looked back for a moment at the firelight gleaming between the rosy-tinted curtains in her boudoir, and the dim gleam of the lamp through the mullioned windows in the room where sir michael audley lay asleep. "i feel as if i were running away," she thought; "i feel as if i were running away secretly in the dead of the night, to lose myself and be forgotten. perhaps it would be wiser in me to run away, to take this man's warning, and escape out of his power forever. if i were to run away and disappear as�as george talboys disappeared. but where could i go? what would become of me? i have no money; my jewels are not worth a couple of hundred pounds, now that i have got rid of the best part of them. what could i do? i must go back to the old life, the old, hard, cruel, wretched life�the life of poverty, and humiliation, and vexation, and discontent. i should have to go back and wear myself out in that long struggle, and die�as my mother died, perhaps!" my lady stood still for a moment on the smooth lawn between the quadrangle and the archway, with her head drooping upon her breast and her hands locked together, debating this question in the unnatural activity of her mind. her attitude reflected the state of that mind�it expressed irresolution and perplexity. but presently a sudden change came over her; she lifted her head�lifted it with an action of defiance and determination. "no! mr. robert audley," she said, aloud, in a low, clear voice; "i will not go back�i will not go back. if the struggle between us is to be a duel to the death, you shall not find me drop my weapon." she walked with a firm and rapid step under the archway. as she passed under that massive arch, it seemed as if she disappeared into some black gulf that had waited open to receive her. the stupid clock struck twelve, and the whole archway seemed to vibrate under its heavy strokes, as lady audley emerged upon the other side and joined phoebe marks, who had waited for her late mistress very near the gateway of the court. "now, phoebe," she said, "it is three miles from here to mount stanning, isn't it?" "yes, my lady." "then we can walk the distance in an hour and a half." lady audley had not stopped to say this; she was walking quickly along the avenue with her humble companion by her side. fragile and delicate as she was in appearance, she was a very good walker. she had been in the habit of taking long country rambles with mr. dawson's children in her old days of dependence, and she thought very little of a distance of three miles. "your beautiful husband will sit up for you, i suppose, phoebe?" she said, as they struck across an open field that was used as a short cut from audley court to the high-road. "oh, yes, my lady; he's sure to sit up. he'll be drinking with the man, i dare say." "the man! what man?" "the man that's in possession, my lady." "ah, to be sure," said lady audley, indifferently. it was strange that phoebe's domestic troubles should seem so very far away from her thoughts at the time she was taking such an extraordinary step toward setting things right at the castle inn. the two women crossed the field and turned into the high road. the way to mount stanning was all up hill, and the long road looked black and dreary in the dark night; but my lady walked on with a desperate courage, which was no common constituent in her selfish sensuous nature, but a strange faculty born out of her great despair. she did not speak again to her companion until they were close upon the glimmering lights at the top of the hill. one of these village lights, glaring redly through a crimson curtain, marked out the particular window behind which it was likely that luke marks sat nodding drowsily over his liquor, and waiting for the coming of his wife. "he has not gone to bed, phoebe," said my lady, eagerly. "but there is no other light burning at the inn. i suppose mr. audley is in bed and asleep." "yes, my lady, i suppose so." "you are sure he was going to stay at the castle to night?" "oh, yes, my lady. i helped the girl to get his room ready before i came away." the wind, boisterous everywhere, was even shriller and more pitiless in the neighborhood of that bleak hill-top upon which the castle inn reared its rickety walls. the cruel blasts raved wildly round that frail erection. they disported themselves with the shattered pigeon-house, the broken weathercock, the loose tiles, and unshapely chimneys; they rattled at the window-panes, and whistled in the crevices; they mocked the feeble building from foundation to roof, and battered, and banged, and tormented it in their fierce gambols, until it trembled and rocked with the force of their rough play. mr. luke marks had not troubled himself to secure the door of his dwelling-house before sitting down to booze with the man who held provisional possession of his goods and chattels. the landlord of the castle inn was a lazy, sensual brute, who had no thought higher than a selfish concern for his own enjoyments, and a virulent hatred for anybody who stood in the way of his gratification. phoebe pushed open the door with her hand, and went into the house, followed by my lady. the gas was flaring in the bar, and smoking the low plastered ceiling. the door of the bar-parlor was half open, and lady audley heard the brutal laughter of mr. marks as she crossed the threshold of the inn. "i'll tell him you're here, my lady," whispered phoebe to her late mistress. "i know he'll be tipsy. you�you won't be offended, my lady, if he should say anything rude? you know it wasn't my wish that you should come." "yes, yes," answered lady audley, impatiently, "i know that. what should i care for his rudeness! let him say what he likes." phoebe marks pushed open the parlor door, leaving my lady in the bar close behind her. luke sat with his clumsy legs stretched out upon the hearth. he held a glass of gin-and-water in one hand and the poker in the other. he had just thrust the poker into a heap of black coals, and was scattering them to make a blaze, when his wife appeared upon the threshold of the room. he snatched the poker from between the bars, and made a half drunken, half threatening motion with it as he saw her. "so you've condescended to come home at last, ma'am," he said; "i thought you was never coming no more." he spoke in a thick and drunken voice, and was by no means too intelligible. he was steeped to the very lips in alcohol. his eyes were dim and watery; his hands were unsteady; his voice was choked and muffled with drink. a brute, even when most sober; a brute, even on his best behavior, he was ten times more brutal in his drunkenness, when the few restraints which held his ignorant, every day brutality in check were flung aside in the indolent recklessness of intoxication. "i�i've been longer than i intended to be, luke," phoebe answered, in her most conciliatory manner; "but i've seen my lady, and she's been very kind, and�and she'll settle this business for us." "she's been very kind, has she?" muttered mr. marks, with a drunken laugh; "thank her for nothing. i know the vally of her kindness. she'd be oncommon kind, i dessay, if she warn't obligated to be it." the man in possession, who had fallen into a maudlin and semi-unconscious state of intoxication upon about a third of the liquor that mr. marks had consumed, only stared in feeble wonderment at his host and hostess. he sat near the table. indeed, he had hooked himself on to it with his elbows, as a safeguard against sliding under it, and he was making imbecile attempts to light his pipe at the flame of a guttering tallow candle near him. "my lady has promised to settle the business for us, luke," phoebe repeated, without noticing luke's remarks. she knew her husband's dogged nature well enough by this time to know that it was worse than useless to try to stop him from doing or saying anything which his own stubborn will led him to do or say. "my lady will settle it," she said, "and she's come down here to see about it to-night," she added. the poker dropped from the landlord's hand, and fell clattering among the cinders on the hearth. "my lady audley come here to-night!" he said. "yes, luke." my lady appeared upon the threshold of the door as phoebe spoke. "yes, luke marks," she said, "i have come to pay this man, and to send him about his business." lady audley said these words in a strange, semi-mechanical manner; very much as if she had learned the sentence by rote, and were repeating it without knowing what she said. mr. marks gave a discontented growl, and set his empty glass down upon the table with an impatient gesture. "you might have given the money to phoebe," he said, "as well as have brought it yourself. we don't want no fine ladies up here, pryin' and pokin' their precious noses into everythink." "luke, luke!" remonstrated phoebe, "when my lady has been so kind!" "oh, damn her kindness!" cried mr. marks; "it ain't her kindness as we want, gal, it's her money. she won't get no snivelin' gratitood from me. whatever she does for us she does because she is obliged; and if she wasn't obliged she wouldn't do it�" heaven knows how much more luke marks might have said, had not my lady turned upon him suddenly and awed him into silence by the unearthly glitter of her beauty. her hair had been blown away from her face, and being of a light, feathery quality, had spread itself into a tangled mass that surrounded her forehead like a yellow flame. there was another flame in her eyes�a greenish light, such as might flash from the changing-hued orbs of an angry mermaid. "stop," she cried. "i didn't come up here in the dead of night to listen to your insolence. how much is this debt?" "nine pound." lady audley produced her purse�a toy of ivory, silver, and turquoise�she took from it a note and four sovereigns. she laid these upon the table. "let that man give me a receipt for the money," she said, "before i go." it was some time before the man could be roused into sufficient consciousness for the performance of this simple duty, and it was only by dipping a pen into the ink and pushing it between his clumsy fingers, that he was at last made to comprehend that his autograph was wanted at the bottom of the receipt which had been made out by phoebe marks. lady audley took the document as soon as the ink was dry, and turned to leave the parlor. phoebe followed her. "you mustn't go home alone, my lady," she said. "you'll let me go with you?" "yes, yes; you shall go home with me." the two women were standing near the door of the inn as my lady said this. phoebe stared wonderingly at her patroness. she had expected that lady audley would be in a hurry to return home after settling this business which she had capriciously taken upon herself; but it was not so; my lady stood leaning against the inn door and staring into vacancy, and again mrs. marks began to fear that trouble had driven her late mistress mad. a little dutch clock in the bar struck two while lady audley lingered in this irresolute, absent manner. she started at the sound and began to tremble violently. "i think i am going to faint, phoebe," she said; "where can i get some cold water?" "the pump is in the wash-house, my lady; i'll run and get you a glass of cold water." "no, no, no," cried my lady, clutching phoebe's arm as she was about to run away upon this errand; "i'll get it myself. i must dip my head in a basin of water if i want to save myself from fainting. in which room does mr. audley sleep?" there was something so irrelevant in this question that phoebe marks stared aghast at her mistress before she answered it. "it was number three that i got ready, my lady�the front room�the room next to ours," she replied, after that pause of astonishment. "give me a candle," said my lady. "i'll go into your room, and get some water for my head; stay where you are, and see that that brute of a husband of yours does not follow me!" she snatched the candle which phoebe had lighted from the girl's hand and ran up the rickety, winding staircase which led to the narrow corridor upon the upper floor. five bed-rooms opened out of this low-ceilinged, close-smelling corridor; the numbers of these rooms were indicated by squat black figures painted upon the panels of the doors. lady audley had driven up to mount stanning to inspect the house when she bought the business for her servant's bridegroom, and she knew her way about the dilapidated old place; she knew where to find phoebe's bedroom, but she stopped before the door of that other chamber which had been prepared for mr. robert audley. she stopped and looked at the number on the door. the key was in the lock, and her hand dropped upon it as if unconsciously. but presently she suddenly began to tremble again, as she had trembled a few minutes before at the striking of the clock. she stood for a few moments trembling thus, with her hand still upon the key; then a horrible expression came over her face, and she turned the key in the lock. she turned it twice, double locking the door. there was no sound from within; the occupant of the chamber made no sign of having heard that ominous creaking of the rusty key in the rusty lock. lady audley hurried into the next room. she set the candle on the dressing-table, flung off her bonnet and slung it loosely across her arm; then she went to the wash-stand and filled the basin with water. she plunged her golden hair into this water, and then stood for a few moments in the center of the room looking about her, with a white, earnest face, and an eager gaze that seemed to take in every object in the poorly furnished chamber. phoebe's bedroom was certainly very shabbily furnished; she had been compelled to select all the most decent things for those best bedrooms which were set apart for any chance traveler who might stop for a night's lodging at the castle inn; but phoebe marks had done her best to atone for the lack of substantial furniture in her apartment by a superabundance of drapery. crisp curtains of cheap chintz hung from the tent-bedstead; festooned drapery of the same material shrouded the narrow window shutting out the light of day, and affording a pleasant harbor for tribes of flies and predatory bands of spiders. even the looking-glass, a miserably cheap construction which distorted every face whose owner had the hardihood to look into it, stood upon a draperied altar of starched muslin and pink glazed calico, and was adorned with frills of lace and knitted work. my lady smiled as she looked at the festoons and furbelows which met her eyes upon every side. she had reason, perhaps, to smile, remembering the costly elegance of her own apartments; but there was something in that sardonic smile that seemed to have a deeper meaning than any natural contempt for phoebe's attempts at decoration. she went to the dressing-table and, smoothed her wet hair before the looking-glass, and then put on her bonnet. she was obliged to place the flaming tallow candle very close to the lace furbelows about the glass; so close that the starched muslin seemed to draw the flame toward it by some power of attraction in its fragile tissue. phoebe waited anxiously by the inn door for my lady's coming she watched the minute hand of the little dutch clock, wondering at the slowness of its progress. it was only ten minutes past two when lady audley came down-stairs, with her bonnet on and her hair still wet, but without the candle. phoebe was immediately anxious about this missing candle. "the light, my lady," she said, "you have left it up-stairs!" "the wind blew it out as i was leaving your room," lady audley answered, quietly. "i left it there." "in my room, my lady?" "yes." "and it was quite out?" "yes, i tell you; why do you worry me about your candle? it is past two o'clock. come." she took the girl's arm, and half led, half dragged her from the house. the convulsive pressure of her slight hand held her firmly as an iron vise could have held her. the fierce march wind banged to the door of the house, and left the two women standing outside it. the long, black road lay bleak and desolate before them, dimly visible between straight lines of leafless hedges. a walk of three miles' length upon a lonely country road, between the hours of two and four on a cold winter's morning, is scarcely a pleasant task for a delicate woman�a woman whose inclinations lean toward ease and luxury. but my lady hurried along the hard, dry highway, dragging her companion with her as if she had been impelled by some horrible demoniac force which knew no abatement. with the black night above them�with the fierce wind howling around them, sweeping across a broad expanse of hidden country, blowing as if it had arisen simultaneously from every point of the compass, and making those wanderers the focus of its ferocity�the two women walked through the darkness down the hill upon which mount stanning stood, along a mile and a half of flat road, and then up another hill, on the western side of which audley court lay in that sheltered valley, which seemed to shut in the old house from all the clamor and hubbub of the everyday world. my lady stopped upon the summit of this hill to draw breath and to clasp her hands upon her heart, in the vain hope that she might still its cruel beating. they were now within three-quarters of a mile of the court, and they had been walking for nearly an hour since they had left the castle inn. lady audley stopped to rest, with her face still turned toward the place of her destination. phoebe marks, stopping also, and very glad of a moment's pause in that hurried journey, looked back into the far darkness beneath which lay that dreary shelter that had given her so much uneasiness. and she did so, she uttered a shrill cry of horror, and clutched wildly at her companion's cloak. the night sky was no longer all dark. the thick blackness was broken by one patch of lurid light. "my lady, my lady!" cried phoebe, pointing to this lurid patch; "do you see?" "yes, child, i see," answered lady audley, trying to shake the clinging hands from her garments. "what's the matter?" "it's a fire�a fire, my lady!" "yes, i am afraid it is a fire. at brentwood, most likely. let me go, phoebe; it's nothing to us." "yes, yes, my lady; it's nearer than brentwood�much nearer; it's at mount stanning." lady audley did not answer. she was trembling again, with the cold perhaps, for the wind had torn her heavy cloak from her shoulders, and had left her slender figure exposed to the blast. "it's at mount stanning, my lady!" cried phoebe marks. "it's the castle that's on fire�i know it is, i know it is! i thought of fire to-night, and i was fidgety and uneasy, for i knew this would happen some day. i wouldn't mind if it was only the wretched place, but there'll be life lost, there'll be life lost!" sobbed the girl, distractedly. "there's luke, too tipsy to help himself, unless others help him; there's mr. audley asleep�" phoebe marks stopped suddenly at the mention of robert's name, and fell upon her knees, clasping her uplifted hands, and appealing wildly to lady audley. "oh, my god!" she cried. "say it's not true, my lady, say it's not true! it's too horrible, it's too horrible, it's too horrible!" "what's too horrible?" "the thought that's in my mind; the terrible thought that's in my mind." "what do you mean, girl?" cried my lady, fiercely. "oh, god forgive me if i'm wrong!" the kneeling woman gasped in detached sentences, "and god grant i may be. why did you go up to the castle, my lady? why were you so set on going against all i could say�you who are so bitter against mr. audley and against luke, and who knew they were both under that roof? oh, tell me that i do you a cruel wrong, my lady; tell me so�tell me! for as there is a heaven above me i think that you went to that place to-night on purpose to set fire to it. tell me that i'm wrong, my lady; tell me that i'm doing you a wicked wrong." "i will tell you nothing, except that you are a mad woman," answered lady audley; in a cold, hard voice. "get up; fool, idiot, coward! is your husband such a precious bargain that you should be groveling there, lamenting and groaning for him? what is robert audley to you, that you behave like a maniac, because you think he is in danger? how do you know the fire is at mount stanning? you see a red patch in the sky, and you cry out directly that your own paltry hovel is in flames, as if there were no place in the world that could burn except that. the fire may be at brentwood, or further away�at romford, or still further away, on the eastern side of london, perhaps. get up, mad woman, and go back and look after your goods and chattels, and your husband and your lodger. get up and go: i don't want you." "oh! my lady, my lady, forgive me," sobbed phoebe; "there's nothing you can say to me that's hard enough for having done you such a wrong, even in my thoughts. i don't mind your cruel words�i don't mind anything if i'm wrong." "go back and see for yourself," answered lady audley, sternly. "i tell you again, i don't want you." she walked away in the darkness, leaving phoebe marks still kneeling upon the hard road, where she had cast herself in that agony of supplication. sir michael's wife walked toward the house in which her husband slept with the red blaze lighting up the skies behind her, and with nothing but the blackness of the night before. chapter xxxiii. the bearer of the tidings. it was very late the next morning when lady audley emerged from her dressing-room, exquisitely dressed in a morning costume of delicate muslin, delicate laces, and embroideries; but with a very pale face, and with half-circles of purple shadow under her eyes. she accounted for this pale face and these hollow eyes by declaring that she had sat up reading until a very late hour on the previous night. sir michael and his young wife breakfasted in the library at a comfortable round table, wheeled close to the blazing fire; and alicia was compelled to share this meal with her step-mother, however she might avoid that lady in the long interval between breakfast and dinner. the march morning was bleak and dull, and a drizzling rain fell incessantly, obscuring the landscape and blotting out the distance. there were very few letters by the morning post; the daily newspapers did not arrive until noon; and such aids to conversation being missing, there was very little talk at the breakfast table. alicia looked out at the drizzling rain drifting against the broad window-panes. "no riding to-day," she said; "and no chance of any callers to enliven us, unless that ridiculous bob comes crawling through the wet from mount stanning." have you ever heard anybody, whom you knew to be dead, alluded to in a light, easy going manner by another person who did not know of his death�alluded to as doing that or this, as performing some trivial everyday operation�when you know that he has vanished away from the face of this earth, and separated himself forever from all living creatures and their commonplace pursuits in the awful solemnity of death? such a chance allusion, insignificant though it may be, is apt to send a strange thrill of pain through the mind. the ignorant remark jars discordantly upon the hyper-sensitive brain; the king of terrors is desecrated by that unwitting disrespect. heaven knows what hidden reason my lady may have had for experiencing some such revulsion of feeling on the sudden mention of mr. audley's name, but her pale face blanched to a sickly white as alicia audley spoke of her cousin. "yes, he will come down here in the wet, perhaps," the young lady continued, "with his hat sleek and shining as if it had been brushed with a pat of fresh butter, and with white vapors steaming out of his clothes, and making him look like an awkward genie just let out of his bottle. he will come down here and print impressions of his muddy boots all over the carpet, and he'll sit on your gobelin tapestry, my lady, in his wet overcoat; and he'll abuse you if you remonstrate, and will ask why people have chairs that are not to be sat upon, and why you don't live in figtree court, and�" sir michael audley watched his daughter with a thoughtful countenance as she talked of her cousin. she very often talked of him, ridiculing him and inveighing against him in no very measured terms. but perhaps the baronet thought of a certain signora beatrice who very cruelly entreated a gentleman called benedick, but who was, it may be, heartily in love with him at the same time. "what do you think major melville told me when he called here yesterday, alicia?" sir michael asked, presently. "i haven't the remotest idea," replied alicia, rather disdainfully. "perhaps he told you that we should have another war before long, by ged, sir; or perhaps he told you that we should have a new ministry, by ged, sir, for that those fellows are getting themselves into a mess, sir; or that those other fellows were reforming this, and cutting down that, and altering the other in the army, until, by ged, sir, we shall have no army at all, by-and-by�nothing but a pack of boys, sir, crammed up to the eyes with a lot of senseless schoolmasters' rubbish, and dressed in shell-jackets and calico helmets. yes, sir, they're fighting in oudh in calico helmets at this very day, sir." "you're an impertinent minx, miss," answered the baronet. "major melville told me nothing of the kind; but he told me that a very devoted admirer of you, a certain sir harry towers, has forsaken his place in hertfordshire, and his hunting stable, and has gone on the continent for a twelvemonths' tour." miss audley flushed up suddenly at the mention of her old adorer, but recovered herself very quickly. "he has gone on the continent, has he?" she said indifferently. "he told me that he meant to do so�if�if he didn't have everything his own way. poor fellow! he's a dear, good-hearted, stupid creature, and twenty times better than that peripatetic, patent refrigerator, mr. robert audley." "i wish, alicia, you were not so fond of ridiculing bob," sir michael said, gravely. "bob is a good fellow, and i'm as fond of him as if he'd been my own son; and�and�i've been very uncomfortable about him lately. he has changed very much within the last few days, and he has taken all sorts of absurd ideas into his head, and my lady has alarmed me about him. she thinks�" lady audley interrupted her husband with a grave shake of her head. "it is better not to say too much about it as yet awhile," she said; "alicia knows what i think." "yes," replied miss audley, "my lady thinks that bob is going mad, but i know better than that. he's not at all the sort of person to go mad. how should such a sluggish ditch-pond of an intellect as his ever work itself into a tempest? he may move about for the rest of his life, perhaps, in a tranquil state of semi-idiotcy, imperfectly comprehending who he is, and where he's going, and what he's doing�but he'll never go mad." sir michael did not reply to this. he had been very much disturbed by his conversation with my lady on the previous evening, and had silently debated the painful question, in his mind ever since. his wife�the woman he best loved and most believed in�had told him, with all appearance of regret and agitation, her conviction of his nephew's insanity. he tried in vain to arrive at the conclusion he wished most ardently to attain; he tried in vain to think that my lady was misled by her own fancies, and had no foundation for what she said. but then, again, it suddenly flashed upon him, that to think this was to arrive at a worse conclusion; it was to transfer the horrible suspicion from his nephew to his wife. she appeared to be possessed with an actual conviction of robert's insanity. to imagine her wrong was to imagine some weakness in her own mind. the longer he thought of the subject the more it harassed and perplexed him. it was most certain that the young man had always been eccentric. he was sensible, he was tolerably clever, he was honorable and gentlemanlike in feeling, though perhaps a little careless in the performance of certain minor social duties; but there were some slight differences, not easily to be defined, that separated him from other men of his age and position. then, again, it was equally true that he had very much changed within the period that had succeeded the disappearance of george talboys. he had grown moody and thoughtful, melancholy and absent-minded. he had held himself aloof from society, had sat for hours without speaking; had talked at other points by fits and starts; and had excited himself unusually in the discussion of subjects which apparently lay far out of