← catalogue

Cashel Byron's Profession

by Bernard Shaw · English · Gutenberg #5872 · 485,216 chars · public domain (US)

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

Title: Cashel Byron's Profession

Author: Bernard Shaw


        
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5872]
                Most recently updated: September 21, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5872

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
        Online Distributed Proofreading Team
        
        HTML file produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASHEL BYRON'S PROFESSION ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team








CASHEL BYRON’S PROFESSION

By George Bernard Shaw




PROLOGUE




I


Moncrief House, Panley Common. Scholastic establishment for the sons of
gentlemen, etc.

Panley Common, viewed from the back windows of Moncrief House, is
a tract of grass, furze and rushes, stretching away to the western
horizon.

One wet spring afternoon the sky was full of broken clouds, and the
common was swept by their shadows, between which patches of green
and yellow gorse were bright in the broken sunlight. The hills to the
northward were obscured by a heavy shower, traces of which were drying
off the slates of the school, a square white building, formerly a
gentleman’s country-house. In front of it was a well-kept lawn with a
few clipped holly-trees. At the rear, a quarter of an acre of land was
enclosed for the use of the boys. Strollers on the common could hear, at
certain hours, a hubbub of voices and racing footsteps from within the
boundary wall. Sometimes, when the strollers were boys themselves,
they climbed to the coping, and saw on the other side a piece of common
trampled bare and brown, with a few square yards of concrete, so worn
into hollows as to be unfit for its original use as a ball-alley. Also
a long shed, a pump, a door defaced by innumerable incised inscriptions,
the back of the house in much worse repair than the front, and about
fifty boys in tailless jackets and broad, turned-down collars. When the
fifty boys perceived a stranger on the wall they rushed to the spot with
a wild halloo, overwhelmed him with insult and defiance, and dislodged
him by a volley of clods, stones, lumps of bread, and such other
projectiles as were at hand.

On this rainy spring afternoon a brougham stood at the door of Moncrief
House. The coachman, enveloped in a white india-rubber coat, was
bestirring himself a little after the recent shower. Within-doors, in
the drawing-room, Dr. Moncrief was conversing with a stately lady aged
about thirty-five, elegantly dressed, of attractive manner, and only
falling short of absolute beauty in her complexion, which was deficient
in freshness.

“No progress whatever, I am sorry to say,” the doctor was remarking.

“That is very disappointing,” said the lady, contracting her brows.

“It is natural that you should feel disappointed,” replied the doctor.
“I would myself earnestly advise you to try the effect of placing him
at some other--” The doctor stopped. The lady’s face had lit up with a
wonderful smile, and she had raised her hand with a bewitching gesture
of protest.

“Oh, no, Dr. Moncrief,” she said. “I am not disappointed with YOU; but
I am all the more angry with Cashel, because I know that if he makes no
progress with you it must be his own fault. As to taking him away, that
is out of the question. I should not have a moment’s peace if he were
out of your care. I will speak to him very seriously about his conduct
before I leave to-day. You will give him another trial, will you not?”

“Certainly. With the greatest pleasure,” exclaimed the doctor, confusing
himself by an inept attempt at gallantry. “He shall stay as long as
you please. But”--here the doctor became grave again--“you cannot too
strongly urge upon him the importance of hard work at the present time,
which may be said to be the turning-point of his career as a student. He
is now nearly seventeen; and he has so little inclination for study that
I doubt whether he could pass the examination necessary to entering one
of the universities. You probably wish him to take a degree before he
chooses a profession.”

“Yes, of course,” said the lady, vaguely, evidently assenting to the
doctor’s remark rather than expressing a conviction of her own. “What
profession would you advise for him? You know so much better than I.”

“Hum!” said Dr. Moncrief, puzzled. “That would doubtless depend to some
extent on his own taste--”

“Not at all,” said the lady, interrupting him with vivacity. “What does
he know about the world, poor boy? His own taste is sure to be something
ridiculous. Very likely he would want to go on the stage, like me.”

“Oh! Then you would not encourage any tendency of that sort?”

“Most decidedly not. I hope he has no such idea.”

“Not that I am aware of. He shows so little ambition to excel in any
particular branch that I should say his choice of a profession may be
best determined by his parents. I am, of course, ignorant whether his
relatives possess influence likely to be of use to him. That is often
the chief point to be considered, particularly in cases like your son’s,
where no special aptitude manifests itself.”

“I am the only relative he ever had, poor fellow,” said the lady, with
a pensive smile. Then, seeing an expression of astonishment on the
doctor’s face, she added, quickly, “They are all dead.”

“Dear me!”

“However,” she continued, “I have no doubt I can make plenty of interest
for him. But it is difficult to get anything nowadays without passing
competitive examinations. He really must work. If he is lazy he ought to
be punished.”

The doctor looked perplexed. “The fact is,” he said, “your son can
hardly be dealt with as a child any longer. He is still quite a boy in
his habits and ideas; but physically he is rapidly springing up into a
young man. That reminds me of another point on which I will ask you
to speak earnestly to him. I must tell you that he has attained some
distinction among his school-fellows here as an athlete. Within due
bounds I do not discourage bodily exercises: they are a recognized part
of our system. But I am sorry to say that Cashel has not escaped that
tendency to violence which sometimes results from the possession of
unusual strength and dexterity. He actually fought with one of the
village youths in the main street of Panley some months ago. The matter
did not come to my ears immediately; and, when it did, I allowed it to
pass unnoticed, as he had interfered, it seems, to protect one of the
smaller boys. Unfortunately he was guilty of a much more serious fault
a little later. He and a companion of his had obtained leave from me to
walk to Panley Abbey together. I afterwards found that their real object
was to witness a prize-fight that took place--illegally, of course--on
the common. Apart from the deception practised, I think the taste they
betrayed a dangerous one; and I felt bound to punish them by a severe
imposition, and restriction to the grounds for six weeks. I do not hold,
however, that everything has been done in these cases when a boy has
been punished. I set a high value on a mother’s influence for softening
the natural roughness of boys.”

“I don’t think he minds what I say to him in the least,” said the lady,
with a sympathetic air, as if she pitied the doctor in a matter that
chiefly concerned him. “I will speak to him about it, of course.
Fighting is an unbearable habit. His father’s people were always
fighting; and they never did any good in the world.”

“If you will be so kind. There are just the three points: the necessity
for greater--much greater--application to his studies; a word to him
on the subject of rough habits; and to sound him as to his choice of a
career. I agree with you in not attaching much importance to his ideas
on that subject as yet. Still, even a boyish fancy may be turned to
account in rousing the energies of a lad.”

“Quite so,” assented the lady. “I will certainly give him a lecture.”

The doctor looked at her mistrustfully, thinking perhaps that she
herself would be the better for a lecture on her duties as a mother. But
he did not dare to tell her so; indeed, having a prejudice to the effect
that actresses were deficient in natural feeling, he doubted the use of
daring. He also feared that the subject of her son was beginning to bore
her; and, though a doctor of divinity, he was as reluctant as other men
to be found wanting in address by a pretty woman. So he rang the bell,
and bade the servant send Master Cashel Byron. Presently a door was
heard to open below, and a buzz of distant voices became audible.
The doctor fidgeted and tried to think of something to say, but his
invention failed him: he sat in silence while the inarticulate buzz rose
into a shouting of “By-ron!” “Cash!” the latter cry imitated from the
summons usually addressed to cashiers in haberdashers’ shops.
Finally there was a piercing yell of “Mam-ma-a-a-a-ah!” apparently in
explanation of the demand for Byron’s attendance in the drawing-room.
The doctor reddened. Mrs. Byron smiled. Then the door below closed,
shutting out the tumult, and footsteps were heard on the stairs.

“Come in,” cried the doctor, encouragingly.

Master Cashel Byron entered blushing; made his way awkwardly to his
mother, and kissed the critical expression which was on her upturned
face as she examined his appearance. Being only seventeen, he had not
yet acquired a taste for kissing. He inexpertly gave Mrs. Byron quite a
shock by the collision of their teeth. Conscious of the failure, he drew
himself upright, and tried to hide his hands, which were exceedingly
dirty, in the scanty folds of his jacket. He was a well-grown youth,
with neck and shoulders already strongly formed, and short auburn hair
curling in little rings close to his scalp. He had blue eyes, and an
expression of boyish good-humor, which, however, did not convey any
assurance of good temper.

“How do you do, Cashel?” said Mrs. Byron, in a queenly manner, after a
prolonged look at him.

“Very well, thanks,” said he, grinning and avoiding her eye.

“Sit down, Byron,” said the doctor. Byron suddenly forgot how to sit
down, and looked irresolutely from one chair to another. The doctor made
a brief excuse, and left the room; much to the relief of his pupil.

“You have grown greatly, Cashel. And I am afraid you are very awkward.”
 Cashel colored and looked gloomy.

“I do not know what to do with you,” continued Mrs. Byron. “Dr. Moncrief
tells me that you are very idle and rough.”

“I am not,” said Cashel, sulkily. “It is bec--”

“There is no use in contradicting me in that fashion,” said Mrs. Byron,
interrupting him sharply. “I am sure that whatever Dr. Moncrief says is
perfectly true.”

“He is always talking like that,” said Cashel, plaintively. “I can’t
learn Latin and Greek; and I don’t see what good they are. I work as
hard as any of the rest--except the regular stews, perhaps. As to
my being rough, that is all because I was out one day with Gully
Molesworth, and we saw a crowd on the common, and when we went to see
what was up it was two men fighting. It wasn’t our fault that they came
there to fight.”

“Yes; I have no doubt that you have fifty good excuses, Cashel. But I
will not allow any fighting; and you really must work harder. Do you
ever think of how hard _I_ have to work to pay Dr. Moncrief one hundred
and twenty pounds a year for you?”

“I work as hard as I can. Old Moncrief seems to think that a fellow
ought to do nothing else from morning till night but write Latin verses.
Tatham, that the doctor thinks such a genius, does all his constering
from cribs. If I had a crib I could conster as well--very likely
better.”

“You are very idle, Cashel; I am sure of that. It is too provoking to
throw away so much money every year for nothing. Besides, you must soon
be thinking of a profession.”

“I shall go into the army,” said Cashel. “It is the only profession for
a gentleman.”

Mrs. Byron looked at him for a moment as if amazed at his presumption.
But she checked herself and only said, “I am afraid you will have to
choose some less expensive profession than that. Besides, you would have
to pass an examination to enable you to enter the army; and how can you
do that unless you study?”

“Oh, I shall do that all right enough when the time comes.”

“Dear, dear! You are beginning to speak so coarsely, Cashel. After all
the pains I took with you at home!”

“I speak the same as other people,” he replied, sullenly. “I don’t see
the use of being so jolly particular over every syllable. I used to have
to stand no end of chaff about my way of speaking. The fellows here know
all about you, of course.”

“All about me?” repeated Mrs. Byron, looking at him curiously.

“All about your being on the stage, I mean,” said Cashel. “You complain
of my fighting; but I should have a precious bad time of it if I didn’t
lick the chaff out of some of them.”

Mrs. Byron smiled doubtfully to herself, and remained silent and
thoughtful for a moment. Then she rose and said, glancing at the
weather, “I must go now, Cashel, before another shower begins. And do,
pray, try to learn something, and to polish your manners a little. You
will have to go to Cambridge soon, you know.”

“Cambridge!” exclaimed Cashel, excited. “When, mamma? When?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Not yet. As soon as Dr. Moncrief says you are fit to
go.”

“That will be long enough,” said Cashel, much dejected by this reply.
“He will not turn one hundred and twenty pounds a year out of doors in
a hurry. He kept big Inglis here until he was past twenty. Look here,
mamma; might I go at the end of this half? I feel sure I should do
better at Cambridge than here.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Byron, decidedly. “I do not expect to have to take
you away from Dr. Moncrief for the next eighteen months at least, and
not then unless you work properly. Now don’t grumble, Cashel; you annoy
me exceedingly when you do. I am sorry I mentioned Cambridge to you.”

“I would rather go to some other school, then,” said Cashel, ruefully.
“Old Moncrief is so awfully down on me.”

“You only want to leave because you are expected to work here; and that
is the very reason I wish you to stay.”

Cashel made no reply; but his face darkened ominously.

“I have a word to say to the doctor before I go,” she added, reseating
herself. “You may return to your play now. Good-bye, Cashel.” And she
again raised her face to be kissed.

“Good-bye,” said Cashel, huskily, as he turned toward the door,
pretending that he had not noticed her action.

“Cashel!” she said, with emphatic surprise. “Are you sulky?”

“No,” he retorted, angrily. “I haven’t said anything. I suppose my
manners are not good enough, I’m very sorry; but I can’t help it.”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Byron, firmly. “You can go, Cashel. I am not
pleased with you.”

Cashel walked out of the room and slammed the door. At the foot of the
staircase he was stopped by a boy about a year younger than himself, who
accosted him eagerly.

“How much did she give you?” he whispered.

“Not a halfpenny,” replied Cashel, grinding his teeth.

“Oh, I say!” exclaimed the other, much disappointed. “That was beastly
mean.”

“She’s as mean as she can be,” said Cashel. “It’s all old Monkey’s
fault. He has been cramming her with lies about me. But she’s just as
bad as he is. I tell you, Gully, I hate my mother.”

“Oh, come!” said Gully, shocked. “That’s a little too strong, old chap.
But she certainly ought to have stood something.”

“I don’t know what you intend to do, Gully; but I mean to bolt. If she
thinks I am going to stick here for the next two years she is jolly much
mistaken.”

“It would be an awful lark to bolt,” said Gully, with a chuckle. “But,”
 he added, seriously, “if you really mean it, by George, I’ll go too!
Wilson has just given me a thousand lines; and I’ll be hanged if I do
them.”

“Gully,” said Cashel, his eyes sparkling, “I should like to see one of
those chaps we saw on the common pitch into the doctor--get him on the
ropes, you know.”

Gully’s mouth watered. “Yes,” he said, breathlessly; “particularly the
fellow they called the Fibber. Just one round would be enough for the
old beggar. Let’s come out into the playground; I shall catch it if I am
found here.”




II


That night there was just sufficient light struggling through the clouds
to make Panley Common visible as a black expanse, against the lightest
tone of which a piece of ebony would have appeared pale. Not a human
being was stirring within a mile of Moncrief House, the chimneys of
which, ghostly white on the side next the moon, threw long shadows on
the silver-gray slates. The stillness had just been broken by the stroke
of a quarter past twelve from a distant church tower, when, from the
obscurity of one of these chimney shadows, a head emerged. It belonged
to a boy, whose body presently wriggled through an open skylight. When
his shoulders were through he turned himself face upward, seized the
miniature gable in which the skylight was set, drew himself completely
out, and made his way stealthily down to the parapet. He was immediately
followed by another boy.

The door of Moncrief House was at the left-hand corner of the front, and
was surmounted by a tall porch, the top of which was flat and could be
used as a balcony. A wall, of the same height as the porch, connected
the house front with the boundary wall, and formed part of the enclosure
of a fruit garden which lay at the side of the house between the lawn
and the playground. When the two boys had crept along the parapet to a
point directly above the porch they stopped, and each lowered a pair
of boots to the balcony by means of fishing-lines. When the boots were
safely landed, their owners let the lines drop and reentered the house
by another skylight. A minute elapsed. Then they reappeared on the top
of the porch, having come out through the window to which it served as a
balcony. Here they put on their boots, and stepped on to the wall of the
fruit garden. As they crawled along it, the hindmost boy whispered.

“I say, Cashy.”

“Shut up, will you,” replied the other under his breath. “What’s wrong?”

“I should like to have one more go at old mother Moncrief’s pear-tree;
that’s all.”

“There are no pears on it this season, you fool.”

“I know. This is the last time we shall go this road, Cashy. Usen’t it
to be a lark? Eh?”

“If you don’t shut up, it won’t be the last time; for you’ll be caught.
Now for it.”

Cashel had reached the outer wall, and he finished his sentence by
dropping from it to the common. Gully held his breath for some moments
after the noise made by his companion’s striking the ground. Then he
demanded in a whisper whether all was right.

“Yes,” returned Cashel, impatiently. “Drop as soft as you can.”

Gully obeyed; and was so careful lest his descent should shake the
earth and awake the doctor, that his feet shrank from the concussion. He
alighted in a sitting posture, and remained there, looking up at Cashel
with a stunned expression.

“Crikey!” he ejaculated, presently. “That was a buster.”

“Get up, I tell you,” said Cashel. “I never saw such a jolly ass as you
are. Here, up with you! Have you got your wind back?”

“I should think so. Bet you twopence I’ll be first at the cross roads. I
say, let’s pull the bell at the front gate and give an awful yell before
we start. They’ll never catch us.”

“Yes,” said Cashel, ironically; “I fancy I see myself doing it, or you
either. Now then. One, two, three, and away.”

They ran off together, and reached the cross roads about eight minutes
later; Gully completely out of breath, and Cashel nearly so. Here,
according to their plan, Gully was to take the north road and run to
Scotland, where he felt sure that his uncle’s gamekeeper would hide
him. Cashel was to go to sea; where, he argued, he could, if his affairs
became desperate, turn pirate, and achieve eminence in that profession
by adding a chivalrous humanity to the ruder virtues for which it is
already famous.

Cashel waited until Gully had recovered from his race. Then he said.

“Now, old fellow, we’ve got to separate.”

Gully, thus confronted with the lonely realities of his scheme, did not
like the prospect. After a moment’s reflection he exclaimed:

“Damme, old chap, but I’ll come with you. Scotland may go and be
hanged.”

But Cashel, being the stronger of the two, was as anxious to get rid of
Gully as Gully was to cling to him. “No,” he said; “I’m going to rough
it; and you wouldn’t be able for that. You’re not strong enough for a
sea life. Why, man, those sailor fellows are as hard as nails; and even
they can hardly stand it.”

“Well, then, do you come with me,” urged Gully. “My uncle’s gamekeeper
won’t mind. He’s a jolly good sort; and we shall have no end of
shooting.”

“That’s all very well for you, Gully; but I don’t know your uncle;
and I’m not going to put myself under a compliment to his gamekeeper.
Besides, we should run too much risk of being caught if we went through
the country together. Of course I should be only too glad if we could
stick to one another, but it wouldn’t do; I feel certain we should be
nabbed. Good-bye.”

“But wait a minute,” pleaded Gully. “Suppose they do try to catch us; we
shall have a better chance against them if there are two of us.”

“Stuff!” said Cashel. “That’s all boyish nonsense. There will be at
least six policemen sent after us; and even if I did my very best, I
could barely lick two if they came on together. And you would hardly
be able for one. You just keep moving, and don’t go near any railway
station, and you will get to Scotland all safe enough. Look here, we
have wasted five minutes already. I have got my wind now, and I must be
off. Good-bye.”

Gully disdained to press his company on Cashel any further. “Good-bye,”
 he said, mournfully shaking his hand. “Success, old chap.”

“Success,” echoed Cashel, grasping Gully’s hand with a pang of remorse
for leaving him. “I’ll write to you as soon as I have anything to tell
you. It may be some months, you know, before I get regularly settled.”

He gave Gully a final squeeze, released him, and darted off along the
road leading to Panley Village. Gully looked after him for a moment, and
then ran away Scotlandwards.

Panley Village consisted of a High Street, with an old-fashioned inn at
one end, a modern railway station and bridge at the other, and a pump
and pound midway between. Cashel stood for a while in the shadow under
the bridge before venturing along the broad, moonlit street. Seeing no
one, he stepped out at a brisk walking pace; for he had by this time
reflected that it was not possible to run all the way to the Spanish
main. There was, however, another person stirring in the village besides
Cashel. This was Mr. Wilson, Dr. Moncrief’s professor of mathematics,
who was returning from a visit to the theatre. Mr. Wilson had
an impression that theatres were wicked places, to be visited by
respectable men only on rare occasions and by stealth. The only plays he
went openly to witness were those of Shakespeare; and his favorite was
“As You Like It”; Rosalind in tights having an attraction for him which
he missed in Lady Macbeth in petticoats. On this evening he had seen
Rosalind impersonated by a famous actress, who had come to a neighboring
town on a starring tour. After the performance he had returned to
Panley, supped there with a friend, and was now making his way back to
Moncrief House, of which he had been intrusted with the key. He was in
a frame of mind favorable for the capture of a runaway boy. An habitual
delight in being too clever for his pupils, fostered by frequently
overreaching them in mathematics, was just now stimulated by the effect
of a liberal supper and the roguish consciousness of having been to the
play. He saw and recognized Cashel as he approached the village pound.
Understanding the situation at once, he hid behind the pump, waited
until the unsuspecting truant was passing within arm’s-length, and then
stepped out and seized him by the collar of his jacket.

“Well, sir,” he said. “What are you doing here at this hour? Eh?”

Cashel, scared and white, looked up at him, and could not answer a word.

“Come along with me,” said Wilson, sternly.

Cashel suffered himself to be led for some twenty yards. Then he stopped
and burst into tears.

“There is no use in my going back,” he said, sobbing. “I have never done
any good there. I can’t go back.”

“Indeed,” said Wilson, with magisterial sarcasm. “We shall try to make
you do better in future.” And he forced the fugitive to resume his
march.

