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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Practical Novelist, by John Davidson
+
+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 Practical Novelist
+
+Author: John Davidson
+
+Illustrator: J. Ellis
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2011 [EBook #35313]
+Last Updated: July 13, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PRACTICAL NOVELIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by C. P. Boyko
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A Practical Novelist
+
+
+by
+
+John Davidson
+
+
+Author of 'Perfervid,' 'Scaramouch in Naxos,' etc.
+
+
+
+
+London
+
+Ward & Downey
+
+York Street, Covent Garden
+
+1891
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. Bagging a Hero
+   II. The Suitor and the Sued
+  III. On the Road
+   IV. A 'Heavy' Father
+    V. The Art of Proposing
+   VI. Lee Enjoys Himself
+  VII. The Unexpected
+ VIII. Briscoe Sees Things in a New Light
+   IX. Dempster Apologizes
+    X. The Night Breeze
+   XI. Conclusion
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+BAGGING A HERO
+
+
+'WELL, but the novel is played out, Carry. It has run to seed.
+Anybody can get the seed; anybody can sow it. If it goes on at
+this rate, novel-writers will soon be in a majority, and
+novel-reading will become a lucrative employment.'
+
+'What are you going to do, then, Maxwell? Here's Peter out of
+work, and my stitching can't support three.'
+
+The three in question were Maxwell Lee, his wife Caroline, and her
+brother, Peter Briscoe. Lee was an unsuccessful literary man; his
+brother-in-law, Briscoe, an unsuccessful business-man. Caroline,
+on the other hand, was entirely successful in an arduous endeavour
+to be a man, hoping and working for all three.
+
+We have nothing whatever to do with the past of these people. We
+start with the conversation introduced in the first sentence.
+Caroline had urged on Lee the advisability of accepting an offer
+from the editor of a country weekly. But Lee, who had composed
+dramas and philosophical romances which no publisher, nor editor
+could be got to read, refused scornfully the task of writing an
+'ordinary, vulgar, sentimental and sensational story of the kind
+required.'
+
+'What am I going to do?' he said. 'I'll tell you: I am going to
+create a novel. Practical joking is the new novel in its infancy.
+The end of every thought is an action; and the centuries of
+written fiction must culminate in an age of acted fiction. We
+stand upon the threshold of that age, and I am destined to open
+the door.'
+
+Caroline sighed, and Briscoe shot out his underlip: evidence that
+they were accustomed to this sort of thing.
+
+Lee continued: 'You shall collaborate with me in the production of
+this novel. Think of it! Novel-writing is effete; novel-creation
+is about to begin. We shall cause a novel to take place in the
+world. We shall construct a plot; we shall select a hero; we shall
+enter into his life, and produce the series of events before
+determined on. Consider for a minute. We can do nothing else now.
+The last development, the naturalist school, is a mere copying, a
+bare photographing of life--at least, that is what it professes to
+be. This is not art. There can never be an art of novel-writing.
+But there can be--there shall be, you will aid me to begin the art
+of novel-creation.'
+
+'Do you propose to make a living by it?' inquired Briscoe.
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+Briscoe rose, and without comment left the house. Caroline looked
+at her husband with a glance of mingled pity and amusement.
+
+'Why are you so fantastic?' she asked softly.
+
+'You laugh at my idea now, because you do not see it as I see it.
+Wait till it is completely developed before you condemn it.'
+
+Caroline made no reply; but went on with her sewing. Lee threw
+himself at full length on a rickety sofa and closed his eyes.
+Besides the sofa, two chairs and a table, a rag of carpet before
+the fire-place, a shelf with some books of poetry and novels, and
+an old oil-painting in a dark corner, made up the furniture of the
+room. There were three other apartments, a kitchen and two
+bedrooms, all as scantily furnished. The house was in the top flat
+of a four-storey land in Peyton Street, Glasgow.
+
+Lee dozed and dreamed. Caroline sewed steadily. An hour elapsed
+without a word from either. Then both were aroused by the noisy
+entrance of Briscoe, who, having let himself into the house by his
+latch-key, strode into the parlour with a portmanteau in either
+hand. He thrashed these down on the floor with defiant emphasis,
+and said, frowning away a grin: 'Your twin-brother's traps, Lee.
+I'll bring _him_ upstairs, too.'
+
+He went out immediately, as if afraid of being recalled.
+
+'Your twin-brother!' exclaimed Mrs. Lee. 'I never heard of him.'
+
+'And I hear of him for the first time.'
+
+They waited in amazement the return of Briscoe. Soon an irregular
+and shuffling tread sounded from the stair; and in a minute he and
+a cabman entered the parlour, bearing between them what seemed the
+lifeless body of a man. This they placed on the sofa. The cabman
+looked about him curiously; but, being apparently satisfied with
+his fare, withdrew.
+
+When he was gone, Briscoe spoke: 'This is the first chapter of
+your novel, Lee. Something startling to begin with, eh?'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'I've bagged a hero for you.'
+
+'Bagged a hero!'
+
+'Yes; kidnapped a millionaire in the middle of Glasgow in broad
+daylight. Here's how it happened: one instant I saw a man with his
+head out of a cab-window, shouting to the driver; the next, the
+cab-door, which can't have been properly fastened, sprang open,
+and the man was lying in the street. On going up to him, I said to
+myself, "Maxwell Lee, as I'm a sinner!" You're wonderfully like,
+even when I look at your faces alternately. Well, I shouted in his
+ear, "Chartres! Chartres!" seeing his name in his hat which had
+fallen off, and pretending to know him perfectly. I felt so mad at
+you and your absurd notions of creating novels, that, without
+thinking of the consequences, I got him into the cab again, told
+the policeman that he was my brother-in-law, and drove straight
+here. It was all done so suddenly, and I assumed such confidence,
+that the police did not so much as demand my address. Of course,
+if you don't want to have anything to do with him, I suppose we
+can make it out a case of mistaken identity.'
+
+'Who is he, I wonder?' said Lee, whose eyes were sparkling.
+
+'There's his name and address,' replied Briscoe, pointing to the
+portmanteaus.
+
+Lee read aloud: '"Mr. Henry Chartres, Snell House, Gourock, N.B."'
+He then pressed his head in both hands, knit his brows, tightened
+his mouth, and regarded the floor for fully a minute.
+
+As soon as Chartres had been laid on the sofa, Caroline wiped the
+mud from his face and hands. There was not a cushion in the room,
+but she brought two pillows from her own bed, and with them
+propped the head and shoulders of the unconscious man. While Lee
+was still contemplating the floor, she said, 'We must get a doctor
+at once.'
+
+Lee's response was a muttered 'Yes, yes;' but the question brought
+him nearer the facts of the case than he had been since Briscoe
+explained his motive in possessing himself of Mr. Chartres.
+
+'A doctor!' repeated Caroline.
+
+'Of course, of course,' said Lee, approaching the sofa for the
+first time. He studied the still unconscious face while Caroline
+and Briscoe watched him: the first wondering that he should seem
+to hesitate to send for a doctor, and the other with an
+incredulous curiosity. Briscoe, an ill-natured, half-educated man,
+had been seized by a sudden inspiration on seeing the likeness
+between Chartres and his brother-in-law. He thought to overset
+Lee's new idea by showing him its impracticability. He believed
+that failure had unhinged his brother-in-law's mind; and knew for
+certain that no argument could possibly avail. He trusted that by
+introducing Chartres under such extraordinary circumstances into
+what he regarded as Lee's insane waking dream the gross absurdity
+of it--absurd at least in his impecunious state--would become
+apparent to him. Having once unfixed this idea, he hoped, with the
+help of Mrs. Lee, to force his acceptance of the commission for
+the country weekly. The result was not going to be what he
+expected. Lee was taking his brother's collaboration seriously. A
+childish smile of wonder and delight overspread his features, as
+his likeness to Chartres appeared more fully, in his estimation,
+upon a detailed examination. He got a looking-glass, and compared
+the two faces, placing the mirror so that the reflection of his
+lay as if he had rested his head on Chartres' shoulder. Thick,
+soft, grey hair, inclined still to curl, and divided on the left
+side; a broad forehead, perpendicular for an inch above the
+eyebrows, then sloping inordinately to the beginning of the hair;
+eyebrows distinctly marked, but not heavy; a well-formed nose,
+rather long, and approaching the aquiline; full, curved lips; the
+mouth not small, but liker a woman's than a man's; the chin,
+almost feminine, little and rounded; the cheeks smooth, and the
+face clean shaved. There was no doubt that the men might have been
+twins, and that their most intimate associates would have been
+constantly mistaking them.
+
+'It's wonderful--wonderful, Peter!' said Lee. 'What a brilliant
+stroke of yours this is!'
+
+'But the doctor, Maxwell!' cried Caroline, who was becoming
+impatient.
+
+'Perhaps we'll not need one,' replied her husband. 'See, he's
+coming round!'
+
+Chartres began to move uneasily; the blood dawned in his cheeks;
+and his breathing grew more vigorous. He opened his eyes and
+attempted to raise his head; but a twinge of pain forced a groan
+from him, and he again fainted.
+
+'We must get him into bed, in the first place,' said Lee.
+
+With much difficulty this was accomplished. Then Caroline renewed
+her demand for a doctor; but her husband, professing to have some
+skill in medicine, declared himself able to treat Chartres, who
+seemed to have fallen on the top of his head. Cold water, he
+assured his wife, would soon remove the effects of the concussion.
+Briscoe also said that there was no need for a doctor. Mrs. Lee
+did not feel called on to dispute the point; and was about to
+resume the cold applications, when it struck her, for the first,
+how very extraordinary a thing it was that this stranger should be
+in their house.
+
+'Why is he here?' she cried. 'What are you going to do with him?'
+
+'We are going to make use of him in our story, my dear,' said Lee,
+mildly. 'We will not do him any harm, but we may keep him prisoner
+here for a little.'
+
+'How cruel! Besides, it would be a crime,' remonstrated his wife.
+
+Lee answered very calmly, but with a consuming fire in his eyes:
+
+'We'll not be cruel if we can possibly help it; and, as for its
+being criminal, surely no novel is complete without a crime. At
+the start of this new departure in the art of fiction we will be
+much hampered in its exercise by scruples and fears of this kind.
+Some of us may even require to be martyrs. For example: should it
+be necessary in the course of the story to commit a forgery or a
+murder, it is not to be expected that the world will allow the
+crime to pass unpunished. But once the veracity and nobility, the
+magnanimity and self-sacrifice, which shall characterise this art
+and the professors of it, have raised the tone of the world, we
+shall be granted, I doubt not, the most cordial permission to
+execute atrocities, which, committed selfishly, would brand the
+criminal as an unnatural monster, but which, performed for art's
+sake, will redound everlastingly to the credit of the artist.'
+
+Mrs. Lee looked helplessly at her brother, who whispered to her,
+'Leave him to me. I'll make it all right.'
+
+The two men then returned to the parlour, leaving Caroline to wait
+on Chartres.
+
+Briscoe having cooled down, began to examine the possibilities of
+good and evil which might spring to himself from his dealing with
+Chartres. Entered on impulsively as little more than a practical
+joke; achieved so far with an apparent absolute success--a success
+which he now felt to be the most remarkable thing about it--this
+adventure, as he now viewed it, opened up a field for his
+enterprise which might produce wheat or tares according to his
+husbandry. He lit a pipe, stretched himself on the sofa, and,
+closing his eyes, concentrated his thoughts on the remarkable
+incident which he had brought about.
+
+Lee, whose presence Briscoe had ignored, began to pace the room
+the moment his brother-in-law's eyes were shut. The stealthy,
+cat-like glance which he threw at Briscoe expanded to a blaze of
+triumph as, in one of his turns across the floor, he seized both
+portmanteaus, and, without accelerating his pace, walked into the
+unoccupied bedroom, the door of which he locked as softly as he
+could. Being relieved by Lee's withdrawal, Briscoe gave himself a
+shake on the sofa, and proceeded with his cogitation.
+
+In the meantime Chartres had revived again. He was unable to use
+his tongue, but signed by opening his mouth that he wished to eat
+and drink. He nibbled a little toast and drank some water. He then
+surveyed the room and his nurse with close attention, and twice
+attempted to speak; but, failing to produce any other sound than a
+sigh, he turned his face to the wall and fell asleep.
+
+Caroline went at once to the parlour, where, of course, she found
+her brother alone.
+
+'Peter,' she said, 'what do you wish to do with this poor man?'
+
+Briscoe uttered an exclamation of irritation and sat up to reply.
+
+'What should we do with him?' he snarled crustily. 'Nothing, I
+suppose. Send him---- Where the devil are the portmanteaus?'
+
+'And where's Maxwell?'
