Charles Ravenshoe had committed suicide — committed suicide as deliberately as any maddened wretch had done that day in all the wide miserable world. He knew it well, and was determined to go on with it. He had not hung himself, or drowned himself, but he had committed deliberate suicide, and he knew — knew well — that his obstinacy would carry him through to the end.
What is suicide nine cases out of ten? Any one can tell you. It is the act of a mad, proud coward, who flies, by his own deed, not from humiliation or disgrace, but, as he fancies, from feeling the consequences of them — who flies to unknown, doubtful evils, sooner than bear positive, present, undoubted ones. All this had Charles done, buoying him up with this excuse and that excuse, and fancying that he was behaving, the cur, like Bayard, or Lieutenant Willoughby — a greater than Bayard — all the time.
The above is Charles’s idea of the matter himself, put in the third person for form’s sake. I don’t agree with all he says about himself I don’t deny that he did very foolish thing, but I incline to believe that there was something noble and self-reliant in his doing it. Think a moment. He had only two courses open to him — the one (I put it coarsely) to eat humble pie, to go back to Cuthbert and Mackworth and accept their ofiers; the other to do as he had done — to go alone into the world, and stand by himself. He did the latter, as we shall see. He could not face Ravenshoe, or any connected with it, again. It had been proved that he was an unwilling impostor, of base, low blood, and his sister — ah, one more pang, poor heart — his sister Ellen, what was she?
Little doubt — little doubt! Better for both of them if they had never been born! He was going to London, and, perhaps, might meet her there! All the vice and misery of the country got thrown into that cesspool When anything had got too foul for the pure country air, men said, Away with it; throw it into the great dunghill, and let it rot there. Was he not going there himself? It was fit she should be there before him! They would meet for certain!
How would they meet? Would she be in silks and satins, or in rags? flaunting in her carriage, or shivering in an archway? What matter? was not shame the heritage of the “lower orders?” The pleasures of the rich must be ministered to by the “lower orders,” or what was the use of money or rank? He was one of the lower orders now. He must learn his lesson; learn to cringe and whine like the rest of them. It would be hard, but it must be learnt. The dogs rose against it sometimes, but it never paid.
The devil was pretty busy with poor Charles in his despair, you see. This was all he had left after three and twenty years of careless idleness and luxury. His creed had been, “I am a Ravenshoe,” and lo! one morning, he was a Ravenshoe no longer. A poor crow, that had been fancying himself an eagle. A crow! “by heavens,” he thought “he was not even that.” A non-entity, turned into the world to find his own value! What were honour, honesty, virtue to him? Why, nothing — words! He must truckle and pander for his living. Why not go back and truckle to Father Mackworth? There was time yet,
No!
Why not? Was it pride only? We have no right to say what it was. If it was only pride, it was better than nothing. Better to have that straw only to cling to, than to be all alone in the great sea with nothing. We have seen that he has done nothing good, with circumstances all in his favour; let us see if he can in any way hold his own, with circumstances all against him.
“America?” he thought once. “They are all gentlemen there. If I could only find her, and tear her jewels off, we would go there together. But she must be found — she must be found. I will never leave England till she goes with me. We shall be brought together. We shall see one another. I love her as I never loved her before. What a sweet, gentle little love she was! My arling! And, when 1 have kissed her, I never dreamed she was my sister. My pretty love! Ellen, Ellen, I am coming to you. Where are you, my love?”
He was alone, in a railway carriage, leaning out to catch the fresh wind, as he said this. He said it once again, this time aloud. “Where are you, my sister?”
Where was she? Could he have only seen! We may be allowed to see, though he could not. Come forward into the great Babylon with me, while he is speeding on towards it; we will rejoin him in an instant.
In a small luxuriously furnished hall, there stands a beautiful woman, dressed modestly in the garb of a servant. She is standing with her arms folded, and a cold, stern, curious look on her face. She is looking towards the hall-door, which is held open by a footman. She is waiting for some one who is coming in; and two travellers enter, a man and a woman. She goes up to the woman, and says, quietly, “I bid you welcome, madam.” Who are these people? Is that waiting-woman Ellen? and these travellers, are they Lord Welter and Adelaide? Let us get back to poor Charles: better be with him than here!
We must follow him closely. We must see why, in his despair, he took the extraordinary resolution that he did. Not that I shall take any particular pains to follow the exact process of his mind in arriving at his determination. If the story has hitherto been told well it will appear nothing extraordinary, and, if otherwise, an intelligent reader would very soon detect any attempt at bolstering up ill-told facts by elaborate, soul-analyzing theories.
He could have wished the train would have run on for ever; but he was aroused by the lights growing thicker and more brilliant, and he felt that they were nearing London, and that the time for action was come.
The great plunge was taken, and he was alone in the cold street — alone, save for the man who carried his baggage. He stood for a moment or so, confused with the rush of carriages of all sorts which were taking the people from the train, till he was aroused by the man asking him where he was to go to.
Charles said, without thmking, “The Warwick Hotel,” and thither they went. For a moment he regretted that he had said so, but the next moment he said, aloud, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”
The man turned round, and begged his pardon. Charles did not answer him; and the man went on, wondering what sort of young gentleman he had got hold of.
The good landlord was glad to see him. Would he have dinner? — a bit of fish and a lamb chop, for instance? Then it suddenly struck Charles that he was hungry — ravenous. He laughed aloud at the idea; and the landlord laughed too, and rubbed his hands. Should it be whiting or smelts now? he asked.
“Anything,” said Charles, “so long as you feed me uick. And give me wine, will you, of some sort; I want to drink. Give me sherry, will you? And I say, let me taste some now, and then I can see if I like it. I am very particular about my wine, you must know.”
In a few minutes a waiter brought in a glass of wine, and waited to know how Charles liked it. He told the man he could go, and he would tell him at dinnertime. When the man was gone, he looked at the wine with a smile. Then he took it up, and poured it into the coal-scuttle.
“Not yet,” he said, “not yet! I’ll try something else before I try to drink my troubles away.” And then he plunged into the Times.
He had no sooner convinced himself that Lord Aberdeen was tampering with the honour of the country by not declaring war, than he found himself profoundly considering what had caused that great statesman to elope with Adelaide, and whether, in case of a Paissian war, Lady Ascot would possibly convict Father Mackworth of having caused it. Then Lady Ascot came into the room with a large bottle of medicine and a Testament, announcing that she was going to attend a sick gunboat. And then, just as he began to see that he was getting sleepy, to sleep he went, fast as a top.
Half an hour’s sleep restored him, and dinner made things look different. “After all,” he said, as he sipped his wine, “here is only the world on the one side and I
Oil the other. I am utterly reckless, and can sink no further. I will get all the pleasure out of life that I can, honestly; for I am an honest man still, and mean to be. I love you, Madame Adelaide, and you have used me worse than a hound, and made me desperate. If he marries you, I will come forward some day, and disgrace you. If you had only waited till you knew everything, I could have forgiven you. I’ll get a place as a footman, and talk about you in the sen-ants’ hall. All London shall know you were engaged to me.”
“Poor dear, pretty Adelaide; as if I would ever hurt a hair of your head, my sweet love! Silly ”
The landlord came in. There was most excellent company in the smoking-room. Would he condescend to join them?
Company and tobacco! Charles would certainly join them; so he had his wine carried in.
There was a fat gentleman, with a snub nose, who was a Conservative. There was a tall gentleman, with a long nose, who was Liberal. There was a short gentleman, with no particular kind of nose, who was Eadical. There was a handsome gentleman, with big whiskers, who was commercial; and there was a gentleman with bandy legs, who was horsy.
I strongly object to using a slang adjective, if any other can be got to supply its place; but by doing so sometimes one avoids a periphrasis, and does not spoil one’s period. Thus, I know of no predicate for a gentleman with a particular sort of hair, complexion. ress, whiskers, and legs, except the one I have used above, and so it must stand.
As Providence would have it, Charles sat down between the landlord and the horsy man, away from the others. He smoked his cigar, and listened to the conversation.
The Conservative gentleman coalesced with the Liberal gentleman on the subject of Lord Aberdeen’s having sold the country to the Paissians; the Ptadical gentleman also came over to them on that subject; and for a time the opposition seemed to hold an overwhelming majority, and to be merely allowing Aberdeen’s Government to hold place longer, that they might commit themselves deeper. In fact, things seemed to be going all one way, as is often the case in coalition ministries just before a grand crash, when the Eadical gentleman caused a violent split in the cabinet, by saying that the whole complication had been brought about by the machinations of the aristocracy — which assertion caused the Conservative gentleman to retort in uimieasured language; and then the Liberal gentleman, trying to trim, found himself distrusted and despised by both parties. Charles listened to them, amused for the time to hear them quoting, quite unconsciously, whole sentences out of their respective leading papers, and then was distracted by the horsy man saying to him —
“Dam politics. What horse will win the Derby, sir?”
“Haphazard,” said Charles, promptly. This, please to remember, was Lord Ascot’s horse, which we have seen before.
The landlord immediately drew closer up.
The horsy man looked at Charles, and said, “H’m; and what has made my lord scratch him for the Two Thousand, sir?”
And so on. We have something to do with Haphazard’s winning the Derby, as we shall see; and we have still more to do with the result of Charles’s-conversation with the “horsy man.” But we have certainly nothing to do with a wordy discussion about the various horses which stood well for the great race (wicked, lovely darlings, how many souls of heroes have they sent to Hades!), and so we will spare the reader. The conclusion of their conversation was the only important part of it.
Charles said to the horsy man on the stairs, “Now you know everything. I am penniless, friendless, and nameless. Can you put me in the way of earning my living honestly?”
And he said, “I can, and I will. This gentleman is a fast man, but he is rich. You’ll have your own way. Maybe, you’ll see some queer things, but what odds?”
“None to me,” said Charles; “I can always leave him.”
“And go back to your friends, like a wise young gentleman, eh?” said the other, kindly.
“I am not a gentleman,” said Charles. “I told you.
SO before. I am a gamekeeper’s son; I swear to you I am. I have been petted and pampered till I look like one, but I am not.”
“You are a deuced good imitation,” said the other. “Good night; come to me at nine, mind.”
At this time, Lady Ascot had despatched her letter to Lord Saltire, and had asked for Charles. The groom of the chambers said that Mr. Ravenshoe had left the house immediately after his interview with her ladyship, three hours before.
She started up. “Gone! — Whither?”
“To Twyford, my lady.”
“Send after him, you idiot! Send the grooms after him on all my lord’s horses. Send a lad on Haphazard, and let him race the train to London. Send the police! He has stolen my purse, with ten thousand gold guineas in it! — I swear he has. Have him bound hand and foot, and bring him back, on your life. If you stay there I will kill you!”
The violent old animal nature, dammed up so long by creeds and formulas, had broken out at last. The decorous Lady Ascot was transformed in one instant into a terrible, grey-headed, magnificent old Alecto, hurling her awful words abroad in a sharp, snarling voice, that made the hair of him that heard it to creep upon his head. The man fled, and shut Lady Ascot in alone.
She walked across the room, and beat her withered old hands against the wall. “Oh, miserable, wicked old woman!” she cried aloud. “How surely have your sins found you out! After concealing a crime for so many years, to find the judgment fall on such an innocent and beloved head! Alicia, Alicia, I did this for your sake. Charles, Charles, come back to the old woman before she dies, and tell her you forgive her.”
Charles had always been passionately fond of horses, and of riding. He was a consummate horseman, and was so perfectly accomplished in everything relating to horses, that I really believe that in time he might actually have risen to the dizzy height of being stud-groom to a great gentleman or nobleman. He had been brought up in a great horse-riding house, and had actually gained so much experience, and had so much to say on matters of this kind; that once, at Oxford, a promising young nobleman cast, so to speak, an adverse opinion of Charles’s into George Simmonds’s own face. Mr. Simmonds looked round on the offender mildly and compassionately, and said, “If any undergraduate could know, my lord, that undergraduate’s name would be Ravenshoe of Paul’s. But he is young, my lord. And, in consequence, ignorant.” His lordship didn’t say anything after that.
I have kept this fact in the background rather, hitherto, because it has not been of any great consequence. It becomes of some consequence now, for the first time. I enlarged a little on Charles being a rowing man, because rowing and training had, for good or for evil, a certain effect on his character. (Whether for good or for evil, you must determine for yourselves.) And I now mention the fact of his being a consummate horseman, because a considerable part of the incidents which follow arise from the fact.
Don’t think for one moment that you are going to be bored by stable talk. You will have simply none of it. It only amounts to this — that Charles, being fond of horses, took up with a certain line of life, and in that line of life met with certain adventures which have made his history worth relating.
When he met the “horsy ” man next morning, he was not dressed like a gentleman. In his store he had some old clothes, which he used to wear at Ravenshoe, in the merry old days when he would be up with daylight to exercise the horses on the moor — cord trousers, and so on, which, being now old and worn, made him look uncommonly like a groom out of place. And what contributed to the delusion was, that for the first time in his life he wore no shirt collar, but allowed his blue-spotted neckcloth to border on his honest red face, without one single quarter of an inch of linen. And, if it ever pleases your lordship’s noble excellence to look like a blackguard for any reason, allow me to recommend you to wear a dark necktie and no collar. Your success will be beyond your utmost hopes.
Charles met his new friend in the bar, and touched his hat to him. His friend laughed, and said, that would do, but asked how long he thought he could keep that sort of thing going. Charles said, as long as was necessary; and they went out together.
They walked as far as a street leading out of one of the largest and best squares (I mean B— lg — e Sq — e, but I don’t like to write it at full length), and stopped at the door of a handsome shop. Charles knew enough of London to surmise that the first floor was let to a man of some wealth; and he was right.
The door was opened, and his friend was shown up stairs, while he was told to wait in the hall. Now Charles began to perceive, with considerable amusement, that he was acting a part — that he was playing, so to speak, at being something other than what he really was, and that he was perhaps overdoing it. In this house, which yesterday he would have entered as an equal, he was now playing at being a servant. It was immensely amusing. He wiped his shoes very clean, and sat down on a bench in the hall, with his hat between his knees, as he had seen grooms do. It is no use wondering; one never finds out anything by that. But I do wonder, nevertheless, whether Charles, had he only known in what relation the master of that house stood to himself, would or would not have set the house on fire, or cut its owner’s throat. When he did find out, he did neither the one thing nor the other; but he had been a good deal tamed by that time.
Presently a servant came down, and, eyeing Charles curiously as a prospective fellow-servant, told him civilly to walk up stairs.
He went up. The room was one of a handsome suite, and overlooked the street. Charles saw at a glance that it was the room of a great dandy. A dandy, if not of the first water, most assuredly high up in the second. Two things only jarred on his eye in his hurried glance round the room. There was too much bric-a-brac, and too many flowers. “I wonder if he is a gentleman,” thought Charles. His friend of the night before was standing in a respectful attitude, leaning on the back of a chair, and Charles looked round for the master of the house, eagerly. He had to cast his eyes downward to see him, for he was lying back on an easy chair, half hidden by the breakfast table.
There he was — Charles’s master: the man who was going to buy him. Charles cast one intensely eager glance at him, and was satisfied. “He will do at a pinch,” said he to himself.
There were a great many handsome and splendid things in that room, but the owner of them was by far the handsomest and most splendid thing there.
