← catalogue

In Luck at Last

by Walter Besant · English · Gutenberg #16129 · 356,897 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of In Luck at Last
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: In Luck at Last

Author: Walter Besant


        
Release date: June 25, 2005 [eBook #16129]
                Most recently updated: December 11, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16129

Credits: Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier, Sankar Viswanathan
        and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
        https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN LUCK AT LAST ***




Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier, Sankar Viswanathan
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net










                           IN LUCK AT LAST.




                           BY WALTER BESANT.






                               NEW YORK:
                   GEORGE MUNRO'S SONS, PUBLISHERS,
                      17 TO 27 VANDEWATER STREET.






CHAPTER I.

WITHIN THREE WEEKS


If everyone were allowed beforehand to choose and select for himself
the most pleasant method of performing this earthly pilgrimage, there
would be, I have always thought, an immediate run upon that way of
getting to the Delectable Mountains which is known as the Craft and
Mystery of Second-hand Bookselling. If, further, one were allowed to
select and arrange the minor details--such, for instance, as the
"pitch" and the character of the shop, it would seem desirable that,
as regards the latter, the kind of bookselling should be neither too
lofty nor too mean--that is to say, that one's ambition would not
aspire to a great collector's establishment, such as one or two we
might name in Piccadilly, the Haymarket, or New Bond Street; these
should be left to those who greatly dare and are prepared to play the
games of Speculation and of Patience; nor, on the other hand, would
one choose an open cart at the beginning of the Whitechapel Road, or
one of the shops in Seven Dials, whose stock-in-trade consists wholly
of three or four boxes outside the door filled with odd volumes at
twopence apiece. As for "pitch" or situation, one would wish it to be
somewhat retired, but not too much; one would not, for instance,
willingly be thrown away in Hoxton, nor would one languish in the
obscurity of Kentish Town; a second-hand bookseller must not be so far
removed from the haunts of men as to place him practically beyond the
reach of the collector; nor, on the other hand, should he be planted
in a busy thoroughfare--the noise of many vehicles, the hurry of quick
footsteps, the swift current of anxious humanity are out of harmony
with the atmosphere of a second-hand bookshop. Some suggestion of
external repose is absolutely necessary; there must be some stillness
in the air; yet the thing itself belongs essentially to the city--no
one can imagine a second-hand bookshop beside green fields--so that
there should be some murmur and perceptible hum of mankind always
present in the ear. Thus there are half-a-dozen bookshops in King
William Street, Strand, which seem to enjoy every possible advantage
of position, for they are in the very heart of London, but yet are not
exposed to the full noise and tumult of that overflowing tide which
surges round Charing Cross. Again, there are streets north of Holborn
and Oxford Street most pleasantly situated for the second-hand
bookseller, and there are streets where he ought not to be, where he
has no business, and where his presence jars. Could we, for instance,
endure to see the shop of a second-hand bookseller established in
Cheapside?

Perhaps, however, the most delightful spot in all London for a
second-hand bookshop is that occupied by Emblem's in the King's Road,
Chelsea.

It stands at the lower end of the road, where one begins to realize
and thoroughly feel the influences of that ancient and lordly suburb.
At this end of the road there are rows of houses with old-fashioned
balconies; right and left of it there are streets which in the summer
and early autumn are green, yellow, red, and golden with their masses
of creepers; squares which look as if, with the people living in them,
they must belong to the year eighteen hundred; neither a day before
nor a day after; they lie open to the road, with their gardens full of
trees. Cheyne Walk and the old church, with its red-brick tower, and
the new Embankment, are all so close that they seem part and parcel of
the King's Road. The great Hospital is within five minutes' walk, and
sometimes the honest veterans themselves may be seen wandering in the
road. The air is heavy with associations and memories. You can
actually smell the fragrance of the new-made Chelsea buns, fresh from
the oven, just as you would a hundred years ago. You may sit with
dainty damsels, all hoops and furbelows, eating custards at the
Bun-house; you may wander among the rare plants of the Botanic
Gardens. The old great houses rise, shadowy and magnificent, above the
modern terraces; Don Saltero's Coffee-House yet opens its hospitable
doors; Sir Thomas More meditates again on Cheyne Walk; at dead of
night the ghosts of ancient minuet tunes may be heard from the Rotunda
of Ranelagh Gardens, though the new barracks stand upon its site; and
along the modern streets you may fancy that if you saw the ladies with
their hoop petticoats, and the gentlemen with their wigs and their
three-cornered hats and swords, you would not be in the least
astonished.

Emblem's is one of two or three shops which stand together, but it
differs from its neighbors in many important particulars. For it has
no plate-glass, as the others have; nor does it stand like them with
open doors; nor does it flare away gas at night; nor is it bright with
gilding and fresh paint; nor does it seek to attract notice by posters
and bills. On the contrary, it retains the old, small, and
unpretending panes of glass which it has always had; in the evening it
is dimly lighted, and it closes early; its door is always shut, and
although the name over the shop is dingy, one feels that a coat of
paint, while it would certainly freshen up the place, would take
something from its character. For a second-hand bookseller who
respects himself must present an exterior which has something of faded
splendor, of worn paint and shabbiness. Within the shop, books line
the walls and cumber the floor. There are an outer and an inner shop;
in the former a small table stands among the books, at which Mr.
James, the assistant, is always at work cataloguing, when he is not
tying up parcels; sometimes even with gum and paste repairing the
slighter ravages of time--foxed bindings and close-cut margins no man
can repair. In the latter, which is Mr. Emblem's sanctum, there are
chairs and a table, also covered with books, a writing-desk, a small
safe, and a glass case, wherein are secured the more costly books in
stock. Emblem's, as must be confessed, is no longer quite what it was
in former days; twenty, thirty, or forty years ago that glass case was
filled with precious treasures. In those days, if a man wanted a book
of county history, or of genealogy, or of heraldry, he knew where was
his best chance of finding it, for Emblem's, in its prime and heyday,
had its specialty. Other books treating on more frivolous subjects,
such as science, belles lettres, art, or politics, he would consider,
buy, and sell again; but he took little pride in them. Collectors of
county histories, however, and genealogy-hunters and their kind, knew
that at Emblem's, where they would be most likely to get what they
wanted, they would have to pay the market price for it.

There is no patience like the patience of a book-collector; there is
no such industry given to any work comparable with the thoughtful and
anxious industry with which he peruses the latest catalogues; there is
no care like unto that which rends his mind before the day of auction
or while he is still trying to pick up a bargain; there are no eyes so
sharp as those which pry into the contents of a box full of old books,
tumbled together, at sixpence apiece. The bookseller himself partakes
of the noble enthusiasm of the collector, though he sells his
collection; like the amateur, the professional moves heaven and earth
to get a bargain: like him, he rejoices as much over a book which has
been picked up below its price, as over a lost sheep which has
returned into the fold. But Emblem is now old, and Emblem's shop is no
longer what it was to the collector of the last generation.

It was an afternoon in late September, and in this very year of grace,
eighteen hundred and eighty-four. The day was as sunny and warm as any
of the days of its predecessor Augustus the Gorgeous, but yet there
was an autumnal feeling in the air which made itself felt even in
streets where there were no red and yellow Virginia creepers, no
square gardens with long trails of mignonette and banks of flowering
nasturtiums. In fact, you cannot anywhere escape the autumnal feeling,
which begins about the middle of September. It makes old people think
with sadness that the grasshopper is a burden in the land, and that
the almond-tree is about to flourish; but the young it fills with a
vinous and intoxicated rejoicing, as if the time of feasting, fruits,
harvests, and young wine, strong and fruity, was upon the world. It
made Mr. James--his surname has never been ascertained, but man and
boy, Mr. James has been at Emblem's for twenty-five years and
more--leave his table where he was preparing the forthcoming
catalogue, and go to the open door, where he wasted a good minute and
a half in gazing up at the clear sky and down the sunny street. Then
he stretched his arms and returned to his work, impelled by the sense
of duty rather than by the scourge of necessity, because there was no
hurry about the catalogue and most of the books in it were rubbish,
and at that season of the year few customers could be expected, and
there were no parcels to tie up and send out. He went back to his
work, therefore, but he left the door partly open in order to enjoy
the sight of the warm sunshine. Now for Emblem's to have its door
open, was much as if Mr. Emblem himself should so far forget his
self-respect as to sit in his shirt-sleeves. The shop had been rather
dark, the window being full of books, but now through the open door
there poured a little stream of sunshine, reflected from some far off
window. It fell upon a row of old eighteenth century volumes, bound in
dark and rusty leather, and did so light up and glorify the dingy
bindings and faded gold, that they seemed fresh from the binder's
hands, and just ready for the noble purchaser, long since dead and
gone, whose book plate they bore. Some of this golden stream fell also
upon the head of the assistant--it was a red head, with fiery red
eyes, red eyebrows, bristly and thick, and sharp thin features to
match--and it gave him the look of one who is dragged unwillingly into
the sunlight. However, Mr. James took no notice of the sunshine, and
went on with his cataloguing almost as if he liked that kind of work.
There are many people who seem to like dull work, and they would not
be a bit more unhappy if they were made to take the place of Sisyphus,
or transformed into the damsels who are condemned to toil continually
at the weary work of pouring water into a sieve. Perhaps Sisyphus does
not so much mind the continual going up and down hill. "After all," he
might say, "this is better than the lot of poor Ixion. At all events,
I have got my limbs free." Ixion, on the other hand, no doubt, is full
of pity for his poor friend Sisyphus. "I, at least," he says, "have no
work to do. And the rapid motion of the wheel is in sultry weather
sometimes pleasant."

Behind the shop, where had been originally the "back parlor," in the
days when every genteel house in Chelsea had both its front and back
parlor--the latter for sitting and living in, the former for the
reception of company--sat this afternoon the proprietor, the man whose
name had stood above the shop for fifty years, the original and only
Emblem. He was--nay, he is--for you may still find him in his place,
and may make his acquaintance over a county history any day in the
King's Road--he is an old man now, advanced in the seventies, who was
born before the battle of Waterloo was fought, and can remember
Chelsea when it was full of veterans wounded in battles fought long
before the Corsican Attila was let loose upon the world. His face
wears the peaceful and wise expression which belongs peculiarly to his
profession. Other callings make a man look peaceful, but not all other
callings make him look wise. Mr. Emblem was born by nature of a calm
temperament,--otherwise he would not have been happy in his business;
a smile lies generally upon his lips, and his eyes are soft and
benign; his hair is white, and his face, once ruddy, is pale, yet not
shrunk and seamed with furrows as happens to so many old men, but
round and firm; like his chin and lips it is clean shaven; he wears a
black coat extraordinarily shiny in the sleeve, and a black silk stock
just as he used to wear in the thirties when he was young, and
something of a dandy, and would show himself on a Saturday evening in
the pit of Drury Lane; and the stock is fastened behind with a silver
buckle. He is, in fact, a delightful old gentleman to look at and
pleasant to converse with, and on his brow every one who can read may
see, visibly stamped, the seal of a harmless and honest life. At the
contemplation of such a man, one's opinion of humanity is sensibly
raised, and even house-agents, plumbers, and suburban builders, feel
that, after all, virtue may bring with, it some reward.

The quiet and warmth of the afternoon, unbroken to his accustomed ear,
as it would be to a stranger, by the murmurous roll of London, made
him sleepy. In his hand he held a letter which he had been reading for
the hundredth time, and of which he knew by heart every word; and as
his eyes closed he went back in imagination to a passage in the past
which it recalled.

He stood, in imagination, upon the deck of a sailing-ship--an emigrant
ship. The year was eighteen hundred and sixty-four, a year when very
few were tempted to try their fortunes in a country torn by civil war.
With him were his daughter and his son-in-law, and they were come to
bid the latter farewell.

"My dear--my dear," cried the wife, in her husband's arms, "come what
may, I will join you in a year."

Her husband shook his head sadly.

"They do not want me here," he said; "the work goes into stronger and
rougher hands. Perhaps over there we may get on better, and besides,
it seems an opening."

If the kind of work which he wanted was given to stronger and rougher
hands than his in England, far more would it be the case in young and
rough America. It was journalistic work--writing work--that he wanted;
and he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a creature of retired and
refined tastes and manners. There are, perhaps, some still living who
have survived the tempestuous life of the ordinary Fleet Street
"newspaper man" of twenty or thirty years ago; perhaps one or two
among these remember Claude Aglen--but he was so short a time with
them that it is not likely; those who do remember him will understand
that the way to success, rough and thorny for all, for such as Aglen
was impossible.

"But you will think every day of little Iris?" said his wife. "Oh, my
dear, if I were only going with you! And but for me you would be at
home with your father, well and happy."

Then in his dream, which was also a memory, the old man saw how the
young husband kissed and comforted his wife.

"My dear," said Claude, "if it were not for you, what happiness could
I have in the world? Courage, my wife, courage and hope. I shall think
of you and Iris all day and all night until we meet again."

And so they parted and the ship sailed away.

The old man opened his eyes and looked about him. It was a dream.

"It was twenty years ago," he said, "and Iris was a baby in arms.
Twenty years ago, and he never saw his wife again. Never again!
Because she died," he added after a pause; "my Alice died."

He shed no tears, being so old that the time of tears was well-nigh
past--at seventy-five the eyes are drier than at forty, and one is no
longer surprised or disappointed, and seldom even angry, whatever
happens.

But he opened the letter in his hand and read it again mechanically.
It was written on thin foreign paper, and the creases of the folds had
become gaping rents. It was dated September, 1866, just eighteen years
back.

"When you read these lines," the letter said, "I shall be in the
silent land, whither Alice, my wife, has gone before me. It would be a
strange thing only to think upon this journey which lies before me,
and which I must take alone, had I time left for thinking. But I have
not. I may last a week, or I may die in a few hours. Therefore, to the
point.

"In one small thing we deceived you, Alice and I--my name is not Aglen
at all; we took that name for certain reasons. Perhaps we were wrong,
but we thought that as we were quite poor, and likely to remain poor,
it would be well to keep our secret to ourselves. Forgive us both this
suppression of the truth. We were made poor by our own voluntary act
and deed, and because I married the only woman I loved.

"I was engaged to a girl whom I did not love. We had been brought up
like brother and sister together, but I did not love her, though I was
engaged to her. In breaking this engagement I angered my father. In
marrying Alice I angered him still more.

"I now know that he has forgiven me; he forgave me on his death-bed;
he revoked his former will and made me his sole heir--just as if
nothing had happened to destroy his old affection--subject to one
condition--viz., that the girl to whom I was first engaged should
receive the whole income until I, or my heirs, should return to
England in order to claim the inheritance.

"It is strange. I die in a wooden shanty, in a little Western town,
the editor of a miserable little country paper. I have not money
enough even to bury me, and yet, if I were at home, I might be called
a rich man, as men go. My little Iris will be an heiress. At the very
moment when I learn that I am my father's heir, I am struck down by
fever; and now I know that I shall never get up again.

"It is strange. Yet my father sent me his forgiveness, and my wife is
dead, and the wealth that has come is useless to me. Wherefore,
nothing now matters much to me, and I know that you will hold my last
wishes sacred.

"I desire that Iris shall be educated as well and thoroughly as you
can afford; keep her free from rough and rude companions; make her
understand that her father was a gentleman of ancient family; this
knowledge will, perhaps, help to give her self-respect. If any
misfortune should fall upon you, such as the loss of health or wealth,
give the papers inclosed to a trustworthy solicitor, and bid him act
as is best in the interests of Iris. If, as I hope, all will go well
with you, do not open the papers until my child's twenty-first
birthday; do not let her know until then that she is going to be rich;
on her twenty-first birthday, open the papers and bid her claim her
own.

"To the woman I wronged--I know not whether she has married or
not--bid Iris carry my last message of sorrow at what has happened. I
do not regret, and I have never regretted, that I married Alice. But,
I gave her pain, for which I have never ceased to grieve. I have been
punished for this breach of faith. You will find among the papers an
account of all the circumstances connected with this engagement. There
is also in the packet my portrait, taken when I was a lad of sixteen;
give her that as well; there is the certificate of my marriage, my
register of baptism, that of Iris's baptism, my signet ring--" "His
arms"--the old man interrupted his reading--"his arms were: quarterly:
first and fourth, two roses and a boar's head, erect; second and
third, gules and fesse between--between--but I cannot remember what it
was between--" He went on reading: "My father's last letter to me;
Alice's letters, and one or two from yourself. If Iris should
unhappily die before her twenty-first birthday, open these papers,
find out from them the owner's name and address, seek her out, and
tell her that she will never now be disturbed by any claimants to the
estate."

The letter ended here abruptly, as if the writer had designed to add
more, but was prevented by death.

For there was a postscript, in another hand, which stated: "Mr. Aglen
died November 25th, 1866, and is buried in the cemetery of Johnson
City, Ill."

The old man folded the letter carefully, and laid it on the table.
Then he rose and walked across the room to the safe, which stood with
open door in the corner furthest from the fireplace. Among its
contents was a packet sealed and tied up in red tape, endorsed: "For
Iris. To be given to her on her twenty-first birthday. From her
father."

"It will be her twenty-first birthday," he said, "in three weeks. Then
I must give her the packet. So--so--with the portrait of her father,
and his marriage-certificate." He fell into a fit of musing, with the
papers in his hand. "She will be safe, whatever happens to me; and as
for me, if I lose her--of course I shall lose her. Why, what will it
matter? Have I not lost all, except Iris? One must not be selfish. Oh,
Iris, what a surprise--what a surprise I have in store for you!"

He placed the letter he had been reading within the tape which
fastened the bundle, so that it should form a part of the
communication to be made on Iris's birthday.

"There," he said, "now I shall read this letter no more. I wonder how
many times I have read it in the last eighteen years, and how often I
have wondered what the child's fortune would be? In three weeks--in
three short weeks. Oh, Iris, if you only knew!"

He put back the letters and the packet, locked the safe, and resumed
his seat.

The red-eyed assistant, still gumming and pasting his slips with
punctilious regard to duty, had been following his master's movements
with curiosity.

"Counting his investments again as usual," Mr. James murmured. "Ah!
and adding 'em up! Always at it. Oh, what a trade it must have been
once!"

Just then there appeared in the door a gentleman. He was quite shabby,
and even ragged in his dress, but he was clearly a gentleman. He was
no longer young; his shoulders were bent, and he had the unmistakable
stamp and carriage of a student.

"Guv'nor's at home," said the assistant briefly.

The visitor walked into the sanctum. He had under his arm half-a-dozen
volumes, which, without a word, he laid before Mr. Emblem, and untied
the string.

"You ought to know this book," he said without further introduction.

Mr. Emblem looked doubtfully at the visitor.

"You sold it to me twenty-five years ago," he went on, "for five
pounds."

"I did. And I remember now. You are Mr. Frank Farrar. Why, it is
twenty-five years ago!"

"I have bought no more books for twenty years and more," he replied.

"Sad--sad! Dear me--tut, tut!--bought no books? And you, Mr. Farrar,
once my best customer. And now--you do not mean to say that you are
going to sell--that you actually want to sell--this precious book?"

"I am selling, one by one, all my books," replied the other with a
sigh. "I am going down hill, Emblem, fast."

"Oh, dear, dear!" replied the bookseller. "This is very sad. One
cannot bear to think of the libraries being dispersed and sold off.
And now yours, Mr. Farrar? Really, yours? Must it be?"

"'Needs must,'" Mr. Farrar said with a sickly smile, "needs must when
the devil drives. I have parted with half my books already. But I
thought you might like to have this set, because they were once your
own."

"So I should"--Mr. Emblem laid a loving hand upon the volumes--"so I
should, Mr. Farrar, but not from you; not from you, sir. Why, you were
almost my best customer--I think almost my very best--thirty years
ago, when my trade was better than it is now. Yes, you gave me five
pounds--or was it five pounds ten?--for this very work. And it is
worth twelve pounds now--I assure you it is worth twelve pounds, if it
is worth a penny."

"Will you give me ten pounds for it, then?" cried the other eagerly;
"I want the money badly."

"No, I can't; but I will send you to a man who can and will. I do not
speculate now; I never go to auctions. I am old, you see. Besides, I
am poor. I will not buy your book, but I will send you to a man who
will give you ten pounds for it, I am sure, and then he will sell it
for fifteen." He wrote the address on a slip of paper. "Why, Mr.
Farrar, if an old friend, so to speak, can put the question, why in
the world--"

"The most natural thing," replied Mr. Farrar with a cold laugh; "I am
old, as I told you, and the younger men get all the work. That is all.
Nobody wants a genealogist and antiquary."

"Dear me, dear me! Why, Mr. Farrar, I remember now; you used to know
my poor son-in-law, who is dead eighteen years since. I was just
reading the last letter he ever wrote to me, just before he died. You
used to come here and sit with him in the evening. I remember now. So
you did."

