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M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur."

by G. J. Whyte-Melville · English · Gutenberg #11085 · 602,280 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur."

Author: G. J. Whyte-Melville


        
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #11085]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11085

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Bradley Norton and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK M. OR N. "SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR." ***

[Illustration: "Two of the police had now arrived." (_Page_ 295)]




M. or N.

"_Similia similibus curantur_"


By G.J. Whyte-Melville




CONTENTS

CHAP.


I. "Small and Early"

II. "Nightfall"

III. Tom Ryfe

IV. Gentleman Jim

V. The Cracksman's Checkmate

VI. A Reversionary Interest

VII. Dick Stanmore

VIII. Nina

IX. The Usual Difficulty

X. The Fairy Queen

XI. In the Scales

XII. "A Cruel Parting"

XIII. Sixes and Sevens

XIV. The Officers' Mess

XV. Mrs. Stanmore at Home

XVI. "Missing--A Gentleman"

XVII. "Wanted--A Lady"

XVIII. "The Coming Queen"

XIX. An Incubus

XX. "The Little Cloud"

XXI. Furens Quid Fæmina

XXII. "Not for Joseph"

XXIII. Anonymous

XXIV. Parted

XXV. Coaxing a Fight

XXVI. Baffled

XXVII. Blinded

XXVIII. Beat

XXIX. Night-Hawks

XXX. Under the Acacias




M. or N.

"_Similia similibus curantur_"




CHAPTER I


"SMALL AND EARLY"


A wild wet night in the Channel, the white waves leaping, lashing, and
tumbling together in that confusion of troubled waters, which nautical
men call a "cross-sea." A dreary, dismal night on Calais sands: faint
moonshine struggling through a low driving scud, the harbour-lights
quenched and blurred in mist. Such a night as bids the trim French
sentry hug himself in his watch-coat, calmly cursing the weather,
while he hums the chorus of a comic opera, driving his thoughts by
force of contrast to the lustrous glow of the wine-shop, the sparkling
eyes and gold ear-rings of Mademoiselle Thérèse, who presides over
Love and Bacchus therein. Such a night as gives the travellers in the
mail-packet some notion of those ups and downs in life which landsmen
may bless themselves to ignore, as hints to the Queen's Messenger,
seasoned though he be, that ten minutes more of that heaving,
pitching, tremulous motion would lay him alongside those poor sick
neophytes whom he pities and condemns; reminding him how even _he_ has
cause to be thankful when he reflects that, save for an occasional
Levanter, the Mediterranean is a mill-pond compared to La Manche. Such
a night as makes the hardy fisherman running for Havre or St. Valérie
growl his "Babord" and "Tribord" in harsher tones than usual to his
mate, because he cannot keep his thoughts off Marie and the little
ones ashore; his dark-eyed Marie, praying her heart out to the Virgin
on her knees, feeling, as the fierce wind howls and blusters round
their hut, that not on her wedding-morning, not on that summer eve
when he won her down by the sea, did she love her Pierre so dearly,
as now in this dark boisterous weather, that causes her very flesh to
creep while she listens to its roar. Nobody who could help it would
be abroad on Calais sands. "Pas même un Anglais!" mutters the sentry,
ordering his firelock with a ring, and wishing it was time for the
Relief. But an Englishman _is_ out nevertheless, wandering aimlessly
to and fro on the beach; turning his face to windward against the
driving rain; trying to think the wet on his cheek is all from
_without_; vainly hoping to stifle grief, remorse, anxiety, by
exposure and active bodily exercise.

"How could I stay in that cursed room?" he mutters, striding wildly
among the sand-hills. "The very tick of the clock was enough to drive
one mad in those long fearful pauses--solemn and silent as death!
Can't the fools do anything for her? What is the use of nurses and
doctors, and all the humbug of medicine and science? My darling! my
darling! It was too cruel to hear you wailing and crying, and to know
I could do you no good! What a coward I am to have fled into the
wilderness like a murderer! I couldn't have stayed there, I feel I
couldn't! I wish I hadn't listened at the door! Only yesterday you
seemed so well and in such good spirits, with your dark eyes looking
so patiently and fondly into mine! And now, if she should die!--if she
should die!"

Then he stands stock-still, turning instinctively from the wind like
one of the brutes, while the past comes back in a waking dream so akin
to reality, that even in his preoccupation he seems to live the last
year of his life over again. Once more he is at the old place in
Cheshire, whither he has gone like any other young dandy, an agreeable
addition to a country shooting-party because of his chestnut locks,
his blue eyes, his handsome person, and general recklessness of
character; agreeable, he reflects, to elderly _roués_ and established
married women, but a scarecrow to mothers, and a stumbling-block to
daughters, as being utterly penniless and rather good-for-nothing.
Once more he comes down late for dinner, to find a vacant place by
that beautiful girl, with her delicate features, her wealth of raven
hair, above all, with the soft, sad, dreamy eyes, that look so loving,
so trustful, and so good. In such characters as theirs these things
are soon accomplished. A walk or two, a waltz, a skein of silk to
wind, a drive in a pony-carriage, an afternoon church, and behold them
in the memorable summer-house, where he won her heart--completely and
unreservedly, while flinging down his own! Then came all the sweet
excitement, all the fascinating mystery of mutual understanding, of
stolen glances, of hidden meanings in the common phrases and daily
courtesies of social life. It was so delightful for each to feel that
other existence bound up in its own, to look down from their enchanted
mountain, with pity not devoid of contempt on the commonplace dwellers
on the plain, undeterred by proofs more numerous perhaps on the hills
of Paphos than in any other airy region, that

"Great clymbers fall unsoft;"

to know that come sorrow, suffering, disgrace, or misfortune, there
was refuge and safety for the poor, broken-winged bird, though its
plumage were torn by the fowler's cruelty, or even soiled in the storm
of shame. Alas! that the latter should arrive too soon!

Perhaps of this young couple, the girl, in her perfect faith and
entire self-sacrifice, may have been less aghast than her lover at the
imminence of discovery, reprobation, and scorn. When no other course
was left open, she eloped willingly enough with the man she had
trusted--shutting her eyes to consequences, in that recklessness
of devotion which, lead though it may to much unhappiness in life,
constitutes not the least lovable trait of the female character, so
ready to burst into extremes of right and wrong.

Besides, who cares for consequences at nineteen, with the sun glinting
on the waves of the Channel, the sea-air freshening cheek and brow,
the coast of Picardy rising bright and glistening, in smiles of
welcome, and the dear, fond face looking down so proudly and wistfully
on its treasure? Consequences indeed! They have been left with the
heavy baggage at London Bridge, to reach their proper owner possibly
hereafter in Paris; but meantime, with this fresh breeze blowing--on
the blue sea--under the blue sky--they do not exist--there are no such
things!

These young people were very foolish, very wicked, but they loved each
other very dearly. Mr. Bruce was none of those heartless, unscrupulous
Lovelaces, oftener met with in fiction than in real life, who can
forget they are _men_ as well as gentlemen; and when he crossed the
Channel with Miss Algernon, it was from sheer want of forethought,
from mismanagement, no doubt, but still more from misfortune, that she
was Miss Algernon still.

To marry, was to be disinherited--that he knew well enough; but
neither he nor his Nina, as he called her, would have paused for this
consideration. There were other difficulties, trivial in appearance,
harassing, vexatious, insurmountable in reality, that yet seemed
from day to day about to vanish; so they waited, and temporised, and
hesitated, till the opportunity came of escaping together, and they
availed themselves of it without delay.

Now they had reached French ground, and were free, but it was too
late! That was why Mr. Bruce roamed so wildly to-night over the Calais
sands, tortured by a cruel fear that he might lose the treasure of his
heart for ever; exaggerating, in that supreme moment of anxiety, her
sufferings, her danger, perhaps even her priceless value to himself.

To do him justice, he did not think for an instant of the many galling
annoyances to which both must be subjected hereafter in the event of
her coming safely through her trial. He found no time to reflect on a
censorious world, an outraged circle of friends, an infuriated family;
on the cold shoulder Mrs. Grundy would turn upon his darling, and the
fair mark he would himself be bound to offer that grim old father, who
had served under Wellington, or that soft-spoken dandy brother in
the Guards, unerring at "rocketers," and deadly for all ground
game, neither of whom would probably shoot the wider, under the
circumstances that he, the offender, felt in honour he must stand at
least one discharge without retaliation, an arrangement which makes
twelve paces uncomfortably close quarters for the passive and
immovable target. He scarcely dwelt a moment on the bitter scorn with
which his own great-uncle, whose natural heir he was, would calmly and
deliberately curse this piece of childish folly, while he disinherited
its perpetrator without scruple or remorse. He never even considered
the disadvantage under which a life that ought to be very dear to him
was now opening on the world: a life that might be blighted through
its whole course by his own folly, punished, a score of years hence,
for unwittingly arriving a few weeks too soon. No! He could think
of nothing but Nina's anguish and Nina's danger; could only wander
helplessly backwards and forwards, stupefied by the continuous gusts
of that boisterous sea-wind, stunned by the dull wash of the incoming
tide, feeling for minutes at a time, a numbed, apathetic impotency;
till, roused and stung by a rush of recurring apprehensions, he
hastened back to his hotel, white, agitated, dripping wet, moving
with wavering gestures and swift, irregular strides, like a man in a
trance.

At the foot of the staircase he ran into the arms of a dapper French
doctor, young, yet experienced, a man of science, a man of pleasure,
an anatomist, a dancer, a philosopher, and a dandy--who put both hands
on his shoulders, and looked in his face with so comical an expression
of congratulation, sympathy, pity, and amusement, that Mr. Bruce's
fears vanished on the instant, and he found voice to ask, in husky
accents, "if it was over?"

"Over!" repeated the doctor. "Pardon, my good sir. For our interesting
young friend it is only just begun. A young lady, monsieur, a
veritable little aristocrat, with a delicate nose, and, my faith,
sound and powerful lungs! I make you my compliment, monsieur. I am
happy to be the first to advertise you of good news. It is late. Let
madame be kept tranquil. You will permit me to wish you good-night. I
will return again in the morning."

"And she is safe?" exclaimed Bruce, crushing the doctor's hand in a
grasp like a vice.

"Safe!" answered the little man. "Parbleu--yes--for the present, safe
as the mole in the harbour, and likely to remain so if you will only
keep out of the room. Come, you shall see her for one quiet little
moment. She desires it so much. And when I scratch at the door thus,
you will come out. Agreed? Enter, then. You shall embrace your child."

So the good-natured man turned into the hotel again, to conduct Mr.
Bruce back to the door from which he had fled in anguish an hour or
two ago, and was thus five minutes too late for another professional
engagement, which could not be postponed, but went on indeed very well
without him, the expectant lady being a person of experience, the wife
of a Calais fisherman, and now employed for the thirteenth time in her
yearly occupation. But this has nothing to do with Mr. Bruce.

That gentleman stole on tiptoe through the darkened room, catching a
glimpse, as he passed the tawdry mirror on the chimney-piece, of a
very pale and anxious face strangely unlike his own, while from behind
the half-drawn bed-curtains he heard a quiet placid breathing, and a
weak, faint voice with its tender whisper, "Charlie, are you there?
My darling, I begged so hard to see you for one minute, and--Charlie
dear, to--to show you _this_."

_This_ was a morsel of something swathed up in wrappings, round which
the young mother's arm was folded with proud, protecting love; but I
think he had been too anxious about the woman to feel a proper elation
in his new position as father to the child. The tears came thick to
his eyes once more, while he caught the pale, fragile hand that lay so
weary and listless on the counterpane, to press it against his lips,
his cheeks, his forehead, murmuring broken words of endearment, and
gratitude, and joy.

She would have kept him there all night: she would have talked to him
for an hour, feeble as she was, of that little being, in so short a
time promoted to its sovereignty of Baby (with a capital B), in which
she had already discovered instincts, qualities, high reasoning
powers, noble moral characteristics: but the doctor's tap was heard,
"scratching," as he called it, at the door, and Bruce, too happy not
to be docile, had the good sense to obey his summons without delay.

"Let them sleep, monsieur," said the Frenchman, struggling into his
great-coat, and hurrying down-stairs. "It will do them more good
than all your prevision and all my experience. I will return in the
morning, to inquire after madame and to renew my acquaintance with
mademoiselle--I should say with 'your charming mees.' Monsieur, you
are now father of a family--you should keep early hours. Good-night,
then--till to-morrow."

Bruce looked after him with a blessing on his lips, and a fervent
thanksgiving in his heart to the Providence that had spared him
his treasure. For the moment, I believe, he completely forgot that
important personage with whom originated all their anxiety and
discomfort. To men, indeed, there is so little individuality about
a Baby, that, I fear, it has to be weaned and vaccinated, and to go
through many other processes before it ceases to be a thing, and
rather an inconvenient one. No; Bruce went to his own sitting-room,
with his heart so full of his Nina, there was scarcely place for other
considerations; therefore, instead of going to bed, he kicked off
his wet boots, turned on a brilliant illumination of gas, and threw
himself into an arm-chair--to smoke. After the excitement he had
lately passed through, the first few whiffs of his cigar were soothing
and consolatory in the extreme, but reflection comes with tobacco, not
less surely than warmth comes with fire; and soon he began to see the
crowd of fresh difficulties which the events of to-night would
bring swarming round his devoted head. How he cursed his foolish
calculations, his ill-judged caution, his cowardly scruples, thus to
have postponed the ceremony of marriage till too late. How impossible
it would be now, to throw dust in the eyes of society as to dates and
circumstances! how fruitless the reparation which should certainly be
put off no longer, no, not a day! It seemed so hard that he, of all
the world, should have injured the woman who loved him, the woman whom
he so devotedly loved in return. He almost hated the innocent baby for
its inopportune arrival; but remembering how that poor little creature
too must bear the punishment of his crime, he flung the end of his
cigar against the stove with a curse, and for one moment--only one
bitter, painful moment--found himself wishing he had never met, never
loved, his darling; had left the lamb at peace in its fold, the rose
ungathered on its stalk.

The clock did not tick twice before there came a reaction. It seemed
so impossible that they should be independent of each other. He would
not be himself without Nina! and the flow of his affection, like
the back-water of a mill-stream, returned only the stronger for its
momentary interruption. After all, Nina was everything, Nina was the
first consideration. Something must be done at once. As soon as she
could bear it, that ceremony must be gone through which should have
been performed long ago. He was young, he was impatient, he would fain
be at work without delay; so he turned to his writing-table, and began
opening certain letters that had already followed him into France, but
that he had laid aside without examination, in the excitement of the
last few hours.

They were not calculated to afford him much distraction. A circular
from a coal company, a couple of invitations to dinner, a tailor's
bill, and a manifesto from the firm, calling attention to the powers
of endurance with which their little account had "made running" for a
considerable period, while promising a "lawyer's letter" to enforce
payment of the same. Next this hostile protocol lay a business-like
missive bearing a Lincoln's Inn look about it not to be mistaken, and
which Bruce determined he would leave unopened till the morning, when,
if Nina had slept, and was doing well, he felt nothing in the world
could make him unhappy.

"Serves me right, though," he yawned, "for deserting Poole. _He_
wouldn't have bothered me for a miserable pony at such a time as
this;" and flinging off his clothes, in less than five minutes he was
as fast asleep as if he had never known an anxiety in the world, but
was lulled by the soothing considerations of a well-spent past, an
untroubled conscience, and a balance at his banker's!

So he slept and dreamed not, as those sleep who are thoroughly
out-wearied in body and mind, waking only when the sun had been up
more than an hour, and the stormy night had given place to a clear,
unclouded day.

The Channel was all blue and white now; the rollers, as they subsided
into a long heaving ground-swell, bringing in with them a freight
of health and freshness to the shore. The gulls were soaring and
screaming round the harbour, edging their wings with gold as they
dipped and wheeled in the morning light. Everything spoke of hope and
happiness and vitality. Bruce opened his window, drew in long breaths
of the keen, reviving air, and stole to listen at Nina's door.

How his heart went up in gratitude to heaven! Mother and child were
sleeping--so peacefully, so soundly. Mother and child! At that early
period the dearest, the sweetest, the holiest link of human love--the
gold without the dross, the flower without the insect, the wine
without the headache, the full fruition of the feelings without the
wear and tear of the heart.

He could have kissed the antiquated French chambermaid, dressed like
a Sister of Mercy, who met him in the passage, and wishing "Monsieur"
good-morning, congratulated him with tears of honest sympathy in her
glittering, bold black eyes. He _did_ give a five-franc piece to the
alert and well-dressed waiter, who looked as if he had never been in
bed, and never required to go. It may be this impulse of generosity
reminded him that five-franc pieces were likely to be scarce with him
in future, and an unpleasant association of ideas brought the lawyer's
letter to his mind. There it lay, square and uncompromising, between
his watch and his cigar-case. He opened it, I am afraid, with a truly
British oath.

He turned quite white when he read it the first time, but the blood
rushed to his temples on a second perusal, and he flung himself
down on his knees at the windowsill, thanking Providence, somewhat
inconsiderately, for the benefits that only came to him through
another man's death.

This letter, indeed, though the composition of a lawyer, had not been
written at the instance of his long-suffering tailor, but was from the
solicitor who conducted the business of his family. It advised him, in
very concise language, of his great-uncle's sudden "demise," as it was
worded, "intestate"; informing him that he thus became heir, as next
of kin, to the whole personal and real property of the deceased, and
concluded with sincere congratulations on his accession to a fine
fortune, not without a hope that their firm might continue to manage
his affairs, and afford him the same satisfaction that had always been
expressed by his late lamented relative, etc. The surprise staggered
him like a blow. From such blows, however, we soon "come to time,"
willing to take any amount of similar punishment. He gave himself
credit for self-denial in not waking Nina on the instant to tell
her of their good fortune. Still more, he plumed himself on his
forethought in resolving to ask her doctor's leave before he entered
on so exciting a topic with the invalid. He longed to tell somebody.
He was so happy, so elated, so thankful! and yet, amidst all his joy,
there rankled an uncomfortable sensation of remorse and self-reproach
when he thought of the little blighted life, the little injured
helpless creature nestling to its young mother's side in the next
room.




CHAPTER II


"NIGHTFALL"


It is more than twenty years ago, and yet how vividly it all comes
back to him to-night!

The sun has gone down in streaks of orange and crimson over the
old oaks that crown the deer-park sloping upward to the rear of
Ecclesfield Manor. Mr. Bruce walks across a darkened room to throw the
window open for a gasp of fresh evening air, laden with the perfume of
pinks, carnations, and moss-roses in the garden below. _Her_ garden!
Is it possible? Something in the action reminds him of that bright,
hopeful morning at Calais. Something in the scent of the flowers
steals to his brain, half torpid and benumbed; his heart contracts
with an agony of physical suffering. "My darling! my darling!" he
murmurs, "shall I never see you tying those flowers again?" and
turning from the window, he falls on his knees by the bedside with
a passionate burst of weeping that, like blood-letting to the body,
restores the unwelcome faculty of consciousness to his mind. When
he raises his head again he knows well enough that the one great
misfortune has arrived at last--that henceforth for _him_ there may
come, in the lapse of long years, resignation, even repose, but hope
and happiness no more.

Even now, though he wonders at his own callousness, he can bear to
look on the bed through a mist of tears; and, so looking, feels
his intellect failing in its effort to grasp the calamity that has
befallen him.

There she lies, like a dead lily, his own, his treasure, his beloved;
the sweet face, calm and placid, with its chiselled ivory features,
its smooth and gentle brow, has already borrowed a higher, a more
perfect beauty from the immortality on which it has entered. Not
fairer, not lovelier did she look that well-remembered evening when he
first knew her pure and priceless heart was his own, though she has
borne him a daughter--nay, two daughters (and he winces with a fresh
and different pain)--the younger as old as she was then. Her raven
hair is parted soft and silky off those pale, delicate temples; her
long black lashes rest upon the waxen cheek. No; she never looked as
beautiful, not in the calm sleep he used to watch so lovingly; and now
the deep, fond eyes must open on his own no more. She was so gentle,
too, so patient, so sweet-tempered, and O, so true. He had been a man
of the world, neither better nor worse than others: he knew women
well; knew how rare are the good ones; knew the prize he had won, and
valued it--yes, he was sure he always valued it as it deserved.
What was the use? Had she not far better have been like the
others--petulant, wilful, capricious, covetous of admiration, careless
of affection, weak-headed, shallow-hearted, and desirous only of that
which could not possibly be her own? Such were most of the women
amongst whom he had been thrown in his youth; but O, how unlike her
who was lying dead there before his eyes.

  "For men at most differ as heaven and earth,
  But women, worst and best, as heaven and hell."

He felt so keenly now that she had been his better angel for more than
twenty years; that but for her he might long ago have deteriorated to
selfishness and cynicism, or sunk into that careless philosophy which
believes only in the tangible, the material, and the present.

A good woman's lot may be linked to that of a bad man; she may even
love him very dearly, and yet retain much of her purer, better nature
amidst all the mire in which she is steeped; but it is not so with us.
To care for a bad woman is to be dragged down to her level, inch by
inch, till the intellect itself becomes sapped in a daily degradation
of the heart. From such slavery emancipation is cheap under any
suffering, at any sacrifice. The lopping of a limb is a painful
process, but above a gangrened wound experienced surgeons amputate
without scruple or remorse.