Cashel, bitterly humiliated by his own tears, and exasperated by a
certain cold triumph which his captor evinced on witnessing them, did
not go many steps farther without protest.

“You needn’t hold me,” he said, angrily; “I can walk without being
held.” The master tightened his grasp and pushed his captive forward.
“I won’t run away, sir,” said Cashel, more humbly, shedding fresh tears.
“Please let me go,” he added, in a suffocated voice, trying to turn his
face toward his captor. But Wilson twisted him back again, and urged him
still onward. Cashel cried out passionately, “Let me go,” and struggled
to break loose.

“Come, come, Byron,” said the master, controlling him with a broad,
strong hand; “none of your nonsense, sir.”

Then Cashel suddenly slipped out of his jacket, turned on Wilson, and
struck up at him savagely with his right fist. The master received the
blow just beside the point of his chin; and his eyes seemed to Cashel
roll up and fall back into his head with the shock. He drooped forward
for a moment, and fell in a heap face downward. Cashel recoiled,
wringing his hand to relieve the tingling of his knuckles, and terrified
by the thought that he had committed murder. But Wilson presently moved
and dispelled that misgiving. Some of Cashel’s fury returned as he shook
his fist at his prostrate adversary, and, exclaiming, “YOU won’t
brag much of having seen me cry,” wrenched the jacket from him with
unnecessary violence, and darted away at full speed.

Mr. Wilson, though he was soon conscious and able to rise, did not feel
disposed to stir for a long time. He began to moan with a dazed faith
that some one would eventually come to him with sympathy and assistance.
Five minutes elapsed, and brought nothing but increased cold and pain.
It occurred to him that if the police found him they would suppose him
to be drunk; also that it was his duty to go to them and give them
the alarm. He rose, and, after a struggle with dizziness and nausea,
concluded that his most pressing duty was to get to bed, and leave Dr.
Moncrief to recapture his ruffianly pupil as best he could.

Accordingly, at half-past one o’clock, the doctor was roused by a
knocking at his chamber-door, outside which he presently found his
professor of mathematics, bruised, muddy, and apparently inebriated.
Five minutes elapsed before Wilson could get his principal’s mind on the
right track. Then the boys were awakened and the roll called. Byron and
Molesworth were reported absent. No one had seen them go; no one had
the least suspicion of how they got out of the house. One little boy
mentioned the skylight; but observing a threatening expression on the
faces of a few of the bigger boys, who were fond of fruit, he did not
press his suggestion, and submitted to be snubbed by the doctor for
having made it. It was nearly three o’clock before the alarm reached the
village, where the authorities tacitly declined to trouble themselves
about it until morning. The doctor, convinced that the lad had gone to
his mother, did not believe that any search was necessary, and contented
himself with writing a note to Mrs. Byron describing the attack on Mr.
Wilson, and expressing regret that no proposal having for its object the
readmission of Master Byron to the academy could be entertained.

The pursuit was now directed entirely after Molesworth, an it wan plain,
from Mr. Wilson’s narrative, that he had separated from Cashel outside
Panley. Information was soon forthcoming. Peasants in all parts of
the country had seen, they said, “a lad that might be him.” The
search lasted until five o’clock next afternoon, when it was rendered
superfluous by the appearance of Gully in person, footsore and
repentant. After parting from Cashel and walking two miles, he had lost
heart and turned back. Half way to the cross roads he had reproached
himself with cowardice, and resumed his flight. This time he placed
eight miles betwixt himself and Moncrief House. Then he left the road to
make a short cut through a plantation, and went astray. After wandering
until morning, thinking dejectedly of the story of the babes in the
wood, he saw a woman working in a field, and asked her the shortest way
to Scotland. She had never heard of Scotland; and when he asked the way
to Panley she lost patience and threatened to set her dog at him.
This discouraged him so much that he was afraid to speak to the other
strangers whom he met. Having the sun as a compass, he oscillated
between Scotland and Panley according to the fluctuation of his courage.
At last he yielded to hunger, fatigue, and loneliness, devoted his
remaining energy to the task of getting back to school; struck the
common at last, and hastened to surrender himself to the doctor, who
menaced him with immediate expulsion. Gully was greatly concerned at
having to leave the place he had just run away from, and earnestly
begged the doctor to give him another chance. His prayer was granted.
After a prolonged lecture, the doctor, in consideration of the facts
that Gully had been seduced by the example of a desperate associate,
that he had proved the sincerity of his repentance by coming back of his
own accord, and had not been accessory to the concussion of the brain
from which Mr. Wilson supposed himself to be suffering, accepted his
promise of amendment and gave him a free pardon. It should be added
that Gully kept his promise, and, being now the oldest pupil, graced his
position by becoming a moderately studious, and, on one occasion, even a
sensible lad.

Meanwhile Mrs. Byron, not suspecting the importance of the doctor’s
note, and happening to be in a hurry when it arrived, laid it by
unopened, intending to read it at her leisure. She would have forgotten
it altogether but for a second note which came two days later,
requesting some acknowledgment of the previous communication. On
learning the truth she immediately drove to Moncrief House, and there
abused the doctor as he had never been abused in his life before; after
which she begged his pardon, and implored him to assist her to recover
her darling boy. When he suggested that she should offer a reward for
information and capture she indignantly refused to spend a farthing on
the little ingrate; wept and accused herself of having driven him away
by her unkindness; stormed and accused the doctor of having treated him
harshly; and, finally, said that she would give one hundred pounds to
have him back, but that she would never speak to him again. The doctor
promised to undertake the search, and would have promised anything
to get rid of his visitor. A reward of fifty pounds was offered. But
whether the fear of falling into the clutches of the law for murderous
assault stimulated Cashel to extraordinary precaution, or whether he had
contrived to leave the country in the four days which elapsed between
his flight and the offer of the reward, the doctor’s efforts were
unsuccessful; and he had to confess their failure to Mrs. Byron. She
agreeably surprised him by writing a pleasant letter to the effect that
it was very provoking, and that she could never thank him sufficiently
for all the trouble he had taken. And so the matter dropped.

Long after that generation of scholars had passed away from Moncrief
House, the name of Cashel Byron was remembered there as that of a hero
who, after many fabulous exploits, had licked a master and bolted to the
Spanish Main.




III


There was at this time in the city of Melbourne, in Australia, a wooden
building, above the door of which was a board inscribed “GYMNASIUM AND
SCHOOL OF ARMS.” In the long, narrow entry hung a framed manuscript
which set forth that Ned Skene, ex-champion of England and the colonies,
was to be heard of within daily by gentlemen desirous of becoming
proficient in the art of self-defence. Also the terms on which Mrs.
Skene, assisted by a competent staff of professors, would give lessons
in dancing, deportment, and calisthenics.

One evening a man sat smoking on a common wooden chair outside the door
of this establishment. On the ground beside him were some tin tacks and
a hammer, with which he had just nailed to the doorpost a card on which
was written in a woman’s handwriting: “WANTED A MALE ATTENDANT WHO CAN
KEEP ACCOUNTS. INQUIRE WITHIN.” The smoker was a powerful man, with a
thick neck that swelled out beneath his broad, flat ear-lobes. He had
small eyes, and large teeth, over which his lips were slightly parted in
a good-humored but cunning smile. His hair was black and close-cut; his
skin indurated; and the bridge of his nose smashed level with his face.
The tip, however, was uninjured. It was squab and glossy, and, by giving
the whole feature an air of being on the point of expanding to its
original shape, produced a snubbed expression which relieved the
otherwise formidable aspect of the man, and recommended him as probably
a modest and affable fellow when sober and unprovoked. He seemed about
fifty years of age, and was clad in a straw hat and a suit of white
linen.

He had just finished his pipe when a youth stopped to read the card on
the doorpost. This youth was attired in a coarse sailor’s jersey and a
pair of gray tweed trousers, which he had considerably outgrown.

“Looking for a job?” inquired the ex-champion of England and the
colonies.

The youth blushed and replied, “Yes. I should like to get something to
do.”

Mr. Skene stared at him with stern curiosity. His piofessional pursuits
had familiarized him with the manners and speech of English gentlemen,
and he immediately recognized the shabby sailor lad as one of that
class.

“Perhaps you’re a scholar,” said the prize-fighter, after a moment’s
reflection.

“I have been at school; but I didn’t learn much there,” replied the
youth. “I think I could bookkeep by double entry,” he added, glancing at
the card.

“Double entry! What’s that?”

“It’s the way merchants’ books are kept. It is called so because
everything is entered twice over.”

“Ah!” said Skene, unfavorably impressed by the system; “once is enough
for me. What’s your weight?”

“I don’t know,” said the lad, with a grin.

“Not know your own weight!” exclaimed Skene. “That ain’t the way to get
on in life.”

“I haven’t been weighed since I was in England,” said the other,
beginning to get the better of his shyness. “I was eight stone four
then; so you see I am only a light-weight.”

“And what do you know about light-weights? Perhaps, being so well
educated, you know how to fight. Eh?”

“I don’t think I could fight you,” said the youth, with another grin.

Skene chuckled; and the stranger, with boyish communicativeness,
gave him an account of a real fight (meaning, apparently, one between
professional pugilists) which he had seen in England. He went on to
describe how he had himself knocked down a master with one blow
when running away from school. Skene received this sceptically, and
cross-examined the narrator as to the manner and effect of the blow,
with the result of convincing himself that the story was true. At the
end of a quarter of an hour the lad had commended himself so favorably
by his conversation that the champion took him into the gymnasium,
weighed him, measured him, and finally handed him a pair of boxing
gloves and invited him to show what he was made of. The youth, though
impressed by the prize-fighter’s attitude with a hopeless sense of
the impossibility of reaching him, rushed boldly at him several times,
knocking his face on each occasion against Skene’s left fist, which
seemed to be ubiquitous, and to have the property of imparting the
consistency of iron to padded leather. At last the novice directed
a frantic assault at the champion’s nose, rising on his toes in his
excitement as he did so. Skene struck up the blow with his right arm,
and the impetuous youth spun and stumbled away until he fell supine in a
corner, rapping his head smartly on the floor at the same time. He rose
with unabated cheerfulness and offered to continue the combat; but Skene
declined any further exercise just then, and, much pleased with his
novice’s game, promised to give him a scientific education and make a
man of him.

The champion now sent for his wife, whom he revered as a preeminently
sensible and well-mannered woman. The newcomer could see in her only a
ridiculous dancing-mistress; but he treated her with great deference,
and thereby improved the favorable opinion which Skene had already
formed of him. He related to her how, after running away from school, he
had made his way to Liverpool, gone to the docks, and contrived to hide
himself on board a ship bound for Australia. Also how he had suffered
severely from hunger and thirst before he discovered himself; and how,
notwithstanding his unpopular position as stowaway, he had been fairly
treated as soon as he had shown that he was willing to work. And in
proof that he was still willing, and had profited by his maritime
experience, he offered to sweep the floor of the gymnasium then and
there. This proposal convinced the Skenes, who had listened to his story
like children listening to a fairy tale, that he was not too much of a
gentleman to do rough work, and it was presently arranged that he should
thenceforth board and lodge with them, have five shillings a week for
pocket-money, and be man-of-all-work, servant, gymnasium-attendant,
clerk, and apprentice to the ex-champion of England and the colonies.

He soon found his bargain no easy one. The gymnasium was open from nine
in the morning until eleven at night, and the athletic gentlemen who
came there not only ordered him about without ceremony, but varied the
monotony of being set at naught by the invincible Skene by practising
what he taught them on the person of his apprentice, whom they pounded
with great relish, and threw backwards, forwards, and over their
shoulders as though he had been but a senseless effigy, provided for
that purpose. Meanwhile the champion looked on and laughed, being too
lazy to redeem his promise of teaching the novice to defend himself. The
latter, however, watched the lessons which he saw daily given to others,
and, before the end of a month, he so completely turned the tables on
the amateur pugilists of Melbourne that Skene one day took occasion to
remark that he was growing uncommon clever, but that gentlemen liked
to be played easy with, and that he should be careful not to knock them
about too much. Besides these bodily exertions, he had to keep account
of gloves and foils sold and bought, and of the fees due both to Mr. and
Mrs. Skene. This was the most irksome part of his duty; for he wrote
a large, schoolboy hand, and was not quick at figures. When he at last
began to assist his master in giving lessons the accounts had fallen
into arrear, and Mrs. Skene had to resume her former care of them; a
circumstance which gratified her husband, who regarded it as a fresh
triumph of her superior intelligence. Then a Chinaman was engaged to do
the more menial work of the establishment. “Skene’s novice,” as he was
now generally called, was elevated to the rank of assistant professor to
the champion, and became a person of some consequence in the gymnasium.

He had been there more than nine months, and had developed from an
active youth into an athletic young man of eighteen, when an important
conversation took place between him and his principal. It was evening,
and the only persons in the gymnasium were Ned Skene, who sat smoking
at his ease with his coat off, and the novice, who had just come
down-stairs from his bedroom, where he had been preparing for a visit to
the theatre.

“Well, my gentleman,” said Skene, mockingly; “you’re a fancy man, you
are. Gloves too! They’re too small for you. Don’t you get hittin’ nobody
with them on, or you’ll mebbe sprain your wrist.”

“Not much fear of that,” said the novice, looking at his watch, and,
finding that he had some minutes to spare, sitting down opposite Skene.

“No,” assented the champion. “When you rise to be a regular professional
you won’t care to spar with nobody without you’re well paid for it.”

“I may say I am in the profession already. You don’t call me an amateur,
do you?”

“Oh, no,” said Skene, soothingly; “not so bad as that. But mind you,
my boy, I don’t call no man a fighting-man what ain’t been in the ring.
You’re a sparrer, and a clever, pretty sparrer; but sparring ain’t the
real thing. Some day, please God, we’ll make up a little match for you,
and show what you can do without the gloves.”

“I would just as soon have the gloves off as on,” said the novice, a
little sulkily.

“That’s because you have a heart as big as a lion,” said Skene, patting
him on the shoulder. But the novice, who was accustomed to hear his
master pay the same compliment to his patrons whenever they were seized
with fits of boasting (which usually happened when they got beaten),
looked obdurate and said nothing.

“Sam Ducket, of Milltown, was here to-day while you was out giving
Captain Noble his lesson,” continued Skene, watching his apprentice’s
face cunningly. “Now Sam is a real fighting-man, if you like.”

“I don’t think much of him. He’s a liar, for one thing.”

“That’s a failing of the profession. I don’t mind telling YOU so,”
 said Skene, mournfully. Now the novice had found out this for himself,
already. He never, for instance, believed the accounts which his master
gave of the accidents and conspiracies which had led to his being
defeated three times in the ring. However, as Skene had won fifteen
battles, his next remark was undeniable. “Men fight none the worse for
being liars. Sam Ducket bet Ebony Muley in twenty minutes.”

“Yes,” said the novice, scornfully; “and what is Ebony Muley? A wretched
old nigger nearly sixty years old, who is drunk seven days in the week,
and would sell a fight for a glass of brandy! Ducket ought to have
knocked him out of time in seventy seconds. Ducket has no science.”

“Not a bit,” said Ned. “But he has lots of game.”

“Pshaw! Come, now, Ned; you know as well as I do that that is one of the
stalest commonplaces going. If a fellow knows how to box, they always
say he has science but no pluck. If he doesn’t know his right hand from
his left, they say that he isn’t clever but that he is full of game.”

Skene looked with secret wonder at his pupil, whose powers of
observation and expression sometimes seemed to him almost to rival those
of Mrs. Skene. “Sam was saying something like that to-day,” he remarked.
“He says you’re only a sparrer, and that you’d fall down with fright if
you was put into a twenty-four-foot ring.”

The novice flushed. “I wish I had been here when Sum Ducket said that.”

“Why, what could you ha’ done to him?” said Skene, his small eyes
twinkling.

“I’d have punched his head; that’s what I could and would have done to
him.”

“Why, man, he’d eat you.”

“He might. And he might eat you too, Ned, if he had salt enough with
you. He talks big because he knows I have no money; and he pretends he
won’t strip for less than fifty pounds a side.”

“No money!” cried Skene. “I know them as’ll make up fifty pound before
twelve to-morrow for any man as I will answer for. There’d be a start
for a young man! Why, my fust fight was for five shillings in Tott’nam
Fields; and proud I was when I won it. I don’t want to set you on to
fight a crack like Sam Ducket anyway against your inclinations; but
don’t go for to say that money isn’t to be had. Let Ned Skene pint to a
young man and say, ‘That’s the young man as Ned backs,’ and others will
come for’ard--ay, crowds of ‘em.”

The novice hesitated. “Do you think I ought to, Ned?” he said.

“That ain’t for me to say,” said Skene, doggedly. “I know what I would
ha’ said at your age. But perhaps you’re right to be cautious. I tell
you the truth, I wouldn’t care to see you whipped by the like of Sam
Ducket.”

“Will you train me if I challenge him?”

“Will I train you!” echoed Skene, rising with enthusiasm. “Ay will I
train you, and put my money on you, too; and you shall knock fireworks
out of him, my boy, as sure as my name’s Ned Skene.”

“Then,” cried the novice, reddening with excitement, “I’ll fight him.
And if I lick him you will have to hand over your belt as champion of
the colonies to me.”

“So I will,” said Skene, affectionately. “Don’t out late; and don’t for
your life touch a drop of liquor. You must go into training to-morrow.”

This was Cashel Byron’s first professional engagement.




CHAPTER I


Wiltstoken Castle was a square building with circular bastions at the
corners, each bastion terminating skyward in a Turkish minaret. The
southwest face was the front, and was pierced by a Moorish arch fitted
with glass doors, which could be secured on occasion by gates of
fantastically hammered iron. The arch was enshrined by a Palladian
portico, which rose to the roof, and was surmounted by an open pediment,
in the cleft of which stood a black-marble figure of an Egyptian, erect,
and gazing steadfastly at the midday sun. On the ground beneath was
an Italian terrace with two great stone elephants at the ends of the
balustrade. The windows on the upper story were, like the entrance,
Moorish; but the principal ones below were square bays, mullioned.
The castle was considered grand by the illiterate; but architects and
readers of books on architecture condemned it as a nondescript
mixture of styles in the worst possible taste. It stood on an eminence
surrounded by hilly woodland, thirty acres of which were enclosed as
Wiltstoken Park. Half a mile south was the little town of Wiltstoken,
accessible by rail from London in about two hours.

Most of the inhabitants of Wiltstoken were Conservatives. They stood in
awe of the castle; and some of them would at any time have cut half a
dozen of their oldest friends to obtain an invitation to dinner, or oven
a bow in public, from Miss Lydia Carew, its orphan mistress. This Miss
Carew was a remarkable person. She had inherited the castle and park
from her aunt, who had considered her niece’s large fortune in railways
and mines incomplete without land. So many other legacies had Lydia
received from kinsfolk who hated poor relations, that she was now, in
her twenty-fifth year, the independent possessor of an annual income
equal to the year’s earnings of five hundred workmen, and under no
external compulsion to do anything in return for it. In addition to the
advantage of being a single woman in unusually easy circumstances, she
enjoyed a reputation for vast learning and exquisite culture. It was
said in Wiltstoken that she knew forty-eight living languages and
all dead ones; could play on every known musical instrument; was an
accomplished painter, and had written poetry. All this might as well
have been true as far as the Wiltstokeners were concerned, since she
knew more than they. She had spent her life travelling with her father,
a man of active mind and bad digestion, with a taste for sociology,
science in general, and the fine arts. On these subjects he had written
books, by which he had earned a considerable reputation as a critic and
philosopher. They were the outcome of much reading, observation of men
and cities, sight-seeing, and theatre-going, of which his daughter had
done her share, and indeed, as she grew more competent and he weaker and
older, more than her share. He had had to combine health-hunting with
pleasure-seeking; and, being very irritable and fastidious, had schooled
her in self-control and endurance by harder lessons than those which had
made her acquainted with the works of Greek and German philosophers long
before she understood the English into which she translated them.

When Lydia was in her twenty-first year her father’s health failed
seriously. He became more dependent on her; and she anticipated that he
would also become more exacting in his demands on her time. The contrary
occurred. One day, at Naples, she had arranged to go riding with an
English party that was staying there. Shortly before the appointed
hour he asked her to make a translation of a long extract from Lessing.
Lydia, in whom self-questionings as to the justice of her father’s yoke
had been for some time stirring, paused thoughtfully for perhaps two
seconds before she consented. Carew said nothing, but he presently
intercepted a servant who was bearing an apology to the English party,
read the note, and went back to his daughter, who was already busy at
Lessing.

“Lydia,” he said, with a certain hesitation, which she would have
ascribed to shyness had that been at all credible of her father when
addressing her, “I wish you never to postpone your business to literary
trifling.”

She looked at him with the vague fear that accompanies a new and
doubtful experience; and he, dissatisfied with his way of putting the
case, added, “It is of greater importance that you should enjoy yourself
for an hour than that my book should be advanced. Far greater!”

Lydia, after some consideration, put down her pen and said, “I shall not
enjoy riding if there is anything else left undone.”

“I shall not enjoy your writing if your excursion is given up for it,”
 he said. “I prefer your going.”