He was a young man, with very pale and delicate features, and a singularly amiable cast of face, who wore a moustache, with the long whiskers which were just then coming into fashion; and he was dressed in a splendid uniform of blue, gold, and scarlet, for he had been on duty that morning, and had just come in. His sabre was cast upon the floor before him, and his shako was on the table. As Charles looked at him, he passed his hand over his hair. There was one ring on it, but uch a ring! “That’s a high-bred hand enough,” said Charles to himself. “And he hasn’t got too much jewellery on him. I wonder who the deuce he is?”
“This is the young man, sir,” said Charles’s new friend.
Lieutenant Hornby was looking at Charles, and, after a pause, said —
“I take him on your recommendation, Sloane. I have no doubt he will do. He seems a good fellow. You are a good fellow, ain’t you?” he continued, addressing Charles personally, with that happy graceful insolence which is the peculiar property of prosperous and entirely amiable young men, and which charms one in spite of oneself.
Charles replied, “I am quarrelsome sometimes among my equals, but I am always good-tempered among horses.”
“That will do very well. You may punch the other two lads’ heads as much as you like. They don’t mind me; perhaps they may you. You will be over them. You will have the management of everything. You will have unlimited opportunities of robbing and plundering me, with an entire absence of all chance of detection. But you won’t do it. It isn’t your line, I saw at once. Let me look at your hand.”
Charles gave him the great ribbed paw which served him in that capacity. And Hornby said —
“Ha! Gentleman’s hand. No business of mine. Don’t wear that ring, will you? A groom mustn’t wear such rings as that. Any character?”
Charles showed him the letter Lord Ascot had written.
“Lord Ascot, eh? I know Lord Welter, slightly.”
“The deuce you do,” thought Charles.
“Were you in Lord Ascot’s stables?”
“No, sir. I am the son of Squire Ravenshoe’s game-keeper. The Ravenshoes and my Lord Ascot’s family are connected by marriage. Ravenshoe is in the west country, sir, Lord Ascot knows me by repute, sir, and has a good opinion of me.”
“It is perfectly satisfactory. Sloane, will you put him in the way of his duties. Make the other lads understand that he is master, will you? You may go.”
So pursuing the course of our story, we have brought ourselves to the present extraordinary position. That Charles Ravenshoe, of Ravenshoe, in the county Devonshire, Esquire, and sometime of St. Paul’s College, Oxford, had hired himself out as groom to Lieutenant Hornby, of the 11Oth Hussars, and that also the above-named Charles Ravenshoe was not, and never had been, Charles Ravenshoe at all, but somebody else all the time, to wit, Charles Horton, a gamekeeper’s son, if indeed he was even this, having been christened under a false name. The situation is so extraordinary and so sad, that having taken the tragical view of it in the previous chapter, we must of necessity begin to look on the brighter side of it now. And this is the better art, because it is exactly what Charles began to do himself. One blow succeeded the other so rapidly, the utter bouleversement of all that he cared about in the world. Father, friends, position, mistress, all lost in one day, had brought on a kind of light-hearted desperation, which had the effect of making him seek company, and talk boisterously and loud all day. It was not unnatural in so young and vigorous a man. But if he oke in the night, there was the cold claw grasping his heart. Well, I said, we would have none of this at present, and we won’t.
Patient old earth, intent only on doing her duty in her set courses, and unmindful of the mites which had been set to make love or war on her bosom, and the least of whom was worth her whole well-organized mass, had rolled on, and on, until by bringing that portion of her which contains the island of Britain, gradually in greater proximity to the sun, she had produced that state of things on that particular part of her which is known among mortals as spring. Now, I am very anxious to please all parties. Some people like a little circumlocution, and for them the above paragraph was written; others do not, and for them, I state that it was the latter end of May, and beg them not to read the above flight of fancy, but to consider it as never having been written.
It was spring. On the sea-coast, the watchers at the lighthouses and the preventive stations began to walk about in their shirt-sleeves, and trim up their patches of spray-beaten garden, hedged with tree-mallow and tamarisk, and to thank God that the long howling winter nights were past for a time. The fishermen shouted merrily one to another as they put off from shore, no longer dreading a twelve hours’ purgatory of sleet and freezing-mist and snow; saying to one another how green the land looked, and how pleasant mackarel time was after all. Their wives, light-hearted at the thought that the wild winter was past, and that they were not widows, brought their work out to the doors, and gossiped pleasantly in the sun, while some of the bolder boys began to paddle about in the surf, and try to believe that the Gulf Stream had come in, and that it was summer again, and not only spring.
In inland country places the barley was all in and springing, the meadows were all bush-harrowed, rolled, and laid up for hay; nay, in early places, brimful of grass, spangled with purple orchises, and in moist rich places golden with marsh marigold, over which the south-west wind passed pleasantly, bringing a sweet perfume of growing vegetation, which gave those who smelt it a tendency to lean against gates, and stiles, and such places, and think what a delicious season it was, and wish it were to last for ever. The young men began to slip away from work somewhat early of an evening, not (as now) to the parade ground, or the butts, but to take their turn at the wicket on the green, where Sir John (our young landlord), was to be found in a scarlet flannel shirt, bowling away like a catapult, at all comers, till the second bell began to ring, and he had to dash off and dress. Now lovers walking by moonlight in deep banked lanes began to notice how dark and broad the shadows grew, and to wait at the lane’s end by the river, to listen to the nightingale, with his breast against the thorn, ranging on from height to height of melodious passion, petulant at his want of art, till he broke into one wild jubilant burst, and ceased, leaving night silent, save for the whispering of newborn insects, and the creeping sound of reviving vegetation.
Spring. The great renewal of the lease. The time when nature-worshippers make good resolutions, to be very often broken before the leaves fall. The time the country becomes once more habitable and agreeable. Does it make any difference in the hundred miles of brick and mortar called London, save, in so far as it makes every reasonable Christian pack up his portmanteau and fly to the green fields, and lover’s lanes beforementioned (though it takes two people for the latter sort of business)? Why, yes; it makes a difference to London certainly, by bringing somewhere about 10,000 people, who have got sick of shooting and hunting through the winter months, swarming into the west end of it, and making it what is called full.
I don’t know that they are wrong after all, for London is a mighty pleasant place in the season (we don’t call it spring on the paving-stones). At this time the windows of the great houses in the squares begin to be brilliant with flowers; and, under the awnings of the balconies, one sees women moving about in the shadow. Now, all through the short night, one hears the ceaseless low rolling thunder of beautiful carriages, and in the daytime also the noise ceases not. All through the west end of the town there is a smell of flowers, of fresh watered roads, and Macassar oil; while at Covent Garden, the scent of the peaches and pineapples begins to prevail over that of rotten cabbage-stalks. The fiddlers are all fiddling away at concert pitch for their lives, the actors are all acting their very hardest, and, the men who look after the horses, have never a minute to call their own, day or night. . It is neither to dukes nor duchesses, to actors nor fiddlers, that we must turn our attention just now, but to a man who was sitting in a wheelbarrow watching a tame jackdaw.
The place was a London mews, behind one of the great squares — the time was afternoon. The weather was warm and sunny. All the proprietors of the horses were out riding or driving, and so the stables were empty and the mews were quiet.
This was about a week after Charles’s degradation, almost the first hour he had to himself in the daytime, and so he sat pondering on his unhappy lot.
Lord Ballyroundtower’s coachman’s wife was hanging out the clothes. She was an Irishwoman off the estate (his lordship’s Irish residences, I see on referring to the peerage, are, “The Grove,” Blarney, and “Swatewathers,” near Avoca). When I say that she was hanging out the clothes I am hardly correct, for she was only fixing the lines up to do so, and being of short stature, and having to reach, was naturally showing her heels, and the jackdaw perceiving this, began to hop stealthily across the yard. Charles saw what was conung and became deeply interested. He would not have spoken for his life. The jackdaw sidled up to her, and began digging into her tendon Achilles with his hard bill with force and rapidity which showed that he was fully-aware of the fact, that the amusement, like most pleasant things, could not last long, and must therefore be made the most of Some women would have screamed and faced round at the first assault.!N’ot so our Irish friend. She endured the anguish until she had succeeded in fastening the clothes-line round the post, and then she turned round on the jackdaw, who had fluttered away to a safe distance, and denounced him.
“Bad cess to ye, ye impident divie, sure it’s Sathan’s own sister’s son ye are, ye dirty prothestant, pecking at the hales of an honest woman, daughter of my lord’s own man. Corny O’Brine, as was a dale bether nor them as sits on whalebarrows and sets ye on too’t — (this was levelled at Charles, so he politely took off his cap and bowed).
“Though, God forgive me, there’s some sitting on whalebarrows as should be sitting in drawingrooms may be (here the jackdaw raised one foot, and said “Jark ”). Get out ye baste, don’t ye hear me blessed lady’s own bird swearing at ye, like a gentleman’s bird as he is. A pretty dear.”
This was strictly true. Lord Ballyroundtower’s brother, the Honourable Frederick Mulligan, was a lieutenant in the navy. A short time before this, being on the Australian station, and wishing to make his sister-in-law a handsome present, he had commissioned a Sydney Jew bird-dealer to get him a sulphur-crested cockatoo, price no object, but the best talker in the olony. The Jew faithfully performed his behest; he got him the best talking cockatoo in the colony, and the Hon. Fred, brought it home in triumph to his sister-in-law’s drawingroom in Belgrave Square.
The bird was a beautiful talker. There was no doubt about that. It had such an amazingly distinct enunciation. But then the bird was not always discreet. Nay, to go further, the bird never icas discreet. He had been educated by a convict bullock-driver, and finished off by the sailors on board H.M.S. Actceon, and really you know, sometimes he did say things he ought not to have said. It was all very well pretending that you couldn’t hear him, but it rendered conversation impossible. You were always in agony at what was to come next. One afternoon a great many people were there, calling. Old Lady Hainault was there. The bird was worse than ever. Every body tried to avoid a silence, but it came, inexorably. That awful old woman, Lady Hainault, broke it by saying that she thought Fred Mulligan must have been giving the bird private lessons himself. After that you know it wouldn’t do. Fred might be angry, but the bird must go to the mews.
So there the bird was, swearing dreadfully at the jackdaw. At last her ladyship’s pug dog, who was staying with the coachman for medical treatment, got excited, bundled out of the house, and attacked the jackdaw. The jackdaw formed square to resist cavalry, and sent the dog howling into the house again quicker than he came out. After which the bird barked and came and sat on the dunghill by Charles.
The mews itself, as I said, was very quiet, with a smell of stable, subdued by a fresh scent of sprinkled water; but at the upper end it joined a street leading from Belgrave Square towards the Park, which was by no means quiet, and which smelt of geraniums and heliotropes. Carriage after carriage went blazing past the end of the mews, along this street, like figures across the disk of a magic lanthorn. Some had scarlet breeches, and some blue; and there were pink bonnets, and yellow bonnets, and Magenta bonnets; and Charles sat on the wheelbarrow by the dunghill, and looked at it all, perfectly contented.
A stray dog lounged in out of the street. It was a cur dog — that any one might see. It was a dog which had bit its rope and run away, for the rope was round its neck now; and it was a thirsty dog, for it went up to the pump and licked the stones. Charles went and pumped for it, and it drank. Then, evidently considering that Charles, by his act of good nature, had acquired authority over its person, and having tried to do without a master already, and having found it wouldn’t do, it sat down beside Charles and declined to proceed any further.
There was a public-house at the corner of the mews, where it joined the street; and on the other side of the street you could see one house. No. 16. The footman of No. 16 was in the area, looking through the railings.
A thirsty man came to the public-house on horseback, and drank a pot of beer at a draught, turning the pot upside down. It was too much for the footman, who disappeared.
Next came a butcher with a tray of meat, who turned into the area of No. 16, and left the gate open. After him came a blind man, led by a dog. The dog, instead of going straight on, turned down the area steps after the butcher. The blind man thought he was going round the corner. Charles saw what would happen; but, before he had time to cry out, the blind man had plunged headlong down the area steps and disappeared, while from the bottom, as from the pit, arose the curses of the butcher.
Charles and others assisted the blind man up, gave him some beer, and set him on his way. Charles watched him. After he had gone a little way, he began striking spitefully at where he thought his dog was, with his stick. The dog was evidently used to this amusement, and dexterously avoided the blows. Finding vertical blows of no avail, the blind man tried horizontal ones, and caught an old gentleman across the shins, making him drop his umbrella and catch up his leg. The blind man promptly asked an alms from him, and, not getting one, turned the corner; and Charles saw him no more.
The hot street and, beyond, the square, the dusty lilacs and laburnums, and the crimson hawthorns. What a day for a bathe! outside the gentle surf, with the sunny headlands right and left, and the moor sleeping quietly in the afternoon sunlight, and Lundy, like a faint blue cloud on the Atlantic horizon, and the old house. He was away at Ravenshoe on a May afternoon.
They say poets are never sane; but are they ever mad? Never. Even old Cowper saved himself from actual madness by using his imagination. Charles was no poet; but he was a good day-dreamer, and so now, instead of maddening himself in his squalid brick prison, he was away in the old bay, bathing and fishing, and wandering up the old stream, breast high among king-fern under the shadowy oaks.
Bricks and mortar, carriages and footmen, wheelbarrows and dunghills, all came back in one moment, and settled on his outward senses with a jar. For there was a rattle of horse’s feet on the stones, and the clank of a sabre, and Lieutenant Hornby, of the 140tli Hussars (Prince Arthur’s Own), came branking into the yard, with two hundred pounds’ worth of trappings on him, looking out for his servant. He was certainly a splendid fellow, and Charles looked at him with a certain kind of pride, as on something that he had a share in.
“Come round to the front door, Horton, and take my horse up to the barracks ” (the Queen had been to the station that morning, and his guard was over.)
Charles walked beside him round into Grosvenor Place. He could not avoid stealing a glance up at the magnificent apparition beside him; and, as he did so, he met a pair of kind grey eyes looking down on him.
“You mustn’t sit and mope there, Horton,” said the lieutenant; “it never does to mope. I know it is infernally hard to help it, and of course you can’t associate with servants, and that sort of thing, at first; but you will get used to it. If you think I don’t know you are a gentleman, you are mistaken. I don’t know who you are, and shall not try to find out. I’ll lend you books or anything of that sort; but you mustn’t brood over it. I can’t stand seeing my fellows wretched, more especially a fellow like you.”
If it had been to save his life, Charles couldn’t say a word. He looked up at the lieutenant and nodded his head. The lieutenant understood him well enough, and said to himself —
“Poor fellow!”
So there arose between these two a feeling which lightened Charles’s servitude, and which before the end came had grown into a liking. Charles’s vengeance was not for Hornby, for the injury did not come from him. His vengeance was reserved for another, and we shall see how he took it.
HITHERTO I have been able to follow Charles right on without leaving him for one instant: now, however, that he is reduced to sitting on a wheelbarrow in a stable-yard, we must see a little less of him. He is, of course, our principal object; but he has removed himself from the immediate sphere of all our other acquaintances, and so we must look up some of them, and see how far they, though absent, are acting on his destiny — nay, we must look up every one of them sooner or later, for there is not one who is not in some way concerned in his adventures past and future.