"Thank you for your good will," said Mr. Farrar. "Yes, I remember your
son-in-law. I knew him before his marriage."

"Did you? Before his marriage? Then--" He was going to add, "Then you
can tell me his real name," but he paused, because it is a pity ever
to acknowledge ignorance, and especially ignorance in such elementary
matters as your son-in-law's name.

So Mr. Emblem checked himself.

"He ought to have been a rich man," Mr. Farrar continued; "but he
quarreled with his father, who cut him off with a shilling, I
suppose."

Then the poor scholar, who could find no market for his learned
papers, tied up his books again and went away with hanging head.

"Ugh!" Mr. James, who had been listening, groaned as Mr. Farrar passed
through the door. "Ugh! Call that a way of doing business? Why, if it
had been me, I'd have bought the book off of that old chap for a
couple o' pounds, I would. Ay, or a sov, so seedy he is, and wants
money so bad. And I know who'd have given twelve pound for it, in the
trade too. Call that carrying on business? He may well add up his
investments every day, it he can afford to chuck such chances. Ah, but
he'll retire soon." His fiery eyes brightened, and his face glowed
with the joy of anticipation. "He must retire before long."

There came another visitor. This time it was a lanky boy, with, a blue
bag over his shoulder and a notebook and pencil-stump in his hand. He
nodded to the assistant as to an old friend with whom one may be at
ease, set down his bag, opened his notebook, and nibbled his stump.
Then he read aloud, with a comma or semicolon between each, a dozen or
twenty titles. They were the names of the books which his employer
wished to pick up. The red-eyed assistant listened, and shook his
head. Then the boy, without another word, shouldered his bag and
departed, on his way to the next second-hand book-shop.

He was followed, at a decent interval, by another caller. This time it
was an old gentleman who opened the door, put in his head, and looked
about him with a quick and suspicious glance. At sight of the
assistant he nodded and smiled in the most friendly way possible, and
came in.

"Good-morning, Mr. James; good-morning, my friend. Splendid weather.
Pray don't disturb yourself. I am just having a look round--only a
look round, you know. Don't move, Mr. James."

He addressed Mr. James, but he was looking at the shelves as he spoke,
and, with the habit of a book-hunter, taking down the volumes, looking
at the title-pages and replacing them; under his arm he carried a
single volume in old leather binding.

Mr. James nodded his head, but did disturb himself; in fact, he rose
with a scowl upon his face, and followed this polite old gentlemen all
round the shop, placing himself close to his elbow. One might almost
suppose that he suspected him, so close and assiduous was his
assistance. But the visitor, accepting these attentions as if they
were customary, and the result of high breeding, went slowly round the
shelves, taking down book after book, but buying none. Presently he
smiled again, and said that he must be moving on, and very politely
thanked Mr. James for his kindness.

"Nowhere," he was so good as to say, "does one get so much personal
kindness and attention as at Emblem's. Good-morning, Mr. James;
good-morning, my friend."

Mr. James grunted; and closed the door after him.

"Ugh!" he said with disgust, "I know you; I know your likes. Want to
make your set complete--eh? Want to sneak one of our books to do it
with, don't you? Ah!" He looked into the back shop before he returned
to his paste and his slips. "That was Mr. Potts, the great Queen Anne
collector, sir. Most notorious book-snatcher in all London, and the
most barefaced. Wanted our fourth volume of the 'Athenian Oracle.' I
saw his eyes reached out this way, and that way, and always resting on
that volume. I saw him edging along to the shelf. Got another odd
volume just like it in his wicked old hand, ready to change it when I
wasn't looking."

"Ah," said Mr. Emblem, waking up from his dream of Iris and her
father's letter; "ah, they will try it on. Keep your eyes open,
James."

"No thanks, as usual," grumbled Mr. James as he returned to his gum
and his scissors. "Might as well have left him to snatch the book."

Here, however, James was wrong, because it is the first duty of an
assistant to hinder and obstruct the book-snatcher, who carries on his
work by methods of crafty and fraudulent exchange rather than by plain
theft, which is a mere brutal way. For, first, the book-snatcher marks
his prey; he finds the shop which has a set containing the volume
which is missing in his own set; next, he arms himself with a volume
which closely resembles the one he covets, and then, on pretense of
turning over the leaves, he watches his opportunity to effect an
exchange, and goes away rejoicing, his set complete. No collector, as
is very well known, whether of books, coins, pictures, medals, fans,
scarabs, book-plates, autographs, stamps, or anything else, has any
conscience at all. Anybody can cut out slips and make a catalogue, but
it requires a sharp assistant, with eyes all over his head like a
spider, to be always on guard against this felonious and unscrupulous
collector.

Next, there came two schoolboys together, who asked for and bought a
crib to "Virgil;" and then a girl who wanted some cheap French
reading-book. Just as the clock began to strike five, Mr. Emblem
lifted his head and looked up. The shop-door opened, and there stepped
in, rubbing his shoes on the mat as if he belonged to the house, an
elderly gentleman of somewhat singular appearance. He wore a fez cap,
but was otherwise dressed as an Englishman--in black frock coat, that
is, buttoned up--except that his feet were incased in black cloth
shoes, so that he went noiselessly. His hair was short and white, and
he wore a small white beard; his skin was a rather dark brown; he was,
in fact, a Hindoo, and his name was Lala Roy.

He nodded gravely to Mr. James and walked into the back shop.

"It goes well," he asked, "with the buying and the selling?"

"Surely, Lala, surely."

"A quiet way of buying and selling; a way fit for one who meditates,"
said the Hindoo, looking round. "Tell me, my friend, what ails the
child? Is she sick?"

"The child is well, Lala."

"Her mind wandered this morning. She failed to perceive a simple
method which I tried to teach her. I feared she might be ill."

"She is not ill, my friend, but I think her mind is troubled."

"She is a woman. We are men. There is nothing in the world that is
able to trouble the mind of the philosopher."

"Nothing," said Mr. Emblem manfully, as if he, too, was a disciple.
"Nothing; is there now?"

The stoutness of the assertion was sensibly impaired by the question.

"Not poverty, which is a shadow; nor pain, which passes; nor the loss
of woman's love, which is a gain; nor fall from greatness--nothing.
Nevertheless," his eyes did look anxious in spite of his philosophy,
"this trouble of the child--will it soon be over?"

"I hope this evening," said Mr. Emblem. "Indeed I am sure that it will
be finished this evening."

"If the child had a mother, or a brother, or any protectors but
ourselves, my friend, we might leave her to them. But she has nobody
except you and me. I am glad that she is not ill."

He left Mr. Emblem, and passing through the door of communication
between house and shop, went noiselessly up the stairs.

One more visitor--unusual for so many to call on a September
afternoon. This time it was a youngish man of thirty or so, who
stepped into the shop with an air of business, and, taking no notice
at all of the assistant, walked swiftly into the back shop and shut
the door behind him.

"I thought so," murmured Mr. James. "After he's been counting up his
investments, his lawyer calls. More investments."

Mr. David Chalker was a solicitor and, according to his friends, who
were proud of him, a sharp practitioner. He was, in fact, one of those
members of the profession who, starting with no connection, have to
make business for themselves. This, in London, they do by encouraging
the county court, setting neighbors by the ears, lending money in
small sums, fomenting quarrels, charging commissions, and generally
making themselves a blessing and a boon to the district where they
reside. But chiefly Mr. Chalker occupied himself with lending money.

"Now, Mr. Emblem," he said, not in a menacing tone, but as one who
warns; "now, Mr. Emblem."

"Now, Mr. Chalker," the bookseller repeated mildly.

"What are you going to do for me?"

"I got your usual notice," the old bookseller began, hesitating, "six
months ago."

"Of course you did. Three fifty is the amount. Three fifty, exactly."

"Just so. But I am afraid I am not prepared to pay off the bill of
sale. The interest, as usual, will be ready."

"Of course it will. But this time the principal must be ready too."

"Can't you get another client to find the money?"

"No, I can't. Money is tight, and your security, Mr. Emblem, isn't so
good as it was."

"The furniture is there, and so is the stock."

"Furniture wears out; as for the stock--who knows what that is worth?
All your books together may not be worth fifty pounds, for what I
know."

"Then what am I to do?"

"Find the money yourself. Come, Mr. Emblem, everybody knows--your
grandson himself told me--all the world knows--you've been for years
saving up for your granddaughter. You told Joe only six months
ago--you can't deny it--that whatever happened to you she would be
well off."

Mr. Emblem did not deny the charge. But he ought not to have told this
to his grandson, of all people in the world.

"As for Joe," Mr. Chalker went on, "you are going to do nothing for
him. I know that. But is it business like, Mr. Emblem, to waste good
money which you might have invested for your granddaughter?"

"You do not understand. Mr. Chalker. You really do not, and I cannot
explain. But about this bill of sale--never mind my granddaughter."

"You the aforesaid Richard Emblem"--Mr. Chalker began to recite,
without commas--"have assigned to me David Chalker aforesaid his
executors administrators and assigns all and singular the several
chattels and things specifically described in the schedule hereto
annexed by way of security for the payment of the sum of three hundred
and fifty pounds and interest thereon at the rate of eight per cent.
per annum."

"Thank you, Mr. Chalker. I know all that."

"You can't complain, I'm sure. It is five years since you borrowed the
money."

"It was fifty pounds and a box of old law books out of your office,
and I signed a bill for a hundred."

"You forget the circumstances."

"No, I do not. My grandson was a rogue. One does not readily forget
that circumstance. He was also your friend, I remember."

"And I held my tongue."

"I have had no more money from you, and the sum has become three
hundred and fifty."

"Of course you don't understand law, Mr. Emblem. How should you! But
we lawyers don't work for nothing. However it isn't what you got, but
what I am to get. Come, my good sir, it's cutting off your nose to
spite your face. Settle and have done with it, even if it does take a
little slice off your granddaughter's fortune? Now look here"--his
voice became persuasive--"why not take me into your confidence? Make a
friend of me. You want advice; let me advise you. I can get you good
investments--far better than you know anything of--good and safe
investments--at six certain, and sometimes seven and even eight per
cent. Make me your man of business--come now. As for this trumpery
bill of sale--this trifle of three fifty, what is it to you?
Nothing--nothing. And as for your intention to enrich your
granddaughter, and cut off your grandson with a shilling, why I honor
you for it--there, though he was my friend. For Joe deserves it
thoroughly. I've told him so, mind. You ask him. I've told him so a
dozen times. I've said: 'The old man's right, Joe.' Ask him if I
haven't."

This was very expansive, but somehow Mr. Emblem did not respond.

Presently, however, he lifted his head.

"I have three weeks still."

"Three weeks still."

"And if I do not find the money within three weeks?"

"Why--but of course you will--but if you do not--I suppose there will
be only one thing left to do--realize the security, sell up--sticks
and books and all."

"Thank you, Mr. Chalker. I will look round me, and--and--do my best.
Good day, Mr. Chalker."

"The best you can do, Mr. Emblem," returned the solicitor, "is to take
me as your adviser. You trust David Chalker."

"Thank you. Good-day, Mr. Chalker."

On his way out, Mr. Chalker stopped for a moment and looked round the
shop.

"How's business?" he asked the assistant.

"Dull, sir," replied Mr. James. "He throws it all away, and neglects
his chances. Naturally, being so rich--"

"So rich, indeed," the solicitor echoed.

"It will be bad for his successor," Mr. James went on, thinking how
much he should himself like to be that successor. "The goodwill won't
be worth half what it ought to be, and the stock is just falling to
pieces."

Mr. Chalker looked about him again thoughtfully, and opened his mouth
as if about to ask a question, but said nothing. He remembered, in
time, that the shopman was not likely to know the amount of his
master's capital or investments.

"There isn't a book even in the glass-case that's worth a five-pound
note," continued Mr. James, whispering, "and he don't look about for
purchases any more. Seems to have lost his pluck."

Mr. Chalker returned to the back-shop.

"Within three weeks, Mr. Emblem," he repeated, and then departed.

Mr. Emblem sat in his chair. He had to find three hundred and fifty
pounds in three weeks. No one knew better than himself that this was
impossible. Within three weeks! But, in three weeks, he would open the
packet of letters, and give Iris her inheritance. At least, she would
not suffer. As for himself--He looked round the little back shop, and
tried to recall the fifty years he had spent there, the books he had
bought and sold, the money which had slipped through his fingers, the
friends who had come and gone. Why, as for the books, he seemed to
remember them every one--his joy in the purchase, his pride in
possession, and his grief at letting them go. All the friends gone
before him, his trade sunk to nothing.

"Yet," he murmured, "I thought it would last my time."

But the clock struck six. It was his tea-time. He rose mechanically,
and went upstairs to Iris.




CHAPTER II.

FOX AND WOLF.


Mr. James, left to himself, attempted, in accordance with his daily
custom, to commit a dishonorable action.

That is to say, he first listened carefully to the retreating
footsteps of his master, as he went up the stairs; then he left his
table, crept stealthily into the back shop, and began to pull the
drawers, turn the handle of the safe, and try the desk. Everything was
carefully locked. Then he turned over all the papers on the table, but
found nothing that contained the information he looked for. It was his
daily practice thus to try the locks, in hope that some day the safe,
or the drawers, or the desk would be left open by accident, when he
might be able to solve a certain problem, the doubt and difficulty of
which sore let and hindered him--namely, of what extent, and where
placed, were those great treasures, savings, and investments which
enabled his master to be careless over his business. It was, further,
customary with him to be thus frustrated and disappointed. Having
briefly, therefore, also in accordance with his usual custom,
expressed his disgust at this want of confidence between master and
man, Mr. James returned to his paste and scissors.

About a quarter past six the shop door was cautiously opened, and a
head appeared, which looked round stealthily. Seeing nobody about
except Mr. James, the head nodded, and presently followed by its body,
stepped into the shop.

"Where's the admiral, Foxy?" asked the caller.

"Guv'nor's upstairs, Mr. Joseph, taking of his tea with Miss Iris,"
replied Mr. James, not at all offended by the allusion to his
craftiness. Who should resemble the fox if not the second-hand
bookseller? In no trade, perhaps, can the truly admirable qualities of
that animal--his patience, his subtlety and craft, his pertinacity,
his sagacity--be illustrated more to advantage. Mr. James felt a glow
of virtue--would that he could grow daily and hourly, and more and
more toward the perfect fox. Then, indeed, and not till then would he
be able to live truly up to his second-hand books.

"Having tea with Iris; well--"

The speaker looked as if it required some effort to receive this
statement with resignation.

"He always does at six o'clock. Why shouldn't he?" asked Mr. James.

"Because, James, he spends the time in cockering up that gal whom he's
ruined and spoiled--him and the old nigger between them--so that her
mind is poisoned against her lawful relations, and nothing will
content her but coming into all the old man's money, instead of going
share and share alike, as a cousin should, and especially a
she-cousin, while there's a biscuit left in the locker and a drop of
rum in the cask."

"Ah!" said Mr. James with a touch of sympathy, called forth, perhaps,
by mention of the rum, which is a favorite drink with second-hand
booksellers' assistants.

"Nothing too good for her," the other went on; "the best of education,
pianos to play upon, and nobody good enough for her to know. Not on
visiting terms, if you please, with her neighbors; waiting for
duchesses to call upon her. And what is she, after all? A miserable
teacher!"

Mr. Joseph Gallop was a young man somewhere between twenty and thirty,
tall, large-limbed, well set-up, and broad-shouldered. A young man
who, at first sight, would seem eminently fitted to push his own
fortunes. Also, at first sight, a remarkably handsome fellow, with
straight, clear-cut features and light, curly hair. When he swung
along the street, his round hat carelessly thrown back, and his
handsome face lit up by the sun, the old women murmured a blessing
upon his comely head--as they used to do, a long time ago, upon the
comely and curly head of Absalom--and the young women looked meaningly
at one another--as was also done in the case of Absalom--and the
object of their admiration knew that they were saying to each other,
in the feminine way, where a look is as good as a whisper, "There goes
a handsome fellow." Those who knew him better, and had looked more
closely into his face, said that his mouth was bad and his eyes
shifty. The same opinion was held by the wiser sort as regards his
character. For, on the one hand, some averred that to their certain
knowledge Joe Gallop had shown himself a monster of ingratitude toward
his grandfather, who had paid his debts and done all kinds of things
for him; on the other hand there were some who thought he had been
badly treated; and some said that no good would ever come of a young
fellow who was never able to remain in the same situation more than a
month or so; and others said that he had certainly been unfortunate,
but that he was a quick and clever young man, who would some day find
the kind of work that suited him, and then he would show everybody of
what stuff he was composed. As for us, we have only to judge of him by
his actions.

"Perhaps, Mr. Joseph," said Mr. James, "perhaps Miss Iris won't have
all bequeathed to her?"

"Do you know anything?" Joe asked quickly. "Has he made a new will
lately?"

"Not that I know of. But Mr. Chalker has been here off and on a good
bit now."

"Ah! Chalker's a close one, too. Else he'd tell me, his old friend.
Look here, Foxy," he turned a beaming and smiling face upon the
assistant. "If you should see anything or find anything out, tell me,
mind. And, remember, I'll make it worth your while."

Mr. James looked as it he was asking himself how Joseph could make it
worth his while, seeing that he got nothing more from his grandfather,
and by his own showing never would have anything more.

"It's only his will I'm anxious to know about; that, and where he's
put away all his money. Think what a dreadful thing it would be for
his heirs if he were to go and die suddenly, and none of us to know
where his investments are. As for the shop, that is already disposed
of, as I dare say you know."

"Disposed of? The shop disposed of! Oh, Lord!" The assistant turned
pale. "Oh, Mr. Joseph," he asked earnestly, "what will become of the
shop? And who is to have it?"

"I am to have it," Mr. Joseph replied calmly. This was the lie
absolute, and he invented it very cleverly and at the right moment--a
thing which gives strength and life to a lie, because he already
suspected the truth and guessed the secret hope and ambition which
possesses every ambitious assistant in this trade--namely, to get the
succession. Mr. James looked upon himself as the lawful and rightful
heir to the business. But sometimes he entertained grievous doubts,
and now indeed his heart sunk into his boots. "I am to have it," Joe
repeated.

"Oh, I didn't know. You are to have it, then? Oh!"

If Mr. James had been ten years younger, I think he would have burst
into tears. But at the age of forty weeping no longer presents itself
as a form of relief. It is more usual to seek consolation in a swear.
He stammered, however, while he turned pale, and then red, and then
pale again.

"Yes, quite proper, Mr. Joseph, I'm sure, and a most beautiful
business may be made again here by one who understands the way. Oh,
you are a lucky man, Mr. Joseph. You are indeed, sir, to get such a
noble chance."

"The shop," Joe went on, "was settled--settled upon me, long ago." The
verb "to settle" is capable of conveying large and vague impressions.
"But after all, what's the good of this place to a sailor?"

"The good--the good of this place?" Mr. James's cheek flushed. "Why, to
make money, to be sure--to coin money in. If I had this place to
myself--why--why, in two years I would be making as much as two
hundred a year. I would indeed."

"You want to make money. Bah! That's all you fellows think of. To sit
in the back shop all day long and to sell moldy books! We jolly sailor
boys know better than that, my lad."

There really was something nautical about the look of the man. He wore
a black-silk tie, in a sailor's running-knot, the ends loose; his
waistcoat was unbuttoned, and his coat was a kind of jacket; not to
speak of his swinging walk and careless pose. In fact, he had been a
sailor; he had made two voyages to India and back as assistant-purser,
or purser's clerk, on board a P. and O. boat, but some disagreement
with his commanding officer concerning negligence, or impudence, or
drink, or laziness--he had been charged in different situations and at
different times with all these vices, either together or
separately--caused him to lose his rating on the ship's books.
However, he brought away from his short nautical experience, and
preserved, a certain nautical swagger, which accorded well with his
appearance, and gave him a swashbuckler air, which made those who knew
him well lament that he had not graced the Elizabethan era, when he
might have become a gallant buccaneer, and so got himself shot through
the head; or that he had not flourished under the reign of good Queen
Anne, when he would probably have turned pirate and been hanged; or
that, being born in the Victorian age, he had not gone to the Far
West, where he would, at least, have had the chance of getting shot in
a gambling-saloon.

"As for me, when I get the business," he continued, "I shall look
about for some one to carry it on until I am able to sell it for what
it will fetch. Books at a penny apiece all round, I suppose"--James
gasped--"shop furniture thrown in"--James panted--"and the goodwill
for a small lump sum." James wondered how far his own savings, and
what he could borrow, might go toward that lump sum, and how much
might "remain." "My grandfather, as you know, of course, is soon going
to retire from business altogether." This was another lie absolute, as
Mr. Emblem had no intention whatever of retiring.

"Soon, Mr. Joseph? He has never said a word to me about it."

"Very soon, now--sooner than you expect. At seventy-five, and with
all his money, why should he go on slaving any longer? Very soon,
indeed. Any day."