+
+Briscoe was in the lobby immediately.
+
+'Here's his hat!' he cried. 'He's not gone off.'
+
+Before he had time to try the door of the room into which Lee had
+shut himself it opened, and that gentleman came forth. He was
+scented, gloved, and dressed in a black broadcloth suit, which had
+evidently never been worn before. He smiled to his brother-in-law,
+kissed his wife, and stepped jauntily into the parlour. They
+followed, amazed and silent.
+
+'I am Henry Chartres,' he said, drawing a handful of bank-notes
+from a bulky purse and offering them to Caroline. Briscoe snatched
+them eagerly, and stowed them in his breast-pocket. At that moment
+the doorbell rang with a violent peal that paralysed the three. A
+visit at any moment was an unusual thing in their household; but
+Caroline, as she went to open the door, experienced a greater
+perturbation than she knew how to account for; and her feeling of
+dread was not lessened when the cabman, who had helped her brother
+to carry Chartres upstairs, and two policemen entered without
+ceremony. They walked past her into the parlour.
+
+'Well, constable,' said Lee, addressing the foremost of the two
+officers, 'what's the matter?'
+
+The constable turned to the cabman, and the cabman looked
+bewildered. When in the house before he had noticed the striking
+similarity between Lee and Chartres, and also the great apparent
+disparity between the social condition of his fare and that of the
+latter's professed relation. On returning to his stand, he
+communicated his doubts to the policemen who had been present at
+the accident. These two sapient Highlanders, after considerable
+discussion, concluded to call at the house to which the cabman had
+driven, and, if they found nothing suspicious, excuse their visit
+in any way suggested. The imaginations of the three had behaved in
+a felonious manner on the road. Peyton Street had certainly not
+the cleanest of reputations; and the cabman had got the length of
+arresting Briscoe's hand in the act of chopping up Chartres' left
+leg--being the last entire member of his body--when he met the man
+himself, as he supposed, smiling and as fresh as a daisy.
+
+'We came to see how you were, sir,' said one of the policemen at
+last.
+
+'Oh, I'm all right now,' said Lee, putting his hand in his pocket.
+'I believe you assisted me when I fell. I'll see you downstairs,'
+with a nod which the constables understood as it was meant. 'I
+want you,' he said to the cabman, 'to drive me to St. Enoch
+Station. You'll get my portmanteaus here,' leading him to the
+bedroom in which he had changed his dress and name.
+
+'Good-bye, Carry. Good-bye, Peter,' and before his wife and
+brother-in-law had recovered from their surprise, he was rattling
+away to the station.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE SUITOR AND THE SUED
+
+
+Miss Jane Chartres was a most emphatic talker, because she
+believed everything she said. Not that she always knew beforehand
+that what she might be going to say was true; but as soon as she
+found herself saying anything she believed it firmly from the
+moment of its announcement. If free-thinking people ever ventured
+to express a doubt that she might have been misinformed, she gave
+them her authorities. As the number of witnesses to Miss Jane's
+word was much too great to admit of their being named separately,
+she quoted them in the lump, and would silence at once the loudest
+infidel with a superemphatic, 'Everybody says so,' or 'Everybody
+does it.'
+
+Miss Jane, being so well acquainted with the sayings and doings of
+everybody, had been forced to the belief, without knowing French,
+and with the inconsistency of genius, that everybody was a fool.
+She did not publish this dogma from the house-tops, but she did
+most sincerely believe it. About the time that she saw her way
+clearly to believe in the foolishness of everybody, another faith
+began to dawn upon her--a faith that she was the only individual
+in the world who was not a fool. It should hardly be called a
+faith either: for it never assumed the brightness and consistency
+of belief, but remained in an uncertain, nebulous condition,
+perhaps because she never really set herself to examine into the
+truth of the matter, allowing a sort of flickering halo of
+infallibility to play about the picture of herself which she
+beheld in her own mind.
+
+Although she believed that it behoved everybody else, male and
+female, being fools, to marry, she had come to the conclusion that
+it behoved her, being in a measure a wise woman, to remain single.
+This opinion, like all her other opinions--her constant opinions,
+that is--had been of gradual growth. It was generally supposed
+that it had fairly taken root about her thirtieth year, when a
+certain lawyer, who had been a great friend presumably of her
+brother, discontinued his visits to Snell House, and took to wife
+the wealthy widow of a game-dealer. It was understood that time
+had made four prior attempts with the help of a mill-owner, a
+wealthy farmer, a minister, and a retired colonel, to dibble this
+opinion with regard to herself and marriage into the soil of Miss
+Jane's mind. On the marriage of the lawyer with the game-dealer's
+widow, time made a furious stab with his persevering instrument,
+and the hardy opinion took a strong hold, and grew, and
+flourished, and put forth a flower. The opinion was that she ought
+not to marry; the flower, that she was made for a higher end than
+to be the wife of any man. The fragrance of this flower was
+grateful to her. However, she never forgot that it was only the
+blossom of an opinion, liable to be uprooted, and not the
+sculptured ornament of an impossible-to-be-disestablished faith.
+
+At the time when our story begins--the middle of July, 1880--Miss
+Jane had been absolute mistress of Snell House for three months,
+her brother William, a bachelor, with whom she had lived for a
+number of years, having died suddenly in the spring. A stroke of
+apoplexy had overtaken him while walking alone, as his habit was,
+on the shore road. His brother, Henry Chartres, was in India at
+the time, having gone out when a young man to push his fortune.
+Within five years he had secured by his own energy, and with some
+monetary help from his brother, a partnership in a lucrative
+business. He then married a lady of some means, who brought him
+only one child, a daughter, called Muriel, after her mother. As is
+the custom, the girl was brought to the home-country to be
+educated, her father taking a six months' holiday for the purpose
+of seeing her safely installed in his brother's house, where she
+was to remain for some time, in order to become acclimatised,
+before going to her first boarding-school, and also that she might
+not feel so sorely her separation from her father and mother, as
+she would have done had she gone at once among strangers. Shortly
+after the return of Henry Chartres to India his wife died. He at
+once determined to give up business and return to Scotland, where
+the society of his daughter and relatives would console him for
+the loss of his wife. But a crisis in the affairs of the Calcutta
+house of which he was a principal kept him in India. His foresight
+and resource were absolutely necessary for the weathering of the
+storm; and he found the relief, which he had been about to seek in
+Scotland, in an unreserved devotion to business. When he had
+re-established the credit of his firm more securely than ever, it
+became apparent that, were he to retire, the consequences might be
+disastrous for his partners, as his name had come to be synonymous
+with stability. It was, therefore, not until ten years after the
+death of his wife that he felt himself at liberty to give up
+business. The news of his brother's death arrived just as he had
+begun to arrange his affairs. In reply to a telegram from his
+sister, he bade her expect him in July; and announced in his first
+letter that he would manage to reach Scotland about the middle of
+the month.
+
+The lands of Snell consist of a bit of moor and a park. They had
+been bought in the beginning of last century by the first notable
+member of the west country Chartreses, a branch of an old
+Perthshire family. Miss Jane Chartres refused altogether to admit
+that she knew anything of the derivation of her ancestor's wealth;
+and we, therefore, think it needless to refer further to the
+subject. The wall which bounded Snell Park on the north stood
+about fifty yards from the edge of a moderately high cliff
+overlooking the Firth of Clyde. The top of this wall was four feet
+from the ground within the park, and a little over six feet above
+the road without. The road was private, and scarcely better than a
+foot-path.
+
+For three months, then, Miss Jane Chartres, whose character has
+been indicated above, whose age is left to the reader's charity,
+had exercised despotic power over Snell House, moor, park, and
+north wall. But liberties had been taken with that wall, and with
+an old tree that grew against it. The reader shall hear the
+history of these dreadful doings from Miss Jane's own lips. She
+was there, beside the tree, on the afternoon of July 15; and, with
+her, her friend Mr. Alec Dempster, a very wealthy youth of thirty,
+with no past--the brother of Emily Dempster, Miss Jane's one bosom
+friend, whose place in her affections, vacant by death, he
+supplied in a sort of interim capacity as well as a man with no
+past, and no possibility of ever having one, could be expected to
+do.
+
+'Well, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane, 'aren't you dying with
+wonder to know why I've brought you here?'
+
+'Dying?' said Mr. Dempster, whose voice was a reminiscence of some
+mechanical sound, one couldn't exactly say which; 'dying is such a
+strong expression that it almost--eh--ah--expresses the degree of
+my wonder.'
+
+Mr. Dempster moved his head spirally, slowly and regularly from
+the top to the bottom of something, as he spoke. That was the
+great peculiarity of Mr. Dempster: he was like something.
+Everything about him, from his boots to his manners, bore
+indefinable resemblances to other things; but the moment a simile
+seemed securely anchored in some characteristic of his appearance
+or conduct the characteristic would undulate into something so
+incongruous with the simile that the latter was like a pair of
+spectacles on a lynx. One thing only he insisted on reproducing
+with some degree of regularity of form: the spiral wriggle of his
+head--extending occasionally into his body--which always
+accompanied the effort to speak, and sometimes occurred alone.
+
+'Read that,' said Miss Jane, handing Mr. Dempster a letter.
+
+Mr. Dempster, mildly astonished and looking like something very
+foolish, did as he was directed.
+
+'MY DARLING FRANK,--Meet me to-morrow at five, at the low wall.
+It's half-past ten, and I am very sleepy. I've been reading
+history to aunt since eight. I am beginning to dream already,
+before I am asleep. It's a happy dream--about you! It will become
+bright and plain when I get to sleep. Good-night,
+sweetheart.--Your own       MURIEL.'
+
+'What do you think of that?' snapped Miss Jane; and Mr. Dempster
+looked in all directions hurriedly, as if a whip had been cracked
+about his ears.
+
+'It's--it's very frank,' he said.
+
+'Very,' went on Miss Jane. 'Look at that.'
+
+She pointed to the bole of the huge elm beneath whose boughs they
+were standing, indicating a little space denuded of the ivy which
+covered the rest of the trunk, and extended along the four great
+arms, and up among the smaller branches of the tree.
+
+Mr. Dempster bored his nose into the uncovered bark, studied it
+from several points of view, bending and curvetting and bridling
+with as much ado as if he had been an antiquary in presence of a
+newly-discovered inscription.
+
+'"M C, F H,"' he said at length; 'inside a heart--very pretty
+and--ah--suggestive; but--commonplace.'
+
+Mr. Dempster's pauses, however arbitrary, were impressive.
+
+'Do you know whose these initials are?' Miss Jane asked.
+
+'I haven't the remotest idea.'
+
+'"M C," Muriel Chartres; "F H," Frank Hay.'
+
+'Ah!'
+
+Dempster leant against an arm of the tree and regarded Miss Jane
+blankly. He had arrived from Edinburgh that day at her summons, to
+meet Mr. Chartres, who was expected in the afternoon, and to
+prosecute his suit for the hand of Muriel. This was a dash of cold
+water right in his face. He hadn't a word to say, and scarcely any
+breath to say one.
+
+'You know Mr. Hay,' Miss Jane said. 'You remember, William used to
+patronise him.'
+
+'The foundling! Why, the fellow hasn't a penny!' exclaimed
+Dempster.
+
+'Ah, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane more sweetly than her wont,
+'presumption is poverty's next door neighbour, wealth and modesty
+often go hand in hand.'
+
+Dempster at once applied this aphoristic compliment to himself, as
+he was intended to do; but he horrified Miss Jane by bowing
+emphatically in acknowledgment, and he outraged her further by
+endeavouring to pay her back in kind:
+
+'A thorough acquaintance with the world generally accompanies the
+single life.'
+
+That was his period, and he imagined he had acquitted himself
+fairly well. But dissatisfaction lowered in Miss Jane's brow. He
+proceeded with stammering haste to mend matters:
+
+'Especially the single female--eh--ah----'
+
+An angry flush drew him up. Still, he went at it again headlong,
+smiling too, and in as suave a tone as he could command:
+
+'Wisdom is an old maid--I mean--Minerva was unmarried.'
+
+Everybody knows people like Mr. Dempster. We are accustomed to
+their shifting similitudes, their inability to express themselves,
+their pretensions, and their good nature. In fact, we do not
+regard them--we do not recognise that they are peculiar; and when
+we see one of them singled out and reproduced--on the stage, for
+example--however faithfully, we call it caricature. Miss Jane had
+a very narrow circle of acquaintances. The Chartreses, indeed,
+were all proud originals. For several generations they had mingled
+little in society, preferring to retain their angularities of
+character in all the ruggedness of nature, rather than submit to
+the painful process of grinding on the social wheel, by which
+jagged, dull-veined flints are smoothed and polished. Miss Jane
+could not tolerate ordinary people. Dempster was the only
+commonplace character in whom she had any interest. His visits to
+Snell House had been hitherto few and short, and she had never got
+accustomed to his genial stupidity. Ineptitude with Miss Jane was
+an almost unpardonable offence. She remembered, however, in the
+confusion to which he had reduced her, much necessity in the past
+for self-denial and longsuffering on his account, and, having a
+real regard for him, she calmed her troubled soul, saying to
+herself, 'He means well.' And then aloud:
+
+'Now, Mr. Dempster, this is the low wall Muriel speaks of. This
+letter I found here.'
