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A Rent In A Cloud

by Charles Lever · English · Gutenberg #32082 · 404,958 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Rent In A Cloud

Author: Charles Lever


        
Release date: April 21, 2010 [eBook #32082]
                Most recently updated: September 3, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32082

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A RENT IN A CLOUD ***




Produced by David Widger





A RENT IN A CLOUD

By Charles Lever




CHAPTER I. THE WHITE HORSE AT COBLENTZ

OUT of a window of the Weissen Ross, at Coblentz, looking upon the rapid
Rhine, over whose circling eddies a rich sunset shed a golden tint, two
young Englishmen lounged and smoked their cigars; rarely speaking, and,
to all seeming, wearing that air of boredom which, strangely enough,
would appear peculiar to a very enjoyable time of life. They
were acquaintances of only a few days. They had met on an Antwerp
steamer--rejoined each other in a picture-gallery--chanced to be side
by side at a table d’hôte at Brussels, and, at last, drifted into one of
those intimacies which, to very young men, represents friendship. They
agreed they would travel together, all the more readily that neither
cared very much in what direction. “As for me,” said Calvert, “it
doesn’t much signify where I pass the interval; but, in October, I must
return to India and join my regiment.”

“And I,” said Loyd, “about the same time must be in England. I have just
been called to the bar.”

“Slow work that must be, I take it.”

“Do you like soldiering?” asked Loyd, in a low quiet voice.

“Hate it! abhor it! It’s all very well when you join first You are so
glad to be free of Woolwich or Sandhurst, or wherever it is. You are
eager to be treated like a man, and so full of Cox and Greenwood, and
the army tailor, and your camp furniture, and then comes the dépôt and
the mess. One’s first three months at mess seemed to be the cream of
existence.”

“Is it really so jolly? Are the fellows good talkers?”

“About the worst in the universe; but to a young hand, they are
enchantment All their discourse is of something to be enjoyed. It is
that foot-race, that game of billiards, that match at cricket, that
stunning fine girl to ride out with, those excellent cigars Watkins is
sending us; and so on. All is action, and very pleasant action too. Then
duty, though it’s the habit to revile and curse it, duty is associated
with a sense of manhood; a sort of goosestep chivalry to be sure, but
still chivalry. One likes to see the sergeant with his orderly book, and
to read, ‘Ensign Calvert for the main guard.’”

“And how long does all this last?”

“I gave it three months, some have been able to prolong it to six. Much
depends upon where the dépôt is, and what sort of corps you’re in.”

“Now for the reaction! Tell me of that.”

“I cannot; it’s too dreadful. It’s a general detestation of all
things military, from the Horse Guards to the mess waiter. You hate
drill--parade--inspection--the adjutant--the wine committee--the
paymaster--the field-officer of the day--and the major’s wife. You are
chafed about everything--you want leave, you want to exchange, you
want to be with the dépôt, you want to go to Corfu, and you are sent to
Canada. Your brother officers are the slowest fellows in the service;
you are quizzed about them at the mess of the Nine Hundred and
Ninth--“Yours” neither give balls nor private theatricals. You wish you
were in the Cape Coast Fencibles--in fact, you feel that destiny has
placed you in the exact position you are least fitted for.”

“So far as I can see, however, all the faults are in yourself.”

“Not altogether. If you have plenty of money, your soldier life is
simply a barrier to the enjoyment of it. You are chained to one spot,
to one set of associates, and to one mode of existence. If you’re
poor, it’s fifty times worse, and all your time is spent in making
five-and-sixpence a day equal to a guinea.”

Loyd made no answer, but smoked on.

“I know,” resumed the other, “that this is not what many will tell you,
or what, perhaps, would suggest itself to your own mind from a chance
intercourse with us. To the civilian the mess is not without a certain
attraction, and there is, I own, something very taking in the aspect of
that little democracy where the fair-cheeked boy is on an equality
with the old bronzed soldier, and the freshness of Rugby or Eton is
confronted with the stern experiences of the veteran campaigner; but
this wears off very soon, and it is a day to be marked with white chalk
when one can escape his mess dinner, with all its good cookery, good
wine, and good attendance, and eat a mutton-chop at the Green Man with
Simpkins, just because Simpkins wears a black coat, lives down in the
country, and never was in a Gazette in his life. And now for _your_ side
of the medal--what is it like?”

“Nothing very gorgeous or brilliant, I assure you,” said Loyd, gently;
for he spoke with a low quiet tone, and had a student-like submissive
manner, in strong contrast to the other’s easy and assured air. “With
great abilities, great industry, and great connexion, the career is
a splendid one, and the rewards the highest. But between such golden
fortunes and mine there is a whole realm of space. However, with time
and hard work, and ordinary luck, I don’t despair of securing a fair
livelihood.”

“After--say--thirty years, eh?”

“Perhaps so.”

“By the time that I drop out of the army a retired lieutenant-colonel,
with three hundred a year, you’ll be in fair practice at Westminster,
with, let us take it, fifteen hundred, or two thousand--perhaps five.”

“I shall be quite satisfied if I confirm the prediction in the middle of
it.”

“Ah,” continued the soldier. “There’s only one road to success--to
marry a charming girl with money. Ashley of ours, who has done the thing
himself, says that you can get money--any man can, if he will; that,
in fact, if you will only take a little trouble you may have all the
attractions you seek for in a wife, plus fortune.”

“Pleasant theory, but still not unlikely to involve a self-deception,
since, even without knowing it, a man may be far more interested by the
pecuniary circumstance.”

“Don’t begin with it; first fall in love--I mean to yourself, without
betraying it--and then look after the settlement. If it be beneath your
expectation, trip your anchor, and get out of the reach of fire.”

“And you may pass your best years in that unprofitable fashion, not to
say what you may find yourself become in the meanwhile.” The soldier
looked at the other askance, and there was in his sidelong glance a sort
of irony that seemed to say, “Oh! you’re an enthusiast, are you?”

“There you have me, Loyd,” said he, hurriedly: “that is the weak point
of my whole system; but remember, after all, do what one will, he can’t
be as fresh at five-and-thirty as five-and-twenty--he will have added
ten years of distrusts, doubts, and dodges to his nature in spite of
himself.”

“If they must come in spite of himself, there is no help for it; but let
him at least not deliberately lay a plan to acquire them.”

“One thing is quite clear,” said the other, boldly: “the change will
come, whether we like it or not, and the wisest philosophy is to plan
our lives so that we may conform to the alterations time will make in
us. I don’t want to be dissatisfied with my condition at five-and-forty,
just for the sake of some caprice that I indulged in at five-and-twenty,
and if I find a very charming creature with an angelic temper, deep blue
eyes, the prettiest foot in Christendom, and a neat sum in Consols, I’ll
promise you there will soon be a step in the promotion of her Majesty’s
service, vice Lieutenant Harry Calvert, sold out.”

The reply of the other was lost in the hoarse noise of the steam which
now rushed from the escape-pipe of a vessel that had just arrived
beneath the window. She was bound for Mayence, but stopped to permit
some few passengers to land at that place. The scene exhibited all that
bustle and confusion so perplexing to the actors, but so amusing to
those who are mere spectators; for while some were eagerly pressing
forward to gain the gangway with their luggage, the massive machinery of
the bridge of boats was already in motion to open a space for the vessel
to move up the stream. The young Englishmen were both interested in
watching a very tall, thin old lady, whose efforts to gather together
the members of her party, her luggage, and her followers, seemed to have
overcome all the ordinary canons of politeness, for she pushed here
and drove there, totally regardless of the inconvenience she was
occasioning. She was followed by two young ladies, from whose courteous
gestures it could be inferred how deeply their companion’s insistence
pained them, and how ashamed they felt at their position.

“I am afraid she is English,” said Loyd.

“Can there be a doubt of it? Where did you ever see that reckless
indifference to all others, that selfish disregard of decency, save in a
certain class of our people? Look, she nearly pushed that fat man down,
the hatchway; and see, she will not show the steward her tickets, and
she will have her change. Poor girls! what misery and exposure all this
is for you!”

“But the steamer is beginning to move on. They will be carried off!
See, they are hauling at the gangway already.”

“She’s on it; she doesn’t care; she’s over now. Well done, old lady!
That back-hander was neatly given; and see, she has marshalled her
forces cleverly: sent the light division in front, and brings up the
rear herself with the luggage and the maids. Now, I call that as clever
a landing on an enemy’s shore as ever was done.”

“I must say I pity the girls, and they look as if they felt all the
mortification of their position. And yet, they’ll come to the same sort
of thing themselves one of these days, as naturally as one of us will to
wearing very easy boots and loose-fitting waistcoats.”

As he said this, the new arrivals had passed up from the landing-place,
and entered the hotel.

“Let us at least be merciful in our criticisms on foreigners, while we
exhibit to their eyes such national specimens as these!” said Calvert
“For my own-part, I believe, that from no one source have we as a people
derived so much of sneer and shame, as from that which includes within
it what is called the unprotected female.”

“What if we were to find out that they were Belgians, or Dutch, or
Americans? or better still, what if they should chance to be remarkably
good sort of English? I conclude we shall meet them at supper.”

“Yes, and there goes the bell for that gathering, which on the present
occasion will be a thin one. They’re all gone off to that fair at
Lahnech.” And so saying, Calvert drew nigh a glass, and made one of
those extempore toilets which young men with smart moustaches are
accustomed to perform before presenting themselves to strangers. Loyd
merely took his hat and walked to the door.

“There! that ought to be enough, surely, for all reasonable
captivation!” said he, laughingly.

“Perhaps you are right; besides, I suspect in the present case it is a
mere waste of ammunition;” and, with a self-approving smile, he nodded
to his image in the glass, and followed his friend.

One line at this place will serve to record that Calvert was very
good looking; blue-eyed, blond-whiskered, Saxon-looking withal; erect
carriage and stately air, which are always taken as favourable types
of our English blood. Perhaps a certain over-consciousness of these
personal advantages, perhaps a certain conviction of the success that
had attended these gifts, gave him what in slang phrase, is called a
“tigerish” air: but it was plain to see that he had acquired his ease of
manner in good company, and that his pretension was rather the stamp of
a class than of an individual.

Loyd was a pale, delicate-looking youth, with dark eyes set in the
deepest of orbits, that imparted sadness to features in themselves
sufficiently grave. He seemed what he was, an overworked student, a man
who had sacrificed health to toil, and was only aware of the bad bargain
when he felt unequal to continue the contest. His doctors had sent
him abroad for rest, for that “distraction” which as often sustain its
English as its French acceptance, and is only a source of worry and
anxiety where rest and peace are required. His means were of the
smallest--he was the only son of a country vicar, who was sorely pinched
to afford him a very narrow support--and who had to raise by a loan
the hundred pounds that were to give him this last chance of regaining
strength and vigour. If travel therefore had its pleasures, it had also
its pains for him. He felt, and very bitterly, the heavy load that his
present enjoyment was laying upon those he loved best in the world, and
this it was that, at his happiest moments, threw a gloom over an already
moody and depressed temperament.

The sad thought of those at home, whose privations were the price of
his pleasures, tracked him at every step; and pictures of that humble
fireside where sat his father and his mother, rose before him as he
gazed at the noble cathedral, or stood amazed before the greatest
triumphs of art. This sensitive feeling, preying upon one naturally
susceptible, certainly tended little to his recovery, and even at times
so overbore every other sentiment, that he regretted he had ever come
abroad. Scarcely a day passed that he did not hesitate whether he should
not turn his steps homeward to England.




CHAPTER II. THE PASSENGERS ON THE STEAMBOAT.

THE table d’hôte room was empty as the two Englishmen entered it at
supper-time, and they took their places, moodily enough, at one end of
a table laid for nigh thirty guests. “All gone to Lahnech, Franz?” asked
Calvert of the waiter.

“Yes, Sir, but they’ll be sorry for it, for there’s thunder in the air,
and we are sure to have a deluge before nightfall.”

“And the new arrivals, are they gone too?”

“No, Sir. They are up stairs. The old lady would seem to have forgotten
a box, or a desk, on board the steamer, and she has been in such a state
about it that she couldn’t think of supping; and the young ones appear
to sympathise in her anxieties, for they, too, said, ‘Oh, we can’t think
of eating just now.’”

“But of course, she needn’t fuss herself. It will be detained at
Mayence, and given up to her when she demands it.”

A very expressive shrug of the shoulders was the only answer Franz made,
and Calvert added, “You don’t quite agree with me, perhaps?”

“It is an almost daily event, the loss of luggage on those Rhine
steamers; so much so, that one is tempted to believe that stealing
luggage is a regular livelihood here.”

Just at this moment the Englishwoman in question entered the room, and
in French of a very home manufacture asked the waiter how she could
manage, by means of the telegraph, to reclaim her missing property.

A most involved and intricate game of cross purposes ensued; for
the waiter’s knowledge of French was scarcely more extensive, and
embarrassed, besides, by some specialities in accent, so that though
_she_ questioned and _he_ replied, the discussion gave little hope of an
intelligible solution.

“May I venture to offer my services, Madam?” said Calvert, rising and
bowing politely. “If I can be of the least use on this occasion----”

“None whatever, Sir. I am perfectly competent to express my own wishes,
and have no need of an interpreter;” and then turning to the waiter,
added: “Montrez moi le telegraph, garçon.”

The semi-tragic air in which she spoke, not to add the strange accent
of her very peculiar French, was almost too much for Calvert’s gravity,
while Loyd, half pained by the ridicule thus attached to a countrywoman,
held down his head and never uttered a word. Meanwhile the old lady had
retired with a haughty toss of her towering bonnet, followed by Franz.

“The old party is fierce,” said Calvert, as he began his supper, “and
would not have me at any price.”

“I suspect that this mistrust of each other is very common with us
English: not so much from any doubt of our integrity, as from a fear
lest we should not be equal in social rank.”

“Well; but really, don’t you think that our externals might have
satisfied that old lady she had nothing to apprehend on that score?”

“I can’t say how she may have regarded that point,” was the cautious
answer.

Calvert pushed his glass impatiently from him, and said, petulantly,
“The woman is evidently a governess, or a companion, or a housekeeper.
She writes her name in the book Miss Grainger, and the others are called
Walter. Now, after all, a Miss Grainger might, without derogating too
far, condescend to know a Fusilier, eh? Oh, here she comes again.”

The lady thus criticised had now re-entered the room, and was busily
engaged in studying the announcement of steamboat departures and
arrivals, over the chimney.

“It is too absurd,” said she, pettishly, in French, “to close the
telegraph-office at eight, that the clerks may go to a ball.”

“Not to a ball, Madam, to the fair at Lahnech,” interposed Franz.

“I don’t care, Sir, whether it be a dance or a junketing. It is the same
inconvenience to the public; and the landlord, and the secretary, as you
call him, of this hotel, are all gone, and nothing left here but you.”

Whether it was the shameless effrontery of the contempt she evinced in
these words, or the lamentable look of abasement of the waiter, that
overcame Calvert, certain is it he made no effort to restrain himself,
but, leaning back in his chair, laughed heartily and openly.

“Well, Sir,” said she, turning fiercely on him, “you force me to say,
that I never witnessed a more gross display of ill breeding and bad
manners.”

“Had you only added, Madam, ‘after a very long experience of life,’ the
remark would have been perfect,” said he, still laughing.

“Oh, Calvert!” broke in Loyd, in a tone of deprecation; but the old
lady, white with passion, retired without waiting for that apology
which, certainly, there was little prospect of her receiving.

“I am sorry you should have said that,” said Loyd, “or though she was
scarcely measured in her remark, our laughter was a gross provocation.”

“How the cant of your profession sticks to you!” said the other. “There
was the lawyer in every word of that speech. There was the ‘case’ and
the ‘set off.’”

Loyd could not help smiling, though scarcely pleased at this rejoinder.

“Take my word for it,” said Calvert, as he helped himself to the dish
before him, “there is nothing in life so aggressive as one of our
elderly countrywomen when travelling in an independent condition. The
theory is attack--attack--attack! They have a sort of vague impression
that the passive are always imposed on, and certainly they rarely place
themselves in that category. As I live, here she comes once more.”

The old lady had now entered the room with a slip of paper in her hand,
to which she called the waiter’s attention, saying,

“You will despatch this message to Mayence, when the office opens in the
morning. See that there is no mistake about it.”

“It must be in German, Madam,” said Franz. “They’ll not take it in in
any foreign language.”

“Tell her you’ll translate it, Loyd. Go in, man, and get your knock-down
as I did,” whispered Calvert.

Loyd blushed slightly; but not heeding the sarcasm of his companion,
he arose, and, approaching the stranger, said, “It will give me much
pleasure to put your message into German, Madam, if it will at all
convenience you.”

It was not till after a very searching look into his face, and an
apparently satisfactory examination of his features, that she replied,
“Well, Sir, I make no objection; there can be no great secrecy in what
passes through a telegraph-office. You can do it, if you please.”

Now, though the speech was not a very gracious acknowledgment of a
proffered service, Loyd took the paper and proceeded to read it. It was
not without an effort, however, that he could constrain himself so far
as not to laugh aloud at the contents, which began by an explanation
that the present inconvenience was entirely owing to the very shameful
arrangements made by the steam packet company for the landing of
passengers at intermediate stations, and through which the complainant,
travelling with her nieces, Millicent and Florence Walter, and her
maids, Susannah Tucker and Mary Briggs, and having for luggage the
following articles----

“May I observe, Madam,” said Loyd, in a mild tone of remonstrance, “that
these explanations are too lengthy for the telegraph, not to say very
costly, and as your object is simply to reclaim a missing article of
your baggage--”

“I trust, Sir, that having fully satisfied your curiosity as to who
we are, and of what grievance we complain, that you will spare me your
comments as to the mode in which we prefer our demand for redress; but I
ought to have known better, and I deserve it!” and, snatching the paper
rudely from his hand, she dashed out of the room in passion.

“By Jove! you fared worse than myself,” said Calvert, as he laughed loud
and long. “You got a heavier castigation for your polite interference
than I did for my impertinence.”

“It is a lesson, at all events,” said Loyd, still blushing for his late
defeat “I wonder is she all right up here,” and he touched his forehead
significantly.

“Of course she is. Nay, more, I’ll wager a Nap. that in her own set,
amidst the peculiar horrors who form her daily intimates, she is a
strong-minded sensible woman, ‘that won’t stand humbug,’ and so on.
These are specialities; they wear thick shoes, woollen petticoats, and
brown veils, quarrel with cabmen, and live at Clapham.”

“But why do they come abroad?”

“Ah! that is the question that would puzzle nineteen out of every
twenty of us. With a panorama in Leicester-square, and a guide-book in a
chimney-corner, we should know more of the Tyrol than we’ll ever acquire
junketing along in a hired coach, and only eager not to pay too much
for one’s ‘Kalbsbraten’ or ‘Schweinfleisch,’ and yet here we come in
shoals,--to grumble and complain of all our self-imposed miseries, and
incessantly lament the comforts of the land that we won’t live in.”

“Some of us come for health,” said Loyd, sorrowfully.

“And was there ever such a blunder? Why the very vicissitudes of a
continental climate are more trying than any severity in our own.
Imagine the room we are now sitting in, of a winter’s evening, with a
stove heated to ninety-five, and the door opening every five minutes to
a draught of air eleven degrees below zero! You pass out of this furnace
to your bed-room, by a stair and corridor like the Arctic regions, to
gain an uncarpeted room, with something like a knife-tray for a bed, and
a poultice of feathers for a coverlet!”

“And for all that we like it, we long for it; save, pinch, screw, and
sacrifice Heaven knows what of home enjoyment just for six weeks or two
months of it.”

“Shall I tell you why? Just because Simpkins has done it Simpkins has
been up the Rhine and dined at the Cursaal at Ems, and made his little
début at roulette at Wiesbaden, and spoken his atrocious French at
Frankfort, and we won’t consent to be less men of the world than
Simpkins; and though Simpkins knows that it doesn’t ‘pay,’ and _I_
know that it doesn’t pay, we won’t ‘peach’ either of us, just for
the pleasure of seeing you, and a score like you, fall into the
same blunder, experience the same disasters, and incur the same
disappointments as ourselves.”

“No. I don’t agree with you; or, rather, I won’t agree with you. I am
determined to enjoy this holiday of mine to the utmost my health will
let me, and you shall not poison the pleasure by that false philosophy
which, affecting to be deep, is only depreciatory.”

“And the honourable gentleman resumed his seat, as the newspapers say,
amidst loud and vociferous cheers, which lasted for several minutes.”
 This Calvert said as he drummed a noisy applause upon the table, and
made Loyd’s face glow with a blush of deep shame and confusion.

“I told you, the second day we travelled together, and I tell you again
now, Calvert,” said he, falteringly, “that we are nowise suited to each
other, and never could make good travelling companions. You know far
more of life than I either do or wish to know. You see things with an
acute and piercing clearness which I cannot attain to. You have no mind
for the sort of humble things which give pleasure to a man simple as
myself; and, lastly, I don’t like to say it, but I must, your means are
so much more ample than mine, that to associate with you I must live in
a style totally above my pretensions. All these are confessions more
or less painful to make, but now that I have made them, let me have the
result, and say, good-bye--good-bye.”