the region of his own life and interests. then there was even another region which seemed to strengthen my lady's case against this unhappy young man. he had been brought up in the frequent society of his cousin, alicia�his pretty, genial cousin�to whom interest, and one would have thought affection, naturally pointed as his most fitting bride. more than this, the girl had shown him, in the innocent guilelessness of a transparent nature, that on her side at least, affection was not wanting; and yet, in spite of all this, he had held himself aloof, and had allowed others to propose for her hand, and to be rejected by her, and had still made no sign. now love is so very subtle an essence, such an indefinable metaphysical marvel, that its due force, though very cruelly felt by the sufferer himself, is never clearly understood by those who look on at its torments and wonder why he takes the common fever so badly. sir michael argued that because alicia was a pretty girl and an amiable girl it was therefore extraordinary and unnatural in robert audley not to have duly fallen in love with her. this baronet, who close upon his sixtieth birthday, had for the first time encountered that one woman who out of all the women in the world had power to quicken the pulses of his heart, wondered why robert failed to take the fever from the first breath of contagion that blew toward him. he forgot that there are men who go their ways unscathed amidst legions of lovely and generous women, to succumb at last before some harsh-featured virago, who knows the secret of that only philter which can intoxicate and bewitch him. he had forgot that there are certain jacks who go through life without meeting the jill appointed for them by nemesis, and die old bachelors, perhaps, with poor jill pining an old maid upon the other side of the party-wall. he forgot that love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by everyone except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures. jones, who is wildly enamored of miss brown, and who lies awake at night until he loathes his comfortable pillow and tumbles his sheets into two twisted rags of linen in his agonies, as if he were a prisoner and wanted to wind them into impromptu ropes; this same jones who thinks russell square a magic place because his divinity inhabits it, who thinks the trees in that inclosure and the sky above it greener and bluer than other trees or sky, and who feels a pang, yes, an actual pang, of mingled hope, and joy, and expectation, and terror, when he emerges from guilford street, descending from the hights of islington, into those sacred precincts; this very jones is hard and callous toward the torments of smith, who adores miss robinson, and cannot imagine what the infatuated fellow can see in the girl. so it was with sir michael audley. he looked at his nephew as a sample of a very large class of young men, and his daughter as a sample of an equally extensive class of feminine goods, and could not see why the two samples should not make a very respectable match. he ignored all those infinitesimal differences in nature which make the wholesome food of one man the deadly poison of another. how difficult it is to believe sometimes that a man doesn't like such and such a favorite dish. if at a dinner-party, a meek looking guest refuses early salmon and cucumbers, or green peas in february, we set him down as a poor relation whose instincts warn him off those expensive plates. if an alderman were to declare that he didn't like green fat, he would be looked upon as a social martyr, a marcus curtius of the dinner-table, who immolated himself for the benefit of his kind. his fellow-aldermen would believe in anything rather than an heretical distaste for the city ambrosia of the soup tureen. but there are people who dislike salmon, and white-bait, and spring ducklings, and all manner of old-established delicacies, and there are other people who affect eccentric and despicable dishes, generally stigmatized as nasty. alas, my pretty alicia, your cousin did not love you! he admired your rosy english face, and had a tender affection for you which might perhaps have expanded by-and-by into something warm enough for matrimony, that every-day jog-trot species of union which demands no very passionate devotion, but for a sudden check which it had received in dorsetshire. yes, robert audley's growing affection for his cousin, a plant of very slow growth, i am fain to confess, had been suddenly dwarfed and stunted upon that bitter february day on which he had stood beneath the pine-trees talking to clara talboys. since that day the young man had experienced an unpleasant sensation in thinking of poor alicia. he looked at her as being in some vague manner an incumbrance upon the freedom of his thoughts; he had a haunting fear that he was in some tacit way pledged to her; that she had a species of claim upon him, which forbade to him the right of thinking of another woman. i believe it was the image of miss audley presented to him in this light that goaded the young barrister into those outbursts of splenetic rage against the female sex which he was liable to at certain times. he was strictly honorable, so honorable that he would rather have immolated himself upon the altar of truth and alicia than have done her the remotest wrong, though by so doing he might have secured his own comfort and happiness. "if the poor little girl loves me," he thought, "and if she thinks that i love her, and has been led to think so by any word or act of mine, i'm in duty bound to let her think so to the end of time, and to fulfill any tacit promise which i may have unconsciously made. i thought once�i meant once to�to make her an offer by-and-by when this horrible mystery about george talboys should have been cleared up and everything peacefully settled�but now�" his thoughts would ordinarily wander away at this point of his reflections, carrying him where he never had intended to go; carrying him back under the pine-trees in dorsetshire, and setting him once more face to face with the sister of his missing friend, and it was generally a very laborious journey by which he traveled back to the point from which he strayed. it was so difficult for him to tear himself away from the stunted turf and the pine-trees. "poor little girl!" he would think on coming back to alicia. "how good it is of her to love me, and how grateful ought i to be for her tenderness. how many fellows would think such a generous, loving heart the highest boon that earth could give them. there's sir harry towers stricken with despair at his rejection. he would give me half his estate, all his estate, twice his estate, if he had it, to be in the shoes which i am anxious to shake off my ungrateful feet. why don't i love her? why is it that although i know her to be pretty, and pure, and good, and truthful, i don't love her? her image never haunts me, except reproachfully. i never see her in my dreams. i never wake up suddenly in the dead of the night with her eyes shining upon me and her warm breath upon my cheek, or with the fingers of her soft hand clinging to mine. no, i'm not in love with her, i can't fall in love with her." he raged and rebelled against his ingratitude. he tried to argue himself into a passionate attachment for his cousin, but he failed ignominiously, and the more he tried to think of alicia the more he thought of clara talboys. i am speaking now of his feelings in the period that elapsed between his return from dorsetshire and his visit to grange heath. sir michael sat by the library fire after breakfast upon this wretched rainy morning, writing letters and reading the newspapers. alicia shut herself in her own apartment to read the third volume of a novel. lady audley locked the door of the octagon ante-chamber, and roamed up and down the suite of rooms from the bedroom to the boudoir all through that weary morning. she had locked the door to guard against the chance of any one coming in suddenly and observing her before she was aware�before she had had sufficient warning to enable her to face their scrutiny. her pale face seemed to grow paler as the morning advanced. a tiny medicine-chest was open upon the dressing-table, and little stoppered bottles of red lavender, sal-volatile, chloroform, chlorodyne, and ether were scattered about. once my lady paused before this medicine-chest, and took out the remaining bottles, half-absently, perhaps, until she came to one which was filled with a thick, dark liquid, and labeled "opium�poison." she trifled a long time with this last bottle; holding it up to the light, and even removing the stopper and smelling the sickly liquid. but she put it from her suddenly with a shudder. "if i could!" she muttered, "if i could only do it! and yet why should i now?" she clinched her small hands as she uttered the last words, and walked to the window of the dressing-room, which looked straight toward that ivied archway under which any one must come who came from mount stanning to the court. there were smaller gates in the gardens which led into the meadows behind the court, but there was no other way of coming from mount stanning or brentwood than by the principal entrance. the solitary hand of the clock over the archway was midway between one and two when my lady looked at it. "how slow the time is," she said, wearily; "how slow, how slow! shall i grow old like this, i wonder, with every minute of my life seeming like an hour?" she stood for a few minutes watching the archway, but no one passed under it while she looked, and she turned impatiently away from the window to resume her weary wandering about the rooms. whatever fire that had been which had reflected itself vividly in the black sky, no tidings of it had as yet come to audley court. the day was miserably wet and windy, altogether the very last day upon which even the most confirmed idler and gossip would care to venture out. it was not a market-day, and there were therefore very few passengers upon the road between brentwood and chelmsford, so that as yet no news of the fire, which had occurred in the dead of the wintry night, had reached the village of audley, or traveled from the village to the court. the girl with the rose-colored ribbons came to the door of the anteroom to summon her mistress to luncheon, but lady audley only opened the door a little way, and intimated her intention of taking no luncheon. "my head aches terribly, martin," she said; "i shall go and lie down till dinner-time. you may come at five to dress me." lady audley said this with the predetermination of dressing at four, and thus dispensing with the services of her attendant. among all privileged spies, a lady's-maid has the highest privileges; it is she who bathes lady theresa's eyes with eau-de-cologne after her ladyship's quarrel with the colonel; it is she who administers sal-volatile to miss fanny when count beaudesert, of the blues, has jilted her. she has a hundred methods for the finding out of her mistress' secrets. she knows by the manner in which her victim jerks her head from under the hair-brush, or chafes at the gentlest administration of the comb, what hidden tortures are racking her breast�what secret perplexities are bewildering her brain. that well-bred attendant knows how to interpret the most obscure diagnosis of all mental diseases that can afflict her mistress; she knows when the ivory complexion is bought and paid for�when the pearly teeth are foreign substances fashioned by the dentist�when the glossy plaits are the relics of the dead, rather than the property of the living; and she knows other and more sacred secrets than these; she knows when the sweet smile is more false than madame levison's enamel, and far less enduring�when the words that issue from between gates of borrowed pearl are more disguised and painted than the lips which help to shape them�when the lovely fairy of the ball-room re-enters the dressing-room after the night's long revelry, and throws aside her voluminous burnous and her faded bouquet, and drops her mask, and like another cinderella loses the glass-slipper, by whose glitter she has been distinguished, and falls back into her rags and dirt, the lady's maid is by to see the transformation. the valet who took wages from the prophet of korazin must have seen his master sometimes unveiled, and must have laughed in his sleeve at the folly of the monster's worshipers. lady audley had made no confidante of her new maid, and on this day of all others she wished to be alone. she did lie down; she cast herself wearily upon the luxurious sofa in the dressing-room, and buried her face in the down pillows and tried to sleep. sleep!�she had almost forgotten what it was, that tender restorer of tired nature, it seemed so long now since she had slept. it was only about eight-and-forty hours perhaps, but it appeared an intolerable time. her fatigue of the night before, and her unnatural excitement, had worn her out at last. she did fall asleep; she fell into a heavy slumber that was almost like stupor. she had taken a few drops out of the opium bottle in a glass of water before lying down. the clock over the mantelpiece chimed the quarter before four as she woke suddenly and started up, with the cold perspiration breaking out in icy drops upon her forehead. she had dreamt that every member of the household was clamoring at the door, eager to tell her of a dreadful fire that had happened in the night. there was no sound but the flapping of the ivy-leaves against the glass, the occasional falling of a cinder, and the steady ticking of the clock. "perhaps i shall be always dreaming these sort of dreams," my lady thought, "until the terror of them kills me!" the rain had ceased, and the cold spring sunshine was glittering upon the windows. lady audley dressed herself rapidly but carefully. i do not say that even in her supremest hour of misery she still retained her pride in her beauty. it was not so; she looked upon that beauty as a weapon, and she felt that she had now double need to be well armed. she dressed herself in her most gorgeous silk, a voluminous robe of silvery, shimmering blue, that made her look as if she had been arrayed in moonbeams. she shook out her hair into feathery showers of glittering gold, and, with a cloak of white cashmere about her shoulders, went down-stairs into the vestibule. she opened the door of the library and looked in. sir michael audley was asleep in his easy-chair. as my lady softly closed this door alicia descended the stairs from her own room. the turret door was open, and the sun was shining upon the wet grass-plat in the quadrangle. the firm gravel-walks were already very nearly dry, for the rain had ceased for upward of two hours. "will you take a walk with me in the quadrangle?" lady audley asked as her step-daughter approached. the armed neutrality between the two women admitted of any chance civility such as this. "yes, if you please, my lady," alicia answered, rather listlessly. "i have been yawning over a stupid novel all the morning, and shall be very glad of a little fresh air." heaven help the novelist whose fiction miss audley had been perusing, if he had no better critics than that young lady. she had read page after page without knowing what she had been reading, and had flung aside the volume half a dozen times to go to the window and watch for that visitor whom she had so confidently expected. lady audley led the way through the low doorway and on to the smooth gravel drive, by which carriages approached the house. she was still very pale, but the brightness of her dress and of her feathery golden ringlets, distracted an observer's eyes from her pallid face. all mental distress is, with some show of reason, associated in our minds with loose, disordered garments and dishabilled hair, and an appearance in every way the reverse of my lady's. why had she come out into the chill sunshine of that march afternoon to wander up and down that monotonous pathway with the step-daughter she hated? she came because she was under the dominion of a horrible restlessness, which, would not suffer her to remain within the house waiting for certain tidings which she knew must too surely come. at first she had wished to ward them off�at first she had wished that strange convulsions of nature might arise to hinder their coming�that abnormal winter lightnings might wither and destroy the messenger who carried them�that the ground might tremble and yawn beneath his hastening feet, and that impassable gulfs might separate the spot from which the tidings were to come and the place to which they were to be carried. she wished that the earth might stand still, and the paralyzed elements cease from their natural functions, that the progress of time might stop, that the day of judgment might come, and that she might thus be brought before an unearthly tribunal, and so escape the intervening shame and misery of any earthly judgment. in the wild chaos of her brain, every one of these thoughts had held its place, and in her short slumber on the sofa in her dressing-room she had dreamed all these things and a hundred other things, all bearing upon the same subject. she had dreamed that a brook, a tiny streamlet when she first saw it, flowed across the road between mount stanning and audley, and gradually swelled into a river, and from a river became an ocean, till the village on the hill receded far away out of sight and only a great waste of waters rolled where it once had been. she dreamt that she saw the messenger, now one person, now another, but never any probable person, hindered by a hundred hinderances, now startling and terrible, now ridiculous and trivial, but never either natural or probable; and going down into the quiet house with the memory of these dreams strong upon her, she had been bewildered by the stillness which had betokened that the tidings had not yet come. and now her mind underwent a complete change. she no longer wished to delay the dreaded intelligence. she wished the agony, whatever it was to be, over and done with, the pain suffered, and the release attained. it seemed to her as if the intolerable day would never come to an end, as if her mad wishes had been granted, and the progress of time had actually stopped. "what a long day it has been!" exclaimed alicia, as if taking up the burden of my lady's thoughts; "nothing but drizzle and mist and wind! and now that it's too late for anybody to go out, it must needs be fine," the young lady added, with an evident sense of injury. lady audley did not answer. she was looking at the stupid one-handed clock, and waiting for the news which must come sooner or later, which could not surely fail to come very speedily. "they have been afraid to come and tell him," she thought; "they have been afraid to break the news to sir michael. who will come to tell it, at last, i wonder? the rector of mount stanning, perhaps, or the doctor; some important person at least." if she could have gone out into the leafless avenues, or onto the high road beyond them; if she could have gone so far as that hill upon which she had so lately parted with phoebe, she would have gladly done so. she would rather have suffered anything than that slow suspense, that corroding anxiety, that metaphysical dryrot in which heart and mind seemed to decay under an insufferable torture. she tried to talk, and by a painful effort contrived now and then to utter some commonplace remark. under any ordinary circumstances her companion would have noticed her embarrassment, but miss audley, happening to be very much absorbed by her own vexations, was quite as well inclined to be silent as my lady herself. the monotonous walk up and down the graveled pathway suited alicia's humor. i think that she even took a malicious pleasure in the idea that she was very likely catching cold, and that her cousin robert was answerable for her danger. if she could have brought upon herself inflammation of the lungs, or ruptured blood-vessels, by that exposure to the chill march atmosphere, i think she would have felt a gloomy satisfaction in her sufferings. "perhaps robert might care for me, if i had inflammation of the lungs," she thought. "he couldn't insult me by calling me a bouncer then. bouncers don't have inflammation of the lungs." i believe she drew a picture of herself in the last stage of consumption, propped up by pillows in a great easy-chair, looking out of a window in the afternoon sunshine, with medicine bottles, a bunch of grapes and a bible upon a table by her side, and with robert, all contrition and tenderness, summoned to receive her farewell blessing. she preached a whole chapter to him in that parting benediction, talking a great deal longer than was in keeping with her prostrate state, and very much enjoying her dismal castle in the air. employed in this sentimental manner, miss audley took very little notice of her step-mother, and the one hand of the blundering clock had slipped to six by the time robert had been blessed and dismissed. "good gracious me!" she cried, suddenly�"six o'clock, and i'm not dressed." the half-hour bell rung in a cupola upon the roof while alicia was speaking. "i must go in, my lady," she said. "won't you come?" "presently," answered lady audley. "i'm dressed, you see." alicia ran off, but sir michael's wife still lingered in the quadrangle, still waited for those tidings which were so long coming. it was nearly dark. the blue mists of evening had slowly risen from the ground. the flat meadows were filled with a gray vapor, and a stranger might have fancied audley court a castle on the margin of a sea. under the archway the shadows of fastcoming night lurked darkly, like traitors waiting for an opportunity to glide stealthily into the quadrangle. through the archway a patch of cold blue sky glimmered faintly, streaked by one line of lurid crimson, and lighted by the dim glitter of one wintry-looking star. not a creature was stirring in the quadrangle but the restless woman who paced up and down the straight pathways, listening for a footstep whose coming was to strike terror to her soul. she heard it at last!�a footstep in the avenue upon the other side of the archway. but was it the footstep? her sense of hearing, made unnaturally acute by excitement, told her that it was a man's footstep�told even more, that it was the tread of a gentleman, no slouching, lumbering pedestrian in hobnailed boots, but a gentleman who walked firmly and well. every sound fell like a lump of ice upon my lady's heart. she could not wait, she could not contain herself, she lost all self-control, all power of endurance, all capability of self-restraint, and she rushed toward the archway. she paused beneath its shadow, for the stranger was close upon her. she saw him, oh, god! she saw him in that dim evening light. her brain reeled, her heart stopped beating. she uttered no cry of surprise, no exclamation of terror, but staggered backward and clung for support to the ivied buttress of the archway. with her slender figure crouched into the angle formed by the buttress and the wall which it supported, she stood staring at the new-comer. as he approached her more closely her knees sunk under her, and she dropped to the ground, not fainting, or in any manner unconscious, but sinking into a crouching attitude, and still crushed into the angle of the wall, as if she would have made a tomb for herself in the shadow of that sheltering brickwork. "my lady!" the speaker was robert audley. he whose bedroom door she had double-locked seventeen hours before at the castle inn. "what is the matter with you?" he said, in a strange, constrained manner. "get up, and let me take you indoors." he assisted her to rise, and she obeyed him very submissively. he took her arm in his strong hand and led her across the quadrangle and into the lamp-lit hall. she shivered more violently than he had ever seen any woman shiver before, but she made no attempt at resistance to his will. chapter xxxiv. my lady tells the truth. "is there any room in which i can talk to you alone?" robert audley asked, as he looked dubiously round the hall. my lady only bowed her head in answer. she pushed open the door of the library, which had been left ajar. sir michael had gone to his dressing-room to prepare for dinner after a day of lazy enjoyment, perfectly legitimate for an invalid. the apartment was quite empty, only lighted by the blaze of the fire, as it had been upon the previous evening. lady audley entered the room, followed by robert, who closed the door behind him. the wretched, shivering woman went to the fireplace and knelt down before the blaze, as if any natural warmth, could have power to check that unnatural chill. the young man followed her, and stood beside her upon the hearth, with his arm resting upon the chimney-piece. "lady audley," he said, in a voice whose icy sternness held out no hope of any tenderness or compassion, "i spoke to you last-night very plainly, but you refused to listen to me. to-night i must speak to you still more plainly, and you must no longer refuse to listen to me." my lady, crouching before the fire with her face hidden in her hands, uttered a low, sobbing sound which was almost a moan, but made no other answer. "there was a fire last night at mount stanning, lady audley," the pitiless voice proceeded; "the castle inn, the house in which i slept, was burned to the ground. do you know how i escaped perishing in that destruction?" "no." "i escaped by a most providential circumstance which seems a very simple one. i did not sleep in the room which had been prepared for me. the place seemed wretchedly damp and chilly, the chimney smoked abominably when an attempt was made at lighting a fire, and i persuaded the servant to make me up a bed on the sofa in the small ground-floor sitting-room which i had occupied during the evening." he paused for a moment, watching the crouching figure. the only change in my lady's attitude was that her head had fallen a little lower. "shall i tell you by whose agency the destruction of the castle inn was brought about, my lady?" there was no answer. "shall i tell you?" still the same obstinate silence. "my lady audley," cried robert, suddenly, "you are the incendiary. it was you whose murderous hand kindled those flames. it was you who thought by that thrice-horrible deed to rid yourself of me, your enemy and denouncer. what was it to you that other lives might be sacrificed? if by a second massacre of saint bartholomew you could have ridded yourself of me you would have sacrificed an army of victims. the day is past for tenderness and mercy. for you i can no longer know pity or compunction. so far as by sparing your shame i can spare others who must suffer by your shame, i will be merciful, but no further. if there were any secret tribunal before which you might be made to answer for your crimes, i would have little scruple in being your accuser, but i would spare that generous and high-born gentleman upon whose noble name your infamy would be reflected." his voice softened as he made this allusion, and for a moment he broke down, but he recovered himself by an effort and continued: "no life was lost in the fire of last night. i slept lightly, my lady, for my mind was troubled, as it has been for a long time, by the misery which i knew was lowering upon this house. it was i who discovered the breaking out of the fire in time to give the alarm and to save the servant girl and the poor drunken wretch, who was very much burnt in spite of efforts, and who now lies in a precarious state at his mother's cottage. it was from him and from his wife that i learned who had visited the castle inn in the dead of the night. the woman was almost distracted when she saw me, and from her i discovered the particulars of last night. heaven knows what other secrets of yours she may hold, my lady, or how easily they might be extorted from her if i wanted her aid, which i do not. my path lies very straight before me. i have sworn to bring the murderer of george talboys to justice, and i will keep my oath. i say that it was by your agency my friend met with his death. if i have wondered sometimes, as it was only natural i should, whether i was not the victim of some horrible hallucination, whether such an alternative was not more probable than that a young and lovely woman should be capable of so foul and treacherous a murder, all wonder is past. after last night's deed of horror, there is no crime you could commit, however vast and unnatural, which could make me wonder. henceforth you must seem to