+
+She pushed aside some large ivy leaves in one of the forks of the
+elm, and deposited the letter in a deep, natural crevice--the
+bottom of which was quite invisible, although easily reached by
+the hand.
+
+'How did you know to search there?' asked Dempster.
+
+'Because I knew Muriel was in love.'
+
+'Did she tell you?'
+
+'No, no; this was the way of it.'
+
+Miss Jane was in her element. She leant against the bole of the
+tree and folded her arms across her belt.
+
+'I observed that she had acquired a habit of going about with her
+eyebrows absurdly elevated, with a languishing look in her eyes,
+and with her lips just touching each other; but evidently ready at
+a moment's notice to open and sigh, or to compress and kiss. I
+knew very well what these signs meant in a girl of her age. Just
+raise your eyebrows, Mr. Dempster.'
+
+Mr. Dempster raised his eyebrows.
+
+'No, no! not to the extent of expressing astonishment, but in this
+way. See.'
+
+Miss Jane suited the action to the word.
+
+'When you raise your eyebrows that way your eyes can't help a
+languishing expression. Then this is the way her mouth was.'
+
+Miss Jane made a _moue_.
+
+'If you don't care to do it before me, do it when you are alone,
+and you will find that raising your eyebrows and looking at
+nothing, and preparing the lips to open, will produce in you a
+relaxed, sentimental, self-pitying kind of feeling, which is
+pretty like what romantic girls feel when they are in love. Of
+course, in Muriel's case it was the feeling which produced the
+expression, and not the expression the feeling; but I know very
+well that an assumption of the expression can produce the feeling,
+and that it always conveys the idea of that feeling to those who
+see it. It's the same with all feelings.'
+
+The whole man Dempster had listened to this exposition, and burst
+out earnestly, 'Miss Chartres, your experience amazes me! Your
+observation is that of a keen--eh--ah--observer; and your
+discernment is truly marvellous!'
+
+He always tried to talk in newspaper paragraphs, but his efforts
+were seldom attended with the success they merited.
+
+Miss Jane shrugged her shoulders and continued: 'My suspicions
+were confirmed yesterday. I followed her here and secured this
+letter. I thought it right that you, as a suitor for Muriel's
+hand, favoured by me, and doubtless to be favoured by her father,
+should be informed of the matter.'
+
+'You overpower me with kindness,' blurted Dempster. 'And you'll
+stand by me, Miss Chartres? You'll be my go-between--I mean my
+bulwark, my bottle-holder?' He was full of imagery, but he
+qualified it, saying plaintively: 'I can't express myself lucidly
+and vividly, like you; but everybody knows I mean well.'
+
+'I think we understand each other, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane,
+looking at her watch. 'A quarter to five. We'd better go. Muriel
+will be here immediately. Of course I haven't told her that I have
+discovered this clandestine correspondence. I shall put the matter
+into her father's hands this very day, and leave him to deal with
+her.'
+
+Dempster assented to this as a wise proceeding. 'It would hardly
+do to watch the meeting here, I suppose--that is, if there is a
+meeting,' he said, as they left the wall.
+
+'To play the spy, Mr. Dempster! No, not that.'
+
+The ivy-clad elm in which Miss Jane had found Muriel's letter, and
+in which she now left it forgetfully, was believed by the
+school-boys to mark the burial-place of a Roman general. It
+certainly looked as if it might be fourteen hundred years old, or
+even as old as the Christian era. It was a worthy peer of the
+Mongewell, Chipstead, and Spratborough elms, by the hoary
+roughness of its bark, where that could be seen, by its portly
+waist, and wide-spread arms, drooping gracefully to the ground, by
+its magnificent cone of foliage, and its fathomless depth of
+green. How pleasant Muriel found it to stand under, to lean
+against, to delight her eyes with its shapeliness, and bathe her
+sight in its ocean of colour! And then, with all its old-world
+dignity, how tender it was! How safe in its arms she felt! She
+could think and dream there like Nature herself, conscious and
+glad that the elm knew all about it. When she forced her way among
+the drooping boughs up to the mighty bole, she was sure that the
+tree thrilled with happiness, and she heard it
+murmuring--murmuring under its spicy breath. No wonder she made it
+her trysting-tree!
+
+As soon as Miss Jane and Dempster returned to the house, Muriel,
+who had been lying on the lawn pretending to read a newspaper,
+arose, and, still apparently engrossed by the news, took a
+circuitous route to the elm. When she got beyond the range of
+prying eyes, the deceptive newspaper was folded, and, carrying it
+in one hand behind her, and in the other swinging by the strings
+her garden-hat, she sped along, fearful lest Frank should have to
+wait. Half over the wall she stretched herself, and looked up and
+down the road. She was first. She leant against the tree and gazed
+before her. She felt perfectly happy. He was sure to come; and
+that was the horizon--the end of the world. There was nothing
+beyond the little quarter of an hour that was dawning like a new
+era. She would hardly be so happy when he, the sun of it, came to
+kiss her.
+
+Now she looked out through the screen of leaves, softening the
+light upon their scabrous cheeks, and showering it like dew from
+their downy breasts, and saw, latticed by the wiry, corky branches
+and bright brown callow twigs, the violet Firth, smooth, velvety,
+the pasture of white gulls, whose cries come faintly up; glimpses
+of the opposite shore, with the sparkling houses of the summer
+towns; the lordly sweep of the entrance to Loch Long; the purple
+misty crowns of the Cobbler and Ben Donich; and the sky; and a
+shadow--
+
+'Frank!'
+
+'How glad I am to find you here!' he said. 'I was foolish enough
+to fear you mightn't come.'
+
+'Why did you doubt? I never missed meeting you yet.'
+
+'Then you expected me! I was sure at the bottom of my heart that
+you would be here.'
+
+'Did I expect you! What are you thinking of? There's something the
+matter. How could you possibly be afraid that I mightn't come
+after I had asked you to meet me?'
+
+'But you didn't ask me.'
+
+'Oh! Did you not get my message?'
+
+'No; and I visited our letter-box last night and this morning.'
+
+She tore her arm from his, and plunged her hand into the fork of
+the tree. A shock passed through her as she felt her letter. She
+knew in a moment it had been violated. The thought that another
+than he for whom it was intended had read it thrilled her with an
+exquisite pang. Her whole face and neck flushed crimson. She drew
+out the paper, crushed it small, and thrust it into her pocket.
+
+'The mean, shameful spy!' she hissed.
+
+Youth has no mercy in a case of this kind.
+
+'See,' she continued, panting, 'I put it here this morning at
+eight. It was gone at ten. Now it is here again. The traitor!'
+
+'Is it a man?' asked Frank.
+
+'No! It's----'
+
+She had grown pale, and she blushed again. She looked at him with
+flickering eyelids. The foolish fellow's pride in Muriel at that
+moment made him heartsick; the lump was in his throat, and, had he
+been unobserved, the moisture which stood in his eyes would have
+overflowed. Even in the first wild anger at betrayal she would not
+betray again. He placed his arm about her and she sobbed; one sob,
+and then one tear out of each eye; and with that she mastered
+herself.
+
+'Frank,' she said, as if the discovery had not been made, 'you
+know my father will be here to-day. He may have come while I've
+been talking to you. Will you speak to him to-night? I don't want
+to have a secret from him. Will you? You needn't be frightened. I
+haven't seen him since I was nine; but I know that he's like you,
+gentle and manly--just a gentleman. Make up your mind now--quick,
+quick, quick! And let me away, or I'll be late for dinner.'
+
+And so it was arranged that they should see each other at the
+low-walk again at eight that evening, lest there should be any
+reason why Frank might not speak at once to Mr. Chartres.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ON THE ROAD
+
+
+Lee secured a compartment for himself in the Greenock train. He
+had a large bundle of letters, taken from one of Chartres'
+portmanteaus, with him. These he studied with an intensity which
+he had never bestowed on anything before. He selected some dozen
+for perusal, and was still devouring them when the train arrived
+at Princes Pier.
+
+As he stepped on the platform he reeled and was only saved from
+falling by the porter who opened the door of the compartment in
+which he had travelled. This weakness was the result of the strain
+of the last two hours. He fortified himself with a glass of brandy
+and a sandwich, deposited the portmanteaus in the left-luggage
+office; and started to walk to Gourock.
+
+He was a tall man, with more than proportionate length of limb.
+Walking had always been his favourite exercise, and he looked
+along the Greenock esplanade from the summit of the approach to
+the station with a shining eye. All the world has admired it from
+the deck of the _Columba_; but to walk along it at a good spanking
+pace, feeling its costly breadth, its substantiality, its triumph
+over nature; to be conscious of the solid nineteenth-century
+comfort and luxury that line one side of it, ascending the hill to
+larger villas and more spacious grounds; and to be, as Lee became,
+before he was two minutes on the road, part and parcel of the
+sky-blue lake-like firth, whose water murmured, for the tide was
+full, with soft reproach against the curbing bastion; of the
+shining magical houses on the other side; of the green and golden
+shoreward slopes; of the depths and heights of the purple
+mountains that met the sky--to be drunk with the sunlight and the
+sea, with the merging, glowing, fading wealth of colour, and the
+far-reaching romance of the hills, is to enjoy to the full this
+west-country esplanade.
+
+When he arrived at the end of it, Lee, unable to endure the
+ordinary road, jumped on a car and took a seat on the top.
+
+He was now in a mood to dare anything, and continued his revel in
+the splendid July afternoon, for the brain-sick man was a poet.
+
+Through Gourock and Ashton the car rattled, but, wrapped in his
+own dream, he saw nothing of them.
+
+From the terminus he walked confidently along the shore road. He
+felt that he would know Snell House the moment he beheld it. Then
+there would be no difficulty. Chartres could not be expected to
+remember any of the domestics; besides, in ten years it was more
+than likely that they had all been changed twice over. His sister
+and daughter--he could not possibly mistake them. He would be shy
+a little, undemonstrative, uncommunicative, and plead his long
+journey--for Chartres had travelled from London on the preceding
+night--as an excuse for retiring early. Then----
+
+A sudden slap on the shoulder interrupted his reverie, and,
+wheeling round, he confronted Briscoe, on whose face a bitter
+sneer was varnished over with a grin at the surprise and annoyance
+his appearance caused his brother-in-law.
+
+'This way,' said Briscoe; and Lee followed him in silence.
+
+They found a seat, one of a number placed along the shore between
+the Cloch and Ashton. There was a considerable slope from the road
+to the water's edge; and they were securely concealed from the
+eyes of pedestrians by the trees and bushes that line stretches of
+the sea-board.
+
+It never entered Lee's head to ask Briscoe how he came to be
+there. Had he done so, Briscoe would have told him--that is, if he
+had thought the truth expedient--how Caroline and he, after Lee's
+sudden and daring departure from Peyton Street, judged it the best
+course to intercept him at the St. Enoch station; but how he,
+Briscoe, having already in his breast-pocket some of the
+advantages arising from Lee's deception, determined, if possible,
+to add to them, and so journeyed to Greenock in the same train
+with his brother-in-law; and, pushing on before him, waited for
+him at a quiet part of the road, where they might discuss the
+situation without much fear of interruption or observation. He had
+not the remotest intention of aiding Lee, whom he despised, to
+pursue his deception to a successful issue. On the contrary, he
+intended to line his own pockets as thickly as he could, and get
+off to London that night or the following morning. There was one
+risk: Chartres might recover sufficiently to come down to Snell
+House before he had gone. This risk he determined to run.
+
+'I wish,' said Lee, recovering speedily from his surprise, 'you
+had not come down yet. I have been thinking of you and Caroline,
+and don't exactly see what to do with you.'
+
+His infatuation was such that he had no doubt Briscoe intended to
+collaborate with him.
+
+'I might marry you,' he continued, 'to my daughter Muriel; or, as
+she is perhaps too young, to my mature sister, Jane. But what to
+do with Caroline? You see, I didn't marry again in India. The only
+course I can conceive at present, will be to make her acquaintance
+as it were for the first time, and marry her over again. But
+there's no hurry; and, I think, on the whole, you had better
+return to Glasgow until I prepare matters for you down here.'