By reason of her age, her sex,, and her rank, my Lady Ascot claims our attention first. We left the dear old woman in a terrible taking, on finding that Charles had suddenly left the house and disappeared. Her wrath gave way to tears, and her tears to memory. Bitterly she blamed herself now for what seemed, years ago, such a harmless deceit. It was not too late. Charles might be found; would come back, surely — would come back to his poor old aunt! He would never — hush! it won’t do to think of that!
Lady Ascot thought of a brilliant plan, and put it into immediate execution. She communicated with Mr. Scotland Yard, the eminent exdetective officer, forwarding a close description of Charles, and a request that he might be found, alive or dead, immediately. Her efforts were crowned with immediate and unlooked-for success. In a week’s time the detective had discovered, not one Charles Ravenshoe, but three, from which her ladyship might take her choice. But the worst of it was that neither of the three was Charles Ravenshoe. There was a remarkable point of similarity between Charles and them, certainly; and that point was, that they were all three young gentlemen under a cloud, and had all three dark hair and prominent features. Here the similarity ended.
The first of the cases placed so promptly before her ladyship by Inspector Yard presented some startling features of similarity mth that of Charles. The young gentleman was from the West of England, had been at college somewhere, had been extravagant (“God bless him, poor dear! when lived a Ravenshoe that wasn’t?” thought Lady Ascot), had been crossed in love, the inspector believed (Lady Ascot thought she had got her fish), and was now in the Coldbath Fields Prison, doing two years’ hard labour for swindling, of which two months were yet to run. The inspector would let her ladyship know the day of his release.
This could not be Charles: and the next young gentleman offered to her notice was a worse shot than the other. He also was dark-haired; but here at once all resemblance ceased. This one had started in life with an ensigncy in the line. He had embezzled the mess-funds, had been to California, had enlisted, deserted, and sold his kit, been a billiard-marker, had come into some property, had spent it, had enlisted again, had been imprisoned for a year and discharged — here Lady Ascot would read no more, but laid down the letter, saving, “Pish!”
But the inspector’s cup was not yet full. The unhappy man was acting from uncertain information, he says. He affirmed, throughout all the long and acrimonious discussion which followed, that his only instructions were to find a young gentleman with dark hair and a hook nose. If this be the case, he may possibly be excused for catching a curly-headed little Jew of sixteen, who was drinking himself to death in a public-house off Regent Street, and producing him as Charles Ravenshoe. His name was Cohen, and he had stolen some money from his father and gone to the races. This was so utterly the wrong article, that Lady Ascot wrote a violent letter to the exinspector, of such an extreme character, that he replied by informing her ladyship that he had sent her letter to his lawyer. A very pretty quarrel followed, which I have not time to describe.
No tidings of Charles! He had hidden himself too effectually. So the old woman wept and watched — watched for her darling who came not, and for the ruin hat slie saw settling down upon her house like a dark cloud, that grew evermore darker.
And little Mary had packed up her boxes and passed out of the old house, with the hard, bitter world before her. Father Mackworth had met her in the hall, and had shaken hands with her in silence. He loved her, in his way, so much, that he cared not to say anything. Cuthbert was outside, waiting to hand her to her carriage. When she was seated he said, “I shall write to you, Mary, for I can’t say all I would.” And then he opened the door and kissed her affectionately; then the carriage went on, and before it entered the wood, she had a glimpse of the grey old house, and Cuthbert on the steps before the porch, bareheaded, waving his hand; then it was among the trees, and she had seen the last of him for ever; then she buried her face in her hands, and knew, for the first time, perhaps, how well she had loved him.
She was going, as we know, to be nursery-governess to the orphan children of Lord Hainault’s brother. She went straight to London to assume her charge. It was very late when she got to Paddington. One of Lord Hainault’s carriages was waiting for her, and she was whirled through “the season ” to Grosvenor Square. Then she had to walk alone into the great lighted hall, with the servants standing right and left, and looking at nothing, as well-bred servants are bound to do. She wished for a moment that the poor little governess had been allowed to come in a cab.
The groom of the chambers informed her that her ladyship had gone out, and would not be home till late; that his lordship was dressing; and that dinner was ready in Miss Corby’s room whenever she pleased.
So she went up. She did not eat much dinner; the steward’s-room boy in attendance had his foolish heart moved to pity by seeing how poor an appetite she had, when he thought what he could have done in that line too.
Presently she asked the lad where was the nursery. The second door to the right. When all was quiet she opened her door, and thought she would go and see the children asleep. At that moment the nursery-door opened, and a tall, handsome quiet-looking man came out. It was Lord Hainault: she had seen him before.
“I like this,” said she, as she drew back. “It was kind of him to go and see his brother’s children before he went out; “and so she went into the nursery.
An old nurse was sitting by the fire sewing. The two elder children were asleep; but the youngest, an audacious young sinner of three, had refused to do anything of the kind until the cat came to bed with him. The nursery cat being at that time out a-walking on the leads, the nursemaid had been despatched to bon-ow one from the kitchen. At this state of affairs Mary entered. The nurse rose and curtsied, and the rebel clambered on her knee, and took her into his confidence. He told her that that day, while walking in the square, he had seen a chimney-sweep; that he had called to
Gus and Flora to come and look; that Gus had been in time and seen him go round the corner, but that Flora had come too late, and cried, and so Gus had lent her his hoop and she had left off, ?Sz;c. &c. After a time he requested to be allowed to say his prayers to her; to which the nurse objected, on the theological ground that he had said them twice akeady that evening, which was once more than was usually allowed. Soon after this the little head lay heavy on Mary’s arm, and the little hand loosed its hold on hers, and the child was asleep.
She left the nursery with a lightened heart; but, nevertheless, she cried herself to sleep. “I wonder, shall I like Lady Hainault; Charles used to. But she is very proud, I believe. I cannot remember much of her. — How those carriages growl and roll, almost like the sea at dear old Piavenshoe.” Then, after a time, she slept.
There was a light in her eyes, not of dawn, which woke her. A tall, handsome woman, in silk and jewels, came and knelt beside her and kissed her; and said that, now her old home was broken up, she must make one there, and be a sister to her, and many other kind words of the same sort. It was Lady Hainaidt (the long Burton girl, as Madam Adelaide called her) come home from her last party; and in such kind keeping I think we may leave little Mary for the present.
Charles’s duties were light enough; he often wished they had been heavier. There were such long idle periods left for thinking and brooding. He rather wondered at first why he was not more employed. He never was in attendance on the lieutenant, save in the daytime. One of the young men under him drove the brougham, and was out all night and in bed all day; and the other was a mere stable-lad from the country. Charles’s duty consisted almost entirely in dressing himself about two o’clock, and loitering about town after his master; and, after he had been at this work about a fortnight, it seemed to him as if he had been at it a year or more.
Charles soon found out all he cared to know about the Lieutenant. He was the only son and heir of an eminent solicitor, lately deceased, who had put him into the splendid regiment to which he belonged, in order to get him into good society. The young fellow had done well enough in that way. He was amazingly rich, amazingly handsome, and passionately fond of his profession, at which he really worked hard; but he was terribly fast. Charles soon found that out; and the irst object which he placed before himself, when he began to awaken from the first dead torpor which came on him after his fall; was to gain influence with him and save him from ruin.
“He is burning the candle at both ends,” said Charles. “He is too good to go to the deuce. In time, if I am careful, he may listen to me.”
And, indeed, it seemed probable. From the very first, Hornby had treated Charles with great respect and consideration. Hornby knew he was a gentleman. One morning, before Charles had been many days with him, the brougham had not come into the mews till seven o’clock; and Charles, going to his lodgings at eight, had found him in uniform, bolting a cup of coffee before going on duty. There was a great pile of money, sovereigns and notes, on the dressing-table, and he caught Charles looking at it.
Hornby laughed. “What are you looking at with that solemn face of yours?” said he.
“Nothing, sir,” said Charles.
“You are looking at that money,” said Hornby; “and you are thinking that it would be as well if I didn’t stay out all night playing — eh?”
“I might have thought so, sir,” said Charles. “I did think so.”
“Quite right, too. Some day I will leave off, perhaps.”
And then he rattled out of the room, and Charles watched him riding down the street, all blue, and carlet, and gold, a brave figure, with the world at his feet.
“There is time yet,” said Charles.
The first time Charles made his appearance in livery in the street he felt horribly guilty. He was in continual terror lest he should meet some one he knew; but, after a time, when he found that day after day he could walk about and see never a familiar face, he grew bolder. He wished sometimes he could see some one he knew from a distance, so as not to be recognised — it was so terribly lonely.
Day after day he saw the crowds pass him in the street, and recognised no one. In old times, when he used to come to London on a raid from Oxford, he fancied he used to recognise an acquaintance at every step; but, now, day after day went on, and he saw no one he knew. The world had become to him like a long uneasy dream of strange faces.
After a very few days of his new life, there began to grow on him a desire to hear of those he had left so abruptly; a desire which was at first mere curiosity, but which soon developed into a yearning regret. At first, after a week or so, he began idly wondering where they all were, and what they thought of his disappearance; and at this time, perhaps, he may have felt a little conceited in thinking how he occupied their thoughts, and of what importance he had made himself by his sudden disappearance. But his curiosity and vanity soon wore away, and were succeeded by a deep gnawing desire to ear something of them all — to catch hold of some little thread, however thin, which should connect him with his past life, and with those he had loved so well. He would have died in his obstinacy sooner than move one inch towards his object; but every day, as he rode about town, dressed in the livery of servitude, which he tried to think was his heritage, and yet of which he was ashamed, he stared hither and thither at the passing faces, trying to find one, were it only that of the meanest servant, which should connect him with the past.
At last, and before long, he saw some one.
One afternoon he was under orders to attend his master, on horseback, as usual. After lunch, Hornby came out, beautifully dressed, handsome and happy, and rode up Grosvenor Place into the park. At the entrance to Rotten Row he joined an old gentleman and his two daughters, and they rode together, chatting pleasantly. Charles rode behind with the other groom, who talked to him about the coming Derby, and would have betted against Haphazard at the current odds. They rode up and down the Row twice, and then Hornby, calhng Charles, gave him his horse and walked about by the Serpentine, talking to every one, and getting a kindly welcome from great and small; for the son of a great attorney, with wealth, manners, and person, may get into very good society, if he is worth it; or, quite possibly, if he isn’t.
Then Hornby and Charles left the park, and, coming down Grosvenor Place, passed into Pall Mall. Here
Hornby went into a club, and loft Charles waiting in the street with his horse half an hour or more.
Then he mounted again, and rode up St. James’s Street into Piccadilly. He turned to the left; and, at the bottom of the hill, not far from Halfmoon Street, he wont into a private house, and, giving Charles his reins, told him to wait for him; and so Charles waited there in the afternoon sun, watching what went by.
It was a sleepy afternoon, and the horses stood quiet, and Charles was a contented fellow, and he rather liked dozing there and watching the world go by. There is plenty to see in Piccadilly on an afternoon in the season, even for a passer-by; but, sitting on a quiet horse, with nothing to do or think about, one can see it all better. And Charles had some humour in him, and so he was amused at what he saw, and would have sat there an hour or more mthout impatience.
Opposite to him was a great bonnet-shop, and in front of it was an orange-woman. A grand carriage dashed up to the bonnet-shop, so that he had to move his horses, and the orange-woman had to get out of the way. Two young ladies got out of the carriage, went in, and (as he believes) bought bonnets, leaving a third, and older one, sitting in the back seat, who nursed a pug dog, with a blue riband. Neither the coachman nor footman belonging to the carriage seemed to mind this lady. The footman thought he would like some oranges; so he went to the orange-woman. The orange-woman was Irish, for her speech bewrayed her, and the footman as from the county Clare; so those two instantly began comparing notes about those delectable regions, to such purpose, that the two young ladies, having, let us hope, suited themselves in the bonnet way, had to open their own carriage-door and get in, before the footman was recalled to a sense of his duties — after which he shut the door, and they drove away.
Then there came by a blind man. It was not the same blind man that Charles saw fall down the area, because that blind man’s dog was a brown one, with a curly tail, and this one’s dog was black, with, no tail at all. Moreover, the present dog carried a basket, which the other one did not. Otherwise they were so much alike (all blind men are), that Charles might have mistaken one for the other. This blind man met with no such serious accident as the other, either. Only, turning into the public-house at the comer, opposite Mr. Hope’s, the dog lagged behind, and, the swing-doors closing between him and his master, Charles saw him pulled through by his chain and nearly throttled.
Next there came by Lord Palmerston, mth his umbrella on his shoulder, walking airily arm-in-arm with Lord John Russell. They were talking together; and, as they passed, Charles heard Lord Palmerston say that it was much warmer on this side of the street than on the other. With which’ proposition Lord John Russell appeared to agree; and so they passed on westward.
After this there came by three prizefighters, arm-in-arm; each of them had a white hat and a cigar; two ad white bull — clogs, and one a black and tan terrier. They made a left wheel, and looked at Charles and his horses, and then they made a right wheel, and looked into the bonnet-shop; after which they went into the public-house into which the blind man had gone before; and, from the noise which immediately arose from inside, Charles came to the conclusion, that the two white bulldogs and the black and tan terrier had set upon the blind man’s dog, and touzled him.
After the prizefighters came Mr. Gladstone, walking very fast. A large Newfoundland dog with a walking-stick in his mouth, blundered up against him, and nearly threw him down. Before he got under way again, the Irish orange-woman bore down on him, and faced him with three oranges in each hand, offering them for sale. Did she know, with the sagacity of her nation, that he was then on his way to the house, to make a Great Statement, and that he would want oranges? I cannot say. He probably got his oranges at Bellamy’s, for he bought none of her. After him came a quantity of indifferent people; and then Charles’s heart beat high — for here was some one coming whom he knew with a vengeance.
Lord Welter, walking calmly down the street, with his “big chest thrown out, and his broad, stupid face in moody repose. He was thinking. He came so close to Charles that, stepping aside to avoid a passer-by, he whitened the shoulder of his coat against the pipe-clay on Charles’s knee; then he stood stock still within six nches of him, but looking the other way towards the houses.
He pulled off one of his gloves and bit his nails. Though his back was towards Charles, still Charles knew well what expression was on his face as he did that. The old cruel lowering of the eyebrows, and pinching in of the lips was there, he knew. The same expression as that which!Marston remarked the time he quarrelled with Cuthbert once at Ravenshoe — mischief I
He went into the house where Charles’s master, Hornby, was; and Charles sat and wondered.
Presently there came out, on to the balcony above, six or seven well-dressed young men, who lounged with their elbows on the red cushions which were fixed to the railing, and talked, looking at the people in the street.
Lord Welter and Lieutenant Hornby were together at the end. There was no scowl on Welter’s face now; Charles watched him and Hornby; the conversation between them got eager, and they seemed to make an appointment. After that they parted, and Hornby came down stairs and got on his horse.
They rode very slowly home. Hornby bowed right and left to the people he knew, but seemed absent. When Charles took his horse at the door, he said suddenly to Charles —
“I have been talking to a man who knows something of you, I believe — Lord Welter.”
“Did you mention me to him, sir?” said Charles.
“No; I didn’t think of it.”
“You would do me a great kindness if you would not do so, sir.”
“Why?” said Hornby, looking suddenly up.