me no longer a woman, a guilty woman with a heart which in its worst wickedness has yet some latent power to suffer and feel; i look upon you henceforth as the demoniac incarnation of some evil principle. but you shall no longer pollute this place by your presence. unless you will confess what you are and who you are in the presence of the man you have deceived so long, and accept from him and from me such mercy as we may be inclined to extend to you, i will gather together the witnesses who shall swear to your identity, and at peril of any shame to myself and those i love, i will bring upon you the just and awful punishment of your crime." the woman rose suddenly and stood before him erect and resolute, with her hair dashed away from her face and her eyes glittering. "bring sir michael!" she cried; "bring him here, and i will confess anything�everything. what do i care? god knows i have struggled hard enough against you, and fought the battle patiently enough; but you have conquered, mr. robert audley. it is a great triumph, is it not�a wonderful victory? you have used your cool, calculating, frigid, luminous intellect to a noble purpose. you have conquered�a mad woman!" "a mad woman!" cried mr. audley. "yes, a mad woman. when you say that i killed george talboys, you say the truth. when you say that i murdered him treacherously and foully, you lie. i killed him because i am mad! because my intellect is a little way upon the wrong side of that narrow boundary-line between sanity and insanity; because, when george talboys goaded me, as you have goaded me, and reproached me, and threatened me, my mind, never properly balanced, utterly lost its balance, and i was mad! bring sir michael; and bring him quickly. if he is to be told one thing let him be told everything; let him hear the secret of my life!" robert audley left the room to look for his uncle. he went in search of that honored kinsman with god knows how heavy a weight of anguish at his heart, for he knew he was about to shatter the day-dream of his uncle's life; and he knew that our dreams are none the less terrible to lose, because they have never been the realities for which we have mistaken them. but even in the midst of his sorrow for sir michael, he could not help wondering at my lady's last words�"the secret of my life." he remembered those lines in the letter written by helen talboys upon the eve of her flight from wildernsea, which had so puzzled him. he remembered those appealing sentences�"you should forgive me, for you know why i have been so. you know the secret of my life." he met sir michael in the hall. he made no attempt to prepare the way for the terrible revelation which the baronet was to hear. he only drew him into the fire-lit library, and there for the first time addressed him quietly thus: "lady audley has a confession to make to you, sir�a confession which i know will be a most cruel surprise, a most bitter grief. but it is necessary for your present honor, and for your future peace, that you should hear it. she has deceived you, i regret to say, most basely; but it is only right that you should hear from her own lips any excuses which she may have to offer for her wickedness. may god soften this blow for you!" sobbed the young man, suddenly breaking down; "i cannot!" sir michael lifted his hand as if he would command his nephew to be silent, but that imperious hand dropped feeble and impotent at his side. he stood in the center of the fire-lit room rigid and immovable. "lucy!" he cried, in a voice whose anguish struck like a blow upon the jarred nerves of those who heard it, as the cry of a wounded animal pains the listener�"lucy, tell me that this man is a madman! tell me so, my love, or i shall kill him!" there was a sudden fury in his voice as he turned upon robert, as if he could indeed have felled his wife's accuser to the earth with the strength of his uplifted arm. but my lady fell upon her knees at his feet, interposing herself between the baronet and his nephew, who stood leaning on the back of an easy-chair, with his face hidden by his hand. "he has told you the truth," said my lady, "and he is not mad! i have sent him for you that i may confess everything to you. i should be sorry for you if i could, for you have been very, very good to me, much better to me than i ever deserved; but i can't, i can't�i can feel nothing but my own misery. i told you long ago that i was selfish; i am selfish still�more selfish than ever in my misery. happy, prosperous people may feel for others. i laugh at other people's sufferings; they seem so small compared to my own." when first my lady had fallen on her knees, sir michael had attempted to raise her, and had remonstrated with her; but as she spoke he dropped into a chair close to the spot upon which she knelt, and with his hands clasped together, and with his head bent to catch every syllable of those horrible words, he listened as if his whole being had been resolved into that one sense of hearing. "i must tell you the story of my life, in order to tell you why i have become the miserable wretch who has no better hope than to be allowed to run away and hide in some desolate corner of the earth. i must tell you the story of my life," repeated my lady, "but you need not fear that i shall dwell long upon it. it has not been so pleasant to me that i should wish to remember it. when i was a very little child i remember asking a question which it was natural enough that i should ask, god help me! i asked where my mother was. i had a faint remembrance of a face, like what my own is now, looking at me when i was very little better than a baby; but i had missed the face suddenly, and had never seen it since. they told me that mother was away. i was not happy, for the woman who had charge of me was a disagreeable woman and the place in which we lived was a lonely place, a village upon the hampshire coast, about seven miles from portsmouth. my father, who was in the navy, only came now and then to see me; and i was left almost entirely to the charge of this woman, who was irregularly paid, and who vented her rage upon me when my father was behindhand in remitting her money. so you see that at a very early age i found out what it was to be poor. "perhaps it was more from being discontented with my dreary life than from any wonderful impulse of affection, that i asked very often the same question about my mother. i always received the same answer�she was away. when i asked where, i was told that that was a secret. when i grew old enough to understand the meaning of the word death, i asked if my mother was dead, and i was told�'no, she was not dead; she was ill, and she was away.' i asked how long she had been ill, and i was told that she had been so some years, ever since i was a baby. "at last the secret came out. i worried my foster-mother with the old question one day when the remittances had fallen very much in arrear, and her temper had been unusually tried. she flew into a passion, and told me that my mother was a mad woman, and that she was in a madhouse forty miles away. she had scarcely said this when she repented, and told me that it was not the truth, and that i was not to believe it, or to say that she had told me such a thing. i discovered afterward that my father had made her promise most solemnly never to tell me the secret of my mother's fate. "i brooded horribly upon the thought of my mother's madness. it haunted me by day and night. i was always picturing to myself this mad woman pacing up and down some prison cell, in a hideous garment that bound her tortured limbs. i had exaggerated ideas of the horror of her situation. i had no knowledge of the different degrees of madness, and the image that haunted me was that of a distraught and violent creature, who would fall upon me and kill me if i came within her reach. this idea grew upon me until i used to awake in the dead of night, screaming aloud in an agony of terror, from a dream in which i had felt my mother's icy grasp upon my throat, and heard her ravings in my ear. "when i was ten years old my father came to pay up the arrears due to my protectress, and to take me to school. he had left me in hampshire longer than he had intended, from his inability to pay this money; so there again i felt the bitterness of poverty, and ran the risk of growing up an ignorant creature among coarse rustic children, because my father was poor." my lady paused for a moment, but only to take breath, for she had spoken rapidly, as if eager to tell this hated story, and to have done with it. she was still on her knees, but sir michael made no effort to raise her. he sat silent and immovable. what was this story that he was listening to? whose was it, and to what was it to lead? it could not be his wife's; he had heard her simple account of her youth, and had believed it as he had believed in the gospel. she had told him a very brief story of an early orphanage, and a long, quiet, colorless youth spent in the conventional seclusion of an english boarding-school. "my father came at last, and i told him what i had discovered. he was very much affected when i spoke of my mother. he was not what the world generally calls a good man, but i learned afterward that he had loved his wife very dearly, and that he would have willingly sacrificed his life to her, and constituted himself her guardian, had he not been compelled to earn the daily bread of the mad woman and her child by the exercise of his profession. so here again i beheld what a bitter thing it is to be poor. my mother, who might have been tended by a devoted husband, was given over to the care of hired nurses. "before my father sent me to school at torquay, he took me to see my mother. this visit served at least to dispel the idea which had so often terrified me. i saw no raving, straight-waist-coated maniac, guarded by zealous jailers, but a golden-haired, blue-eyed, girlish creature, who seemed as frivolous as a butterfly, and who skipped toward us with her yellow curls decorated with natural flowers, and saluted us with radiant smiles, and gay, ceaseless chatter. "but she didn't know us. she would have spoken in the same manner to any stranger who had entered the gates of the garden about her prison-house. her madness was an hereditary disease transmitted to her from her mother, who had died mad. she, my mother, had been, or had appeared sane up to the hour of my birth, but from that hour her intellect had decayed, and she had become what i saw her. "i went away with the knowledge of this, and with the knowledge that the only inheritance i had to expect from my mother was�insanity! "i went away with this knowledge in my mind, and with something more�a secret to keep. i was a child of ten years only, but i felt all the weight of that burden. i was to keep the secret of my mother's madness; for it was a secret that might affect me injuriously in after-life. i was to remember this. "i did remember this; and it was, perhaps, this that made me selfish and heartless, for i suppose i am heartless. as i grew older i was told that i was pretty�beautiful�lovely�bewitching. i heard all these things at first indifferently, but by-and-by i listened to them greedily, and began to think that in spite of the secret of my life i might be more successful in the world's great lottery than my companions. i had learnt that which in some indefinite manner or other every school-girl learns sooner or later�i learned that my ultimate fate in life depended upon my marriage, and i concluded that if i was indeed prettier than my schoolfellows, i ought to marry better than any one of them. "i left school before i was seventeen years of age, with this thought in my mind, and i went to live at the other extremity of england with my father, who had retired upon his half-pay, and had established himself at wildernsea, with the idea that the place was cheap and select. "the place was indeed select. i had not been there a month before i discovered that even the prettiest girl might wait a long time for a rich husband. i wish to hurry over this part of my life. i dare say i was very despicable. you and your nephew, sir michael, have been rich all your lives, and can very well afford to despise me; but i knew how far poverty can affect a life, and i looked forward with a sickening dread to a life so affected. at last the rich suitor, the wandering prince came." she paused for a moment, and shuddered convulsively. it was impossible to see any of the changes in her countenance, for her face was obstinately bent toward the floor. throughout her long confession she never lifted it; throughout her long confession her voice was never broken by a tear. what she had to tell she told in a cold, hard tone, very much the tone in which some criminal, dogged and sullen to the last, might have confessed to a jail chaplain. "the wandering prince came," she repeated; "he was called george talboys." for the first time since his wife's confession had begun, sir michael audley started. he began to understand it all now. a crowd of unheeded words and forgotten circumstances that had seemed too insignificant for remark or recollection, flashed back upon him as vividly as if they had been the leading incidents of his past life. "mr. george talboys was a cornet in a dragoon regiment. he was the only son of a rich country gentleman. he fell in love with me, and married me three months after my seventeenth birthday. i think i loved him as much as it was in my power to love anybody; not more than i have loved you, sir michael�not so much, for when you married me you elevated me to a position that he could never have given me." the dream was broken. sir michael audley remembered that summer's evening, nearly two years ago, when he had first declared his love for mr. dawson's governess; he remembered the sick, half-shuddering sensation of regret and disappointment that had come over him then, and he felt as if it had in some manner dimly foreshadowed the agony of to-night. but i do not believe that even in his misery he felt that entire and unmitigated surprise, that utter revulsion of feeling that is felt when a good woman wanders away from herself and becomes the lost creature whom her husband is bound in honor to abjure. i do not believe that sir michael audley had ever really believed in his wife. he had loved her and admired her; he had been bewitched by her beauty and bewildered by her charms; but that sense of something wanting, that vague feeling of loss and disappointment which had come upon him on the summer's night of his betrothal had been with him more or less distinctly ever since. i cannot believe that an honest man, however pure and single may be his mind, however simply trustful his nature, is ever really deceived by falsehood. there is beneath the voluntary confidence an involuntary distrust, not to be conquered by any effort of the will. "we were married," my lady continued, "and i loved him very well, quite well enough to be happy with him as long as his money lasted, and while we were on the continent, traveling in the best style and always staying at the best hotels. but when we came back to wildernsea and lived with papa, and all the money was gone, and george grew gloomy and wretched, and was always thinking of his troubles, and appeared to neglect me, i was very unhappy, and it seemed as if this fine marriage had only given me a twelvemonth's gayety and extravagance after all. i begged george to appeal to his father, but he refused. i persuaded him to try and get employment, and he failed. my baby was born, and the crisis which had been fatal to my mother arose for me. i escaped, but i was more irritable perhaps after my recovery, less inclined to fight the hard battle of the world, more disposed to complain of poverty and neglect. i did complain one day, loudly and bitterly; i upbraided george talboys for his cruelty in having allied a helpless girl to poverty and misery, and he flew into a passion with me and ran out of the house. when i awoke the next morning, i found a letter lying on the table by my bed, telling me that he was going to the antipodes to seek his fortune, and that he would never see me again until he was a rich man. "i looked upon this as a desertion, and i resented it bitterly�resented it by hating the man who had left me with no protector but a weak, tipsy father, and with a child to support. i had to work hard for my living, and in every hour of labor�and what labor is more wearisome than the dull slavery of a governess?�i recognized a separate wrong done me by george talboys. his father was rich, his sister was living in luxury and respectability, and i, his wife, and the mother of his son, was a slave allied to beggary and obscurity. people pitied me, and i hated them for their pity. i did not love the child, for he had been left a burden upon my hands. the hereditary taint that was in my blood had never until this time showed itself by any one sign or token; but at this time i became subject to fits of violence and despair. at this time i think my mind first lost its balance, and for the first time i crossed that invisible line which separates reason from madness. i have seen my father's eyes fixed upon me in horror and alarm. i have known him soothe me as only mad people and children are soothed, and i have chafed against his petty devices, i have resented even his indulgence. "at last these fits of desperation resolved themselves into a desperate purpose. i determined to run away from this wretched home which my slavery supported. i determined to desert this father who had more fear of me than love for me. i determined to go to london and lose myself in that great chaos of humanity. "i had seen an advertisement in the times while i was at wildernsea, and i presented myself to mrs. vincent, the advertiser, under a feigned name. she accepted me, waiving all questions as to my antecedents. you know the rest. i came here, and you made me an offer, the acceptance of which would lift me at once into the sphere to which my ambition had pointed ever since i was a school-girl, and heard for the first time that i was pretty. "three years had passed, and i had received no token of my husband's existence; for, i argued, that if he had returned to england, he would have succeeded in finding me under any name and in any place. i knew the energy of his character well enough to know this. "i said 'i have a right to think that he is dead, or that he wishes me to believe him dead, and his shadow shall not stand between me and prosperity.' i said this, and i became your wife, sir michael, with every resolution to be as good a wife as it was in my nature to be. the common temptations that assail and shipwreck some women had no terror for me. i would have been your true and pure wife to the end of time, though i had been surrounded by a legion of tempters. the mad folly that the world calls love had never had any part in my madness, and here at least extremes met, and the vice of heartlessness became the virtue of constancy. "i was very happy in the first triumph and grandeur of my new position, very grateful to the hand that had lifted me to it. in the sunshine of my own happiness i felt, for the first time in my life, for the miseries of others. i had been poor myself, and i was now rich, and could afford to pity and relieve the poverty of my neighbors. i took pleasure in acts of kindness and benevolence. i found out my father's address and sent him large sums of money, anonymously, for i did not wish him to discover what had become of me. i availed myself to the full of the privilege your generosity afforded me. i dispensed happiness on every side. i saw myself loved as well as admired, and i think i might have been a good woman for the rest of my life, if fate would have allowed me to be so. "i believe that at this time my mind regained its just balance. i had watched myself very closely since leaving wildernsea; i had held a check upon myself. i had often wondered while sitting in the surgeon's quiet family circle whether any suspicion of that invisible, hereditary taint had ever occurred to mr. dawson. "fate would not suffer me to be good. my destiny compelled me to be a wretch. within a month of my marriage, i read in one of the essex papers of the return of a certain mr. talboys, a fortunate gold-seeker, from australia. the ship had sailed at the time i read the paragraph. what was to be done? "i said just now that i knew the energy of george's character. i knew that the man who had gone to the antipodes and won a fortune for his wife would leave no stone unturned in his efforts to find her. it was hopeless to think of hiding myself from him. "unless he could be induced to believe that i was dead, he would never cease in his search for me. "my brain was dazed as i thought of my peril. again the balance trembled, again the invisible boundary was passed, again i was mad. "i went down to southampton and found my father, who was living there with my child. you remember how mrs. vincent's name was used as an excuse for this hurried journey, and how it was contrived i should go with no other escort than phoebe marks, whom i left at the hotel while i went to my father's house. "i confided to my father the whole secret of my peril. he was not very much shocked at what i had done, for poverty had perhaps blunted his sense of honor and principle. he was not very much shocked, but he was frightened, and he promised to do all in his power to assist me in my horrible emergency. "he had received a letter addressed to me at wildernsea, by george, and forwarded from there to my father. this letter had been written within a few days of the sailing of the argus, and it announced the probable date of the ship's arrival at liverpool. this letter gave us, therefore, data upon which to act. "we decided at once upon the first step. this was that on the date of the probable arrival of the argus, or a few days later, an advertisement of my death should be inserted in the times. "but almost immediately after deciding upon this, we saw that there were fearful difficulties in the carrying out of such a simple plan. the date of the death, and the place in which i died, must be announced, as well as the death itself. george would immediately hurry to that place, however distant it might be, however comparatively inaccessible, and the shallow falsehood would be discovered. "i knew enough of his sanguine temperament, his courage and determination, his readiness to hope against hope, to know that unless he saw the grave in which i was buried, and the register of my death, he would never believe that i was lost to him. "my father was utterly dumfounded and helpless. he could only shed childish tears of despair and terror. he was of no use to me in this crisis. "i was hopeless of any issue out of my difficulties. i began to think that i must trust to the chapter of accidents, and hope that among other obscure corners of the earth, audley court might be undreamt of by my husband. "i sat with my father, drinking tea with him in his miserable hovel, and playing with the child, who was pleased with my dress and jewels, but quite unconscious that i was anything but a stranger to him. i had the boy in my arms, when a woman who attended him came to fetch him that she might make him more fit to be seen by the lady, as she said. "i was anxious to know how the boy was treated, and i detained this woman in conversation with me while my father dozed over the tea-table. "she was a pale-faced, sandy-haired woman of about five-and-forty and she seemed very glad to get the chance of talking to me as long as i pleased to allow her. she soon left off talking of the boy, however, to tell me of her own troubles. she was in very great trouble, she told me. her eldest daughter had been obliged to leave her situation from ill-health; in fact, the doctor said the girl was in a decline; and it was a hard thing for a poor widow who had seen better days to have a sick daughter to support, as well as a family of young children. "i let the woman run on for a long time in this manner, telling me the girl's ailments, and the girl's age, and the girl's doctor's stuff, and piety, and sufferings, and a great deal more. but i neither listened to her nor heeded her. i heard her, but only in a far-away manner, as i heard the traffic in the street, or the ripple of the stream at the bottom of it. what were this woman's troubles to me? i had miseries of my own, and worse miseries than her coarse nature could ever have to endure. these sort of people always had sick husbands or sick children, and expected to be helped in their illness by the rich. it was nothing out of the common. i was thinking this, and i was just going to dismiss the woman with a sovereign for her sick daughter, when an idea flashed upon me with such painful suddenness that it sent the blood surging up to my brain, and set my heart beating, as it only beats when i am mad. "i asked the woman her name. she was a mrs. plowson, and she kept a small general shop, she said, and only ran in now and then to look after georgey, and to see that the little maid-of-all-work took care of him. her daughter's name was matilda. i asked her several questions about this girl matilda, and i ascertained that she was four-and-twenty, that she had always been consumptive, and that she was now, as the doctor said, going off in a rapid decline. he had declared that she could not last much more than a fortnight. "it was in three weeks that the ship that carried george talboys was expected to anchor in the mersey. "i need not dwell upon this business. i visited the sick girl. she was fair and slender. her description, carelessly given, might tally nearly enough with my own, though she bore no shadow of resemblance to me, except in these two particulars. i was received by the girl as a rich lady who wished to do her a service. i bought the mother, who was poor and greedy, and who for a gift of money, more money than she had ever before received, consented to submit to anything i wished. upon the second day after my introduction to this mrs. plowson, my father went over to ventnor, and hired lodgings for his invalid daughter and her little boy. early the next morning he carried over the dying girl and georgey, who had been bribed to call her 'mamma.' she entered the house as mrs. talboys; she was attended by a ventnor medical man as mrs. talboys; she died, and her death and burial were registered in that name. "the advertisement was inserted in the times, and upon the second day after its insertion george talboys visited ventnor, and ordered the tombstone which at this hour records the death of his wife, helen talboys." sir michael audley rose slowly, and with a stiff, constrained action, as if every physical sense had been benumbed by that one sense of misery. "i cannot hear any more," he said, in a hoarse whisper; "if there is anything more to be told i cannot hear it. robert, it is you who have brought about this discovery, as i understand. i want to know nothing more. will you take upon yourself the duty of providing for the safety and comfort of this lady whom i have thought my wife? i need not ask you to remember in all you do, that i have loved her very dearly and truly. i cannot say farewell to her. i will not say it until i can think of her without bitterness�until i can pity her, as i now pray that god may pity her this night." sir michael walked slowly from the room. he did not trust himself to look at that crouching figure. he did not wish to see the creature whom he had cherished. he went straight to his dressing-room, rung for his valet, and ordered him to pack a portmanteau, and make all necessary arrangements for accompanying his master by the last up-train. chapter xxxv. the hush that succeeds the tempest. robert audley followed his uncle into the vestibule after sir michael had spoken those few quiet words which sounded the death-knell of his hope and love. heaven knows how much the young man had feared the coming of this day. it had come; and though there had been no great outburst of despair, no whirlwind of stormy grief, no loud tempest of anguish and tears, robert took no comforting thought from the unnatural stillness. he knew enough to know that sir michael audley went away with the barbed arrow, which his nephew's hand had sent home to its aim, rankling in his tortured heart; he knew that this strange and icy calm was the first numbness of a heart stricken by grief so unexpected as for a time to be rendered almost incomprehensible by a blank stupor of astonishment; he knew that