On the other hand, a true woman's affection is of all earthly
influences the noblest and most elevating. It encourages the highest
and gentlest qualities of man's nature--his enterprise, courage,
patience, sympathy, above all, his trust. Happy the pilgrim on whose
life such a beacon-star has shone out to guide him in the right way;
thrice happy if it sets not until it has lured him so far that he will
never again turn aside from the path.

Such reflections as these, while they added to his sense of loss and
loneliness, yet took so much of the sting out of Mr. Bruce's great
sorrow, that he could realise it for minutes at a time without being
goaded to madness or stunned to apathy by the pain.

There had been no warning--no preparation. He had left her that
morning as usual, after smoking a cigar in her society on the lawn,
while she tied, and snipped, and gathered the flowers of her pretty
garden. He had visited the stable, ordered the pony-carriage, seen the
keeper, and been to look at an Alderney cow. It was one of his idle
days, yet, after twenty years of marriage, such days he still liked to
spend, if possible, in the company of his wife. So he strolled back to
write his letters in her boudoir, and entered it at the garden door,
expecting to find her, as usual, busied in some graceful feminine
employment.

Her work was heaped on the sofa; a book she had been reading lay open
on the table; the very flowers she gathered an hour ago had the dew on
them still. He could not finish his first letter without consulting
her, for she kept his memory, his conscience, and his money, just
as she kept his heart, so he ran up-stairs to her bedroom door and
knocked.

There was no answer, and he went in. At the first glance he thought
she must have fainted, for she had fallen on her knees against a
high-backed chair, her face buried in its cushions, and one hand
touching the carpet. He had a quick eye, and the turn of that grey
rigid hand warned him with a stab of something he refused persistently
to believe. Then he lifted her on the bed where she lay now, and sent
for every doctor within reach.

He had no recollection of the interval that elapsed before the nearest
could arrive, nor distinct notion of any part of that long sunny
afternoon while he sat by his Nina in the death-chamber. Once he
got up to stop the ticking of a clock on the chimney-piece, moving
mechanically with stealthy footfall across the room lest she should
be disturbed. The doctors came and went, agreeing, as they left the
house, that he had answered their questions with wonderful precision
and presence of mind; nay, that he was less prostrated by the blow
than they should have expected. "Disease of the heart," said they--I
believe they called it "the _pericardium_"; and after paying a tribute
of admiration to the loveliness of the dead lady, discussed the
leading article of that day's _Times_ with perfect equanimity. What
would you have? There can be but one person in the world to whom
another is more than all the world beside.

This person was sitting by Nina's bed, except for a few brief minutes
at a time, utterly stupefied and immovable. Even Maud--his cherished
daughter Maud--whose smile had hitherto been welcome in his eyes as
the light of morning, could not rouse his attention by the depth of
her own uncontrolled grief. He sat like an idiot or an opium-eater,
till something prompted him to open the window and gasp for a breath
of fresh evening air. Then it all came back to him, and he awoke to
the full consciousness of his misery.

There are men, though not many, and these, perhaps, the least inclined
to prate about it, who have one attachment in their lives to which
every other sentiment is but an accessory and a satellite. Such
natures are often very bold to dare, very strong to endure, very
difficult to assail, save in their single vulnerable point. Force
that, and the man's whole vitality seems to collapse. He does not even
make a fight of it, but fails, gives in, and goes down without an
effort. Such was the character of Mr. Bruce, and to-day he had gotten
his death-blow.

The stars twinkled out faintly one by one, the harvest-moon rose broad
and ruddy behind the wooded hill, and still he sat stupefied at the
bedside. The door opened gently to admit a beautiful girl, strangely,
startlingly like her dead mother, who came in with a cup of tea and a
candle. Setting these on the chimney-piece, she moved softly round
to where he sat, and pressed his head, with both hands, against her
breast.

"Dearest father," said she, "I have brought you some tea. Try and
rouse yourself, papa, dear papa, for _my_ sake. You love _me_ too."

The appeal was well chosen; once more the tears came to his eyes, and
he woke up as from a dream.

"You are a good girl, Maud," he answered, with a vague, distracted
air. "I have my children left--I have my children left! But all the
world cannot make up to me for what I have lost!"

She thought his mind was wandering, and tried to recall him to
himself.

"We must bear our sorrows as best we may, papa," she answered, very
gently. "We must help each other. You and I are alone now in the
world."

A contraction, as of some fresh pain, came over his livid face. He
raised his head to speak, but, stopping himself with an obvious
effort, looked long and scrutinisingly in his daughter's face.

Maud Bruce was a very beautiful girl even now, in the extremity of
her sorrow. She had been crying heartily; no wonder, but her delicate
features were not swollen, nor her dark eyes dimmed. The silky
hair shone smooth and trim, the muslin dress was not rumpled nor
disarranged, and the white hands, with which she still caressed her
father's sorrow-laden head, neither shook nor wavered in their office.

With her mother's beauty, Miss Bruce had inherited but little of her
mother's character; on the contrary, her nature, like that of
her father's ancestors rather than his own, was bold, firm, and
self-reliant to an unusual degree. She was hard, and that is the only
epithet properly to describe her--manner, voice, appearance, all
were lady-like, feminine, and exceedingly attractive; but the
self-possession she never seemed to lose, would have warned an
experienced admirer, that beneath the white bosom beat a heart not to
be reduced by stratagem, nor carried by assault; that he must not hope
to see the beautiful dark eyes veil themselves in the dreamy softness
which so confesses all it means to hide; that the raven tresses
clinging coquettishly to that faultless head were most unlikely to be
severed as a tribute of affection for any one whose conquest would not
be a question of pride and profit to their owner. Tenderness was the
one quality Maud lacked, the one quality which, like the zone of
Venus, completed all her mother's attractions, with an indefinable and
irresistible charm.

There is a wild German legend which describes how a certain woodman, a
widower, gave shelter to a strangely fascinating dame, and falling in
love with her, incontinently made his guest lawful mistress of hearth
and home; how, notwithstanding his infatuated passion, and intense
admiration for her beauty, there was yet in it a fierceness which
chilled and repelled him, while he worshiped; how his children could
never be brought to look in the fair face of their stepmother without
crying aloud for fear; and how at last he discovered, to his horror
and dismay, that he had wedded a fearful creature, half wolf, half
woman, combining the seductions of the syren with the cruel voracity
of the brute. There was something about Maud Bruce to remind one of
that horrible myth, even now, now at her gentlest and softest, while
she clung round a sorrowing father, by the death-bed of one, whom, in
their different ways, both had very dearly loved.

It was well that the young lady preserved her presence of mind, for
Bruce seemed incapable of connected thought or action. He roused
himself, indeed, at his daughter's call, but gazed stupidly about him,
stammered in his speech, and faltered in his step when he crossed
the room. The shock of grief had evidently overmastered his
faculties--something, too, besides affliction, seemed to worry and
distress him--something of which he wished to unbosom himself,
but that yet he could not make up his mind to reveal. Maud, whose
quickness of perception was seldom at fault, did not fail to observe
this, and reviewing the position with her accustomed coolness, drew
her father gently to the writing-table, and sat down.

"Papa," said she, "there is much to be done. We must exert ourselves.
It will do us both good. Bargrave can be down by the middle of the
day, to-morrow. Let me write for him at once."

Bargrave and Co. were Mr. Bruce's solicitors, as they had been his
great-uncle's: it was the same firm, indeed, that had apprised him of
his inheritance at Calais twenty years ago. How he rejoiced in their
intelligence then! What was the use of an inheritance now?

A weary lassitude had come over him; he seemed incapable of exertion,
and shook his head in answer to Maud's appeal; but again some
hidden motive stung him into action, and taking his seat at the
writing-table, he seized a pen, only to let it slip helplessly through
his fingers, while he looked in his daughter's face with a vacant
stare.

Maud was equal to the occasion. Obviously something more than sorrow
had reduced her father to this state. She sat down opposite, scribbled
off a note hastily enough, but in the clear unwavering hand, affirmed
by her correspondents to be so characteristic of the writer's
disposition, and ringing the bell, desired it should be dispatched on
the instant. "Let Thomas take the brougham with the ponies; the doctor
is sure to be at home. He can bring him back at once."

Then she looked at her father, and stopped the lady's-maid, who,
tearful and hysterical, had answered the familiar summons, which but
this morning was "missis's bell."

"While they are putting to," said she calmly, "I will write a
telegraphic message and a letter. Tell him to send word when he is
ready. I shall give him exactly ten minutes."

Once more she glanced uneasily at Mr. Bruce; what she saw decided her.
In half-a-dozen words she penned a concise message to her father's
solicitor, desiring him to come himself or send a confidential person
to Ecclesfield Manor, by the very first train, on urgent business; and
wrote a letter as well to the same address, explaining her need of
immediate assistance, for Mr. Bargrave to receive the following
morning, in case that gentleman should not obey her telegram in
person, a contingency Miss Bruce considered highly probable.

The ten minutes conceded to Thomas had stretched to twenty before he
was ready; for so strong is the force of habit among stablemen, that
even in a case of life and death, horses cannot be allowed to start
till their manes are straightened and their hoofs blacked. In the
interval, Miss Bruce became more and more concerned to observe no
signs of attention on her father's part--no inquiries as to her
motives--apparently no consciousness of what she was doing. When the
brougham was heard to roll away at a gallop, she came round and
put her arm about his neck, where he sat in his chair at the
writing-table.

"Papa, dear," she said, "I have told them to get your dressing-room
ready. You are ill, very ill. I can see it. You must go to bed."

He nodded, and smiled. Such a weary, silly smile, letting her lead him
away like a little child. He would even have passed the bed where his
wife lay without a look, but that his daughter stopped him at the
door.

"Papa," said she--and the girl deserved credit for the courage with
which she kept her tears back--"won't you kiss her before you go?"

It may be some instinct warned her that not in the body was he to look
on the face he loved again--that those material lips were never more
to touch the gentle brow which in a whole lifetime he had not seen
to frown--that their next greeting, freed from earthly anxieties,
released from earthly troubles, must be exchanged, at no distant
period, in heaven.

He obeyed unhesitatingly, imprinting a caress on his dead wife's
forehead with no kind of emotion, and so left the room, muttering
vaguely certain indistinct and incoherent syllables, in which the
words "Nina" and "Bargrave" were alone intelligible.

Maud saw her father to his room, and consigned him to the hands of
his valet, to be put to bed without delay. Then she went to the
dining-room, and forced herself to eat a crust of bread, to drink
a single glass of sherry. "I shall need all my strength to-night,"
thought the girl, "to take care of poor papa, and arrange about the
funeral and such matters as he cannot attend to--the funeral! O,
mother, dear, kind mother! I wasn't half good enough to you while you
were with us, and now--but I won't cry--I won't cry. There'll be time
enough for all that by and by. The first thing to think of is about
papa. He hasn't borne it well. Men have very little courage when they
come to trial, and I fear--I fear there is something sadly wrong with
him. Let me see. Three-quarters of an hour to get to Bragford--five
minutes' stoppage at the turn-pike, for that stupid man is sure to
have gone to bed--five minutes more for Doctor Skilton to put on his
greatcoat, forty minutes for coming back--those ponies always go
faster towards home. No, he can't be here under another hour. Another
hour! It's a long time in a case like this. Suppose papa should have
a paralytic stroke! And I haven't a notion what to do--the proper
remedies, the best treatment. Women ought to know everything, and be
ready for everything."

"Then there's the lawyer to-morrow. I don't suppose papa will be able
to see him. I must think of all the business--all the arrangements. He
can't be here till ten o'clock at the earliest, even if he starts by
the first train. I shall write my directions for _him_ in the morning.
Meantime, I'll go and sit with poor papa, and see if I can't hush him
off to sleep."

But when Miss Bruce reached her father's room, she found him lying in
an alarming state of which she had no experience. Something between
sleeping and waking, yet without the repose of the one, the
consciousness of the other. So she took her place by his pillow, and
watched, listening anxiously for the brougham that was to bring the
doctor.




CHAPTER III


TOM RYFE


At half-past eight in the morning Mr. Bargrave's office in Gray's Inn
was still empty. It had been swept, indeed, and "straightened," as he
called it, by a young gentleman, whose duty it was to be in attendance
at all hours from sunrise to sunset, when nobody else was in the
way, and who fulfilled that duty by slipping out on such available
occasions to join the youth of the quarter in sports of clamour,
strength, and skill. Just now he was half-a-mile off in Holborn,
running at full speed, shouting at the top of his voice, with no
apparent object but that of exercising his own physical powers and
the patience of the general public in his exertions. It was not,
therefore, the step of this trusty guardian which fell sharp and
quick on the stone stair outside the office, nor was it his hand,
nor pass-key, that opened the door to admit Mr. Bargrave's nephew,
assistant, and possible successor in the business, Tom Ryfe.

That gentleman entered with the air of a master, looked about him,
detected the absence of his young subordinate as one who is disgusted
rather than surprised, and lifted two envelopes lying unopened on the
table with an oath. "As usual," he muttered, "telegram and letter,
same date--same place. Arrive together, of course! Chances are, if
there is any hurry you get the letter before the telegram. Halloa!
here's a business. Bargrave's sure to be an hour late, and that young
scamp not within a mile. If I had my way--Hang it! I _will_ have my
way. At all events I must manage _this_ business my way, for it seems
there's not a moment to spare, and nobody to help me. Dorothe-a!"

The dirtiest woman to be found, probably, at that hour in the whole of
London, appeared from a lower storey in answer to his summons. Pushing
her hair off a grimy forehead with a grimier hand, she listened to
his directions, staring vacantly, as is the manner of her kind, but
understanding them, nevertheless, and not incapable of remembering
their purport: they were short and intelligible enough.

"Tell that young scamp he is to sleep in the office tonight. He
mustn't leave it on any consideration while I'm away. I'm going into
the country, and I'll break his head when I come back."

Tom Ryfe then huddled the letter into his pocket for perusal at
leisure, hailed a hansom, and in less than a quarter of an hour was in
his uncle's breakfast-room, bolting ham, muffins, and green tea, while
his clothes were packed.

Mr. Bargrave, a bachelor, who liked his comforts, and took care to
have them, was reading the newspaper in a silk dressing-gown, and a
pair of gold spectacles. He had finished breakfast--such a copious
and leisurely repast as is consumed by one who dines at six, drinks a
bottle of port every day at dessert, and never smoked a cigar in his
life. No earthly consideration would hurry him for the next half-hour.
He looked over the top of his newspaper with the placid benignity of a
man who, considering digestion one of the most important functions of
nature, values and encourages it accordingly.

"Sudden," observed Mr. Bargrave, in answer to his nephew's
communication. "Something of a seizure, no doubt. Time is of
importance; the young lady's telegram should have come to hand last
night. Be so good as to make a note on the back. Three doctors, does
she say? Bless me! They'll never let him get over it. Most unfortunate
just now, on account of the child--of the young lady. You can take the
necessary instructions. I will follow, if required. It's twenty-three
minutes' drive to the station. Better be off at once, Tom."

So Tom took the hint, and was off. While he drives to the station we
may as well give an account of Tom's position in the firm of Bargrave
and Co.

Old Bargrave's sister had chosen to marry a certain Mr. Ryfe, of whom
nobody knew more than that he could shoot pigeons, had been concerned
in one or two doubtful turf transactions, and played a good hand at
whist. _While_ he lived, though it was a mystery _how_ he lived, he
kept Mrs. Ryfe "very comfortable," to use Bargrave's expression. When
he died he left her nothing but the boy Tom, a precocious urchin,
inheriting some of his father's sporting propensities, with a certain
slang smartness of tone and manner, acquired in those circles where
horseflesh is affected as an inducement to speculation.

Mrs. Ryfe did not long survive her husband. She had married a scamp,
and was, therefore, very fond of him: so before he had been dead a
year, she was laid in the same grave. Then her brother took the boy
Tom, and put him into his own business, making him begin by sweeping
out the office, and so requiring him to rise grade by grade till he
became confidential clerk and head manager of all matters connected
with the firm.

At twenty-six years of age, Tom Ryfe possessed as much experience
as his principal, joined to a cunning and sharpness of intellect
peculiarly his own. To take care of number one was doubtless the
head clerk's ruling maxim; but while thus attending to his personal
welfare, he never failed to affect a keen interest in the affairs
of numbers two, three, four, and the rest. Tom Ryfe was a "friendly
fellow," people declared; "a deuced friendly fellow, and knew what he
was about, mind you, better than most people."

"Every great man," said the Emperor Nicholas, "has a hook in his
nose." In the firmest characters, no doubt, there is a weakness
by which they are to be led or driven; and Tom Ryfe, like other
notabilities, was not without this crevice in his armour, this breach
in his embattled wall. He had shrewdness, knowledge of the world,
common sense, and yet the one great object of his efforts was to be
admitted into a class of society far above his own, and to find there
an ideal lady with whom to pass the rest of his days.

"I'll marry a top-sawyer," he used to say, whenever his uncle broached
the question of his settlement in life. "Why, bless ye, it's the same
tackle and the same fly that takes the big fish and the little one.
It's no more trouble to make up to a duchess than a dairymaid. I'll
pick a real white-handed one, you see if I don't. A wife that can
_move_, uncle, cool, and calm, and lofty, like an air balloon; wearing
her dresses as if she was made for them, and her jewels as if she
didn't know she'd got them on; looking as much at home in the Queen's
drawing-room as she does in her own. That's my sort, and that's the
sort I'll choose! Why, there's scores of 'em to be seen any afternoon
in the Park. Never tell me I can't go in and take my pick. 'Nothing
venture, nothing have,' they say. I ain't going to venture much. I
don't see occasion for it, but I'll _have_ what I want, you see if I
won't, or I'll know the reason why."

Whereon Bargrave, who considered womankind in general as an
unnecessary evil, would reply--

"Time enough, Tom, time enough. I haven't had much experience with the
ladies myself, except as clients, you know. The less I see of 'em, I
think, the more I like 'em. Better put it off a little, Tom. It can be
done any day, my boy, when you've an hour to spare. I wouldn't be in
a hurry if I was you. There's a fresh sample ticketed every year; and
they're not like port wine, you must remember, they don't improve with
keeping."

Tom Ryfe had plenty of time to revolve his speculations, matrimonial
and otherwise, during his journey to Ecclesfield Manor by one of those
mid-day trains so irritating to through-passengers, which stop at
intermediate stations, dropping brown-paper parcels, and taking up old
women with baskets. He reviewed many little affairs of the heart in
which he had lately been engaged, without, however, suffering his
affections to involve themselves too deeply for speedy withdrawal. He
reflected with great satisfaction on his own fastidious rejection of
several "suitable parties," as he expressed it, who did not quite
reach his standard of aristocratic perfection, remembering how Mrs.
Blades, the well-to-do widow, with fine eyes and a house in Duke
Street, had fairly landed him but for that unfortunate dinner at which
he detected her eating fish with a knife; how certain grated-looking
needle-marks on Miss Glance's left forefinger had checked him just in
time while in the act of kissing her hand; and how, on the very eve of
a proposal to beautiful Constance de Courcy, whose manner, bearing,
and appearance, no less than her name, denoted the extreme of
refinement and high birth, he had sustained a shock, galvanic but
salutary, from her artless exclamation, "O my! whatever shall I do? If
here isn't pa!"

"No," thought Tom, as he rolled on into the fair expanse of down
country that lay for miles round Ecclesfield, "I haven't found one yet
quite up to the pattern I require. When I do I shall go in and
win, that's all. I don't see why my chance shouldn't be as good as
another's. I'm not such a bad-looking chap when I'm dressed and my
hair's greased. I can do tricks with cards like winking. I can ride a
bit, shoot a bit--'specially pigeons--dance a bit, and make love to
'em no end. I've got the gift of the gab, I know, and I stick at
nothing. That's what the girls like, and that's what will pull me
through when I find the one I want. Another station, and not there
yet! What a slow train this is!"

It was a slow train, and Tom, arriving at Ecclesfield, saw on the face
of the servant who admitted him that he was too late. In addition to
the solemn and mysterious hush that pervades a house in which the dead
lie yet unburied, a feeling of horror, the result of some unlooked-for
and additional calamity, seemed to predominate; and Tom was hardly
surprised, however much he might be shocked, when the old
butler gasped, in broken sentences, "Seizure--last night--quite
unconscious--all over this morning. Will you take some refreshment,
sir, after your journey?"

Mr. Bruce had been dead a few hours--dead without time to set his
house in order, without consciousness even to wish his child good-bye.

She came down to see Mr. Bargrave's clerk that afternoon, pale, calm,
collected, beautiful, but stern and unbending under the sorrow against
which her haughty nature rebelled. In a few words, referring to a
memorandum the while, she gave him her directions for the funeral and
its ceremonies; desired him to ascertain at once the state of her late
father's affairs, the amount of a succession to which she believed
herself entitled; begged he would return with full information that
day fortnight; ordered luncheon for him in the dining-room; and so
dismissed him as a bereaved queen might dismiss the humblest of her
subjects.

