Lady Hainault (nee Burton, not the Dowager) had asked some one to dinner, and the question had been whom to ask to meet him. Mary had been called into consultation, as she generally was on most occasions, and she and Lady Hainault had made up a list together. Every one had accepted, and was coming; and here were Mary and Lady Hainault, dressed for dinner, alone in the drawingroom with the children.
“We could not have done better for him, Mary, I think. You must go in to dinner with him.”
“Is Mary going to stop down to dinner?” said the youngest boy; “what a shame! I sha’n’t say my prayers tonight if she don’t come up.”
The straightforward Gus let his brother know what would be the consequences of such neglect hereafter, in a plain-spoken way peculiarly his own.
“Gus! Gus I don’t say such things,” said Lady Hainault.
“The hymn-book says so, aunt,” said Gus, triumphantly; and he quoted a charming little verse of Dr. Watts’s, beginning, “There is a dreadful Hell”
Lady Hainault might have been puzzled what to say, and Mary would not have helped her, for they had had an argument about that same hymn-book (Mary contending that one or two of the hymns were as well left alone at first), when Flora struck in and saved her aunt, by remarking,
“I shall save up my money and buy some jewels for Mary like aunt’s, so that when she stays down to dinner some of the men may fall in love with her, and marry her.”
“Pooh! you silly goose,” said Gus, “those jewels cost sixty million thousand pounds a-piece. I don’t want her to be married till I grow up, and then I shall marry her myself. Till then I shall buy her a yellow wig, like grandma Hainault’s, and then nobody will want to marry her.”
“Be quiet, Gus,” said Lady Hainault.
It was one thing to say “be quiet, Gus,” and it was another thing to make him hold his tongue. But, to do Gus justice, he was a good fellow, and never acted “enfant terrible ” but to the most select and private audience. Now he had begun: “I wish some one would marry grandma,” when the door was thrown open, the first guest was announced, and Gus was dumb.
“General Mainwaring.” The general sat down between Lady Hainault and Mary, and, while talking to them, reached out his broad brown hand and lifted the youngest boy on his knee, who played with his ribands, and cried out that he would have the orange and blue ne, if he pleased; while Gus and Flora came and stood at his knee.
He talked to them both sadly in a low voice about the ruin which had come on Lord Ascot. There was worse than mere ruin, he feared. He feared there was disgrace. He had been with him that morning. He was a wreck. One side of his face was sadly pulled down, and he stammered in his speech. He would get over it. He was only three-and-forty. But he would not show again in society, he feared. Here was somebody else; they would change the subject.
Lord Saltire. They were so glad to see him. Every one’s face had a kind smile on it as the old man came and sat down among them. His own smile was not the least pleasant of the lot, I warrant you.
“So you are talking about poor Ascot, eh?” he said. “I don’t know whether you were or not; but, if you were, let us talk about something else. You see, my dear Miss Corby, that my prophecy to you on the terrace at Ravenshoe is falsified. I said they would not fight, and lo, they are as good as at it.”
They talked about the coming war, and Lord Hainault came in and j(jined them. Soon after another guest was announced.
Lady Ascot. She was dressed in dark grey silk, with her white hair simply parted under a plain lace cap. She looked so calm, so brave, so kind, so beautiful, as she came with firm strong step in at the door, that they one and all rose and came towards her. She ad always been loved by them all; how much more deeply was she loved now, when her bitter troubles had made her doubly sacred.
Lord Saltire gave her his arm, and she came and sat down among them with her hands calmly folded before her.
“I was determined to come and see you tonight, my dear,” she said. “I should break down if I couldn’t see some that I loved. And tonight, in particular” (she looked earnestly at Lord Saltire). “Is he come yet?”
“Not yet, dear grandma,” said Mary.
“No one is coming besides, I suppose?” asked Lady Ascot.
“No one; we are waiting for him.”
The door was opened once more, and they all looked curiously round. This time the servant announced, perhaps in a somewhat louder tone than usual, as if he were aware that they were more interested,
“Mr. Ravenshoe.”
A well-dressed, gentlemanly-looking man came into the room, bearing such a wonderful likeness to Charles Ravenshoe, that Lady Hainault and General Mainwaring, the only two who had never seen him before, started, and thought they saw Charles himself It was not Charles, though; it was our old friend, William, whilom pad-groom to Charles Ravenshoe, Esquire, now himself “William Ravenshoe, Esquire, of Ravenshoe.
He was the guest of the evening. He would be heir to Ravenshoe himself some day; for they had made up their minds that Cuthbert would never marry. Ravenshoe, as Cuthbert was managing it now, would be worth ten or twelve thousand a year, and, if these new tin lodes came to anything, perhaps twenty. He had been a stable-helper, said old Lady Hainault — the companion of the drunken riots of his foster-brother impostor, and that quiet gentlemanly creature Welter. If he entered the house, she left it. To which young Lady Hainault had replied that some one must ask him to dinner in common decency, if it was only for the sake of that dear Charles, who had been loved by every one who knew him. That she intended to ask him to dinner, and that, if her dear mother-in-law objected to meet him, why the remedy lay with herself. Somebody must introduce him to some sort of society; and Lord Hainault and herself had made up their minds to do it, so that further argimient on the subject would be wasted breath. To which the Dowager replied that she really wished, after all, that Hainault had married that pretty chit of a thing, Adelaide Summers, as he was thinking of doing; as she, the Dowager, could not have been treated with greater insolence even by her, bold as she was. With which Parthian piece of spite she had departed to Casterton with. Miss Hicks, and had so goaded and snapped at that unfortunate reduced gentlewoman by the Nvay, that at last Hicks, as her wont was, had turned upon her and given her as good as she brought. If the Dowager could have heard Lady Hainault telling her lord the whole business that night, and joking with him about his alleged penchant for Adelaide and heard the jolly laugh that those two good souls had about it, her ladyship would have been more spiteful still.
But, nevertheless, Lady Hainault was very nervous about William. When Mary was consulted, she promptly went bail for his good behaviour, and pled his cause so warmly that the tears stood in her eyes. Her old friend William! What innocent plots she and he had hatched together against the priest in old times. What a bond there was between them in their mutual love for him who was lost to them.
But Lady Hainault would be on the safe side; and so only the party named above were asked. All old friends of the family.
Before dinner was announced they were all at their ease about him. He was shy certainly, but not awkward. He evidently knew that he was asked there on trial, and he accepted his position. But he was so handsome (handsomer than poor Charles), he was so gentle and modest, and — perhaps, too, not least — had such a well modulated voice, that before the evening was over he had won every one in the room. If he knew anything of a subject he helped the conversation quietly, as well as he could; if he had to confess ignorance (which was seldom, for he was among well-bred people) he did so frankly, but unobtrusively. He was a great success.
One thing puzzled him, and pleased him. He knew that he was a person of importance, and that he was the guest of the evening. But he soon found that there was another cause for his being interesting to them all, more powerful than his curious position, or his prospective wealth; and that was his connexion with Charles Ravenshoe, now Horton. He was the hero of the evening. Half William’s light was borrowed from him. He quickly became aware of it, and it made him happy.
How strange it is that some men have the power of winning such love from all they meet. I knew one, gone from us now by a glorious death, who had that faculty. Only a few knew his great worth and goodness; and yet, as his biographer most truly says, those who once saw his face never forgot it. Charles Ravenshoe had that faculty also, though, alas, his value, both in worth and utility, was far inferior to that of the man to whom I have alluded above.* But he had the same infinite kindness towards everything created; which is part of the secret.
* I mean C. M.
The first hint that William had, as to how deeply important a person Charles was among the present company, was given him at dinner. Various subjects had been talked of indifferently, and William had listened, till Lord Hainault said to William,
“What a strange price people are giving for cobs! I saw one sold to day at Tattersall’s for ninety guineas.”
William answered, “Good cobs are very hard to get, Lord Hainault. I could get you ten good horses over fifteen, for one good cob.”
Lord Saltire said, “My cob is the best I ever had; and a sweet-tempered creature. Our dear boy broke it for me at Ravenshoe.”
“Dear Charles,” said Lady Ascot. “What a splendid rider he was! Dear boy! He got Ascot to write him a certificate about that sort of thing before he went away. Ah, dear!”
“I never thought,” said Lord Saltire, quietly, “that I ever should have cared half as much for anybody as I do for that lad. Do you remember, Mainwaring,” he con? tinned, speaking still lower, while they all sat hushed, “the first night I ever saw him, when he marked for you and me at billiards, at Ranford? I don’t know why, but I loved the boy from the first moment I saw him. Both there and ever afterwards, he reminded me so strongly of Barkham. He had just the same gentle, winning way with him that Barkham had. Barkham was a little taller, though, I fancy,” he went on, looking straight at Lady Ascot, and taking snuff. “Don’t you think so, Maria?”
No one spoke for a moment
Lord Barkham had been Lord Saltire’s only son. He had been killed in a duel at nineteen, as I have mentioned before. Lord Saltire very rarely spoke of him, and, when he did, generally in a cynical manner. But General Mainwaring and Lady Ascot knew that the memory of that poor boy was. as fresh in the true ld heart after forty years, as it was on the morning when he came out from his dressing-room, and met them carrying his corpse upstairs.
“He was a good fellow,” said Lord Hainault, alluding to Charles. “He was a very good fellow.”
“This great disappointment which I have had about him,” said Lord Saltire, in his old dry tone, “is a just judgment on me for doing a good-natured and virtuous action many years ago. When his poor father Densil was in prison, I went to see him, and reconciled him with his family. Poor Densil was so grateful for this act of folly on my part, that I grew personally attached to him; and hence all this misery. Disinterested actions are great mistakes, Maria, depend upon it.”
When the ladies were gone upstairs, William found Lord Saltire beside him. He talked to him a little time, and then finished by saying —
“You are modest and gentlemanly, and the love you bear for your foster-brother is very pleasing to me indeed. I am going to put it to the test. You must come and see me tomorrow morning. I have a great deal to say to you.”
“About him, my lord? Have you heard of him?”
“Not a word. I fear he has gone to America or Australia. He told Lord Ascot he should do so.”
“I’ll hunt him to the world’s end, my lord,” said true William. “And Cuthbert shall pray for me the while. I fear you are right. But we shall find him soon.”
When they went up into the drawingroom, Mary was sitting on a sofa by herself. She looked up to William, and he went and sat down by her. They were quite away from the rest, together.
“Dear William,” said Mary, looking frankly at him, and laying her hand on his.
“I am so glad,” said William, “to see your sweet face again. I was down at Ravenshoe last week. How they love you there! An idea prevails among old and young that dear Cuthbert is to die, and that I am to marry you, and that we are to rule Ravenshoe triumphantly. It was useless to represent to them that Cuthbert would not die, and that you and I most certainly never would marry one another. My dearest Jane Evans was treated as a thing of nought. You were elected mistress of Ravenshoe imanimously.”
“How is Jane?”
“Pining, poor dear, at her school. She don’t like it.”
“I should think not,” said Mary. “Give my dear love to her. She will make you a good wife. How is Cuthbert?”
“Very well in health. No more signs of his heart complaint, which never existed. But he is peaking at getting no tidings from Charles. Ah, how he loved him! May I call you ‘Mary?’ ”
“You must not dare to call me anything else. No tidings of him yet?”
“None. I feel sure he is gone to America. We will get him back, Mary. Never fear.”
They talked till she was cheerful, and at last she said —
“William, you were always so well-mannered; but how — how — have you got to be so gentlemanly in so short a time? ”
“By playing at it,” said William, laughing. “The stud-groom at Ravenshoe used always to say I was too much of a gentleman for him. In twenty years’ time I shall pass muster in a crowd. Good night.”
And Charles was playing at being something other than a gentleman all the time. We shall see who did best in the end.
What a happy place a man’s bed is — probably the best place in which he ever finds himself. Very few people will like to deny that, I think; that is to say, as a general rule. After a long day’s shooting in cold weather, for instance; or half a night on deck among the ice, when the fog has lifted, and the ghastly cold walls are safe in sight; or after a fifty mile ride in the bush, under a pouring rain; or after a pleasant ball, when you have to pull down the blind, that the impudent sun may not roast you awake in two hours; for in all these cases, and a hundred more, bed is very pleasant; but you know as well as I do, that there are times when you would sooner be on a frozen deck, or in the wildest bush in the worst weather, or waltzing in the hall of Eblis with Vathek’s mama, or almost in your very grave, than in bed, and awake.
Oh, the weary watches! when the soul, which in sleep would leave the tortured body to rest and ramble off in dreams, holds on by a mere thread, yet a thread strong enough to keep every nerve in tense agony. When one’s waking dreams of the past are as vivid as those of sleep, and there is always present, through all, the dreadful lurking thought that one is awake, and that it is all real. When, looking back, every kindly impulsive action, every heartily spoken word, makes you fancy that you have only earned contempt where you merit kindness. Where the past looks like a hell of missed opportunities, and the future like another black hopeless hell of uncertainty and imminent misfortune of all kinds! Oh, weary watches. Let us be at such times on the bleakest hill-side, in the coldest night that ever blew, rather than in the warmest bed that money will buy.
When you are going to have a night of this kind, you seldom know it beforehand, for certain. Sometimes, if you have had much experience in the sort of thing — if you have lost money, or gone in debt, or if your sweetheart has cut you very often — you may at last guess, before you get your boots off, that you are going to have a night of it; in which case, read yourself to sleep in bed. Never mind burning the house down (that would be rather desirable as a distraction from thought); but don’t read till you are sleepy with your clothes on, and then undress, because, if you do, you will find, by the time you have undressed yourself, that you are terribly wide awake, and, when the candle is blown out, you will be all ready for a regular Walpurgis night.
Charles, poor lad, had not as yet had much experience of Walpurgis nights. Before his catastrophe he had never had one. He had been used to tumble tired into his bed, and sleep a heavy dreamless sleep till an hour before aking. Then, indeed, he might begin to dream of his horses, and his dogs, and so on, and then gradually wake into a state more sweet than the sweetest dream — that state in. which sense is awake to all outward objects, but in which the soul is taking its few last airy flutters round its home, before coming to rest for the day. But, even since then, he had not had experience enough to make him dread the night. The night he came home from St. John’s Wood, he thought he would go to bed and sleep it off. Poor fellow!
A fellow-servant slept in the same room with him — the younger and better-tempered of the two (though Charles had no complaint against either of them). The lad was asleep; and, before Charles put out the light, he looked at him. His cheek was laid on his arm, and he seemed so cahn and happy that Charles knew he was not there, but far away. He was right. As he looked, the lad smiled, and babbled of something in his dream. Strange! the soul had still sufficient connexion with the body to make it smile.
“I wonder if Miss Martineau or Mr. Atkinson ever watched the face of one who slept and dreamt,” said Charles, rambling on as soon as he had got into bed. “Pish! why that fellow’s body is the mere tool of his soul. His soul is out a-walking, and his body is only a log. Hey, that won’t do; that’s as bad as Miss Martineau. I should have said that his body is only a fine piece of clockwork. That clockwork don’t smile of itself. My dear Madam, and Mr. Atkinson, I am going to leave my body hehind, and be off at Ravenshoe in five minutes. That is to say, I am going to sleep.”
He was, was he? Why no, not just at present. If he had meant to do so, he had, perhaps, better not have bothered himself about “Letters on the laws of man’s nature; ” for, when he had done his profound cogitations about them, as above, he thought that he had got a well, say a pulex, in his bed. There was no more a pulex than there was a scorpion; but he had an exciting chase after an imaginary one, like our old friend Mr. Sponge after an imaginary fox at Laverick Wells. After this, he had an irritation where he couldn’t reach, that is to say, in the middle of his back; then he had the same complaint where he could reach, and used a certain remedy (which is a pretty way of saying that he scratched himself); then he had the cramp in his right leg; then he had the cramp in his left leg; then he grew hot all over, and threw the clothes off; then he grew cold all over, and pulled them on again; then he had the cramp in his left leg again; then he had another flea hunt, cramp, irritation in back, heat, cold, and so on, all over; and then, after half an hour, finding himself in a state of feverish despondency, he fell into a cheerful train of thought, and was quite inclined to look at his already pleasant prospects from a hopeful point of view.
Poor dear fellow! You may say that it is heartless to make fun of him just now, when everything is going so terribly wrong. But really my story is so very sad, hat we must try to make a little feeble fun where we can, or it would be unreadable.
He tried to face the future, manfully. But lo, there was no future to face — it was all such a dead, hopeless blank. Ellen must come away from that house, and he must support her; but how? It would be dishonourable for him to come upon the Ravenshoes for a farthing, and it would be dishonourable for her to marry that foolish Hornby. And these two courses, being dishonourable, were impossible. And there he was brought up short.
But would either course be dishonourable? Yes, yes, was the answer each weary time he put the question to himself; and there the matter ended. Was there one soul in the wide world he could consult? Not one. All alone in the weary world, he and she. Not one friend for either of them. They had made their beds, and must lie on them. When would the end of it all come? What would the end be?
There was a noise in the street. A noise of a woman scolding, whose voice got louder and louder, till it rose into a scream. A noise of a man cursing and abusing her; then a louder scream, and a sound of blows. One, two; then a heavy fall, and silence. A drunken, homeless couple had fallen out in the street, and the man had knocked the woman down. That was all. It was very common. Probably the woman was not much hurt. That sort of woman got used to it. The police would come and take them to the station. There they were.
The man and woman were being taken off l)y two constables, scolding and swearing. Well, well!
Was it to come to that? There were bridges in London, and under them runs the river. Charles had come over one once, after midnight. He wished he had never seen the cursed place. He remembered a fluttering figure which had come and begged a halfpenny of him to pay the toll, and get home. He had given her money, and then, by a sudden impulse, followed her till she was safe off the bridge. Ugly thoughts, Charles! ugly thoughts! Will the dawn never come? Why, the night is not half over yet.
God in his mercy sets a limit to human misery in many ways. I do not believe that the condemned man, waiting through the weary night for the gallows, thinks all night through of his fate. We read generally in those accounts of the terrible last night (which are so rightly published in the newspapers — they are the most terrifying part of the punishment), that they conversed cheerfully, or slept, or did something, showing that they half forgot for a time what was coming. And so, before the little window grew to a lighter grey, poor Charles had found some relief from his misery. He was between sleep and waking, and he had fulfilled his challenge to Miss Martineau, though later than he intended. He had gone to Ravenshoe.