when this dull quiet had passed away, when little by little, and one by one, each horrible feature of the sufferer's sorrow became first dimly apparent and then terribly familiar to him, the storm would burst in fatal fury, and tempests of tears and cruel thunder-claps of agony would rend that generous heart. robert had heard of cases in which men of his uncle's age had borne some great grief, as sir michael had borne this, with a strange quiet; and had gone away from those who would have comforted them, and whose anxieties have been relieved by this patient stillness, to fall down upon the ground and die under the blow which at first had only stunned him. he remembered cases in which paralysis and apoplexy had stricken men as strong as his uncle in the first hour of the horrible affliction; and he lingered in the lamp-lit vestibule, wondering whether it was not his duty to be with sir michael�to be near him, in case of any emergency, and to accompany him wherever he went. yet would it be wise to force himself upon that gray-headed sufferer in this cruel hour, in which he had been awakened from the one delusion of a blameless life to discover that he had been the dupe of a false face, and the fool of a nature which was too coldly mercenary, too cruelly heartless, to be sensible of its own infamy? "no," thought robert audley, "i will not intrude upon the anguish of this wounded heart. there is humiliation mingled with this bitter grief. it is better he should fight the battle alone. i have done what i believe to have been my solemn duty, yet i should scarcely wonder if i had rendered myself forever hateful to him. it is better he should fight the battle alone. i can do nothing to make the strife less terrible. better that it should be fought alone." while the young man stood with his hand upon the library door, still half-doubtful whether he should follow his uncle or re-enter the room in which he had left that more wretched creature whom it had been his business to unmask, alicia audley opened the dining-room door, and revealed to him the old-fashioned oak-paneled apartment, the long table covered with showy damask, and bright with a cheerful glitter of glass and silver. "is papa coming to dinner?" asked miss audley. "i'm so hungry; and poor tomlins has sent up three times to say the fish will be spoiled. it must be reduced to a species of isinglass soup, by this time, i should think," added the young lady, as she came out into the vestibule with the times newspaper in her hand. she had been sitting by the fire reading the paper, and waiting for her seniors to join her at the dinner table. "oh, it's you, mr. robert audley." she remarked, indifferently. "you dine with us of course. pray go and find papa. it must be nearly eight o'clock, and we are supposed to dine at six." mr. audley answered his cousin rather sternly. her frivolous manner jarred upon him, and he forgot in his irrational displeasure that miss audley had known nothing of the terrible drama which had been so long enacting under her very nose. "your papa has just endured a very great grief, alicia," the young man said, gravely. the girl's arch, laughing face changed in a moment to a tenderly earnest look of sorrow and anxiety. alicia audley loved her father very dearly. "a grief?" she exclaimed; "papa grieved! oh! robert, what has happened?" "i can tell you nothing yet, alicia," robert answered in a low voice. he took his cousin by the wrist, and drew her into the dining-room as he spoke. he closed the door carefully behind him before he continued: "alicia, can i trust you?" he asked, earnestly. "trust me to do what?" "to be a comfort and a friend to your poor father under a very heavy affliction." "yes!" cried alicia, passionately. "how can you ask me such a question? do you think there is anything i would not do to lighten any sorrow of my father's? do you think there is anything i would not suffer if my suffering could lighten his?" the rushing tears rose to miss audley's bright gray eyes as she spoke. "oh, robert! robert! could you think so badly of me as to think i would not try to be a comfort to my father in his grief?" she said, reproachfully. "no, no, my dear," answered the young man, quietly; "i never doubted your affection, i only doubted your discretion. may i rely upon that?" "you may, robert," said alicia, resolutely. "very well, then, my dear girl, i will trust you. your father is going to leave the court, for a time at least. the grief which he has just endured�a sudden and unlooked-for sorrow, remember�has no doubt made this place hateful to him. he is going away; but he must not go alone, must he, alicia?" "alone? no! no! but i suppose my lady�" "lady audley will not go with him," said robert, gravely; "he is about to separate himself from her." "for a time?" "no, forever." "separate himself from her forever!" exclaimed alicia. "then this grief�" "is connected with lady audley. lady audley is the cause of your father's sorrow." alicia's face, which had been pale before, flushed crimson. sorrow, of which my lady was the cause�a sorrow which was to separate sir michael forever from his wife! there had been no quarrel between them�there had never been anything but harmony and sunshine between lady audley and her generous husband. this sorrow must surely then have arisen from some sudden discovery; it was, no doubt, a sorrow associated with disgrace. robert audley understood the meaning of that vivid blush. "you will offer to accompany your father wherever he may choose to go, alicia," he said. "you are his natural comforter at such a time as this, but you will best befriend him in this hour of trial by avoiding all intrusion upon his grief. your very ignorance of the particulars of that grief will be a security for your discretion. say nothing to your father that you might not have said to him two years ago, before he married a second wife. try and be to him what you were before the woman in yonder room came between you and your father's love." "i will," murmured alicia, "i will." "you will naturally avoid all mention of lady audley's name. if your father is often silent, be patient; if it sometimes seems to you that the shadow of this great sorrow will never pass away from his life, be patient still; and remember that there can be no better hope of a cure of his grief than the hope that his daughter's devotion may lead him to remember there is one woman upon this earth who will love him truly and purely until the last." "yes�yes, robert, dear cousin, i will remember." mr. audley, for the first time since he had been a schoolboy, took his cousin in his arms and kissed her broad forehead. "my dear alicia," he said, "do this and you will make me happy. i have been in some measure the means of bringing this sorrow upon your father. let me hope that it is not an enduring one. try and restore my uncle to happiness, alicia, and i will love you more dearly than brother ever loved a noble-hearted sister; and a brotherly affection may be worth having, perhaps, after all, my dear, though it is very different to poor sir harry's enthusiastic worship." alicia's head was bent and her face hidden from her cousin while he spoke, but she lifted her head when he had finished, and looked him full in the face with a smile that was only the brighter for her eyes being filled with tears. "you are a good fellow, bob," she said; "and i've been very foolish and wicked to feel angry with you because�" the young lady stopped suddenly. "because what, my dear?" asked mr. audley. "because i'm silly, cousin robert," alicia said, quickly; "never mind that, bob, i'll do all you wish, and it shall not be my fault if my dearest father doesn't forget his troubles before long. i'd go to the end of the world with him, poor darling, if i thought there was any comfort to be found for him in the journey. i'll go and get ready directly. do you think papa will go to-night?" "yes, my dear; i don't think sir michael will rest another night under this roof yet awhile." "the mail goes at twenty minutes past nine," said alicia; "we must leave the house in an hour if we are to travel by it. i shall see you again before we go, robert?" "yes, dear." miss audley ran off to her room to summon her maid, and make all necessary preparations for the sudden journey, of whose ultimate destination she was as yet quite ignorant. she went heart and soul into the carrying out of the duty which robert had dictated to her. she assisted in the packing of her portmanteaus, and hopelessly bewildered her maid by stuffing silk dresses into her bonnet-boxes and satin shoes into her dressing-case. she roamed about her rooms, gathering together drawing-materials, music-books, needle-work, hair-brushes, jewelry, and perfume-bottles, very much as she might have done had she been about to sail for some savage country, devoid of all civilized resources. she was thinking all the time of her father's unknown grief, and perhaps a little of the serious face and earnest voice which had that night revealed her cousin robert to her in a new character. mr. audley went up-stairs after his cousin, and found his way to sir michael's dressing-room. he knocked at the door and listened, heaven knows how anxiously, for the expected answer. there was a moment's pause, during which the young man's heart beat loud and fast, and then the door was opened by the baronet himself. robert saw that his uncle's valet was already hard at work preparing for his master's hurried journey. sir michael came out into the corridor. "have you anything more to say to me, robert?" he asked, quietly. "i only came to ascertain if i could assist in any of your arrangements. you go to london by the mail?" "yes." "have you any idea of where you will stay." "yes, i shall stop at the clarendon; i am known there. is that all you have to say?" "yes; except that alicia will accompany you?" "alicia!" "she could not very well stay here, you know, just now. it would be best for her to leave the court until�" "yes, yes, i understand," interrupted the baronet; "but is there nowhere else that she could go�must she be with me?" "she could go nowhere else so immediately, and she would not be happy anywhere else." "let her come, then," said sir michael, "let her come." he spoke in a strange, subdued voice, and with an apparent effort, as if it were painful to him to have to speak at all; as if all this ordinary business of life were a cruel torture to him, and jarred so much upon his grief as to be almost worse to bear than that grief itself. "very well, my dear uncle, then all is arranged; alicia will be ready to start at nine o'clock." "very good, very good," muttered the baronet; "let her come if she pleases, poor child, let her come." he sighed heavily as he spoke in that half pitying tone of his daughter. he was thinking how comparatively indifferent he had been toward that only child for the sake of the woman now shut in the fire-lit room below. "i shall see you again before you go, sir," said robert; "i will leave you till then." "stay!" said sir michael, suddenly; "have you told alicia?" "i have told her nothing, except that you are about to leave the court for some time." "you are very good, my boy, you are very good," the baronet murmured in a broken voice. he stretched out his hand. his nephew took it in both his own, and pressed it to his lips. "oh, sir! how can i ever forgive myself?" he said; "how can i ever cease to hate myself for having brought this grief upon you?" "no, no, robert, you did right; i wish that god had been so merciful to me as to take my miserable life before this night; but you did right." sir michael re-entered his dressing-room, and robert slowly returned to the vestibule. he paused upon the threshold of that chamber in which he had left lucy�lady audley, otherwise helen talboys, the wife of his lost friend. she was lying upon the floor, upon the very spot in which she had crouched at her husband's feet telling her guilty story. whether she was in a swoon, or whether she lay there in the utter helplessness of her misery, robert scarcely cared to know. he went out into the vestibule, and sent one of the servants to look for her maid, the smart, be-ribboned damsel who was loud in wonder and consternation at the sight of her mistress. "lady audley is very ill," he said; "take her to her room and see that she does not leave it to-night. you will be good enough to remain near her, but do not either talk to her or suffer her to excite herself by talking." my lady had not fainted; she allowed the girl to assist her, and rose from the ground upon which she had groveled. her golden hair fell in loose, disheveled masses about her ivory throat and shoulders, her face and lips were colorless, her eyes terrible in their unnatural light. "take me away," she said, "and let me sleep! let me sleep, for my brain is on fire!" as she was leaving the room with her maid, she turned and looked at robert. "is sir michael gone?" she asked. "he will leave in half an hour." "there were no lives lost in the fire at mount stanning?" "none." "i am glad of that." "the landlord of the house, marks, was very terribly burned, and lies in a precarious state at his mother's cottage; but he may recover." "i am glad of that�i am glad no life was lost. good-night, mr. audley." "i shall ask to see you for half an hour's conversation in the course of to-morrow, my lady." "whenever you please. good night." "good night." she went away quietly leaning upon her maid's shoulder, and leaving robert with a sense of strange bewilderment that was very painful to him. he sat down by the broad hearth upon which the red embers were fading, and wondered at the change in that old house which, until the day of his friend's disappearance, had been so pleasant a home for all who sheltered beneath its hospitable roof. he sat brooding over the desolate hearth, and trying to decide upon what must be done in this sudden crisis. he sat helpless and powerless to determine upon any course of action, lost in a dull revery, from which he was aroused by the sound of carriage-wheels driving up to the little turret entrance. the clock in the vestibule struck nine as robert opened the library door. alicia had just descended the stairs with her maid; a rosy-faced country girl. "good-by, robert," said miss audley, holding out her hand to her cousin; "good-by, and god bless you! you may trust me to take care of papa." "i am sure i may. god bless you, my dear." for the second time that night robert audley pressed his lips to his cousin's candid forehead, and for the second time the embrace was of a brotherly or paternal character, rather than the rapturous proceeding which it would have been had sir harry towers been the privileged performer. it was five minutes past nine when sir michael came down-stairs, followed by his valet, grave and gray-haired like himself. the baronet was pale, but calm and self-possessed. the hand which he gave to his nephew was as cold as ice, but it was with a steady voice that he bade the young man good-by. "i leave all in your hands, robert," he said, as he turned to leave the house in which he had lived so long. "i may not have heard the end, but i have heard enough. heaven knows i have no need to hear more. i leave all to you, but you will not be cruel�you will remember how much i loved�" his voice broke huskily before he could finish the sentence. "i will remember you in everything, sir," the young man answered. "i will do everything for the best." a treacherous mist of tears blinded him and shut out his uncle's face, and in another minute the carriage had driven away, and robert audley sat alone in the dark library, where only one red spark glowed among the pale gray ashes. he sat alone, trying to think what he ought to do, and with the awful responsibility of a wicked woman's fate upon his shoulders. "good heaven!" he thought; "surely this must be god's judgment upon the purposeless, vacillating life i led up to the seventh day of last september. surely this awful responsibility has been forced upon me in order that i may humble myself to an offended providence, and confess that a man cannot choose his own life. he cannot say, 'i will take existence lightly, and keep out of the way of the wretched, mistaken, energetic creatures, who fight so heartily in the great battle.' he cannot say, 'i will stop in the tents while the strife is fought, and laugh at the fools who are trampled down in the useless struggle.' he cannot do this. he can only do, humbly and fearfully, that which the maker who created him has appointed for him to do. if he has a battle to fight, let him fight it faithfully; but woe betide him if he skulks when his name is called in the mighty muster-roll, woe betide him if he hides in the tents when the tocsin summons him to the scene of war!" one of the servants brought candles into the library and relighted the fire, but robert audley did not stir from his seat by the hearth. he sat as he had often sat in his chambers in figtree court, with his elbows resting upon the arms of his chair, and his chin upon his hand. but he lifted his head as the servant was about to leave the room. "can i send a message from here to london?" he asked. "it can be sent from brentwood, sir�not from here." mr. audley looked at his watch thoughtfully. "one of the men can ride over to brentwood, sir, if you wish any message to be sent." "i do wish to send a message; will you manage it for me, richards?" "certainly, sir." "you can wait, then, while i write the message." "yes, sir." the man brought writing materials from one of the side-tables, and placed them before mr. audley. robert dipped a pen in the ink, and stared thoughtfully at one of the candles for a few moments before he began to write. the message ran thus: "from robert audley, of audley court, essex, to francis wilmington, of paper-buildings, temple. "dear wilmington�if you know any physician experienced in cases of mania, and to be trusted with a secret, be so good as to send me his address by telegraph." mr. audley sealed this document in a stout envelope, and handed it to the man, with a sovereign. "you will see that this is given to a trustworthy person, richards," he said, "and let the man wait at the station for the return message. he ought to get it in an hour and a half." mr. richards, who had known robert audley in jackets and turn-down collars, departed to execute his commission. heaven forbid that we should follow him into the comfortable servants' hall at the court, where the household sat round the blazing fire, discussing in utter bewilderment the events of the day. nothing could be wider from the truth than the speculations of these worthy people. what clew had they to the mystery of that firelit room in which a guilty woman had knelt at their master's feet to tell the story of her sinful life? they only knew that which sir michael's valet had told them of this sudden journey. how his master was as pale as a sheet, and spoke in a strange voice that didn't sound like his own, somehow, and how you might have knocked him�mr. parsons, the valet�down with a feather, if you had been minded to prostrate him by the aid of so feeble a weapon. the wiseheads of the servants' hall decided that sir michael had received sudden intelligence through mr. robert�they were wise enough to connect the young man with the catastrophe�either of the death of some near and dear relation�the elder servants decimated the audley family in their endeavors to find a likely relation�or of some alarming fall in the funds, or of the failure of some speculation or bank in which the greater part of the baronet's money was invested. the general leaning was toward the failure of a bank, and every member of the assembly seemed to take a dismal and raven-like delight in the fancy, though such a supposition involved their own ruin in the general destruction of that liberal household. robert sat by the dreary hearth, which seemed dreary even now when the blaze of a great wood-fire roared in the wide chimney, and listened to the low wail of the march wind moaning round the house and lifting the shivering ivy from the walls it sheltered. he was tired and worn out, for remember that he had been awakened from his sleep at two o'clock that morning by the hot breath of blazing timber and the sharp crackling of burning woodwork. but for his presence of mind and cool decision, mr. luke marks would have died a dreadful death. he still bore the traces of the night's peril, for the dark hair had been singed upon one side of his forehead, and his left hand was red and inflamed, from the effect of the scorching atmosphere out of which he had dragged the landlord of the castle inn. he was thoroughly exhausted with fatigue and excitement, and he fell into a heavy sleep in his easy-chair before the bright fire, from which he was only awakened by the entrance of mr. richards with the return message. this return message was very brief. "dear audley�always glad to oblige. alwyn mosgrave, m.d., 12 saville row. safe." this with names and addresses, was all that it contained. "i shall want another message taken to brentwood to-morrow morning, richards," said mr. audley, as he folded the telegram. "i should be glad if the man would ride over with it before breakfast. he shall have half a sovereign for his trouble." mr. richards bowed. "thank you, sir�not necessary, sir; but as you please, of course, sir," he murmured. "at what hour might you wish the man to go?" mr. audley might wish the man to go as early as he could, so it was decided that he should go at six. "my room is ready, i suppose, richards?" said robert. "yes, sir�your old room." "very good. i shall go to bed at once. bring me a glass of brandy and water as hot as you can make it, and wait for the telegram." this second message was only a very earnest request to doctor mosgrave to pay an immediate visit to audley court on a matter of serious moment. having written this message, mr. audley felt that he had done all that he could do. he drank his brandy and water. he had actual need of the diluted alcohol, for he had been chilled to the bone by his adventures during the fire. he slowly sipped the pale golden liquid and thought of clara talboys, of that earnest girl whose brother's memory was now avenged, whose brother's destroyer was humiliated in the dust. had she heard of the fire at the castle inn? how could she have done otherwise than hear of it in such a place as mount stanning? but had she heard that he had been in danger, and that he had distinguished himself by the rescue of a drunken boor? i fear that, even sitting by that desolate hearth, and beneath the roof whose noble was an exile from his own house, robert audley was weak enough to think of these things�weak enough to let his fancy wander away to the dismal fir-trees under the cold march sky, and the dark-brown eyes that were so like the eyes of his lost friend. chapter xxxvi. dr. mosgrave's advice. my lady slept. through that long winter night she slept soundly. criminals have often so slept their last sleep upon earth; and have been found in the gray morning slumbering peacefully, by the jailer who came to wake them. the game had been played and lost. i do not think that my lady had thrown away a card, or missed the making of a trick which she might by any possibility have made; but her opponent's hand had been too powerful for her, and he had won. she looked upon herself as a species of state prisoner, who would have to be taken good care of. a second iron mask, who must be provided for in some comfortable place of confinement. she abandoned herself to a dull indifference. she had lived a hundred lives within the space of the last few days of her existence, and she had worn out her capacity for suffering�for a time at least. she ate her breakfast, and took her morning bath, and emerged, with perfumed hair and in the most exquisitely careless of morning toilets, from her luxurious dressing-room. she looked at herself in the cheval-glass before she left the room. a long night's rest had brought back the delicate rose-tints of her complexion, and the natural luster of her blue eyes. that unnatural light which had burned so fearfully the day before had gone, and my lady smiled triumphantly as she contemplated the reflection of her beauty. the days were gone in which her enemies could have branded her with white-hot irons, and burned away the loveliness which had done such mischief. whatever they did to her they must leave her her beauty, she thought. at the worst, they were powerless to rob her of that. the march day was bright and sunny, with a cheerless sunshine certainly. my lady wrapped herself in an indian shawl; a shawl that had cost sir michael a hundred guineas. i think she had an idea that it would be well to wear this costly garment; so that if hustled suddenly away, she might carry at least one of her possessions with her. remember how much she had periled for a fine house and gorgeous furniture, for carriages and horses, jewels and laces; and do not wonder if she clings with a desperate tenacity to gauds and gew-gaws, in the hour of her despair. if she had been judas, she would have held to her thirty pieces of silver to the last moment of her shameful life. mr. robert audley breakfasted in the library. he sat long over his solitary cup of tea, smoking his meerschaum pipe, and meditating darkly upon the task that lay before him. "i will appeal to the experience of this dr. mosgrave," he though; "physicians and lawyers are the confessors of this prosaic nineteenth century. surely, he will be able to help me." the first fast train from london arrived at audley at half-past ten o'clock, and at five minutes before eleven, richards, the grave servant, announced dr. alwyn mosgrave. the physician from saville row was a tall man of about fifty years of age. he was thin and sallow, with lantern jaws, and eyes of a pale, feeble gray, that seemed as if they had once been blue, and had faded by the progress of time to their present neutral shade. however powerful the science of medicine as wielded by dr. alwyn mosgrave, it had not been strong enough to put flesh upon his bones, or brightness into his face. he had a strangely expressionless, and yet strangely attentive countenance. he had the face of a man who had spent the greater part of his life in listening to other people, and who had parted with his own individuality and his own passions at the very outset of his career. he bowed to robert audley, took the opposite seat indicated by him, and addressed his attentive face to the young barrister. robert saw that the physician's glance for a moment lost its quiet look of attention, and became earnest and searching. "he is wondering whether i am the patient," thought mr. audley, "and is looking for the diagnoses of madness in my face." dr. mosgrave spoke as if in answer to this thought. "is it not about your own�health�that you wish to consult me?" he said, interrogatively. "oh, no!" dr. mosgrave looked at his watch, a fifty-guinea benson-made chronometer, which he carried loose in his waistcoat pocket as carelessly as if it had been a potato. "i need not remind you that my time is precious," he said; "your telegram informed me that my services were required in a case of�danger�as i apprehend, or i should not be here this morning." robert audley had sat looking gloomily at the fire, wondering how he should begin the conversation, and had needed this reminder of the physician's presence. "you are very good, dr. mosgrave," he said, rousing himself by an effort, "and i thank you very much for having responded to my summons. i am about to appeal to you upon a subject which is more painful to me than words can describe. i am about to implore your advice in a most difficult case, and i trust almost blindly to your experience to rescue me, and others who are very dear to me, from a cruel and complicated position." the business-like attention in dr. mosgrave's face grew into a look of interest as he listened to robert audley. "the revelation made by the patient to the physician is, i believe, as sacred as the confession of a penitent to his priest?" robert asked, gravely. "quite as sacred." "a solemn confidence, to be violated under no circumstances?" "most certainly." robert audley looked at the fire again. how much should he tell, or how little, of the dark history of his uncle's second wife? "i have been given to understand, dr. mosgrave, that you have devoted much of your attention to the treatment of insanity." "yes, my practice is almost confined to the treatment of mental diseases." "such being the