There was an emotion in the last words that more than compensated for
what preceded them. It was the genuine sorrow that loneliness ever
impresses on certain natures; but Calvert read the sentiment as a
tribute to himself, and hastily said, “No, no, you are all wrong.
The very disparities you complain of are the bonds between us. The
differences in our temperament are the resources by which the sphere of
our observation will be widened--my scepticism will be the corrector of
your hopefulness--and, as to means, take my word for it, nobody can
be harder up than I am, and if you’ll only keep the bag, and limit the
outgoings, I’ll submit to any shortcomings when you tell me they are
savings.”

“Are you serious--downright in earnest in all this?” asked Loyd.

“So serious, that I propose our bargain should begin from this hour.
We shall each of us place ten Napoleons in that bag of yours. You shall
administer all outlay, and I bind myself to follow implicitly all your
behests, as though I were a ward and you my guardian.”

“I’m not very confident about the success of the scheme. I see many
difficulties already, and there may be others that I cannot foresee;
still, I am willing to give it a trial.”

“At last I realise one of my fondest anticipations which was to travel
without the daily recurring miseries of money reckoning.”

“Don’t take those cigars, they are supplied by the waiter, and cost two
groschen each, and they sell for three groschen a dozen in the Platz;”
 and, so saying, Loyd removed the plate from before him in a quiet
business-like way, that promised well for the spirit is which his trust
would be exercised.

Calvert laughed as he laid down the cigar, but his obedience ratified
the pact between them.

“When do we go from this?” asked he, in a quiet and half-submissive
tone.

“Oh, come, this is too much!” said Loyd. “I undertook to be purser, but
not pilot.”

“Well, but I insist upon your assuming all the cares of legislation. It
is not alone that I want not to think of the cash; but I want to have
no anxieties about the road we go, where we halt, and when we move on. I
want, for once in my life, to indulge the glorious enjoyment of perfect
indolence--such another chance will scarcely offer itself.”

“Be it so. Whenever you like to rebel, I shall be just as ready to
abdicate. I’ll go to my room now and study the map, and by the time you
have finished your evening’s stroll on the bridge, I shall have made the
plan of our future wanderings.”

“Agreed!” said Calvert. “I’m off to search for some of those cheap
cigars you spoke of.”

“Stay; you forget that you have not got any money. Here are six silver
groschen; take two dozen, and see that they don’t give you any of those
vile Swiss ones in the number.”

He took the coin with becoming gravity, and set out on his errand.




CHAPTER III. FELLOW-TRAVELLERS’ LIFE

PARTLY to suit Calvert’s passion for fishing, partly to meet his own
love of a quiet, unbroken, easy existence, Loyd decided for a ramble
through the lakes of Northern Italy; and, in about ten days after the
compact had been sealed, they found themselves at the little inn of the
Trota, on the Lago d’Orta. The inn, which is little more than a cottage,
is beautifully situated on a slender promontory that runs into the lake,
and is itself almost hidden by the foliage of orange and oleander trees
that cover it. It was very hard to believe it to be an inn with its
trellised vine-walk, its little arched boat-house, and a small shrine
beside the lake, where on certain saints’ days, a priest said a mass,
and blessed the fish and those that caught them. It was still harder,
too, to credit the fact when one discovered his daily expenses to be all
comprised within the limits of a few francs, and this with the services
of the host, Signor Onofrio, for boatman.

To Loyd it was a perfect paradise. The glorious mountain range, all
rugged and snow-capped--the deep-bosomed chestnut-woods--the mirror-like
lake--the soft and balmy air, rich in orange odours--the earth teeming
with violets--all united to gratify the senses, and wrap the mind in a
dreamy ecstasy and enjoyment. It was equally a spot to relax in or
to work, and although now more disposed for the former, he planned in
himself to come back here, at some future day, and labour with all the
zest that a strong resolve to succeed inspires.

What law would he not read? What mass of learned lore would he not store
up! What strange and curious knowledge would he not acquire in this
calm seclusion! He parcelled out his day in imagination; and, by rising
early, and by habits of uninterrupted study, he contemplated that in one
long vacation here he would have amassed an amount of information that
no discursive labour could ever attain. And then, to distract him from
weightier cares, he would write those light and sketchy things, some
of which had already found favour with editors. He had already attained
some small literary successes, and was like a very young man, delighted
with the sort of recognition they had procured him; and last of all,
there was something of romance in this life of mysterious seclusion.
He was the hero of a little story to himself, and this thought diffused
itself over every spot and every occupation, as is only known to those
who like to make poems of their lives, and be to their own hearts their
own epic.

Calvert, too, liked the place; but scarcely with the same enthusiasm.
The fishing was excellent. He had taken a “four-pounder,” and heard of
some double the size. The cookery of the little inn was astonishingly
good. Onofrio had once been a courier, and picked up some knowledge of
the social chemistry on his travels. Beccafichi abounded, and the small
wine of the Podere had a false smack of Rhenish, and then with cream,
and fresh eggs, and fresh butter, and delicious figs in profusion, there
were, as he phrased it, “far worse places in the hill country!”

Resides being the proprietor of the inn, Onofrio owned a little villa, a
small cottage-like thing on the opposite shore of the lake, to which he
made visits once or twice a week, with a trout, or a capon, or a basket
of artichokes, or some fine peaches--luxuries which apparently always
found ready purchasers amongst his tenants. He called them English, but
his young guests, with true British phlegm, asked him no questions about
them, and he rarely, if ever, alluded to them. Indeed, his experience
of English people had enabled him to see that they ever maintained a
dignified reserve towards each other, even when offering to foreigners
all the freedom of an old intimacy; and then he had an Italian’s tact
not to touch on a dangerous theme, and thus he contented himself with
the despatch of his occasional hamper without attracting more attention
to the matter than the laborious process of inscribing the words
“Illustrissima Sign’. Grangiari,” on the top.

It was about a month after they had taken up their abode at the Trota
that Onofrio was seized with one of those fevers of the country which,
though rarely dangerous to life, are still so painful and oppressive as
to require some days of confinement and care. In this interval, Calvert
was deprived of his chief companion, for mine host was an enthusiastic
fisherman, and an unequalled guide to all parts of the lake. The young
soldier, chafed and fretted out of all measure at this interruption
to his sport, tried to read; tried to employ himself in the garden;
endeavoured to write a long-promised letter home; and at last, in utter
failure, and in complete discontent with himself and everything, he
walked moodily about, discussing within himself whether he would not
frankly declare to Loyd that the whole thing bored him, and that he
wanted to be free. “This sort of thing suits Loyd well enough,” would
he say. “It is the life of Brazenose or Christchurch in a purer air
and finer scenery. He can read five or six hours at a stretch, and then
plunge in the lake for a swim, or pull an oar for half an hour, by way
of refreshment. He is as much a man of reflection and thought as I am of
action and energy. Yet, it is your slow, solemn fellow,” he would say,
“who is bored to death when thrown upon himself;” and now he had, in a
measure, to recant this declaration, and own that the solitude was too
much for _him_.

While he was yet discussing with himself how to approach the subject,
the hostess came to tell him that Onofrio’s illness would prevent him
acting as his boatman, and begged the boat might be spared him on that
day, to send over some fruit and fresh flowers he had promised to the
family at St Rosalia; “that is,” added she, “if I’m lucky enough to find
a boatman to take them, for at this season all are in full work in the
fields.”

“What would you say, Donna Marietta, if I were to take charge of the
basket myself, and be your messenger to the villa?”

The hostess was far less astonished at his offer than he had imagined
she would be. With her native ideas on these subjects, she only accepted
the proposal as an act of civility, and not as a surprising piece of
condescension, and simply said, “Onofrio shall thank you heartily for it
when he is up and about again.”

If this was not the exact sort of recognition he looked for, Calvert at
all events saw that he was pledged to fulfil his offer; and so he stood
by while she measured out peas, and counted over artichokes, and tied up
bundles of mint and thyme, and stored up a pannier full of ruddy apples,
surmounting all with a gorgeous bouquet of richly perfumed flowers,
culled in all the careless profusion of that land of plenty. Nor was
this all. She impressed upon him how he was to extol the excellence
of this, and the beauty of that, to explain that the violets were true
Parmesans, and the dates such as only Onofrio knew how to produce.

Loyd laughed his own little quiet laugh when he heard of his friend’s
mission, and his amusement was not lessened at seeing the half-awkward
and more than half-unwilling preparations Calvert made to fulfil it.

“Confound the woman!” said he, losing all patience; “she wanted to
charge me with all the bills and reckonings for the last three weeks, on
the pretext that her husband is but ill-skilled in figures, and that
it was a rare chance to find one like myself to undertake the office.
I have half a mind to throw the whole cargo overboard when I reach the
middle of the lake. I suppose a Nap. would clear all the cost.”

“Oh, I’ll not hear of such extravagance,” said Loyd, demurely.

“I conclude I have a right to an act of personal folly, eh?” asked
Calvert, pettishly.

“Nothing of the kind. I drew up our contract with great care, and
especially on this very head, otherwise it would have been too offensive
a bargain for him who should have observed all the rigid injunctions of
its economy.”

“It was a stupid arrangement from the first,” said Calvert warmly. “Two
men yet never lived, who could say that each could bound his wants by
those of another. Not to say that an individual is not himself the same
each day of the week. I require this on Tuesday, which I didn’t want on
Monday, and so on.”

“You are talking of caprice as though it were necessity, Calvert.”

“I don’t want to discuss the matter like a special pleader, and outside
the margin of our conjoint expenses I mean to be as wasteful as I
please.”

“As the contract is only during pleasure, it can never be difficult to
observe it.”

“Yes, very true. You have arrived at my meaning by another road. When
was it we last replenished the bag?”

“A little more than a week ago.”

“So that there is about a fortnight yet to run?”

“About that.”

Calvert stood in thought for a few seconds, and then, as if having
changed the purpose he was meditating, turned suddenly away and hastened
down to the boat quay.

Like many bashful and diffident men, Loyd had a false air of coldness
and resolution, which impressed others greatly, but reacted grievously
on his own heart in moments of afterthought; and now, no sooner had
his companion gone, than he felt what a mockery it was for him to have
assumed a rigid respect for a mere boyish agreement, which lost all its
value the moment either felt it burdensome. “_I_ was not of an age to
play Mentor to _him_. It could never become me to assume the part of
a guardian. I ought to have said the bargain ceases the instant you
repudiate it. A forced companionship is mere slavery. Let us part the
good friends we met; and so on.” At last he determined to sit down and
write a short note to Calvert, releasing him from his thraldom, and
giving him his full and entire liberty.

“As for myself, I will remain here so long as I stay abroad, and if I
come to the continent again, I will make for this spot as for a home:
and now for the letter.”




CHAPTER IV. THE “LAGO D’ORTA.”

LEAVING Loyd to compose his letter, we will follow Calvert, as, with
vigorous stroke, he rushed his light boat through the calm water,
leaving a long bright line of bubbles in his wake. Dressed in his blue
flannel shirt and white trousers, a gay bunch of roses stuck jauntily in
the side of his straw hat, there was an air of health, vigour, and dash
about him, to which his full bright eye and upturned moustache well
contributed. And, as from time to time he would rest on his oars, while
his thin skiff cleaved her way alone, his bronzed and manly face and
carelessly waving hair made up a picture of what we are proud to think
is eminently British in its character. That is to say, there was about
him much of what indicated abundance of courage, no small proportion
of personal strength, and a certain sort of recklessness, which in a
variety of situations in life is equivalent to power.

To any eye that watched him, as with scarce an effort he sent his boat
forward, while the lazy cirri of smoke that rose from his short pipe
indicated ease, there would have seemed one who was indulging in the
very fullest enjoyment of a scene second to none in Europe. You had
but to look along the shore itself to see the most gorgeous picture of
wooded islands and headlands glowing in every tint of colour from the
pure white of the oleander to the deep scarlet of the San Giuseppe,
with, in the distance, the snow-capped Alps of the St. Bernard, while
around and close to the very water’s edge peeped forth little villas,
half smothered in orange-blossoms. Far over the lake came their floating
perfumes, as though to lend enchantment to each sense, and steep the
very soul in a delicious luxury.

Now, as Calvert felt the refreshing breath of the gentle air that
stirred the water, he was conscious of a glorious morning, and of
something generally grand in the scene about him; but that was all. He
had little romance--less of the picturesque--in his nature. If his eyes
fell on the lake, it was to fancy the enjoyment of cleaving through
it as a swimmer; if he turned towards the Alps, it was to imagine how
toilsome would prove the ascent; how deeply lay the snow on the wheels
of the diligence; how many feet below the surface were buried the poles
that once marked out the road. But even these were but fleeting fancies.
His thoughts were seriously turned upon his own future, which opened no
bright or brilliant prospect before him. To go back again to India,
to return to the old regimental drudgery, or the still more wearisome
existence of life in a remote detachment; to waste what he felt the
best years of life in inglorious indolence, waiting for that routine
promotion that comes associated with the sense of growing old; and to
trace at last the dim vista of a return to England, when of an age
that all places and people and things have grown to be matters of
indifference. These were sad reflections. So sad, that not even the
bright scene around him could dispel. And then there were others, which
needed no speculation to suggest, and which came with the full force of
documents to sustain them. He was heavily in debt. He owed money to
the army agent, to the paymaster, to the Agra Bank, to the regimental
tailor, to the outfitter--to everyone, in short, who would suffer him to
be a debtor. Bonds, and I O’s, and promissory notes, renewed till they
had nigh doubled, pressed on his memory, and confused his powers of
calculation.

An old uncle, a brother of his mother’s, who was his guardian, would
once on a time have stood by him, but he had forfeited his good esteem
by an act of deception with regard to money, which the old man could not
forgive. “Be it so,” said he; “I deemed my friendship for you worth more
than three hundred pounds. You, it would seem, are differently minded;
keep the money and let us part.” And they did part, not to meet again.
Calvert’s affairs were managed by the regimental agent, and he thought
little more of an old relative, who ceased to hold a place in his memory
when unassociated with crisp inclosures “payable at sight.”

“I wonder what would come of it if I were to write to him; if I were to
put it to his humanity to rescue me from a climate where, after all, I
might die--scores of fellows die out there. At all events, I detest it.
I could say, ‘My leave expires in October, if you would like to see
me once more before I quit England for ever, for I am going to a
pestilential spot--the home of the ague and jungle fever, and Heaven
knows what else--your sister’s son--poor Sophy’s child.’ That ought to
touch him.” And then he went on to think of all the tender and moving
things he could write, and to picture to himself the agitation of him
who read them; and thus speculating, and thus plotting, he swept his
light boat along till she came close in to shore, and he saw the little
villa peeping through the spray-like branches of a weeping ash that
stood beside it “Higher up,” cried a voice, directing him. “Don’t you
know the landing-place yet?” And, startled by a voice not altogether
strange to him, he looked round and saw the old lady of the Rhine
steamer, the same who had snubbed him at Coblentz, the terrible Miss
Grainger of the lost writing-case. It was some minutes before he
remembered that he was performing the part of boatman, and not appearing
in his own character. Resolved to take all the benefit of his incognito,
he lifted his hat in what he fancied to be the true Italian style, and
taking a basket in each hand, followed the old lady to the house.

“It is three days that we have been expecting you,” said she, tartly, as
she walked briskly on, turning at times to point a sarcasm with a fierce
look. “You were punctual enough on Tuesday last, when you came for your
rent. You were to the very minute then, because it suited yourself. But
you are like all your countrymen--mean, selfish, and greedy. As to those
pears you brought last, I have struck them off the account. You may
bring others if you please, but I’ll not pay for rotten fruit any more
than I will for three journeys to Como for nothing--do you hear me, Sir?
three journeys to look after my writing-desk, which I lost on the Rhine,
but which I know was forwarded here, though I can’t get it. Is it worth
your while to answer? Oh, of course, your old excuse--you are forgetting
your English--it is so long since you were a courier. You knew quite
enough, when I came here, to make me pay more than double the proper
rent for this miserable place, with out a carpet, or--” Just as she
readied thus tar, she was joined by one of the young girls, whose looks
had vastly changed for the better, and was now a strikingly fine and
handsome girl.

“Milly,” said the old lady, “take this man round by the kitchen garden,
and get some one to take the fruit from him, and be sure you count the
melons.”

Not sorry for the change of companionship, Calvert followed Milly, who,
not condescending to bestow a look on him, moved haughtily on in front.

“Leave your baskets yonder, my good man,” said she, pointing to a bench
under a spreading fig-tree; and Calvert, depositing his burden, drew
himself up and removed his hat. “My aunt will pay you,” said she,
turning to go away.

“I’d far rather it had been the niece,” said he, in English.

“What do you mean? Who are you?”

“A stranger, who, rather than suffer you to incur the privation of a
breakfast without fruit, rowed across the lake this morning to bring
it.”

“Won’t he go, Milly? What is he bargaining about?” cried Miss Grainger,
coming up.

But the young girl ran hastily towards her, and for some minutes they
spoke in a low tone together.

“I think it an impertinence--yes, an impertinence, Milly--and I mean to
tell him so!” said the old lady, fuming with passion. “Such things are
not done in the world. They are unpardonable liberties. What is your
name, Sir?”

“Calvert, Madam.”

“Calvert? Calvert? Not Calvert of Rocksley?” said she, with a sneer.

“No, Ma’am, only his nephew.”

“Are you his nephew, really nis nephew?” said she, with a half
incredulity.

“Yes, Madam, I have that very unprofitable honour, if you axe acquainted
with the family, you will recognise their crest;” and he detached a seal
from his watch-chain and handed it to her.

“Quite true, the portcullis and the old motto, ‘Ferme en Tombant’ I
know, or rather I knew your relatives once, Mr. Calvert;” this was said
with a total change of manner, and a sort of simpering politeness that
sat very ill upon her.

Quick enough to mark this change of manner and profit by it, he said,
somewhat coldly, “Have I heard your name, Madam? Will you permit me to
know it?”

“Miss Grainger, Sir. Miss Adelaide Grainger”--reddening as she spoke.

“Never heard that name before. Will you present me to this young lady?”
 And thus with an air of pretension, whose impertinence was partly
covered by an appearance of complete unconsciousness, he bowed and
smiled, and chatted away till the servant announced breakfast.

To the invitation to join them, he vouchsafed the gentlest bend of the
head, and a half smile of acceptance, which the young lady resented by
a stare that might have made a less accomplished master of impertinence
blush to the very forehead. Calvert was, however, a proficient in his
art.

As they entered the breakfast-room, Miss Grainger presented him to a
young and very delicate-looking girl who lay on a sofa propped up by
cushions, and shrouded with shawls, though the season was summer.

“Florence, Mr. Calvert Miss Florence Walter. An invalid come to benefit
by the mild air of Italy, Sir, but who feels even these breezes too
severe and too bracing for her.”

“Egypt is your place,” said Calvert; “one of those nice villas on the
sea slope of Alexandretta, with the palm-trees and the cedars to keep
off the sun;” and seating himself by her side in an easy familiar way,
devoid of all excess of freedom, talked to her about health and sickness
in a fashion that is very pleasant to the ears of suffering. And he
really talked pleasantly on the theme. It was one of which he had
already some experience. The young wife of a brother officer of his own
had gained, in such a sojourn as he pictured, health enough to go on to
India, and was then alive and well, up in the Hill country above Simlah.

“Only fancy, aunt, what Mr. Calvert is promising me--to be
rosy-cheeked,” said the poor sick girl, whose pale face caught a slight
pinkish tint as she spoke. “I am not romancing in the least,” said
Calvert, taking his place next Milly at the table. “The dryness of the
air, and the equitable temperature, work, positively, miracles;” and he
went on telling of cures and recoveries. When at last he arose to take
leave, it was amidst a shower of invitations to come back, and pledges
on his part to bring with him some sketches of the scenery of Lower
Egypt, and some notes he had made of his wanderings there.

“By-the-way,” said he, as he gained the door, “have I your permission
to present a friend who lives with me--a strange, bashful, shy creature,
very good in his way, though that way isn’t exactly my way; but really
clever and well read, I believe. May I bring him? Of course I hope to be
duly accredited to you myself, through my uncle.”

“You need not, Mr. Calvert I recognise you for one of the family in many
ways,” said Miss Grainger; “and when your friend accompanies you, he
will be most welcome.” So, truly cordially they parted.




CHAPTER V. OLD MEMORIES.

WHEN Calvert rejoined his friend, he was full of the adventure of the
morning--such a glorious discovery as he had made. What a wonderful
old woman, and what charming girls! Milly, however, he owned, rather
inclined to the contemptuous. “She was what you Cockneys call ‘sarcy,’
Loyd; but the sick girl was positively enchanting; so pretty, so gentle,
and so confiding withal. By-the-way, you must make me three or four
sketches of Nile scenery--a dull flat, with a palm-tree, group of
camels in the fore, and a pyramid in the background; and I’ll get up the
journal part, while you are doing the illustrations. I know nothing of
Egypt beyond the overland route, though I have persuaded them I kept a
house in Cairo, and advised them by all means to take Florence there for
the winter.”