"Mr. Joseph," the assistant positively trembled with eagerness and
apprehension.

"What is it, James? Did you really think that a man like me was going
to sit in a back shop among these moldy volumes all day? Come, that's
too good. You might have given me credit for being one cut above a
counter, too. I am a gentleman, James, if you please; I am an officer
and a gentleman."

He then proceeded to explain, in language that smacked something of
the sea, that his ideas soared far above trade, which was, at best, a
contemptible occupation, and quite unworthy of a gentleman,
particularly an officer and a gentleman; and that his personal friends
would never condescend even to formal acquaintance, not to speak of
friendship, with trade. This discourse may be omitted. When one reads
about such a man as Joe Gallop, when we are told how he looked and
what he said and how he said it, with what gestures and in what tone,
we feel as if it would be impossible for the simplest person in the
world to be mistaken as to his real character. My friends, especially
my young friends, so far from the discernment of character being easy,
it is, on the contrary, an art most difficult, and very rarely
attained. Nature's indications are a kind of handwriting the
characters in which are known to few, so that, for instance, the
quick, enquiring glance of an eye, in which one may easily read--who
knows the character--treachery, lying, and deception, just as in the
letter Beth was originally easily discerned the effigies of a house,
may very easily pass unread by the multitude. The language, or rather
the alphabet, is much less complicated than the cuneiform of the Medes
and Persians, yet no one studies it, except women, most of whom are
profoundly skilled in this lore, which makes them so fearfully and
wonderfully wise. Thus it is easy for man to deceive his brother man,
but not his sister woman. Again, most of us are glad to take everybody
on his own statements; there are, or may be, we are all ready to
acknowledge, with sorrow for erring humanity, somewhere else in the
world, such things as pretending, swindling, acting a part, and
cheating, but they do not and cannot belong to our own world. Mr.
James, the assistant, very well knew that Mr. Emblem's grandson had
already, though still young, as bad a record as could be desired by
any; that he had been turned out of one situation after another; that
his grandfather had long since refused to help him any more; that he
was always to be found in the Broad Path which leadeth to destruction.
When he had money he ran down that path as fast as his legs could
carry him; when he had none, he only walked and wished he could run.
But he never left it, and never wished to leave it. Knowing all this,
the man accepted and believed every word of Joe's story. James
believed it, because he hoped it. He listened respectfully to Joe's
declamation on the meanness of trade, and then he rubbed his hands,
and said humbly that he ventured to hope, when the sale of the
business came on, Mr. Joseph would let him have a chance.

"You?" asked Joe. "I never thought of you. But why not? Why not, I
say? Why not you as well as anybody else?"

"Nobody but me, Mr. Joseph, knows what the business is, and how it
might be improved; and I could make arrangements for paying by regular
instalments."

"Well, we'll talk about it when the time comes. I won't forget.
Sailors, you know, can't be expected to understand the value of shops.
Say, James, what does the commodore do all day?"

"Sits in there and adds up his investments."

"Always doing that--eh? Always adding 'em up? Ah, and you've never got
a chance of looking over his shoulder, I suppose?"

"Never."

"You may find that chance, one of these days. I should like to know,
if only for curiosity, what they are and where they are. He sits in
there and adds 'em up. Yes--I've seen him at it. There must be
thousands by this time."

"Thousands," said the assistant, in the belief that the more you add
up a sum the larger it grows.

Joe walked into the back shop and tried the safe.

"Where are the keys?" he asked.

"Always in his pocket or on the table before him. He don't leave them
about."

"Or you'd ha' known pretty sharp all there is to know--eh, my lad?
Well, you're a foxy one, you are, if ever there was one. Let's be
pals, you and me. When the old man goes, you want the shop--well, I
don't see why you shouldn't have the shop. Somebody must have the
shop; and it will be mine to do what I please with. As for his
savings, he says they are all for Iris--well, wills have been set
aside before this. Do you think now, seriously, do you think, James
that the old man is quite right--eh? Don't answer in a hurry. Do you
think, now, that he is quite right in his chump?"

James laughed.

"He's right enough, though he throws away his chances."

"Throws away his chances. How the deuce can he be all right then? Did
you ever hear of a bookseller in his right mind throwing away his
chances?"

"Why--no--for that matter--"

"Very well, then; for that matter, don't forget that you've seen him
throw away all his chances--all his chances, you said. You are ready
to swear to that. Most important evidence, that, James." James had not
said "all," but he grunted, and the other man went on: "It may come in
useful, this recollection. Keep your eyes wide-open, my red haired
pirate. As for the moldy old shop, you may consider it as good as your
own. Why, I suppose you'll get somebody else to handle the paste-brush
and the scissors, and tie up the parcels, and water the shop--eh?
You'll be too proud to do that for yourself, you will."

Mr. James grinned and rubbed his hands.

"All your own--eh? Well, you'll wake 'em up a bit, won't you?"

Mr. James grinned again--he continued grinning.

"Go on, Mr. Joseph," he said; "go on--I like it."

"Consider the job as settled, then. As for terms they shall be easy;
I'm not a hard man. And--I say, Foxy, about that safe?"

Mr. James suddenly ceased grinning, because he observed a look in his
patron's eyes which alarmed him.

"About that safe. You must find out for me where the old man has put
his money, and what it is worth. Do you hear? Or else--"

"How can I find out? He won't tell me any more than you."

"Or else you must put me in the way of finding out." Mr. Joseph
lowered his voice to a whisper. "He keeps the keys on the table before
him. When a customer takes him out here, he leaves the keys behind
him. Do you know the key of the safe?"

"Yes, I know it."

"What is to prevent a clever, quick-eyed fellow like you, mate,
stepping in with a bit of wax--eh? While he is talking, you know. You
could rush it in a moment."

"It's--it's dangerous, Mr. Joseph."

"So it is--rather dangerous--not much. What of that?"

"I would do anything I could to be of service to you, Mr. Joseph; but
that's not honest, and it's dangerous."

"Dangerous! There's danger in the briny deep and shipwreck on the
blast, if you come to danger. Do we, therefore, jolly mariners afloat
ever think of that? Never. As to honesty, don't make a man sick."

"Look here, Mr. Joseph. If you'll give me a promise in writing, that
I'm to have the shop, as soon as you get it, at a fair valuation and
easy terms--say ten per cent down, and--"

"Stow it, mate; write what you like, and I'll sign it. Now about that
key?"

"Supposing you was to get a duplicate key, and supposing you was to
get into trouble about it, Mr. Joseph, should you--should you--I only
put it to you--should you up and round upon the man as got you that
key?"

"Foxy, you are as suspicious as a Chinaman. Well, then, do it this
way. Send it me in a letter, and then who is to know where the letter
came from?"

The assistant nodded.

"Then I think I can do the job, though not, perhaps, your way. But I
think I can do it. I won't promise for a day or two."

"There you spoke like an honest pal and a friendly shipmate.
Dangerous! Of course it is. When the roaring winds do blow--Hands upon
it, brother. Foxy, you've never done a better day's work. You are too
crafty for any sailor--you are, indeed. Here, just for a little key--"

"Hush, Mr. Joseph! Oh, pray--pray don't talk so loud! You don't know
who may be listening. There's Mr. Lala Roy. You never hear him
coming."

"Just for a trifle of a key, you are going to get possession of the
best book-shop in all Chelsea. Well, keep your eyes skinned and the
wax ready, will you? And now, James, I'll be off."

"Oh, I say, Mr. Joseph, wait a moment!" James was beginning to realize
what he had promised. "If anything dreadful should come of this? I
don't know what is in the safe. There may be money as well as papers."

"James, do you think I would steal? Do you mean to insinuate that I am
a thief, sir? Do you dare to suspect that I would take money?"

James certainly looked as if he had thought even that possible.

"I shall open the safe, take out the papers, read them, and put them
back just as I found them. Will that do for you?"

He shook hands again, and took himself off.

At seven o'clock Mr. Emblem came down-stairs again.

"Has any one been?" he asked as usual.

"Only Mr. Joseph."

"What might Mr. Joseph want?"

"Nothing at all."

"Then," said his grandfather, "Mr. Joseph might just as well have kept
away."

       *       *       *       *       *

Let us anticipate a little. James spent the next day hovering about in
the hope that an opportunity would offer of getting the key in his
possession for a few moments. There was no opportunity. The bunch of
keys lay on the table under the old man's eyes all day, and when he
left the table he carried them with him. But the day afterward he got
his chance. One of the old customers called to talk over past bargains
and former prizes. Mr. Emblem came out of the back shop with his
visitor, and continued talking with him as far as the door. As he
passed the table--James's table--he rested the hand which carried the
keys on it, and left them there. James pounced upon them and slipped
them into his pocket noiselessly. Mr. Emblem returned to his own chair
and thought nothing of the keys for an hour and a half by the clock,
and during this period James was out on business. When Mr. Emblem
remembered his keys, he felt for them in their usual place and missed
them, and then began searching about and cried out to James that he
had lost his bunch of keys.

"Why, sir," said James, bringing them to him, after a little search,
and with a very red face, "here they are; you must have left them on
my table."

And in this way the job was done.




CHAPTER III.

IRIS THE HERALD.


By a somewhat remarkable coincidence it was on this very evening that
Iris first made the acquaintance of her pupil, Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot.
These coincidences, I believe, happen oftener in real life than they
do even on the stage, where people are always turning up at the very
nick of time and the critical moment.

I need little persuasion to make me believe that the first meeting of
Arnold Arbuthnot and Iris, on the very evening when her cousin was
opening matters with the Foxy one, was nothing short of Providential.
You shall see, presently, what things might have happened if they had
not met. The meeting was, in fact, the second of the three really
important events in the life of a girl. The first, which is seldom
remembered with the gratitude which it deserves, is her birth; the
second, the first meeting with her future lover; the third, her
wedding-day; the other events of a woman's life are interesting,
perhaps, but not important.

Certain circumstances, which will be immediately explained, connected
with this meeting, made it an event of very considerable interest to
Iris, even though she did not suspect its immense importance. So much
interest that she thought of nothing else for a week beforehand; that
as the appointed hour drew near she trembled and grew pale; that when
her grandfather came up for his tea, she, who was usually so quick to
discern the least sign of care or anxiety in his face, actually did
not observe the trouble, plainly written in his drooping head and
anxious eyes, which was due to his interview with Mr. David Chalker.

She poured out the tea, therefore, without one word of sympathy. This
would have seemed hard if her grandfather had expected any. He did
not, however, because he did not know that the trouble showed in his
face, and was trying to look as if nothing had happened. Yet in his
brain were ringing and resounding the words, "Within three
weeks--within three weeks," with the regularity of a horrid clock at
midnight, when one wants to go to sleep.

"Oh," cried Iris, forced, as young people always are, to speak of her
own trouble, "oh, grandfather, he is coming to-night."

"Who is coming to-night, my dear?" and then he listened again for the
ticking of the clock: "Within three weeks--within three weeks." "Who
is coming to-night, my dear?"

He took the cup of tea from her, and sat down with an old man's
deliberation, which springs less from wisdom and the fullness of
thought that from respect to rheumatism.

The iteration of that refrain, "Within three weeks," made him forget
everything, even the trouble of his granddaughter's mind.

"Oh, grandfather, you cannot have forgotten!"

She spoke with the least possible touch of irritation, because she had
been thinking of this thing for a week past, day and night, and it was
a thing of such stupendous interest to her, that it seemed impossible
that anyone who knew of it could forget what was coming.

"No, no." The old man was stimulated into immediate recollection by
the disappointment in her eyes. "No, no, my dear, I have not
forgotten. Your pupil is coming. Mr. Arbuthnot is coming. But, Iris,
child, don't let that worry you. I will see him for you, if you like."

"No; I must see him myself. You see, dear, there is the awful
deception. Oh, how shall I tell him?"

"No deception at all," he said stoutly. "You advertised in your own
initials. He never asked if the initials belonged to a man or to a
woman. The other pupils do not know. Why should this one? What does it
matter to him if you have done the work for which he engaged your
services?"

"But, oh, he is so different! And the others, you know, keep to the
subject."

"So should he, then. Why didn't he?"

"But he hasn't. And I have been answering him, and he must think that
I was drawing him on to tell me more about himself; and now--oh, what
will he think? I drew him on and on--yet I didn't mean to--till at
last he writes to say that he regards me as the best friend and the
wisest adviser he has ever had. What will he think and say?
Grandfather, it is dreadful!"

"What did you tell him for, Iris, my dear? Why couldn't you let things
go on? And by telling him you will lose your pupil."

"Yes, of course; and, worse still, I shall lose his letters. We live
so quietly here that his letters have come to me like news of another
world. How many different worlds are there all round one in London? It
has been pleasant to read of that one in which ladies go about
beautifully dressed always, and where the people have nothing to do
but to amuse themselves. He has told me about this world in which he
lives, and about his own life, so that I know everything he does, and
where he goes; and"--here she sighed heavily--"of course it could not
go on forever; and I should not mind so much if it had not been
carried on under false pretenses."

"No false pretenses at all, my dear. Don't think it."

"I sent back his last check," she said, trying to find a little
consolation for herself. "But yet--"

"Well, Iris," said her grandfather, "he wanted to learn heraldry, and
you have taught him."

"For the last three months"--the girl blushed as if she was confessing
her sins--"for the last three months there has not been a single word
in his letters about heraldry. He tells me that he writes because he
is idle, or because he wants to talk, or because he is alone in his
studio, or because he wants his unknown friend's advice. I am his
unknown friend, and I have been giving him advice."

"And very good advice, too," said her grandfather benevolently. "Who
is so wise as my Iris?"

"I have answered all his letters, and never once told him that I am
only a girl."

"I am glad you did not tell him, Iris," said her grandfather; but he
did not say why he was glad. "And why can't he go on writing his
letters without making any fuss?"

"Because he says he must make the acquaintance of the man--the man, he
says--with whom he has been in correspondence so long. This is what he
says."

She opened a letter which lay upon a table covered with papers, but
her grandfather stopped her.

"Well, my dear, I do not want to know what he says. He wishes to make
your acquaintance. Very good, then. You are going to see him, and to
tell him who you are. That is enough. But as for deceiving"--he
paused, trying to understand this extreme scrupulosity of
conscience--"if you come to deceiving--well, in a kind sort of a way
you did allow him to think his correspondent a man. I admit that. What
harm is done to him? None. He won't be so mean, I suppose, as to ask
for his money back again."

"I think he ought to have it all back," said Iris; "yes, all from the
very beginning. I am ashamed that I ever took any money from him. My
face burns when I think of it."

To this her grandfather made no reply. The returning of money paid for
services rendered was, to his commercial mind, too foolish a thing to
be even talked about. At the same time, Iris was quite free to manage
her own affairs. And then there was that roll of papers in the safe.
Why, what matter if she sent away all her pupils? He changed the
subject.

"Iris, my dear," he said, "about this other world, where the people
amuse themselves; the world which lives in the squares and in the big
houses on the Chelsea Embankment here, you know--how should you like,
just for a change, to belong to that world and have no work to do?"

"I don't know," she replied carelessly, because the question did not
interest her.

"You would have to leave me, of course. You would sever your
connection, as they say, with the shop."

"Please, don't let us talk nonsense, grandfather."

"You would have to be ashamed, perhaps, of ever having taught for your
living."

"Now that I never should be--never, not if they made me a duchess."

"You would go dressed in silk and velvet. My dear, I should like to
see you dressed up just for once, as we have seen them at the
theater."

"Well, I should like one velvet dress in my life. Only one. And it
should be crimson--a beautiful, deep, dark crimson."

"Very good. And you would drive in a carriage instead of an omnibus;
you would sit in the stalls instead of the upper circle; you would
give quantities of money to poor people; and you would buy as many
second hand books as you pleased. There are rich people, I believe,
ostentatious people, who buy new books. But you, my dear, have been
better brought up. No books are worth buying till they have stood the
criticism of a whole generation at least. Never buy new books, my
dear."

"I won't," said Iris. "But, you dear old man, what have you got in
your head to-night? Why in the world should we talk about getting
rich?"

"I was only thinking," he said, "that perhaps, you might be so much
happier--"

"Happier? Nonsense! I am as happy as I can be. Six pupils already. To
be sure I have lost one," she sighed; "and the best among them all."

When her grandfather left her, Iris placed candles on the
writing-table, but did not light them, though it was already pretty
dark. She had half an hour to wait; and she wanted to think, and
candles are not necessary for meditation. She sat at the open window
and suffered her thoughts to ramble where they pleased. This is a
restful thing to do, especially if your windows look upon a tolerably
busy but not noisy London road. For then, it is almost as good as
sitting beside a swiftly-running stream; the movement of the people
below is like the unceasing flow of the current; the sound of the
footsteps is like the whisper of the water along the bank; the echo of
the half heard talk strikes your ear like the mysterious voices wafted
to the banks from the boats as they go by; and the lights of the shops
and the street presently become spectral and unreal like lights seen
upon the river in the evening.

Iris had a good many pupils--six, in fact, as she had boasted; why,
then, was she so strangely disturbed on account of one?

An old tutor by correspondence may be, and very likely is, indifferent
about his pupils, because he has had so many; but Iris was a young
tutor, and had as yet known few. One of her pupils, for instance, was
a gentleman in the fruit and potato line, in the Borough. By reason of
his early education, which had not been neglected so much as entirely
omitted, he was unable to personally conduct his accounts. Now a
merchant without his accounts is as helpless as a tourist without his
Cook. So that he desired, in his mature age, to learn book keeping,
compound addition, subtraction, and multiplication. He had no
partners, so that he did not want division. But it is difficult--say,
well-nigh impossible--for a middle-aged merchant, not trained in the
graces of letter-writing, to inspire a young lady with personal
regard, even though she is privileged to follow the current of his
thoughts day by day, and to set him his sums.

Next there was a young fellow of nineteen or twenty, who was beginning
life as an assistant-teacher in a commercial school at Lower Clapton.
This way is a stony and a thorny path to tread; no one walks upon it
willingly; those who are compelled to enter upon it speedily either
run away and enlist, or they go and find a secluded spot in which to
hang themselves. The smoother ways of the profession are only to be
entered by one who is the possessor of a degree, and it was the
determination of this young man to pass the London University
Examinations, and to obtain the degree of Bachelor. In this way his
value in the educational market would be at once doubled, and he could
command a better place and lighter work. He showed himself, in his
letters, to be an eminently practical, shrewd, selfish, and
thick-skinned young man, who would quite certainly get on in the
world, and was resolved to lose no opportunities, and, with that view,
he took as much work out of his tutor as he could get for the money.
Had he known that the "I.A." who took such a wonderful amount of
trouble with his papers was only a woman, he would certainly have
extorted a great deal more work for his money. All this Iris read in
his letters and understood. There is no way in which a man more surely
and more naturally reveals his true character than in his
correspondence, so that after awhile, even though the subject of the
letters be nothing more interesting than the studies in hand, those
who write the letters may learn to know each other if they have but
the mother wit to read between the lines. Certainly this young
schoolmaster did not know Iris, nor did he desire to discover what she
was like, being wholly occupied with the study of himself. Strange and
kindly provision of Nature. The less desirable a man actually appears
to others, the more fondly he loves and believes in himself. I have
heard it whispered that Narcissus was a hunchback.

Then there was another pupil, a girl who was working her very hardest
in order to become, as she hoped, a first-class governess, and who,
poor thing! by reason of her natural thickness would never reach even
the third rank. Iris would have been sorry for her, because she worked
so fiercely, and was so stupid, but there was something hard and
unsympathetic in her nature which forbade pity. She was miserably
poor, too, and had an unsuccessful father, no doubt as stupid as
herself, and made pitiful excuses for not forwarding the slender fees
with regularity.

Everybody who is poor should be, on that ground alone, worthy of pity
and sympathy. But the hardness and stupidity, and the ill-temper, all
combined and clearly shown in her letters, repelled her tutor. Iris,
who drew imaginary portraits of her pupils, pictured the girl as plain
to look upon, with a dull eye, a leathery, pallid cheek, a forehead
without sunshine upon it, and lips which seldom parted with a smile.

Then there was, besides, a Cambridge undergraduate. He was neither
clever, nor industrious, nor very ambitious; he thought that a
moderate place was quite good enough for him to aim at, and he found
that his unknown and obscure tutor by correspondence was cheap and
obliging, and willing to take trouble, and quite as efficacious for
his purposes as the most expensive Cambridge coach. Iris presently
discovered that he was lazy and luxurious, a deceiver of himself, a
dweller in Fool's Paradise and a constant shirker of work. Therefore,
she disliked him. Had she actually known him and talked with him, she
might have liked him better in spite of these faults and shortcomings,
for he was really a pleasant, easygoing youth, who wallowed in
intellectual sloth, but loved physical activity; who will presently
drop easily, and comfortably, and without an effort or a doubt, into
the bosom of the Church, and will develop later on into an admirable
country parson, unless they disestablish the Establishment: in which
case, I do not know what he will do.