“I am sorry I cannot enter into particulars, sir; but, if I thought he would know where I was, I should at once quit your service and try to lose myself once more.”
“Lose yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
“ETm!” said Hornby, thoughtfully. “Well I know there is something about you which I don’t understand. I ain’t sure it is any lousiness of mine though. I will say nothing. You are not a man to chatter about anything you see. Mind you don’t. You see how I trust you.” And so he went in, and Charles went round to the stable.
“Is the brougham going out tonight?” he asked of his fellow-servant.
“Ordered at ten,” said the man. “Nightwork again, I expect. I wanted to get out too. Consume the darned card-playing. Was you going anywhere tonight?”
“Nowhere,” said Charles.
“It’s a beautiful evening,” said the man. “If you should by chance saunter up toward Grosvenor Square, and could leave a note for me, I should thank you very much; upon my soul, I should.”
I don’t think Charles ever hesitated at doing a good-natured action in his life. A request to him was like a command It came as natural to him now to take a dirty, scrawled love-letter from a groom to a scullery-maid as in old times it did to lend a man fifty pounds. He said at once he would go with great pleasure.
The man (a surly fellow enough at ordinary times) thanked him heartily; and, when Charles had got the letter, he sauntered away in that direction slowly, thinking of many things.
“By Jove,” he said, to himself, “my scheme of hiding does not seem to be very successful. Little more than a fortnight gone, and I am thrown against Welter. What a strange thingj!”
It was still early in the afternoon — seven o’clock, or thereabouts — and he was opposite Tattersall’s. A mail phaeton, with a pair of splendid horses, attracted his attention and diverted his thoughts. He turned down. Two eminent men on the turf walked past him up the nearly empty yard, and he heard one say to the other, —
“Ascot will run to win; that I know. He must. If Haphazard can stay, he is safe.”
To which the other said, “Pish!” and they passed on.
“There they are again,” said Charles, as he turned back. “The very birds of the air are talking about them. It gets interesting, though — if anything could ever be interesting again.”
St. George’s Hospital. At the door was a gaudily dressed, handsome young woman, who was asking the orter could she see some one inside. No. The visiting-hours were over. She stood for a few minutes on the steps, impatiently biting her nails, and then fluttered down the street.
“What made him think of his sister Ellen? She must be found. That was the only object in the world, so to speak. There was nothing to be done, only to wait and watch.
“I shall find her some day, in God’s good time.” The world had just found out that it was hungry, and was beginning to tear about in wheeled vehicles to its neighbours’ houses to dinner. As the carriages passed Charles, he could catch glimpses of handsome girls, all a mass of white muslin, swan’s-down fans, and fal-lals, going to begin their night’s work; of stiff dandies, in white ties, yawning already; of old ladies in jewels, and old gentlemen buttoned up across the chest, going, as one might say, to see fair play among the young people. And then our philosophical Charles pleased himself by picturing how, in two months more, the old gentlemen would be among their turnips, the old ladies among their flowers and their poor folks, the dandies creeping, creeping, weary hours through the heather, till the last maddening moment when the big stag was full in view, sixty yards off; and (prettiest thought of all), how the girls, with their thick shoes on, would be gossiping with old Goody Blake and Harry Gill, or romping with the collage schoolchildren on the lawn. Right, old Charles, with all but the dandies!
For now the apotheosis of dandies was approaching. The time was coming when so many of them should disappear into that black thundercloud to the south, and be seen no more in park or club, in heather or stubble.
But, in that same year, the London season went on much as usual; only folks talked of war, and the French were more popular than they are now. And through the din and hubbub poor Charles passed on like a lost sheep, and left his fellow-servant’s note at an area in Grosvenor Square.
“And which,” said he to the man who took it, with promises of instant delivery, “is my Lord Hainault’s house, now, for instance?”
Lord Hainault’s house was the other side of the square; number something. Charles thanked the man, and went across. When he had made it out, he leant his back against the railings of the square, and watched it.
The carriage was at the door. The coachman, seeing a handsomely-dressed groom leaning against the rails, called to him to come over and alter some strap or another. Charles ran over and helped him. Charles supposed her ladyship was going out to dinner. Yes, her ladyship was now coming out. And, almost before Charles had time to move out of the way, out she came, with her head in the air, more beautiful than ever, and drove away.
He went back to his post from mere idleness. He wondered whether Mary had come there yet or not. He ad half a mind to inquire, but was afraid of being seen. He still leant against the railings of the gate, as I said, in mere idleness, when he heard the sound of children’s voices in the square behind.
“That woman,” said a child’s voice, “was a gipsy-woman. I looked through the rails, and I said, ‘ Hallo, ma’am, what are you doing there 1 ‘ And she asked me for a penny. And I said I couldn’t give her anything, for I had given three halfpence to the Punch and Judy, and I shouldn’t have any more money till next Saturday. “Which was quite true, Flora, as you know.”
“But, Gus,” said another child’s voice, “if she had been a gipsy — woman she would have tried to steal you, and make you beg in the streets; or else she would have told your fortune in coffee-grounds. I don’t think she was a real gipsy.”
“I should like to have my fortune told in the coffee-grounds,” said Gus; “but, if she had tried to steal me, I should have kicked her in her stomach. There is a groom outside there; let us ask him. Grooms go to the races, and see heaps of gipsies! I say, sir.”
Charles turned. A child’s voice was always music to him. He had such a look on his face as he turned to them, that the children had his confidence in an instant. The gipsy question was laid before him instantly, by both Gus and Flora, with immense volubility, and he was just going to give an oracular opinion through the railings, when a voice — a low, gentle voice, which made him start — came from close by.
“Gus and Flora, my clears, the dew is falling. Let us go in.”
“There is Miss Corby,” said Gus. “Let us run to her.”
They raced to Mary. Soon after the three came to the gate, laughing, and passed close to him. The children were clinging to her skirt and talking merrily. They formed a pretty little group as they went across the street, and Mary’s merry little laugh comforted him, “She is happy there,” he said; “best as it is!”
Once, when half-way across the street, she turned and looked towards him, before he had time to turn away. He saw that she did not dream of his being there, and went on. And so Charles sauntered home through the pleasant summer evening, saying to himself, “I think she is happy; I am glad she laughed.”
“Three meetings in one day! I shall be found out, if I don’t mind. I must be very careful.”
In which an Entirely New, And, as Will Be Seen Hereafter, a Most Important Character is Introduced.
The servants, I mean the stable-servants, who lived in the mews where Charles did, had a club; and, a night or two after he had seen Mary in the square, he was elected a member of it. The duke’s coachman, a wiry, grey, stern-looking, elderly man, waited upon him and informed him of the fact. He said that such a course was very unusual — in fact, without precedent. Men, he said, were seldom elected to the club until they were known to have been in good service for some years; but he (coachman) had the ear of the club pretty much, and had brought him in triumphant. He added that he could see through a brick wall as well as most men, and that, when he see a gentleman dressed in a livery, moping and brooding about the mews, he had said to himself that he wanted a little company, such as it was, to cheer him up, and so he had requested the club, &c.; and the club had done as he told them,
“Now, this is confoundedly kind of you,” said Charles; “but I am not a gentleman; I am a game-keeper’s son.”
“I suppose you can read Greek, now, can’t you?” said the coachman.
Charles was obliged to confess he could.
“Of course,” said the coachman; “all gamekeepers’ sons is forced to learn Greek, in order as they may slang the poachers in an unknown tongue. Fiddle-de-dee! I know all about it; leastwise, guess. Come along with me; why, I’ve got sous as old as you. Come along.”
“Are they in service?” said Charles, by way of something to say.
“Two of ’em are, but one’s in the army.”
“Indeed!” said Charles, with more interest.
“Ay; he is in your governor’s regiment.”
“Does he like it?” said Charles. “I should like to know him.”
“Like it? — don’t he?” said the coachman. “See what society he gets into. I suppose there ain’t no gentlemen’s sons troopers in that regiment, eh? Oh dear no. Don’t for a moment suppose it, young man. Not at all.”
Charles was very much interested by this news. He made up his mind there and then that he would enlist immediately. But he didn’t; he only thought about it.
Charles found that the club was composed of about a dozen coachmen and superior pad-grooms. They were very civil to him, and to one another. There was nothing to laugh at. There was nothing that could be tortured into ridicule. They talked about their horses and their business quite naturally. There was an air of kindly fellowship, and a desire for mutual assistance among them, which, at times, Charles had not noticed at the university. One man sang a song, and sang it very prettily too, about stag-hunting. He had got as far as —
“As every breath with sobs he drew,
The labouring buck strained full in view,”
when the door opened, and an oldish groom came in.
The song was not much attended to now. When the singer had finished, the others applauded him, but impatiently; and then there was a general exclamation of “Well?”
“I’ve just come down from the corner. There has been a regular run against Haphazard, and no one knows why. Something wrong with the horse, I suppose, because there’s been no run on any other in particular, only against him.”
“Was Lord Ascot there?” said some one.
-’ Ah, that he was. Wouldn’t bet, though, even at the long odds. Said he’d got every sixpence he was worth on the horse, and would stand where he was; and that’s true, they say. And master says, likewise, that Lord Welter would have taken ’em, but that his father stopped him.”
“That looks queerish,” said some one else.
“Ay, and wasn’t there a jolly row, too?”
“Who with?” asked several.
“Lord Welter and Lord Hainault. It happened outside, close to me. Lord Hainault was walking across the yard, and Lord Welter came up to him and said, ‘How d’ye do, Hainault?’ and Lord Hainault turned round and said, quite quiet, ‘Welter, you are a scoundrel! ‘ And Lord Welter said, ‘ Hainault, you are out of your senses; ‘ but he turned pale, too, and he looked — Lord! I shouldn’t like to have been before him — and Lord Hainault says, ‘ You know what I mean; ’ and Lord Welter says, ‘ No, I don’t; but, by Gad, you shall tell me; ‘ and then the other says, as steady as a rock, ‘ I’ll tell you. You are a man that one daren’t leave a woman alone with. Where’s that Casterton girl? Where’s Adelaide Summers? Neither a friend’s house, nor your own father’s house, is any protection for a woman against you.’ ‘Gad,’ says Lord Welter, ‘ You were pretty sweet on the last-named yourself, once on a time.’ ”
“Well!” said some one, “and what did Lord Hainault say?”
“He said, ‘You are a liar and a scoundrel, Welter.’ And then Lord Welter came at him; but Lord Ascot came between them, shaking like anything, and says he, ‘Hainault, go away, for God’s sake; you don’t know what you are saying. — Welter, be silent.’ But they made no more of he than —” (here our friend as at a loss for a simile).
“But how did it end?” asked Charles.
“Well,” said the speaker, “General Mainwaring came up, and laid his hand on Lord Welter’s shoulder, and took him off pretty quiet. And that’s all I know about it.”
It was clearly all. Charles rose to go, and walked hy himself from street to street, thinking.
Suppose he was to be thrown against Lord Welter, how should he act? what should he say? Truly it was a puzzling question. The anomaly of his position was never put before him more strikingly than now. What could he say? what could he do?
After the first shock, the thought of Adelaide’s unfaithfulness was not so terrible as on the first day or two; many little unamiable traits of character, vanity, selfishness, and so on, unnoticed before, began to come forth in somewhat startling relief., Anger, indignation, and love, all three jumbled up together, each one by turns in the ascendant, were the frames of mind in which Charles found himself when he began thinking about her. One moment he was saying to himself, “How beautiful she was!” and the next, “She was as treacherous as a tiger; she never could have cared for me.” But, when he came to think of Welter, his anger overmastered everything, and he would clench his teeth as he walked along, and for a few moments feel the blood rushing to his head and singing in his ears. Let us hope that Lord Welter will not come across him while he is in that mood, or there will be mischief
But his anger was soon over. He had just had one of these fits of anger as he walked along; and he was, like a good fellow, trying to conquer it, by thinking of Lord Welter as he was as a boy, and before he was a villain, when he came before St. Peter’s Church, in Eaton Square, and stopped to look at some fine horses which were coming out of Salter’s.
At the east end of St. Peter’s Church there is a piece of bare white wall in a corner, and in front of the wall was a little shoeblack.
He was not one of the regular brigade, with a red shirt, but an “Arab” of the first water. He might have been seven or eight years old, but was small. His whole dress consisted of two garments; a ragged shirt, with no buttons, and half of one sleeve gone, and a ragged pair of trousers, which, small as he was, were too small for him, and barely reached below his knees. His feet and head were bare: and under a vivid, tangled shock of hair looked a pretty, dirty, roguish face, with a pair of grey, twinkling eyes, which was amazingly comical. Charles stopped, watching him, and, as he did so, felt what we have most of us felt, I dare say — that, at certain times of vexation and anger, the company and conversation of children is the best thing for us.
The little man was playing at fives against the bare wall, with such tremendous energy — that he did not notice that Charles had stopped and was looking at him. Every nerve in his wiry lean little body was braced up to the game; his heart and soul were as eeply enlisted in it, as though he were captain of the eleven, or stroke of the eight.
He had no ball to play with, but he played with a brass button. The button flew hither and thither, being so irregular in shape, and the boy dashed after it like lightning. At last, after he had kept up five-and-twenty or so, the button flew over his head and lighted at Charles’s feet.
As the boy turned to get it, his eyes met Charles’s, and he stopped, parting the long hair from his forehead, and gazing on him till the beautiful little face, beautiful through dirt and ignorance and neglect, lit up with a smile, as Charles looked at him, with the kind, honest old expression. And so began their acquaintance, almost comically at first.
Charles don’t care to talk much about that boy now. If he ever does, it is to recall his comical humorous sayings and doings in the first part of their strange friendship. He never speaks of the end, even to me.
The boy stood smiling at him, as I said, holding his long hair out of his eyes; and Charles looked on him and laughed, and forgot all about Welter and the rest of them at once.
“I want my boots cleaned,” he said.
The boy said, “I can’t clean they dratted top-boots. I cleaned a groom’s boots a Toosday, and he punched my block because I blacked the tops. Where did that button go?”
And Charles said, ” You can clean the lower part of my boots, and do no harm. Your button is here against the lamp-post.”
The boy picked it up, and got his apparatus ready. But, before he began, he looked up in Charles’s face, as if he was going to speak; then he began vigorously, but in half a minute looked up again and stopped.
Charles saw that the boy liked him, and wanted to talk to him; so he began, severely, —
“How came you to be playing fives with a brass button, eh?”
The boy struck work at once, and answered, “I ain’t got no ball.”
“If you begin knocking stamped pieces of metal about in the street,” continued Charles, “you will come to chuck-farthing; and from chuck-farthing to the gallows is a very short step indeed, I can assure you.”
The boy did not seem to know whether Charles was joking or not. He cast a quick glance up at his face; but, seeing no sign of a smile there, he spat on one of his brushes, and said, —
“Not if you don’t cheat, it ain’t.”
Charles suffered the penalty, which usually follows on talking nonsense, of finding himself in a dilemma. So he said imperiously, —
“I shall buy you a ball tomorrow; I am not going to have you knocking buttons about against people’s walls in broad daylight, like that.”
It was the first time that the boy had ever heard nonsense talked in his life. It was a new sensation. He ave a sharp look up into Charles’s face again, and then went on with his work.
