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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Rogue's Life, by Wilkie Collins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: A Rogue's Life
+
+Author: Wilkie Collins
+
+Release Date: February 21, 2006 [EBook #1588]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROGUE'S LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by James Rusk and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+A ROGUE'S LIFE
+
+by Wilkie Collins
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY WORDS.
+
+The following pages were written more than twenty years since, and were
+then published periodically in _Household Words._
+
+In the original form of publication the Rogue was very favorably
+received. Year after year, I delayed the republication, proposing,
+at the suggestion of my old friend, Mr. Charles Reade, to enlarge
+the present sketch of the hero's adventures in Australia. But the
+opportunity of carrying out this project has proved to be one of the
+lost opportunities of my life. I republish the story with its
+original conclusion unaltered, but with such occasional additions and
+improvements as will, I hope, render it more worthy of attention at the
+present time.
+
+The critical reader may possibly notice a tone of almost boisterous
+gayety in certain parts of these imaginary Confessions. I can only
+plead, in defense, that the story offers the faithful reflection of a
+very happy time in my past life. It was written at Paris, when I had
+Charles Dickens for a near neighbor and a daily companion, and when
+my leisure hours were joyously passed with many other friends, all
+associated with literature and art, of whom the admirable comedian,
+Regnier, is now the only survivor. The revising of these pages has been
+to me a melancholy task. I can only hope that they may cheer the sad
+moments of others. The Rogue may surely claim two merits, at least,
+in the eyes of the new generation--he is never serious for two moments
+together; and he "doesn't take long to read." W. C.
+
+GLOUCESTER PLACE, LONDON, _March_ 6th, 1879.
+
+
+
+
+A ROGUE'S LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+I AM going to try if I can't write something about myself. My life
+has been rather a strange one. It may not seem particularly useful or
+respectable; but it has been, in some respects, adventurous; and that
+may give it claims to be read, even in the most prejudiced circles. I
+am an example of some of the workings of the social system of this
+illustrious country on the individual native, during the early part of
+the present century; and, if I may say so without unbecoming vanity, I
+should like to quote myself for the edification of my countrymen.
+
+Who am I.
+
+I am remarkably well connected, I can tell you. I came into this world
+with the great advantage of having Lady Malkinshaw for a grandmother,
+her ladyship's daughter for a mother, and Francis James Softly, Esq., M.
+D. (commonly called Doctor Softly), for a father. I put my father last,
+because he was not so well connected as my mother, and my grandmother
+first, because she was the most nobly-born person of the three. I have
+been, am still, and may continue to be, a Rogue; but I hope I am not
+abandoned enough yet to forget the respect that is due to rank. On this
+account, I trust, nobody will show such want of regard for my feelings
+as to expect me to say much about my mother's brother. That inhuman
+person committed an outrage on his family by making a fortune in the
+soap and candle trade. I apologize for mentioning him, even in an
+accidental way. The fact is, he left my sister, Annabella, a legacy of
+rather a peculiar kind, saddled with certain conditions which indirectly
+affected me; but this passage of family history need not be produced
+just yet. I apologize a second time for alluding to money matters before
+it was absolutely necessary. Let me get back to a pleasing and reputable
+subject, by saying a word or two more about my father.
+
+I am rather afraid that Doctor Softly was not a clever medical man; for
+in spite of his great connections, he did not get a very magnificent
+practice as a physician.
+
+As a general practitioner, he might have bought a comfortable business,
+with a house and snug surgery-shop attached; but the son-in-law of Lady
+Malkinshaw was obliged to hold up his head, and set up his carriage, and
+live in a street near a fashionable square, and keep an expensive
+and clumsy footman to answer the door, instead of a cheap and tidy
+housemaid. How he managed to "maintain his position" (that is the right
+phrase, I think), I never could tell. His wife did not bring him a
+farthing. When the honorable and gallant baronet, her father, died, he
+left the widowed Lady Malkinshaw with her worldly affairs in a curiously
+involved state. Her son (of whom I feel truly ashamed to be obliged to
+speak again so soon) made an effort to extricate his mother--involved
+himself in a series of pecuniary disasters, which commercial people
+call, I believe, transactions--struggled for a little while to get out
+of them in the character of an independent gentleman--failed--and then
+spiritlessly availed himself of the oleaginous refuge of the soap and
+candle trade. His mother always looked down upon him after this; but
+borrowed money of him also--in order to show, I suppose, that her
+maternal interest in her son was not quite extinct. My father tried
+to follow her example--in his wife's interests, of course; but the
+soap-boiler brutally buttoned up his pockets, and told my father to go
+into business for himself. Thus it happened that we were certainly a
+poor family, in spite of the fine appearance we made, the fashionable
+street we lived in, the neat brougham we kept, and the clumsy and
+expensive footman who answered our door.
+
+What was to be done with me in the way of education?
+
+If my father had consulted his means, I should have been sent to a
+cheap commercial academy; but he had to consult his relationship to Lady
+Malkinshaw; so I was sent to one of the most fashionable and famous of
+the great public schools. I will not mention it by name, because I don't
+think the masters would be proud of my connection with it. I ran away
+three times, and was flogged three times. I made four aristocratic
+connections, and had four pitched battles with them: three thrashed me,
+and one I thrashed. I learned to play at cricket, to hate rich people,
+to cure warts, to write Latin verses, to swim, to recite speeches, to
+cook kidneys on toast, to draw caricatures of the masters, to construe
+Greek plays, to black boots, and to receive kicks and serious advice
+resignedly. Who will say that the fashionable public school was of no
+use to me after that?
+
+After I left school, I had the narrowest escape possible of intruding
+myself into another place of accommodation for distinguished people; in
+other words, I was very nearly being sent to college. Fortunately for
+me, my father lost a lawsuit just in the nick of time, and was obliged
+to scrape together every farthing of available money that he possessed
+to pay for the luxury of going to law. If he could have saved his seven
+shillings, he would certainly have sent me to scramble for a place in
+the pit of the great university theater; but his purse was empty, and
+his son was not eligible therefore for admission, in a gentlemanly
+capacity, at the doors.
+
+The next thing was to choose a profession.
+
+Here the Doctor was liberality itself, in leaving me to my own devices.
+I was of a roving adventurous temperament, and I should have liked to
+go into the army. But where was the money to come from, to pay for my
+commission? As to enlisting in the ranks, and working my way up,
+the social institutions of my country obliged the grandson of Lady
+Malkinshaw to begin military life as an officer and gentleman, or not
+to begin it at all. The army, therefore, was out of the question. The
+Church? Equally out of the question: since I could not pay for admission
+to the prepared place of accommodation for distinguished people, and
+could not accept a charitable free pass, in consequence of my high
+connections. The Bar? I should be five years getting to it, and should
+have to spend two hundred a year in going circuit before I had earned a
+farthing. Physic? This really seemed the only gentlemanly refuge left;
+and yet, with the knowledge of my father's experience before me, I was
+ungrateful enough to feel a secret dislike for it. It is a degrading
+confession to make; but I remember wishing I was not so highly
+connected, and absolutely thinking that the life of a commercial
+traveler would have suited me exactly, if I had not been a poor
+gentleman. Driving about from place to place, living jovially at inns,
+seeing fresh faces constantly, and getting money by all this enjoyment,
+instead of spending it--what a life for me, if I had been the son of a
+haberdasher and the grandson of a groom's widow!
+
+While my father was uncertain what to do with me, a new profession was
+suggested by a friend, which I shall repent not having been allowed
+to adopt, to the last day of my life. This friend was an eccentric old
+gentleman of large property, much respected in our family. One day,
+my father, in my presence, asked his advice about the best manner of
+starting me in life, with due credit to my connections and sufficient
+advantage to myself.
+
+"Listen to my experience," said our eccentric friend, "and, if you are
+a wise man, you will make up your mind as soon as you have heard me. I
+have three sons. I brought my eldest son up to the Church; he is said to
+be getting on admirably, and he costs me three hundred a year. I brought
+my second son up to the Bar; he is said to be getting on admirably,
+and he costs me four hundred a year. I brought my third son up to
+_Quadrilles_--he has married an heiress, and he costs me nothing."
+
+Ah, me! if that worthy sage's advice had only been followed--if I had
+been brought up to Quadrilles!--if I had only been cast loose on the
+ballrooms of London, to qualify under Hymen, for a golden degree! Oh!
+you young ladies with money, I was five feet ten in my stockings; I was
+great at small-talk and dancing; I had glossy whiskers, curling locks,
+and a rich voice! Ye girls with golden guineas, ye nymphs with crisp
+bank-notes, mourn over the husband you have lost among you--over the
+Rogue who has broken the laws which, as the partner of a landed or
+fund-holding woman, he might have helped to make on the benches of
+the British Parliament! Oh! ye hearths and homes sung about in so
+many songs--written about in so many books--shouted about in so many
+speeches, with accompaniment of so much loud cheering: what a settler
+on the hearth-rug; what a possessor of property; what a bringer-up of a
+family, was snatched away from you, when the son of Dr. Softly was lost
+to the profession of Quadrilles!
+
+It ended in my resigning myself to the misfortune of being a doctor.
+
+If I was a very good boy and took pains, and carefully mixed in the best
+society, I might hope in the course of years to succeed to my father's
+brougham, fashionably-situated house, and clumsy and expensive footman.
+There was a prospect for a lad of spirit, with the blood of the early
+Malkinshaws (who were Rogues of great capacity and distinction in the
+feudal times) coursing adventurous through every vein! I look back on my
+career, and when I remember the patience with which I accepted a medical
+destiny, I appear to myself in the light of a hero. Nay, I even went
+beyond the passive virtue of accepting my destiny--I actually studied, I
+made the acquaintance of the skeleton, I was on friendly terms with the
+muscular system, and the mysteries of Physiology dropped in on me in the
+kindest manner whenever they had an evening to spare.
+
+Even this was not the worst of it. I disliked the abstruse studies of my
+new profession; but I absolutely hated the diurnal slavery of qualifying
+myself, in a social point of view, for future success in it. My fond
+medical parent insisted on introducing me to his whole connection. I
+went round visiting in the neat brougham--with a stethoscope and medical
+review in the front-pocket, with Doctor Softly by my side, keeping
+his face well in view at the window--to canvass for patients, in the
+character of my father's hopeful successor. Never have I been so ill at
+ease in prison, as I was in that carriage. I have felt more at home
+in the dock (such is the natural depravity and perversity of my
+disposition) than ever I felt in the drawing-rooms of my father's
+distinguished patrons and respectable friends. Nor did my miseries end
+with the morning calls. I was commanded to attend all dinner-parties,
+and to make myself agreeable at all balls. The dinners were the worst
+trial. Sometimes, indeed, we contrived to get ourselves asked to the
+houses of high and mighty entertainers, where we ate the finest French
+dishes and drank the oldest vintages, and fortified ourselves sensibly
+and snugly in that way against the frigidity of the company. Of these
+repasts I have no hard words to say; it is of the dinners we gave
+ourselves, and of the dinners which people in our rank of life gave to
+us, that I now bitterly complain.
+
+Have you ever observed the remarkable adherence to set forms of speech
+which characterizes the talkers of arrant nonsense! Precisely the same
+sheepish following of one given example distinguishes the ordering of
+genteel dinners.
+
+When we gave a dinner at home, we had gravy soup, turbot and
+lobster-sauce, haunch of mutton, boiled fowls and tongue, lukewarm
+oyster-patties and sticky curry for side-dishes; wild duck,
+cabinet-pudding, jelly, cream and tartlets. All excellent things, except
+when you have to eat them continually. We lived upon them entirely in
+the season. Every one of our hospitable friends gave us a return dinner,
+which was a perfect copy of ours--just as ours was a perfect copy of
+theirs, last year. They boiled what we boiled, and we roasted what they
+roasted. We none of us ever changed the succession of the courses--or
+made more or less of them--or altered the position of the fowls opposite
+the mistress and the haunch opposite the master. My stomach used to
+quail within me, in those times, when the tureen was taken off and
+the inevitable gravy-soup smell renewed its daily acquaintance with my
+nostrils, and warned me of the persistent eatable formalities that were
+certain to follow. I suppose that honest people, who have known what it
+is to get no dinner (being a Rogue, I have myself never wanted for one),
+have gone through some very acute suffering under that privation. It may
+be some consolation to them to know that, next to absolute starvation,
+the same company-dinner, every day, is one of the hardest trials that
+assail human endurance. I date my first serious determination to throw
+over the medical profession at the earliest convenient opportunity,
+from the second season's series of dinners at which my aspirations, as a
+rising physician, unavoidably and regularly condemned me to be present.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE opportunity I wanted presented itself in a curious way, and led,
+unexpectedly enough, to some rather important consequences.
+
+I have already stated, among the other branches of human attainment
+which I acquired at the public school, that I learned to draw
+caricatures of the masters who were so obliging as to educate me. I
+had a natural faculty for this useful department of art. I improved it
+greatly by practice in secret after I left school, and I ended by making
+it a source of profit and pocket money to me when I entered the medical
+profession. What was I to do? I could not expect for years to make a
+halfpenny, as a physician. My genteel walk in life led me away from all
+immediate sources of emolument, and my father could only afford to give
+me an allowance which was too preposterously small to be mentioned. I
+had helped myself surreptitiously to pocket-money at school, by selling
+my caricatures, and I was obliged to repeat the process at home!
+
+At the time of which I write, the Art of Caricature was just approaching
+the close of its colored and most extravagant stage of development. The
+subtlety and truth to Nature required for the pursuit of it now, had
+hardly begun to be thought of then. Sheer farce and coarse burlesque,
+with plenty of color for the money, still made up the sum of what the
+public of those days wanted. I was first assured of my capacity for the
+production of these requisites, by a medical friend of the ripe critical
+age of nineteen. He knew a print-publisher, and enthusiastically showed
+him a portfolio full of my sketches, taking care at my request not to
+mention my name. Rather to my surprise (for I was too conceited to be
+greatly amazed by the circumstance), the publisher picked out a few of
+the best of my wares, and boldly bought them of me--of course, at his
+own price. From that time I became, in an anonymous way, one of the
+young buccaneers of British Caricature; cruising about here, there and
+everywhere, at all my intervals of spare time, for any prize in the
+shape of a subject which it was possible to pick up. Little did my
+highly-connected mother think that, among the colored prints in the
+shop-window, which disrespectfully illustrated the public and private
+proceedings of distinguished individuals, certain specimens bearing
+the classic signature of "Thersites Junior," were produced from designs
+furnished by her studious and medical son. Little did my respectable
+father imagine when, with great difficulty and vexation, he succeeded in
+getting me now and then smuggled, along with himself, inside the pale
+of fashionable society--that he was helping me to study likenesses which
+were destined under my reckless treatment to make the public laugh at
+some of his most august patrons, and to fill the pockets of his son with
+professional fees, never once dreamed of in his philosophy.
+
+For more than a year I managed, unsuspected, to keep the Privy Purse
+fairly supplied by the exercise of my caricaturing abilities. But the
+day of detection was to come.
+
+Whether my medical friend's admiration of my satirical sketches led him
+into talking about them in public with too little reserve; or whether
+the servants at home found private means of watching me in my moments
+of Art-study, I know not: but that some one betrayed me, and that
+the discovery of my illicit manufacture of caricatures was actually
+communicated even to the grandmotherly head and fount of the family
+honor, is a most certain and lamentable matter of fact. One morning my
+father received a letter from Lady Malkinshaw herself, informing him,
+in a handwriting crooked with poignant grief, and blotted at every third
+word by the violence of virtuous indignation, that "Thersites Junior"
+was his own son, and that, in one of the last of the "ribald's"
+caricatures her own venerable features were unmistakably represented as
+belonging to the body of a large owl!
+
+Of course, I laid my hand on my heart and indignantly denied everything.
+Useless. My original model for the owl had got proofs of my guilt that
+were not to be resisted.
+
+The doctor, ordinarily the most mellifluous and self-possessed of
+men, flew into a violent, roaring, cursing passion, on this
+occasion--declared that I was imperiling the honor and standing of the
+family--insisted on my never drawing another caricature, either for
+public or private purposes, as long as I lived; and ordered me to go
+forthwith and ask pardon of Lady Malkinshaw in the humblest terms that
+it was possible to select. I answered dutifully that I was quite ready
+to obey, on the condition that he should reimburse me by a trebled
+allowance for what I should lose by giving up the Art of Caricature,
+or that Lady Malkinshaw should confer on me the appointment of
+physician-in-waiting on her, with a handsome salary attached. These
+extremely moderate stipulations so increased my father's anger, that he
+asserted, with an unmentionably vulgar oath, his resolution to turn me
+out of doors if I did not do as he bid me, without daring to hint at
+any conditions whatsoever. I bowed, and said that I would save him the
+exertion of turning me out of doors, by going of my own accord. He shook
+his fist at me; after which it obviously became my duty, as a member
+of a gentlemanly and peaceful profession, to leave the room. The same
+evening I left the house, and I have never once given the clumsy and
+expensive footman the trouble of answering the door to me since that
+time.
+
+I have reason to believe that my exodus from home was, on the whole,
+favorably viewed by my mother, as tending to remove any possibility of
+my bad character and conduct interfering with my sister's advancement in
+life.
+
+By dint of angling with great dexterity and patience, under the
+direction of both her parents, my handsome sister Annabella had
+succeeded in catching an eligible husband, in the shape of a wizen,
+miserly, mahogany-colored man, turned fifty, who had made a fortune in
+the West Indies. His name was Batterbury; he had been dried up under
+a tropical sun, so as to look as if he would keep for ages; he had two
+subjects of conversation, the yellow-fever and the advantage of walking
+exercise: and he was barbarian enough to take a violent dislike to me.
+He had proved a very delicate fish to hook; and, even when Annabella
+had caught him, my father and mother had great difficulty in landing
+him--principally, they were good enough to say, in consequence of my
+presence on the scene. Hence the decided advantage of my removal from
+home. It is a very pleasant reflection to me, now, to remember how
+disinterestedly I studied the good of my family in those early days.
+
+Abandoned entirely to my own resources, I naturally returned to the
+business of caricaturing with renewed ardor.
+
+About this time Thersites Junior really began to make something like a
+reputation, and to walk abroad habitually with a bank-note comfortably
+lodged among the other papers in his pocketbook. For a year I lived a
+gay and glorious life in some of the freest society in London; at the
+end of that time, my tradesmen, without any provocation on my part, sent
+in their bills. I found myself in the very absurd position of having no
+money to pay them, and told them all so with the frankness which is one
+of the best sides of my character. They received my advances toward
+a better understanding with brutal incivility, and treated me soon
+afterward with a want of confidence which I may forgive, but can never
+forget. One day, a dirty stranger touched me on the shoulder, and showed
+me a dirty slip of paper which I at first presumed to be his card.
+Before I could tell him what a vulgar document it looked like, two more
+dirty strangers put me into a hackney coach. Before I could prove to
+them that this proceeding was a gross infringement on the liberties of
+the British subject, I found myself lodged within the walls of a prison.
+
+Well! and what of that? Who am I that I should object to being in
+prison, when so many of the royal personages and illustrious characters
+of history have been there before me? Can I not carry on my vocation
+in greater comfort here than I could in my father's house? Have I any
+anxieties outside these walls? No: for my beloved sister is married--the
+family net has landed Mr. Batterbury at last. No: for I read in the
+paper the other day, that Doctor Softly (doubtless through
+the interest of Lady Malkinshaw) has been appointed the
+King's-Barber-Surgeon's-Deputy-Consulting Physician. My relatives are
+comfortable in their sphere--let me proceed forthwith to make myself
+comfortable in mine. Pen, ink, and paper, if you please, Mr. Jailer: I
+wish to write to my esteemed publisher.
+
+
+
+"DEAR SIR--Please advertise a series of twelve Racy Prints, from my
+fertile pencil, entitled, 'Scenes of Modern Prison Life,' by Thersites
+Junior. The two first designs will be ready by the end of the week, to
+be paid for on delivery, according to the terms settled between us for
+my previous publications of the same size.
+
+"With great regard and esteem, faithfully yours,
+
+"FRANK SOFTLY."
+
+
+
+Having thus provided for my support in prison, I was enabled to
+introduce myself to my fellow-debtors, and to study character for the
+new series of prints, on the very first day of my incarceration, with my
+mind quite at ease.
+
+If the reader desires to make acquaintance with the associates of
+my captivity, I must refer him to "Scenes of Modern Prison Life," by
+Thersites Junior, now doubtless extremely scarce, but producible to the
+demands of patience and perseverance, I should imagine, if anybody will
+be so obliging as to pass a week or so over the catalogue of the British
+Museum. My fertile pencil has delineated the characters I met with,
+at that period of my life, with a force and distinctness which my pen
+cannot hope to rival--has portrayed them all more or less prominently,
+with the one solitary exception of a prisoner called Gentleman Jones.
+The reasons why I excluded him from my portrait-gallery are so honorable
+to both of us, that I must ask permission briefly to record them.
+
+My fellow-captives soon discovered that I was studying their personal
+peculiarities for my own advantage and for the public amusement. Some
+thought the thing a good joke; some objected to it, and quarreled with
+me. Liberality in the matter of liquor and small loans, reconciled a
+large proportion of the objectors to their fate; the sulky minority I
+treated with contempt, and scourged avengingly with the smart lash of
+caricature. I was at that time probably the most impudent man of my age
+in all England, and the common flock of jail-birds quailed before the
+magnificence of my assurance. One prisoner only set me and my pencil
+successfully at defiance. That prisoner was Gentleman Jones.
+
+He had received his name from the suavity of his countenance, the
+inveterate politeness of his language, and the unassailable composure of
+his manner. He was in the prime of life, but very bald--had been in the
+army and the coal trade--wore very stiff collars and prodigiously long
+wristbands--seldom laughed, but talked with remarkable glibness, and was
+never known to lose his temper under the most aggravating circumstances
+of prison existence.
+
+He abstained from interfering with me and my studies, until it was
+reported in our society, that in the sixth print of my series, Gentleman
+Jones, highly caricatured, was to form one of the principal figures. He
+then appealed to me personally and publicly, on the racket-ground, in
+the following terms:
+
+"Sir," said he, with his usual politeness and his unwavering smile, "you
+will greatly oblige me by not caricaturing my personal peculiarities. I
+am so unfortunate as not to possess a sense of humor; and if you did my
+likeness, I am afraid I should not see the joke of it."
+
+"Sir," I returned, with my customary impudence, "it is not of the
+slightest importance whether _you_ see the joke of it or not. The public
+will--and that is enough for me."
+
+With that civil speech, I turned on my heel; and the prisoners near
+all burst out laughing. Gentleman Jones, not in the least altered or
+ruffled, smoothed down his wristbands, smiled, and walked away.
+
+The same evening I was in my room alone, designing the new print, when
+there came a knock at the door, and Gentleman Jones walked in. I got up,
+and asked what the devil he wanted. He smiled, and turned up his long
+wristbands.
+
+"Only to give you a lesson in politeness," said Gentleman Jones.
+
+"What do you mean, sir? How dare you--?"
+
+The answer was a smart slap on the face. I instantly struck out in a
+state of fury--was stopped with great neatness--and received in return a
+blow on the head, which sent me down on the carpet half stunned, and too
+giddy to know the difference between the floor and the ceiling.
+
+"Sir," said Gentleman Jones, smoothing down his wristbands again, and
+addressing me blandly as I lay on the floor, "I have the honor to inform
+you that you have now received your first lesson in politeness. Always
+be civil to those who are civil to you. The little matter of
+the caricature we will settle on a future occasion. I wish you
+good-evening."
+
+The noise of my fall had been heard by the other occupants of rooms on
+my landing. Most fortunately for my dignity, they did not come in to see
+what was the matter until I had been able to get into my chair again.
+When they entered, I felt that the impression of the slap was red on my
+face still, but the mark of the blow was hidden by my hair. Under these
+fortunate circumstances, I was able to keep up my character among my
+friends, when they inquired about the scuffle, by informing them that
+Gentleman Jones had audaciously slapped my face, and that I had been
+obliged to retaliate by knocking him down. My word in the prison was as
+good as his; and if my version of the story got fairly the start of his,
+I had the better chance of the two of being believed.
+
+I was rather anxious, the next day, to know what course my polite and
+pugilistic instructor would take. To my utter amazement, he bowed to me
+as civilly as usual when we met in the yard; he never denied my version
+of the story; and when my friends laughed at him as a thrashed man, he
+took not the slightest notice of their agreeable merriment. Antiquity,
+I think, furnishes us with few more remarkable characters than Gentleman
+Jones.
+
+That evening I thought it desirable to invite a friend to pass the time
+with me. As long as my liquor lasted he stopped; when it was gone, he
+went away. I was just locking the door after him, when it was pushed
+open gently, but very firmly, and Gentleman Jones walked in.
+
+My pride, which had not allowed me to apply for protection to the prison
+authorities, would not allow me now to call for help. I tried to get to
+the fireplace and arm myself with the poker, but Gentleman Jones was
+too quick for me. "I have come, sir, to give you a lesson in morality
+to-night," he said; and up went his right hand.
+
+I stopped the preliminary slap, but before I could hit him, his terrible
+left fist reached my head again; and down I fell once more--upon the
+hearth-rug this time--not over-heavily.
+
+"Sir," said Gentleman Jones, making me a bow, "you have now received
+your first lesson in morality. Always speak the truth; and never say
+what is false of another man behind his back. To-morrow, with your
+kind permission, we will finally settle the adjourned question of the
+caricature. Good-night."
+
+I was far too sensible a man to leave the settling of that question to
+him. The first thing in the morning I sent a polite note to Gentleman
+Jones, informing him that I had abandoned all idea of exhibiting his
+likeness to the public in my series of prints, and giving him full
+permission to inspect every design I made before it went out of the
+prison. I received a most civil answer, thanking me for my courtesy, and
+complimenting me on the extraordinary aptitude with which I profited by
+the most incomplete and elementary instruction. I thought I deserved
+the compliment, and I think so still. Our conduct, as I have already
+intimated, was honorable to us, on either side. It was honorable
+attention on the part of Gentleman Jones to correct me when I was in
+error; it was honorable common sense in me to profit by the correction.
+I have never seen this great man since he compounded with his creditors
+and got out of prison; but my feelings toward him are still those of
+profound gratitude and respect. He gave me the only useful teaching I
+ever had; and if this should meet the eye of Gentleman Jones I hereby
+thank him for beginning and ending my education in two evenings, without
+costing me or my family a single farthing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+To return to my business affairs. When I was comfortably settled in the
+prison, and knew exactly what I owed, I thought it my duty to my father
+to give him the first chance of getting me out. His answer to my letter
+contained a quotation from Shakespeare on the subject of thankless
+children, but no remittance of money. After that, my only course was
+to employ a lawyer and be declared a bankrupt. I was most uncivilly
+treated, and remanded two or three times. When everything I possessed
+had been sold for the benefit of my creditors, I was reprimanded and let
+out. It is pleasant to think that, even then, my faith in myself and in
+human nature was still not shaken.
+
+About ten days before my liberation, I was thunderstruck at receiving a
+visit from my sister's mahogany-colored husband, Mr. Batterbury. When
+I was respectably settled at home, this gentleman would not so much as
+look at me without a frown; and now, when I was a scamp, in prison, he
+mercifully and fraternally came to condole with me on my misfortunes.
+A little dexterous questioning disclosed the secret of this prodigious
+change in our relations toward each other, and informed me of a family
+event which altered my position toward my sister in the most whimsical
+manner.
+
+While I was being removed to the bankruptcy court, my uncle in the soap
+and candle trade was being removed to the other world. His will took
+no notice of my father or my mother; but he left to my sister (always
+supposed to be his favorite in the family) a most extraordinary legacy
+of possible pin-money, in the shape of a contingent reversion to the
+sum of three thousand pounds, payable on the death of Lady Malkinshaw,
+provided I survived her.
+
+Whether this document sprang into existence out of any of his involved
+money transactions with his mother was more than Mr. Batterbury could
+tell. I could ascertain nothing in relation to it, except that the
+bequest was accompanied by some cynical remarks, to the effect that the
+testator would feel happy if his legacy were instrumental in reviving
+the dormant interest of only one member of Doctor Softly's family in the
+fortunes of the hopeful young gentleman who had run away from home. My
+esteemed uncle evidently felt that he could not in common decency avoid
+doing something for his sister's family; and he had done it accordingly
+in the most malicious and mischievous manner. This was characteristic of
+him; he was just the man, if he had not possessed the document before,
+to have had it drawn out on his death-bed for the amiable purpose which
+it was now devoted to serve.
+
+Here was a pretty complication! Here was my sister's handsome legacy
+made dependent on my outliving my grandmother! This was diverting
+enough; but Mr. Batterbury's conduct was more amusing still.