There it was, all before him. The dawn behind the eastern headland had flooded the amphitheatre of hills, till the crags behind the house had turned from grey to old, and the vane upon the priest’s tower shone like a star. The sea had changed from black to purple, and the fishing boats were stealing lazily homewards, over the gentle rolling groundswell. The surf was whispering to the sand of their coming. As window after window blazed out before the sun, and as woodland and hill-side, stream and park, village and lonely farm in the distant valley, waked before the coming day, Charles watched, in his mind’s eye, the dark old porch, till there came out a figure in black, and stood solitary in the terrace gazing seawards. And as he said, “Cuthbert,” he fell into a dreamless, happy sleep.
He determined that he would not go to see Ellen till the afternoon. Hornby was on duty in the morning, and never saw Charles all day; he avoided him as though on purpose. Charles, on his part, did not want to meet him till he had made some definite arrangement, and so was glad of it. But, towards two o’clock, it came across his mind that he would saunter round to St. Peter’s Church, and see the comical little imp of a boy who was generally to be found there, and beguile a quarter of an hour by listening to his prattle.
He had given up reading. He had hardly opened a book since his misfortune. This may seem an odd thing to have to record about a gentleman, and to a certain extent a scholar; but so it was. He wanted to lower himself, and he was beginning to succeed. There was an essential honesty in him, which made him hate to appear what he was not; and this feeling, carried to an absurd extent, prevented his taking refuge in the most obvious remedy for all troubles except hunger: books. He did not know, as I do, that determined reading: reading of anything, even the advertisements in a newspaper; will stop all cravings except those of the stomach, and will even soften them; but he guessed it, nevertheless. “Why should I read it?” said he. “I must learn to do as the rest of them.” And so he did as the rest of them, and “rather loafed away his time than otherwise.”
And he was more inclined to ” loaf “than usual this day, because he very much dreaded what was to come. And so he dawdled round to St. Peter’s Church, and came upon his young friend, playing at fives with the ball he had given him, as energetically as he had before played with the brass button. Shoeblacks are compelled to a great deal of unavoidable “loafing; ” but certainly this one loafed rather energetically, for he was hot and frantic in his play.
He was very glad to see Charles. He parted his matted hair from his face, and looking at him admiringly with a pleasant smile; then he suddenly said —
“You was drunk last night, worn’t you?”
Charles said, No — that he never got drunk.
“Worn’t you really, though?” said the boy; “you look as tho’ you had a been. You looks wild about the eyes,” and then he hazarded another theory to account for Charles’s appearance, which Charles also negatived emphatically.
“I give a halpenny for this one,” said the boy, showing him the ball, “and I spent the other halpenny.” Here he paused, expecting a rebuke, apparently; but Charles nodded kindly at him, and he was encouraged to go on, and to communicate a piece of intelligence with the air of one who assumes that his hearer is aufait with all the movements of the great world, and will be interested.
“Old Biddy Flanigan’s dead.”
“No! is she?” said Charles, who, of course, had not the wildest idea who she was, but guessed her to be an aged, and probably dissipated Irishwoman.
“Ah! I believe you,” said the boy. “And they was a — waking on her last night, down in our court (he said, ‘daone in aour cawt'). They waked me sharp enough; but, as for she! she’s fast.”
“What did she die of?” asked Charles.
“Well, she died mostly along of Mr. Malone’s bumble foot, I fancy. Him and old Biddy was both drunk a-fighting on the stairs, and she was a step below he; and he being drunk, and bumble-footed too, lost his balance, and down they come together, and the back of her head come against the door scraper, and there she was. Wake she! “he added with scorn, “not if all the Irish and Rooshans in France was to put stones in their stockings, and howl a week on end, they wouldn’t wake her.”
“Did they put stones in their stockings?” asked Charles, thinking that it was some papist form of penance.
“Miss Ophelia Flanigan, she put half a brick in her stocking end, so she did, and come at Mr. Malone for to break his head with it, and there were a hole in the stocking, and the brick flew out, and hit old Denny Moriarty in the jaw, and broke it. And he worn’t a doing nothink, he worn’t; but was sitting in a corner decent and quiet, blind drunk, a singing to his self; and they took he to Guy’s orspital. And the pleece come in, and got gallus well kicked about the head, and then they took they to Guy’s orspital; and then Miss Flanigan fell out of winder into the airy, and then they took she to Guy’s orspital; and there they is, the whole bilin of ’em in bed together, with their heads broke, a-eating of jelly and a-drinking of sherry wind; and then in comes a mob from Rosemary-lane, and then they all begins to get a bit noisy and want to fight, and so I hooked it.”
“Then there are a good many Irish in your court?” said Charles.
“Irish! ah! I believe you. They’re all Irish there except we and Billy Jones’s lot. The Emperor of Rooshar is a nigger; but his lot is mostly Irish, but another bilin of Irish from Mr. Malone’s lot. And one on ’em plays the bagpipes, with a bellus, against the water-butt of a Sunday evening, when they’re off the lay. And Mr. Malone’s lot heaves crockery and broken vegetables at him out of winder, by reason of their being costermongers, and having such things handy; so there’s mostly a shine of a Sunday evening.”
“But who are Mr. Malone, and Billy Jones, and the Emperor of Russia?”
“They keeps lodging houses,” said the boy. “Miss Ophelia Flanigan is married on Mr. Malone, but she keeps her own name, because her family’s a better one nor his’n, and she’s ashamed of him. They gets on very well when they’re sober, but since they’ve been a making money they mostly gets drunk in bed of a morning, so they ain’t so happy together as they was.”
“Does she often attack him with a brick in the foot of a stocking?” asked Charles.
“No,” said the boy; “she said her papa had taught her that little game. She used to fist hold of the poker, but he got up to that, and spouted it. So now they pokes the fire with a mopstick, which am’t so handy to hit with, and softer.”
Charles walked away northward, and thought what a charming sort of person Miss Ophelia Flanigan must be, and how he would rather like to know her for curiosity’s sake. The picture he drew of her in his mind was not exactly like the original, as we shall see.
It was very pleasant summer weather — weather in which an idle man would be inclined to dawdle, under any circumstances; and Charles was the more inclined to dawdle, because he very much disliked the errand on which he went. He could loiter at street corners now with the best of them, and talk to any one who happened to be loitering there too. He was getting on.
So he loitered at street corners, and talked. And he found out something today for the first time. He had been so absorbed in his own troubles that all rumours had been to him like the buzzing of bees; but today he began to appreciate that this rumour of war was no longer a mere rumour, but likely to grow into an awful reality.
If he were only free, he said to himself If he could only provide for poor Ellen. “Gad, if they could get up a regiment of fellows in the same state of mind as I am!”
He went into a public-house, and drank a glass of ale. They were talking of it there. “Sir Charles Napier is to have the fleet,” said one man, “and if he don’t bring Cronstadt about their ears in two hours, I am a Dutchman. As for Odnssa — ”
A man in seedy black, who (let us hope) had seen better days, suggested Sebastopol.
The first man had not heard of Sebastopol. It could not be a place of much importance, or he must have heard of it. Talk to him about Petersburg and Moscow, and he would listen to you.
This sort of talk, heard everywhere on his slow walk, excited Charles; and thinking over it, he came to the door of Lord Welter’s house and rang.
The door was barely opened, when he saw Lord Welter himself in the hall, who called to him by his Christian name, and bade him come in. Charles followed Lord Welter into a room, and, when the atter turned round, Charles saw that he was disturbed and anxious.
“Charles,” he said, “Ellen is gone 1 ”
Charles said “Wliere?” for he hardly understood him.
“Where? God knows! She must have left the house soon after you saw her last night. She left this note for me. Take it and read it. You see I am free from blame in this matter.”
Charles took it and read it.
“My Lord,
“I should have consented to accept the shelter of your roof for a longer period, were it not that, by doing so, I should be continually tempted to the commission of a dishonourable action — an action which would bring speedy punishment on myself, by ruining too surely the man whom, of all others in the world, I love and respect.
“Lieutenant Hornby has proposed marriage to me. Your lordship’s fine sense of honour will show you at once how impossible it is for me to consent to ruin his prospects by a union with such a one as myself Distrusting my own resolution, I have fled, and henceforth I am dead to him and to you.
“Ah! Welter, Welter! you yourself might have been loved as he is, once; but that time is gone by for ever. I should have made you a better wife than Adelaide. I might have loved you myself once, but I fell more through anger and vanity than through love.
“My brother, he whom we call Charles Ravenshoe, is in this weary world somewhere. I have an idea that you will meet him. You used to love one another. Don’t let him quarrel with you for such a worthless straw as I am. Tell him I always loved him as a brother. It is better that we should not meet yet. Tell him that he must make his own place in the world before we meet, and then I have something to say to him.
“Mary, the Mother of God, and the blessed saints before the throne, bless you and him, here and hereafter!”
Charles had nothing to say to Lord Welter, not one word. He saw that the letter was genuine. He understood that Welter had had no time to tell her of his coming, and that she was gone; neither Welter nor he knew where, or were likely to know; that was all He only bid him goodbye, and walked home again.
When you know the whole story, you will think that Charles’s run of ill luck at this time is almost incredible; but I should call you to witness that it is not so. This was the first stroke of real ill luck that he had had. All his other misfortunes came from his mad determination of alienating himself from all his friends. If he had even left Lord Welter free to have mentioned that he had been seen, all might have gone well, but he made him promise secrecy; and now, after having, so to speak, made ill luck for himself, and lamented over it. ere was a real stroke of it with a vengeance, and he did not know it. He was not anxious about Ellen’s future; he felt sure at once that she was going into some Roman Catholic refuge, where she would be quiet and happy. In fact, with a new fancy he had in his head, he was almost content to have missed her. And Ellen, meanwhile, never dreamt either of his position or state of mind, or she would have searched him out at the end of the world. She thought he was just as he always had been, or, perhaps, turning his attention to some useful career, with Cuthbert’s assistance; and she thought she would wait, and wait she did; and they went apart, not to meet till the valley of the shadow of death had been passed, and life was not so well worth having as it had been.
But as for our old friend, Father Mackworth. As I said once before, “It’s no use wondering, but I do wonder,” whether Father Mackworth, had he known how near Ellen and Charles had been to meeting the night before, would not have whistled “Lillibulero,” as Uncle Toby did in times of dismay; that is, if he had known the tune.
The villagers at Ravenshoe, who loved Charles, were very much puzzled and put out by his sudden disappearance. Although they had little or no idea of the real cause of his absence, yet it was understood to be a truth, not to be gainsayed, that it was permanent. And as it was a heavily-felt misfortune to them, and as they really had no idea why he was gone, or where he was gone to, it became necessary that they should comfort themselves by a formula. At which time. Master Lee, up to Slarrow, erected the theory, that Master Charles was gone to the Indies — which was found to be a doctrine so comfortable to the souls of those that adopted it, as being hazy and vague, and as leaving his return an open question, that it was unanimously adopted; and those who ventured to doubt it, were treated as heretics and heathens.
It was an additional puzzle to them to find that William had turned out to be a gentleman, and a Ravenshoe; a fact which could not, of course, be concealed from them, though the other facts of the case were carefully hushed up — not a very difficult matter in a simple feudal village, like Ravenshoe. But, when William ppeared, after a short absence, lie suffered greatly in popularity, from the belief that he had allowed Charles to go to the Indies by himself. Old Master James Lee, of Tor Head, old Master James Lee, of Withycombe Barton, and old Master James Lee, up to Slarrow, the three great quidnuncs of the village, were sunning themselves one day under the wall which divides part of the village from the shore, when by there came, talking earnestly together, William, and John Marston.
The three old men raised their hats, courteously. They were in no distinguishable relation to one other, but, from similarity of name and age, always hunted in a leash. (Sporting men will notice a confusion here about the word “ leash,” but let it pass.) When no one was by, I have heard them fall out and squabble together about dates, or such like; but, when others were present, they would, so to speak, trump one another’s tricks to any amount. And if, on these occasions, any one of the three took up an untenable position, the other two would lie him out of it like Jesuits, and only fall foul of him when they were alone together — which, to say the least of it, was neighbourly and decent.
“God save you, gentlemen,” said old Master Lee up to Slarrow, who was allowed to commit himself by the other two, who were waiting to be “down on him ” in private. “Any news from the Indies lately?”
William and Marston stopped, and William said —
“No, Master Lee, we have not heard from Captain Archer for seven months, or more.”
“I ask your pardon,” said Lee up to Slarrow; “I .warn’t a speaking of he. I was speaking of our ovm darling boy, Master Charles. “When be he a-coming back to see we?”
“When, indeed!” said William. “I wish I knew, Master Lee.”
“They Indies,” said the old man, “is well enough; but what’s he there no more than any other gentleman? Why don’t he come home to his own? Who’s a-keeping on him away?”
William and John Marston walked on without answering. And then the two other Master Lees fell on to Master Lee up to Slarrow, and verbally ill treated him — partly because he had go. no information out of William, and partly because, having both sat quiet and given him plenty of rope, he had not hanged himself. Master Lee up to Slarrow had evil times of it that blessed spring afternoon, and ended by “dratting ” both his companions, for a couple of old fools. After which, they adjourned to the public-house and hard cider, sent them to drink for their sins.
“They’ll never make a scholar of me, Marston,” said William; “I will go on at it for a year, but no more. I shall away soon to hunt up Charles. Is there any police in America?”
Marston answered absently, “Yes; he believed so; ” but was evidently thinking of something else.
They had gone sauntering out for a walk together. Marston had come down from Oxford the day before
(after an examination for an Exeter fellowship, I believe) for change of air; and he thought he would like to walk with William up to the top of the lofty promontory, which bounded Ravenshoe-bay on the west, and catch the pleasant summer breeze coming in from the Atlantic.
On the loftiest point of all, with the whispering blue sea on three sides of them, four hundred feet below, there they sat down on the short sheep-eaten turf, and looked westward.
Cape after cape stretched away under the afternoon sun, till the last seemed only a dark cloud floating on the sea. Beyond that cape there was nothing but water for three thousand weary miles. The scene was beautiful enough, but very melancholy; a long coastline, trending away into dim distance, on a quiet sunny afternoon, is very melancholy. Indeed, far more melancholy than the same place in a howling gale: when the nearest promontory only, is dimly visible, a black wall, echoing the thunder of bursting waves, and when sea, air, and sky, like the three furies, are rushing on with mad, destructive unanimity.
They lay, these two, on the short turf, looking westward; and, after a time, John Marston broke silence. He spoke very low and quietly, and without looking at William.
“I have something very heavy on my mind, William. I am not a fool, with a morbid conscience, but I have been very wrong. I have done what I never can undo. I loved that fellow, William: ”
William said “Ay.”
“I know what you would say. You would say, that every one who ever knew Charles loved him; and you are right. He was so utterly unselfish, so entirely given up to trying to win others, that every one loved him, and could not help it. The cleverest man in England, with all his cleverness, could not gain so many friends as Charles.”
William seemed to think this such a self-evident proposition, that he did not think it worth while to say anything.
“And Charles was not clever. And what makes me mad with myself is this. I had influence over him, and I abused it. I was not gentle enough with him. I used to make fun of him, and be flippant, and priggish, and dictatorial, with him. God help me! And now he has taken some desperate step, and, in fear of my ridicule, has not told me of it. I felt sure he would come to me, but I have lost hope now. May God forgive me — God forgive me!”
In a few moments, William said, “If you pause to think, Marston, you will see how unjust you are to yourself. He could not be afraid of me, and yet he has never come near me.”
“Of course not,” said Marston. “You seem hardly to know him so well as I. He fears that you would make him take money, and that he would be a burthen on you. I never expected that he would come back to you. He knows that you would never leave him. He nows, as well as you know yourself, that you would sacrifice all your time and your opportunities of education to him. And, by being dependent on you, he would be dependent on Father Mackworth — the only man in the world he dislikes and distrusts.
William uttered a form of speech concerning the good father, which is considered by foreigners to be merely a harmless nsitionsl facon de parler — sometimes, perhaps, intensive, when the participle is used, but in general no more than expletive. In this case, the speaker was, I fear, in earnest, and meant what he said most heartily.
Marston never swore, but he certainly did not correct William for swearing, in this case, as he should have done. There was a silence for a time. After a little, William laid his hand on Marston’s shoulder, and said —
“He never had a truer friend than you. Don’t you blame yourself.”
“I do; and shall, until I find him.”
“Marston,” said William, “what has he done with himself? Where the deuce is he gone?”
“Lord Saltire and I were over the same problem for two hours the other night, and we could make nothing of it, but that he was gone to America or Australia. He hardly took money enough with him to keep him till now. I can make nothing of it. Do you think he would be likely to seek out Welter?”
“If he were going to do so, he would have done so by now, and we must have heard of it. No,” said William.
“He was capable of doing very odd things,” said Marston. “Do you remember that Easter vacation, when he and Lord Welter and Mowbray went away together?”
“Remember!” said William. “Why I was with them; and glorious fun it was. Rather fast fun though — too fast by half. We went up and lived On the Severn and Avon Canal, among the bargemen, dressing accordingly. Charles had nothing to do with that folly, beyond joining in it, and spending the day in laughing. Tliat was Lord Welter’s doing. The bargees nicknamed Lord Welter “the sweep,” and said he was a good fellow, but a terrible blackguard. And so he was — for that time, at all events.
Marston laughed, and, after a time, said, “Did he ever seem to care about soldiering? Do you think he was likely to enlist?”
“It is possible,” said William; “it is quite possible. Yes, he has often talked to me about soldiering. I mind — I remember, I should say — that he once was hot about going into the army, but he gave it up because it would have taken him away from Mr. Ravenshoe too much.”
They turned and walked homewards, without speaking a word all the way. On the bridge they paused and leant upon the coping, looking into the stream. All of a sudden, William laid his hand on Marston’s arm, and looking in his face, said —
“Every day we lose, I feel he is getting farther from us. I don’t know what may happen. I shall go and seek him, I will get educated at my leisure. Only think of what may be happening now! I was a fool to have given it up so soon, and to have tried waiting till he came to us. He will never come. I must go and fetch him. Here is Cuthbert, too, good fellow, fretting himself to death about it. Let us go and talk to him.”
And John Marston said, “Eight, true heart; let us o.”
Of all their acquaintances, there was only one who could have given them any information — Lord Welter; and he, of all others, was the very last they dreamt of going to. You begin to see, I dare say, that, when Charles is found, my story will nearly be at an end. But my story is not near finished yet, I assure you.