“Where do you live, my little mannikin?” said Charles directly, in that quiet pleasant voice I know so well.
The boy did not look up this time. It was not very often, possibly, that he got spoken to so kindly by his patrons; he worked away, and answered that he lived in Marquis Court, in Southwark.
”Why do you come so far then? “asked Charles.
The boy told him why he plodded so wearily, day after day, over here in the West-end. It was for family reasons, into which I must not go too closely. Somebody, it appeared, still came home, now and then, just once in a way, to see her mother, and to visit the den where she was bred; and there was still left one who would wait for her week after week — still one pair of childish feet, bare and dirty, that would patter back beside her — still one childish voice that would prattle with her on the way to her hideous home, and call her sister.
“Have you any brothers?”
Five altogether. Jim was gone for a sojer, it appeared; and Nipper was sent over the water. Harry was on the cross —
“On the cross?” said Charles.
“Ah!” the boy said, “he goes out cly-faking and such. He’s a prig, and a smart one, too. He’s fly, is Harry.”
“But what is cly-faking?” said Charles.
“Why a-prigging of wipes, and sneeze-boxes, and ridicules, and such.”
Charles was not so ignorant of slang as not to understand what his little friend meant now. He said —
“But you are not a thief, are you?”
The boy looked up at him frankly and honestly, and said —
“Lord bless you, no! I shouldn’t make no hand of that. I ain’t brave enough for that!”
He gave the boy twopence, and gave orders that one penny was to be spent in a ball. And then he sauntered listlessly away — every day more listless, and not three weeks gone yet.
His mind returned to this child very often. He found himself thinking more about the little rogue than he could explain. The strange babble of the child, prattling so innocently, and, as he thought, so prettily, about vice, and crime, and misery; about one brother transported, one a thief — and you see he could love his sister even to the very end of it all. Strange babble indeed from a child’s lips.
He thought of it again and agam, and then, dressing himself plainly, he went up to Grosvenor Square, where Mary would be walking with Lord Charles Herries’s children. He wanted to hear them talk.
He was right in his calculations; the children were there. All three of them this time; and Hary was there too. They were close to the rails, and he leant his back on them, and heard every word.
“Miss Corby,” said Gus, “if Lady Ascot is such a good woman, she will go to heaven when she dies 1 ”
“Yes, indeed, my dear,” said Mary.
“And, when grandma dies, will she go to heaven, too 1 ” said the artful Gus, knowing as well as possible that old Lady Hainault and Lady Ascot were deadly enemies.
“I hope so, my dear,” said Mary.
“But does Lady Ascot hope so? Do you think grandma would be happy if — ”
It became high time to stop master Gus, who was getting on too fast. Mary having bowled him out, Miss Flora had an innings.
“When I grow up,” said Flora, “I shall wear knee-breeches and top-boots, and a white bulldog, and a long clay pipe, and I shall drive into Henley on a market-day and put up at the Catherine Wheel”
Mary had breath enough left to ask her why.
“Because Farmer Thompson at Casterton dresses like that, and he is such a dear old darling. He gives us strawberries and cream; and in his garden are gooseberries and peacocks; and the peacocks’ wives don’t spread out their tails like their husbands do, — the foolish things. Now, when I am married — ”
Gus was rude enough to interrupt her here. He remarked —
“When Archy goes to heaven, he’ll want the cat to come to bed with him; and, if he can’t get her, there’ll be a pretty noise.”
“My dears,” said Mary, “you must not talk any more nonsense; I can’t permit it.”
“But, my dear Miss Corby,” said Flora, “we haven’t been talking nonsense, have we? I told you the tnith about Farmer Thompson.”
“I know what she means,” said Gus; “we have been saying what came into our heads, and it vexes her. It is all nonsense, you know, about you wearing breeches and spreading out your tail like a peacock; we mustn’t vex her.”
Flora didn’t answer Gus, but answered Mary by climbing on her knee and kissing her. “Tell us a story, dear,” said Gus.
“What shall I tell?” said Mary.
“Tell us about Ravenshoe,” said Flora; “tell us about the fishermen, and the priest that walked about like a ghost in the dark passages; and about Cuthbert Ptavenshoe, who was always saying his prayers; and about the other one who won the boat race.”
“Which one?” said silly Mary.
“Why, the other; the one you like best. What was his name?”
“Charles!”
How quietly and softly she said it! The word left her lips like a deep sigh. One who heard it was a gentleman still. He had heard enough, perhaps too much, and walked away towards the stable and the public-house, leaving her in the gathering gloom of the summer's evening under the red hawthorns, and laburnums, among the children. And, as he walked away, he thought of the night he left Ravenshoe, when the little figure was standing in the hall all alone. “ She might have loved me, and I her,” he said, “if the world were not out of joint; God grant it may not be so!” And, although he said, “God grant she may not,” he really wished it had been so; and from this very time Mary began to take Adelaide’s place in his heart.
Not that he was capable of falling in love with any woman at this time. He says he was crazy, and I believe him to a certain extent. It was a remarkably lucky thing for him that he had so diligently neglected his education. If he had not, and had found himself in his present position, with three or four times more of intellectual cravings to be satisfied, he would have gone mad, or taken to drinking. I, who write, have seen the thing happen.
But, before the crash came, I have seen Charles patiently spending the morning cutting gun-wads from an old hat, in preference to going to his books. It was this interest in trifles which saved him just now. He could think at times, and had had education enough to think logically; but his brain was not so active but that he could cut gun-wads for an hour or so; though his friend William could cut one-third more gun-wads out of an old hat than he.
He was thinking now, in his way, about these children — about Gus and Flora on the one hand, and the little shoeblack on the other. Both so innocent and retty, and yet so different. He had taken himself from the one world and thrown himself into the other. There were two worlds and two standards — gentlemen and non-gentlemen. The “lower orders “did not seem to be so particular about the character of their immediate relations as the upper. That, was well, for he belonged to the former now, and had a sister. If one of Lord Charles Herries’s children had gone wrong, Gus and Flora would never have talked of him or her to a stranger. He must learn the secret of this armour which made the poor so invulnerable. He must go and talk to the little shoeblack.
He thought that was the reason why he went to look after the little rogue next day; but that was not the real reason. The reason was, that he had found a friend in a lower grade than himself, who would admire him and look up to him. The first friend of that sort he had made since his fall. What that friend accidentally saved him from, we shall see.
HORNBY was lying ou his back on the sofa in the window, and looking out. He had sent for Charles, and Charles was standing beside him; but he had not noticed him yet. In a minute Charles said, “You sent for me, sir.”
Hornby turned sharply round. “By Jove, yes,” he said, looking straight at him; “Lord Welter is married.”
Charles did not move a muscle, and Hornby looked disappointed. Charles only said —
“May I ask who she is, sir?”
“She is a Miss Summers. Do you know anything of her?”
Charles knew Miss Summers quite well by sight — had attended her while riding, in fact. A statement which, though strictly true, misled Hornby more than fifty lies.
“Handsome?”
“Remarkably so. Probably the handsomest” (he was going to say “girl,” but said “lady”) “I ever saw in my life.”
“H’m!” and he sat silent a moment, and gave
Charles time to think. “I am glad he has married her, and before tomorrow, too.”
“Well,” said Hornby again, “we shall go down in the drag tomorrow. Fen’ers will drive, he says. I suppose he had better; he drives better than I. Make the other two lads come in livery, but come in 1)lack trousers yourself. Wear your red waistcoat; you can button your coat over it, if it is necessary.” “Shall I wear my cockade, sir?” “Yes; that won’t matter. Can you fight?” Charles said to himself, “I suppose we shall be in Queer-street tomorrow, then;” but he rather liked the idea. “I used to like it,” said he aloud. “I don’t think I care about it now. Last year, at Oxford, I and three other University men, three Pauls and a Brazenose, had a noble stramash on Follybridge. That is the last fighting I have seen.”
“What College were you at?” said Hornby, looking out of the window; “Brazenose?”
“Paul’s,” said Charles, without thinking. “Then you are the man Welter was telling me about — Charles Ravenshoe.”
Charles saw it was no good to fence, and said, “Yes.” “By Jove,” said Hornby, “yours is a sad story. You must have ridden out with Lady Welter more than once, I take it.”
“Are you going to say anything to Lord Welter, sir?” “Not I. I like you too well to lose you. You will stick by me, won’t you?”
“I will,” said Charles, “to the death. But oh, Hornby, for any sake mind those d — d bones!”
“I will. But don’t be an ass: I don’t play half as much as you think.”
“You are playing with Welter now, sir; are you not?”
“You are a pretty dutiful sort of groom, I don’t think,” said Hornby, looking round and laughing good-naturedly. “ What the dickens do you mean by cross-questioning me like that? Yes, I am. There — and for a noble purpose too.”
Charles said no more, but was well pleased enough. If Hornby had only given him a little more of his confidence!
“I suppose,” said Hornby, “if Haphazard don’t win tomorrow, Lord Ascot will be a beggar.”
“They say,” said Charles, “that he has backed his own horse through thick and thin, sir. It is inconceivable folly; but things could not be worse at Ranford, and he stands to win some sum on the horse, as they say, which would put everything right; and the horse is favourite.”
“Favourites never win,” said Hornby; “and I don’t think that Lord Ascot has so much on him as they say.”
So, the next day, they went to the Derby. Sir Robert Ferrers of the (ruards drove (this is Inkerman Bob, and he has got a patent cork leg now, and a “Victoria Cross, and goes a-shooting on a grey cob); and there was Red Maclean, on furlough from India; and there was Lord Swansea, youngest of existing
Guardsmen, who blew a horn, and didn’t blow it at all well; and there were two of Lieutenant Hornby’s brother-officers, besides the Lieutenant: and behind, with Hornby’s two grooms and our own Charles, dressed in sober black, was little Dick Ferrers, of the Home Office, who carried a peashooter, and pea-shot the noses of the leading horses of a dragful of Plungers, which followed them — which thing, had he been in the army, he wouldn’t have dared to do. And the Plungers swore, and the dust flew, and the mnd blew, and Sir Ptobert drove, and Charles laughed, and Lord Swansea gave them a little music, and away they went to the Derby.
When they came on the course, Charles and his fellow-servants had enough to do to get the horses out and see after them. After nearly an hour’s absence he got back to the drag, and began to look about him.
The Plungers had drawn up behind them, and were lolling about Before them was a family party — a fine elderly gentleman, a noble elderly lady, and two uncommonly pretty girls; and they were enjoying themselves. They were too well bred to make a noise; but there was a subdued babbling sound of laughter in that carriage, which was better music than that of a little impish German who, catching Charles’s eye, played the accordion and waltzed before him, as did Salome before Herod, but with a different effect.
The carriage beyond that was a very handsome one, and in it sat a lady most beautifully dressed, alone. By the step of the carriage were a crowd of men — Hornby,
Hornby’s brother-officers, Sir Robert Ferrers, and even little Dick Ferrers. Nay, there was a Plunger there; and they were all talking and laughing at the top of their voices.
Charles, goose as he was, used to be very fond of Dickens’s novels. He used to say that almost everywhere in those novels you came across a sketch, may be unconnected with the story, as bold and true and beautiful as those chalk sketches of Eaphael in the Taylor — scratches which, when once seen, you could never forget any more. And, as he looked at that lady in the carriage, he was reminded of one of Dickens’s masterpieces in that way, out of the “Old Curiosity Shop “— of a lady sitting in a carriage all alone at the races, who bought Nell’s poor flowers, and bade her go home and stay there, for God’s sake.
Her back was towards him, of course; yet he guessed she was beautiful. “She is a fast woman, God help her 1 ” said he; and he determined to go and look at her.
He sauntered past the carriage, and turned to look at her. It was Adelaide.
As faultlessly beautiful as ever, but ah — how changed! The winning petulance, so charming in other days, was gone from that face for ever. Hard, stern, proud, defiant, she sat there upright, alone. Fallen from the society of all women of her own rank, she knew — who better? — that not one of those men chattering around her would have borne to see her in the company of his ister, viscountess though she were, countess and mother of earls as she would be. They laughed, and lounged, and joked before her; and she tolerated them, and cast her gibes hither and thither among them, bitterly and contemptuously. It was her first appearance in the world. She had been married three days, Not a woman would speak to her: Lord Welter had coarsely told her so that morning; and bitterness and hatred were in her heart. It was for this she had bartered honour and good fame. She had got’ her title, flung to her as a bone to a dog by Welter; but her social power, for which she had sold herself, was lower, far lower, than when she was poor Adelaide Summers.
It is right that it should be so, as a rule; in her case it was doubly right.
Charles knew all this well enough., And at the first glance at her face he knew that “the iron had entered into her soul” (I know no better expression), and he was revenged. He had ceased to love her, but revenge is sweet — to some.
Not to him. When he looked at her, he would havi? given his life that she might smile again, though she was no more to him what she had been. He turned for fear of being seen, saying to himself, —
“Poor girl! Poor dear Adelaide! She must lie on the bed she has made. God help her!”
Haphazard was the first favourite — facile princeps. He was at two and a half to one. Bill Sykes, at three and a half, was a very dangerous horse. Then came Carnarvon, Lablache, Lickpitcher, Ivanhoe, Ben Gaunt, Bathbun, Hamlet, Allfours, and Colonel Sibthorp. The last of these was at twenty to one. Ben Gaunt was to make the running for Haphazard, so they said; and Colonel Sibthorp for Bill Sykes.
So he heard the men talking round Lady Welter’s carriage. Hornby’s voice was as loud as any one s, and a pleasant voice it was; but they none of them talked very low. Charles could hear every word.
“I am afraid Lady Welter will never forgive me,” said Hornby, “but I have bet against the favourite.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Adelaide.
“I have bet against your horse, Lady Welter.”
“My horse?” said Adelaide, coolly and scornfully. “My horses are all post-horses, hired for the day to bring me here. I hope none of them are engaged in the races, as I shall have to go home with a pair only, and then I shall be disgraced for ever.”
“I mean Haphazard.”
“Oh, that horse?” said Adelaide; “that is Lord Ascot’s horse, not mine. I hope you may win. You ought to win something, oughtn’t you? Welter has won a great deal from you, I believe.”
The facts were the other way. But Hornby said no more to her. She was glad of this, though she liked him well enough, for she hoped that she had offended him l)y her insolent manner. But they were at cross-purposes.
Presently Lord Welter came swinging in among hem; he looked terribly savage and wild, and Charles thought he had heen drinking. Knowing what he was in this mood, and knowing also the mood Adelaide was in, he dreaded some scene. “ But they cannot quarrel so soon,” he thought.
“How d’ye do?” said Lord Welter to the knot of men round his wife’s carriage. “Lady Welter, have your people got any champagne, or anything of that sort?”
“I suppose so; you had better ask them.”
She had not forgotten what he said to her that morning so brutally. She saw he was madly angry, and would have liked to make him commit himself before these men. She had fawned, and wheedled, and flattered for a month; but now she was Lady Welter, and he should feel it.
Lord Welter looked still more savage, but said nothing. A man brought him some wine; and, as he gave it to him, Adelaide said, as quietly as though she were telling him that there was some dust on his coat, —
“You had better not take too much of it; you seem to have had enough already. Sir Robert Ferrers here is very taciturn in his cups, I am told; but you make such a terrible to-do when you are drunk.”