But this other man, this man who was coming for an explanation, this
Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot, was, if you please, a very different kind of
pupil. In the first place he was a gentleman, a fact which he
displayed, not ostentatiously, in every line of his letters; next, he
had come to her for instruction--the only pupil she had in that
science, in heraldry, which she loved. It is far more pleasant to be
describing a shield and settling questions in the queer old language
of this queer old science, than in solving and propounding problems in
trigonometry and conic sections. And then--how if your pupil begins to
talk round the subject and to wander into other things? You cannot
very well talk round a branch of mathematics, but heraldry is a
subject surrounded by fields, meadows, and lawns, so to speak, all
covered with beautiful flowers. Into these the pupil wandered, and
Iris not unwillingly followed. Thus the teaching of heraldry by
correspondence became the most delightful interchange of letters
imaginable, set off and enriched with a curious and strange piquancy,
derived from the fact that one of them, supposed to be an elderly man,
was a young girl, ignorant of the world except from books, and the
advice given her by two old men, who formed all her society. Then, as
was natural, what was at first a kind of play, became before long a
serious and earnest confidence on the one side, and a hesitating
reception on the other.

Latterly he more than once amused himself by drawing an imaginary
portrait of her; it was a pleasing portrait, but it made her feel
uneasy.

"I know you," he said, "from your letters, but yet I want to know you
in person. I think you are a man advanced in years." Poor Iris! and
she not yet twenty-one. "You sit in your study and read; you wear
glasses, and your hair is gray; you have a kind heart and a cheerful
voice; you are not rich--you have never tried to make yourself rich;
you are therefore little versed in the ways of mankind; you take your
ideas chiefly from books; the few friends you have chosen are true and
loyal; you are full of sympathy, and quick to read the thoughts of
those in whom you take an interest." A very fine character, but it
made Iris's cheek to burn and her eyes to drop. To be sure she was not
rich, nor did she know the world; so far her pupil was right, but yet
she was not gray nor old. And, again, she was not, as he thought, a
man.

Letter-writing is not extinct, as it is a commonplace to affirm, and
as people would have us believe. Letters are written still--the most
delightful letters--letters as copious, as charming, as any of the
last century; but men and women no longer write their letters as
carefully as they used to do in the old days, because they were then
shown about, and very likely read aloud. Our letters, therefore,
though their sentences are not so balanced nor their periods so
rounded, are more real, more truthful, more spontaneous, and more
delightful than the laborious productions of our ancestors, who had to
weigh every phrase, and to think out their bon mots, epigrams, and
smart things for weeks beforehand, so that the letter might appear
full of impromptu wit. I should like, for instance, just for once, to
rob the outward or the homeward mail, in order to read all the
delightful letters which go every week backward and forward between
the folk in India and the folk at home.

"I shall lose my letters," Iris recollected, and her heart sunk. Not
only did her correspondent begin to draw these imaginary portraits of
her, but he proceeded to urge upon her to come out of her concealment,
and to grant him an interview. This she might have refused, in her
desire to continue a correspondence which brightened her monotonous
life. But there came another thing, and this decided her. He began to
give, and to ask, opinions concerning love, marriage, and such
topics--and then she perceived it could not possibly be discussed with
him, even in domino and male disguise. "As for love," her pupil wrote,
"I suppose it is a real and not a fancied necessity of life. A man, I
mean, may go on a long time without it, but there will come a time--do
not you think so?--when he is bound to feel the incompleteness of life
without a woman to love. We ought to train our boys and girls from the
very beginning to regard love and marriage as the only things really
worth having, because without them there is no happiness. Give me your
own experience. I am sure you must have been in love at some time or
other in your life."

Anybody will understand that Iris could not possibly give her own
experience in love-matters, nor could she plunge into speculative
philosophy of this kind with her pupil. Obviously the thing must come
to an end. Therefore she wrote a letter to him, telling him that
"I.A." would meet him, if he pleased, that very evening at the hour of
eight.

It is by this time sufficiently understood that Iris Aglen professed
to teach--it is an unusual combination--mathematics and heraldry; she
might also have taught equally well, had she chosen, sweetness of
disposition, goodness of heart, the benefits conferred by pure and
lofty thoughts on the expression of a girl's face, and the way to
acquire all the other gracious, maidenly virtues; but either there is
too limited a market for these branches of culture, or--which is
perhaps the truer reason--there are so many English girls, not to
speak of Americans, who are ready and competent to teach them, and do
teach them to their brothers, and their lovers, and to each other, and
to their younger sisters all day long.

As for her heraldry, it was natural that she should acquire that
science, because her grandfather knew as much as any Pursuivant or
King-at-Arms, and thought that by teaching the child a science which
is nowadays cultivated by so few, he was going to make her fortune.
Besides, ever mindful of the secret packet, he thought that an heiress
ought to understand heraldry. It was, indeed, as you shall see, in
this way that her fortune was made; but yet not quite in the way he
proposed to make it. Nobody ever makes a fortune quite in the way at
first intended for him.

As for her mathematics, it is no wonder that she was good in this
science, because she was a pupil of Lala Roy.

This learned Bengalee condescended to acknowledge the study of
mathematics as worthy even of the Indian intellect, and amused himself
with them when he was not more usefully engaged in chess. He it was
who, being a lodger in the house, taught Iris almost as soon as she
could read how letters placed side by side may be made to signify and
accomplish stupendous things, and how they may disguise the most
graceful and beautiful curves, and how they may even open a way into
boundless space, and there disclose marvels. This wondrous world did
the philosopher open to the ready and quick-witted girl; nor did he
ever lead her to believe that it was at all an unusual or an
extraordinary thing for a girl to be so quick and apt for science as
herself, nor did he tell her that if she went to Newnham or to Girton,
extraordinary glories would await her, with the acclamations of the
multitude in the Senate House and the praise of the Moderators. Iris,
therefore, was not proud of her mathematics, which seemed part of her
very nature. But of her heraldry she was, I fear, extremely
proud--proud even to sinfulness. No doubt this was the reason why,
through her heraldry, the humiliation of this evening fell upon her.

"If he is young," she thought, "if he is young--and he is sure to be
young--he will be very angry at having opened his mind to a girl"--it
will be perceived that, although she knew so much mathematics, she was
really very ignorant of the opposite sex, not to know that a young man
likes nothing so much as the opening of his mind to a young lady. "If
he is old, he will be more humiliated still"--as if any man at any age
was ever humiliated by confessing himself to a woman. "If he is a
proud man, he will never forgive me. Indeed, I am sure that he can
never forgive me, whatever kind of man he is. But I can do no more
than tell him I am sorry. If he will not forgive me then, what more
can I say? Oh, if he should be vindictive!"

When the clock began to strike the hour of eight, Iris lighted her
candles, and before the pulsation of the last stroke had died away,
she heard the ringing of the house-bell.

The door was opened by her grandfather himself, and she heard his
voice.

"Yes," he said, "you will find your tutor, in the first floor front,
alone. If you are inclined to be vindictive, when you hear all,
please ring the bell for me."

The visitor mounted the stairs, and Iris, hearing his step, began to
tremble and to shake for fear.

When the door opened she did not at first look up. But she knew that
her pupil was there, and that he was looking for his tutor.

"Pardon me"--the voice was not unpleasant--"pardon me. I was directed
to this room. I have an appointment with my tutor."

"If," said Iris, rising, for the time for confession had at length
arrived, "if you are Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot, your appointment is, I
believe, with me."

"It is with my tutor," he said.

"I am your tutor. My initials are I.A."

The room was only lighted by two candles, but they showed him the
hanging head and the form of a woman, and he thought she looked young,
judging by the outline. Her voice was sweet and clear.

"My tutor? You?"

"If you really are Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot, the gentleman who has
corresponded with I.A. for the last two years on heraldry, and--and
other things, I am your tutor."

She had made the dreaded confession. The rest would be easy. She even
ventured to raise her eyes, and she perceived, with a sinking of the
heart, that her estimate of her pupil's age was tolerably correct. He
was a young man, apparently not more than five or six and twenty.

It now remained to be seen if he was vindictive.

As for the pupil, when he recovered a little from the blow of this
announcement, he saw before him a girl, quite young, dressed in a
simple gray or drab colored stuff, which I have reason to believe is
called Carmelite. The dress had a crimson kerchief arranged in folds
over the front, and a lace collar, and at first sight it made the
beholder feel that, considered merely as a setting of face and figure,
it was remarkably effective. Surely this is the true end and aim of
all feminine adornment, apart from the elementary object of keeping
one warm.

"I--I did not know," the young man said, after a pause, "I did not
know at all that I was corresponding with a lady."

Here she raised her eyes again, and he observed that the eyes were
very large and full of light--"eyes like the fishpools of
Heshbon"--dove's eyes.

"I am very sorry," she said meekly. "It was my fault."

He observed other things now, having regained the use of his senses.
Thus he saw that she wore her hair, which was of a wonderful chestnut
brown color, parted at the side like a boy's, and that she had not
committed the horrible enormity of cutting it short. He observed, too,
that while her lips were quivering and her cheek was blushing, her
look was steadfast. Are dove's eyes, he asked himself, always
steadfast?

"I ought to have told you long ago, when you began to write
about--about yourself and other things, when I understood that you
thought I was a man--oh, long ago I ought to have told you the truth!"

"It is wonderful!" said the young man, "it is truly wonderful!" He
was thinking of the letters--long letters, full of sympathy, and a
curious unworldly wisdom, which she had sent him in reply to his own,
and he was comparing them with her youthful face, as one involuntarily
compares a poet's appearance with his poetry--generally a
disappointing thing to do, and always a foolish thing.

"I am very sorry," she repeated.

"Have you many pupils, like myself?"

"I have several pupils in mathematics. It does not matter to them
whether they are taught by a man or a woman. In heraldry I had only
one--you."

He looked round the room. One end was occupied by shelves, filled with
books; in one of the windows was a table, covered with papers and
adorned with a type-writer, by means of which Iris carried on her
correspondence. For a moment the unworthy thought crossed his mind
that he had been, perhaps, artfully lured on by a siren for his
destruction. Only for a moment, however, because she raised her face
and met his gaze again, with eyes so frank and innocent, that he could
not doubt them. Besides, there was the clear outline of her face, so
truthful and so honest. The young man was an artist, and therefore
believed in outline. Could any sane and intelligent creature doubt
those curves of cheek and chin?

"I have put together," she said, "all your letters for you. Here they
are. Will you, please, take them back? I must not keep them any
longer." He took them, and bowed. "I made this appointment, as you
desired, to tell you the truth, because I have deceived you too long:
and to beg you to forgive me; and to say that, of course, there is an
end to our correspondence."

"Thank you. It shall be as you desire. Exactly," he repeated, "as you
desire."

He ought to have gone at once. There was nothing more to say. Yet he
lingered, holding the letters in his hand.

"To write these letters," he said, "has been for a long time one of
my greatest pleasures, partly because I felt that I was writing to a
friend, and so wrote in full trust and confidence; partly because they
procured me a reply--in the shape of your letters. Must I take back
these letters of mine?"

She made no answer.

"It is hard, is it not, to lose a friend so slowly acquired, thus
suddenly and unexpectedly?"

"Yes," she said, "it is hard. I am very sorry. It was my fault."

"Perhaps I have said something, in my ignorance--something which ought
not to have been said or written--something careless--something which
has lowered me in your esteem--"

"Oh, no--no!" said Iris quickly. "You have never said anything that a
gentleman should not have said."

"And if you yourself found any pleasure in answering my letters--"

"Yes," said Iris with frankness, "it gave me great pleasure to read
and to answer your letters, as well as I could."

"I have not brought back your letters. I hope you will allow me to
keep them. And, if you will, why should we not continue our
correspondence as before?" But he did not ask the question
confidently.

"No," said Iris decidedly "it can never be continued as before. How
could it, when once we have met, and you have learned the truth?"

"Then," he continued, "if we cannot write to each other any more, can
we not talk?"

She ought to have informed him on the spot that the thing was quite
impossible, and not to be thought of for one moment. She should have
said, coldly, but firmly--every right-minded and well-behaved girl
would have said--"Sir, it is not right that you should come alone to a
young lady's study. Such things are not to be permitted. It we meet in
society, we may, perhaps, renew our acquaintance."

But girls do go on sometimes as if there was no such thing as
propriety at all, and such cases are said to be growing more frequent.
Besides, Iris was not a girl who was conversant with social
convenances. She looked at her pupil thoughtfully and frankly.

"Can we?" she asked. She who hesitates is lost, a maxim which cannot
be too often read, said, and studied. It is one of the very few golden
rules omitted from Solomon's Proverbs. "Can we? It would be pleasant."

"It you will permit me," he blushed and stammered, wondering at her
ready acquiescence, "if you will permit me to call upon you
sometimes--here, if you will allow me, or anywhere else. You know my
name. I am by profession an artist, and I have a studio close at hand
in Tite Street."

"To call upon me here?" she repeated.

Now, when one is a tutor, and has been reading with a pupil for two
years, one regards that pupil with a feeling which may not be exactly
parental, but which is unconventional. If Arnold had said, "Behold me!
May I, being a young man, call upon you, a young woman?" she would
have replied: "No, young man, that can never be." But when he said,
"May I, your pupil, call sometimes upon you, my tutor?" a distinction
was at once established by which the impossible became possible.

"Yes," she said, "I think you may call. My grandfather has his tea
with me every evening at six. You may call then if it will give you
any pleasure."

"You really will let me come here?"

The young man looked as if the permission was likely to give him the
greatest pleasure.

"Yes; if you wish it."

She spoke just exactly like an Oxford Don giving an undergraduate
permission to take an occasional walk with him, or to call for
conversation and advice at certain times in his rooms. Arnold noticed
the manner, and smiled.

"Still," he said, "as your pupil."

He meant to set her at her ease concerning the propriety of these
visits. She thought he meant a continuation of a certain little
arrangement as to fees, and blushed.

"No," she said; "I must not consider you as a pupil any longer. You
have put an end to that yourself."

"I do not mind, if only I continue your friend."

"Oh," she said, "but we must not pledge ourselves rashly to
friendship. Perhaps you will not like me when you once come to know
me."

"Then I remain your disciple."

"Oh no," she flushed again, "you must already think me presumptuous
enough in venturing to give you advice. I have written so many foolish
things--"

"Indeed, no," he interrupted, "a thousand times no. Let me tell you
once for all, if I may, that you have taught me a great deal--far more
than you can ever understand, or than I can explain. Where did you get
your wisdom? Not from the Book of Human Life. Of that you cannot know
much as yet."

"The wisdom is in your imagination, I think. You shall not be my pupil
nor my disciple, but--well--because you have told me so much, and I
seem to have known you so long, and, besides, because you must never
feel ashamed of having told me so much, you shall come, if you please,
as my brother."

It was not till afterward that she reflected on the vast
responsibilities she incurred in making this proposal, and on the
eagerness with which her pupil accepted it.

"As your brother!" he cried, offering her his hand. "Why, it is
far--far more than I could have ventured to hope. Yes, I will come as
your brother. And now, although you know so much about me, you have
told me nothing about yourself--not even your name."

"My name is Iris Aglen."

"Iris! It is a pretty name!"

"It was, I believe, my grandmother's. But I never saw her, and I do
not know who or what my father's relations are."

"Iris Aglen!" he repeated. "Iris was the Herald of the Gods, and the
rainbow was constructed on purpose to serve her for a way from Heaven
to the Earth."

"Mathematicians do not allow that," said the girl, smiling.

"I don't know any mathematics. But now I understand in what school you
learned your heraldry. You are Queen-at-Arms at least, and Herald to
the Gods of Olympus."

He wished to add something about the loveliness of Aphrodite, and the
wisdom of Athene, but he refrained, which was in good taste.

"Thank you, Mr. Arbuthnot," Iris replied. "I learned my heraldry of my
grandfather, who taught himself from the books he sells. And my
mathematics I learned of Lala Roy, who is our lodger, and a learned
Hindoo gentleman. My father is dead--and my mother as well--and I have
no friends in the world except these two old men, who love me, and
have done their best to spoil me."

Her eyes grew humid and her voice trembled.

No other friends in the world! Strange to say, this young man felt a
little sense of relief. No other friends. He ought to have sympathized
with the girl's loneliness; he might have asked her how she could
possibly endure life without companionship, but he did not; he only
felt that other friends might have been rough and ill-bred; this girl
derived her refinement, not only from nature, but also from separation
from the other girls who might in the ordinary course have been her
friends and associates. And if no other friends, then no lover.
Arnold was only going to visit the young lady as her brother; but
lovers do not generally approve the introduction of such novel effects
as that caused by the appearance of a brand-new and previously
unsuspected brother. He was glad, on the whole, that there was no
lover.

Then he left her, and went home to his studio, where he sat till
midnight, sketching a thousand heads one after the other with rapid
pencil. They were all girls' heads, and they all had hair parted on
the left side, with a broad, square forehead, full eyes, and straight,
clear-cut features.

"No," he said, "it is no good. I cannot catch the curve of her
mouth--nobody could. What a pretty girl! And I am to be her brother!
What will Clara say? And how--oh, how in the world can she be, all at
the same time, so young, so pretty, so learned, so quick, so
sympathetic, and so wise?"




CHAPTER IV.

THE WOLF AT HOME.


There is a certain music-hall, in a certain street, leading out of a
certain road, and this is quite clear and definite enough. Its
distinctive characteristics, above any of its fellows, is a vulgarity
so profound, that the connoisseur or student in that branch of mental
culture thinks that here at last he has reached the lowest depths. For
this reason one shrinks from actually naming it, because it might
become fashionable, and then, if it fondly tried to change its
character to suit its changed audience, it might entirely lose its
present charm, and become simply commonplace.

Joe Gallop stood in the doorway of this hall, a few days after the
Tempting of Mr. James. It was about ten o'clock, when the
entertainments were in full blast. He had a cigarette between his
lips, as becomes a young man of fashion, but it had gone out, and he
was thinking of something. To judge from the cunning look in his eyes,
it was something not immediately connected with the good of his
fellow-creatures. Presently the music of the orchestra ceased, and
certain female acrobats, who had been "contorting" themselves
fearfully and horribly for a quarter of an hour upon the stage, kissed
their hands, which were as hard as ropes, from the nature of their
profession, and smiled a fond farewell. There was some applause, but
not much, because neither man nor woman cares greatly for female
acrobats, and the performers themselves are with difficulty persuaded
to learn their art, and generally make haste to "go in" again as soon
as they can, and try henceforward to forget that they have ever done
things with ropes and bars.

Joe, when they left the stage, ceased his meditations, whatever may
have been their subject, lit a fresh cigarette, and assumed an air of
great expectation, as if something really worth seeing and hearing
were now about to appear. And when the chairman brought down the
hammer with the announcement that Miss Carlotta Claradine, the
People's Favorite, would now oblige, it was Joe who loudly led the way
for a tumultuous burst of applause. Then the band, which at this
establishment, and others like unto it, only plays two tunes, one for
acrobats, and one for singers, struck up the second air, and the
People's Favorite appeared. She may have had by nature a sweet and
tuneful voice; perhaps it was in order to please her friends, the
people, that, she converted it into a harsh and rasping voice, that
she delivered her words with even too much gesture, and that she
uttered a kind of shriek at the beginning of every verse, which was
not in the composer's original music, but was thrown in to compel
attention. She was dressed with great simplicity, in plain frock,
apron, and white cap, to represent a fair young Quakeress, and she
sung a song about her lover with much "archness"--a delightful quality
in woman.

"Splendid, splendid! Bravo!" shouted Joseph at the end of the first
verse. "That fetches 'em, don't it, sir? Positively drags 'em, in,
sir."

He addressed his words, without turning his head, to a man who had
just come in, and was gazing at him with unbounded astonishment.

"You here, Joe??" he said.

Joe started.

"Why, Chalker, who'd have thought to meet you in this music-hall?"

"It's a good step, isn't it? And what are you doing, Joe? I heard
you'd left the P. and O. Company."

"Had to," said Joe. "A gentleman has no choice but to resign. Ought
never to have gone there. There's no position, Chalker--no position at
all in the service. That is what I felt. Besides, the uniform, for a
man of my style, is unbecoming. And the captain was a cad."

"Humph! and what are you doing then? Living on the old man again?"

"Never you mind, David Chalker," replied Joe with dignity; "I am not
likely to trouble you any more after the last time I called upon you."

"Well, Joe," said the other, without taking offense, "it is not my
business to lend money without a security, and all you had to offer
was your chance of what your grandfather might leave you--or might
not."

"And a very good security too, if he does justice to his relations."

"Yes; but how did I know whether he was going to do justice? Come,
Joe, don't be shirty with an old friend."