“But how could you practise such a deception in such a case, Calvert?”
 said Loyd, reproachfully.

“Just as naturally as you have ‘got up’ that grand tone of moral
remonstrance. What an arrant humbug you are, Loyd. Why not keep all this
fine indignation for Westminster, where it will pay?”

“Quiz away, if you like; but you will not prevent me saying that the
case of a poor sick girl is not one for a foolish jest, or a--”

He stopped and grew very red, but the other continued:--

“Out with it, man. You were going to say, a falsehood. I’m not going
to be vexed with you because you happen to have a rather crape-coloured
temperament, and like turning things round till you find the dark side
of them.” He paused for a few seconds and then went on: “If you had been
in my place this morning, I know well enough what you’d have done. You’d
have rung the changes over the uncertainty of life, and all its miseries
and disappointments. You’d have frightened that poor delicate creature
out of her wits, and driven her sister half distracted, to satisfy what
you imagine to be your conscience, but which, I know far better, is
nothing but a morbid love of excitement--an unhealthy passion for
witnessing pain. Now, I left her actually looking better for my
visit--she was cheered and gay, and asked when I’d come again, in a
voice that betrayed a wish for my return.”

Loyd never liked being drawn into a discussion with his friend, seeing
how profitless such encounters are in general, and how likely to
embitter intercourse; so he merely took his hat and moved towards the
door.

“Where are you going? Not to that odious task of photography, I hope?”
 cried Calvert.

“Yes,” said the other, smiling; “I am making a complete series of views
of the lake, and some fine day or other I’ll make water-colour drawings
from them.”

“How I hate all these fine intentions that only point to more work. Tell
me of a plan for a holiday, some grand scheme for idleness, and I am
with you; but to sit quietly down and say, ‘I’ll roll that stone up a
hill next summer, or next autumn,’ that drives me mad.”

“Well, I’ll not drive you mad. I’ll say nothing about it,” said Loyd,
with a good-natured smile.

“But won’t you make me these drawings, these jottings of my tour amongst
the Pyramids?”

“Not for such an object as you want them to serve.”

“I suppose, when you come to practise at the bar, you’ll only defend
innocence and protect virtue, eh? You’ll, of course, never take the
brief of a knave, or try to get a villain off. With your principles, to
do so would be the basest of all crimes.”

“I hope I’ll never do that deliberately which my conscience tells me I
ought not to do.”

“All right. Conscience is always in one’s own keeping--a guest in the
house, who is far too well bred to be disagreeable to the family.
Oh, you arch hypocrite! how much worse you are than a reprobate like
myself!”

“I’ll not dispute that.”

“More hypocrisy!”

“I mean that, without conceding the point, it’s a thesis I’ll not
argue.”

“You ought to have been a Jesuit, Loyd. You’d have been a grand fellow
in a long black soutane, with little buttons down to the feet, and a
skull-cap on your head. I think I see some poor devil coming to you
about a ‘cas de conscience,’ and going away sorely puzzled with your
reply to him.”

“Don’t come to me with one of yours, Calvert, that’s all,” said Loyd,
laughing, as he hurried off.

Like many men who have a strong spirit of banter in them, Calvert was
vexed and mortified when his sarcasm did not wound. “If the stag will
not run, there can be no pursuit,” and so was it that he now felt angry
with Loyd, angry with himself. “I suppose these are the sort of fellows
who get on in life. The world likes their quiet subserviency, and
their sleek submissiveness. As for me, and the like of me, we are
‘not placed.’ Now for a line to my Cousin Sophy, to know who is the
‘Grainger’ who says she is so well acquainted with us all. Poor Sophy,
it was a love affair once between us, and then it came to a quarrel,
and out of that we fell into the deeper bitterness of what is called ‘a
friendship.’ We never really hated each other till we came to that!”

     “Dearest, best of friends,” he began, “in my broken health,
     fortunes, and spirits, I came to this place a few weeks ago,
     and made, by chance, the acquaintance of an atrocious old
     woman called Grainger--Miss or Mrs., I forget which--who is
     she, and why does she know _us_, and call us the ‘dear
     Calverts,’ and your house ‘sweet old Rocksley?’ I fancy she
     must be a begging-letter impostor, and has a design--it will
     be a very abortive one--upon my spare five-pound notes. Tell
     me all you know of her, and if you can add a word about her
     nieces twain--one pretty, the other prettier--do so.

     “Any use in approaching my uncle with a statement of my
     distresses--mind, body, and estate? I owe him so much
     gratitude that, if he doesn’t want me to be insolvent, he
     must help me a little further.

     “Is it true you are going to be married? The thought of it
     sends a pang through me, of such anguish as I dare not speak
     of. Oh dear! oh dear! what a flood of bygones are rushing
     upon me, after all my pledges, all my promises! One of
     these girls reminded me of your smile; how like, but how
     different, Sophy. Do say there’s no truth in the story of
     the marriage, and believe me--what your heart will tell you
     I have never ceased to be--your devoted

     “Harry Calvert.”

“I think that ought to do,” said he, as he read over the letter; “and
there’s no peril in it since her marriage is fixed for the end of the
month. It is, after all, a cheap luxury to bid for the lot that will
certainly be knocked down to another. She’s a nice girl, too, is Sophy,
but, like all of us, with a temper of her own.

“I’d like to see her married to Loyd, they’d make each other perfectly
miserable.”

With this charitable reflection to turn over in various ways, tracing
all the consequences he could imagine might spring from it, he sauntered
out for a walk beside the lake.

“This box has just come by the mail from Chiasso,” said his host,
pointing to a small parcel, corded and sealed. “It is the box the
signora yonder has been searching for these three weeks; it was broken
when the diligence upset, and they tied it together as well as they
could.”

The writing-desk was indeed that which Miss Grainger had lost on
her Rhine journey, and was now about to reach her in a lamentable
condition--one hinge torn off the lock strained, and the bottom split
from one end to the other.

“I’ll take charge of it I shall go over to see her in a day or two,
perhaps to-morrow;” and with this Calvert carried away the box to his
own room.

As he was laying the desk on his table, the bottom gave way, and the
contents fell about the room. They were a mass of papers and letters,
and some parchments; and he proceeded to gather them up as best he
might, cursing the misadventure, and very angry with himself for being
involved in it. The letters were in little bundles, neatly tied, and
docketed with the writers’ names. These he replaced in the box, having
inverted it, and placing all, as nearly as he could, in due order, till
he came to a thick papered document tied with red tape at the corner,
and entitled Draft of Jacob Walter’s Will, with Remarks of Counsel “This
we must look at,” said Calvert “What one can see at Doctors’ Commons for
a shilling is no breach of confidence, even if seen for nothing;” and
with this he opened the paper.

It was very brief, and set forth how the testator had never made, nor
would make, any other will, that he was sound of mind, and hoped to die
so. As to his fortune, it was something under thirty thousand pounds
in Bank Stock, and he desired it should be divided equally between his
daughters, the survivor of them to have the whole, or, in the event
of each life lapsing before marriage, that the money should be divided
amongst a number of charities that he specified.

“I particularly desire and beg,” wrote he, “that my girls be brought up
by Adelaide Grainger, my late wife’s half-sister, who long has known the
hardships of poverty, and the cares of a narrow subsistence, that they
may learn in early life the necessity of thrift, and not habituate
themselves to luxuries, which a reverse of fortune might take away
from them. I wish, besides, that it should be generally believed their
fortune was one thousand pounds each, so that they should not become a
prey to fortune-hunters, nor the victims of adventurers, insomuch that
my last request to each of my dear girls would be not to marry the
man who would make inquiry into the amount of their means till twelve
calendar months after such inquiry, that time being full short enough to
study the character of one thus palpably worldly-minded and selfish.”

A few cautions as to the snares and pitfalls of the world followed,
and the document finished with the testator’s name, and that of three
witnesses in pencil, the words “if they consent,” being added in ink,
after them.

“Twice fifteen make thirty--thirty thousand pounds--a very neat sum
for a great many things, and yielding, even in its dormant state, about
fifteen hundred a year. What can one do for that? Live, certainly--live
pleasantly, jovially, if a man were a bachelor. At Paris, for instance,
with one’s pleasant little entresol in the Rue Neuve, or the Rue
Faubourg St Honoré, and his club, and his saddle-horses, with even
ordinary luck at billiards, he could make the two ends meet very
satisfactorily. Then, Baden always pays its way, and the sea-side places
also do, for the world is an excellent world to the fellow who travels
with his courier, and only begs to be plucked a little by the fingers
that wear large diamonds.

“But all these enchantments vanish when it becomes a question of a wife.
A wife means regular habits and respectability. The two most costly
things I know of. Your scampish single-handed valet, who is out all day
on his own affairs, and only turns up at all at some noted time in your
habits, is not one tenth as dear as that old creature with the powdered
head and the poultice of cravat round his neck, who only bows when the
dinner is served, and grows apoplectic if he draws a cork.

“It’s the same in everything! Your house must be taken, not because
it is convenient or that you like it, but because your wife can put a
pretentious address on her card. It must be something to which you can
tag Berkeley Square, or Belgravia. In a word, a wife is a mistake, and,
what is worse, a mistake out of which there is no issue.”

Thus reasoning and reflecting--now, speculating on what he should
feel--now, imagining what “the world” would say--he again sat down, and
once more read Over Mr. Walter’s last will and testament.




CHAPTER VI. SOPHY’S LETTER.

IN something over a week the post brought two letters for the
fellow-travellers. Loyd’s was from his mother--a very homely affair,
full of affection and love, and overflowing with those little details
of domestic matters so dear to those who live in the small world of home
and its attachments.

Calvert’s was from his Cousin Sophy, much briefer, and very different in
style. It ran thus:

     “Dear Henry--”

“I used to be Harry,” muttered he.

     “Dear Henry,--It was not without surprise I saw your
     handwriting again. A letter from you is indeed an event at
     Rocksley.

     “The Miss Grainger, if her name be Adelaide (for there were
     two sisters) was our nursery governess long ago. Cary liked,
     I hated her. She left us to take charge of some one’s
     children--relatives of her own, I suspect--and though she
     made some move about coming to see us, and presenting ‘her
     charge,’ as she called it, there was no response to the
     suggestion, and it dropped. I never heard more of her.

     “As to any hopes of assistance from papa, I can scarcely
     speak encouragingly. Indeed, he made no inquiry as to the
     contents of your letter, and only remarked afterwards to
     Cary that he trusted the correspondence was not to continue.

     “Lastly, as to myself, I really am at a loss to see how my
     marriage can be a subject of joy or grief, of pleasure or
     pain, to you. We are as much separated from each other in
     all the relations of life, as we shall soon be by long miles
     of distance. Mr. Wentworth Graham is fully aware of the
     relations which once subsisted between us,--he has even
     read your letters--and it is at his instance I request that
     the tone of our former intimacy shall cease from this day,
     and that there may not again be any reference to the past
     between us. I am sure in this I am merely anticipating what
     your own sense of honourable propriety would dictate, and
     that I only express a sentiment your own judgment has
     already ratified.

     “Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,

     “Sophia Calvert.”

“Oh dear! When we were Sophy and Harry, the world went very differently
from now, when it has come to Henry and Sophia. Not but she is
right--right in everything but one. She ought not to have shown the
letters. There was no need of it, and it was unfair! There is a roguery
in it too, which, if I were Mr. Wentworth Graham, I’d not like. It is
only your most accomplished sharper that ever plays ‘cartes sur table.’
I’d sorely suspect the woman who would conciliate the new love by a
treachery to the old one. However, happily, this is his affair, not
mine. Though I could make it mine, too, if I were so disposed, by simply
reminding her that Mr. W. G. has only seen one half, and, by long odds,
the least interesting half, of our correspondence, and that for the
other he must address himself to me. Husbands have occasionally to learn
that a small sealed packet of old letters would be a more acceptable
present to the bride on her wedding morning than the prettiest trinket
from the Rue de la Paix. Should like to throw this shell into the midst
of the orange-flowers and the wedding favours, and I’d do it too, only
that I could never accurately hear of the tumult and dismay it caused.
I should be left to mere imagination for the mischief and imagination no
longer satisfies me.”

While he thus mused, he saw Loyd preparing for one of his daily
excursions with the photographic apparatus, and could not help a
contemptuous pity for a fellow so easily amused and interested, and
so easily diverted from the great business of life--which he deemed
“getting on”--to a pastime which cost labour and returned no profit.

“Come and see ‘I Grangeri’ (the name by which the Italians designated
the English family at the villa), it’s far better fun than hunting out
rocky bits, or ruined fragments of masonry. Come, and I’ll promise you
something prettier to look at than all your feathery ferns or drooping
foxgloves.”

Loyd tried to excuse himself. He was always shy and timid with strangers.
His bashfulness repelled intimacy and so he frankly owned that he would
only be a bar to his friend’s happiness, and throw a cloud over this
pleasant intercourse.

“How do you know but I’d like that?” said Calvert with a mocking laugh.
“How do you know but I want the very force of a contrast to bring my own
merits more conspicuously forward?”

“And make them declare when we went away, that it is inconceivable why
Mr. Calvert should have made a companion of that tiresome Mr. Loyd--so
low-spirited and so dreary, and so uninteresting in every way?”

“Just so! And that the whole thing has but one explanation--in Calvert’s
kindness and generosity; who, seeing the helplessness of this poor
depressed creature, has actually sacrificed himself to vivify and cheer
him. As we hear of the healthy people suffering themselves to be bled
that they might impart their vigorous heart’s blood to a poor wretch in
the cholera.”

“But I’m not blue yet,” said Loyd laughing. “I almost think I could get
on with my own resources.”

“Of course you might, in the fashion you do at present; but _that_ is
not life--or at least it is only the life of a vegetable. Mere existence
and growth are not enough for a man who has hopes to fulfil, and
passions to exercise, and desires to expand into accomplishments, not
to speak of the influence that everyone likes to wield over his fellows.
But, come along, jump into the boat, and see these girls! I want you;
for there is one of them I scarcely understand as yet, and as I am
always taken up with her sick sister, I’ve had no time to learn more
about her.”

“Well,” said Loyd, “not to offer opposition to the notion of the tie
that binds us, I consent.” And sending back to the cottage all the
details of his pursuit, he accompanied Calvert to the lake.

“The invalid girl I shall leave to your attention, Loyd,” said the
other, as he pulled across the water. “I like her the best; but I am in
no fear of rivalry in that quarter, and I want to see what sort of stuff
the other is made of. So, you understand, you are to devote yourself
especially to Florence, taking care, when opportunity serves, to say all
imaginable fine things about me--my talents, my energy, my good spirits,
and so forth. I’m serious, old fellow, for I will own to you I mean to
marry one of them, though which, I have not yet decided on.”

Loyd laughed heartily--far more heartily than in his quiet habit was his
wont--and said, “Since when has this bright idea occurred to you?”

“I’ll tell you,” said the other gravely. “I have for years had a sort
of hankering kind of half attachment to a cousin of mine. We used to
quarrel, and make up, and quarrel again; but somehow, just as careless
spendthrifts forget to destroy the old bill when they give a renewal,
and at last find a swingeing sum hanging over them they had never
dreamed of, Sophy and I never entirely cancelled our old scores, but
kept them back to be demanded at some future time. And the end has been,
a regular rupture between us, and she is going to be married at the end
of this month, and, not to be outdone on the score of indifference, I
should like to announce my own happiness, since that’s the word for it,
first.”

“But have you means to marry?”

“Not a shilling.”

“Nor prospects?”

“None.”

“Then I don’t understand----”

“Of course you don’t understand. Nor could I make you understand
how fellows like myself play the game of life. But let me try by an
illustration to enlighten you. When there’s no wind on a boat, and her
sails flap lazily against the mast, she can have no guidance, for there
is no steerage-way on her. She may drift with a current, or rot in a
calm, or wait to be crushed by some heavier craft surging against her.
Any wind--a squall, a hurricane--would be better than that. Such is
my case. Marriage without means is a hurricane; but I’d rather face a
hurricane than be water-logged between two winds.”

“But the girl you marry--”

“The girl I marry--or rather the girl who marries _me_--will soon learn
that she’s on board a privateer, and that on the wide ocean called life
there’s plenty of booty to be had, for a little dash and a little danger
to grasp it.”

“And is it to a condition like this you’d bring the girl you love,
Calvert?”

“Not if I had five thousand a year. If I owned that, or even four, I’d
be as decorous as yourself; and I’d send my sons to Rugby, and act as
poor-law guardian, and give my twenty pounds to the county hospital,
and be a model Englishman, to your heart’s content. But I haven’t five
thousand a year, no, nor five hundred a year; and as for the poor-house
and the hospital, I’m far more likely to claim the benefit than aid
the funds. Don’t you see, my wise-headed friend, that the whole is a
question of money? Morality is just now one of the very dearest things
going, and even the rich cannot always afford it. As for me, a poor
sub in an Indian regiment, I no more affect it than I presume to keep a
yacht, or stand for a county.”

“But what right have you to reduce another to such straits as these? Why
bring a young girl into such a conflict?”

“If ever you read Louis Blanc, my good fellow, you’d have seen that the
right of all rights is that of ‘associated labour.’ But come, let us not
grow too deep in the theme, or we shall have very serious faces to meet
out friends with, and yonder, where you see the drooping ash trees, is
the villa. Brush yourself up, therefore, for the coming interview; think
of your bits of Shelley and Tennyson, and who knows but you’ll acquit
yourself with honour to your introducer.”

“Let my introducer not be too confident,” said Loyd, smiling; “but here
come the ladies.”

As he spoke, two girls drew nigh the landing-place, one leaning on the
arm of the other, and in her attitude showing how dependent she was for
support.

“My bashful friend, ladies!” said Calvert, presenting Loyd. And with
this they landed.




CHAPTER VII. DISSENSION.

THE knowledge Calvert now possessed of the humble relations which had
subsisted between Miss Grainger and his uncle’s family, had rendered
him more confident in his manner, and given him even a sort of air of
protection towards them. Certain it is, each day made him less and less
a favourite at the villa, while Loyd, on the other hand, grew in esteem
and liking with everyone of them. A preference which, with whatever tact
shrouded, showed itself in various shapes.

“I perceive,” said Calvert one morning, as they sat at breakfast
together, “my application for an extension of leave is rejected. I
am ordered to hold myself in readiness to sail with drafts for some
regiments in Upper India!” he paused for a few seconds, and then
continued. “I’d like anyone to tell me what great difference there is
in real condition between an Indian officer and a transported felon. In
point of daily drudgery there is little, and as for climate the felon
has the best of it.”

“I think you take too dreary a view of your fortune. It is not the sort
of career I would choose, nor would it suit me, but if my lot had fallen
that way, I suspect I’d not have found it so unendurable.”

“No. It would not suit you. There’s no scope in a soldier’s life for
those little sly practices, those small artifices of tact and ingenuity,
by which subtlety does its work in this world. In such a career, all
this adroitness would be clean thrown away.”

“I hope,” said Loyd, with a faint smile, “that you do not imagine that
these are the gifts to achieve success in any calling.”

“I don’t know--I am not sure, but I rather suspect they find their place
at the Bar.”

“Take my word for it, then, you are totally mistaken. It is an error
just as unworthy of your good sense as it is of your good feeling!” And
he spoke with warmth and energy.

“Hurrah! hurrah!” cried Calvert “For three months I have been exploring
to find one spot in your whole nature that would respond fiercely to
attack, and at last I have it.”

“You put the matter somewhat offensively to me, or I’d not have replied
in this fashion--but let us change the topic, it is an unpleasant one.”

“I don’t think so. When a man nurtures what his friend believes to be a
delusion, and a dangerous delusion, what better theme can there be than
its discussion?”

“I’ll not discuss it,” said Loyd, with determination.

“You’ll not discuss it?”

“No!”

“What if I force you? What if I place the question on grounds so direct
and so personal that you can’t help it?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You shall presently. For some time back I have been thinking of asking
an explanation from you--an explanation of your conduct at the villa.
Before you had established an intimacy there, _I_ stood well with
everyone. The old woman, with all her respect for my family and
connexions, was profuse in her attentions. Of the girls, as I somewhat
rashly confided to you, I had only to make my choice. I presented you
to them, never anticipating that I was doing anything very dangerous to
them or to myself, but I find I was wrong. I don’t want to descend to
details, nor inquire how and by what arts you gained your influence; my
case is simply with the fact that, since _you_ have been in favour, _I_
have been out of it My whole position with them is changed. I can only
suggest now what I used to order, and I have the pleasure, besides, of
seeing that even my suggestion must be submitted to you and await your
approval.”

“Have you finished?” said Loyd, calmly.

“No, far from it! I could make my charge extend over hours long. In
fact, I have only to review our lives here for the last six or seven
weeks, to establish all I have been saying, and show you that you owe me
an explanation, and something more than an explanation.”

“Have you done now?”

“If you mean, have I said all that I could say on this subject, no, far
from it. You have not heard a fiftieth part of what I might say about
it.”