Tom Ryfe, returning to London by the next train, thought he had never
felt so small; and yet, was not this proud, sorrowing, and beautiful
young damsel the ideal he had been seeking hitherto in vain? It is
not too much to say that for twenty miles he positively _hated_ her,
striving fiercely against the influence, which yet he could not but
acknowledge. In another twenty, his good opinion of his best friend
Mr. Ryfe reasserted itself. He had seen something of the world, and
possessed, moreover, a certain shallow acquaintance with human nature,
not of the highest class, so he argued thus--

"Women like what they are unaccustomed to. The Grand Duchess of
Gerolstein makes love to a private soldier simply because she don't
know what a private soldier is. This girl must have lived amongst a
set of starched and stuck-up people who have not two ideas beyond
themselves and their order. She has never so much as seen a smart,
business-like, active fellow, ready to take all trouble off her hands,
and make up her mind for her before she can turn round--young, too,
and not so bad-looking, though I dare say she's used to good-looking
chaps enough. The man's game who went in for Miss Bruce would be
this: constant attention to her interests, supreme disregard for her
feelings, and never to let her have her own way for a moment. She'd be
so utterly taken aback she'd give in without a fight. Why shouldn't I
try my chance? It's a good spec. It must be a good spec. And yet,
hang it! such a high-handed girl as that would suit _me_ without a
shilling. It dashed me a little at first; but I like that scornful way
of hers, I own. What eyes, too! and what hair! I wonder if I'm a fool.
No; nothing's impossible; it's only difficult. What! London already?
Ah! there's no place like town."

The familiar gas-lamps, the roll of the cabs, the bustle in the
streets, dispelled whatever shadows of mistrust in his own merits
remained from Tom's reflections in the railway carriage; and long
before he reached his uncle's house, he had made up his mind to "go
in," as he called it, for Miss Bruce, morally confident of winning,
yet troubled with certain chilling misgivings, as fearing that _this_
time he had really fallen in love.

Many and long, during the ensuing week, were the consultations between
old Bargrave and his nephew as to the future prospects of the lady in
question. Her father had died without a will. That fact seemed pretty
evident, as he had often expressed his intention of preparing such an
instrument, but had hitherto moved no farther in the matter.

"Depend upon it, Tom," said his uncle, that very evening over their
port wine, "he wouldn't go to anybody else. He was never much of
a business man, and he couldn't have disentangled his affairs
sufficiently to make 'em clear, except to me. It's a sad pity for many
reasons, but I'm just as sure there's no will as I am that my glass is
empty. Help yourself, Tom, and pass the wine."

"Then she takes as next of kin," said Tom, thinking of Maud's dark
eyes, and filling his glass. "Here's her health!"

"By all means," assented Bargrave. "Her very good health, poor girl!
But as to the succession I have my doubts; grave doubts. There's a
trust, Tom. I looked over the deed while you were down there to-day.
It is so worded that a male heir might advance a prior claim. There
_is_ a male heir, a parson in Dorsetshire, not a likely man to give in
without a fight. We'll look at it again to-morrow. If it reads as I
think, I wouldn't give a pinch of snuff for the young lady's chance."

Tom's face fell. "Can't we fight it, uncle?" said he, stoutly,
applying himself once more to the port; but Bargrave had drawn his
silk handkerchief over his face, and was already fast asleep.

So uncle and nephew went into the trust-deed, morning after morning,
arriving in its perusal at a conclusion adverse to Miss Brace's
interest; but then, as the younger man observed, "the beauty of our
English law is, that you can always fight a thing even if you haven't
a leg to stand on."

It was almost time for Tom Ryfe's return journey to Ecclesfield, and
a coat ordered for the express purpose of captivating Miss Bruce had
actually come home, when the post brought him a little note from
that lady, which afforded him, as such notes often do, an absurd and
overweening joy. It was bordered with the deepest black, and ran as
follows--


DEAR SIR,

('_Dear_ sir,' thought Tom, 'ah! that sounds much sweeter than plain
sir')--I venture to trouble you with a commission in the nature of
business. A packet, containing some diamond ornaments belonging to me,
will be left by the jeweller at Mr. Bargrave's office to-morrow. Will
you kindly bring it down with you to Ecclesfield?

Yours, very obediently,

"Maud Bruce."


Tom kissed the signature. He was very far gone already, and took care
to be at the office in time to receive the diamonds. That boy was
out of the way, of course! So Tom summoned the grimy Dorothea to his
presence.

"I shall be busy for an hour," said he; "don't admit anybody unless he
comes by appointment, except it's a man with a packet of jewelry. Take
it in yourself, and bring it here at once. I've got to carry it down
with me to-night by the train. Do you understand?"

"Is it a long journey as you're a-goin', sir?" asked Dorothea. "I
should like to clean up a bit while you was away."

"Only to Bragford," answered Tom; "but I might not be back for a day
or two. Mind about the parcel, though," he added, in the exuberance
of his spirits. "The thing's valuable. It's for a young lady. It's
jewels, Dorothea. It's diamonds."

"Lor!" said Dorothea, going back to her scrubbing forthwith.

The jeweller being dilatory, Tom had finished his letters before that
artificer arrived, thus saving Dorothea all responsibility in the
valuable packet confided to his charge, for Mr. Ryfe received it
himself in the outer office, whither he had resorted in a fidget to
compare a time-table with a railway-map of England. He fretted to set
off at once. He had finished his business; he had nothing to do now
but eat an early dinner at his uncle's, and so start by the afternoon
train on the path of love, triumph, and success, leaving the boy,
coerced by ghastly threats, to take charge of the office in his
absence.

We have all seen a bird moulting, draggled, dirty, woebegone, not to
be recognised for the same bird, sleek and glossy in its holiday-suit
of feathers, pruning its wing for a flight across the summer sky. Even
so different was the Dorothea of the unkempt hair, the soapy arms, the
dingy apron, and the grimy face, from a gaudy damsel who emerged in
the afternoon sun out of Mr. Bargrave's chambers, bright with all the
colours of the rainbow, and scrupulously dressed, according to the
extreme style of the last prevailing fashion but two.

She was a good-looking woman enough now that she had "cleaned
herself," as she expressed it, but for a certain roughness of hair,
coarseness of skin, and general redundancy of outline, despite of
which drawbacks, however, she attracted many admiring glances from
cab-drivers, omnibus-conductors, a precocious shoeblack, and the
policeman on duty, as she tripped into Holborn and mingled with the
living stream that flows unceasingly down that artery of London.

Dorothea seemed to know where she was going well enough, and yet the
coarse red cheek turned pale while she approached her goal, though it
was but a flashy, dirty-looking gin-shop, standing at a corner where
two streets met. Her colour rose though, higher than before, when a
pot-boy, with a shock of red hair, and his shirt-sleeves rolled up to
his shoulders, thus accosted her--

"You're just in time, miss; he'd 'a been off in a minit, but old
Batters, he come in just now, and your young man stopped to take his
share of another half-quartern."




CHAPTER IV


GENTLEMAN JIM


There is no reason, because a woman is coarse, hard-working, low-born,
and badly dressed, she should be without that inconvenient feminine
appendage--a heart. Dorothea trembled and turned pale when the door of
the Holborn gin-shop swung open and the man she most wished to see in
all the world stood at her side.

He would have been a good-looking fellow enough in any rank of life,
but to Dorothea, and others of her class, his clear, well-cut features
and jetty ringlets rendered him an absolute Adonis, despite the air of
half-drunken bravado and assumed recklessness which marred a naturally
resolute expression of countenance. He wore a fur cap, a velveteen
jacket, and a bright-red neckcloth, secured by an enormous ring; nor
was this remarkable costume out of character with the perfume he
exhaled, denoting he had consumed at least his share of that other
half-quartern which postponed his departure.

Dorothea slipped her arm in his, and clung to him with the fond
tenacity of a woman who loves heart and soul, poor thing, to her cost.

His manner was an admirable combination of low-class gallantry with
pitying condescension.

"Why, Doll," said he, "what's up now? You don't look hearty, my lass.
Step in and take a dram; it'll do you good."

She glanced admiringly in the comely dissipated face.

"Ah! they may well call you Gentleman Jim," she answered; "you're fit
to be a lord of the land, you are; and so you would, if I was queen.
But I doesn't want you to treat me, Jim, leastways not this turn; I
wants you to come for a walk, dear. I've a bit of news for you. It's
business, Jim," she added, somewhat ruefully, "or I wouldn't go for to
ask."

His face, which had fallen a little, assuming that wearied expression
a woman ought most to dread on the face she cares for, brightened
considerably.

"Come on, lass!" he exclaimed, "business first, and pleasure arter.
Speak up, and let's hear all about it."

They had turned from the main thoroughfare into a dark and quiet
by-street. She crossed her work-worn hands on his arm, and proceeded
nervously--

"You say I never put you on a job, Jim. Well, I've a job to put you on
now. I don't half like it, dear. It's for your sake I don't half like
it. Promise me as you'll be careful, very careful, this turn."

"Bother!" answered Jim. "Stow that, lass, and let's have it out."

Thus elegantly adjured, Doll, as he called her, obeyed without delay,
though her voice faltered and her colour faded more than once while
she went on.

"You told me as you wouldn't love me without I kep' my ears open, and
my eyes too. Well, Jim, I've watched and watched old master and young,
like a cat watches a mouse-hole, till I've been that sick and tired I
could have set down and cried. Now, to-day I wanted to see you so bad,
at any rate, and, thinks I, here's a bit of news as my Jim will like
to learn. Look now: young master, he's a-goin' to a place they call
Bragford by the five-o'clock train. O, I mind the name well enough.
You know, Jim, you always bid me take notice of names. Well, it's
Bragford. Bragford, says he, quite plain, an' as loud as I'm
a-speakin' now."

"Forty-five miles from London," answered Jim, "and not ten minutes'
walk from the branch line. Well?"

"He's a-takin' summut down for a young lady," continued Doll. "It is
but a small package, what you might put in your coat-pocket, or your
hat. O, Jim! Jim! if you should chance on a stroke of luck this turn,
won't you give the trade up for good and all? If you and me had but a
roof to cover us, I wouldn't ask better than only liberty to work for
you till I dropped."

Tears stood in her eyes, and for a moment the face that looked up
into the ruffian's was almost beautiful in its expression of entire
devotion and trust.

He had taken a doubtful cigar from his coat-pocket, and was smoking
thoughtfully.

"Small," said he, "then it ought, by rights, to be valuable. Did ye
get a feel of it, Doll, or was it only a smell?"

"He took it hisself out of the jeweller's hands," answered Doll;
"but I hadn't no call to be curious, for he told me what it was free
enough. There ain't no smell about diamonds, Jim."

"Nor you can't swear to them neither," replied Jim exultingly.
"Diamonds, Doll! you're _sure_ he said diamonds? Come, you _have_
done it, my lass. Give us a kiss, Doll, and let's turn in here at the
Sunflower, and drink good luck to the job."

The woman acceded to both proposals readily enough, but followed her
companion into the ill-favoured little tavern with a weary step and a
heavy heart. Some unerring instinct told her, no doubt, that she was
giving all and taking nothing, offering gold for silver, truth for
falsehood, love and devotion for a mere liking, rapidly waning to
indifference and contempt.

Tom Ryfe, all anxiety to find himself once more in the same county
with Miss Bruce, was in good time, we may be sure, for the train that
should carry him down to Ecclesfield. Bustling through the station to
take his ticket, he was closely followed by a well-dressed person in
a pair of blue spectacles, travelling apparently without luggage or
impediments of any description. This individual seemed also bound
for Bragford, and showed some little eagerness to travel in the
same carriage with Tom, who attributed the compliment to his
lately-constructed coat and general appearance as a swell of the first
water. "He don't often get such a chance," thought Mr. Ryfe, accepting
with extreme graciousness the other's civilities as to open windows
and change of seats. He even went so far as to take a proffered cigar
from the case of his fellow-traveller, which he would have smoked
forth-with, but for the peremptory objections of a crusty old
gentleman, who arrived at the last moment, encumbered with such a
paraphernalia of railway-rugs, travelling-bags, books, newspapers and
magazines as denoted the through-passenger, not to be got rid of at
any intermediate station. The old gentleman glared defiance, but made
himself comfortable nevertheless; and the presence of this common
enemy was a bond of union to render the two chance acquaintances more
than ordinarily cordial and communicative.

Smoking being prohibited, they had not proceeded many miles into the
country ere the gentleman in spectacles produced a box of lozenges
from his pocket, and, selecting one for his own consumption, offered
another, with much suavity, to Tom Ryfe, surveying meanwhile, with
inquisitive glances, the bulge in that gentleman's breast-pocket,
where he carried his valuable package; but here again both were
startled, not to say irritated, by the dictatorial interference of the
last arrival.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," said this irrepressible old man, "I cannot
permit it. Damn me, sir!" turning full round upon Tom Ryfe, "I _won't_
permit it! I can detect the smell of chloroform in those lozenges.
Smell, sir, I've the smell of a bloodhound. I could hunt a scamp all
over England by nose--by nose, I tell you, sir, and worry him to death
when I ran into him; and I _would_ too. Now, sir, if _you_ choose to
be chloroformed, I don't. I'm not anxious to be taken out of this
compartment as stupid as an owl, and as cold as a cabbage, with a
pain in my eyes, a singing in my ears, and a scoundrel's hands in my
waistcoat-pockets. Excuse me, sir, I'm warm--I wouldn't give much for
a chap that wasn't--and I speak my mind!"

It seemed a bad speculation to quarrel with him, this big, burly,
resolute, and disagreeable old man. Tom Ryfe, for once, was at a
nonplus. He murmured a few vague sentences of dissent, while the
passenger in spectacles, consigning his lozenges to an inner pocket,
buried himself in the broad sheet of the _Times_. But it was his turn
now, and not even thus could he escape. Staring grimly at him, over
the top of the paper, his tormentor fired a point-blank question, from
which there was no refuge.

"Pray, sir," said he, "are you a chemist?"

The gentleman in spectacles signified, by a shake of the head, that
was not his profession.

"Then, sir," continued the other, "do you know anything about
chemistry--volatile essences, noxious drugs, subtle poisons? I do."
(Here Tom Ryfe observed his ally turn pale.) "Permit me to remark,
sir, that if _you_ don't, you are like a school-boy carrying a
pocketful of squibs and crackers on the fifth of November, unconscious
that a single spark may blow him into the Christmas holidays before he
can say 'knife!' Let me see those lozenges, sir--let me have them in
my hand; I'll tell you in five seconds what they're made of, and how,
and where, and why."

Here the man in spectacles, with considerable presence of mind, threw
the whole of his lozenges out of window, under cover of the _Times_.

"You frighten me, sir," said he; "I wouldn't keep such dangerous
articles about me on any consideration."

The old gentleman executed an elaborate wink, denoting extreme
satisfaction, at Tom Ryfe. "If you were going through," said he, "I
could tell you some funny stories. Queer tricks upon travellers
I've seen in my time. Why I was the first person to find out the
sinking-floor dodge in West Street. My evidence transported three
people for life, and a fourth for fifteen years. I once saw a man
pulled down by the heels through a grating in one of the busiest
streets in the City, and if I _hadn't_ seen him he would never have
come up alive. Why the police apply to me for advice many a time when
people are missing. 'Don't distress yourselves,' says I, 'they'll turn
up, never fear.' And they _do_ turn up, sir, in nineteen cases out of
twenty. In the twentieth, when there's foul play, we generally know
something about it within eight-and-forty hours. Bragford? Is it? You
get out here, do you? Good-morning, gentlemen; I hope you've enjoyed
your jaunt."

Then as Tom, collecting great-coats, newspapers, etc., followed his
new acquaintance out of the carriage, this strange old gentleman
detained him for an instant by the arm.

"Friend of yours, sir?" said he, pointing to the man in spectacles on
the platform. "Never saw him before? I thought so. Sharper, sir, I'll
take my oath of it, or something worse. I know the sort; I've exposed
hundreds of them. Take my advice, sir, and never see him again."

With that the train glided on, leaving Mr. Ryfe and the gentleman
in spectacles staring at each other over a basket of fish and a
portmanteau.

"Mad!" observed the latter, with an uneasy attempt at a laugh, and a
readjustment of his glasses.

"Mad, no doubt," answered Tom, but followed the lunatic's counsel,
nevertheless, so far as to refrain from offering the other a lift
in the well-appointed brougham, with its burly coachman, waiting to
convey him to Ecclesfield Manor, though his late fellow-traveller was
proceeding in that direction on foot.

Tom had determined to sleep at the Railway Hotel, Bragford, ere he
returned to London next day. This arrangement he considered more
respectful than an intrusion on the hospitality of Ecclesfield, should
it be offered him. Perhaps so scrupulous a regard for the proprieties
mollified Miss Bruce in his favour, and called forth an invitation
to tea in the drawing-room when he had concluded the solitary dinner
prepared for him after his journey.

Tom Ryfe was always a careful dresser. Up to forty most men are. It
is only when we have nobody to please that we become negligent of
pleasing. I believe, though, that never in his life did he tie his
neckcloth or brush his whiskers with more care than on the present
occasion in a large and dreary chamber known to the household as one
of the "best bedrooms" of Ecclesfield Manor.

Tom looked about him, with a proud consciousness that at last his foot
was on the ladder he had wanted all his life to climb. Here he stood,
actually dressing for dinner, a welcome guest in the house of an
old-established county family, on terms of confidence, if not
intimacy, with its proud and beautiful female representative, in whose
cause he was about to do battle with all the force of his intellect,
and (Tom began to think she could make him fool enough for anything)
all the resources of his purse. The old family pictures--sad daubs, or
they would never have been consigned to the bedrooms--simpered down on
him with encouraging benignity. Prim women, wearing enormously long
waists, and their heads a good deal on one side, pointed their fans
at him, while he washed his hands, with a coquetry irresistible, had
their colours only stood, combining entreaty and command; while
a jolly old boy in flowing wig, steel breast-plate, and the most
convivial of noses, smiled in his face, as who should say, "_Audaces
Fortuna juvat_!--Go in, my hearty, and win if you can!"

What was there in these surroundings, in the orderly decorum of the
well-regulated mansion, in the chiming of the stable clock, nay, in
the reflection of his own person shown by that full-length glass, to
take the starch, as it were, out of Tom's self-confidence, turning his
moral courage limp and helpless for the nonce, bringing insensibly to
his mind the familiar refrain of "Not for Joseph"? What was there that
bade him man himself against this discouragement, as true bravery mans
itself against the sensation of fear? and why should he be less worthy
of approbation than other spirits who venture on "enterprises of great
pith and moment" with beating hearts indeed, but with unflinching
courage and a dogged determination to succeed?

Had Tom been a young knight arming for a tournament, in which the good
fortune of his lance was to win him a king's daughter for his bride,
he might have claimed to be an admirable and interesting hero. Was
he, indeed, a less respectable adventurer, that for steel he had to
substitute French polish, for surcoat and corselet, broadcloth and
cambric--that the battle he was to wage must be fought out by tenacity
of purpose and ingenuity of brain, rather than strength of arm and
downright hardness of skull?

He shook a little too much scent on his handkerchief as he finished
dressing, and walked down-stairs in a state of greater agitation than
he would have liked to admit.

Dinner was soon done. Eaten in solitude with grave servants watching
every mouthful, he was glad to get it over. In a glass of brown sherry
he drank Miss Brace's health, and thus primed, followed the butler to
the drawing-room, where that lady sat working by the light of a single
lamp.

The obscurity was in his favour. Tom made his bow and accepted the
chair offered him, less awkwardly than was to be expected from the
situation.

Maud looked very beautiful with the light falling on her sculptured
chin, her fair neck, and white hands, set off by the deep shadows of
the mourning dress she wore.

I believe he was going to begin by saying "it had been a fine day,"
but she stopped him in her clear, cold voice, with its patrician
accent, so difficult to define, yet so impossible to mistake.

"I have to thank you, Mr. Ryfe, for taking such care of my jewels. I
hope the man left them at your office as he promised, and that you had
no farther trouble about them."

He wanted to say that "no errand of hers could be a trouble to him,"
but the words stuck in his throat, or she would hardly have proceeded
so graciously.

"We must go into a few matters of business this evening, if you have
got the papers you mentioned. I leave here to-morrow, and there is
little time to spare."

He produced a neatly-folded packet, docketed and carefully tied with
tape. The sight of it roused his energies, as the shaking of a guidon
rouses an old trooper. Despite of the enchantress and all her glamour,
Tom was himself again.

"Business is my trade, Miss Bruce," said he briskly. "I must ask
your earnest attention for a quarter of an hour, while I explain our
position as regards the estate. At present it appears beset with
difficulties. That's my look-out. Before we begin," added Tom, with a
diffident faltering of voice, partly natural, partly assumed, "forgive
my asking your future address. It is indispensable that we should
frequently communicate, and--and--I cannot help hoping and expressing
my hope for your happiness in the home you have chosen."

Maud's smile was very taking. She smiled with her eyes, those dark,
pleasing eyes that would have made a fool of a wiser man than Tom.

"I am going to Aunt Agatha's," she said. "I am to live with her for
good. I have no home of my own now."

The words were simple enough--spoken, too, without sadness or
bitterness as a mere abstract matter of fact, but they aroused all the
pen-and-ink chivalry in Tom's nature, and he vowed in his heart to lay
goose-quill in rest on her behalf, with the devotion of a Montmorency
or a Bayard.