+
+'Mr. Chartres,' said Briscoe, 'am I to collaborate with you, or am
+I not?'
+
+Lee flushed with pleasure, and answered, 'Most certainly, my dear
+Peter!'
+
+'Then I must have some share in devising the plot.'
+
+'Assuredly! I beg your pardon. I was forgetting your rights.
+Really, I have been selfish in the solitary enjoyment of the
+creation of this novel, which you began with such originality and
+power.'
+
+Briscoe rather winced at this. However, he was glad to find Lee so
+tractable.
+
+'Mr. Chartres,' he said, 'I am your friend, Mr. Peter Briscoe. I
+came from India with you. I'm a rough diamond; don't care how I
+dress--accounts for my rather worn toggery; see? Saved you from
+drowning when you fell overboard in the Bay of Biscay. You,
+eternally grateful; I, no friends in this country--across for a
+visit merely--came right north with you, agreeing to do so at the
+last moment, so that you had no time to advise them at Snell
+House.'
+
+Lee gazed at his brother-in-law with admiration.
+
+'Briscoe, my dear fellow,' he cried, 'you're a trump! You--you
+saved my life.'
+
+'Then we'll take the road again,' said Briscoe. 'The house is
+round the corner; I inquired shortly before you came up.'
+
+'Briscoe,' said Lee, 'for the first work of a newlyborn art, we
+are----'
+
+'Beating the record.'
+
+'Exactly, my rough and ready friend.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A HEAVY FATHER
+
+
+'Now, Jane, let me understand this about Muriel. You say she is at
+present engaged in a grand love affair with some young hopeful or
+other.'
+
+'Yes, Henry. Frank Hay is a very good-looking, clever,
+well-behaved young man. He has taken one of the big bursaries in
+Glasgow University, and looks forward to a professorship
+somewhere. These prospects are rather mediocre, especially in
+connection with a Chartres; but neither William nor I would have
+said a word against him were he not a foundling.'
+
+'A foundling! How very interesting! An actual foundling.'
+
+'O, there's nothing unusual about his case. I forget the exact
+details, but they differ in no essential from what we are
+accustomed to in stories.'
+
+'That's rather unfortunate. I should have liked everything
+connected with these events to have the same characteristic as the
+main circumstance, distinct novelty.'
+
+'What do you mean, Henry? Muriel is right in thinking you
+curiously changed.'
+
+'Does she think so? Well; I should have stuck by my original
+determination, and gone to bed; but I felt so invigorated after
+dinner, that I thought we might as well have a talk over matters
+this evening.'
+
+'Yes,' said Miss Jane, dryly, prodding Lee all over with her
+piercing eyes.
+
+'Do you think,' she queried, 'we did right in forbidding Muriel to
+have any communication with Mr. Hay?'
+
+'Well, my dear sister, you must see that the question of right
+hardly enters here. It is purely a matter of adapting means to an
+end. Should the course you have followed, as in the case of a pair
+of high-spirited lovers, be calculated to lead to strained
+relations, and produce, say, an elopement, I should be inclined to
+support you; as, although shorn of much of its romance in these
+days of railways and telegraphs, there is always a measure of
+excitement to be got out of a runaway match.'
+
+Miss Jane meditated for several seconds; and hopefully came to the
+conclusion that her brother had developed a satirical tendency,
+which he gratified in this recondite fashion. She made no reply.
+Lee resumed.
+
+'I think you had better send Muriel to me. I would like to have a
+talk with her alone.'
+
+'Very well,' said Miss Jane curtly, and left the room.
+
+It was the library in which Lee sat. He had arrived with Briscoe
+about six o'clock, just as the Snell household were sitting down
+to dinner. Four was the usual dinner hour, but it had been put off
+till five and then till six--to the anger and horror of the
+cook--in the hope that Mr. Chartres would be there to preside.
+Both Lee and Briscoe imagined that the dinner had gone off to
+admiration. The latter, taking advantage of his rollicking
+character, was now roving about the rooms, helping himself to many
+little valuables. After securing all the money Lee was possessed
+of, which he might manage to do that evening, he saw a fair chance
+of getting away with his booty, out of immediate danger, and
+before the arrival of Chartres, whom he half-expected to find in
+every room he entered. He knew that Caroline would not wait for
+his return if her charge recovered sufficiently to travel, but
+would start with him at once; and while she might be able to make
+terms for her crazy husband, some stout menservants and a
+duck-pond suggested anything but a pleasant ending to his own
+share in the adventure. After Miss Jane had left the library, Lee,
+with a most placid expression, walked across the room once or
+twice, and sat down to wait for Muriel. In a second or two the
+door opened, and Mr. Dempster appeared. This gentleman had been
+left to himself since dinner, and was searching for Miss Jane.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' he said, looking the very picture of a
+square man in a round hole. 'I thought Miss Chartres was here.'
+
+'Come in, come in, Mr. Dempster,' said Lee, blandly. 'Is it my
+daughter or my sister you wish to see?'
+
+'Your sister, sir.'
+
+'I expect them both here in a few minutes. Take a seat.'
+
+Dempster gathered his coat-tails on either side with as much
+tenderness and delicacy as if they had been growing out of him and
+were recovering from rheumatism, and sat down on the very edge of
+a chair, crowding himself together as if he had consisted of
+several people.
+
+'I hope I don't intrude,' said Dempster, with the spiral motion of
+his head. He was always more uncomfortable and serpentine than
+usual in the presence of strangers.
+
+'Not at all.'
+
+Lee said to himself, 'This is a millionaire; and I am an
+adventurer--Fortune is a mistress of irony.'
+
+A smile peculiar to him, and childish in its unconcealed
+expression of pleasure, passed over his face. Then he said
+brusquely, but with perfect good humour, 'Do you think much, Mr.
+Dempster?'
+
+'Think!' exclaimed Mr. Dempster, throwing his head back in a
+convolution which a burlesque actor would have paid highly to
+learn the trick of.
+
+'Yes, think,' repeated Lee, with his happy, innocent smile.
+
+'I--I can't say I do,' said Dempster, perspiring profusely.
+'I--I,' he continued making a wholly ineffectual effort to
+laugh--'I--eh--ah--haven't given the subject much attention.
+But----'
+
+'Exactly, Mr. Dempster, I understand. I have often thought by the
+way, that you unlucky fellows who inherit your money, can't enjoy
+it so well as we who have wrought for it.'
+
+Now, if there was one thing Dempster objected to more than
+another, it was to be hurried about from subject to subject. He
+had just got his mind focussed to the consideration of Lee's first
+question, when a new distance intervened, and--he saw men as trees
+walking. But he must make some reply.
+
+'No--no,' he said. 'We can't. I--I think we can't. Eh--ah----'
+
+'Eh--ah,' the favourite expletive of the orator, was frequently
+employed by Dempster with a solemn pathos inexpressibly touching.
+Lee almost relented at the overpowering sadness of its utterance
+on this occasion: but the baiting of a millionaire was as novel as
+any of his present manifold pleasures, and he continued it.
+
+'I suppose now,' he said, 'you would like to work hard at
+something or other. Most idle men would.'
+
+Dempster rubbed his knees with vehemence, anxious, doubtless, to
+get himself into an electric condition which would enable him to
+overcome the insane disposition he felt to fall forward at Lee's
+feet. He succeeded in producing so much of the positive fluid as
+to fall back instead of forward; but all he could manage to say
+was, 'I suppose I would.'
+
+'I have often wondered,' said Lee, whose smile was beginning to be
+warped by malice, 'why rich men don't commit burglaries and
+homicides in order to obtain terms of hard labour. It would be
+such an absolute change for them; _ennui_ would hide its head.'
+
+It is impossible to say what ultimate effect this remarkable
+suggestion would have had upon Dempster, for the paralysis which
+it caused to begin with was suddenly cured by a tap--a shrinking,
+single tap on the door, preceding the entrance of Muriel. Dempster
+took the opportunity of escaping in a thoroughly graceless manner.
+When the door had closed again, Lee said to Muriel, who remained
+standing, 'Do you not find me exactly what you expected?'
+
+She looked hard at him. It was on her lips to tell him that she
+thought him very unlike his letters; but she merely said, 'You are
+not like your photographs.'
+
+'No; they were generally thought good in India.'
+
+'O, anyone could tell for whom they were meant.'
+
+'Of course. My appearance has changed since I last sat to a
+photographer. Sit down, Muriel; I wish to have some serious
+conversation with you.'
+
+Muriel sat down on a couch. Her eyes were twinkling, and the blood
+danced into her cheeks.
+
+'I have learned from your aunt,' said Lee, who was just a little
+too portentously grave, 'that there exists a romantic attachment
+between a certain Mr. Frank Hay and you. I understand you are
+firmly persuaded that you and this gentleman love each other with
+an unchangeable love. I will grant that Mr. Hay is a handsome,
+high-spirited young man. I do not remember to have seen him; but I
+give my daughter credit for not falling in love with a booby. I
+admit that first love is the most ecstatically delightful thing in
+the world. I say, I subscribe to all that and as much more as you
+like in the same strain; but--' and here he became very severe--'I
+have to inform you that from this day you must cease to see, or
+correspond with Mr. Frank Hay.'
+
+'O father!'
+
+Lee, enjoying his power, and as much a spectator of the scene as
+an actor in it, continued coldly, 'It will be hard I know; but
+your friends have acted very wisely in coming between you. Girls
+should never be allowed to choose husbands, and never are in
+well-regulated families. You may think me plain-spoken and harsh,
+perhaps; but I have a habit of coming to the point; and, notice,
+of never returning to it. The matter is settled.'
+
+'But, sir----'
+
+'What! have I not said it is settled? I do not mean, however, to
+do you out of a husband.'
+
+Muriel shivered, and her face became white.
+
+'My friend, Mr. Briscoe, who saved my life is still a young man;
+and I intend to have him for a son-in-law.'
+
+Lee's eyes dilated with exultation. His novel was going to turn
+out a masterpiece.
+
+'Marry Mr. Briscoe!'
+
+'It rests with him,' said Lee.
+
+'What! Your daughter must marry this Mr. Briscoe if he wants her,
+whether she likes or not?'
+
+'I am glad,' said Lee in a truly regal style, 'that you apprehend
+the matter so clearly.'
+
+'I am bewildered,' said Muriel.
+
+'You seem to be; but it is wise of you not to object. I hope to
+find you always a dutiful daughter.'
+
+Lee left the room. A time-piece on the mantelshelf rang eight. The
+blood returned to Muriel's cheeks, and she ran out of the house to
+the north wall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ART OF PROPOSING
+
+
+When Dempster left the library on the entrance of Muriel, he met
+Miss Jane at the door of that room. She proposed a turn in the
+park as the evening was doing honour to the glorious day. They
+went out together and wandered to Muriel's elm. Dempster's suit
+was the subject they discussed. She urged him to make a proposal
+that night, and promised to procure him an opportunity. Dempster
+was willing, but in great straits how to proceed.
+
+'You see,' he said, 'I never did a thing of the kind before. Then
+you know Muriel is not aware that I'm in love with her. If she
+knew that, then I could go at it like a--professor.'
+
+It is to be feared he intended to say 'nigger,' and only
+substituted the more refined but equally enigmatic word by an
+exhaustive effort of brain power, whose external manifestation was
+the usual wriggle.
+
+Miss Jane said, 'Well it _is_ very difficult to know what to do in
+making an offer of marriage. I have had six proposals--that is,
+formal proposals--all of which I refused peremptorily, as I think
+that I was made for a higher end than to be the wife of any
+man--and they were all done differently; but, on the whole, I
+prefer the colonel's method; and I think in proposing to Muriel
+you had better follow it.'
+
+'Oh, thank you! Tell me exactly what he did, and I'll practise it
+just now.'
+
+In his excitement Dempster's body, lithe and lissom as that of the
+most poetical maiden, partook in the motion of his head. Miss
+Jane, who had often been on the point of speaking to him about
+this absurd habit, burst out, 'Don't wriggle that way, as if you
+were impaled!'
+
+Dempster shrivelled up, and hung flaccid on his spinal column,
+like a hooked worm that has been long in the water.
+
+'I assure you,' continued Miss Jane, less harshly, 'if you are
+ever to take a place in the world you must overcome that.'
+
+'Must I! I'm very glad you've told me. It's my natural form.'
+
+'Conquer it, conquer it. Remember Demosthenes, Mr. Dempster.'
+
+'I will, I will,' he cried, almost breaking his back, and causing
+a hot shooting pain in his head, as he nipped a sprouting
+corkscrew in the bud--a metaphor worthy of himself. Then he made a
+sudden plunge into a sea of words, where he had to keep
+perpetually rapping on the head an electric eel that tried with
+unremitting fervour to run, or rather wriggle, the gauntlet of his
+body and escape by his skull through the suture.