“Well, I have heard quite enough. My answer is this, you are totally
mistaken; I never, directly or indirectly, prejudiced your position. I
seldom spoke of you, never slightingly. I have thought, it is true, that
you assumed towards these ladies a tone of superiority, which could not
fail to be felt by them, and that the habit grew on you, to an extent
you perhaps were not aware of; as, however, they neither complained of,
nor resented it, and as, besides, you were far more a man of the world
than myself, and consequently knew better what the usages of society
permitted, I refrained from any remark, nor, but for your present
charge, would I say one word now on the subject.”

“So, then, you have been suffering in secret all this time over my
domineering and insolent temper, pitying the damsels in distress, but
not able to get up enough of Quixotism to avenge them?”

“Do you want to quarrel with me, Calvert?” said the other calmly.

“If I knew what issue it would take, perhaps I could answer you.”

“I’ll tell you, then, at least so far as I am concerned, I have never
injured, never wronged you. I have therefore nothing to recall, nothing
to redress, upon any part of my conduct. In what you conceive you are
personally interested, I am ready to give a full explanation, and this
done, all is done between us.”

“I thought so, I suspected as much,” said Calvert, contemptuously. “I
was a fool to suppose you’d have taken the matter differently, and now
nothing remains for me but to treat my aunt’s nursery governess with
greater deference, and be more respectful in the presence--the august
presence--of a lawyer’s clerk.”

“Good-bye, Sir,” said Loyd, as he left the room.

Calvert sat down and took up a book, but though he read three full
pages, he knew nothing of what they contained. He opened his desk, and
began a letter to Loyd, a farewell letter, a justification of himself,
but done more temperately than he had spoken; but he tore it up, and so
with a second and a third. As his passion mounted, he bethought him of
his cousin and her approaching marriage. “I can spoil some fun there,”
 cried he, and wrote as follows:

     “Lago d’Orta, August 12.

     “Dear Sir,--In the prospect of the nearer relations which a
     few days more will establish between us, I venture to
     address you thus familiarly. My cousin, Miss Sophia Calvert,
     has informed me by a letter I have just received that she
     deemed it her duty to place before you a number of letters
     written by me to her, at a time when there subsisted between
     us a very close attachment. With my knowledge of my cousin’s
     frankness, her candour, and her courage--for it would also
     require some courage--I am fully persuaded that she has
     informed you thoroughly on all that has passed. We were both
     very young, very thoughtless, and, worse than either, left
     totally to our own guidance, none to watch, none to look
     after us. There is no indiscretion in my saying that we were
     both very much in love, and with that sort of confidence in
     each other that renders distrust a crime to one’s own
     conscience. Although, therefore, she may have told you much,
     her womanly dignity would not let her dwell on these
     circumstances, explanatory of much, and palliative of all
     that passed between us. To you, a man of the world, I owe
     this part declaration, less, however, for your sake or for
     mine, than for her, for whom either of us ought to make any
     sacrifice in our power.

     “The letters she wrote me are still in my possession. I own
     they are very dear to me; they are all that remain of a
     past, to which nothing in my future life can recall the
     equal. I feel, however, that your right to them is greater
     than my own, but I do not know how to part with them. I pray
     you advise me in this. Say how you would act in a like
     circumstance, knowing all that has occurred, and be assured
     that your voice will be a command to your very devoted
     servant,

     “H.C.

     “P.S.--When I began this letter, I was minded to say my
     cousin should see it: on second thoughts, I incline to say
     not, decidedly not.”


When this base writer had finished writing he flung down the pen, and
said to himself, half aloud, “I’d give something to see him read this!”

With a restless impatience to do something--anything, he left the house,
walking with hurried steps to the little jetty where the boats lay.
“Where’s my boat, Onofrio?” said he, asking for the skiff he generally
selected.

“The other signor has taken her across the lake.”

“This is too much,” muttered he. “The fellow fancies that because he
skulks a satisfaction, he is free to practise an impertinence. He knew I
preferred this boat, and therefore he took her.”

“Jump in, and row me across to La Rocca,” said he to the boatman. As
they skimmed across the lake, his mind dwelt only on vengeance, and
fifty different ways of exacting it passed and repassed before him. All,
however, concentrating on the one idea--that to pass some insult upon
Loyd in presence of the ladies would be the most fatal injury he could
inflict, but how to do this without a compromise of himself was the
difficulty.

“Though no woman will ever forgive a coward,” thought he, “I must take
care that the provocation I offer be such as will not exclude myself
from sympathy.” And, with all his craft and all his cunning, he could
not hit upon a way to this. He fancied, too, that Loyd had gone over to
prejudice the ladies against him by his own version of what had occurred
in the morning. He knew well how, of late, he himself had not occupied
the highest place in their esteem--it was not alone the insolent and
overbearing tone _he_ assumed, but a levity in talking of things
which others treated with deference, alike offensive to morals and
manners--these had greatly lowered him in their esteem, especially of
the girls, for old Miss Grainger, with a traditional respect for his
name and family, held to him far more than the others.

“What a fool I was ever to have brought the fellow here! What downright
folly it was in me to have let them ever know him. Is it too late,
however, to remedy this? Can I not yet undo some of this mischief?” This
was a new thought, and it filled his mind till he landed. As he drew
quite close to the shore he saw that the little awning-covered boat,
in which the ladies occasionally made excursions on the lake, was now
anchored under a large drooping ash, and that Loyd and the girls were on
board of her. Loyd was reading to them; at least so the continuous and
equable tone of his voice indicated, as it rose in the thin and silent
air. Miss Grainger was not there--and this was a fortunate thing--for
now he should have his opportunity to talk with her alone, and probably
ascertain to what extent Loyd’s representations had damaged him.

He walked up to the villa, and entered the drawing-room, as he was wont,
by one of the windows that opened on the green sward without. There
was no one in the room, but a half-written letter, on which the ink was
still fresh, showed that the writer had only left it at the instant. His
eye caught the words, “Dear and Reverend Sir,” and in the line beneath
the name Loyd. The temptation was too strong, and he read on:

     “Dear and Reverend Sir,--I hasten to express my entire
     satisfaction with the contents of your letter. Your son, Mr.
     Loyd, has most faithfully represented his position and his
     prospects, and, although my niece might possibly have placed
     her chances of happiness in the hands of a wealthier suitor,
     I am fully assured she never could have met with one whose
     tastes, pursuits, and general disposition--”

A sound of coming feet startled him, and he had but time to throw
himself on a sofa, when Miss Grainger entered. Her manner was
cordial--fully as cordial as usual--perhaps a little more so, since,
in the absence of her nieces, she was free to express the instinctive
regard she felt towards all that bore his name.

“How was it that you did not come with Loyd?” asked she.

“I was busy, writing letters I believe--congratulations on Sophy’s
approaching marriage; but what did Loyd say--was that the reason he
gave?”

“He gave none. He said he took a whim into his head to row himself
across the lake; and indeed I half suspect the exertion was too much for
him. He has been coughing again, and the pain in his side has returned.”

“He’s a wretched creature--I mean as regards health and strength. Of
course he always must have been so: but the lives these fellows lead in
London would breach the constitution of a really strong man.”

“Not Loyd, however; he never kept late hours, nor had habits of
dissipation.”

“I don’t suppose he ever told you that he had,” said he, laughing. “I
conclude that he has never shown you his diary of town life.”

“But do you tell me, seriously, that he is a man of dissipated habits?”

“Not more so than eight out of every ten, perhaps, in his class of life.
The student is everywhere more given to the excitements of vice than the
sportsman. It is the compensation for the wearisome monotony of brain
labour, and they give themselves up to excesses from which the healthier
nature of a man with country tastes would revolt at once. But what have
I to do with his habits? I am not his guardian nor his confessor.”

“But they have a very serious interest for _me_.”

“Then you must look for another counsellor. I am not so immaculate
that I can arraign others; and, if I were, I fancy I might find some
pleasanter occupation.”

“But if I tell you a secret, a great secret--”

“I’d not listen to a secret I detest secrets, just as I’d hate to have
the charge of another man’s money. So, I warn you, tell me nothing that
you don’t want to hear talked of at dinner, and before the servants.”

“Yes; but this is a case in which I really need your advice.”

“You can’t have it at the price you propose. Not to add, that I have a
stronger sentiment to sway me in this case, which you will understand
at once, when I you tell that he is a man of whom I would like to speak
with great reserve, for the simple reason that I don’t like him.”

“Don’t like him! You don’t like him!”

“It does seem very incredible to you; but I must repeat it, I don’t like
him.”

“But will you tell me why? What are the grounds of your dislike?”

“Is it not this very moment I have explained to you that my personal
feeling towards him inspires a degree of deference which forbids me to
discuss his character? He may be the best fellow in Europe, the bravest,
the boldest, the frankest, the fairest All I have to say is, that if I
had a sister, and he proposed to marry her I’d rather see her a corpse
than his wife; and now you have led me into a confession that I told you
I’d not enter upon. Say another word about it and I’ll go and ask Loyd
to come up here and listen to the discussion, for I detest secrets and
secrecy, and I’ll have nothing to say to either.”

“You’d not do anything so rash and inconsiderate?”

“Don’t provoke me, that’s all. You are always telling me you know the
Calverts, their hot-headedness, their passionate warmth, and so on. I
leave it to yourself, is it wise to push me further?”

“May I show you a letter I received yesterday morning, in reply to one
of mine?”

“Not if it refers to Loyd.”

“It does refer to him.”

“Then I’ll not read it. I tell you for the last time, I’ll not be
cheated into this discussion. I don’t desire to have it said of me some
fine morning, You talked of the man that you lived with on terms of
intimacy. You chummed with him, and yet you told stories of him.”

“If you but knew the difficulty of the position in which you have placed
me--”

“I know at least the difficulty in which you have placed _me_, and I am
resolved not to incur it. Have I given to you Sophy’s letter to read?”
 said he with a changed voice. “I must fetch it out to you and let you
see all that she says of her future happiness.” And thus, by a sudden
turn, he artfully engaged her in recollections of Rocksley, and all the
persons and incidents of a remote long ago!

When Loyd returned with the girls to the house, Calvert soon saw that
he had not spoken to them on the altercation of the morning--a reserve
which he ungenerously attributed to the part Loyd himself filled in the
controversy. The two met with a certain reserve; but which, however felt
and understood by each, was not easily marked by a spectator. Florence,
however, saw it, with the traditional clearness of an invalid. She
read what healthier eyes never detect She saw that the men had either
quarrelled, or were on the brink of a quarrel, and she watched them
closely and narrowly. This was the easier for her, as at meal times she
never came to table, but lay on a sofa, and joined in the conversation
at intervals.

Oppressed by the consciousness of what had occurred in the morning, and
far less able to conceal his emotions or master them than his companion,
Loyd was disconcerted and ill at ease: now answering at cross-purposes,
now totally absorbed in his own reflections. As Calvert saw this, it
encouraged him to greater efforts to be agreeable. He could, when he
pleased, be a most pleasing guest. He had that sort of knowledge of
people and life which seasons talk so well, and suits so many listeners.
He was curious to find out to which of the sisters Loyd was engaged,
but all his shrewdness could not fix the point decisively. He talked on
incessantly, referring occasionally to Loyd to confirm what he knew well
the other’s experience could never have embraced, and asking frankly,
as it were, for his opinion on people he was fully aware the other had
never met with.

Emily (or Milly, as she was familiarly called) Walter showed impatience
more than once at these sallies, which always made Loyd confused and
uncomfortable, so that Calvert leaned to the impression that it was
she herself was the chosen one. As for Florence, she rather enjoyed,
he thought, the awkward figure Loyd presented, and she even laughed
outright at his bashful embarrassment.

“Yes,” said Calvert to himself, “Florence is with me. She is my ally.
I’m sure of her.”

“What spirits he has,” said Miss Grainger, as she brought the sick girl
her coffee. “I never saw him in a gayer mood. He’s bent on tormenting
Loyd though, for he has just proposed a row on the lake, and that he
should take one boat and Loyd the other, and have a race. He well knows
who’ll win.”

“That would be delightful, aunt Let us have it by all means. Mr.
Calvert, I engage _you_. You are to take _me_. Emily will go with Mr.
Loyd.”

“And I’ll stand at the point and be the judge,” said Miss Grainger.

Calvert never waited for more, but springing up, hastened down to the
shore to prepare the boat He was soon followed by Miss Grainger, with
Florence leaning on her arm and looking brighter and fairer than he
thought he had ever seen her.

“Let us be off at once,” whispered Calvert, “for I’d like a few hundred
yards’ practice--a sort of trial gallop--before I begin;” and, placing
the sick girl tenderly in the stern, he pulled vigorously out into the
lake. “What a glorious evening!” said he. “Is there anything in the
world can equal one of these sunsets on an Italian lake, with all the
tints of the high Alps blending softly on the calm water?”

She made no answer; and he went on enthusiastically about the scene, the
hour, the stillness, and the noble sublimity of the gigantic mountains
which arose around them.

Scarcely, however, had Calvert placed her in the boat, and pulled out
vigorously from the shore, than he saw a marked change come over the
girl’s face. All the laughing gaiety of a moment back was gone, and an
expression of anxiety had taken its place.

“You are not ill?” asked he, eagerly.

“No. Why do you ask me?”

“I was afraid--I fancied you looked paler. You seem changed.”

“So I am,” said she, seriously. “Answer me what I shall ask, but tell me
frankly.”

“That I will; what is it?”

“You and Loyd have quarrelled--what was it about?”

“What a notion! Do you imagine that the silly quizzing that passes,
between young men implies a quarrel?”

“No matter what I fancy; tell me as candidly as you said you would. What
was the subject of your disagreement?”

“How peremptory you are,” said he laughing. “Are you aware that to give
your orders in this fashion implies one of two things--a strong interest
in me, or in my adversary?”

“Well, I accept the charge; now for the confession.”

“Am I right, then, dearest Florence?” said he, ceasing to row, and
leaning down to look the nearer at her. “Am I right, then, that your
claim to this knowledge is the best and most indisputable?”

“Tell me what it is!” said she, and her pale face suddenly glowed with a
deep flush.

“You guessed aright, Florence, we did quarrel; that is, we exchanged
very angry words, though it is not very easy to say how the difference
began, nor how far it went I was dissatisfied with him. I attributed to
his influence, in some shape or other, that I stood less well here--in
_your_ esteem, I mean--than formerly; and he somewhat cavalierly told
me if there were a change I owed it to myself, that I took airs upon me,
that I was haughty, presuming, and fifty other things of the same sort;
and so, with an interchange of such courtesies, we grew at last to feel
very warm, and finally reached that point where men--of the world, at
least--understand discussion ceases, and something else succeeds.”

“Well, go on,” cried she, eagerly.

“All is told; there is no more to say. The lawyer did not see the thing,
perhaps, in the same vulgar light that I did; he took his hat, and came
over here. I followed him, and there’s the whole of it.”

“I think he was wrong to comment upon your manner, if not done from a
sense of friendship, and led on to it by some admission on your part.”

“Of course he was; and I am charmed to hear you say so.”

She was silent for some time, leaning her head on her hand, and
appearing deep in thought.

“Now that I have made _my_ confession, will you let me have one of
_yours?_” said he, in a low, soft voice.

“I’m not sure; what’s it to be about?”

“It’s about myself I want to question you.”

“About yourself! Surely you could not have hit upon a sorrier adviser,
or a less experienced counsellor than I am.”

“I don’t want advice, Florence, I only want a fact; and from all I have
seen of you, I believe you will deal fairly with me.”

She nodded assent, and he went on:

“In a few weeks more I shall be obliged to return to India; to a land I
dislike, and a service I detest: to live amongst companions distasteful
to me, and amidst habits and associations that, however endurable when I
knew no better, are now become positively odious in my eyes. This is my
road to rank, station, and honour. There is, however, another path;
and if I relinquish this career, and give up all thought of ambition, I
might remain in Europe--here, perhaps, on this very lake side--and
lead a life of humble but unbroken happiness--one of those peaceful
existences which poets dream of, but never realise, because it is no
use in disparaging the cup of life till one has tasted and known its
bitterness; and these men have not reached such experience--_I_ have.”

He waited for her to speak--he looked eagerly at her for a word--but she
was silent.

“The confession I want from you, Florence, is this: could you agree to
share this life with me?”

She shook her head and muttered, but what he could not catch.

“It would be too dreary, too sad-coloured, you think?”

“No,” said she, “not that.”

“You fear, perhaps, that these schemes of isolation have never
succeeded: that weariness will come when there are no longer new objects
to suggest interest or employment?”

“Not that,” said she, more faintly.

“Then the objection must be myself. Florence, is it that you would, not,
that you could not, trust me with your happiness?”

“You ask for frankness, and you shall have it. I cannot except your
offer. My heart is no longer mine to give.”

“And this--this engagement, has been for some time back?” asked he,
almost sternly.

“Yes, for some time,” said she, faintly.

“Am I acquainted with the object of it? Perhaps I have no right to ask
this. But there is a question I have full and perfect right to ask. How,
consistently with such an engagement, have you encouraged the attentions
I have paid you?”

“Attentions! and to me! Why, your attentions have been directed rather
to my sister--at least, she always thought so--and even these we deemed
the mere passing flirtations of one who made no secret of saying that he
regarded marriage as an intolerable slavery, or rather, the heavy price
that one paid for the pleasure of courtship.”

“Are the mere levities with which I amused an hour to be recorded
against me as principles?”

“Only when such levities fitted into each other so accurately as to show
plan and contrivance.”

“It was Loyd said that. That speech was his. I’d lay my life on it.”

“I think not. At least, if the thought were his, he’d have expressed it
far better.”

“You admire him, then?” asked he, peering closely at her..

“I wonder why they are not here,” said she, turning her head away. “This
same race ought to come off by this time.”

“Why don’t you answer my question?”

“There he goes! Rowing away all alone, too, and my aunt is waving her
handkerchief in farewell. See how fast he sends the boat through the
water. I wonder why he gave up the race?”

“Shall I tell you? He dislikes whatever he is challenged to do. He is
one of those fellows who will never dare to measure himself against
another.”

“My aunt is beckoning to us to come back, Mr. Calvert.”

“And my taste is for going forward,” muttered he, while at the same time
he sent the boat’s head suddenly round, and pulled vigorously towards
the shore.

“May I trust that what has passed between us is a secret, and not to be
divulged to another--not even to your sister?”

“If you desire--if you exact.”

“I do, most decidedly. It is shame enough to be rejected. I don’t see
why my disgrace is to be paraded either for pity or ridicule.”

“Oh, Mr. Calvert--”

“Or triumphed over,” said he sternly, as he sent the boat up to the side
of the little jetty, where Miss Grainger and her niece awaited them.

“Poor Loyd has just got bad news from home,” said Miss Grainger, “and he
has hastened back to ask, by telegraph, if they wish him to return.”

“Anyone ill, or dying?” asked Calvert carelessly.

“No, it’s some question of law about his father’s vicarage. There would
seem to be a doubt as to his presentation--whether the appointment lay
with the patron of the bishop.”

Calvert turned to mark how the girls received these tidings, but they
had walked on, and with heads bent down, and close together, were deep
in conversation.

“I thought it was only in my profession,” said Calvert sneeringly,
“where corrupt patronage was practised. It is almost a comfort to think
how much the good people resemble the wicked ones.”

Miss Grainger, who usually smiled at his levities, looked grave at this
one, and no more was said, as they moved on towards the cottage.




CHAPTER VIII. GROWING DARKER

IT was late at night when Calvert left the villa, but, instead of rowing
directly back to the little inn, he left his boat to drift slowly in
the scarce perceptible current of the lake, and wrapping himself in his
cloak, lay down to muse or to sleep.

It was just as day broke that he awoke, and saw that he had drifted
within a few yards of his quarters, and in a moment after he was on
shore.

As he gained his room, he found a letter for him in Loyd’s hand. It ran
thus:

     “I waited up all night to see you before I started, for I
     have been suddenly summoned home by family circumstances. I
     was loth to part in an angry spirit, or even in coldness,
     with one in whose companionship I have passed so many happy
     hours, and for whom I feel, notwithstanding what has passed
     between us, a sincere interest. I wanted to speak to you of
     much which I cannot write--that is to say, I would have
     endeavoured to gain a hearing for what I dare not venture to
     set down in the deliberate calm of a letter. When I own that
     it was of yourself, your temper, your habits, your nature,
     in short, that I wished to have spoken, you will, perhaps,
     say that it was as well time was not given me for such
     temerity. But bear in mind, Calvert, that though I am free
     to admit all your superiority over myself, and never would
     presume to compare my faculties or my abilities with yours--
     though I know well there is not a single gift or grace in
     which you are not my master, there is one point in which I
     have an advantage over you--I had a mother! You, you have
     often told me, never remember to have seen yours. To that
     mother’s trainings I owe anything of good, however humble it
     be, in my nature, and, though the soil in which the seed has
     fallen be poor and barren, so much of fruit has it borne
     that I at least respect the good which I do not practise,
     and I reverence that virtue to which I am a rebel. The
     lesson, above all others, that she instilled into we, was to
     avoid the tone of a scoffer, to rescue myself from the cheap
     distinction which is open to everyone who sets himself to
     see only ridicule in what others respect, and to mock the
     themes that others regard with reverence. I stop, for I am
     afraid to weary you--I dread that, in your impatience, you
     will throw this down and read no more--I will only say, and
     I say it in all the sincerity of truth, that if you would
     endeavour to be morally as great as what your faculties can
     make you intellectually, there is no eminence you might not
     attain, nor any you would not adorn.