"Miss Bruce," said he resolutely, "the battle is not yet lost. In our
last, of the 15th, we advised you that the other side had already
taken steps to oppose our claims. My uncle has great experience, and I
will not conceal from you that my uncle is less sanguine than myself;
but I begin to see my way, and if there is a possibility of winning,
by hook or by crook, depend upon it, Miss Bruce, win we _will_, for
our own sakes, and--and--for _yours_!"

The last two words were spoken in a whisper, being indeed a
spontaneous ebullition, but she heard them nevertheless. In her deep
sorrow, in her friendless, homeless position there was something
soothing and consolatory in the sympathy of this young man, lawyer's
clerk though he were, as she insisted with unnecessary repetition
to herself. He showed at his best, too, while explaining the legal
complications involved in the whole business, and the steps by which
he hoped eventually to succeed. Maud was too thoroughly a woman not to
admire power, and Tom's intellect possessed obviously no small share
of that quality, when directed on such matters as the present. In
half-an-hour he had furnished her with a lucid statement of the whole
case, and in half-an-hour he had inspired her with respect for
his opinion, admiration of his sagacity, and confidence in his
strength--not a bad thirty minutes' work. At its conclusion, she shook
hands with him cordially when she wished him good-night. Tom was
no fool, and knew when to venture as when to hold back. He bowed
reverentially over the white hand, muttering only--"God bless you,
Miss Bruce! If you think of anything else, at a moment's notice I will
come from the end of the world to serve you,"--and so hurried away
before she could reply.




CHAPTER V


THE CRACKSMAN'S CHECKMATE


Puckers, or Miss Puckers, as she liked to be called below-stairs,
was a little puzzled by her young mistress's abstraction, while she
brushed out Maud's wealth of raven hair for the night. Stealing
glances at herself in the glass opposite, she could not help observing
the expression on Miss Bruce's face. The light was in it once more
that had been so quenched by her father's death. Puckers, who, in the
housekeeper's room, had discussed the affairs of the family almost
hourly ever since that sorrowful event, considered that it must have
left his daughter in the possession of untold wealth, and that "the
young man from town," as she designated Tom Ryfe, was sent down
expressly to afford the heiress an estimate of her possessions. A true
lady's-maid, she determined to hazard the inquiry.

"I suppose, miss," said she, brushing viciously, "we sha'n't be going
to your aunt's now quite so soon. I'm sure I've been that hurried and
put about, I don't scarce know which way to turn."

"Why?" asked Maud quietly. "Not so hard, please."

"Well, miss, a lady is not like a servant, you know; she can do as she
chooses, of course. But if I was _you_, miss, I'd remain on the spot.
There's the new furniture to get; there's the linen to see to; there's
the bailiff given warning; and that there young man from town, I
suppose _he_ wouldn't come if we could do without him, charging
goodness knows what, as if his very words was gold. But I give you
joy, miss, of your fortune, I do. I was a-sayin', only last night, was
it? to Mrs. Plummer, says I, 'Whatever _my_ young lady will do,' says
I, 'in a house where she isn't mistress, she that's been used to rule
in her poor ma's time, and her pa's, ah! ever since she cut her teeth
almost;' and Mrs. Plummer says, says she----"

"That'll do, Puckers," observed Miss Bruce, "I shall not want you any
more. Good-night."

She took as little notice of her handmaid's volubility as if the
latter had been a grey parrot, and dismissed her with a certain cold,
imperial manner that none of the household ever dreamt it possible
to dispute or disobey; but after Puckers, with a quantity of white
draperies over her arm, had departed to return no more, she sat down
at the dressing-table, and began to think with all her might.

Her maid was a fool, no doubt: all maids were; but the shaft of folly,
shot at random, went home to the quick. "A house where she wasn't
mistress!" Had she ever considered the future shelter offered her by
Aunt Agatha in that light? Here at the Manor, for as long as she could
remember, had she not reigned supreme? All the little arrangements of
dinner-parties, picnics, archery-meetings, and such gatherings as
make up country society, had fallen into her hands. Mamma didn't
care--mamma never cared how anything was settled so long as papa was
pleased; and papa thought Maud could not possibly do wrong. So by
degrees--and this at an age when young ladies are ordinarily in the
schoolroom--Miss Bruce had grown, on all social questions, to be the
virtual head of the family. It was a position of which, till the time
came to abdicate, she had not sufficiently appreciated the value. It
seemed so natural to order carriages and horses at her own hours, to
return visits, to receive guests, to do the honours of a comfortable
country-house with an adequate establishment, and now, could she bear
to live with Aunt Agatha, on sufferance?--Aunt Agatha, whom she had
never liked, and whom she only refrained from snubbing and setting
down, because they so seldom met, but when the elder lady had been
invited by the younger as a guest! "To be dependent," thought Maud,
mentally addressing the beautiful face in the glass, "How should you
like that? _you_ with your haughty head, and your scornful eyes, and
your hard, unbending heart? I know you! Nobody knows you but me! And I
know how _bad_ you are--how capricious, and how cruel! When you want
anything, do you ever spare anybody to get it? Did you ever love any
one on earth as well as your own way? Even mamma? O, mamma, dear, dear
mamma, if you had lived I might have got better--I _was_ better, I
know I was better while I was with _you_. But now--now I must be
myself. I can't help it. After all, it is not my fault. What is it
I most covet and desire in the world? It is power. Rank, wealth,
luxury--these are all very well as accessories of life; but how should
I loathe and hate them if they were conditional on my thinking as
other people thought, or doing what I was told! I ought to have been
a man. Women are such weak, vapid, idiotic characters, in general--at
least, all I meet down here. Engrossed with their children, their
parishes, their miserable household cares and perplexities. While in
London, I believe there are women who actually lead a party and turn
out a minister. But they are beautiful, of course. Well--and me? I
don't think I am so much amiss. With my looks and the position I ought
to have, surely I might hold my own with the best of them. But what
good will my looks do me if I am to be a dependent on Aunt Agatha? No.
Without the estate I am nothing. With it I might be _anything_. This
lawyer thinks he can win it for me. I wonder if he knows. How clever
he seems! and how thoughtful! Nothing escapes him, and nothing seems
to take him by surprise. And yet what a fool I could make of him if I
chose. I saw it before he had been five minutes in the room. I wonder
now what he thinks of _me_!--whether he has the presumption to suppose
I could ever allow him to betray what he cared for me. I believe I
should rather admire his impudence! It is pleasant to be cared for,
even by an inferior; and, after all, this Mr. Ryfe is not without his
good points. He has plenty of talent and energy, and I should think
audacity. By his own account he sticks at nothing, when he means
winning, and he certainly means to win for me if he can. I never saw
anybody so eager, so much in earnest. Perhaps he thinks that if he
could come to me and say, 'There, Miss Bruce, I have saved your
birthright for you, and I ask nothing but one kind word in return,' I
might be disposed to give it, and something more. Well, I don't know.
Perhaps it would be as good a way as any other of getting into favour.
One thing is certain. The inheritance I must preserve at every
sacrifice. Dear me, how late it is! I ought to have been in bed hours
ago. Puckers, is that you?"

Puckers did not answer, and a faint rustle in the adjoining room,
which had called forth Miss Bruce's question, ceased the instant she
spoke aloud.

This young lady was not nervous; far from it; yet her watch seemed
to tick with extraordinary vigour, and her heart to beat harder than
common while she listened.

The door of communication between the two rooms was closed. Another
door in the smaller apartment opened to the passage, but this, she
remembered, was habitually locked on the inside. It couldn't be
Puckers, therefore, who thus disturbed her mistress's reflections,
unless that handmaiden had come down the chimney, or in at the window.

In this smaller room Miss Bruce kept her riding-habits, her
ball-dresses, her draperies of different fabric, her transparencies of
all kinds, and her jewels.

The house was very silent--so silent, that in the distant corridors
were distinctly audible those faint and ghostly footfalls, which
traverse all large houses after midnight. There were candles burning
on Maud's toilet-table, but they served rather to show how dismal were
the shadowy corners of the large, lofty bedroom, than to afford light
and confidence to its inmate.

She listened intently. Yes; she was sure she heard somebody in the
next room--a step that moved stealthily about; a noise as of woodwork
skilfully and cautiously forced open.

One moment she felt frightened. Then her courage came back the higher
for its interruption. She could have escaped from her own room into
the passage, easily enough, and so alarmed the house; but when she
reflected that its fighting garrison consisted only of an infirm old
butler--for the footman was absent on leave--there seemed little to
be gained by such a proceeding, if violence or robbery were really
intended. Besides, she rather scorned the idea of summoning assistance
till she had ascertained the amount of danger.

So she blew her candle out, crept to the door of the little room, and
laid her hand noiselessly on its lock.

Softly as she turned it, gently as she pushed the door back on its
hinges inch by inch, she did not succeed in entering unobserved. The
light of a shaded lantern flashed over her the instant she crossed the
threshold, dazzling her eyes indeed, yet not so completely but
that she made out the figure of a man standing over her shattered
jewel-box, of which he seemed to have been rifling the contents. Quick
as thought, she said to herself, "Come, there is only one! If I can
frighten _him_ more than he frightens _me_, the game is mine."

The man swore certain ghastly oaths in a whisper, and Maud was aware
of the muzzle of a pistol covering her above the dark lantern.

She wondered why she wasn't frightened, not the least frightened--only
rather angry and intensely determined to save the jewels, and have it
out.

She could distinguish a dark figure behind the spot of intense light
radiating round her own person, and perceived, besides, almost without
looking, that an entrance had been made by the window, which stood
wide open to disclose the topmost rounds of a garden-ladder, borrowed
doubtless from the tool-house, propped against its sill.

What the housebreaker saw was a vision of dazzling beauty in a flood
of light. A pale, queenly woman, with haughty, delicate face, and
loops of jet-black hair, falling over robes of white, erect and
dauntless, fronting his levelled weapon without the slightest sign of
fear.

He had never set eyes on such a sight as this; no, neither in circus
nor music-hall, nor gallery of metropolitan theatre at Christmas. For
a moment he lost his head--for a moment he hesitated.

In that moment Miss Bruce showed herself equal to the occasion.


Quick as thought, she made one step to the window, pushed the ladder
outwards with all her force, and shut down the sash. As it closed, the
ladder, poising for an instant, fell with a crash on the gravel below.

"Now," she said quietly, "you are trapped and taken. Better make no
resistance, for the gamekeepers watching below are a rough sort of
people, and I do not wish to see you ill-treated."

The man was aghast! What could it all mean? Was he awake or dreaming?
She must be well backed, he said to himself, to assume such a position
as this; and she looked so beautiful--so beautiful!

The latter consideration was not without its effect on him, even in
the exercise of his profession. "Gentleman Jim," as his mates affirmed
in their nervous English, became a fool of the deepest crimson dye
whenever a woman was concerned, and this woman was in his eyes as an
angel of light.

Nevertheless, instinctively rather than of intention, he muttered
hoarsely--

"Drop it, miss, I warn you. One word out loud and I'll shoot, as sure
as you stand there."

"Shoot away!" she answered with perfect composure; "you will save me
the trouble of giving an alarm. They expect it, and are waiting for it
every moment below-stairs. Light those candles, and let us see what
damage you have done before you return the plunder."

A pair of wax-candles stood on the chimney-piece, and he obeyed
mechanically, wondering at himself the while. His cunning, however,
had not entirely deserted him, and he left his pistol lying on the
table, ready to snatch it away if she tried to take possession. It was
thus he gauged her confidence, and seeing she scarcely noticed the
weapon, argued that powerful assistance must be near at hand to
render this beautiful young lady so arbitrary and so unconcerned.
His admiration burst out in spite of his discomfiture and critical
position.

"Well, you _are_ a cool one!" he exclaimed, in accents of mingled
vexation and approval. "A cool one and a stunner, I'm blessed if you
ain't! No offence, but I never see your likes yet, not since I was
born. Come, miss, let's cry quits. You pass me out o' this on the
quiet. I dessay as I can make shift to get down without the ladder;
an' I'll leave all these here gimcracks just as I found 'em. Now I've
seen ye once, I'm blessed if I'd take so much as an ear-drop,
unless it was in the way of a keepsake. Pass me out, miss, and I'll
promise--no, I'm blowed if I think as I _can_ promise--never to come
here no more."

Undisguised admiration--the admiration always acceptable to a woman
when accompanied with respect--shone in Gentleman Jim's dark eyes. He
seemed under a spell, and while he acknowledged its strength, had no
power, nay, had no wish, to resist its influence. When on such jobs as
these it was his habit to observe an unusual sobriety. He was glad now
to think of his adherence to that rule. Had he been drunk, he might,
peradventure, have insulted this divinity. What had come over him? He
felt almost pleased to know he was in her power, and yet she treated
him like the dirt beneath her feet.

"No insolence, sir," she said in a commanding voice. "Let me see,
first of all, that every one of my trinkets is in its place. There,
that bracelet would have brought you money, those diamonds would have
been valuable if you could have got them clear off. You must have
learned your trade very badly to suppose that with such things in the
house we keep no guard. Come, I am willing to believe that distress
brought you to this. Listen. You are in my power, and I will show you
mercy. If I give you five pounds now, on the spot, and let you go,
will you promise to try and get your bread as an honest man?"

The tears came in his eyes. This woman, then, that looked so like an
angel, was angel all through. Yet, touched as he felt in his better
nature, the proletary instinct bade him try once more if her effort to
get rid of him originated in pity or fear, and he muttered, "Guineas!
make it guineas, miss, and I'll say 'done.'"

"Not a shilling more, not a farthing," she answered, moving her hand
as if to put it on the bell-pull. "It cannot matter to me," she added,
in a tone of the most complete indifference, "but while I am about
it I think I would rather be the making of an honest man than the
destruction of a rogue."

Her acting was perfect. She seemed so cold, so impassive, so
completely mistress of the position, and all the time her heart was
beating as the gambler's beats, albeit in winning vein, ere he lifts
the box from off the imprisoned dice--as the lion-tamer's beats when
he spurns in its very den the monster that could crush him with a
movement, and that yet he holds in check by an imaginary force,
irresistible only so long as it is unresisted.

Such situations have a horrible fascination of their own. I have even
known them prolonged to gratify a morbid thirst for excitement; but
I think Miss Bruce was chiefly anxious to be released from her
precarious position, and to get rid of her visitor as soon as she
could. Even her resolute nerves were beginning to give way, and she
knew her own powers well enough to mistrust a protracted trial of
endurance. Feminine fortitude is so apt to break down all at once, and
Miss Bruce, though a courageous specimen of her sex, was but a woman
who had wrought herself up for a gallant effort, after all.

She was quite unprepared though for its results. Gentleman Jim
snatched up his pistol, stowed it away in his breast-pocket, as if
heartily ashamed of it, brought out from that receptacle a pearl
necklace and a pair of coral ear-rings, dashed them down on the table
with an imprecation, and looking ridiculously sheepish, thus delivered
himself--

"Five pounds, miss! Five devils! If ever I went for to ask five
shillings of you, or five fardens, may the hands rot off at my wrists
and the teeth drop out of my head. Strike me blind, now, this moment,
in this here room, if I'd take so much as a pin's head that you
valued, not if my life depended on it and there wasn't no other way of
getting a morsel of bread! Look ye here, miss. No offence; I'm but
a rough-and-ready chap, and you're a lady. I never come a-nigh one
afore. Now I know what they mean when they talk of a real lady, and I
see what it is puts such a spirit into them swells as lives with the
likes of you. But a rough chap needn't be a blind chap. I come in here
for to clean out your jewel-box. I tell ye fair, I don't think as I
meant to have ill-treated you, and now I know as I _couldn't_ have
done it, but I wanted them gimcracks just the same. If so be as you'd
like to see me shopped and lagged, you take and ring that there bell,
and look if I go for to move a foot from this blessed spot. There! If
so be as you bid me walk out free from that there winder, take and
count these here now at once, and see there's not one missing and not
one broke. Say the word, miss--which is it to be?"

The reaction was coming on fast. Maud dared not trust her voice, but
she pointed to the window with a gesture in which she preserved an
admirable imitation of confidence and command. Gentleman Jim threw
up the sash, but paused ere he ventured his plunge into the darkness
outside.

"Look ye 'ere, miss," he muttered in a hoarse whisper, with one leg
over the ledge, "if ever you wants a chap to do you a turn, don't ye
forget there's one inside this waistcoat as will take a leap in a
halter any day to please ye. You drop a line to 'Gentleman Jim,' at
the Sunflower, High Holborn. O! I can read, bless ye, and write and
cipher too. What I says I sticks to. No offence, miss. I wonder will I
ever see you again?"

He darted back for an instant, much to Maud's dismay, snatched a knot
of ribbon which had fallen from her dress on the carpet, and was gone.

She heard his leap on the gravel below, and his cautious footsteps
receding towards the park. Then she passed her hands over her face,
and looked about her as one who wakes from a dream.

"It was an escape, I suppose," she said, "and I ought to have been
horribly frightened; yet I never seemed to lose the upper hand with
him for a moment. How odd that even a man like that should be such a
fool. No wiser and no cooler than Mr. Ryfe. What is it, I wonder; what
is it, and how long will it last?"

[Illustration: He muttered in a hoarse whisper, with one leg over the
ledge.]




CHAPTER VI


A REVERSIONARY INTEREST


Although Dorothea could assume on occasions so bright an exterior as I
have in a previous chapter endeavoured to describe, her normal state
was undoubtedly that which is best conveyed by the epithet "grimy."
Old Mr. Bargrave, walking serenely into his office at eleven, and
meeting this handmaiden on the stairs, used to wonder how so much
dirt could accumulate on the human countenance, when irrigated, as
Dorothea's red eyelids too surely testified, by daily tears. Yes, she
had gone about her work of late with a heavy heart and a moody brow.
Hers was at best a dull dreary life, but in it there grew a noxious
weed which she was pleased to cherish for a flower. Well, it was
withering every day before her eyes, and all the tears she could shed
were not enough to keep it alive. Ah! when the ship is going down
under our very feet I don't think it much matters what may be our rank
and rating on board. The cook's mate in the galley is no less dismayed
than the admiral in command. Dorothea's light, so to speak, was only
a tallow-candle, yet to put it out was to leave the poor woman very
desolate in the dark. So Mr. Bargrave ventured one morning to ask if
she felt quite well; but the snappish manner in which his inquiries
were met, as though they masked a load of hidden sarcasm and insult,
caused the old gentleman to scuffle into his office with unusual
activity, much disturbed and humiliated, while resolved never so to
commit himself again.

Into that office we must take the liberty of following him, tenanted
as it is only by himself and Tom Ryfe.

The latter, extremely well dressed, wears a posy of spring flowers at
his buttonhole, and betrays in his whole bearing that he is under some
extraneous influence of an unbusinesslike nature. Bargrave subsides
into his leather chair with a grunt, shuffles his papers, dips a pen
in the inkstand, and looks over his spectacles at his nephew.

"Waste of time, waste of capital, Tom," says he, with some irritation.
"Mind, I washed _my_ hands of it from the first. You've been at work
now for some months; that's _your_ look-out and it's been kept apart
and separate from the general business--that's _mine_."

"I've got Tangle's opinion here," answered Tom; "I won't ask you to
look at it, uncle. He's dead against us. Just what you said six months
back. There's no getting over that trust-deed, nor through it,
nor round it, nor any way to the other side of it. I've done _my_
d----dest, and we're not a bit better off than when we began."

He spoke in a cheerful, almost an exulting tone, quite unlike a man
worsted in a hard and protracted struggle.

"I'm sorry for the young lady," observed Bargrave; "but I never
expected anything else. It's a fine estate, and it must go to the male
heir. She has but a small settlement, Tom, very inadequate to her
position, as I told poor Mr. Bruce many a time. He used to say
everything would be set right by his will, and now one of these girls
is left penniless, and the other with a pittance, a mere pittance,
brought up, as I make no doubt she was, to believe herself an
heiress."

"One of them!" exclaimed Tom. "What do you mean?"

"Why, that poor thing who was born a few weeks too soon," answered
Bargrave. "She's totally unprovided for. With regard to Miss Bruce,
there is a settlement. Two hundred a year, Tom, for life; nothing
more. I told you so when you undertook the job. And now who's to pay
your costs?"

"Not you, uncle," answered Tom flippantly, "so don't distress yourself
on that score."

"I don't, indeed," observed Bargrave, with emphasis.

"You've had your own time to work this, on the understanding, as you
know, that it was to be worked at your own risk. I haven't interfered;
it was no affair of mine. But your costs will be heavy, Tom, I can't
help seeing that. Tangle's opinion don't come so cheap, you see,
though it's word for word the same as mine. I would have let _you_
have it for nothing, and anybody else for six and eightpence."

"The costs _will_ be heavy," answered Tom, still radiant. "I should
say a thou. wouldn't cover the amount. Of course, if we can't get them
from the estate, they must come out of my pocket."

Bargrave's eyebrows were raised. How the new school went ahead, he
thought. Here was this nephew of his talking of a thousand pounds with
an indifference verging on contempt. Well, that was Tom's look-out;
nevertheless, on such a road it would be wise to establish a
halting-place, and his tone betrayed more interest than common while
he asked--

"You won't take it into Chancery, Tom, will you?"