case, i think i may venture to conclude that you sometimes receive strange, and even terrible, revelations." dr. mosgrave bowed. he looked like a man who could have carried, safely locked in his passionless breast, the secrets of a nation, and who would have suffered no inconvenience from the weight of such a burden. "the story which i am about to tell you is not my own story," said robert, after a pause; "you will forgive me, therefore, if i once more remind you that i can only reveal it upon the understanding that under no circumstances, or upon no apparent justification, is that confidence to be betrayed." dr. mosgrave bowed again. a little sternly, perhaps, this time. "i am all attention, mr. audley," he said coldly. robert audley drew his chair nearer to that of the physician, and in a low voice began the story which my lady had told upon her knees in that same chamber upon the previous night. dr. mosgrave's listening face, turned always toward the speaker, betrayed no surprise at that strange revelation. he smiled once, a grave, quiet smile, when mr. audley came to that part of the story which told of the conspiracy at ventnor; but he was not surprised. robert audley ended his story at the point at which sir michael audley had interrupted my lady's confession. he told nothing of the disappearance of george talboys, nor of the horrible suspicions that had grown out of that disappearance. he told nothing of the fire at the castle inn. dr. mosgrave shook his head, gravely, when mr. audley came to the end of his story. "you have nothing further to tell me?" he said. "no. i do not think there is anything more that need be told," robert answered, rather evasively. "you would wish to prove that this lady is mad, and therefore irresponsible for her actions, mr. audley?" said the physician. robert audley stared, wondering at the mad doctor. by what process had he so rapidly arrived at the young man's secret desire? "yes, i would rather, if possible, think her mad; i should be glad to find that excuse for her." "and to save the esclandre of a chancery suit, i suppose, mr. audley," said dr. mosgrave. robert shuddered as he bowed an assent to this remark. it was something worse than a chancery suit that he dreaded with a horrible fear. it was a trial for murder that had so long haunted his dreams. how often he had awoke, in an agony of shame, from a vision of a crowded court-house, and his uncle's wife in a criminal dock, hemmed in on every side by a sea of eager faces. "i fear that i shall not be of any use to you," the physician said, quietly; "i will see the lady, if you please, but i do not believe that she is mad." "why not?" "because there is no evidence of madness in anything she has done. she ran away from her home, because her home was not a pleasant one, and she left in the hope of finding a better. there is no madness in that. she committed the crime of bigamy, because by that crime she obtained fortune and position. there is no madness there. when she found herself in a desperate position, she did not grow desperate. she employed intelligent means, and she carried out a conspiracy which required coolness and deliberation in its execution. there is no madness in that." "but the traits of hereditary insanity�" "may descend to the third generation, and appear in the lady's children, if she have any. madness is not necessarily transmitted from mother to daughter. i should be glad to help you, if i could, mr. audley, but i do not think there is any proof of insanity in the story you have told me. i do not think any jury in england would accept the plea of insanity in such a case as this. the best thing you can do with this lady is to send her back to her first husband; if he will have her." robert started at this sudden mention of his friend. "her first husband is dead," he answered, "at least, he has been missing for some time�and i have reason to believe that he is dead." dr. mosgrave saw the startled movement, and heard the embarrassment in robert audley's voice as he spoke of george talboys. "the lady's first husband is missing," he said, with a strange emphasis on the word�"you think that he is dead?" he paused for a few moments and looked at the fire, as robert had looked before. "mr. audley," he said, presently, "there must be no half-confidences between us. you have not told me all." robert, looking up suddenly, plainly expressed in his face the surprise he felt at these words. "i should be very poorly able to meet the contingencies of my professional experience," said dr. mosgrave, "if i could not perceive where confidence ends and reservation begins. you have only told me half this lady's story, mr. audley. you must tell me more before i can offer you any advice. what has become of the first husband?" he asked this question in a decisive tone, as if he knew it to be the key-stone of an arch. "i have already told you, dr. mosgrave, that i do not know." "yes," answered the physician, "but your face has told me what you have withheld from me; it has told me that you suspect." robert audley was silent. "if i am to be of use to you, you must trust me, mr. audley," said the physician. "the first husband disappeared�how and when? i want to know the history of his disappearance." robert paused for some time before he replied to this speech; but, by and by, he lifted his head, which had been bent in an attitude of earnest thought, and addressed the physician. "i will trust you, dr. mosgrave," he said. "i will confide entirely in your honor and goodness. i do not ask you to do any wrong to society; but i ask you to save our stainless name from degradation and shame, if you can do so conscientiously." he told the story of george's disappearance, and of his own doubts and fears, heaven knows how reluctantly. dr. mosgrave listened as quietly as he had listened before. robert concluded with an earnest appeal to the physician's best feelings. he implored him to spare the generous old man whose fatal confidence in a wicked woman had brought much misery upon his declining years. it was impossible to draw any conclusion, either favorable or otherwise, from dr. mosgrave's attentive face. he rose, when robert had finished speaking, and looked at his watch once more. "i can only spare you twenty minutes," he said. "i will see the lady, if you please. you say her mother died in a madhouse?" "she did. will you see lady audley alone?" "yes, alone, if you please." robert rung for my lady's maid, and under convoy of that smart young damsel the physician found his way to the octagon antechamber, and the fairy boudoir with which it communicated. ten minutes afterward, he returned to the library, in which robert sat waiting for him. "i have talked to the lady," he said, quietly, "and we understand each other very well. there is latent insanity! insanity which might never appear; or which might appear only once or twice in a lifetime. it would be a dementia in its worst phase, perhaps; acute mania; but its duration would be very brief, and it would only arise under extreme mental pressure. the lady is not mad; but she has the hereditary taint in her blood. she has the cunning of madness, with the prudence of intelligence. i will tell you what she is, mr. audley. she is dangerous!" dr. mosgrave walked up and down the room once or twice before he spoke again. "i will not discuss the probabilities of the suspicion which distresses you, mr. audley," he said, presently, "but i will tell you this much, i do not advise any esclandre. this mr. george talboys has disappeared, but you have no evidence of his death. if you could produce evidence of his death, you could produce no evidence against this lady, beyond the one fact that she had a powerful motive for getting rid of him. no jury in the united kingdom would condemn her upon such evidence as that." robert audley interrupted dr. mosgrave, hastily. "i assure you, my dear sir," he said, "that my greatest fear is the necessity of any exposure�any disgrace." "certainly, mr. audley," answered the physician, coolly, "but you cannot expect me to assist you to condone one of the worst offenses against society. if i saw adequate reason for believing that a murder had been committed by this woman, i should refuse to assist you in smuggling her away out of the reach of justice, although the honor of a hundred noble families might be saved by my doing so. but i do not see adequate reason for your suspicions; and i will do my best to help you." robert audley grasped the physician's hands in both his own. "i will thank you when i am better able to do so," he said, with emotion; "i will thank you in my uncle's name as well as in my own." "i have only five minutes more, and i have a letter to write," said dr. mosgrave, smiling at the young man's energy. he seated himself at a writing-table in the window, dipped his pen in the ink, and wrote rapidly for about seven minutes. he had filled three sides of a sheet of note-paper, when he threw down his pen and folded his letter. he put this letter into an envelope, and delivered it, unsealed, to robert audley. the address which it bore was: "monsieur val, "villebrumeuse, "belgium." mr. audley looked rather doubtfully from this address to the doctor, who was putting on his gloves as deliberately as if his life had never known a more solemn purpose than the proper adjustment of them. "that letter," he said, in answer to robert audley's inquiring look, "is written to my friend monsieur val, the proprietor and medical superintendent of a very excellent maison de santé in the town of villebrumeuse. we have known each other for many years, and he will no doubt willingly receive lady audley into his establishment, and charge himself with the full responsibility of her future life; it will not be a very eventful one!" robert audley would have spoken, he would have once more expressed his gratitude for the help which had been given to him, but dr. mosgrave checked him with an authoritative gesture. "from the moment in which lady audley enters that house," he said, "her life, so far as life is made up of action and variety, will be finished. whatever secrets she may have will be secrets forever! whatever crimes she may have committed she will be able to commit no more. if you were to dig a grave for her in the nearest churchyard and bury her alive in it, you could not more safely shut her from the world and all worldly associations. but as a physiologist and as an honest man, i believe you could do no better service to society than by doing this; for physiology is a lie if the woman i saw ten minutes ago is a woman to be trusted at large. if she could have sprung at my throat and strangled me with her little hands, as i sat talking to her just now, she would have done it." "she suspected your purpose, then!" "she knew it. 'you think i am mad like my mother, and you have come to question me,' she said. 'you are watching for some sign of the dreadful taint in my blood.' good-day to you, mr. audley," the physician added hurriedly, "my time was up ten minutes ago; it is as much as i shall do to catch the train." chapter xxxvii. buried alive. robert audley sat alone in the library with the physician's letter upon the table before him, thinking of the work which was still to be done. the young barrister had constituted himself the denouncer of this wretched woman. he had been her judge; and he was now her jailer. not until he had delivered the letter which lay before him to its proper address, not until he had given up his charge into the safe-keeping of the foreign mad-house doctor, not until then would the dreadful burden be removed from him and his duty done. he wrote a few lines to my lady, telling her that he was going to carry her away from audley court to a place from which she was not likely to return, and requesting her to lose no time in preparing for the journey. he wished to start that evening, if possible, he told her. miss susan martin, the lady's maid, thought it a very hard thing to have to pack her mistress' trunks in such a hurry, but my lady assisted in the task. she toiled resolutely in directing and assisting her servant, who scented bankruptcy and ruin in all this packing up and hurrying away, and was therefore rather languid and indifferent in the discharge of her duties; and at six o'clock in the evening she sent her attendant to tell mr. audley that she was ready to depart as soon as he pleased. robert had consulted a volume of bradshaw, and had discovered that villebrumeuse lay out of the track of all railway traffic, and was only approachable by diligence from brussels. the mail for dover left london bridge at nine o'clock, and could be easily caught by robert and his charge, as the seven o'clock up-train from audley reached shoreditch at a quarter past eight. traveling by the dover and calais route, they would reach villebrumeuse by the following afternoon or evening. it was late in the afternoon of the next day when the diligence bumped and rattled over the uneven paving of the principal street in villebrumeuse. robert audley and my lady had had the coupé of the diligence to themselves for the whole of the journey, for there were not many travelers between brussels and villebrumeuse, and the public conveyance was supported by the force of tradition rather than any great profit attaching to it as a speculation. my lady had not spoken during the journey, except to decline some refreshments which robert had offered her at a halting place upon the road. her heart sunk when they left brussels behind, for she had hoped that city might have been the end of her journey, and she had turned with a feeling of sickness and despair from the dull belgian landscape. she looked up at last as the vehicle jolted into a great stony quadrangle, which had been the approach to a monastery once, but which was now the court yard of a dismal hotel, in whose cellars legions of rats skirmished and squeaked even while the broad sunshine was bright in the chambers above. lady audley shuddered as she alighted from the diligence, and found herself in that dreary court yard. robert was surrounded by chattering porters, who clamored for his "baggages," and disputed among themselves as to the hotel at which he was to rest. one of these men ran away to fetch a hackney-coach at mr. audley's behest, and reappeared presently, urging on a pair of horses�which were so small as to suggest the idea that they had been made out of one ordinary-sized animal�with wild shrieks and whoops that had a demoniac sound in the darkness. mr. audley left my lady in a dreary coffee-room in the care of a drowsy attendant while he drove away to some distant part of the quiet city. there was official business to be gone through before sir michael's wife could be quietly put away in the place suggested by dr. mosgrave. robert had to see all manner of important personages; and to take numerous oaths; and to exhibit the english physician's letter; and to go through much ceremony of signing and countersigning before he could take his lost friend's cruel wife to the home which was to be her last upon earth. upward of two hours elapsed before all this was arranged, and the young man was free to return to the hotel, where he found his charge staring absently at a pair of wax-candles, with a cup of untasted coffee standing cold and stagnant before her. robert handed my lady into the hired vehicle, and took his seat opposite to her once more. "where are you going to take me?" she asked, at last. "i am tired of being treated like some naughty child, who is put into a dark cellar as a punishment for its offenses. where are you taking me?" "to a place in which you will have ample leisure to repent the past, mrs. talboys," robert answered, gravely. they had left the paved streets behind them, and had emerged out of a great gaunt square, in which there appeared to be about half a dozen cathedrals, into a small boulevard, a broad lamp-lit road, on which the shadows of the leafless branches went and came tremblingly, like the shadows of a paralytic skeleton. there were houses here and there upon this boulevard; stately houses, entre cour et jardin, and with plaster vases of geraniums on the stone pillars of the ponderous gateways. the rumbling hackney-carriage drove upward of three-quarters of a mile along this smooth roadway before it drew up against a gateway, older and more ponderous than any of those they had passed. my lady gave a little scream as she looked out of the coach-window. the gaunt gateway was lighted by an enormous lamp; a great structure of iron and glass, in which one poor little shivering flame struggled with the march wind. the coachman rang the bell, and a little wooden door at the side of the gate was opened by a gray-haired man, who looked out at the carriage, and then retired. he reappeared three minutes afterward behind the folding iron gates, which he unlocked and threw back to their full extent, revealing a dreary desert of stone-paved courtyard. the coachman led his wretched horses into the courtyard, and piloted the vehicle to the principal doorway of the house, a great mansion of gray stone, with several long ranges of windows, many of which were dimly lighted, and looked out like the pale eyes of weary watchers upon the darkness of the night. my lady, watchful and quiet as the cold stars in the wintry sky, looked up at these casements with an earnest and scrutinizing gaze. one of the windows was shrouded by a scanty curtain of faded red; and upon this curtain there went and came a dark shadow, the shadow of a woman with a fantastic head dress, the shadow of a restless creature, who paced perpetually backward and forward before the window. sir michael audley's wicked wife laid her hand suddenly upon robert's arm, and pointed with the other hand to this curtained window. "i know where you have brought me," she said. "this is a mad-house." mr. audley did not answer her. he had been standing at the door of the coach when she addressed him, and he quietly assisted her to alight, and led her up a couple of shallow stone steps, and into the entrance-hall of the mansion. he handed dr. mosgrave's letter to a neatly-dressed, cheerful-looking, middle-aged woman, who came tripping out of a little chamber which opened out of the hall, and was very much like the bureau of an hotel. this person smilingly welcome robert and his charge: and after dispatching a servant with the letter, invited them into her pleasant little apartment, which was gayly furnished with bright amber curtains and heated by a tiny stove. "madam finds herself very much fatigued?" the frenchwoman said, interrogatively, with a look of intense sympathy, as she placed an arm-chair for my lady. "madam" shrugged her shoulders wearily, and looked round the little chamber with a sharp glance of scrutiny that betokened no very great favor. "what is this place, robert audley?" she cried fiercely. "do you think i am a baby, that you may juggle with and deceive me�what is it? it is what i said just now, is it not?" "it is a maison de santé, my lady," the young man answered, gravely. "i have no wish to juggle with or to deceive you." my lady paused for a few moments, looking reflectively at robert. "a maison de santé," she repeated. "yes, they manage these things better in france. in england we should call it a madhouse. this a house for mad people, this, is it not, madam?" she said in french, turning upon the woman, and tapping the polished floor with her foot. "ah, but no, madam," the woman answered with a shrill scream of protest. "it is an establishment of the most agreeable, where one amuses one's self�" she was interrupted by the entrance of the principal of this agreeable establishment, who came beaming into the room with a radiant smile illuminating his countenance, and with dr. mosgrave's letter open in his hand. it was impossible to say how enchanted he was to make the acquaintance of m'sieu. there was nothing upon earth which he was not ready to do for m'sieu in his own person, and nothing under heaven which he would not strive to accomplish for him, as the friend of his acquaintance, so very much distinguished, the english doctor. dr. mosgrave's letter had given him a brief synopsis of the case, he informed robert, in an undertone, and he was quite prepared to undertake the care of the charming and very interesting "madam�madam�" he rubbed his hands politely, and looked at robert. mr. audley remembered, for the first time, that he had been recommended to introduce his wretched charge under a feigned name. he affected not to hear the proprietor's question. it might seem a very easy matter to have hit upon a heap of names, any one of which would have answered his purpose; but mr. audley appeared suddenly to have forgotten that he had ever heard any mortal appellation except that of himself and of his lost friend. perhaps the proprietor perceived and understood his embarrassment. he at any rate relieved it by turning to the woman who had received them, and muttering something about no. 14, bis. the woman took a key from a long range of others, that hung over the mantel-piece, and a wax candle from a bracket in a corner of the room, and having lighted the candle, led the way across the stone-paved hall, and up a broad, slippery staircase of polished wood. the english physician had informed his belgian colleague that money would be of minor consequence in any arrangements made for the comfort of the english lady who was to be committed to his care. acting upon this hint, monsieur val opened the outer door of a stately suite of apartments, which included a lobby, paved with alternate diamonds of black and white marble, but of a dismal and cellar-like darkness; a saloon furnished with gloomy velvet draperies, and with a certain funereal splendor which is not peculiarly conducive to the elevation of the spirits; and a bed-chamber, containing a bed so wondrously made, as to appear to have no opening whatever in its coverings, unless the counterpane had been split asunder with a pen-knife. my lady stared dismally round at the range of rooms, which looked dreary enough in the wan light of a single wax-candle. this solitary flame, pale and ghost-like in itself, was multiplied by paler phantoms of its ghostliness, which glimmered everywhere about the rooms; in the shadowy depths of the polished floors and wainscot, or the window-panes, in the looking-glasses, or in those great expanses of glimmering something which adorned the rooms, and which my lady mistook for costly mirrors, but which were in reality wretched mockeries of burnished tin. amid all the faded splendor of shabby velvet, and tarnished gilding, and polished wood, the woman dropped into an arm-chair, and covered her face with her hands. the whiteness of them, and the starry light of diamonds trembling about them, glittered in the dimly-lighted chamber. she sat silent, motionless, despairing, sullen, and angry, while robert and the french doctor retired to an outer chamber, and talked together in undertones. mr. audley had very little to say that had not been already said for him, with a far better grace than he himself could have expressed it, by the english physician. he had, after great trouble of mind, hit upon the name of taylor, as a safe and simple substitute for that other name, to which alone my lady had a right. he told the frenchman that this mrs. taylor was distantly related to him�that she had inherited the seeds of madness from her mother, as indeed dr. mosgrave had informed monsieur val; and that she had shown some fearful tokens of the lurking taint that was latent in her mind; but that she was not to be called "mad." he begged that she might be treated with all tenderness and compassion; that she might receive all reasonable indulgences; but he impressed upon monsieur val, that under no circumstances was she to be permitted to leave the house and grounds without the protection of some reliable person, who should be answerable for her safe-keeping. he had only one other point to urge, and that was, that monsieur val, who, as he had understood, was himself a protestant�the doctor bowed�would make arrangements with some kind and benevolent protestant clergyman, through whom spiritual advice and consolation might be secured for the invalid lady; who had especial need, robert added, gravely, of such advantages. this�with all necessary arrangements as to pecuniary matters, which were to be settled from time to time between mr. audley and the doctor, unassisted by any agents whatever�was the extent of the conversation between the two men, and occupied about a quarter of an hour. my lady sat in the same attitude when they re-entered the bedchamber in which they had left her, with her ringed hands still clasped over her face. robert bent over to whisper in her ear. "your name is madam taylor here," he said. "i do not think you would wish to be known by your real name." she only shook her head in answer to him, and did not even remove her hands from over her face. "madam will have an attendant entirely devoted to her service." said monsieur val. "madam will have all her wishes obeyed; her reasonable wishes, but that goes without saying," monsieur adds, with a quaint shrug. "every effort will be made to render madam's sojourn at villebrumeuse agreeable. the inmates dine together when it is wished. i dine with the inmates sometimes; my subordinate, a clever and a worthy man always. i reside with my wife and children in a little pavilion in the grounds; my subordinate resides in the establishment. madam may rely upon our utmost efforts being exerted to insure her comfort." monsieur is saying a great deal more to the same effect, rubbing his hands and beaming radiantly upon robert and his charge, when madam rises suddenly, erect and furious, and dropping her jeweled fingers from before her face, tells him to hold his tongue. "leave me alone with the man who has brought me here." she cried, between her set teeth. "leave me!" she points to the door with a sharp, imperious gesture; so rapid that the silken drapery about her arm makes a swooping sound as she lifts her hand. the sibilant french syllables hiss through her teeth as she utters them, and seem better fitted to her mood and to herself than the familiar english she has spoken hitherto. the french doctor shrugs his shoulders as he goes out into the lobby, and mutters something about a "beautiful devil," and a gesture worthy of "the mars." my lady walked with a rapid footstep to the door between the bed-chamber and the saloon; closed it, and with the handle of the door still in her hand, turned and looked at robert audley. "you have brought me to my grave, mr. audley," she cried; "you have used your power basely and cruelly, and have brought me to a living grave." "i have done that which i thought just to others and merciful to you," robert answered, quietly. "i should have been a traitor to society had i suffered you to remain at liberty after�the disappearance of george talboys and the fire at castle inn. i have brought you to a place in which you will be kindly treated by people who have no knowledge of your story�no power to taunt or to reproach you. you will lead a quiet and peaceful life, my lady; such a life as many a good and holy woman in this catholic country freely takes upon herself, and happily endures until the end. the solitude of your existence in this place will be no greater than that of a king's daughter, who, flying from the evil of the time, was glad to take shelter in a house as tranquil as this. surely, it is a small atonement which i ask you to render for your sins, a light penance which i call upon you to perform. live here and repent; nobody will assail you, nobody will torment you. i only say to you, repent!" "i cannot!" cried my lady, pushing her hair fiercely from her white forehead, and fixing her dilated eyes upon robert audley, "i cannot! has my beauty brought me to this? have i plotted and schemed to shield myself and laid awake in the long deadly nights, trembling to think of my dangers, for this? i had better have given up at once, since this was to be the end. i had better have yielded to the curse that was upon me, and given up when george talboys first came back to england." she plucked at the feathery golden curls as if she would have torn them from her head. it had served her so little after all, that gloriously glittering hair, that beautiful nimbus of yellow light that had contrasted so exquisitely with the melting azure of her eyes. she hated herself and her beauty. "i would laugh at you and defy you, if i dared," she cried; "i would kill