     “If our intimacy had not cooled down of late, from what
     causes I am unable to tell, to a point in which the first
     disagreement must be a breach between us, I would have told
     you that I had formed an attachment to Florence Walter, and
     obtained her aunt’s consent to our marriage; I mean, of
     course, at some future which I cannot define, for I have my
     way to make in the world, and, up to the present, have only
     been a burden on others. We are engaged, however, and we
     live on hope. Perhaps I presume too far on any interest you
     could feel for me when I make you this communication.   It
     may be that you will say, ‘What is all this to me?’ At all
     events, I have told you what, had I kept back, would have
     seemed to myself an uncandid reservation. Deal with it how
     you may.

     “There is, however, another reason why I should tell you
     this. If you were unaware of the relations which exist
     between our friends and myself, you might unconsciously
     speak of me in terms which this knowledge would, perhaps,
     modify--at least, you would speak without the consciousness
     that you were addressing unwilling hearers. You now know the
     ties that bind us, and your words will have that
     significance which you intend they should bear.

     “Remember, and remember distinctly, I disclaim all
     pretension, as I do all wish, to conciliate your favour as
     regards this matter; first, because I believe I do not need
     it; and secondly, that if I asked for, I should be unworthy
     of it. I scarcely know how, after our last meeting, I stand
     in your estimation, but I am ready to own that if you would
     only suffer yourself to be half as good as your nature had
     intended you and your faculties might make you, you would be
     conferring a great honour on being the friend of yours
     truly,

     “Joseph Loyd.”


“What a cant these fellows acquire!” said Calvert as he read the letter
and threw it from him. “What mock humility! what downright and palpable
pretension to superiority through every line of it! The sum of it all
being, I can’t deny that you are cleverer, stronger, more active, and
more manly than me; but, somehow, I don’t exactly see why or, how, but
I’m your better! Well, I’ll write an answer to this one of these days,
and such an answer as I flatter myself he’ll not read aloud to the
company who sit round the fire at the vicarage. And so, Mademoiselle
Florence, this was your anxiety, and this the reason for all that
interest about our quarrel which I was silly enough to ascribe to a
feeling for myself. How invariably it is so! How certain it is that a
woman, the weakest, the least experienced, the most commonplace, is more
than a match in astuteness for a man, in a question where her affections
are concerned. The feminine nature has strange contradictions. They can
summon the courage of a tigress to defend their young, and the spirit
of a Machiavelli to protect a lover. She must have had some misgiving,
however, that, to prefer a fellow like this to me would be felt by me as
an outrage. And then the cunning stroke of implying that her sister was
not indisposed to listen to me. The perfidy of that!”

Several days after Loyd’s departure, Calvert was lounging near the lake,
when he jumped up, exclaiming, “Here comes the postman! I see he makes
a sign to me. What can this be about? Surely, my attached friend has not
written to me again. No, this is a hand that I do not recognise. Let us
see what it contains.” He opened and read as follows:

     “Sir,--I have received your letter. None but a scoundrel
     could have written it! As all prospect of connexion with
     your family is now over, you cannot have a pretext for not
     affording me such a satisfaction as, had you been a
     gentleman in feeling as you are in station, it would never
     have been necessary for me to demand from you. I leave this,
     to-morrow, for the continent, and will be at Basle by Monday
     next. I will remain there for a week at your orders, and
     hope that there may be no difficulty to their speedy
     fulfilment.

     “I am, your obedient and faithful servant,

     “Wentworth Gordon GRAHAM.”


“The style is better than yours, Master Loyd, just because it means
something. The man is in an honest passion and wants a fight The other
fellow was angry, and begged me not to notice it. And so, Sophy, I have
spoiled the wedding favours, and scattered the bridesmaids! What a heavy
lesson for an impertinent note. Poor thing! why did she trust herself
with a pen? Why did she not know that the most fatal of all bottles is
the ink bottle? Precious rage old Uncle Geoffrey must be in. I’d like
to have one peep at the general discomfiture--the deserted dinner-table,
and the empty drawing-room. They deserve it all! they banished _me_,
and much good have they got of it Well, Mr. Wentworth Gordon Graham
must have his wicked way. The only difficulty will be to find what is
so absurdly misnamed as a friend. I must have a friend; I’ll run up to
Milan and search the hotels: I’ll surely find some one who will like the
cheap heroism of seeing another man shot at. This is the season when
all the fellows who have no money for Baden come across the Alps. I’m
certain to chance upon one to suit me.”

Having despatched a short note, very politely worded to Mr. Graham, to
the post office, Basle, he ordered a carriage, and set out for Milan.

The city was in full festivity when he arrived, overjoyed at its
new-born independence, and proud of the presence of its king. The
streets were crowded with a holiday population, and from all the
balconies and windows hung costly tapestries, or gay coloured carpets,
Military music resounded on all sides, and so dense was the throng of
people and carriages, that Calvert could only proceed at a walking pace,
none feeling any especial care to make way for a dusty traveller, seated
in one of the commonest of country conveyances.

As he moved slowly and with difficulty forwards, he suddenly heard his
name called; he looked up, and saw a well known face, that of a brother
officer, who had left India on a sick leave along with himself.

“I say, old fellow!” cried Barnard, “this is your ground; draw into that
large gate to your right, and come up here.”

In a few seconds, Calvert, escorted by a waiter, was shown to his
friend’s apartment.

“I never dreamed of meeting you here, Calvert.”

“Nor I of finding you lodged so sumptuously,” said Calvert, as his
eyes ranged over the splendid room, whose massive hangings of silk,
and richly gilt ceiling, gave that air of a palace one so often sees in
Italian hotels.

“Luck, Sir, luck. I’m married, and got a pot of money with my wife.”
 He dropped his voice to a whisper, while, with a gesture of his thumb
towards an adjoining room, he motioned his friend to be cautious.

“Who was she?”

“Nobody; that is, not anyone you ever heard of Stockport people,
called Reppingham. The father, a great railway contractor, vulgar old
dog--begun as a navvy--with one daughter, who is to inherit, they say,
a quarter of a million; but, up to this, we’ve only an allowance--two
thousand a year. The old fellow, however, lives with us--a horrible
nuisance.” This speech, given in short, abrupt whispers, was uttered
with many signs to indicate that the respected father-in-law was in the
vicinity. “Now, of yourself, what’s your news? What have you done last,
eh?”

“Nothing very remarkable. I have been vegetating on a lake in the north
of Italy, trying to live for five shillings a day, and spending three
more in brandy, to give me courage to do it.”

“But your leave is up; or perhaps you have got renewal?”

“No, my leave goes to the fifteenth of October.”

“Not a bit of it; we got our leave on the same day, passed the Board the
same day, and for exactly the same time. My leave expired on the tenth
of August. I’ll show you the paper; I have it here.”

“Do so. Let me see it.”

Barnard opened his desk, and quickly found the paper he sought for. It
was precisely as Barnard said. The Board of Calcutta had confirmed the
regimental recommendation, and granted a two-years’ leave, which ended
on the tenth of August.

“Never mind, man,” said Barnard; “get back to London as hard as you can,
furbish up some sick certificate to say that you were unable to quit
your bed--”

“That is not so easy as you imagine; I have a little affair in hand,
which may end in more publicity than I have any fancy for.” And he told
him of his approaching meeting with Graham, and asked him to be his
friend.

“What was the quarrel about?” asked Barnard.

“A jealousy; he was going to marry a little cousin I used to flirt with,
and we got to words about it. In fact, it is what Sir Lucius would call
a very pretty quarrel, and there’s nothing to be done but finish it.
You’ll stand by me, won’t you?”

“I don’t see how I can. Old Rep, our governor, never leaves me. I’m
obliged to report myself about four times a day.”

“But you know that can never go on. You needn’t be told by me that no
man can continue such a system of slavery, nor is there anything could
recompense it. You’ll have to teach her better one of these days;
begin at once. My being here gives you a pretext to begin. Start at
once--to-day. Just say, ‘I’ll have to show Calvert the lions; he’ll want
to hunt up galleries,’ and such-like.”

“Hush! here comes my wife. Fanny, let me present to you one of my oldest
friends, Calvert It’s a name you have often heard from me.”

The young lady--she was not more than twenty--was pleasing-looking and
well mannered. Indeed, Calvert was amazed to see her so unlike what he
expected; she was neither pretentious nor shy; and, had his friend not
gone into the question of pedigree, was there anything to mark a class
in life other than his own. While they talked together they were joined
by her father, who, however, more than realised the sketch drawn by
Barnard.

He was a morose, down-looking old fellow, with a furtive expression, and
a manner of distrust about him that showed itself in various ways. From
the first, though Calvert set vigorously to work to win his favour, he
looked with a sort of misgiving at him. He spoke very little, but in
that little there were no courtesies wasted; and when Barnard whispered,
“You had better ask him to dine with us, the invitation will come better
from you!” the reply was, “I won’t; do you hear that? I won’t.”

“But he’s an old brother-officer of mine, Sir; we served several years
together.”

“The worse company yours, then.”

“I say, Calvert,” cried Barnard, aloud, “I must give you a peep at our
gay doings here. I’ll take you a drive round the town, and out of the
Porta Orientale, and if we should not be back at dinner-time, Fanny--”

“We’ll dine without you, that’s all!” said the old man; while, taking
his daughter’s hand, he led her out of the room.

“I say, Bob, I’d not change with you, even for the difference,” said
Calvert.

“I never saw him so bad before,” said the other, sheepishly.

“Because you never tried him! Hitherto you have been a spaniel, getting
kicked and cuffed, and rather liking it; but, now that the sight of an
old friend has rallied you to a faint semblance of your former self,
you are shocked and horrified. You made a bad start, Bob; that was the
mistake. You ought to have begun by making him feel the immeasurable
distance there lay between him and a gentleman; not only in dress,
language, and behaviour, but in every sentiment and feeling. Having done
this, he would have tacitly submitted to ways that were not his own, by
conceding that they might be those of a class he had never belonged to.
You might, in short, have ruled him quietly and constitutionally. Now
you have nothing for it but one thing.”

“Which is--”

“A revolution! Yes, you must overthrow the whole government, and build
up another out of the smash. Begin to-day. We’ll dine together wherever
you like. We’ll go to the Scala if it’s open. We’ll sup--”

“But Fanny?”

“She’ll stand by her husband. Though, probably, she’ll have you ‘up’ for
a little private discipline afterwards. Come, don’t lose time. I want to
do my cathedral, and my gallery, and my other curiosities in one day,
for I have some matters to settle at Orto before I start for Basle. Have
they a club, a casino, or anything of the sort here, where they play?”

“There is a place they call the Gettone, but I’ve never been there but
once.”

“Well, we’ll finish there this evening; for I want to win a little
money, to pay my journey.”

“If I can help you--”

“No, no. Not to be thought of. I’ve got some fifty Naps by me--tame
elephants--that are sure to entrap others. You must come with me to
Basle, Bob. You can’t desert me in such a crisis,” said Calvert, as they
left the inn together.

“We’ll see. I’ll think over it. The difficulty will be--”

“The impossibility is worse than a difficulty; and that is what I shall
have to face if you abandon me. Why, only think of it for a moment
Here I am, jilted, out of the army--for I know I shall lose my
commission--without a guinea; you’d not surely wish me to say, without
a friend! If it were not that it would be so selfish, I’d say the step
will be the making of you. You’ll have that old bear so civilised on
your return, you’ll not know him.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I know it. He’ll see at once that you’ll not stand this sort of
bullying. That if you did, your friends would not stand it. We shan’t be
away above four days, and those four days will give him a fright he’ll
never forget.”

“I’ll think over it”

“No. You’ll do it--that’s better; and I’ll promise you--if Mr. Graham
does not enter a fatal objection--to come back with you and stand to you
through your troubles.”

Calvert had that about him in his strong will, his resolution, and his
readiness at reply, which exercised no mean despotism over the fellows
of his own age. And it was only they who disliked and avoided him who
ever resisted him. Barnard was an easy victim, and before the day drew
to its close., he had got to believe that it was by a rare stroke of
fortune Calvert had come to Milan-come to rescue him from the “most
degrading sort of bondage a good fellow could possibly fall into.”

They dined splendidly, and sent to engage a box at the Opera; but the
hours passed so pleasantly over their dinner, that they forgot all about
it, and only reached the theatre a few minutes before it closed.

“Now for the--what do you call the place?” cried Calvert.

“The Gettone.”

“That’s it. I’m eager to measure my luck against these Milanais. They
say, besides, no fellow has such a vein as when his life is threatened;
and I remember myself, when I had the yellow fever at Galle, I passed
twenty-one times at écarte’, all because I was given over!”

“What a fellow you are, Calvert!” said the other, with a weak man’s
admiration for whatever was great, even in infamy.

“You’ll see how I’ll clear them out But what have I done with my purse?
Left it on my dressing table, I suppose they are honest in the hotel?”

“Of course they are. It’s all safe; and I’ve more money about me than
you want Old Rep handed me three thousand francs this morning to pay the
bill, and when I saw you, I forgot all about it.”

“Another element of luck,” cried Calvert, joyously. “The money that
does not belong to a man always wins. Why, there’s five thousand francs
here,” said Calvert, as he counted over the notes.

“Two of them are Fanny’s, She got her quarter’s allowance yesterday.
Stingy, isn’t it? Only three hundred a year.”

“It’s downright disgraceful. She ought to have eight at the very least;
but wait till we come back from Basle. You’ll not believe what a change
I’ll work in that old fellow, when I take him in hand.”

By this time they had reached the Gettone, and, after a brief colloquy,
were suffered to pass up stairs and enter the rooms.

“Oh, it’s faro they play; my own game,” whispered Calvert, “I was afraid
the fellows might have indulged in some of their own confounded things,
which no foreigner can compete in. At faro I fear none.”

While Barnard joined a group of persons round a roulette-table, where
fashionably-dressed women adventured their franc pieces along with men
clad in the most humble mode, Calvert took his place among the faro
players. The boldness of his play, and the reckless way he adventured
his money, could not conceal from their practised acuteness that he was
master of the game, and they watched him attentively.

“I think I have nearly cleaned them out, Bob,” cried he to his friend,
as he pointed to a heap of gold and silver, which lay promiscuously
piled up before him.

“I suppose you must give them their revenge?” whispered the other, “if
they wish for it.”

“Nothing of the kind. At a public table, a winner rises when he pleases.
If I continue to sit here now, it is because that old fellow yonder has
got a rouleau in his pocket which he cannot persuade himself to break.
See, he has taken it out: for the fourth time, this is. I wonder can he
screw up his courage to risk it. Yes! he has! There go ten pieces on the
queen. Go back to your flirtation with the blonde ringlets, and don’t
disturb my game. I must have that fellow’s rouleau before I leave. Go
back, and I’ll not tell your wife.”

It was in something less than an hour after this that Barnard felt a
hand laid on his shoulder, and looking up, saw Calvert standing over
him. “Well, it took you some time to finish that old fellow, Calvert!”

“He finished _me_ which was worse. Have you got a cigar?”

“Do you mean that you lost all your winnings?”

“Yes, and your five thousand francs besides, not to speak of a borrowed
thousand from someone I have given my card to. A bore, isn’t it?”

“It’s more than a bore--it’s a bad business. I don’t know how I’ll
settle it with the landlord.”

“Give him a bill, he’ll never be troublesome: and, as to your wife’s
money, tell her frankly you lost it at play. Isn’t that the best way,
Madame?” said he, addressing a young and pretty woman at his side. “I am
advising my friend to be honest with his wife, and confess that he spent
his money in very pleasant company. Come along out of this stuffy place.
Let us have a walk in the fresh cool air, and a cigar, if you have one.
I often wonder,” said he, as they gained the street, “how the fellows
who write books and want to get up sensation scenes, don’t come and do
something of this sort There’s a marvellous degree of stimulant in being
cleaned out, not only of one’s own cash, but of one’s credit; and
by credit I mean it in the French sense, which says, ‘Le crédit est
l’argent des autres.’”

“I wish you had not lost that money,” muttered the other.

“So do I. I have combativeness very strong, and I hate being beaten by
anyone in anything.”

“I’m thinking of the money!” said the other, doggedly.

“Naturally, for it was yours. ‘‘Twas mine, ‘tis his,’ as Hamlet has it
Great fellow, Hamlet! I don’t suppose that anyone ever drew a character
wherein Gentleman was so distinctly painted as Hamlet. He combined all
the grandest ideas of his class with a certain ‘disinvoltura’--a sort of
high bred levity--that relieved his sternness, and made him much better
company than such fellows as Laertes and Horatio.”

“When you saw luck turning, why didn’t you leave off?”

“Why not ask why the luck turned before I left off? That would be the
really philosophic inquiry. Isn’t it chilly?”

“I’m not cold, but I’m greatly provoked.”

“So am I for _you_; for I haven’t got enough to repay you, but trust me
to arrange the matter in the morning. The landlord will see the thing
with the eyes of his calling: he’ll soon perceive that the son-in-law
of a man who travels with two carriages, and can’t speak one word of
French, is one to be trusted. I mean him to cash a bill for us before
I leave. Old Rep’s white hat and brown spencer are guarantees for fifty
thousand francs in any city of Europe. There is a solvent vulgarity in
the very creak of his shoes.”

“Oh! he’s not a very distinguished-looking person, certainly,” said
Barnard, who now resented the liberty he had himself led the way to.

“There I differ with you; _I_ call him eminently distinguished, and I’d
rather be able to ‘come’ that cravat tie, and have the pattern of the
dark-green waistcoat with the red spots, than I’d have--what shall I
say?--all the crisp bank paper I lost awhile ago. You are not going in,
surely?” cried he, as the other rang violently at the hotel.

“Yes; I am very tired of this fooling. I wish you hadn’t lost that
money.”

“Do you remember how it goes, Bob?

     ‘His weary song,
     The whole day long,
     Was still l’argent, l’argent, l’argent’

She is complaining that though the linnet is singing in the trees, and
the trout leaping in the river, her tiresome husband could only liken
them to the clink of the gold as it fell on the counter? Why, man,
you’ll wake the dead if you ring in that fashion!”

“I want to get in.”

“Here comes the fellow at last; how disgusted he’ll be to find there’s
not a five-franc piece between us.”

Scarcely was the door opened than Barnard passed in and left him without
even a good-night.




CHAPTER IX. ON THE ROAD

CALVERT’S first care as he entered his room was to ascertain if his
purse was there. It was all safe and untouched. He next lit a cigar, and
opening his window, leaned out to smoke. It was a glorious autumn night,
still, starry and cloudless. Had anyone from the street beneath seen him
there, he might have said, “There is some wearied man of brain-labour,
taking his hour of tranquil thought before he betakes himself to rest;
or he is one of those contemplative natures who loves to be free to
commune with his own heart in the silence of a calm night.” He looked
like this, and perhaps--who knows if he were not nearer it than we wot
of?

It was nigh daybreak before he lay down to sleep. Nor had he been fully
an hour in slumber when he was awoke, and found Barnard, dressed in a
morning gown and slippers, standing beside his bed.

“I say, Calvert, rub your eyes and listen to me. Are you awake?”

“Not very perfectly; but quite enough for anything you can have to say.
What is it?”

“I am so fretted about that money.”

“Why you told me that last night,” said Calvert, addressing himself, as
it were, again to sleep.

“Oh, its all very fine and very philosophic to be indifferent about
another man’s ‘tin;’ but I tell you I don’t know what to do, what to
say about it I’m not six weeks married, and it’s rather early to come to
rows and altercations with a father-in-law.”

“Address him to me. Say ‘Go to Calvert--he’ll talk to you.’ Do that like
a good fellow and go to bed. Good night.”

“I’ll not stand this sort of thing, Calvert. I’m no going to lose my
money and be laughed at too!”

“You’ll not stand what?” cried Calvert, sitting up in bed, and looking
now thoroughly awake.

“I mean,” said the other, doggedly, “you have got me into a confounded
scrape, and you are bound to get me out of it.”

“That is speaking like a man of sense. It is what I intend to do;
but can’t we sleep over it first? I want what the old ladies call my
‘natural rest.’”

“There’s no time for that. The old governor is always pottering about
by six o’clock, and it’s just as likely, as the landlord talks English,
he’ll be down by way of gossiping with him, and ask if the bill is
settled.”

“What an old beast he must be. I wonder you could have married into such
a vulgar set.”

“If you have nothing to say but abuse of my connections, I am not going
to waste any more time here.”

“There, that’s a dear fellow; go to bed now, and call me somewhere
towards four in the afternoon.”

“This is rather more than a joke.”