The younger man laid his forefinger to the side of his nose, winked
thrice with considerable energy, lifted his hat from its peg, adjusted
his collars in the glass, nodded to his uncle, muttering briefly,
"Back in two hours," and vanished.

Old Bargrave looked after him with a grim, approving smile. "Boy or
man," said he aloud, "that chap always knew what he was about. Tom can
be safely trusted to take care of Number One."

He was wrong, though, on the present occasion. If Mr. Ryfe did indeed
know what he was about, there could be no excuse for the enterprise on
which he had embarked. He was selfish. He would not have denied his
selfishness, and indeed rather prided himself on that quality; yet
behold him now waging a contest in which a man wastes money, time,
comfort, and self-respect, that he may wrest from real sorrow and
discomfiture the shadow of a happiness which he cannot grasp when he
has reached it. There is much wisdom in the opinion expressed by a
certain fox concerning grapes hanging out of distance; but it is a
wisdom seldom acquired till the limbs are too stiff to stretch for an
effort--till there is scarce a tooth left in the mumbling jaws to be
set on edge.

Tom Ryfe had allowed his existence to merge itself in another's.
For months, as devotedly as such natures can worship, he had been
worshipping his ideal in the person of Miss Bruce. I do not say that
he was capable of that highest form of adoration which seeks in the
first place the unlimited sovereignty of its idol, and which, as being
too good for them, women constantly undervalue; but I do say that he
esteemed his fair client the most beautiful, the most attractive, and
the most perfect of her sex, resolving that for him she was the only
woman in the world, and that in defiance of everything, even her own
inclinations, he would win her if he could.

In Holborn there is always a hansom to be got at short notice.
"Grosvenor Crescent," says Tom, shutting the half-doors with a bang,
and shouting his orders through the little hole in the top. So to
Grosvenor Crescent he is forwarded accordingly, at the utmost speed
attainable by a pair of high wheels, a well-bred "screw," and a
rough-looking driver with a flower in his mouth.

There are several peculiarities, all unreasonable, many ridiculous,
attending the demeanour of a man in love. Not the least eccentric
of these are his predatory instincts, his tendency to prowl, his
preference for walking over other modes of conveyance, and inclination
to subterfuge of every kind as to his ultimate destination. Tom Ryfe
was going to Belgrave Square; why should he direct his driver to set
him down a quarter of a mile off? why overpay the man by a shilling?
why wear down the soles of an exceedingly thin and elaborate pair of
boots on the hot, hard pavement without compunction? Why? Because he
was in love. This was also the reason, no doubt, that he turned red
and white when he approached the Square railings; that his nose seemed
to swell, his mouth got dry, his hat felt too tight, and the rest
of his attire too loose for the occasion; also that he affected an
unusual interest in the numbers of the doors, as though meditating a
ceremonious morning call, while all the time his heart was under
the laburnums in the centre of the Square gardens, at the feet of a
haughty, handsome girl, dressed in half-mourning, with the prettiest
black-laced parasol to be found on this side of the Rue Castiglione,
for love--of which, indeed, as the gift of Mr. Ryfe, it was a type--or
money, which, not having been yet paid for, it could hardly be said to
represent.

That heart of his gave a bound when he saw it in her hand as she
sailed up the broad gravel-walk to let him in. He was almost happy,
poor fellow, for almost a minute, not distressing himself to observe
that the colour never deepened a shade on her proud, pale cheek; that
the shapely hand, which fitted its pass-key to the lock, was firm as
a dentist's, and the clear, cold voice that greeted him far steadier
than his own. It is a choice of evils, after all, this favourite game
of cross-purposes for two. To care more than the adversary entails
worry and vexation; to care less makes a burden of it, and a bore.

"Thank you so much for coming, Miss Bruce--Maud," said Tom
passionately. "You never fail, and yet I always dread, somehow, that I
shall be disappointed."

"I keep my word, Mr. Ryfe," answered the young lady, with perfect
self-possession; "and I am quite as anxious as you can be, I assure
you. I want so to know how we are getting on."

He showed less discouragement than might have been expected. Perhaps
he was used to the _sang-froid_, perhaps he rather liked it, believing
it, in his ignorance, a distinctive mark of class, not knowing--how
should he?--that, once excited, these thoroughbred ones are, of all
racers, the least amenable to restraint.

"I have bad news," he said tenderly. "Miss Bruce, I hardly like to
tell you that I fear we cannot make our case enough to come into
court. I took the opinion of the first man we have. I am sorry to
say he gives it against us. I am not selfish," he added, with real
emotion, "and I am sorry indeed, for your sake, dearest Miss Bruce."

He meant to have called her "Maud"; but the beautiful lips tightened,
and the delicate eyebrows came down very straight and stern over the
deep eyes in which he had learned to read his fate. He would wait for
a better opportunity, he thought, of using the dear, familiar name.

She took small notice of his trouble.


"Has there been no mismanagement?" she asked, almost angrily; "no
papers lost? no foul play? Have you done your best?"

"I have, indeed," he answered meekly. "After all, is it not for my own
interest as much as yours? Are they not henceforth to be in common?"

She ignored the question altogether; she seemed to be thinking of
something else. While they paced up and down a walk screened from the
Square windows by trees and shrubs already clothed in the tender,
quivering foliage of spring, she kept silence for several seconds,
looking straight before her with a sterner expression than he could
yet remember to have seen on the face he adored. Presently she spoke
in a hard, determined voice--

"I _am_ disappointed. Yes, Mr. Ryfe, I don't mind owning I am bitterly
and grievously disappointed. There, I suppose it's not your fault, so
you needn't look black about it; and I dare say you did the best
you could afford at the price. Well, I don't want to hurt your
feelings--your _very_ best, then. And yet it seems very odd--you were
so confident at first. Of course if the thing's really gone, and
there's no chance left, it's folly to think about it. But what a
future to lose--what a future to lose! Mr. Ryfe, I can't stay with
Aunt Agatha--I can't and I won't! How she could ever find anybody to
marry her! Mr. Ryfe, speak to me. What had I better do?"

Tom would have given a round sum of money at that moment to recall one
of the many imaginary conversations held with Miss Bruce, in which
he had exhausted poetry, sentiment, and forensic ardour for the
successful pleading of his suit. Now he could find nothing better to
say than that "he had hoped she was comfortable with Mrs. Stanmore;
and anybody who didn't make Miss Bruce comfortable must be brutal
and wicked. But--but--if it was really so--and she could be
persuaded--why, Miss Bruce must long have known----" And here
the voice of Tom, the plausible, the prudent, the self-reliant,
degenerated to a husky whisper, because he felt that his very heart
was mounting to his throat.

Miss Bruce cut him exceedingly short.

"You remember our bargain," she said bitterly. "If you don't, I can
remind you of it. Listen, Mr. Ryfe; I am not going to cheat you out of
your dues. You were to win back my fortune from the next of kin--this
cousin who seems to have law on his side. You charged yourself with
the trouble--that counts for nothing, it is in the way of your
business--with the costs--the expenses--I don't know what you call
them--these were to be paid out of the estate. It was all plain
sailing, if we had conquered; and there was an alternative in the
event of failure. I accepted it. But I tell you, not till every
stratagem has been tried, every stone turned, every resource
exhausted, do I acknowledge the defeat, nor--I speak plain English,
Mr. Ryfe--do I pay the penalty."

He turned very pale. "You did not use this tone when we walked
together through the snow in the avenue at Ecclesfield. You promised
of your own accord, you know you did," said poor Tom, trembling all
over; "and I have got your promise in writing locked up in a tin box
at home."

She laughed a hard, shrill laugh, not without some real humour in it,
at his obvious distress.

"Keep it safe in your tin box," said she, "and don't be afraid, when
the time comes, that I shall throw you over. Ah! what an odd thing
money is; and how it seems able to do everything!" She was looking
miles away now, totally unconscious of her companion's presence.
"To me this five or six thousand a year represents hope, enjoyment,
position--all that makes life worth having. More, to lose it is to
lose my freedom, to lose all that makes life endurable!"

"And you _have_ lost it," observed Tom doggedly. He was very brave,
very high-minded, very chivalrous in any way; but he possessed the
truly British quality of tenacity, and did not mean to be shaken off
by any feminine vagaries where once he had taken hold.

"Et je payerais de ma personne," replied Miss Bruce scornfully. "I
don't suppose you know any French. You must go now, Mr. Ryfe; my
maid's coming back for me from the bonnet-shop. I can't be trusted,
you see, over fifty yards of pavement and a crossing by myself. The
maid is walking with me now behind these lilac-bushes, you know. Her
name is Ryfe. She is very cross and silent; she wears a well-made
coat, shiny boots, rather a good hat, and carries a nosegay as big
as a chimney-sweep's--you can give it me if you like--I dare say you
bought it on purpose."

How she could twist and turn him at will! three or four playful words
like these, precious all the more that her general manner was so
haughty and reserved, caused Tom to forget her pride, her whims, her
various caprices, her too palpable indifference to himself. He offered
the flowers with humble gratitude, ignoring resolutely the presumption
that she would probably throw them away before she reached her own
door.

"Good-bye, Miss Bruce," said he, bowing reverently over the slim hand
she vouchsafed him, and "Good-bye," echoed the young lady, adding,
with another of those hard little laughs that jarred so on Tom's
nerves, "Come with better news next time, and don't give in while
there's a chance left; depend upon it the money's better worth having
than the client. By the bye, I sent you a card for Lady Goldthred's
this afternoon--only a stupid breakfast--did you forget it?"

"Are you going?" returned Tom, with the clouds clearing from his brow.

"Perhaps we shall, if it's fine," was the reply. "And now I can't wait
any longer. Don't forget what I told you, and do the best you can."

So Tom Ryfe departed from his garden of Eden with sundry misgivings
not entirely new to him, that the fruit he took such pains to ripen
for his own gathering might but be gaudy wax-work after all, or
painted stone, perhaps, cold, smooth, and beautiful, against which he
should rasp his teeth in vain.

The well-tutored Puckers, dressed in faded splendour, and holding a
brown-paper parcel in her hand, was waiting for her young lady at the
corner of the Square.

While thus engaged she witnessed a bargain, of an unusual nature, made
apparently under extraordinary pressure of circumstances. A ragged
boy, established at the crossing, who had indeed rendered himself
conspicuous by his endeavours to ferry Puckers over dry-shod, was
accosted by a shabby-genteel and remarkably good-looking man in the
following vernacular--

"On this minnit, off at six, Buster; two bob an' a bender, and a three
of eye-water, in?"

"Done for another joey," replied Buster, with the premature acuteness
of youth foraging for itself in the streets of London.

"Done," repeated the man, pulling a handful of silver from his pocket,
and assuming the broom at once to enter on his professional labours,
ere Puckers had recovered from her astonishment, or Buster could
vanish round the corner in the direction of a neighbouring mews.

Though plying his instrument diligently, the man kept a sharp eye on
the Square gardens. When Tom Ryfe emerged through the heavy iron gate
he whispered a deep and horrible curse, but his dark eyes shone and
his whole face beamed into a ruffianly kind of beauty, when after a
discreet pause, Miss Bruce followed the young lawyer through the same
portal. Then the man went to work with his broom harder than ever. Not
Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak at the feet of his sovereign
mistress lest they should take a speck of mud could have shown more
loyalty, more devotion, than did Gentleman Jim sweeping for bare life,
as Miss Bruce and her maid approached the crossing he had hired for
the occasion.

Maud recognised him at a glance. Not easily startled or surprised, she
bade Puckers walk on, while she took a half-crown from her purse and
put it in the sweeper's hand.

"At least it is an honest trade," said she, looking him fixedly in the
face.

The man turned pale while he received her bounty.

"It's not that, miss," he stammered. "It's not that--I only wanted to
get a look of ye. I only wanted just to hear the turn of your voice
again. No offence, miss, I'll go away now. O! can't ye give a chap a
job? It's my heart's blood as I'd shed for you, free--and never ask no
more nor a kind word in return!"

She looked him over from head to foot once more and passed on. In that
look there was neither surprise, nor indignation, nor scorn, only a
quaint and somewhat amused curiosity, yet this thief and associate of
thieves quivered, as if it had been a sun-stroke. When she passed out
of sight he bit the half-crown till it bent, and hid it away in his
breast. "I'll never part with ye," said he, "never;" unmindful of poor
Dorothea, going about her work tearful and forlorn. Gentleman Jim,
uneducated, besotted, half-brutalised as he was, had yet drunk from
the cup that poisons equally the basest and noblest of our kind. A
well-dressed, good-looking young man, walking on the other side of
the Square, did not fail to witness Tom Ryfe's farewell and Maud's
interview with the crossing-sweeper. He too looked strangely
disturbed, pacing up and down an adjoining street, more than once,
before he could make up his mind to ring a well-known bell. Verily
Miss Bruce seemed to be one of those ladies whose destiny it is to
puzzle, worry, and interest every man with whom they come in contact.




CHAPTER VII


DICK STANMORE


She had certainly succeeded in puzzling Dick Stanmore and already
began to interest him. The worry would surely follow in due time.
Dick was a fine subject for the scalpel--good-humoured, generous,
single-hearted, with faultless digestive powers, teeth, and colour to
correspond, a strong tendency to active exercise, and such a faculty
of enjoyment as, except in the highest order of intellects, seldom
lasts a man over thirty.

Like many of his kind, he _said_ he hated London, but lived there very
contentedly from April to July, nevertheless. He was fresh, just at
present, from a good scenting season in Leicestershire, followed by a
sojourn on the Tweed, in which classical river he had improved many
shining hours, wading waist-deep under a twenty-foot rod, any number
of yards of line, and a fly of various hues, as gaudy, and but little
smaller than a cock pheasant. Now he had been a week in town, during
which period he met Miss Bruce at least once every day. This constant
intercourse is to be explained in a few words.

Mrs. Stanmore, the Aunt Agatha with whom Maud expressed herself so
unwilling to reside, was a sister of the late Mr. Bruce. She had
married a widower with one son, that widower being old Mr. Stanmore,
defunct, that son being Dick. Mrs. Stanmore, in the enjoyment of
a large jointure (which rather impoverished her step-son), though
arbitrary and unpleasant, was a woman of generous instincts, so
offered Maud a home the moment she learned her niece's double
bereavement; which home, for many reasons, heiress or no heiress, Miss
Bruce felt constrained to accept. Thus it came about that she found
herself walking with Tom Ryfe _en cachette_ in the Square gardens;
and, leaving them, recognised the gentleman whom she was to meet at
luncheon in ten minutes, on whose intellect at least, if not his
heart, she felt pretty sure she had already made an impression.

"I won't show her up," said Dick to his neatest boots, while he
scraped them at his mother's door, "but I _should_ like to know who
that bumptious-looking chap is, and what the h----ll she could have to
say to him in the Square gardens all the same."

Mr. Stanmore's language at the luncheon-table, it is needless to
say, was far less emphatic than that which relieved his feelings in
soliloquy; nor was he to-day quite so talkative as usual. His mother
thought him silent (he always called her "mother," and, to do her
justice, she could not have loved her own son better, nor scolded
him oftener, had she possessed one); Miss Bruce voted him stupid and
sulky. She told him so.

"A merrythought, if you please, and no bread-sauce," said the young
lady, in her calm, imperious manner. "Don't forget I hate bread-sauce,
if you mean to come here often to luncheon; and do _say_ something.
Aunt Agatha can't, no more can I. Recollect we've got a heavy
afternoon before us."

Aunt Agatha always contradicted. "Not heavier than any other
breakfast, Maud," said she severely. "You didn't think that tea at the
Tower heavy last week, nor the ghosts in the mess-room of the Blues.
Lady Goldthred's an old friend of mine, and it was very kind of her to
ask us. Besides, Dick's coming down in the barouche."

Maud's face brightened, and be sure, Dick saw it brighten.

"That accounts for it," said she, with the rare smile in her eyes;
"and he thinks we sha'n't let him smoke, so he sulks beforehand, grim,
grave, and silent as a ghost. Mr. Stanmore, cheer up. You may smoke
the whole way down. _I'll_ give you leave."

"Nonsense, my dear," observed Aunt Agatha sternly. "He don't want
to do anything of the kind. What have you been about, Maud, all
the morning? I looked for you everywhere to help me with the
visiting-list."

"Puckers and I took a 'constitutional,'" answered Miss Bruce
unblushingly. "We wanted to do some shopping." But her dark eyes stole
towards Dick, and, although his never met them, she felt satisfied he
had witnessed her interview with Tom Ryfe in the Square gardens.

"I saw you both coming in, Miss Bruce," said Dick, breaking the
awkward pause which succeeded Maud's mis-statement. "I think Puckers
wears twice as smart a bonnet as yours. I hope you are not offended."

Again that smile from the dark eyes. Dick felt, and perhaps she meant
him to feel, that he had lost nothing in her good opinion by ignoring
even to herself that which she wished to keep unknown.

"I think you've very little taste in bonnets, whatever you may have in
faces," answered the young lady; "and I think I shall go and put one
on now that will make you eat your words humbly when I appear in it on
the lawn at Lady Goldthred's."

"I have no doubt there won't be a dry eye in the place," answered
Dick, looking after her, as she left the room, with undisguised
admiration in his honest face--with something warmer and sweeter than
admiration creeping and gathering about his heart.

So they all went down together in the barouche, Dick sitting with his
back to the horses, and gazing his fill on the young beauty opposite,
looking so cool and fair in her fresh summer draperies, so thoroughly
in keeping with the light and sparkle of everything around--the
brilliant sunshine, the spring foliage, the varying scenery, even to
the varnish and glitter of the well-appointed carriage, and the plated
harness on the horses.

Aunt Agatha conversed but sparingly. She was occupied with the phantom
pages of her banker's book; with the shortcomings of a new housemaid;
not a little with the vague sketch of a dress, to be worn at certain
approaching gaieties, which should embody the majesty of the chaperon
without entirely resigning all pretensions to youth. But for one
remark, "that the coachman was driving very badly," I think she
travelled in stately silence as far as Kew. Not so the other
occupants of the barouche. Maud, desirous of forgetting much that was
distasteful to her in the events of the morning, and indeed, in the
course of her daily life, resolved to accept the tangible advantages
of the present, nor scrupled to show that she enjoyed fresh air, fine
weather, and pleasant company. Dick, stimulated by her presence,
and never disinclined to gaiety of spirit, exerted himself to be
agreeable, pouring forth a continuous stream of that pleasant nonsense
which is the only style of conversation endurable in the process of
riding, driving, or other jerking means of locomotion.

It is only when his suit has prospered that a man feels utterly
idiotic and moonstruck in the presence of the woman he adores. Why,
when life is scarce endurable but at her side, he should become a bore
in her presence, is only another intricacy in the many puzzles that
constitute the labyrinth of love. So long as he flutters unsinged
about its flame, the moth is all the happier for the warmth of the
candle, all the livelier for the inspiration of its rays. Dick
Stanmore, turning into the Kensington Road, was the insect basking in
those bright, alluring beams; but Dick Stanmore on the farther side of
Kew felt more like the same insect when its wings have been already
shrivelled and its powers of flight destroyed in the temerity of its
adoration.

Still it was pleasant, very pleasant. She looked so beautiful, she
smiled so kindly, always with her eyes, sometimes with the perfect,
high-bred mouth; she entered so gaily into his gossip, his fancies,
his jokes, allowing him to hold her parasol and arrange her shawls
with such sweetness and good-humour, that Dick felt quite sorry to
reach the Portugal laurels and trim lawns of their destination, when
the drive was over from which he had derived this new and unforeseen
gratification. Something warned him that, in accordance with that rule
of compensation which governs all terrestrial matters, these delights
were too keen to last, and there must surely be annoyance and vexation
in store to complete the afternoon.

His first twinge originated in the marked admiration called forth by
Miss Bruce's appearance at the very outset. She had scarcely made
her salaam to Lady Goldthred, and passed on through billiard-room,
library, and verandah, to the two dwarfed larches and half-acre of
mown grass which constitute the wilderness of a suburban villa, ere
Dick felt conscious that his could be no monopoly of adoration. Free
trade was at once declared by glances, whispers and inquiries from a
succession of well-dressed young gentlemen, wise doubtless in their
own conceit, yet not wanting in that worldly temerity which impels
fools to rush in where angels fear to tread, and gives the former
class of beings, in their dealings with that sex which is compounded
of both, an immeasurable advantage over the latter.

Miss Bruce had not traversed the archery-ground twenty-five feet, from
target to target, on her way to the refreshment-tent, ere half-a-dozen
of the household troops, a bachelor baronet, and the richest young
commoner of his year were presented by her host, at their own earnest
request. Dick's high spirits went down like the froth in a glass of
soda-water, and he fell back discouraged, to exchange civilities with
Lady Goldthred.

That excellent woman, dressed, painted, and wound-up for the occasion,
was volubly delighted with everybody; and being by no means sure of
Dick's identity, dashed the more cordiality into her manner, while
careful not to commit herself by venturing on his name.