Standing where they were on the bridge, they could look along the village street. It was as neat a street as one ever sees in a fishing village; that is to say, rather an untidy one, for, of all human employments, fishing involves more lumber and mess than any other. Everything past use was “hit,” as they say in Berkshire, out into the street; and of the inorganic part of this refuse, that is to say, tiles, bricks, potsherds, and so on, the children built themselves shops and bazaars, and sold one another the organic orts, that is to say, cabbage-stalks, fish-bones, and orangepeel, which were paid for-in mussel-shells. And, as Marston and William looked long this street, as one may say, at high market time, they saw Cuthbert come, slowly riding along among the children, and the dogs, and the pigs, and the herring-bones, and brickbats.
He was riding a noble horse, and was dressed with his usual faultless neatness and good taste, as clean as a new pin from top to toe. As he came along, picking his way gently among the children, the fishermen and their wives came out right and left from their doors, and greeted Mm kindly. In older times they would not have done this, but it had got about that he was pining for the loss of his brother, and their hearts had warmed to him. It did not take much to make their hearts warm to a Ravenshoe; though they were sturdy, independent rogues enough at times. I am a very great admirer of the old feudal feeling, when it is not abused by either party. In parts of Australia, where it, or something near akin to it, is very strong indeed, I have seen it act on high and low most beneficially; giving to the one side a sense of responsibility, and to the other a feeling of trust and reliance. “Here’s ‘ Captain Dash,’ or ‘ Colonel Blank,’ or ‘ Mr. So-and-so,’ and he won’t see me wronged, I know. I have served him and his father for forty year, and he’s a gentleman, and so were his father before him.” Tliat is the sort of thing you will hear often enough in Australia. And even on the diggings, with all the leaven of Americanism and European Eadicalism one finds there, it is much easier for a warden to get on with the diggers if he comes of a nown colonial family, than if he is an unknown man. The old colonial diggers, the people of the greatest real weight, talk of them, and the others listen and mark. All people, prate as they may, like a guarantee for respectability. In the colonies, such a guarantee is given by a man’s being tolerably well off, and “come of decent people.” In England, it is given, in cases, by a man and a man’s forefathers having been good landlords and honest men. Such a guarantee is given by such people as the Ravenshoes, but that is not the whole secret of their influence. That comes more from association — a feeling strong enough, as one sees, to make educated and clever men use their talents and eloquence towards keeping a school in a crowded, unhealthy neighbourhood, instead of moving it into the country; merely because, as far as one can gather from their speeches, they were educated at it themselves, twenty years ago. Hereby visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, with a vengeance!
“Somewhat too much of this.” It would be stretching a point to say that Cuthbert was a handsome man, though he was very near being so, indeed. He was tall, but not too slender, for he had developed in chest somewhat since we first knew him. His face was rather pale, but his complexion perfectly clear; save that he had a black mark roimd his eyes. His features were decidedly marked, but not so strongly as Charles’s; and there was an air of stately repose about him, showing itself in his way of carrying his head perfectly upright, nd the firm, but not harsh, settling of Ids mouth, with the lower lip slightly pouting, which was very attractive. He was a consummate horseman, too, and, as I said, perfectly dressed; and, as he came towards them, looking apparently at nothing, both William and Marston thought they had never seen a finer specimen of a gentleman.
He had strangely altered in two months. As great a change had come over him as comes over a rustic when the drill-sergeant gets him and makes a soldier of him. There is the same body, the same features, the same hair and eyes. Bill Jones is Bill Jones, if you are to believe his mother. But Bill Jones the soldier is not Bill Jones the ploughboy. He is quite a different person. So, since the night when Charles departed, Cuthbert had not been the Cuthbert of former times. He was no longer wayward and irritable; he was as silent as ever, but he had grown so staid, so studiously courteous to every one, so exceedingly humble-minded and patient with every one, that all save one or two wondered at the change in him.
He had been passionately fond of Charles, though he had seldom shown it, and was terribly cut up at his loss. He had greatly humiliated himself to himself by what was certainly his felonious offer to Father Mackworth; and he had found the estate somewhat involved, and had determined to set to work and bring it to rights. These three causes had made Cuthbert Ravenshoe a humbler and better man than he had ever been before.
“William,” he said, smiling kindly on him, “I have boon seeing after your estate for you. It does me good to have some one to work for. You will die a rich man.”
William said nothing. One of Cuthbert’s fixed notions was that he would die young and childless. He claimed to have a heart-complaint, though it really appeared without any foundation. It was a fancy which William had combated at first, but now acquiesced in, because he found it useless to do otherwise.
He dismounted and walked with them. “Cuthbert,” said William, “we have been thinking about Charles.”
“I am always thinking about him,” said Cuthbert; “is there no way of finding him?”
“I am going. I want you to give me some money and let me go.”
“You had better go at once, William. You had better try if the police can help you. We are pretty sure that he is gone to America, unless he has enlisted. In either case, it is very possible we may find him. Aunt Ascot would have succeeded, if she had not lost her temper. Don’t you think I am right, my dear Marston?”
“I do, indeed, Ravenshoe,” said Marston. “Don’t you think now, Mt. Mackworth, that, if a real push is made, and with judgment, we may find Charles again?”
They had reached the terrace, and Father Mackworth was standing in front of the porch. He said he believed it was perfectly possible. “Nay,” he said, “possible! I'm as sure of seeing Charles Horton back here again, as I am that I shall eat my dinner today.”
“And I,” said Cuthbert, “am equally sure that we shall see poor Ellen back some day. Poor girl! she shall have a warm welcome.”
Father Mackworth said he hoped it might be so. And the lie did not choke him.
“We are going to send William away again to look after him, father,” said Cuthbert.
“He had much better stay at home and mind his education,” said Mackworth.
William had his back towards them, and was looking out to sea, whistling. When the priest spoke he turned round sharply, and said —
“Hey? what’s that?”
The priest repeated it.
“I suppose,” said William, “that that is more my business than yours, is it not? I don’t intend to go to school again, certainly not to you.”
Cuthbert looked from one to the other of them, and said nothing. A few days before this William and the priest had fallen out; and Mackworth, appealing, had been told with the greatest kindness and politeness by Cuthbert that he could not interfere. That William was heir to Ravenshoe, and that he really had no power over him whatever. Mackworth had said nothing then, but now he had followed Cuthbert into the library, and, when they were alone, said —
“Cuthbert, I did not expect this from you. You ave let him insult me twice, and have not corrected him.”
Cuthbert put his back against the door, and said —
“Now you don’t leave this room till you apologize for these wicked words. My dear old fellow, what a goose you are! Have not you and he always squabbled? Do fight it out with him, and don’t try and force me to take a side. I ain’t going to do it, you know, and so I tell you plainly. Give it to him. Who can do it so well as you? Remember what an altered position he is in. How can you expect me to take your part against him?”
Father Mackworth cleared his brow, and said, laughing, “You are right, Cuthbert. I’ll go about with the rogue. He is inclined to kick over the traces, but I’ll whip him in a little. I have had the whip hand of every Ravenshoe I have had to deal with yet, yourself included, and it’s hard if I am to be beat by this new whipper-snapper.”
Cuthbert said affectionately to him, “I think you love me, Mackworth. Don’t quarrel with him more than you can help. I know you love me.” And so Cuthbert went to seek John Marston.
Love him! Ay, that he did. John Mackworth could be cruel, hard, false, vindictive. He could cheat, and he could lie, if need were. He was heartless and ambitious. But he loved Cuthbert. It was a love which had taken a long time growing, but there it was, and he was half ashamed of it. Even to himself he ould try to make out that it was mere selfishness and ambition — that he was gentle with Cuthbert, because he must keep his place at Ravenshoe. Even now he would try to persuade himself that such was the case — perhaps the more strongly, because he began to see now that there was a soft spot in his heart, and that Cuthbert was master of it. Since the night when Cuthbert had offered him ten thousand pounds, and he had refused it, Cuthbert had never been the same to him. And Mackworth, expecting to find his influence increased, found to his astonishment that from that moment it was gone. Cuthbert’s intensely sensitive and proud nature revolted from the domination of a man before whom he had so lowered himself; and firmly, though humbly now, for he was altered by seeing how nearly he had been a villain, he let him see that he would walk in future in his own strength. Father Mackworth saw soon that Ravenshoe was a comfortable home for him, but that his power was gone. Unless!
And yet he knew that he could exercise a power little dreamt of. It is in the power, possibly, of a condemned man to burn the prison down, and possibly his interest; but he has compimctions. Mackworth tried to persuade himself that the reason he did not use his power was that it would not be advisable. He was a cipher in the house, and knew by instinct that he would never be more. But in reality, I believe, he let his power sleep for Cuthbert’s sake.
“Who could have thought,” he said, “that the very hing which clinched my power, as I thought, should have destroyed it? Are not those people fools, who lay down rules for human action? Why, no. They are possibly right five times out of ten. But as for the other five! Bah!”
“No, I won’t allow that. It was my own fault. I should have known his character better. But there, I could not have helped it, for he did it himself. I was passive.”
And Cuthbert followed Marston into the hall, and said, “You are not going away because William goes, Marston?”
“Do you want me?” said Marston.
“Yes,” said Cuthbert. “You must stay with me. My time is short, and I must know as much of this world as I may. I have much to do; you must help me. I will be like a little child in your hands. I will die in the old faith, but I will learn something new.”
And so Marston stayed with him, and they two grew fast friends. Cuthbert had nothing to learn in this management of his estate; there he was Marston’s master; but all that a shrewd young man of the world could teach a bookworm, so much Cuthbert got from Marston.
Marston one day met the village doctor, the very man whom we saw at the beginning of the book, putting out William (whom we then supposed to be Charles) to nurse, Marston asked him, “Was there any reality in this heart-complaint of Cuthbert’s?”
“Not the very faintest shadow of a reality,” said the doctor. “It is the most tiresome whimsy I ever knew. He has persuaded himself of it, though. He used to be very hypochondriac. He is as likely to live till eighty as you are.”
There was ruin in the Ascot family, we know. And Lord Ascot, crippled with paralysis at six-and-forty, was lying in South Audley Street, nursed by Lady Ascot. The boxes, which we saw packed ready for their foreign tour at the London Bridge Hotel, were still there — not gone abroad yet, for the simple reason that Herodias had won the Oaks, and that Lord Welter had won, some said seven, others said seventy thousand pounds. (He had really won nine.) So the boxes might stay where they were a few days, and he might pursue Ms usual avocations in peace, all his debts of honour being satisfied.
He had barely saved himself from being posted. Fortunately for him, he had, on the Derby, betted chiefly with a few friends, one of whom was Hornby; and they waited and said nothing till after the Oaks, when they were paid, and Welter could hold up his head again. He was indebted to the generosity of Hornby and Sir Charles Ferrers for his honour — the very men whom he would have swindled. But he laughed and ate his dinner, and said they were good fellows, and thought no more of it.
The bailiffs were at Ranford. The servants were gone, and the horses were advertised at Tattersall’s ah’eady. It was reported in the county that an aged Jew, being in possession, and prowling about the premises, had come into the poultry yard, and had surreptitiously slain, cooked, and essayed to eat, the famous cock “Sampson,” the champion bird of England, since his match with “Young Countryman.” On being-informed by the old keeper that my lord had refused sixty guineas for him a few weeks before, he had (so said the county) fled out of the house, tearing his hair, and knocked old Lady Hainault, who had also come prowling over in her pony-carriage, down the steps, flat on her back. Miss Hicks, who was behind with her shawls, had picked her up, they said, and “caught it.”
If Adelaide was beautiful everywhere, surely she was more beautiful on horseback than anywhere else, and no one knew it better than herself She was one of the first who appeared in the park in a low-crowned hat — a “wide-awake.” They are not de rigueur even yet, I believe; but Adelaide was never very particular so long as she could look well. She had found out how splendid her perfect mask looked imder the careless, irregular curves of such a head-dress, and how bright her banded hair shone in contrast with a black ostrich feather which drooped on her shoulder. And so she had taken to wear one since she had been Lady Welter, and had appeared in the park in it twice.
Lord Welter bethought himself once in these times — hat is, just after the Oaks — that he would like to take his handsome wife out and show her in the park. His Hornby speculation had turned out ill; in fact, Hornby had altogether made rather a handsome sum out of him, and he must look for some one else. The some one else, a young Austrian, Pscechenyi by name, a young fellow of wealth, had received his advances somewhat coldly, and it became necessary to hang out Adelaide as a lure.
Lord Welter was aware that, if he had asked Adelaide to come and ride with him, on the ground of giving her an afternoon’s amusement, and tried to persuade her to it by fair-spoken commonplaces, she would probably not have come; and so he did nothing of the kind. He and his wife thoroughly understood one another. There was perfect confidence between them in everything. Towards one another they were perfectly sincere, and this very sincerity begot a feeling of trust between them, which ultimately ripened into something better. They began life together without any professions of affection; but out of use, and a similarity of character, there grew a liking in the end. She knew everything about Lord Welter, save one thing, which she was to know immediately, and which was of no importance; and she was always ready to help him, provided, as she told him, “he didn’t humbug,” which his lordship, as we know, was not inclined to do, without her caution.
Lord Welter went into her dressing-room in the morning, and said —
“Here’s a note from Pscechenyi. He won’t come tonight.”
“Indeed!” said Adelaide, brushing her hair. “I did not igive him credit for so much sense. Really, you know, he can’t be such a fool as he looks.”
“We must have him,” said Lord Welter.
“Of course we must,” said Adelaide. “I really cannot allow such a fat goose to run about with a knife and fork in him any longer. Heigh ho! Let’s see. He affects Lady Brittlejug, don’t he? I am going to her party tonight, and I’ll capture him for you, and bring him home to you from under her very nose. Now do try and make a better hand of him than you did of Hornby, or we shall all be in the workhouse together.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Lord Welter, laughing. “But look here. I don’t think you’ll catch him so, you know. She looks as well as you by candlelight, but she can’t ride a hang. Come out in the park this afternoon. He will be there.”
“Very well,” said Adelaide; “I suppose you know best. I shall be glad of a ride. Half-past two, then.”
So at the time appointed these two innocent lambkins rode forth to take the air. Lord Welter, big, burly, red-faced, good humoured, perfectly dressed, and sitting on his horse as few others could sit, the model of a frank English nobleman. Adelaide, beautiful and fragile beyond description, perfect in dress and caniage, riding trustingly and lovingly in the shadow of her lord, the happy, timid bride all over. They had no groom.
What should a poor simple couple like them want with a groom? It was a beautiful sight, and many turned to look at them.
But Lord Saltire, who was looking out of the drawingroom window of Lord Ascot’s house in South Audley Street, as they passed, turned to Marston, and said very emphatically —
“Now, I do really wonder what infernal mischief those two are after. There is an air of pastoral simplicity about their whole get-up, which forebodes some very great — very great “— here he paused, took snuff, and looked Marston straight in the face — “obliquity of moral purpose.”
Meanwhile, the unconscious innocents sauntered on into the park, under the Marble Arch, and down towards Rotten-row. When they got into the Row they had a canter. There was Pscechenyi riding with Hornby and Miss Buckjumper, but they gave them the “go by,” and went softly on towards Kensington-gate. “Who is the woman in the hat and feathers?” said everybody who didn’t know. “Lady Welter,” said everybody who did; and, whatever else they said of her, they all agreed that she was wonderfully beautiful, and rode divinely. When they came slowly back, they found Hornby and the Austrian were standing against the rail talking to some ladies. They drew close up, and entered into conversation. And Adelaide found herself beside Miss Buckjumper, now Lady Handly cross.
Adelaide was somewhat pleased to find herself at the ide of this famous horsewoman and beauty. She was so sure tliat comparisons would be favourable to herself. And they were. If ever an exquisitely formed nose was, so to speak, put out of joint, that nose was in the middle of Miss Buckjumper’s face that day. Nevertheless, she did not show anything. She had rather a respect for Adelaide, as being a successful woman. Was not she herself cantering for a coronet? There was very soon a group round them, and Lord Welter’s hoarse jolly laugh was heard continually. People, who were walking in the park to see the great people, paused outside the circle to look at her, and repassed again. Mr. Pelagius J. Bottom, of New York, whose father emigrated to Athens, and made a great fortune at the weaving business in the time of King Theseus, got on a bench, and looked at her through a double-barrelled opera-glass. There never was such a success. The Austrian thought no more of Hornby’s cautions, thought no more of Miss Buckjumper or Lady Brittlejug. He was desperately in love, and was dying for some excuse to withdraw his refusal of this morning. Pelagius Jas. Bottom would have come, and mortgaged the paternal weaving business at the dice, but unfortunately his letters of introduction, being all addressed to respectable people, did not include one to Lord and Lady Welter. All the young fellows would have come and played all night, till church-time next morning, for her sake. As Lord Welter candidly told her that night, she was the best investment he had ever made.
They did not want all the young fellows though. Too many cooks spoil the broth. They only wanted the young Austrian, and so Lord Welter said, after a time, “I was in hopes of seeing you at my house tonight.” Tliat was quite enough. Fifty Hornbys would not have stopped him now.
Still they stood there talking. Adelaide was almost happy. Which of these staid women had such power as she? There was a look of pride and admiration even on Lord Welter’s stupid face. Yes, it was a great success. Suddenly all people began to look one way and come towards the rails, and a buzz arose, “The Queen — the Queen!”
Adelaide turned just as the outriders were opposite to her. She saw the dark claret-coloured carriage, fifty yards off, and she knew that Lady Emily Montford, who had been her sister-bridesmaid at Lady Hainault’s wedding, was in waiting that day. Hornby declares the whole thing was done on purpose. Let us be more charitable, and suppose that her horse was startled at the scarlet coats of the outriders; however it was, the brute took fright, stood on its hind legs, and bolted straight towards [the royal carriage. She reined it up within ten feet of the carriage step, plunging furiously. Raising her whip hand to push her hat more firmly on, she knocked it (5ff, and sat there bareheaded, with one loop of her hair fallen down, a sight which no man who saw it ever forgot. She saw a look of amazed admiration in the Queen’s face. She saw Lady Emily’s look of entle pity. She saw her Majesty lean forward, and ask who it was. She saw her name pass Lady Emily’s lips, and then she saw the Queen turn with a frown, and looking steadily the other way.
Wrath and rage were in her heart, and showed themselves one instant in her face. A groom had run out and picked up her hat. She bent down to take it from him, and saw that it was Charles Ravenshoe.