“To be sure it is, man; it is dead sleepiness. Goodnight.”

“I see you have found your purse--how much had you in it?”

“Count it, if you’re curious,” said Calvert, drowsily.

“Fifty-four Napoleons and a half,” said the other, slowly. “Look ye,
Calvert, I’m going to impound this. It’s a sorry instalment, but, as far
as it goes--”

“Take it, old fellow, and leave me quiet.”

“One word more, Calvert,” said Barnard, seriously. “I cannot muster
courage to meet old Rep this morning, and if you like to start at once
and settle this affair you have in Switzerland, I’m ready, but it must
be done instanter.”

“All right; I shall be ready within an hour. Tell the porter to send my
bath up at once, and order coffee by the time you’ll be dressed.”

There was very little trace of sleep about Calvert’s face now, as,
springing from his bed, he prepared for the road. With such despatch,
indeed, did he proceed, that he was already in the coffee-room before
his friend had descended.

“Shall we say anything to the landlord before we start, Calvert?”
 whispered he.

“Of course; send Signor Angelo, or Antonio, or whatever his name, here.
The padrone, I mean,” said he to the waiter.

“He is called Luigi Filippo, Sir,” said the man indignantly.

“A capital name for a rogue. Let us have him here.”

A very burly consequential sort of man, marvellously got up as to beard,
moustaches, and watch-chain, entered and bowed.

“Signor Luigi Filippo,” said Calvert, “my friend here--the son of that
immensely wealthy mi Lordo up stairs--is in a bit of scrape; he had an
altercation last night with a fellow we take to be an Austrian spy.”

The host spat out, and frowned ferociously.

“Just so; a dog of a Croat, I suspect,” went on Culvert; “at all events,
he must put a bullet in him, and to do so, must get over the frontier
beyond Como; we want therefore a little money from you, and your
secrecy, till this blows over.”

The host bowed, and pursed up his lips like one who would like a little
time for reflection, and at last said, “How much money, Signor?”

“What do you say, Bob? will a hundred Naps do, or eighty?”

“Fifty; fifty are quite enough,” cried Barnard.

“On a circular note, of course, Signor?” asked the host.

“No, a draft at six days on my friend’s father; mi Lordo means to pass a
month here.”

“I don’t think I’ll do that, Calvert,” whispered Barnard; but the other
stopped him at once with, “Be quiet; leave this to me.”

“Though payable at sight, Signor Luigi, we shall ask you to hold it over
for five or six days, because we hope possibly to be back here before
Saturday, and if so, we’ll settle this ourselves.”

“It shall be done, gentlemen,” said the host “I’ll go and draw out the
bills, and you shall have the money immediately.”

“How I touched the fellow’s patriotism, Bob. It was the Austrian dodge
stood us in stead, there. I know that I have jeopardised your esteem for
me by the loss of that money last night; but do confess that this was a
clever hit of mine.”

“It’s a bad business from beginning to end!” was however all that he
could obtain from Barnard.

“Narrow-minded dog! he won’t see any genius in a man that owes him five
shillings.”

“I wish it was only five shillings.”

“What an ignoble confession! It means this that your friendship depends
on the rate of exchanges, and that when gold rises--But here comes Luigi
Fillipo.

“Now, no squeamishness, but write your name firmly. ‘Cut boldly,’ said
the auger, ‘and he cut it through.’ Don’t you remember that classic
anecdote in your Roman history?”

It is a strange fact that the spirit of raillery, which to a dull man
is, at first, but a source of irritation and fretfulness, will, when
persevered in, become at last one of the most complete despotisms. He
dreads it as a weapon which he cannot defend himself against; and he
comes to regard it as an evidence of superiority and power. Barnard saw
the dominion that the other exercised over him, but could not resist it.

“Where to now?” asked he, as they whirled rapidly along the road towards
Monza.

“First of all, to Orta. There is an English family I want to see. Two
prettier girls you can’t imagine--not that the news has any interest for
you, poor caged mouse that you are--but I am in love with one of them. I
forget which, but I believe it’s the one that won’t have me.”

“She’s right,” said Barnard, with a half smile.

“Well, I half suspect she is. I could be a charming lover, but I fear
I’d make only a sorry husband. My qualities are too brilliant for
every-day use. It is your dreary fellows, with a tiresome monotony of
nature, do best in that melancholy mill they call marriage. You, for
instance, ought to be a model ‘mari.’”

“You are not disposed to give me the chance, I think,” said Barnard,
peevishly.

“On the contrary, I am preparing you most carefully for your career.
Conjugal life is a reformatory. You must come to it as a penitent Now
I’ll teach you the first part of your lesson; your wife shall supply the
second.”

“I’d relish this much better if--”

“I had not lost that money, you were going to say. Out with it, man.
When a fellow chances upon a witty thing, he has a right to repeat it;
besides, you have reason on your side. A loser is always wrong. But
after all, Bob, whether the game be war, or marriage, or a horse-race,
one’s skill has very little to say to it Make the wisest combinations
that ever were fashioned, and you’ll lose sometimes. Draw your card at
hazard, and you’ll win. If you only saw the fellow that beat me t’other
day in a girl’s affections--as dreary a dog as ever you met in your
life, without manliness, without ‘go’ in him--and yet he wasn’t a
curate. I know you suspect he was a curate.”

“If you come through this affair all right, what do you intend to turn
to, Calvert?” said the other, who really felt a sort of interest in his
fortunes.

“I have thought of several things: the Church--the Colonies--Patent
Fuel--Marriage--Turkish Baths, and a Sympathy Society for Suffering
Nationalities, with a limited liability to all who subscribe fifty
pounds and upwards.”

“But, seriously, have you any plans?”

“Ten thousand plans! I have plans enough to ruin all Threadneedle
Street; but what use are plans? What’s the good of an architect in a
land were there are no bricks, no mortar, and no timber? When I’ve
shot Graham, I’ve a plan how to make my escape out of Switzerland; but,
beyond that, nothing; not one step, I promise you. See, yonder is Monte
Rosa; how grand he looks in the still calm air of the morning. What a
gentleman a mountain is! how independent of the changeful fortunes of
the plains, where grass succeeds tillage, and what is barley to-day, may
be a brick-field to-morrow; but the mountain is ever the same--proud and
cold if you will, but standing above all the accidents of condition, and
asserting itself by qualities which are not money-getting. I’d like to
live in a land of mountains, if it were not for the snobs that come to
climb them.”

“But why should they be snobs?”

“I don’t know; perhaps the mountains like it. There, look yonder, our
road leads along that ledge till we reach Chiasso, about twelve miles
off; do you think you can last that long without breakfast? There,
there, don’t make that pitiful face; you shall have your beefsteak,
and your chocolate, and your eggs, and all the other claims of
your Anglo-Saxon nature, whose birthright it is to growl for every
twenty-four hours, and ‘grub’ every two.”

They gained the little inn at Orta by the evening, and learned, as
Calvert expected, that nothing had changed in his absence--indeed what
was there to change--so long as the family at the villa remained in the
cottage. All was to Calvert as he left it.

Apologising to his friend for a brief absence, he took boat and crossed
the lake. It was just as they had sat down to tea that he entered the
drawing-room.

If there was some constraint in the reception of him, there was that
amount of surprise at his appearance that half masked it “You have been
away, Mr. Calvert?” asked Miss Grainger.

“Yes,” said he, carelessly, “I got a rambling fit on me, and finding
that Loyd had started for England, I grew fidgety at being alone, so
I went up to Milan, saw churches and galleries, and the last act of a
ballet; but, like a country mouse, got home-sick for the hard peas and
the hollow tree, and hurried back again.”

After some careless talk of commonplaces he managed at last to secure
the chair beside Florence’s sofa, and affected to take an interest in
some work she was engaged at. “I have been anxious to see you and speak
to you, Florry,” said he, in a low tone, not audible by the others.
“I had a letter from Loyd, written just before he left. He has told me
everything.”

She only bent down her head more deeply over her work, but did not
speak.

“Yes; he was more candid than you,” continued he. “He said you were
engaged--that is--that you had owned to him that you liked him, and that
when the consent he hoped for would be obtained, you would be married.”

“How came he to write this to _you?_” said she, with a slight tremor in
her voice.

“In this wise,” said he, calmly. “He felt that he owed me an apology for
something that had occurred between us on that morning; and, when making
his excuses, he deemed he could give no better proof of frankness than
by this avowal. It was, besides, an act of fairness towards one who,
trusting to his own false light, might have been lured to delusive
hopes.”

“Perhaps so,” said she, coldly.

“It was very right of him, very proper.”

She nodded.

“It was more--it was generous.”

“He _is_ generous,” said she, warmly.

“He had need be.”

“How do you mean, that he had need be?” asked she, eagerly.

“I mean this--that he will require every gift he has, and every grace,
to outbalance the affection which I bear you--which I shall never cease
to bear you. You prefer him. Now, you may regard me how you will--I will
not consent to believe myself beaten. Yes, Florence, I know not only
that I love you more than he does, but I love you with a love he is
incapable of feeling. I do not wish to say one word in his dispraise,
least of all to you, in whose favour I want to stand well; but I wish
you--and it is no unfair request--to prove the affection of the two men
who solicit your love.”

“I am satisfied with his.”

“You may be satisfied with the version your own imagination renders
of it. You may be satisfied with the picture you have coloured for
yourself; but I want you to be just to yourself, and just to me. Now if
I can show you in his own handwriting--the ink only dried on the paper a
day ago--a letter from him to me, in which he asks my pardon in terms so
abject as never were wrung from any man, except under the pressure of a
personal fear?”

“You say this to outrage me. Aunt Grainger,” cried she, in a voice
almost a scream, “listen to what this gentleman has had the temerity to
tell me. Repeat it now, Sir, if you dare.”

“What is this, Mr. Calvert? You have not surely presumed--”

“I have simply presumed, Madam, to place my pretensions in rivalry with
Mr. Loyd’s. I have been offering to your niece the half of a very humble
fortune, with a name not altogether ignoble.”

“Oh dear, Mr. Calvert!” cried the old lady, “I never suspected this. I’m
sure my niece is aware of the great honour we all feel--at least I
do most sensibly--that, if she was not already engaged--Are you ill,
dearest? Oh, she has fainted. Leave us, Mr. Calvert Send Maria here.
Milly, some water immediately.”

For more than an hour Calvert walked the little grass-plot before the
door, and no tidings came to him from those within. To a momentary
bustle and confusion, a calm succeeded--lights flitted here and there
through the cottage. He fancied he heard something like sobbing, and
then all was still and silent.

“Are you there, Mr. Calvert?” cried Milly, at last, as she moved out
into the dark night air. “She is better now--much better. She seems
inclined to sleep, and we have left her.”

“You know how it came on?” asked he in a whisper. “You know what brought
it about?”

“No; nothing of it.”

“It was a letter that I showed her--a letter of Loyd’s to
myself--conceived in such terms as no man of, I will not say of spirit,
but a common pretension to the sense of gentleman, could write. Wait a
moment, don’t be angry with me till you hear me out. We had quarrelled
in the morning. It was a serious quarrel, on a very serious question. I
thought, of course, that all young men, at least, regard these things
in the same way. Well, he did not. I have no need to say more; _he_ did
not, and consequently nothing could come of it. At all events, I deemed
that the man who could not face an adversary had no right to brave a
rival, and so I intimated to him. For the second time he differed with
me, and dared in my own presence to prosecute attentions which I had
ordered him to abandon. This was bad enough, but there was worse to
come, for, on my return home from this, I found a letter from him in the
most abject terms; asking my pardon--for what?--for my having insulted
him, and begging me, in words of shameful humility, to let him follow up
his courtship, and, if he could, secure the hand of your sister, Now she
might, or might not accept my offer. I am not coxcomb enough to suppose
I must succeed simply because I wish success; but, putting myself
completely out of the question, could I suffer a girl I deemed worthy of
my love, and whom I desired to make my wife, to fall to the lot of one
so base as this? I ask you, was there any other course open to me than
to show her the letter? Perhaps it was rash; perhaps I ought to have
shown it first of all to Miss Grainger. I can’t decide this point. It
is too subtle for me. I only know that what I did I should do again, no
matter what the consequences might be.”

“And this letter, has she got it still?” asked Milly.

“No, neither she nor any other will ever read it now. I have torn it to
atoms. The wind has carried the last fragment at this moment over the
lake.”

“Oh dear; what misery all this is,” cried the girl in an accent of deep
affliction. “If you knew how she is attached--” Then suddenly checking
the harsh indiscretion of her words, she added, “I am sure you did all
for the best, Mr. Calvert I must go back now. You’ll come and see us, or
perhaps you’ll let me write to you, to-morrow.”

“I have to say good-bye, now,” said he, sadly. “I may see you all again
within a week. It may be this is a good-bye for ever.”

He kissed her hand as he spoke, and turned to the lake, where his boat
was lying.

“How amazed she’ll be to hear that she saw a letter--read it--held it in
her hands,” muttered he, “but I’ll stake my life she’ll never doubt the
fact when it is told to her by those who believe it.”

“You seem to be in rare spirits,” said Barnard when Calvert returned to
the inn. “Have you proposed and been accepted?”

“Not exactly,” said the other, smiling, “but I have had a charming
evening; one of those fleeting moments of that ‘vie de famille’ Balzac
tells us are worth all our wild and youthful excesses.”

“Yes!” replied Barnard, scoffingly; “domesticity would seem to be your
forte. Heaven help your wife, say I, if you ever have one.”

“You don’t seem to be aware how you disparage conjugal life, my good
friend, when you speak of it as a thing in which men of _your_ stamp are
the ornaments. It would be a sorry institution if its best requirements
were a dreary temperament and a disposition that mistakes moodiness for
morality.”

“Good-night; I have had enough,” said the other, and left the room.

“What a pity to leave such a glorious spot on such a morning,” said
Calvert, as he stood waiting while the post-horses were being harnessed.
“If we had but been good boys, as we might have been--that is, if _you_
had not fallen into matrimony, and _I_ into a quarrel--we should have
such a day’s fishing here! Yonder, where you see the lemon-trees hanging
over the rock, in the pool underneath there are some twelve and fourteen
‘pounders,’ as strong as a good-size pike; and then we’d have grilled
them under the chestnut-trees, and talked away, as we’ve done scores of
times, of the great figure we were to make--I don’t know when or how,
but some time and in some wise--in the world; astonishing all our
relations, and putting to utter shame and confusion that private tutor
at Dorking who would persist in auguring the very worst of us.”

“Is that the bill that you are tearing up? Let me see it What does he
charge for that Grignolino wine and those bad cigars?” broke in Barnard.

“What do I know or care?” said Calvert, with a saucy laugh. “If you
possessed a schoolboy’s money-box with a slit in it to hold your
savings, there would be some sense in looking after the five-franc
pieces you could rescue from a cheating landlord, and add to your store;
but when you know in your heart that you are never the richer nor the
better of the small economies that are only realised at the risk of an
apoplexy and some very profane expressions, my notion is, never mind
them--never fret about them.”

“You talk like a millionaire,” said the other contemptuously.

“It is all the resemblance that exists between us, Bob; not, however,
that I believe Baron Rothschild himself could moralise over the
insufficiency of wealth to happiness as I could. Here comes our team,
and I must say a sorrier set of screws never tugged in a rope harness.
Get in first I like to show all respect to the man who pays. I say, my
good fellow,” cried he to the postilion, “drive your very best, for mi
Lordo here is immensely rich, and would just as soon give you five gold
Marengos as five francs.”

“What was it you said to him?” asked Barnard, as they started at a
gallop.

“I said he must not spare his cattle, for we were running away from our
creditors.”

“How could you--”

“How could I? What nonsense, man! besides, I wanted the fellow to take
an interest in us, and, you see, so he has. Old Johnson was right; there
are few pleasures more exhilarating than being whirled along a good road
at the top speed of post-horses.”

“I suppose you saw that girl you are in love with?” said Barnard after a
pause.

“Yes; two of them. Each of the syrens has got a lien upon my heart, and
I really can’t say which of them holds the preference shares.’”

“Is there money?”

“Not what a great Croesus like yourself would call money, but still
enough for a grand ‘operation’ at Hom-burg, or a sheep-farming exploit
in Queensland.”

“You’re more ‘up’ to the first than the last”

“All wrong! Games of chance are to fellows like you, who must accept
Fortune as they find her. Men of _my_ stamp mould destiny.”

“Well, I don’t know. So long as I have known you, you’ve never been out
of one scrape without being half way into another.”

“And yet there are fellows who pay dearer for their successes than ever
I have done for my failures.”

“How so? What do they do?”

“They marry! Ay, Bob, they marry rich wives, but without any power to
touch the money, just as a child gets a sovereign at Christmas under the
condition he is never to change it.”

“I must say you are a pleasant fellow to travel with.”

“So I am generally reputed, and you’re a lucky dog to catch me ‘in the
vein,’ for I don’t know when I was in better spirits than this morning.”




CHAPTER X. A DAYBREAK BESIDE THE RHINE.

THE day was just breaking over that wide flat beside the Rhine at Basle,
as two men, descending from a carriage on the high road, took one of the
narrow paths which lead through the fields, walking slowly, and talking
to each other in the careless tone of easy converse.

“We are early, Barnard, I should say; fully half an hour before our
time,” said Calvert, as he walked on first, for the path did not admit
of two abreast. “What grand things these great plains are, traversed by a
fine river, and spreading away to a far distant horizon. What a sense of
freedom they inspire; how suggestive they are of liberty; don’t you feel
that?”

“I think I see them coming,” said the other. “I saw a carriage descend
the hill yonder. Is there nothing else you have to say--nothing that you
think of, Harry?”

“Nothing. If it should be a question of a funeral, Bob, my funds will
show how economically it must be done; but even if I had been richer, it
is not an occasion I should like to make costly.”

“It was not of that I was thinking. It was of friends or relations.”

“My dear fellow, I have few relatives and no friends. No man’s
executorship will ever entail less trouble than mine. I have nothing to
leave, nor any to leave it to.”

“But these letters--the cause of the present meeting--don’t you intend
that in case of--in the event of--”

“My being killed. Go on.”

“That they should be given up to your cousin?”

“Nothing of the kind ever occurred to me. In the first place, I don’t
mean to be shot; and in the second, I have not the very remotest
intention of releasing the dear Sophy from those regrets and sorrows
which she ought to feel for my death. Nay, I mean her to mourn me with a
degree of affliction to which anxiety will add the poignancy.”

“This is not generous, Calvert.”

“I’m sure it’s not. Why, my dear friend, were I to detect any such
weakness in my character, I’d begin to fancy I might end by becoming a
poltroon.”

“Is that your man--he in the cloak--or the tall one behind him?” said
Barnard, as he pointed to a group who came slowly along through a
vineyard.

“I cannot say. I never saw Mr. Graham to my knowledge. Don’t let them be
long about the preliminaries, Bob; the morning is fresh and the ground
here somewhat damp. Agree to all they ask, distance and everything, only
secure that the word be given by you. Remember that, in the way I’ve
told you.”

As Calvert strolled listlessly along towards the river, Barnard advanced
to meet the others, who, to the number of five, came now forward.
Colonel Rochefort, Mr. Graham’s friend, and Barnard were slightly
acquainted, and turned aside to talk to each other in confidence.

“It is scarcely the moment to hope for it, Mr. Barnard,” said the other,
“but I cannot go on without asking, at least, if there is any peaceful
settlement possible?”

“I fear not. You told me last night that all retraction by your friend
of his offensive letter was impossible.”

“Utterly so.”

“What, then, would you suggest?”

“Could not Mr. Calvert be brought to see that it was he who gave the
first offence? That, in writing, as he did, to a man in my friend’s
position--”

“Mere waste of time, colonel, to discuss this; besides, I think we have
each of us already said all that we could on this question, and Calvert
is very far from being satisfied with me for having allowed myself to
entertain it There is really nothing for it but a shot.”

“Yes, Sir; but you seem to forget, if we proceed to this arbitrament, it
is not a mere exchange of fire will satisfy my friend.”

“We are, as regards that, completely at his service; and if your supply
of ammunition be only in proportion to the number of your followers, you
can scarcely be disappointed.”

The colonel reddened deeply, and in a certain irritation replied: “One
of these gentlemen is a travelling companion of my friend, whose health
is too delicate to permit him to act for him; the other is a French
officer of rank, who dined with us yesterday; the third is a surgeon.”

“To us it is a matter of perfect indifference if you come accompanied
by fifty, or five hundred; but let us lose no more time. I see how I am
trying my friend’s patience already. Ten paces, short paces, too,” began
Barnard as he took his friend’s arm.

“And the word?”

“I am to give it.”

“All right; and you remember how?”

“Yes! the word is, One--two; at the second you are to fire.”

“Let me hear you say them.”

“One--two.”

“No, no; that’s not it. One-two--sharp; don’t dwell on the interval;
make them like syllables of one word.”

“One-two.”

“Yes, that’s it; and remember that you cough once before you begin.
There, don’t let them see us talking together. Give me a shake hands,
and leave me.”