Lydia obeyed silently. An odd thought struck her that she might end the
matter gracefully by kissing him. But as they were unaccustomed to make
demonstrations of this kind, nothing came of the impulse. She spent the
day on horseback, reconsidered her late rebellious thoughts, and made
the translation in the evening.

Thenceforth Lydia had a growing sense of the power she had unwittingly
been acquiring during her long subordination. Timidly at first, and more
boldly as she became used to dispense with the parental leading-strings,
she began to follow her own bent in selecting subjects for study, and
even to defend certain recent developments of art against her father’s
conservatism. He approved of this independent mental activity on her
part, and repeatedly warned her not to pin her faith more on him than
on any other critic. She once told him that one of her incentives to
disagree with him was the pleasure it gave her to find out ultimately
that he was right. He replied gravely:

“That pleases me, Lydia, because I believe you. But such things are
better left unsaid. They seem to belong to the art of pleasing, which
you will perhaps soon be tempted to practise, because it seems to all
young people easy, well paid, amiable, and a mark of good breeding. In
truth it is vulgar, cowardly, egotistical, and insincere: a virtue in
a shopman; a vice in a free woman. It is better to leave genuine praise
unspoken than to expose yourself to the suspicion of flattery.”

Shortly after this, at his desire, she spent a season in London, and
went into English polite society, which she found to be in the main a
temple for the worship of wealth and a market for the sale of virgins.
Having become familiar with both the cult and the trade elsewhere, she
found nothing to interest her except the English manner of conducting
them; and the novelty of this soon wore off. She was also incommoded by
her involuntary power of inspiring affection in her own sex. Impulsive
girls she could keep in awe; but old women, notably two aunts who had
never paid her any attention during her childhood, now persecuted her
with slavish fondness, and tempted her by mingled entreaties and bribes
to desert her father and live with them for the remainder of their
lives. Her reserve fanned their longing to have her for a pet; and, to
escape them, she returned to the Continent with her father, and ceased
to hold any correspondence with London. Her aunts declared themselves
deeply hurt, and Lydia was held to have treated them very injudiciously;
but when they died, and their wills became public, it was found that
they had vied with one another in enriching her.

When she was twenty-five years old the first startling event of her life
took place. This was the death of her father at Avignon. No endearments
passed between them even on that occasion. She was sitting opposite to
him at the fireside one evening, reading aloud, when he suddenly said,
“My heart has stopped, Lydia. Good-bye!” and immediately died. She had
some difficulty in quelling the tumult that arose when the bell was
answered. The whole household felt bound to be overwhelmed, and took
it rather ill that she seemed neither grateful to them nor disposed to
imitate their behavior.

Carew’s relatives agreed that he had made a most unbecoming will. It
was a brief document, dated five years before his death, and was to the
effect that he bequeathed to his dear daughter Lydia all he possessed.
He had, however, left her certain private instructions. One of these,
which excited great indignation in his family, was that his body
should be conveyed to Milan, and there cremated. Having disposed of
her father’s remains as he had directed, she came to set her affairs
in order in England, where she inspired much hopeless passion in
the toilers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Chancery Lane, and agreeably
surprised her solicitors by evincing a capacity for business, and a
patience with the law’s delay, that seemed incompatible with her age and
sex. When all was arranged, and she was once more able to enjoy perfect
tranquillity, she returned to Avignon, and there discharged her last
duty to her father. This was to open a letter she had found in his desk,
inscribed by his hand: “For Lydia. To be read by her at leisure when I
and my affairs shall be finally disposed of.” The letter ran thus:

“MY DEAR LYDIA,--I belong to the great company of disappointed men. But
for you, I should now write myself down a failure like the rest. It is
only a few years since it first struck me that although I had failed in
many ambitions with which (having failed) I need not trouble you now,
I had achieved some success as a father. I had no sooner made this
discovery than it began to stick in my thoughts that you could draw no
other conclusion from the course of our life together than that I have,
with entire selfishness, used you throughout as my mere amanuensis
and clerk, and that you are under no more obligation to me for your
attainments than a slave is to his master for the strength which
enforced labor has given to his muscles. Lest I should leave you
suffering from so mischievous and oppressive an influence as a sense of
injustice, I now justify myself to you.

“I have never asked you whether you remember your mother. Had you at any
time broached the subject, I should have spoken quite freely to you on
it; but as some wise instinct led you to avoid it, I was content to let
it rest until circumstances such as the present should render further
reserve unnecessary. If any regret at having known so little of the
woman who gave you birth troubles you, shake it off without remorse. She
was the most disagreeable person I ever knew. I speak dispassionately.
All my bitter personal feeling against her is as dead while I write as
it will be when you read. I have even come to cherish tenderly certain
of her characteristics which you have inherited, so that I confidently
say that I never, since the perishing of the infatuation in which I
married, felt more kindly toward her than I do now. I made the best,
and she the worst, of our union for six years; and then we parted. I
permitted her to give what account of the separation she pleased, and
allowed her about five times as much money as she had any right
to expect. By these means I induced her to leave me in undisturbed
possession of you, whom I had already, as a measure of precaution,
carried off to Belgium. The reason why we never visited England during
her lifetime was that she could, and probably would, have made my
previous conduct and my hostility to popular religion an excuse for
wresting you from me. I need say no more of her, and am sorry it was
necessary to mention her at all.

“I will now tell you what induced me to secure you for myself. It was
not natural affection; I did not love you then, and I knew that you
would be a serious encumbrance to me. But, having brought you into the
world, and then broken through my engagements with your mother, I felt
bound to see that you should not suffer for my mistake. Gladly would
I have persuaded myself that she was (as the gossips said) the fittest
person to have charge of you; but I knew better, and made up my mind to
discharge my responsibility as well as I could. In course of time
you became useful to me; and, as you know, I made use of you without
scruple, but never without regard to your own advantage. I always kept
a secretary to do whatever I considered mere copyist’s work. Much as you
did for me, I think I may say with truth that I never imposed a task of
absolutely no educational value on you. I fear you found the hours you
spent over my money affairs very irksome; but I need not apologize for
that now: you must already know by experience how necessary a knowledge
of business is to the possessor of a large fortune.

“I did not think, when I undertook your education, that I was laying the
foundation of any comfort for myself. For a long time you were only a
good girl, and what ignorant people called a prodigy of learning.
In your circumstances a commonplace child might have been both. I
subsequently came to contemplate your existence with a pleasure which
I never derived from the contemplation of my own. I have not succeeded,
and shall not succeed in expressing the affection I feel for you, or
the triumph with which I find that what I undertook as a distasteful
and thankless duty has rescued my life and labor from waste. My literary
travail, seriously as it has occupied us both, I now value only for
the share it has had in educating you; and you will be guilty of no
disloyalty to me when you come to see that though I sifted as much sand
as most men, I found no gold. I ask you to remember, then, that I did my
duty to you long before it became pleasurable or even hopeful. And, when
you are older and have learned from your mother’s friends how I failed
in my duty to her, you will perhaps give me some credit for having
conciliated the world for your sake by abandoning habits and
acquaintances which, whatever others may have thought of them, did much
while they lasted to make life endurable to me.

“Although your future will not concern me, I often find myself thinking
of it. I fear you will soon find that the world has not yet provided a
place and a sphere of action for wise and well-instructed women. In my
younger days, when the companionship of my fellows was a necessity
to me, I voluntarily set aside my culture, relaxed my principles, and
acquired common tastes, in order to fit myself for the society of the
only men within my reach; for, if I had to live among bears, I had
rather be a bear than a man. Let me warn you against this. Never attempt
to accommodate yourself to the world by self-degradation. Be patient;
and you will enjoy frivolity all the more because you are not frivolous:
much as the world will respect your knowledge all the more because of
its own ignorance.

“Some day, I expect and hope, you will marry. You will then have an
opportunity of making an irremediable mistake, against the possibility
of which no advice of mine or subtlety of yours can guard you. I think
you will not easily find a man able to satisfy in you that desire to be
relieved of the responsibility of thinking out and ordering our course
of life that makes us each long for a guide whom we can thoroughly
trust. If you fail, remember that your father, after suffering a bitter
and complete disappointment in his wife, yet came to regard his marriage
as the happiest event in his career. Let me remind you also, since you
are so rich, that it would be a great folly for you to be jealous of
your own income, and to limit your choice of a husband to those already
too rich to marry for money. No vulgar adventurer will be able to
recommend himself to you; and better men will be at least as much
frightened as attracted by your wealth. The only class against which
I need warn you is that to which I myself am supposed to belong. Never
think that a man must prove a suitable and satisfying friend for
you merely because he has read much criticism; that he must feel
the influences of art as you do because he knows and adopts the
classification of names and schools with which you are familiar; or
that because he agrees with your favorite authors he must necessarily
interpret their words to himself as you understand them. Beware of men
who have read more than they have worked, or who love to read better
than to work. Beware of painters, poets, musicians, and artists of all
sorts, except very great artists: beware even of them as husbands and
fathers. Self-satisfied workmen who have learned their business well,
whether they be chancellors of the exchequer or farmers, I recommend to
you as, on the whole, the most tolerable class of men I have met.

“I shall make no further attempt to advise you. As fast as my counsels
rise to my mind follow reflections that convince me of their futility.

“You may perhaps wonder why I never said to you what I have written down
here. I have tried to do so and failed. If I understand myself aright,
I have written these lines mainly to relieve a craving to express
my affection for you. The awkwardness which an over-civilized man
experiences in admitting that he is something more than an educated
stone prevented me from confusing you by demonstrations of a kind I had
never accustomed you to. Besides, I wish this assurance of my love--my
last word--to reach you when no further commonplaces to blur the
impressiveness of its simple truth are possible.

“I know I have said too much; and I feel that I have not said enough.
But the writing of this letter has been a difficult task. Practised as I
am with my pen, I have never, even in my earliest efforts, composed with
such labor and sense of inadequacy----”

Here the manuscript broke off. The letter had never been finished.




CHAPTER II


In the month of May, seven years after the flight of the two boys from
Moncrief House, a lady sat in an island of shadow which was made by
a cedar-tree in the midst of a glittering green lawn. She did well
to avoid the sun, for her complexion was as delicately tinted as
mother-of-pearl. She was a small, graceful woman, with sensitive lips
and nostrils, green eyes, with quiet, unarched brows, and ruddy gold
hair, now shaded by a large, untrimmed straw hat. Her dress of Indian
muslin, with half-sleeves terminating at the elbows in wide ruffles,
hardly covered her shoulders, where it was supplemented by a scarf
through which a glimpse of her throat was visible in a nest of soft
Tourkaris lace. She was reading a little ivory-bound volume--a miniature
edition of the second part of Goethe’s “Faust.”

As the afternoon wore on and the light mellowed, the lady dropped her
book and began to think and dream, unconscious of a prosaic black object
crossing the lawn towards her. This was a young gentleman in a
frock coat. He was dark, and had a long, grave face, with a reserved
expression, but not ill-looking.

“Going so soon, Lucian?” said the lady, looking up as he came into the
shadow.

Lucian looked at her wistfully. His name, as she uttered it, always
stirred him vaguely. He was fond of finding out the reasons of things,
and had long ago decided that this inward stir was due to her fine
pronunciation. His other intimates called him Looshn.

“Yes,” he said. “I have arranged everything, and have come to give an
account of my stewardship, and to say good-bye.”

He placed a garden-chair near her and sat down. She laid her hands one
on the other in her lap, and composed herself to listen.

“First,” he said, “as to the Warren Lodge. It is let for a month only;
so you can allow Mrs. Goff to have it rent free in July if you still
wish to. I hope you will not act so unwisely.”

She smiled, and said, “Who are the present tenants? I hear that they
object to the dairymaids and men crossing the elm vista.”

“We must not complain of that. It was expressly stipulated when they
took the lodge that the vista should be kept private for them. I had
no idea at that time that you were coming to the castle, or I should of
course have declined such a condition.”

“But we do keep it private for them; strangers are not admitted. Our
people pass and repass once a day on their way to and from the dairy;
that is all.”

“It seems churlish, Lydia; but this, it appears, is a special case--a
young gentleman, who has come to recruit his health. He needs daily
exercise in the open air; but he cannot bear observation, and he has
only a single attendant with him. Under these circumstances I agreed
that they should have the sole use of the elm vista. In fact, they are
paying more rent than would be reasonable without this privilege.”

“I hope the young gentleman is not mad.”

“I satisfied myself before I let the lodge to him that he would be a
proper tenant,” said Lucian, with reproachful gravity. “He was strongly
recommended to me by Lord Worthington, whom I believe to be a man of
honor, notwithstanding his inveterate love of sport. As it happens,
I expressed to him the suspicion you have just suggested. Worthington
vouched for the tenant’s sanity, and offered to take the lodge in his
own name and be personally responsible for the good behavior of this
young invalid, who has, I fancy, upset his nerves by hard reading.
Probably some college friend of Worthington’s.”

“Perhaps so. But I should rather expect a college friend of Lord
Worthington’s to be a hard rider or drinker than a hard reader.”

“You may be quite at ease, Lydia. I took Lord Worthington at his word
so far as to make the letting to him. I have never seen the real tenant.
But, though I do not even recollect his name, I will venture to answer
for him at second-hand.”

“I am quite satisfied, Lucian; and I am greatly obliged to you. I will
give orders that no one shall go to the dairy by way of the warren. It
is natural that he should wish to be out of the world.”

“The next point,” resumed Lucian, “is more important, as it concerns
you personally. Miss Goff is willing to accept your offer. And a most
unsuitable companion she will be for you!”

“Why, Lucian?”

“On all accounts. She is younger than you, and therefore cannot
chaperone you. She has received only an ordinary education, and her
experience of society is derived from local subscription balls. And, as
she is not unattractive, and is considered a beauty in Wiltstoken, she
is self-willed, and will probably take your patronage in bad part.”

“Is she more self-willed than I?”

“You are not self-willed, Lydia; except that you are deaf to advice.”

“You mean that I seldom follow it. And so you think I had better employ
a professional companion--a decayed gentlewoman--than save this
young girl from going out as a governess and beginning to decay at
twenty-three?”

“The business of getting a suitable companion, and the pleasure or duty
of relieving poor people, are two different things, Lydia.”

“True, Lucian. When will Miss Goff call?”

“This evening. Mind; nothing is settled as yet. If you think better of
it on seeing her you have only to treat her as an ordinary visitor and
the subject will drop. For my own part, I prefer her sister; but she
will not leave Mrs. Goff, who has not yet recovered from the shock of
her husband’s death.”

Lydia looked reflectively at the little volume in her hand, and seemed
to think out the question of Miss Goff. Presently, with an air of having
made up her mind, she said, “Can you guess which of Goethe’s characters
you remind me of when you try to be worldly-wise for my sake?”

“When I try--What an extraordinary irrelevance! I have not read Goethe
lately. Mephistopheles, I suppose. But I did not mean to be cynical.”

“No; not Mephistopheles, but Wagner--with a difference. Wagner taking
Mephistopheles instead of Faust for his model.” Seeing by his face
that he did not relish the comparison, she added, “I am paying you a
compliment. Wagner represents a very clever man.”

“The saving clause is unnecessary,” he said, somewhat sarcastically. “I
know your opinion of me quite well, Lydia.”

She looked quickly at him. Detecting the concern in her glance, he shook
his head sadly, saying, “I must go now, Lydia. I leave you in charge of
the housekeeper until Miss Goff arrives.”

She gave him her hand, and a dull glow came into his gray jaws as he
took it. Then he buttoned his coat and walked gravely away. As he went,
she watched the sun mirrored in his glossy hat, and drowned in his
respectable coat. She sighed, and took up Goethe again.

But after a little while she began to be tired of sitting still, and she
rose and wandered through the park for nearly an hour, trying to find
the places in which she had played in her childhood during a visit to
her late aunt. She recognized a great toppling Druid’s altar that had
formerly reminded her of Mount Sinai threatening to fall on the head of
Christian in “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” Farther on she saw and avoided a
swamp in which she had once earned a scolding from her nurse by filling
her stockings with mud. Then she found herself in a long avenue of green
turf, running east and west, and apparently endless. This seemed the
most delightful of all her possessions, and she had begun to plan a
pavilion to build near it, when she suddenly recollected that this must
be the elm vista of which the privacy was so stringently insisted upon,
by her invalid tenant at the Warren Lodge. She fled into the wood at
once, and, when she was safe there, laughed at the oddity of being a
trespasser in her own domain. She made a wide detour in order to avoid
intruding a second time; consequently, after walking for a quarter of
an hour, she lost herself. The trees seemed never ending; she began to
think she must possess a forest as well as a park. At last she saw an
opening. Hastening toward it, she came again into the sunlight, and
stopped, dazzled by an apparition which she at first took to be a
beautiful statue, but presently recognized, with a strange glow of
delight, as a living man.

To so mistake a gentleman exercising himself in the open air on a
nineteenth-century afternoon would, under ordinary circumstances, imply
incredible ignorance either of men or statues. But the circumstances in
Miss Carew’s case were not ordinary; for the man was clad in a jersey
and knee-breeches of white material, and his bare arms shone like those
of a gladiator. His broad pectoral muscles, in their white covering,
were like slabs of marble. Even his hair, short, crisp, and curly,
seemed like burnished bronze in the evening light. It came into Lydia’s
mind that she had disturbed an antique god in his sylvan haunt. The
fancy was only momentary; for she perceived that there was a third
person present; a man impossible to associate with classic divinity. He
looked like a well to do groom, and was contemplating his companion much
as a groom might contemplate an exceptionally fine horse. He was the
first to see Lydia; and his expression as he did so plainly showed that
he regarded her as a most unwelcome intruder. The statue-man, following
his sinister look, saw her too, but with different feelings; for his
lips parted, his color rose, and he stared at her with undisguised
admiration and wonder. Lydia’s first impulse was to turn and fly; her
next, to apologize for her presence. Finally she went away quietly
through the trees.

The moment she was out of their sight she increased her pace almost to
a run. The day was too warm for rapid movement, and she soon stopped
and listened. There were the usual woodland sounds; leaves rustling,
grasshoppers chirping, and birds singing; but not a human voice or
footstep. She began to think that the god-like figure was only the
Hermes of Praxiteles, suggested to her by Goethe’s classical Sabbat, and
changed by a day-dream into the semblance of a living reality. The
groom must have been one of those incongruities characteristic of
dreams--probably a reminiscence of Lucian’s statement that the tenant
of the Warren Lodge had a single male attendant. It was impossible that
this glorious vision of manly strength and beauty could be substantially
a student broken down by excessive study. That irrational glow of
delight, too, was one of the absurdities of dreamland; otherwise she
should have been ashamed of it.

Lydia made her way back to the castle in some alarm as to the state of
her nerves, but dwelling on her vision with a pleasure that she would
not have ventured to indulge had it concerned a creature of flesh
and blood. Once or twice it recurred to her so vividly that she
asked herself whether it could have been real. But a little reasoning
convinced her that it must have been an hallucination.

“If you please, madam,” said one of her staff of domestics, a native of
Wiltstoken, who stood in deep awe of the lady of the castle, “Miss Goff
is waiting for you in the drawing-room.”

The drawing-room of the castle was a circular apartment, with a
dome-shaped ceiling broken into gilt ornaments resembling thick
bamboos, which projected vertically downward like stalagmites. The
heavy chandeliers were loaded with flattened brass balls, magnified
fac-similes of which crowned the uprights of the low, broad,
massively-framed chairs, which were covered in leather stamped with
Japanese dragon designs in copper-colored metal. Near the fireplace was
a great bronze bell of Chinese shape, mounted like a mortar on a black
wooden carriage for use as a coal-scuttle. The wall was decorated with
large gold crescents on a ground of light blue.

In this barbaric rotunda Miss Carew found awaiting her a young lady
of twenty-three, with a well-developed, resilient figure, and a clear
complexion, porcelain surfaced, and with a fine red in the cheeks.
The lofty pose of her head expressed an habitual sense of her
own consequence given her by the admiration of the youth of the
neighborhood, which was also, perhaps, the cause of the neatness of her
inexpensive black dress, and of her irreproachable gloves, boots, and
hat. She had been waiting to introduce herself to the lady of the castle
for ten minutes in a state of nervousness that culminated as Lydia
entered.

“How do you do, Miss Goff, Have I kept you waiting? I was out.”

“Not at all,” said Miss Goff, with a confused impression that red hair
was aristocratic, and dark brown (the color of her own) vulgar. She had
risen to shake hands, and now, after hesitating a moment to consider
what etiquette required her to do next, resumed her seat. Miss Carew
sat down too, and gazed thoughtfully at her visitor, who held herself
rigidly erect, and, striving to mask her nervousness, unintentionally
looked disdainful.

“Miss Goff,” said Lydia, after a silence that made her speech
impressive, “will you come to me on a long visit? In this lonely place I
am greatly in want of a friend and companion of my own age and position.
I think you must be equally so.”

Alice Goff was very young, and very determined to accept no credit that
she did not deserve. With the unconscious vanity and conscious honesty
of youth, she proceeded to set Miss Carew right as to her social
position, not considering that the lady of the castle probably
understood it better than she did herself, and indeed thinking it quite
natural that she should be mistaken.