Her face grew soft again directly. Poor thing! she must have had a kind heart after all, crusted over as it was with vanity, pride, and selfishness. Now, in her anger and shame, she could have cried to see her old love so degraded. There was no time for crying, or for saying more than a few sharp words, for they were coming towards her.
“What nonesense is this, Charles?” she said. “What is this masquerade? Are you come to double my shame? Go home and take that dress off and burn it. Is your pride dead, that you disgrace yourself like this in public? If you are desperate, as you seem, why are you not at the war? They want desperate men there. Oh! if I was a man!”
They parted then; no one but Lord Welter and Hornby knew who Charles was. The former saw that Adelaide had recognised him, and, as they rode simply home together, said —
“I knew poor Charles was a groom. He saw his sister the other night at our house. I didn’t tell you; I hardly know why. I really believe, do you know, hat the truth of the matter is, Adelaide, that I did not want to vex yon. Now! ”
He looked at her as if he thought she would disbelieve him, but she said —
“Nay, I do believe you, Welter. You are not an ill-natured man, but you are selfish and unprincipled. So am I, perhaps to a greater extent than you. At what time is that fool of a German coming?”
“At half-past eleven.”
“I must go to that woman Brittlejug’s party. I must show there, to keep friends with her. She has such a terrible tongue. I will be back by twelve or so.”
“I wish you could stay at home.”
“I really dare not, my dear Welter. I must go. I will be back in good time.”
“Of course you will please yourself about it,” said Lord Welter, a thought sulkily. And, when he was by himself, he said —
“She is going to see Charles Ravenshoe. Well, perhaps she ought. She treated him d — d bad! And so did I.”
Lord Ascot had been moved into South Audley Street, his town house, and Lady Ascot was there nursing him. General Mainwaring was off for Varna. But Lord Saltire had been a constant visitor, bringing with him very often Marston, who was, you will remember, an old friend of Lady Ascot.
It was not at all an unpleasant house to be in. Lord Ascot was crippled — he had been seized with paralysis at Epsom; and he was ruined. But every one knew the worst, and felt relieved by thinking that things could get no worse than worst, and so must get better.
In fact, every one admitted to the family party about that time remembered it as a very happy and quiet time indeed. Lord Ascot was their first object, of course; and a more gentle and biddable invalid than the poor fellow made can hardly be conceived. He was passionately fond of reading novels (a most reprehensible practice), and so was easily amused. Lord Saltire and he would play picquet; and every evening there would be three hours of whist, until the doctor looked in the last thing, and Lord Ascot was helped to bed.
Marston was always set to play with Lord Ascot, because Lord Saltire and Lady Ascot would not play against one another. Lord Saltire was, of course, one of the best players in Europe; and I really believe that Lady Ascot was not the worst by any means. I can see the party now. I can see Lady Ascot laying down a card, and looking at the same time at her partner, to call his attention to her lead. And I can see Lord Saltire take out his snuff-box thereat, as if he were puzzled, but not alarmed. William would come sometimes and sit quietly behind Marston, or Lord Saltire, watching the game. In short, they were a very quiet pleasant party indeed.
One night — it was the very night on which Adelaide had lost her hat in the Park — there was no whist. Marston had gone down to Oxford suddenly, and William came in to tell them so. Lady Ascot was rather glad, she said, for she had a friend coming to tea, who did not play whist; so Lord Saltire and Lord Ascot sat down to picquet, and William talked to his aunt.
“Who is your friend, Maria?” asked Lord Saltire.
“A Mr. Bidder, a minister. He has written a book on the Revelations, which you really ought to read, James; it would suit you.”
They both laughed.
“About the seven seals, hey?” said Lord Saltire; “’ septem phocce,’ as I remember Machynleth translated it at Eton once. We called him ‘Vituliua ‘ ever after. The name stuck to him through life with some of us. A capital name for him, too! His fussy blundering in his war-business is just like his old headlong way of looking out words in his dictionary. He is an ass, Maria; and I will bet fifty pounds that your friend, the minister, is another.”
“How can you know? at all events, the man he brings with him is none.”
“Another minister?”
“Yes, a Moravian missionary from Australia.”
“Then certainly another ass, or he would have gone as missionary to a less abominably detestable hole. They were all burnt into the sea there the other day. Immediately after which the rivers rose seventy feet, and drowned the rest of them.”
Soon after were announced Mr, Bidder and Mr. Smith. Mr. Bidder was an entirely unremarkable man; but Mr. Smith was one of the most remarkable men I have ever seen, or rather heard — for externally there was nothing remarkable about him, except a fine forehead, and a large expressive grey eye, which, when he spoke to you, seemed to come back from a long distance, and fix itself upon yours. In manners he was perfect. He was rather taciturn, though always delighted to communicate information about his travels, in a perfectly natural way. If one man wanted information on botany, or what not, he was there to give it. If another wanted to hear about missionary work, he was ready for him. He never spoke or acted untruthfully for one instant. He never acted the free and easy man of the world, as some religious gentlemen of all sects feel it necessary to do ometimes, imitating the real thing as well as Paul Bedford would imitate Fanny Ellsler. What made him remarkable was his terrible earnestness, and the feeling you had, that his curious language was natural, and meant something; something very important indeed. ie has something to do with the story. The straws in the gutter have to do with the history of a man like Charles, a man who leaves all things to chance. And this man Smith is very worthy of notice, and so I have said thus much about him, and am going to say more.
Mr. Bidder was very strong on the Eussian war, which he illustrated by the Revelations. He was a good fellow, and well-bred enough to see that his friend Smith was an object of greater interest to Lady Ascot than himself; so he “ retired into “a book of prints, and left the field clear.
Mr. Smith sat by Lady Ascot, and William drew close up. Lady Ascot began by a commonplace, of course.
“You have suffered great hardships among those savages, Mr. Smith, have you not?”
” Hardships! Oh, dear no, my dear lady. Our station was one of the pleasantest places in the whole earth, I believe; and we had a peaceful time. When the old man is strong in me I wish I was back there.”
“You did not make much progress with them, I believe?”
“None whatever. We found out after a year or two that it was hopeless to make them understand the existence of a God; and after that we stayed on to see if we could bring them to some knowledge of agriculture, and save them from their inevitable extermination, as the New Zealanders have been saved.”
“And to no purpose?”
“None. For instance, we taught them to plant our potatoes for us. They did it beautifully, but in the night they dug them up and ate them. And in due season we waited that our potatoes should grow, and they grew not. Then they came to Brother Hillyar, my coadjutor, an old man, now ruling ten cities for his master, and promised for rewards of flour to tell him why the potatoes did not grow. And he, loving them, gave them what they desired. And they told him that they dug them up while we slept. And for two days I went about my business laughing in secret places, for which he tried to rebuke me, but could not, laughing himself. The Lord kept him waiting long, for he was seventy-four; but, doubtless, his reward is the greater.”
William said, “You brought home a collection of zoological specimens, I think. They are in the Museum.”
“Yes. But what I could not bring over were my live pets. I and my wife had a menagerie of our own — a great number of beasts — ”
Mr. Bidder looking up from his book, catching the last sentence only, said that the number of the beast was 666; and, then turning round, held himself ready to strike into the conversation, thinking that the time was come when he should hide his light no longer.
“The natives are very low savages, are they not, Mr. Smith?” said William. “I have heard that they cannot count above ten.”
“Not so far as that,” said Mr. Smith. “The tribe we were most among used to express all large unknown quantities by ‘eighty-four;' — it was as x and y to them. That seems curious at first, does it not?”
William said it did seem curious, their choosing that particular number. But Mr. Bidder, dying to mount his hobby-horse, and not caring how, said it was not at all curious. If you multiplied the twelve tribes of Israel into the seven cities of refuge, there you were at once.
Mr. Smith said he thought he had made a Little mistake. The number, he fancied, was ninety-four.
Lord Saltire, from the card-table, said that that made the matter clearer than before. For if you placed the Ten Commandments to the previous result you arrived at ninety-four, which was the number wanted. And his lordship, who had lost, and was consequently possibly cross, added that, if you divided the whole by the five foolish virgins, and pitched Tobit’s dog neck and heels, into the result, you would find yourself much about where you started.
Mr. Bidder, who, as I said, was a good fellow, laughed,
* A fact with regard to one tribe, to the author’s frequent confusion. Any number above two, whether of horses, cattle, or sheep, was always represented as being eighty-four. Invariably, too, with an adjective introduced after the word “four,” which we don’t use in a drawingroom. nd Mr. Smith resumed the conversation once more; Lord Saltire seemed interested in what he said, and did not interfere with him.
“You buried poor Mrs. Smith out there,” said Lady Ascot. “I remember her well. She was very beautiful as a girl.”
“Very beautiful,” said the missionary. “Yes; she never lost her beauty, do you know. That climate is very deadly to those who go there with the seeds of consumption in them. She had done a hard day’s work before she went to sleep, though she was young. Don’t you think so, Lady Ascot?”
“A hard day’s work; a good day’s work, indeed. Who knows better than I?” said Lady Ascot. “What an awaking it must be from such a sleep as hers!”
“Beyond the power of human tongue to tell,” said the missionary, looking dreamily as at something far away. “Show me the poet that can describe in his finest language the joy of one’s soul when one wakes on a summer’s morning. Who, then, can conceive or tell the unutterable happiness of the purified soul, waking face to face with the King of Glory? ”
Lord Saltire looked at him curiously, and said to himself, “This fellow is in earnest. I have seen this sort of thing before. But seldom! Yes, but seldom!”
“I should not have alluded to my wife’s death,” continued the missionary in a low voice, “but that her ladyship introduced the subject. And no one has a better right to hear of her than her kind old friend. She fell asleep on the Sabbath evening after prayers. We moved her bed into the verandah, Lady Ascot, that she might see the sunlight fade out on the tops of the highest trees — a sight she always loved. And from the verandah we could see through the tree stems Mount Joorma, laid out in endless folds of woodland, all purple and gold. And I thought she was looking at the mountain, but she was looking far beyond that, for she said, ‘ I shall have to wait thirty years for you, James, but I shall be very happy and very busy. The time will go quick enough for me, but it will be a slow weary time for you, my darling. Go home from here, my love, into the great towns, and see what is to be done there.’ And so she went to sleep.
“I rebelled for three days. I went away into the bush, with Satan at my elbow all the time, through dry places, through the forest, down by lonely creeksides, up among bald volcanic downs, where there are slopes of slippery turf, leading down to treacherous precipices of slag; and then through the quartz ranges, and the reedy swamps, where the black swans float, and the spur-winged plover hovers and cackles; all about I went among the beasts and the birds. But on the third day the Lord wearied of me, and took me back, and I lay on His bosom again like a child. He will always take you home, my lord, if you come. After three days, after thrice twenty years, my lord. Time is nothing to Him.”
Lord Saltire was looking on him with kindly admiration.
“There is something in it, my lord. Depend upon it that it is not all a dream. Would not you give all your amazing wealth, all your honours, everything, to change places with me?”
“I certainly would,” said Lord Saltire. “I have always been of opinion that there was something in it. I remember,” he continued, turning to William, “expressing the same opinion to your father in the Fleet Prison once, when he had quarrelled with the priests for expressing some opinions which he had got from me. But you must take up with that sort of thing very early in life if you mean it to have any reality at all. I am too old now.”*
Lord Saltire said this in a different tone from his usual one. In a tone that we have never heard him use before. There was something about the man Smith which, in spite of his quaint language, softened every one who heard him speak. Lady Ascot says it was the grace of God. I entirely agree with her ladyship.
“I came home,” concluded the missionary, “to try some city work. My wife’s nephew, John Marston, whom I expected to see here tonight, is going to assist in this work. There seems plenty to do. We are at work in Sonthwark at present.”
* Once for all, let me call every honest reader to witness, that, unless I speak in the first person, I am not bound to the opinions of any one of the characters in this book. I have merely made people speak as I think they would have spoken. Even in a story, consisting so entirely of incident as thi.s, I feel it necessary to say so much, for no kind of unfairness is so common as that of identifying the opinions of a story-teller with those of his dramatis persona.
Possibly it was well that the company, more particularly Lady Ascot, were in a softened and forgiving mood. For, before any one had resumed the conversation, Lord Ascot’s valet stood in the door, and, looking at Lady Ascot with a face which said as plain as words, “It is a terrible business, my lady, but I am innocent,” announced —
“Lady Welter.”
Lord Saltire put his snuff-box into his right-hand trousers’ pocket, and his pocket handkerchief into his left, and kept his hands there, leaning back in his chair, with his legs stretched out, and a smile of infinite wicked amusement on his face. Lord Ascot and William stared like a couple of gabies. Lady Ascot had no time to make the slightest change, either in feature or position, before Adelaide, dressed for the evening in a cloud of white and pink, with her bare arms loaded with bracelets, a swansdown fan hanging from her left wrist, sailed swiftly into the room, with outstretched hands, bore down on Lady Ascot, and began kissing her, as though the old lady were a fruit of some sort, and she were a dove pecking at it.
“Dearest grandma!” — peck. “So glad to see you!” — peck. “Couldn’t help calling in on you as I went to Lady Brittlejug’s — and how well you are looking! “— peck, peck. ” I can spare ten minutes — do tell me all the news, since I saw you. My dear Lord Ascot, I was so sorry to hear of your illness, but you look better than I expected And how do you do, my dear Lord Saltire?”
Lord Saltire was pretty well, and was delighted to see Lady Welter apparently in the enjoyment of such health and spirits, and so on, aloud. But, secretly, Lord Saltire was wondering what on earth could have brought her here. Perhaps she only wanted to take Lady Ascot by surprise, and force her into a recognition of her as Lady Welter. No. My lord saw there was something more than that. She was restless and absent with Lady Ascot. Her eye kept wandering, in the middle of all her rattling talk; but, wherever it wandered, it always came back to William, of whom she had hitherto taken no notice whatever.
“She has come after him. For what?” thought my lord. “I wonder if the jade knows anything of Charles.”
Lady Ascot had steeled herself against this meeting. She had determined, firstly, that no mortal power should ever induce her to set eyes on Adelaide again; and, secondly, that she, Lady Ascot, would give her, Adelaide, a piece of her mind, which she should never forget to her dying day. The first of these, rather contradictory, determinations had been disposed of by Adelaide’s audacity; and, as for the second; why, the piece of Lady Ascot’s mind which was to be given to Adelaide was, somehow, not ready; but, instead of it, only silent tears, and withered, trembling fingers, which andered lovingly over the beautiful young hand, and made the gaudy bracelets on the wrist click one against the other.
“What could I say, Brooks? what could I do?” said Lady Ascot to her maid that night, “when I saw her own self come back, with her own old way? I love the girl more than ever. Brooks, I believe. She beat me. She took me by surprise. I could not resist her. If she had proposed to put me in a wheelbarrow, and wheel me into the middle of that disgraceful, that detestable woman, Brittlejug’s drawingroom, there and then, I should have let her do it, I believe. I might have begged for time to put on my bonnet; but I should have gone.”
She sat there ten minutes or more, talking. Then she said that it was time to go, but that she should come and see Lady Ascot on the morrow. Then she turned to William, to whom she had not been introduced, and asked, would he see her to her carriage? Lord Saltire was next the bell, and, looking her steadily in the face, raised his hand slowly to pull it. Adelaide begged him eagerly not to trouble himself; he, with a smile, promptly dropped his hand, and out she sailed on William’s arm. Lord Saltire holding the door open, and shutting it after her, with somewhat singular rapidity.
“I hope none of those fools of servants will come blundering upstairs before she has said her say,” he remarked aloud. “Give us some of your South
African experiences, Mr. Smith. Did you ever see a woman beautiful enough to go clip a lion’s claws single-handed, eh?”
William, convoying Adelaide downstairs, had got no further than the first step, when he felt her hand drawn from his arm; he had got one foot on the step below, when he turned to see the cause of this. Adelaide was standing on the step above him, with her glorious face bent sternly, almost fiercely, down on his, and the hand from which the fan hung pointed towards him. It was as beautiful a sight as he had ever seen, and he calmly wondered what it meant. The perfect mouth was curved in scorn, and from it came sharp ringing words, decisive, hard, clear, like the sound of a hammer on an anvil.
“Are you a party to this shameful business, sir? you, who have taken his name, and his place, and his prospects in society. You, who professed, as I hear, to love him like another life, dearer than your own. You, who lay on the same breast with him — tell me, in God’s name, that you are sinning in ignorance.”
William, as I have remarked before, had a certain amount of shrewdness. He determined to let her go on. He only said, “You are speaking of Charles Ravenshoe.”
“Ay,” she said sharply; “of Charles Ravenshoe, sir — ex-stable-boy. I came here tonight to beard them all; to ask them, did they know, and did they dare to suffer it. If they had not given me an answer, I would have said such things to them as would have made them top their ears. Lord Saltire has a biting tongue, has he? Let him hear what mine is. But, when I saw you among them, I determined to save a scene, and speak to you alone. Shameful — ”
William looked quietly at her. “Will your ladyship remark that I, that all of us, have been moving heaven and earth to find Charles Ravenshoe, and that we have been utterly unable to find him? If you have any information about him, would it not be as well to consider that the desperation caused by your treatment of him was the principal cause of his extraordinary resolution of hiding himself? And, instead of scolding me and others, who are doing all we can, to give us all the information in your power?”
“Well, well,” she said, “perhaps you are right. Consider me rebuked, will you have the goodness? I saw Charles Ravenshoe today.”
“Today!”
“Ay, and talked to him.”
“How did he look? was he pale? was he thin? Did he seem to want money? Did he ask after me? Did he send any message? Can you take me to where he is? Did he seem much broken down? Does he know we have been seeking him? Lady Welter, for God’s sake, do something to repair the wrong you did him, and take me to where he is.”
“I don’t know where he is, I tell you. 1 saw him for just one moment. He picked up my hat in the Park. He was dressed like a groom. He came from I now not where, like a ghost from the grave. He did not speak to me. He gave me my hat, and was gone. I do not know whose groom he is, but 1 think Welter knows. He will tell me tonight. I dared not ask him today, lest he should think I was going to see him. When I tell him where I have been, and describe what has passed here, he will tell me. Come to me tomorrow morning, and he shall tell you; that will be better. You have sense enough to see why.”
“I see.”
“Another thing. He has seen his sister Ellen. And yet another thing. When I ran away with Lord Welter, I had no idea of what had happened to him — of this miserable esclandre. But you must have known that before, if you were inclined to do me justice. Come tomorrow morning. I must go now.”