myself and defy you, if i dared. but i am a poor, pitiful coward, and have been so from the first. afraid of my mother's horrible inheritance; afraid of poverty; afraid of george talboys; afraid of you." she was silent for a little while, but she held her place by the door, as if determined to detain robert as long as it was her pleasure to do so. "do you know what i am thinking of?" she said, presently. "do you know what i am thinking of, as i look at you in the dim light of this room? i am thinking of the day upon which george talboys disappeared." robert started as she mentioned the name of his lost friend; his face turned pale in the dusky light, and his breathing grew quicker and louder. "he was standing opposite me, as you are standing now," continued my lady. "you said that you would raze the old house to the ground; that you would root up every tree in the gardens to find your dead friend. you would have had no need to do so much: the body of george talboys lies at the bottom of the old well, in the shrubbery beyond the lime-walk." robert audley flung his hands and clasped them above his head, with one loud cry of horror. "oh, my god!" he said, after a dreadful pause; "have all the ghastly things that i have thought prepared me so little for the ghastly truth, that it should come upon me like this at last?" "he came to me in the lime-walk," resumed my lady, in the same hard, dogged tone as that in which she had confessed the wicked story of her life. "i knew that he would come, and i had prepared myself, as well as i could, to meet him. i was determined to bribe him, to cajole him, to defy him; to do anything sooner than abandon the wealth and the position i had won, and go back to my old life. he came, and he reproached me for the conspiracy at ventnor. he declared that so long as he lived he would never forgive me for the lie that had broken his heart. he told me that i had plucked his heart out of his breast and trampled upon it; and that he had now no heart in which to feel one sentiment of mercy for me. that he would have forgiven me any wrong upon earth, but that one deliberate and passionless wrong that i had done him. he said this and a great deal more, and he told me that no power on earth should turn him from his purpose, which was to take me to the man i had deceived, and make me tell my wicked story. he did not know the hidden taint that i had sucked in with my mother's milk. he did not know that it was possible to drive me mad. he goaded me as you have goaded me; he was as merciless as you have been merciless. we were in the shrubbery at the end of the lime-walk. i was seated upon the broken masonry at the mouth of the well. george talboys was leaning upon the disused windlass, in which the rusty iron spindle rattled loosely whenever he shifted his position. i rose at last, and turned upon him to defy him, as i had determined to defy him at the worst. i told him that if he denounced me to sir michael, i would declare him to be a madman or a liar, and i defied him to convince the man who loved me�blindly, as i told him�that he had any claim to me. i was going to leave him after having told him this, when he caught me by the wrist and detained me by force. you saw the bruises that his fingers made upon my wrist, and noticed them, and did not believe the account i gave of them. i could see that, mr. robert audley, and i saw that you were a person i should have to fear." she paused, as if she had expected robert to speak; but he stood silent and motionless, waiting for the end. "george talboys treated me as you treated me," she said, petulantly. "he swore that if there was but one witness of my identity, and that witness was removed from audley court by the width of the whole earth, he would bring him there to swear to my identity, and to denounce me. it was then that i was mad, it was then that i drew the loose iron spindle from the shrunken wood, and saw my first husband sink with one horrible cry into the black mouth of the well. there is a legend of its enormous depth. i do not know how deep it is. it is dry, i suppose, for i heard no splash, only a dull thud. i looked down and i saw nothing but black emptiness. i knelt down and listened, but the cry was not repeated, though i waited for nearly a quarter of an hour�god knows how long it seemed to me!�by the mouth of the well." robert audley uttered a word of horror when the story was finished. he moved a little nearer toward the door against which helen talboys stood. had there been any other means of exit from the room, he would gladly have availed himself of it. he shrank from even a momentary contact with this creature. "let me pass you, if you please," he said, in an icy voice. "you see i do not fear to make my confession to you," said helen talboys; "for two reasons. the first is, that you dare not use it against me, because you know it would kill your uncle to see me in a criminal dock; the second is, that the law could pronounce no worse sentence than this�a life-long imprisonment in a mad-house. you see i do not thank you for your mercy, mr. robert audley, for i know exactly what it is worth." she moved away from the door, and robert passed her without a word, without a look. half an hour afterward he was in one of the principal hotels at villebrumeuse, sitting at a neatly-ordered supper-table, with no power to eat; with no power to distract his mind, even for a moment, from the image of that lost friend who had been treacherously murdered in the thicket at audley court. chapter xxxviii. ghost-haunted. no feverish sleeper traveling in a strange dream ever looked out more wonderingly upon a world that seemed unreal than robert audley, as he stared absently at the flat swamps and dismal poplars between villebrumeuse and brussels. could it be that he was returning to his uncle's house without the woman who had reigned in it for nearly two years as queen and mistress? he felt as if he had carried off my lady, and had made away with her secretly and darkly, and must now render up an account to sir michael of the fate of that woman, whom the baronet had so dearly loved. "what shall i tell him?" he thought. "shall i tell the truth�the horrible, ghastly truth? no; that would be too cruel. his generous spirit would sink under the hideous revelation. yet, in his ignorance of the extent of this wretched woman's wickedness, he may think, perhaps, that i have been hard with her." brooding thus, mr. robert audley absently watched the cheerless landscape from the seat in the shabby coupé of the diligence, and thought how great a leaf had been torn out of his life, now that the dark story of george talboys was finished. what had he to do next? a crowd of horrible thoughts rushed into his mind as he remembered the story that he had heard from the white lips of helen talboys. his friend�his murdered friend�lay hidden among the moldering ruins of the old well at audley court. he had lain there for six long months, unburied, unknown; hidden in the darkness of the old convent well. what was to be done? to institute a search for the remains of the murdered man was to inevitably bring about a coroner's inquest. should such an inquest be held, it was next to impossible that the history of my lady's crime could fail to be brought to light. to prove that george talboys met with his death at audley court, was to prove almost as surely that my lady had been the instrument of that mysterious death; for the young man had been known to follow her into the lime-walk upon the day of his disappearance. "my god!" robert exclaimed, as the full horror of his position became evident to him; "is my friend to rest in this unhallowed burial-place because i have condoned the offenses of the woman who murdered him?" he felt that there was no way out of this difficulty. sometimes he thought that it little mattered to his dead friend whether he lay entombed beneath a marble monument, whose workmanship should be the wonder of the universe, or in that obscure hiding-place in the thicket at audley court. at another time he would be seized with a sudden horror at the wrong that had been done to the murdered man, and would fain have traveled even more rapidly than the express between brussels and paris could carry him in his eagerness to reach the end of his journey, that he might set right this cruel wrong. he was in london at dusk on the second day after that on which he had left audley court, and he drove straight to the clarendon, to inquire after his uncle. he had no intention of seeing sir michael, as he had not yet determined how much or how little he should tell him, but he was very anxious to ascertain how the old man had sustained the cruel shock he had so lately endured. "i will see alicia," he thought, "she will tell me all about her father. it is only two days since he left audley. i can scarcely expect to hear of any favorable change." but mr. audley was not destined to see his cousin that evening, for the servants at the clarendon told him that sir michael and his daughter had left by the morning mail for paris, on their way to vienna. robert was very well pleased to receive this intelligence; it afforded him a welcome respite, for it would be decidedly better to tell the baronet nothing of his guilty wife until he returned to england, with health unimpaired and spirits re-established, it was to be hoped. mr. audley drove to the temple. the chambers which had seemed dreary to him ever since the disappearance of george talboys, were doubly so to-night. for that which had been only a dark suspicion had now become a horrible certainty. there was no longer room for the palest ray, the most transitory glimmer of hope. his worst terrors had been too well founded. george talboys had been cruelly and treacherously murdered by the wife he had loved and mourned. there were three letters waiting for mr. audley at his chambers. one was from sir michael, and another from alicia. the third was addressed in a hand the young barrister knew only too well, though he had seen it but once before. his face flushed redly at the sight of the superscription, and he took the letter in his hand, carefully and tenderly, as if it had been a living thing, and sentient to his touch. he turned it over and over in his hands, looking at the crest upon the envelope, at the post-mark, at the color of the paper, and then put it into the bosom of his waistcoat with a strange smile upon his face. "what a wretched and unconscionable fool i am!" he thought. "have i laughed at the follies of weak men all my life, and am i to be more foolish than the weakest of them at last? the beautiful brown-eyed creature! why did i ever see her? why did my relentless nemesis ever point the way to that dreary house in dorsetshire?" he opened the first two letters. he was foolish enough to keep the last for a delicious morsel�a fairy-like dessert after the commonplace substantialities of a dinner. alicia's letter told him that sir michael had borne his agony with such a persevering tranquility that she had become at last far more alarmed by his patient calmness than by any stormy manifestation of despair. in this difficulty she had secretly called upon the physician who attended the audley household in any cases of serious illness, and had requested this gentleman to pay sir michael an apparently accidental visit. he had done so, and after stopping half an hour with the baronet, had told alicia that there was no present danger of any serious consequence from this great grief, but that it was necessary that every effort should be made to arouse sir michael, and to force him, however unwillingly, into action. alicia had immediately acted upon this advice, had resumed her old empire as a spoiled child, and reminded her father of a promise he had made of taking her through germany. with considerable difficulty she had induced him to consent to fulfilling this old promise, and having once gained her point, she had contrived that they should leave england as soon as it was possible to do so, and she told robert, in conclusion, that she would not bring her father back to his old house until she had taught him to forget the sorrows associated with it. the baronet's letter was very brief. it contained half a dozen blank checks on sir michael audley's london bankers. "you will require money, my dear robert," he wrote, "for such arrangements as you may think fit to make for the future comfort of the person i committed to your care. i need scarcely tell you that those arrangements cannot be too liberal. but perhaps it is as well that i should tell you now, for the first and only time, that it is my earnest wish never again to hear that person's name. i have no wish to be told the nature of the arrangements you may make for her. i am sure that you will act conscientiously and mercifully. i seek to know no more. whenever you want money, you will draw upon me for any sums that you may require; but you will have no occasion to tell me for whose use you want that money." robert audley breathed a long sigh of relief as he folded this letter. it released him from a duty which it would have been most painful for him to perform, and it forever decided his course of action with regard to the murdered man. george talboys must lie at peace in his unknown grave, and sir michael audley must never learn that the woman he had loved bore the red brand of murder on her soul. robert had only the third letter to open�the letter which he had placed in his bosom while he read the others; he tore open the envelope, handling it carefully and tenderly as he had done before. the letter was as brief as sir michael's. it contained only these few lines: "dear mr. audley�the rector of this place has been twice to see marks, the man you saved in the fire at the castle inn. he lies in a very precarious state at his mother's cottage, near audley court, and is not expected to live many days. his wife is attending him, and both he and she have expressed a most earnest desire that you should see him before he dies. pray come without delay. "yours very sincerely, "clara talboys. "mount stanning rectory, march 6." robert audley folded this letter very reverently, and placed it underneath that part of his waistcoat which might be supposed to cover the region of his heart. having done this, he seated himself in his favorite arm-chair, filled and lighted a pipe and smoked it out, staring reflectingly at the fire as long as his tobacco lasted. "what can that man marks want with me," thought the barrister. "he is afraid to die until he has made confession, perhaps. he wishes to tell me that which i know already�the story of my lady's crime. i knew that he was in the secret. i was sure of it even upon the night on which i first saw him. he knew the secret, and he traded on it." robert audley shrank strangely from returning to essex. how should he meet clara talboys now that he knew the secret of her brother's fate? how many lies he should have to tell, or how much equivocation he must use in order to keep the truth from her? yet would there be any mercy in telling that horrible story, the knowledge of which must cast a blight upon her youth, and blot out every hope she had even secretly cherished? he knew by his own experience how possible it was to hope against hope, and to hope unconsciously; and he could not bear that her heart should be crushed as his had been by the knowledge of the truth. "better that she should hope vainly to the last," he thought; "better that she should go through life seeking the clew to her lost brother's fate, than that i should give that clew into her hands, and say, 'our worst fears are realized. the brother you loved has been foully murdered in the early promise of his youth.'" but clara talboys had written to him, imploring him to return to essex without delay. could he refuse to do her bidding, however painful its accomplishment might be? and again, the man was dying, perhaps, and had implored to see him. would it not be cruel to refuse to go�to delay an hour unnecessarily? he looked at his watch. it wanted only five minutes to nine. there was no train to audley after the ipswich mail, which left london at half-past eight; but there was a train that left shoreditch at eleven, and stopped at brentwood between twelve and one. robert decided upon going by this train, and walking the distance between brentwood and audley, which was upwards of six miles. fleet street was quiet and lonely at this late hour, and robert audley being in a ghost-seeing mood, would have been scarcely astonished had he seen johnson's set come roystering westward in the lamp-light, or blind john milton groping his way down the steps before saint bride's church. mr. audley hailed a hansom at the corner of farrington street, and was rattled rapidly away across tenantless smithfield market, and into a labyrinth of dingy streets that brought him out upon the broad grandeur of finsbury pavement. the hansom rattled up the steep and stony approach to shoreditch station, and deposited robert at the doors of that unlovely temple. there were very few people going to travel by this midnight train, and robert walked up and down the long wooden platform, reading the huge advertisements whose gaunt lettering looked wan and ghastly in the dim lamplight. he had the carriage in which he sat all to himself. all to himself did i say? had he not lately summoned to his side that ghostly company which of all companionship is the most tenacious? the shadow of george talboys pursued him, even in the comfortable first-class carriage, and was behind him when he looked out of the window, and was yet far ahead of him and the rushing engine, in that thicket toward which the train was speeding, by the side of the unhallowed hiding-place in which the mortal remains of the dead man lay, neglected and uncared for. "i must give my lost friend decent burial," robert thought, as the chill wind swept across the flat landscape, and struck him with such frozen breath as might have emanated from the lips of the dead. "i must do it; or i shall die of some panic like this which has seized upon me to-night. i must do it; at any peril; at any cost. even at the price of that revelation which will bring the mad woman back from her safe hiding-place, and place her in a criminal dock." he was glad when the train stopped at brentwood at a few minutes after twelve. it was half-past one o'clock when the night wanderer entered the village of audley, and it was only there that he remembered that clara talboys had omitted to give him any direction by which he might find the cottage in which luke marks lay. "it was dawson who recommended that the poor creature should be taken to his mother's cottage," robert thought, by-and-by, "and, i dare say. dawson has attended him ever since the fire. he'll be able to tell me the way to the cottage." acting upon this idea, mr. audley stopped at the house in which helen talboys had lived before her second marriage. the door of the little surgery was ajar, and there was a light burning within. robert pushed the door open and peeped in. the surgeon was standing at the mahogany counter, mixing a draught in a glass measure, with his hat close beside him. late as it was, he had evidently only just come in. the harmonious snoring of his assistant sounded from a little room within the surgery. "i am sorry to disturb you, mr. dawson," robert said, apologetically, as the surgeon looked up and recognized him, "but i have come down to see marks, who, i hear, is in a very bad way, and i want you to tell me the way to his mother's cottage." "i'll show you the way, mr. audley," answered the surgeon, "i am going there this minute." "the man is very bad, then?" "so bad that he can be no worse. the change that can happen is that change which will take him beyond the reach of any earthly suffering." "strange!" exclaimed robert. "he did not appear to be much burned." "he was not much burnt. had he been, i should never have recommended his being removed from mount stanning. it is the shock that has done the business. he has been in a raging fever for the last two days; but to-night he is much calmer, and i'm afraid, before to-morrow night, we shall have seen the last of him." "he has asked to see me, i am told," said mr. audley. "yes," answered the surgeon, carelessly. "a sick man's fancy, no doubt. you dragged him out of the house, and did your best to save his life. i dare say, rough and boorish as the poor fellow is, he thinks a good deal of that." they had left the surgery, the door of which mr. dawson had locked behind him. there was money in the till, perhaps, for surely the village apothecary could not have feared that the most daring housebreaker would imperil his liberty in the pursuit of blue pill and colocynth, of salts and senna. the surgeon led the way along the silent street, and presently turned into a lane at the end of which robert audley saw the wan glimmer of a light; a light which told of the watch that is kept by the sick and dying; a pale, melancholy light, which always has a dismal aspect when looked upon in this silent hour betwixt night and morning. it shone from the window of the cottage in which luke marks lay, watched by his wife and mother. mr. dawson lifted the latch, and walked into the common room of the little tenement, followed by robert audley. it was empty, but a feeble tallow candle, with a broken back, and a long, cauliflower-headed wick, sputtered upon the table. the sick man lay in the room above. "shall i tell him you are here?" asked mr. dawson. "yes, yes, if you please. but be cautious how you tell him, if you think the news likely to agitate him. i am in no hurry. i can wait. you can call me when you think i can safely come up-stairs." the surgeon nodded, and softly ascended the narrow wooden stairs leading to the upper chamber. robert audley seated himself in a windsor chair by the cold hearth-stone, and stared disconsolately about him. but he was relieved at last by the low voice of the surgeon, who looked down from the top of the little staircase to tell him that luke marks was awake, and would be glad to see him. robert immediately obeyed this summons. he crept softly up the stairs, and took off his hat before he bent his head to enter at the low doorway of the humble rustic chamber. he took off his hat in the presence of this common peasant man, because he knew that there was another and a more awful presence hovering about the room, and eager to be admitted. phoebe marks was sitting at the foot of the bed, with her eyes fixed upon her husband's face�not with any very tender expression in the pale light, but with a sharp, terrified anxiety, which showed that it was the coming of death itself that she dreaded, rather than the loss of her husband. the old woman was busy at the fire-place, airing linen, and preparing some mess of broth which it was not likely the patient would ever eat. the sick man lay with his head propped up by pillows, his coarse face deadly pale, and his great hands wandering uneasily about the coverlet. phoebe had been reading to him, for an open testament lay among the medicine and lotion bottles upon the table near the bed. every object in the room was neat and orderly, and bore witness of that delicate precision which had always been a distinguishing characteristic of phoebe. the young woman rose as robert audley crossed the threshold, and hurried toward him. "let me speak to you for a moment, sir, before you talk to luke," she said, in an eager whisper. "pray let me speak to you first." "what's the gal a-sayin', there?" asked the invalid in a subdued roar, which died away hoarsely on his lips. he was feebly savage, even in his weakness. the dull glaze of death was gathering over his eyes, but they still watched phoebe with a sharp glance of dissatisfaction. "what's she up to there?" he said. "i won't have no plottin' and no hatchin' agen me. i want to speak to mr. audley my own self; and whatever i done i'm goin' to answer for. if i done any mischief, i'm a-goin' to try and undo it. what's she a-sayin'?" "she ain't a-sayin' nothin', lovey," answered the old woman, going to the bedside of her son, who even when made more interesting than usual by illness, did not seem a very fit subject for this tender appellation. "she's only a-tellin' the gentleman how bad you've been, my pretty." "what i'm a-goin' to tell i'm only a-goin' to tell to him, remember," growled mr. mark; "and ketch me a-tellin' of it to him if it warn't for what he done for me the other night." "to be sure not, lovey," answered the old woman soothingly. phoebe marks had drawn mr. audley out of the room and onto the narrow landing at the top of the little staircase. this landing was a platform of about three feet square, and it was as much as the two could manage to stand upon it without pushing each other against the whitewashed wall, or backward down the stairs. "oh, sir, i wanted to speak to you so badly," phoebe answered, eagerly; "you know what i told you when i found you safe and well upon the night of the fire?" "yes, yes." "i told you what i suspected; what i think still." "yes, i remember." "but i never breathed a word of it to anybody but you, sir, and i think that luke has forgotten all about that night; i think that what went before the fire has gone clean out of his head altogether. he was tipsy, you know, when my la�when she came to the castle; and i think he was so dazed and scared like by the fire that it all went out of his memory. he doesn't suspect what i suspect, at any rate, or he'd have spoken of it to anybody or everybody; but he's dreadful spiteful against my lady, for he says if she'd have let him have a place at brentwood or chelmsford, this wouldn't have happened. so what i wanted to beg of you, sir, is not to let a word drop before luke." "yes, yes, i understand; i will be careful." "my lady has left the court, i hear, sir?" "yes." "never to come back, sir?" "never to come back." "but she has not gone where she'll be cruelly treated; where she'll be ill-used?" "no: she will be very kindly treated." "i'm glad of that, sir; i beg your pardon for troubling you with the question, sir, but my lady was a kind mistress to me." luke's voice, husky and feeble, was heard within the little chamber at this period of the conversation, demanding angrily when "that gal would have done jawing;" upon which phoebe put her finger to her lips, and led mr. audley back into the sick-room. "i don't want you" said mr. marks, decisively, as his wife re-entered the chamber�"i don't want you; you've no call to hear what i've got to say�i only want mr. audley, and i wants to speak to him all alone, with none o' your sneakin' listenin' at doors, d'ye hear? so you may go down-stairs and keep there till you're wanted; and you may take mother�no, mother may stay, i shall want her presently." the sick man's feeble hand pointed to the door, through which his wife departed very submissively. "i've no wish to hear anything, luke," she said, "but i hope you won't say anything against those that have been good and generous to you." "i shall say what i like," answered mr. marks, fiercely, "and i'm not a-goin' to be ordered by you. you ain't the parson, as i've ever heerd of; nor the lawyer neither." the landlord of the castle inn had undergone no moral transformation by his death-bed sufferings, fierce and rapid as they had been. perhaps some faint glimmer of a light that had been far off from his life now struggled feebly through the black obscurities of ignorance that darkened his soul. perhaps a half angry, half sullen penitence urged him to make some rugged effort to atone for a life that had been selfish and drunken and wicked. be it how it might he wiped his white lips, and turning his haggard eyes earnestly upon robert audley, pointed to a chair by the bedside. "you made game of me in a general way, mr. audley," he said, presently, "and you've drawed me out, and you've tumbled and tossed me about like in a gentlemanly way, till i was nothink or anythink in your hands; and you've looked me through and through, and turned me inside out till you thought you knowed as much as i knowed. i'd no particular call to be grateful to you, not before the fire at the castle t'other night. but i am grateful to you for that. i'm not grateful to folks in a general way, p'r'aps, because the things as gentlefolks have give have a'most allus been the very things i didn't want. they've give me soup, and tracks, and flannel, and coals; but, lord, they've made such a precious noise about it that i'd have been to send 'em all back to 'em. but when a gentleman goes and puts his own life in danger to save a drunken brute like me, the drunkenest brute as ever was feels grateful like to that gentleman, and wishes to say before he dies�which he sees in the doctor's face as he ain't got long to live�'thank ye, sir, i'm obliged to you." luke marks stretched out his left hand�the right hand had been injured by the fire, and was wrapped in linen�and groped feebly for that of mr. robert audley. the young man took the coarse but shrunken hand in both his own, and pressed it cordially. "i need no thanks, luke marks," he said; "i was very glad to be of service to you." mr. marks did not speak immediately. he was lying quietly upon his side, staring reflectingly at robert audley. "you was oncommon fond of that gent as disappeared at the court, warn't you, sir?" he said at last. robert started at the mention of his dead friend. "you was oncommon fond of that mr. talboys, i've heard say, sir," repeated luke. "yes, yes," answered robert, rather impatiently, "he was my very dear friend." "i've heard the servants at the court say how you took on when you couldn't find him. i've heered the landlord of the sun inn say how cut up you was when you first missed him. 