+
+The miserly little wretch not only tried to conceal his greedy desire to
+save his own pockets by securing the allowance of pin-money left to his
+wife, but absolutely persisted in ignoring the plain fact that his visit
+to me sprang from the serious pecuniary interest which he and Annabella
+now had in the life and health of your humble servant. I made all
+the necessary jokes about the strength of the vital principle in Lady
+Malkinshaw, and the broken condition of my own constitution; but he
+solemnly abstained from understanding one of them. He resolutely kept up
+appearances in the very face of detection; not the faintest shade of red
+came over his wicked old mahogany face as he told me how shocked he and
+his wife were at my present position, and how anxious Annabella was that
+he should not forget to give me her love. Tenderhearted creature! I
+had only been in prison six months when that overwhelming testimony
+of sisterly affection came to console me in my captivity. Ministering
+angel! you shall get your three thousand pounds. I am fifty years
+younger than Lady Malkinshaw, and I will take care of myself, Annabella,
+for thy dear sake!
+
+The next time I saw Mr. Batterbury was on the day when I at last got
+my discharge. He was not waiting to see where I was going next, or what
+vital risks I was likely to run on the recovery of my freedom, but
+to congratulate me, and to give me Annabella's love. It was a very
+gratifying attention, and I said as much, in tones of the deepest
+feeling.
+
+"How is dear Lady Malkinshaw?" I asked, when my grateful emotions had
+subsided.
+
+Mr. Batterbury shook his head mournfully. "I regret to say, not quite so
+well as her friends could wish," he answered. "The last time I had the
+pleasure of seeing her ladyship, she looked so yellow that if we had
+been in Jamaica I should have said it was a case of death in twelve
+hours. I respectfully endeavored to impress upon her ladyship the
+necessity of keeping the functions of the liver active by daily walking
+exercise; time, distance, and pace being regulated with proper regard to
+her age--you understand me?--of course, with proper regard to her age."
+
+"You could not possibly have given her better advice," I said. "When I
+saw her, as long as two years ago, Lady Malkinshaw's favorite delusion
+was that she was the most active woman of seventy-five in all England.
+She used to tumble downstairs two or three times a week, then, because
+she never would allow any one to help her; and could not be brought to
+believe that she was as blind as a mole, and as rickety on her legs as a
+child of a year old. Now you have encouraged her to take to walking, she
+will be more obstinate than ever, and is sure to tumble down daily, out
+of doors as well as in. Not even the celebrated Malkinshaw toughness can
+last out more than a few weeks of that practice. Considering the present
+shattered condition of my constitution, you couldn't have given her
+better advice--upon my word of honor, you couldn't have given her better
+advice!"
+
+"I am afraid," said Mr. Batterbury, with a power of face I envied; "I
+am afraid, my dear Frank (let me call you Frank), that I don't quite
+apprehend your meaning: and we have unfortunately no time to enter into
+explanations. Five miles here by a roundabout way is only half my daily
+allowance of walking exercise; five miles back by a roundabout way
+remain to be now accomplished. So glad to see you at liberty again!
+Mind you let us know where you settle, and take care of yourself; and
+do recognize the importance to the whole animal economy of daily walking
+exercise--do now! Did I give you Annabella's love? She's so well.
+Good-by."
+
+Away went Mr. Batterbury to finish his walk for the sake of his health,
+and away went I to visit my publisher for the sake of my pocket.
+
+An unexpected disappointment awaited me. My "Scenes of Modern Prison
+Life" had not sold so well as had been anticipated, and my publisher was
+gruffly disinclined to speculate in any future works done in the same
+style. During the time of my imprisonment, a new caricaturist had
+started, with a manner of his own; he had already formed a new school,
+and the fickle public were all running together after him and his
+disciples. I said to myself: "This scene in the drama of your life, my
+friend, has closed in; you must enter on another, or drop the curtain at
+once." Of course I entered on another.
+
+Taking leave of my publisher, I went to consult an artist-friend on my
+future prospects. I supposed myself to be merely on my way to a change
+of profession. As destiny ordered it, I was also on my way to the woman
+who was not only to be the object of my first love, but the innocent
+cause of the great disaster of my life.
+
+I first saw her in one of the narrow streets leading from Leicester
+Square to the Strand. There was something in her face (dimly visible
+behind a thick veil) that instantly stopped me as I passed her. I looked
+back and hesitated. Her figure was the perfection of modest grace. I
+yielded to the impulse of the moment. In plain words, I did what you
+would have done, in my place--I followed her.
+
+She looked round--discovered me--and instantly quickened her pace.
+Reaching the westward end of the Strand, she crossed the street and
+suddenly entered a shop.
+
+I looked through the window, and saw her speak to a respectable elderly
+person behind the counter, who darted an indignant look at me, and at
+once led my charming stranger into a back office. For the moment, I
+was fool enough to feel puzzled; it was out of my character you will
+say--but remember, all men are fools when they first fall in love. After
+a little while I recovered the use of my senses. The shop was at the
+corner of a side street, leading to the market, since removed to make
+room for the railway. "There's a back entrance to the house!" I thought
+to myself--and ran down the side street. Too late! the lovely fugitive
+had escaped me. Had I lost her forever in the great world of London? I
+thought so at the time. Events will show that I never was more mistaken
+in my life.
+
+I was in no humor to call on my friend. It was not until another day had
+passed that I sufficiently recovered my composure to see poverty staring
+me in the face, and to understand that I had really no alternative but
+to ask the good-natured artist to lend me a helping hand.
+
+I had heard it darkly whispered that he was something of a vagabond. But
+the term is so loosely applied, and it seems so difficult, after all, to
+define what a vagabond is, or to strike the right moral balance between
+the vagabond work which is boldly published, and the vagabond work which
+is reserved for private circulation only, that I did not feel justified
+in holding aloof from my former friend. Accordingly, I renewed our
+acquaintance, and told him my present difficulty. He was a sharp man,
+and he showed me a way out of it directly.
+
+"You have a good eye for a likeness," he said; "and you have made
+it keep you hitherto. Very well. Make it keep you still. You can't
+profitably caricature people's faces any longer--never mind! go to the
+other extreme, and flatter them now. Turn portrait-painter. You shall
+have the use of this study three days in the week, for ten shillings a
+week--sleeping on the hearth-rug included, if you like. Get your
+paints, rouse up your friends, set to work at once. Drawing is of
+no consequence; painting is of no consequence; perspective is of
+no consequence; ideas are of no consequence. Everything is of no
+consequence, except catching a likeness and flattering your sitter--and
+that you know you can do."
+
+I felt that I could; and left him for the nearest colorman's.
+
+Before I got to the shop, I met Mr. Batterbury taking his walking
+exercise. He stopped, shook hands with me affectionately, and asked
+where I was going. A wonderful idea struck me. Instead of answering his
+question, I asked after Lady Malkinshaw.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," said Mr. Batterbury; "her ladyship tumbled
+downstairs yesterday morning."
+
+"My dear sir, allow me to congratulate you!"
+
+"Most fortunately," continued Mr. Batterbury, with a strong emphasis on
+the words, and a fixed stare at me; "most fortunately, the servant had
+been careless enough to leave a large bundle of clothes for the wash
+at the foot of the stairs, while she went to answer the door. Falling
+headlong from the landing, her ladyship pitched (pardon me the
+expression)--pitched into the very middle of the bundle. She was a
+little shaken at the time, but is reported to be going on charmingly
+this morning. Most fortunate, was it not? Seen the papers? Awful news
+from Demerara--the yellow fever--"
+
+"I wish I was at Demerara," I said, in a hollow voice.
+
+"You! Why?" exclaimed Mr. Batterbury, aghast.
+
+"I am homeless, friendless, penniless," I went on, getting more hollow
+at every word. "All my intellectual instincts tell me that I could
+retrieve my position and live respectably in the world, if I might only
+try my hand at portrait-painting--the thing of all others that I am
+naturally fittest for. But I have nobody to start me; no sitter to give
+me a first chance; nothing in my pocket but three-and-sixpence; and
+nothing in my mind but a doubt whether I shall struggle on a little
+longer, or end it immediately in the Thames. Don't let me detain you
+from your walk, my dear sir. I'm afraid Lady Malkinshaw will outlive me,
+after all!"
+
+"Stop!" cried Mr. Batterbury; his mahogany face actually getting
+white with alarm. "Stop! Don't talk in that dreadfully unprincipled
+manner--don't, I implore, I insist! You have plenty of friends--you have
+me, and your sister. Take to portrait-painting--think of your family,
+and take to portrait-painting!"
+
+"Where am I to get a sitter?' I inquired, with a gloomy shake of the
+head.
+
+"Me," said Mr. Batterbury, with an effort. "I'll be your first sitter.
+As a beginner, and especially to a member of the family, I suppose your
+terms will be moderate. Small beginnings--you know the proverb?" Here he
+stopped; and a miserly leer puckered up his mahogany cheeks.
+
+"I'll do you, life-size, down to your waistcoat, for fifty pounds," said
+I.
+
+Mr. Batterbury winced, and looked about him to the right and left, as if
+he wanted to run away. He had five thousand a year, but he contrived to
+took, at that moment, as if his utmost income was five hundred. I walked
+on a few steps.
+
+"Surely those terms are rather high to begin with?" he said, walking
+after me. "I should have thought five-and-thirty, or perhaps forty--"
+
+"A gentleman, sir, cannot condescend to bargain," said I, with mournful
+dignity. "Farewell!" I waved my hand, and crossed over the way.
+
+"Don't do that!" cried Mr. Batterbury. "I accept. Give me your address.
+I'll come tomorrow. Will it include the frame! There! there! it doesn't
+include the frame, of course. Where are you going now? To the colorman?
+He doesn't live in the Strand, I hope--or near one of the bridges. Think
+of Annabella, think of the family, think of the fifty pounds--an income,
+a year's income to a prudent man. Pray, pray be careful, and compose
+your mind: promise me, my dear, dear fellow--promise me, on your word of
+honor, to compose your mind!"
+
+I left him still harping on that string, and suffering, I believe, the
+only serious attack of mental distress that had ever affected him in the
+whole course of his life.
+
+
+
+Behold me, then, now starting afresh in the world, in the character of
+a portrait-painter; with the payment of my remuneration from my first
+sitter depending whimsically on the life of my grandmother. If you care
+to know how Lady Malkinshaw's health got on, and how I succeeded in
+my new profession, you have only to follow the further course of these
+confessions, in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+I GAVE my orders to the colorman, and settled matters with my friend the
+artist that day.
+
+The next morning, before the hour at which I expected my sitter,
+having just now as much interest in the life of Lady Malkinshaw as Mr.
+Batterbury had in her death, I went to make kind inquiries after her
+ladyship's health. The answer was most reassuring. Lady Malkinshaw had
+no present intention of permitting me to survive her. She was, at that
+very moment, meritoriously and heartily engaged in eating her breakfast.
+My prospects being now of the best possible kind, I felt encouraged to
+write once more to my father, telling him of my fresh start in life, and
+proposing a renewal of our acquaintance. I regret to say that he was so
+rude as not to answer my letter.
+
+Mr. Batterbury was punctual to the moment. He gave a gasp of relief when
+he beheld me, full of life, with my palette on my thumb, gazing fondly
+on my new canvas.
+
+"That's right!" he said. "I like to see you with your mind composed.
+Annabella would have come with me; but she has a little headache this
+morning. She sends her love and best wishes."
+
+I seized my chalks and began with that confidence in myself which has
+never forsaken me in any emergency. Being perfectly well aware of
+the absolute dependence of the art of portrait-painting on the art
+of flattery, I determined to start with making the mere outline of my
+likeness a compliment to my sitter.
+
+It was much easier to resolve on doing this than really to do it. In
+the first place, my hand would relapse into its wicked old caricaturing
+habits. In the second place, my brother-in-law's face was so
+inveterately and completely ugly as to set every artifice of pictorial
+improvement at flat defiance. When a man has a nose an inch long, with
+the nostrils set perpendicularly, it is impossible to flatter it--you
+must either change it into a fancy nose, or resignedly acquiesce in
+it. When a man has no perceptible eyelids, and when his eyes globularly
+project so far out of his head, that you expect to have to pick them up
+for him whenever you see him lean forward, how are mortal fingers and
+bushes to diffuse the right complimentary expression over them? You must
+either do them the most hideous and complete justice, or give them up
+altogether. The late Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., was undoubtedly the
+most artful and uncompromising flatterer that ever smoothed out all the
+natural characteristic blemishes from a sitter's face; but even that
+accomplished parasite would have found Mr. Batterbury too much for him,
+and would have been driven, for the first time in his practice of art,
+to the uncustomary and uncourtly resource of absolutely painting a
+genuine likeness.
+
+As for me, I put my trust in Lady Malkinshaw's power of living, and
+portrayed the face of Mr. Batterbury in all its native horror. At
+the same time, I sensibly guarded against even the most improbable
+accidents, by making him pay me the fifty pounds as we went on, by
+installments. We had ten sittings. Each one of them began with a message
+from Mr. Batterbury, giving me Annabella's love and apologies for not
+being able to come and see me. Each one of them ended with an argument
+between Mr. Batterbury and me relative to the transfer of five pounds
+from his pocket to mine. I came off victorious on every occasion--being
+backed by the noble behavior of Lady Malkinshaw, who abstained from
+tumbling down, and who ate and drank, and slept and grew lusty, for
+three weeks together. Venerable woman! She put fifty pounds into my
+pocket. I shall think of her with gratitude and respect to the end of
+my days.
+
+One morning, while I was sitting before my completed portrait, inwardly
+shuddering over the ugliness of it, a suffocating smell of musk was
+wafted into the studio; it was followed by a sound of rustling
+garments; and that again was succeeded by the personal appearance of my
+affectionate sister, with her husband at her heels. Annabella had got to
+the end of her stock of apologies, and had come to see me.
+
+She put her handkerchief to her nose the moment she entered the room.
+
+"How do you do, Frank? Don't kiss me: you smell of paint, and I can't
+bear it."
+
+I felt a similar antipathy to the smell of musk, and had not the
+slightest intention of kissing her; but I was too gallant a man to
+say so; and I only begged her to favor me by looking at her husband's
+portrait.
+
+Annabella glanced all round the room, with her handkerchief still at
+her nose, and gathered her magnificent silk dress close about her superb
+figure with her disengaged hand.
+
+"What a horrid place!" she said faintly behind her handkerchief. "Can't
+you take some of the paint away? I'm sure there's oil on the floor. How
+am I to get past that nasty table with the palette on it? Why can't you
+bring the picture down to the carriage, Frank?"
+
+Advancing a few steps, and looking suspiciously about her while she
+spoke, her eyes fell on the chimney-piece. An eau-de-Cologne bottle
+stood upon it, which she took up immediately with a languishing sigh.
+
+It contained turpentine for washing brushes in. Before I could warn her,
+she had sprinkled herself absently with half the contents of the bottle.
+In spite of all the musk that now filled the room, the turpentine
+betrayed itself almost as soon as I cried "Stop!" Annabella, with
+a shriek of disgust, flung the bottle furiously into the fireplace.
+Fortunately it was summer-time, or I might have had to echo the shriek
+with a cry of "Fire!"
+
+"You wretch! you brute! you low, mischievous, swindling blackguard!"
+cried my amiable sister, shaking her skirts with all her might, "you
+have done this on purpose! Don't tell me! I know you have. What do
+you mean by pestering me to come to this dog-kennel of a place?" she
+continued, turning fiercely upon the partner of her existence and
+legitimate receptacle of all her superfluous wrath. "What do you mean by
+bringing me here, to see how you have been swindled? Yes, sir, swindled!
+He has no more idea of painting than you have. He has cheated you out
+of your money. If he was starving tomorrow he would be the last man in
+England to make away with himself--he is too great a wretch--he is too
+vicious--he is too lost to all sense of respectability--he is too much
+of a discredit to his family. Take me away! Give me your arm directly!
+I told you not to go near him from the first. This is what comes of your
+horrid fondness for money. Suppose Lady Malkinshaw does outlive him;
+suppose I do lose my legacy. What is three thousand pounds to you? My
+dress is ruined. My shawl's spoiled. _He_ die! If the old woman lives
+to the age of Methuselah, he won't die. Give me your arm. No! Go to my
+father. I want medical advice. My nerves are torn to pieces. I'm giddy,
+faint, sick--SICK, Mr. Batterbury!"
+
+Here she became hysterical, and vanished, leaving a mixed odor of musk
+and turpentine behind her, which preserved the memory of her visit for
+nearly a week afterward.
+
+"Another scene in the drama of my life seems likely to close in before
+long," thought I. "No chance now of getting my amiable sister to
+patronize struggling genius. Do I know of anybody else who will sit to
+me? No, not a soul. Having thus no portraits of other people to paint,
+what is it my duty, as a neglected artist, to do next? Clearly to take a
+portrait of myself."
+
+I did so, making my own likeness quite a pleasant relief to the ugliness
+of my brother-in-law's. It was my intention to send both portraits
+to the Royal Academy Exhibition, to get custom, and show the public
+generally what I could do. I knew the institution with which I had to
+deal, and called my own likeness, Portrait of a Nobleman.
+
+That dexterous appeal to the tenderest feelings of my distinguished
+countrymen very nearly succeeded. The portrait of Mr. Batterbury (much
+the more carefully-painted picture of the two) was summarily turned out.
+The Portrait of a Nobleman was politely reserved to be hung up, if the
+Royal Academicians could possibly find room for it. They could not.
+So that picture also vanished back into the obscurity of the artist's
+easel. Weak and well-meaning people would have desponded under these
+circumstances; but your genuine Rogue is a man of elastic temperament,
+not easily compressible under any pressure of disaster. I sent the
+portrait of Mr. Batterbury to the house of that distinguished patron,
+and the Portrait of a Nobleman to the Pawnbroker's. After this I had
+plenty of elbow-room in the studio, and could walk up and down briskly,
+smoking my pipe, and thinking about what I should do next.
+
+I had observed that the generous friend and vagabond brother artist,
+whose lodger I now was, never seemed to be in absolute want of money;
+and yet the walls of his studio informed me that nobody bought his
+pictures. There hung all his great works, rejected by the Royal Academy,
+and neglected by the patrons of Art; and there, nevertheless, was he,
+blithely plying the brush; not rich, it is true, but certainly never
+without money enough in his pocket for the supply of all his modest
+wants. Where did he find his resources? I determined to ask him the
+question the very next time he came to the studio.
+
+"Dick," I said (we called each other by our Christian names), "where do
+you get your money?"
+
+"Frank," he answered, "what makes you ask that question?"
+
+"Necessity," I proceeded. "My stock of money is decreasing, and I
+don't know how to replenish it. My pictures have been turned out of the
+exhibition-rooms; nobody comes to sit to me; I can't make a farthing;
+and I must try another line in the Arts, or leave your studio. We are
+old friends now. I've paid you honestly week by week; and if you can
+oblige me, I think you ought. You earn money somehow. Why can't I?"
+
+"Are you at all particular?" asked Dick.
+
+"Not in the least," I answered.
+
+Dick nodded, and looked pleased; handed me my hat, and put on his own.
+
+"You are just the sort of man I like," he remarked, "and I would sooner
+trust you than any one else I know. You ask how I contrive to earn
+money, seeing that all my pictures are still in my own possession. My
+dear fellow, whenever my pockets are empty, and I want a ten-pound note
+to put into them, I make an Old Master."
+
+I stared hard at him, not at first quite understanding what he meant.
+
+"The Old Master I can make best," continued Dick, "is Claude Lorraine,
+whom you may have heard of occasionally as a famous painter of classical
+landscapes. I don't exactly know (he has been dead so long) how many
+pictures he turned out, from first to last; but we will say, for the
+sake of argument, five hundred. Not five of these are offered for sale,
+perhaps, in the course of five years. Enlightened collectors of old
+pictures pour into the market by fifties, while genuine specimens of
+Claude, or of any other Old Master you like to mention, only dribble
+in by ones and twos. Under these circumstances, what is to be done? Are
+unoffending owners of galleries to be subjected to disappointment?
+Or are the works of Claude, and the other fellows, to be benevolently
+increased in number, to supply the wants of persons of taste and
+quality? No man of humanity but must lean to the latter alternative. The
+collectors, observe, don't know anything about it--they buy Claude (to
+take an instance from my own practice) as they buy all the other Old
+Masters, because of his reputation, not because of the pleasure they get
+from his works. Give them a picture with a good large ruin, fancy trees,
+prancing nymphs, and a watery sky; dirty it down dexterously to the
+right pitch; put it in an old frame; call it a Claude; and the sphere
+of the Old Master is enlarged, the collector is delighted, the
+picture-dealer is enriched, and the neglected modern artist claps a
+joyful hand on a well-filled pocket. Some men have a knack at making
+Rembrandts, others have a turn for Raphaels, Titians, Cuyps, Watteaus,
+and the rest of them. Anyhow, we are all made happy--all pleased with
+each other--all benefited alike. Kindness is propagated and money is
+dispersed. Come along, my boy, and make an Old Master!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+HE led the way into the street as he spoke. I felt the irresistible
+force of his logic. I sympathized with the ardent philanthropy of his
+motives. I burned with a noble ambition to extend the sphere of the Old
+Masters. In short, I took the tide at the flood, and followed Dick.
+
+We plunged into some by-streets, struck off sharp into a court, and
+entered a house by a back door. A little old gentleman in a black velvet
+dressing-gown met us in the passage. Dick instantly presented me: "Mr.
+Frank Softly--Mr. Ishmael Pickup." The little old gentleman stared at
+me distrustfully. I bowed to him with that inexorable politeness which
+I first learned under the instructive fist of Gentleman Jones, and which
+no force of adverse circumstances has ever availed to mitigate in after
+life. Mr. Ishmael Pickup followed my lead. There is not the least need
+to describe him--he was a Jew.
+
+"Go into the front show-room, and look at the pictures, while I speak to
+Mr. Pickup," said Dick, familiarly throwing open a door, and pushing me
+into a kind of gallery beyond. I found myself quite alone, surrounded by
+modern-antique pictures of all schools and sizes, of all degrees of dirt
+and dullness, with all the names of all the famous Old Masters, from
+Titian to Teniers, inscribed on their frames. A "pearly little gem," by
+Claude, with a ticket marked "Sold" stuck into the frame, particularly
+attracted my attention. It was Dick's last ten-pound job; and it did
+credit to the youthful master's abilities as a workman-like maker of
+Claudes.
+
+I have been informed that, since the time of which I am writing, the
+business of gentlemen of Mr. Pickup's class has rather fallen off,
+and that there are dealers in pictures, nowadays, who are as just and
+honorable men as can be found in any profession or calling, anywhere
+under the sun. This change, which I report with sincerity and reflect on
+with amazement, is, as I suspect, mainly the result of certain wholesale
+modern improvements in the position of contemporary Art, which
+have necessitated improvements and alterations in the business of
+picture-dealing.
+
+In my time, the encouragers of modern painting were limited in number
+to a few noblemen and gentlemen of ancient lineage, who, in matters of
+taste, at least, never presumed to think for themselves. They either
+inherited or bought a gallery more or less full of old pictures. It was
+as much a part of their education to put their faith in these on hearsay
+evidence, as to put their faith in King, Lords and Commons. It was an
+article of their creed to believe that the dead painters were the great
+men, and that the more the living painters imitated the dead, the better
+was their chance of becoming at some future day, and in a minor degree,
+great also. At certain times and seasons, these noblemen and gentlemen
+self-distrustfully strayed into the painting-room of a modern artist,
+self-distrustfully allowed themselves to be rather attracted by his
+pictures, self-distrustfully bought one or two of them at prices which
+would appear so incredibly low, in these days, that I really cannot
+venture to quote them. The picture was sent home; the nobleman or
+gentleman (almost always an amiable and a hospitable man) would ask the
+artist to his house and introduce him to the distinguished individuals
+who frequented it; but would never admit his picture, on terms of
+equality, into the society even of the second-rate Old Masters. His work
+was hung up in any out-of-the-way corner of the gallery that could be
+found; it had been bought under protest; it was admitted by sufferance;
+its freshness and brightness damaged it terribly by contrast with the
+dirtiness and the dinginess of its elderly predecessors; and its only
+points selected for praise were those in which it most nearly resembled
+the peculiar mannerism of some Old Master, not those in which it
+resembled the characteristics of the old mistress--Nature.
+
+The unfortunate artist had no court of appeal that he could turn to.
+Nobody beneath the nobleman, or the gentleman of ancient lineage, so
+much as thought of buying a modern picture. Nobody dared to whisper that
+the Art of painting had in anywise been improved or worthily enlarged in
+its sphere by any modern professors. For one nobleman who was ready
+to buy one genuine modern picture at a small price, there were twenty
+noblemen ready to buy twenty more than doubtful old pictures at great
+prices. The consequence was, that some of the most famous artists of
+the English school, whose pictures are now bought at auction sales for
+fabulous sums, were then hardly able to make an income. They were a
+scrupulously patient and conscientious body of men, who would as soon
+have thought of breaking into a house, or equalizing the distribution of
+wealth, on the highway, by the simple machinery of a horse and pistol,
+as of making Old Masters to order. They sat resignedly in their lonely
+studios, surrounded by unsold pictures which have since been covered
+again and again with gold and bank-notes by eager buyers at auctions
+and show-rooms, whose money has gone into other than the painter's
+pockets---who have never dreamed that the painter had the smallest moral
+right to a farthing of it. Year after year, these martyrs of the brush
+stood, palette in hand, fighting the old battle of individual
+merit against contemporary dullness--fighting bravely, patiently,
+independently; and leaving to Mr. Pickup and his pupils a complete
+monopoly of all the profit which could be extracted, in their line
+of business, from the feebly-buttoned pocket of the patron, and the
+inexhaustible credulity of the connoisseur.
+
+Now all this is changed. Traders and makers of all kinds of commodities
+have effected a revolution in the picture-world, never dreamed of by the
+noblemen and gentlemen of ancient lineage, and consistently protested
+against to this day by the very few of them who still remain alive.
+
+The daring innovators started with the new notion of buying a picture
+which they themselves could admire and appreciate, and for the
+genuineness of which the artist was still living to vouch. These
+rough and ready customers were not to be led by rules or frightened by
+precedents; they were not to be easily imposed upon, for the article
+they wanted was not to be easily counterfeited. Sturdily holding to
+their own opinions, they thought incessant repetitions of Saints,
+Martyrs, and Holy Families, monotonous and uninteresting--and said so.
+They thought little pictures of ugly Dutch women scouring pots, and
+drunken Dutchmen playing cards, dirty and dear at the price--and said
+so. They saw that trees were green in nature, and brown in the Old
+Masters, and they thought the latter color not an improvement on
+the former--and said so. They wanted interesting subjects; variety,
+resemblance to nature; genuineness of the article, and fresh paint;
+they had no ancestors whose feelings, as founders of galleries, it was
+necessary to consult; no critical gentlemen and writers of valuable
+works to snub them when they were in spirits; nothing to lead them by
+the nose but their own shrewdness, their own interests, and their own
+tastes--so they turned their backs valiantly on the Old Masters, and
+marched off in a body to the living men.
+
+From that time good modern pictures have risen in the scale. Even as
+articles of commerce and safe investments for money, they have now (as
+some disinterested collectors who dine at certain annual dinners I know
+of, can testify) distanced the old pictures in the race. The modern
+painters who have survived the brunt of the battle, have lived to see
+pictures for which they once asked hundreds, selling for thousands, and
+the young generation making incomes by the brush in one year, which
+it would have cost the old heroes of the easel ten to accumulate. The
+posterity of Mr. Pickup still do a tolerable stroke of business (making
+bright modern masters for the market which is glutted with the dingy old
+material), and will, probably, continue to thrive and multiply in the
+future: the one venerable institution of this world which we can safely
+count upon as likely to last, being the institution of human folly.
+Nevertheless, if a wise man of the reformed taste wants a modern
+picture, there are places for him to go to now where he may be sure of
+getting it genuine; where, if the artist is not alive to vouch for his
+work, the facts at any rate have not had time to die which vouch for
+the dealer who sells it. In my time matters were rather different. The
+painters _we_ throve by had died long enough ago for pedigrees to get
+confused, and identities disputable; and if I had been desirous of
+really purchasing a genuine Old Master for myself--speaking as a
+practical man--I don't know where I should have gone to ask for one,
+or whose judgment I could have safely relied on to guard me from being
+cheated, before I bought it.
+
+
+
+We are stopping a long time in the picture-gallery, you will say. I am
+very sorry--but we must stay a little longer, for the sake of a living
+picture, the gem of the collection.
+
+I was still admiring Mr. Pickup's Old Masters, when a dirty little boy
+opened the door of the gallery, and introduced a young lady.
+
+My heart--fancy my having a heart!--gave one great bound in me. I
+recognized the charming person whom I had followed in the street.