“You are very kind,” she replied, stiffly; “but our positions are quite
different, Miss Carew. The fact is that I cannot afford to live an
idle life. We are very poor, and my mother is partly dependent on my
exertions.”

“I think you will be able to exert yourself to good purpose if you come
to me,” said Lydia, unimpressed. “It is true that I shall give you very
expensive habits; but I will of course enable you to support them.”

“I do not wish to contract expensive habits,” said Alice, reproachfully.
“I shall have to content myself with frugal ones throughout my life.”

“Not necessarily. Tell me, frankly: how had you proposed to exert
yourself? As a teacher, was it not?”

Alice flushed, but assented.

“You are not at all fitted for it; and you will end by marrying. As
a teacher you could not marry well. As an idle lady, with expensive
habits, you will marry very well indeed. It is quite an art to know how
to be rich--an indispensable art, if you mean to marry a rich man.”

“I have no intention of marrying,” said Alice, loftily. She thought
it time to check this cool aristocrat. “If I come at all I shall come
without any ulterior object.”

“That is just what I had hoped. Come without condition, or second
thought of any kind.”

“But--” began Alice, and stopped, bewildered by the pace at which the
negotiation was proceeding. She murmured a few words, and waited for
Lydia to proceed. But Lydia had said her say, and evidently expected a
reply, though she seemed assured of having her own way, whatever Alice’s
views might be.

“I do not quite understand, Miss Carew. What duties?--what would you
expect of me?”

“A great deal,” said Lydia, gravely. “Much more than I should from a
mere professional companion.”

“But I am a professional companion,” protested Alice.

“Whose?”

Alice flushed again, angrily this time. “I did not mean to say--”

“You do not mean to say that you will have nothing to do with me,” said
Lydia, stopping her quietly. “Why are you so scrupulous, Miss Goff? You
will be close to your home, and can return to it at any moment if you
become dissatisfied with your position here.”

Fearful that she had disgraced herself by ill manners; loath to be taken
possession of as if her wishes were of no consequence when a rich
lady’s whim was to be gratified; suspicious--since she had often heard
gossiping tales of the dishonesty of people in high positions--lest she
should be cheated out of the salary she had come resolved to demand; and
withal unable to defend herself against Miss Carew, Alice caught at the
first excuse that occurred to her.

“I should like a little time to consider,” she said.

“Time to accustom yourself to me, is it not? You can have as long as you
plea-”

“Oh, I can let you know tomorrow,” interrupted Alice, officiously.

“Thank you. I will send a note to Mrs. Goff to say that she need not
expect you back until tomorrow.”

“But I did not mean--I am not prepared to stay,” remonstrated Alice,
feeling that she was being entangled in a snare.

“We shall take a walk after dinner, then, and call at your house, where
you can make your preparations. But I think I can supply you with all
you will require.”

Alice dared make no further objection. “I am afraid,” she stammered,
“you will think me horribly rude; but I am so useless, and you are so
sure to be disappointed, that--that--”

“You are not rude, Miss Goff; but I find you very shy. You want to
run away and hide from new faces and new surroundings.” Alice, who was
self-possessed and even overbearing in Wiltstoken society, felt that
she was misunderstood, but did not know how to vindicate herself. Lydia
resumed, “I have formed my habits in the course of my travels, and so
live without ceremony. We dine early--at six.”

Alice had dined at two, but did not feel bound to confess it.

“Let me show you your room,” said Lydia, rising. “This is a curious
drawingroom,” she added, glancing around. “I only use it occasionally to
receive visitors.” She looked about her again with some interest, as if
the apartment belonged to some one else, and led the way to a room on
the first floor, furnished as a lady’s bed-chamber. “If you dislike
this,” she said, “or cannot arrange it to suit you, there are others, of
which you can have your choice. Come to my boudoir when you are ready.”

“Where is that?” said Alice, anxiously.

“It is--You had better ring for some one to show you. I will send you my
maid.”

Alice, even more afraid of the maid than of the mistress, declined
hastily. “I am accustomed to attend to myself, Miss Carew,” with proud
humility.

“You will find it more convenient to call me Lydia,” said Miss Carew.
“Otherwise you will be supposed to refer to my grandaunt, a very old
lady.” She then left the room.

Alice was fond of thinking that she had a womanly taste and touch
in making a room pretty. She was accustomed to survey with pride her
mother’s drawing-room, which she had garnished with cheap cretonnes,
Japanese paper fans, and knick-knacks in ornamental pottery. She felt
now that if she slept once in the bed before her, she could never be
content in her mother’s house again. All that she had read and believed
of the beauty of cheap and simple ornament, and the vulgarity of
costliness, recurred to her as a hypocritical paraphrase of the “sour
grapes” of the fox in the fable. She pictured to herself with a shudder
the effect of a sixpenny Chinese umbrella in that fireplace, a cretonne
valance to that bed, or chintz curtains to those windows. There was in
the room a series of mirrors consisting of a great glass in which she
could see herself at full length, another framed in the carved oaken
dressing-table, and smaller ones of various shapes fixed to jointed arms
that turned every way. To use them for the first time was like having
eyes in the back of the head. She had never seen herself from all points
of view before. As she gazed, she strove not to be ashamed of her dress;
but even her face and figure, which usually afforded her unqualified
delight, seemed robust and middle-class in Miss Carew’s mirrors.

“After all,” she said, seating herself on a chair that was even more
luxurious to rest in than to look at; “putting the lace out of
the question--and my old lace that belongs to mamma is quite as
valuable--her whole dress cannot have cost much more than mine. At any
rate, it is not worth much more, whatever she may have chosen to pay for
it.”

But Alice was clever enough to envy Miss Carew her manners more than
her dress. She would not admit to herself that she was not thoroughly
a lady; but she felt that Lydia, in the eye of a stranger, would answer
that description better than she. Still, as far as she had observed,
Miss Carew was exceedingly cool in her proceedings, and did not take
any pains to please those with whom she conversed. Alice had often made
compacts of friendship with young ladies, and had invited them to call
her by her Christian name; but on such occasions she had always called
themn “dear” or “darling,” and, while the friendship lasted (which was
often longer than a month, for Alice was a steadfast girl), had never
met them without exchanging an embrace and a hearty kiss.

“And nothing,” she said, springing from the chair as she thought of
this, and speaking very resolutely, “shall tempt me to believe that
there is anything vulgar in sincere affection. I shall be on my guard
against this woman.”

Having settled that matter for the present, she resumed her examination
of the apartment, and was more and more attracted by it as she
proceeded. For, thanks to her eminence as a local beauty, she had not
that fear of beautiful and rich things which renders abject people
incapable of associating costliness with comfort. Had the counterpane of
the bed been her own, she would have unhesitatingly converted it into a
ball-dress. There were toilet appliances of which she had never felt the
need, and could only guess the use. She looked with despair into the two
large closets, thinking how poor a show her three dresses, her ulster,
and her few old jackets would make there. There was also a dressing-room
with a marble bath that made cleanliness a luxury instead of one of the
sternest of the virtues, as it seemed at home. Yet she remarked that
though every object was more or less ornamental, nothing had been placed
in the rooms for the sake of ornament alone. Miss Carew, judged by her
domestic arrangements, was a utilitarian before everything. There was
a very handsome chimney piece; but as there was nothing on the mantel
board, Alice made a faint effort to believe that it was inferior in
point of taste to that in her own bedroom, which was covered with blue
cloth, surrounded by fringe and brass headed nails, and laden with
photographs in plush frames.

The striking of the hour reminded her that she had forgotten to prepare
for dinner. Khe hastily took off her hat, washed her hands, spent
another minute among the mirrors, and was summoning courage to ring
the bell, when a doubt occurred to her. Ought she to put on her gloves
before going down or not? This kept her in perplexity for many seconds.
At last she resolved to put her gloves in her pocket, and be guided
as to their further disposal by the example of her hostess. Then, not
daring to hesitate any longer, she rang the bell, and was presently
joined by a French lady of polished manners--Miss Carew’s maid who
conducted her to the boudoir, a hexagonal apartment that, Alice thought,
a sultana might have envied. Lydia was there, reading. Alice noted with
relief that she had not changed her dress, and that she was ungloved.

Miss Goff did not enjoy the dinner. There was a butler who seemed to
have nothing to do but stand at a buffet and watch her. There was also a
swift, noiseless footman who presented himself at her elbow at intervals
and compelled her to choose on the instant between unfamiliar things
to eat and drink. She envied these men their knowledge of society, and
shrank from their criticism. Once, after taking a piece of asparagus
in her hand, she was deeply mortified at seeing her hostess consume the
vegetable with the aid of a knife and fork; but the footman’s back was
turned to her just then, and the butler, oppressed by the heat of the
weather, was in a state of abstraction bordering on slumber. On the
whole, by dint of imitating Miss Oarew, who did not plague her with any
hostess-like vigilance, she came off without discredit to her breeding.

Lydia, on her part, acknowledged no obligation to entertain her guest
by chatting, and enjoyed her thoughts and her dinner in silence. Alice
began to be fascinated by her, and to wonder what she was thinking
about. She fancied that the footman was not quite free from the same
influence. Even the butler might have been meditating himself to
sleep on the subject. Alice felt tempted to offer her a penny for her
thoughts. But she dared not be so familiar as yet. And, had the offer
been made and accepted, butler, footman, and guest would have been
plunged into equal confusion by the explanation, which would have run
thus:

“I saw a vision of the Hermes of Praxiteles in a sylvan haunt to-day;
and I am thinking of that.”




CHAPTER III.


Next day Alice accepted Miss Carew’s invitation. Lydia, who seemed
to regard all conclusions as foregone when she had once signified her
approval of them, took the acceptance as a matter of course. Alice
thereupon thought fit to remind her that there were other persons to be
considered. So she said, “I should not have hesitated yesterday but for
my mother. It seems so heartless to leave her.”

“You have a sister at home, have you not?”

“Yes. But she is not very strong, and my mother requires a great deal
of attention.” Alice paused, and added in a lower voice, “She has never
recovered from the shock of my father’s death.”

“Your father is then not long dead?” said Lydia in her usual tone.

“Only two years,” said Alice, coldly. “I hardly know how to tell my
mother that I am going to desert her.”

“Go and tell her today, Alice. You need not be afraid of hurting her.
Grief of two years’ standing is only a bad habit.”

Alice started, outraged. Her mother’s grief was sacred to her; and yet
it was by her experience of her mother that she recognized the truth of
Lydia’s remark, and felt that it was unanswerable. She frowned; but the
frown was lost: Miss Carew was not looking at her. Then she rose and
went to the door, where she stopped to say,

“You do not know our family circumstances. I will go now and try to
prevail on my mother to let me stay with you.”

“Please come back in good time for dinner,” said Lydia, unmoved. “I
will introduce you to my cousin Lucian Webber. I have just received a
telegram from him. He is coming down with Lord Worthington. I do not
know whether Lord Worthington will come to dinner or not. He has an
invalid friend at the Warren, and Lucian does not make it clear whether
he is coming to visit him or me. However, it is of no consequence; Lord
Worthington is only a young sportsman. Lucian is a clever man, and will
be an eminent one some day. He is secretary to a Cabinet Minister, and
is very busy; but we shall probably see him often while the Whitsuntide
holidays last. Excuse my keeping you waiting at the door to hear that
long history. Adieu!” She waved her hand; Alice suddenly felt that it
was possible to be very fond of Miss Carew.

She spent an unhappy afternoon with her mother. Mrs. Goff had had the
good-fortune to marry a man of whom she was afraid, and who made himself
very disagreeable whenever his house or his children were neglected in
the least particular. Making a virtue of necessity, she had come to be
regarded in Wiltstoken as a model wife and mother. At last, when a drag
ran over Mr. Goff and killed him, she was left almost penniless, with
two daughters on her hands. In this extremity she took refuge in grief,
and did nothing. Her daughters settled their father’s affairs as best
they could, moved her into a cheap house, and procured a strange tenant
for that in which they had lived during many years. Janet, the elder
sister, a student by disposition, employed herself as a teacher of the
scientific fashions in modern female education, rumors of which had
already reached Wiltstoken. Alice was unable to teach mathematics and
moral science; but she formed a dancing-class, and gave lessons in
singing and in a language which she believed to be current in France,
but which was not intelligible to natives of that country travelling
through Wiltstoken. Both sisters were devoted to one another and to
their mother. Alice, who had enjoyed the special affection of her
self-indulgent father, preserved some regard for his memory, though
she could not help wishing that his affection had been strong enough
to induce him to save a provision for her. She was ashamed, too, of the
very recollection of his habit of getting drunk at races, regattas, and
other national festivals, by an accident at one of which he had met his
death.

Alice went home from the castle expecting to find the household divided
between joy at her good-fortune and grief at losing her; for her views
of human nature and parental feeling were as yet pure superstitions. But
Mrs. Goff at once became envious of the luxury her daughter was about
to enjoy, and overwhelmed her with accusations of want of feeling,
eagerness to desert her mother, and vain love of pleasure. Alice, who
loved Mrs. Goff so well that she had often told her as many as five
different lies in the course of one afternoon to spare her some
unpleasant truth, and would have scouted as infamous any suggestion
that her parent was more selfish than saintly, soon burst into tears,
declaring that she would not return to the castle, and that nothing
would have induced her to stay there the night before had she thought
that her doing so could give pain at home. This alarmed Mrs. Goff, who
knew by experience that it was easier to drive Alice upon rash resolves
than to shake her in them afterwards. Fear of incurring blame in
Wiltstoken for wantonly opposing her daughter’s obvious interests,
and of losing her share of Miss Carew’s money and countenance, got the
better of her jealousy. She lectured Alice severely for her headstrong
temper, and commanded her, on her duty not only to her mother, but also
and chiefly to her God, to accept Miss Carew’s offer with thankfulness,
and to insist upon a definite salary as soon as she had, by good
behavior, made her society indispensable at the castle. Alice, dutiful
as she was, reduced Mrs. Goff to entreaties, and even to symptoms of an
outburst of violent grief for the late Mr. Goff, before she consented
to obey her. She would wait, she said, until Janet, who was absent
teaching, came in, and promised to forgive her for staying away the
previous night (Mrs. Goff had falsely represented that Janet had been
deeply hurt, and had lain awake weeping during the small hours of the
morning). The mother, seeing nothing for it but either to get rid of
Alice before Janet’s return or to be detected in a spiteful untruth, had
to pretend that Janet was spending the evening with some friends, and to
urge the unkindness of leaving Miss Carew lonely. At last Alice washed
away the traces of her tears and returned to the castle, feeling very
miserable, and trying to comfort herself with the reflection that her
sister had been spared the scene which had just passed.

Lucian Webber had not arrived when she reached the castle. Miss Carew
glanced at her melancholy face as she entered, but asked no questions.
Presently, however, she put down her book, considered for a moment, and
said,

“It is nearly three years since I have had a new dress.” Alice looked up
with interest. “Now that I have you to help me to choose, I think I will
be extravagant enough to renew my entire wardrobe. I wish you would take
this opportunity to get some things for yourself. You will find that my
dress-maker, Madame Smith, is to be depended on for work, though she is
expensive and dishonest. When we are tired of Wiltstoken we will go to
Paris, and be millinered there; but in the meantime we can resort to
Madame Smith.”

“I cannot afford expensive dresses,” said Alice.

“I should not ask you to get them if you could not afford them. I warned
you that I should give you expensive habits.”

Alice hesitated. She had a healthy inclination to take whatever she
could get on all occasions; and she had suffered too much from poverty
not to be more thankful for her good-fortune than humiliated by Miss
Carew’s bounty. But the thought of being driven, richly attired, in
one of the castle carriages, and meeting Janet trudging about her daily
tasks in cheap black serge and mended gloves, made Alice feel that she
deserved all her mother’s reproaches. However, it was obvious that a
refusal would be of no material benefit to Janet, so she said,

“Really I could not think of imposing on your kindness in this wholesale
fashion. You are too good to me.”

“I will write to Madame Smith this evening,” said Lydia.

Alice was about to renew her protest more faintly, when a servant
entered and announced Mr. Webber. She stiffened herself to receive
the visitor. Lydia’s manner did not alter in the least. Lucian, whose
demeanor resembled Miss Goff’s rather than his cousin’s, went through
the ceremony of introduction with solemnity, and was received with a
dash of scorn; for Alice, though secretly awe-stricken, bore herself
tyrannically towards men from habit.

In reply to Alice, Mr. Webber thought the day cooler than yesterday. In
reply to Lydia, he admitted that the resolution of which the leader of
the opposition had given notice was tantamount to a vote of censure on
the government. He was confident that ministers would have a majority.
He had no news of any importance. He had made the journey down with
Lord Worthington, who had come to Wiltstoken to see the invalid at the
Warren. He had promised to return with him in the seven-thirty train.

When they went down to dinner, Alice, profiting by her experience of
the day before, faced the servants with composure, and committed no
solecisms. Unable to take part in the conversation, as she knew little
of literature and nothing of politics, which were the staple of Lucian’s
discourse, she sat silent, and reconsidered an old opinion of hers that
it was ridiculous and ill-bred in a lady to discuss anything that was
in the newspapers. She was impressed by Lucian’s cautious and somewhat
dogmatic style of conversation, and concluded that he knew everything.
Lydia seemed interested in his information, but quite indifferent to his
opinions.

Towards half-past seven Lydia proposed that they should walk to the
railway station, adding, as a reason for going, that she wished to make
some bets with Lord Worthington. Lucian looked grave at this, and
Alice, to show that she shared his notions of propriety, looked shocked.
Neither demonstration had the slightest effect on Lydia. On their way to
the station he remarked,

“Worthington is afraid of you, Lydia--needlessly, as it seems.”

“Why?”

“Because you are so learned, and he so ignorant. He has no culture save
that of the turf. But perhaps you have more sympathy with his tastes
than he supposes.”

“I like him because I have not read the books from which he has borrowed
his opinions. Indeed, from their freshness, I should not be surprised to
learn that he had them at first hand from living men, or even from his
own observation of life.”

“I may explain to you, Miss Goff,” said Lucian, “that Lord Worthiugton
is a young gentleman--”

“Whose calendar is the racing calendar,” interposed Lydia, “and who
interests himself in favorites and outsiders much as Lucian does in
prime-ministers and independent radicals. Would you like to go to Ascot,
Alice?”

Alice answered, as she felt Lucian wished her to answer, that she had
never been to a race, and that she had no desire to go to one.

“You will change your mind in time for next year’s meeting. A race
interests every one, which is more than can be said for the opera or the
Academy.”

“I have been at the Academy,” said Alice, who had made a trip to London
once.

“Indeed!” said Lydia. “Were you in the National Gallery?”

“The National Gallery! I think not. I forget.”

“I know many persons who never miss an Academy, and who do not know
where the National Gallery is. Did you enjoy the pictures, Alice?”

“Oh, very much indeed.”

“You will find Ascot far more amusing.”

“Let me warn you,” said Lucian to Alice, “that my cousin’s pet caprice
is to affect a distaste for art, to which she is passionately devoted;
and for literature, in which she is profoundly read.”

“Cousin Lucian,” said Lydia, “should you ever be cut off from
your politics, and disappointed in your ambition, you will have an
opportunity of living upon art and literature. Then I shall respect your
opinion of their satisfactoriness as a staff of life. As yet you have
only tried them as a sauce.”

“Discontented, as usual,” said Lucian.

“Your one idea respecting me, as usual,” replied Lydia, patiently, as
they entered the station.

The train, consisting of three carriages and a van, was waiting at the
platform. The engine was humming subduedly, and the driver and fireman
were leaning out; the latter, a young man, eagerly watching two
gentlemen who were standing before the first-class carriage, and the
driver sharing his curiosity in an elderly, preoccupied manner. One
of the persons thus observed was a slight, fair-haired man of about
twenty-five, in the afternoon costume of a metropolitan dandy. Lydia
knew the other the moment she came upon the platform as the Hermes of
the day before, modernized by a straw hat, a canary-colored scarf, and
a suit of a minute black-and-white chess-board pattern, with a crimson
silk handkerchief overflowing the breast pocket of the coat. His hands
were unencumbered by stick or umbrella; he carried himself smartly,
balancing himself so accurately that he seemed to have no weight; and
his expression was self-satisfied and good-humored. But--! Lydia felt
that there was a “but” somewhere--that he must be something more than a
handsome, powerful, and light-hearted young man.

“There is Lord Worthington,” she said, indicating the slight gentleman.
“Surely that cannot be his invalid friend with him?”

“That is the man that lives at the Warren,” said Alice. “I know his
appearance.”

“Which is certainly not suggestive of a valetudinarian,” remarked
Lucian, looking hard at the stranger.

They had now come close to the two, and could hear Lord Worthington, as
he prepared to enter the carriage, saying, “Take care of yourself,
like a good fellow, won’t you? Remember! if it lasts a second over the
fifteen minutes, I shall drop five hundred pounds.”

Hermes placed his arm round the shoulders of the young lord and gave
him a playful roll. Then he said with good accent and pronunciation, but
with a certain rough quality of voice, and louder than English gentlemen
usually speak, “Your money is as safe as the mint, my boy.”