They should feel her tongue, these fellows! They might come and dangle about her carriage — door, and joke to one another, and look on her beauty as if she were a doll; but they should feel her tongue! Charles’s heart sank within him as he heard her. Only a month gone, and she desperate.
But of all the mischievous things done on that racecourse that day — and they were many — the most mischievous and uncalled-for was Adelaide’s attack upon Sir Robert Ferrer, who, though very young, was as sober, clever, and discreet a young man as any in the Guards, or in England. But Adelaide had heard a story about him. To wit, that, going to dinner at Greenwich with a number of friends, and havino; taken two glasses or so of wine at his dinner, he got it into Ms head that he was getting tipsy; and refused to speak another word all the evening for fear of committing himself.
The other men laughed at Ferrers. And Lord Welter chose to laugh too; he was determined that his wife should not make a fool of him. But now every one began to draw off and take their places for the race. Little Dick Ferrers, whose whole life was one long effort of good nature, stayed by Lady Welter, though horribly afraid of her, because he did not like to see her left alone. Charles forced himself into a front position against the rails, with his friend Mr. Sloane, and held on thereby, intensely interested. He was passionately fond of horse-racing; and he forgot everything, even his poor, kind old friend Lord Ascot, in scrutinising every horse as it canie by from the Warren, and guessing which was to win. ”
Haphazard was the horse, there could be no doubt. A cheer ran all along the line, as he came walking majestically down, as though he knew he was the hero of the day. Bill Sykes and Carnarvon were as good as ood could be; but Haphazard was better. Charles remembered Lady Ascot’s tearful warning about his not being able to stay; but he laughed it to scorn. The horse had furnished so since then! Here he came, flying past them like a whirlwind, shaking the earth, and making men’s ears tingle with the glorious music of his feet on the turf. Haphazard, ridden by “Wells, must win! Hurrah for Wells!
As the horse came slowly past again, he looked up to see the calm, stern face; but it was not there. There were Lord Ascot’s colours, dark blue and white sash; but where was Wells? The jockey was a smooth-faced young man, with very white teeth, who kept grinning and touching his cap at every other word Lord Ascot said to him. Charles hurriedly borrowed Sloane’s card, and read,
“Lord Ascot’s Haphazard J. Brooks.”
Who, in the name of confusion, was J. Brooks? All of a sudden he remembered. It was one of Lord Ascot’s own lads. It was the very lad that rode Haphazard on the day that Adelaide and he rode out to the Downs, at Ranford, to see the horse gallop. Lord Ascot must be mad.
“But Wells was to have ridden Haphazard, Mr. Sloane,” said Charles.
“He wouldn’t,” said Sloane, and laughed sardonically. But there was no time for Charles to ask why he laughed, for the horses were off.
Those who saw the race were rather surprised that
Ben Caunt had not showed more to the front at first to force the running; but there was not much time to think of such tilings. As they came round the corner, Haphazard, who was lying sixth, walked through his horses and laid himself alongside of Bill Sykes. A hundred yards from the post, Bill Sykes made a push, and drew a neck a-head; in a second or so more Haphazard had passed him, winning the Derby by a clear length; and poor Lord Ascot fell headlong down in a fit, like a dead man.
Little Dicky Ferrers, in the excitement of the race, had climbed into the rumble of Adelaide’s carriage, peashooter and all; and, having cheered rather noisily as the favourite came in winner, he was beginning to wonder whether he hadn’t made a fool of himself, and what Lady Welter would say when she found where he had got to, when Lord Welter broke through the crowd, and came up to his wife, looking like death.
“Get home, Adelaide! You see what has happened, and know what to do. Lady Welter, if I get hold of that bt)y, Brooks, tonight, in a safe place, I’ll murder
Mm, by!”
“I believe you will, Welter. Keep away from him, unless you are a madman. If you anger the boy it will all come out. Where is Lord Ascot?”
“Dead, they say, or dying. He is in a fit.”
“I ought to go to him, Welter, in common decency.”
“Go home, I tell you. Get the things you know of packed, and taken to one of the hotels at London Bridge. Any name will do. Be at home tonight, dressed, in a state of jubilation; and keep a couple of hundred pounds in the house. Here, you fellows! her ladyship’s horses — look sharp!”
Poor little Dicky Ferrers had heard more than he intended; but Lord Welter, in his madness, had not noticed him. He didn’t use his peashooter going home, and spoke very little. There was a party of all of them in Hornby’s rooms that night, and Dicky was so dull at first, that his brother made some excuse to get him by himself, and say a few eager, affectionate words to him.
“Dick, my child, you have lost some money. How much? You shall have it tomorrow.”
“Not half a halfpenny. Bob; but I was with Lady Welter just after the race, and I heard more tlian I ought to have heard.”
“You couldn’t help it, I hope.”
“I ought to have helped it; but it was so sudden, I couldn’t help it. And now I can’t ease my mind by telling anybody.”
“I suppose it was some rascality of Welter’s,” said Sir Robert, laughing. “It don’t much matter; only don’t tell any one, you know.” And then they went in again, and Dicky never told any one till every one knew.
For it came out soon that Lord Ascot had been madly betting, by commission, against his own horse, and that forty years’ rents of his estates wouldn’t set my lord on his legs again. With his usual irresolution, he had changed his policy — partly owing, I fear, to our dear old friend Lady Ascot’s perpetual croaking about “Eamoneur blood,” and its staying qualities. So, after betting such a sum on his own horse as gave the betting world confidence, and excusing himself by pleading his well-known poverty from going further, he had hedged, by commission; and, could his horse have lost, he would have won enough to set matters right at Ranford. He dared not ask a great jockey to ride for him under such circumstances, and so he puffed one of his own lads to the world, and broke with Wells. The lad had sold him like a sheep. Meanwhile, thinking himself a man of honour, poor fool, he had raised every farthing possible on his estate to meet his engagements on the turf in case of failure — in case of his horse winning by some mischance, if such a thing could be. And so it came about that the men of the turf were all honourably paid, and he and his tradesmen were ruined. The estates were entailed; but for thirty years Ranford must be in the hands of strangers. Lord Welter, too, had raised money, and lost fearfully by the same speculation.
There are some men who are always in the right place when they are wanted — always ready to do good and kind actions — and who are generally found “to the fore” in times of trouble. Such a man was General Mainwaring. When Lord Ascot fell down in a fit, he was beside him, and, having seen him doing well, and having heard from him, as he recovered, the fearful extent of the disaster, he had posted across country to Ranford and told Lady Ascot.
She took it very quietly.
“Win or lose,” she said, “it is all one to this unhappy house. Tell them to get out my horses, dear general, and let me go to my poof darling Ascot. You have heard nothing of Charles Ravenshoe, general?”
“Nothing, my dear lady.”
Charles had brushed his sleeve in the crowd that day, and had longed to take the dear old brown hand in his again, but dared not. Poor Charles 1 If he had only done so I
So the general and Lady Ascot went oft’ together, and nursed Lord Ascot; and Adelaide, pale as death, but beautiful as ever, was driven home through the dust and turmoil, clenching her hands impatiently together at every stoppage on the road.
There was a time, a time we have seen, when Lord Welter was a merry, humorous, thoughtless boy. A boy, one would have said, with as little real mischief in him as mifjht be. He might have made a decent member of society, who knows? But, to do him justice, he had had everything against him from his earliest childhood. He had never known what a mother was, or a sister. His earliest companions were grooms and gamekeepers; and his religious instruction was got mostly from his grandmother, whose old-fashioned Sunday-morning lectures and collect learnings, so rigidly pursued that he dreaded Sunday of all days in the week, were succeeded by cock-fighting in the Croft with his father in the afternoon, and lounging away the evening among the stable-boys. As Lord Saltire once said, in a former part of this story, “Ranford was what the young men of the day called an uncommon fast house.”
Fast enough, in truth. “All downhill and no drag on.” Welter soon defied his grandmother. For his father he cared nothing. Lord Ascot was so foolishly fond of the boy that he never contradicted him in anything, and sed even to laugh when he was impudent to his grandmother, whom, to do Lord Ascot justice, he respected more than any living woman. Tutors were tried, of whom Welter, by a happy combination of obstinacy and recklessness, managed to vanquish three, in as many months. It was hopeless. Lord Ascot would not hear of his going to school. He was his only boy, his darling. He could not part with him; and, when Lady Ascot pressed the matter, he grew obstinate, as he could at times, and said he would not. The boy would do well enough; he had been just like him at his age, and look at him now!
Lord Ascot was mistaken. He had not been quite like Lord Welter at his age. He had been a very quiet sort of boy indeed. Lord Ascot was a great stickler for blood in horses, and understood such things. I wonder he could not have seen the difference between the sweet, loving face of his mother, capable of violent, furious passion though it was, and that of his coarse, stupid, handsome, gipsy-looking wife, and judged accordingly. He had engrafted a new strain of blood on the old Staunton stock, and was to reap the consequences.
What was to become of Lord Welter was a great problem, still unsolved; when, one night, shortly before Charles paid his first visit to Ranford, vice Cuthbert, disapproved of. Lord Ascot came up, as his custom was, into his mother’s dressing-room, to have half-an-hour’s chat with her before she went to bed.
“I wonder, mother dear,” he said, “whether I ought to ask old Saltire again, or not? He wouldn’t come last time, you know. If I thought he wouldn’t come, I’d ask him.”
“You must ask him,” said Lady Ascot, brushing her grey hair, “and he will come.”
“Very well,” said Lord Ascot. “It’s a bore; but you must have some one to flirt with, I suppose.”
Lady Ascot laughed. In fact, she had written before, and told him that he must come, for she wanted him; and come he did.
“Now, Maria,” said Lord Saltire, on the first night, as soon as he and Lady Ascot were seated together on a quiet sofa, “what is it? Why have you brought me down to meet this mob of jockeys and gamekeepers? A fortnight here, and not a soul to speak to, but Mainwaring and yourself. After I was here last time, dear old Lady Hainault croaked out in a large crowd that some one smelt of the stable.
“Dear old soul,” said Lady Ascot. “What a charming, delicate wit she has. You will have to come here again, though. Every year, mind.”
“Kismet,” said Lord Saltire. “But what is the matter?”
“What do you think of Ascot's boy?”
“Oh, Lord!” said Lord Saltire. “So I have been brought all this way to be consulted about a schoolboy. Well, I think he looks an atrocious young cub, as like his dear mamma as he can be. I always used to expect that she would call me a pretty gentleman, and want to tell my fortune.”
Lady Ascot smiled: she knew her man. She knew he would have died for her and hers.
“He is getting very troublesome,” said Lady Ascot. “What would you reco — ”
“Send him to Eton,” said Lord Saltire.
“But he is very high-spirited, James, and — ”
“Send him to Eton. Do you hear, Maria?”
“But Ascot won’t let him go,” said Lady Ascot.
“Oh, he won’t, won’t he?” said Lord Saltire. “Now, let us hear no more of the cub, but have our picquet in peace.”
The next morning Lord Saltire had an interview with Lord Ascot, and two hours afterwards it was known that Lord Welter was to go to Eton at once.
And so, when Lord Welter met Charles at Twyford, he told him of it.
At Eton, he had rapidly found other boys brought up with the same tastes as himself, and with these he consorted. A rapid interchange of experiences went on among these young gentlemen; which ended in Lord Welter, at all events, being irreclaimably vicious.
Lord Welter had fallen in love with Charles, as boys do, and their friendship had lasted on, waning as it went, till they permanently met again at Oxford. There, though their intimacy was as close as ever, the old love died out, for a time, amidst riot and debauchery. Charles had some sort of a creed about women; Lord Welter had none. Charles drew a line at a certain point, low down it might be, which he never passed; Welter set no bounds anywhere. What Lord Hainault said of him at Tattersall’s was true. One day, when they had been arguing on this point rather sharply, Charles said —
“If you mean what you say, you are not fit to come into a gentleman’s house. But you don’t mean it, old cock; so don’t be an ass.”
He did mean it, and Charles was right. Alas! that ever he should have come to Ravenshoe!
Lord Welter had lived so long in the house with Adelaide that he never thought of making love to her. They used to quarrel, like Benedict and Beatrice. What happened was her fault. She was worthless. Worthless. Let us have done with it. I can expand over Lord Saltire and Lady Ascot, and such good people, but I cannot over her, more than is necessary.
Two things Lord Welter was very fond of — brawling and dicing. He was an arrant bully; very strong, and perfect in the use of his fists, and of such courage and tenacity that, having once begun a brawl, no one had ever made him leave it, save as an unqualified victor. This was getting well known now. Since he had left Oxford and had been living in London, he had been engaged in two or three personal encounters in the terribly fast society to which he had betaken himself, and men were getting afraid of him. Another thing was, that, drink as he would, he never played the worse for it. He was a lucky player. Sometimes, after winning money of a man, he would ask him home to have his revenge. That man generally went again and again to Lord Welter’s house in St. John’s Wood, and did not find himself any the richer. It was the most beautiful little gambling den in London, and it was presided over by one of the most beautiful, witty, fascinating women ever seen. A woman with whom all the men fell in love; so staid, so respectable, and charmingly behaved. Lord Welter always used to call her Lady Welter; so they all called her Lady Welter too, and treated her as though she were.
But this Lady Welter was soon to be dethroned to make room for Adelaide. A day or two before they went off together, this poor woman got a note from Welter to tell her to prepare for a new mistress. It was no blow to her. He had prepared her for it for some time. There might have been tears, wild tears, in private; but what cared he for the tears of such an one? When Lord Welter and Adelaide came home, and Adelaide came with him into the hall, she advanced towards her, dressed as a waiting-woman, and said quietly,
“You are welcome home, madam.”
It was Ellen, and Lord Welter was the delinquent, as you have guessed already. When she fled from Ravenshoe, she was flying from the anger of her supposed brother William; for he thought he knew all about it; and, when Charles and Marston saw her passing roimd the cliff, she was making her weary way on foot towards Exeter to join him in London. After she was missed, William had written to Lord Welter, earnestly begging him to tell him if he had heard of her. And Welter had written back to him that he knew nothing, on his honour. Alas for Welter’s honour, and William’s folly in believing him!
Poor Ellen! Lord Welter had thought that she would have left the house, and had good reason for thinking so. But, when he got home, there she was. All her finery cast away, dressed plainly and quietly. And there she stayed, waiting on Adelaide, demure and quiet as a waiting-woman should be. Adelaide had never been to Ravenshoe, and did not know her. Lord Welter had calculated on her going; but she stayed on. Why?
You must bear with me, indeed you must, at such times as these. I touch as lightly as I can; but I have undertaken to tell a story, and I must tell it. These things are going on about us, and we try to ignore them, till they are thnist rudely upon us, as they are twenty times a year. No English story about young men could lie complete without bringing in subjects which some may think best left alone. Let us comfort ourselves with one great, undeniable fact, — the immense improvement in morals which has taken place in the last ten years. The very outcry which is now raised against such relations shows plainly one thing at least — that undeniable facts are being winked at no longer, and that some reform is coming. Every younger son who can command ￡200 a year ought to be allowed to marry in his own rank in life, whatever that may be. They will bo uncomfortable, and have to save and push; and very good thing for them. They won’t lose caste. There are some things worse than mere discomfort. Let lis look at bare facts, which no one dare deny. There is in the great world, and the upper middle-class world too, a crowd of cadets; younger sons, clerks, officers in the army, and so on; non-marrying men, as the slang goes, who are asked out to dine and dance with girls who are their equals in rank, and who have every opportunity of falling in love with them. And yet if one of this numerous crowd were to dare to fall in love with, and to propose to, one of these girls, he would be denied the house. It is the fathers and mothers who are to blame, to a great extent, for the very connexions they denounce so loudly. But yet the very outcry they are raising against these connexions is a hopeful sign.