+
+'Miss Chartres,' he said, 'I wish you would help me. I have been
+wanting to get married for six years now, and I can't. I won't be
+caught. They try it, the mothers. They dangle their daughters
+before me like--like Mayflies. But I won't bite. I'd sooner
+starve, Miss Chartres, starve. Die in a ditch--celibacy, you know.
+I'll never marry one of these artificial flies. They may be good
+enough; but it's their mothers--O, their mothers! Why, I've read
+about them in novels. And then, when I do fall in love with a
+nice--with a sweet--a natural--eh--ah--a natural fly--you
+understand--I--I can't bite--haven't the courage--don't know how.
+I've been in love before several times--though I never loved
+anybody before like Muriel--and I couldn't possibly manage to--to
+bite. But you'll teach me now, my dear Miss Chartres.'
+
+He emerged, dripping, and the long-repressed eel shot out at the
+crown of his head in a rapid spasm, leaving him a mere husk
+propped against the elm.
+
+Miss Jane, who had made up her mind that he should marry Muriel,
+put his sincerity against his _gaucherie_, and determined to drill
+him into some better form; for she judged that if the excitement
+of talking about a proposal produced effects of the kind she had
+witnessed, that of making one would simply stultify its object.
+
+'I'll help you,' she said. 'Stand there.'
+
+She seated herself on a protruding root of the elm, and pointed to
+a sort of alcove in one of the large boughs. Dempster squeezed
+himself under the branches, and stood, or rather stooped, at
+attention.
+
+'Now, obey my instructions. Imagine this to be a drawing-room.
+Come forward on tip-toe, and say very significantly, and in fact
+intensely, "Good evening. Miss Chartres," and don't wriggle.'
+
+Dempster, clothed with resolution as with a strait-jacket,
+advanced, and whispered between his set teeth, 'Good evening, Miss
+Chartres.'
+
+'Good evening, Mr. Dempster; be seated.'
+
+He looked about for as comfortable a knot as possible, but Miss
+Jane cried, 'No, no! you must refuse respectfully. The gallant
+colonel did. He said something like this:--"Miss Chartres, I will
+never sit in your presence until I have got an answer to a
+question which my whole being is burning to ask." When you have
+said that, go down on one knee and take my hand.'
+
+Dempster was beginning to feel at home. Miss Jane was so
+sympathetic, and smiled so benignly. In the heat of the moment,
+and to prove himself an apt scholar, he thought he would reproduce
+his lesson with variations. So he got down on his knees at the
+off-set, and began, 'My adored Miss Chartres, never again in your
+enchanting presence----'
+
+'O!' went off among the branches like a sharp tap on a muffled
+drum.
+
+Miss Jane looked up in time to catch a glimpse of Muriel's head.
+Dempster's strait-jacket snapped, and the released mechanism
+hoisted him to his feet, spinning and glaring round in a vortex of
+coat-tails.
+
+Miss Jane, also on her feet, said calmly, 'That was Muriel.
+There's no harm done. I must just tell her the exact state of the
+case. It's always best to tell the truth. If she has any heart at
+all it will be touched at the thought of your rehearsing your
+proposal. I'll go after her, and explain, and send her to you.
+That's the very thing.'
+
+Now Miss Jane was a very shrewd woman. Her mind had been
+ingenuously fixed on a marriage between her niece and her
+_protege_, up to the moment of the appearance of Muriel's head
+among the branches. There and then a sense of the incongruity of
+such a union had struck her with most convincing power. Several
+forces converged in this blow. One can be mentioned unreservedly,
+viz., the sudden intuitive recognition of the fact that Muriel
+would never consent to marry Dempster. Another, equally powerful,
+must only be hinted:--the lady at that moment had once more,
+however strangely, a gentleman at her feet. These are the keys to
+her future conduct.
+
+She was about to go after Muriel, but Dempster clutched her dress.
+
+'I can't,' he whimpered.
+
+'Nonsense. You'll be astonished at your own courage.'
+
+'But the proposal. How am I to say it?'
+
+'Keep a good heart, and remember my instructions. I've told you
+how to begin. The rest you must do for yourself. Muriel will he
+here shortly.'
+
+Dempster resigned himself: and in a few seconds fear wound him up
+to a pitch of nervous excitement, abnormal even with him.
+
+'I'll rehearse again,' he said aloud, withdrawing to the alcove.
+He got into the strait-jacket once more, and advanced on tip-toe
+to an imaginary lady. But the charge did not give him
+satisfaction. He retreated and stepped out a second time. He was
+too absorbed in his manoeuvres to remember that however perfect he
+might become, this mode would be out of the question in the
+impending interview.
+
+'Good evening,' he said impressively to the mossy root, and got
+down on his knees.
+
+'Miss Chartres'--and persuasion tipped his tongue--'I am burning
+to know----'
+
+A silvery ripple glided through the air behind him. 'I beg'
+pardon, Mr. Dempster. I was not aware you were so pious a man,'
+said Muriel.
+
+A jack-in-the-box when the spring is touched shoots up not more
+suddenly than Dempster did. Abashed, he could only stammer,
+'Eh--ah--I mean well.'
+
+'I do indeed believe you,' said Muriel in a kindly tone. 'My aunt
+has told me that you were about to honour me with an offer of
+marriage. I thank you, sir; but I beg you not to put me to the
+necessity--the very disagreeable necessity--of refusing you.'
+
+Half-an-hour before she could not have taken such a plain-spoken
+initiative; but the interview with Lee had roused her soul to
+arms.
+
+Dempster, on the contrary, dimly conscious of his own absurdity
+and afraid to trust his nature, stood forth against her in his
+strait-waistcoat of formality. He could hardly believe his ears,
+accustomed to the lie that no girl could possibly refuse a
+millionaire, a false tenet which he had donned with his first pair
+of trousers.
+
+'Why should you refuse me? I--I am very rich, and I love you.'
+This was still pronounced in his best society tone.
+
+'I am very sorry for you,' said Muriel frigidly. 'If you persist
+you will only annoy us both.'
+
+His fear suddenly left him. He felt an underhand attack upon his
+wealth, which was _him_--his personality. He threw off the
+strait-waistcoat. He turned up the sleeves of his riches, and, in
+a raucous tone like that of an aggrieved school bully who wants an
+excuse to pommel a small boy, said 'Why do you refuse me? Give me
+a reason.'
+
+'A reason!'
+
+'Yes. Is there anything extraordinary in asking for a reason? I
+can't be put off in this way, you know. Do you love another?'
+
+'I am very sorry for you; but you are becoming impertinent.'
+
+'But what am I to do if you won't marry me? All my friends know
+what I've come here for. It's absurd.'
+
+'You had better desist.'
+
+It is charitable to suppose that Dempster was utterly unaware of
+what he was doing. Anger nearly suffocated him. He twisted and
+squirmed at every word, writhing with the anticipation of mockery.
+
+'It's shameful,' he cried. 'Here have I been loving you like--like
+lava; and to be thrown overboard, ignominiously--yes,
+ignominiously'--he fancied he heard the word resounding in
+smoking-rooms--'for a poor nobody.'
+
+Muriel started and glared at him. But he was 'fey,' and went on.
+
+'You may well look! A foundling--a charity-boy! You love this
+sup--superfluous and probably illegitimate pauper, who----'
+
+'O, you unmanly fool!'
+
+'I say!' and he fell against the tree smitten by Muriel's thunder
+and lightning. The storm pealed on.
+
+'I have read of men who spoke such cowardice, but I never thought
+to know one. How dare you talk of love? O the shame! Every wealthy
+fool can look at us, and love us, as they say, and whine to us--it
+_is_ a shame! What right have you to love me or think of me? If
+you ever wish to be worth a thought, or fit for his service whom
+you've slandered, go and found hospitals, endow
+scholarships--fling your wealth in the sea--only get rid of it!
+And plough the fields, break stones, dig ditches--some honest work
+your scanty brains are suited for; and when that has made you
+something of a man, go and beg his pardon. Go away from here, now,
+at once. He's waiting for me.'
+
+Dempster limped away. His works were all run down. Youth is cruel,
+and Muriel had meant to wound; but she felt a little remorseful at
+the sight of the abject creature she had scorched and scotched
+with such crude severity, and wished that she had at least spared
+him the last savage cut. To be called a fool and a coward--to be
+told to get rid of one's personality, is bad; but to be dismissed
+in order to make instant room for the other, partakes too much of
+hacking and slashing, and might even be put in the category with
+vitriol-throwing.
+
+Muriel looked over the wall and called Frank. He was waiting
+somewhere near, she knew; and he came and climbed over and kissed
+her.
+
+'Where were you hiding?' she asked.
+
+'I sat on a stone by the side of the wall, and meant to sit there
+till the voices ceased, or you called me.'
+
+'Did you hear what we said?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Well, it doesn't matter just now. I'll tell you some other time.'
+
+She sat down on the wall and bade him do the same. Dempster was
+forgotten: the stronger impression, that produced by Lee, came out
+through the more recent one like the original writing on a
+palimpsest.
+
+'When one meets one's father,' she said, 'after a long absence,
+whether one knows him well or not, one's heart leaps, and a great
+thrill strikes through one.'
+
+'Yes,' said Frank. 'I believe my nerves would ring to the sound of
+my father's voice if I were hearing it, though I've never seen
+him.'
+
+'Don't imagine it for a moment, dear. When your father comes back
+after ten years you shiver in his presence--you feel as if you had
+jumped into a frosty sea out of the summer. I did when I went to
+him from you.'
+
+She kicked her heels against the wall, and sat on her hands,
+looking round and up at Frank like a bird. Then she turned her
+gaze into the tree. In the mood that held her, to think was to
+resolve. She came to her feet, and stood before her lover.
+
+'What would you think if I were to tell you that my father had
+chosen a husband for me?'
+
+'I should think it the height of folly, unless I were his
+selection.'
+
+'Come to him now. Say to him that you love me, and that I love
+you, and that he may kill me if he likes, but that I will never
+marry anybody else.'
+
+'This is encouraging.'
+
+'And you will need courage.'
+
+'What is wrong?'
+
+'You'll know soon enough. Come.' And she led him to the house. She
+danced along the path. Her eyes clashed against his.
+
+'I'm in the major key,' she said.
+
+No wonder she was in the major key. She had a vision of the
+encounter between her lover and her father; a wordy tournament in
+which the former bore off the honours. Her heart was fast melting
+down every feeling into a glowing rage at the man who, after ten
+years' absence, came to blight her life; and her body, the flames
+about that crucible, leapt and trembled. She could move only in
+bounds to a measure. Frank, mystified, but flushed by sympathy,
+followed her, admiring.
+
+She took him straight to the library. Lee was not there.
+
+'Wait here, and I shall find my father,' she said.
+
+But Miss Jane came into the room.
+
+'How in the name of all the proprieties dare you enter this house,
+sir?' she cried.
+
+Frank, as the reader will surmise, had been forbidden the house.
+
+Muriel sat down on the couch and pulled her lover to her side.
+Then she rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands,
+and looked at her aunt. It was grossly impertinent.
+
+'For shame! What is the meaning of this folly, Muriel?' and the
+angry lady crossed the floor, and bristled before the couple with
+only a yard between.
+
+Muriel became absolutely but serenely rabid.
+
+'Mr. Hay is going to take supper with us to-night,' she said.
+'Ring the bell please, aunt, and order supper to be hastened.'
+
+Miss Jane towered, physically and morally.
+
+'Muriel'--she spoke solemnly, as became her exaltation--'you
+wicked girl! You have much greater cause to keep your room and cry
+over your misdemeanours, than come here outraging all decency in
+this way. Have you no maidenly reserve at all?'
+
+Then she leant towards Frank.
+
+'Mr. Hay, I should think this exhibition of temper and impudence
+will make it needless to fear that you will aid further in
+thwarting our intentions with regard to Muriel. Indeed, I don't
+know at present how it will be possible for me to stand by quietly
+and see any young man, however eligible, throw himself away on
+such an incorrigible young woman.'
+
+Thoroughly on fire at the imperturbable smile on Muriel's face,
+she leaned towards her again, a flaming tower of Pisa.
+
+'Muriel, if ever you wish to regain the place you have lost in my
+esteem, you will tell Mr. Hay to leave this house at once, and
+never enter it again.'
+
+Muriel fumbled in her pocket, and half-withdrew her hand, but
+thought better of it.
+
+Miss Jane again menaced Frank.
+
+'Mr. Hay, the cool effrontery you display in sitting quietly
+smiling--don't try to hide it, sir!--while the woman you profess
+to love throws to the winds all respect for herself and her
+betters, actually and openly defying her aunt----'
+
+Muriel had risen, and was approaching the bell-pull. Her hand was
+almost on it, when her aunt, with surprising agility, intercepted
+her.