There was a cordiality in the solicitor's manner which boded well. Joe
was pretty certain that Mr. Chalker was not a man to cultivate
friendship unless something was to be got out of it. It is only the
idle and careless who can waste time over unprofitable friendships.
With most men friendship means assisting in each other's little games,
so that every man must become, on occasion, bonnet, confederate, and
pal, for his friend, and may expect the same kindly office for
himself.

If Chalker wished to keep up his old acquaintance with Joe Gallop,
there must be some good reason. Now the only reason which suggested
itself to Joe at that moment was that Chalker had lately drawn a new
will for the old man, and that he himself might be in it. Here he was
wrong. The only reason of Mr. Chalker's friendly attitude was
curiosity to know what Joe was doing, and how he was living.

"Look here, Chalker," Joe whispered, "you used to pretend to be a pal.
What's the good of being a pal if you won't help a fellow? You see my
grandfather once a week or so; you shut the door and have long talks
with him. If you know what he's going to do with his money, why not
tell a fellow? Let's make a business matter of it."

"How much do you know, Joe, and what is your business proposal worth?"

"Nothing at all; that's the honest truth--I know nothing. The old
man's as tight as wax. But there's other business in the world besides
his. Suppose I know of something a precious sight better than his
investments, and suppose--just suppose--that I wanted a lawyer to
manage it for me?"

"Well, Joe?"

"Encore! Bravo! Encore! Bravo!" Joe banged his stick on the floor and
shouted because the singer ended her first song. He looked so fierce
and big, that all the bystanders made haste to follow his example.

"Splendid, isn't she?" he said.

"Hang the singer! What do you mean by other business?"

"Perhaps it's nothing. Perhaps there will be thousands in it. And
perhaps I can get on without you, after all."

"Very well, Joe. Get on without me if you like."

"Look here, Chalker," Joe laid a persuasive hand on the other's arm,
"can't we two be friendly? Why don't you give a fellow a lift? All I
want to know is where the old man's put his money, and how he's left
it."

"Suppose I do know," Mr. Chalker replied, wishing ardently that he
did, "do you think I am going to betray trust--a solicitor betray
trust--and for nothing? But if you want to talk real business, Joe,
come to my office. You know where that is."

Joe knew very well; in fact, there had been more than one difficulty
which had been adjusted through Mr. Chalker's not wholly disinterested
aid.

Then the singer appeared again attired in a new and startling dress,
and Joe began once more to applaud again with voice and stick. Mr.
Chalker, surprised at this newly-developed enthusiasm for art, left
him and walked up the hall, and sat down beside the chairman, whom he
seemed to know. In fact, the chairman was also the proprietor of the
show, and Mr. Chalker was acting for him in his professional capacity,
much as he had acted for Mr. Emblem.

"Who is your new singer?" he asked.

"She calls herself Miss Carlotta Claradine. She's a woman, let me tell
you, Mr. Chalker, who will get along. Fine figure, plenty of cheek,
loud voice, flings herself about, and don't mind a bit when the words
are a leetle strong. That's the kind of singer the people like. That's
her husband, at the far end of the room--the big, good-looking chap
with the light mustache and the cigarette in his mouth."

"Whew!" Mr. Chalker whistled the low note which indicates Surprise.
"That's her husband, is it? The husband of Miss Carlotta Claradine, is
it? Oho! oho! Her husband! Are you sure he is her husband?"

"Do you know him, then?"

"Yes, I know him. What was the real name of the girl?"

"Charlotte Smithers. This is her first appearance on any stage--and we
made up the name for her when we first put her on the posters. I made
it myself--out of Chlorodyne, you know, which is in the
advertisements. Sounds well, don't it? Carlotta Claradine."

"Very well, indeed. By Jove! Her husband, is he?"

"And, I suppose," said the chairman, "lives on his wife's salary.
Bless you, Mr. Chalker, there's a whole gang about every theater and
music hall trying to get hold of the promising girls. It's a regular
profession. Them as have nothing but their good looks may do for the
mashers, but these chaps look out for the girls who'll bring in the
money. What's a pretty face to them compared with the handling of a
big salary every week? That's the sort Carlotta's husband belongs to."

"Well, the life will suit him down to the ground."

"And jealous with it, if you please. He comes here every night to
applaud and takes her home himself. Keeps himself sober on purpose."

And then the lady appeared again in a wonderful costume of blue silk
and tights, personating the Lion Masher. It was her third and last
song.

In the applause which followed, Mr. Chalker could discern plainly the
stick as well as the voice of his old friend. And he thought how
beautiful is the love of husband unto wife, and he smiled, thinking
that when Joe came next to see him, he might, perhaps, hear truths
which he had thought unknown, and, for certain reasons, wished to
remain unknown.

Presently he saw the singer pass down the hall, and join her husband,
who now, his labors ended, was seeking refreshment at the bar. She was
a good-looking girl--still only a girl, and apparently under
twenty--quietly dressed, yet looking anything but quiet. But that
might have been due to her fringe, which was, so to speak, a
prominent-feature in her face. She was tall and well-made, with large
features, an ample cheek, a full eye, and a wide mouth. A
good-natured-looking girl, and though her mouth was wide, it suggested
smiles. The husband was exchanging a little graceful badinage with the
barmaid when she joined him, and perhaps this made her look a little
cross. "She's jealous, too," said Mr. Chalker, observant; "all the
better." Yet a face which, on the whole, was prepossessing and good
natured, and betokened a disposition to make the best of the world.

"How long has she been married?" Mr. Chalker asked the proprietor.

"Only about a month or so."

"Ah!"

Mr. Chalker proceeded to talk business, and gave no further hint of
any interest in the newly-married pair.

"Now, Joe," said the singer, with a freezing glance at the barmaid,
"are you going to stand here all night?"

Joe drank off his glass and followed his wife into the street. They
walked side by side in silence, until they reached their lodgings.
Then she threw off her hat and jacket, and sat down on the horsehair
sofa and said abruptly:

"I can't do it, Joe; and I won't. So don't ask me."

"Wait a bit--wait a bit, Lotty, my love. Don't be in a hurry, now.
Don't say rash things, there's a good girl." Joe spoke quite softly,
as if he were not the least angry, but, perhaps, a little hurt.
"There's not a bit of a hurry. You needn't decide to-day, nor yet
to-morrow."

"I couldn't do it," she said. "Oh, it's a dreadful, wicked thing even
to ask me. And only five weeks to-morrow since we married!"

"Lotty, my dear, let us be reasonable." He still spoke quite softly.
"If we are not to go on like other people; if we are to be continually
bothering our heads about honesty, and that rubbish, we shall be
always down in the world. How do other people make money and get on?
By humbug, my dear. By humbug. As for you, a little play-acting is
nothing."

"But I am not the man's daughter, and my own father's alive and well."

"Look here, Lotty. You are always grumbling about the music-halls."

"Well, and good reason to grumble. If you heard those ballet girls
talk, and see how they go on at the back, you'd grumble. As for the
music--" She laughed, as if against her will. "If anybody had told me
six months ago--me, that used to go to the Cathedral Service every
afternoon--that I should be a Lion Masher at a music-hall and go on
dressed in tights, I should have boxed his ears for impudence."

"Why, you don't mean to tell me, Lotty, that you wish you had stuck to
the moldy old place, and gone on selling music over the counter?"

"Well, then, perhaps I do."

"No, no, Lotty; your husband cannot let you say that."

"My husband can laugh and talk with barmaids. That makes him happy."

"Lotty," he said, "you are a little fool. And think of the glory.
Posters with your name in letters a foot and a half long--'The
People's Favorite.' Why, don't they applaud you till their hands drop
off?"

She melted a little.

"Applaud! As if that did any good! And me in tights!"

"As for the tights," Joe replied with dignity, "the only person whom
you need consult on that subject is your husband; and since I do not
object, I should like to see the man who does. Show me that man,
Lotty, and I'll straighten him out for you. You have my perfect
approval, my dear. I honor you for the tights."

"My husband's approval!"

She repeated his words again in a manner which had been on other
occasions most irritating to him. But to-night he refused to be
offended.

"Of course," he went on, "as soon as I get a berth on another ship I
shall take you off the boards. It is the husband's greatest delight,
especially if he is a jolly sailor, to brave all dangers for his wife.
Think, Lotty, how pleasant it would be not to do any more work."

"I should like to sing sometimes, to sing good music, at the great
concerts. That's what I thought I was going to do."

"You shall; you shall sing as little or as often as you like. 'A
sailor's wife a sailor's star should be.' You shall be a great lady,
Lotty, and you shall just command your own line. Wait a bit, and you
shall have your own carriage, and your own beautiful house, and go to
as many balls as you like among the countesses and the swells."

"Oh, Joe!" she laughed. "Why, if we were as rich as anything, I should
never get ladies to call upon me. And as for you, no one would ever
take you to be a gentleman, you know."

"Why, what do you call me, now?"

He laughed, but without much enjoyment. No one likes to be told that
he is not a gentleman, whatever his own suspicions on the subject may
be.

"Never mind. I know a gentleman when I see one. Go on with your
nonsense about being rich."

"I shall make you rich, Lotty, whether you like it or not," he said,
still with unwonted sweetness.

She shook her head.

"Not by wickedness," she said stoutly.

"I've got there," he pulled a bundle of papers out of his pockets,
"all the documents wanted to complete the case. All I want now is for
the rightful heiress to step forward."

"I'm not the rightful heiress, and I'm not the woman to step forward,
Joe; so don't you think it."

"I've been to-day," Joe continued, "to Doctors' Commons, and I've seen
the will. There's no manner of doubt about it; and the money--oh,
Lord, Lotty, if you only knew how much it is!"

"What does it matter, Joe, how much it is, if it is neither yours nor
mine?"

"It matters this: that it ought all to be mine."

"How can that be, if it was not left to you?"

Joe was nothing if not a man of resource. He therefore replied without
hesitation or confusion:

"The money was left to a certain man and to his heirs. That man is
dead. His heiress should have succeeded, but she was kept out of her
rights. She is dead, and I am her cousin, and entitled to all her
property, because she made no will."

"Is that gospel truth, Joe? Is she dead? Are you sure?"

"Quite sure," he replied. "Dead as a door-nail."

"Is that the way you got the papers?"

"That's the way, Lotty."

"Then why not go to a lawyer and make him take up the case for you,
and honestly get your own?"

"You don't know law, my dear, or you wouldn't talk nonsense about
lawyers. There are two ways. One is to go myself to the present
unlawful possessor and claim the whole. It's a woman; she would be
certain to refuse, and then we should go to law, and very likely lose
it all, although the right is on our side. The other way is for some
one--say you--to go to her and say: 'I am that man's daughter. Here
are my proofs. Here are all his papers. Give me back my own.' That you
could do in the interests of justice, though I own it is not the exact
truth."

"And if she refuses then?"

"She can't refuse, with the man's daughter actually standing before
her. She might make a fuss for a bit. But she would have to give in at
last."

"Joe, consider. You have got some papers, whatever they may contain.
Suppose that it is all true that you have told me--"

"Lotty, my dear, when did I ever tell you an untruth?"

"When did you ever tell me the truth, my dear? Don't talk wild.
Suppose it is all true, how are you going to make out where your
heiress has been all this time, and what she has been doing?"

"Trust me for that."

"I trust you for making up something or other, but--oh, Joe, you
little think, you clever people, how seldom you succeed in deceiving
any one."

"I've got such a story for you, Lotty, as would deceive anybody.
Listen now. It's part truth, and part--the other thing. Your father--"

"My father, poor dear man," Lotty interrupted, "is minding his
music-shop in Gloucester, and little thinking what wickedness his
daughter is being asked to do."

"Hang it! the girl's father, then. He died in America, where he went
under another name, and you were picked up by strangers and reared
under that name, in complete ignorance of your own family. All which
is true and can be proved."

"Who brought her up?"

"People in America. I'm one of 'em."

"Who is to prove that?"

"I am. I am come to England on purpose. I am her guardian."

"Who is to prove that you are the girl's guardian?"

"I shall find somebody to prove that."

His thoughts turned to Mr. Chalker, a gentleman whom he judged capable
of proving anything he was paid for.

"And suppose they ask me questions?"

"Don't answer 'em. You know very little. The papers were only found
the other day. You are not expected to know anything."

"Where was the real girl?"

"With her grandfather."

"Where was the grandfather?"

"What does that matter?" he replied; "I will tell you afterward."

"When did the real girl die?"

"That, too, I will tell you afterward."

Lotty leaned her cheek upon her hand, and looked at her husband
thoughtfully.

"Let us be plain, Joe."

"You can never be plain, my dear," he replied with the smile of a
lover, not a husband; "never in your husband's eyes; not even in
tights."

But she was not to be won by flattery.

"Fine words," she said, "fine words. What do they amount to? Oh, Joe,
little I thought when you came along with your beautiful promises,
what sort of a man I was going to marry."

"A very good sort of a man," he said. "You've got a jolly sailor--an
officer and a gentleman. Come now, what have you got to say to this?
Can't you be satisfied with an officer and a gentleman?"

He drew himself up to his full height. Well, he was a handsome fellow:
there was no denying it.

"Good looks and fine words," his wife went on. "Well, and now I've got
to keep you, and if you could make me sing in a dozen halls every
night, you would, and spend the money on yourself--joyfully you
would."

"We would spend it together, my dear. Don't turn rusty, Lotty."

He was not a bad-tempered man, and this kind of talk did not anger him
at all. So long as his wife worked hard and brought in the coin for
him to spend, what mattered for a few words now and then? Besides, he
wanted her assistance.

"What are you driving at?" he went on. "I show you a bit of my hand,
and you begin talking round and round. Look here, Lotty. Here's a
splendid chance for us. I must have a woman's help. I would rather
have your help than any other woman's--yes, than any other woman's in
the world. I would indeed. If you won't help me, why, then, of course,
I must go to some other woman."

His wife gasped and choked. She knew already, after only five weeks'
experience, how bad a man he was--how unscrupulous, false, and
treacherous, how lazy and selfish. But, after a fashion, she loved
him; after a woman's fashion, she was madly jealous of him. Another
woman! And only the other night she had seen him giving
brandy-and-soda to one of the music-hall ballet-girls. Another woman!

"If you do, Joe," she said; "oh, if you do--I will kill her and you
too!"

He laughed.

"If I do, my dear, you don't think I shall be such a fool as to tell
you who she is. Do you suppose that no woman has ever fallen in love
with me before you? But then, my pretty, you see I don't talk about
them; and do you suppose--oh, Lotty, are you such a fool as to suppose
that you are the first girl I ever fell in love with?"

"What do you want me to do? Tell me again."

"I have told you already. I want you to become, for the time, the
daughter of the man who died in America; you will claim your
inheritance; I will provide you with all the papers; I will stand by
you; I will back you up with such a story as will disarm all
suspicion. That is all."

"Yes. I understand. Haven't people been sent to prison for less, Joe?"

"Foolish people have. Not people who are well advised and under good
management. Mind you, this business is under my direction. I am boss."

She made no reply, but took her candle and went off to bed.

In the dead of night she awakened her husband.

"Joe," she said, "is it true that you know another girl who would do
this for you?"

"More than one, Lotty," he replied, this man of resource, although he
was only half awake. "More than one. A great many more. Half-a-dozen,
I know, at least."

She was silent. Half an hour afterward she woke him up again.

"Joe," she said, "I've made up my mind. You sha'n't say that I refused
to do for you what any other girl in the world would have done."

As a tempter it will be seen that Joe was unsurpassed.

It was now a week since he had received, carefully wrapped in wool,
and deposited in a wooden box dispatched by post, a key, newly made.
It was, also, very nearly a week since he had used that key. It was
used during Mr. Emblem's hour for tea, while James waited and watched
outside in an agony of terror. But Joe did not find what he wanted.
There were in the safe one or two ledgers, a banker's book, a
check-book, and a small quantity of money. But there were not any
records at all of monies invested. There were no railway certificates,
waterwork shares, transfers, or notes of stock, mortgages, loans, or
anything at all. The only thing that he saw was a roll of papers tied
up with red tape. On the roll was written: "For Iris. To be given to
her on her twenty-first birthday."

"What the deuce is this, I wonder?" Joe took this out and looked at it
suspiciously. "Can he be going to give her all his money before he
dies? Is he going to make her inherit it at once?" The thought was so
exasperating that he slipped the roll into his pocket. "At all
events," he said, "she sha'n't have them until I have read them first.
I dare say they won't be missed for a day or two."

He calculated that he could read and master the contents that night,
and put back the papers in the safe in the morning while James was
opening the shop.

"There's nothing, James," he whispered as he went out, the safe being
locked again. "There is nothing at all. Look here, my lad, you must
try another way of finding out where the money is."

"I wish I was sure that he hasn't carried off something in his
pocket," James murmured.

Joe spent the whole evening alone, contrary to his usual practice,
which was, as we have seen, to spend it at a certain music-hall. He
read the papers over and over again.

"I wish," he said at length, "I wish I had known this only two months
ago. I wish I had paid more attention to Iris. What a dreadful thing
it is to have a grandfather who keeps secrets from his grandson. What
a game we might have had over this job! What a game we might have
still if--"

And here he stopped, for the first germ or conception of a magnificent
coup dawned upon him, and fairly dazzled him so that his eyes saw a
bright light and nothing else.

"If Lotty would," he said. "But I am afraid she won't hear of it." He
sprung to his feet and caught sight of his own face in the looking
glass over the fireplace. He smiled. "I will try," he said, "I think
I know by this time, how to get round most of 'em. Once they get to
feel there are other women in the world besides themselves, they're
pretty easy worked. I will try."

One has only to add to the revelations already made that Joe paid a
second visit to the shop, this time early in the morning. The shutters
were only just taken down. James was going about with that remarkable
watering-pot only used in shops, which has a little stream running out
of it, and Mr. Emblem was upstairs slowly shaving and dressing in his
bedroom. He walked in, nodded to his friend the assistant, opened the
safe, and put back the roll.

"Now," he murmured, "if the old man has really been such a
dunder-headed pump as not to open the packet all these years, what the
devil can he know? The name is different; he hasn't got any clew to
the will; he hasn't got the certificate of his daughter's marriage, or
of the child's baptism--both in the real name. He hasn't got anything.
As for the girl here, Iris, having the same christian-name, that's
nothing. I suppose there is more than one woman with such a fool of a
name as that about in the world.

"Foxy," he said cheerfully, "have you found anything yet about the
investments? Odd, isn't it? Nothing in the safe at all. You can have
your key back."

He tossed him the key carelessly and went away.

The question of his grandfather's savings was grown insignificant
beside this great and splendid prize which lay waiting for him. What
could the savings be? At best a few thousands; the slowly saved thrift
of fifty years; nobody knew better than Joe himself how much his own
profligacies had cost his grandfather; a few thousands, and those
settled on his Cousin Iris, so that, to get his share, he would have
to try every kind of persuasion unless he could get up a case for law.
But the other thing--why, it was nearly all personal estate, so far as
he could learn by the will, and he had read it over and over again in
the room at Somerset House, with the long table in it, and the
watchful man who won't let anybody copy anything. What a shame, he
thought, not to let wills be copied! Personalty sworn under a hundred
and twenty thousand, all in three per cents, and devised to a certain
young lady, the testator's ward, in trust, for the testator's son, or
his heirs, when he or they should present themselves. Meantime, the
ward was to receive for her own use and benefit, year by year, the
whole income.

"It is unfortunate," said Joe, "that we can't come down upon her for
arrears. Still, there's an income, a steady income, of three thousand
six hundred a year when the son's heirs present themselves. I should
like to call myself a solicitor, but that kite won't fly, I'm afraid.
Lotty must be the sole heiress. Dressed quiet, without any powder, and
her fringe brushed flat, she'd pass for a lady anywhere. Perhaps it's
lucky, after all, that I married her, though if I had had the good
sense to make up to Iris, who's a deuced sight prettier, she'd have
kept me going almost as well with her pupils, and set me right with
the old man and handed me over this magnificent haul for a finish. If
only the old man hasn't broken the seals and read the papers!"

The old man had not, and Joe's fears were, therefore, groundless.




CHAPTER V.

AS A BROTHER.


Arnold immediately began to use the privilege accorded to him with a
large and liberal interpretation. If, he argued, a man is to be
treated as a brother, there should be the immediate concession of the
exchange of christian-names, and he should be allowed to call as often
as he pleases. Naturally he began by trying to read the secret of a
life self-contained, so dull, and yet so happy, so strange to his
experience.

"Is this, Iris?" he asked, "all your life? Is there nothing more?"

"No," she said; "I think you have seen all. In the morning I have my
correspondence; in the afternoon I do my sewing, I play a little, I
read, or I walk, sometimes by myself, and sometimes with Lala Roy; in
the evening I play again, or I read again, or I work at the
mathematics, while my grandfather and Lala Roy have their chess. We
used to go to the theater sometimes, but of late my grandfather has
not gone. At ten we go to bed. That is all my life."