And so she went to her carriage by herself after all. And William stood still on the stairs, triumphant. Charles was as good as found.
The two clergymen passed him on their way downstairs, and bade him good night. Then he returned to the drawingroom, and said —
“My lord. Lady Welter has seen Charles today, and spoken to him. With God’s help, I will have him here with us tomorrow night.”
It was half-past eleven. What Charles, in his head-long folly and stupidity, had contrived to do before this time, must be told in another chapter — no, I have not patience to wait. My patience is exhausted. One ct of folly following another so fast would exhaust the patience of Job. If one did not love him so well, one would not be so angry with him. I will tell it here and have done with it. When he had left Adelaide, he had gone home with Hornby. He had taken the horses to the stable; he had written a note to Hornby. Then he had packed up a bundle of clothes, and walked quietly off.
Round by St. Peter's Church — he had no particular reason for going there, except, perhaps, that his poor foolish heart yearned that evening to see some one who cared for him, though it were only a shoeblack. There was still one pair of eyes which would throw a light for one instant into the thick darkness which was gathering fast around him.
His little friend was there. Charles and he talked for a while, and at last he said —
“You will not see me again. I am going to the war. I am going to Windsor to enlist in the Hussars tonight.”
“They will kill you,” said the boy.
“Most likely,” said Charles. “So we must say goodbye. Mind, now, you go to the school at night, and say that prayer I gave you on the paper. We must say goodbye. We had better be quick about it.”
The boy looked at him steadily. Then he began to (iraw his breath in long sighs — longer, longer yet, till his chest seemed bursting. Then out it all came in a furious hurricane of tears, and he leant his head against the wall, and beat the bricks with his clenched hand.
“And I am never to see you no more! no more! no more!”
“No more,” said Charles. But he thought he might soften the poor boy’s grief; and he did think, too, at the moment, that he would go and see the house where his kind old aunt lived, before he went away for ever; so he said —
“I shall be in South Audley Street, 167, tomorrow at noon, Now, you must not cry, my dear. You must say goodbye.”
And so he left him, thinking to see him no more. Once more, Charles, only once more, and then God help you!
He went off that night to Windsor, and enlisted in the 140th Hussars.
And so you see here we are all at sixes and sevens once more. Apparently as near the end of the story, as when I wrote the adventures of Alured Ravenshoe at the court of Henry the Eighth in the very first chapter. If Charles had had a little of that worthy’s impudence, instead of being the shy, sensitive fellow he was, why, the story would have been over long ago. In point of fact, I don’t know that it would ever have been written at all. So it is best as it is for all parties.
Although Charles had enlisted in Hornby’s own regiment, he had craftily calculated that there was not the slightest chance of Hornby’s finding it out for some time. Hornby’s troop was at the Regent’s Park. The headquarters were at Windsor, and the only officer likely to recognise him was Hornby’s captain. And so he went to work at his new duties with an easy mind, rather amused than otherwise, and wondering where and when it would all end.
From sheer unadulterated ignorance, I cannot follow him during the first week or so of his career. I have a suspicion, almost amounting to certainty, that, if I could, I should not. I do not believe that the readers of Ravenshoe would care to hear about sword-exercise, riding-school, stablegnard, and so on. I can, however, tell you thus much, that Charles learnt his duties in a wonderfully short space of time, and was a great favourite with high and low.
When William went to see Adelaide by appointment the morning after his interview with her, he had an interview with Lord Welter, who told him, in answer to his inquiries, that Charles was groom to Lieutenant Hornby.
“I promised that I would say nothing about it,” he continued; “but I think I ought: and Lady Welter has been persuading me to do so, if any inquiries were made, only this morning. I am deuced glad, Ravenshoe, that none of you have forgotten him. It would be a great shame if you had. He is a good fellow, and has been infernally used by some of us — by me, for instance.”
William, in his gladness, said, “Never mind, my lord; let bygones be bygones. We shall all be to one another as we were before, please God. I have found Charles, at all events; so there is no gap in the old circle, except my father’s. I had a message for Lady Welter.”
“She is not down; she is really not well this morning, or she could have seen you.”
“It is only this. Lady Ascot begs that she will come over to lunch. My aunt wished she would have stopped longer last night.”
“Your aunt?”
“My aunt. Lady Ascot.”
“Ah! I beg pardon; 1 am not quite used to the new state of affairs. Was Lady Welter with Lady Ascot last night?”
William was obliged to say yes, but felt as if he had committed an indiscretion by having said anything about it.
“The deuce she was!” said Lord Welter. “I thought she was somewhere else. Tell my father that I will come and see him today, if he don’t think it would be too much for him.”
“All, Lord Welter 1 you would have come before, if you had known — ”
“I know, I know. You must know that I had my reasons for not coming. Well, I hope that you and I will be better acquainted in our new positions; we were intimate enough in our old.”
When William was gone. Lord Welter went up to his wife’s dressing-room, and said —
“Lady Welter, you are a jewel. If you go on like this, you will be recognised, and we shall die at Ranford — you and I— a rich and respectable couple. If ‘ifs and ands were pots and pans,’ Lady Welter, we should do surprisingly well. If, for instance. Lord Saltire could be got to like me something better than a mad dog, he would leave my father the whole of his landed estate, and cut Charles Horton, whilom Ravenshoe, off with the comparatively insignificant sum of eighty thousand pounds, the amount of his funded property. Eh! Lady Welter.”
Adelaide actually bounded from her chair.
“Are you drunk, Welter?” she said.
“Seeing that it is hut the third hour of the day, I am not, Lady Welter. Neither am I a fool. Lord Saltire would clear my father now, if he did not know that it would be more for my benefit than his. I believe he would sooner leave his money to a hospital than see me get one farthing of it.”
“Welter,” said Adelaide, eagerly, “if Charles gets hold of Lord Saltire again, he will have the whole; the old man adores him. I know it; I see it all now; why did I never think of it before? He thinks he is like Lord Barkham, his son. There is time yet. If that man, William Ravenshoe, comes this morning, you must know nothing of Charles.!Mind that. Nothing. They must not meet. He may forget him, Mind, Welter, no answer!”
She was walking up and down the room rapidly now, and Lord Welter was looking at her with a satirical smile on his face.
“Lady Welter,” he said, “the man, William Ravenshoe, has been here, and has got his answer. By this time, Charles is receiving his lordship’s blessing.”
“Fool!” was all that Adelaide could say.
“Well, hardly that,” said Lord Welter. “At leasts you should hardly call me so. I understood the position of affairs long before you. I was a reckless young cub not to have paid Lord Saltire more court in old times; but I never knew the state of our affairs till very shortly efore the crash came, or I might have done so. In the present case, I have not been such a fool. Charles is restored to Lord Saltire through my instrumentality. A very good basis of operations, Lady Welter.”
“At a risk of about half a million of money,” remarked Adelaide.
“There was no risk in the other course, certainly,” said Lord Welter, “for we should never have seen a farthing of it. And besides, Lady Welter — ”
“Well!”
“I have your attention. Good. It may seem strange to you, who care about no one in heaven or earth, but I love this fellow, this Charles Horton. I always did. He is worth all the men I ever met put together. I am glad to have been able to give him a lift this morning. Even if I had not been helping myself, I should have done it all the same. That is comical, is it not? For Lord Saltire’s landed property I shall light. The campaign begins at lunch today, Lady Welter; so, if you will be so good as to put on your full war-paint and feathers, we will dig up the tomahawk, and be off on the war-trail in your ladyship’s brougham. Goodbye for the present.”
Adelaide was beaten. She was getting afraid of her husband; afraid of his strong masculine cunning, of his reckless courage, and of the strange apparition of a great brutal heart at the bottom of it all. What were all her fine-spun female cobwebs worth against such a huge, blundering, thieving, hornet as he?
That same day, Lord Saltire and Lady Ascot were sitting in the drawingroom window, in South Audley Street, alone. He had come in, as his custom was, about eleven, and found her reading her great old Bible; he had taken up the paper and read away for a time, saying that he would not interrupt her; she, too, had seemed glad to avoid a tete-a-tete conversation, and had continued; but, after a few minutes, he had dropped the paper, and cried —
“The deuce!”
“My dear James,” said she, “what is the matter?”
“Matter! why, we have lost a war-steamer, almost without a shot fired. The Russians have got the Tiger, crew and all. It is unbearable, Maria; if they are going to blunder like this at the beginning, where will it end?”
Lord Saltire was disgusted with the war from the very beginning, in consequence of the French alliance, and so the present accident was as fuel for his wrath. Lady Ascot, as loyal a soul as lived, was possibly rather glad that something had taken up Lord Saltire’s attention just then, for she was rather afraid of him this morning.
She knew his great dislike for Lord Welter, and expected to be scolded for her weakness with regard to Adelaide the night before. Moreover, she had the guilty consciousness that she had asked Adelaide to come to lunch that morning, of which he did not yet know. So she was rather glad to have a subject to talk of, not personal.
“And when did it happen, my dear James?” she asked.
“On the twelfth of last month, Lady Ascot. Come and sit here in the window, and give an account of yourself,???sall you have the goodness?”
Now that she saw it must come, she was as cool and as careless as need be. He could not be hard on her. Charles was to come home to them that day. She drew her chair up, and laid her withered old hand on his, and the two grey heads were bent together. Grey heads but green hearts.
“Look at old Daventry,” said Lord Saltire, “on the other side of the way. Don’t you see him, Maria, listening to that organ? He is two years older than I am. He looks younger.”
“I don’t know that he does. He ought to look older. She led him a terrible life. Have you been to see him lately?”
“What business is that of yours? So you are going to take Welter’s wife back into your good graces, eh, my lady?”
“Yes, James.”
“‘Yes, James!’ — I have no patience with you. You are weaker than water. Well, well, we must forgive her, I suppose. She has behaved generous enough about Charles, has she not? I rather admire her scolding poor William Ravenshoe. I must renew our acquaintance.”
“She is coming to lunch today.”
“I thought you looked guilty. Is Welter coming?”
Lady Ascot made no reply. Neither at that moment would Lord Saltire have heard her if she had. He was totally absorbed in the proceedings of his old friend Lord Daventry, before mentioned. That venerable dandy had listened to the organ until the man had played all his tunes twice through, when he had given him half a crown, and the man had departed. Immediately afterwards, a Punch and Judy had come, which Punch and Judy was evidently an acquaintance of his; for, on descrying him, it had hurried on with its attendant crowd, and breathlessly pitched itself in front of him, let down its green curtains, and plunged at once in medias res. The back of the show was towards Lord Saltire; but, just as he saw Punch look round the comer, to see which way the Devil was gone, he saw two pickpockets advance on Lord Daventry from different quarters, with fell intentions. They met at his tailcoat pocket, quarrelled, and fought. A policeman bore down on them; Lord Daventry was still unconscious, staring his eyes out of his head. The affair was becoming exciting, when Lord Saltire felt a warm tear drop on his hand.
“James,” said Lady Ascot, “don’t be hard on Welter. I love Welter. There is good in him; there is, indeed. I know how shamefully he has behaved; but don’t be hard on him, James.”
“My dearest Maria,” said Lord Saltire, “I would not give you one moment’s uneasiness for the world. I do not like Welter. I dislike him. But I will treat him for your sake and Ascot’s as though I loved him — there. Now about Charles. He will be with us today, thank God. What the deuce are we to do?”
“I cannot conceive,” said Lady Ascot; “it is such a terrible puzzle. One does not like to move, and yet it seems such a sin to stand still.”
“No answer to your advertisement, of course 1 ” said Lord Saltire.
“None whatever. It seems strange, too, with such a reward as we have offered; but it was worded so cautiously, you see.”
Lord Saltire laughed. “Cautiously, indeed. No one could possibly guess what it was about. It was a miracle of obscurity; but it won’t do to go any further yet.” After a pause, he said — “You are perfectly certain of your facts, Maria, for the fiftieth time.”
“Perfectly certain. I committed a great crime, James. I did it for Alicia’s sake. Think what my bringing up had been, how young I was, and forgive me if you can; excuse me if you cannot.”
“Nonsense about a great crime, Maria. It was a reat mistake, certainly. If you had only the courage to have asked Petre one simple question! Alicia never guessed the fact, of course?”
“Never.”
“Do you think, Maria, that by any wild possibility James or Norah knew?”
“How could they possibly? What a foolish question.”
“I don’t know. Those Roman Catholics do strange things,” said Lord Saltire, staring out of window at the crowd.
“If she knew, why did she change the child?”
“Eh?” said Lord Saltire, turning round.
“You have not been attending,” said Lady Ascot.
“No, I have not,” said Lord Saltire; “I was looking at Daventry.”
“Do you still,” said Lord Saltire, “since all our researches and failures, stick to the belief that the place was in Hampshire?”
“I do indeed, and in the north of Hampshire too.”
“I wonder,” said Lord Saltire, turning round suddenly, “whether Mackworth knows?”
“Of course he does,” said Lady Ascot, quietly.
“Hum,” said Lord Saltire, “I had a hold over that man once; but I threw it away as being worthless. I wish I had made a bargain for my information. But what nonsense; how can he know?”
“Know?” said Lady Ascot, scornfully; “what is there a confessor don’t know? Don’t tell me that all Mackworth’s power came from finding out poor Densil’s faux pas. The man has a sense of power other than that.”
“Then he never used it,” said Lord Saltire. “Densil, dear soul, never knew.”
“I said of sense of power,” said Lady Ascot, “which gave him his consummate impudence. Densil never dreamt of it.”
At this point the policeman had succeeded in capturing the two pickpockets, and was charging them before Lord Daventry. Lord Daventry audibly offered them ten shillings a-piece to say nothing about it; at which the crowd cheered.
“Would it be any use to offer money to the priest — say ten thousand pounds or so?” said Lord Saltire. “You are a religious woman, Maria, and as such are a better judge of a priest’s conscience than I. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Lady Ascot. “I don’t know but what the man is high-minded, in his heathenish way. You know Cuthbert’s story of his having refused ten thousand pounds to hush up the matter about Charles. His information would be a blow to the Popish Church in the West. He would lose position by accepting your offer. I don’t know what his position may be worth. You can try him, if all else fails; not otherwise, I should say. We must have a closer search.”
“When you come to think, Maria, he can’t know. If Densil did not know, how could he?”
“Old Clifford might have known, and told him.”
“If we are successful, and if Adelaide has no children — two improbable things — ” said Lord Saltire, “why then —”
“Why, then — ” said Lady Ascot. “But at the worst you are going to make Charles a rich man. Shall you tell William?”
“Not yet. Cuthbert should never be told, I say; but that is Charles’s business. I have prepared William.”
“Cuthbert will not live,” said Lady Ascot.
“Not a chance of it, I believe. Marston says his heart-complaint does not exist, but I think differently.”
At this moment, Lonl Daventry’s offer of money having been refused, the whole crowd moved off in procession towards the police-station. First came three little girls with big bonnets and babies, who, trying to do two things at once — to wit, head the procession by .superior speed, and at the same time look round at Lord Daventry and the pickpockets — succeeded in neither, but only brought the three babies’ heads in violent collision every other step. Next came Lord Daventry, resigned. Next the policeman, with a pick-pocket in each hand, who were giving explanations. Next the boys; after them, the Punch and Judy, which had unfortunately seen the attempt made, and must to the station as a witness, to the detriment of business. Bringing up the rear were the British public, who played practical jokes with one another. The dogs kept a parallel course in the gutter, and barked. In turning the first comer, the procession was cut into, and for a time thrown into confusion, by a light-hearted costermonger, who, returning from a successful market with an empty barrow, drove it in among them with considerable velocity. After which, they disappeared like the baseless fabric of a dream, only to be heard of again in the police reports.
“Lord and Lady Welter.”
Lord Saltire had seen them drive up to the door; so he was quite prepared. He had been laughing intensely, but quite silently, at poor Lord Daventry’s adventures, and so, when he turned round he had a smile on his face. Adelaide had done kissing Lady Ascot, and was still holding both her hands with a look of intense mournful affection. Lord Saltire was so much amused by Adelaide’s acting, and by her simplicity in performing before himself, that, when he advanced to Lord Welter, he was perfectly radiant.
“Well, my dear scapegrace, and how do you do?” he said, giving his hand to Lord Welter; “a more ill-mannered fellow I never saw in my life. To go away and hide yourself with that lovely young wife of yours, and leave all us oldsters to bore one another to death. What the deuce do you mean by it? Eh, sir?”
Lord Welter did not reply in the same strain. He said —
“It is very kind of you to receive me like this. I did not expect it. Allow me to tell you, that I think your manner towards me would not be quite so cordial if you new everything; there is a great deal that you don’t know, and which I don’t mean to tell you.”
It is sometimes quite impossible, even for a writer of fiction, a man with carte blanche in the way of invention, to give the cause for a man’s actions. I have thought and thought, and I cannot for the life of me tell you why Lord Welter answered Lord Saltire like that, whether it was from deep cunning or merely from recklessness. If it was cunning, it was cunning of a high order. It was genius. The mixture of respect and kindness towards the person, and of carelessness about his favour was — well — very creditable. Lord Saltire did not think he was acting, and his opinion is of some value, I believe. But then, we must remember that he was prepared to think the best of Lord Welter that day, and must make allowances. I am not prepared with an opinion; let every man form his own. I only know tliat Lord Saltire tapped his teeth with his snuff-box and remained silent. Lord Welter, whether consciously or no, was nearer the half of a million of money than he had ever been before.
But Adelaide’s finer sense was offended at her husband’s method of proceeding. For one instant, when she heard him say what he did, she could have killed huu. “Reckless, brutal, selfish,” she said fiercely to herself, “throwing a duke’s fortune to the winds by sheer obstinacy.” (At this time she had picked up Lady Ascot’s spectacles, and was playfully placing them on her venerable nose.) “I wish I had never seen him. he is maddening. If he only had some brains, where might not we be?” But the conversation of that morning came to her mind with a jar, and the suspicion with it, that he had more brains of a sort than she; that, though they were on a par in morality, there was a strength about him, against which her finesse was worthless. She knew she could never deceive Lord Saltire, and there was Lord Saltire tapping him on the knee with his snuff-box, and talking earnestly and confidentially to him. She was beginning to respect her husband. He dared face that terrible old man with his hundreds of thousands; she trembled in his presence.
Let us leave her, fooling our dear old friend to the top of her bent, and hear what the men were saying.
“I know you have been, as they say now, ‘ very fast, ‘ ” said Lord Saltire, drawing nearer to him. I don’t want to ask any questions which don’t concern me. You have sense enough to know that it is worth your while to stand well with me. Will you answer me a few questions which do concern me?”