+
+'Not while I live!' she cried, almost hysterically.
+
+Frank rose, and began, 'I shall not----'
+
+'You shall!' cried Muriel.
+
+'Leave the room, Muriel!' said Miss Jane, collecting her dignity,
+and posing again as a tower.
+
+Muriel's hand slipped back to her pocket, and she looked straight
+into her aunt's eyes. Once more she changed her purpose, and left
+the room with a smile, and an airy nod to Frank.
+
+'Did that girl wink just now, sir?' said Miss Jane.
+
+'I didn't observe.'
+
+The excited lady pulled a chair before Frank, and sat down
+opposite him. 'Mr. Hay,' she said, 'I wish to be reasonable. I
+know myself what it is to be young. Indeed, putting other
+circumstances aside, I can almost sympathise with you in your
+infatuation for Muriel. She is really a very good-looking girl;
+but this scene must have convinced you that her nature is wholly
+unregenerate, and I hope----'
+
+What she hoped can only be guessed, for Muriel re-entered the
+room.
+
+Miss Jane rose, this time in cathedral-like grandeur. Alas! she
+was a very weak-tempered woman. The cathedral brought forth a cat.
+
+'What brings you back?' she cried. 'You are a disgrace to your
+sex: you are no lady; you are a shameless minx!'
+
+Muriel came close to her, her hand clutched in her pocket.
+
+'Aunt,' she said, 'you are carrying this a little too far. Did you
+really suppose that I had gone at your command?'
+
+'I certainly did; and I repeat it. Go!'
+
+'When I leave this room, Frank goes with me. Supper will be served
+in a minute for him and me in my sitting-room.'
+
+'Is it you or I that's dreaming, girl?'
+
+'You have been dreaming, but you're wakening now. You thought you
+could mistress me; you can't.'
+
+'If I can't mistress yon, as you vulgarly say, we'll see whom the
+servants will obey.'
+
+Miss Jane rang the bell violently.
+
+Muriel's hand was again half-out of her pocket, but a whimsical
+expression came over her face, and she returned it.
+
+'They shan't get the chance of disobeying you,' she said, going
+out of the room and holding the door shut. Her aunt tried to pull
+it open, but did not prosecute her attempt. It was too like a
+school-girl. She appealed to Frank tacitly. He shook his head. To
+tell the truth, the young man enjoyed it rather than not.
+
+Shortly, a housemaid's voice was heard saying, 'Supper's just
+ready, Miss Muriel.'
+
+The answer came, 'Very well; that's all,' and Muriel re-entered.
+She put her back against the door in a blaze of triumph, and said
+mock-heroically, 'No one shall leave this room till supper's
+served.'
+
+Miss Jane was beaten, and Muriel had conquered without it; but now
+she held it out, and shook it open, remorselessly, her poor,
+little, crumpled letter. Her aunt, who had forgotten all about it,
+sank on the couch sobbing hysterically. Youth will exact the
+uttermost farthing, knowing not how it will need much mercy
+itself. The girl was punished there and then by a shade that
+passed over her lover's brow. She felt that he remembered the
+scene of the discovery, and contrasted it with this; but before
+she had decided what amends to make Lee entered the room. He
+looked about him, and immediately appeared to be in a tremendous
+passion; Miss Jane sat up; and Muriel, crossing the floor, took
+Frank's arm.
+
+'Muriel,' said Lee, 'go to your room.'
+
+She clung to Frank.
+
+'I never bid twice,' and he pulled her away and swung her to the
+door.
+
+'This is too much!' cried Frank, stepping towards Lee.
+
+'Mr. Hay, I suppose. I shall speak with you immediately.'
+
+Muriel was about to approach Frank again, but Lee pointed her
+sternly to the door. As before, in his presence, and by his
+conduct, she was utterly bewildered, and wandered out of the room
+as if she had lost her wits.
+
+'Here's a change!' exclaimed Miss Jane, 'What a disgraceful scene
+there has been here, brother! I apologise to myself for allowing
+my emotions to overcome me.'
+
+'Leave us, please, Jane.'
+
+'Certainly, Henry,' and as she went, she cast a withering look at
+Frank.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LEE ENJOYS HIMSELF
+
+
+Lee sat down behind the table and began to point a quill. Frank
+took a chair opposite him.
+
+'Mr. Hay,' said Lee, 'we may as well come to the point at once. My
+daughter cannot marry you. I have chosen her a husband.'
+
+'I am glad to come to the point at once,' said Frank. 'Miss
+Chartres bade me tell you that she will have no husband but me.
+She sends you this message: You may kill her, but you cannot force
+her to marry against her will.'
+
+'I am sorry her message is so commonplace. It indicates that her
+novel-reading has not been eclectic, to say the least; and, which
+is of more importance to me, it lowers the tone of the present
+work. That, of course, you don't understand; but no matter. Force
+her to marry against her will? Surely not. _You_ know, if _she_
+doesn't, that people never act against their wills. We will change
+her will, or kill it.'
+
+'Which would be to kill her.'
+
+'I'm not so sure of that. It will be an interesting experiment. I
+understand you to say that by the time my daughter's will has been
+conquered, her body must be so reduced that death will ensue. Now,
+I do not think so. What will you wager that she does not survive
+the subjugation of her will?'
+
+There was a pause before Frank replied, which gave his answer an
+appearance of deliberation it did not possess. He was so
+astonished at the beaming satisfaction on Lee's face, utterly
+incompatible under any hypothesis he could think of, with the
+cold-blooded, heartless suggestion regarding Muriel, that words
+were denied him for a second or two. When they did come, slowly
+and vehemently, they had more reference to the character of the
+wagerer than the matter of the villainous bet.
+
+'You are a scoundrel!'
+
+Lee laid down the quill with which he had been dallying, and
+settled himself comfortably in his chair. He expected to derive
+great pleasure from this interview. Hitherto he had been dealing
+with women and servants; he was now to have a foeman worthy of his
+steel.
+
+'I am a scoundrel,' he said, weighing each word. 'That is your
+position. Now, how will you defend it?'
+
+The momentary blankness on Frank's face made Lee fear he had been
+too precipitate, and had routed the young man with this wholly
+unexpected turn, putting an end to the intellectual enjoyment he
+had anticipated. So when the blankness left Frank's face, the
+child-like happiness which dwelt in every line of Lee's could only
+be matched by the pictured countenance of some rapt and smiling
+medieval saint. The young man, concluding that he had to deal with
+what the world calls a 'character,' met him on his own ground.
+
+'Your imperturbability under the accusation is the best proof, I
+think.' He said this mildly and collectedly, not wishing to give
+Lee the advantage of his coolness.
+
+'A very fair answer,' said Lee. 'I shall allow you this stroke by
+way of compensation. Poor fellow, you will have a sore heart for a
+while, I imagine. You're not a fool, and you're good-looking. I
+think more of my daughter on your account.'
+
+Lee resumed the quill, and began to write with a perfect
+assumption of unconcern. Frank stood up, put both hands on the
+table, leant forward a little, and delivered himself of a short
+speech. His blood was up, and he spoke very little above a
+whisper.
+
+'Mr. Chartres, you have the right to control the actions of your
+daughter. You are going to abuse that right. I shall interfere.
+Your daughter loves me; you are going to force her from me; I
+shall do all I can to prevent you. I love your daughter; I shall
+stick at nothing to obtain her: Mr. Chartres, I shall succeed.'
+
+The practical novelist positively trembled with delight.
+
+'I like you, young man,' he cried; 'and I believe you will
+improve. I think you will be unconsciously my best collaborateur.
+Both your character and Muriel's will be tested, illuminated, and
+strengthened for good or evil, in the course of this work, and
+that immediately. Who would write who has once tasted the
+pleasures of this new fiction! This is a foreign language to you.
+Some day I may teach you its whole secret. In the meantime regard
+me as a student of character, who, tired of books, of the dead
+subject, has taken to vivisection--vivisection of the soul. Well,
+sir, it is to be a duel, then. Good. I have a suspicion you
+imagine it is your bold bearing that makes me so placid. You are
+mistaken. It is my habit in opposition. I learnt it in the jungle,
+shooting tigers. My gun is always heavily loaded. I take a
+deliberate aim. If I shoot a tiger, it is killed; if a turtle-dove,
+it is blown to pieces. You comprehend.'
+
+'Me, the turtle-dove; yes. And the bereaved mate will peck herself
+to death,' said Frank with considerable coolness.
+
+'In a cage we can force her to live,' said Lee.
+
+Frank had thought to meet Lee on his own ground, but found himself
+wholly at sea. He would strike out boldly till he touched land
+again.
+
+'I am astonished,' he said, 'that a man like you, who seem to
+trample on conventionalities should arrogate to himself that
+absurd authority claimed by some fathers over the hands of their
+daughters.'
+
+'And what if it were because parental jurisdiction over marriage
+is becoming a thing of the past that I make myself absolute?'
+
+'That would be very foolish,' said Frank, forgetting with whom he
+was dealing.
+
+'That is no argument, my good sir,' came from Lee at once, and
+Frank saw his mistake.
+
+'You see,' continued Lee, 'the idea of the parent is changing. The
+popular parent is the servant of his children. Now, whenever an
+idea, an opinion--a song, a faith, a show--becomes popular, I know
+at once it has some inherent weakness, some hollow lie; for the
+world is weak and false, and all kinds of froth and flame commend
+themselves to it. An opinion is like a jug of beer: the foaming
+head attracts the youth; the old toper blows it off.'
+
+'You think yourself clever, but this is rank sophistry.'
+
+'No argument again. Go away, Mr. Hay, and learn to do something
+besides assert. Come back and have a talk as soon as you really
+have something to say.'
+
+Frank walked slowly to the door. He was endeavouring to estimate
+Lee. Did all fathers treat unsuitable candidates for their
+daughters' hands to such a dose of brusque philosophy? Surely not.
+Then, did all fathers returned from India with dark skins, and,
+presumably, no livers, behave in this fashion? He could not
+believe it. He returned to the charge.
+
+'Why are you so ill-bred?' he asked.
+
+'I am not ill-bred. Had I received you with anything but a
+downright refusal your hopes would have risen. Had I agreed with
+you in anything, you would have thought, "I may manage him yet." I
+have been kind to you. I have been most polite. I have not
+deceived you for an instant. Do not think that the suave manner is
+the sign of the kind heart. What is called politeness is, as you
+know, the commonest form of hypocrisy; courtesy has become
+etiquette, and the gentleman is the ghost of a dead chivalry.'
+
+'You are a braggart as well as a sophist. You----'
+
+'Go away till you learn to do other than assert and call names.'
+
+'I will speak. You said a little while ago that when an opinion
+became popular, you, in effect, adopted its converse.'
+
+'Too hard and fast; but go on.'
+
+'Marriage is coming to be regarded more and more as a mere civil
+relation; you will, I have no doubt, look upon it as a sacred
+thing. If the heart does not go along with a holy ordinance, it is
+the blackest sin to take part in it. Will you play the devil to
+your own daughter?'
+
+'Ah, this is better!' said Lee with glistening eyes. 'In the same
+way any marriage not consented to by the woman's father must be
+unholy also. Two evils you see.'
+
+'Who can doubt which is the less?'
+
+'Now you are the sophist. There is no less or greater evil; it is
+all tarred with the same stick. But, to take a broader view. I
+firmly believe that marriages are made in heaven; therefore I
+should suppose, a marriage as ordained by heaven, happens once in
+fifty years, and it seems to me as likely that the decree of fate
+would be fulfilled in the father's choice as in the daughter's;
+and much more so when the father is a past master in the study of
+character.'
+
+Frank was exasperated.
+
+'Have you no heart?' he said.
+
+The smile on Lee's face told him what a commonplace he had
+uttered. Smothering his emotion, he said, 'You teach me how to
+think and how to act. Marriages _are_ made in heaven, and you were
+not married. If you had been you would have loved your daughter. A
+man of your no-principles must be answered as the fool
+is--according to his folly. And indeed you are a kind of fool, and
+a bad kind. I said before, thoughtlessly, that I would stick at
+nothing in endeavouring to make Miss Chartres my wife. Now I
+repeat it with full purpose.'
+
+'Good,' said Lee, rubbing his hands. 'Still a little too much
+nicknaming, but, on the whole, good. You are a capital
+collaborateur. I have taught you how to think and act already. Are
+you not astonished at yourself? What would they think at your
+debating club of this talk of ours? If you like it, come back and
+have some more.'
+
+Frank went to the door in silence, but returned again.