+
+Her veil was not down this time. All the beauty of her large, soft,
+melancholy, brown eyes beamed on me. Her delicate complexion became
+suddenly suffused with a lovely rosy flush. Her glorious black hair--no!
+I will make an effort, I will suppress my ecstasies. Let me only say
+that she evidently recognized me. Will you believe it?--I felt myself
+coloring as I bowed to her. I never blushed before in my life. What a
+very curious sensation it is!
+
+The horrid boy claimed her attention with a grin.
+
+"Master's engaged," he said. "Please to wait here."
+
+"I don't wish to disturb Mr. Pickup," she answered.
+
+What a voice! No! I am drifting back into ecstasies: her voice was
+worthy of her--I say no more.
+
+"If you will be so kind as to show him this," she proceeded; "he knows
+what it is. And please say, my father is very ill and very anxious. It
+will be quite enough if Mr. Pickup will only send me word by you--Yes or
+No."
+
+She gave the boy an oblong slip of stamped paper. Evidently a promissory
+note. An angel on earth, sent by an inhuman father, to ask a Jew for
+discount! Monstrous!
+
+The boy disappeared with the message.
+
+I seized my opportunity of speaking to her. Don't ask me what I said!
+Never before (or since) have I talked such utter nonsense, with such
+intense earnestness of purpose and such immeasurable depth of feeling.
+Do pray remember what you said yourself, the first time you had the
+chance of opening your heart to _your_ young lady. The boy returned
+before I had half done, and gave her back the odious document.
+
+"Mr. Pickup's very sorry, miss. The answer is, No."
+
+She lost all her lovely color, and sighed, and turned away. As she
+pulled down her veil, I saw the tears in her eyes. Did that piteous
+spectacle partially deprive me of my senses? I actually entreated her to
+let me be of some use--as if I had been an old friend, with money enough
+in my pocket to discount the note myself. She brought me back to my
+senses with the utmost gentleness.
+
+"I am afraid you forget, sir, that we are strangers. Good-morning."
+
+I followed her to the door. I asked leave to call on her father, and
+satisfy him about myself and my family connections. She only answered
+that her father was too ill to see visitors. I went out with her on to
+the landing. She turned on me sharply for the first time.
+
+"You can see for yourself, sir, that I am in great distress. I appeal to
+you, as a gentleman, to spare me."
+
+If you still doubt whether I was really in love, let the facts speak for
+themselves. I hung my head, and let her go.
+
+When I returned alone to the picture-gallery--when I remembered that I
+had not even had the wit to improve my opportunity by discovering her
+name and address--I did really and seriously ask myself if these were
+the first symptoms of softening of the brain. I got up, and sat down
+again. I, the most audacious man of my age in London, had behaved like a
+bashful boy! Once more I had lost her--and this time, also, I had nobody
+but myself to blame for it.
+
+These melancholy meditations were interrupted by the appearance of
+my friend, the artist, in the picture-gallery. He approached me
+confidentially, and spoke in a mysterious whisper.
+
+"Pickup is suspicious," he said; "and I have had all the difficulty in
+the world to pave your way smoothly for you at the outset. However,
+if you can contrive to make a small Rembrandt, as a specimen, you may
+consider yourself employed here until further notice. I am obliged to
+particularize Rembrandt, because he is the only Old Master disengaged
+at present. The professional gentleman who used to do him died the other
+day in the Fleet--he had a turn for Rembrandts, and can't be easily
+replaced. Do you think you could step into his shoes? It's a peculiar
+gift, like an ear for music, or a turn for mathematics. Of course
+you will be put up to the simple elementary rules, and will have the
+professional gentleman's last Rembrandt as a guide; the rest depends,
+my dear friend, on your powers of imitation. Don't be discouraged by
+failures, but try again and again; and mind you are dirty and dark
+enough. You have heard a great deal about the light and shade of
+Rembrandt--Remember always that, in your case, light means dusky yellow,
+and shade dense black; remember that, and--"
+
+"No pay," said the voice of Mr. Pickup behind me; "no pay, my dear,
+unlesh your Rembrandt ish good enough to take me in--even me, Ishmael,
+who dealsh in pictersh and knowsh what'sh what."
+
+What did I care about Rembrandt at that moment? I was thinking of my
+lost young lady; and I should probably have taken no notice of Mr.
+Pickup, if it had not occurred to me that the old wretch must know her
+father's name and address. I at once put the question. The Jew grinned,
+and shook his grisly head. "Her father'sh in difficultiesh, and mum's
+the word, my dear." To that answer he adhered, in spite of all that I
+could say to him.
+
+With equal obstinacy I determined, sooner or later, to get my
+information.
+
+I took service under Mr. Pickup, purposing to make myself essential to
+his prosperity, in a commercial sense--and then to threaten him with
+offering my services to a rival manufacturer of Old Masters, unless
+he trusted me with the secret of the name and address. My plan looked
+promising enough at the time. But, as some wise person has said, Man
+is the sport of circumstances. Mr. Pickup and I parted company
+unexpectedly, on compulsion. And, of all the people in the world, my
+grandmother, Lady Malkinshaw, was the unconscious first cause of the
+events which brought me and the beloved object together again, for the
+third time!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ON the next day, I was introduced to the Jew's workshop, and to the
+eminent gentlemen occupying it. My model Rembrandt was put before me;
+the simple elementary rules were explained; and my materials were all
+placed under my hands.
+
+Regard for the lovers of the Old Masters, and for the moral well-being
+of society, forbids me to be particular about the nature of my labors,
+or to go into dangerous detail on the subject of my first failures
+and my subsequent success. I may, however, harmlessly admit that my
+Rembrandt was to be of the small or cabinet size, and that, as there was
+a run on Burgomasters just then, my subject was naturally to be of
+the Burgomaster sort. Three parts of my picture consisted entirely of
+different shades of dirty brown and black; the fourth being composed
+of a ray of yellow light falling upon the wrinkled face of a
+treacle-colored old man. A dim glimpse of a hand, and a faint suggestion
+of something like a brass washhand basin, completed the job, which
+gave great satisfaction to Mr. Pickup, and which was described in the
+catalogue as--
+
+
+
+"A Burgomaster at Breakfast. Originally in the collection of Mynheer
+Van Grubb. Amsterdam. A rare example of the master. Not engraved. The
+chiar'oscuro in this extraordinary work is of a truly sublime character.
+Price, Two Hundred Guineas."
+
+
+
+I got five pounds for it. I suppose Mr. Pickup got one-ninety-five.
+
+This was perhaps not very encouraging as a beginning, in a pecuniary
+point of view. But I was to get five pounds more, if my Rembrandt sold
+within a given time. It sold a week after it was in a fit state to be
+trusted in the showroom. I got my money, and began enthusiastically on
+another Rembrandt--"A Burgomaster's Wife Poking the Fire." Last time,
+the chiar'oscuro of the master had been yellow and black, this time it
+was to be red and black. I was just on the point of forcing my way into
+Mr. Pickup's confidence, as I had resolved, when a catastrophe happened,
+which shut up the shop and abruptly terminated my experience as a maker
+of Old Masters.
+
+"The Burgomaster's Breakfast" had been sold to a new customer, a
+venerable connoisseur, blessed with a great fortune and a large
+picture-gallery. The old gentleman was in raptures with the
+picture--with its tone, with its breadth, with its grand feeling for
+effect, with its simple treatment of detail. It wanted nothing, in his
+opinion, but a little cleaning. Mr. Pickup knew the raw and ticklish
+state of the surface, however, far too well, to allow of even an
+attempt at performing this process, and solemnly asserted, that he was
+acquainted with no cleansing preparation which could be used on the
+Rembrandt without danger of "flaying off the last exquisite glazings of
+the immortal master's brush." The old gentleman was quite satisfied with
+this reason for not cleaning the Burgomaster, and took away his purchase
+in his own carriage on the spot.
+
+For three weeks we heard nothing more of him. At the end of that time, a
+Hebrew friend of Mr. Pickup, employed in a lawyer's office, terrified
+us all by the information that a gentleman related to our venerable
+connoisseur had seen the Rembrandt, had pronounced it to be an impudent
+counterfeit, and had engaged on his own account to have the picture
+tested in a court of law, and to charge the seller and maker thereof
+with conspiring to obtain money under false pretenses. Mr. Pickup and I
+looked at each other with very blank faces on receiving this agreeable
+piece of news. What was to be done? I recovered the full use of my
+faculties first; and I was the man who solved that important and
+difficult question, while the rest were still utterly bewildered by it.
+"Will you promise me five and twenty pounds in the presence of these
+gentlemen if I get you out of this scrape?" said I to my terrified
+employer. Ishmael Pickup wrung his dirty hands and answered, "Yesh, my
+dear!"
+
+Our informant in this awkward matter was employed at the office of the
+lawyers who were to have the conducting of the case against us; and he
+was able to tell me some of the things I most wanted to know in relation
+to the picture.
+
+I found out from him that the Rembrandt was still in our customer's
+possession. The old gentleman had consented to the question of its
+genuineness being tried, but had far too high an idea of his own
+knowledge as a connoisseur to incline to the opinion that he had been
+taken in. His suspicious relative was not staying in the house, but was
+in the habit of visiting him, every day, in the forenoon. That was as
+much as I wanted to know from others. The rest depended on myself, on
+luck, time, human credulity, and a smattering of chemical knowledge
+which I had acquired in the days of my medical studies. I left the
+conclave at the picture-dealer's forthwith, and purchased at the nearest
+druggist's a bottle containing a certain powerful liquid, which I
+decline to particularize on high moral grounds. I labeled the bottle
+"The Amsterdam Cleansing Compound"; and I wrapped round it the following
+note:
+
+
+
+"Mr. Pickup's respectful compliments to Mr.--(let us say, Green). Is
+rejoiced to state that he finds himself unexpectedly able to forward Mr.
+Green's views relative to the cleaning of 'The Burgomaster's Breakfast.'
+The inclosed compound has just reached him from Amsterdam. It is made
+from a recipe found among the papers of Rembrandt himself--has been
+used with the most astonishing results on the Master's pictures in
+every gallery of Holland, and is now being applied to the surface of the
+largest Rembrandt in Mr. P.'s own collection. Directions for use: Lay
+the picture flat, pour the whole contents of the bottle over it gently,
+so as to flood the entire surface; leave the liquid on the surface for
+six hours, then wipe it off briskly with a soft cloth of as large a
+size as can be conveniently used. The effect will be the most wonderful
+removal of all dirt, and a complete and brilliant metamorphosis of the
+present dingy surface of the picture."
+
+
+
+I left this note and the bottle myself at two o'clock that day; then
+went home, and confidently awaited the result.
+
+The next morning our friend from the office called, announcing himself
+by a burst of laughter outside the door. Mr. Green had implicitly
+followed the directions in the letter the moment he received it--had
+allowed the "Amsterdam Cleansing Compound" to remain on the Rembrandt
+until eight o'clock in the evening--had called for the softest linen
+cloth in the whole house--and had then, with his own venerable hands,
+carefully wiped off the compound, and with it the whole surface of the
+picture! The brown, the black, the Burgomaster, the breakfast, and the
+ray of yellow light, all came clean off together in considerably less
+than a minute of time. If the picture, was brought into court now, the
+evidence it could give against us was limited to a bit of plain panel,
+and a mass of black pulp rolled up in a duster.
+
+Our line of defense was, of course, that the compound had been
+improperly used. For the rest, we relied with well-placed confidence on
+the want of evidence against us. Mr. Pickup wisely closed his shop for a
+while, and went off to the Continent to ransack the foreign galleries.
+I received my five and twenty pounds, rubbed out the beginning of my
+second Rembrandt, closed the back door of the workshop behind me, and
+there was another scene of my life at an end. I had but one circumstance
+to regret--and I did regret it bitterly. I was still as ignorant as ever
+of the young lady's name and address.
+
+My first visit was to the studio of my excellent artist-friend, whom
+I have already presented to the reader under the sympathetic name of
+"Dick." He greeted me with a letter in his hand. It was addressed to
+me--it had been left at the studio a few days since; and (marvel of all
+marvels!) the handwriting was Mr. Batterbury's. Had this philanthropic
+man not done befriending me even yet? Were there any present or
+prospective advantages to be got out of him still? Read his letter, and
+judge.
+
+
+
+"SIR--Although you have forfeited by your ungentlemanly conduct toward
+myself, and your heartlessly mischievous reception of my dear wife, all
+claim upon the forbearance of the most forbearing of your relatives,
+I am disposed, from motives of regard for the tranquillity of Mrs.
+Batterbury's family, and of sheer good-nature so far as I am myself
+concerned, to afford you one more chance of retrieving your position by
+leading a respectable life. The situation I am enabled to offer you is
+that of secretary to a new Literary and Scientific Institution, about to
+be opened in the town of Duskydale, near which neighborhood I possess,
+as you must be aware, some landed property. The office has been placed
+at my disposal, as vice-president of the new Institution. The salary is
+fifty pounds a year, with apartments on the attic-floor of the building.
+The duties are various, and will be explained to you by the local
+committee, if you choose to present yourself to them with the inclosed
+letter of introduction. After the unscrupulous manner in which you have
+imposed on my liberality by deceiving me into giving you fifty pounds
+for an audacious caricature of myself, which it is impossible to hang
+up in any room of the house, I think this instance of my forgiving
+disposition still to befriend you, after all that has happened, ought to
+appeal to any better feelings that you may still have left, and revive
+the long dormant emotions of repentance and self-reproach, when you
+think on your obedient servant,
+
+"DANIEL BATTERBURY."
+
+Bless me! What A long-winded style, and what a fuss about fifty pounds
+a year, and a bed in an attic! These were naturally the first emotions
+which Mr. Batterbury's letter produced in me. What was his real motive
+for writing it? I hope nobody will do me so great an injustice as to
+suppose that I hesitated for one instant about the way of finding _that_
+out. Of course I started off directly to inquire if Lady Malkinshaw had
+had another narrow escape of dying before me.
+
+"Much better, sir," answered my grandmother's venerable butler, wiping
+his lips carefully before he spoke; "her ladyship's health has been much
+improved since her accident."
+
+"Accident!" I exclaimed. "What, another? Lately? Stairs again?"
+
+"No, sir; the drawing-room window this time," answered the butler, with
+semi-tipsy gravity. "Her ladyship's sight having been defective of late
+years, occasions her some difficulty in calculating distances.
+Three days ago, her ladyship went to look out of the window, and,
+miscalculating the distance--" Here the butler, with a fine dramatic
+feeling for telling a story, stopped just before the climax of the
+narrative, and looked me in the face with an expression of the deepest
+sympathy.
+
+"And miscalculating the distance?" I repeated impatiently.
+
+"Put her head through a pane of glass," said the butler, in a soft
+voice suited to the pathetic nature of the communication. "By great
+good fortune her ladyship had been dressed for the day, and had got her
+turban on. This saved her ladyship's head. But her ladyship's neck, sir,
+had a very narrow escape. A bit of the broken glass wounded it within
+half a quarter of an inch of the carotty artery" (meaning, probably,
+carotid); "I heard the medical gentleman say, and shall never forget
+it to my dying day, that her ladyship's life had been saved by a
+hair-breadth. As it was, the blood lost (the medical gentleman said
+that, too, sir) was accidentally of the greatest possible benefit,
+being apoplectic, in the way of clearing out the system. Her ladyship's
+appetite has been improved ever since--the carriage is out airing of
+her at this very moment--likewise, she takes the footman's arm and the
+maid's up and downstairs now, which she never would hear of before this
+last accident. 'I feel ten years younger' (those were her ladyship's own
+words to me, this very day), 'I feel ten years younger, Vokins, since I
+broke the drawing-room window.' And her ladyship looks it!"
+
+No doubt. Here was the key to Mr. Batterbury's letter of forgiveness.
+His chance of receiving the legacy looked now further off than ever;
+he could not feel the same confidence as his wife in my power of living
+down any amount of starvation and adversity; and he was, therefore,
+quite ready to take the first opportunity of promoting my precious
+personal welfare and security, of which he could avail himself, without
+spending a farthing of money. I saw it all clearly, and admired the
+hereditary toughness of the Malkinshaw family more gratefully than ever.
+What should I do? Go to Duskydale? Why not? It didn't matter to me where
+I went, now that I had no hope of ever seeing those lovely brown eyes
+again.
+
+I got to my new destination the next day, presented my credentials, gave
+myself the full advantage of my high connections, and was received with
+enthusiasm and distinction.
+
+I found the new Institution torn by internal schisms even before it was
+opened to the public. Two factious governed it--a grave faction and
+a gay faction. Two questions agitated it: the first referring to the
+propriety of celebrating the opening season by a public ball, and the
+second to the expediency of admitting novels into the library. The grim
+Puritan interest of the whole neighborhood was, of course, on the
+grave side--against both dancing and novels, as proposed by local
+loose thinkers and latitudinarians of every degree. I was officially
+introduced to the debate at the height of the squabble; and found myself
+one of a large party in a small room, sitting round a long table, each
+man of us with a new pewter inkstand, a new quill pen, and a clean sheet
+of foolscap paper before him. Seeing that everybody spoke, I got on
+my legs along with the rest, and made a slashing speech on the
+loose-thinking side. I was followed by the leader of the grim
+faction--an unlicked curate of the largest dimensions.
+
+"If there were, so to speak, no other reason against dancing," said
+my reverend opponent, "there is one unanswerable objection to it.
+Gentlemen! John the Baptist lost his head through dancing!"'
+
+Every man of the grim faction hammered delightedly on the table, as that
+formidable argument was produced; and the curate sat down in triumph. I
+jumped up to reply, amid the counter-cheering of the loose-thinkers;
+but before I could say a word the President of the Institution and the
+rector of the parish came into the room.
+
+They were both men of authority, men of sense, and fathers of charming
+daughters, and they turned the scale on the right side in no time. The
+question relating to the admission of novels was postponed, and the
+question of dancing or no dancing was put to the vote on the spot. The
+President, the rector and myself, the three handsomest and highest-bred
+men in the assembly, led the way on the liberal side, waggishly warning
+all gallant gentlemen present to beware of disappointing the young
+ladies. This decided the waverers, and the waverers decided the
+majority. My first business, as Secretary, was the drawing out of a
+model card of admission to the ball.
+
+My next occupation was to look at the rooms provided for me.
+
+The Duskydale Institution occupied a badly-repaired ten-roomed house,
+with a great flimsy saloon built at one side of it, smelling of paint
+and damp plaster, and called the Lecture Theater. It was the chilliest,
+ugliest, emptiest, gloomiest place I ever entered in my life; the idea
+of doing anything but sitting down and crying in it seemed to me quite
+preposterous; but the committee took a different view of the matter,
+and praised the Lecture Theater as a perfect ballroom. The Secretary's
+apartments were two garrets, asserting themselves in the most barefaced
+manner, without an attempt at disguise. If I had intended to do more
+than earn my first quarter's salary, I should have complained. But as
+I had not the slightest intention of remaining at Duskydale, I could
+afford to establish a reputation for amiability by saying nothing.
+
+"Have you seen Mr. Softly, the new Secretary? A most distinguished
+person, and quite an acquisition to the neighborhood." Such was
+the popular opinion of me among the young ladies and the liberal
+inhabitants. "Have you seen Mr. Softly, the new Secretary? A worldly,
+vainglorious young man. The last person in England to promote the
+interests of our new Institution." Such was the counter-estimate of
+me among the Puritan population. I report both opinions quite
+disinterestedly. There is generally something to be said on either
+side of every question; and, as for me, I can always hold up the scales
+impartially, even when my own character is the substance weighing in
+them. Readers of ancient history need not be reminded, at this time of
+day, that there may be Roman virtue even in a Rogue.
+
+The objects, interests, and general business of the Duskydale
+Institution were matters with which I never thought of troubling myself
+on assuming the duties of Secretary. All my energies were given to the
+arrangements connected with the opening ball.
+
+I was elected by acclamation to the office of general manager of the
+entertainments; and I did my best to deserve the confidence reposed in
+me; leaving literature and science, so far as I was concerned, perfectly
+at liberty to advance themselves or not, just as they liked. Whatever
+my colleagues may have done, after I left them, nobody at Duskydale
+can accuse me of having ever been accessory to the disturbing of
+quiet people with useful knowledge. I took the arduous and universally
+neglected duty of teaching the English people how to be amused entirely
+on my own shoulders, and left the easy and customary business of making
+them miserable to others.
+
+My unhappy countrymen! (and thrice unhappy they of the poorer sort)--any
+man can preach to them, lecture to them, and form them into classes--but
+where is the man who can get them to amuse themselves? Anybody may cram
+their poor heads; but who will brighten their grave faces? Don't read
+story-books, don't go to plays, don't dance! Finish your long day's
+work and then intoxicate your minds with solid history, revel in
+the too-attractive luxury of the lecture-room, sink under the soft
+temptation of classes for mutual instruction! How many potent, grave and
+reverent tongues discourse to the popular ear in these siren strains,
+and how obediently and resignedly this same weary popular ear listens!
+What if a bold man spring up one day, crying aloud in our social
+wilderness, "Play, for Heaven's sake, or you will work yourselves into
+a nation of automatons! Shake a loose leg to a lively fiddle! Women
+of England! drag the lecturer off the rostrum, and the male mutual
+instructor out of the class, and ease their poor addled heads of
+evenings by making them dance and sing with you. Accept no offer from
+any man who cannot be proved, for a year past, to have systematically
+lost his dignity at least three times a week, after office hours. You,
+daughters of Eve, who have that wholesome love of pleasure which is one
+of the greatest adornments of the female character, set up a society for
+the promotion of universal amusement, and save the British nation from
+the lamentable social consequences of its own gravity!" Imagine a
+voice crying lustily after this fashion--what sort of echoes would it
+find?--Groans?
+
+I know what sort of echoes my voice found. They were so discouraging
+to me, and to the frivolous minority of pleasure-seekers, that I
+recommended lowering the price of admission so as to suit the means of
+any decent people who were willing to leave off money-grubbing and tear
+themselves from the charms of mutual instruction for one evening at
+least. The proposition was indignantly negatived by the managers of the
+Institution. I am so singularly obstinate a man that I was not to be
+depressed even by this.
+
+My next efforts to fill the ballroom could not be blamed. I procured
+a local directory, put fifty tickets in my pocket, dressed myself in
+nankeen pantaloons and a sky-blue coat (then the height of fashion),
+and set forth to tout for dancers among all the members of the genteel
+population, who, not being notorious Puritans, had also not been so
+obliging as to take tickets for the ball. There never was any pride or
+bashfulness about me. Excepting certain periods of suspense and anxiety,
+I am as even-tempered a Rogue as you have met with anywhere since the
+days of Gil Blas.
+
+My temperament being opposed to doing anything with regularity, I opened
+the directory at hazard, and determined to make my first call at the
+first house that caught my eye. Vallombrosa Vale Cottages. No. 1. Doctor
+and Miss Dulcifer. Very good. I have no preferences. Let me sell the
+first two tickets there. I found the place; I opened the garden gate; I
+advanced to the door, innocently wondering what sort of people I should
+find inside.
+
+If I am asked what was the true reason for this extraordinary activity
+on my part, in serving the interests of a set of people for whom I cared
+nothing, I must honestly own that the loss of my young lady was at the
+bottom of it. Any occupation was welcome which kept my mind, in some
+degree at least, from dwelling on the bitter disappointment that had
+befallen me. When I rang the bell at No. 1, did I feel no presentiment
+of the exquisite surprise in store for me? I felt nothing of the sort.
+The fact is, my digestion is excellent. Presentiments are more closely
+connected than is generally supposed with a weak state of stomach.
+
+I asked for Miss Dulcifer, and was shown into the sitting-room.
+
+Don't expect me to describe my sensations: hundreds of sensations flew
+all over me. There she was, sitting alone, near the window! There she
+was, with nimble white fingers, working a silk purse!
+
+The melancholy in her face and manner, when I had last seen her,
+appeared no more. She was prettily dressed in maize color, and the room
+was well furnished. Her father had evidently got over his difficulties.
+I had been inclined to laugh at his odd name, when I found it in the
+directory! Now I began to dislike it, because it was her name, too. It
+was a consolation to remember that she could change it. Would she change
+it for mine?
+
+I was the first to recover; I boldly drew a chair near her and took her
+hand.
+
+"You see," I said, "it is of no use to try to avoid me. This is the
+third time we have met. Will you receive me as a visitor, under these
+extraordinary circumstances? Will you give me a little happiness to
+compensate for what I have suffered since you left me?"
+
+She smiled and blushed.
+
+"I am so surprised," she answered, "I don't know what to say."
+
+"Disagreeably surprised?" I asked.
+
+She first went on with her work, and then replied (a little sadly, as I
+thought):
+
+"No!"
+
+I was ready enough to take advantage of my opportunities this time; but
+she contrived with perfect politeness to stop me. She seemed to remember
+with shame, poor soul, the circumstances under which I had last seen
+her.
+
+"How do you come to be at Duskydale?" she inquired, abruptly changing
+the subject. "And how did you find us out here?"
+
+While I was giving her the necessary explanations her father came in. I
+looked at him with considerable curiosity.
+
+A tall stout gentleman with impressive respectability oozing out of him
+at every pore--with a swelling outline of black-waistcoated stomach,
+with a lofty forehead, with a smooth double chin resting pulpily on a
+white cravat. Everything in harmony about him except his eyes, and these
+were so sharp, bright and resolute that they seemed to contradict the
+bland conventionality which overspread all the rest of the man. Eyes
+with wonderful intelligence and self-dependence in them; perhaps, also,
+with something a little false in them, which I might have discovered
+immediately under ordinary circumstances: but I looked at the doctor
+through the medium of his daughter, and saw nothing of him at the first
+glance but his merits.
+
+"We are both very much indebted to you, sir, for your politeness in
+calling," he said, with excessive civility of manner. "But our stay
+at this place has drawn to an end. I only came here for the
+re-establishment of my daughter's health. She has benefited greatly
+by the change of air, and we have arranged to return home to-morrow.
+Otherwise, we should have gladly profited by your kind offer of tickets
+for the ball."
+
+Of course I had one eye on the young lady while he was speaking. She was
+looking at her father, and a sudden sadness was stealing over her face.
+What did it mean? Disappointment at missing the ball? No, it was a
+much deeper feeling than that. My interest was excited. I addressed a
+complimentary entreaty to the doctor not to take his daughter away from
+us. I asked him to reflect on the irreparable eclipse that he would be
+casting over the Duskydale ballroom. To my amazement, she only
+looked down gloomily on her work while I spoke; her father laughed
+contemptuously.
+
+"We are too completely strangers here," he said, "for our loss to be
+felt by any one. From all that I can gather, society in Duskydale will
+be glad to hear of our departure. I beg your pardon, Alicia--I ought to
+have said _my_ departure."
+
+Her name was Alicia! I declare it was a luxury to me to hear it--the
+name was so appropriate, so suggestive of the grace and dignity of her
+beauty.
+
+I turned toward her when the doctor had done. She looked more gloomily
+than before. I protested against the doctor's account of himself.
+He laughed again, with a quick distrustful lo ok, this time, at his
+daughter.
+
+"If you were to mention my name among your respectable inhabitants," he
+went on, with a strong, sneering emphasis on the word respectable, "they
+would most likely purse up their lips and look grave at it. Since I gave
+up practice as a physician, I have engaged in chemical investigations
+on a large scale, destined I hope, to lead to some important public
+results. Until I arrive at these, I am necessarily obliged, in my
+own interests, to keep my experiments secret, and to impose similar
+discretion on the workmen whom I employ. This unavoidable appearance
+of mystery, and the strictly retired life which my studies compel me to
+lead, offend the narrow-minded people in my part of the county, close
+to Barkingham; and the unpopularity of my pursuits has followed me here.
+The general opinion, I believe, is, that I am seeking by unholy arts for
+the philosopher's stone. Plain man, as you see me, I find myself getting
+quite the reputation of a Doctor Faustus in the popular mind. Even
+educated people in this very place shake their heads and pity my
+daughter there for living with an alchemical parent, within easy
+smelling-distance of an explosive laboratory. Excessively absurd, is it
+not?"
+
+It might have been excessively absurd, but the lovely Alicia sat with
+her eyes on her work, looking as if it were excessively sad, and not
+giving her father the faintest answering smile when he glanced toward
+her and laughed, as he said his last words. I could not at all tell
+what to make of it. The doctor talked of the social consequences of his
+chemical inquiries as if he were living in the middle ages. However,
+I was far too anxious to see the charming brown eyes again to ask
+questions which would be sure to keep them cast down. So I changed the
+topic to chemistry in general; and, to the doctor's evident astonishment
+and pleasure, told him of my own early studies in the science.