'if the two gents had been brothers,' the landlord said, 'our gent,' meanin' you, sir, 'couldn't have been more cut up when he missed the other.'" "yes, yes, i know, i know," said robert; "pray do not speak any more of this subject. i cannot tell you how much it distresses me." was he to be haunted forever by the ghost of his unburied friend? he came here to comfort the sick man, and even here he was pursued by this relentless shadow; even here he was reminded of the secret crime which had darkened his life. "listen to me, marks," he said, earnestly; "believe me that i appreciate your grateful words, and that i am very glad to have been of service to you. but before you say anything more, let me make one most solemn request. if you have sent for me that you may tell me anything of the fate of my lost friend, i entreat you to spare yourself and to spare me that horrible story. you can tell me nothing which i do not already know. the worst you can tell me of the woman who was once in your power, has already been revealed to me by her own lips. pray, then, be silent upon this subject; i say again, you can tell me nothing which i do not know." luke marks looked musingly at the earnest face of his visitor, and some shadowy expression, which was almost like a smile, flitted feebly across the sick man's haggard features. "i can't tell you nothin' you don't know?" he asked. "nothing." "then it ain't no good for me to try," said the invalid, thoughtfully. "did she tell you?" he asked, after a pause. "i must beg, marks, that you will drop the subject," robert answered, almost sternly. "i have already told you that i do not wish to hear it spoken of. whatever discoveries you made, you made your market out of them. whatever guilty secrets you got possession of, you were paid for keeping silence. you had better keep silence to the end." "had i?" cried luke marks, in an eager whisper. "had i really now better hold my tongue to the last?" "i think so, most decidedly. you traded on your secret, and you were paid to keep it. it would be more honest to hold to your bargain, and keep it still." "would it now?" said mr. marks with a ghastly grin; "but suppose my lady had one secret and i another. how then?" "what do you mean?" "suppose i could have told something all along; and would have told it, perhaps, if i'd been a little better treated; if what was give to me had been give a little more liberal like, and not flung at me as if i was a dog, and was only give it to be kep' from bitin'. suppose i could have told somethin', and would have told it but for that? how then?" it was impossible to describe the ghastliness of the triumphant grin that lighted up the sick man's haggard face. "his mind is wandering," robert thought; "i had need be patient with him, poor fellow. it would be strange if i could not be patient with a dying man." luke marks lay staring at mr. audley for some moments with that triumphant grin upon his face. the old woman, wearied out with watching her dying son, had dropped into a doze, and sat nodding her sharp chin over the handful of fire, upon which the broth that was never to be eaten, still bubbled and simmered. mr. audley waited very patiently until it should be the sick man's pleasure to speak. every sound was painfully distinct in that dead hour of the night. the dropping of the ashes on the hearth, the ominous crackling of the burning coals, the slow and ponderous ticking of the sulky clock in the room below, the low moaning of the march wind (which might have been the voice of an english banshee, screaming her dismal warning to the watchers of the dying), the hoarse breathing of the sick man--every sound held itself apart from all other sounds, and made itself into a separate voice, loud with a gloomy portent in the solemn stillness of the house. robert sat with his face shaded by his hands, thinking what was to become of him now that the secret of his friend's fate had been told, and the dark story of george talboys and his wicked wife had been finished in the belgian mad-house. what was to become of him? he had no claim upon clara talboys; for he had resolved to keep the horrible secret that had been told to him. how then could he dare to meet her with that secret held back fom her? how could he ever look into her earnest eyes, and yet withhold the truth? he felt that all power of reservation would fail before the searching glance of those calm brown eyes. if he was indeed to keep this secret he must never see her again. to reveal it would be to embitter her life. could he, for any selfish motive of his own, tell her this terrible story?--or could he think that if he told her she would suffer her murdered brother to lie unavenged and forgotten in his unhallowed grave? hemmed in on every side by difficulties which seemed utterly insumountable; with the easy temperament which was natural to him embittered by the gloomy burden he had borne so long, robert audley looked hopelessly forward to the life which lay before him, and thought that it would have been better for him had he perished among the burning ruins of the castle inn. "who would have been sorry for me? no one but my poor little alicia," he thought, "and hers would have only been an april sorrow. would clara talboys have been sorry? no! she would have only regretted me as a lost link in the mystery of her brother's death. she would only--" chapter xxxix. that which the dying man had to tell. heaven knows whither mr. audley's thoughts might have wandered had he not been startled by a sudden movement of the sick man, who raised himself up in his bed, and called to his mother. the old woman woke up with a jerk, and turned sleepily enough to look at her son. "what is it, luke, deary?" she asked soothingly. "it ain't time for the doctor's stuff yet. mr. dawson said as you weren't to have it till two hours after he went away, and he ain't been gone an hour yet." "who said it was the doctor's stuff i wanted?" cried mr. marks, impatiently. "i want to ask you something, mother. do you remember the seventh of last september?" robert started, and looked eagerly at the sick man. why did he harp upon this forbidden subject? why did he insist upon recalling the date of george's murder? the old woman shook her head in feeble confusion of mind. "lord, luke," she said, "how can'ee ask me such questions? my memory's been a failin' me this eight or nine year; and i never was one to remember the days of the month, or aught o' that sort. how should a poor workin' woman remember such things." luke marks shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "you're a good un to do what's asked you, mother," he said, peevishly. "didn't i tell you to rememer that day? didn't i tell you as the time might come when you'd be called upon to bear witness about it, and put upon your bible oath about it? didn't i tell you that, mother?" the old woman shook her head hopelessly. "if you say so, i make no doubt you did, luke," she said, with a conciliatory smile; "but i can't call it to mind, lovey. my memory's been failin' me this nine yaer, sir," she added, turning to robert audley, "and i'm but a poor crittur." mr. audley laid his hand upon the sick man's arm. "marks," he said, "i tell you again, you have no cause to worry yourself about this matter. i ask you no questions, i have no wish to hear anything." "but, suppose i want to tell something," cried luke, with feverish energy, "suppose i feel i can't die with a secret on my mind, and have asked to see you on purpose that i might tell you; suppose that, and you'll suppose nothing but the truth. i'd have been burnt alive before i'd have told her." he spoke these words between his set teeth, and scowled savagely as he uttered them. "i'd have been burnt alive first. i made her pay for her pretty insolent ways; i made her pay for her airs and graces; i'd never have told her�never, never! i had my power over her, and i kept it; i had my secret and was paid for it; and there wasn't a petty slight as she ever put upon me or mine that i didn't pay her out for twenty times over!" "marks, marks, for heaven's sake be calm," said robert, earnestly. "what are you talking of? what is it that you could have told?" "i'm a-goin to tell you," answered luke, wiping his lips. "give us a drink, mother." the old woman poured out some cooling drink into a mug, and carried it to her son. he drank it in an eager hurry, as if he felt that the brief remainder of his life must be a race with the pitiless pedestrian, time. "stop where you are," he said to his mother, pointing to a chair at the foot of the bed. the old woman obeyed, and seated herself meekly opposite to mr. audley. "i'll ask you another question, mother," said luke, "and i think it'll be strange if you can't answer it. do you remember when i was at work upon atkinson's farm; before i was married you know, and when i was livin' down here along of you?" "yes, yes," mrs. marks answered, nodding triumphantly, "i remember that, my dear. it were last fall, just about as the apples was bein' gathered in the orchard across our lane, and about the time as you had your new sprigged wesket. i remember, luke, i remember." mr. audley wondered where all this was to lead to, and how long he would have to sit by the sick man's bed, hearing a conversation that had no meaning to him. "if you remember that much, maybe you'll remember more, mother," said luke. "can you call to mind my bringing some one home here one night, while atkinsons was stackin' the last o' their corn?" once more mr. audley started violently, and this time he looked up earnestly at the face of the speaker, and listened, with a strange, breathless interest, that he scarcely understood himself, to what luke marks was saying. "i rek'lect your bringing home phoebe," the old woman answered, with great animation. "i rek'lect your bringin' phoebe home to take a cup o' tea, or a little snack o' supper, a mort o' times." "bother phoebe," cried mr. marks, "who's a talkin' of phoebe? what's phoebe, that anybody should go to put theirselves out about her? do you remember my bringin' home a gentleman after ten o'clock, one september night; a gentleman as was wet through to the skin, and was covered with mud and slush, and green slime and black muck, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, and had his arm broke, and his shoulder swelled up awful; and was such a objeck that nobody would ha' knowed him; a gentleman as had to have his clothes cut off him in some places, and as sat by the kitchen fire, starin' at the coals as if he had gone mad or stupid-like, and didn't know where he was, or who he was; and as had to be cared for like a baby, and dressed, and dried, and washed, and fed with spoonfuls of brandy, that had to be forced between his locked teeth, before any life could be got into him? do you remember that, mother?" the old woman nodded, and muttered something to the effect that she remembered all these circumstances most vividly, now that luke happened to mention them. robert audley uttered a wild cry, and fell down upon his knees by the side of the sick man's bed. "my god!" he ejaculated, "i think thee for thy wondrous mercies. george talboys is alive!" "wait a bit," said mr. marks, "don't you be too fast. mother, give us down that tin box on the shelf over against the chest of drawers, will you?" the old woman obeyed, and after fumbling among broken teacups and milk-jugs, lidless wooden cotton-boxes, and a miscellaneous litter of rags and crockery, produced a tin snuff-box with a sliding lid; a shabby, dirty-looking box enough. robert audley still knelt by the bedside with his face hidden by his clasped hands. luke marks opened the tin box. "there ain't no money in it, more's the pity," he said, "or if there had been it wouldn't have been let stop very long. but there's summat in it that perhaps you'll think quite as valliable as money, and that's what i'm goin' to give you as a proof that a drunken brute can feel thankful to them as is kind to him." he took out two folded papers, which he gave into robert audley's hands. they were two leaves torn out of a pocket-book, and they were written upon in pencil, and in a handwriting that was quite strange to mr. audley�a cramped, stiff, and yet scrawling hand, such as some plowman might have written. "i don't know this writing," robert said, as he eagerly unfolded the first of the two papers. "what has this to do with my friend? why do you show me these?" "suppose you read 'em first," said mr. marks, "and ask me questions about them afterwards." the first paper which robert audley had unfolded contained the following lines, written in that cramped, yet scrawling hand which was so strange to him: "my dear friend�i write to you in such utter confusion of mind as perhaps no man ever before suffered. i cannot tell you what has happened to me, i can only tell you that something has happened which will drive me from england a broken-hearted man, to seek some corner of the earth in which i may live and die unknown and forgotten. i can only ask you to forget me. if your friendship could have done me any good, i would have appealed to it. if your counsel could have been any help to me, i would have confided in you. but neither friendship nor counsel can help me; and all i can say to you is this, god bless you for the past, and teach you to forget me in the future. g.t." the second paper was addressed to another person, and its contents were briefer than those of the first. "helen�may god pity and forgive you for that which you have done to-day, as truly as i do. rest in peace. you shall never hear of me again; to you and to the world i shall henceforth be that which you wished me to be to-day. you need fear no molestation from me. i leave england never to return. "g.t." robert audley sat staring at these lines in hopeless bewilderment. they were not in his friend's familiar hand, and yet they purported to be written by him and were signed with his initials. he looked scrutinizingly at the face of luke marks, thinking that perhaps some trick was being played upon him. "this was not written by george talboys," he said. "it was," answered luke marks, "it was written by mr. talboys, every line of it. he wrote it with his own hand; but it was his left hand, for he couldn't use his right because of his broken arm." robert audley looked up suddenly, and the shadow of suspicion passed away from his face. "i understand," he said, "i understand. tell me all; tell me how it was that my poor friend was saved." "i was at work up at atkinson's farm, last september," said luke marks, "helping to stack the last of the corn, and as the nighest way from the farm to mother's cottage was through the meadows at the back of the court, i used to come that way, and phoebe used to stand in the garden wall beyond the lime-walk sometimes, to have a chat with me, knowin' my time o' comin' home. "i don't know what phoebe was a-doin' upon the evenin' of the seventh o' september�i rek'lect the date because farmer atkinson paid me my wages all of a lump on that day, and i'd had to sign a bit of a receipt for the money he give me�i don't know what she was a-doin', but she warn't at the gate agen the lime-walk, so i went round to the other side o' the gardens and jumped across the dry ditch, for i wanted partic'ler to see her that night, as i was goin' away to work upon a farm beyond chelmsford the next day. audley church clock struck nine as i was crossin' the meadows between atkinson's and the court, and it must have been about a quarter past nine when i got into the kitchen garden. "i crossed the garden, and went into the lime-walk; the nighest way to the servants' hall took me through the shrubbery and past the dry well. it was a dark night, but i knew my way well enough about the old place, and the light in the window of the servants' hall looked red and comfortable through the darkness. i was close against the mouth of the dry well when i heard a sound that made my blood creep. it was a groan�a groan of a man in pain, as was lyin' somewhere hid among the bushes. i warn't afraid of ghosts and i warn't afraid of anythink in a general way, but there was somethin in hearin' this groan as chilled me to the very heart, and for a minute i was struck all of a heap, and didn't know what to do. but i heard the groan again, and then i began to search among the bushes. i found a man lyin' hidden under a lot o' laurels, and i thought at first he was up to no good, and i was a-goin' to collar him to take him to the house, when he caught me by the wrist without gettin' up from the ground, but lookin' at me very earnest, as i could see by the way his face was turned toward me in the darkness, and asked me who i was, and what i was, and what i had to do with the folks at the court. "there was somethin' in the way he spoke that told me he was a gentleman, though i didn't know him from adam, and couldn't see his face; and i answered his questions civil. "'i want to get away from this place,' he said, 'without bein' seen by any livin' creetur, remember that. i've been lyin' here ever since four o'clock to-day, and i'm half dead, but i want to get away without bein' seen, mind that.' "i told him that was easy enough, but i began to think my first thoughts of him might have been right enough, after all, and that he couldn't have been up to no good to want to sneak away so precious quiet. "'can you take me to any place where i can get a change of dry clothes,' he says, 'without half a dozen people knowin' it?' "he'd got up into a sittin' attitude by this time, and i could see that his right arm hung close by his side, and that he was in pain. "i pointed to his arm, and asked him what was the matter with it; but he only answered, very quiet like: 'broken, my lad, broken. not that that's much,' he says in another tone, speaking to himself like, more than to me. 'there's broken hearts as well as broken limbs, and they're not so easy mended.' "i told him i could take him to mother's cottage, and that he could dry his clothes there and welcome. "'can your mother keep a secret?' he asked. "'well, she could keep one well enough if she could remember it,' i told him; 'but you might tell her all the secrets of the freemasons, and foresters, and buffalers and oddfellers as ever was, to-night: and she'd have forgotten all about 'em to-morrow mornin'.' "he seemed satisfied with this, and he got himself up by holdin' on to me, for it seemed as if his limbs was cramped, the use of 'em was almost gone. i felt as he came agen me, that his clothes was wet and mucky. "'you haven't been and fell into the fish-pond, have you, sir?' i asked. "he made no answer to my question; he didn't seem even to have heard it. i could see now he was standin' upon his feet that he was a tall, fine-made man, a head and shoulders higher than me. "'take me to your mother's cottage,' he said, 'and get me some dry clothes if you can; i'll pay you well for your trouble.' "i knew that the key was mostly left in the wooden gate in the garden wall, so i led him that way. he could scarcely walk at first, and it was only by leanin' heavily upon my shoulder that he managed to get along. i got him through the gate, leavin' it unlocked behind me, and trustin' to the chance of that not bein' noticed by the under-gardener, who had the care of the key, and was a careless chap enough. i took him across the meadows, and brought him up here, still keepin' away from the village, and in the fields, where there wasn't a creature to see us at that time o' night; and so i got him into the room down-stairs, where mother was a-sittin' over the fire gettin' my bit o' supper ready for me. "i put the strange chap in a chair agen the fire, and then for the first time i had a good look at him. i never see anybody in such a state before. he was all over green damp and muck, and his hands was scratched and cut to pieces. i got his clothes off him how i could, for he was like a child in my hands, and sat starin' at the fire as helpless as any baby; only givin' a long heavy sigh now and then, as if his heart was a-goin' to bust. at last he dropped into a kind of a doze, a stupid sort of sleep, and began to nod over the fire, so i ran and got a blanket and wrapped him in it, and got him to lie down on the press bedstead in the room under this. i sent mother to bed, and i sat by the fire and watched him, and kep' the fire up till it was just upon daybreak, when he 'woke up all of a sudden with a start, and said he must go, directly this minute. "i begged him not to think of such a thing and told him he warn't fit to move for ever so long; but he said he must go, and he got up, and though he staggered like, and at first could hardly stand steady two minutes together, he wouldn't be beat, and he got me to dress him in his clothes as i'd dried and cleaned as well as i could while he laid asleep. i did manage it at last, but the clothes was awful spoiled, and he looked a dreadful objeck, with his pale face and a great cut on his forehead that i'd washed and tied up with a handkercher. he could only get his coat on by buttoning it on round his neck, for he couldn't put a sleeve upon his broken arm. but he held out agen everything, though he groaned every now and then; and what with the scratches and bruises on his hands, and the cut upon his forehead, and his stiff limbs and broken arm, he'd plenty of call to groan; and by the time it was broad daylight he was dressed and ready to go. "'what's the nearest town to this upon the london road?' he asked me. "i told him as the nighest town was brentwood. "'very well, then,' he says, 'if you'll go with me to brentwood, and take me to some surgeon as'll set my arm, i'll give you a five pound note for that and all your other trouble.' "i told him that i was ready and willin' to do anything as he wanted done; and asked him if i shouldn't go and see if i could borrow a cart from some of the neighbors to drive him over in, for i told him it was a good six miles' walk. "he shook his head. no, no, no, he said, he didn't want anybody to know anything about him; he'd rather walk it. "he did walk it; and he walked like a good 'un, too; though i know as every step he took o' them six miles he took in pain; but he held out as he'd held out before; i never see such a chap to hold out in all my blessed life. he had to stop sometimes and lean agen a gateway to get his breath; but he held out still, till at last we got into brentwood, and then he says, 'take me to the nighest surgeon's,' and i waited while he had his arm set in splints, which took a precious long time. the surgeon wanted him to stay in brentwood till he was better, but he said it warn't to be heard on, he must get up to london without a minute's loss of time; so the surgeon made him as comfortable as he could, considering and tied up his arm in a sling." robert audley started. a circumstance connected with his visit to liverpool dashed suddenly back upon his memory. he remembered the clerk who had called him back to say there was a passenger who took his berth on board the victoria regia within an hour or so of the vessel's sailing; a young man with his arm in a sling, who had called himself by some common name, which robert had forgotten. "when his arm was dressed," continued luke, "he says to the surgeon, 'can you give me a pencil to write something before i go away?' the surgeon smiles and shakes his head: 'you'll never be able to write with that there hand to-day,' he says, pointin' to the arm as had just been dressed. 'p'raps not,' the young chap answers, quiet enough, 'but i can write with the other,' 'can't i write it for you?' says the surgeon. 'no, thank you,' answers the other; 'what i've got to write is private. if you can give me a couple of envelopes, i'll be obliged to you.' "with that the surgeon goes to fetch the envelopes, and the young chap takes a pocket-book out of his coat pocket with his left hand; the cover was wet and dirty, but the inside was clean enough, and he tears out a couple of leaves and begins to write upon 'em as you see; and he writes dreadful awk'ard with his left hand, and he writes slow, but he contrives to finish what you see, and then he puts the two bits o' writin' into the envelopes as the surgeon brings him, and he seals 'em up, and he puts a pencil cross upon one of 'em, and nothing on the other: and then he pays the surgeon for his trouble, and the surgeon says, ain't there nothin' more he can do for him, and can't he persuade him to stay in brentwood till his arm's better; but he says no, no, it ain't possible; and then he says to me, 'come along o' me to the railway station, and i'll give you what i've promised.' "so i went to the station with him. we was in time to catch the train as stops at brentwood at half after eight, and we had five minutes to spare. so he takes me into a corner of the platform, and he says, 'i wants you to deliver these here letters for me,' which i told him i was willin'. 'very well, then,' he says; 'look here; you know audley court?' 'yes,' i says, 'i ought to, for my sweetheart lives lady's maid there.' 'whose lady's maid?' he says. so i tells him, 'my lady's, the new lady what was governess at mr. dawson's.' 'very well, then,' he says; 'this here letter with the cross upon the envelope is for lady audley, but you're to be sure to give it into her own hands; and remember to take care as nobody sees you give it.' i promises to do this, and he hands me the first letter. and then he says, 'do you know mr. audley, as is nevy to sir michael?' and i said, 'yes, i've heerd tell on him, and i've heerd as he was a reg'lar swell, but affable and free-spoken' (for i heerd 'em tell on you, you know)," luke added, parenthetically. "'now look here,' the young chap says, 'you're to give this other letter to mr. robert audley, whose a-stayin' at the sun inn, in the village;' and i tells him it's all right, as i've know'd the sun ever since i was a baby. so then he gives me the second letter, what's got nothing wrote upon the envelope, and he gives me a five-pound note, accordin' to promise; and then he says, 'good-day, and thank you for all your trouble,'and he gets into a second-class carriage; and the last i sees of him is a face as white as a sheet of writin' paper, and a great patch of stickin'-plaster criss-crossed upon his forehead." "poor george! poor george!" "i went back to audley, and i went straight to the sun inn, and asked for you, meanin' to deliver both letters faithful, so help me god! then; but the landlord told me as you'd started off that mornin' for london, and he didn't know when you'd come back, and he didn't know the name o' the place where you lived in london, though he said he thought it was in one o' them law courts, such as westminster hall or doctors' commons, or somethin' like that. so what was i to do? i couldn't send a letter by post, not knowin' where to direct to, and i couldn't give it into your own hands, and i'd been told partickler not to let anybody else know of it; so i'd nothing to do but to wait and see if you come back, and bide my time for givin' of it to you. "i thought i'd go over to the court in the evenin' and see phoebe, and find out from her when there'd be a chance of seein' her lady, for i know'd she could manage it if she liked. so i didn't go to work that day, though i ought to ha' done, and i lounged and idled about until it was nigh upon dusk, and then i goes down to the meadows behind the court, and there i finds phoebe sure enough, waitin' agen the wooden door in the wall, on the lookout for me. "i hadn't been talkin' to her long before i see there was somethink wrong with her and i told her as much. "well,' she says, 'i ain't quite myself this evenin', for i had a upset yesterday, and i ain't got over it yet.' "'a upset,' i says. 