"But, Iris, have you no friends at all, and no relations? Are there no
girls of your own age who come to see you?"

"No, not one; I have a cousin, but he is not a good man at all. His
father and mother are in Australia. When he comes here, which is very
seldom, my grandfather falls ill only with thinking about him and
looking at him. But I have no other relations, because, you see, I do
not know who my father's people were."

"Then," said Arnold, "you may be countess in your own right; you may
have any number of rich people and nice people for your cousins. Do
you not sometimes think of that?"

"No" said Iris; "I never think about things impossible."

"If I were you, I should go about the streets, and walk round the
picture-galleries looking for a face like your own. There cannot be
many. Let me draw your face, Iris, and then we will send it to the
Grosvenor, and label it, 'Wanted, this young lady's cousins.' You must
have cousins, if you could only find them out."

"I suppose I must. But what if they should turn out to be rough and
disagreeable people?"

"Your cousins could not be disagreeable, Iris," said Arnold.

She shook her head.

"One thing I should like," she replied. "It would be to find that my
cousins, if I have any, are clever people--astronomers,
mathematicians, great philosophers, and writers. But what nonsense it
is even to talk of such things; I am quite alone, except for my
grandfather and Lala Roy."

"And they are old," murmured Arnold.

"Do not look at me with such pity," said the girl. "I am very happy. I
have my own occupation; I am independent; I have my work to fill my
mind; and I have these two old gentlemen to care for and think
of. They have taken so much care of me that I ought to think of
nothing else but their comfort; and then there are the books
down-stairs--thousands of beautiful old books always within my reach."

"But you must have some companions, if only to talk and walk with."

"Why, the books are my companions; and then Lala Roy goes for walks
with me; and as for talking, I think it is much more pleasant to
think."

"Where do you walk?"

"There is Battersea Park; there are the squares; and if you take an
omnibus, there are the Gardens and Hyde Park."

"But never alone, Iris?"

"Oh, yes, I am often alone. Why not?"

"I suppose," said Arnold, shirking the question, because this is a
civilized country, and in fact, why not? "I suppose that it is your
work which keeps you from feeling life dull and monotonous."

"No life," she said, looking as wise as Newton, if Newton was ever
young and handsome--"no life can be dull when one is thinking about
mathematics all day. Do you study mathematics?"

"No; I was at Oxford, you know."

"Then perhaps you prefer metaphysics? Though Lala Roy says that the
true metaphysics, which he has tried to teach me, can only be reached
by the Hindoo intellect."

"No, indeed; I have never read any metaphysics whatever. I have only
got the English intellect." This he said with intent satirical, but
Iris failed to understand it so, and thought it was meant for a
commendable humility.

"Physical science, perhaps?"

"No, Iris. Philosophy, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, or science
of any kind have I never learned, except only the science of Heraldry,
which you have taught me, with a few other things."

"Oh!" She wondered how a man could exist at all without learning these
things. "Not any science at all? How can any one live without some
science?"

"I knew very well," he said, "that as soon as I was found out I should
be despised."

"Oh, no, not despised. But it seems such a pity--"

"There is another kind of life, Iris, which you do not know. You must
let me teach you. It is the life of Art. If you would only condescend
to show the least curiosity about me, Iris, I would try to show you
something of the Art life."

"How can I show curiosity about you, Arnold? I feel none."

"No; that is just the thing which shames me. I have felt the most
lively curiosity about you, and I have asked you thousands of
impertinent questions."

"Not impertinent, Arnold. If you want to ask any more, pray do. I dare
say you cannot understand my simple life."

"And you ask me nothing at all about myself. It isn't fair, Iris."

"Why should I? I know you already."

"You know nothing at all about me."

"Oh, yes, I know you very well indeed. I knew you before you came
here. You showed me yourself in your letters. You are exactly like the
portrait I drew of you. I never thought, for instance, that you were
an old gentleman, as you thought me." He laughed. It was a new thing
to see Iris using, even gently, the dainty weapons of satire.

"But you do not know what I am, or what is my profession, or anything
at all about me."

"No; I do not care to know. All that is not part of yourself. It is
outside you."

"And because you thought you knew me from those letters, you suffer me
to come here and be your disciple still? Yet you gave me back my
letters?"

"That was because they were written to me under a wrong impression."

"Will you have them back again?"

She shook her head.

"I know them all by heart," she said simply.

There was not the slightest sign of coquetry or flattery in her voice,
or in her eyes, which met his look with clear and steady gaze.

"I cannot ask you to read my portrait to me as you drew it from those
pictures."

"Why not?" She began to read him his portrait as readily as if she
were stating the conclusion of a problem. "I saw that you were young
and full of generous thoughts; sometimes you were indignant with
things as they are, but generally you laughed at them and accepted
them. It is, it seems, the nature of your friends to laugh a great
deal at things which they ought to remedy if they could; not laugh at
them. I thought that you wanted some strong stimulus to work; anybody
could see that you were a man of kindly nature and good-breeding. You
were careful not to offend by anything that you wrote, and I was
certain that you were a man of honor. I trusted you, Arnold, before I
saw your face, because I knew your soul."

"Trust me still, Iris," he said in rather a husky voice.

"Of course I did not know, and never thought, what sort of a man you
were to look at. Yet I ought to have known that you were handsome. I
should have guessed that from the very tone of your letters. A
hunchback or a cripple could not have written in so light-hearted a
strain, and I should have discovered, if I had thought of such a
thing, that you were very well satisfied with your personal
appearance. Young men should always be that, at least, if only to give
them confidence."

"Oh, Iris--oh! Do you really think me conceited?"

"I did not say that. I only said that you were satisfied with
yourself. That, I understand now, was clear, from many little natural
touches in your letters."

"What else did you learn?"

"Oh, a great deal--much more than I can tell you. I knew that you go
into society, and I learned from you what society means; and though
you tried to be sarcastic, I understood easily that you liked social
pleasure."

"Was I sarcastic?"

"Was it not sarcastic to tell me how the fine ladies, who affect so
much enthusiasm for art, go to see the galleries on the private-view
day, and are never seen in them again? Was it not sarcastic--"

"Spare me, Iris. I will never do it again. And knowing so much, do you
not desire to know more?"

"No, Arnold. I am not interested in anything else."

"But my position, my profession, my people--are you not curious to
know them?"

"No. They are not you. They are accidents of yourself."

"Philosopher! But you must know more about me. I told you I was an
artist. But you have never inquired whether I was a great artist or a
little one."

"You are still a little artist," she said. "I know that, without being
told. But perhaps you may become great when you learn to work
seriously."

"I have been lazy," he replied with something like a blush, "but that
is all over now. I am going to work. I will give up society. I will
take my profession seriously, if only you will encourage me."

Did he mean what he said? When he came away he used at this period to
ask himself that question, and was astonished at the length he had
gone. With any other girl in the world, he would have been taken at
his word, and either encouraged to go on, or snubbed on the spot. But
Iris received these advances as if they were a confession of weakness.

"Why do you want me to encourage you?" she asked. "I know nothing
about Art. Can't you encourage yourself, Arnold?"

"Iris, I must tell you something more about myself. Will you listen
for a moment? Well, I am the son of a clergyman who now holds a
colonial appointment. I have got the usual number of brothers and
sisters, who are doing the usual things. I will not bore you with
details about them."

"No," said Iris, "please do not."

"I am the adopted son, or ward, or whatever you please, of a certain
cousin. She is a single lady with a great income, which she promises
to bequeath to me in the future. In the meantime, I am to have
whatever I want. Do you understand the position, Iris?"

"Yes, I think so. It is interesting, because it shows why you will
never be a great artist. But it is very sad."

"A man may rise above his conditions, Iris," said Arnold meekly.

"No," she went on; "it is only the poor men who do anything good. Lala
Roy says so."

"I will pretend to be poor--indeed, I am poor. I have nothing. If it
were not for my cousin, I could not even profess to follow Art."

"What a pity," she said, "that you are rich! Lala Roy was rich once."

Arnold repressed an inclination to desire that Lala Roy might be kept
out of the conversation.

"But he gave up all his wealth and has been happy, and a philosopher,
ever since."

"I can't give up my wealth, Iris, because I haven't got any--I owe my
cousin everything. But for her, I should never even have known you."

He watched her at her work in the morning when she sat patiently
answering questions, working out problems, and making papers. She
showed him the letters of her pupils, exacting, excusing,
petulant--sometimes dissatisfied and even ill-tempered, he watched her
in the afternoon while she sewed or read. In the evening he sat with
her while the two old men played their game of chess. Regularly every
evening at half-past nine the Bengalee checkmated Mr. Emblem. Up to
that hour he amused himself with his opponent, formed ingenious
combinations, watched openings, and gradually cleared the board until
he found himself as the hour of half-past nine drew near, able to
propose a simple problem to his own mind, such as, "White moves first,
to mate in three, four, or five moves," and then he proceeded to solve
that problem, and checkmated his adversary.

No one, not even Iris, knew how Lala Roy lived, or what he did in the
daytime. It was rumored that he had been seen at Simpson's in the
Strand, but this report wanted confirmation. He had lived in Mr.
Emblem's second floor for twenty years; he always paid his bills with
regularity, and his long spare figure and white mustache and fez were
as well known in Chelsea as any red-coated lounger among the old
veterans of the Hospital.

"It is quiet for you in the evenings," said Arnold.

"I play to them sometimes. They like to hear me play during the game.
Look at them."

She sat down and played. She had a delicate touch, and played soft
music, such as soothes, not excites the soul. Arnold watched her, not
the old men. How was it that refinement, grave, self-possession,
manners, and the culture of a lady, could be found in one who knew no
ladies? But then Arnold did not know Lala Roy, nor did he understand
the old bookseller.

"You are always wondering about me," she said, talking while she
played; "I see it in your eyes. Can you not take me as I am, without
thinking why I am different from other girls? Of course I am
different, because I know none of them."

"I wish they were all like you," he said.

"No; that would be a great pity. You want girls who understand your
own life, and can enter into your pursuits--you want companions who
can talk to you; go back to them, Arnold, as soon as you are tired of
coming here."

And yet his instinct was right which told him that the girl was not a
coquette. She had no thought--not the least thought--as yet that
anything was possible beyond the existing friendship. It was pleasant,
but Arnold would get tired of her, and go back to his own people. Then
he would remain in her memory as a study of character. This she did
not exactly formulate, but she had that feeling. Every woman makes a
study of character about every man in whom she becomes ever so little
interested. But we must not get conceited, my brothers, over this
fact. The converse, unhappily, does not hold true. Very few men ever
study the character of a woman at all. Either they fall in love with
her before they have had time to make more than a sketch, and do not
afterward pursue the subject, or they do not fall in love with her at
all; and in the latter case it hardly seems worth while to follow up a
first rough draft.

"Checkmate," said Lala Roy.

The game was finished and the evening over. "Would you like," he
said, another evening, "to see my studio, or do you consider my studio
outside myself?"

"I should very much like to see an artist's studio," she replied with
her usual frankness, leaving it an open question whether she would not
be equally pleased to see any other studio.

She came, however, accompanied by Lala Roy, who had never been in a
studio before, and indeed had never looked at a picture, except with
the contemptuous glance which the philosopher bestows upon the follies
of mankind. Yet he came, because Iris asked him. Arnold's studio is
one of the smallest of those in Tite Street. Of course it is built of
red brick, and of course it has a noble staircase and a beautiful
painting-room or studio proper all set about with bits of tapestry,
armor, pictures, and china, besides the tools and properties of the
craft. He had portfolios full of sketches; against the wall stood
pictures, finished and unfinished; on an easel was a half-painted
picture representing a group taken from a modern novel. Most painters
only draw scenes from two novels--the "Vicar of Wakefield" and "Don
Quixote;" but Arnold knew more. The central figure was a girl, quite
unfinished--in fact, barely sketched in.

Iris looked at everything with the interest which belongs to the new
and unexpected.

Arnold began to show the pictures in the portfolios. There were
sketches of peasant life in Norway and on the Continent; there were
landscapes, quaint old houses, and castles; there were ships and
ports; and there were heads--hundreds of heads.

"I said you might be a great artist," said Iris. "I am sure now that
you will be if you choose."

"Thank you, Iris. It is the greatest compliment you could pay me."

"And what is this?" she was before the easel on which stood the
unfinished picture.

"It is a scene from a novel. But I cannot get the principal face. None
of the models are half good enough. I want a sweet face, a serious
face, a face with deep, beautiful eyes. Iris"--it was a sudden
impulse, an inspiration--"let me put your face there. Give me my first
commission."

She blushed deeply. All these drawings, the multitudinous faces and
heads and figures in the portfolio were a revelation to her. And just
at the very moment when she discovered that Arnold was one of those
who worship beauty--a thing she had never before understood--he told
her that her face was so beautiful that he must put in his picture.

"Oh, Arnold," she said, "my face would be out of place in that
picture."

"Would it? Please sit down, and let me make a sketch."

He seized his crayons and began rapidly.

"What do you say, Lala Roy?" he asked by way of diversion.

"The gifts of the understanding," said the Sage, "are the treasures of
the Lord; and He appointeth to every one his portion."

"Thank you," replied Arnold. "Very true and very apt, I'm sure. Iris,
please, your face turned just a little. So. Ah, if I can but do some
measure of justice to your eyes!"

When Iris went away, there was for the first time the least touch of
restraint or self-consciousness in her. Arnold felt it. She showed it
in her eyes and in the touch of her fingers when he took her hand at
parting. It was then for the first time also that Arnold discovered a
truth of overwhelming importance. Every new fact--everything which
cannot be disputed or denied, is, we all know, of the most enormous
importance. He discovered no less a truth than that he was in love
with Iris. So important is this truth to a young man that it reduces
the countless myriads of the world to a single pair--himself and
another; it converts the most arid waste of streets into an Eden; and
it blinds the eyes to ambition, riches, and success. Arnold sat down
and reasoned out this truth. He said coldly and "squarely:"

"This is a girl whom I have known only a fortnight or so; she lives
over a second-hand bookshop; she is a teacher by profession; she knows
none of the ways of society; she would doubtless be guilty of all
kinds of queer things, if she were suddenly introduced to good people;
probably, she would never learn our manners," with more to the same
effect, which may be reasonably omitted. Then his Conscience woke up,
and said quite simply: "Arnold, you are a liar." Conscience does
sometimes call hard names. She is feminine, and therefore privileged
to call hard names. Else we would sometimes kick and belabor
Conscience. "Arnold, don't tell more lies. You have been gradually
learning to know Iris, through the wisest and sweetest letters that
were ever written, for a whole year. You gradually began to know her,
in fact, when you first began to interlard your letters with conceited
revelations about yourself. You knew her to be sympathetic, quick, and
of a most kind and tender heart. You are quite sure, though you try to
disguise the fact, that she is as honest as the day, and as true as
steel. As for her not being a lady, you ought to be ashamed of
yourself for even thinking such a thing. Has she not been tenderly
brought up by two old men who are full of honor, and truth, and all
the simple virtues? Does she not look, move, and speak like the most
gracious lady in the land?" "Like a goddess," Arnold confessed. "As
for the ways and talk of society, what are these worth? and cannot
they be acquired? And what are her manners save those of the most
perfect refinement and purity?" Thus far Conscience. Then Arnold, or
Arnold's secret _advocatus diaboli_, began upon another and quite
different line. "She must have schemed at the outset to get me into
her net; she is a siren; she assumes the disguise of innocence and
ignorance the better to beguile and to deceive. She has gone home
to-day elated because she thinks she has landed a gentleman."

Conscience said nothing; there are some things to which Conscience has
no reply in words to offer; yet Conscience pointed to the portrait of
the girl, and bade the most unworthy of all lovers look upon even his
own poor and meager representation of her eyes and face, and ask
whether such blasphemies could ever be forgiven.

After a self abasement, which for shame's sake we must pass over, the
young man felt happier.

Henry the Second felt much the same satisfaction the morning after
his scourging at the hands of the monks, who were as muscular as they
were vindictive.




CHAPTER VI.

COUSIN CLARA.


That man who spends his days in painting a girl's portrait, in talking
to her, and in gazing upon the unfinished portrait when she is not
with him, and occupies his thoughts during the watches of the night in
thinking about her, is perilously near to taking the last and fatal
step. Flight for such a man is the only thing left, and he so seldom
thinks of flight until it is too late.

Arnold was at this point.

"I am possessed by this girl," he might have said had he put his
thoughts into words. "I am haunted by her eyes; her voice lingers on
my ears; I dream of her face, the touch of her fingers is like the
touch of an electric battery." What symptoms are these, so common that
one is almost ashamed to write them down, but the infallible symptoms
of love? And yet he hesitated, not because he doubted himself any
longer, but because he was not independent, and such an engagement
might deprive him at one stroke of all that he possessed. Might? It
certainly would. Yes, the new and beautiful studio, all the things in
it, all his prospects for the future, would have to be given up. "She
is worth more than that," said Arnold, "and I should find work
somehow. But yet, to plunge her into poverty--and to make Clara the
most unhappy of women!"

The reason why Clara would be made the most unhappy of women, was that
Clara was his cousin and his benefactor, to whom he owed everything.
She was the kindest of patrons, and she liked nothing so much as the
lavishing upon her ward everything that he could desire. But she also,
unfortunately, illustrated the truth of Chaucer's teaching, in that
she loved power more than anything else, and had already mapped out
Arnold's life for him.

It was his custom to call upon her daily, to use her house as his own.
When they were separated, they wrote to each other every day; the
relations between them were of the most intimate and affectionate
kind. He advised in all her affairs, while she directed his; it was
understood that he was her heir, and though she was not more than five
and forty or so, and had, apparently, a long life still before her, so
that the succession was distant, the prospect gave him importance. She
had been out of town, and perhaps the fact of a new acquaintance with
so obscure a person as a simple tutor by correspondence, seemed to
Arnold not worth mentioning. At all events, he had not mentioned it in
his daily letters.

And now she was coming home; she was actually arrived; he would see
her that evening. Her last letter was lying before him.

     "I parted from dear Stella yesterday. She goes to stay with
     the Essex Mainwarings for a month; after that, I hope that
     she will give me a long visit. I do not know where one could
     find a sweeter girl, or one more eminently calculated to
     make a man happy. Beautiful, strictly speaking, she is not,
     perhaps, but of excellent connections, not without a
     portion, young, clever, and ambitious. With such a wife, my
     dear Arnold, a man may aspire to anything."

"To anything!" repeated Arnold; "what is her notion of anything? She
has arrived by this time." He looked at his watch and found it was
past five. "I ought to have been at the station to meet her. I must go
round and see her, and I must dine with her to-night." He sighed
heavily. "It would be much pleasanter to spend the evening with Iris."

Then a carriage stopped at his door. It was his cousin, and the next
minute he was receiving and giving the kiss of welcome. For his own
part, he felt guilty, because he could put so little heart into that
kiss, compared with all previous embraces. She was a stout, hearty
little woman, who could never have been in the least beautiful, even
when she was young. Now on the middle line, between forty and fifty,
she looked as if her face had been chopped out of the marble by a rude
but determined artist, one who knew what he wanted and would tolerate
no conventional work. So that her face, at all events, was, if not
unique, at least unlike any other face one had ever seen. Most faces,
we know, can be reduced to certain general types--even Iris's face
might be classified--while of yours, my brother, there are, no doubt,
multitudes. Miss Holland, however, had good eyes--bright, clear
gray--the eyes of a woman who knows what she wants and means to get it
if she can.

"Well, my dear," she said, taking the one comfortable chair in the
studio, "I am back again, and I have enjoyed my journey very much; we
will have all the travels this evening. You are looking splendid,
Arnold!"

"I am very well indeed. And you, Clara? But I need not ask."

"No, I am always well. I told you about dear Stella, did I not? I
never had a more delightful companion."

"So glad you liked her."

"If only, Arnold, you would like her too. But I know"--for Arnold
changed color--"I know one must not interfere in these matters. But
surely one may go so far with a young man one loves as to say, 'Here
is a girl of a million.' There is not, Arnold, I declare, her equal
anywhere; a clearer head I never met, or a better educated girl, or
one who knows what a man can do, and how he can be helped to do it."

"Thank you, Clara," Arnold said coldly; "I dare say I shall discover
the young lady's perfections in time."

"Not, I think, without some help. She is not an ordinary girl. You
must draw her out, my dear boy."

"I will," he said listlessly. "I will try to draw her out, if you
like."

"We talked a great deal of you, Arnold," Clara went on. "I confided to
her some of my hopes and ambitions for you; and I am free to confess
to you that she has greatly modified all my plans and calculations."

"Oh!" Arnold was interested in this "But, my dear Clara, I have my
profession. I must follow my profession."