+
+This led to the mention of my father, whose reputation had reached the
+ears of Doctor Dulcifer. As he told me that, his daughter looked up--the
+sun of beauty shone on me again! I touched next on my high connections,
+and on Lady Malkinshaw; I described myself as temporarily banished from
+home for humorous caricaturing, and amiable youthful wildness. She was
+interested; she smiled--and the sun of beauty shone warmer than ever!
+I diverged to general topics, and got brilliant and amusing. She
+laughed--the nightingale notes of her merriment bubbled into my ears
+caressingly--why could I not shut my eyes and listen to them? Her color
+rose; her face grew animated. Poor soul! A little lively company was but
+too evidently a rare treat to her. Under such circumstances, who would
+not be amusing? If she had said to me, "Mr. Softly, I like tumbling," I
+should have made a clown of myself on the spot. I should have stood on
+my head (if I could), and been amply rewarded for the graceful exertion,
+if the eyes of Alicia had looked kindly on my elevated heels!
+
+How long I stayed is more than I can tell. Lunch came up. I eat and
+drank, and grew more amusing than ever. When I at last rose to go, the
+brown eyes looked on me very kindly, and the doctor gave me his card.
+
+"If you don't mind trusting yourself in the clutches of Doctor Faustus,"
+he said, with a gay smile, "I shall be delighted to see you if you are
+ever in the neighborhood of Barkingham."
+
+I wrung his hand, mentally relinquishing my secretaryship while I
+thanked him for the invitation. I put out my hand next to his daughter,
+and the dear friendly girl met the advance with the most charming
+readiness. She gave me a good, hearty, vigorous, uncompromising shake.
+O precious right hand! never did I properly appreciate your value until
+that moment.
+
+Going out with my head in the air, and my senses in the seventh heaven,
+I jostled an elderly gentleman passing before the garden gate. I turned
+round to apologize; it was my brother in office, the estimable Treasurer
+of the Duskydale Institute.
+
+"I have been half over the town looking after you," he said. "The
+Managing Committee, on reflection, consider your plan of personally
+soliciting public attendance at the hall to be compromising the dignity
+of the Institution, and beg you, therefore, to abandon it."
+
+"Very well," said I, "there is no harm done. Thus far, I have only
+solicited two persons, Doctor and Miss Dulcifer, in that delightful
+little cottage there."
+
+"You don't mean to say you have asked _them_ to come to the ball!"
+
+"To be sure I have. And I am sorry to say they can't accept the
+invitation. Why should they not be asked?"
+
+"Because nobody visits them."
+
+"And why should nobody visit them?"
+
+The Treasurer put his arm confidentially through mine, and walked me on
+a few steps.
+
+"In the first place," he said, "Doctor Dulcifer's name is not down in
+the Medical List."
+
+"Some mistake," I suggested, in my off-hand way. "Or some foreign
+doctor's degree not recognized by the prejudiced people in England."
+
+"In the second place," continued the Treasurer, "we have found out that
+he is not visited at Barkingham. Consequently, it would be the height of
+imprudence to visit him here."
+
+"Pooh! pooh! All the nonsense of narrow-minded people, because he lives
+a retired life, and is engaged in finding out chemical secrets which the
+ignorant public don't know how to appreciate."
+
+"The shutters are always up in the front top windows of his house at
+Barkingham," said the Treasurer, lowering his voice mysteriously. "I
+know it from a friend resident near him. The windows themselves are
+barred. It is currently reported that the top of the house, inside, is
+shut off by iron doors from the bottom. Workmen are employed there who
+don't belong to the neighborhood, who don't drink at the public houses,
+who only associate with each other. Unfamiliar smells and noises find
+their way outside sometimes. Nobody in the house can be got to talk. The
+doctor, as he calls himself, does not even make an attempt to get into
+society, does not even try to see company for the sake of his poor
+unfortunate daughter. What do you think of all that?"
+
+"Think!" I repeated contemptuously; "I think the inhabitants of
+Barkingham are the best finders of mares' nests in all England. The
+doctor is making important chemical discoveries (the possible value of
+which I can appreciate, being chemical myself), and he is not quite
+fool enough to expose valuable secrets to the view of all the world. His
+laboratory is at the top of the house, and he wisely shuts it off from
+the bottom to prevent accidents. He is one of the best fellows I ever
+met with, and his daughter is the loveliest girl in the world. What
+do you all mean by making mysteries about nothing? He has given me an
+invitation to go and see him. I suppose the next thing you will find out
+is, that there is something underhand even in that?"
+
+"You won't accept the invitation?"
+
+"I shall, at the very first opportunity; and if you had seen Miss
+Alicia, so would you."
+
+"Don't go. Take my advice and don't go," said the Treasurer, gravely.
+"You are a young man. Reputable friends are of importance to you at the
+outset of life. I say nothing against Doctor Dulcifer--he came here as
+a stranger, and he goes away again as a stranger--but you can't be sure
+that his purpose in asking you so readily to his house is a harmless
+one. Making a new acquaintance is always a doubtful speculation; but
+when a man is not visited by his respectable neighbors--"
+
+"Because he doesn't open his shutters," I interposed sarcastically.
+
+"Because there are doubts about him and his house which he will not
+clear up," retorted the Treasurer. "You can take your own way. You may
+turn out right, and we may all be wrong; I can only say again, it is
+rash to make doubtful acquaintances. Sooner or later you are always
+sure to repent it. In your place I should certainly not accept the
+invitation."
+
+"In my place, my dear sir," I answered, "you would do exactly what I
+mean to do."
+
+The Treasurer took his arm out of mine, and without saying another word,
+wished me good-morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+I HAD spoken confidently enough, while arguing the question of
+Doctor Dulcifer's respectability with the Treasurer of the D uskydale
+Institution; but, if my perceptions had not been blinded by my
+enthusiastic admiration for Alicia, I think I should have secretly
+distrusted my own opinion as soon as I was left by myself. Had I been
+in full possession of my senses, I might have questioned, on reflection,
+whether the doctor's method of accounting for the suspicions which kept
+his neighbors aloof from him, was quite satisfactory. Love is generally
+described, I believe, as the tender passion. When I remember the
+insidiously relaxing effect of it on all my faculties, I feel inclined
+to alter the popular definition, and to call it a moral vapor-bath.
+
+What the Managing Committee of the Duskydale Institution thought of the
+change in me, I cannot imagine. The doctor and his daughter left the
+town on the day they had originally appointed, before I could make
+any excuse for calling again; and, as a necessary consequence of their
+departure, I lost all interest in the affairs of the ball, and yawned
+in the faces of the committee when I was obliged to be present at their
+deliberations in my official capacity.
+
+It was all Alicia with me, whatever they did. I read the Minutes through
+a soft medium of maize-colored skirts. Notes of melodious laughter
+bubbled, in my mind's ear, through all the drawling and stammering of
+our speech-making members. When our dignified President thought he had
+caught my eye, and made oratorical overtures to me from the top of the
+table, I was lost in the contemplation of silk purses and white fingers
+weaving them. I meant "Alicia" when I said "hear, hear"--and when I
+officially produced my subscription list, it was all aglow with the
+roseate hues of the marriage-license. If any unsympathetic male readers
+should think this statement exaggerated, I appeal to the ladies--_they_
+will appreciate the rigid, yet tender, truth of it.
+
+The night of the ball came. I have nothing but the vaguest recollection
+of it.
+
+I remember that the more the perverse lecture theater was warmed the
+more persistently it smelled of damp plaster; and that the more brightly
+it was lighted, the more overgrown and lonesome it looked. I can recall
+to mind that the company assembled numbered about fifty, the room being
+big enough to hold three hundred. I have a vision still before me,
+of twenty out of these fifty guests, solemnly executing intricate
+figure-dances, under the superintendence of an infirm local
+dancing-master--a mere speck of fidgety human wretchedness twisting
+about in the middle of an empty floor. I see, faintly, down the dim
+vista of the Past, an agreeable figure, like myself, with a cocked hat
+under its arm, black tights on its lightly tripping legs, a rosette in
+its buttonhole, and an engaging smile on its face, walking from end to
+end of the room, in the character of Master of the Ceremonies. These
+visions and events I can recall vaguely; and with them my remembrances
+of the ball come to a close. It was a complete failure, and that would,
+of itself, have been enough to sicken me of remaining at the Duskydale
+Institution, even if I had not had any reasons of the tender sort for
+wishing to extend my travels in rural England to the neighborhood of
+Barkingham.
+
+The difficulty was how to find a decent pretext for getting away.
+Fortunately, the Managing Committee relieved me of any perplexity on
+this head, by passing a resolution, one day, which called upon the
+President to remonstrate with me on my want of proper interest in the
+affairs of the Institution. I replied to the remonstrance that the
+affairs of the Institution were so hopelessly dull that it was equally
+absurd and unjust to expect any human being to take the smallest
+interest in them. At this there arose an indignant cry of "Resign!"
+from the whole committee; to which I answered politely, that I should be
+delighted to oblige the gentlemen, and to go forthwith, on condition of
+receiving a quarter's salary in the way of previous compensation.
+
+After a sordid opposition from an economical minority, my condition of
+departure was accepted. I wrote a letter of resignation, received in
+exchange twelve pounds ten shillings, and took my place, that same day,
+on the box-seat of the Barkingham mail.
+
+Rather changeable this life of mine, was it not? Before I was
+twenty-five years of age, I had tried doctoring, caricaturing
+portrait-painting, old picture-making, and Institution-managing; and
+now, with the help of Alicia, I was about to try how a little marrying
+would suit me. Surely, Shakespeare must have had me prophetically in his
+eye, when he wrote about "one man in his time playing many parts." What
+a character I should have made for him, if he had only been alive now!
+
+I found out from the coachman, among other matters, that there was a
+famous fishing stream near Barkingham; and the first thing I did, on
+arriving at the town, was to buy a rod and line.
+
+It struck me that my safest way of introducing myself would be to
+tell Doctor Dulcifer that I had come to the neighborhood for a little
+fishing, and so to prevent him from fancying that I was suspiciously
+prompt in availing myself of his offered hospitality. I put up, of
+course, at the inn--stuck a large parchment book of flies half in and
+half out of the pocket of my shooting-jacket--and set off at once to the
+doctor's. The waiter of whom I asked my way stared distrustfully while
+he directed me. The people at the inn had evidently heard of my new
+friend, and were not favorably disposed toward the cause of scientific
+investigation.
+
+The house stood about a mile out of the town, in a dip of ground near
+the famous fishing-stream. It was a lonely, old-fashioned red-brick
+building, surrounded by high walls, with a garden and plantation behind
+it.
+
+As I rang at the gate-bell, I looked up at the house. Sure enough all
+the top windows in front were closed with shutters and barred. I was let
+in by a man in livery; who, however, in manners and appearance, looked
+much more like a workman in disguise than a footman. He had a very
+suspicious eye, and he fixed it on me unpleasantly when I handed him my
+card.
+
+I was shown into a morning-room exactly like other morning-rooms in
+country houses.
+
+After a long delay the doctor came in, with scientific butchers' sleeves
+on his arms, and an apron tied round his portly waist. He apologized for
+coming down in his working dress, and said everything that was civil and
+proper about the pleasure of unexpectedly seeing me again so soon. There
+was something rather preoccupied, I thought, in those brightly resolute
+eyes of his; but I naturally attributed it to the engrossing influence
+of his scientific inquiries. He was evidently not at all taken in by my
+story about coming to Barkingham to fish; but he saw, as well as I did,
+that it would do to keep up appearances, and contrived to look highly
+interested immediately in my parchment-book. I asked after his daughter.
+He said she was in the garden, and proposed that we should go and find
+her. We did find her, with a pair of scissors in her hand, outblooming
+the flowers that she was trimming. She looked really glad to see me--her
+brown eyes beamed clear and kindly--she gave my hand another inestimable
+shake--the summer breezes waved her black curls gently upward from her
+waist--she had on a straw hat and a brown Holland gardening dress.
+I eyed it with all the practical interest of a linendraper. O Brown
+Holland you are but a coarse and cheap fabric, yet how soft and
+priceless you look when clothing the figure of Alicia!
+
+I lunched with them. The doctor recurred to the subject of my angling
+intentions, and asked his daughter if she had heard what parts of the
+stream at Barkingham were best for fishing in.
+
+She replied, with a mixture of modest evasiveness and adorable
+simplicity, that she had sometimes seen gentlemen angling from a
+meadow-bank about a quarter of a mile below her flower-garden. I risked
+everything in my usual venturesome way, and asked if she would show
+me where the place was, in case I called the next morning with my
+fishing-rod. She looked dutifully at her father. He smiled and nodded.
+Inestimable parent!
+
+On rising to take leave, I was rather curious to know whether he would
+offer me a bed in the house, or not. He detected the direction of my
+thoughts in my face and manner, and apologized for not having a bed to
+offer me; every spare room in the house being occupied by his chemical
+assistants, and by the lumber of laboratories. Even while he was
+speaking those few words, Alicia's face changed just as I had seen
+it change at our first interview. The downcast, gloomy expression
+overspread it again. Her father's eye wandered toward her when mine
+did, and suddenly assumed the same distrustful look which I remembered
+detecting in it, under similar circumstances, at Duskydale. What could
+this mean?
+
+The doctor shook hands with me in the hall, leaving the workman-like
+footman to open the door.
+
+I stopped to admire a fine pair of stag's antlers. The footman coughed
+impatiently. I still lingered, hearing the doctor's footsteps ascending
+the stairs. They suddenly stopped; and then there was a low heavy
+clang, like the sound of a closing door made of iron, or of some other
+unusually strong material; then total silence, interrupted by another
+impatient cough from the workman-like footman. After that, I thought my
+wisest proceeding would be to go away before my mysterious attendant was
+driven to practical extremities.
+
+Between thoughts of Alicia, and inquisitive yearnings to know more about
+the doctor's experiments, I passed rather a restless night at my inn.
+
+The next morning, I found the lovely mistress of my destiny, with the
+softest of shawls on her shoulders, the brightest of parasols in her
+hand, and the smart little straw hat of the day before on her head,
+ready to show me the way to the fishing-place. If I could be sure
+beforehand that these pages would only be read by persons actually
+occupied in the making of love--that oldest and longest-established of
+all branches of manufacturing industry--I could go into some very tender
+and interesting particulars on the subject of my first day's fishing,
+under the adorable auspices of Alicia. But as I cannot hope for a wholly
+sympathetic audience--as there may be monks, misogynists, political
+economists, and other professedly hard-hearted persons present among
+those whom I now address--I think it best to keep to safe generalities,
+and to describe my love-making in as few sentences as the vast, though
+soft, importance of the subject will allow me to use.
+
+Let me confess, then, that I assumed the character of a fastidious
+angler, and managed to be a week in discovering the right place to fish
+in--always, it is unnecessary to say, under Alicia's guidance. We went
+up the stream and down the stream, on one side. We crossed the bridge,
+and went up the stream and down the stream on the other. We got into
+a punt, and went up the stream (with great difficulty), and down the
+stream (with great ease). We landed on a little island, and walked all
+round it, and inspected the stream attentively from a central point of
+view. We found the island damp, and went back to the bank, and up the
+stream, and over the bridge, and down the stream again; and then, for
+the first time, the sweet girl turned appealingly to me, and confessed
+that she had exhausted her artless knowledge of the locality. It was
+exactly a week from the day when I had first followed her into the
+fields with my fishing-rod over my shoulder; and I had never yet caught
+anything but Alicia's hand, and that not with my hook.
+
+We sat down close together on the bank, entirely in consequence of our
+despair at not finding a good fishing-place. I looked at the brown eyes,
+and they turned away observantly down the stream. I followed them, and
+they turned away inquiringly up the stream. Was this angel of patience
+and kindness still looking for a fishing place? And was it _up_ the
+stream, after all? No!--she smiled and shook her head when I asked the
+question, and the brown eyes suddenly stole a look at me. I could
+hold out no longer In one breathless moment I caught hold of both her
+hands--in one stammering sentence I asked her if she would be my wife.
+
+She tried faintly to free her hands--gave up the attempt--smiled--made
+an effort to look grave--gave that up, too--sighed suddenly--checked
+herself suddenly--said nothing. Perhaps I ought to have taken my answer
+for granted; but the least business-like man that ever lived becomes
+an eminently practical character in matters of love. I repeated my
+question. She looked away confusedly; her eye lighted on a corner of
+her father's red-brick house, peeping through a gap in the plantation
+already mentioned; and her blushing cheeks lost their color instantly. I
+felt her hands grow cold; she drew them resolutely out of mine, and rose
+with the tears in her eyes. Had I offended her?
+
+"No," she said when I asked her the question, and turned to me again,
+and held out her hand with such frank, fearless kindness, that I almost
+fell on my knees to thank her for it.
+
+Might I hope ever to hear her say "Yes" to the question that I had asked
+on the riverbank?
+
+She sighed bitterly, and turned again toward the red-brick house.
+
+Was there any family reason against her saying "Yes"? Anything that I
+must not inquire into? Any opposition to be dreaded from her father?
+
+The moment I mentioned her father, she shrank away from me and burst
+into a violent fit of crying.
+
+"Don't speak of it again!" she said in a broken voice. "I mustn't--you
+mustn't--ah, don't, don't say a word more about it! I'm not distressed
+with you--it is not your fault. Don't say anything--leave me quiet for a
+minute. I shall soon be better it you leave me quiet."
+
+She dried her eyes directly, with a shiver as if it was cold, and took
+my arm. I led her back to the house-gate; and then, feeling that I
+could not go in to lunch as usual, after what had happened, said I would
+return to the fishing-place.
+
+"Shall I come to dinner this evening?" I asked, as I rang the gate-bell
+for her.
+
+"Oh, yes--yes!--do come, or he--"
+
+The mysterious man-servant opened the door, and we parted before she
+could say the next words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+I WENT back to the fishing-place with a heavy heart, overcome by
+mournful thoughts, for the first time in my life. It was plain that
+she did not dislike me, and equally plain that there was some obstacle
+connected with her father, which forbade her to listen to my offer of
+marriage. From the time when she had accidentally looked toward the
+red-brick house, something in her manner which it is quite impossible
+to describe, had suggested to my mind that this obstacle was not only
+something she could not mention, but something that she was partly
+ashamed of, partly afraid of, and partly doubtful about. What could it
+be? How had she first known it? In what way was her father connected
+with it?
+
+In the course of our walks she had told me nothing about herself which
+was not perfectly simple and unsuggestive.
+
+Her childhood had been passed in England. After that, she had lived with
+her father and mother at Paris, where the doctor had many friends--for
+all of whom she remembered feeling more or less dislike, without being
+able to tell why. They had then come to England, and had lived in
+lodgings in London. For a time they had been miserably poor. But, after
+her mother's death--a sudden death from heart disease--there had come a
+change in their affairs, which she was quite unable to explain. They had
+removed to their present abode, to give the doctor full accommodation
+for the carrying on of his scientific pursuits. He often had occasion to
+go to London; but never took her with him. The only woman at home
+now, beside herself, was an elderly person, who acted as cook and
+housekeeper, and who had been in their service for many years. It was
+very lonely sometimes not having a companion of her own age and sex;
+but she had got tolerably used to bear it, and to amuse herself with her
+books, and music, and flowers.
+
+Thus far she chatted about herself quite freely; but when I tried, even
+in the vaguest manner, to lead her into discussing the causes of
+her strangely secluded life, she looked so distressed, and became so
+suddenly silent, that I naturally refrained from saying another word on
+that topic. One conclusion, however, I felt tolerably sure that I had
+drawn correctly from what she said: her father's conduct toward her,
+though not absolutely blamable or grossly neglectful on any point,
+had still never been of a nature to make her ardently fond of him. He
+performed the ordinary parental duties rigidly and respectably enough;
+but he had apparently not cared to win all the filial love which his
+daughter would have bestowed on a more affectionate man.
+
+When, after reflecting on what Alicia had told me, I began to call to
+mind what I had been able to observe for myself, I found ample materials
+to excite my curiosity in relation to the doctor, if not my distrust.
+
+I have already described how I heard the clang of the heavy door, on the
+occasion of my first visit to the red-brick house. The next day, when
+the doctor again took leave of me in the hall, I hit on a plan for
+seeing the door as well as hearing it. I dawdled on my way out, till I
+heard the clang again; then pretended to remember some important message
+which I had forgotten to give to the doctor, and with a look of innocent
+hurry ran upstairs to overtake him. The disguised workman ran after
+me with a shout of "Stop!" I was conveniently deaf to him--reached the
+first floor landing--and arrived at a door which shut off the whole
+staircase higher up; an iron door, as solid as if it belonged to a
+banker's strong-room, and guarded millions of money. I returned to the
+hall, inattentive to the servant's not over-civil remonstrances, and,
+saying that I would wait till I saw the doctor again, left the house.
+
+The next day two pale-looking men, in artisan costume, came up to the
+gate at the same time as I did, each carrying a long wooden box under
+his arm, strongly bound with iron. I tried to make them talk while we
+were waiting for admission, but neither of them would go beyond "Yes,"
+or "No"; and both had, to my eyes, some unmistakably sinister lines in
+their faces. The next day the houskeeping cook came to the door--a buxom
+old woman with a look and a ready smile, and something in her manner
+which suggested that she had not begun life quite so respectably as she
+was now ending it. She seemed to be decidedly satisfied with my personal
+appearance; talked to me on indifferent matters with great glibness;
+but suddenly became silent and diplomatic the moment I looked toward the
+stair and asked innocently if she had to go up and down them often in
+the course of the day. As for the doctor himself he was unapproachable
+on the subject of the mysterious upper regions. If I introduced
+chemistry in general into the conversation he begged me not to spoil his
+happy holiday hours with his daughter and me, by leading him back to his
+work-a-day thoughts. If I referred to his own experiments in particular
+he always made a joke about being afraid of my chemical knowledge, and
+of my wishing to anticipate him in his discoveries. In brief, after a
+week's run of the lower regions, the upper part of the red-brick
+house and the actual nature of its owner's occupations still remained
+impenetrable mysteries to me, pry, ponder, and question as I might.
+
+Thinking of this on the river-bank, in connection with the distressing
+scene which I had just had with Alicia, I found that the mysterious
+obstacle at which she had hinted, the mysterious life led by her
+father, and the mysterious top of the house that had hitherto defied
+my curiosity, all three connected themselves in my mind as links of the
+same chain. The obstacle to my marrying Alicia was the thing that most
+troubled me. If I only found out what it was, and if I made light of
+it (which I was resolved beforehand to do, let it be what it might), I
+should most probably end by overcoming her scruples, and taking her away
+from the ominous red-brick house in the character of my wife. But how
+was I to make the all-important discovery?
+
+Cudgeling my brains for an answer to this question, I fell at last into
+reasoning upon it, by a process of natural logic, something after this
+fashion: The mysterious top of the house is connected with the
+doctor, and the doctor is connected with the obstacle which has made
+wretchedness between Alicia and me. If I can only get to the top of the
+house, I may get also to the root of the obstacle. It is a dangerous and
+an uncertain experiment; but, come what may of it, I will try and find
+out, if human ingenuity can compass the means, what Doctor Dulcifer's
+occupation really is, on the other side of that iron door.
+
+Having come to this resolution (and deriving, let me add,
+parenthetically, great consolation from it), the next subject of
+consideration was the best method of getting safely into the top regions
+of the house.
+
+Picking the lock of the iron door was out of the question, from the
+exposed nature of the situation which that mysterious iron barrier
+occupied. My only possible way to the second floor lay by the back of
+the house. I had looked up at it two or three times, while walking
+in the garden after dinner with Alicia. What had I brought away in
+my memory as the result of that casual inspection of my host's back
+premises? Several fragments of useful information.
+
+In the first place, one of the most magnificent vines I had ever seen
+grew against the back wall of the house, trained carefully on a strong
+trellis-work. In the second place, the middle first-floor back window
+looked out on a little stone balcony, built on the top of the porch
+over the garden door. In the third place, the back windows of the
+second floor had been open, on each occasion when I had seen them--most
+probably to air the house, which could not be ventilated from the front
+during the hot summer weather, in consequence of the shut-up condition
+of all the windows thereabouts. In the fourth place, hard by the
+coach-house in which Doctor Dulcifer's neat gig was put up, there was a
+tool-shed, in which the gardener kept his short pruning-ladder. In the
+fifth and last place, outside the stable in which Doctor Dulcifer's
+blood mare lived in luxurious solitude, was a dog-kennel with a large
+mastiff chained to it night and day. If I could only rid myself of the
+dog--a gaunt, half-starved brute, made savage and mangy by perpetual
+confinement--I did not see any reason to despair of getting in
+undiscovered at one of the second-floor windows--provided I waited until
+a sufficiently late hour, and succeeded in scaling the garden wall at
+the back of the house.
+
+Life without Alicia being not worth having, I determined to risk the
+thing that very night.
+
+Going back at once to the town of Barkingham, I provided myself with a
+short bit of rope, a little bull's-eye lantern, a small screwdriver, and
+a nice bit of beef chemically adapted for the soothing of troublesome
+dogs. I then dressed, disposed of these things neatly in my coat
+pockets, and went to the doctor's to dinner. In one respect,
+Fortune favored my audacity. It was the sultriest day of the whole
+season--surely they could not think of shutting up the second-floor back
+windows to-night!
+
+Alicia was pale and silent. The lovely brown eyes, when they looked
+at me, said as plainly as in words, "We have been crying a great deal,
+Frank, since we saw you last." The little white fingers gave mine a
+significant squeeze--and that was all the reference that passed between
+us to what happened in the morning. She sat through the dinner bravely;
+but, when the dessert came, left us for the night, with a few shy,
+hurried words about the excessive heat of the weather being too much
+for her. I rose to open the door, and exchanged a last meaning look with
+her, as she bowed and went by me. Little did I think that I should have
+to live upon nothing but the remembrance of that look for many weary
+days that were yet to come.
+
+The doctor was in excellent spirits, and almost oppressively hospitable.
+We sat sociably chatting over our claret till past eight o'clock. Then
+my host turned to his desk to write a letter before the post want out;
+and I strolled away to smoke a cigar in the garden.
+
+Second-floor back windows all open, atmosphere as sultry as ever,
+gardener's pruning-ladder quite safe in the tool-shed, savage mastiff
+in his kennel crunching his bones for supper. Good. The dog will not be
+visited again tonight: I may throw my medicated bit of beef at once into
+his kennel. I acted on the idea immediately; the dog seized his piece of
+beef; I heard a snap, a wheeze, a choke, and a groan--and there was the
+mastiff disposed of, inside the kennel, where nobody could find out that
+he was dead till the time came for feeding him the next morning.
+
+I went back to the doctor; we had a social glass of cold
+brandy-and-water together; I lighted another cigar, and took my leave.
+My host being too respectable a man not to keep early country hours, I
+went away, as usual, about ten. The mysterious man-servant locked the
+gate behind me. I sauntered on the road back to Barkingham for about
+five minutes, then struck off sharp for the plantation, lighted
+my lantern with the help of my cigar and a brimstone match of that
+barbarous period, shut down the slide again, and made for the garden
+wall.
+
+It was formidably high, and garnished horribly with broken bottles;
+but it was also old, and when I came to pick at the mortar with my
+screw-driver, I found it reasonably rotten with age and damp.
+
+I removed four bricks to make footholes in different positions up the
+wall. It was desperately hard and long work, easy as it may sound in
+description--especially when I had to hold on by the top of the wall,
+with my flat opera hat (as we used to call it in those days) laid, as a
+guard, between my hand and the glass, while I cleared a way through the
+sharp bottle-ends for my other hand and my knees. This done, my great
+difficulty was vanquished; and I had only to drop luxuriously into a
+flower-bed on the other side of the wall.
+
+Perfect stillness in the garden: no sign of a light anywhere at the back
+of the house: first-floor windows all shut: second-floor windows still
+open. I fetched the pruning-ladder; put it against the side of the
+porch; tied one end of my bit of rope to the top round of it; took the
+other end in my mouth, and prepared to climb to the balcony over the
+porch by the thick vine branches and the trellis-work.
+
+No man who has had any real experience of life can have failed to
+observe how amazingly close, in critical situations, the grotesque
+and the terrible, the comic and the serious, contrive to tread on each
+other's heels. At such times, the last thing we ought properly to
+think of comes into our heads, or the least consistent event that could
+possibly be expected to happen does actually occur. When I put my
+life in danger on that memorable night, by putting my foot on the
+trellis-work, I absolutely thought of the never-dying Lady Malkinshaw
+plunged in refreshing slumber, and of the frantic exclamations Mr.
+Batterbury would utter if he saw what her ladyship's grandson was
+doing with his precious life and limbs at that critical moment. I am no
+hero--I was fully aware of the danger to which I was exposing myself;
+and yet I protest that I caught myself laughing under my breath, with
+the most outrageous inconsistency, at the instant when I began the
+ascent of the trellis-work.