Evidently, Alice thought, the stranger was an intimate friend of Lord
Worthington. She resolved to be particular in her behavior before him,
if introduced.

“Lord Worthington,” said Lydia.

At the sound of her voice he climbed hastily down from the step of the
carriage, and said in some confusion, “How d’ do, Miss Carew. Lovely
country and lovely weather--must agree awfully well with you. Plenty of
leisure for study, I hope.”

“Thank you; I never study now. Will you make a book for me at Ascot?”

He laughed and shook his head. “I am ashamed of my low tastes,” he said;
“but I haven’t the heap to distinguish myself in your--Eh?”

Miss Carew was saying in a low voice, “If your friend is my tenant,
introduce him to me.”

Lord Worthington hesitated, looked at Lucian, seemed perplexed and
amused at the name time, and at last said,

“You really wish it?”

“Of course,” said Lydia. “Is there any reason--”

“Oh, not the least in the world since you wish it,” he replied quickly,
his eyes twinkling mischievously as he turned to his companion who was
standing at the carriage door admiring Lydia, and being himself admired
by the stoker. “Mr. Cashel Byron: Miss Carew.”

Mr. Cashel Byron raised his straw hat and reddened a little; but, on the
whole, bore himself like an eminent man who was not proud. As, however,
he seemed to have nothing to say for himself, Lord Worthington hastened
to avert silence by resuming the subject of Ascot. Lydia listened to
him, and looked at her new acquaintance. Now that the constraint of
society had banished his former expression of easy good-humor, there
was something formidable in him that gave her an unaccountable thrill
of pleasure. The same impression of latent danger had occurred, less
agreeably, to Lucian, who was affected much as he might have been by
the proximity of a large dog of doubtful temper. Lydia thought that Mr.
Byron did not, at first sight, like her cousin; for he was looking at
him obliquely, as though steadily measuring him.

The group was broken up by the guard admonishing the gentlemen to take
their seats. Farewells were exchanged; and Lord Worthington cried, “Take
care of yourself,” to Cashel Byron, who replied somewhat impatiently,
and with an apprehensive glance at Miss Carew, “All right! all right!
Never you fear, sir.” Then the train went off, and he was left on the
platform with the two ladies.

“We are returning to the park, Mr. Cashel Byron,” said Lydia.

“So am I,” said he. “Perhaps--” Here he broke down, and looked at Alice
to avoid Lydia’s eye. Then they went out together.

When they had walked some distance in silence, Alice looking rigidly
before her, recollecting with suspicion that he had just addressed
Lord Worthington as “sir,” while Lydia was admiring his light step and
perfect balance, which made him seem like a man of cork; he said,

“I saw you in the park yesterday, and I thought you were a ghost. But
my trai--my man, I mean--saw you too. I knew by that that you were
genuine.”

“Strange!” said Lydia. “I had the same fancy about you.”

“What! You had!” he exclaimed, looking at her. While thus unmindful of
his steps, he stumbled, and recovered himself with a stifled oath. Then
he became very red, and remarked that it was a warm evening.

Miss Goff, whom he had addressed, assented. “I hope,” she added, “that
you are better.”

He looked puzzled. Concluding, after consideration, that she had
referred to his stumble, he said,

“Thank you: I didn’t hurt myself.”

“Lord Worthington has been telling us about you,” said Lydia. He
recoiled, evidently deeply mortified. She hastened to add, “He mentioned
that you had come down here to recruit your health; that is all.”

Cashel’s features relaxed into a curious smile. But presently he became
suspicious, and said, anxiously, “He didn’t tell you anything else about
me, did he?”

Alice stared at him superciliously. Lydia replied, “No. Nothing else.”

“I thought you might have heard my name somewhere,” he persisted.

“Perhaps I have; but I cannot recall in what connection. Why? Do you
know any friend of mine?”

“Oh, no. Only Lord Worthington.”

“I conclude then that you are celebrated, and that I have the misfortune
not to know it, Mr. Cashel Byron. Is it so?”

“Not a bit of it,” he replied, hastily. “There’s no reason why you
should ever have heard of me. I am much obliged to you for your kind
inquiries,” he continued, turning to Alice. “I’m quite well now, thank
you. The country has set me right again.”

Alice, who was beginning to have her doubts of Mr. Byron, in spite of
his familiarity with Lord Worthington, smiled falsely and drew herself
up a little. He turned away from her, hurt by her manner, and so ill
able to conceal his feelings that Miss Carew, who was watching him, set
him down privately as the most inept dissimulator she had ever met. He
looked at Lydia wistfully, as if trying to read her thoughts, which
now seemed to be with the setting sun, or in some equally beautiful and
mysterious region. But he could see that there was no reflection of Miss
Goff’s scorn in her face.

“And so you really took me for a ghost,” he said.

“Yes. I thought at first that you were a statue.”

“A statue!”

“You do not seem flattered by that.”

“It is not flattering to be taken for a lump of stone,” he replied,
ruefully.

Lydia looked at him thoughtfully. Here was a man whom she had mistaken
for the finest image of manly strength and beauty in the world; and
he was so devoid of artistic culture that he held a statue to be a
distasteful lump of stone.

“I believe I was trespassing then,” she said; “but I did so
unintentionally. I had gone astray; for I am comparatively a stranger
here, and cannot find my way about the park yet.”

“It didn’t matter a bit,” said Cashel, impetuously. “Come as often as
you want. Mellish fancies that if any one gets a glimpse of me he won’t
get any odds. You see he would like people to think--” Cashel checked
himself, and added, in some confusion, “Mellish is mad; that’s about
where it is.”

Alice glanced significantly at Lydia. She had already suggested that
madness was the real reason of the seclusion of the tenants at the
Warren. Cashel saw the glance, and intercepted it by turning to her and
saying, with an attempt at conversational ease,

“How do you young ladies amuse yourselves in the country? Do you play
billiards ever?”

“No,” said Alice, indignantly. The question, she thought, implied
that she was capable of spending her evenings on the first floor of a
public-house. To her surprise, Lydia remarked,

“I play--a little. I do not care sufficiently for the game to make
myself proficient. You were equipped for lawn-tennis, I think, when I
saw you yesterday. Miss Goff is a celebrated lawn-tennis player. She
vanquished the Australian champion last year.”

It seemed that Byron, after all, was something of a courtier; for he
displayed great astonishment at this feat. “The Australian champion!” he
repeated. “And who may HE--Oh! you mean the lawn-tennis champion. To be
sure. Well, Miss Goff, I congratulate you. It is not every amateur that
can brag of having shown a professional to a back seat.”

Alice, outraged by the imputation of bragging, and certain that slang
was vulgar, whatever billiards might be, bore herself still more
loftily, and resolved to snub him explicitly if he addressed her again.
But he did not; for they presently came to a narrow iron gate in the
wall of the park, at which Lydia stopped.

“Let me open it for you,” said Cashel. She gave him the key, and he
seized one of the bars of the gate with his left hand, and stooped as
though he wanted to look into the keyhole. Yet he opened it smartly
enough.

Alice was about to pass in with a cool bow when she saw Miss Carew offer
Cashel her hand. Whatever Lydia did was done so well that it seemed the
right thing to do. He took it timidly and gave it a little shake,
not daring to meet her eyes. Alice put out her hand stiffly. Cashel
immediately stepped forward with his right foot and enveloped her
fingers with the hardest clump of knuckles she had ever felt. Glancing
down at this remarkable fist, she saw that it was discolored almost to
blackness. Then she went in through the gate, followed by Lydia, who
turned to close it behind her. As she pushed, Cashel, standing outside,
grasped a bar and pulled. She at once relinquished to him the labor of
shutting the gate, and smiled her thanks as she turned away; but in that
moment he plucked up courage to look at her. The sensation of being so
looked at was quite novel to her and very curious. She was even a little
out of countenance, but not so much so as Cashel, who nevertheless could
not take his eyes away.

“Do you think,” said Alice, as they crossed the orchard, “that that man
is a gentleman?”

“How can I possibly tell? We hardly know him.”

“But what do you think? There is always a certain something about a
gentleman that one recognizes by instinct.”

“Is there? I have never observed it.”

“Have you not?” said Alice, surprised, and beginning uneasily to fear
that her superior perception of gentility was in some way the effect of
her social inferiority to Miss Carew. “I thought one could always tell.”

“Perhaps so,” said Lydia. “For my own part I have found the same
varieties of address in every class. Some people enjoy a native
distinction and grace of manner--”

“That is what I mean,” said Alice.

“--but they are seldom ladies and gentlemen; often actors, gypsies, and
Celtic or foreign peasants. Undoubtedly one can make a fair guess, but
not in the case of this Mr. Cashel Byron. Are you curious about him?”

“I!” exclaimed Alice, superbly. “Not in the least.”

“I am. He interests me. I seldom see anything novel in humanity; and he
is a very singular man.”

“I meant,” said Alice, crestfallen, “that I take no special interest in
him.”

Lydia, not being curious as to the exact degree of Alice’s interest,
merely nodded, and continued, “He may, as you suppose, be a man
of humble origin who has seen something of society; or he may be a
gentleman unaccustomed to society. Probably the latter. I feel no
conviction either way.”

“But he speaks very roughly; and his slang is disgusting. His hands are
hard and quite black. Did you not notice them?”

“I noticed it all; and I think that if he were a man of low condition he
would be careful not to use slang. Self-made persons are usually precise
in their language; they rarely violate the written laws of society.
Besides, his pronunciation of some words is so distinct that an idea
crossed me once that he might be an actor. But then it is not uniformly
distinct. I am sure that he has some object or occupation in life: he
has not the air of an idler. Yet I have thought of all the ordinary
professions, and he does not fit one of them. This is perhaps what makes
him interesting. He is unaccountable.”

“He must have some position. He was very familiar with Lord
Worthington.”

“Lord Worthington is a sportsman, and is familiar with all sorts of
people.”

“Yes; but surely he would not let a jockey, or anybody of that class,
put his arm round his neck, as we saw Mr. Byron do.”

“That is true,” said Lydia, thoughtfully. “Still,” she added, clearing
her brow and laughing, “I am loath to believe that he is an invalid
student.”

“I will tell you what he is,” said Alice suddenly. “He is companion
and keeper to the man with whom he lives. Do you recollect his saying
‘Mellish is mad’?”

“That is possible,” said Lydia. “At all events we have got a topic; and
that is an important home comfort in the country.”

Just then they reached the castle. Lydia lingered for a moment on the
terrace. The Gothic chimneys of the Warren Lodge stood up against the
long, crimson cloud into which the sun was sinking. She smiled as if
some quaint idea had occurred to her; raised her eyes for a moment to
the black-marble Egyptian gazing with unwavering eyes into the sky; and
followed Alice in-doors.

Later on, when it was quite dark, Cashel sat in a spacious kitchen at
the lodge, thinking. His companion, who had laid his coat aside, was at
the fire, smoking, and watching a saucepan that simmered there. He broke
the silence by remarking, after a glance at the clock, “Time to go to
roost.”

“Time to go to the devil,” said Cashel. “I am going out.”

“Yes, and get a chill. Not if I know it you don’t.”

“Well, go to bed yourself, and then you won’t know it. I want to take a
walk round the place.”

“If you put your foot outside that door to-night Lord Worthington will
lose his five hundred pounds. You can’t lick any one in fifteen minutes
if you train on night air. Get licked yourself more likely.”

“Will you bet two to one that I don’t stay out all night and knock the
Flying Dutchman out of time in the first round afterwards? Eh?”

“Come,” said Mellish, coaxingly; “have some common-sense. I’m advising
you for your good.”

“Suppose I don’t want to be advised for my good. Eh? Hand me over that
lemon. You needn’t start a speech; I’m not going to eat it.”

“Blest if he ain’t rubbing his ‘ands with it!” exclaimed Mellish, after
watching him for some moments. “Why, you bloomin’ fool, lemon won’t
‘arden your ‘ands. Ain’t I took enough trouble with them?”

“I want to whiten them,” said Cashel, impatiently throwing the lemon
under the grate; “but it’s no use; I can’t go about with my fists like a
nigger’s. I’ll go up to London to-morrow and buy a pair of gloves.”

“What! Real gloves? Wearin’ gloves?”

“You thundering old lunatic,” said Cashel, rising and putting on his
hat; “is it likely that I want a pair of mufflers? Perhaps YOU think you
could teach me something with them. Ha! ha! By-the-bye--now mind this,
Mellish--don’t let it out down here that I’m a fighting man. Do you
hear?”

“Me let it out!” cried Mellish, indignantly. “Is it likely? Now, I asts
you, Cashel Byron, is it likely?”

“Likely or not, don’t do it,” said Cashel. “You might get talking with
some of the chaps about the castle stables. They are generous with their
liquor when they can get sporting news for it.”

Mellish looked at him reproachfully, and Cashel turned towards the door.
This movement changed the trainer’s sense of injury into anxiety. He
renewed his remonstrances as to the folly of venturing into the night
air, and cited many examples of pugilists who had suffered defeat
in consequence of neglecting the counsel of their trainers. Cashel
expressed his disbelief in these anecdotes in brief and personal terms;
and at last Mellish had to content himself with proposing to limit the
duration of the walk to half an hour.

“Perhaps I will come back in half an hour,” said Cashel, “and perhaps I
won’t.”

“Well, look here,” said Mellish; “we won’t quarrel about a minute or
two; but I feel the want of a walk myself, and I’ll come with you.”

“I’m d--d if you shall,” said Cashel. “Here, let me out; and shut up.
I’m not going further than the park. I have no intention of making a
night of it in the village, which is what you are afraid of. I know
you, you old dodger. If you don’t get out of my way I’ll seat you on the
fire.”

“But duty, Cashel, duty,” pleaded Mellish, persuasively. “Every man
oughter do his duty. Consider your duty to your backers.”

“Are you going to get out of my way, or must I put you out of it?” said
Cashel, reddening ominously.

Mellish went back to his chair, bowed his head on his hands, and wept.
“I’d sooner be a dog nor a trainer,” he exclaimed. “Oh! the cusseduess
of bein’ shut up for weeks with a fightin’ man! For the fust two days
they’re as sweet as treacle; and then their con trairyness comes out.
Their tempers is puffict ‘ell.”

Cashel, additionally enraged by a sting of remorse, went out and slammed
the door. He made straight towards the castle, and watched its windows
for nearly half an hour, keeping in constant motion so as to avert a
chill. At last an exquisitely toned bell struck the hour from one of
the minarets. To Cashel, accustomed to the coarse jangling of ordinary
English bells, the sound seemed to belong to fairyland. He went slowly
back to the Warren Lodge, and found his trainer standing at the open
door, smoking, and anxiously awaiting his return. Cashel rebuffed
certain conciliatory advances with a haughty reserve more dignified,
but much less acceptable to Mr. Mellish, than his former profane
familiarity, and went contemplatively to bed.




CHAPTER IV


One morning Miss Carew sat on the bank of a great pool in the park,
throwing pebbles two by two into the water, and intently watching the
intersection of the circles they made on its calm surface. Alice was
seated on a camp-stool a little way off, sketching the castle, which
appeared on an eminence to the southeast. The woodland rose round them
like the sides of an amphitheatre; but the trees did not extend to the
water’s edge, where there was an ample margin of bright greensward and a
narrow belt of gravel, from which Lydia was picking her pebbles.

Presently, hearing a footstep, she looked back, and saw Cashel Byron
standing behind Alice, apparently much interested in her drawing. He was
dressed as she had last seen him, except that he wore primrose gloves
and an Egyptian red scarf. Alice turned, and surveyed him with haughty
surprise; but he made nothing of her looks; and she, after glancing at
Lydia to reassure herself that she was not alone, bade him good-morning,
and resumed her work.

“Queer place,” he remarked, after a pause, alluding to the castle.
“Chinese looking, isn’t it?”

“It is considered a very fine building,” said Alice.

“Oh, hang what it is considered!” said Cashel. “What IS it? That is the
point to look to.”

“It is a matter of taste,” said Alice, very coldly.

“Mr. Cashel Byron.”

Cashel started and hastened to the bank. “How d’ye do, Miss Carew,” he
said. “I didn’t see you until you called me.” She looked at him; and he,
convicted of a foolish falsehood, quailed. “There is a splendid view of
the castle from here,” he continued, to change the subject. “Miss Goff
and I have just been talking about it.”

“Yes. Do you admire it?”

“Very much indeed. It is a beautiful place. Every one must acknowledge
that.”

“It is considered kind to praise my house to me, and to ridicule it to
other people. You do not say, ‘Hang what it is considered,’ now.”

Cashel, with an unaccustomed sense of getting the worst of an encounter,
almost lost heart to reply. Then he brightened, and said, “I can tell
you how that is. As far as being a place to sketch, or for another
person to look at, it is Chinese enough. But somehow your living in it
makes a difference. That is what I meant; upon my soul it is.”

Lydia smiled; but he, looking down at her, did not see the smile because
of her coronet of red hair, which seemed to flame in the sunlight. The
obstruction was unsatisfactory to him; he wanted to see her face. He
hesitated, and then sat down on the ground beside her cautiously, as if
getting into a very hot bath.

“I hope you won’t mind my sitting here,” he said, timidly. “It seems
rude to talk down at you from a height.”

She shook her head and threw two more stones into the pool. He could
think of nothing further to say, and as she did not speak, but gravely
watched the circles in the water, he began to stare at them too; and
they sat in silence for some minutes, steadfastly regarding the waves,
she as if there were matter for infinite thought in them, and he as
though the spectacle wholly confounded him. At last she said,

“Have you ever realized what a vibration is?”

“No,” said Cashel, after a blank look at her.

“I am glad to hear you make that admission. Science has reduced
everything nowadays to vibration. Light, sound, sensation--all the
mysteries of nature are either vibrations or interference of vibrations.
There,” she said, throwing another pair of pebbles in, and pointing
to the two sets of widening rings as they overlapped one another; “the
twinkling of a star, and the pulsation in a chord of music, are THAT.
But I cannot picture the thing in my own mind. I wonder whether the
hundreds of writers of text-books on physics, who talk so glibly of
vibrations, realize them any better than I do.”

“Not a bit of it. Not one of them. Not half so well,” said Cashel,
cheerfully, replying to as much of her speech as he understood.

“Perhaps the subject does not interest you,” she said, turning to him.

“On the contrary; I like it of all things,” said he, boldly.

“I can hardly say so much for my own interest in it. I am told that you
are a student, Mr. Cashel Byron. What are your favorite studies?--or
rather, since that is generally a hard question to answer, what are your
pursuits?”

Alice listened.

Cashel looked doggedly at Lydia, and his color slowly deepened. “I am a
professor,” he said.

“A professor of what? I know I should ask of where; but that would only
elicit the name of a college, which would convey no real information to
me.”

“I am a professor of science,” said Cashel, in a low voice, looking
down at his left fist, which he was balancing in the air before him, and
stealthily hitting his bent knee as if it were another person’s face.

“Physical or moral science?” persisted Lydia.

“Physical science,” said Cashel. “But there’s more moral science in it
than people think.”

“Yes,” said Lydia, seriously. “Though I have no real knowledge of
physics, I can appreciate the truth of that. Perhaps all the science
that is not at bottom physical science is only pretentious nescience.
I have read much of physics, and have often been tempted to learn
something of them--to make the experiments with my own hands--to
furnish a laboratory--to wield the scalpel even. For, to master science
thoroughly, I believe one must take one’s gloves off. Is that your
opinion?”

Cashel looked hard at her. “You never spoke a truer word,” he said. “But
you can become a very respectable amateur by working with the gloves.”

“I never should. The many who believe they are the wiser for reading
accounts of experiments deceive themselves. It is as impossible to learn
science from theory as to gain wisdom from proverbs. Ah, it is so easy
to follow a line of argument, and so difficult to grasp the facts that
underlie it! Our popular lecturers on physics present us with chains of
deductions so highly polished that it is a luxury to let them slip from
end to end through our fingers. But they leave nothing behind but a
vague memory of the sensation they afforded. Excuse me for talking
figuratively. I perceive that you affect the opposite--a reaction on
your part, I suppose, against tall talk and fine writing. Pray, should
I ever carry out my intention of setting to work in earnest at science,
will you give me some lessons?”

“Well,” said Cashel, with a covert grin, “I would rather you came to me
than to another professor; but I don’t think it would suit you. I should
like to try my hand on your friend there. She’s stronger and straighter
than nine out of ten men.”

“You set a high value on physical qualifications then. So do I.”

“Only from a practical point of view, mind you,” said Cashel, earnestly.
“It isn’t right to be always looking at men and women as you would at
horses. If you want to back them in a race or in a fight, that’s one
thing; but if you want a friend or a sweetheart, that’s another.”

“Quite so,” said Lydia, smiling. “You do not wish to commit yourself to
any warmer feeling towards Miss Goff than a critical appreciation of her
form and condition.”

“Just that,” said Cashel, satisfied. “YOU understand me, Miss Carew.
There are some people that you might talk to all day, and they’d be no
wiser at the end of it than they were at the beginning. You’re not one
of that sort.”

“I wonder do we ever succeed really in communicating our thoughts to one
another. A thought must take a new shape to fit itself into a strange
mind. You, Mr. Professor, must have acquired special experience of the
incommunicability of ideas in the course of your lectures and lessons.”