"Surely--surely! Listen, Arnold, patiently. Anybody can become an
artist--anybody, of course, who has the genius. And all kinds of
people, gutter people, have the genius."

"The sun," said Arnold, just as if he had been Lala Roy, "shines on
all alike."

"Quite so; and there is an immense enthusiasm for art everywhere; but
there is no art leader. There is no one man recognized as the man most
competent to speak on art of every kind. Think of that. It is Stella's
idea entirely. This man, when he is found, will sway enormous
authority; he will become, if he has a wife able to assist him, an
immense social power."

"And you want me to become that man?"

"Yes, Arnold. I do not see why you should not become that man. Cease
to think of becoming President of the Royal Academy, yet go on
painting; prove your genius, so as to command respect; cultivate the
art of public speaking; and look about for a wife who will be your
right hand. Think of this seriously. This is only a rough sketch, we
can fill in the details afterward. But think of it. Oh, my dear boy!
if I were only a man, and five-and-twenty, with such a chance before
me! What a glorious career is yours, if you choose! But of course you
will choose. Good gracious, Arnold! who is that?"

She pointed to the canvas on the easel, where Iris's face was like the
tale of Cambuscan, half told.

"It is no one you know, Clara."

"One of your models?" She rose and examined it more closely through
her glasses. "The eyes are wonderful, Arnold. They are eyes I know. As
if I could ever forget them! They are the same eyes, exactly the same
eyes. I have never met with any like them before. They are the eyes of
my poor, lost, betrayed Claude Deseret. Where did you pick up this
girl, Arnold? Is she a common model?"

"Not at all. She is not a model. She is a young lady who teaches by
correspondence. She is my tutor--of course I have so often talked to
you about her--who taught me the science of Heraldry, and wrote me
such charming letters."

"Your tutor! You said your tutor was an old gentleman."

"So I thought, Clara. But I was wrong. My tutor is a young lady, and
this is her portrait, half-finished. It does not do her any kind of
justice."

"A young lady!" She looked suspiciously at Arnold, whose telltale
cheek flushed. "A young lady! Indeed! And you have made her
acquaintance."

"As you see, Clara; and she does me the honor to let me paint her
portrait."

"What is her name, Arnold?"

"She is a Miss Aglen."

"Strange. The Deserets once intermarried with the Aglens. I wonder if
she is any connection. They were Warwickshire Aglens. But it is
impossible--a teacher by correspondence, a mere private governess! Who
are her people?"

"She lives with her grandfather. I think her father was a tutor or
journalist of some kind, but he is dead; and her grandfather keeps a
second-hand bookshop in the King's Road close by."

"A bookshop! But you said, Arnold, that she was a young lady."

"So she is, Clara," he replied simply.

"Arnold!" for the first time in his life Arnold saw his cousin angry
with him. She was constantly being angry with other people, but never
before had she been angry with him. "Arnold, spare me this nonsense.
If you have been playing with this shop-girl I cannot help it, and I
beg that you will tell me no more about it, and do not, to my face,
speak of her as a lady."

"I have not been playing with her, I think," said Arnold gravely; "I
have been very serious with her."

"Everybody nowadays is a young lady. The girl who gives you a cup of
tea in a shop; the girl who dances in the ballet; the girl who makes
your dresses."

"In that case, Clara, you need not mind my calling Miss Aglen a young
lady."

"There is one word left, at least: women of my class are gentlewomen."

"Miss Aglen is a gentlewoman."

"Arnold, look me in the face. My dear boy, tell me, are you mad? Oh,
think of my poor unhappy Claude, what he did, and what he must have
suffered!"

"I know what he did. I do not know what he suffered. My case, however,
is different from his. I am not engaged to any one."

"Arnold, think of the great scheme of life I have drawn out for you.
My dear boy, would you throw that all away?"

She laid her hands upon his arm and looked in his eyes with a pitiful
gaze. He took her hands in his.

"My dear, every man must shape his life for himself, or must live out
the life shaped for him by his fate, not by his friends. What if I see
a life more delightful to me than that of which you dream?"

"You talk of a delightful life, Arnold; I spoke of an honorable
career."

"Mine will be a life of quiet work and love. Yours, Clara, would be of
noisy and troublesome work without love."

"Without love, Arnold? You are infatuated."

She sunk into the chair and buried her face in her hands. First, it
was her lover who had deserted her for the sake of a governess, the
daughter of some London tradesman; and now her adopted son, almost the
only creature she loved, for whom she had schemed and thought for
nearly twenty years, was ready to give up everything for the sake of
another governess, also connected with the lower forms of commercial
interests.

"It is very hard, Arnold," she said. "No, don't try to persuade me. I
am getting an old woman, and it is too late for me to learn that a
gentleman can be happy unless he marries a lady. You might as well ask
me to look for happiness with a grocer."

"Not quite," said Arnold.

"It is exactly the same thing. Pray, have you proposed to this--this
young lady of the second-hand bookshop?"

"No, I have not."

"You are in love with her, however?"

"I am, Clara."

"And you intend to ask her--in the shop, I dare say, among the
second-hand books--to become your wife?"

"That is my serious intention, Clara."

"Claude did the same thing. His father remonstrated with him in vain,
he took his wife to London, where, for a time, he lived in misery and
self-reproach."

"Do you know that he reproached himself?"

"I know what must have happened when he found out his mistake. Then he
went to America, where he died, no doubt in despair, although his
father had forgiven him."

"The cases are hardly parallel," said Arnold. "Still, will you permit
me to introduce Miss Aglen to you, if she should do me the honor of
accepting me? Be generous, Clara. Do not condemn the poor girl without
seeing her."

"I condemn no one--I judge no one, not even you, Arnold. But I will
not receive that young woman."

"Very well, Clara."

"How shall you live, Arnold?" she asked coldly.

It was the finishing stroke--the dismissal.

"I suppose we shall not marry; but, of course, I am talking as if--"

"As if she was ready to jump into your arms. Go on."

"We shall not marry until I have made some kind of a beginning in my
work. Clara, let us have no further explanation. I understand
perfectly well. But, my dear Clara," he laid his arm upon her neck and
kissed her, "I shall not let you quarrel with me. I owe you too much,
and I love you too well. I am always your most faithful of servants."

"No; till you are married--then--Oh, Arnold! Arnold!"

A less strong-minded woman would have burst into tears. Clara did not.
She got into her carriage and drove home. She spent a miserable
evening and a sleepless night. But she did not cry.




CHAPTER VII.

ON BATTERSEA TERRACE.


If a woman were to choose any period of her life which she pleased,
for indefinite prolongation, she would certainly select that period
which lies between the first perception of the first symptoms--when
she begins to understand that a man has begun to love her--and the day
when he tells her so.

Yet women who look back to this period with so much fondness and
regret forget their little tremors and misgivings--the self-distrust,
the hopes and fears, the doubts and perplexities, which troubled this
time. For although it is acknowledged, and has been taught by all
philosophers from King Lemuel and Lao-Kiun downward, that no greater
prize can be gained by any man than the love of a good woman, which is
better than a Peerage--better than a Bonanza mine--better than Name
and Fame, Kudos and the newspaper paragraph, and is arrived at by much
less exertion, being indeed the special gift of the gods to those
they love; yet all women perfectly understand the other side to this
great truth--namely, that no greater happiness can fall to any woman
than the love of a good man. So that, in all the multitudinous and
delightful courtships which go on around us, and in our midst, there
is, on both sides, both with man and with maid, among those who truly
reach to the right understanding of what this great thing may mean, a
continual distrust of self, with humility and anxiety. And when, as
sometimes happens, a girl has been brought up in entire ignorance of
love, so that the thought of it has never entered her head, the thing
itself, when it falls upon her, is overwhelming, and infolds her as
with a garment from head to foot, and, except to her lover, she
becomes as a sealed fountain. I know not how long this season of
expectation would have lasted for Iris, but for Arnold's conversation
with his cousin, which persuaded him to speak and bring matters to a
final issue. To this girl, living as secluded as if she was in an
Oriental harem, who had never thought of love as a thing possible for
herself, the consciousness that Arnold loved her was bewildering and
astonishing, and she waited, knowing that sooner or later something
would be said, but trembling for fear that it should be said.

After all, it was Lala Roy, and not Clara, who finally determined
Arnold to wait no longer.

He came every day to the studio with Iris when she sat for her
portrait. This was in the afternoon. But he now got into the habit of
coming in the morning, and would sit in silence looking on. He came
partly because he liked the young man, and partly because the
painter's art was new to him, and it amused him to watch a man giving
his whole time and intellect to the copying or faces and things on
canvas. Also, he was well aware by this time that it was not to see
Mr. Emblem or himself that Arnold spent every evening at the house,
and he was amused to watch the progress of an English courtship. In
India, we know, they manage matters differently, and so as to give the
bridegroom no more trouble than is necessary. This young man, however,
took, he observed, the most wonderful pains and the most extraordinary
trouble to please.

"Do you know, Lala Roy," Arnold said one morning after a silence of
three hours or so, "do you know that this is going to be the portrait
of the most beautiful woman in the world, and the best?"

"It is well," said the Philosopher, "when a young man desires virtue
as well as beauty."

"You have known her all her life. Don't trouble yourself to speak,
Lala. You can nod your head if there isn't a maxim ready. You began to
lodge in the house twenty years ago, and you have seen her every day
since. If she is not the best, as well as the most beautiful girl in
the world, you ought to know and can contradict me. But you do know
it."

"Happy is the man," said the Sage, "who shall call her wife; happy the
children who shall call her mother."

"I suppose, Lala," Arnold went on with an ingenuous blush, "I suppose
that you have perceived that--that--in fact--I love her."

The Philosopher inclined his head.

"Do you think--you who know her so well--that she suspects or knows
it?"

"The thoughts of a maiden are secret thoughts. As well may one search
for the beginnings of a river as inquire into the mind of a woman.
Their ways are not our ways, nor are their thoughts ours, nor have we
wit to understand, nor have they tongue to utter the things they
think. I know not whether she suspects."

"Yet you have had experience, Lala Roy?"

A smile stole over the Sage's features.

"In the old days when I was young, I had experience, as all men have.
I have had many wives. Yet to me, as to all others, the thoughts of
the harem are unknown."

"Yet, Iris--surely you know the thoughts of Iris, your pupil."

"I know only that her heart is the abode of goodness, and that she
knows not any evil thought. Young man, beware. Trouble not the clear
fountain."

"Heaven knows," said Arnold, "I would not--" And here he stopped.

"Youth," said the Sage presently, "is the season for love. Enjoy the
present happiness. Woman is made to be loved. Receive with gratitude
what Heaven gives. The present moment is your own. Defer not until the
evening what you may accomplish at noon."

With these words the oracle became silent, and Arnold sat down and
began to think it all over again.

An hour later he presented himself at the house in the King's Road.
Iris was alone, and she was playing.

"You, Arnold? It is early for you."

"Forgive me, Iris, for breaking in on your afternoon; but I
thought--it is a fine afternoon--I thought that, perhaps--You have
never taken a walk with me."

She blushed, I think in sympathy with Arnold, who looked confused and
stammered, and then she said she would go with him.

They left the King's Road by the Royal Avenue, where the leaves were
already thin and yellow, and passed through the Hospital and its broad
grounds down to the river-side; then they turned to the right, and
walked along the embankment, where are the great new red houses, to
Cheyne Walk, and so across the Suspension Bridge. Arnold did not speak
one word the whole way. His heart was so full that he could not trust
himself to speak. Who would not be four-and-twenty again, even with
all the risks and dangers of life before one, the set traps, the
gaping holes, and the treacherous quicksands, if it were only to feel
once more the overwhelming spirit of the mysterious goddess of the
golden cestus? In silence they walked side by side over the bridge.
Half-way across, they stopped and looked up the river. The tide was
running in with a swift current, and the broad river was nearly at the
full; the strong September sun fell upon the water, which was broken
into little waves under a fresh breeze meeting the current from the
north-west. There were lighters and barges majestically creeping up
stream, some with brown three-cornered sails set in the bows and
stern, some slowly moving with the tide, their bows kept steady by
long oars, and some, lashed one to the other, forming a long train,
and pulled along by a noisy little tug, all paddle wheel and engine.
There was a sculler vigorously practicing for his next race, and
dreaming, perhaps, of sending a challenge to Hanlan; there were some
boys in a rowing-boat, laughing and splashing each other; on the north
bank there was the garden of the Embankment, with its young trees
still green, for the summer lasted into late September this year, and,
beyond, the red brick tower of the old church, with its flag post on
the top. These details are never so carefully marked as when one is
anxious, and fully absorbed in things of great importance. Perhaps
Arnold had crossed the bridge a hundred times before, but to day, for
the first time, he noticed the common things of the river. One may be
an artist, and yet may miss the treasures that lie at the very feet.
This is a remark which occurs to one with each new Academy Show. With
every tide the boats go up and down with their brown sails, and always
the tower of Chelsea Church rises above the trees, and the broad river
never forgets to sparkle and to glow in the sunshine when it gets the
chance. Such common things are for the most part unheeded, but, when
the mind is anxious and full, they force themselves upon one. Arnold
watched boats, and river, and sunshine on the sails, with a strange
interest and wonder, as one sees visions in a dream. He had seen all
these things before, yet now he noticed them for the first time, and
all the while he was thinking what he should say to Iris, and how he
should approach the subject. I know not whether Iris, like him, saw
one thing and noticed another. The thoughts of a maiden, as Lala Roy
said, are secret thoughts. She looked upon the river from the bridge
with Arnold. When he turned, she turned with him, and neither spoke.

They left the bridge, and passed through the wooden gate at the
Battersea end of it, and across the corner where the stone columns
lie, like an imitation of Tadmor in the Desert, and so to the broad
terrace overlooking the river.

There is not, anywhere, a more beautiful terrace than this of
Battersea Park, especially when the tide is high. Before it lies the
splendid river, with the barges which Arnold had seen from the bridge.
They are broad, and flat, and sometimes squat, and sometimes black
with coal, and sometimes they go up and down sideways, in lubberly
Dutch fashion, but they are always picturesque; and beyond the river
is the Embankment, with its young trees, which will before many years
be tall and stately trees; and behind the trees are the new red
palaces; and above the houses, at this time of the year and day, are
the flying clouds, already colored with the light of the sinking sun.
Behind the terrace are the trees, and lawns of the best-kept park in
London.

In the afternoon of a late September day, there are not many who walk
in these gardens. Arnold and Iris had the terrace almost to
themselves, save for half-a-dozen girls with children, and two or
three old men making the most of the last summer they were ever likely
to see, though it would have been cruel to tell them so.

"This is your favorite walk, Iris," said Arnold at last, breaking the
silence.

"Yes; I come here very often. It is my garden. Sometimes in the
winter, and when the east wind blows up the river, I have it all to
myself."

"A quiet life, Iris," he said, "and a happy life."

"Yes; a happy life."

"Iris, will you change it for a life which will not be so quiet?" He
took her hand, but she made no reply. "I must tell you, Iris, because
I cannot keep it from you any longer. I love you--oh, my dear, I
cannot tell you how I love you."

"Oh, Arnold!" she whispered. It had come, the thing she feared to
hear!

"May I go on? I have told you now the most important thing, and the
rest matters little. Oh, Iris, may I go on and tell you all?"

"Go on," she said; "tell me all."

"As for telling you everything," He said with a little laugh, "that is
no new thing. I have told you all that is in my mind for a year and
more. It seems natural that I should tell you this too, even if it did
not concern you at all, but some other girl; though that would be
impossible. I love you, Iris; I love you--I should like to say nothing
more. But I must tell you as well that I am quite a poor man; I am an
absolute pauper; I have nothing at all--no money, no work, nothing. My
studio and all must go back to her; and yet, Iris, in spite of this, I
am so selfish as to tell you that I love you. I would give you, if I
could, the most delightful palace in the world, and I offer you a
share in the uncertain life of an artist, who does not know whether he
has any genius, or whether he is fit even to be called an artist."

She gave him her hand with the frankness which was her chief charm,
and with a look in her eyes so full of trust and truth that his heart
sunk within him for very fear lest he should prove unworthy of so much
confidence.

"Oh, Arnold," she said, "I think that I have loved you all along, ever
since you began to write to me. And yet I never thought that love
would come to me."

He led her into that bosky grove set with seats convenient for lovers,
which lies romantically close to the Italian Restaurant, where they
sell the cocoa and the ginger beer. There was no one in the place
besides themselves, and here, among the falling leaves, and in a
solitude as profound as on the top of a Dartmoor tor, Arnold told the
story of his love again, and with greater coherence, though even more
passion.

"Oh," said Iris again, "how could you love me, Arnold--how could you
love any girl so? It is a shame, Arnold; we are not worth so much.
Could any woman," she thought, "be worth the wealth of passion and
devotion which her lover poured out for her?"

"My tutor," he went on, "if you only knew what things you have taught
me, a man of experience! If I admired you when I thought you must be a
man, and pictured an old scholar full of books and wisdom, what could
I do when I found that a young girl had written those letters? You
gave mine back to me; did you think that I would ever part with yours?
And you owned--oh, Iris, what would not the finished woman of the
world give to have the secret of your power?--you owned that you knew
all my letters, every one, by heart. And after all, you will love me,
your disciple and pupil, and a man who has his way to make from the
very beginning and first round of the ladder. Think, Iris, first. Is
it right to throw away so much upon a man who is worth so little?"

"But I am glad that you are poor. If you were rich I should have been
afraid--oh, not of you, Arnold--never of you, but of your people. And,
besides it is so good--oh, so very good for a young man--a young man
of the best kind, not my cousin's kind--to be poor. Nobody ought ever
to be allowed to become rich before he is fifty years of age at the
very least. Because now you will have to work in earnest, and you will
become a great artist--yes, a truly great artist, and we shall be
proud of you."

"You shall make of me what you please, and what you can. For your
sake, Iris, I wish I were another Raphael. You are my mistress and my
queen. Bid me to die, and I will dare--Iris, I swear that the words of
the extravagant old song are real to me."

"Nay," she said, "not your queen, but your servant always. Surely love
cannot command. But, I think," she added softly, with a tender blush;
"I think--nay, I am sure and certain that it can obey."

He stooped and kissed her fingers.

"My love," he murmured; "my love--my love!"

The shadows lengthened and the evening fell; but those two foolish
people sat side by side, and hand in hand, and what they said further
we need not write down, because to tell too much of what young lovers
whisper to each other is a kind of sacrilege.

At last Arnold became aware that the sun was actually set, and he
sprung to his feet.

They walked home again across the Suspension Bridge. In the western
sky was hanging a huge bank of cloud all bathed in purple, red and
gold; the river was ablaze; the barges floated in a golden haze; the
light shone on their faces, and made them all glorious, like the face
of Moses, for they, too, had stood--nay, they were still standing--at
the very gates of Heaven.

"See, Iris," said the happy lover, "the day is done; your old life is
finished; it has been a happy time, and it sets in glory and splendor.
The red light in the west is a happy omen of the day to come."

So he took her hand, and led her over the river, and then to his own
studio in Tite Street. There, in the solemn twilight, he held her in
his arms, and renewed the vows of love with kisses and fond caresses.

"Iris, my dear--my dear--you are mine and I am yours. What have I done
to deserve this happy fate?"




CHAPTER VIII.

THE DISCOVERY.


At nine o'clock that evening, Mr. Emblem looked up from the chess
board.

"Where is Mr. Arbuthnot this evening, my dear?" he asked.

It would be significant in some houses when a young man is expected
every evening. Iris blushed, and said that perhaps he was not coming.
But he was, and his step was on the stair as she spoke.

"You are late, Mr. Arbuthnot," said Mr. Emblem, reproachfully, "you
are late, sir, and somehow we get no music now until you come. Play us
something, Iris. It is my move, Lala--"

Iris opened the piano and Arnold sat down beside her, and their eyes
met. There was in each the consciousness of what had passed.

"I shall speak to him to-night, Iris," Arnold whispered. "I have
already written to my cousin. Do not be hurt if she does not call upon
you."

"Nothing of that sort will hurt me," Iris said, being ignorant of
social ways, and without the least ambition to rise in the world. "If
your cousin does not call upon me I shall not be disappointed. Why
should she want to know me? But I am sorry, Arnold, that she is angry
with you."

Lala Roy just then found himself in presence of a most beautiful
problem--white to move and checkmate in three moves. Mr. Emblem found
the meshes of fate closing round him earlier than usual, and both bent
their heads closely over the table.

"Checkmate!" said Lala Roy. "My friend, you have played badly this
evening."

"I have played badly," Mr. Emblem replied, "because to-morrow will be
an important day for Iris, and for myself. A day, Iris, that I have
been looking forward to for eighteen years, ever since I got your
father's last letter, written upon his death-bed. It seems a long
time, but like a lifetime," said the old man of seventy-five, "it is
as nothing when it is gone. Eighteen years, and you were a little
thing of three, child!"