“I can make no promises. Lord Saltire. Let me hear what they are, will you?”
“Why,” said Lord Saltire, “about Charles Ravenshoe.”
“About Charles!” said Lord Welter, looking up at Lord Saltire. “Oh, yes; any number. I have nothing to conceal there. Of course you will know everything. I had sooner you knew it from me than another.”
“I don’t mean about Adelaide; let that go by.
Perhaps I am glad that that is as it is. But have you known where Charles was lately? Your wife told William to come to her this morning; that is why I ask.”
“I have known a very short time. When William Ravenshoe came this morning, I gave him every information. Charles will be with you today.”
“I am satisfied.”
“I don’t care to justify myself, hut if it had not heen for me you would never have seen him. And more. I am not the first man, Lord Saltire, who has done what I have done.”
“No, of course not,” said Lord Saltire. “I can’t fling the first stone at you; God forgive me.”
“But you must see, Lord Saltire, that I could not have guessed that Ellen was his sister.”
“Hey?” said Lord Saltire. “Say that again.”
“I say that, when I took Ellen Horton away from Ravenshoe, I did not know that she was Charles’s sister.”
Lord Saltire fell back in his chair, and said —
“Good God!”
“It is very terrible, looked at one way, Lord Saltire. If you come to look at it another, it amounts to this, that she was only, as far as I know, a gamekeeper’s daughter. Do you remember what you said to Charles and me, when we were rusticated?”
“Yes. I said that one vice was considered more venial than another vice now-a-days; and I say so still.
I had sooner that you had died of delirium tremens in a ditch than done this.”
“So had not I, Lord Saltire. When I became involved with Adelaide, I thought Ellen was provided for; I, even then, had not heard this esclandre about Charles. She refused a splendid offer of marriage before she left me.”
“We thought she was dead. Where is she gone?”
“I have no idea. She refused everything. She stayed on as Adelaide’s maid, and left us suddenly. We have lost all trace of her.”
“What a miserable, dreadful business!” said Lord Saltire.
“Very so,” said Lord Welter. “Hadn’t we better change the subject, my lord?” he added drily. “I am not at all sure that I shall submit to much more cross-questioning. You must not push me too far, or I shall get savage.”
“I won’t,” said Lord Saltire. “But, Welter, for God’s sake, answer me two more questions. Not offensive ones, on my honour.”
“Fifty, if you will; only consider my rascally temper.”
“Yes, yes! When Ellen was with you, did she ever hint that she was in possession of any information about the Ravenshoes?”
“Yes; or rather, when slie went, she left a letter, and in it she said that she had something to tell Charles.” Good, good!” said Lord Saltire. “She may know.
We must find her. Now, Charles is coming here today. Had you better meet him, Welter?”
“We have met before. All that is past is forgiven between us.”
“Met!” said Lord Saltire eagerly. “And what did he say to you? Was there a scene, Welter?”
Lord Welter paused before he answered, and Lord Saltire, the wase, looked out of the window. Once Lord Welter seemed going to speak, but there was a catch in his breath. The second attempt was more fortunate. He said, in a low voice —
“Why, I’ll tell you, my lord. Charles Ravenshoe is broken-hearted.”
“Lord and Lady Hainault.”
And Miss Corby, and Gus, and Flora, and Archy, the footman might have added, but was probably afraid of spoiling his period.
It was rather awkward. They were totally unexpected, and Lord Hainault and Lord Welter had not met since Lord Hainault had denounced Lord Welter at Tatters all’s. It was so terribly awkward that Lord Saltire recovered his spirits, and looked at the two young men with a smile. The young men disappointed him, however, for Lord Hainault said, “How d’ye do. Welter?” and Lord Welter said, “How do, Hainault?” and the matter was settled, at all events for the present.
When all salutations had been exchanged among the ladies, and Archy had hoisted himself up into Mary’s lap, and Lady Hainault had imperially settled herself in chair, with Flora at her kuee, exactly opposite Adelaide, there was a silence for a moment, during which it became apparent that Gus had a question to ask of Lady Ascot. Mary trembled, but the others were not quite sorry to have the silence broken. Gus, having obtained leave of the house, washed to know, whether or not Satan, should he repent of his sins, would have a chance of regaining his former position?
“That silly Scotch nursemaid has been reading Burns’s poems to him, I suppose,” said Lady Hainault; unless Mary herself has been doing so. Mary prefers anything to Watts’s hymns, Lady Ascot.”
“You must not believe one word Lady Hainault says, Lady Ascot,” said Mary. “She has been shamefully worsted in an argument, and she is resorting to all sorts of unfair means to turn the scales. I never read a word of Burns’s poems in my life.”
“You will be pleased not to believe a single word Miss Corby says, Lady Ascot,” said Lady Hainault. “She has convicted herself. She sings ‘ The banks and braes of bonny Doon ‘ — very badly, I will allow, but still she sings it.”
There was a laugh at this. Anything was better than the silence which had gone before. It became evident that Lady Hainault would not speak to Adelaide. It was very uncomfortable. Dear Mary would have got up another friendly passage of arms mth Lady Hainault, but she was too nervous. She would have even drawn out Gus, but she saw that Gus, dear fellow, as not in a humour to be trusted that morning. He evidently was aware that the dogs of war were loose, and was champing the bit like a war-horse. Lady Ascot was as nervous as Mary, dying to say something, but unable. Lady Hainault was calmly inexorable, Adelaide sublimely indifferent. If you will also consider that Lady Ascot was awaiting news of Charles — nay, possibly Charles himself — and that, in asking Adelaide to lunch, she had overlooked the probability that William would bring him back with him — that Lord Welter had come without invitation, and that the Hainaults were totally unexpected — you will think that the dear old lady was in about as uncomfortable a position as she could be, and that any event, even the house catching fire, must change matters for the better.
Not at all. They say that, when things come to the worst, they must mend. That is undeniable. But when are they at the worst? Who can tell that? Lady Ascot thought they were at the worst now, and was taking comfort. And then the footman threw open the door, and announced —
“Lady Hainault and Miss Hicks.”
At this point Lady Ascot lost her temper, and exclaimed aloud, “This is too much!” They thought old Lady Hainault did not hear her; but she did, and so did Hicks. They heard it fast enough, and remembered it too.
In great social catastrophes, minor differences are forgotten. In the Indian mutiny, people spoke to one nother, and made friends, who were at bitterest variance before. There are crises so terrible that people of all creeds and shades of political opinion must combine against a common enemy. This was one. When this dreadful old woman made her totally unexpected entrance, and when Lady Ascot showed herself so entirely without discretion as to exclaim aloud in the way she did, young Lady Hainault and Adelaide were so horrified, so suddenly quickened to a sense of impending danger, that they began talking loudly and somewhat affectionately to one another. And young Lady Hainault, whose self-possession was scattered to the four winds by this last misfortune, began asking Adelaide all about Lady Brittlejug’s drum, in full hearing of her mamma-in-law, who treasured up every word she said. And, just as she became conscious of saying wildly that she was so sorry she could not have been there — as if Lady Brittlejug would ever have had the impudence to ask her — she saw Lord Saltire, across the room, looking quietly at her, with the expression on his face of one of the idols at Abou Simbel.
Turn Lady Ascot once fairly to bay, you would (if you can forgive slang) get very little change out of her. She came of valiant blood. No Headstall was ever yet known to refuse his fence. Even her poor brother, showing as he did traces of worn-out blood (the men always go a generation or two before the women), had been a desperate rider, offered to kick Fouquier Tinville at his trial, and had kept Simon waiting on the guillotine while he pared his nails. Her ladyship rose and accepted battle; she advanced towards old Lady Hainault, and, leaning on her crutched stick, began —
“And how do you do, my dear Lady Hainault?”
She thought Lady Hainault would say something very disagreeable, a.s she usually did. She looked at her, and was surprised to see how altered she was. There was something about her looks that Lady Ascot did not like.
“;My dear Lady Ascot,” said old Lady Hainault, “I thank you. I am a very old woman. I never forget my friends, I assure you. Hicks, is Lord Hainault here? — I am very blind,” you will be glad to hear, Lady Ascot. Hicks, I want Lord Hainault instantly. Fetch him to me, you stupid woman. Hainault! Hainault!”
Our Lady Hainault rose suddenly, and put her arm round her waist. “Mamma,” she said, “what do you want?”
“I want Hainault, you foolish girl. Is that him? Hainault, I have made the will, my dear boy. The rogue came to me, and I told him that the will was made, and that Britten and Sloane had witnessed it. Did I do right or not, eh? Ha! ha! I followed you here to tell you. Don’t let that woman Ascot insult me, Hainault. She has committed a felony, that woman. I’ll have her prosecuted. And all to get that chit Alicia married to that pale-faced papist, Petre Ravenshoe. She thinks I didn’t know it, does she? I knew she knew it well enough, and I knew it too, and I have ominittecl a felony too, in holding my tongue, and we’ll both go to Bridewell, and — ”
Lord Saltire here came up, and quietly offered her his arm. She took it and departed, muttering to herself.
I must mention here, that the circumstance mentioned by old Lady Hainault, of having made a will, has nothing to do with the story. A will had existed to the detriment of Lady Hainault and Miss Hicks, and she had most honourably made another in their favour.
Lady Ascot would have given worlds to unsay many things she had heretofore said to her. It was evident that poor old Lady Hainault’s mind was failing. Lady Ascot would have prayed her forgiveness on her knees, but it was too late. Lady Hainault never appeared in public again. She died a short time after this, and, as I mentioned before, left poor Miss Hicks a rich woman. Very few people knew how much good there was in the poor old soul. Let the Casterton tenantry testify.
On this occasion her appearance had, as we have seen, the effect of reconciling Lady Hainault and Adelaide. A very few minutes after her departure William entered the room, followed by Hornby, whom none of them had ever seen before.
They saw from William’s face that something fresh was the matter. He introduced Hornby, who seemed concerned, and then gave an open note to Lord Saltire. He read it over, and then said —
“This unhappy boy has disappeared again. Apparently his interview with you determined him, my dear Lady Welter. Can you give us any clue? This is his letter:—"
“Dear Lieutenant, — I must say goodbye even to you, my last friend. I was recognised in your service today by Lady Welter, and it will not do for me to stay in it any longer. It was a piece of madness ever taking to such a line of life.”
[Here there were three lines carefully erased. Lord Saltire mentioned it, and Hornby quietly said, “I erased those lines previous to showing the letter to any one; they referred to exceedingly private matters.” Lord Saltire bowed, and continued,]
“A hundred thanks for your kindness; you have been to me more like a brother than a master. We shall meet again, when you little expect it. Pray don’t assist in any search after me; it will be quite useless.
Adelaide came forward as pale as death. “I believe I am the cause of this. I did not dream it would have made him alter his resolution so suddenly. When I saw him yesterday he was in a groom’s livery. I told him he was disgracing himself, and told him, if he was desperate to go to the war.”
They looked at one another in silence.
“Then,” Lady Ascot said, “he has enlisted, I suppose. I wonder in what regiment? — could it be in yours, Mr. Hornby?”
“The very last in which he would, I should say,” said Hornby, “if he wants to conceal himself. He must know that I should find him at once.”
So Lady Ascot was greatly pooh-poohed by the other wiseacres, she being right all the time.
“I think,” said Lord Saltire to Lady Ascot, “that perhaps we had better take Mr. Hornby into our confidence.” She agreed, and, after the Hainaults and Welters were gone, Hornby remained behind with them, and heard things which rather surprised him.
“Inquiries at the depots of various regiments would be as good a plan as any. Meanwhile I will give any assistance in my power. Pray, would it not be a good plan to advertise for him, and state all the circumstances of the case? ”
“Why, no,” said Lord Saltire, “we do not wish to make known all the circumstances yet. Other interests have to be consulted, and our information is not yet complete. Complete! we have nothing to go on but mere surmise.”
“You will think me inquisitive,” said Hornby. “But you little know what a right (I had almost said) I have to ask these questions. Does the present Mr. Ravenshoe know of all this?”
“Not one word.”
And so Hornby departed with William, and said nothing at all about Ellen. As they left the door a little shoe-black looked inquisitively at them, and seemed as though he would speak. They did not notice he child. He could have told them what they wanted to know, but how were they to guess that?
Impossible. Actually, according to the sagacious Welter, half a million pounds, and other things, going a-begging, and a dirty little shoe-black the only human being who knew where the heir was! A pig is an an obstinate animal, likewise a sheep; but what pig or sheep was ever so provoking in its obstinacy as Charles in his good-natured, well-meaning, blundering stupidity? In a very short time you will read an advertisement put into the Times by Lady Ascot’s solicitor, which will show you the reason for some of the great anxiety which she and others felt to have him on the spot. At first Lady Ascot and Lord Saltire lamented his absence, from the hearty goodwill they bore him; but, as time wore on, they began to get deeply solicitous for his return for other reasons. Lady Ascot’s hands were tied. She was in a quandary, and, when the intelligence came of his having enlisted, and there seemed nearly a certainty of his being shipped off to foreign parts, and killed before she could get at him, she was in a still greater quandary. Suppose, before being killed, he was to marry some one? “Good heavens, my dear James, was ever an unfortunate wretch punished so before for keeping a secret?”
“I should say not, Maria,” said Lord Saltire coolly. “I declare I love the lad better the more trouble he gives one. There never was such a dear obstinate dog. Welter has been making his court, and has made it well — with an air of ruffian-like simplicity, which was alarming, because novel. I, even I, can hardly tell whether it was real or not. He has ten times the brains of his shallow-pated little wife, whose manoeuvres, my dear Maria, I should have thought even you, not ordinarily a sagacious person, might have seen through.”
“I believe the girl loves me; and don’t be rude, James.”
“I believe she don’t care twopence for you; and I shall be as rude as I please, Maria.”
Poor Lord Ascot had a laugh at this little battle between his mother and her old friend. So Lord Saltire turned to him and said —
“At half-past one tomorrow morning, you will be awakened by three ruffians in crape masks, with pistols, who will take you out of bed with horrid threats, and walk you upstairs and down in your shirt, until you have placed all your money and valuables into their hands. They will effect an entrance by removing a pane of glass, and introducing a small boy, disguised as a shoe-black, who will give them admittance.”
“Good Gad!” said Lord Ascot, “what are you talking about?”
“Don’t you see that shoe-black over the way?” said Lord Saltire. “He has been watching the house through two hours; the burglars are going to put him in at the back-kitchen window. There comes Daventry back from the police-station. I bet you a sovereign he has his boots cleaned.”
Poor Lord Ascot jumped at the bet like an old war-horse. “I’d have given you three to one if you had waited.”
Lord Daventry had indeed reappeared on the scene; his sole attendant was one of the little girls mth a big bonnet and a baby, before mentioned, who had evidently followed him to the police-station, watched him in, and then accompanied him home — staring at him as at a man of dark experiences, a man not to be lost sight of on any account, lest some new and exciting thing should befall him meanwhile. This young lady, having absented herself some two hours on this errand, and having thereby deprived the baby of its natural nourishment, was now suddenly encountered by an angry mother, and, knowing what she had to expect, was forced to “dodge” her infuriated parent round and round Lord Daventry, in a way which made that venerable nobleman giddy, and caused him to stop, shut his eyes, and feebly offer them money not to do it any more. Ultimately the young lady was caught and cuffed, the baby was refreshed, and his lordship free.
Lord Saltire won his pound, to his great delight. Such an event as a shoe-black in South Audley Street was not to be passed by. Lord Daventry entered into conversation with our little friend, asked him if he went to school? if he could say the Lord’s Prayer? how much he made in the day? whether his parents were alive? and ultimately had his boots cleaned, and gave he boy half-a-crown. After which he disappeared from the scene, and, like many of our large stafif of super-numeraries, from this history for evermore — he has served his turn with us. Let us dismiss the kind-hearted old dandy, with our best wishes.
Lord Saltire saw him give the boy the half-crown. He saw the boy pocket it as though it were a halfpenny; and afterwards continue to watch the house, as before. He was more sure than ever that the boy meant no good. If he had known that he was waiting for one chance of seeing Charles again, perhaps he would have given him half-a-crown himself. What a difference one word from that boy would have made in our story!
When they came back from dinner, there was the boy still lying on the pavement, leaning against his box. The little girl who had had her ears boxed came and talked to him for a time, and went on. After a time she eame back with a quartern loaf in her hand, the crumbs of which she picked as she went along, after the manner of children sent on an errand to the baker’s. When she had gone by, he rose and leant against the railings, as though lingering, loth to go.
Once more, later. Lord Saltire looked out, and the boy was still there. “I wonder what the poor little rogue wants?” said Lord Saltire; “I have half a mind to go and ask him.” But he did not. It was not to be, my lord. You might have been with Charles the next morning at Windsor. You might have been in time if you had; you will have a different sort of meeting with im than that, if you meet him at all. Beyond the grave, my lord, that meeting must be. Possibly a happier one, who knows? who dare say?
The summer night closed in, but the boy lingered yet, to see, if perchance he might, the only friend he ever had; to hear, if he might, the only voice which had ever spoken gently and kindly to him of higher things: the only voice which had told him that strange, wild tale, scarce believed as yet, of a glorious immortality.
The streets began to get empty. The people passed im —
“Ones and twos, And groups; the latest said the night grew chill. And hastened; but he loitered; whilst the dews Fell fast, he loitered still.”
In the natural course of events, I ought now to follow Charles in his military career, step by step. But the fact is that I know no more about the details of horse-soldiering than a marine, and, therefore, I cannot. It is within the bounds of possibility that the reader may congratulate himself on my ignorance, and it may also be possible that he has good reason for so doing.
Within a fortnight after Hornby’s introduction to Lord Saltire and Lady Ascot, he was off with the headquarters of his regiment to Varna. The depot was at Windsor, and there, unknown to Hornby, was Charles, drilling and drilling. Two more troops were to follow the headquarters in a short time, and so well had Charles stuck to his duty that he was considered fit to take his place in one of them. Before his moustaches were properly grown, he found himself a soldier in good earnest.