“That man is nervous, or I am much mistaken,” said Graham’s invalid
friend to the colonel; and they both looked towards Calvert, who with
his hat drawn down over his brows, walked lazily to his ground.

“It is not the reputation he has,” whispered the colonel. “Be calm,
Graham; be as cool as the other fellow.”

The principals were now placed, and the others fell back on either side,
and almost instantaneously, so instantaneously, indeed, that Colonel
Rochefort had not yet ceased to walk, two shots rang out one distinctly
before the other, and Graham fell.

All ran towards him but Calvert, who, throwing his pistol at his feet,
stood calm and erect. For a few seconds they bent down over the wounded
man, and then Barnard, hastening back to his friend, whispered, “Through
the chest; it is all over.”

“Dead?” said the other.

He nodded, and taking his arm, said, “Don’t lose a moment; the Frenchman
says you have not an instant to spare.”

For a moment Calvert moved as if going towards the others, then, as if
with a changed purpose, he turned sharply round and walked towards the
high road.

As Calvert was just about to gain the road, Barnard ran after him, and
cried out, “Stop, Calvert, hear what these men say; they are crying out
unfair against us. They declare--”

“Are you an ass, Bob?” said the other, angrily. “Who minds the stupid
speech of fellows whose friend is knocked over?”

“Yes, but I’ll hear this out,” cried Barnard.

“You’ll do so without _me_, then, and a cursed fool you are for your
pains. Drive across to the Bavarian frontier, my man,” said he, giving
the postilion a Napoleon, “and you shall have a couple more if you get
there within two hours.”

With all the speed that whip and spur could summon, the beasts sped
along the level road, and Calvert, though occasionally looking through
the small pane in the back of the carriage to assure himself he was not
pursued, smoked on unceasingly. He might have been a shade graver than
his wont, and preoccupied too, for he took no notice of the objects
on the road, nor replied to the speeches of the postilion, who, in his
self-praise, seemed to call for some expression of approval.

“You are a precious fool, Master Barnard, and you have paid for your
folly, or you had been here before this.”

Such were his uttered thoughts, but it cost him little regret as he
spoke them.

The steam-boat that left Constance for Lindau was just getting under
weigh as he reached the lake, and he immediately embarked in her, and
on the same evening, gained Austrian territory at Bregenz, to pass the
night For a day or two, the quietness of this lone and little-visited
spot suited him, and it was near enough to the Swiss frontier, at the
Rhine, to get news from Switzerland. On the third day, a paragraph in
the Basle Zeitung told him everything. It was, as such things usually
are, totally misrepresented, but there was enough revealed for him to
guess what had occurred. It was headed “Terrible Event,” and ran thus:

     “At a meeting which took place with pistols, this morning,
     between two English lords at the White Meadows, one fell so
     fatally wounded that his death ensued in a few minutes. An
     instantaneous cry of foul play amongst his friends led to a
     fierce and angry altercation, which ended in a second
     encounter between the first principal and the second of the
     deceased. In this the former was shot through the throat,
     the bullet injuring several large vessels, and lodging, it
     is supposed, in the spine. He has been conveyed to the Hôtel
     Royal, but no hopes of his recovery are entertained.”

“I suspected what would come of your discussion, Bob. Had you only been
minded to slip away with me, you’d have been in the enjoyment of a whole
skin by this time. I wonder which of them shot him. I’d take the odds
it was the Frenchman; he handled the pistols like a fellow who envied us
our pleasant chances. I suppose I ought to write to Barnard, or to his
people; but it’s not an agreeable task, and I’ll think over it.”

He thought over it, and wrote as follows:

     “Dear Bob,--I suspect, from a very confused paragraph in a
     stupid newspaper, that you have fought somebody and got
     wounded. Write and say if this be so what it was all about,
     who did it, and what more can be done for you,

     “By yours truly,

     “H.C.

     “Address, Como.”

To this he received no answer when he called at the post-office, and
turned his steps next to Orta. He did not really know why, but it was,
perhaps, with some of that strange instinct that makes the criminal
haunt the homes of those he has once injured, and means to injure more.
There was, however, one motive which he recognised himself; he wished to
know something of those at the villa; when they had heard from Loyd, and
what? whether, too, they had heard of his own doings, and in what way?
A fatal duel, followed by another that was like to prove fatal, was
an event sure to provoke newspaper notice. The names could not escape
publicity, and he was eager to see in what terms they mentioned his own.
He trusted much to the difficulty of getting at any true version of the
affair, and he doubted greatly if anyone but Graham and himself could
have told why they were to meet at all. Graham’s second, Rochefort,
evidently knew very little of the affair. At all events, Graham was no
longer there to give his version, while for the incidents of the duel,
who was to speak? All, save Barnard, who was dying, if not dead, must
have taken flight The Swiss authorities would soon have arrested them if
within reach. He might therefore reassure himself that no statement that
he could not at least impugn could get currency just yet “I will row
over to the old Grainger”--so he called her--“and see what she has Heard
of it all.”

It was nightfall as he reached the shore, and walked slowly and
anxiously to the house. He had learned at Orta that they were to leave
that part of the world in another fortnight, but whither for none knew.
As he drew nigh, he determined to have a peep at the interior before he
presented himself. He accordingly opened the little wicket noiselessly,
and passed round through the flower-garden till he reached the windows
of the drawing-room.




CHAPTER XI. THE LIFE AT THE VILLA.

THE curtains were undrawn, and the candles were lighted. All within
looked just as he had so often seen it. The sick girl lay on her sofa,
with her small spaniel at her feet Miss Grainger was working at a table,
and Emily sat near her sister, bending over the end of the sofa, and
talking to her. “Let me see that letter again, Florry,” she said, taking
a letter from the passive fingers of the sick girl. “Yes, he is sure it
must have been Calvert. He says, that though the Swiss papers give the
name Colnart, he is sure it was Calvert, and you remember his last words
here as he went away that evening?”

“Poor fellow!” said Florence, “I am sure I have no right to bear him
good will, but I am sorry for him--really sorry. I suppose, by this
time, it is all over?”

“The wound was through, the throat, it is said,” said Miss Grainger.
“But how confused the whole story is. Who is Barnard, and why did
Calvert fight to save Barnard’s honour?”

“No, aunt. It was to rescue Mr. Graham’s, the man who was about to marry
Sophia Calvert.”

“Not at all, Milly. It was Graham who shot Barnard; and then poor
Calvert, horrified at his friend’s fate--”

Calvert never waited for more. He saw that there was that amount of
mistake and misunderstanding, which required no aid on his part, and
now nothing remained but to present himself suddenly before them as a
fugitive from justice seeking shelter and protection. The rest he was
content to leave to hazard.

A sharp ring at the door-bell was scarcely answered by the servant, when
the man came to the drawing-room door, and made a sign to Miss Grainger.

“What is it, Giacomo? What do you mean?” she cried.

“Just one moment, signora; half a minute here,” he said.

Well accustomed to the tone of secrecy assumed by Italians on occasions
the least important, Miss Grainger followed him outside, and there,
under the glare of the hall-lamp, stood Calvert, pale, his hair
dishevelled, his cravat loosened, and his coat-sleeve torn. “Save me!
hide me!” said he, in a low whisper. “Can you--will you save me?”

She was one not unfitted to meet a sudden change; and, although secretly
shocked, she rallied quickly, and led him into a room beside the hall “I
know all,” said she. “We all knew it was your name.”

“Can you conceal me here for a day--two days at furthest?”

“A week, if you need it.”

“And the servant--can he be trusted?”

“To the death. I’ll answer for him.”

“How can you keep the secret from the girls?”

“I need not; they must know everything.”

“But Florence; can she--has she forgiven me?”

“Yes, thoroughly. She scarcely knows about what she quarrelled with you.
She sometimes fears that she wronged you; and Milly defends you always.”

“You have heard--you know what has happened to me?”

“In a fashion: that is, we only know there has been a duel. We feared
you had been wounded; and, indeed we heard severely wounded.”

“The story is too long to tell you now; enough, if I say it was all
about Sophy. You remember Sophy, and a fellow who was to have married
her, and who jilted her, and not only this but boasted of the injury
he had done her, and the insult he had thrown on us. A friend of
mine, Barnard, a brother officer, heard him--but why go on with this
detail?--there was a quarrel and a challenge, and it was by merest
accident I heard of it, and reached Basle in time. Of course, I was not
going to leave to Barnard what of right belonged to me. There were, as
you can imagine, innumerable complications in the matter. Rochefort, the
other man’s friend, and a French fellow, insisted on having a finger in
the pie. The end of it was, I shot Graham and somebody else--I believe
Rochefort--put a bullet into Barnard. The Swiss laws in some cantons
are severe, and we only learned too late that we had fought in the very
worst of them; so I ran, I don’t know how, or in what direction. I lost
my head for a while, and wandered about the Voralberg and the Splugen
for a week or two. How I find myself now here is quite a mystery to me.”

There was a haggard wildness in his look that fully accorded with all he
said, and the old lady felt the most honest pity for his sufferings.

“I don’t know if I’m perfectly safe here,” said he, looking fearfully
around him. “Are you sure you can conceal me, if need be?”

“Quite sure; have no fear about that. I’ll tell the girls that your
safety requires the greatest caution and secrecy, and you’ll see how
careful they will be.”

“Girls _will_ talk, though,” said he, doubtingly.

“There is the double security here--they have no one to talk to,” she
said, with a faint smile.

“Very true. I was forgetting how retired your life was here. Now for
the next point. What are you to tell them--I mean, how much are they to
know?”

The old lady looked puzzled; she felt she might easily have replied, “If
they only know no more than I can tell them, your secret will certainly
be safe;” but, as she looked at his haggard cheek and feverish eye, she
shrunk from renewing a theme full of distress and suffering. “Leave it
to me to say something--anything which shall show them that you are in a
serious trouble, and require all their secrecy and sympathy.”

“Yes, that may do--at least for the present. It will do at least with
Emily, who bears me no ill will.”

“You wrong Florence if you imagine that _she_ does. It was only the
other day, when, in a letter from Loyd, she read that you had left the
army, she said how sorry she was you had quitted the career so suited to
your abilities.”

“Indeed! I scarce hoped for so much of interest in me.”

“Oh, she talks continually about you; and always as of one, who
only needs the guidance of some true friend to be a man of mark and
distinction yet.”

“It is very good, very kind of her,” he said; and, for an instant,
seemed lost in thought.

“I’ll go back now,” said Miss Grainger, “and prepare them for your
coming. They’ll wonder what has detained me all this while. Wait one
moment for me here.”

Calvert, apparently, was too much engaged with his own thoughts to hear
her, and suffered her to go without a word. She was quickly back again,
and beckoning him to follow her, led the way to the drawing-room.

Scarcely had Calvert passed the doorway, when the two girls met him, and
each taking a hand, conducted him without a word to a sofa. Indeed, his
sickly look, and the air of downright misery in his countenance, called
or all their sympathy and kindness.

“I have scarcely strength to thank you!” he said to them, in a faint
voice. Though the words were addressed to both, the glance he gave
towards Florence sent the blood to her pale cheeks, and made her turn
away in some confusion.

“You’ll have some tea and rest yourself, and when you feel once quiet
and undisturbed here you’ll soon regain your strength,” said Emily, as
she turned towards the tea-table. While Florence, after a few moments’
hesitation, seated herself on the sofa beside him.

“Has she told you what has befallen me?” whispered he to her.

“In part--that is, something of it. As much as she could in a word or
two; but do not speak of it now.”

“If I do not now, Florence, I can never have the courage again.”

“Then be it so,” she said eagerly. “I am more anxious to see you strong
and well again, than to hear how you became wretched and unhappy.”

“But if you do not hear the story from myself, Florence, and if you
should hear the tale that others may tell of me--if you never know how I
have been tried and tempted--”

“There, there--don’t agitate yourself, or I must leave you; and, sec,
Milly is remarking our whispering together.”

“Does she grudge me this much of your kindness?”

“No; but--there--here she comes with your tea.” She drew a little table
in front of him, and tried to persuade him to eat.

“Your sister has just made me a very generous promise, Emily,” said
he. “She has pledged herself--even without hearing my exculpation--to
believe me innocent; and although I have told her that the charges that
others will make against me may need some refutation on my part, she
says she’ll not listen to them. Is not that very noble--is it not truly
generous?”

“It is what I should expect from Florence.”

“And what of Florence’s sister?” said he, with a half furtive glance
towards her.

“I hope, nothing less generous.”

“Then I am content,” said he, with a faint sigh. “When a man is as
thoroughly ruined as I am, it might be thought he would be indifferent
to opinion in every shape--and so I am, beyond the four walls of this
room; but here,” and he looked at each in turn, “are the arbiters of
my fate; if you will but be to me dear sisters--kind, compassionate,
forgiving sisters--you will do more for this crushed and wounded heart,
than all the sympathy of the whole world beside.”

“We only ask to be such to you,” cried Florence, eagerly: “and we feel
how proud we could be of such a brother; but, above all, do not distress
yourself now, by a theme so painful to touch on. Let the unhappy events
of the last few weeks lie, if not forgotten, at least unmentioned, till
you are calm and quiet enough to talk of them as old memories.”

“Yes! but how can I bear the thought of what others may say of
me--meanwhile?”

“Who are these others--we see no one, we go into no society?”

“Have you not scores of dear friends, writing by every post to ask
if this atrocious duellist be ‘your’ Mr. Calvert, and giving such a
narrative, besides, of his doings, that a galley-slave would shrink from
contact with such a man? Do I not know well how tenderly people deal
with the vices that are not their own? How severe the miser can be on
the spendthrift, and how mercilessly the coward condemns the hot blood
that resents an injury, and how gladly they would involve in shame the
character that would not brook dishonour?”

“Believe me, we have very few ‘dear friends’ at all,” said Florence,
smiling, “and not one, no, not a single one of the stamp you speak of.”

“If you were only to read our humdrum letters,” chimed in Emily, “you’d
see how they never treat of anything but little domestic details of
people who live as obscurely as ourselves. How Uncle Tom’s boy has got
into the Charterhouse; or Mary’s baby taken the chicken-pox.”

“But Loyd writes to you--and not in this strain?”

“I suspect Joseph cares little to fill his pages with what is called
news,” said Emily, with a laughing glance at her sister, who had turned
away her head in some confusion.

“Nor would he be one likely to judge you harshly,” said Florence,
recovering herself. “I believe you have few friends who rate you more
highly than he does.”

“It is very generous of him!” said Calvert, haughtily; and then,
catching in the proud glance of Florry’s eyes a daring challenge of his
words, he added, in a quieter tone, “I mean, it is generous of him
to overlook how unjust I have been to him. It is not easy for men
so different to measure each other, and I certainly formed an unfair
estimate of him.”

“Oh! may I tell him that you said so?” cried she, taking his hand with
warmth.

“I mean to do it for myself dearest sister. It is a debt I cannot permit
another to acquit for me.”

“Don’t you think you are forgetting our guest’s late fatigues, and what
need he has of rest and quietness, girls?” said Miss Grainger, coming
over to where they sat.

“I was forgetting everything in my joy, aunt,” cried Florence. “He is
going to write to Joseph like a dear, dear brother as he is, and we
shall all be so happy, and so united.”

“A brother? Mr. Calvert a brother?” said the old lady, in consternation
at such a liberty with one of that mighty house, in which she had once
lived as an humble dependant.

“Yes,” cried he. “It is a favour I have begged, and they have not denied
me.”

The old lady’s face flushed, and pride and shame glowed together on her
cheeks.

“So we must say good-night,” said Calvert, rising; “but we shall have a
long day’s talk together, to-morrow. Who is it that defines an aunt as a
creature that always sends one to bed?” whispered he to Florence.

“What made you laugh, dear?” said her sister, after Calvert had left the
room.

“I forget--I didn’t know I laughed--he is a strange incomprehensible
fellow--sometimes I like him greatly, and sometimes I feel a sort of
dread of him that amounts to terror.”

“If I were Joseph, I should not be quite unconcerned about that jumbled
estimation.”

“He has no need to be. They are unlike in every way,” said she, gravely;
and then, taking up her book, went on, or affected to go on reading.

“I wish Aunt Grainger would not make so much of him. It is a sort of
adulation that makes our position regarding him perfectly false,” said
Emily. “Don’t you think so, dear?”

Florence, however, made no reply, and no more passed that evening
between them.

Few of us have not had occasion to remark the wondrous change produced
in some quiet household, where the work of domesticity goes on in
routine fashion, by the presence of an agreeable and accomplished guest.
It is not alone that he contributes by qualities of his own to the
common stock of amusement, but that he excites those around him to
efforts, which develop resources they had not, perhaps, felt conscious
of possessing. The necessity, too, of wearing one’s company face, which
the presence of a stranger exacts, has more advantages than many wot of.
The small details whose discussion forms the staple of daily talk--the
little household cares and worries--have to be shelved. One can scarcely
entertain their friends with stories of the cook’s impertinence, or
the coachman’s neglect, and one has to see, as they do see, that the
restraint of a guest does not in reality affect the discipline of a
household, though it suppress the debates and arrest the discussion.

It has been often remarked that the custom of appearing in
parliament--as it was once observed--in court-dress, imposed a degree
of courtesy and deference in debate, of which men in wide-awake hats and
paletots are not always observant; and, unquestionably, in the little
ceremonial observances imposed by the stranger’s presence, may be seen
the social benefits of a good breeding not marred by over-familiarity.
It was thus Calvert made his presence felt at the villa. It was true he
had many companionable qualities, and he had, or at least affected to
have, very wide sympathies. He was ever ready to read aloud, to row,
to walk, to work in the flower-garden, to sketch, or to copy music,
as though each was an especial pleasure to him. If he was not as high
spirited and light hearted as they once had seen him, it did not
detract from, but rather added to the interest he excited. He was in
misfortune--a calamity not the less to be compassionated that none could
accurately define it; some dreadful event had occurred, some terrible
consequence impended, and each felt the necessity of lighten ing the
load of his sorrow, and helping him to bear his affliction. They were so
glad when they could cheer him up, and so happy when they saw him take
even a passing pleasure in the pursuits their own days were spent in.

They had now been long enough in Italy not to feel depressed by its
dreamy and monotonous quietude, but to feel the inexpressible charm of
that soft existence, begotten of air, and climate, and scenery. They had
arrived at that stage--and it _is_ a stage--in which the olive is
not dusky, nor the mountain arid: when the dry course of the torrent
suggests no wish for water. Life--mere life--has a sense of luxury about
it, unfelt in northern lands. With an eager joy, therefore, did they
perceive that Calvert seemed to have arrived at the same sentiment, and
the same appreciation as themselves. He seemed to ask for nothing
better than to stroll through orange groves, or lie under some spreading
fig-tree, drowsily soothed by the song of the vine-dresser, or the
unwearied chirp of the cicala. How much of good there must be surely in
a nature pleased with such tranquil simple pleasures! thought they. See
how he likes to watch the children at their play, and with what courtesy
he talked to that old priest. It is clear dissipation may have damaged,
but has not destroyed that fine temperament--his heart has not lost its
power to feel. It was thus that each thought of him, though there was
less of confidence between the sisters than heretofore.

A very few words will suffice to explain this: When Florence recovered
from the shock Calvert had occasioned her on the memorable night of his
visit, she had nothing but the very vaguest recollection of what had
occurred. That some terrible tidings had been told her--some disastrous
news in which Loyd and Calvert were mixed up: that she had blamed
Calvert for rashness or indiscretion; that he had either shown a letter
he ought never to have shown, or not produced one which might have
averted a misfortune; and, last of all, that she herself had done or
said something which a calmer judgment could not justify--all these were
in some vague and shadowy shape before her, and all rendered her anxious
and uneasy. On the other hand, Emily, seeing with some satisfaction that
her sister never recurred to the events of that unhappy night, gladly
availed herself of this silence to let them sleep undisturbed. She was
greatly shocked, it is true, by the picture Calvert’s representation
presented of Loyd. He had never been a great favourite of her own; she
recognised many good and amiable traits in his nature, but she deemed
him gloomy, depressed, and a dreamer--and a dreamer, above all, she
regarded as unfit to be the husband of Florence, whose ill health had
only tended to exaggerate a painful and imaginative disposition. She
saw, or fancied she saw, that Loyd’s temperament, calm and gentle
though it was, deemed to depress her sister. His views of life were very
sombre, and no effort ever enabled him to look forward in a sanguine
or hopeful spirit If, however, to these feelings an absolute fault of
character were to be added--the want of personal courage--her feelings
for him could no longer be even the qualified esteem she had hitherto
experienced. She also knew that nothing could be such a shock to
Florence, as to believe that the man she loved was a coward; nor could
any station, or charm, or ability, however great, compensate for such
a defect As a matter, therefore, for grave after-thought, but not
thoroughly “proven,” she retained this charge in her mind, nor did she
by any accident drop a hint or a word that could revive the memory of
that evening.