+
+I reached the balcony over the porch in safety, depending more upon
+the tough vine branches than the trellis-work during my ascent. My next
+employment was to pull up the pruning-ladder, as softly as possible,
+by the rope which I held attached to it. This done, I put the ladder
+against the house wall, listened, measured the distance to the open
+second-floor window with my eye, listened again--and, finding all quiet,
+began my second and last ascent. The ladder was comfortably long, and I
+was conveniently tall; my hand was on the window-sill--I mounted another
+two rounds--and my eyes were level with the interior of the room.
+
+Suppose any one should be sleeping there!
+
+I listened at the window attentively before I ventured on taking my
+lantern out of my coatpocket. The night was so quite and airless that
+there was not the faintest rustle among the leaves in the garden beneath
+me to distract my attention. I listened. The breathing of the lightest
+of sleepers must have reached my ear, through that intense stillness, if
+the room had been a bedroom, and the bed were occupied. I heard nothing
+but the quick beat of my own heart. The minutes of suspense were passing
+heavily--I laid my other hand over the window-sill, then a moment of
+doubt came--doubt whether I should carry the adventure any further. I
+mastered my hesitation directly--it was too late for second thoughts.
+"Now for it!" I whispered to myself, and got in at the window.
+
+To wait, listening again, in the darkness of that unknown region, was
+more than I had courage for. The moment I was down on the floor, I
+pulled the lantern out of my pocket and raised the shade.
+
+So far, so good--I found myself in a dirty lumber-room. Large pans, some
+of them cracked and more of them broken; empty boxes bound with iron, of
+the same sort as those I had seen the workmen bringing in at the front
+gate; old coal sacks; a packing-case full of coke; and a huge, cracked,
+mouldy blacksmith's bellows--these were the principal objects that I
+observed in the lumber-room. The one door leading out of it was open,
+as I had expected it would be, in order to let the air through the back
+window into the house. I took off my shoes, and stole into the passage.
+My first impulse, the moment I looked along it, was to shut down my
+lantern-shade, and listen again.
+
+Still I heard nothing; but at the far end of the passage I saw a bright
+light pouring through the half-opened door of one of the mysterious
+front rooms.
+
+I crept softly toward it. A decidedly chemical smell began to steal into
+my nostrils--and, listening again, I thought I heard above me, and
+in some distant room, a noise like the low growl of a large furnace,
+muffled in some peculiar manner. Should I retrace my steps in that
+direction? No--not till I had seen something of the room with the bright
+light, outside of which I was now standing. I bent forward softly;
+looking by little and little further and further through the opening of
+the door, until my head and shoulders were fairly inside the room, and
+my eyes had convinced me that no living soul, sleeping or waking, was in
+any part of it at that particular moment. Impelled by a fatal curiosity,
+I entered immediately, and began to look about me with eager eyes.
+
+I saw iron ladles, pans full of white sand, files with white metal left
+glittering in their teeth, molds of plaster of Paris, bags containing
+the same material in powder, a powerful machine with the name and use
+of which I was theoretically not unacquainted, white metal in a
+partially-fused state, bottles of aquafortis, dies scattered over a
+dresser, crucibles, sandpaper, bars of metal, and edged tools in plenty,
+of the strangest construction. I was not at all a scrupulous man, as
+the reader knows by this time; but when I looked at these objects, and
+thought of Alicia, I could not for the life of me help shuddering. There
+was not the least doubt about it, even after the little I had seen:
+the important chemical pursuits to which Doctor Dulcifer was devoting
+himself, meant, in plain English and in one word--Coining.
+
+Did Alicia know what I knew now, or did she only suspect it?
+
+Whichever way I answered that question in my own mind, I could be no
+longer at any loss for an explanation of her behavior in the meadow
+by the stream, or of that unnaturally gloomy, downcast look which
+overspread her face when her father's pursuits were the subject of
+conversation. Did I falter in my resolution to marry her, now that I had
+discovered what the obstacle was which had made mystery and wretchedness
+between us? Certainly not. I was above all prejudices. I was the
+least particular of mankind. I had no family affection in my way--and,
+greatest fact of all, I was in love. Under those circumstances what
+Rogue of any spirit would have faltered? After the first shock of the
+discovery was over, my resolution to be Alicia's husband was settled
+more firmly than ever.
+
+There was a little round table in a corner of the room furthest from
+the door, which I had not yet examined. A feverish longing to look at
+everything within my reach--to penetrate to the innermost recesses of
+the labyrinth in which I had involved myself--consumed me. I went to the
+table, and saw upon it, ranged symmetrically side by side, four objects
+which looked like thick rulers wrapped up in silver paper. I opened the
+paper at the end of one of the rulers, and found that it was composed of
+half-crowns. I had closed the paper again, and was just raising my head
+from the table over which it had been bent, when my right cheek came
+in contact with something hard and cold. I started back--looked up--and
+confronted Doctor Dulcifer, holding a pistol at my right temple.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE doctor (like me) had his shoes off. The doctor (like me) had come
+in without making the least noise. He cocked the pistol without saying a
+word. I felt that I was probably standing face to face with death, and
+I too said not a word. We two Rogues looked each other steadily and
+silently in the face--he, the mighty and prosperous villain, with my
+life in his hands: I, the abject and poor scamp, waiting his mercy.
+
+It must have been at least a minute after I heard the click of the
+cocked pistol before he spoke.
+
+"How did you get here?" he asked.
+
+The quiet commonplace terms in which he put his question, and the
+perfect composure and politeness of his manner, reminded me a little of
+Gentleman Jones. But the doctor was much the more respectable-looking
+man of the two; his baldness was more intellectual and benevolent; there
+was a delicacy and propriety in the pulpiness of his fat white chin, a
+bland bagginess in his unwhiskered cheeks, a reverent roughness about
+his eyebrows and a fullness in his lower eyelids, which raised him far
+higher, physiognomically speaking, in the social scale, than my old
+prison acquaintance. Put a shovel-hat on Gentleman Jones, and the effect
+would only have been eccentric; put the same covering on the head of
+Doctor Dulcifer, and the effect would have been strictly episcopal.
+
+"How did you get here?" he repeated, still without showing the least
+irritation.
+
+I told him how I had got in at the second-floor window, without
+concealing a word of the truth. The gravity of the situation, and the
+sharpness of the doctor's intellects, as expressed in his eyes, made
+anything like a suppression of facts on my part a desperately dangerous
+experiment.
+
+"You wanted to see what I was about up here, did you?" said he, when I
+had ended my confession. "Do you know?"
+
+The pistol barrel touched my cheek as he said the last words. I
+thought of all the suspicious objects scattered about the room, of the
+probability that he was only putting this question to try my courage, of
+the very likely chance that he would shoot me forthwith, if I began to
+prevaricate. I thought of these things, and boldly answered:
+
+"Yes, I do know."
+
+He looked at me reflectively; then said, in low, thoughtful tones,
+speaking, not to me, but entirely to himself:
+
+"Suppose I shoot him?"
+
+I saw in his eye, that if I flinched, he would draw the trigger.
+
+"Suppose you trust me?" I said, without moving a muscle.
+
+"I trusted you, as an honest man, downstairs, and I find you, like a
+thief, up here," returned the doctor, with a self-satisfied smile at
+the neatness of his own retort. "No," he continued, relapsing into
+soliloquy: "there is risk every way; but the least risk perhaps is to
+shoot him."
+
+"Wrong," said I. "There are relations of mine who have a pecuniary
+interest in my life. I am the main condition of a contingent reversion
+in their favor. If I am missed, I shall be inquired after." I have
+wondered since at my own coolness in the face of the doctor's pistol;
+but my life depended on my keeping my self-possession, and the desperate
+nature of the situation lent me a desperate courage.
+
+"How do I know you are not lying?" he asked.
+
+"Have I not spoken the truth, hitherto?"
+
+Those words made him hesitate. He lowered the pistol slowly to his side.
+I began to breathe freely.
+
+"Trust me," I repeated. "If you don't believe I would hold my tongue
+about what I have seen here, for your sake, you may be certain that I
+would for--"
+
+"For my daughter's," he interposed, with a sarcastic smile.
+
+I bowed with all imaginable cordiality. The doctor waved his pistol in
+the air contemptuously.
+
+"There are two ways of making you hold your tongue," he said. "The first
+is shooting you; the second is making a felon of you. On consideration,
+after what you have said, the risk in either case seems about equal. I
+am naturally a humane man; your family have done me no injury; I will
+not be the cause of their losing money; I won't take your life, I'll
+have your character. We are all felons on this floor of the house. You
+have come among us--you shall be one of us. Ring that bell."
+
+He pointed with the pistol to a bell-handle behind me. I pulled it in
+silence.
+
+Felon! The word has an ugly sound--a very ugly sound. But, considering
+how near the black curtain had been to falling over the adventurous
+drama of my life, had I any right to complain of the prolongation of the
+scene, however darkly it might look at first? Besides, some of the best
+feelings of our common nature (putting out of all question the value
+which men so unaccountably persist in setting on their own lives),
+impelled me, of necessity, to choose the alternative of felonious
+existence in preference to that of respectable death. Love and Honor
+bade me live to marry Alicia; and a sense of family duty made me shrink
+from occasioning a loss of three thousand pounds to my affectionate
+sister. Perish the far-fetched scruples which would break the heart of
+one lovely woman, and scatter to the winds the pin-money of another!
+
+"If you utter one word in contradiction of anything I say when my
+workmen come into the room," said the doctor, uncocking his pistol as
+soon as I had rung the bell, "I shall change my mind about leaving your
+life and taking your character. Remember that; and keep a guard on your
+tongue."
+
+The door opened, and four men entered. One was an old man whom I had not
+seen before; in the other three I recognized the workman-like footman,
+and the two sinister artisans whom I had met at the house-gate. They all
+started, guiltily enough, at seeing me.
+
+"Let me introduce you," said the doctor, taking me by the arm. "Old File
+and Young File, Mill and Screw--Mr. Frank Softly. We have nicknames
+in this workshop, Mr. Softly, derived humorously from our professional
+tools and machinery. When you have been here long enough, you will get
+a nickname, too. Gentlemen," he continued, turning to the workmen, "this
+is a new recruit, with a knowledge of chemistry which will be useful to
+us. He is perfectly well aware that the nature of our vocation makes
+us suspicious of all newcomers, and he, therefore, desires to give you
+practical proof that he is to be depended on, by making half-a-crown
+immediately, and sending the same up, along with our handiwork, directed
+in his own handwriting, to our estimable correspondents in London. When
+you have all seen him do this of his own free will, and thereby put his
+own life as completely within the power of the law as we have put
+ours, you will know that he is really one of us, and will be under no
+apprehensions for the future. Take great pains with him, and as soon as
+he turns out a tolerably neat article, from the simple flatted plates,
+under your inspection, let me know. I shall take a few hours' repose
+on my camp-bed in the study, and shall be found there whenever you want
+me."
+
+He nodded to us all round in the most friendly manner, and left the
+room.
+
+I looked with considerable secret distrust at the four gentlemen who
+were to instruct me in the art of making false coin. Young File was the
+workman-like footman; Old File was his father; Mill and Screw were the
+two sinister artisans. The man of the company whose looks I liked least
+was Screw. He had wicked little twinkling eyes--and they followed me
+about treacherously whenever I moved. "You and I, Screw, are likely to
+quarrel," I thought to myself, as I tried vainly to stare him out of
+countenance.
+
+I entered on my new and felonious functions forthwith. Resistance was
+useless, and calling for help would have been sheer insanity. It was
+midnight; and, even supposing the windows had not been barred, the
+house was a mile from any human habitation. Accordingly, I abandoned
+myself to fate with my usual magnanimity. Only let me end in winning
+Alicia, and I am resigned to the loss of whatever small shreds and
+patches of respectability still hang about me--such was my philosophy.
+I wish I could have taken higher moral ground with equally consoling
+results to my own feelings.
+
+The same regard for the well-being of society which led me to abstain
+from entering into particulars on the subject of Old Master-making, when
+I was apprenticed to Mr. Ishmael Pickup, now commands me to be equally
+discreet on the kindred subject of Half-Crown-making, under the auspices
+of Old File, Young File, Mill, and Screw.
+
+Let me merely record that I was a kind of machine in the hands of these
+four skilled workmen. I moved from room to room, and from process to
+process, the creature of their directing eyes and guiding hands. I cut
+myself, I burned myself, I got speechless from fatigue, and giddy from
+want of sleep. In short, the sun of the new day was high in the heavens
+before it was necessary to disturb Doctor Dulcifer. It had absolutely
+taken me almost as long to manufacture a half-a-crown feloniously as
+it takes a respectable man to make it honestly. This is saying a great
+deal; but it is literally true for all that.
+
+Looking quite fresh and rosy after his night's sleep, the doctor
+inspected my coin with the air of a schoolmaster examining a little
+boy's exercise; then handed it to Old File to put the finished touches
+and correct the mistakes. It was afterward returned to me. My own hand
+placed it in one of the rouleaux of false half-crowns; and my own hand
+also directed the spurious coin, when it had been safely packed up, to
+a certain London dealer who was to be on the lookout for it by the next
+night's mail. That done, my initiation was so far complete.
+
+"I have sent for your luggage, and paid your bill at the inn," said the
+doctor; "of course in your name. You are now to enjoy the hospitality
+that I could not extend to you before. A room upstairs has been prepared
+for you. You are not exactly in a state of confinement; but, until your
+studies are completed, I think you had better not interrupt them by
+going out."
+
+"A prisoner!" I exclaimed aghast.
+
+"Prisoner is a hard word," answered the doctor. "Let us say, a guest
+under surveillance."
+
+"Do you seriously mean that you intend to keep me shut up in this part
+of the house, at your will and pleasure?" I inquired, my heart sinking
+lower and lower at every word I spoke.
+
+"It is very spacious and airy," said the doctor; "as for the lower part
+of the house, you would find no company there, so you can't want to go
+to it."
+
+"No company!" I repeated faintly.
+
+"No. My daughter went away this morning for change of air and scene,
+accompanied by my housekeeper. You look astonished, my dear sir--let
+me frankly explain myself. While you were the respectable son of Doctor
+Softly, and grandson of Lady Malkinshaw, I was ready enough to let my
+daughter associate with you, and should not have objected if you had
+married her off my hands into a highly-connected family. Now, however,
+when you are nothing but one of the workmen in my manufactory of money,
+your social position is seriously altered for the worse; and, as I could
+not possibly think of you for a son-in-law, I have considered it best to
+prevent all chance of your communicating with Alicia again, by sending
+her away from this house while you are in it. You will be in it until I
+have completed certain business arrangements now in a forward state of
+progress--after that, you may go away if you please. Pray remember that
+you have to thank yourself for the position you now stand in; and do
+me the justice to admit that my conduct toward you is remarkably
+straightforward, and perfectly natural under all the circumstances."
+
+These words fairly overwhelmed me. I did not even make an attempt to
+answer them. The hard trials to my courage, endurance, and physical
+strength, through which I had passed within the last twelve hours, had
+completely exhausted all my powers of resistance. I went away speechless
+to my own room; and when I found myself alone there, burst out crying.
+Childish, was it not?
+
+When I had been rested and strengthened by a few hours' sleep, I found
+myself able to confront the future with tolerable calmness.
+
+What would it be best for me to do? Ought I to attempt to make my
+escape? I did not despair of succeeding; but when I began to think of
+the consequences of success, I hesitated. My chief object now was, not
+so much to secure my own freedom, as to find my way to Alicia. I had
+never been so deeply and desperately in love with her as I was now, when
+I knew she was separated from me. Suppose I succeeded in escaping from
+the clutches of Doctor Dulcifer--might I not be casting myself uselessly
+on the world, without a chance of finding a single clew to trace her
+by? Suppose, on the other hand, that I remained for the present in
+the red-brick house--should I not by that course of conduct be putting
+myself in the best position for making discoveries?
+
+In the first place, there was the chance that Alicia might find some
+secret means of communicating with me if I remained where I was. In the
+second place, the doctor would, in all probability, have occasion to
+write to his daughter, or would be likely to receive letters from her;
+and, if I quieted all suspicion on my account, by docile behavior,
+and kept my eyes sharply on the lookout, I might find opportunities of
+surprising the secrets of his writing-desk. I felt that I need be under
+no restraints of honor with a man who was keeping me a prisoner, and who
+had made an accomplice of me by threatening my life. Accordingly,
+while resolving to show outwardly an amiable submission to my fate, I
+determined at the same time to keep secretly on the watch, and to take
+the very first chance of outwitting Doctor Dulcifer that might happen
+to present itself. When we next met I was perfectly civil to him. He was
+too well-bred a man not to match me on the common ground of courtesy.
+
+"Permit me to congratulate you," he said, "on the improvement in your
+manner and appearance. You are beginning well, Francis. Go on as you
+have begun."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+MY first few days' experience in my new position satisfied me that
+Doctor Dulcifer preserved himself from betrayal by a system of
+surveillance worthy of the very worst days of the Holy Inquisition
+itself.
+
+No man of us ever knew that he was not being overlooked at home, or
+followed when he went out, by another man. Peepholes were pierced in the
+wall of each room, and we were never certain, while at work, whose eye
+was observing, or whose ear was listening in secret. Though we all lived
+together, we were probably the least united body of men ever assembled
+under one roof. By way of effectually keeping up the want of union
+between us, we were not all trusted alike. I soon discovered that
+Old File and Young File were much further advanced in the doctor's
+confidence than Mill, Screw, or myself. There was a locked-up room,
+and a continually-closed door shutting off a back staircase, of both of
+which Old File and Young File possessed keys that were never so much as
+trusted in the possession of the rest of us. There was also a trap-door
+in the floor of the principal workroom, the use of which was known to
+nobody but the doctor and his two privileged men. If we had not been all
+nearly on an equality in the matter of wages, these distinctions
+would have made bad blood among us. As it was, nobody having reason
+to complain of unjustly-diminished wages, nobody cared about any
+preferences in which profit was not involved.
+
+The doctor must have gained a great deal of money by his skill as a
+coiner. His profits in business could never have averaged less than five
+hundred per cent; and, to do him justice, he was really a generous as
+well as a rich master.
+
+Even I, as a new hand, was, in fair proportion, as well paid by the week
+as the rest.
+
+We, of course, had nothing to do with the passing of false money--we
+only manufactured it (sometimes at the rate of four hundred pounds'
+worth in a week); and left its circulation to be managed by our
+customers in London and the large towns. Whatever we paid for in
+Barkingham was paid for in the genuine Mint coinage. I used often
+to compare my own true guineas, half-crowns and shillings with our
+imitations under the doctor's supervision, and was always amazed at the
+resemblance. Our scientific chief had discovered a process something
+like what is called electrotyping nowadays, as I imagine. He was very
+proud of this; but he was prouder still of the ring of his metal, and
+with reason: it must have been a nice ear indeed that could discover the
+false tones in the doctor's coinage.
+
+If I had been the most scrupulous man in the world, I must still have
+received my wages, for the very necessary purpose of not appearing to
+distinguish myself invidiously from my fellow-workmen. Upon the whole,
+I got on well with them. Old File and I struck up quite a friendship.
+Young File and Mill worked harmoniously with me, but Screw and I (as I
+had foreboded) quarreled.
+
+This last man was not on good terms with his fellows, and had less of
+the doctor's confidence than any of the rest of us. Naturally not of a
+sweet temper, his isolated position in the house had soured him, and he
+rashly attempted to vent his ill-humor on me, as a newcomer. For some
+days I bore with him patiently; but at last he got the better of my
+powers of endurance; and I gave him a lesson in manners, one day, on the
+educational system of Gentleman Jones. He did not return the blow, or
+complain to the doctor; he only looked at me wickedly, and said: "I'll
+be even with you for that, some of these days." I soon forgot the words
+and the look.
+
+With Old File, as I have said, I became quite friendly. Excepting the
+secrets of our prison-house, he was ready enough to talk on subjects
+about which I was curious.
+
+He had known his present master as a young man, and was perfectly
+familiar with all the events of his career. From various conversations,
+at odds and ends of spare time, I discovered that Doctor Dulcifer had
+begun life as a footman in a gentleman's family; that his young mistress
+had eloped with him, taking away with her every article of value that
+was her own personal property, in the shape of jewelry and dresses; that
+they had lived upon the sale of these things for some time; and that
+the husband, when the wife's means were exhausted, had turned
+strolling-player for a year or two. Abandoning that pursuit, he had
+next become a quack-doctor, first in a resident, then in a vagabond
+capacity--taking a medical degree of his own conferring, and holding to
+it as a good traveling title for the rest of his life. From the selling
+of quack medicines he had proceeded to the adulterating of foreign
+wines, varied by lucrative evening occupation in the Paris gambling
+houses. On returning to his native land, he still continued to turn his
+chemical knowledge to account, by giving his services to that particular
+branch of our commercial industry which is commonly described as the
+adulteration of commodities; and from this he had gradually risen to
+the more refined pursuit of adulterating gold and silver--or, to use the
+common phrase again, making bad money.
+
+According to Old File's statement, though Doctor Dulcifer had never
+actually ill-used his wife, he had never lived on kind terms with her:
+the main cause of the estrangement between them, in later years, being
+Mrs. Dulcifer's resolute resistance to her husband's plans for emerging
+from poverty, by the simple process of coining his own money. The poor
+woman still held fast by some of the principles imparted to her in
+happier days; and she was devotedly fond of her daughter. At the time
+of her sudden death, she was secretly making arrangements to leave
+the doctor, and find a refuge for herself and her child in a foreign
+country, under the care of the one friend of her family who had not cast
+her off. Questioning my informant about Alicia next, I found that he
+knew very little about her relations with her father in later years.
+That she must long since have discovered him to be not quite so
+respectable a man as he looked, and that she might suspect something
+wrong was going on in the house at the present time, were, in Old File's
+opinion, matters of certainty; but that she knew anything positively on
+the subject of her father's occupations, he seemed to doubt. The doctor
+was not the sort of man to give his daughter, or any other woman, the
+slightest chance of surprising his secrets.
+
+These particulars I gleaned during one long month of servitude and
+imprisonment in the fatal red-brick house.
+
+During all that time not the slightest intimation reached me of Alicia's
+whereabouts. Had she forgotten me? I could not believe it. Unless
+the dear brown eyes were the falsest hypocrites in the world, it was
+impossible that she should have forgotten me. Was she watched? Were all
+means of communicating with me, even in secret, carefully removed from
+her? I looked oftener and oftener into the doctor's study as those
+questions occurred to me; but he never quitted it without locking the
+writing-desk first--he never left any papers scattered on the table, and
+he was never absent from the room at any special times and seasons that
+could be previously calculated upon. I began to despair, and to feel
+in my lonely moments a yearning to renew that childish experiment of
+crying, which I have already adverted to, in the way of confession.
+Moralists will be glad to hear that I really suffered acute mental
+misery at this time of my life. My state of depression would have
+gratified the most exacting of Methodists; and my penitent face
+would have made my fortune if I could only have been exhibited by a
+reformatory association on the platform of Exeter Hall.
+
+How much longer was this to last? Whither should I turn my steps when I
+regained my freedom? In what direction throughout all England should I
+begin to look for Alicia?
+
+Sleeping and walking--working and idling--those were now my constant
+thoughts. I did my best to prepare myself for every emergency that could
+happen; I tried to arm myself beforehand against every possible accident
+that could befall me. While I was still hard at work sharpening my
+faculties and disciplining my energies in this way, an accident befell
+the doctor, on the possibility of which I had not dared to calculate,
+even in my most hopeful moments.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ONE morning I was engaged in the principal workroom with my employer. We
+were alone. Old File and his son were occupied in the garrets. Screw had
+been sent to Barkingham, accompanied, on the usual precautionary plan,
+by Mill. They had been gone nearly an hour when the doctor sent me into
+the next room to moisten and knead up some plaster of Paris. While I was
+engaged in this occupation, I suddenly heard strange voices in the large
+workroom. My curiosity was instantly excited. I drew back the little
+shutter from the peephole in the wall, and looked through it.
+
+I saw first my old enemy, Screw, with his villainous face much paler
+than usual; next, two respectably-dressed strangers whom he appeared
+to have brought into the room; and next to them Young File, addressing
+himself to the doctor.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said my friend, the workman-like footman; "but
+before these gentlemen say anything for themselves, I wish to explain,
+as they seem strangers to you, that I only let them in after I had heard
+them give the password. My instructions are to let anybody in on our
+side of the door if they can give the password. No offense, sir, but I
+want it to be understood that I have done my duty."
+
+"Quite right, my man," said the doctor, in his blandest manner. "You may
+go back to your work."
+
+Young File left the room, with a scrutinizing look for the two strangers
+and a suspicious frown for Screw.
+
+"Allow us to introduce ourselves," began the elder of the two strangers.
+
+"Pardon me for a moment," interposed the doctor. "Where is Mill?" he
+added, turning to Screw.
+
+"Doing our errands at Barkingham," answered Screw, turning paler than
+ever.
+
+"We happened to meet your two men, and to ask them the way to your
+house," said the stranger who had just spoken. "This man, with a caution
+that does him infinite credit, required to know our business before he
+told us. We managed to introduce the password--'Happy-go-lucky'--into
+our answer. This of course quieted suspicion; and he, at our request,
+guided us here, leaving his fellow-workman, as he has just told you, to
+do all errands at Barkingham."
+
+While these words were being spoken, I saw Screw's eyes wandering
+discontentedly and amazedly round the room. He had left me in it with
+the doctor before he went out: was he disappointed at not finding me in
+it on his return?
+
+While this thought was passing through my mind, the stranger resumed his
+explanations.
+
+"We are here," he said, "as agents appointed to transact private
+business, out of London, for Mr. Manasseh, with whom you have dealings,
+I think?"
+
+"Certainly," said the doctor, with a smile.
+
+"And who owes you a little account, which we are appointed to settle."
+
+"Just so!" remarked the doctor, pleasantly rubbing his hands one over
+the other. "My good friend, Mr. Manasseh, does not like to trust the
+post, I suppose? Very glad to make your acquaintance, gentlemen. Have
+you got the little memorandum about you?"
+
+"Yes; but we think there is a slight inaccuracy in it. Have you any
+objection to let us refer to your ledger?"
+
+"Not the least in the world. Screw, go down into my private laboratory,
+open the table-drawer nearest the window, and bring up a locked book,
+with a parchment cover, which you will find in it."
+
+As Screw obeyed I saw a look pass between him and the two strangers
+which made me begin to feel a little uneasy. I thought the doctor
+noticed it too; but he preserved his countenance, as usual, in a state
+of the most unruffled composure.
+
+"What a time that fellow is gone!" he exclaimed gayly. "Perhaps I had
+better go and get the book myself."
+
+The two strangers had been gradually lessening the distance between
+the doctor and themselves, ever since Screw had left the room. The last
+words were barely out of his mouth, before they both sprang upon him,
+and pinioned his arms with their hands.
+
+"Steady, my fine fellow," said Mr. Manasseh's head agent. "It's no go.
+We are Bow Street runners, and we've got you for coining."
+
+"Not a doubt of it," said the doctor, with the most superb coolness.
+"You needn't hold me. I'm not fool enough to resist when I'm fairly
+caught."
+
+"Wait till we've searched you; and then we'll talk about that," said the
+runner.*
+
+The doctor submitted to the searching with the patience of a martyr.
+No offensive weapon being found in his pockets, they allowed him to sit
+down unmolested in the nearest chair.
+
+"Screw, I suppose?" said the doctor, looking inquiringly at the
+officers.
+
+"Exactly," said the principal man of the two. "We have been secretly
+corresponding with him for weeks past. We have nabbed the man who went
+out with him, and got him safe at Barkingham. Don't expect Screw back
+with the ledger. As soon as he has made sure that the rest of you are in
+the house, he is to fetch another man or two of our Bow Street lot, who
+are waiting outside till they hear from us. We only want an old man and
+a young one, and a third pal of yours who is a gentleman born, to make
+a regular clearance in the house. When we have once got you all, it
+will be the prettiest capture that's ever been made since I was in the
+force."
+
+What the doctor answered to this I cannot say. Just as the officer had
+done speaking, I heard footsteps approaching the room in which I was
+listening. Was Screw looking for me? I instantly closed the peephole
+and got behind the door. It opened back upon me, and, sure enough, Screw
+entered cautiously.
+
+An empty old wardrobe stood opposite the door. Evidently suspecting
+that I might have taken the alarm and concealed myself inside it, he
+approached it on tiptoe. On tiptoe also I followed him; and, just as his
+hands were on the wardrobe door, my hands were on his throat. He was
+a little man, and no match for me. I easily and gently laid him on his
+back, in a voiceless and half-suffocated state--throwing myself right
+over him, to keep his legs quiet. When I saw his face getting black, and
+his small eyes growing largely globular, I let go with one hand, crammed
+my empty plaster of Paris bag, which lay close by, into his mouth,
+tied it fast, secured his hands and feet, and then left him perfectly
+harmless, while I took counsel with myself how best to secure my own
+safety.