+
+'Ah!' exclaimed Lee. '"He often took leave, but was loath to
+depart!" What! Is it meant to be considered by me evidence of your
+determined spirit? Eh? Is it a dodge?'
+
+'Ill-doers are ill-dreaders,' said Frank. 'I am not going to speak
+for myself, but for Muriel. You have talked of her as if she were
+a thing that you could turn to any use, and you have spoken of
+caging her. I perceive you to be most irrational and obstinate. I
+can imagine your going great lengths to obtain a desired end.
+Promise me that you will not use physical force in any----'
+
+'I never make promises.'
+
+'Then,' pursued Frank in a tone of entreaty that had mastered his
+voice to his great annoyance, for he felt that it was enjoyed like
+a sacrifice by the apparently infernal spirit whom he
+addressed--'I demand to know what weapons you will use. Will you
+employ force?'
+
+'I am always armed to the teeth.'
+
+'You mean you are unscrupulous.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'It is impossible to reason with you, I defy you. Why, you are an
+insolent, cold-blooded villain, and deserve a horsewhipping.'
+
+'I will take an early opportunity of presenting you with a
+horsewhip to attempt the administration of one,' said Lee with
+perfect good humour.
+
+'Let it be very soon,' said Frank, going, 'for when you are my
+father-in-law I will decline the offer.'
+
+Lee rose to his feet. 'You wish this colloquy to end
+theatrically,' he said. 'I will disappoint you. You may marry my
+daughter, if you can.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE UNEXPECTED
+
+
+Muriel had bribed the servant who should have shown Frank out to
+bring him to her sitting-room; and this was accomplished without
+observation. As he entered, Muriel's appearance astonished him.
+She looked superb in his eyes--flushed, bright, bold, a wonderful
+contrast to the haggard girl Lee had hurled from him half an hour
+before. The momentary defeated feeling was past. She now stood on
+her rights. No father or man should have treated her as Lee had
+done, and she replied by sticking to her purpose, and having Frank
+sup with her.
+
+'Sit, sit,' she said. 'We'll not say a word about anything until
+we've supped--I mean about anything except the supper.'
+
+They were both very hungry, and on the principle that promptitude
+in action is the best prayer for the success of any enterprise,
+dispensed with a grace. Truly, the good eater, if he masticate
+well, renders the best thanks. Frank and Muriel worshipped God
+heartily before the great mahogany altar of Britain--which was in
+this instance, a little one of walnut--rapidly replacing the mercy
+of appetite by the mercy of satisfaction.
+
+Meantime Lee had other visitors. Mr. Linty, the family lawyer,
+succeeded Frank almost immediately, and Miss Jane accompanied him
+into the library. Lee knew about him from some of the letters he
+had read. He was, however, wholly unprepared to enter into
+business with him; but pleasure he expected.
+
+After the formal courtesies, the lawyer began. He was a
+sandy-haired, little, dry, old gentleman, and spoke very stiffly.
+
+'Mr. Chartres,' he said, 'the intent with which I visit you to-day
+is to convey to you certain information which I think it my duty
+to let you have as soon as possible.'
+
+'I am a man of business,' said Lee.
+
+'Good, sir; very good. Mr. Chartres, an entailed estate is in a
+most delicate position, surrounded as it is with innumerable
+statutory provisions. It is doubtful whether you would be able,
+supposing you were so inclined, to make good a claim on Snell
+without proving the death of your brother Robert.'
+
+Imagining that the lawyer had made a mistake in using Robert
+instead of William, and that there had been circumstances in
+connection with the death of the late proprietor which he had not
+learned; wishing, besides, to gain time, as this was the first
+intimation he had received of the estate being entailed, Lee said
+in a half-bantering tone, 'Well, you know, I never had a brother,
+Robert.'
+
+'O!' said the lawyer.
+
+'Well,' began Miss Jane, but stopped short, not sure what to say
+or think.
+
+Lee surpassed himself at this juncture. Not a feature of his face
+showed he was at a loss. He turned to Miss Jane and asked in a
+sort of parenthesis, 'What were you going to say?'
+
+'O!' said Miss Jane, 'I think, and I always told William, that
+although nothing has been heard of Robert for thirty years, he may
+still be alive. William said that he died to the family when he
+became a prodigal, and forbade his name to be mentioned. I thought
+that uncharitable.'
+
+'Ay,' said Lee indifferently. 'Of course, I agreed with William.'
+
+It was very successful.
+
+'But,' said Mr. Linty, 'We _must_ speak of him, for, if he is
+alive the estate is his. Do you know anything of him?'
+
+'No,' said Lee; 'but as we have not heard of him for thirty years,
+we may reasonably suppose him dead.'
+
+'By no means. That cannot even be taken as presumptive evidence.
+If there were seventy years from the birth of your brother there
+would be no difficulty, but if he is alive he will only be
+fifty-five. I am afraid the estate will require to be "hung
+up"--put into the hands of trustees.'
+
+'Well, sir,' said Lee, rising, 'your contribution to this work is
+wholly unexpected, but likely to produce most interesting
+complications. I am indeed much obliged to you. There is nothing
+original in it, but a missing heir is a very good thing to fall
+back on.'
+
+The lawyer, supposing he had heard an elaborate, and, if so,
+certainly incomprehensible joke, laughed appreciatively. Miss Jane
+frowned and examined Lee all over with scorn and minuteness.
+
+The latter continued. 'You must really excuse me just now. I only
+reached Snell House a few hours ago, and I am in no condition to
+discuss business. I suppose,' with a laugh, 'you won't turn us out
+immediately.'
+
+'By no means,' said Mr. Linty. 'In all likelihood there will be no
+need for that. I shall expect a visit from you to-morrow. Good
+evening.'
+
+Miss Jane, who was a great friend of Mr. Linty's, left the library
+to see him to the door.
+
+Lee's next visitor was of a different quality. He was an old man,
+very ill-dressed, the great size of his head, which was covered
+with thick white hair, being the most notable thing about him.
+Miss Jane introduced him, having met him at the door when she
+parted with the lawyer.
+
+'This is Clacher, brother,' she said. 'You remember it was he who
+found William's body on the road.'
+
+Lee did remember, as it had been mentioned in one of the letters
+he had read. Miss Jane informed Lee further under her breath, that
+Clacher was quite mad, although harmless, and that he got a living
+by begging in the disguise of a hawker. He had called often since
+the death of William, asking for the 'new Mr. Chartres.'
+
+'I am very glad you have brought him to me,' said Lee. 'He may be
+useful.'
+
+He then advanced to the old pedlar, and held out his hand, saying,
+'How do you do, Mr. Clacher?'
+
+Clacher emitted a chuckling noise, and darted glances at odd
+corners of the room--glances which, if it had been possible to
+enclose them, would have been found to resemble blind alleys, as
+they ran a certain distance into space and stopped without
+lighting on anything. Then he said in a hoarse, harsh voice,
+speaking to himself as much as to Lee, 'I'm gaun tae dae it
+Englified.'
+
+He pulled himself up with all the appearance of a man about to
+make a lengthy statement; but instead of a speech he only
+succeeded in a pitiful pantomimic display. He could not remember
+what he had come to say. As if to stir up his dormant faculties he
+began rubbing his head with both hands, gathering his thick hair
+into shocks, and then scattering these asunder. While endeavouring
+to make hay of his hair in this manner, his little fierce eyes,
+like swivel-guns of exceedingly minute calibre, resumed firing
+their blank shots into space. Then, satisfied apparently that
+nothing could be done toward the tedding of his hair, he rubbed
+his shaved cheeks, beat his forehead and his breast, and tore at
+the fingers of both hands.
+
+All at once he stood erect, and, as if he were resuming a train of
+thought, or a conversation, said, 'It's a wonnerfu' secret.'
+
+'Indeed?' said Lee, quietly.
+
+'Ay; for it can pit another in the deid man's shoes ye stann' in.
+But I was gaun tae dae it Englified. Ye micht check me when I gang
+wrang.'
+
+'Check you when you go wrong?'
+
+'That's it! "Go wrong"--no, "gang wrang." Keep me richt--right,
+will you, sir?'
+
+'It's of no consequence to me, my good man,' replied Lee, 'whether
+you speak Englified as you call it, or not; but I'll keep you
+right if you like.'
+
+'Thank you, thank you! But whaat----'
+
+'What,' said Lee.
+
+'Bide a wee, bide a wee!' cried Clacher, rubbing his hair.
+
+'Ye see,' he continued, 'if I tak' time tae dae it Englified, I
+forget it. Whaat wis it I wis gaun tae dae Englified, and whaat
+for wis I gaun to dae it Englified? I canna' mind, I canna' mind.'
+
+'Never mind, then,' said Lee, gently. 'You interest me as much as
+any character in the story. It seems indeed to be made to my hand,
+and I shall only require to mould it here and there in order to
+give it distinction.'
+
+'Ye're mad, ye're mad!' cried Clacher, excitedly, shaking his big
+frowsy head, and seeing Lee for the first time, although his eyes
+had seemed fixed on him repeatedly.
+
+'Poor fellow!' said Lee to Miss Jane, 'he thinks everybody mad but
+himself, like all lunatics.'
+
+'Lunatics,' said Miss Jane, emphatically, 'are unerring judges of
+the lunacy of others.'
+
+'I've heard that, too,' said Lee, ingenuously.
+
+'My good friend,' he continued, addressing Clacher, 'we must
+really try and remember what and why it is to be done Englified.
+Come with me and you shall have something to eat and a glass of
+good wine. If that doesn't startle your memory I don't know what
+will.'
+
+Miss Jane looked volumes, but only said, 'Henry, there never was a
+man so changed as you.'
+
+'My dear Jane,' said Lee, 'in ten years--why, I might have become
+a lunatic too.'
+
+As he crossed the hall with Clacher to the dining-room, a sound of
+laughter from upstairs struck on his ear. He stopped, and
+listened. It was repeated, and the laughing voices were Muriel's
+and another's. Entering the dining-room he hastily confided
+Clacher to the care of Briscoe and Dempster, who were discussing a
+bottle of port, and hurried away to Muriel's sitting-room. He went
+in without knocking, and another peal of laughter came to an early
+death. Frank and Muriel stood up as the door opened. She meant to
+fight; he recognised the falseness of their position, and felt, as
+he looked, exceedingly awkward.
+
+'Father,' began Muriel, looking in Lee's direction, but past him,
+through the open door, 'you must not----'
+
+She got no further; for she saw coming towards her room, in single
+file, Miss Jane, Dempster, Briscoe, and Clacher. It is pretty
+certain that none of these four persons knew exactly why they had
+come upstairs. Miss Jane probably expected some kind of scene to
+take place at which she might have an interest in assisting;
+Dempster followed her out of sheer stupidity; Briscoe came after
+Dempster because he was drunk; and Clacher after him because he
+was mad, and didn't know any better. When Miss Jane, arriving at
+the top of the staircase, saw Muriel's door open, she hesitated;
+but behind her there came such a motley procession that she had to
+go on. She stopped at the door; the others stood about her in a
+semi-circle, and the _tableau_ was complete.
+
+Lee, the only individual of the seven who was thoroughly
+collected, said, looking round him meditatively, 'The situation is
+turning out better than it promised to. After all, what more can
+we do either in writing fiction or creating it than follow an
+indication, and let the rest come.'
+
+He then motioned Miss Jane aside and, taking Briscoe's hand, led
+him into the room. The maudlin gravity with which that worthy bore
+himself, combined with a remarkable bulging about the pockets,
+made him a very comic figure, and raised a smile even on Muriel's
+face. But Lee took one of her hands and put it in one of
+Briscoe's, saying, 'Muriel, this is your future husband.'
+
+She turned very pale; and almost fainted, when a hazy smile
+struggled into Briscoe's slack mouth and dull eyes, and he
+attempted to kiss her. She broke from him with a half-suppressed
+exclamation of disgust, and would have thrown her arms round
+Frank; but Lee seized her, and handed her over to her aunt who had
+entered the room.
+
+'Leave my house,' he then said to Frank, with a gesture of
+authority.
+
+It was a peculiar position for the young man, and Lee watched him
+with intense interest. Frank walked to Muriel, kissed her on the
+cheek, whispered something in her ear, and then passed out through
+the little crowd at the door without looking to the right hand or
+the left.
+
+'Very good!' exclaimed Lee. 'Perhaps that's the best thing he
+could have done.'
+
+'But, Henry,' said Miss Jane, 'I think Mr. Dempster would like to
+marry Muriel.'
+
+'Me!' shouted Dempster spirally. 'No; I assure you. My dear Miss
+Jane, I would as soon think of marrying you. Eh--ah--I mean well.'