Lieutenant Hornby, walking up and down the earth to see what mischief he could get into, had done a smart stroke of business in that way, by making the acquaintance of Lord Welter at a gambling-house. Hornby was a very good fellow. He had two great pleasures in life. One, I am happy to say, was soldiering, at which he worked like a horse, and the other, I am very sorry to say, was gambling, at which he worked a great deal harder than he should. He was a marked man among professional players. Every one knew how awfully rich he was, and every one in succession had a “shy ” at him. He was not at all particular. He would accept a battle with any one. Gaming men did all sorts of dirty things to get introduced to him, and play with him. The greater number of them had their wicked will; but the worst of it was, that he always won. Sometimes, at a game of chance, he might lose enough to encourage his enemies to go on; but at games of skill no one could touch him. His billiard playing was simply masterly. And Dick Ferrers will tell you, that he and Hornby, being once, I am very sorry to say, together at G— n — ch r — r, were accosted in the park by a skittle-sharper, and that Hornby (who would, like Faust, have played chess with Old Gooseberry) allowed himself to be taken into a skittle-ground, from which he came out in half an hour victorious over the skittle-sharper, beating him easily.
In the heyday of his fame, Lord Welter was told of him, and saying, “Give me the daggers,” got introduced to him. They had a tournament at ecarte, or billiards, or something or another of that sort, it don’t matter; and Lord Welter asked him up to St. John’s Wood, where he saw Ellen.
He lost that night liberally, as he could afford to; and, with very little persuasion, was induced to come there the next. He lost liberally again. He had fallen in love with Ellen.
Lord Welter saw it, and made use of it as a bait to draw on Hornby to play. Ellen’s presence was, of course, a great attraction to him, and he came and played; but unluckily for Lord Welter, after a few nights his luck changed, or he took more care, and he began to
Win again; so much so that, about the time when Adelaide came home, my Lord Welter had had nearly enough of Lieutenant Hornby, and was in hopes that he should have got rid of Ellen and him together; for his lordship was no fool about some tilings, and saw plainly this — that Hornby was passionately fond of Ellen, and, moreover, that poor Ellen had fallen deeply in love with Hornby.
So, when he came home, he was surprised and angry to find her there. She would not go. She would stay and wait on Adelaide. She had been asked to go; but had refused sharply the man she loved. Poor girl, she had her reasons; and we shall see what they were. Now you know what I meant when I wondered whether or no Charles would have burnt Hornby’s house down if he had known all. But you will be rather inclined to forgive Hornby presently, as Charles did when he came to know everything.
But the consequence of Ellen’s staying on as servant to Adelaide brought this with it, that Hornby determined that he would have the entree of the house in St. John’s Wood, at any price. Lord Welter guessed this, and guessed that Hornby would be inclined to lose a little money in order to gain it. When he brushed Charles’s knee in Piccadilly he was deliberating whether or no he should ask him back there again. As he stood unconsciously, almost touching Charles, he came to the determination that he would try what bargain he could make with the honour of Charles’s sister, whom he had so shamefully injured lready. And Charles saw them make the appointment together in the balcony. How little he guessed for what!
Lord Hainault was right. Welter was a scoundrel. But Hornby was not, as we shall see.
Hornby loved play for play’s sake. And, extravagant dandy though he was, the attorney blood of his father came out sometimes so strong in him that, although he would have paid any price to be near, and speak to Ellen, yet he could not help winning, to Lord Welter’s great disgust, and his own great amusement. Their game, I believe, was generally picquet or ecarte, and at both these he was Lord Welter’s master. What with his luck and his superior play, it was very hard to lose decently sometimes; and sometimes, as I said, he would cast his plans to the winds, and win terribly. But he always repented when he saw Lord Welter get savage, and lost dutifully, though at times he could barely keep his countenance. Nevertheless the balance he allowed to Lord Welter made a very important item in that gentleman’s somewhat precarious income.
But, in spite of all his sacrifices, he but rarely got even a glimpse of Ellen. And, to complicate matters, Adelaide, who sat by and watched the play, and saw Hornby purposely losing at times, got it into her silly head that he was in love with her. She liked the man; who did not? But she had honour enough left to be mde to him. Hornby saw all this, and was amused. I often think that it must have been a fine spectacle, to see the honoumble man playing with the scoundrel, and iving him just as much line as he chose. And, when I call Hornby an honourable man I mean what I say, as you will see.
This was the state of things when the Derby crash came. At half-past five on that day the Viscountess Welter dashed up to her elegant residence in St. John’s Wood, in a splendid barouche, drawn by four horses, and when “her people ” came and opened the door and let down the steps, lazily descended, and, followed by her footman bearing her fal-lals, lounged up the steps as if life were really too ennuyant to be born any longer. Three hours afterwards, a fierce eager woman, plainly dressed, with a dark veil, was taking apartments in the Bridge Hotel, London Bridge, for Mr. and Mrs. Staunton, who were going abroad in a few days; and was overseeing, with her confidential servant, a staid man in black, the safe stowage of numerous hasped oak boxes, the most remarkable thing about which, was their great weight. The lady was Lady Welter, and the man was Lord Welter’s confidential scoundrel. The landlord thought they had robbed Hunt and Roskell’s, and were off with the plunder, till he overheard the man say, “I think that is all, my lady’; ” after which he was quite satisfied. The fact was that all the Ascot race plate, gold salvers and epergnes, silver cups rough with designs of the chase, and possibly also some of the Ascot family jewels, were so disgusted with the state of things in England, that they were thinking of going for a little trip on the Continent. What should a dutiful wife do but see to their safe stowage? If any enterprising burglar had taken it into his head to “crack ” that particular “crib ” known as the Bridge Hotel, and got clear off with the “swag,” he might have retired on the hard-earned fruits of a well-spent life, into happier lands — might have been “run ” for M,L.C., or possibly for Congress in a year or two. Who can tell?
And, also, if Lord Welter’s confidential scoundrel had taken it into his head to waylay and rob his lordship’s noble consort on her way home — which he was quite capable of doing — and if he also had got clear off, he would have found himself a better man by seven hundred and ninety-four pounds, three half-crowns, and a — threepenny piece; that is, if he had done it before her ladyship had paid the cabman. But both the burglars and the valet missed the tide, and the latter regrets it to this day.
At eleven o’clock that night Lady Welter was lolling leisurely on her drawingroom sofa, quite bored to death. When Lord Welter, and Hornby, and Sir Robert Ferrers, and some Dragoons came in, she was yawning, as if life was really too much of a plague to be endured. Would she play loo? Oh, yes; anything after such a wretched, lonely evening. That was the game where you had three cards, wasn’t it, and you needn’t go on unless you liked? Would Welter or some one lend her some money? She had got a threepenny piece and a shilling somewhere or another, but that would not be enough, she supposed, where was Sir Robert’s little brother?
Gone to bed? How tiresome; she had fallen in love with him, and had set her heart on seeing him tonight; and so on.
Lord Welter gave her a key, and told her there was some money in his dressing-case. As she left the room, Hornby, who was watching them, saw a quick look of intelligence pass between them, and laughed in his sleeve.
I have been given to understand that guinea unlimited loo is a charming pursuit, soothing to the feelings, and highly improving to the moral tone. I speak from hearsay, as circumstances over which I have no control have prevented my ever trying it. But this I know — that, if Lord Welter’s valet had robbed his master and mistress when they went to bed that night; instead of netting seven hundred and ninety-four, seven, nine, he would have netted eleven hundred and forty-six, eight, six; leaving out the threepenny-piece. But he didn’t do it; and Lord and Lady Welter slept that sleep which is the peculiar reward of a quiet conscience, undisturbed.
But, next morning, when Charles waited on Hornby in his dressing-room, the latter said —
“I shall want you tonight, lad. I thought I might have last night; but, seeing the other fellows went, I left you at home. Be ready at half-past six. I lost a hundred and twenty pounds last night I don’t mean to afford it any longer. I shall stop it.”
“Where are we to go to, sir?”
“To St. John’s Wood. We shall be up late. Leave the servant’s hall, and come up and lie in the hall as if you were asleep. Don’t let yourself be seen. ‘No one win notice you.”
Charles little thought where he was going.
Chaeles had really no idea where he was going. Although he Ivnew that Hornby had been playing with Lord Welter, yet he thought, from what Hornby had said, that he would not bring him into collision with him; and indeed he did not — only taking Charles with him as a reserve in case of accidents, for he thoroughly distrusted his lordship.
At half-past six in the evening Hornby rode slowly away, followed by Charles. He had told Charles that he should dine in St. John’s Wood at seven, and should ride there, and Charles was to wait with the horses. But it was nearly seven, and yet Hornby loitered, and seemed undetermined. It was a wild, gusty evening, threatening rain. There were very few people abroad, and those who were rode or walked rapidly. And yet Hornby dawdled irresolute, as though his determination were hardly strong enough yet.
At first he rode quite away from his destination, but by degrees his horse’s head got changed into the right direction; then he made another detour, but a shorter one; at last he put spurs to his horse, and rode resolutely up the short carriage-drive before the door, and, giving the reins to Charles, walked firmly in.
Charles put up the horses, and went into the servants’ hall, or the room which answered that end in the rather small house of Lord Welter. No one was there. All the servants were busy with the dinner, and Charles was left unnoticed.
By and by a page, noticing a strange servant in passing the door, brought him some beer, and a volume of the Newgate Calendar. This young gentleman called his attention to a print of a lady cutting up the body of her husband with a chopper, assisted by a young Jew, who was depicted “walking off with a leg,” like one of the Fans (the use of which seems to be, to cool the warm imagination of other travellers into proper limits), while the woman was preparing for another effort. After having recommended Charles to read the letterpress thereof, as he would find it tolerably spicy, he departed, and left him alone.
The dinner was got over in time; and after a time there was silence in the house — a silence so great that Charles rose and left the room. He soon found his way to another; but all was dark and silent, though it was not more than half-past nine.
He stood in the dark passage, wondering where to go, and determined to turn back to the room from which he had come. There was a light there, at all events.
There was a light, and the Newgate Calendar. The wild wind, that had eddied and whirled the dust at the street corners, and swept across the park all day, had gone down, and the rain had come on. He could hear it, drip, drip, outside; it was very melancholy. Confound the Newgate Calendar!
He was in a very queer house, he knew. What did Hornby mean by asking him the night before whether or no he could fight, and whether he would stick to him? Drip, drip; otherwise a dead silence. Charles’s heart began to beat a little faster.
Where were all the servants? He had heard plenty of them half an hour ago. He had heard a French cook swearing at English kitchen-girls, and had heard plenty of other voices; and now — the silence of the grave. Or of Christie and Manson’s on Saturday evening; or of the Southern Indian Ocean in a calm at midnight; or of anything else you like; similes are cheap.
He remembered now that Hornby had said, “Come and lie in the hall as if asleep; no one will notice you.” He determined to do so. But where was it? His candle was flickering in its socket, and, as he tried to move it, it went out.
He could scarcely keep from muttering an oath, but he did. His situation was very uncomfortable. He did not know in what house he was — only that he was in a quarter of the town in which there were not a few uncommonly queer houses. He determined to grope his way to the light.
He felt his way out of the room and along a passage. The darkness was intense, and the silence perfect
Suddenly a dull red liglit gleamed iu his eyes, and made him start. It was the liglit of the kitchen fire. A cricket would have been company, but there was none.
He continued to advance cautiously. Soon a ghosth’ square of very dim grey light on his left showed him where was a long narrow window. It was barred with iron bars. He was just thinking of this, and how very queer it was, when he uttered a loud oath, and came crashing down. He had fallen upstairs.
He had made noise enough to waken the seven sleepers; but those gentlemen did not seem to be in the neighbourhood, or, at all events, if awakened, gave no sign of it. Dead silence. He sat on the bottom stair and rubbed his shins, and, in spite of a strong suspicion that he had got into a scrape, laughed to himself at the absurdity of his position.
“Would it be worth while, I wonder,” he said to himself, “to go back to the kitchen and get the poker? I’d better not, I suppose. It would be so deuced awkward to be caught in the dark with a poker in your hand. Being on the premises for the purpose of committing a felony — that is what they would say; and then they would be sure to say that you were the companion of thieves, and had been convicted before. No. Under this staircase, in the nature of things, is the housemaid’s cupboard. What should I find there as a weapon of defence? A dust-pan. A great deal might be done with a dust-pan, mind you, at close quarters. How would it do to arrange all her paraphernalia on the stairs, and by fire, so that mine enemies, rushing forth, might stumble and fall, and be taken unawares? But that would be acting on the offensive, and I have no safe grounds for pitching into anyone yet.”
Though Charles tried to comfort himself by talking nonsense, he was very uncomfortable. Staying where he was, was intolerable; and he hardly dared [ascend into the upper regions imbidden. Besides, he had fully persuaded himself that a disturbance was imminent, and, though a brave man, did not like to precipitate it. He had mistaken the character of the house he was in. At last, taking heart, he turned and felt his way upstairs. He came before a door through the keyhole of which the light streamed strongly; he was deliberating whether to open it or not, when a shadow crossed it, though he heard no noise, but a minute after the distant sound of a closing door. He could stand it no longer. He opened the door, and advanced into a blaze of light.
He entered a beautiful flagged hall, frescoed and gilded. There were vases of flowers round the walls, and strips of Indian matting on the pavement. It was Ht by a single chandelier, which was reflected in four great pier-glasses reaching to the ground, in which Charles’s top-boots and brown face were reduplicated most startingly. The tout ensemble was very beautiful; but what struck Charles, was the bad taste of having an entrance-hall decorated like a drawingroom, “That is just the sort of thing they do in these places,” he thought.
There were only two hats on the entrance table; one of which he was rejoiced to recognise as that of his most respected master. “May the deuce take his silly noddle for bringing me to such a place!” thought Charles.
This was evidently the front hall spoken of by Hornby; and he remembered his advice to pretend to go to sleep. So he lay down on three hall-chairs, and put his hat over his eyes.
Hall-chairs are hard; and, although Charles had just been laughing at the proprietor of the house for being so lavish in his decorations, he now wished that he had carried out his system a little further, and had cushions to his chairs. But no; the chairs were de rigueur, with crests on the backs of them. Charles did not notice whose.
If a man pretends to go to sleep, and, like the Marchioness with her orangepeel and water, “makes believe very much,” he may sometimes succeed in going to sleep in good earnest. Charles imitated the thing so well, that in five ixdnutes he was as fast off as a top.