+
+I should have made my escape at once; but for what I heard the officer
+say about the men who were waiting outside. Were they waiting near or
+at a distance? Were they on the watch at the front or the back of
+the house? I thought it highly desirable to give myself a chance of
+ascertaining their whereabouts from the talk of the officers in the
+next room, before I risked the possibility of running right into their
+clutches on the outer side of the door.
+
+I cautiously opened the peephole once more.
+
+The doctor appeared to be still on the most friendly terms with his
+vigilant guardians from Bow Street.
+
+"Have you any objection to my ringing for some lunch, before we are
+all taken off to London together?" I heard him ask in his most cheerful
+tones. "A glass of wine and a bit of bread and cheese won't do you any
+harm, gentlemen, if you are as hungry as I am."
+
+"If you want to eat and drink, order the victuals at once," replied one
+of the runners, sulkily. "We don't happen to want anything ourselves."
+
+"Sorry for it," said the doctor. "I have some of the best old Madeira in
+England."
+
+"Like enough," retorted the officer sarcastically. "But you see we are
+not quite such fools as we look; and we have heard of such a thing, in
+our time, as hocussed wine."
+
+"O fie! fie!" exclaimed the doctor merrily. "Remember how well I am
+behaving myself, and don't wound my feelings by suspecting me of such
+shocking treachery as that!"
+
+He moved to a corner of the room behind him, and touched a knob in the
+wall which I had never before observed. A bell rang directly, which had
+a new tone in it to my ears.
+
+"Too bad," said the doctor, turning round again to the runners; "really
+too bad, gentlemen, to suspect me of that!"
+
+Shaking his head deprecatingly, he moved back to the corner, pulled
+aside something in the wall, disclosed the mouth of a pipe which was a
+perfect novelty to me, and called down it.
+
+"Moses!"
+
+It was the first time I had heard that name in the house.
+
+"Who is Moses?" inquired the officers both together, advancing on him
+suspiciously.
+
+"Only my servant," answered the doctor. He turned once more to the pipe,
+and called down it:
+
+"Bring up the Stilton Cheese, and a bottle of the Old Madeira."
+
+The cheese we had in use at that time was of purely Dutch extraction.
+I remembered Port, Sherry, and Claret in my palmy dinner-days at
+the doctor's family-table; but certainly not Old Madeira. Perhaps
+he selfishly kept his best wine and his choicest cheese for his own
+consumption.
+
+"Sam," said one of the runners to the other, "you look to our civil
+friend here, and I'll grab Moses when he brings up the lunch."
+
+"Would you like to see what the operation of coining is, while my man
+is getting the lunch ready?" said the doctor. "It may be of use to me
+at the trial, if you can testify that I afforded you every facility
+for finding out anything you might want to know. Only mention my polite
+anxiety to make things easy and instructive from the very first, and
+I may get recommended to mercy. See here--this queer-looking machine,
+gentlemen (from which two of my men derive their nicknames), is what we
+call a Mill-and-Screw."
+
+He began to explain the machine with the manner and tone of a lecturer
+at a scientific institution. In spite of themselves, the officers burst
+out laughing. I looked round at Screw as the doctor got deeper into his
+explanations. The traitor was rolling his wicked eyes horribly at me.
+They presented so shocking a sight, that I looked away again. What was I
+to do next? The minutes were getting on, and I had not heard a word
+yet, through the peephole, on the subject of the reserve of Bow Street
+runners outside. Would it not be best to risk everything, and get away
+at once by the back of the house?
+
+Just as I had resolved on venturing the worst, and making my escape
+forthwith, I heard the officers interrupt the doctor's lecture.
+
+"Your lunch is a long time coming," said one of them.
+
+"Moses is lazy," answered the doctor; "and the Madeira is in a remote
+part of the cellar. Shall I ring again?"
+
+"Hang your ringing again!" growled the runner, impatiently. "I don't
+understand why our reserve men are not here yet. Suppose you go and give
+them a whistle, Sam."
+
+"I don't half like leaving you," returned Sam. "This learned gentleman
+here is rather a shifty sort of chap; and it strikes me that two of us
+isn't a bit too much to watch him."
+
+"What's that?" exclaimed Sam's comrade, suspiciously.
+
+A crash of broken crockery in the lower part of the house had followed
+that last word of the cautious officer's speech. Naturally, I could draw
+no special inference from the sound; but, for all that, it filled me
+with a breathless interest and suspicion, which held me irresistibly at
+the peephole--though the moment before I had made up my mind to fly from
+the house.
+
+"Moses is awkward as well as lazy," said the doctor. "He has dropped the
+tray! Oh, dear, dear me! he has certainly dropped the tray."
+
+"Let's take our learned friend downstairs between us," suggested Sam. "I
+shan't be easy till we've got him out of the house."
+
+"And I shan't be easy if we don't handcuff him before we leave the
+room," returned the other.
+
+"Rude conduct, gentlemen--after all that has passed, remarkably rude
+conduct," said the doctor. "May I, at least, get my hat while my hands
+are at liberty? It hangs on that peg opposite to us." He moved toward it
+a few steps into the middle of the room while he spoke.
+
+"Stop!" said Sam; "I'll get your hat for you. We'll see if there's
+anything inside it or not, before you put it on."
+
+The doctor stood stockstill, like a soldier at the word, Halt.
+
+"And I'll get the handcuffs," said the other runner, searching his
+coat-pockets.
+
+The doctor bowed to him assentingly and forgivingly.
+
+"Only oblige me with my hat, and I shall be quite ready for you," he
+said--paused for one moment, then repeated the words, "Quite ready," in
+a louder tone--and instantly disappeared through the floor!
+
+I saw the two officers rush from opposite ends of the room to a great
+opening in the middle of it. The trap-door on which the doctor had been
+standing, and on which he had descended, closed up with a bang at the
+same moment; and a friendly voice from the lower regions called out
+gayly, "Good-by!"
+
+The officers next made for the door of the room. It had been locked from
+the other side. As they tore furiously at the handle, the roll of the
+wheels of the doctor's gig sounded on the drive in front of the house;
+and the friendly voice called out once more, "Good-by!"
+
+I waited just long enough to see the baffled officers unbarring the
+window shutters for the purpose of giving the alarm, before I closed the
+peephole, and with a farewell look at the distorted face of my prostrate
+enemy, Screw, left the room.
+
+The doctor's study-door was open as I passed it on my way downstairs.
+The locked writing-desk, which probably contained the only clew to
+Alicia's retreat that I was likely to find, was in its usual place on
+the table. There was no time to break it open on the spot. I rolled it
+up in my apron, took it off bodily under my arm, and descended to the
+iron door on the staircase. Just as I was within sight of it, it was
+opened from the landing on the other side. I turned to run upstairs
+again, when a familiar voice cried, "Stop!" and looking round, I beheld
+Young File.
+
+"All right!" he said. "Father's off with the governor in the gig, and
+the runners in hiding outside are in full cry after them. If Bow Street
+can get within pistol-shot of the blood mare, all I can say is, I give
+Bow Street full leave to fire away with both barrels! Where's Screw?"
+
+"Gagged by me in the casting-room."
+
+"Well done, you! Got all your things, I see, under your arm? Wait two
+seconds while I grab my money. Never mind the rumpus upstairs--there's
+nobody outside to help them; and the gate's locked, if there was."
+
+He darted past me up the stairs. I could hear the imprisoned officers
+shouting for help from the top windows. Their reserve men must have been
+far away, by this time, in pursuit of the gig; and there was not much
+chance of their getting useful help from any stray countryman who might
+be passing along the road, except in the way of sending a message to
+Barkingham. Anyhow we were sure of a half hour to escape in, at the very
+least.
+
+"Now then," said Young File, rejoining me; "let's be off by the back way
+through the plantations. How came you to lay your lucky hands on Screw?"
+he continued, when we had passed through the iron door, and had closed
+it after us.
+
+"Tell me first how the doctor managed to make a hole in the floor just
+in the nick of time."
+
+"What! did you see the trap sprung?"
+
+"I saw everything."
+
+"The devil you did! Had you any notion that signals were going on, all
+the while you were on the watch? We have a regular set of them in case
+of accidents. It's a rule that father, and me, and the doctor are
+never to be in the workroom together--so as to keep one of us always at
+liberty to act on the signals.--Where are you going to?"
+
+"Only to get the gardener's ladder to help us over the wall. Go on."
+
+"The first signal is a private bell--that means, _Listen at the pipe._
+The next is a call down the pipe for 'Moses'--that means, _Danger! Lock
+the door._ 'Stilton Cheese' means, _Put the Mare to;_ and 'Old Madeira'
+_Stand by the trap._ The trap works in that locked-up room you never got
+into; and when our hands are on the machinery, we are awkward enough
+to have a little accident with the luncheon tray. 'Quite Ready' is the
+signal to lower the trap, which we do in the regular theater-fashion. We
+lowered the doctor smartly enough, as you saw, and got out by the back
+staircase. Father went in the gig, and I let them out and locked the
+gates after them. Now you know as much as I've got breath to tell you."
+
+We scaled the wall easily by the help of the ladder. When we were down
+on the other side, Young File suggested that the safest course for us
+was to separate, and for each to take his own way. We shook hands and
+parted. He went southward, toward London, and I went westward, toward
+the sea-coast, with Doctor Dulcifer's precious writing-desk safe under
+my arm.
+
+     * The "Bow Street runners" of those days were the
+     predecessors of the detective police of the present time.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+FOR a couple of hours I walked on briskly, careless in what direction I
+went, so long as I kept my back turned on Barkingham.
+
+By the time I had put seven miles of ground, according to my
+calculations, between me and the red-brick house, I began to look upon
+the doctor's writing-desk rather in the light of an incumbrance, and
+determined to examine it without further delay. Accordingly I picked up
+the first large stone I could find in the road, crossed a common, burst
+through a hedge, and came to a halt, on the other side, in a thick wood.
+Here, finding myself well screened from public view, I broke open the
+desk with the help of the stone, and began to look over the contents.
+
+To my unspeakable disappointment I found but few papers of any kind
+to examine. The desk was beautifully fitted with all the necessary
+materials for keeping up a large correspondence; but there were not
+more than half a dozen letters in it altogether. Four were on business
+matters, and the other two were of a friendly nature, referring to
+persons and things in which I did not feel the smallest interest. I
+found besides half a dozen bills receipted (the doctor was a mirror of
+punctuality in the payment of tradesmen), note and letter-paper of the
+finest quality, clarified pens, a pretty little pin-cushion, two small
+account-books filled with the neatest entries, and some leaves
+of blotting-paper. Nothing else; absolutely nothing else, in the
+treacherous writing-desk on which I had implicitly relied to guide me to
+Alicia's hiding-place.
+
+I groaned in sheer wretchedness over the destruction of all my dearest
+plans and hopes. If the Bow Street runners had come into the plantation
+just as I had completed the rifling of the desk I think I should have
+let them take me without making the slightest effort at escape. As it
+was, no living soul appeared within sight of me. I must have sat at the
+foot of a tree for full half an hour, with the doctor's useless bills
+and letters before me, with my head in my hands, and with all my
+energies of body and mind utterly crushed by despair.
+
+At the end of the half hour, the natural restlessness of my faculties
+began to make itself felt.
+
+Whatever may be said about it in books, no emotion in this world ever
+did, or ever will, last for long together. The strong feeling may return
+over and over again; but it must have its constant intervals of change
+or repose. In real life the bitterest grief doggedly takes its rest and
+dries its eyes; the heaviest despair sinks to a certain level, and stops
+there to give hope a chance of rising, in spite of us. Even the joy of
+an unexpected meeting is always an imperfect sensation, for it never
+lasts long enough to justify our secret anticipations--our happiness
+dwindles to mere every-day contentment before we have half done with it.
+
+I raised my head, and gathered the bills and letters together, and stood
+up a man again, wondering at the variableness of my own temper, at the
+curious elasticity of that toughest of all the vital substances within
+us, which we call Hope. "Sitting and sighing at the foot of this tree,"
+I thought, "is not the way to find Alicia, or to secure my own safety.
+Let me circulate my blood and rouse my ingenuity, by taking to the road
+again."
+
+Before I forced my way back to the open side of the hedge, I thought it
+desirable to tear up the bills and letters, for fear of being traced by
+them if they were found in the plantation. The desk I left where it was,
+there being no name on it. The note-paper and pens I pocketed--forlorn
+as my situation was, it did not authorize me to waste stationery. The
+blotting-paper was the last thing left to dispose of: two neatly-folded
+sheets, quite clean, except in one place, where the impression of a few
+lines of writing appeared. I was about to put the blotting-paper into
+my pocket after the pens, when something in the look of the writing
+impressed on it, stopped me.
+
+Four blurred lines appeared of not more than two or three words each,
+running out one beyond another regularly from left to right. Had the
+doctor been composing poetry and blotting it in a violent hurry? At a
+first glance, that was more than I could tell. The order of the written
+letters, whatever they might be, was reversed on the face of the
+impression taken of them by the blotting-paper. I turned to the other
+side of the leaf. The order of the letters was now right, but the
+letters themselves were sometimes too faintly impressed, sometimes
+too much blurred together to be legible. I held the leaf up to the
+light--and there was a complete change: the blurred letters grew
+clearer, the invisible connecting lines appeared--I could read the words
+from first to last.
+
+The writing must have been hurried, and it had to all appearance been
+hurriedly dried toward the corner of a perfectly clean leaf of the
+blotting-paper. After twice reading, I felt sure that I had made out
+correctly the following address:
+
+Miss Giles, 2 Zion Place, Crickgelly, N. Wales.
+
+It was hard under the circumstances, to form an opinion as to the
+handwriting; but I thought I could recognize the character of some of
+the doctor's letters, even in the blotted impression of them. Supposing
+I was right, who was Miss Giles?
+
+Some Welsh friend of the doctor's, unknown to me? Probably enough. But
+why not Alicia herself under an assumed name? Having sent her from home
+to keep her out of my way, it seemed next to a certainty that her father
+would take all possible measures to prevent my tracing her, and would,
+therefore, as a common act of precaution, forbid her to travel under her
+own name. Crickgelly, North Wales, was assuredly a very remote place to
+banish her to; but then the doctor was not a man to do things by halves:
+he knew the lengths to which my cunning and resolution were capable of
+carrying me; and he would have been innocent indeed if he had hidden his
+daughter from me in any place within reasonable distance of Barkingham.
+Last, and not least important, Miss Giles sounded in my ears exactly
+like an assumed name.
+
+Was there ever any woman absolutely and literally named Miss Giles?
+However I may have altered my opinion on this point since, my mind was
+not in a condition at that time to admit the possible existence of any
+such individual as a maiden Giles. Before, therefore, I had put the
+precious blotting-paper into my pocket, I had satisfied myself that
+my first duty, under all the circumstances, was to shape my flight
+immediately to Crickgelly. I could be certain of nothing--not even
+of identifying the doctor's handwriting by the impression on the
+blotting-paper. But provided I kept clear of Barkingham, it was all
+the same to me what part of the United Kingdom I went to; and, in
+the absence of any actual clew to her place of residence, there was
+consolation and encouragement even in following an imaginary trace.
+My spirits rose to their natural height as I struck into the highroad
+again, and beheld across the level plain the smoke, chimneys, and church
+spires of a large manufacturing town. There I saw the welcome promise
+of a coach--the happy chance of making my journey to Crickgelly easy and
+rapid from the very outset.
+
+On my way to the town, I was reminded by the staring of all the people I
+passed on the road, of one important consideration which I had hitherto
+most unaccountably overlooked--the necessity of making some radical
+change in my personal appearance.
+
+I had no cause to dread the Bow Street runners, for not one of them
+had seen me; but I had the strongest possible reasons for distrusting a
+meeting with my enemy, Screw. He would certainly be made use of by
+the officers for the purpose of identifying the companions whom he had
+betrayed; and I had the best reasons in the world to believe that he
+would rather assist in the taking of me than in the capture of all the
+rest of the coining gang put together--the doctor himself not excepted.
+My present costume was of the dandy sort--rather shabby, but gay in
+color and outrageous in cut. I had not altered it for an artisan's suit
+in the doctor's house, because I never had any intention of staying
+there a day longer than I could possibly help. The apron in which I had
+wrapped the writing-desk was the only approach I had made toward wearing
+the honorable uniform of the workingman.
+
+Would it be wise now to make my transformation complete, by adding to
+the apron a velveteen jacket and a sealskin cap? No: my hands were
+too white, my manners too inveterately gentleman-like, for all artisan
+disguise. It would be safer to assume a serious character--to shave
+off my whiskers, crop my hair, buy a modest hat and umbrella, and dress
+entirely in black. At the first slopshop I encountered in the suburbs of
+the town, I got a carpet-bag and a clerical-looking suit. At the first
+easy shaving-shop I passed, I had my hair cropped and my whiskers taken
+off. After that I retreated again to the country--walked back till I
+found a convenient hedge down a lane off the highroad--changed my upper
+garments behind it, and emerged, bashful, black, and reverend, with my
+cotton umbrella tucked modestly under my arm, my eyes on the ground, my
+head in the air, and my hat off my forehead. When I found two laborers
+touching their caps to me on my way back to the town, I knew that it was
+all right, and that I might now set the vindictive eyes of Screw himself
+safely at defiance.
+
+I had not the most distant notion where I was when I reached the High
+Street, and stopped at The Green Bull Hotel and Coach-office. However,
+I managed to mention my modest wishes to be conveyed at once in the
+direction of Wales, with no more than a becoming confusion of manner.
+
+The answer was not so encouraging as I could have wished. The coach to
+Shrewsbury had left an hour before, and there would be no other public
+conveyance running in my direct ion until the next morning. Finding
+myself thus obliged to yield to adverse circumstances, I submitted
+resignedly, and booked a place outside by the next day's coach, in the
+name of the Reverend John Jones. I thought it desirable to be at once
+unassuming and Welsh in the selection of a traveling name; and therefore
+considered John Jones calculated to fit me, in my present emergency, to
+a hair.
+
+After securing a bed at the hotel, and ordering a frugal curate's dinner
+(bit of fish, two chops, mashed potatoes, semolina pudding, half-pint of
+sherry), I sallied out to look at the town.
+
+Not knowing the name of it, and not daring to excite surprise by asking,
+I found the place full of vague yet mysterious interest. Here I was,
+somewhere in central England, just as ignorant of localities as if I had
+been suddenly deposited in Central Africa. My lively fancy revelled in
+the new sensation. I invented a name for the town, a code of laws
+for the inhabitants, productions, antiquities, chalybeate springs,
+population, statistics of crime, and so on, while I walked about the
+streets, looked in at the shop-windows, and attentively examined the
+Market-place and Town-hall. Experienced travelers, who have exhausted
+all novelties, would do well to follow my example; they may be certain,
+for one day at least, of getting some fresh ideas, and feeling a new
+sensation.
+
+On returning to dinner in the coffee-room, I found all the London papers
+on the table.
+
+The _Morning Post_ happened to lie uppermost, so I took it away to
+my own seat to occupy the time, while my unpretending bit of fish was
+frying. Glancing lazily at the advertisements on the first page, to
+begin with, I was astonished by the appearance of the following lines,
+at the top of a column:
+
+
+
+"If F-- --K S--FTL--Y will communicate with his distressed and alarmed
+relatives, Mr. and Mrs. B--TT--RB--RY, he will hear of something to
+his advantage, and may be assured that all will be once more forgiven.
+A--B--LLA entreats him to write."
+
+
+
+What, in the name of all that is most mysterious, does this mean! was my
+first thought after reading the advertisement. Can Lady Malkinshaw have
+taken a fresh lease of that impregnable vital tenement, at the door of
+which Death has been knocking vainly for so many years past? (Nothing
+more likely.) Was my felonious connection with Doctor Dulcifer
+suspected? (It seemed improbable.) One thing, however, was certain: I
+was missed, and the Batterburys were naturally anxious about me--anxious
+enough to advertise in the public papers.
+
+I debated with myself whether I should answer their pathetic appeal
+or not. I had all my money about me (having never let it out of my own
+possession during my stay in the red-brick house), and there was plenty
+of it for the present; so I thought it best to leave the alarm and
+distress of my anxious relatives unrelieved for a little while longer,
+and to return quietly to the perusal of the _ Morning Post._
+
+Five minutes of desultory reading brought me unexpectedly to an
+explanation of the advertisement, in the shape of the following
+paragraph:
+
+
+
+"ALARMING ILLNESS OF LADY MALKINSHAW.--We regret to announce that this
+venerable lady was seized with an alarming illness on Saturday last,
+at her mansion in town. The attack took the character of a fit--of what
+precise nature we have not been able to learn. Her ladyship's medical
+attendant and near relative, Doctor Softly, was immediately called
+in, and predicted the most fatal results. Fresh medical attendance was
+secured, and her ladyship's nearest surviving relatives, Mrs. Softly,
+and Mr. and Mrs. Batterbury, of Duskydale Park, were summoned. At
+the time of their arrival her ladyship's condition was comatose, her
+breathing being highly stertorous. If we are rightly informed, Doctor
+Softly and the other medical gentlemen present gave it as their opinion
+that if the pulse of the venerable sufferer did not rally in the course
+of a quarter of an hour at most, very lamentable results might be
+anticipated. For fourteen minutes, as our reporter was informed, no
+change took place; but, strange to relate, immediately afterward her
+ladyship's pulse rallied suddenly in the most extraordinary manner. She
+was observed to open her eyes very wide, and was heard, to the surprise
+and delight of all surrounding the couch, to ask why her ladyship's
+usual lunch of chicken-broth with a glass of Amontillado sherry was not
+placed on the table as usual. These refreshments having been produced,
+under the sanction of the medical gentlemen, the aged patient partook
+of them with an appearance of the utmost relish. Since this happy
+alteration for the better, her ladyship's health has, we rejoice to
+say, rapidly improved; and the answer now given to all friendly
+and fashionable inquirers is, in the venerable lady's own humorous
+phraseology, 'Much better than could be expected.'"
+
+
+Well done, my excellent grandmother! my firm, my unwearied, my undying
+friend! Never can I say that my case is desperate while you can swallow
+your chicken-broth and sip your Amontillado sherry. The moment I want
+money, I will write to Mr. Batterbury, and cut another little golden
+slice out of that possible three-thousand-pound-cake, for which he has
+already suffered and sacrificed so much. In the meantime, O venerable
+protectress of the wandering Rogue! let me gratefully drink your health
+in the nastiest and smallest half-pint of sherry this palate ever
+tasted, or these eyes ever beheld!
+
+I went to bed that night in great spirits. My luck seemed to be
+returning to me; and I began to feel more than hopeful of really
+discovering my beloved Alicia at Crickgelly, under the alias of Miss
+Giles.
+
+The next morning the Rev. John Jones descended to breakfast so rosy,
+bland, and smiling, that the chambermaids simpered as he tripped by
+them in the passage, and the landlady bowed graciously as he passed
+her parlor door. The coach drove up, and the reverend gentleman (after
+waiting characteristically for the woman's ladder) mounted to his place
+on the roof, behind the coachman. One man sat there who had got up
+before him--and who should that man be, but the chief of the Bow Street
+runners, who had rashly tried to take Doctor Dulcifer into custody!
+
+There could not be the least doubt of his identity; I should have known
+his face again among a hundred. He looked at me as I took my place by
+his side, with one sharp searching glance--then turned his head away
+toward the road. Knowing that he had never set eyes on my face (thanks
+to the convenient peephole at the red-brick house), I thought my meeting
+with him was likely to be rather advantageous than otherwise. I had now
+an opportunity of watching the proceedings of one of our pursuers, at
+any rate--and surely this was something gained.
+
+"Fine morning, sir," I said politely.
+
+"Yes," he replied in the gruffest of monosyllables.
+
+I was not offended: I could make allowance for the feelings of a man who
+had been locked up by his own prisoner.
+
+"Very fine morning, indeed," I repeated, soothingly and cheerfully.
+
+The runner only grunted this time. Well, well! we all have our little
+infirmities. I don't think the worse of the man now, for having been
+rude to me, that morning, on the top of the Shrewsbury coach.
+
+The next passenger who got up and placed himself by my side was a
+florid, excitable, confused-looking gentleman, excessively talkative
+and familiar. He was followed by a sulky agricultural youth in
+top-boots--and then, the complement of passengers on our seat behind the
+coachman was complete.
+
+"Heard the news, sir?" said the florid man, turning to me.
+
+"Not that I am aware of," I answered.
+
+"It's the most tremendous thing that has happened these fifty
+years," said the florid man. "A gang of coiners, sir, discovered at
+Barkingham--in a house they used to call the Grange. All the dreadful
+lot of bad silver that's been about, they're at the bottom of. And the
+head of the gang not taken!--escaped, sir, like a ghost on the stage,
+through a trap-door, after actually locking the runners into his
+workshop. The blacksmiths from Barkingham had to break them out; the
+whole house was found full of iron doors, back staircases, and all that
+sort of thing, just like the Inquisition. A most respectable man, the
+original proprietor! Think what a misfortune to have let his house to a
+scoundrel who has turned the whole inside into traps, furnaces, and iron
+doors. The fellow's reference, sir, was actually at a London bank, where
+he kept a first-rate account. What is to become of society? where is our
+protection? Where are our characters, when we are left at the mercy of
+scoundrels? The times are awful--upon my soul, the times we live in are
+perfectly awful!"
+
+"Pray, sir, is there any chance of catching this coiner?" I inquired
+innocently.
+
+"I hope so, sir; for the sake of outraged society, I hope so," said
+the excitable man. "They've printed handbills at Barkingham, offering
+a reward for taking him. I was with my friend the mayor, early this
+morning, and saw them issued. 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I'm going West--give
+me a few copies--let me help to circulate them--for the sake of outraged
+society, let me help to circulate them. Here they are--take a few, sir,
+for distribution. You'll see these are three other fellows to be
+caught besides the principal rascal--one of them a scamp belonging to
+a respectable family. Oh! what times! Take three copies, and pray
+circulate them in three influential quarters. Perhaps that gentleman
+next you would like a few. Will you take three, sir?"
+
+"No, I won't," said the Bow Street runner doggedly. "Nor yet one of
+'em--and it's my opinion that the coining-gang would be nabbed all the
+sooner, if you was to give over helping the law to catch them."
+
+This answer produced a vehement expostulation from my excitable
+neighbor, to which I paid little attention, being better engaged in
+reading the handbill.
+
+It described the doctor's personal appearance with remarkable accuracy,
+and cautioned persons in seaport towns to be on the lookout for him. Old
+File, Young File, and myself were all dishonorably mentioned together
+in a second paragraph, as runaways of inferior importance Not a word was
+said in the handbill to show that the authorities at Barkingham even so
+much as suspected the direction in which any one of us had escaped. This
+would have been very encouraging, but for the presence of the runner
+by my side, which looked as if Bow Street had its suspicions, however
+innocent Barkingham might be.
+
+Could the doctor have directed his flight toward Crickgelly? I trembled
+internally as the question suggested itself to me. Surely he would
+prefer writing to Miss Giles to join him when he got to a safe place of
+refuge, rather than encumber himself with the young lady before he was
+well out of reach of the far-stretching arm of the law. This seemed
+infinitely the most natural course of conduct. Still, there was the
+runner traveling toward Wales--and not certainly without a special
+motive. I put the handbills in my pocket, and listened for any hints
+which might creep out in his talk; but he perversely kept silent.
+The more my excitable neighbor tried to dispute with him, the more
+contemptuously he refused to break silence. I began to feel vehemently
+impatient for our arrival at Shrewsbury; for there only could I hope to
+discover something more of my formidable fellow-traveler's plans.
+
+The coach stopped for dinner; and some of our passengers left us, the
+excitable man with the handbills among the number. I got down, and stood
+on the doorstep of the inn, pretending to be looking about me, but in
+reality watching the movements of the runner.
+
+Rather to my surprise, I saw him go to the door of the coach and speak
+to one of the inside passengers. After a short conversation, of which I
+could not hear one word, the runner left the coach door and entered
+the inn, called for a glass of brandy and water, and took it out to
+his friend, who had not left the vehicle. The friend bent forward to
+receive it at the window. I caught a glimpse of his face, and felt my
+knees tremble under me--it was Screw himself!
+
+Screw, pale and haggard-looking, evidently not yet recovered from the
+effect of my grip on his throat! Screw, in attendance on the runner,
+traveling inside the coach in the character of an invalid. He must be
+going this journey to help the Bow Street officers to identify some one
+of our scattered gang of whom they were in pursuit. It could not be the
+doctor--the runner could discover him without assistance from anybody.
+Why might it not be me?