Cashel looked uneasily at the water, and said in a lower voice, “Of
course you may call me just whatever you like; but--if it’s all the same
to you--I wish you wouldn’t call me professor.”

“I have lived so much in countries where professors expect to be
addressed by their titles on all occasions, that I may claim to be
excused for having offended on that point. Thank you for telling me. But
I am to blame for discussing science with you. Lord Worthington told
us that you had come down here expressly to escape from it--to recruit
yourself after an excess of work.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Cashel.

“I have not done harm enough to be greatly concerned; but I will not
offend again. To change the subject, let us look at Miss Goff’s sketch.”

Miss Carew had hardly uttered this suggestion, when Cashel, in a
business-like manner, and without the slightest air of gallantry,
expertly lifted her and placed her on her feet. This unexpected
attention gave her a shock, followed by a thrill that was not
disagreeable. She turned to him with a faint mantling on her cheeks. He
was looking with contracted brows at the sky, as though occupied with
some calculation.

“Thank you,” she said; “but pray do not do that again. It is a little
humiliating to be lifted like a child. You are very strong.”

“There is not much strength needed to lift such a feather-weight as you.
Seven stone two, I should judge you to be, about. But there’s a great
art in doing these things properly. I have often had to carry off a man
of fourteen stone, resting him all the time as if he was in bed.”

“Ah,” said Lydia; “I see you have had some hospital practice. I
have often admired the skill with which trained nurses handle their
patients.”

Cashel made no reply, but, with a sinister grin, followed her to where
Alice sat.

“It is very foolish of me, I know,” said Alice, presently; “but I never
can draw when any one is looking at me.”

“You fancy that everybody is thinking about how you’re doing it,” said
Cashel, encouragingly. “That’s always the way with amateurs. But the
truth is that not a soul except yourself is a bit concerned about it.
EX-cuse me,” he added, taking up the drawing, and proceeding to examine
it leisurely.

“Please give me my sketch, Mr. Byron,” she said, her cheeks red with
anger. Puzzled, he turned to Lydia for an explanation, while Alice
seized the sketch and packed it in her portfolio.

“It is getting rather warm,” said Lydia. “Shall we return to the
castle?”

“I think we had better,” said Alice, trembling with resentment as she
walked away quickly, leaving Lydia alone with Cashel, who presently
exclaimed,

“What in thunder have I done?”

“You have made an inconsiderate remark with unmistakable sincerity.”

“I only tried to cheer her up. She must have mistaken what I said.”

“I think not. Do you believe that young ladies like to be told that
there is no occasion for them to be ridiculously self-conscious?”

“I say that! I’ll take my oath I never said anything of the sort.”

“You worded it differently. But you assured her that she need not object
to have her drawing overlooked, as it is of no importance to any one.”

“Well, if she takes offence at that she must be a born fool. Some people
can’t bear to be told anything. But they soon get all that thin-skinned
nonsense knocked out of them.”

“Have you any sisters, Mr. Cashel Byron?”

“No. Why?”

“Or a mother?”

“I have a mother; but I haven’t seen her for years; and I don’t much
care if I never see her. It was through her that I came to be what I
am.”

“Are you then dissatisfied with your profession?”

“No--I don’t mean that. I am always saying stupid things.”

“Yes. That comes of your ignorance of a sex accustomed to have its
silliness respected. You will find it hard to keep on good terms with my
friend without some further study of womanly ways.”

“As to her, I won’t give in that I’m wrong unless I AM wrong. The
truth’s the truth.”

“Not even to please Miss Goff?”

“Not even to please you. You’d only think the worse of me afterwards.”

“Quite true, and quite right,” said Lydia, cordially. “Good-bye, Mr.
Cashel Byron. I must rejoin Miss Goff.”

“I suppose you will take her part if she keeps a down on me for what I
said to her.”

“What is ‘a down’? A grudge?”

“Yes. Something of that sort.”

“Colonial, is it not?” pursued Lydia, with the air of a philologist.

“Yes; I believe I picked it up in the colonies.” Then he added,
sullenly, “I suppose I shouldn’t use slang in speaking to you. I beg
your pardon.”

“I do not object to it. On the contrary, it interests me. For example, I
have just learned from it that you have been in Australia.”

“So I have. But are you out with me because I annoyed Miss Goff?”

“By no means. Nevertheless, I sympathize with her annoyance at the
manner, if not the matter, of your rebuke.”

“I can’t, for the life of me, see what there was in what I said to raise
such a fuss about. I wish you would give me a nudge whenever you see me
making a fool of myself. I will shut up at once and ask no questions.”

“So that it will be understood that my nudge means ‘Shut up, Mr. Cashel
Byron; you are making a fool of yourself’?”

“Just so. YOU understand me. I told you that before, didn’t I?”

“I am afraid,” said Lydia, her face bright with laughter, “that I cannot
take charge of your manners until we are a little better acquainted.”

He seemed disappointed. Then his face clouded; and he began, “If you
regard it as a liberty--”

“Of course I regard it as a liberty,” she said, neatly interrupting him.
“Is not my own conduct a sufficient charge upon my attention? Why should
I voluntarily assume that of a strong man and learned professor as
well?”

“By Jingo!” exclaimed Cashel, with sudden excitement, “I don’t care what
you say to me. You have a way of giving things a turn that makes it a
pleasure to be shut up by you; and if I were a gentleman, as I ought
to be, instead of a poor devil of a professional pug, I would--” He
recollected himself, and turned quite pale. There was a pause.

“Let me remind you,” said Lydia, composedly, though she too had changed
color at the beginning of his outburst, “that we are both wanted
elsewhere at present; I by Miss Goff, and you by your servant, who has
been hovering about us and looking at you anxiously for some minutes.”

Cashel turned fiercely, and saw Mellish standing a little way off,
sulkily watching him. Lydia took the opportunity, and left the place. As
she retreated she could hear that they were at high words together; but
she could not distinguish what they were saying. Fortunately so; for
their language was villainous.

She found Alice in the library, seated bolt upright in a chair that
would have tempted a good-humored person to recline. Lydia sat down in
silence. Alice, presently looking at her, discovered that she was in
a fit of noiseless laughter. The effect, in contrast to her habitual
self-possession, was so strange that Alice almost forgot to be offended.

“I am glad to see that it is not hard to amuse you,” she said.

Lydia waited to recover herself thoroughly, and then replied, “I have
not laughed so three times in my life. Now, Alice, put aside your
resentment of our neighbor’s impudence for the moment, and tell me what
you think of him.”

“I have not thought about him at all, I assure you,” said Alice,
disdainfully.

“Then think about him for a moment to oblige me, and let me know the
result.”

“Really, you have had much more opportunity of judging than I. _I_ have
hardly spoken to him.”

Lydia rose patiently and went to the bookcase. “You have a cousin at one
of the universities, have you not?” she said, seeking along the shelf
for a volume.

“Yes,” replied Alice, speaking very sweetly to atone for her want of
amiability on the previous subject.

“Then perhaps you know something of university slang?”

“I never allow him to talk slang to me,” said Alice, quickly.

“You may dictate modes of expression to a single man, perhaps, but not
to a whole university,” said Lydia, with a quiet scorn that brought
unexpected tears to Alice’s eyes. “Do you know what a pug is?”

“A pug!” said Alice, vacantly. “No; I have heard of a bulldog--a
proctor’s bulldog, but never a pug.”

“I must try my slang dictionary,” said Lydia, taking down a book and
opening it. “Here it is. ‘Pug--a fighting man’s idea of the contracted
word to be produced from pugilist.’ What an extraordinary definition!
A fighting man’s idea of a contraction! Why should a man have a special
idea of a contraction when he is fighting; or why should he think of
such a thing at all under such circumstances? Perhaps ‘fighting man’ is
slang too. No; it is not given here. Either I mistook the word, or it
has some signification unknown to the compiler of my dictionary.”

“It seems quite plain to me,” said Alice. “Pug means pugilist.”

“But pugilism is boxing; it is not a profession. I suppose all men are
more or less pugilists. I want a sense of the word in which it denotes
a calling or occupation of some kind. I fancy it means a demonstrator of
anatomy. However, it does not matter.”

“Where did you meet with it?”

“Mr. Byron used it just now.”

“Do you really like that man?” said Alice, returning to the subject more
humbly than she had quitted it.

“So far, I do not dislike him. He puzzles me. If the roughness of his
manner is an affectation I have never seen one so successful before.”

“Perhaps he does not know any better. His coarseness did not strike me
as being affected at all.”

“I should agree with you but for one or two remarks that fell from him.
They showed an insight into the real nature of scientific knowledge, and
an instinctive sense of the truths underlying words, which I have never
met with except in men of considerable culture and experience. I suspect
that his manner is deliberately assumed in protest against the selfish
vanity which is the common source of social polish. It is partly
natural, no doubt. He seems too impatient to choose his words heedfully.
Do you ever go to the theatre?”

“No,” said Alice, taken aback by this apparent irrelevance. “My father
disapproved of it. But I was there once. I saw the ‘Lady of Lyons.’”

“There is a famous actress, Adelaide Gisborne--”

“It was she whom I saw as the Lady of Lyons. She did it beautifully.”

“Did Mr. Byron remind you of her?”

Alice stared incredulously at Lydia. “I do not think there can be two
people in the world less like one another,” she said.

“Nor do I,” said Lydia, meditatively. “But I think their dissimilarity
owes its emphasis to some lurking likeness. Otherwise how could he
have reminded me of her?” Lydia, as she spoke, sat down with a troubled
expression, as if trying to unravel her thoughts. “And yet,” she added,
presently, “my theatrical associations are so complex that--” A long
silence ensued, during which Alice, conscious of some unusual stir in
her patroness, watched her furtively and wondered what would happen
next.

“Alice.”

“Yes.”

“My mind is exercising itself in spite of me on small and impertinent
matters--a sure symptom of failing mental health. My presence here is
only one of several attempts that I have made to live idly since my
father’s death. They have all failed. Work has become necessary to me. I
will go to London tomorrow.”

Alice looked up in dismay; for this seemed equivalent to a dismissal.
But her face expressed nothing but polite indifference.

“We shall have time to run through all the follies of the season before
June, when I hope to return here and set to work at a book I have
planned. I must collect the material for it in London. If I leave town
before the season is over, and you are unwilling to come away with me, I
can easily find some one who will take care of you as long as you please
to stay. I wish it were June already!”

Alice preferred Lydia’s womanly impatience to her fatalistic calm.
It relieved her sense of inferiority, which familiarity had increased
rather than diminished. Yet she was beginning to persuade herself,
with some success, that the propriety of Lydia’s manners was at least
questionable. That morning Miss Carew had not scrupled to ask a man what
his profession was; and this, at least, Alice congratulated herself on
being too well-bred to do. She had quite lost her awe of the servants,
and had begun to address them with an unconscious haughtiness and a
conscious politeness that were making the word “upstart” common in the
servants’ hall. Bashville, the footman, had risked his popularity there
by opining that Miss Goff was a fine young woman.

Bashville was in his twenty-fourth year, and stood five feet ten in his
stockings. At the sign of the Green Man in the village he was known as a
fluent orator and keen political debater. In the stables he was deferred
to as an authority on sporting affairs, and an expert wrestler in the
Cornish fashion. The women servants regarded him with undissembled
admiration. They vied with one another in inventing expressions of
delight when he recited before them, which, as he had a good memory and
was fond of poetry, he often did. They were proud to go out walking with
him. But his attentions never gave rise to jealousy; for it was an open
secret in the servants’ hall that he loved his mistress. He had never
said anything to that effect, and no one dared allude to it in his
presence, much less rally him on his weakness; but his passion was well
known for all that, and it seemed by no means so hopeless to the younger
members of the domestic staff as it did to the cook, the butler, and
Bashville himself. Miss Carew, who knew the value of good servants,
appreciated her footman’s smartness, and paid him accordingly; but she
had no suspicion that she was waited on by a versatile young student of
poetry and public affairs, distinguished for his gallantry, his personal
prowess, his eloquence, and his influence on local politics.

It was Bashville who now entered the library with a salver, which he
proffered to Alice, saying, “The gentleman is waiting in the round
drawing-room, miss.”

Alice took the gentleman’s card, and read, “Mr. Wallace Parker.”

“Oh!” she said, with vexation, glancing at Bashville as if to divine his
impression of the visitor. “My cousin--the one we were speaking of just
now--has come to see me.”

“How fortunate!” said Lydia. “He will tell me the meaning of pug. Ask
him to lunch with us.”

“You would not care for him,” said Alice. “He is not much used to
society. I suppose I had better go and see him.”

Miss Carew did not reply, being plainly at a loss to understand how
there could be any doubt about the matter. Alice went to the round
drawing-room, where she found Mr. Parker examining a trophy of Indian
armor, and presenting a back view of a short gentleman in a spruce blue
frock-coat. A new hat and pair of gloves were also visible as he stood
looking upward with his hands behind him. When he turned to greet Alice
lie displayed a face expressive of resolute self-esteem, with eyes whose
watery brightness, together with the bareness of his temples, from which
the hair was worn away, suggested late hours and either very studious
or very dissipated habits. He advanced confidently, pressed Alice’s hand
warmly for several seconds, and placed a chair for her, without noticing
the marked coldness with which she received his attentions.

“I was surprised, Alice,” he said, when he had seated himself opposite
to her, “to learn from Aunt Emily that you had come to live here without
consulting me. I--”

“Consult you!” she said, contemptuously, interrupting him. “I never
heard of such a thing! Why should I consult you as to my movements?”

“Well, I should not have used the word consult, particularly to such
an independent little lady as sweet Alice Goff. Still, I think you
might--merely as a matter of form, you know--have informed me of the
step you were taking. The relations that exist between us give me a
right to your confidence.”

“What relations, pray?”

“What relations!” he repeated, with reproachful emphasis.

“Yes. What relations?”

He rose, and addressed her with tender solemnity. “Alice,” he began; “I
have proposed to you at least six times--”

“And have I accepted you once?”

“Hear me to the end, Alice. I know that you have never explicitly
accepted me; but it has always been understood that my needy
circumstances were the only obstacle to our happiness. We--don’t
interrupt me, Alice; you little know what’s coming. That obstacle no
longer exists. I have been made second master at Sunbury College, with
three hundred and fifty pounds a year, a house, coals, and gas. In the
course of time I shall undoubtedly succeed to the head mastership--a
splendid position, worth eight hundred pounds a year. You are now free
from the troubles that have pressed so hard upon you since your father’s
death; and you can quit at once--now--instantly, your dependent position
here.”

“Thank you: I am very comfortable here. I am staying on a visit with
Miss Carew.”

Silence ensued; and he sat down slowly. Then she added, “I am
exceedingly glad that you have got something good at last. It must be a
great relief to your poor mother.”

“I fancied, Alice--though it may have been only fancy--I fancied that
YOUR mother was colder than usual in her manner this morning. I hope
that the luxuries of this palatial mansion are powerless to corrupt
your heart. I cannot lead you to a castle and place crowds of liveried
servants at your beck and call; but I can make you mistress of an
honorable English home, independent of the bounty of strangers. You can
never be more than a lady, Alice.”

“It is very good of you to lecture me, I am sure.”

“You might be serious with me,” he said, rising in ill-humor, and
walking a little way down the room.

“I think the offer of a man’s hand ought to be received with respect.”

“Oh! I did not quite understand. I thought we agreed that you are not to
make me that offer every time we meet.”

“It was equally understood that the subject was only deferred until
I should be in a position to resume it without binding you to a long
engagement. That time has come now; and I expect a favorable answer at
last. I am entitled to one, considering how patiently I have waited for
it.”

“For my part, Wallace, I must say I do not think it wise for you to
think of marrying with only three hundred and fifty pounds a year.”

“With a house: remember that; and coals and gas! You are becoming very
prudent, now that you live with Miss Whatshername here. I fear you no
longer love me, Alice.”

“I never said I loved you at any time.”

“Pshaw! You never said so, perhaps; but you always gave me to understand
that--”

“I did nothing of the sort, Wallace; and I won’t have you say so.”

“In short,” he retorted, bitterly, “you think you will pick up some
swell here who will be a better bargain than I am.”

“Wallace! How dare you?”

“You hurt my feelings, Alice, and I speak out. I know how to behave
myself quite as well as those who have the entree here; but when my
entire happiness is at stake I do not stand on punctilio. Therefore, I
insist on a straightforward answer to my fair, honorable proposal.”

“Wallace,” said Alice, with dignity; “I will not be forced into giving
an answer against my will. I regard you as a cousin.”

“I do not wish to be regarded as a cousin. Have I ever regarded you as a
cousin?”

“And do you suppose, Wallace, that I should permit you to call me by my
Christian name, and be as familiar as we have always been together, if
you were not my cousin? If so, you must have a very strange opinion of
me.”

“I did not think that luxury could so corrupt--”

“You said that before,” said Alice, pettishly. “Do not keep repeating
the same thing over and over; you know it is one of your bad habits.
Will you stay to lunch? Miss Carew told me to ask you.”

“Indeed! Miss Carew is very kind. Please inform her that I am deeply
honored, and that I feel quite disturbed at being unable to accept her
patronage.”

Alice poised her head disdainfully. “No doubt it amuses you to make
yourself ridiculous,” she said; “but I must say I do not see any
occasion for it.”

“I am sorry that my behavior is not sufficiently good for you. You
never found any cause to complain of it when our surroundings were less
aristocratic. I am quite ashamed of taking so much of your valuable
time. GOOD-morning.”

“Good-morning. But I do not see why you are in such a rage.”

“I am not in a rage. I am only grieved to find that you are corrupted by
luxury. I thought your principles were higher. Good-morning, Miss Goff.
I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you again in this very choice
mansion.”

“Are you really going, Wallace?” said Alice, rising.

“Yes. Why should I stay?”

She rang the bell, greatly disconcerting him; for he had expected her
to detain him and make advances for a reconciliation. Before they could
exchange more words, Bashville entered.

“Good-bye,” said Alice, politely.

“Good-bye,” he replied, through his teeth. He walked loftily out,
passing Bashville with marked scorn.

He had left the house, and was descending the terrace steps, when he was
overtaken by the footman, who said, civilly,

“Beg your pardon, sir. You’ve forgotten this, I think.” And he handed
him a walking-stick.

Parker’s first idea was that his stick had attracted the man’s attention
by the poor figure it made in the castle hall, and that Bashville was
requesting him, with covert superciliousness, to remove his property.
On second thoughts, his self-esteem rejected this suspicion as too
humiliating; but he resolved to show Bashville that he had a gentleman
to deal with. So he took the stick, and instead of thanking Bashville,
handed him five shillings.

Bashville smiled and shook his head. “Oh, no, sir,” he said, “thank you
all the same! Those are not my views.”

“The more fool you,” said Parker, pocketing the coins, and turning away.

Bashville’s countenance changed. “Come, come, sir,” he said, following
Parker to the foot of the stops, “fair words deserve fair words. I am no
more a fool than you are. A gentleman should know his place as well as a
servant.”

“Oh, go to the devil,” muttered Parker, turning very red and hurrying
away.

“If you weren’t my mistress’s guest,” said Bashville, looking menacingly
after him, “I’d send you to bed for a week for sending me to the devil.”




CHAPTER V


Miss Carew remorselessly carried out her intention of going to London,
where she took a house in Regent’s Park, to the disappointment of Alice,
who had hoped to live in Mayfair, or at least in South Kensington. But
Lydia set great store by the high northerly ground and open air of the
park; and Alice found almost perfect happiness in driving through London
in a fine carriage and fine clothes. She liked that better than concerts
of classical music, which she did not particularly relish, or even than
the opera, to which they went often. The theatres pleased her more,
though the amusements there were tamer than she had expected. Society
was delightful to her because it was real London society. She acquired a
mania for dancing; went out every night, and seemed to herself far more
distinguished and attractive than she had ever been in Wiltstoken, where
she had nevertheless held a sufficiently favorable opinion of her own
manners and person.

Lydia did not share all these dissipations. She easily procured
invitations and chaperones for Alice, who wondered why so intelligent
a woman would take the trouble to sit out a stupid concert, and then go
home, just as the real pleasure of the evening was beginning.

One Saturday morning, at breakfast, Lydia said,

“Your late hours begin to interfere with the freshness of your
complexion, Alice. I am getting a little fatigued, myself, with literary
work. I will go to the Crystal Palace to-day, and wander about the
gardens for a while; there is to be a concert in the afternoon for the
benefit of Madame Szczymplica, whose playing you do not admire. Will you
come with me?”

“Of course,” said Alice, resolutely dutiful.

“Of choice; not of course,” said Lydia. “Are you engaged for to-morrow
evening?”

“Sunday? Oh, no. Besides, I consider all my engagements subject to your
convenience.”

There was a pause, long enough for this assurance to fall perfectly
flat. Alice bit her lip. Then Lydia said, “Do you know Mrs. Hoskyn?”

“Mrs. Hoskyn who gives Sunday evenings? Shall we go there?” said Alice,
eagerly. “People often ask me whether I have been at one of them. But I
don’t know her--though I have seen her. Is she nice?”