Till a night or two before this, Charles had never dreamt of Ravenshoe since he had left it. When the first sharp sting of his trouble was in his soul, his mind had refused to go back farther than to the events of a day or so before. He had dreamt long silly dreams of his master, or his fellow-servants, or his horses, but always, all through the night, with a dread on him of waking in the dark. But, as his mind began to settle and his pain got dulled, he began to dream about Ravenshoe, and Oxford, and Shrewsbury again; and he no longer dreaded the waking as he did, for the reality of his life was no longer hideous to him. With the fatal “plasticity ” of his nature, he had lowered himself, body and soul, to the level of it.
But tonight, as he slept on these chairs, he dreamt of Ravenshoe, and of Cuthbert, and of Ellen. And he woke, and she was standing within ten feet of him, under the chandelier.
He was awake in an instant, but he lay as still as a mouse, staring at her. She had not noticed him, but was standing in profound thought. Found, and so soon! His sister! How lovely she was, standing, dressed in light pearl grey, like some beautiful ghost, with her speaking eyes fixed on nothing. She moved now, but so lightly that her footfall was barely heard upon the matting. Then she turned and noticed him. She did not seem surprised at seeing a groom stretched out asleep on the chairs — she was used to that sort of thing probably — but she turned away, gliding through a door at the further end of the hall, and was gone.
Charles’s heart was leaping and beating madly, l3ut he heard another door open, and lay still.
Adelaide came out of a door opposite to the one into which Ellen had passed. Charles was not surprised. He was beyond surprise. But, when he saw her and Ellen in the same house, in one instant, with the quickness of lightning, he understood it all. It was Welter had tempted Ellen from Ravenshoe! Fool! fool! he might have prevented it once if he had only-guessed.
If he had any doubt as to where he was now, it was soon dispelled. Lord Welter came rapidly out of the door after Adelaide, and called her in a whisper, “Adelaide.”
“Well,” she said, turning round sharply.
“Come back, do you hear?” said Lord Welter. “Where the deuce are you going?”
“To my own room.”
“Come back, I tell you,” said Lord Welter savagely, in a low voice. “You are going to spoil everything with your confounded airs.”
“I shall not come back. I am not going to act as a decoy-duck to that man, or any other man. Let me go, Welter.”
Lord Welter was very near having to let her go with a vengeance. Charles was ready for a spring, but watched, and waited his time. Lord Welter had only caught her firmly by the wrist to detain her. He was not hurting her.
“Look you here, my Lady Welter,” he said slowly and distinctly. “Listen to what I’ve got to say, and don’t try the shadow of a tantrum with me, for I won’t have it for one moment. I don’t nnnd your chaff and nonsense in public; it blinds people, it is racy and attracts people; but in private I am master, do you hear? Master. You know you are afraid of me, and ave good cause to be, by Jove. You are shaking now. Go back to that room.”
“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. Not without you, Welter. How can you use nie so cruelly, Welter? Oh, Welter, how can you be such a villain?”
“You conceited fool,” said Lord Welter contemptuously. “Do you think he wants to make love to you?”
“You know he does, Welter; you know it,” said Adelaide passionately.
Lord Welter laughed good-naturedly. (He could be good-natured.) He drew her towards him and kissed her. “My poor little girl,” he said, “if I thought that, I would break his neck. But it is utterly wide of the truth. Look here, Adelaide; you are as safe from insult as my wife, as you were at Ranford. What you are not safe from is my own temper. Let us be friends in private and not squabble so much, eh? You are a good shrewd, clever wife to me. Do keep your tongue quiet. Come in and mark what follows. ”
They had not noticed Charles, though he had been so sure that they would, that he had got his face down on the chair, covered with his arms, feigning sleep. When they went into the room again, Charles caught hold of a coat which was on the back of a chair, and, curling himself up, put it over him. He would listen, listen, listen for every word. He had a right to listen now.
In a minute a bell rang twice. Almost at the same moment some one came out of the door through which
Lord Welter had passed, and stood silent. In about two minutes another door opened, and some one else came into the hall.
A woman’s voice — Ellen’s — said, “Oh, are you come again?”
A man’s voice — Lieutenant Hornby’s — said in answer, “You see I am. I got Lady Welter to ring her bell twice for you, and then to stay in that room, so that I might have an interview with you.”
“I am obliged to her ladyship. She must have been surprised that I was the object of attraction. She fancied herself so.”
“She was surprised. And she was more so, when I told her what my real object was.”
“Indeed,” said Ellen bitterly. “But her ladyship’s surprise does not appear to have prevented her from assisting you.”
“On the contrary,” said Hornby, “she wished me God speed — her own words.”
“Sir, you are a gentleman. Don’t disgrace yourself and me — if I can be disgraced — by quoting that woman’s blasphemy before me. Sir, you have had your answer. I shall go.”
“Ellen, you must stay. I have got this interview with you tonight, to ask you to be my wife. I love you as I believe woman was never loved before, and I ask you to be my wife.”
“You madman! you madman!”
“I am no madman. I was a madman when I spoke to you before; I pray your forgiveness for that. You must forget that. I say that I love you as a woman was never loved before. Shall I say something more, Ellen?”
“Say on.”
“You love me.”
“I love you as man was never loved before; and I swear to you that I hope I may lie stiff and cold in my unhonoured coffin, before I’ll ruin the man I love, by tying him to such a wretch as myself”
“Ellen, Ellen, don’t say that. Don’t take such vows, which you will not dare to break afterwards. Think, you may regain all that you have lost, and marry a man who loves you — ah, so dearly! — and whom you love too.”
“Ay; there’s the rub. If I did not love you, I would marry you tomorrow. Piegain all I have lost, say you? Bring my mother to life again, for instance, or walk among other women again as an honest one? You talk nonsense, Mr. Hornby — nonsense. I am going.”
“Ellen! Ellen! Why do you stay in this house? Think once again.”
“I shall never leave thinking; but my determination is the same. I tell you, as a desperate woman like me dare tell you, that I love you far too well to ruin your prospects, and I love my own soul too well ever to make another false step. I stayed in this house because I loved to see you now and then, and hear your voice; but now I shall leave it.”
“See me once more, Ellen — only once more!”
“I will see you once more. I will tear my heart once more, if you wish it. You have deserved all I can do for you, God knows. Come here the day after tomorrow; but come without hope, mind. A woman who has been through what I have can trust herself. Do you know that I am a Catholic?”
“No.”
“I am. Would you turn Catholic if I were to marry you?”
God forgive poor Hornby! He said, “Yes.” What will not men say at such times?
“Did I not say you were a madman? Do you think I would ruin you in the next world, as well as in this? Go away, sir; and, when your children are round you, humbly bless God’s mercy for saving you, body and soul, this night.”
“I shall see you again?”
“Come here the day after tomorrow; but come without hope.”
She passed through the door, and left him standing alone. Charles rose from his lair, and, coming up to him, laid his hand on his shoulder.
“You have heard all this,” said poor Hornby.
“Every word, ” said Charles. “I had a right to listen, you know. She is my sister.”
“Your sister?”
Then Charles told him all. Hornby had heard enough from Lord Welter to understand it.
“Your sister! Can you help me, Horton? Surely she will hear reason from you. Will you persuade her to listen to me?”
“No,” said Charles. “She was right. You are mad. I will not help you do an act which you would bitterly repent all your life. You must forget her. She and I are disgraced, and must get away somewhere, and hide our shame together.”
What Hornby would have answered, no man can tell; for at this moment Adelaide came out of the room, and passed quickly across the hall, saying good night to him as she passed. She did not recognise Charles, or seem surprised at seeing Hornby talking to his groom. Nobody who had lived in Lord Welter’s house a day or two was surprised at anything.
But Charles, speaking to Hornby more as if he were master than servant, said, “Wait here; ” and, stepping quickly from him, went into the room where Lord Welter sat alone, and shut the door. Hornby heard it locked behind him, and waited in the hall, listening intensely, for what was to follow.
“There’ll be a row directly,” said Hornby to himself; “and that chivalrous fool, Charles, has locked himself in. I wish Welter did not send all his servants out of the house at night. There’ll be murder done here some day.”
He listened and heard voices, low as yet — so low that he could hear the dripping of the rain outside. Drip — drip! The suspense was intolerable. “VMien would they be at one another’s throats?
There is a particular kind of Ghost or Devil, which is represented by an isosceles triangle (more or less correctly drawn) for the body; straight lines turned up at the ends for legs; straight lines divided into five at the ends for arms; a round 0, with arbitrary dots for the features, for a head; with a hat, an umbrella, and a pipe. Drawn like this, it is a sufficiently terrible object. But, if you take an ace of clubs, make the club represent the head, add horns, and fill in the body and limbs as above, in deep black, with the feather end of the pen, it becomes simply appalling, and will strike terror into the stoutest heart.
Is this the place, say you, for talking such nonsense as this? If you must give us balderdash of this sort, could not you do so in a chapter with a less terrible heading than this one has? And I answer, “why not let me tell my story my own way? Something depends even on this nonsense of making devils out of the ace of clubs.
It was rather a favourite amusement of Charles’s and Lord Welter’s, in old times at Ranford. They used, on rainy afternoons, to collect all the old aces of clubs
(and there were always plenty of them to be had in that house, God help it), and make devils out of them, each one worse than the first. And now, when Charles had locked the door, and advanced softly up to Welter, he saw, over his shoulder, that he had got an ace of clubs, and the pen and ink, and was making a devil.
It was a trifling circumstance enough, perhaps; but there was enough of old times in it to alter the tone in which Charles said, “Welter,” as he laid his hand on his shoulder.
Lord Welter was a bully; but he was as brave as a lion, with nerves of steel He neither left off his drawing, nor looked up; he only said — “Charley boy, come and sit down till I have finished this fellow. Get an ace of clubs, and try your own hand. I am out of practice.”
Perhaps even Lord Welter might have started when he heard Charles’s voice, and felt his hand on his shoulder; but he had had one instant — only one instant — of preparation. When he heard the key turn in the door, he had looked in a pier-glass opposite to him, and seen who and what was coming, and then gone on with his employnent. Even allowing for this moment’s preparation, we must give him credit for the nerve of one man in ten thousand; for the apparition of Charles Ravenshoe was as unlooked for as that of any one of Charles Ravenshoe’s remote ancestors.
You see, I call him Charles Ravenshoe still. It is a trick. You must excuse it.
Charles did not sit down and draw devils; he said, in a quiet mournful tone,
“Welter, Welter, why have you been such a villain?”
Lord Welter found that a difficult question to answer. He let it alone, and said nothing.
“I say nothing about Adelaide. You did not use me well there; for, when you persuaded her to go off with you, you had not heard of my ruin.”
“On my soul, Charles, there was not much persuasion wanted there.”
“Very likely. I do not want to speak about that, but about Ellen, my sister. Was anything ever done more shamefully than that?”
Charles expected some furious outbreak when he said that. None came. What was good in Lord Welter came to the surface, when he saw his old friend and playmate there before him, sunk so far below hun in all that tills world considers worth having, but rising so far above him in his fearless honour and manliness. He was humbled, sorry, and ashamed. Bitter as Charles’s words were, he felt they were true, and had manhood enough left to” not resent them. To the sensation of fear, as I have said before. Lord Welter was a total stranger, or he might have been nervous at being locked up in a room alone, mth a desperate man, physically his equal, whom he had so shamefully wronged. He rose and leant against the chimney-piece, looking at Charles.
“I did not know she was your sister, Charles. You must do me that justice.”
“Of course you did not. If — ”
“I know what you are going to say — that I should not have dared. On my soul, Charles, I don’t know; I believe I dare do anything. But I tell you one thing — of all the men who walk this earth, you are the last I would willingly wrong. When I went off with Adelaide, I knew she did not care sixpence for you. I knew she would have made you wretched. I knew better than you, because I never was in love with her, and you were, what a heartless ambitious jade it was! She sold herself to me for the title I gave her, as she had tried to sell herself to that solemn prig, Hainault, before. And I bought her, because a handsome, witty, clever wife is a valuable chattel to a man like me, who has to live by his wits.”
“Ellen was as handsome and as clever as she. Why did not you marry her?” said Charles bitterly.
“If you will have the real truth, Ellen would have been Lady Welter now, but — ”
Lord Welter hesitated. He was a great rascal, and he had a brazen front, but he found a difficulty in going on. It must be, I should fancy, very hard work to tell all the little ins and outs of a piece of villany one has been engaged in, and to tell, as Lord Welter did on this occasion, the exact truth.
“I am waiting,” said Charles, “to hear you tell me why she was not made Lady Welter.”
“What, you will have it then? Well, she was too scrupulous. She was too honourable a woman for this ine of business. She wouldn’t play, or learn to play — d — n it, sir, you have got the whole truth now, if that will content you.”
“I believe what you say, my lord. Do you know that Lieutenant Hornby made her an offer of marriage tonight?”
“I supposed he would,” said Lord Welter.
“And that she has refused him?”
“I guessed that she would. She is your own sister. Shall you try to persuade her?”
“I would see her in her cof&n first.”
“So I suppose.”
“She must come away from here. Lord Welter. I must keep her and do what I can for her. We must pull through it together somehow.”
“She had better go from here. She is too good for this hole. I must make provision for her to live with you.”
“Not one halfpenny, my lord. She has lived too long in dependence and disgrace already. We will pull through together alone.”
Lord Welter said nothing, but he determined that Charles should not have his way in this respect.
Charles continued, “When I came into this room tonight I came to quarrel with you. You have not allowed me to do so, and I thank you for it.” Here he paused, and then went on in a lower voice, “I think you are sorry, Welter; are you not? I am sure you are sorry. I am sure you wouldn’t have done it if you had foreseen the consequences, eh?”
Lord Welter’s coarse imcler-lip shook for half a second, and his big chest heaved once; but he said nothing.
“Only think another time; that is all. Now do nie a favour; make me a promise.”
“I have made it.”
“Don’t tell any human soul you have seen me. If you do, you will only entail a new disguise and a new hiding on me. You have promised.”
“On my honour.”
“If you keep your promise, I can stay where I am. How is — Lady Ascot?”
“Well. Nursing my father.”
“Is he ill?”
“Had a fit the day before yesterday. I heard this morning from them. He is much better, and will get over it.”
“Have you heard anything from Ravenshoe?”
“Not a word Lord Saltire and General Mainwaring are both with my father, in London. Grandma won’t see either me or Adelaide. Do you know that she has been moving heaven and earth to find you?”
“Good soul! I won’t be found, though. Now, good night!”
And he went. If any one had told him three months before that he would have been locked in the same room with a man who had done him such irreparable injury, and have left it at the end of half an hour with a quiet “good night,” he would most likely have beaten hat man there and then. But he was getting tamed very fast. Ay, he was already getting more than tamed; he was in a fair way to get broken-hearted.
“I will not see her tonight, sir,” he said to Hornby, whom he found with his head resting on the table; “I will come tomorrow and prepare her for leaving this house. You are to see her the day after tomorrow; but without hope, remember.”
He roused a groom from above the stable to help him to saddle the horses. “Will it soon be morning?” he asked.
“Morning,” said the lad; “it’s not twelve o’clock yet. It’s a dark night, mate, and no moon. But the nights are short now. The dawn will be on us before we have time to turn in our beds.”
He rode slowly home after Hornby. “The night is dark, but the dawn will be upon us before we can turn in our beds! “Only the idle words of a sleepy groom, yet they echoed in his ears all the way home.’ The night is dark indeed; but it will be darker yet before the dawn, Charles Ravenshoe.