"What is going to happen to me, grandfather, except that I shall be
twenty-one?"

"We shall see to-morrow. Patience, my dear--patience."

He spread out his hands and laughed. What was going to happen to
himself was a small thing compared with the restoration of Iris to her
own.

"Mr. Emblem," said Arnold, "I also have something of importance to
say."

"You, too, Mr. Arbuthnot? Cannot yours wait also until to-morrow?"

"No; it is too important. It cannot wait an hour."

"Well, sir"--Mr. Emblem pushed up his spectacles and leaned back in
his chair--"well, Mr. Arbuthnot, let us have it."

"I think you may guess what I have to say, Mr. Emblem. I am sure that
Lala Roy has already guessed it."

The philosopher inclined his head in assent.

"It is that I have this afternoon asked Iris to marry me, Mr. Emblem.
And she has consented."

"Have you consented, Iris, my dear?" said her grandfather.

She placed her hand in Arnold's for reply.

"Do you think you know him well enough, my dear?" Mr. Emblem asked
gravely, looking at her lover. "Marriage is a serious thing: it is a
partnership for life. Children, think well before you venture on the
happiness or ruin of your whole lives. And you are so young. What a
pity--what a thousand pities that people were not ordained to marry at
seventy or so!"

"We have thought well," said Arnold. "Iris has faith in me."

"Then, young man, I have nothing to say. Iris will marry to please
herself, and I pray that she may be happy. As for you, I like your
face and manners, but I do not know who you are, nor what your means
may be. Remember that I am poor--I am so poor--I can tell you all now,
that to-morrow we shall--well, patience--to-morrow I shall most likely
have my very stock seized and sold."

"Your stock sold? Oh, grandfather!" cried Iris; "and you did not tell
me! And I have been so happy."

"Friend," said Lala, "was it well to hide this from me?"

"Foolish people," Mr. Emblem went on, "have spread reports that I am
rich, and have saved money for Iris. It is not true, Mr. Arbuthnot. I
am not rich. Iris will come to you empty-handed."

"And as for me, I have nothing," said Arnold, "except a pair of hands
and all the time there is. So we have all to gain and nothing to
lose."

"You have your profession," said Iris, "and I have mine. Grandfather,
do not fear, even though we shall all four become poor together."

It seemed natural to include Lala Roy, who had been included with them
for twenty years.

"As for Iris being empty-handed," said Arnold, "how can that ever be?
Why, she carries in her hands an inexhaustible cornucopia, full of
precious things."

"My dear," said the old man, holding out his arms to her, "I could not
keep you always. Some day I knew you would leave me; it is well that
you should leave me when I am no longer able to keep a roof over your
head."

"But we shall find a roof for you, grandfather, somewhere. We shall
never part."

"The best of girls always," said Mr. Emblem; "the best of girls! Mr.
Arbuthnot, you are a happy man."

Then the Sage lifted up his voice and said solemnly:

"On her tongue dwelleth music; the sweetness of honey floweth from her
lips; humility is like a crown of glory about her head; her eye
speaketh softness and love; her husband putteth his heart in her bosom
and findeth joy."

"Oh, you are all too good to me," murmured Iris.

"A friend of mine," said Mr. Emblem, "now, like nearly all my friends,
beneath the sod, used to say that a good marriage was a happy blending
of the finest Wallsend with the most delicate Silkstone. But he was in
the coal trade. For my own part I have always thought that it is like
the binding of two scarce volumes into one."

"Oh, not second-hand volumes, grandfather," said Iris.

"I don't know. Certainly not new ones. Not volumes under
one-and-twenty, if you please. Mr. Arbuthnot, I am glad; you will know
why very soon. I am very glad that Iris made her choice before her
twenty-first birthday. Whatever may happen now, no one can say that
either of you was influenced by any expectations. You both think
yourself paupers; well, I say nothing, because I know nothing. But,
children, if a great thing happen to you, and that before
four-and-twenty hours have passed, be prepared--be prepared, I say--to
receive it with moderate rejoicing."

"To-morrow?" Iris asked. "Why to-morrow? Why not to-night, if you have
a secret to tell us?"

"Your father enjoined in his last letter to wait till you were
twenty-one. The eve of your birthday, however, is the same thing as
your birthday. We will open the papers to-night. What I have to tell
you, Iris, shall be told in the presence of your lover, whatever it
is--good or bad."

He led the way down-stairs into the back shop. Here he lit the gas,
and began to open his case, slowly and cautiously.

"Eighteen years ago, Iris, my child, I received your father's last
letter, written on his death bed. This I have already told you. He set
down, in that letter, several things which surprised me very much. We
shall come to these things presently. He also laid down certain
instructions for your bringing up, my dear. I was, first of all, to
give you as good an education as I could afford; I was to keep you as
much as possible separated from companions who might not be thought
afterward fit to be the friends of a young lady. You have as good an
education as Lala Roy and I could devise between us. From him you have
learned mathematics, so as to steady your mind and make you exact; and
you have learned the science of heraldry from me, so that you may at
once step into your own place in the polite world, where, no doubt, it
is a familiar and a necessary study. You have also learned music,
because that is an accomplishment which every one should possess. What
more can any girl want for any station? My dear, I am happy to think
that a gentleman is your lover. Let him tell us, now--Lala Roy and
me--to our very faces, if he thinks we have, between us, made you a
lady."

Arnold stooped and kissed her hand.

"There is no more perfect lady," he said, "in all the land."

"Iris's father, Mr. Arbuthnot, was a gentleman of honorable and
ancient family, and I will tell you, presently, as soon as I find it
out myself, his real name. As for his coat-of-arms, he bore Quarterly,
first and fourth, two roses and a boar's head erect; second and third,
gules and fesse between--strange, now that I have forgotten what it
was between. Everybody calls himself a gentleman nowadays; even Mr.
Chalker, who is going to sell me up, I suppose; but everybody, if you
please, is not armiger. Iris, your father was armiger. I suppose I am
a gentleman on Sundays, when I go to church with Iris, and wear a
black coat. But your father, my dear, though he married my daughter,
was a gentleman by birth. And one who knows heraldry respects a
gentleman by birth." He laid his hand now on the handle of the safe,
as if the time were nearly come for opening it, but not quite. "He
sent me, with this last letter, a small parcel for you, my dear, not
to be opened until you reached the age of twenty-one. As for the
person who had succeeded to his inheritance, she was to be left in
peaceable possession for a reason which he gave--quite a romantic
story, which I will tell you presently--until you came of age. He was
very urgent on this point. If, however, any disaster of sickness or
misfortune fell upon me, I was to act in your interests at once,
without waiting for time. Children," the old man added solemnly, "by
the blessing of Heaven--I cannot take it as anything less--I have been
spared in health and fortune until this day. Now let me depart in
peace, for my trust is expired, and my child is safe, her inheritance
secured, with a younger and better protector." He placed the key in
the door of the safe. "I do not know, mind," he said, still hesitating
to take the final step; "I do not know the nature of the inheritance;
it may be little or maybe great. The letter does not inform me on this
point. I do not even know the name of the testator, my son-in-law's
father. Nor do I know the name of my daughter's husband. I do not even
know your true name, Iris, my child. But it is not Aglen."

"Then, have I been going under a false name all my life?"

"It was the name your father chose to bear for reasons which seemed
good and sufficient to him, and these are part of the story which I
shall have to tell you. Will you have this story first, or shall we
first open the safe and read the contents of the parcel?"

"First," said Arnold, "let us sit down and look in each other's
faces."

It was a practical suggestion. But, as it proved, it was an unlucky
one, because it deprived them of the story.

"Iris," he said, while they waited, "this is truly wonderful!"

"Oh, Arnold! What am I to do with an inheritance?"

"That depends on what it is. Perhaps it is a landed estate; in which
case we shall not be much better off, and can go on with our work;
perhaps there will be houses; perhaps it will be thousands of pounds,
and perhaps hundreds. Shall we build a castle in the air to suit our
inheritance?"

"Yes; let us pretend. Oh, grandfather, stop one moment! Our castle,
Arnold, shall be, first of all, the most beautiful studio in the world
for you. You shall have tapestry, blue china, armor, lovely glass,
soft carpets, carved doors and painted panels, a tall mantelshelf,
old wooden cabinets, silver cups, and everything else what one ought
to like, and you shall choose everything for yourself, and never get
tired of it. But you must go on painting; you must never stop working,
because we must be proud of you as well that you like. Oh, but I have
not done yet. My grandfather is to have two rooms for himself, which
he can fill with the books he will spend his time in collecting; Lala
Roy will have two more rooms, quite separate, where he can sit by
himself whenever he does not choose to sit with me; I shall have my
own study to myself, where I shall go on reading mathematics; and we
shall all have, between us, the most beautiful dining-room and
drawing-room that you ever saw; and a garden and a fountain,
and--yes--money to give to people who are not so fortunate as
ourselves. Will that do, Arnold?"

"Yes, but you have almost forgotten yourself, dear. There must be
carriages for you, and jewels, and dainty things all your own, and a
boudoir, and nobody shall think of doing or saying anything in the
house at all, except for your pleasure; will that do, Iris?"

"I suppose we shall have to give parties of some kind, and to go to
them. Perhaps one may get to like society. You will teach me
lawn-tennis, Arnold; and I should like, I think, to learn dancing. I
suppose I must leave off making my own dresses, though I know that I
shall never be so well dressed if I do. And about the cakes and
puddings--but, oh, there is enough pretending."

"It is difficult," said Lala Roy, "to bear adversity. But to be
temperate in prosperity is the height of wisdom."

"And now suppose, Iris," said Arnold "that the inheritance, instead
of being thousands a year, is only a few hundreds."

"Ah, then, Arnold, it will be ever so much simpler. We shall have
something to live upon until you begin to make money for us all."

"Yes; that is very simple. But suppose, again, that the inheritance is
nothing but a small sum of money."

"Why, then," said Iris, "we will give it all to grandfather, who will
pay off his creditor, and we will go on as if nothing had happened."

"Child!" said Mr. Emblem, "do you think that I would take your little
all?"

"And suppose, again," Arnold went on, "that the inheritance turns out
a delusion, and that there is nothing at all?"

"That cannot be supposed," said Mr. Emblem quickly; "that is absurd!"

"If it were," said Iris, "we shall only be, to-morrow, just exactly
what we are to-day. I am a teacher by correspondence, with five
pupils. Arnold is looking for art-work, which will pay; and between
us, my dear grandfather and Lala Roy, we are going to see that you
want nothing."

Always Lala Roy with her grandfather, as if their interests were
identical, and, indeed, he had lived so long with them that Iris could
not separate the two old men.

"We will all live together," Iris continued, "and when our fortune is
made we will all live in a palace. And now, grandfather, that we have
relieved our feelings, shall we have the story and the opening of the
papers in the safe?"

"Which will you have first?" Mr. Emblem asked again.

"Oh, the safe," said Arnold. "The story can wait. Let us examine the
contents of the safe."

"The story," said Mr. Emblem, "is nearly all told in your father's
letter, my dear. But there is a little that I would tell you first,
before I read that letter. You know, Iris, that I have never been
rich; my shop has kept me up till now, but I have never been able to
put by money. Well--my daughter Alice, your poor mother, my dear, who
was as good and clever as you are, was determined to earn her own
living, and so she went out as a governess. And one day she came home
with her husband; she had been married the day before, and she told me
they had very little money, and her husband was a scholar and a
gentleman, and wanted to get work by writing. He got some, but not
enough, and they were always in a poor way, until one day he got a
letter from America--it was while the Civil War was raging--from an
old Oxford friend, inviting him to emigrate and try fortune as a
journalist out there. He went, and his wife was to join him. But she
died, my dear; your mother died, and a year later I had your father's
last letter, which I am now going to read to you."

"One moment, sir," said Arnold. "Before you open the safe and take out
the papers, remember that Iris and I can take nothing--nothing at all
for ourselves until all your troubles are tided over."

"Children--children," cried Mr. Emblem.

"Go, my son, to the Desert," observed the Sage, standing solemnly
upright like a Prophet of Israel. "Observe the young stork of the
wilderness, how he beareth on his wings his aged sire and supplieth
him with food. The piety of a child is sweeter than the incense of
Persia offered to the sun; yea, more delicious is it than the odors
from a field of Arabian spice."

"Thank you, Lala," said Mr. Emblem. "And now, children, we will
discover the mystery."

He unlocked the safe and threw it open with somewhat of a theatrical
air. "The roll of papers." He took it out. "'For Iris to be opened on
her twenty-first birthday.' And this is the eve of it. But where is
the letter? I tied the letter round it, with a piece of tape. Very
strange. I am sure I tied the letter with a piece of tape. Perhaps it
was--Where is the letter?"

He peered about in the safe; there was nothing else in it except a few
old account books; but he could not find the letter! Where could it
be?

"I remember," he said--"most distinctly I remember tying up the
letter with the parcel. Where can it be gone to?"

A feeling of trouble to come seized him. He was perfectly sure he had
tied up the letter with the parcel, and here was the parcel without
the letter, and no one had opened the safe except himself.

"Never mind about the letter, grandfather," said Iris; "we shall find
that afterward."

"Well, then, let us open the parcel."

It was a packet about the size of a crown-octavo volume, in brown
paper, carefully fastened up with gum, and on the face of it was a
white label inscribed: "For Iris, to be opened on her twenty-first
birthday." Everybody in turn took it, weighed it, so to speak, looked
at it curiously, and read the legend. Then they returned it to Mr.
Emblem, who laid it before him and produced a penknife. With this, as
carefully and solemnly as if he were offering up a sacrifice or
performing a religious function, he cut the parcel straight through.

"After eighteen years," he said; "after eighteen years. The ink will
be faded and the papers yellow. But we shall see the certificates of
the marriage and of your baptism, Iris; there will also be letters to
different people, and a true account of the rupture with his father,
and the cause, of which his letter spoke. And of course we shall find
out what was his real name and what is the kind of inheritance which
has been waiting for you so long, my dear. Now then."

The covering incase of the packet was a kind of stiff cardboard or
millboard, within brown paper. Mr. Emblem laid it open. It was full of
folded papers. He took up the first and opened it. The paper was
blank. The next, it was blank; the third, it was blank; the fourth,
and fifth, and sixth, and so on throughout. The case, which had been
waiting so long, waiting for eighteen years, to be opened on Iris's
twenty-first birthday, was full of blank papers. They were all half
sheets of note-paper.

Mr. Emblem looked surprised at the first two or three papers; then he
turned pale; then he rushed at the rest. When he had opened all, he
stared about him with bewilderment.

"Where is the letter?" he asked again. Then he began with trembling
hands to tear out the contents of the safe and spread them upon the
table. The letter was nowhere.

"I am certain," he said, for the tenth time, "I am quite certain that
I tied up the letter with red tape, outside the packet. And no one has
been at the safe except me."

"Tell us," said Arnold, "the contents of the letter as well as you
remember them. Your son-in-law was known to you under the name of
Aglen, which was not his real name. Did he tell you his real name?"

"No."

"What did he tell you? Do you remember the letter?"

"I remember every word of the letter."

"If you dictate it, I will write it down. That may be a help."

Mr. Emblem began quickly, and as if he was afraid of forgetting:

"'When you read these lines, I shall be in the Silent Land, whither
Alice, my wife, has gone before me.'"

Then Mr. Emblem began to stammer.

"'In one small thing we deceived you, Alice and I. My name is not
Aglen'--is not Aglen--"

And here a strange thing happened. His memory failed him at this
point.

"Take time," said Arnold; "there is no hurry."

Mr. Emblem shook his head.

"I shall remember the rest to-morrow, perhaps," he said.

"Is there anything else you have to help us?" asked Arnold: "never
mind the letter, Mr. Emblem. No doubt that will come back presently.
You see we want to find out, first, who Iris's father really was, and
what is her real name. There was his coat-of-arms. That will connect
her with some family, though it may be a family with many branches."

"Yes--oh yes! his coat-of-arms. I have seen his signet-ring a dozen
times. Yes, his coat; yes, first and fourth, two roses and a boar's
head erect; second and third--I forget."

"Humph! Was there any one who knew him before he was married?"

"Yes, yes," Mr. Emblem sat up eagerly. "Yes, there is--there is; he is
my oldest customer. But I forget his name, I have forgotten
everything. Perhaps I shall get back my memory to-morrow. But I am
old. Perhaps it will never get back."

He leaned his head upon his hands, and stared about him with
bewildered eyes.

"I do not know, young man," he said presently, addressing Arnold, "who
you are. If you come from Mr. Chalker, let me tell you it is a day too
soon. To-morrow we will speak of business." Then he sprung to his feet
suddenly, struck with a thought which pierced him like a dagger.
"To-morrow! It is the day when they will come to sell me up. Oh, Iris!
what did that matter when you were safe? Now we are all paupers
together--all paupers."

He fell back in his chair white and trembling. Iris soothed him;
kissed his cheek and pressed his hand; but the terror and despair of
bankruptcy were upon him. This is an awful specter, which is ever
ready to appear before the man who has embarked his all in one
venture. A disastrous season, two or three unlucky ventures, a
succession of bad debts, and the grisly specter stands before them.
He had no terror for the old man so long as he thought that Iris was
safe. But now--

"Idle talk, Iris--idle talk, child," he said, when they tried to
comfort him. "How can a girl make money by teaching? Idle talk, young
man. How can money be made by painting? It's as bad a trade as
writing. How can money be made anyhow but in an honest shop? And
to-morrow I shall have no shop, and we shall all go into the street
together!"

Presently, when lamentations had yielded to despair, they persuaded
him to go to bed. It was past midnight. Iris went upstairs with him,
while Lala Roy and Arnold waited down below. And then Arnold made a
great discovery. He began to examine the folded papers which were in
the packet. I think he had some kind of vague idea that they might
contain secret and invisible writing. They were all sheets of
note-paper, of the same size, folded in the same way--namely, doubled
as if for a square envelope. On holding one to the light, he read the
water-mark:

     HIEROGLYPHICA
     A Vegetable Vellum.
     M.S. & Co.

They all had the same water-mark. He showed the thing to the Hindoo,
who did not understand what it meant.

Then Iris came down again. Her grandfather was sleeping. Like a child,
he fell asleep the moment his head fell upon the pillow.

"Iris," he said, "this is no delusion of your grandfather's. The
parcel has been robbed."

"How do you know, Arnold?"

"The stupid fellow who stole and opened the packet no doubt thought he
was wonderfully clever to fill it up again with paper. But he forgot
that the packet has been lying for eighteen years in the safe, and
that this note-paper was made the day before yesterday."

"How do you know that?"

"You can tell by the look and feel of the paper; they did not make
paper like this twenty years ago; besides, look at the water-mark;" he
held it to the light, and Iris read the mystic words. "That is the
fashion of to-day. One house issues a new kind of paper, with a fancy
name, and another imitates them. To-morrow, I will ascertain exactly
when this paper was made."

"But who would steal it, Arnold? Who could steal it?"

"It would not probably be of the least use to any one. But it might be
stolen in order to sell it back. We may see an advertisement carefully
worded, guarded, or perhaps--Iris, who had access to the place, when
your grandfather was out?"

"No one but James, the shopman. He has been here five-and-twenty
years. He would not, surely, rob his old master. No one else comes
here except the customers and Cousin Joe."

"Joe is not, I believe, quite--"

"Joe is a very bad man. He has done dreadful things. But then, even if
Joe were bad enough to rob the safe, how could he get at it? My
grandfather never leaves it unlocked. Oh, Arnold, Arnold, that all
this trouble should fall upon us on the very day--"

"My dear, is it not better that it should fall upon you when I am
here, one more added to your advisers? If you have lost a fortune, I
have found one. Think that you have given it to me."

"Oh, the fortune may go," she said. "The future is ours, and we are
young. But who shall console my grandfather in his old age for his
bankruptcy?"

"As the stream," said Lala Roy, "which passeth from the mountains to
the ocean, kisseth every meadow on its way, yet tarries not in any
place, so Fortune visits the sons of men; she is unstable as the wind;
who shall hold her? Let not adversity tear off the wings of hope."

They could do nothing more. Arnold replaced the paper in the packet,
and gave it to Iris; they put back the ledgers and account-books in
the safe, and locked it up, and then they went upstairs.

"You shall go to bed, Iris," said Arnold, "and you, too, Lala Roy. I
shall stay here, in case Mr. Emblem should--should want anything."

He was, in reality, afraid that "something would happen" to the old
man. His sudden loss of memory, his loss of self-control when he spoke
of his bankruptcy, the confusion of his words, told clearly of a mind
unhinged. He could not go away and leave Iris with no better
protection than one other weak old man.

He remained, but Iris sat with him, and in the silent watches of the
night they talked about the future.

Under every roof are those who talk about the future, and those who
think about the past; so the shadow of death is always with us and the
sunshine of life. Not 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/16129