"_So_ good of you to come," she fired it at him as she had fired it at
fifty others, "all this distance from town, and such a hot day, to see
my poor little place. But isn't it pretty now? And are we not lucky in
the weather? And weren't you smothered in dust coming down? And you've
brought _the_ beauty with you too. I declare Sir Moses is positively
smitten. I'm getting quite jealous. Just look at him now. But he's not
the only one, that's a comfort."

Dick _did_ look, wondering vaguely why the sunshine should have faded
all at once. Sir Moses, a little bald personage, in a good-humoured
fuss, whom no amount of inexperience could have taken for anything but
the "man of the house," was paying the utmost attention to Miss Bruce,
bringing her tea, placing a camp-stool for her that she might see the
archery, and rendering her generally those hospitable services which
it had been his lot to waste on many less attractive objects during
that long sunny afternoon.

"Sir Moses is always so kind," answered Dick vaguely, "and nobody's
breakfasts are so pleasant as yours, Lady Goldthred."

"I'm _too_ glad you think so," answered his hostess, who, like
a good-hearted woman as she was, took enormous pains with these
festivities, congratulating herself, when she washed off her rouge,
and doffed her robes of ceremony at night, that she had got through
the great penance of her year. "You're always so good-natured. But I
_do_ think men like to come here. The country air, you know, and
the scenery, and plenty of pretty people. Now, there's Lord
Bearwarden--look, he's talking to Miss Bruce, under the cedar--he's
actually driven over from Windsor, and though he's a way of being
so fine and _blasé_ and all that, he don't look much bored at this
moment, does he? Twenty thousand a year, they say, and been everywhere
and done everything. Now, I fancy, he wants to marry, for he's much
older, you know, than he looks. To hear him talk, you'd think he was
a hundred, and broken-hearted into the bargain. For my part, I've no
patience with a melancholy man; but then I'm not a young lady. You
know him, though, of course?"

Dick's reply, if he made one, was drowned in a burst of brass music
that deafened people at intervals throughout the afternoon, and Lady
Goldthred's attention wandered to fresh arrivals, for whom, with fresh
smiles and untiring energy, she elaborated many more remarks of a
similar tendency.

Dick Stanmore _did_ know Lord Bearwarden, as every man about London
knows every other man leading the same profitable life. There were
many whom he would have preferred as rivals; but thinking he detected
signs of weariness on Maud's face (it had already come to this, that
he studied her countenance, and winced to see it smile on any one
else), he crossed the lawn, that he might fill the place by her side,
to which he considered himself as well entitled as another.

His progress took some little time, what, with bowing to one lady,
treading on the dress of another, and parrying the attack of a third
who wanted him to give her daughter a cup of tea; so that by the time
Dick reached her Lord Bearwarden had left Miss Bruce to the attentions
of another guest, more smart than gentlemanlike, in whose appearance
there was something indefinably out of keeping with the rest. Dick
started. It was the man with whom he had seen Maud walking before
luncheon in the Square.

People were pairing for a dance on the lawn, and Mr. Stanmore, wedged
in by blocks of beauty and mountains of muslin, could neither advance
nor retreat. It was no fault of his that he overheard Miss Bruce's
conversation with the stranger.

"_Will_ you dance with me?" said the latter, in a whisper of
suppressed anger, rather than the tone of loving entreaty with which
it is customary to urge this pleasant request.

"Impossible!" answered Maud energetically. "I'm engaged to Lord
Bearwarden--it's the Lancers, and he's only gone to make up the set."

The man ground his teeth and knit his brows.

"You seem to forget," he muttered--"you carry it off with too high a
hand. I have a right to bid you dance with me. I have a right, if I
chose, to order you down to the river there and row you back to Putney
with the tide; and I _will_, I swear, if you provoke me too far."

She seemed to keep her temper with an effort.

"_Do_ be patient," she whispered, glancing round at the bystanders.
"Surely you can trust me. Hush! here comes Lord Bearwarden."

And taking that nobleman's arm, she walked off with a mournful
pleading look at her late companion, which poor Dick Stanmore would
have given worlds to have seen directed to himself.

There was no more pleasure for him now during the rest of the
entertainment. He did indeed obtain a momentary distraction from his
resolution to ascertain the name of the person who had so spoilt his
afternoon. It helped him very little to be told the gentleman was "a
Mr. Ryfe." Nobody seemed to know any more, and even this information
he extracted with difficulty from Lady Goldthred, who added, in a tone
of astonishment--

"Why, you brought him, didn't you?"

Dick was mystified--worse, he was unhappy. For a few minutes he
wandered about behind the dancers, watching Maud and her partner as
they threaded the intricacies of those exceedingly puzzling evolutions
which constitute the Lancer quadrilles. Lord Bearwarden was obviously
delighted with Maud, and that young lady seemed by no means
unconscious or careless of her partner's approval. I do not myself
consider the measure they were engaged in threading as particularly
conducive to the interchange of sentiment. If my memory serves me
right, this complicated dance demands as close an attention as whist,
and affords almost as few opportunities of communicating with a
partner. Nevertheless, there is a language of the eyes, as of the
lips; and it was not Lord Bearwarden's fault if his looks were
misunderstood by their object. All this Dick saw, and seeing, grew
more and more disgusted with life in general, with Lady Goldthred's
breakfast in particular. When the dance ended, and Dick
Stanmore--hovering about his flame, like the poor moth to which I have
compared him, once singed and eager to be singed again--was hesitating
as to whether he, too, should not go boldly in and try his chance,
behold Mr. Ryfe, with an offensive air of appropriation, walks off
with Miss Bruce arm-in-arm, towards the sequestered path that leads
to the garden-gate, that leads to the shady lane, that leads to the
shining river!

It was all labour and sorrow now. People who called this sort of thing
amusement, thought Dick, would go to purgatory for pastime, and a
stage farther for diversion. When he broke poor Redwing's back three
fields from home in the Melton steeplechase he was grieved, annoyed,
distressed. When he lost that eleven-pounder in the shallows below
Melrose, because "Aundry," his Scottish henchman, was too drunk to
keep his legs in a running stream, he was angry, vexed, disgusted; but
never before, in his whole life of amusement and adventure, had he
experienced anything like the combination of uncomfortable feelings
that oppressed him now. He was ashamed of his own weakness, too, all
the time, which only made matters worse.

"Hang it!" thought Dick, "I don't see why I should punish myself by
staying here any longer. I'll tell my mother I must be back in London
to dinner, make my bow, jump into a boat, and scull down to Chelsea.
So I will. The scull will do me good, and if--if she _has_ gone on the
water with that snob, why I shall know the worst. What a strange, odd
girl she is! And O, how I wish she wasn't!"

But it takes time to find a lady, even of Mrs. Stanmore's presence,
amongst five hundred of her kind jostled up in half-an-acre of ground;
neither will the present code of good manners, liberal as it is,
bear a guest out in walking up to his hostess _à bout portant_, to
interrupt her in an interesting conversation, by bidding her a solemn
good-bye hours before anybody else has begun to move. Twenty minutes
at least must have elapsed ere Dick found himself in a dainty
outrigger with a long pair of sculls, fairly launched on the bosom of
the Thames--more than time for the corsair, if corsair he should be,
to have sailed far out of sight with false, consenting Maud in the
direction of London Bridge.

Dick was no mean waterman. The exercise of a favourite art, combining
skill with muscular effort, is conducive to peace of mind. A swim, a
row, a gallop over a country, a fencing-bout or a rattling set-to with
"the gloves" bring a man to his senses more effectually than whole
hours of quiescent reflection. Ere the perspiration stood on Dick
Stanmore's brow, he suspected he had been hasty and unjust; by the
time he caught his second wind, and had got fairly into swing, he was
in charity with all the world, reflecting, not without toleration and
self-excuse, that he had been an ass.

So he sculled on, like a jolly young waterman, making capital way with
the tide, and calculating that if the fugitive pair should have done
anything so improbable as to take the water in company, he must have
overhauled, or at least sighted them, ere now.

His spirits rose. He wondered why he should have been so desponding an
hour ago. He had made excuses for himself--he began to make them for
Maud, nay, he was fast returning to his allegiance, the allegiance of
a day, thrown off in five minutes, when he sustained another damper,
such as the total reversal of his outrigger and his own immersion,
head uppermost, in the Thames, could not have surpassed.

At a bend of the river near Putney he came suddenly on one of those
lovely little retreats which fringe its banks--a red-brick house, a
pretty flower-garden, a trim lawn, shaded by weeping-willows, kissing
the water's edge. On that lawn, under those weeping-willows, he
descried the graceful, pliant figure, the raven hair, the imperious
gestures that had made such havoc with his heart, and muttering the
dear name, never before coupled with a curse, he knew for the first
time, by the pain, how fondly he already loved this wild, heedless,
heartless girl, who had come to live in his mother's house. Swinging
steadily along in mid-stream, he must have been too far off, he
thought, for her to recognise his features; yet why should she have
taken refuge in the house with such haste, at an open window, through
which a pair of legs clad in trousers denoted the presence of some
male companion? For a moment he turned sick and faint, as he resigned
himself to the torturing truth. This Mr. Ryfe, then, had been as good
as his word, and she, his own proud, refined, beautiful idol, had
committed the enormity of accompanying that imperious admirer down
here. What could be the secret of such a man's influence over such a
girl? Whatever it was, she must be Dick's idol no longer. And he would
have loved her so dearly!--so dearly!

There were tears in the eyes of this jolly young waterman as he pulled
on. These things hurt, you see, while the heart is fresh and honest,
and has been hitherto untouched. Those should expect rubbers who play
at bowls; if people pull their own chestnuts out of the fire they
must compound for burnt fingers; and when you wager a living, loving,
trustful heart against an organ of wax, gutta-percha, or Aberdeen
granite, don't be surprised if you get the worst of the game all
through.

He had quite given her up by the time he arrived at Chelsea, and
had settled in his own mind that henceforward there must be no more
sentiment, no more sunshine, no more romance. He had dreamt his dream.
Well for him it was so soon over. _Semel insanivimus omnes_. Fellows
had all been fools once, but no woman should ever make a fool of him
again! No woman ever _could_. He should never see another like _her_!

Perhaps this was the reason he walked half-a-mile out of his homeward
way, through Belgrave Square, to haunt the street in which she lived,
looking wistfully into those gardens whence he had seen her emerge
that very day with her mysterious companion--gazing with plaintive
interest on the bell-handle and door-scraper of his mother's
house--vaguely pondering how he could ever bear to enter that house
again--and going through the whole series of those imaginary throes,
which are indeed real sufferings with people who have been foolish
enough to exchange the dignity and reality of existence for a dream.

What he expected I am at a loss to explain; but although, while pacing
up and down the street, he vowed every turn should be the last, he
had completed his nineteenth, and was on the eve of commencing his
twentieth, when Mrs. Stanmore's carriage rolled up to the door,
stopping with a jerk, to discharge itself of that lady and Maud,
looking cool, fresh, and unrumpled as when they started. The revulsion
of feeling was almost too much for Dick. By instinct, rather than with
intention, he came forward to help them out, so confused in his ideas
that he failed to remark how entirely his rapid retreat from the
breakfast had been overlooked. Mrs. Stanmore seemed never to have
missed him. Maud greeted him with a merry laugh, denoting more of
good-humour and satisfaction than should have been compatible with
keen interest in his movements or justifiable pique at his desertion.

"Why, here you are!" she exclaimed gaily. "Actually home before us,
like a dog that one takes out walking to try and lose. Poor thing! did
it run all the way under the carriage with its tongue out? and wasn't
it choked with dust, and isn't it tired and thirsty? and won't it come
in and have some tea?"

What could Dick say or do? He followed her up-stairs to the back
drawing-room, meek and submissive as the dog to which she had likened
him, waiting for her there with a dry mouth and a beating heart while
she went to "take off her things"; and when she reappeared smiling and
beautiful, able only to propound the following ridiculous question
with a gasp--

"Didn't you go on the water then, after all?"

"On the water!" she repeated. "Not I. Nothing half so pleasant,
I assure you. I wish we had! for anything so slow as the whole
performance on dry land, I never yet experienced. I danced five
dances, none of them nice ones--I hate dancing on turf--and I had a
warm-water ice and some jelly that tasted of bees'-wax. What became
of you? We couldn't find you anywhere to get the carriage. However, I
asked Aunt Agatha to come away directly somebody made a move, because
I was cross and tired and bored with the whole business. I think
she liked it much better than I did; but here she is to answer for
herself."

Dick had no dinner that day, yet what a pleasant cigar it was he
smoked as he coasted Belgrave Square once more in the sweet spring
evening under the gas-lamps! He had been very unhappy in the
afternoon, but that was all over now. Anxiety, suspicion, jealousy,
and the worst ingredient of the latter, a sense of humiliation, had
made wild work with his spirits, his temper, and indeed his appetite;
yet twenty minutes in a dusky back drawing-room, a cup of weak tea
and a slice of inferior bread-and-butter, were enough to restore
self-respect, peace of mind, and vigour of digestion. He could not
recall one word that bore an unusually favourable meaning, one look
that might not have been directed to a brother or an intimate friend,
and still he felt buoyed up with hope, restored to happiness. The
reaction had come on, and he was more in love with her than ever.




CHAPTER VIII


NINA


It might have spared Mr. Stanmore a deal of unnecessary discomfort had
the owner of those legs which he saw through the open window at Putney
thought fit to show the rest of his person to voyagers on the river.
Dick would then have recognised an old college friend, would have
landed to greet him with the old college heartiness, and in the
natural course of events would have satisfied himself that his
suspicions of Maud were unfounded and absurd.

Simon Perkins is not a romantic name, nor did the exterior of Simon
Perkins, as seen either within or without the Putney cottage,
correspond with that which fiction assigns to a hero of romance. His
frame was small and slight, his complexion pale, his hair weak and
thin, his manner diffident, awkward, almost ungainly, but that its
thorough courtesy and good-nature were so obvious and unaffected. In
general society people passed him over as a shy, harmless, unmeaning
little man; but those who really knew him affirmed that his courage
was not to be damped, nor his nerve shaken, by extremity of
danger--that he was always ready with succour for the needy, with
sympathy for the sorrowful. In short, as they tersely put it, that
"his heart was in the right place."

For half-a-dozen terms at Oxford he and Dick had been inseparable.
Their intimacy, none the less close for dissimilarity of tastes and
pursuits, since Perkins was a reading man, and Dick a "fast" one, had
been still more firmly soldered by a long vacation spent together in
Norway, and a "thrilling tableau," as Dick called it, to which their
expedition gave rise. Had Simon Perkins's heart been no stouter than
his slender person, his companion must have died a damp death, and
this story would never have been told.

The young men were in one of the most picturesque parts of that wild
and beautiful country, created, as it would seem, for the express
gratification of the fisherman and the landscape painter; Simon
Perkins, an artist in his very soul, wholly engrossed by the sketch of
a mountain, Dick Stanmore equally absorbed in fishing a pool. Scarce
twenty yards apart, neither was conscious, for the moment, of the
other's existence; Simon, indeed, being in spirit some seven thousand
feet above the level of the sea, putting more ochre into the virgin
snow that crested his topmost peak, and Dick deftly dropping a fly,
the size of a pen-wiper, over the nose of a fifteen-pounder that had
already once risen to the gaudy lure.

Poising himself, like a Mercury, on a rock in mid-stream, the angler
had just thrown eighteen yards of line lightly as a silken thread
to an inch, when his foot slipped, and a loud splash, bringing the
painter, like Icarus, out of the clouds with a run, startled his
attention to the place where his companion was not. In another second
Simon had his grip on Dick's collar, and both men were struggling for
dear life in the pool. Stanmore could swim, of course, but it takes
a good swimmer to hold his own in fisherman's boots, encumbered,
moreover, with sundry paraphernalia of his art. Simon was a very mild
performer in the water, but he had coolness, presence of mind, and
inflexible tenacity of purpose. To these qualities the friends owed it
that they ever reached the shore alive. It was a very near thing,
and when they found their legs and looked into each other's faces,
gasping, dripping, spouting water from ears, nose, and mouth, Dick
gathered breath to exclaim, "You trump! I should have been drowned,
to a moral!" Whereat the other, choking, coughing, and sputtering,
answered faintly, "You old muff! I believe we were never out of our
depth the whole time!"

Perkins did not go up for his degree, and the men lost sight of one
another in a few years, cherishing, indeed, a kindly remembrance each
of his friend, yet taking little pains to refresh that remembrance by
renewed intercourse. How many intimacies, how many attachments outlast
a twelvemonth's break? There are certain things people go on caring
for, but I fear they are more intimately connected with self in daily
life than either the romance of friendship or the intermittent fever
of love. The enjoyment of luxury, the pursuit of money-making, seem to
lose none of their zest with advancing years, and perhaps to these we
may add the taste for art.

Now to Simon Perkins art was as the very air he breathed. The greatest
painter was, in his eyes, the greatest man that lived. When he left
Oxford, he devoted himself to the profession of painting with
such success as rendered him independent, besides enabling him to
contribute largely to the comfort of two maiden aunts with whom he
lived.

Not without hard work; far from it. There is no pursuit, perhaps,
which demands such constant and unremitting exertion from its
votaries. The ideal to which he strains can never be reached, for his
very successes keep building it yet higher, and a painter is so far
like a baby his whole life through that he is always learning to
_see_.

Simon was still learning to see on the afternoon Dick Stanmore sculled
by his cottage windows--studying the effect of a declining sun on the
opposite elms, not entirely averting his looks from that graceful
girl, who ran into the house to the oarsman's discomfiture, and
missing her more than might have been expected when she vanished
up-stairs. Was not the sun still shining bright on that graceful
feathery foliage? He did not quite think it was.

Presently there came to the door a rustle of draperies, and an elderly
lady, not remarkable for beauty, entered the room. Taking no notice
of Simon, she proceeded to arrange small articles of furniture with a
restless manner that denoted anxiety of mind. At last, stopping short
in the act of dusting a china tea-cup, with a very clean cambric
handkerchief, she observed, in a faltering voice, "Simon, dear, I feel
so nervous I know I shall never get through with it. Where's your Aunt
Jemima?" Even while she spoke there appeared at the door another lady,
somewhat more elderly, and even less remarkable for beauty, who seated
herself bolt upright in an elbow-chair without delay, and, looking
austerely round, observed in an impressive voice, "Susannah, fetch me
my spectacles; Simon, shut the door."

Of all governments there must be a head. It was obvious that in this
deliberative assembly Miss Jemima Perkins assumed the lead. Both
commands being promptly obeyed, she pulled her spectacles from their
case and put them on, as symbols of authority, forthwith.

"I want your advice, Simon," said this strong-minded old lady, in a
hard, clear voice. "I dare say I sha'n't act upon it, but I want it
all the same. I've no secrets from either of you; but as the head of
the family I don't mean to shirk responsibility, and my opinion is,
she must go. Susannah, no weakness. My dear, you ought to be ashamed
of yourself. Nina, run up-stairs again, we don't want you just now."

This to a pretty head with raven hair, that popped saucily in, and as
saucily withdrew.

Simon looked wistfully after the pretty head, and relapsed into a
day-dream. Was he thinking what a picture it would make, or what a
reality it was? His aunt's voice recalled him to facts.

"Simon," she repeated, "my opinion is she must go."

"Go!" said her nephew vacantly, "what do you mean,
aunt?--Go?--where?--who?"

"Why that girl we're all so fond of," replied Miss Jemima, growing
every moment more severe. "Mr. Algernon used to come here twice every
quarter, usedn't he? Never missed the day, did he? and paid his money
as regular as clockwork. Susannah, how long is it since he's been to
see us?"

Susannah sobbed.

"That's no answer," pursued the inflexible speaker. "Tomorrow week it
will be ten months since we have seen him; and tomorrow week it will
be ten months since we've had a scrap of his handwriting. Is that girl
to remain here, dependent on the bounty of a struggling artist and two
old maids? My opinion is that she ought to go out and gain her own
livelihood; my feeling is that--that--I couldn't bear to think of the
poor dear in any home but this."

Here the old lady, whose assumption of extreme fortitude had
been gradually leading to the inevitable catastrophe, broke down
altogether, while Susannah, giving rein to her emotions, lifted up her
voice and wept.

"You knew who she was all along, Jemima," said the latter, gulping
sadly at her syllables: "you know you did; and it's cruel to harrow up
our feelings like this."

Simon said nothing, but on his homely features gathered an expression
of resolve, through which there gleamed the bright radiance of hope.

Miss Perkins wiped her eyes and then her spectacles. Resuming her
dignity, she proceeded in a calmer voice--

"I will not conceal from you, Susannah, nor from you, Simon, that I
have had my suspicions for several years. Those suspicions became a
certainty some time ago. There can be no doubt now of the relationship
existing between our Nina and the Mr. Algernon, as he called himself,
who took such an interest in the child's welfare. When I saw Mr.
Bruce's death in the paper, I knew that our pet had lost her father.
What was I to do? When I consented to take charge of the child twenty
years ago--and a sweet pretty babe she was--I perfectly understood
there must be a mystery connected with her birth. As head of the
family, I imparted my suspicions to neither of you, and I kept my
conjectures and my disapproval to myself. This seemed only fair to
my correspondent, only fair to the child. When I learned Mr. Bruce's
death, it came upon me like a shot, that he was the Mr. Algernon who
used to visit here, and who furnished such liberal means for the
support and education of that girl up-stairs--Susannah, I cannot make
myself understood if you will persist in blowing your nose!--Since Mr.
Bruce's death no Mr. Algernon has darkened our doors, no remittances
have come to hand with the usual signature. Simon, my impression is
that no provision whatever has been made for the poor thing, and that
our Nina is--is utterly destitute and friendless."