In all his troubles this was the happiest time he had, for he had got rid of the feeling that he was a disgraced man. If he must wear a livery, he would wear the Queen’s; there was no disgrace in that. He was a soldier, and he would be a hero. Sometimes, perhaps, he thought for a moment that he, with his two thousand pounds worth of education, might have been better employed than in littering a horse, and swash-bucklering about among the Windsor taverns; but he did not think long about it. If there were any disgrace in the matter, there was a time coming soon, by all accounts, when the disgrace would be wiped out in fire and blood On Sunday, when he saw the Eton lads streaming up to the terrace, the old Shrewsbury days, and the past generally, used to come back to him rather unpleasantly; but the bugle put it all out of his head again in a moment. Were there not the three most famous armies in the world gathering, gathering, for a feast of ravens? Was not the world looking on in silence and awe, to see England, France, and Russia locked in a death-grip? Was not he to make one at the merry meeting? Who could think at such a time as this?
The time was getting short now. In five days they were to start for Southampton, to follow the headquarters to Constantinople, to Varna, and so into the dark thundercloud beyond. He felt as certain that he would never come back again, as that the sun would rise on the morrow.
He made the last energetic effort that he made at all. It was like the last struggle of a drowning man. He says that the way it happened was this. And I believe him, for it was one of his own mad impulses, and, like all his other impulses, it came too late. They came branking into some pot-house, half a dozen of them, and talked oud about this and that, and one young lad among them said, that “he would give a thousand pounds, if he had it, to see his sister before he went away, for fear she should think that he had gone off without thinking of her.”
Charles left them, and walked up the street. As he walked, his purpose grew. He went straight to the quarters of a certain cornet, son to the major of the regiment, and asked to speak to him.
The cornet, a quiet, smooth-faced boy, listened patiently to what he had to say, but shook his head and told him he feared it was impossible. But, he said, after a pause, he would help him all he could. The next morning he took him to the major while he was alone at breakfast, and Charles laid his case before him so well, that the kind old man gave him leave to go to London at four o’clock, and come back by the last train that same evening.
The Duchess of Cheshire’s ball was the last and greatest which was given that season. It was, they say, in some sort like the Duchess of Eichmond’s ball before Waterloo. The story I have heard is that Lord George Barty persuaded his mother to give it, because he was sure that it would be the last ball he should ever dance at. At all events the ball was given, and he was right; for he sailed in the same ship with Charles four days after, and was killed at Balaclava. However, we have nothing to do with that. All we have to do mth is the fact, that it was a very great ball indeed, and that Lady Hainault was going to it.
Some traditions and customs grow by degrees into laws, ay, and into laws less frequently broken than those made and provided by Parliament. Allow people to walk across the corner of one of your fields for twenty years, and there is a right of way, and they may walk across that field till the crack of doom. Allow a man to build a hut on your property, and live in it for twenty years, and you can’t get rid of him. He gains a right there. (I never was annoyed in either of these ways myself, for reasons which I decline to mention; but it is the law, I believe.) There is no law to make the young men fire off guns at one’s gate on the 5th of November, but they never miss doing it. (I found some of the men using their rifles for this purpose last year, and had to fulminate about it.) To follow out the argument, there was no rule in Lord Hainault’s house that the children should always come in and see their aunt dress for a ball. But they always did; and Lady Hainault herself, though she could be perfectly determined, never dared to question their right.
They behaved very well. Flora brought in a broken picture-broom, which, stuck into an old straw hat of Archy’s, served her for feathers. She also made unto herself a newspaper fan. Gus had an old twelfth-cake ornament on his breast for a star, and a tape round his neck for a garter. In this guise they represented the Duke and Duchess of Cheshire, and received their company in a corner, as good as gold. As for Archy, he nursed his cat, sucked his thumb, and looked at his aunt.
Mary was “by way of ” helping Lady Hainault’s maid, but she was very clumsy about it, and her hands shook a good deal. Lady Hainault, at last looking up, saw that she was deadly pale, and crying. So, instead of taking any notice, she dismissed the children as soon as she could, as a first step towards being left alone with Mary.
Gus and Flora, finding that they must go, changed the game, and made believe that they were at court, and that their aunt was the Queen. So they dexterously backed to the door and bowed themselves out. Archy was lord chamberlain, or gold stick, or what not, and had to follow them in the same way. He was less successful, for he had to walk backwards, sucking his thumb, and nursing his cat upside down (she was a patient cat, and was as much accustomed to be nursed that way as any other). He got on very well till he came to the door, when he fell on the back of his head, crushing his cat and biting his thumb to the bone. Gus and Flora picked him up, saying that lord chamberlains never cried when they fell on the backs of their heads. But Archy, poor dear, was obliged to cry a little, the more so as the dear cat had bolted upstairs, with her tail as big as a fox’s, and Archy was afraid she was angry with him, which seemed quite possible. So Mary had to go out and take him to the nursery. He would stop his crying, he said, if she would tell hun the story of Ivedy Avedy. So she told it him quite to the end, where the baffled old sorcerer, Gongolo, gets into the plate-warmer with his three farthings and the brass soup-ladle, shuts the door after him, and disappears for ever. After which she went down to Lady Hainault’s room again.
Lady Hainault was alone now. She was sitting before her dressing-table, with her hands folded, apparently looking at herself in the glass. She took no notice of what she had seen; though, now they were alone together, she determined that Mary should tell her what was the matter — for, in truth, she was very anxious to know. She never looked at!Mary when she came in; she only said —
“Mary, my love, how do I look?”
“I never saw you look so beautiful before,” said Mary.
“I am glad of that. Hainault is so ridiculously proud of me, that I really delight in looking my best. Now, Mary, let me have the necklace; that is all, I believe, unless you would like me to put on a little rouge.”
Mary tried to laugh, but could not. Her hands were shaking so that the jewels were clicking together as she held them. Lady Hainault saw that she must help her to speak, but she had no occasion; the necklace helped her.
It was a very singular necklace, a Hainault heirloom, which Lady Hainault always wore on grand occasions to please her husband. There was no other necklace like it anywhere, though some folks who did not own it said it was old-fashioned, and should be reset. It was a collar of nine points, the ends of brilliants, running upwards as the points broadened into larger rose diamonds. The eye, catching the end of the points, was dazzled with yellow light, which faded into red as the rays of the larger roses overpowered the brilliants: and at the upper rim the soft crimson haze of light melted, overpowered, into nine blazing great rubies. It seemed, however, a shame to hide such a beautiful neck by such a glorious bauble.
Mary was trying to clasp it on, but her fingers failed, and down went the jewels clashing on the floor. The next moment she was down too, on her knees, clutching Lady Hainault’s hand, and saying, or trying to say, in spite of a passionate burst of sobbing, “Lady Hainault, let me see him; let me see him, or I shall die.”
Lady Hainault turned suddenly upon her, and laid her disengaged hand upon her hair. “My little darling,” she said, “my pretty little bird.”
“You must let me see him. You could not be so cruel. I always loved him, not like a sister, oh! not like a sister, woe to me. As you love Lord Hainault; I know it now.”
“My poor little Mary. I always thought something of this kind.”
“He is coming tonight. He sails tomorrow or next day, and I shall never see him again.”
“Sails! where for?”
“I don’t know; he does not say. But you must let me see him. He don’t dream I care for him, Lady Hainault. But I must see him, or I shall die.”
“You shall see him; but who is it? Any one I know?”
“Who is it? Who could it be but Charles Ravenshoe?”
“Good God! Coming here tonight! Mary, ring the bell for Alwright. Send round to South Audley Street for Lord Saltire, or William Ravenshoe, or some of them. They are dying to catch him. There is something more in their eagerness than you or I know of. Send at once, Mary, or we shall be too late. When does he come? Get up, my dear. My poor little Mary. I am so Sony. Is he coming here? And how soon will he come, dear? Do be calm. Think what we may do for him. He should be here now. Stay, I will write a note — just one line. Where is my blotting-book? Alwright, get my blotting-book. And stay; say that, if any one calls for Miss Corby, he is to be shown into the drawingroom at once. Let us go there, Mary.”
Alwright had meanwhile, not having heard the last sentence, departed to the drawingroom, and possessed herself of Lady Hainault’s portfolio, meaning to carry it. up to the dressing-room; then she had remembered the message about any one calling being shown up to the drawingroom, and had gandered down to the hall to give it to the porter; after which she gandered upstairs to the dressing-room again, thinking that Lady Hainault was there, and missing both her and Mary from having gone downstair’s. So, while she and Mary were looking for the blotting-book impatiently in the rdrawingroom, the door was opened, and the servant announced, “A gentleman to see Miss Corby.”
He had discreetly said a gentleman, for he did not like to say an Hussar. Mary turned round and saw a man all scarlet and gold before her, and was frightened and did not know him. But when he said, “Mary,” in the old, old voice, there came such a rush of bygone times, bygone words, scenes, sounds, meetings and partings, sorrows and joys, into her wild, warm little heart, that, with a low, loving, tender cry, she ran to him and hid her face on his bosom.*
* As a matter of curiosity I tried to write this paragraph from the word “Mary,” to the word “bosom,” without using a single word derived from the Latin. After having taken all possible pains to do so, I found there were eight out of forty-eight. I think it is hardly possible to reduce the proportion lower, and I think it is undesirable to reduce it so low.
And Lady Hainault swept out of the room after that unlucky blotting-book. And I intend to go after her, out of mere politeness, to help her to find it. I will not submit to be lectured for making an aposiopesis. If any think they could do this business better than I, let them communicate with the publishers, and finish the story for themselves. I decline to go into that drawingroom at present. I shall wander upstairs into my lady’s chamber, after that goosey-gander Alwright, and see what she has done with the blotting-book.
Lady Hainault found the idiot of a woman in her dressing-room, looking at herself in the glass, with the blotting-book under her arm. The maid looked as foolish as people generally do who are caught looking at themselves in the glass. (How disconcerting it is to be found standing on a chair before the chimney-glass, just to have a look at your entire figure before going to a party!)* But Lady Hainault said nothing to her; but, taking the book from under her arm, she sat down and fiercely scrawled off a note to Lord Saltire, to be opened by any of them, to say that Charles Ravenshoe was then in her house, and to come in God’s name.
* Which is a crib from Sir E. B. L. B. L.
“I have caged their bird for them,” she said out loud when she had just finished and was folding up the letter; “ they will owe me a good turn for this.”
The maid, who had no notion anything was the matter, had been surreptitiously looking in the glass again, and wondering whether her nose was really so very red after all. When Lady Hainault spoke thus aloud to herself, she gave a guilty start, and said, “Immediately, my lady,” which you will perceive was not exactly appropriate to the occasion.
“Don’t be a goose, my good old Alwright, and dont tread on my necklace, Alwright; it is close at your feet.”
So it was. Lying where Mary had dropped it. Alwright thought she must have knocked it off the dressing-table; but, when Lady Hainault told her that Miss Corby had dropped it there, Alwright began to wonder why her ladyship had not thought it worth while to pick it up again.
“Put it on while I seal this letter, will you? I cannot trust you, Alwright; I must go myself.” She went out of the room and quickly downstairs to the hall. All this had taken but a few minutes; she had hurried as much as was possible, but the time seems longer to us, because, following my usual plan of playing the fool on important occasions, I have been telling you about the lady-maid’s nose. She went down quickly to the hall, and sent off one of the men to South Audley Street with her note, giving him orders to run all the way, and personally to see Lady Ascot, or some one else of those named. After this she came upstairs again.
When she came to the drawingroom door, Charles was standing at it. “Lady Hainault,” he said, “would you come here, please? Poor Mary has fainted.”
“Poor thing,” said Lady Hainault, “I will come to her. One word, Mr. Ravenshoe. Oh, do think one instant of this fatal, miserable resolution of yours. Think how fond we have all been of you. Think of the love that your cousin and Lady Ascot bear for you, and communicate with them. At all events stay ten minutes more, and see one of them. I must go to poor Mary.”
“Dear Lady Hainault, you will not change my resolution to stand alone. There is a source of disgrace you probably know nothing of. Besides, nothing short of an Order in Council could stop me now. We sail for the East in twenty-four hours.”
They had just time for this, very hurriedly spoken, or poor little Mary had done what she never had done before in her life, fainted away. Lady Hainault and Charles went into the drawingroom.
Just before this, Alwright, coming downstairs, had seen her most sacred mistress standing at the drawingroom door, talking familiarly and earnestly to a common soldier. Her ladyship had taken his hand in hers, and was laying her other hand upon his breast. Alwright sat down on the stairs.
She was a poor feeble thing, and it was too much for her. She was Casterton-bred, and had a feeling for the honour of the family. Her first impulse was to run to Lord Hainault’s dressing-room door and lock him in. Her next was to rock herself to and fro and moan. She followed the latter of these two impulses. Meanwhile, Lady Hainault had succeeded in bringing poor Mary to herself Charles had seen her bending over the poor little lifeless body, and blessed her. Presently Lady Hainault said, “She is better now, Mr. Ravenshoe, will you come and speak to her?” There was no answer. Lady Hainault thought Charles was in the little drawingroom, and had not heard her. She went there. It was dimly lighted, but she saw in a moment that it was empty. She grew frightened, and hurriedly went out on to the stairs. There was no one there. She hurried down, and was met by the weeping Alwright.
“He is safe out of the house, my lady,” said that brilliant genius. “I saw him come out of the drawingroom, and I ran down and sent the hall porter on a message, and let hini out myself. Oh! my lady! my lady!”
Lady Hainault was a perfect-tempered woman, but she could not stand this. “Alwright,” she said, “you are a perfect, hopeless, imbecile idiot. Go and tell his lordship to come to me instantly. Instantly! do you hear? I wouldn’t,” she continued to herself when Al Wright was gone, “face Lord Saltire alone after this for a thousand pounds.”
What was the result of Charles’s interview with Mary? Simply this. The poor little thing had innocently shown him, in a way he could not mistake, that she loved him with all her heart and soul. And, when he left that room, he had sworn an oath to himself that he would use all his ingenuity to prevent her ever setting eyes on him again. “I am low and degraded enough now,” he said to himself; “but if I gave that poor innocent child the opportunity of nourishing her love for me, I should be too low to live.”
He did not contemplate the possibility, you see, of raising himself to her level No. He was too much broken down for that. Hope was dead with him. He had always been a man of less than average strength of will; and two or three disasters — terrible disasters they were, remember — had made him such as we see him, a helpless, drifting log upon the sea of chance. What Lord Welter had said was terribly true, “Charles Ravenshoe is broken-hearted.” But to the very last he as a just, honourable, true, kind-hearted man. A man in ten thousand. Call him fool, if you will. I cannot gainsay you there. But when you have said that, you have finished.
Did he love Mary? Yes, from this time forward, he loved her as she loved him; and, the darker the night grew, that star burned steadily and more steadily yet. Never brighter, perhaps, than when it gleamed on the turbid waters, which whelm the bodies of those to whose eyesight all stars have set for, ever.
The stream at Ravenshoe was as low as they had ever seen it, said the keeper’s boys who were allowed to take artists and strangers up to see the waterfall in the wood. The artists said that it was more beautiful than ever; for now, instead of roaring headlong over the rocks in one great sheet beneath the quivering oak leaves, it streamed and spouted over and among the black slabs of slate in a million interlacing jets. Yes, the artists were quite satisfied with the state of things; but the few happy souls who had dared to ask Cuthbert for a day or so of salmon-fishing were not so well satisfied by any means. While the artists were saying that this sort of tiring, you know, was the sort of thing to show one how true it was that beauty, life, and art, were terms coordinate, synonymous, inseparable — that these made up the sum of existence — that the end of existence was love, and what was love but the worship of the beautiful (or something of this sort, for your artist is but a mortal man, like the rest of us, and is apt, if you give him plenty of tobacco on a hot day, to get uncommon hazy in his talk) — while, I say, the artists were orking away like mad, and uttering the most beautiful sentiments in the world, the anglers were, as old Master Lee, up to Slarrow, would have said, “dratting” the scenery, the water, the weather, the beer, and existence generally, because it wouldn’t rain. If it had rained, you see, the artists would have left talking about the beautiful, and begun “dratting ” in turn; leaving the anglers to talk about the beautiful as best they might. “Which fact gives rise to moral reflections of the profoundest sort. But every one, except the discontented anglers, would have said that it was heavenly summer weather. The hay was all got in without one drop of rain on it. And now, as one glorious, cloudless day succeeded another, all the land seemed silently swelling with the wealth of the harvest. Fed by gentle dews at night, warmed by the genial sun by day, the corn began to turn from grey to gold, and the distant valleys which spread away inland, folded in the mighty grey arms of the moor, shone out gallantly with acre beyond acre of yellow wheat and barley. A still, happy time.
And the sea! Who shall tell the beauty of the restless Atlantic in such weather? For nearly three weeks there was a gentle wind, now here, now there, which just curled the water, and made a purple shadow for such light clouds as crept across the blue sky above. Night and morning the fishing-boats crept out and in. Never was such a fishing season. The mouth of the stream was crowded with salmon, waiting to get up the first fresh. You might see them as you sailed across he shallow sandbank, the Delta of the stream, which had never risen above the water for forty years, yet which now, so still had been the bay for three weeks, was within a foot of the surface at low tide.
A quiet, happy time. The three old Master Lees lay all day on the sand, where the fishing-boats were drawn up, and had their meals brought to them by young male relatives, who immediately pulled off every rag of clothes they had, and went into the water for an hour or two. The minding of these ’ere clothes, and the looking out to sea, was quite enough employment for these three old cronies. They never fell out once for three weeks. They used to talk about the war, or the cholera, which was said to be here, or there, or coming, or gone. But they cared little about that. Ravenshoe was not a cholera place. It had never come there before, and they did not think that it was coming now. They were quite right; it never came. Cuthbert used his influence, and got the folks to move some cabbage stalks, and rotten fish, just to make sure, as he said. They would have done more for him than that just now; so it was soon accomplished. The juvenile population, which is the pretty way of saying the children, might have offered considerable opposition to certain articles of merchandise being removed without due leave obtained and given; but, when it was done, they were all in the water as naked as they were born. When it was over they had good sense enough to see that it could not be helped. These sweeping measures of reform, however, are apt to bear hard on particular cases. For instance, young James Lee, great-grandson of Master James Lee, up to Slarrow, lost six dozen (some say nine, but that I don’t believe) of oyster shells, which he was storing up for a grotto. Cuthbert very properly refunded the price of them, which amounted to twopence.
“Nonsense, again,” you say. Why no! What I have written above is not nonsense. The whims and oddities of a village; which one has seen with one’s own eyes, and heard with one’s own ears, are not nonsense. I knew, when I began, what I had to say in this chapter, and I have just followed on a train of images. And the more readily, because I know that what I have to say in this chapter must be said without effort to be said well.