+
+I began to think whether it would be best to trust boldly in my
+disguise, and my lucky position outside the coach, or whether I should
+abandon my fellow-passengers immediately. It was not easy to settle at
+once which course was the safest--so I tried the effect of looking at my
+two alternatives from another point of view. Should I risk everything,
+and go on resolutely to Crickgelly, on the chance of discovering that
+Alicia and Miss Giles were one and the same person--or should I give up
+on the spot the only prospect of finding my lost mistress, and direct my
+attention entirely to the business of looking after my own safety?
+
+As the latter alternative practically resolved itself into the simple
+question of whether I should act like a man who was in love, or like a
+man who was not, my natural instincts settled the difficulty in no time.
+I boldly imitated the example of my fellow-passengers, and went in to
+dinner, determined to go on afterward to Crickgelly, though all Bow
+Street should be following at my heels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+SECURE as I tried to feel in my change of costume, my cropped hair, and
+my whiskerless cheeks, I kept well away from the coach-window, when the
+dinner at the inn was over and the passengers were called to take their
+places again. Thus far--thanks to the strength of my grasp on his
+neck, which had left him too weak to be an outside passenger--Screw had
+certainly not seen me; and, if I played my cards properly, there was no
+reason why he should see me before we got to our destination.
+
+Throughout the rest of the journey I observed the strictest caution, and
+fortune seconded my efforts. It was dark when we got to Shrewsbury. On
+leaving the coach I was enabled, under cover of the night, to keep a
+sharp watch on the proceedings of Screw and his Bow Street ally. They
+did not put up at the hotel, but walked away to a public house. There,
+my clerical character obliged me to leave them at the door.
+
+I returned to the hotel, to make inquiries about conveyances.
+
+The answers informed me that Crickgelly was a little fishing-village,
+and that there was no coach direct to it, but that two coaches running
+to two small Welsh towns situated at nearly equal distances from my
+destination, on either side of it, would pass through Shrewsbury
+the next morning. The waiter added, that I could book a
+place--conditionally--by either of these vehicles; and that, as they
+were always well-filled, I had better be quick in making my choice
+between them. Matters had now arrived at such a pass, that nothing was
+left for me but to trust to chance. If I waited till the morning to see
+whether Screw and the Bow Street runner traveled in my direction, and to
+find out, in case they did, which coach they took, I should be running
+the risk of losing a place for myself, and so delaying my journey for
+another day. This was not to be thought of. I told the waiter to book me
+a place in which coach he pleased. The two were called respectively The
+Humming Bee, and The Red Cross Knight. The waiter chose the latter.
+
+Sleep was not much in my way that night. I rose almost as early as Boots
+himself--breakfasted--then sat at the coffee-room window looking out
+anxiously for the two coaches.
+
+Nobody seemed to agree which would pass first. Each of the inn servants
+of whom I inquired made it a matter of partisanship, and backed his
+favorite coach with the most consummate assurance. At last, I heard the
+guard's horn and the clatter of the horses' hoofs. Up drove a coach--I
+looked out cautiously--it was the Humming Bee. Three outside places were
+vacant; one behind the coachman; two on the dickey. The first was taken
+immediately by a farmer, the second---to my unspeakable disgust and
+terror--was secured by the inevitable Bow Street runner; who, as soon as
+h e was up, helped the weakly Screw into the third place, by his side.
+They were going to Crickgelly; not a doubt of it, now.
+
+I grew mad with impatience for the arrival of the Red Cross Knight.
+Half-an-hour passed--forty minutes--and then I heard another horn and
+another clatter--and the Red Cross Knight rattled up to the hotel door
+at full speed. What if there should be no vacant place for me! I ran
+to the door with a sinking heart. Outside, the coach was declared to be
+full.
+
+"There is one inside place," said the waiter, "if you don't mind paying
+the--"
+
+Before he could say the rest, I was occupying that one inside place. I
+remember nothing of the journey from the time we left the hotel door,
+except that it was fearfully long. At some hour of the day with which I
+was not acquainted (for my watch had stopped for want of winding up), I
+was set down in a clean little street of a prim little town (the name of
+which I never thought of asking), and was told that the coach never went
+any further.
+
+No post-chaise was to be had. With incredible difficulty I got first a
+gig, then a man to drive it; and, last, a pony to draw it. We hobbled
+away crazily from the inn door. I thought of Screw and the Bow Street
+runner approaching Crickgelly, from their point of the compass, perhaps
+at the full speed of a good post-chaise--I thought of that, and would
+have given all the money in my pocket for two hours' use of a fast
+road-hack.
+
+Judging by the time we occupied in making the journey, and a little also
+by my own impatience, I should say that Crickgelly must have been at
+least twenty miles distant from the town where I took the gig. The sun
+was setting, when we first heard, through the evening stillness, the
+sound of the surf on the seashore. The twilight was falling as we
+entered the little fishing village, and let our unfortunate pony stop,
+for the last time, at a small inn door.
+
+The first question I asked of the landlord was, whether two gentlemen
+(friends of mine, of course, whom I expected to meet) had driven into
+Crickgelly, a little while before me. The reply was in the negative;
+and the sense of relief it produced seemed to rest me at once, body and
+mind, after my long and anxious journey. Either I had beaten the spies
+on the road, or they were not bound to Crickgelly. Any way, I had first
+possession of the field of action. I paid the man who had driven me, and
+asked my way to Zion Place. My directions were simple--I had only to go
+through the village, and I should find Zion Place at the other end of
+it.
+
+The village had a very strong smell, and a curious habit of building
+boats in the street between intervals of detached cottages; a helpless,
+muddy, fishy little place. I walked through it rapidly; turned inland
+a few hundred yards; ascended some rising ground; and discerned, in the
+dim twilight, four small lonesome villas standing in pairs, with a shed
+and a saw-pit on one side, and a few shells of unfinished houses on
+the other. Some madly speculative builder was evidently trying to turn
+Crickgelly into a watering-place.
+
+I made out Number Two, and discovered the bell-handle with difficulty,
+it was growing so dark. A servant-maid--corporeally enormous; but, as I
+soon found, in a totally undeveloped state, mentally--opened the door.
+
+"Does Miss Giles live here?" I asked.
+
+"Don't see no visitors," answered the large maiden. "'T'other one tried
+it and had to go away. You go, too."
+
+"'T'othor one?" I repeated. "Another visitor? And when did he call?"
+
+"Better than an hour ago."
+
+"Was there nobody with him?"
+
+"No. Don't see no visitors. He went. You go, too."
+
+Just as she repeated that exasperating formula of words, a door opened
+at the end of the passage. My voice had evidently reached the ears of
+somebody in the back parlor. Who the person was I could not see, but I
+heard the rustle of a woman's dress. My situation was growing desperate,
+my suspicions were aroused--I determined to risk everything--and I
+called softly in the direction of the open door, "Alicia!"
+
+A voice answered, "Good heavens! Frank?" It was _her_ voice. She had
+recognized mine. I pushed past the big servant; in two steps I was at
+the end of the passage; in one more I was in the back parlor.
+
+She was there, standing alone by the side of a table. Seeing my changed
+costume and altered face, she turned deadly pale, and stretched her hand
+behind her mechanically, as if to take hold of a chair. I caught her
+in my arms; but I was afraid to kiss her--she trembled so when I only
+touched her.
+
+"Frank!" she said, drawing her head back. "What is it? How did you find
+out? For mercy's sake what does it mean?"
+
+"It means, love, that I've come to take care of you for the rest of your
+life and mine, if you will only let me. Don't tremble--there's nothing
+to be afraid of! Only compose yourself, and I'll tell you why I am here
+in this strange disguise. Come, come, Alicia!--don't look like that at
+me. You called me Frank just now, for the first time. Would you have
+done that, if you had disliked me or forgotten me?"
+
+I saw her color beginning to come back--the old bright glow returning to
+the dear dusky cheeks. If I had not seen them so near me, I might have
+exercised some self-control--as it was, I lost my presence of mind
+entirely, and kissed her.
+
+She drew herself away half-frightened, half-confused--certainly not
+offended, and, apparently, not very likely to faint--which was more than
+I could have said of her when I first entered the room. Before she had
+time to reflect on the peril and awkwardness of our position, I pressed
+the first necessary questions on her rapidly, one after the other.
+
+"Where is Mrs. Baggs?" I asked first.
+
+Mrs. Baggs was the housekeeper.
+
+Alicia pointed to the closed folding-doors. "In the front parlor; asleep
+on the sofa."
+
+"Have you any suspicion who the stranger was who called more than an
+hour ago?"
+
+"None. The servant told him we saw no visitors, and he went away,
+without leaving his name."
+
+"Have you heard from your father?"
+
+She began to turn pale again, but controlled herself bravely, and
+answered in a whisper:
+
+"Mrs. Baggs had a short note from him this morning. It was not dated;
+and it only said circumstances had happened which obliged him to leave
+home suddenly, and that we were to wait here till be wrote again, most
+likely in a few days."
+
+"Now, Alicia," I said, as lightly as I could, "I have the highest
+possible opinion of your courage, good-sense, and self-control; and I
+shall expect you to keep up your reputation in my eyes, while you are
+listening to what I have to tell you."
+
+Saying these words, I took her by the hand and made her sit close by me;
+then, breaking it to her as gently and gradually as possible, I told her
+all that had happened at the red-brick house since the evening when
+she left the dinner-table, and we exchanged our parting look at the
+dining-room door.
+
+It was almost as great a trial to me to speak as it was to her to hear.
+She suffered so violently, felt such evident misery of shame and terror,
+while I was relating the strange events which had occurred in her
+absence, that I once or twice stopped in alarm, and almost repented my
+boldness in telling her the truth. However, fair-dealing with her, cruel
+as it might seem at the time, was the best and safest course for the
+future. How could I expect her to put all her trust in me if I began
+by deceiving her--if I fell into prevarications and excuses at the very
+outset of our renewal of intercourse? I went on desperately to the end,
+taking a hopeful view of the most hopeless circumstances, and making my
+narrative as mercifully short as possible.
+
+When I had done, the poor girl, in the extremity of her forlornness
+and distress, forgot all the little maidenly conventionalities and
+young-lady-like restraints of everyday life--and, in a burst of natural
+grief and honest confiding helplessness, hid her face on my bosom, and
+cried there as if she were a child again, and I was the mother to whom
+she had been used to look for comfort.
+
+I made no attempt to stop her tears--they were the safest and best vent
+for the violent agitation under which she was suffering. I said nothing;
+words, at such a ti me as that, would only have aggravated her distress.
+All the questions I had to ask; all the proposals I had to make, must,
+I felt, be put off--no matter at what risk--until some later and calmer
+hour. There we sat together, with one long unsnuffed candle lighting
+us smokily; with the discordantly-grotesque sound of the housekeeper's
+snoring in the front room, mingling with the sobs of the weeping girl on
+my bosom. No other noise, great or small, inside the house or out of it,
+was audible. The summer night looked black and cloudy through the little
+back window.
+
+I was not much easier in my mind, now that the trial of breaking my bad
+news to Alicia was over. That stranger who had called at the house an
+hour before me, weighed on my spirits. It could not have been Doctor
+Dulcifer. He would have gained admission. Could it be the Bow Street
+runner, or Screw? I had lost sight of them, it is true; but had they
+lost sight of me?
+
+Alicia's grief gradually exhausted itself. She feebly raised her head,
+and, turning it away from me, hid her face. I saw that she was not fit
+for talking yet, and begged her to go upstairs to the drawing-room and
+lie down a little. She looked apprehensively toward the folding-doors
+that shut us off from the front parlor.
+
+"Leave Mrs. Baggs to me," I said. "I want to have a few words with her;
+and, as soon as you are gone, I'll make noise enough here to wake her."
+
+Alicia looked at me inquiringly and amazedly. I did not speak again.
+Time was now of terrible importance to us--I gently led her to the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+As soon as I was alone, I took from my pocket one of the handbills which
+my excitable fellow-traveler had presented to me, so as to have it ready
+for Mrs. Baggs the moment we stood face to face. Armed with this ominous
+letter of introduction, I kicked a chair down against the folding-doors,
+by way of giving a preliminary knock to arouse the housekeeper's
+attention. The plan was immediately successful. Mrs. Baggs opened the
+doors of communication violently. A slight smell of spirits entered
+the room, and was followed close by the housekeeper herself, with an
+indignant face and a disordered head-dress.
+
+"What do you mean, sir? How dare you--" she began; then stopped aghast,
+looking at me in speechless astonishment.
+
+"I have been obliged to make a slight alteration in my personal
+appearance, ma'am," I said. "But I am still Frank Softly."
+
+"Don't talk to me about personal appearances, sir," cried Mrs.
+Baggs recovering. "What do you mean by being here? Leave the house
+immediately. I shall write to the doctor, Mr. Softly, this very night."
+
+"He has no address you can direct to," I rejoined. "If you don't believe
+me, read that." I gave her the handbill without another word of preface.
+
+Mrs. Baggs looked at it--lost in an instant some of the fine color
+plentifully diffused over her face by sleep and spirits--sat down in the
+nearest chair with a thump that seemed to threaten the very foundations
+of Number Two, Zion Place--and stared me hard in the face; the most
+speechless and helpless elderly female I ever beheld.
+
+"Take plenty of time to compose yourself ma'am," I said. "If you don't
+see the doctor again soon, under the gallows, you will probably not have
+the pleasure of meeting with him for some considerable time."
+
+Mrs. Baggs smote both her hands distractedly on her knees, and whispered
+a devout ejaculation to herself softly.
+
+"Allow me to deal with you, ma'am, as a woman of the world," I went on.
+"If you will give me half-an-hour's hearing, I will explain to you how
+I come to know what I do; how I got here; and what I have to propose to
+Miss Alicia and to you."
+
+"If you have the feelings of a man, sir," said Mrs. Baggs, shaking her
+head and raising her eyes to heaven, "you will remember that I have
+nerves, and will not presume upon them."
+
+As the old lady uttered the last words, I thought I saw her eyes turn
+from heaven, and take the earthly direction of the sofa in the front
+parlor. It struck me also that her lips looked rather dry. Upon these
+two hints I spoke.
+
+"Might I suggest some little stimulant?" I asked, with respectful
+earnestness. "I have heard my grandmother (Lady Malkinshaw) say that, 'a
+drop in time saves nine.'"
+
+"You will find it under the sofa pillow," said Mrs. Baggs, with sudden
+briskness. "'A drop in time saves nine'--my sentiments, if I may put
+myself on a par with her ladyship. The liqueur-glass, Mr. Softly, is
+in the backgammon-board. I hope her ladyship was well the last time you
+heard from her? Suffers from her nerves, does she? Like me, again. In
+the backgammon-board. Oh, this news, this awful news!"
+
+I found the bottle of brandy in the place indicated, but no
+liqueur-glass in the backgammon-board. There was, however, a wine-glass,
+accidentally left on a chair by the sofa. Mrs. Baggs did not seem to
+notice the difference when I brought it into the back room and filled it
+with brandy.
+
+"Take a toothful yourself," said Mrs. Baggs, lightly tossing off the
+dram in a moment. "'A drop in time'--I can't help repeating it, it's
+so nicely expressed. Still, with submission to her ladyship's better
+judgment, Mr. Softly, the question seems now to arise, whether, if one
+drop in time saves nine, two drops in time may not save eighteen." Here
+Mrs. Baggs forgot her nerves and winked. I returned the wink and filled
+the glass a second time. "Oh, this news, this awful news!" said Mrs.
+Baggs, remembering her nerves again.
+
+Just then I thought I heard footsteps in front of the house, but,
+listening more attentively, found that it had begun to rain, and that I
+had been deceived by the pattering of the first heavy drops against
+the windows. However, the bare suspicion that the same stranger who had
+called already might be watching the house now, was enough to startle
+me very seriously, and to suggest the absolute necessity of occupying
+no more precious time in paying attention to the vagaries of Mrs. Baggs'
+nerves. It was also of some importance that I should speak to her while
+she was sober enough to understand what I meant in a general way.
+
+Feeling convinced that she was in imminent danger of becoming downright
+drunk if I gave her another glass, I kept my hand on the bottle, and
+forthwith told my story over again in a very abridged and unceremonious
+form, and without allowing her one moment of leisure for comment on
+my narrative, whether it might be of the weeping, winking, drinking,
+groaning, or ejaculating kind. As I had anticipated, when I came to a
+conclusion, and consequently allowed her an opportunity of saying a few
+words, she affected to be extremely shocked and surprised at hearing of
+the nature of her master's pursuits, and reproached me in terms of
+the most vehement and virtuous indignation for incurring the guilt of
+abetting them, even though I had done so from the very excusable motive
+of saving my own life. Having a lively sense of the humorous, I was
+necessarily rather amused by this; but I began to get a little surprised
+as well, when we diverged to the subject of the doctor's escape, on
+finding that Mrs. Baggs viewed the fact of his running away to some
+hiding-place of his own in the light of a personal insult to his
+faithful and attached housekeeper.
+
+"It shows a want of confidence in me," said the old lady, "which I
+may forgive, but can never forget. The sacrifices I have made for that
+ungrateful man are not to be told in words. The very morning he sent
+us away here, what did I do? Packed up the moment he said Go. I had my
+preserves to pot, and the kitchen chimney to be swept, and the lock of
+my box hampered into the bargain. Other women in my place would have
+grumbled--I got up directly, as lively as any girl of eighteen you like
+to mention. Says he, 'I want Alicia taken out of young Softly's way,
+and you must do it.'---Says I, 'This very morning, sir?'--Says he, 'This
+very morning.'--Says I, 'Where to?'--Says he, 'As far off as ever you
+can go; coast of Wales--Crickgelly. I won't trust her nearer; young
+Softly's too cunning, and she's too fond of him.'--'Any more orders,
+sir?' says I.--'Yes; take some fancy name--Simkins, Johnson, Giles,
+Jones, James,' says he, 'what you like bu t Dulcifer; for that scamp
+Softly will move heaven and earth to trace her.'--'What else?' says
+I.--'Nothing, but look sharp,' says he; 'and mind one thing, that she
+sees no visitors, and posts no letters.' Before those last words had
+been out of his wicked lips an hour, we were off. A nice job I had to
+get her away--a nice job to stop her from writing letters to you--a nice
+job to keep her here. But I did it; I followed my orders like a slave
+in a plantation with a whip at his bare back. I've had rheumatics, weak
+legs, bad nights, and miss in the sulks--all from obeying the doctor's
+orders. And what is my reward? He turns coiner, and runs away without a
+word to me beforehand, and writes me a trumpery note, without a date to
+it, without a farthing of money in it, telling me nothing! Look at my
+confidence in him, and then look at the way he's treated me in return.
+What woman's nerves can stand that? Don't keep fidgeting with the
+bottle! Pass it this way, Mr. Softly, or you'll break it, and drive me
+distracted."
+
+"He has no excuse, ma'am," I said. "But will you allow me to change the
+subject, as I am pressed for time? You appear to be so well acquainted
+with the favorable opinion which Miss Alicia and I entertain of each
+other, that I hope it will be no fresh shock to your nerves, if I inform
+you, in plain words, that I have come to Crickgelly to marry her."
+
+"Marry her! marry--If you don't leave off fidgeting with the bottle, Mr.
+Softly, and change the subject directly, I shall ring the bell."
+
+"Hear me out, ma'am, and then ring if you like. If you persist, however,
+in considering yourself still the confidential servant of a felon who is
+now flying for his life, and if you decline allowing the young lady to
+act as she wishes, I will not be so rude as to hint that--as she is of
+age--she may walk out of this house with me, whenever she likes, without
+your having the power to prevent her; but, I will politely ask instead,
+what you would propose to do with her, in the straitened position as to
+money in which she and you are likely to be placed? You can't find
+her father to give her to; and, if you could, who would be the best
+protector for her? The doctor, who is the principal criminal in the eye
+of the law, or I, who am only the unwilling accomplice? He is known to
+the Bow Street runners--I am not. There is a reward for the taking of
+him, and none for the taking of me. He has no respectable relatives
+and friends, I have plenty. Every way my chances are the best; and
+consequently I am, every way, the fittest person to trust her to. Don't
+you see that?"
+
+Mrs. Baggs did not immediately answer. She snatched the bottle out of
+my hands--drank off another dram, shook her head at me, and ejaculated
+lamentably: "My nerves, my nerves! what a heart of stone he must have to
+presume on my poor nerves!"
+
+"Give me one minute more," I went on. "I propose to take you and Alicia
+to-morrow morning to Scotland. Pray don't groan! I only suggest the
+journey with a matrimonial object. In Scotland, Mrs. Baggs, if a man and
+woman accept each other as husband and wife, before one witness, it is a
+lawful marriage; and that kind of wedding is, as you see plainly enough,
+the only safe refuge for a bridegroom in my situation. If you consent to
+come with us to Scotland, and serve as witness to the marriage, I shall
+be delighted to acknowledge my sense of your kindness in the eloquent
+language of the Bank of England, as expressed to the world in general on
+the surface of a five-pound note."
+
+I cautiously snatched away the brandy bottle as I spoke, and was in the
+drawing-room with it in an instant. As I suppose, Mrs. Baggs tried to
+follow me, for I heard the door rattle, as if she had got out of her
+chair, and suddenly slipped back into it again. I felt certain of her
+deciding to help us, if she was only sober enough to reflect on what I
+had said to her. The journey to Scotland was a tedious, and perhaps a
+dangerous, undertaking. But I had no other alternative to choose.
+
+In those uncivilized days, the Marriage Act had not been passed, and
+there was no convenient hymeneal registrar in England to change a
+vagabond runaway couple into a respectable man and wife at a moment's
+notice. The trouble and expense of taking Mrs. Baggs with us, I
+encountered, of course, solely out of regard for Alicia's natural
+prejudices. She had led precisely that kind of life which makes
+any woman but a bad one morbidly sensitive on the subject of small
+proprieties. If she had been a girl with a recognized position in
+society, I should have proposed to her to run away with me alone. As it
+was, the very defenselessness of her situation gave her, in my opinion,
+the right to expect from me even the absurdest sacrifices to the
+narrowest conventionalities. Mrs. Baggs was not quite so sober in her
+habits, perhaps, as matrons in general are expected to be; but, for my
+particular purpose, this was only a slight blemish; it takes so little,
+after all, to represent the abstract principle of propriety in the
+short-sighted eye of the world.
+
+As I reached the drawing-room door, I looked at my watch.
+
+Nine o'clock! and nothing done yet to facilitate our escaping from
+Crickgelly to the regions of civilized life the next morning. I was
+pleased to hear, when I knocked at the door, that Alicia's voice sounded
+firmer as she told me to come in. She was more confused than astonished
+or frightened when I sat down by her on the sofa, and repeated the
+principal topics of my conversion with Mrs. Baggs.
+
+"Now, my own love," I said, in conclusion--suiting my gestures, it is
+unnecessary to say, to the tenderness of my language--"there is not
+the least doubt that Mrs. Baggs will end by agreeing to my proposals.
+Nothing remains, therefore, but for you to give me the answer now, which
+I have been waiting for ever since that last day when we met by the
+riverside. I did not know then what the motive was for your silence and
+distress. I know now, and I love you better after that knowledge than I
+did before it."
+
+Her head dropped into its former position on my bosom, and she murmured
+a few words, but too faintly for me to hear them.
+
+"You knew more about your father, then, than I did?" I whispered.
+
+"Less than you have told me since," she interposed quickly, without
+raising her face.
+
+"Enough to convince you that he was breaking the laws," I suggested;
+"and, to make you, as his daughter, shrink from saying 'yes' to me when
+we sat together on the river bank?"
+
+She did not answer. One of her arms, which was hanging over my shoulder,
+stole round my neck, and clasped it gently.
+
+"Since that time," I went on, "your father has compromised me. I am in
+some danger, not much, from the law. I have no prospects that are not
+of the most doubtful kind; and I have no excuse for asking you to share
+them, except that I have fallen into my present misfortune through
+trying to discover the obstacle that kept us apart. If there is any
+protection in the world that you can turn to, less doubtful than mine, I
+suppose I ought to say no more, and leave the house. But if there should
+be none, surely I am not so very selfish in asking you to take your
+chance with me? I honestly believe that I shall have little difficulty,
+with ordinary caution, in escaping from pursuit, and finding a safe home
+somewhere to begin life in again with new interests. Will you share
+it with me, Alicia? I can try no fresh persuasions---I have no right,
+perhaps, in my present situation to have addressed so many to you
+already."
+
+Her other arm stole round my neck; she laid her cheek against mine, and
+whispered--
+
+"Be kind to me, Frank--I have nobody in the world who loves me but you!"
+
+I felt her tears on my face; my own eyes moistened as I tried to answer
+her. We sat for some minutes in perfect silence--without moving, without
+a thought beyond the moment. The rising of the wind, and the splashing
+of the rain outside were the first sounds that stirred me into action
+again.
+
+I summoned my resolution, rose from the sofa, and in a few hasty words
+told Alicia what I proposed for the next day, and mentioned the hour at
+which I would come in the morning. As I had anticipated, she seemed
+relieved and reassured at the prospect even of such slight sanction and
+encouragement, on the part of another woman, as would be implied by the
+companionship of Mrs. Baggs on the journey to Scotland.
+
+The next and last difficulty I had to encounter was necessarily
+connected with her father. He had never been very affectionate; and
+he was now, for aught she or I knew to the contrary, parted from her
+forever. Still, the instinctive recognition of his position made her
+shrink, at the last moment, when she spoke of him, and thought of the
+serious nature of her engagement with me. After some vain arguing and
+remonstrating, I contrived to quiet her scruples, by promising that an
+address should be left at Crickgelly, to which any second letter that
+might arrive from the doctor could be forwarded. When I saw that this
+prospect of being able to communicate with him, if he wrote or wished to
+see her, had sufficiently composed her mind, I left the drawing-room.
+It was vitally important that I should get back to the inn and make the
+necessary arrangements for our departure the next morning, before the
+primitive people of the place had retired to bed.
+
+As I passed the back parlor door on my way out, I heard the voice of
+Mrs. Baggs raised indignantly. The words "bottle!" "audacity!" and
+"nerves!" reached my ear disjointedly. I called out "Good-by! till
+to-morrow;" heard a responsive groan of disgust; then opened the front
+door, and plunged out into the dark and rainy night.
+
+It might have been the dropping of water from the cottage roofs while I
+passed through the village, or the groundless alarm of my own suspicious
+fancy, but I thought I was being followed as I walked back to the inn.
+Two or three times I turned round abruptly. If twenty men had been at my
+heels, it was too dark to see them. I went on to the inn.
+
+The people there were not gone to bed; and I sent for the landlord to
+consult with him about a conveyance. Perhaps it was my suspicious fancy
+again; but I thought his manner was altered. He seemed half distrustful,
+half afraid of me, when I asked him if there had been any signs, during
+my absence, of those two gentlemen, for whom I had already inquired on
+arriving at his door that evening. He gave an answer in the negative,
+looking away from me while he spoke.
+
+Thinking it advisable, on the whole, not to let him see that I noticed
+a change in him, I proceeded at once to the question of the conveyance,
+and was told that I could hire the landlord's light cart, in which he
+was accustomed to drive to the market town. I appointed an hour for
+starting the next day, and retired at once to my bedroom. There my
+thoughts were enough. I was anxious about Screw and the Bow Street
+runner. I was uncertain about the stranger who had called at Number Two,
+Zion Place. I was in doubt even about the landlord of the inn. Never did
+I know what real suffering from suspense was, until that night, Whatever
+my apprehensions might have been, they were none of them realized the
+next morning.
+
+Nobody followed me on my way to Zion Place, and no stranger had called
+there before me a second time, when I made inquiries on entering the
+house. I found Alicia blushing, and Mrs. Baggs impenetrably wrapped up
+in dignified sulkiness. After informing me with a lofty look that
+she intended to go to Scotland with us, and to take my five-pound
+note--partly under protest, and partly out of excessive affection for
+Alicia--she retired to pack up. The time consumed in performing this
+process, and the further delay occasioned by paying small outstanding
+debts to tradespeople, and settling with the owner of the house,
+detained us till nearly noon before we were ready to get into the
+landlord's cart.
+
+I looked behind me anxiously at starting, and often afterward on the
+road; but never saw anything to excite my suspicions. In settling
+matters with the landlord over night, I had arranged that we should be
+driven to the nearest town at which a post-chaise could be obtained.
+My resources were just as likely to hold out against the expenses of
+posting, where public conveyances could not be obtained, as against the
+expense of waiting privately at hotels, until the right coaches might
+start. According to my calculations, my money would last till we got
+to Scotland. After that, I had my watch, rings, shirtpin, and Mr.
+Batterbury, to help in replenishing my purse. Anxious, therefore, as I
+was about other things, money matters, for once in a way, did not cause
+me the smallest uneasiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+WE posted five-and-thirty miles, then stopped for a couple of hours to
+rest, and wait for a night coach running northward.