Here Miss Susannah gave a little scream, whereat her sister glared
austerely, and resumed the spectacles she had taken off to dry.

"Not friendless, aunt," exclaimed Simon, in a great heat and fuss;
"never friendless so long as we are all above ground. I am perfectly
willing to--stay, Aunt Jemima, I beg your pardon, what do you think
ought to be done?"

The old lady smoothed her dress, looking round with placid dignity.

"I will first hear what you two have to propose. Susannah, leave off
crying this minute, and tell us what you think of this--this _very_
embarrassing position."

It is possible that but for the formidable adjective Susannah might
have originated, and indeed expressed some idea of her own; but to
confront a position described by her sister as "embarrassing" was
quite beyond her powers, and she could only repeat feebly, "I'll give
her half my money--I'll give her half my money. We can't drive her
out into the cold." This with sobs and tears, and a hand pressed
helplessly to her side.

Miss Jemima turned from her with contempt, declaring, in an audible
whisper, she had "more than half a mind to send the foolish thing to
bed;" then looked severely at her nephew.

"This girl," said he, "has become a member of our family, just as
if she were a born relation. It seems to me there is no question of
feeling or sentiment or prejudice in the matter. It is a mere affair
of duty. We are bound to treat Nina Algernon exactly as if she were a
Perkins."

His aunt took his face in both her hands, squeezed it hard, and
flattened his nose with a grim kiss. After this feat she looked more
severe than ever.

"I believe you are right," she said; "I believe this arrangement is a
special duty sent on purpose for us to fulfil. I had made up my mind
on the subject before I spoke to you, but it is satisfactory to
know that you both think as I do. When we give way to our feelings,
Susannah, we are sure to be injudicious, sometimes even unjust. But
duty is a never-failing guide, and--O! my dears, to part with that
darling would be to take the very heart out of my breast; and, Simon,
I'm so glad you agree with me; and, Susannah, dear, if I spoke harshly
just now, it was for your own good; and--and--I'll just step upstairs
into the storeroom, and look out some of the house-linen that wants
mending. I had rather you didn't disturb me. I shall be down again to
tea."

So the old lady marched out firmly enough, but sister and nephew both
knew right well that kindly tears, long kept back from a sense of
dignity, would drop on the half-worn house-linen, and that in the
solitude of her storeroom she would give vent to those womanly
feelings she deemed it incumbent on her, as head of the family, to
restrain before the rest.

Miss Susannah entertained no such scruples. Inflicting on her nephew a
very tearful embrace, she sobbed out incoherent congratulations on the
decision at which her eldest sister had arrived.

"But we mustn't let the dear girl find it out," said this sensitive,
weak-minded, but generous-hearted lady. "We should make no sort of
difference in our treatment of her, of course, but we must take great
care not to let anything betray us in our manner. I am not good at
concealment, I know, but I will undertake that she never suspects
anything from mine."

The fallacy of this assertion was so transparent that Simon could not
forbear a smile.

"Better make a clean breast of it at once," said he. "Directly there's
a mystery in a family, Aunt Susannah, you may be sure there can be
no union. It need not be put in a way to hurt her feelings. On the
contrary, Aunt Jemima might impress on her that we count on her
assistance to keep the pot boiling. Why, she's saving us pounds and
pounds at this moment. Where should I get such a model for my Fairy
Queen, I should like to know? It ought to be a great picture--a great
picture, Aunt Susannah, if I can only work it out. And where should I
be if she left me in the lurch? No--no; we won't forget the bundle of
sticks. I'll to the maul-stick, and you and Aunt Jemima shall be as
cross as two sticks; and as for Nina, with her bright eyes, and her
pleasant voice, and her merry ways, I don't know what sort of a stick
we should make of her." "A fiddlestick, I should think," said that
young lady, entering the room from the garden window, having heard, it
is to be hoped, no more than Simon's closing sentence. "What are
you two doing here in the dark? It's past eight--tea's ready--Aunt
Jemima's down--and everything's getting cold."

Candles were lit in the next room, and the tea-things laid. Following
the ladies, and watching with a painter's eye the lights and shades as
they fell on Nina's graceful beauty, Simon Perkins felt, not for the
first time, that if she were to leave the cottage, she would carry
away with her all that made it a dear and happy home, depriving him at
once of past, present, and future, taking from him the very cunning of
his handicraft, and, worse still, the inspiration of his art.

It was no wonder she had wound herself round the hearts of that quiet
little family in the retired Putney villa. As like Maud Bruce in form
and feature, as though she had been her twin sister, Nina Algernon
possessed the same pale, delicate features, the same graceful form,
the same dark, pleading eyes and glossy raven hair; but Mr. Bruce's
elder and unacknowledged daughter had this advantage over the younger,
that about her there was a sweetness, a freshness, a quiet gaiety, and
a _bonhomie_ such as spring only from kindliness of disposition and
pure unselfishness of heart. Had she been an ugly girl, though she
might have lacked admirers, she could not have long remained without a
lover. Being as handsome as Maud, she seemed calculated to rivet more
attachments, while she made almost as many conquests. Between the
sisters there was a similitude and a difference. One was a costly
artificial flower, the other a real garden rose.




CHAPTER IX


THE USUAL DIFFICULTY


Maud's instincts, when, soon after her father's death, she felt a
strong disinclination to live with Aunt Agatha, had not played her
false. As inmates of the same house, the two ladies hit it off badly
enough. Perhaps because in a certain imperiousness and hardness of
character they were somewhat alike, their differences, though only on
rare occasions culminating in a battle royal, smouldered perpetually,
breaking out, more often than was seemly, in brisk skirmish and rapid
passage of arms.

Miss Bruce's education during the lifetime of her parents had been
little calculated to fit her for the position of a dependent, and with
all her misgivings, which, indeed, vexed her sadly, she could not yet
quite divest herself of an idea that her inheritance had not wholly
passed away. Under any circumstances she resolved before long to go at
the head of an establishment of her own, so that she should assume her
proper position, which she often told herself, with _her_ attractions
and _her_ opportunities was a mere question of will.

Then, like a band of iron tightening round her heart, would come the
thought of her promise to Tom Ryfe, the bitter regret for her
own weakness, her own overstrained notions of honour, as she now
considered them, in committing that promise to writing. She felt
as people feel in a dream, when, step which way they will, an
insurmountable obstacle seems to arise, arresting their progress, and
hemming them in by turns on every side.


It was not in the best of humours that, a few days after Lady
Goldthred's party, Maud descended to the luncheon-table fresh from an
hour's consideration of her grievances, and of the false position
in which she was placed. Mrs. Stanmore, too, had just sent back a
misfitting costume to the dressmaker for the third time; so each lady
being, as it were, primed and loaded, the lightest spark would suffice
to produce explosion.

While the servants remained it was necessary to keep the peace,
but cutlets, mashed potatoes, and a ration of sherry having been
distributed, the room was cleared, and a fair field remained for
immediate action. Dick's train was late from Newmarket, and he was
well out of it.

To do her justice, Maud had meant to intrench herself in sullen
silence. She saw the attack coming, and prepared to remain on the
defensive. Aunt Agatha began quietly enough--to borrow a metaphor from
the noble game of chess, she advanced a pawn.

"I don't know how I'm to take you to Countess Monaco's to-night, Maud;
that stupid woman has disappointed me again, and I've got literally
nothing to go in. Besides, there will be such a crush we shall never
get away in time for my cousin's ball. I promised her I'd be early if
I could."

Now Miss Bruce knew, I suppose because he had told her, that Lord
Bearwarden would be at Countess Monaco's reception, but would not be
at the said ball. It is possible Mrs. Stanmore may have been aware
of this also, and that her pawn simply represented what ladies call
"aggravation."

Maud took it at once with her knight. "I don't the least care about
Countess Monaco's, aunt," said she. "Dick's not going because he's not
asked, and I'm engaged to dance the first dance with him at the other
place. It's a family bear-fight, I conclude; but though I hate the
kind of thing, Dick is sure to take care of _me_."

Check for Aunt Agatha, whom this off-hand speech displeased for more
reasons than one. It galled her to be reminded that her step-son had
received no invitation from the smart foreign countess; while that
Maud should thus appropriate him, calling him "Dick" twice in a
breath, was more than she could endure. So she moved her king out of
position.

"Talking of balls," said she, in a cold, civil voice, "reminds me that
you danced three times the night before last with Lord Bearwarden, and
twice with Dick, besides going down with him to supper. I don't like
finding fault, Maud, but I have a duty to perform, and I speak to you
as if you were my own child."

"How can you be sure of that?" retorted incorrigible Maud. "You never
had one."

This was a sore point, as Miss Bruce well knew. Aunt Agatha's line of
battle was sadly broken through, and her pieces huddled together on
the board. She began to lose her head, and her temper with it.

"You speak in a very unbecoming tone, Miss Bruce," said she angrily.
"You force me into saying things I would much rather keep to myself. I
don't wish to remind you of your position in this house."

It was now Maud's turn to advance her strongest pieces--castles,
rooks, and all.

"You remind me of it often enough," she replied, with her haughtiest
air--an air which, notwithstanding its assumption of superiority,
certainly made her look her best; "if not in words, at least in
manner, twenty times a day. You think I don't see it, Mrs. Stanmore,
or that I don't mind it, because I've too much pride to resent it as
it deserves. I am indebted to you, certainly, for a great deal--the
roof that shelters me, and the food I eat. I owe you as much as your
carriage-horses, and a little less than your servants, for I do my
work and get no wages. Never fear but I shall pay up everything some
day; perhaps very soon. You had better get your bill made out, so as
to send it in on the morning of my departure. I wish the time had come
to settle it now."

Mrs. Stanmore was aghast. Very angry, no doubt, but yet more
surprised, and perhaps the least thing cowed. Her cap, her laces,
the lockets round her neck, the very hair of her head, vibrated with
excitement. Maud, cool, pale, impassable, was sure to win at last,
waiting, like the superior chess-player, for that final mistake which
gives an adversary checkmate.


It came almost immediately. Mrs. Stanmore set down her sherry, because
the hand that held her glass shook so she could not raise it to her
lips. "You are rude and impertinent," said she; "and if you really
think so wickedly, the sooner you leave this house the better, though
you _are_ my brother's child; and--and--Maud, I don't mean it. But how
can you say such things? I never expected to be spoken to like this."

Then the elder lady began to cry, and the game was over. Before the
second course came in a reconciliation took place. Maud presented a
pale, cold cheek to be kissed by her aunt, and it was agreed that
they should go to Countess Monaco's for the harmless purpose, as they
expressed it, of "just walking through the rooms," leaving thereafter
as soon as practicable for the ball; and Mrs. Stanmore, who was
good-hearted if bad-tempered, trusted "dear Maud would think no more
of what she had said in a moment of irritation, but that they would be
better friends than ever after their little tiff."

None the less, though, for this decisive victory did the young lady
cherish her determination to settle in life without delay. Lord
Bearwarden had paid her considerable attention on the few occasions
they had met. True, he was not what the world calls a "marrying man";
but the world, in arranging its romances, usually leaves out that very
chapter--the chapter of accidents--on which the whole plot revolves.
And why should there not be a Lady Bearwarden of the present as of the
past? To land so heavy a fish would be a signal triumph. Well, it was
at least possible, if not probable. This should be a matter for future
consideration, and must depend greatly on circumstances.

In the meantime, Dick Stanmore would marry her tomorrow. Of that she
felt sure. Why? O, because she did! I believe women seldom deceive
themselves in such matters. Dick had never told her he cared for her;
after all, she had not known him many weeks, yet a certain deference
and softness of tone, a diffidence and even awkwardness of manner,
increasing painfully when they were alone, betrayed that he was her
slave. And she liked Dick, too, very much, as a woman could hardly
help liking that frank and kindly spirit. She even thought she could
love him if it was necessary, or at any rate make him a good wife, as
wives go. He would live in London, of course, give up hunting and all
that. It really might do very well. Yes, she would think seriously
about Dick Stanmore, and make up her mind without more delay.

But how to get rid of Tom Ryfe? Ignore it as she might--strive as she
would to forget it in excitement, dissipation, and schemes for the
future, none the less was the chain always round her neck. Even while
it ceased to gall her she was yet sensible of its weight. So long as
she owed him money, so long as he held her written promise to repay
that debt with her hand, so long was she debarred all chances for the
future, so long was she tied down to a fate she could not contemplate
without a shudder. To be a "Mrs. Ryfe" when on the cards lay such a
prize as the Bearwarden coronet, when she need only put out her hand
and take Dick Stanmore, with his brown locks, his broad shoulders, his
genial, generous heart, for better or worse! It was unbearable. And
then to think that she could ever have fancied she liked the man;
that, even now, she had to give him clandestine meetings, to see him
at unseasonable hours, as if she loved him dearly, and was prepared
to make every sacrifice for his sake! Her pride revolted, her whole
spirit rose in arms at the reflection. She knew he cared for her too;
cared for her in his own way very dearly; and "c'est ce que c'est
d'être femme," I fear she hated him all the more! So long as a woman
knows nothing about him, her suspicion that a man likes her is nine
points out of ten in his favour; but directly she has fathomed his
intellect and probed his heart; squeezed the orange, so to speak, and
resolved to throw away the rind, in proportion to the constancy of his
attachment will be her weariness of its duration; and from weariness
in such matters there is but one short step to hatred and disgust.

Tom Ryfe must be paid his money. To this conclusion, at least, Maud's
reflections never failed to lead. Without such initiatory proceeding
it was useless to think of demanding the return of that written
promise. But how to raise the funds? After much wavering and
hesitation, Miss Bruce resolved at last to pawn her diamonds. So
dearly do women love their trinkets, that I believe, though he never
knew it, Tom Ryfe was more than once within an ace of gaining the
prize he longed for, simply from Maud's disinclination to part with
her jewels. How little he dreamt that the very packet which had helped
to cement into intimacy his first acquaintance with her should prove
the means of dashing his cherished hopes to the ground, and raising
yet another obstacle to shut him out from his lovely client!

While Maud is meditating in the back drawing-room, and Aunt Agatha,
having removed the traces of emotion from her eyes and nose, is trying
on a bonnet up-stairs, Dick Stanmore has shaken off the dust of a
railway journey, in his lodgings, dressed himself from top to toe,
and is driving his phaeton merrily along Piccadilly, on his way to
Belgrave Square. How his heart leaps as he turns the well-known
corner! how it beats as he skips into his step-mother's house!--how
it stops when he reaches the door of that back drawing-room, where,
knowing the ways of the establishment, he hopes to find his treasure
alone! The colour returns to his face. There she is in her usual
place, her usual attitude, languid, graceful, indolent, yet glad to
see him nevertheless.

"I'm in luck," said Dick, blushing like a school-boy. "My train was
late, and I was so afraid you'd be gone out before I could get here.
It seems so long since I've seen you. And where have you been, and
how's my mother, and what have you been doing?"

"What have _you_ been doing, rather?" repeats the young lady, giving
him a cool and beautiful hand that he keeps in his own as long as he
dares. "Three days at Newmarket are long enough to make 'a man or
a mouse,' as you call it, of a greater capitalist than you, Mr.
Stanmore. Seriously, I hope you've had a good week."

"Only lost a pony on the whole meeting," answered Dick triumphantly.
"And even that was a 'fluke,' because Bearwarden's Bacchante filly was
left at the post."

"I congratulate you," said Maud, with laughter gleaming in her dark
eyes. "I suppose you consider that tantamount to winning. Was Lord
Bearwarden much disappointed, and did he swear horribly?"

"Bearwarden never swears," replied Dick. "He only told the starter he
wondered he could get them off at all; for it must have put him out
sadly to see all the boys laughing at him. I've no doubt one or two
were fined in the very next race, for the official didn't seem to like
it."

Maud pondered. "Is Lord Bearwarden very good-tempered?" said she.

"Well, he never breaks out," answered Dick. "But why do you want to
know?"

"Because you and he are such friends," said this artful young lady.
'"Because I can't make him out--because I don't care whether he is or
not! And now, Mr. Stanmore, though you've not been to see your mamma
yet, you've behaved like a good boy, considering; so I've got a little
treat in store for you. Will you drive me out in your phaeton?"

"Will a duck swim?" exclaimed Dick, delighted beyond measure, with but
the one drawback to supreme happiness, of a wish that his off-horse
had been more than twice in harness.

"Now before I go to put my bonnet on," continued Miss Bruce,
threatening him with her finger like a child, "you must promise to do
exactly what you're told--to drive very slow and very carefully, and
to set me down the instant I'm tired of you, because Aunt Agatha won't
hear of our going for more than half-an-hour or so, and it will take
some diplomacy to arrange even that."

Then she tripped up-stairs, leaving the door open, so that Dick,
looking at himself in the glass, wondering, honest fellow, what she
could see in him to like, and thinking what a lucky dog he was,
overheard the following conversation at the threshold of his
step-mother's chamber on the floor above.

A light tap--a smothered "Who's there?" and the silvery tones of the
voice he loved--

"Aunt Agatha--may Mr. Stanmore drive me to Rose and Brilliant's in his
phaeton?"

Something that sounded very like "Certainly not."

"But please, Aunt Agatha," pleaded the voice, "I've got a headache,
and an open carriage will do me so much good, and you can call for me
afterwards, whenever you like, to do our shopping. I sha'n't be five
minutes putting my bonnet on, and the wind's changed, and it's such a
beautiful day!"

Here a door opened, whispers were exchanged, it closed with a bang, a
bell rang, an organ in the street struck up "The Marseillaise," and
ere it had played eight bars, Maud was on the stairs again looking, to
Dick's admiring eyes, like an angel in a bonnet coming straight down
from heaven.

In after-days he often thought of that happy drive--of the pale
beautiful face, in its transparent little bonnet, turned confidingly
upwards to his own, of the winning ways, the playfully imperious
gestures, the sweet caressing voice--of the hope thrilling to his very
heart that perhaps for him might be reserved the blissful lot of thus
journeying with her by his side through life.

As they passed into the Park at Albert Gate, two of his young
companions nodded and took off their hats, elbowing each other, as who
should say, "I suppose that's a case!" How proud Dick felt, and how
happy! The quarter of a mile that brought him to Apsley House seemed
a direct road to Paradise; the man who is always watering the
rhododendrons shone like a glorified being, and the soft west wind
fanned his temples like an air from heaven. How pleasant she was, how
quaint, how satirical, how amusing! Not the least frightened when that
off-horse shied in Piccadilly--not the least impatient (neither, be
sure, was he) when a block of carriages kept them stationary for ten
minutes in the narrow gorge of Bond Street. Long before they stopped
at Rose and Brilliant's it was all over with Dick.

"You're not to get out," said Maud, while they drew up to the door of
that fashionable jeweller. "Yes, you may, just to keep my dress off
the wheel, but you mustn't come in. I said I'd a treat for you; now
tell me without prevarication--will you have sleeve-links with a
cipher or a monogram? Speak up--in one word--quick!"

Sleeve-links! and from _her_! A present to be valued and cherished
more than life itself. He could hardly believe his senses. Far too
bewildered to solve the knotty point of cipher _versus_ monogram, he
muttered some incoherent syllables, and only began to recover when he
had stared blankly for a good five minutes at the off-horse's ears,
from the driving-seat of his phaeton.

It took a long time apparently to pick out those sleeve-links. Perhaps
the choicest assortment of such articles remained in the back shop,
for thither Miss Bruce retired; and it is possible she may have
appealed to the proprietor's taste in her selection, since she was
closeted with that gentleman in earnest conference for three-quarters
of an hour. Dick had almost got tired of waiting, when she emerged at
last to thank him for her drive, and to present him, as she affirmed,
with the results of her protracted shopping.

"There is a design on them already," said she, slipping a little box
of card into his hand with her pleasantest smile, "so I could not have
your initials engraved, but I dare say you won't lose them all the
same."

Dick rather thought _not_, hiding the welcome keepsake away in his
waistcoat-pocket, as near his heart as the construction of that
garment would permit; but his day's happiness was over now, for Mrs.
Stanmore had arrived in her brougham to take his companion away for
the rest of the afternoon.

That night, before he went to bed, I think he was fool enough to kiss
the insensible sleeve-links more than once. They were indeed choice
little articles of workmanship, bearing on their surface two quaint
and fanciful designs, representing a brace of Cupids in difficulty,
the one singed by his own torch, the other crying over a broken bow.

At the same hour Maud was enclosing an order for a large sum of money
in a letter which seemed to cost her much study and vexation. Even
Miss Bruce found some difficulty in explaining to a lover that she
valued truth, honour, and fidelity at so many hundred pounds, while
she begged to forward him a cheque for the amount in lieu of the goods
marked "damaged and returned."