“She is a young woman who has read a great deal of art criticism, and
been deeply impressed by it. She has made her house famous by bringing
there all the clever people she meets, and making them so comfortable
that they take care to come again. But she has not, fortunately for her,
allowed her craze for art to get the better of her common-sense. She
married a prosperous man of business, who probably never read anything
but a newspaper since he left school; and there is probably not a
happier pair in England.”

“I presume she had sense enough to know that she could not afford to
choose,” said Alice, complacently. “She is very ugly.”

“Do you think so? She has many admirers, and was, I am told, engaged to
Mr. Herbert, the artist, before she met Mr. Hoskyn. We shall meet Mr.
Herbert there to-morrow, and a number of celebrated persons besides--his
wife, Madame Szczymplica the pianiste, Owen Jack the composer, Hawkshaw
the poet, Conolly the inventor, and others. The occasion will be a
special one, as Herr Abendgasse, a remarkable German socialist and art
critic, is to deliver a lecture on ‘The True in Art.’ Be careful, in
speaking of him in society, to refer to him as a sociologist, and not as
a socialist. Are you particularly anxious to hear him lecture?”

“No doubt it will be very interesting,” said Alice. “I should not like
to miss the opportunity of going to Mrs. Hoskyn’s. People so often ask
me whether I have been there, and whether I know this, that, and the
other celebrated person, that I feel quite embarrassed by my rustic
ignorance.”

“Because,” pursued Lydia, “I had intended not to go until after the
lecture. Herr Abendgasse is enthusiastic and eloquent, but not original;
and as I have imbibed all his ideas direct from their inventors, I
do not feel called upon to listen to his exposition of them. So that,
unless you are specially interested--”

“Not at all. If he is a socialist I should much rather not listen to
him, particularly on Sunday evening.”

So it was arranged that they should go to Mrs. Hoskyn’s after the
lecture. Meanwhile they went to Sydenham, where Alice went through
the Crystal Palace with provincial curiosity, and Lydia answered her
questions encyclopedically. In the afternoon there was a concert, at
which a band played several long pieces of music, which Lydia seemed to
enjoy, though she found fault with the performers. Alice, able to detect
neither the faults in the execution nor the beauty of the music, did as
she saw the others do--pretended to be pleased and applauded decorously.
Madame Szczymplica, whom she expected to meet at Mrs. Hoskyn’s,
appeared, and played a fantasia for pianoforte and orchestra by the
famous Jack, another of Mrs. Hoskyn’s circle. There was in the programme
an analysis of this composition from which Alice learned that by
attentively listening to the adagio she could hear the angels singing
therein. She listened as attentively as she could, but heard no angels,
and was astonished when, at the conclusion of the fantasia, the audience
applauded Madame Szczymplica as if she had made them hear the music of
the spheres. Even Lydia seemed moved, and said,

“Strange, that she is only a woman like the rest of us, with just
the same narrow bounds to her existence, and just the same prosaic
cares--that she will go by train to Victoria, and from thence home in a
common vehicle instead of embarking in a great shell and being drawn by
swans to some enchanted island. Her playing reminds me of myself as I
was when I believed in fairyland, and indeed knew little about any other
land.”

“They say,” said Alice, “that her husband is very jealous, and that she
leads him a terrible life.”

“THEY SAY anything that brings gifted people to the level of their own
experience. Doubtless they are right. I have not met Mr. Herbert, but I
have seen his pictures, which suggest that he reads everything and sees
nothing; for they all represent scenes described in some poem. If
one could only find an educated man who had never read a book, what a
delightful companion he would be!”

When the concert was over they did not return directly to town, as Lydia
wished to walk awhile in the gardens. In consequence, when they left
Sydenham, they got into a Waterloo train, and so had to change at
Clapham Junction. It was a fine summer evening, and Alice, though she
thought that it became ladies to hide themselves from the public in
waiting-rooms at railway stations, did not attempt to dissuade Lydia
from walking to and fro at an unfrequented end of the platform, which
terminated in a bank covered with flowers.

“To my mind,” said Lydia, “Clapham Junction is one of the prettiest
places about London.”

“Indeed!” said Alice, a little maliciously. “I thought that all artistic
people looked on junctions and railway lines as blots on the landscape.”

“Some of them do,” said Lydia; “but they are not the artists of our
generation; and those who take up their cry are no better than parrots.
If every holiday recollection of my youth, every escape from town
to country, be associated with the railway, I must feel towards it
otherwise than did my father, upon whose middle age it came as a
monstrous iron innovation. The locomotive is one of the wonders of
modern childhood. Children crowd upon a bridge to see the train pass
beneath. Little boys strut along the streets puffing and whistling in
imitation of the engine. All that romance, silly as it looks, becomes
sacred in afterlife. Besides, when it is not underground in a foul
London tunnel, a train is a beautiful thing. Its pure, white fleece of
steam harmonizes with every variety of landscape. And its sound! Have
you ever stood on a sea-coast skirted by a railway, and listened as the
train came into hearing in the far distance? At first it can hardly be
distinguished from the noise of the sea; then you recognize it by its
vibration; one moment smothered in a deep cutting, and the next sent
echoing from some hillside. Sometimes it runs smoothly for many minutes,
and then breaks suddenly into a rhythmic clatter, always changing
in distance and intensity. When it comes near, you should get into a
tunnel, and stand there while it passes. I did that once, and it was
like the last page of an overture by Beethoven--thunderingly impetuous.
I cannot conceive how any person can hope to disparage a train
by comparing it with a stage-coach; and I know something of
stage-coaches--or, at least, of diligences. Their effect on the men
employed about them ought to decide the superiority of steam without
further argument. I have never observed an engine-driver who did not
seem an exceptionally intelligent mechanic, while the very writers and
artists who have preserved the memory of the coaching days for us do
not appear to have taken coachmen seriously, or to have regarded them
as responsible and civilized men. Abuse of the railway from a pastoral
point of view is obsolete. There are millions of grown persons in
England to whom the far sound of the train is as pleasantly suggestive
as the piping of a blackbird. Again--is not that Lord Worthington
getting out of the train? Yes, that one, at the third platform from
this. He--” She stopped.

Alice looked, but could see neither Lord Worthington nor the cause of a
subtle but perceptible change in Lydia, who said, quickly,

“He is probably coming to our train. Come to the waiting-room.” She
walked swiftly along the platform as she spoke. Alice hurried after her;
and they had but just got into the room, the door of which was close to
the staircase which gave access to the platform, when a coarse din
of men’s voices showed that a noisy party were ascending the steps.
Presently a man emerged reeling, and at once began to execute a drunken
dance, and to sing as well as his condition and musical faculty allowed.
Lydia stood near the window of the room and watched in silence. Alice,
following her example, recognized the drunken dancer as Mellish. He was
followed by three men gayly attired and highly elated, but comparatively
sober. After them came Cashel Byron, showily dressed in a velveteen
coat, and tightly-fitting fawn-colored pantaloons that displayed the
muscles of his legs. He also seemed quite sober; but he was dishevelled,
and his left eye blinked frequently, the adjacent brow and cheek being
much yellower than his natural complexion, which appeared to advantage
on the right side of his face. Walking steadily to Mellish, who was now
asking each of the bystanders in turn to come and drink at his expense,
he seized him by the collar and sternly bade him cease making a fool of
himself. Mellish tried to embrace him.

“My own boy,” he exclaimed, affectionately. “He’s my little nonpareil.
Cashel Byron again’ the world at catch weight. Bob Mellish’s money--”

“You sot,” said Cashel, rolling him about until he was giddy as well as
drunk, and then forcing him to sit down on a bench; “one would think you
never saw a mill or won a bet in your life before.”

“Steady, Byron,” said one of the others. “Here’s his lordship.” Lord
Worthington was coming up the stairs, apparently the most excited of the
party.

“Fine man!” he cried, patting Cashel on the shoulder. “Splendid man! You
have won a monkey for me to-day; and you shall have your share of it,
old boy.”

“I trained him,” said Mellish, staggering forward again. “I trained him.
You know me, my lord. You know Bob Mellish. A word with your lordship in
c-confidence. You ask who knows how to make the beef go and the muscle
come. You ask--I ask your lordship’s pard’n. What’ll your lordship
take?”

“Take care, for Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Lord Worthington, clutching at
him as he reeled backward towards the line. “Don’t you see the train?”

“_I_ know,” said Mellish, gravely. “I am all right; no man more so. I am
Bob Mellish. You ask--”

“Here. Come out of this,” said one of the party, a powerful man with a
scarred face and crushed nose, grasping Mellish and thrusting him into
the train. “Y’ll ‘ave to clap a beefsteak on that ogle of yours, where
you napped the Dutchman’s auctioneer, Byron. It’s got more yellow paint
on it than y’ll like to show in church to-morrow.”

At this they all gave a roar of laughter, and entered a third-class
carriage. Lydia and Alice had but just time to take their places in the
train before it started.

“Eeally, I must say,” said Alice, “that if those were Mr. Cashel Byron’s
and Lord Worthington’s associates, their tastes are very peculiar.”

“Yes,” said Lydia, almost grimly. “I am a fair linguist; but I did not
understand a single sentence of their conversation, though I heard it
all distinctly.”

“They were not gentlemen,” said Alice. “You say that no one can tell by
a person’s appearance whether he is a gentleman or not; but surely you
cannot think that those men are Lord Worthington’s equals.”

“I do not,” said Lydia. “They are ruffians; and Cashel Byron is the most
unmistakable ruffian of them all.”

Alice, awestruck, did not venture to speak again until they left the
train at Victoria. There was a crowd outside the carriage in which
Cashel had travelled. They hastened past; but Lydia asked a guard
whether anything was the matter. He replied that a drunken man,
alighting from the train, had fallen down upon the rails, and that, had
the carriage been in motion, he would have been killed. Lydia thanked
her informant, and, as she turned from him, found Bashville standing
before her, touching his hat. She had given him no instructions to
attend. However, she accepted his presence as a matter of course, and
inquired whether the carriage was there.

“No, madam,” replied Bashville. “The coachman had no orders.”

“Quite right. A hansom, if you please.” When he was gone she said to
Alice, “Did you tell Bashville to meet us?”

“Oh, DEAR, no,” said Alice. “I should not think of doing such a thing.”

“Strange! However, he knows his duties better than I do; so I have no
doubt that he has acted properly. He has been waiting all the afternoon,
I suppose, poor fellow.”

“He has nothing else to do,” said Alice, carelessly. “Here he is. He has
picked out a capital horse for us, too.”

Meanwhile, Mellish had been dragged from beneath the train and seated on
the knee of one of his companions. He was in a stupor, and had a large
lump on his brow. His eye was almost closed. The man with the crushed
nose now showed himself an expert surgeon. While Cashel supported the
patient on the knee of another man, and the rest of the party kept off
the crowd by mingled persuasion and violence, he produced a lancet
and summarily reduced the swelling by lancing it. He then dressed the
puncture neatly with appliances for that purpose which he carried about
him, and shouted in Mellish’s ear to rouse him. But the trainer only
groaned, and let his head drop inert on his breast. More shouting was
resorted to, but in vain. Cashel impatiently expressed an opinion that
Mellish was shamming, and declared that he would not stand there to be
fooled with all the evening.

“If he was my pal ‘stead o’ yours,” said the man with the broken nose,
“I’d wake him up fast enough.”

“I’ll save you the trouble,” said Cashel, coolly stooping and seizing
between his teeth the cartilage of the trainer’s ear.

“That’s the way to do it,” said the other, approvingly, as Mellish
screamed and started to his feet. “Now, then. Up with you.”

He took Mellish’s right arm, Cashel took the left, and they brought
him away between them without paying the least heed to his tears, his
protestations that he was hurt, his plea that he was an old man, or his
bitter demand as to where Cashel would have been at that moment without
his care.

Lord Worthington had taken advantage of this accident to slip away from
his travelling companions and drive alone to his lodgings in Jermyn
Street. He was still greatly excited; and when his valet, an old
retainer with whom he was on familiar terms, brought him a letter that
had arrived during his absence, he asked him four times whether any
one had called, and four times interrupted him by scraps of information
about the splendid day he had had and the luck he was in.

“I bet five hundred even that it would be over in a quarter of an hour;
and then I bet Byron two hundred and fifty to one that it wouldn’t.
That’s the way to doit; eh, Bedford? Catch Cashel letting two hundred
and fifty slip through his fingers! By George, though, he’s an artful
card. At the end of fourteen minutes I thought my five hundred was
corpsed. The Dutchman was full of fight; and Cashel suddenly turned weak
and tried to back out of the rally. You should have seen the gleam in
the Dutchman’s eye when he rushed in after him. He made cock-sure of
finishing him straight off.”

“Indeed, my lord. Dear me!”

“I should think so: I was taken in by it myself. It was only done to
draw the poor devil. By George, Bedford, you should have seen the way
Cashel put in his right. But you couldn’t have seen it; it was too
quick. The Dutchman was asleep on the grass before he knew he’d been
hit. Byron had collected fifteen pounds for him before he came to. His
jaw must feel devilish queer after it. By Jove, Bedford, Cashel is a
perfect wonder. I’d back him for every cent I possess against any man
alive. He makes you feel proud of being an Englishman.”

Bedford looked on with submissive wonder as his master, transfigured
with enthusiasm, went hastily to and fro through the room, occasionally
clinching his fist and smiting an imaginary Dutchman. The valet at last
ventured to remind him that he had forgotten the letter.

“Oh, hang the letter!” said Lord Worthington. “It’s Mrs. Hoskyn’s
writing--an invitation, or some such rot. Here; let’s see it.”

“Campden Hill Road, Saturday.

“My dear Lord Worthington,--I have not forgotten my promise to obtain
for you a near view of the famous Mrs. Herbert--‘Madame Simplicita,’
as you call her. She will be with us to-morrow evening; and we shall be
very happy to see you then, if you care to come. At nine o’clock, Herr
Abendgasse, a celebrated German art critic and a great friend of mine,
will read us a paper on ‘The True in Art’; but I will not pay you the
compliment of pretending to believe that that interests you, so you may
come at ten or half-past, by which hour all the serious business of the
evening will be over.”

“Well, there is nothing like cheek,” said Lord Worthington, breaking
off in his perusal. “These women think that because I enjoy life in a
rational way I don’t know the back of a picture from the front, or the
inside of a book from the cover. I shall go at nine sharp.”

“If any of your acquaintances take an interest in art, I will gladly
make them welcome. Could you not bring me a celebrity or two? I am very
anxious to have as good an audience as possible for Herr Abendgasse.
However, as it is, he shall have no reason to complain, as I flatter
myself that I have already secured a very distinguished assembly. Still,
if you can add a second illustrious name to my list, by all means do
so.”

“Very good, Mrs. Hoskyn,” said Lord Worthington, looking cunningly at
the bewildered Bedford. “You shall have a celebrity--a real one--none
of your mouldy old Germans--if I can only get him to come. If any of her
people don’t like him they can tell him so. Eh, Bedford?”




CHAPTER VI


Next evening, Lydia and Alice reached Mrs. Hoskyn’s house in Campden
Hill Road a few minutes before ten o’clock. They found Lord Worthington
in the front garden, smoking and chatting with Mr. Hoskyn. He threw away
his cigar and returned to the house with the two ladies, who observed
that he was somewhat flushed with wine. They went into a parlor to take
off their wraps, leaving him at the foot of the stairs. Presently they
heard some one come down and address him excitedly thus,

“Worthington. Worthington. He has begun making a speech before the whole
room. He got up the moment old Abendgasse sat down. Why the deuce did
you give him that glass of champagne?”

“Sh-sh-sh! You don’t say so! Come with me; and let us try to get him
away quietly.”

“Did you hear that?” said Alice. “Something must have happened.”

“I hope so,” said Lydia. “Ordinarily, the fault in these receptions is
that nothing happens. Do not announce us, if you please,” she added to
the servant, as they ascended the stairs. “Since we have come late,
let us spare the feelings of Herr Abendgasse by going in as quietly as
possible.”

They had no difficulty in entering unnoticed, for Mrs. Hoskyn considered
obscurity beautiful; and her rooms were but dimly lighted by two curious
lanterns of pink glass, within which were vaporous flames. In the middle
of the larger apartment was a small table covered with garnet-colored
plush, with a reading-desk upon it, and two candles in silver
candlesticks, the light of which, being brighter than the lanterns, cast
strong double shadows from a group of standing figures about the table.
The surrounding space was crowded with chairs, occupied chiefly by
ladies. Behind them, along the wall, stood a row of men, among whom was
Lucian Webber. All were staring at Cashel Byron, who was making a speech
to some bearded and spectacled gentlemen at the table. Lydia, who had
never before seen him either in evening dress or quite at his ease,
was astonished at his bearing. His eyes were sparkling, his confidence
overbore the company, and his rough voice created the silence it broke.
He was in high good-humor, and marked his periods by the swing of his
extended left arm, while he held his right hand close to his body and
occasionally pointed his remarks by slyly wagging his forefinger.

“--executive power,” he was saying as Lydia entered. “That’s a very good
expression, gentlemen, and one that I can tell you a lot about. We have
been told that if we want to civilize our neighbors we must do it mainly
by the example of our own lives, by each becoming a living illustration
of the highest culture we know. But what I ask is, how is anybody to
know that you’re an illustration of culture. You can’t go about like a
sandwich man with a label on your back to tell all the fine notions you
have in your head; and you may be sure no person will consider your mere
appearance preferable to his own. You want an executive power; that’s
what you want. Suppose you walked along the street and saw a man beating
a woman, and setting a bad example to the roughs. Well, you would be
bound to set a good example to them; and, if you’re men, you’d like to
save the woman; but you couldn’t do it by merely living; for that would
be setting the bad example of passing on and leaving the poor creature
to be beaten. What is it that you need to know then, in order to act up
to your fine ideas? Why, you want to know how to hit him, when to hit
him, and where to hit him; and then you want the nerve to go in and do
it. That’s executive power; and that’s what’s wanted worse than sitting
down and thinking how good you are, which is what this gentleman’s
teaching comes to after all. Don’t you see? You want executive power to
set an example. If you leave all that to the roughs, it’s their example
that will spread, and not yours. And look at the politics of it. We’ve
heard a good deal about the French to-night. Well, they’ve got executive
power. They know how to make a barricade, and how to fight behind it
when they’ve made it. What’s the result? Why, the French, if they only
knew what they wanted, could have it to-morrow for the asking--more’s
the pity that they don’t know. In this country we can do nothing; and
if the lords and the landlords, or any other collection of nobs, were
to drive us into the sea, what could we do but go? There’s a gentleman
laughing at me for saying that; but I ask him what would he do if the
police or the soldiers came this evening and told him to turn out of his
comfortable house into the Thames? Tell ‘em he wouldn’t vote for their
employers at the next election, perhaps? Or, if that didn’t stop them,
tell ‘em that he’d ask his friends to do the same? That’s a pretty
executive power! No, gentlemen. Don’t let yourself be deceived by people
that have staked their money against you. The first thing to learn is
how to fight. There’s no use in buying books and pictures unless you
know how to keep them and your own head as well. If that gentleman that
laughed know how to fight, and his neighbors all knew how to fight
too, he wouldn’t need to fear police, nor soldiers, nor Russians, nor
Prussians, nor any of the millions of men that may be let loose on him
any day of the week, safe though he thinks himself. But, says you, let’s
have a division of labor. Let’s not fight for ourselves, but pay other
men to fight for us. That shows how some people, when they get hold
of an idea, will work it to that foolish length that it’s wearisome to
listen to them. Fighting is the power of self-preservation; another man
can’t do it for you. You might as well divide the labor of eating your
dinner, and pay one fellow to take the beef, another the beer, and a
third the potatoes. But let us put it for the sake of argument that you
do pay others to fight for you. Suppose some one else pays them higher,
and they fight a cross, or turn openly against you! You’d have only
yourself to blame for giving the executive power to money. And so long
as the executive power is money the poor will be kept out of their
corner and fouled against the ropes; whereas, by what I understand, the
German professor wants them to have their rights. Therefore I say that a
man’s first duty is to learn to fight. If he can’t do that he can’t set
an example; he can’t stand up for his own rights or his neighbors’; he
can’t keep himself in bodily health; and if he sees the weak ill-used
by the strong, the most he can do is to sneak away and tell the nearest
policeman, who most likely won’t turn up until the worst of the mischief
is done. Coming to this lady’s drawing-room, and making an illustration
of himself, won’t make him feel like a man after that. Let me be
understood, though, gentlemen: I don’t intend that you should take
everything I say too exactly--too literally, as it were. If you see
a man beating a woman, I think you should interfere on principle. But
don’t expect to be thanked by her for it; and keep your eye on her;
don’t let her get behind you. As for him, just give him a good one and
go away. Never stay to get yourself into a street fight; for it’s low,
and generally turns out badly for all parties. However, that’s only a
bit of practical advice. It doesn’t alter the great principle that you
should get an executive power. When you get that, you’ll have courage
in you; and, what’s more, your courage will be of some use to you. For
though you may have courage by nature, still, if you haven’t executive
power as well, your courage will only lead you to stand up to be beaten
by men that have both courage and executive power; and what good does
that do you? People say that you’re a game fellow; but they won’t find
the stakes for you unless you can win them. You’d far better put your
game in your pocket, and throw up the sponge while you can see to do it.