If I thought I was writing for a reader who was going to criticise closely my way of telling my story, I tell you the honest truth, I should tell my story very poorly indeed. Of course I must submit to the same criticism as my betters. But there are times when I feel that I must have my reader go hand in hand with me. To do so, he must follow the same train of ideas as I do. At such times I write as naturally as I can. I see that greater men than I have done the same. I see that Captain Marryat, for instance, at a particular part of his noblest novel, “The King’s Own,” has put in a chapter about his grandmother and the spring tide?, which, for perfect English and rough humour, it is hard to match anywhere.
I have not dared to play the fool, as he has, for two reasons. The first, that I could not play it so well, and the second, that I have no frightful tragedy to put before you, to counterbalance it, as he had. Well, it is time that this rambling came to an end. I hope that I have not rambled too far, and bored you. That would be very unfortunate just now.
Ravenshoe bay again, then — in the pleasant summer drought I have been speaking of before. Father Mackworth and the two Tiernays were lying on the sand, looking to sea. Cuthbert had gone off to send away some boys who were bathing too near the mouth of the stream and hunting his precious salmon. The younger Tiernay had recently taken to collect “ common objects of the shore” — a pleasant, healthy mania which prevailed about that time. He had been dabbling among the rocks at the western end of the bay, and had just joined his brother and Father Mackworth with a tin-box full of all sorts of creatures, and he turned them out on the sand and called theu’ attention to them.
“A very good morning’s work, my brother,” he said, “These anemones are all good and rare ones.”
“Bedad,” said the jolly priest, “they’d need be of some value, for they ain’t pretty to look at; what’s this cockle now wid the long red spike coming out of him?”
“Cardium tuberculatum.”
“See here, Mackworth,” said Tiernay, rolling over toward him on the sand with the shell in his hand.
“Here’s the rid-nosed oysther of Carlingford. Ye remember the legend about it, surely?”
“I don’t, indeed,” said Mackworth, angrily, pretty sure that Father Tiernay was going to talk nonsense, but not exactly knowing how to stop him.
“Not know the legend!” said Father Tiernay. “Why, when Saint Bridget was hurrying across the sand, to attend Saint Patrick in his last illness, poor dear, this divvil of a oysther was sunning himself on the shore, and, as she went by, he winked at her holiness with the wicked eye of ‘um, and he says, says he, ‘Nate ankles enough, anyhow,’ he ‘says. ‘Ye’re drunk ye spalpeen,’ says St. Bridget, ‘to talk like that at an honest gentlewoman.’ ‘ Sorra a bit of me,’ says the oysther. ‘Ye’re always drunk,’ says St. Bridget. ‘ Drunk yourself,’ says the oysther; ‘ I’m fastin from licker since the tide went down.’ ‘ What makes yer nose so red, ye scoundrel?’ says St. Bridget: ‘No ridder nor yer own,’ says the oysther, getting angry. For the Saint was stricken in years, and red-nosed by rayson of being out in all weathers, seeing to this and to that. ‘ Yer nose is red through drink,’ says she, ‘ and yer nose shall stay as rid as mine is now, till the day of judgment.’ And that’s the legend about St. Bridget and the Carlingford oysther, and ye ought to be ashamed that ye never heard it before.”
“I wish, sir,” said Mackworth, “that you could possibly stop yourself from talking this preposterous, indecent nonsense. Surely the first and noblest of Irish Saints may claim exemption from your clumsy wit.”
“Begorra, I’m catching it, Mr. Ravenshoe,” said Tiernay.
“What for?” said Cuthbert, who had just come up.
“Why, for telling a legend. Sure, I made it up on the spot. But it is none the worse for that; d’ye think so now?”
“Not much the better, I should think,” said Cuthbert, laughing.
“Allow me to say,” said Mackworth, “that I never heard such shameless, blasphemous nonsense in my life.”
The younger Tiernay was frightened, and began gathering up his shells and weeds. His handsome weak face was turned towards the great, strong, coarse face of his brother, with a look of terror, and his fingers trembled as he put the sea-spoils into his box. Cuthbert, watching them both, guessed that sometimes Father Tiernay could show a violent, headlong temper, and that his brother had seen an outbreak of this kind and trembled for one now. It was only a guess, possibly a good one; but there were no signs of such an outbreak now. Father Tiernay only lay back on the sand and laughed, without a cloud on his face.
“Bedad,” he said, “I’ve been lying on the sand, and the sun has got into my stomach and made me talk nonsense. When I was a gossoon, I used to sleep with the pig; and it was a poor feeble-minded pig, as never ot fat on petaty skins. If folly’s catchin’, I must have caught it from that pig. Did ye ever hear the legend of St. Laurence O’Toole’s wooden-legged sow, Mackworth?”
It was evident, after this, that the more Mackworth fulminated against good Father Tiernay’s unutterable nonsense, the more he would talk; so he rose and moved sulkily away. Cuthbert asked him, laughing, what the story was.
“Faix,” said Tiernay, “I ain’t sure, principally because I havn’t had time to invent it; but we’ve got rid of Mackworth, and can now discourse reasonable.”
Cuthbert sent a boy up to the hall for some towels, and then lay down on the sand beside Tiernay. He was very fond of that man in spite of his recldess Irish habit of talking nonsense. He was not alone there. I think that every one who knew Tiernay liked him.
They lay on the sand together, those tlu-ee; and, when Father Mackworth’s anger had evaporated, he came back and lay beside him. Tiernay put his hand out to him, and Mackworth shook it, and they were reconciled. I believe Mackworth esteemed Tiernay, though they were so utterly unlike in character and feeling. I know that Tiernay had a certain admiration for Mackworth.
“Do you think, now,” said Tiernay, “that you Englishmen enjoy such a scene and such a time as this as much as we Irishmen do? I cannot tell. You talk etter about it. You Lave a dozen poets to our one. Our best poet, I take it, is Tommy Moore. You class him as third-rate; but I doubt, mind you, whether you feel nature so acutely as we do.”
“I think we do,” said Cuthbert, eagerly. “I cannot think that you can feel the beauty of the scene we are looking at more deeply than I do. You feel nature as in ‘ Silent O’Moyle; ‘ we feel it as in Keats’ ‘St. Agnes’ Eve.’”
He was sitting up on the sand, with his elbows on his knees, and his face buried in his hands. None of them spoke for a time; and he, looking seaward, said, idly, in a low voice —
“St. Agnes’ Eve. Ah! bitter chill it was.
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped, trembling, through the frozen grass;
And drowsy was the flock in woolly fold.”
What was the poor lad thinking of? God knows. There are times when one can’t follow the train of a man’s thoughts — only treasure up their spoken words as priceless relics.
His beautiful face was turned towards the dying sun, and in that face there was a look of such kindly, quiet peace, that they who watched it were silent, and waited to hear what he would say.
The western headland was black before the afternoon sun, and, far to sea, Lundy lay asleep in a golden haze. All before them the summer sea heaved between the capes, and along the sand, and broke in short crisp surf at their feet, gently moving the seaweed, the sand, and he shells.
“St. Agnes’ Eve,” he said again. “Ah, yes! that is ne of the poems written by Protestants which help to ake men Catholics. Nine-tenths of their highest eligious imagery is taken from Catholicism. The English poets have nothing to supply the place of it. Milton felt it, and wrote about it; yes, after ranging hrough all heathendom for images, he comes home to us at last:—
“Let ray due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof.
And storied windows, richly dight.
Casting a dim religious light.
“Yes; he could feel for that cloister life. The highest form of human happiness! We have the poets with us, at all events. Why, what is the most perfect bijou of a poem in the English language? Tennyson’s ‘ St. Agnes.’ He had to come to us.”
The poor fellow looked across the sea, which was breaking in crisp ripples at his feet among the seaweed, the sand, and the shells; and, as they listened, they heard him say, almost passionately —
“Break up the heavens, oh Lord! and far
Through all yon starhght keen
Draw rae, thy bride, a glittering star
In raiment white and clean.
“They have taken our churches from us, and driven us into Birmingham-built chapels. They sneer at us, but they forget that we built their arches and stained their glass for them. Art has revenged herself on them for their sacrilege by quitting earth in disgust. They have robbed us of our churches and our revenues, and turned us out on the world. Ay, but we are revenged. They don’t know the use of them now they have got them; and the only men who could teach them, the Tractarians, are abused and persecuted by them for their superior knowledge.”
So he rambled on, looking seaward; at his feet the surf playing with the sand, the seaweed, and the shells.
He made a very long pause, and then, when they thought that he was thinking of something quite different, he suddenly said —
“I don’t believe it matters whether a man is buried in the chancel, or out of it. But they are mad to discourage such a feeling as that, and not make use of it. Am I the worse man because I fancy that, when I lie there so quiet, I shall hear above my head the footfalls of those who go to kneel around the altar? What is it one of them says —
“Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God.”
He very seldom spoke so much as this. They were surprised to hear him ramble on so; but it was an afternoon in which it was natural to sit upon the shore and talk, saying straight on just what came uppermost — a quiet, pleasant afternoon; an afternoon to lie upon the sand and conjure up old memories.
“I have been rambling, hav’n’t I?” he said presently. “Have I been talking aloud, or only thinking?”
“You have been talking,” said Tiernay, wondering at such a question.
“Have I? I thought I had been only thinking. I will go and bathe, I think, and clear my head from dreams. I must have been quoting poetry, then,” he added, smiling.
“Ay, and quoting it well too,” said Tiernay.
A young fisherman was waiting with a boat, and the lad had come with his towels. He stepped lazily across the sand to the boat, and they shoved off.
Besides the murmur of the surf upon the sand, playing with the shells and seaweed; besides the shouting of the bathing boys; besides the voices of the home — returning fishermen, carried sharp and distinct along the water; besides the gentle chafing of the stream among the pebbles, was there no other sound upon the beach that afternoon? Yes, a sound different to all these. A loud-sounding alarm drum, beating more rapidly and furiously each moment, but only heard by one man, and not heeded by him.
The tide drawing eastward, and a gentle wind following it, hardly enough to fill the sails of the lazy fishing-boats and keep them to their course. Here and there among the leeward part of the fleet, you might hear the sound of an oar working in the rowlocks sleepily coming over the sea and mingling harmoniously with the rest.
The young man with Cuthbert rowed out a little distance, and then they saw Cuthbert standing in the prow undressing himself. The fishing-boats near him luffed and hurriedly put out oars, to keep away. The Squire was going to bathe, and no Ravenshoe man was ill-mannered enough to come near.
Those on the shore saw him standing stripped for one moment — a tall majestic figure. Then they saw him plunge into the water and begin swimming.
And then; — it is an easy task to tell it. They saw his head go under water, and, though they started on their feet and waited till seconds grew to minutes and hope was dead, it never rose again. Without one cry, without one struggle, without even one last farewell wave of the hand, as the familiar old landscape faded on his eyes for ever, poor Cuthbert went down; to be seen no more until the sea gave up its dead. The poor wild, passionate heart had fluttered itself to rest for ever.
The surf still gently playing with the sand, the sea changing from purple to grey, and from grey to black, under the fading twilight. The tide sweeping westward towards the tall black headland, towards the slender-curved thread of the new moon, which grew more brilliant as the sun dipped to his rest in the red Atlantic.
Groups of fishermen and sea boys and servants, that followed the ebbing tide as it went westward, peering into the crisping surf to see something they knew was here. One group that paused among the tumbled boulders on the edge of the retreating surges, under the dark promontory and bent over something which lay at their feet.
The naked corpse of a young man, calm and beautiful in death, lying quiet and still between two rocks, softly pillowed on a bed of green and purple seaweed. And a priest that stood upon the shore, and cried wildly to the four winds of heaven, “Oh, my God, I loved him! My God! my God! I loved him!”
The Second Column of “The Times ” Of this Date, with Other Matters.
“TOMATO. Slam the door!”
“EDWARD. Come at once; poor Maria is in sad distress. Toodlekins stole!!!”
“J. B. can return to his deeply afflicted family if he likes, or remain away if he likes. The A F, one and all, will view either course with supreme indifference. Should he choose the former alternative, he is requested to be as quick as possible. If the latter, to send the key of the cellaret.”
“LOST. A little black and tan lady’s lap dog. Its real name is Pussy, but it will answer to the name of Toodlekins best. If any gentleman, living near Kensal Green or Kentish Town, should happen, perfectly accidentally of course, to have it in his possession, and would be so good as to bring it to 997, Sloane Street, I would give him a sovereign and welcome, and not a single question asked, upon my honour.”
It becomes evident to me that the dog Toodlekins, mentioned in the second advertisement, is the same dog alluded to in the fourth; unless you resort to the theory that two dogs were stolen on the same day, and that both were called Toodlekins. And you are hardly prepared to do that, I fancy. Consequently, you arrive at this, that the “Maria ” of the second advertisement, is the “little black and tan lady” of the fourth. And that, in 1854, she lived at 997, Sloane Street. Who was she? Had she made a fortune by exhibiting herself in a aravan like Mrs. Gamp’s spotted negress, and taken a house in Sloane Street, for herself, Toodlekins, and the person who advertised for Edward to come and comfort her? Again, who was Edward? Was he her l3rother? Was he something nearer and dearer? Was he enamoured of her person or her property? I fear the latter. Who could tndy love a little black and tan lady?
Again. The wording of her advertisement gives rise to this train of thought. Two persons must always be concerned in stealing a dog — the person who steals the dog, and the person who has the dog stolen; because, if the dog did not belong to any one, it is evident that no one could steal it. To put it more scientifically, there must be an active and a passive agent. Now, I’ll bet a dirty old dishcloth against the New York Herald, which is pretty even betting, that our little black and tan friend, Maria, had been passive agent in a dog — stealing case more than once before this, or why does she mention these two localities? But we must get on to the other advertisements.
“LOST. A large white bulldog, very red about the eyes; desperately savage. Answers to the name of ‘Billy.’ The advertiser begs that any person finding him will be very careful not to irritate him. The best way of securing him is to make him pin another dog, and then tie his four legs together and muzzie him. Any one bringing him to the Coach and Horses, St. Martin’s Lane, will be rewarded.”
He seems to have been found the same day, and by some one who was a bit of a wag; for the very next advertisement nms thus:
“FOUND. A large white bulldog, very red about the eyes; desperately savage. The owner can have him at once, by applying to Queen’s Mew’s, Belgrave Street, and paying the price of the advertisement and the cost of a new pad groom, aged 18, as the dog has bitten one so severely about the knee that it is necessary to sell him at once to drive a cab.”
“LOST. Somewhere between Mile-end Road and Putney Bridge, an old leathern piu-se, containing a counterfeit sixpence, a lock of hair in a paper, and a twenty-pound note. Any one bringing the note to 267, Tylney Street, Mayfair, may keep the purse and the rest of its contents for their trouble.”
This was a very shabby advertisement. The next, though coming from an attorney’s office, is much more munificent. It quite makes one’s mouth water, and envy the lucky fellow who would answer it.
“ONE HUNDRED GUINEAS REWARD. Register wanted.
To parish clerks. Any person who can discover the register of marriage between Petre Ravenshoe, Esq. of Ravenshoe, in the county of Devon, and Maria Dawson, which is supposed to have been solemnised in or about the year 1778, will receive the above reward, on communicating with Messrs. Compton and Brogden, solicitors, 2004, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”
Tomato slammed the door as he was told. Edward dashed up to 997, Sloane Street, in a hansom cab, just as the little black and tan lady paid one sovereign to a gentleman in a velveteen shooting-coat, from Kentish town, and hugged Toodlekins to her bosom. J. B. came home to his afflicted family with the key of the cellaret. The white bulldog was restored to the prizefighter, and the groom lad received shin-plaster and was sent home tipsy. Nay, even an honest man, finding that the note was stopped, took it to Tylney Street and got a half-a-crown. But no one ever answered the advertisement of Lord Saltire’s solicitor about the marriage register. The long summer dragged on. The square grew dry and dusty; business grew slack, and the clerks grew idle; but no one came. As they sat there drinking ginger-beer, and looking out at the parched lilacs and laburnums, talking about the theatres, and the war, and the cholera, it grew to be a joke with them. When any shabby man in black was seen coming across the square, they would say to one another, “Here comes the man to answer Lord Saltire’s advertisement.” Many men in black, shabby and smart, came across the square and into the office; but none had a word to say about the marriage of Petre Ravenshoe with Maria Dawson, which took place in the year 1778.
Once, during that long, sad summer, the little shoe-black thought he would saunter up to the house in South Audley Street, before which he had waited so long one night to meet Charles, who had never come. Not perhaps with any hope. Only that he would like to see the place which his friend had appointed. He might come back there some day; who could tell?
Almost every house in South Audley Street had the shutters closed. When he came opposite Lord Ascot’s house, he saw the shutters were closed there too. But more; at the second story there was a great painted board hung edgeways, all scarlet and gold. There was some writing on it too, on a scroll. He could spell a little now, thanks to the ragged-school, and he spelt out
“Christus Salvator mens.” What could that mean? he wondered.
There was an old woman in the area, holding two of the rails in her hands, and resting her chin on the kerb-stone, looking along the hot desolate street. Our friend went over and spoke to her.
“I say, Missis,” he said, “what’s that thing up there?”
“That’s the scutching, my man,” said she.
“The scutchings!”
“Ah! My Lord’s dead. Died last Friday week, and they’ve took him down to the country house, to bury him.”
“My Lord?” said the boy; “was he the one as used to wear top-boots, and went for a soger?”
The old woman had never seen my lord wear top-boots. Had hearn tell, though, as his father used to, and drive a coach and four in ’em. None on ’em hadn’t gone for sogers, neither.
“But what’s the scutching for?” asked the boy.
They put it up for a year, like for a monument, she said. She couldn’t say what the writing on it meant. It was my lord’s motter, that was all she knowd. And, being a tender-hearted old woman, and not having the fear of thieves before her eyes, she had taken him down into the kitchen, and fed him. WTien he returned to the upper regions, he was “ collared ” by a policeman, on a charge of “area sneaking,” but, after explanations, was let go, to paddle home, barefooted, to the cholera-stricken court where he lived, little dreaming, poor lad, what an important part he was accidentally to play in this history hereafter.
They laid poor Lord Ascot to sleep in the chancel at Ranford, and Lady Ascot stood over the grave like a grey, old, storm-beaten tower. “It is strange, James,” she said to Lord Saltire that day, “you and I being left like this, with the young ones going down around us like grass. Surely our summons must come soon, James. It’s weary, weary waiting.”