CHAPTER X


THE FAIRY QUEEN


I have said that Simon Perkins was a painter to the tips of his
fingers. Just as a carpenter cannot help looking at a piece of wood
with a professional glance it is impossible to mistake--a glance that
seems to embrace at once its length, depth, thickness, toughness,
and general capabilities--so a painter views every object in nature,
animate or inanimate, as a subject for imitation and study of his art.
The heavens are not too high, the sea too deep, nor the desert too
wide to afford him a lesson; and the human countenance, with its
endless variety of feature and expression, is a book he never wearies
of learning by heart. When his professional interest in beauty is
enhanced by warmer feelings, it may be imagined that vanity could
require no fuller tribute of admiration than the worship of one whose
special gift it is to decide on the symmetry of outward form.

As a painter, Simon Perkins approved of Nina Algernon--as a man he
loved her. Lest his position should not prove sufficiently fatal, she
had become of late practically identified with his art, almost as
completely as she was mixed up with his every-day life. For many
months, perhaps even for years, the germ of a great work had taken
root in his imagination. Slowly, almost painfully, that germ developed
itself, passing through several stages, sketch upon sketch, till it
came to maturity at last in the composition of a large picture on
which he was now employed.

The subject afforded ample scope for liberty of fancy in form and
grouping--for the indulgence of a gorgeous taste in colouring and
costume. It represented Thomas the Rhymer in Fairyland, at the moment
when its glamour is falling from his eyes, when its magic lustre is
dying out on all that glittering pageantry and the elfin is fading to
a gnome. The handsome wizard turns from a crowd of phantom shapes,
half lovely, half grotesque--for their change is even now in
progress--to look wistfully and appealingly on the queen.

There is a pained expression in his comely features, of hurt
affection, and trust betrayed, yet not without a ray of pride and
triumph, that, come what might to the others, she is still unchanged.
Around him the fairies are shedding their glory as trees in autumn
shed their leaves. Here a sweet laughing face surmounts the hideous
body of an imp, there the bright scales of an unearthly armour shrivel
to rottenness and dust. The dazzling robes are turning blank and
colourless, the emerald rays waning to a pale, sad light, the flashing
diadem is dulled and dim. Yet on the fairy queen there lowers no
shadow of change, there threaten no symptoms of decay.

Bathed in the halo of a true though hapless love, she is still
the same as when he first saw her all those seven long years ago,
glistening in immortal charms, and knelt to her for the queen of
heaven, where she rode--"under the linden tree."

It is obvious that on her countenance, besides the stamp of exceeding
beauty, there must appear sorrow, self-reproach, fortitude, majesty,
and undying tenderness. All these the painter thought he read in Nina
Algernon's girlish face.

So she sat to him dutifully enough for a model of his fairy queen, and
if she wearied at times, as I think she must, comforted herself with
the remembrance that in this way she helped the family who gave her
bread.

For the convenience of sitters, Simon Perkins had his painting-room in
Berners Street: thither it was his custom to resort in the morning,
by penny steamer or threepenny omnibus, and there he spent many happy
hours working hard with palette and brush. Not the least golden seemed
those in which Nina accompanied him to sit patiently while he studied,
and drew her, line by line, feature by feature. The expeditions to and
fro were delightful, the labour was pleasure, the day was gone far too
soon.

A morning could not but be fine, when, emerging from an omnibus at
Albert Gate, Simon walked by the side of his model through Hyde Park
on their way to Berners Street; but about this period one morning
seemed even finer than common, because that Nina, taking his arm as
they crossed Rotten Row, thought fit to confide to him an interview of
the day before with Aunt Jemima, in which she extorted from that dear
old lady with some difficulty the fact of her own friendless position
in the world.

"And I don't mind it a bit," continued the girl, catching her voice
like a child, as was her habit when excited, "for I'm sure you're all
so kind to me that I'd much rather not have any other friends. And I
don't want to be independent, and I'll never leave you, so long as
you'll keep me. And O, Simon, isn't it good of your aunts, and you
too, to have taken care of me ever since I was quite a little thing?
For I'm no relation, you know--and how can I ever do enough for you? I
can't. It's impossible. And you don't want me to, if I could!"

Notwithstanding the playful manner which was part of Nina's self,
there were tears of real feeling in her eyes, and I doubt if Simon's
were quite dry while he answered--

"You belong to us just as much as if you _were_ a relation, Nina. My
aunts have said so ever since I can remember, and as for me, why you
used to ride on my foot when you were in short frocks! What a little
romp it was! Always troublesome, and always will be--and that's
why we're so fond of you." He spoke lightly, but his voice shook
nevertheless.

"So you ought to be," she answered. "For you know how much I love you
all."

"What, even stern Aunt Jemima?" said this blundering young man,
clumsily beating about the bush, and thus scaring the bird quite as
much as if he had thrust his hand boldly into the nest.

"Aunt Jemima best of all," replied Nina saucily, "because she's the
eldest, and tries to keep me in order, but she can't."

"And which of us next best, Nina?" continued he, turning away with
extraordinary interest in a mowing-machine.

"Aunt Susannah, of course." This very demurely, while tightening her
pretty lips to keep back a laugh.

"Then I come last," he observed gently; but there was something in the
tone that made her glance sharply in his face.

She pressed his arm. "You dear old simple Simon," said she kindly.
"Surely you must know me by this time. I love you very dearly, just as
if you were my brother. Brother, indeed! I don't think if I'd a father
I could be much fonder of him than I am of you."

What a bright morning it had been five minutes ago, and now the sky
seemed clouded all at once. Simon even thought the statue of Achilles
looked more grim and ghostly than usual, lowering there in his naked
bronze.

She had wounded him very deeply, that pretty unconscious archer. These
random shafts for which no interposing shield makes ready are sure
to find the joints in our harness. A tough hard nature such as
constitutes the true fighter only presses more doggedly to the front,
but gentler spirits are fain to turn aside out of the battle, and go
home to die. There came a dimness before Simon's eyes, and a ringing
in his ears. He scarcely heard his companion, while she asked--

"Who are those men bowing? Do you know them? They must take me for
somebody else."

"Those men bowing" were two no less important characters than Lord
Bearwarden and Tom Ryfe, the latter in the act of selling the former
a horse. Such transactions, for some mysterious reason, always take
place in the morning, and whatever arguments may be adduced against
a too enthusiastic worship of the noble animal, at least it promotes
early rising.

Tom Ryfe was one of those men rarely seen in the saddle or on the box,
but who, nevertheless, always seem to have a horse to dispose of,
whatever be the kind required. Hack, hunter, pony, phaeton-horse, he
was either possessor of the very animal you wanted, or could suit you
with it at twenty-four hours' notice; yet if you met him by accident
riding in the Park, he was sure to tell you he had been mounted by
a friend; if you saw him driving a team--and few could handle four
horses in a crowded thoroughfare with more neatness and precision--you
might safely wager it was from the box of another man's coach.

He was supposed to be a very fine rider over a country, and there were
vague traditions of his having gone exceedingly well through great
runs on special occasions; but these exploits had obviously lost
nothing of their interest in the process of narration, and were indeed
enhanced by that obscurity which increases the magnitude of most
things, in the moral as in the material world.

Mr. Ryfe knew all the sporting men about London, but not their wives.
He was at home on the Downs and the Heath, in the pavilion at Lord's,
and behind the traps of the Red House. He dined pretty frequently at
the barracks of the household troops, welcome to the genial spirits
of his entertainers, chiefly for those qualities with which they
themselves credited him; and he called Bearwarden "My lord," wherefore
that nobleman thought him a snob, and would perhaps have considered
him a still greater if he had _not_. The horse in question showed
good points and fine action. Mr. Ryfe walked, trotted, cantered,
and finally reined him up at the rails on which Lord Bearwarden was
leaning.

"Rather a flat-catcher, Tom," said that nobleman, between the whiffs
of a cigar. "Too much action for a hunter, and too little body. He
wouldn't carry my weight if the ground was deep, though he's not a bad
goer, I'll admit."

"Exactly what I said at first, my lord," answered Tom, slipping the
reins through his fingers, and letting the horse reach over the iron
bar against his chest to crop the tufts of grass beneath, an attitude
in which his fine shoulders and liberty of frame showed to great
advantage. "I never thought he was a fourteen-stone horse, and I never
told you so."

"And I never told _you_ I rode fourteen stone, did I?" replied Lord
Bearwarden, who was a little touchy on that score. "Thirteen five at
the outside, and not so much as that after deer-stalking in Scotland.
He's clean thoroughbred, isn't he?"

The purchaser was biting, and Tom understood his business as if he had
been brought up to it.

"Clean," he answered, passing his leg over the horse's neck, and
sliding to the ground, thus leaving his saddle empty for the other.
"But he's thrown away on a heavy man. His place is carrying thirteen
stone over high Leicestershire. Nothing could touch him there amongst
the hills. Jumping's a vulgar accomplishment. Plenty of them can jump
if one dare ride them, but he's really an extraordinary fencer. Such a
mouth, too, and such a _gentleman_! Why he's the pleasantest hack in
London. You like a nice hack, my lord. Get up and feel him. It's like
riding a bird."

So Lord Bearwarden jumped on, and altered the stirrups, and crammed
his hat down, ere he rode the horse to and fro, trying him in all
his paces, and probably falling in love with him forthwith, for he
returned with a brightened eye and higher colour to Tom Ryfe on the
footway.

It was at this juncture both gentlemen started and took their hats off
to the lady who walked some fifty paces off, arm-in-arm with Simon
Perkins, the painter.

Their salute was not returned. The lady, indeed, to whom it was
addressed seemed to hurry on all the faster with her companion. It was
remarkable, and both remarked it, that neither made any observation on
this lack of courtesy, but finished their bargain without apparently
half so much interest in sale or purchase as they felt five minutes
ago.

"You'll dine with us, Tom, on the 11th?" said Bearwarden, when they
parted opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, but he was obviously thinking
of something else.

"On the 11th," repeated Tom--"delighted, my lord--at eight o'clock,
I suppose," and turned his horse's head soberly towards Piccadilly,
proceeding at a walk, as one who revolved certain reflections, not of
the most agreeable, in his mind. A dinner at the barracks was usually
rather an event with Mr. Ryfe, but on the present occasion he forgot
all about it before he had gone a hundred yards.

Lord Bearwarden, rejecting the temptation of luncheon in the
mess-room, ran up-stairs to his own quarters to think--of course he
smoked at the same time.

This nobleman was one of the many of his kind who, to their credit be
it said, are not spoiled by sailing down the stream with the wind in
their favour. He had been "a good fellow" at Eton, he remained "a good
fellow" in the regiment. With general society he was not perhaps quite
so popular. People said he "required knowing"; and for those who
didn't choose to take the trouble of knowing him he was a little
reserved; with men, even a little rough. His manner was of the world,
worldly, and gave the idea of complete heartlessness and _savoir
faire_; yet under this seemingly impervious covering lurked a womanly
romance of temperament, a womanly tenderness of heart, than which
nothing would have made him so angry as to be accused of possessing.
His habits were manly and simple, his chief ambition was to
distinguish himself as a soldier, and so far as he could find
opportunity he had seen service with credit on the staff. A keen
sportsman, he could ride and shoot as well as his neighbours, and
this is saying no little amongst the young officers of the Household
Brigade.

Anything but a "ladies' man," there was yet something about
Bearwarden, irrespective of his income and his coronet, that seemed
to interest women of all temperaments and characters. They would turn
away from far handsomer, better dressed, and more amusing people to
attract his notice when he entered a room, and the more enterprising
would even make fierce love to him on further acquaintance,
particularly after they discovered what up-hill work it was. Do they
appreciate a difficulty the greater trouble it requires to surmount,
or do they enjoy a scrape the more, that they have to squeeze
themselves into it by main force? I wonder if the sea-nymphs love
their Tritons because those zoophytes must necessarily be so cold! It
is doubtless against the hard impenetrable rock that the sea-waves
dash themselves again and again. Bearwarden responded but faintly to
the boldest advances. There must be a reason for it, said the fair
assailants. Curiosity grew into interest, and, flavoured with a dash
of pique, formed one of those messes with which, in stimulating their
vanity, women fancy they satisfy their hunger of the heart.

Bearwarden was a man with a history; of this they were quite sure, and
herein they were less mistaken than people generally find themselves
who jump to conclusions. Yes, Bearwarden had a history, and a sad one,
so far as the principal actor was concerned. Indeed he dared not
think much about it even yet, and drove it--for he was no weak, silly
sentimentalist--by sheer force of will out of his mind. Indeed, if it
had not wholly changed his _real_ self, it had encrusted him with that
hardness and roughness of exterior which he turned instinctively to
the world. The same thing had happened to him that happens to most of
us at one time or another. Just as the hunting man, sooner or later,
is pretty sure to be laid up with a broken collar-bone, so in the
career of life must be encountered that inevitable disaster which
results in a wounded spirit and a sore heart. The collar-bone, we all
know, is a six weeks' job; but injuries of a tenderer nature take
far longer to heal. Nevertheless, the cure of these, too, is but a
question of time, though, to carry on the metaphor, I think in
either case the hapless rider loses some of the zest and dash which
distinguished his earlier performances, previous to discomfiture.
"Only a woman's hair," wrote Dean Swift on a certain packet hidden
away in his desk. And thus a very dark page in Lord Bearwarden's
history might have been headed "Only a woman's falsehood." Not much to
make a fuss about, surely; but he was kind, generous, of a peculiarly
trustful disposition, and it punished him very sharply, though he
tried hard to bear his sorrow like a man. It was the usual business.
He had attached himself to a lady of somewhat lower social standing
than his own, of rather questionable antecedents, and whom the world
accepted to a certain extent on sufferance, as it were, and under
protest, yet welcomed her cordially enough, nevertheless. His
relations abused her, his friends warned him against her; of course
he loved her very dearly, all the more that he had to sacrifice many
interests for her sake, and so resolved to make her his wife.

For reasons of her own she stipulated that he should leave his
regiment, and even in this, though he would rather have lost an arm,
he yielded to her wish.

The letter to his colonel, in which he requested permission to send in
his papers, actually lay sealed on the table, when he received a note
in a well-known hand that taught him the new lesson he had never
expected to learn. The writer besought his forgiveness, deploring her
own heartlessness the while, and proceeded to inform him that there
was a Somebody else in the field to whom she was solemnly promised
(just as she had been to him), and with whom she was about to unite
her Lot--capital L. She never could be happy, of course, but it was
her destiny: to fight against it was useless, and she trusted Lord B.
would forget her, etc., etc. All this in well-chosen language, and
written with an exceedingly good pen.

It was lucky his letter to the colonel had not been sent. In such
sorrows as these a soldier learns how his regiment is his real home,
how his comrades are the staunchest, the least obtrusive, and the
sincerest of friends.

Patting his charger's neck at the very next field-day, Bearwarden
told himself there was much to live for still; that it would be
unsoldierlike, unmanly, childish, to neglect duty, to wince from
pleasure, to turn his back on all the world had to offer, only because
a woman followed her nature and changed her mind.

So he bore it very well, and those who knew him best wondered he cared
so little: and all the while he never heard a strain of music, nor
felt a ray of sunshine, nor looked on beauty of any kind whatever,
without that gnawing cruel pain at his heart. Thus the years passed
on, and the women of his family declared that Bearwarden was a
confirmed old bachelor.

When he met Miss Bruce at Lady Goldthred's, no doubt he admired her
beauty and approved of her manner, but it was neither beauty nor
manner, nor could he have explained what it was, that caused the
pulses within him to stir, as they stirred long ago--that brought back
a certain flavour of the old draught he had quaffed so eagerly, to
find it so bitter at the dregs. Another meeting with Maud, a dance
or two, a whisper on a crowded staircase, and Lord Bearwarden told
himself that the deep wound had healed at last; that the grass was
growing fresh and fair over the grave of a dead love; that for him
too, as for others, there might still be an interest in the chances of
the great game.

Surely the blind restored to sight is more grateful, more joyous, more
triumphant, than he who, born in darkness, finds himself overwhelmed
and dazzled with the glare of his new gift!

Some men are so strangely constituted that they like a woman all the
better for "snubbing" them. Lord Bearwarden had never felt so grave
an interest in Miss Bruce as when he entered the barracks under the
impression she had cut him dead, without the slightest pretext or
excuse.

Not so Tom Ryfe. In that gentleman's mind mingled the several
disagreeable sensations of surprise, anger, jealousy, and disgust. Of
these he chewed the bitter cud while he rode home, wondering with whom
Miss Bruce could thus dare to parade herself in public, maddened at
the open rebellion inferred by so ignoring his presence and his love,
vowing to revenge himself without delay by tightening the curb and
making her feel, to her cost, the hold he possessed over her person
and her actions. By the time he reached his uncle's house, he had
made up his mind to demand an explanation, to come to a final
understanding, to assert his authority, and to avenge his pride. He
turned pale to see Maud's monogram on the envelope of a letter that
had arrived during his absence; paler still, when from this letter a
thin slip of stamped paper fluttered to the floor--white to the very
lips while he read the sharp, decisive, cruel lines that accounted for
its presence in the missive, and that bade him relinquish at a word
all the hope and happiness of his life. Without unbuttoning his coat,
without removing the hat from his head, or the gloves from his hands,
he sat fiercely down, and wrote his answer.

"You think to get rid of me, Miss Bruce, as you would get rid of an
unsuitable servant, by giving him his wages and bidding him to go
about his business. You imagine that the debt between us is such as a
sum of money can at once wipe out: that because you have been able to
raise this money (and how you did so I think I have a right to ask)
our business connection ceases, and the _lover_, inconvenient, no
doubt, from his priority of claim, must go to the wall directly the
_lawyer_ has been paid his bill. You never were more mistaken in your
life. Have you forgotten a certain promise I hold of yours, written in
your own hand, signed with your own signature, furnished, as itself
attests, of your own free will? and do you think I am a likely man to
forego such an advantage? You might have had me for a friend--how dear
a friend I cannot bear to tell you now. If you persist in making me an
enemy, you have but yourself to blame. I am not given to threaten; and
you know that I can generally fulfil what I promise. I give you fair
warning then: so surely as you try, in the faintest item, to elude
your bargain, so surely will I cross your path, and spoil your game,
and show you up before the world. Mine you are, and mine you shall be.
If of free will, happily; if not, then to your misery and my own. But,
mark me, always _mine_!"

"The wisest clerks are not the wisest men." It is a bad plan ever to
drive a woman into a corner; and with all his knowledge of law, I
think Mr. Ryfe could hardly have written a more ill-advised and
injudicious letter than the above to Miss Bruce.




CHAPTER XI


IN THE SCALES


It was a declaration of war. Of all women in the world--and this is
saying a great deal--Maud was perhaps the least disposed to accept
anything like usurpation, or assumption of undue authority, especially
on the part of one in whose character she had detected an element of
weakness. Tom Ryfe, notwithstanding his capabilities, was a fool, like
most others, where his feelings were touched, and proved it by the
injudicious means he used to attain the end he so desired.

Locked in her own room, she read his letter over and over again, with
a bitter curl of her lip, that denoted hatred, scorn, even contempt.
When a man has been unfortunate enough to excite the last of these
amiable feelings, he should lose no time in decamping, for the game is
wholly and irretrievably lost. Mr. Ryfe would have felt this, could
he have seen the gestures of the woman he loved, while she tore his
letter into shreds--could he have marked the carriage of her haughty
head, the compression of her sweet, resolute lips, the fierce energy
of her white, cruel hands. Maud paced the floor for some half-dozen
turns, opened the window, arranged the bottles on her toilet-table,
the flowers on her chimney-piece, even took a good long look at
herself in the glass, and sat down to think.

For weeks she had been revolving in her mind the necessity of breaking
with Tom Ryfe, the policy of securing position and freedom by an early
marriage. That odious letter decided her; and now it only remained to
make her choice. There are women--and these, though sometimes the
most fascinating, by no means the most trustworthy of their sex--who
possess over mankind a mesmeric influence, almost akin to witchcraft.
Without themselves feeling deeply, perhaps for the very reason that
they do _not_, they are capable of exercising a magic sway over those
with whom they come in contact; and while they attract more admirers
than they know what to do with, are seldom very fortunate in their
selection, or happy in their eventual lot. Miss Bruce was one of these
witches, far more mischievous than the old conventional hags we used
to burn under the sapient government of our first Stuart, and she knew
a deal better than any old woman who ever mounted a broom-stick the
credulity of her victims, the dangerous power of her spells. These she
had lately been using freely. It was time to turn their exercise to
good account.

"Mr. Stanmore _would_, in a moment," thought Maud, "if I only gave him
the slightest hint. And I like him. Yes, I like him very much indeed.
Poor Dick! What a fool one can make a man look, to be sure, when he's
in love, as people call it! Aunt Agatha wouldn't much fancy it, I
suppose; not that I should care two pins about that. And Dick's very
easy to manage--too easy, I think. He seems as if I couldn't make him
angry. I made him _sorry_, though, the other day, poor fellow! but
that's not half such fun. Now Lord Bearwarden _has_ got a temper, I'm
sure. I wonder, if we were to quarrel, which would give in first. I
don't think I should. I declare it would be rather nice to try. He's
good-looking--that's to say, good-looking for a _man_. It's an ugly
animal at best. And they tell me the Den is such a pretty place in the
autumn! And twenty thousand a year! I don't care so much about the
money part of it. Of course one must have mo

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