'you had a quarrel with your missus, i suppose.' "she didn't answer me directly, but she smiled the queerest smile as ever i see, and presently she says: "no, luke, it weren't nothin' o' that kind; and what's more, nobody could be friendlier toward me than my lady. i think she'd do any think for me a'most; and i think, whether it was a bit o' farming stock and furniture or such like, or whether it was the good-will of a public-house, she wouldn't refuse me anythink as i asked her.' "i couldn't make out this, for it was only a few days before as she'd told me her missus was selfish and extravagant, and we might wait a long time before we could get what we wanted from her. "so i says to her, 'why, this is rather sudden like, phoebe;' and she says, 'yes, it is sudden;' and she smiles again, just the same sort of smile as before. upon that i turns round upon her sharp, and says: "i'll tell you what it is, my gal, you're a-keepin' somethink from me; somethink you've been told, or somethink you've found out; and if you think you're a-goin' to try that game on with me, you'll find you're very much mistaken; and so i give you warnin'." "but she laughed it off like, and says, 'lor' luke, what could have put such fancies into your head?' "'perhaps other people can keep secrets as well as you,' i said, 'and perhaps other people can make friends as well as you. there was a gentleman came here to see your missus yesterday, warn't there�a tall young gentleman with a brown beard?' "instead of answering of me like a christian, my cousin phoebe bursts out a-cryin', and wrings her hands, and goes on awful, until i'm dashed if i can make out what she's up to. "but little by little i got it out of her, for i wouldn't stand no nonsense; find she told me how she'd been sittin' at work at the window of her little room, which was at the top of the house, right up in one of the gables, and overlooked the lime-walk, and the shrubbery and the well, when she see my lady walking with a strange gentleman, and they walked together for a long time, until by-and-by they�" "stop!" cried robert, "i know the rest." "well, phoebe told me all about what she see, and she told me she'd met her lady almost directly afterward, and somethin' had passed between 'em, not much, but enough to let her missus know that the servant what she looked down upon had found out that as would put her in that servant's power to the last day of her life. "'and she is in my power, luke,' says phoebe; 'and she'll do anythin' in the world for us if we keep her secret.' "so you see both my lady audley and her maid thought as the gentleman as i'd seen safe off by the london train was lying dead at the bottom of the well. if i was to give the letter they'd find out the contrary of this; and if i was to give the letter, phoebe and me would lose the chance of gettin' started in life by her missus. "so i kep' the letter and kep' my secret, and my lady kep' hern. but i thought if she acted liberal by me, and gave me the money i wanted, free like, i'd tell her everythink, and make her mind easy. "but she didn't. whatever she give me she throwed me as if i'd been a dog. whenever she spoke to me, she spoke as she might have spoken to a dog; and a dog she couldn't abide the sight of. there was no word in her mouth that was too bad for me; there was no toss as she could give her head that was too proud and scornful for me; and my blood b'iled agen her, and i kep' my secret, and let her keep hern. i opened the two letters, and i read 'em, but i couldn't make much sense out of 'em, and i hid 'em away; and not a creature but me has seen 'em until this night." luke marks had finished his story, and lay quietly enough, exhausted by having talked so long. he watched robert audley's face, fully expecting some reproof, some grave lecture; for he had a vague consciousness that he had done wrong. but robert did not lecture him; he had no fancy for an office which he did not think himself fitted to perform. robert audley sat until long after daybreak with the sick man, who fell into a heavy slumber a short time after he had finished his story. the old woman had dozed comfortably throughout her son's confession. phoebe was asleep upon the press bedstead in the room below; so the young barrister was the only watcher. he could not sleep; he could only think of the story he had heard. he could only thank god for his friend's preservation, and pray that he might be able to go to clara talboys, and say, "your brother still lives, and has been found." phoebe came up-stairs at eight o'clock, ready to take her place at the sick-bed, and robert audley went away, to get a bed at the sun inn. it was nearly dusk when he awoke out of a long dreamless slumber, and dressed himself before dining in the little sitting-room, in which he and george had sat together a few months before. the landlord waited upon him at dinner, and told him that luke marks had died at five o'clock that afternoon. "he went off rather sudden like," the man said, "but very quiet." robert audley wrote a long letter that evening, addressed to madame taylor, care of monsieur val, villebrumeuse; a long letter in which he told the wretched woman who had borne so many names, and was to bear a false one for the rest of her life, the story that the dying man had told him. "it may be some comfort to her to hear that her husband did not perish in his youth by her wicked hand," he thought, "if her selfish soul can hold any sentiment of pity or sorrow for others." chapter xl. restored. clara talboys returned to dorsetshire, to tell her father that his only son had sailed for australia upon the 9th of september, and that it was most probable he yet lived, and would return to claim the forgiveness of the father he had never very particularly injured; except in the matter of having made that terrible matrimonial mistake which had exercised so fatal an influence upon his youth. mr. harcourt-talboys was fairly nonplused. junius brutus had never been placed in such a position as this, and seeing no way of getting out of this dilemma by acting after his favorite model, mr. talboys was fain to be natural for once in his life, and to confess that he had suffered much uneasiness and pain of mind about his only son since his conversation with robert audley, and that he would be heartily glad to take his poor boy to his arms, whenever he should return to england. but when was he likely to return? and how was he to be communicated with? that was the question. robert audley remembered the advertisements which he had caused to be inserted in the melbourne and sydney papers. if george had re-entered either city alive, how was it that no notice had ever been taken of that advertisement? was it likely that his friend would be indifferent to his uneasiness? but then, again, it was just possible that george talboys had not happened to see this advertisement; and, as he had traveled under a feigned name, neither his fellow passengers nor the captain of the vessel would have been able to identify him with the person advertised for. what was to be done? must they wait patiently till george grew weary of his exile, and returned to his friends who loved him? or were there any means to be taken by which his return might be hastened? robert audley was at fault! perhaps, in the unspeakable relief of mind which he had experienced upon the discovery of his friend's escape, he was unable to look beyond the one fact of that providential preservation. in this state of mind he went down to dorsetshire to pay a visit to mr. talboys, who had given way to a perfect torrent of generous impulses, and had gone so far as to invite his son's friend to share the prim hospitality of the square, red brick mansion. mr. talboys had only two sentiments upon the subject of george's story; one was a natural relief and happiness in the thought that his son had been saved, the other was an earnest wish that my lady had been his wife, and that he might thus have had the pleasure of making a signal example of her. "it is not for me to blame you, mr. audley," he said, "for having smuggled this guilty woman out of the reach of justice, and thus, as i may say, paltered with the laws of your country. i can only remark that, had the lady fallen into my hands, she would have been very differently treated." it was in the middle of april when robert audley found himself once more under those black fir-trees beneath which his wandering thoughts had so often stayed since his first meeting with clara talboys. there were primroses and early violets in the hedges now, and the streams, which, upon his first visit, had been hard and frost-bound as the heart of harcourt talboys, had thawed, like that gentleman, and ran merrily under the blackthorn bushes in the capricious april sunshine. robert had a prim bedroom, and an uncompromising dressing-room allotted him in the square house, and he woke every morning upon a metallic spring mattress, which always gave him the idea of sleeping upon some musical instrument, to see the sun glaring in upon him through the square, white blinds and lighting up the two lackered urns which adorned the foot of the blue iron bedstead, until they blazed like two tiny brazen lamps of the roman period. he emulated mr. harcourt talboys in the matter of shower-baths and cold water, and emerged prim and blue as that gentleman himself, as the clock in the hall struck seven, to join the master of the house in his ante-breakfast constitutional under the fir-trees in the stiff plantation. but there was generally a third person who assisted in the constitutional promenades, and that third person was clara talboys, who used to walk by her father's side, more beautiful than the morning�for that was sometimes dull and cloudy, while she was always fresh and bright�in a broad-leaved straw-hat and flapping blue ribbons, one quarter of an inch of which mr. audley would have esteemed a prouder decoration than ever adorned a favored creature's button-hole. at first they were very ceremonious toward each other, and were only familiar and friendly upon the one subject of george's adventures; but little by little a pleasant intimacy arose between them, and before the first three weeks of robert's visit had elapsed, miss talboys made him happy, by taking him seriously in hand and lecturing him on the purposeless life he had led so long, and the little use he had made of the talents and opportunities that had been given to him. how pleasant it was to be lectured by the woman he loved! how pleasant it was to humiliate himself and depreciate himself before her! how delightful it was to get such splendid opportunities of hinting that if his life had been sanctified by an object he might indeed have striven to be something better than an idle flaneur upon the smooth pathways that have no particular goal; that, blessed by the ties which would have given a solemn purpose to every hour of his existence, he might indeed have fought the battle earnestly and unflinchingly. he generally wound up with a gloomy insinuation to the effect that it was only likely he would drop quietly over the edge of the temple gardens some afternoon when the river was bright and placid in the low sunlight, and the little children had gone home to their tea. "do you think i can read french novels and smoke mild turkish until i am three-score-and-ten, miss talboys?" he asked. "do you think there will not come a day in which my meerschaums will be foul, and the french novels more than usually stupid, and life altogether such a dismal monotony that i shall want to get rid of it somehow or other?" i am sorry to say that while this hypocritical young barrister was holding forth in this despondent way, he had mentally sold up his bachelor possessions, including all michel levy's publications, and half a dozen solid silver-mounted meerschaums; pensioned off mrs. maloney, and laid out two or three thousand pounds in the purchase of a few acres of verdant shrubbery and sloping lawn, embosomed amid which there should be a fairy cottage ornée, whose rustic casements should glimmer out of bowers of myrtle and clematis to see themselves reflected in the purple bosom of the lake. of course, clara talboys was far from discovering the drift of these melancholy lamentations. she recommended mr. audley to read hard and think seriously of his profession, and begin life in real earnest. it was a hard, dry sort of existence, perhaps, which she recommended; a life of serious work and application, in which he should strive to be useful to his fellow-creatures, and win a reputation for himself. "i'd do all that," he thought, "and do it earnestly, if i could be sure of a reward for my labor. if she would accept my reputation when it was won, and support me in the struggle by her beloved companionship. but what if she sends me away to fight the battle, and marries some hulking country squire while my back is turned?" being naturally of a vacillating and dilatory disposition, there is no saying how long mr. audley might have kept his secret, fearful to speak and break the charm of that uncertainty which, though not always hopeful, was very seldom quite despairing, had not he been hurried by the impulse of an unguarded moment into a full confession of the truth. he had stayed five weeks at grange heath, and felt that he could not, in common decency, stay any longer; so he had packed his portmanteau one pleasant may morning, and had announced his departure. mr. talboys was not the sort of man to utter any passionate lamentations at the prospect of losing his guest, but he expressed himself with a cool cordiality which served with him as the strongest demonstration of friendship. "we have got on very well together, mr. audley," he said, "and you have been pleased to appear sufficiently happy in the quiet routine of our orderly household; nay, more, you have conformed to our little domestic regulations in a manner which i cannot refrain from saying i take as an especial compliment to myself." robert bowed. how thankful he was to the good fortune which had never suffered him to oversleep the signal of the clanging bell, or led him away beyond the ken of clocks at mr. talboys' luncheon hour. "i trust as we have got on so remarkably well together," mr. talboys resumed, "you will do me the honor of repeating your visit to dorsetshire whenever you feel inclined. you will find plenty of sport among my farms, and you will meet with every politeness and attention from my tenants, if you like to bring your gun with you." robert responded most heartily to these friendly overtures. he declared that there was no earthly occupation that was more agreeable to him than partridge-shooting, and that he should be only too delighted to avail himself of the privilege so kindly offered to him. he could not help glancing toward clara as he said this. the perfect lids drooped a little over the brown eyes, and the faintest shadow of a blush illuminated the beautiful face. but this was the young barrister's last day in elysium, and there must be a dreary interval of days and nights and weeks and months before the first of september would give him an excuse for returning to dorsetshire; a dreary interval which fresh colored young squires or fat widowers of eight-and-forty, might use to his disadvantage. it was no wonder, therefore, that he contemplated this dismal prospect with moody despair, and was bad company for miss talboys that morning. but in the evening after dinner, when the sun was low in the west, and harcourt talboys closeted in his library upon some judicial business with his lawyer and a tenant farmer, mr. audley grew a little more agreeable. he stood by clara's side in one of the long windows of the drawing-room, watching the shadows deepening in the sky and the rosy light growing every moment rosier as the sun died out. he could not help enjoying that quiet tête-a-tête, though the shadow of the next morning's express which was to carry him away to london loomed darkly across the pathway of his joy. he could not help being happy in her presence; forgetful of the past, reckless of the future. they talked of the one subject which was always a bond of union between them. they talked of her lost brother george. she spoke of him in a very melancholy tone this evening. how could she be otherwise than sad, remembering that if he lived�and she was not even sure of that�he was a lonely wanderer far away from all who loved him, and carrying the memory of a blighted life wherever he went. "i cannot think how papa can be so resigned to my poor brother's absence," she said, "for he does love him, mr. audley; even you must have seen lately that he does love him. but i cannot think how he can so quietly submit to his absence. if i were a man, i would go to australia, and find him, and bring him back; if he was still to be found among the living," she added, in a lower voice. she turned her face away from robert, and looked out at the darkening sky. he laid his hand upon her arm. it trembled in spite of him, and his voice trembled, too, as he spoke to her. "shall i go to look for your brother?" he said. "you!" she turned her head, and looked at him earnestly through her tears. "you, mr. audley! do you think that i could ask you to make such a sacrifice for me, or for those i love?" "and do you think, clara, that i should think any sacrifice too great a one if it were made for you? do you think there is any voyage i would refuse to take, if i knew that you would welcome me when i came home, and thank me for having served you faithfully? i will go from one end of the continent of australia to the other to look for your brother, if you please, clara; and will never return alive unless i bring him with me, and will take my chance of what reward you shall give me for my labor." her head was bent, and it was some moments before she answered him. "you are very good and generous, mr. audley," she said, at last, "and i feel this offer too much to be able to thank you for it. but what you speak of could never be. by what right could i accept such a sacrifice?" "by the right which makes me your bounden slave forever and ever, whether you will or no. by right of the love i bear you, clara," cried mr. audley, dropping on his knees�rather awkwardly, it must be confessed�and covering a soft little hand, that he had found half hidden among the folds of a silken dress, with passionate kisses. "i love you, clara," he said, "i love you. you may call for your father, and have me turned out of the house this moment, if you like; but i shall go on loving you all the same; and i shall love you forever and ever, whether you will or no." the little hand was drawn away from his, but not with a sudden or angry gesture, and it rested for one moment lightly and tremulously upon his dark hair. "clara, clara!" he murmured, in a low, pleading voice, "shall i go to australia to look for your brother?" there was no answer. i don't know how it is, but there is scarcely anything more delicious than silence in such cases. every moment of hesitation is a tacit avowal; every pause is a tender confession. "shall we both go, dearest? shall we go as man and wife? shall we go together, my dear love, and bring our brother back between us?" mr. harcourt talboys, coming into the lamplit room a quarter of an hour afterward, found robert audley alone, and had to listen to a revelation which very much surprised him. like all self-sufficient people, he was tolerably blind to everything that happened under his nose, and he had fully believed that his own society, and the spartan regularity of his household, had been the attractions which had made dorsetshire delightful to his guest. he was rather disappointed, therefore; but he bore his disappointment pretty well, and expressed a placid and rather stoical satisfaction at the turn which affairs had taken. so robert audley went back to london, to surrender his chambers in figtree court, and to make all due inquiries about such ships as sailed from liverpool for sydney in the month of june. he had lingered until after luncheon at grange heath, and it was in the dusky twilight that he entered the shady temple courts and found his way to his chambers. he found mrs. maloney scrubbing the stairs, as was her wont upon a saturday evening, and he had to make his way upward amidst an atmosphere of soapy steam, that made the balusters greasy under his touch. "there's lots of letters, yer honor," the laundress said, as she rose from her knees and flattened herself against the wall to enable robert to pass her, "and there's some parcels, and there's a gentleman which has called ever so many times, and is waitin' to-night, for i towld him you'd written to me to say your rooms were to be aired." he opened the door of his sitting-room, and walked in. the canaries were singing their farewell to the setting sun, and the faint, yellow light was flickering upon the geranium leaves. the visitor, whoever he was, sat with his back to the window and his head bent upon his breast. but he started up as robert audley entered the room, and the young man uttered a great cry of delight and surprise, and opened his arms to his lost friend, george talboys. we know how much robert had to tell. he touched lightly and tenderly upon that subject which he knew was cruelly painful to his friends; he said very little of the wretched woman who was wearing out the remnant of her wicked life in the quiet suburb of the forgotten belgian city. george talboys spoke very briefly of that sunny seventh of september, upon which he had left his friend sleeping by the trout stream while he went to accuse his false wife of that conspiracy which had well nigh broken his heart. "god knows that from the moment in which i sunk into the black pit, knowing the treacherous hand that had sent me to what might have been my death, my chief thought was of the safety of the woman who had betrayed me. i fell upon my feet upon a mass of slush and mire, but my shoulder was bruised, and my arm broken against the side of the well. i was stunned and dazed for a few minutes, but i roused myself by an effort, for i felt that the atmosphere i breathed was deadly. i had my australian experiences to help me in my peril; i could climb like a cat. the stones of which the well was built were rugged and irregular, and i was able to work my way upward by planting my feet in the interstices of the stones, and resting my back at times against the opposite side of the well, helping myself as well as i could with my hands, though one arm was crippled. it was hard work, bob, and it seems strange that a man who had long professed himself weary of his life, should take so much trouble to preserve it. i think i must have been working upward of half an hour before i got to the top; i know the time seemed an eternity of pain and peril. it was impossible for me to leave the place until after dark without being observed, so i hid myself behind a clump of laurel-bushes, and lay down on the grass faint and exhausted to wait for nightfall. the man who found me there told you the rest. robert." "yes, my poor old friend.�yes, he told me all." george had never returned to australia after all. he had gone on board the victoria regia, but had afterward changed his berth for one in another vessel belonging to the same owners, and had gone to new york, where he had stayed as long as he could endure the loneliness of an existence which separated him from every friend he had ever known. "jonathan was very kind to me, bob," he said; "i had enough money to enable me to get on pretty well in my own quiet way and i meant to have started for the california gold fields to get more when that was gone. i might have made plenty of friends had i pleased, but i carried the old bullet in my breast; and what sympathy could i have with men who knew nothing of my grief? i yearned for the strong grasp of your hand, bob; the friendly touch of the hand which had guided me through the darkest passage of my life." chapter xli. at peace. two years have passed since the may twilight in which robert found his old friend; and mr. audley's dream of a fairy cottage has been realized between teddington locks and hampton bridge, where, amid a little forest of foliage, there is a fantastical dwelling place of rustic woodwork, whose latticed windows look out upon the river. here, among the lilies and the rushes on the sloping bank, a brave boy of eight years old plays with a toddling baby, who peers wonderingly from his nurse's arms at that other baby in the purple depth of the quiet water. mr. audley is a rising man upon the home circuit by this time, and has distinguished himself in the great breach of promise case of hobbs v. nobbs, and has convulsed the court by his deliciously comic rendering of the faithless nobb's amatory correspondence. the handsome dark-eyed boy is master george talboys, who declines musa at eton, and fishes for tadpoles in the clear water under the spreading umbrage beyond the ivied walls of the academy. but he comes very often to the fairy cottage to see his father, who lives there with his sister and his sister's husband; and he is very happy with his uncle robert, his aunt clara, and the pretty baby who has just begun to toddle on the smooth lawn that slopes down to the water's brink, upon which there is a little swiss boat-house and landing-stage where robert and george moor their slender wherries. other people come to the cottage near teddington. a bright, merry-hearted girl, and a gray-bearded gentleman, who has survived the trouble of his life, and battled with it as a christian should. it is more than a year since a black-edged letter, written upon foreign paper, came to robert audley, to announce the death of a certain madame taylor, who had expired peacefully at villebrumeuse, dying after a long illness, which monsieur val describes as a maladie de langueur. another visitor comes to the cottage in this bright summer of 1861�a frank, generous hearted young man, who tosses the baby and plays with georgey, and is especially great in the management of the boats, which are never idle when sir harry towers is at teddington. there is a pretty rustic smoking-room over the swiss boat-house, in which the gentlemen sit and smoke in the summer evenings, and whence they are summoned by clara and alicia to drink tea, and eat strawberries and cream upon the lawn. audley court is shut up, and a grim old housekeeper reigns paramount in the mansion which my lady's ringing laughter once made musical. a curtain hangs before the pre-raphaelite portrait; and the blue mold which artists dread gathers upon the wouvermans and poussins, the cuyps and tintorettis. the house is often shown to inquisitive visitors, though the baronet is not informed of that fact, and people admire my lady's rooms, and ask many questions about the pretty, fair-haired woman who died abroad. sir michael has no fancy to return to the familiar dwelling-place in which he once dreamed a brief dream of impossible happiness. he remains in london until alicia shall be lady towers, when he is to remove to a house he has lately bought in hertfordshire, on the borders of his son-in-law's estate. george talboys is very happy with his sister and his old friend. he is a young man yet, remember, and it is not quite impossible that he may, by-and-by, find some one who will console him for the past. that dark story of the past fades little by little every day, and there may come a time in which the shadow my lady's wickedness has cast upon the young man's life will utterly vanish away. the meerschaum and the french novels have been presented to a young templar with whom robert audley had been friendly in his bachelor days; and mrs. maloney has a little pension, paid her quarterly, for her care of the canaries and geraniums. i hope no one will take objection to my story because the end of it leaves the good people all happy and at peace. if my experience of life has not been very long, it has at least been manifold; and i can safely subscribe to that which a mighty king and a great philosopher declared, when he said, that neither the experience of his youth nor of his age had ever shown him "the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." the end. 