+
+On getting into this vehicle we were fortunate enough to find the fourth
+inside place not occupied. Mrs. Baggs showed her sense of the freedom
+from restraint thus obtained by tying a huge red comforter round her
+head like a turban, and immediately falling fast asleep. This gave
+Alicia and me full liberty to talk as we pleased. Our conversation was
+for the most part of that particular kind which is not of the smallest
+importance to any third person in the whole world. One portion of it,
+however, was an exception to this general rule. It had a very positive
+influence on my fortunes, and it is, therefore, I hope, of sufficient
+importance to bear being communicated to the reader.
+
+We had changed horses for the fourth time, had seated ourselves
+comfortably in our places, and had heard Mrs. Baggs resume the kindred
+occupations of sleeping and snoring, when Alicia whispered to me:
+
+"I must have no secrets, now, from you--must I, Frank?"
+
+"You must have anything you like, do anything you like, and say anything
+you like. You must never ask leave--but only grant it!"
+
+"Shall you always tell me that, Frank?"
+
+I did not answer in words, but the conversation suffered a momentary
+interruption. Of what nature, susceptible people will easily imagine. As
+for the hard-hearted I don't write for them.
+
+"My secret need not alarm you," Alicia went on, in tones that began to
+sound rather sadly; "it is only about a tiny pasteboard box that I can
+carry in the bosom of my dress. But it has got three diamonds in it,
+Frank, and one beautiful ruby. Did you ever give me credit for having so
+much that was valuable about me?--shall I give it you to keep for me?"
+
+I remembered directly Old File's story of Mrs. Dulcifer's elopement, and
+of the jewels she had taken with her. It was easy to guess, after what I
+had heard, that the poor woman had secretly preserved some of her little
+property for the benefit of her child.
+
+"I have no present need of money, darling," I answered; "keep the box in
+its present enviable position." I stopped there, saying nothing of the
+thought that was really uppermost in my mind. If any unforeseen accident
+placed me within the grip of the law, I should not now have the double
+trial to endure of leaving my wife for a prison, and leaving her
+helpless.
+
+Morning dawned and found us still awake. The sun rose, Mrs. Baggs left
+off snoring, and we arrived at the last stage before the coach stopped.
+
+I got out to see about some tea for my traveling companions, and looked
+up at the outside passengers. One of them seated in the dickey looked
+down at me. He was a countryman in a smock-frock, with a green patch
+over one of his eyes. Something in the expression of his uncovered eye
+made me pause--reflect--turn away uneasily--and then look again at him
+furtively. A sudden shudder ran through me from top to toe; my heart
+sank; and my head began to feel giddy. The countryman in the dickey was
+no other than the Bow Street runner in disguise.
+
+I kept away from the coach till the fresh horses were on the point of
+starting, for I was afraid to let Alicia see my face, after making that
+fatal discovery. She noticed how pale I was when I got in. I made the
+best excuse I could; and gently insisted on her trying to sleep a little
+after being awake all night. She lay back in her corner; and Mrs. Baggs,
+comforted with a morning dram in her tea, fell asleep again. I had thus
+an hour's leisure before me to think what I should do next.
+
+Screw was not in company with the runner this time. He must have managed
+to identify me somewhere, and the officer doubtless knew my personal
+appearance well enough now to follow and make sure of me without help.
+That I was the man whom he was tracking could not be doubted: his
+disguise and his position on the top of the coach proved it only too
+plainly.
+
+But why had he not seized me at once? Probably because he had some
+ulterior purpose to serve, which would have been thwarted by my
+immediate apprehension. What that purpose was I did my best to fathom,
+and, as I thought, succeeded in the attempt. What I was to do when the
+coach stopped was a more difficult point to settle. To give the runner
+the slip, with two women to take care of, was simply impossible. To
+treat him, as I had treated Screw at the red-brick house, was equally
+out of the question, for he was certain to give me no chance of catching
+him alone. To keep him in ignorance of the real object of my journey,
+and thereby to delay his discovering himself and attempting to make me a
+prisoner, seemed the only plan on the safety of which I could place the
+smallest reliance. If I had ever had any idea of following the example
+of other runaway lovers, and going to Gretna Green, I should now have
+abandoned it. All roads in that direction would betray what the purpose
+of my journey was if I took them. Some large town in Scotland would be
+the safest destination that I could publicly advertise myself as
+bound for. Why not boldly say that I was going with the two ladies to
+Edinburgh?
+
+Such was the plan of action which I now adopted.
+
+To give any idea of the distracted condition of my mind at the time when
+I was forming it, is simply impossible. As for doubting whether I ought
+to marry at all under these dangerous circumstances, I must frankly
+own that I was too selfishly and violently in love to look the question
+fairly in the face at first. When I subsequently forced myself to
+consider it, the most distinct project I could frame for overcoming all
+difficulty was, to marry myself (the phrase is strictly descriptive of
+the Scotch ceremony) at the first inn we came to, over the Border; to
+hire a chaise, or take places in a public conveyance to Edinburgh, as
+a blind; to let Alicia and Mrs. Baggs occupy those places; to remain
+behind myself; and to trust to my audacity and cunning, when left alone,
+to give the runner the slip. Writing of it now, in cool blood, this
+seems as wild and hopeless a plan as ever was imagined. But, in the
+confused and distracted state of all my faculties at that period, it
+seemed quite easy to execute, and not in the least doubtful as to any
+one of its probable results.
+
+On reaching the town at which the coach stopped, we found ourselves
+obliged to hire another chaise for a short distance, in order to get to
+the starting-point of a second coach. Again we took inside places,
+and again, at the first stages when I got down to look at the outside
+passengers, there was the countryman with the green shade over his
+eye. Whatever conveyance we traveled by on our northward road, we never
+escaped him. He never attempted to speak to me, never seemed to notice
+me, and never lost sight of me. On and on we went, over roads that
+seemed interminable, and still the dreadful sword of justice hung
+always, by its single hair, over my head. My haggard face, my feverish
+hands, my confused manner, my inexpressible impatience, all belied the
+excuses with which I desperately continued to ward off Alicia's growing
+fears, and Mrs. Baggs's indignant suspicions. "Oh! Frank, something has
+happened! For God's sake, tell me what!"--"Mr. Softly, I can see through
+a deal board as far as most people. You are following the doctor's
+wicked example, and showing a want of confidence in me." These were the
+remonstrances of Alicia and the housekeeper.
+
+At last we got out of England, and I was still a free man. The chaise
+(we were posting again) brought us into a dirty town, and drew up at the
+door of a shabby inn. A shock-headed girl received us.
+
+"Are we in Scotland?" I asked.
+
+"Mon! whar' else should ye be?" The accent relieved me of all doubt.
+
+"A private room--something to eat, ready in an hour's time--chaise
+afterward to the nearest place from which a coach runs to Edinburgh."
+Giving these orders rapidly, I followed the girl with my traveling
+companions into a stuffy little room. As soon as our attendant had left
+us, I locked the door, put the key in my pocket, and took Alicia by the
+hand.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Baggs," said I, "bear witness--"
+
+"You're not going to marry her now!" interposed Mrs. Baggs, indignantly.
+"Bear witness, indeed! I won't bear witness till I've taken off my
+bonnet, and put my hair tidy!"
+
+"The ceremony won't take a minute," I answered; "and I'll give you your
+five-pound note and open the door the moment it's over. Bear witness,"
+I went on, drowning Mrs. Baggs's expostulations with the all-important
+marriage-words, "that I take this woman, Alicia Dulcifer for my lawful
+wedded wife."
+
+"In sickness and in health, in poverty and wealth," broke in Mrs. Baggs,
+determining to represent the clergyman as well as to be the witness.
+
+"Alicia, dear," I said, interrupting in my turn, "repeat my words. Say
+'I take this man, Francis Softly, for my lawful wedded husband.'"
+
+She repeated the sentence, with her face very pale, with her dear hand
+cold and trembling in mine.
+
+"For better for worse," continued the indomitable Mrs. Baggs. "Little
+enough of the Better, I'm afraid, and Lord knows how much of the Worse."
+
+I stopped her again with the promised five-pound note, and opened the
+room door. "Now, ma'am," I said, "go to your room; take off your bonnet,
+and put your hair as tidy as you please."
+
+Mrs. Baggs raised her eyes and hands to heaven, exclaimed "Disgraceful!"
+and flounced out of the room in a passion. Such was my Scotch
+marriage--as lawful a ceremony, remember, as the finest family wedding
+at the largest parish church in all England.
+
+An hour passed; and I had not yet summoned the cruel courage to
+communicate my real situation to Alicia. The entry of the shock-headed
+servant-girl to lay the cloth, followed by Mrs. Baggs, who was never out
+of the way where eating and drinking appeared in prospect, helped me to
+rouse myself. I resolved to go out for a few minutes to reconnoiter, and
+make myself acquainted with any facilities for flight or hiding which
+the situation of the house might present. No doubt the Bow Street runner
+was lurking somewhere; but he must, as a matter of course, have
+heard, or informed himself, of the orders I had given relating to our
+conveyance on to Edinburgh; and, in that case, I was still no more in
+danger of his avowing himself and capturing me, than I had been at any
+previous period of our journey.
+
+"I am going out for a moment, love, to see about the chaise," I said
+to Alicia. She suddenly looked up at me with an anxious searching
+expression. Was my face betraying anything of my real purpose? I hurried
+to the door before she could ask me a single question.
+
+The front of the inn stood nearly in the middle of the principal street
+of the town. No chance of giving any one the slip in that direction; and
+no sign, either, of the Bow Street runner. I sauntered round, with the
+most unconcerned manner I could assume, to the back of the house, by the
+inn yard. A door in one part of it stood half-open. Inside was a bit of
+kitchen-garden, bounded by a paling; beyond that some backs of detached
+houses; beyond them, again, a plot of weedy ground, a few wretched
+cottages, and the open, heathery moor. Good enough for running away, but
+terribly bad for hiding.
+
+I returned disconsolately to the inn. Walking along the passage toward
+the staircase, I suddenly heard footsteps behind me--turned round, and
+saw the Bow Street runner (clothed again in his ordinary costume, and
+accompanied by two strange men) standing between me and the door.
+
+"Sorry to stop you from going to Edinburgh, Mr. Softly," he said. "But
+you're wanted back at Barkingham. I've just found out what you have been
+traveling all the way to Scotland for; and I take you prisoner, as one
+of the coining gang. Take it easy, sir. I've got help, you see; and you
+can't throttle three men, whatever you may have done at Barkingham with
+one."
+
+He handcuffed me as he spoke. Resistance was hopeless. I could only make
+an appeal to his mercy, on Alicia's account.
+
+"Give me ten minutes," I said, "to break what has happened to my wife.
+We were only married an hour ago. If she knows this suddenly, it may be
+the death of her."
+
+"You've led me a nice dance on a wrong scent," answered the runner,
+sulkily. "But I never was a hard man where women are concerned. Go
+upstairs, and leave the door open, so that I can see in through it if I
+like. Hold your hat over your wrists, if you don't want her to see the
+handcuffs."
+
+I ascended the first flight of stairs, and my heart gave a sudden bound
+as if it would burst. I stopped, speechless and helpless, at the sight
+of Alicia, standing alone on the landing. My first look at her face told
+me she had heard all that had passed in the passage. She passionately
+struck the hat with which I had been trying to hide the handcuffs out
+of my fingers, and clasped me in her arms with such sudden and desperate
+energy that she absolutely hurt me.
+
+"I was afraid of something, Frank," she whispered. "I followed you a
+little way. I stopped here; I have heard everything. Don't let us be
+parted! I am stronger than you think me. I won't be frightened. I won't
+cry. I won't trouble anybody, if that man will only take me with you!"
+
+It is best for my sake, if not for the reader's, to hurry over the scene
+that followed.
+
+It ended with as little additional wretchedness as could be expected.
+The runner was resolute about keeping me handcuffed, and taking me
+back, without a moment's unnecessary waste of time to Barkingham; but he
+relented on other points.
+
+Where he was obliged to order a private conveyance, there was no
+objection to Alicia and Mrs. Baggs following it. Where we got into a
+coach, there was no harm in their hiring two inside places. I gave my
+watch, rings, and last guinea to Alicia, enjoining her, on no account,
+to let her box of jewels see the light until we could get proper advice
+on the best means of turning them to account. She listened to these and
+other directions with a calmness that astonished me.
+
+"You shan't say, my dear, that your wife has helped to make you uneasy
+by so much as a word or a look," she whispered to me as we left the inn.
+
+And she kept the hard promise implied in that one short sentence
+throughout the journey. Once only did I see her lose her
+self-possession. At starting on our way south, Mrs. Baggs--taking the
+same incomprehensible personal offense at my misfortune which she
+had previously taken at the doctor's--upbraided me with my want of
+confidence in her, and declared that it was the main cause of all my
+present trouble. Alicia turned on her as she was uttering the words,
+with a look and a warning that silenced her in an instant:
+
+"If you say another syllable that isn't kind to him, you shall find your
+way back by yourself!"
+
+The words may not seem of much importance to others; but I thought, as
+I overheard them, that they justified every sacrifice I had made for my
+wife's sake.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+ON our way back I received from the runner some explanation of his
+apparently unaccountable proceedings in reference to myself.
+
+To begin at the beginning, it turned out that the first act of the
+officers, on their release from the workroom in the red-brick house,
+was to institute a careful search for papers in the doctor's study and
+bedroom. Among the other documents that he had not had time to destroy,
+was a letter to him from Alicia, which they took from one of the pockets
+of his dressing-gown. Finding, from the report of the men who had
+followed the gig, that he had distanced all pursuit, and having
+therefore no direct clew to his whereabout, they had been obliged to
+hunt after him in various directions, on pure speculation. Alicia's
+letter to her father gave the address of the house at Crickgelly; and to
+this the runner repaired, on the chance of intercepting or discovering
+any communications which the doctor might make to his daughter, Screw
+being taken with the officer to identify the young lady. After leaving
+the last coach, they posted to within a mile of Crickgelly, and then
+walked into the village, in order to excite no special attention,
+should the doctor be lurking in the neighborhood. The runner had tried
+ineffectually to gain admission as a visitor at Zion Place. After having
+the door shut on him, he and Screw had watched the house and village,
+and had seen me approach Number Two. Their suspicions were directly
+excited.
+
+Thus far, Screw had not recognized, nor even observed me; but he
+immediately identified me by my voice, while I was parleying with the
+stupid servant at the door. The runner, hearing who I was, reasonably
+enough concluded that I must be the recognized medium of communication
+between the doctor and his daughter, especially when he found that I was
+admitted, instantly after calling, past the servant, to some one inside
+the house.
+
+Leaving Screw on the watch, he went to the inn, discovered himself
+privately to the landlord, and made sure (in more ways than one, as
+I conjectured) of knowing when, and in what direction, I should leave
+Crickgelly. On finding that I was to leave it the next morning, with
+Alicia and Mrs. Baggs, he immediately suspected that I was charged with
+the duty of taking the daughter to, or near, the place chosen for
+the father's retreat; and had therefore abstained from interfering
+prematurely with my movements. Knowing whither we were bound in the
+cart, he had ridden after us, well out of sight, with his countryman's
+disguise ready for use in the saddle-bags--Screw, in case of any
+mistakes or mystifications, being left behind on the watch at
+Crickgelly.
+
+The possibility that I might be running away with Alicia had suggested
+itself to him; but he dismissed it as improbable, first when he saw
+that Mrs. Baggs accompanied us, and again, when, on nearing Scotland, he
+found that we did not take the road to Gretna Green. He acknowledged, in
+conclusion, that he should have followed us to Edinburgh, or even to
+the Continent itself, on the chance of our leading him to the doctor's
+retreat, but for the servant girl at the inn, who had listened outside
+the door while our brief marriage ceremony was proceeding, and from
+whom, with great trouble and delay, he had extracted all the information
+he required. A further loss of half an hour's time had occurred while
+he was getting the necessary help to assist him, in the event of my
+resisting, or trying to give him the slip, in making me a prisoner.
+These small facts accounted for the hour's respite we had enjoyed at the
+inn, and terminated the runner's narrative of his own proceedings.
+
+On arriving at our destination I was, of course, immediately taken to
+the jail.
+
+Alicia, by my advice, engaged a modest lodging in a suburb of
+Barkingham. In the days of the red-brick house, she had seldom been seen
+in the town, and she was not at all known by sight in the suburb. We
+arranged that she was to visit me as often as the authorities would let
+her. She had no companion, and wanted none. Mrs. Baggs, who had never
+forgiven the rebuke administered to her at the starting-point of our
+journey, left us at the close of it. Her leave-taking was dignified and
+pathetic. She kindly informed Alicia that she wished her well, though
+she could not conscientiously look upon her as a lawful married woman;
+and she begged me (in case I got off), the next time I met with a
+respectable person who was kind to me, to profit by remembering my past
+errors, and to treat my next benefactress with more confidence than I
+had treated her.
+
+My first business in the prison was to write to Mr. Batterbury.
+
+I had a magnificent ease to present to him, this time. Although I
+believed myself, and had succeeded in persuading Alicia, that I was sure
+of being recommended to mercy, it was not the less the fact that I was
+charged with an offense still punishable by death, in the then barbarous
+state of the law. I delicately stated just enough of my case to make
+one thing clear to the mind of Mr. Batterbury. My affectionate sister's
+interest in the contingent reversion was now ( unless Lady Malkinshaw
+perversely and suddenly expired) actually threatened by the Gallows!
+
+While calmly awaiting the answer, I was by no means without subjects
+to occupy my attention when Alicia was not at the prison. There was
+my fellow-workman--Mill--(the first member of our society betrayed by
+Screw) to compare notes with; and there was a certain prisoner who
+had been transported, and who had some very important and interesting
+particulars to communicate, relative to life and its chances in our
+felon-settlements at the Antipodes. I talked a great deal with this man;
+for I felt that his experience might be of the greatest possible benefit
+to me.
+
+Mr. Batterbury's answer was speedy, short, and punctual. I had shattered
+his nervous system forever, he wrote, but had only stimulated his
+devotion to my family, and his Christian readiness to look pityingly on
+my transgressions. He had engaged the leader of the circuit to defend
+me; and he would have come to see me, but for Mrs. Batterbury; who had
+implored him not to expose himself to agitation. Of Lady Malkinshaw the
+letter said nothing; but I afterward discovered that she was then at
+Cheltenham, drinking the waters and playing whist in the rudest health
+and spirits.
+
+It is a bold thing to say, but nothing will ever persuade me that
+Society has not a sneaking kindness for a Rogue.
+
+For example, my father never had half the attention shown to him in his
+own house, which was shown to me in my prison. I have seen High
+Sheriffs in the great world, whom my father went to see, give him two
+fingers--the High Sheriff of Barkinghamshire came to see me, and shook
+hands cordially. Nobody ever wanted my father's autograph--dozens of
+people asked for mine. Nobody ever put my father's portrait in the
+frontispiece of a magazine, or described his personal appearance
+and manners with anxious elaboration, in the large type of a great
+newspaper--I enjoyed both those honors. Three official individuals
+politely begged me to be sure and make complaints if my position was
+not perfectly comfortable. No official individual ever troubled his head
+whether my father was comfortable or not. When the day of my trial came,
+the court was thronged by my lovely countrywomen, who stood up panting
+in the crowd and crushing their beautiful dresses, rather than miss the
+pleasure of seeing the dear Rogue in the dock. When my father once stood
+on the lecturer's rostrum, and delivered his excellent discourse, called
+"Medical Hints to Maids and Mothers on Tight Lacing and Teething," the
+benches were left empty by the ungrateful women of England, who were not
+in the slightest degree anxious to feast their eyes on the sight of
+a learned adviser and respectable man. If these facts led to one
+inevitable conclusion, it is not my fault. We Rogues are the spoiled
+children of Society. We may not be openly acknowledged as Pets, but we
+all know, by pleasant experience, that we are treated like them.
+
+The trial was deeply affecting. My defense--or rather my
+barrister's--was the simple truth. It was impossible to overthrow
+the facts against us; so we honestly owned that I got into the scrape
+through love for Alicia. My counsel turned this to the best possible
+sentimental account. He cried; the ladies cried; the jury cried; the
+judge cried; and Mr. Batterbury, who had desperately come to see the
+trial, and know the worst, sobbed with such prominent vehemence, that I
+believe him, to this day, to have greatly influenced the verdict. I
+was strongly recommended to mercy and got off with fourteen years'
+transportation. The unfortunate Mill, who was tried after me, with a
+mere dry-eyed barrister to defend him, was hanged.
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+WITH the record of my sentence of transportation, my life as a Rogue
+ends, and my existence as a respectable man begins. I am sorry to say
+anything which may disturb popular delusions on the subject of poetical
+justice, but this is strictly the truth.
+
+My first anxiety was about my wife's future.
+
+Mr. Batterbury gave me no chance of asking his advice after the trial.
+The moment sentence had been pronounced, he allowed himself to be helped
+out of court in a melancholy state of prostration, and the next morning
+he left for London. I suspect he was afraid to face me, and nervously
+impatient, besides, to tell Annabella that he had saved the legacy
+again by another alarming sacrifice. My father and mother, to whom I had
+written on the subject of Alicia, were no more to be depended on than
+Mr. Batterbury. My father, in answering my letter, told me that he
+conscientiously believed he had done enough in forgiving me for throwing
+away an excellent education, and disgracing a respectable name. He added
+that he had not allowed my letter for my mother to reach her, out
+of pitying regard for her broken health and spirits; and he ended by
+telling me (what was perhaps very true) that the wife of such a son as
+I had been, had no claim upon her father-in-law's protection and help.
+There was an end, then, of any hope of finding resources for Alicia
+among the members of my own family.
+
+The next thing was to discover a means of providing for her without
+assistance. I had formed a project for this, after meditating over my
+conversations with the returned transport in Barkingham jail, and I had
+taken a reliable opinion on the chances of successfully executing my
+design from the solicitor who had prepared my defense.
+
+Alicia herself was so earnestly in favor of assisting in my experiment,
+that she declared she would prefer death to its abandonment.
+Accordingly, the necessary preliminaries were arranged; and, when we
+parted, it was some mitigation of our grief to know that there was a
+time appointed for meeting again. Alicia was to lodge with a distant
+relative of her mother's in a suburb of London; was to concert measures
+with this relative on the best method of turning her jewels into money;
+and was to follow her convict husband to the Antipodes, under a feigned
+name, in six months' time.
+
+If my family had not abandoned me, I need not have thus left her to help
+herself. As it was, I had no choice. One consolation supported me at
+parting--she was in no danger of persecution from her father. A second
+letter from him had arrived at Crickgelly, and had been forwarded to the
+address I had left for it. It was dated Hamburg, and briefly told her to
+remain at Crickgelly, and expect fresh instructions, explanations, and
+a supply of money, as soon as he had settled the important business
+matters which had taken him abroad. His daughter answered the letter,
+telling him of her marriage, and giving him an address at a post-office
+to write to, if he chose to reply to her communication. There the matter
+rested.
+
+What was I to do on my side? Nothing but establish a reputation for mild
+behavior. I began to manufacture a character for myself for the first
+days of our voyage out in the convict-ship; and I landed at the penal
+settlement with the reputation of being the meekest and most biddable of
+felonious mankind.
+
+After a short probationary experience of such low convict employments
+as lime-burning and road-mending, I was advanced to occupations more in
+harmony with my education. Whatever I did, I never neglected the first
+great obligation of making myself agreeable and amusing to everybody. My
+social reputation as a good fellow began to stand as high at one end of
+the world as ever it stood at the other. The months passed more
+quickly than I had dared to hope. The expiration of my first year of
+transportation was approaching, and already pleasant hints of my being
+soon assigned to private service began to reach my ears. This was the
+first of the many ends I was now working for; and the next pleasant
+realization of my hopes that I had to expect, was the arrival of Alicia.
+
+She came, a month later than I had anticipated; safe and blooming,
+with five hundred pounds as the produce of her jewels, and with the
+old Crickgelly alias (changed from Miss to Mrs. Giles), to prevent any
+suspicions of the connection between us.
+
+Her story (concocted by me before I left England) was, that she was a
+widow lady, who had come to settle in Australia, and make the most of
+her little property in the New World. One of the first things Mrs. Giles
+wanted was necessarily a trustworthy servant, and she had to make her
+choice of one among the convicts of good character, to be assigned to
+private service. Being one of that honorable body myself at the time,
+it is needless to say that I was the fortunate man on whom Mrs. Giles's
+choice fell. The first situation I got in Australia was as servant to my
+own wife.
+
+Alicia made a very indulgent mistress.
+
+If she had been mischievously inclined, she might, by application to a
+magistrate, have had me flogged or set to work in chains on the roads,
+whenever I became idle or insubordinate, which happened occasionally.
+But instead of complaining, the kind creature kissed and made much of
+her footman by stealth, after his day's work. She allowed him no female
+followers, and only employed one woman-servant occasionally, who was
+both old and ugly. The name of the footman was Dear in private, and
+Francis in company; and when the widowed mistress, upstairs, refused
+eligible offers of marriage (which was pretty often), the favored
+domestic in the kitchen was always informed of it, and asked, with the
+sweetest humility, if he approved of the proceeding.
+
+Not to dwell on this anomalous period of my existence, let me say
+briefly that my new position with my wife was of the greatest advantage
+in enabling me to direct in secret the profitable uses to which her
+little fortune was put.
+
+We began in this way with an excellent speculation in cattle--buying
+them for shillings and selling them for pounds. With the profits thus
+obtained, we next tried our hands at houses--first buying in a small
+way, then boldly building, and letting again and selling to great
+advantage. While these speculations were in progress, my behavior in
+my wife's service was so exemplary, and she gave me so excellent a
+character when the usual official inquiries were instituted, that I
+soon got the next privilege accorded to persons in my situation--a
+ticket-of-leave. By the time this had been again exchanged for a
+conditional pardon (which allowed me to go about where I pleased in
+Australia, and to trade in my own name like any unconvicted merchant)
+our house-property had increased enormously, our land had been sold for
+public buildings, and we had shares in the famous Emancipist's Bank,
+which produced quite a little income of themselves.
+
+There was now no need to keep the mask on any longer.
+
+I went through the superfluous ceremony of a second marriage with
+Alicia; took stores in the city; built a villa in the country; and
+here I am at this present moment of writing, a convict aristocrat--a
+prosperous, wealthy, highly respectable mercantile man, with two years
+of my sentence of transportation still to expire. I have a barouche and
+two bay horses, a coachman and page in neat liveries, three charming
+children, and a French governess, a boudoir and lady's-maid for my wife.
+She is as handsome as ever, but getting a little fat. So am I, as a
+worthy friend remarked when I recently appeared holding the plate, at
+our last charity sermon.
+
+What would my surviving relatives and associates in England say, if they
+could see me now? I have heard of them at different times and through
+various channels. Lady Malkinshaw, after living to the verge of
+a hundred, and surviving all sorts of accidents, died quietly one
+afternoon, in her chair, with an empty dish before her, and without
+giving the slightest notice to anybody. Mr. Batterbury, having
+sacrificed so much to his wife's reversion, profited nothing by its
+falling in at last. His quarrels with my amiable sister--which took
+their rise from his interested charities toward me--ended in producing a
+separation. And, far from saving anything by Annabella's inheritance of
+her pin-money, he had a positive loss to put up with, in the shape
+of some hundreds extracted yearly from his income, as alimony to his
+uncongenial wife. He is said to make use of shocking language whenever
+my name is mentioned, and to wish that he had been carried off by the
+yellow fever before he ever set eyes on the Softly family.
+
+My father has retired from practice. He and my mother have gone to live
+in the country, near the mansion of the only marquis with whom my father
+was actually and personally acquainted in his professional days. The
+marquis asks him to dinner once a year, and leaves a card for my mother
+before he returns to town for the season. A portrait of Lady Malkinshaw
+hangs in the dining-room. In this way, my parents are ending their days
+contentedly. I can honestly say that I am glad to hear it.
+
+Doctor Dulcifer, when I last heard of him, was editing a newspaper in
+America. Old File, who shared his flight, still shares his fortunes,
+being publisher of his newspaper. Young File resumed coining operations
+in London; and, having braved his fate a second time, threaded his way,
+in due course, up to the steps of the scaffold. Screw carries on the
+profitable trade of informer, in London. The dismal disappearance of
+Mill I have already recorded.
+
+So much on the subject of my relatives and associates. On the subject
+of myself, I might still write on at considerable length. But while the
+libelous title of "A ROGUE'S LIFE" stares me in the face at the top
+of the page, how can I, as a rich and reputable man, be expected to
+communicate any further autobiographical particulars, in this place,
+to a discerning public of readers? No, no, my friends! I am no longer
+interesting--I am only respectable like yourselves. It is time to say
+"Good-by."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Rogue's Life, by Wilkie Collins
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