“Now, on this subject of game, I’ve something to say that will ease
the professor’s mind on a point that he seemed anxious about. I am no
musician; but I’ll just show you how a man that understands one art
understands every art. I made out from the gentleman’s remarks that
there is a man in the musical line named Wagner, who is what you might
call a game sort of composer; and that the musical fancy, though they
can’t deny that his tunes are first-rate, and that, so to speak, he wins
his fights, yet they try to make out that he wins them in an outlandish
way, and that he has no real science. Now I tell the gentleman not to
mind such talk. As I have just shown you, his game wouldn’t be any use
to him without science. He might have beaten a few second-raters with a
rush while he was young; but he wouldn’t have lasted out as he has done
unless he was clever as well. You will find that those that run him down
are either jealous, or they are old stagers that are not used to his
style, and think that anything new must be bad. Just wait a bit, and,
take my word for it, they’ll turn right round and swear that his style
isn’t new at all, and that he stole it from some one they saw when
they were ten years old. History shows us that that is the way of such
fellows in all ages, as the gentleman said; and he gave you Beethoven as
an example. But an example like that don’t go home to you, because there
isn’t one man in a million that ever heard of Beethoven. Take a man that
everybody has heard of--Jack Randall! The very same things were said of
HIM. After that, you needn’t go to musicians for an example. The truth
is, that there are people in the world with that degree of envy and
malice in them that they can’t bear to allow a good man his merits; and
when they have to admit that he can do one thing, they try to make out
that there’s something else he can’t do. Come: I’ll put it to you short
and business-like. This German gentleman, who knows all about music,
tells you that many pretend that this Wagner has game but no science.
Well, I, though I know nothing about music, will bet you twenty-five
pounds that there’s others that allow him to be full of science, but say
that he has no game, and that all he does comes from his head, and not
from his heart. I will. I’ll bet twenty-five pounds on it, and let the
gentleman of the house be stakeholder, and the German gentleman referee.
Eh? Well, I’m glad to see that there are no takers.

“Now we’ll go to another little point that the gentleman forgot. He
recommended you to LEARN--to make yourselves better and wiser from day
to day. But he didn’t tell you why it is that you won’t learn, in spite
of his advice. I suppose that, being a foreigner, he was afraid of
hurting your feelings by talking too freely to you. But you’re not so
thin-skinned as to take offence at a little plain-speaking, I’ll be
bound; so I tell you straight out that the reason you won’t learn is not
that you don’t want to be clever, or that you are lazier than many that
have learned a great deal, but just because you’d like people to think
that you know everything already--because you’re ashamed to be seen
going to school; and you calculate that if you only hold your tongue
and look wise you’ll get through life without your ignorance being found
out. But where’s the good of lies and pretence? What does it matter if
you get laughed at by a cheeky brat or two for your awkward beginnings?
What’s the use of always thinking of how you’re looking, when your sense
might tell you that other people are thinking about their own looks and
not about yours? A big boy doesn’t look well on a lower form, certainly,
but when he works his way up he’ll be glad he began. I speak to you more
particularly because you’re Londoners; and Londoners beat all creation
for thinking about themselves. However, I don’t go with the gentleman in
everything he said. All this struggling and striving to make the world
better is a great mistake; not because it isn’t a good thing to improve
the world if you know how to do it, but because striving and struggling
is the worst way you could set about doing anything. It gives a man a
bad style, and weakens him. It shows that he don’t believe in himself
much. When I heard the professor striving and struggling so earnestly to
set you to work reforming this, that, and the other, I said to myself,
‘He’s got himself to persuade as well as his audience. That isn’t the
language of conviction.’ Whose--”

“Really, sir,” said Lucian Webber, who had made his way to the table, “I
think, as you have now addressed us at considerable length, and as
there are other persons present whose opinions probably excite as much
curiosity as yours--” He was interrupted by a, “Hear, hear,” followed by
“No, no,” and “Go on,” uttered in more subdued tones than are customary
at public meetings, but with more animation than is usually displayed
in drawing-rooms. Cashel, who had been for a moment somewhat put out,
turned to Lucian and said, in a tone intended to repress, but at the
same time humor his impatience, “Don’t you be in a hurry, sir. You shall
have your turn presently. Perhaps I may tell you something you don’t
know, before I stop.” Then he turned again to the company, and resumed.

“We were talking about effort when this young gentleman took it upon
himself to break the ring. Now, nothing can be what you might call
artistically done if it’s done with an effort. If a thing can’t be done
light and easy, steady and certain, let it not be done at all. Sounds
strange, doesn’t it? But I’ll tell you a stranger thing. The more effort
you make, the less effect you produce. A WOULD-BE artist is no artist at
all. I see that in my own profession (never mind what that profession is
just at present, as the ladies might think the worse of me for it).
But in all professions, any work that shows signs of labor, straining,
yearning--as the German gentleman said--or effort of any kind, is work
beyond the man’s strength that does it, and therefore not well done.
Perhaps it’s beyond his natural strength; but it is more likely that
he was badly taught. Many teachers set their pupils on to strain, and
stretch, so that they get used up, body and mind, in a few months.
Depend upon it, the same thing is true in other arts. I once taught
a fiddler that used to get a hundred guineas for playing two or
three tunes; and he told me that it was just the same thing with the
fiddle--that when you laid a tight hold on your fiddle-stick, or even
set your teeth hard together, you could do nothing but rasp like the
fellows that play in bands for a few shillings a night.”

“How much more of this nonsense must we endure?” said Lucian, audibly,
as Cashel stopped for breath. Cashel turned and looked at him.

“By Jove!” whispered Lord Worthington to his companion, “that fellow had
better be careful. I wish he would hold his tongue.”

“You think it’s nonsense, do you?” said Cashel, after a pause. Then he
raised one of the candles, and illuminated a picture that hung on
the wall, “Look at that picture,” he said. “You see that fellow in
armor--St. George and the dragon, or whatever he may be. He’s jumped
down from his horse to fight the other fellow--that one with his head in
a big helmet, whose horse has tumbled. The lady in the gallery is
half crazy with anxiety for St. George; and well she may be. THERE’S a
posture for a man to fight in! His weight isn’t resting on his legs; one
touch of a child’s finger would upset him. Look at his neck craned out
in front of him, and his face as flat as a full moon towards his man, as
if he was inviting him to shut up both his eyes with one blow. You can
all see that he’s as weak and nervous as a cat, and that he doesn’t know
how to fight. And why does he give you that idea? Just because he’s all
strain and stretch; because he isn’t at his ease; because he carries the
weight of his body as foolishly as one of the ladies here would carry a
hod of bricks; because he isn’t safe, steady, and light on his pins, as
he would be if he could forget himself for a minute, and leave his body
to find its proper balance of its own accord. If the painter of that
picture had known his business he would never have sent his man up to
the scratch in such a figure and condition as that. But you can see
with one eye that he didn’t understand--I won’t say the principles of
fighting, but the universal principles that I’ve told you of, that ease
and strength, effort and weakness, go together. Now,” added Cashel,
again addressing Lucian; “do you still think that notion of mine
nonsense?” And he smacked his lips with satisfaction; for his criticism
of the picture had produced a marked sensation, and he did not know
that this was due to the fact that the painter, Mr. Adrian Herbert, was
present.

Lucian tried to ignore the question; but he found it impossible to
ignore the questioner. “Since you have set the example of expressing
opinions without regard to considerations of common courtesy,” he
said, shortly, “I may say that your theory, if it can be called one, is
manifestly absurd.”

Cashel, apparently unruffled, but with more deliberation of manner than
before, looked about him as if in search of a fresh illustration. His
glance finally rested on the lecturer’s seat, a capacious crimson damask
arm-chair that stood unoccupied at some distance behind Lucian.

“I see you’re no judge of a picture,” said he, good-humoredly, putting
down the candle, and stepping in front of Lucian, who regarded him
haughtily, and did not budge. “But just look at it in this way. Suppose
you wanted to hit me the most punishing blow you possibly could. What
would you do? Why, according to your own notion, you’d make a great
effort. ‘The more effort the more force,’ you’d say to yourself. ‘I’ll
smash him even if I burst myself in doing it.’ And what would happen
then? You’d only cut me and make me angry, besides exhausting all your
strength at one gasp. Whereas, if you took it easy--like this--” Here
he made a light step forward and placed his open palm gently against the
breast of Lncian, who instantly reeled back as if the piston-rod of a
steam-engine had touched him, and dropped into the chair.

“There!” exclaimed Cashel, standing aside and pointing to him. “It’s
like pocketing a billiard-ball!”

A chatter of surprise, amusement, and remonstrance spread through the
rooms; and the company crowded towards the table. Lucian rose, white
with rage, and for a moment entirely lost his self-control. Fortunately,
the effect was to paralyze him; he neither moved nor spoke, and only
betrayed his condition by his pallor and the hatred in his expression.
Presently he felt a touch on his arm and heard his name pronounced by
Lydia. Her voice calmed him. He tried to look at her, but his vision was
disturbed; he saw double; the lights seemed to dunce before his eyes;
and Lord Worthington’s voice, saying to Cashel, “Rather too practical,
old fellow,” seemed to come from a remote corner of the room, and yet to
be whispered into his ear. He was moving irresolutely in search of
Lydia when his senses and his resentment were restored by a clap on the
shoulder.

“You wouldn’t have believed that now, would you?” said Cashel. “Don’t
look startled; you’ve no bones broken. You had your little joke with me
in your own way; and I had mine in MY own way. That’s only--”

He stopped; his brave bearing vanished; he became limp and shamefaced.
Lucian, without a word, withdrew with Lydia to the adjoining apartment,
and left him staring after her with wistful eyes and slackened jaw.

In the meantime Mrs. Hoskyn, an earnest-looking young woman, with
striking dark features and gold spectacles, was looking for Lord
Worthington, who betrayed a consciousness of guilt by attempting to
avoid her. But she cut off his retreat, and confronted him with a
steadfast gaze that compelled him to stand and answer for himself.

“Who is that gentleman whom you introduced to me? I do not recollect his
name.”

“I am really awfully sorry, Mrs. Hoskyn. It was too bad of Byron. But
Webber was excessively nasty.”

Mrs. Hoskyn, additionally annoyed by apologies which she had not
invited, and which put her in the ignominious position of a complainant,
replied coldly, “Mr. Byron! Thank you; I had forgotten,” and was turning
away when Lydia came up to introduce Alice, and to explain why she had
entered unannounced. Lord Worthington then returned to the subject of
Cashel, hoping to improve his credit by claiming Lydia’s acquaintance
with him.

“Did you hear our friend Byron’s speech, Miss Carew? Very
characteristic, I thought.”

“Very,” said Lydia. “I hope Mrs. Hoskyn’s guests are all familiar with
his style. Otherwise they must find him a little startling.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Hoskyn, beginning to wonder whether Cashel could be
some well-known eccentric genius. “He is very odd. I hope Mr. Webber is
not offended.”

“He is the less pleased as he was in the wrong,” said Lydia. “Intolerant
refusal to listen to an opponent is a species of violence that has no
business in such a representative nineteenth-century drawing-room
as yours, Mrs. Hoskyn. There was a fitness in rebuking it by skilled
physical violence. Consider the prodigious tact of it, too! One
gentleman knocks another half-way across a crowded room, and yet no one
is scandalized.”

“You see, Mrs. Hoskyn, the general verdict is ‘Served him right,’” said
Lord Worthington.

“With a rider to the effect that both gentlemen displayed complete
indifference to the comfort of their hostess,” said Lydia. “However, men
so rarely sacrifice their manners to their minds that it would be a pity
to blame them. You do not encourage conventionality, Mrs. Hoskyn?”

“I encourage good manners, though certainly not conventional manners.”

“And you think there is a difference?”

“I FEEL that there is a difference,” said Mrs. Hoskyn, with dignity.

“So do I,” said Lydia; “but one can hardly call others to account for
one’s own subjective ideas.”

Lydia went away to another part of the room without waiting for a reply.
Meanwhile, Cashel stood friendless in the middle of the room, stared
at by most of his neighbors, and spoken to by none. Women looked at him
coldly lest it should be suspected that they were admiring him; and
men regarded him stiffly according to the national custom. Since his
recognition of Lydia, his self-confidence had given place to a misgiving
that he had been making a fool of himself. He began to feel lonely and
abashed; and but for his professional habit of maintaining a cheerful
countenance under adverse circumstances, he would have hid himself
in the darkest corner of the room. He was getting sullen, and seeking
consolation in thoughts of how terribly he could handle all these
distantly-mannered, black-coated gentlemen if he chose, when Lord
Worthington came up to him.

“I had no idea you were such an orator, Byron,” he said. “You can go
into the Church when you cut the other trade. Eh?”

“I wasn’t brought up to the other trade,” said Cashel; “and I know how
to talk to ladies and gentlemen as well as to what you’d suppose to be
my own sort. Don’t you be anxious about me, my lord. I know how to make
myself at home.”

“Of course, of course,” said Lord Worthington, soothingly. “Every one
can see by your manners that you are a gentleman; they recognize that
even in the ring. Otherwise--I know you will excuse my saying so--I
daren’t have brought you here.”

Cashel shook his head, but was pleased. He thought he hated
flattery; had Lord Worthington told him that he was the best boxer
in England--which he probably was--he would have despised him. But he
wished to believe the false compliment to his manners, and was therefore
perfectly convinced of its sincerity. Lord Worthington perceived this,
and retired, pleased with his own tact, in search of Mrs. Hoskyn, to
claim her promise of an introduction to Madame Szczymplica, which Mrs.
Hoskyn had, by way of punishing him for Cashel’s misdemeanor, privately
determined not to redeem.

Cashel began to think he had better go. Lydia was surrounded by men
who were speaking to her in German. He felt his own inability to talk
learnedly even in English; and he had, besides, a conviction that she
was angry with him for upsetting her cousin, who was gravely conversing
with Miss Goff. Suddenly a horrible noise caused a general start and
pause. Mr. Jack, the eminent composer, had opened the piano-forte, and
was illustrating some points in a musical composition under discussion
by making discordant sounds with his voice, accompanied by a few chords.
Cashel laughed aloud in derision as he made his way towards the door
through the crowd, which was now pressing round the pianoforte at which
Madame Szczymplica had just come to the assistance of Jack. Near the
door, and in a corner remote from the instrument, he came upon Lydia and
a middle-aged gentleman, evidently neither a professor nor an artist.

“Ab’n’gas is a very clever man,” the gentleman was saying. “I am sorry I
didn’t hear the lecture. But I leave all that to Mary. She receives the
people who enjoy high art up-stairs; and I take the sensible men down to
the garden or the smoking-room, according to the weather.”

“What do the sensible women do?” said Lydia.

“They come late,” said Mr. Hoskyn, and then laughed at his repartee
until he became aware of the vicinity of Cashel, whose health he
immediately inquired after, shaking his hand warmly and receiving a
numbing grip in return. As soon as he saw that Lydia and Cashel were
acquainted, he slipped away and left them to entertain one another.

“I wonder how he knows me,” said Cashel, heartened by her gracious
reception of a nervous bow. “I never saw him before in my life.”

“He does not know you,” said Lydia, with some sternness. “He is your
host, and therefore concludes that he ought to know you.”

“Oh! That was it, was it?” He paused, at a loss for conversation. She
did not help him. At last he added, “I haven’t seen you this long time,
Miss Carew.”

“It is not very long since I saw you, Mr. Cashel Byron. I saw you
yesterday at some distance from London.”

“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Cashel, “don’t say that. You’re joking, ain’t
you?”

“No. Joking, in that sense, does not amuse me.”

Cashel looked at her in consternation. “You don’t mean to say that you
went to see a--a--Where--when did you see me? You might tell me.”

“Certainly. It was at Clapham Junction, at a quarter-past six.”

“Was any one with me?”

“Your friend, Mr. Mellish, Lord Worthington, and some other persons.”

“Yes. Lord Worthington was there. But where were you?”

“In a waiting-room, close to you.”

“I never saw you,” said Cashel, growing red as he recalled the scene.
“We must have looked very queer. I had had an accident to my eye, and
Mellish was not sober. Did you think I was in bad company?”

“That was not my business, Mr. Cashel Byron.”

“No,” said Cashel, with sudden bitterness. “What did YOU care what
company I kept? You’re mad with me because I made your cousin look like
a fool, I suppose. That’s what’s the matter.”

Lydia looked around to see that no one was within earshot, and, speaking
in a low tone to remind him that they were not alone, said, “There is
nothing the matter, except that you are a grown-up boy rather than a
man. I am not mad with you because of your attack upon my cousin; but he
is very much annoyed, and so is Mrs. Hoskyn, whose guest you were bound
to respect.”

“I knew you’d be down on me. I wouldn’t have said a word if I’d known
that you were here,” said Cashel, dejectedly. “Lie down and be walked
over; that’s what you think I’m fit for. Another man would have twisted
his head off.”

“Is it possible that you do not know that gentlemen never twist
one another’s heads off in society, no matter how great may be the
provocation?”

“I know nothing,” said Cashel with plaintive sullenness. “Everything I
do is wrong. There. Will that satisfy you?”

Lydia looked up at him in doubt. Then, with steady patience, she added:
“Will you answer me a question on your honor?”

He hesitated, fearing that she was going to ask what he was.

“The question is this,” she said, observing the hesitation. “Are you a
simpleton, or a man of science pretending to be a simpleton for the sake
of mocking me and my friends?”

“I am not mocking you; honor bright! All that about science was only a
joke--at least, it’s not what you call science. I’m a real simpleton in
drawing-room affairs; though I’m clever enough in my own line.”

“Then try to believe that I take no pleasure in making you confess
yourself in the wrong, and that you cannot have a lower opinion of me
than the contrary belief implies.”

“That’s just where you’re mistaken,” said Cashel, obstinately. “I
haven’t got a low opinion of you at all. There’s such a thing as being
too clever.”

“You may not know that it is a low opinion. Nevertheless, it is so.”

“Well, have it your own way. I’m wrong again; and you’re right.”

“So far from being gratified by that, I had rather that we were both in
the right and agreed. Can you understand that?”

“I can’t say I do. But I give in to it. What more need you care for?”

“I had rather you understood. Let me try to explain. You think that I
like to be cleverer than other people. You are mistaken. I should like
them all to know whatever I know.”

Cashel laughed cunningly, and shook his head. “Don’t you make any
mistake about that,” he said. “You don’t want anybody to be quite as
clever as yourself; it isn’t in human nature that you should. You’d like
people to be just clever enough to show you off--to be worth beating.
But you wouldn’t like them to be able to beat you. Just clever enough to
know how much cleverer you are; that’s about the mark. Eh?”

Lydia made no further effort to enlighten him. She looked at him
thoughtfully, and said, slowly, “I begin to hold the clew to your
idiosyncrasy. You have attached yourself to the modern doctrine of a
struggle for existence, and look on life as a perpetual combat.”

“A fight? Just so. What is life but a fight? The curs forfeit or get
beaten; the rogues sell the fight and lose the confidence of their
backers; the game ones and the clever ones win the stakes, and have to
hand over the lion’s share of them to the loafers; and luck plays the
devil with them all in turn. That’s not the way they describe life in
books; but that’s what it is.”

“Oddly put, but perhaps true. Still, is there any need of a struggle? Is
not the world large enough for us all to live peacefully in?”

“YOU may think so, because you were born with a silver spoon in your
mouth. But if you hadn’t to fight for that silver spoon, some one else
had; and no doubt he thought it hard that it should be taken away from
him and given to you. I was a snob myself once, and thought the world
was made for me to enjoy myself and order about the poor fellows whose
bread I was eating. But I was left one day where I couldn’t grab any
more of their bread, and had to make some for myself--ay, and some extra
for loafers that had the power to make me pay for what they didn’t own.
That took the conceit out of me fast enough. But what do you know about
such things?”

“More than you think, perhaps. These are dangerous ideas to take with
you into English society.”

“Hmf!” growled Cashel. “They’d be more dangerous if I could give every
man that is robbed of half what he earns twelve lessons--in science.”

“So you can. Publish your lessons. ‘Twelve lectures on political
economy, by Cashel Byron.’ I will help you to publish them, if you
wish.”

“Bless your innocence!” said Cashel: “the sort of political economy I
teach can’t be learned from a book.”

“You have become an enigma again. But yours is not the creed of a
simpleton. You are playing with me--revealing your wisdom from beneath a
veil of infantile guilelessness. I have no more to say.”

“May I be shot if I understand you! I never pretended to be guileless.
Come: is it because I raised a laugh against your cousin that you’re so
spiteful?”

Lydia looked earnestly and doubtfully at him; and he instinctively put
his head back, as if it were in danger. “You do not understand, then?”
 she said. “I will test the genuineness of your stupidity by an appeal to
your obedience.”

“Stupidity! Go on.”

“But will you obey me, if I lay a command upon you?”

“I will go through fire and water for you.”

Lydia blushed faintly, and paused to wonder at the novel sensation
before she resumed. “You had better not apologize to my cousin: partly
because you would only make matters worse; chiefly because he does not
deserve it. But you must make this speech to Mrs. H

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/5872