As for Miss Grainger, only too happy to see that Florence seemed to
retain no trace of that distressing scene, she never went back to it,
and thus every event of the night was consigned to silence, if not
oblivion. Still, there grew out of that reserve a degree of estrangement
between the sisters, which each, unconscious of in herself, could detect
in the other. “I think Milly has grown colder to me of late, aunt She is
not less kind or attentive, but there is a something of constraint about
her I cannot fathom,” would Florence say to her aunt While the other
whispered, “I wonder why Florry is so silent when we are alone together?
She that used to tell me all her thoughts, and speak for hours of what
she hoped and wished, now only alludes to some commonplace topic--the
book she has just read, or the walk we took yesterday.”

The distance between them was not the less wide that each had secretly
confided to Calvert her misgivings about the other. Indeed, it would
have been, for girls so young and inexperienced in life, strange not to
have accorded him their confidence. He possessed a large share of that
quality which very young people regard as sagacity. I am not sure that
the gift has got a special name, but we have all of us heard of some one
“with such a good head,” “so safe an adviser,” “such a rare counsellor
in a difficulty,” “knowing life and mankind so well,” and “such an
aptitude to take the right road in a moment of embarrassment.” The
phoenix is not usually a man of bright or showy qualities; he is, on
the contrary, one that the world at large has failed to recognise. If,
however, by any chance he should prove to be smart, ready-witted, and a
successful talker, his sway is a perfect despotism. Such was Calvert; at
least such was he to the eyes of these sisters. Now Emily had confided
to him that she thought Loyd totally unworthy of Florence. His good
qualities were undeniable, but he had few attractive or graceful ones;
and then there was a despondent, depressed tone about him that must
prove deeply injurious to one whose nature required bright and cheery
companionship. Calvert agreed with every word of this.

Florence, on her side, was, meanwhile, imparting to him that Loyd was
not fairly appreciated by her aunt or her sister. They deemed him very
honourable, very truthful, and very moral, but they did not think highly
of his abilities, nor reckon much on his success in life. In fact,
though the words themselves were spared her, they told her in a hundred
modes that “she was throwing herself away;” and, strange as it may read,
she liked to be told so, and heard with a sort of triumphant pride that
she was going to make a sacrifice of herself and all her prospects--all
for “poor Joseph.” To become the auditor of this reckoning required
more adroitness than the other case; but Calvert was equal to it. He
saw where to differ, where to agree with her. It was a contingency which
admitted of a very dexterous flattery, rather insinuated, however, than
openly declared; and it was thus he conveyed to her that he took the
same view as the others. He knew Loyd was an excellent fellow, far too
good and too moral for a mere scamp like himself to estimate. He was
certain he would turn out respectable, esteemed, and all that. He would
be sure to be a churchwarden, and might be a poor-law guardian; and his
wife would be certain to shine in the same brightness attained by
him. Then stopping, he would heave a low, faint sigh, and turn the
conversation to something about her own attractions or graceful gifts.
How enthusiastically the world of “society” would one day welcome
them--and what a “success” awaited her whenever she was well enough to
endure its fatigue. Now, though all these were only as so many fagots
to the pile of her martyrdom, she delighted to listen to them, and never
wearied of hearing Calvert exalt all the greatness of the sacrifice she
was about to make, and how immeasurably she was above the lot to which
she was going to consign herself.

It is the drip, drip, that eats away the rock, and iteration ever so
faint, will cleave its way at last: so Florry, without in the slightest
degree disparaging Loyd, grew at length to believe, as Calvert assured
her, that “Master Joseph” was the luckiest dog that ever lived, and had
carried off a prize immeasurably above his pretensions.

Miss Grainger, too, found a confessor in their guest: but it will spare
the reader some time if I place before him a letter which Calvert wrote
to one of his most intimate friends a short time after he had taken up
his abode at the villa. The letter will also serve to connect some past
events with the present now before us.

The epistle was addressed Algernon Drayton, Esq., Army and Navy Club,
London, and ran thus:

     “My dear Algy,--You are the prince of ‘our own
     correspondents,’ and I thank you, ‘imo corde,’ if that be
     Latin for it, for all you have done for me. I defy the whole
     Bar to make out, from your narrative, who killed who, in
     that affair at Basle. I know, after the third reading of it,
     I fancied that I had been shot through the heart, and then
     took post-horses for Zurich. It was and is a master-piece of
     the bewildering imbroglio style. Cultivate your great gifts,
     then, my friend. You will be a treasure to the court of
     Cresswell, and the most injured of men or the basest of
     seducers will not be able at the end of a suit to say which
     must kneel down and ask pardon of the other. I suppose I
     ought to say I’m sorry for Barnard, but I can’t. No, Algy, I
     cannot. He was an arrant snob, and, if he had lived, he’d
     have gone about telling the most absurd stories and getting
     people to believe them, just on the faith of his stupidity.
     If there is a ridiculous charge in the world, it is that of
     ‘firing before one’s time,’ which, to make the most of it,
     must be a matter of seconds, and involves, besides, a
     question as to the higher inflammability of one’s powder. I
     don’t care who made mine, but I know it did its work well.
     I’m glad, however, that you did not deign to notice that
     contemptible allegation, and merely limited yourself to what
     resulted. Your initials and the stars showered over the
     paragraph, are in the highest walk of legerdemain, and I can
     no more trace relatives to antecedents, than I can tell what
     has become of the _egg_ I saw Houdin smash in my hat.

     “I know, however, I mustn’t come back just yet There is that
     shake-of-the-headiness abroad that makes one uncomfortable.
     Fortunately, this is no-sacrifice to me. My debts keep me
     out of London, just as effectually as my morals. Besides
     this, my dear Algy, I’m living in the very deepest of
     clover, domesticated with a maiden aunt and two lovely
     nieces, in a villa on an Italian lake, my life and comforts
     being the especial care of the triad. Imagine an infant-
     school occupied in the care of a young tiger of the spotted
     species, and you may, as the Yankees say, realise the
     situation. But they seem to enjoy the peril of what they are
     doing, or they don’t see it, I can’t tell which.

     “‘Gazetted out,’ you say; ‘Meno male,’ as they say here. I
     might have been promoted, and so tempted to go back to that
     land of Bores, Bearers, and Bungalores, and I am grateful to
     the stumble that saves me from a fall. But you ask, what do
     I mean to do? and I own I do not see my way to anything.
     Time was when gentleman-riding, coach-driving, or billiards,
     were on a par with the learned professions; but, my dear
     Drayton, we have fallen upori a painfully enlightened age,
     and every fellow can do a little of everything.

     “You talk of my friends? You might as well talk of my Three
     per Cents. If I had friends, it would be natural enough they
     should help me to emigrate as a means of seeing the last of
     me; but I rather suspect that my relatives, who by a figure
     of speech represent the friends aforesaid, have a lively
     faith that some day or other the government will be at the
     expense of my passage--that it would be quite superfluous in
     them to provide for it.

     “You hint that I might marry, meaning thereby marry with
     money; and, to be sure, there’s Barnard’s widow with plenty
     of tin, and exactly in that stage of affliction that
     solicits consolation; for when the heart is open to sorrow,
     Love occasionally steps in before the door closes. Then, a
     more practical case. One of these girls here--the fortune is
     only fifteen thousand--I think over the matter day and
     night, and I verily believe I see it in the light of
     whatever may be the weather at the time: very darkly on the
     rainy days; not so gloomy when the sky is blue and the air
     balmy.

     “Do you remember that fellow that _I_ stayed behind for at
     the Cape, and thereby lost my passage, just to quarrel with
     Headsworth? Well, a feeling of the same sort is tempting
     me sorely at this time. There is one of these girls, a poor
     delicate thing, very pretty and coquettish in her way, has
     taken it into her wise head to prefer a stupid loutish sort
     of young sucking barrister to me, and treats me with an
     ingenious blending of small compassion and soft pity to
     console my defeat. If you could ensure my being an afflicted
     widower within a year, I’d marry her, just to show her the
     sort of edged tool she has been playing with. I’m often half
     driven to distraction by her impertinent commiseration. I
     tried to get into a row with the man, but he would not have
     it. Don’t you hate the fellow that won’t quarrel with you,
     worse even than the odious wretch who won’t give you credit?

     “I might marry the sister, I suppose, to-morrow; but that
     alone is a reason against it. Besides, she is terribly
     healthy; and though I have lost much faith in consumption,
     from cases I have watched in my own family, bad air and bad
     treatment will occasionally aid its march. Could you, from
     such meagre data as these, help me with a word of advice?
     for I do like the advice of an unscrupulous dog-like
     yourself--so sure to be practical Then there is no cant
     between men like us--we play ‘cartes sur table.’

     “The old maid who represents the head of this house has been
     confidentially sounding me as to an eligible investment for
     some thousands which have fallen in from a redeemed
     mortgage. I could have said, ‘Send them to me, and you shall
     name the interest yourself;’ but I was modest, and did not.
     I bethought me, however, of a good friend, one Algy Drayton,
     a man of large landed property, but who always wants money
     for drainage. Eh, Algy! Are your lips watering at the
     prospect? If so, let your ingenuity say what is to be the
     security.

     “Before I forget it, ask Pearson if he has any more of that
     light Amontillado. It is the only thing ever sets me right,
     and I have been poorly of late. I know I must be out of
     sorts, because all day yesterday I was wretched and
     miserable at my misspent life and squandered abilities. Now,
     in my healthier moments, such thoughts never cross me. I’d
     have been honest if Nature had dealt fairly with me; but
     the younger son of a younger brother starts too heavily
     weighted to win by anything but a ‘foul’ You understand this
     well, for we are in the same book. We each of us pawned our
     morality very early in life, and never were rich enough to
     redeem it. Apropos of pledges, is your wife alive? I lost a
     bet about it some time ago, but I forget on which side. I
     backed my opinion.

     “Now, to sum up.    Let me hear from you about all I have
     been asking; and, though I don’t opine it lies very much in
     your way, send me any tidings you can pick up--to   his
     disadvantage,   of course--of  Joseph   Loyd,   Middle
     Temple.    You know scores of attorneys who could trace him.
     Your hint about letter writing for the papers is not a bad
     one.    I suppose I could learn the trick, and do it at
     least as well as some of the fellows whose lucubrations I
     read.   A political surmise, a spicy bit of scandal, a
     sensation trial   wound up with a few moral reflections upon
     how much better we do the same sort of things at home. Isn’t
     that the bone of it? Send me--don’t forget it--send me some
     news of Rocksley. I want to hear how they take all that I
     have been doing of late for their happiness. I have half of
     a letter written to Soph--a sort of mild condolence, blended
     with what the serious people call profitable reflections and
     suggestive hints that her old affection will find its way
     back to me one of these days, and that when the event
     occurs, her best course will be to declare it. I have
     reminded her, too, that I laid up a little love in her heart
     when we parted, just as shrewd people leave a small balance
     at their bankers’ as a title to reopen their account at a
     future day.

     “Give Guy’s people a hint that it’s only wasting postage-
     stamps to torment me with bills. I never break the envelope
     of a dun’s letter, and I know them as instinctively as a
     detective does a swell-mobsman. What an imaginative race
     these duns must be. I know of no fellow, for the high
     flights of fancy, to equal one’s tailor or bootmaker. As to
     the search for the elixir vitae, it’s a dull realism after
     the attempts I have witnessed for years to get money out of
     myself.

     “But I must close this; here is Milly, whose taper fingers
     have been making cigarettes for me all the morning, come to
     propose a sail on the lake!--fact Algy!--and the wolf is
     going out with the lambs, just as prettily and as decorously
     as though his mother had been a ewe and cast ‘sheep’s eyes’
     at his father. Address me, Orta, simply, for I don’t wish it
     to be thought here that my stay is more than a day by day
     matter. I have all my letters directed to the post-office.

     “Yours, very cordially,

     “Harry Calvert.”


The pleasant project thus passingly alluded to was not destined to
fulfilment; for as Calvert with the two sisters were on their way to
the lake, they were overtaken by Miss Grainger, who insisted on
carrying away Calvert, to give her his advice upon a letter she had just
received. Obeying with the best grace he could, and which really did not
err on the score of extravagance, he accompanied the old lady back to
the house, somewhat relieved, indeed, in mind, to learn that the letter
she was about to show him in no way related to him nor his affairs.

“I have my scruples, Mr. Calvert, about asking your opinion in a case
where I well know your sympathies are not in unison with our own; but
your wise judgment and great knowledge of life are advantages I cannot
bring myself to relinquish. I am well aware that whatever your feelings
or your prejudices, they will not interfere with that good judgment.”

“Madam, you do me honour; but, I hope, no more than justice.”

“You know of Florry’s engagement to Mr. Loyd?” she asked, abruptly, as
though eager to begin her recital; and he bowed. “Well, he left this
so hurriedly about his father’s affairs, that he had no time to settle
anything, or, indeed, explain anything. We knew nothing of his prospects
or his means, and he just as little about my niece’s fortune. He had
written, it is true, to his father, and got a most kind and affectionate
answer, sanctioning the match, and expressing fervent wishes for his
happiness--Why do you smile, Mr. Calvert?”

“I was only thinking of the beauty of that benevolence that costs
nothing; few things are more graceful than a benediction--nothing so
cheap.”

“That may be so. I have nothing to say to it,” she rejoined, in some
irritation. “But old Mr. Loyd’s letter was very beautiful, and very
touching. He reminded Joseph that he himself had married on the very
scantiest of means, and that though his life had never been above the
condition of a very poor vicar, the narrowness of his fortune had not
barred his happiness. I’d like to read you a passage--”

“Pray do not You have given me the key-note, and I feel as if I could
score down the whole symphony.”

“You don’t believe him, then?”

“Heaven forfend! All I would say is, that between a man of his
temperament and one of mine discussion is impossible; and if this be the
letter on which you want my opinion, I frankly tell you I have none to
give.”

“No, no! this is not the letter; here is the letter I wish you to
read. It has only come by this morning’s post, and I want to have your
judgment on it before I speak of it to the girls.”

Calvert drew the letter slowly from its envelope, and, with a sort of
languid resignation, proceeded to read it As he reached the end of the
first page, he said, “Why, it would need a lawyer of the Ecclesiastical
Court to understand this. What’s all this entangled story about
irregular induction, and the last incumbent, and the lay impropriator?”

“Oh, you needn’t have read that! It’s the poor old gentleman’s account
of his calamity; how he has lost his vicarage, and is going down to a
curacy in Cornwall. Here,” said she, pointing to another page, “here is
where you are to begin; ‘I might have borne--’”

“Ah, yes!” said he, reading aloud; “‘I might have borne up better under
this misfortune if it had not occurred at such a critical moment of my
poor boy’s fate, for I am still uncertain what effect these tidings will
have produced on you. I shall no longer have a home to offer the young
people, when from reasons of health, or economy, or relaxation, they
would like to have left the town and come down to rusticate with us.
Neither will it be in my power to contribute--even in the humble shape I
had once hoped--to their means of living. I am, in short, reduced to
the very narrowest fortune, nor have I the most distant prospect of any
better: so much for myself As for Joseph, he has been offered, through
the friendly intervention of an old college companion, an appointment at
the Calcutta Bar. It is not a lucrative nor an important post, but one
which they say will certainly lead to advancement and future fortune.
Had it not been for his hopes--hopes which had latterly constituted the
very spring of his existence--such an opening as this would have been
welcomed with all his heart; but now the offer comes clouded with all
the doubts as to how you may be disposed to regard it. Will you consent
to separate from the dear girl you have watched over with such loving
solicitude for years? Will she herself consent to expatriation and the
parting from her sister and yourself? These are the questions which
torture his mind, and leave him no rest day or night! The poor fellow
has tried to plead his cause in a letter--he has essayed a dozen
times--but all in vain.

“My own selfishness shocks me,” he says, “when I read over what I have
written, and see how completely I have forgotten everything but my own
interests. If he remain at home, by industry and attention he may hope,
in some six or seven years, to be in a position to marry; but six or
seven years are a long period of life, and sure to have their share of
vicissitudes and casualties. Whereas, by accepting this appointment,
which will be nearly seven hundred a year, he could afford at once to
support a wife, of course supposing her to submit willingly to the
privations and wants of such straitened fortunes. I have offered to tell
his story for him--that story he has no strength to tell himself--but I
have not pledged to be his advocate; for, while I would lay down my life
to secure his happiness, I cannot bring myself to urge, for his sake,
what might be unfair or ungenerous to exact from another.

“‘Though my son’s account of your niece leaves us nothing more to ask or
wish for in a daughter, I am writing in ignorance of many things I would
like to know. Has she, for instance, the energy of character that would
face a new life in a new and far away land? Has she courage--has she
health for it? My wife is not pleased at my stating all these reasons
for doubt; but I am determined you shall know the worst of our case from
ourselves, and discover no blot we have not prepared you for.’” Calvert
mattered something here, but too inaudibly to be heard, and went on
reading: “‘When I think that poor Joe’s whole happiness will depend on
what decision your next letter will bring, I have only to pray that
it may be such as will conduce to the welfare of those we both love so
dearly I cannot ask you to make what are called ‘sacrifices’ for us: but
I entreat you let the consideration of affection weigh with you, not
less than that of worldly interests, and also to believe that when one
has to take a decision which is to influence a lifetime, it is as safe
to take counsel from the heart as from the head--from the nature that is
to feel, as from the intellect that is to plan.’

“I think I have read enough of this,” said Calvert, impatiently. “I know
the old gent’s brief perfectly. It’s the old story: first gain a girl’s
affections, and let her friends squabble, if they dare, about the
settlements. He’s an artful old boy, that vicar! but I like him, on the
whole, better than his son, for though he does plead in forma pauperis,
he has the fairness to say so.”

“You are very severe, Mr. Calvert. I hope you are too severe,” said the
old lady, in some agitation.

“And what answer are you going to give him?” asked he, curtly.

“That is exactly the point on which I want your advice; for though
I know well you are no friend to young Loyd, I believe you to be our
sincere well-wisher, and that your judgment will be guided by the honest
feelings of regard for us.”

Without deigning to notice this speech, he arose and walked up and
down the room apparently deep in thought He stopped at last, and said,
abruptly, “I don’t presume to dictate to you in this business; but if I
were the young lady’s guardian, and got such a letter as this, my reply
would be a very brief one.”

“You’d refuse your consent?”

“Of course I would! Must your niece turn adventuress, and go off to
Heaven knows where, with God knows whom? Must she link her fortunes to
a man who confessedly cannot face the world at home, but must go to
the end of the earth for a bare subsistence? What is there in this man
himself, in his character, station, abilities, and promise, that are to
recompense such devotion as this? And what will your own conscience say
to the first letter from India, full of depression and sorrow, regrets
shadowed forth, if not avowed openly, for the happy days when you were
all together, and contrasts of that time, with the dreary dulness of an
uncheered existence? _I_ know something of India, and I can tell you it
is a country where life is only endurable by splendour. Poverty in such
a land is not merely privation, it is to live in derision and contempt.
Everyone knows how many rupees you have per month, and you are measured
by your means in everything. That seven hundred a year, which sounds
plausibly enough, is something like two hundred at home, if so much.
Of course you can override all these considerations, and, as the vicar
says, ‘Let the heart take precedence of the head.’ _My_ cold and
worldly counsels will not stand comparison with _his_ fine and generous
sentiments, no more than I could make as good a figure in the pulpit
as he could. But, perhaps, as a mere man of the world, I am his equal;
though there are little significant hints in that very letter that show
the old parson is very wide awake.”

“I never detected them,” said she, curtly.

“Perhaps not, but rely upon one thing. It was not such a letter as
he would have addressed to a man. If _I_, for instance, had been the
guardian instead of you, the whole tone of the epistle would have been
very different.”

“Do you think so?”

“Think so! I know it I had not read ten lines till I said to myself,
‘This was meant for very different eyes from mine.’”

“If I thought that--”

“Go on,” said he; “finish, and let me hear what you would say or do,
when arrived at the conclusion I have come to.”

So far, however, from having come to any decision, she really did not
see in the remotest distance anything to guide her to one.

“What would you advise me to do, Mr. Calvert?” said she, at last, and
after a pause of some time.

“Refer him to me; say the point is too difficult for you; that while
your feelings for your niece might overbear all other considerations,
those very feelings might be the sources of error to you. You might, for
instance, concede too much to the claim of affection; or, on the other
hand, be too regardful of the mere worldly consideration. Not that, on
second thoughts, I’d enter upon this to him, I’d simply say a friend in
whom I repose the fullest confidence, has consented to represent me in
this difficult matter. Not swayed as I am by the claims of affection,
he will be able to give a calmer and more dispassionate judgment than
I could. Write to Mr. Calvert, therefore, who is now here, and say what
the mere business aspect of the matter suggests to you to urge. Write to
him frankly, as to one who already is known to your son, and has lived
on terms of intimacy with him. His reply will be mine.”

“Is not that a very cold and repelling answer to the good vicar’s
letter?”

“I think not, and I suspect it will have one good effect The parson’s
style will become natural at once, and you’ll see what a very different
fashion he’ll write when the letter is addressed to me.”

“What will Florence say?”

“Nothing, if she knows nothing. And, of course, if you intend to take
her into your counsels, you must please to omit _me_. I’m not going
to legislate for a you

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