+
+Miss Jane's face quivered a second, but she said nothing, and left
+the room. Dempster, aghast at his dreadful mistake, followed her
+downstairs. Clacher, unable to make up his mind whether to stick
+by Briscoe or follow Dempster, sat down disconsolately on the top
+step, with his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands.
+Lee also went out, signing to Briscoe to follow him. Then Lee
+locked Muriel into her room, and putting the key in his pocket,
+took Briscoe and Clacher to the library with him.
+
+It was half-past nine when Muriel found herself a prisoner; and
+Frank had whispered that he would wait for her all night at the
+low wall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BRISCOE SEES THINGS IN A NEW LIGHT
+
+
+Food and drink were provided for Clacher in the library. It was a
+very large room, and he sat at a little table in the corner, out
+of hearing of the low tones in which Briscoe and Lee conversed.
+
+Lee was exceedingly angry at Briscoe for having got tipsy, and
+rated him severely, getting no response, however, save laughter or
+a drunken 'You shut up.' At last, losing patience, he dashed a
+tumbler of water in the drunken man's face. Briscoe rose to
+strike; but Lee gave him another tumbler, and while he was still
+rubbing the water out of his eyes, a third, which knocked him down
+into his chair again, pretty well sobered and very surly. Lee was
+a man of great physical strength, and although on several
+occasions Briscoe had been able to control his will, a single bout
+at fisticuffs had shown, once for all, who was master in that
+branch of dialectic.
+
+'My dear Briscoe,' said Lee, handing him his handkerchief to help
+to dry himself, 'this is really too bad of you. Do you think I
+don't know the meaning of those stuffed pockets of yours? You've
+been helping yourself, forgetting altogether the work of art in
+which we are engaged.'
+
+'Heaven helps those that help themselves,' growled Briscoe, still
+a little maudlin and very crusty.
+
+'A very good proverb indeed; but it has always seemed to me to
+require a gloss, as, say, "Help yourself, and Heaven will develop
+heroic qualities in you by opposing you." So you see I am
+interfering with you to give your acts a higher tone. You'll have
+to empty out your pockets, my boy. Nobody need know; and, if they
+should, kleptomania is quite genteel.'
+
+'Now, look here,' said Briscoe: 'I'm not fit for this almighty art
+of yours. By Jove, when I think of where I am, and what we're up
+to, I can hardly believe it's me! Just you give me as much money
+as you can, and let me slope quietly, and you'll get on far better
+without me. I never could grease myself and worm through the tight
+places--get through the world, as folks say; and I tell you it
+would be far better for you if I were away.'
+
+'Briscoe, I have always admired your independent character,' said
+Lee. 'Neither can I get through the world; but there's another
+method which equally insures success, and that is, to transcend
+the world: death by starvation is then itself a glorious
+triumph--the triumph of the idea. I know what I mean, and, though
+I were to explain till doomsday, you wouldn't, so it don't matter.
+You will confer a lasting benefit on the world if you stay and
+help with the work in which I am engaged. It is a glorious labour,
+apart from its artistic merit; for it is raising the tone of
+everybody about me. It is just what these people needed,
+especially Muriel and Frank--the dash of bitter that strengthens
+the sweet, the need for rebellion that wakens the soul, the spur
+that drives natures roughshod over convention, the----'
+
+'Draw it mild,' interposed Briscoe sneeringly. 'To-morrow, or
+maybe to-night, Caroline will be down with the real man, and what
+will you do then?'
+
+'I long for their arrival. That will be the great scene.'
+
+'What'll you do?'
+
+'Well, murder I merely glanced at. To turn them out of the house
+as impostors, though a simple solution of the matter for a short
+time, would only stave off a final settlement. This is what I
+intend: to shut up Chartres in one of the rooms, pinioned, and, if
+necessary, gagged, as a dangerous lunatic, until I can have him
+removed to a private asylum, which will be a matter of only a few
+hours; and, once there, we are safer than if he were in the
+grave.'
+
+'How will you manage that?'
+
+'The simplest thing in the world. You can't have read many novels
+or you wouldn't ask. Besides the novels, however, I have studied
+the lunacy laws; and I could put you, Briscoe--sensible,
+hard-headed fellow as you are--into an asylum to-morrow, and defy
+the world to take you out!'
+
+'By Jove, there's a chance here!' said Briscoe. 'Damn it, man,
+banish your dreams, and do the thing as a downright piece of the
+finest villainy ever perpetrated.'
+
+'I haven't the least objection, my dear Briscoe, that you should
+be a villain. There's not one, at present, in the work, and if you
+choose, still collaborating with me, to adopt such a role, I shall
+be very glad indeed.'
+
+'I'll do it,' said Briscoe, rising. 'I'll go off to Glasgow and
+prepare the whole thing for to-morrow early.'
+
+'The last train from Greenock left some time ago.'
+
+'What! is it so late as that?'
+
+'Yes; but you can go off to-morrow before breakfast.'
+
+'Very well. But we're going to do this, mind! No shamming--no
+artistic flourishes--upright, downright villainy!'
+
+'On your part, certainly.'
+
+'And I'm to marry Muriel?'
+
+'Oh, you must see that is impossible. The girl will fight to the
+death against it. Besides, it would be thoroughly inartistic. No,
+no. My intention is to bring about an elopement; and then to
+discover that you are Frank's father. You see? You're old enough.
+He's only twenty-two, and you're over forty. The invention of
+antecedents and the getting up evidence will be most engrossing.
+Of course I'll intercept these young people, and drive them to the
+very last resource. It will do them any amount of good.'
+
+Briscoe put up his hand warningly, and Lee turned his head and saw
+Clacher standing behind him.
+
+'Ah! my good friend,' he said, 'have you had enough?'
+
+'Ay,' said Clacher.
+
+'Do you remember what it is you want to do "Englified"?'
+
+'No--yet.'
+
+'Do you think you'll remember soon?'
+
+'Mebbe, if ye'll let me alone, and gie me some mair drink.
+Whusky.'
+
+'Certainly,' said Lee, rising. 'You can have this room to
+yourself, and I shall send you whiskey.'
+
+'I think I'll go to bed,' said Briscoe. 'I'm very tired; and I'll
+have an early start to-morrow.'
+
+'Come out and smoke a cigar with me first,' said Lee. And then in
+a whisper, 'I want you to help me. They may arrive any moment.'
+
+'Of course,' replied Briscoe, in the same tone, clenching his
+fists. 'I forgot that.'
+
+So Clacher was left with a decanter of whiskey; and as soon as he
+was alone he pulled from his breast-pocket a dirty letter, which
+he read and re-read, and thought over and got madder about: and he
+always took the other glass of whiskey, muttering to himself, 'I
+canna' mind, I canna' mind.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DEMPSTER APOLOGISES
+
+
+While Briscoe was being sobered in the library a remarkable scene
+transacted itself in the dining-room between Miss Jane and
+Dempster. The outraged lady settled herself in an easy chair with
+a book; but the offender entered before she had time to read six
+lines. He approached her on tip-toe, and, a spring seeming to give
+way somewhere within him, he came down plump on one knee, as if he
+had been a puppet, and burst out woefully 'Eh--ah!' like an escape
+of saw-dust.
+
+Miss Jane ignored him, and pressed open her book, which was new
+and stiff.
+
+Dempster cleared his throat of the saw-dust, and with drooping
+head, his left hand on his left knee and his right arm hanging
+limp, whispered, just above his breath, 'Miss Chartres, you see
+before you a miserable being.'
+
+'I don't; I'm not looking,' said the lady sharply, disconcerting
+Dempster terribly.
+
+'If you would look you would see me,' he said nervously, as
+several watch-springs seemed to break out of bounds in various
+parts of his anatomy.
+
+Miss Jane looked over the top of her book. She saw him collapsed
+before her with abased eyes, and was satisfied. So she hid her
+face again, smiling, and said coldly, 'I have seen you.'
+
+'Have you?' said Dempster, going off, as it were accidentally,
+like a gun; 'I'm very glad: for I would have had no rest of mind
+or body if you hadn't looked at me. I would have gone about like a
+hen that had lost her--I mean----'
+
+'Well, and say ill, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane, unable to
+resist the chance which she had long desired to take. 'These kind
+of people often make more mischief than ill-doers,' she added.
+
+This overwhelmed Dempster. Down he came on the other knee, and,
+clasping both hands, called out in serpentine anguish, and without
+a stammer, 'Why are you so hard on me? The moment I made that
+unfortunate remark about marrying you, the earth, the sun, my
+wealth, and life and death were to me no more than they are to a
+poor man. I assure you, I assure you--I don't exaggerate; and I
+beg you, I implore you to forgive me.'
+
+'Rise, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane with a slight return of
+graciousness. 'There is really nothing to forgive.'
+
+Some automatic winding-up process began within him and would soon
+have brought him to his feet with a bound, but Miss Jane's reply
+to his 'And we will be friends as we were before?' made him all
+run down again; for the lady said, 'That can hardly be. Though
+mistakes may not require forgiveness, they cannot always be
+forgotten. But rise, please.'
+
+'I'll not rise till you forget,' said Dempster with pitiful
+resignation, his various members barely hanging together. The poor
+fellow was in deader earnest than even Miss Jane supposed, as will
+shortly appear.
+
+'But I cannot forget,' said the lady. 'Thought is free, and
+self-willed besides, Mr. Dempster.'
+
+He clasped his hands again, and in a succession of spasms
+ejaculated, 'You are the only woman whose society I have any
+comfort in. You understand me; and your advice is always good,
+and--eh--ah--agreeable. You never snub me--at least not often, and
+not without good reason--like younger, like thoughtless hoydens.
+If you won't forget and be friends with me again, I don't know
+whatever I'm to do. I have nothing at all to think of now Muriel
+has rejected me; and I'll have nobody I can talk to with any
+frankness if you go on remembering.'
+
+Miss Jane's blood, which was not by any means a meagre decoction,
+but on the contrary rich and sweet enough yet, tingled to her
+finger ends. This man actually needed her! She laid aside her
+book, leant forward a little, resting her hands neatly in her lap.
+There was no smile, but she looked with a gentle earnestness, and
+the tang was gone from her tongue.
+
+'How am I to forget?' she said. 'Tell me that, and I'll try. I
+suppose you have not forgotten what you said--very bitter words
+for any woman to digest. You would as soon think of marrying me as
+of marrying a young hoyden, who, from what I can make out, had
+just rejected you with insult; and the tone of voice--the tone of
+voice! But rise, Mr. Dempster.'
+
+'I won't,' he said, looking her right in the face, and wondering
+that he had never noticed before how silky her brown hair was, and
+how kindly her brown eyes. 'I won't. Forget and then I'll rise.'
+
+'How can I forget?' softly.
+
+'Just as easily as I can rise. The mind is like legs; it can be
+bent and unbent.'
+
+Now Miss Jane was not very much of a prude; but Dempster was
+becoming too confident. He must be brought low again. So she
+lifted her book and said 'Shocking!'
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he cried, vexed at finding the
+stumbling-block, which he had nearly rolled up to the top and
+kicked over the other side out of sight for ever, down at the
+bottom of the hill again. 'I didn't mean to say,' trying to twist
+his fingers into a hay-band, 'that your mind was like my legs--oh
+dear me! I've put both feet in it now!'
+
+Miss Jane hid her face completely, but it was to conceal a smile.
+
+Dempster smoothed his cheeks with both hands and held his head for
+a second or two, all of him gathered up in a more powerful effort
+to think than he had ever made in his life before.
+
+'What can I do to make you forget?' he muttered.
+
+'Ah!' he cried, after a second, pulling the book from Miss Jane's
+face as a child might have done, 'I think I'm going to have an
+idea.'
+
+'You don't mean to say so!' said Miss Jane, leaning forward again
+in the same neat, pleasant way, with a laugh that was almost
+girlish.
+
+'Yes, I believe I am,' said Dempster, sitting down on the calves
+of his legs with his hands on his knees, and looking up
+trustfully, like something in india-rubber.
+
+'If I were to say,' he enunciated slowly, 'something contradicting
+emphatically what you can't at present forget, you
+might--eh--ah--forget?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+He had been about a foot from her, and he now scraped along the
+ground on his knees until he almost touched hers.
+
+'You might try to say something of that kind,' she said, blushing,
+and with a little gasp. Now that it seemed to be coming she was
+put out; but, like a brave woman having her last chance, she kept
+her position and smiled encouragingly.
+
+'Might I? Oh, thank you!' he cried with effusion.
+
+Then he knitted his brows and rubbed his head. His serpentine
+faculty was in abeyance--these involuntaries of his had to cease
+in order that he might once in his life attempt to think.
+
+As for Miss Jane, she was mistaken in imagining that he had the
+least notion of making love to her. He valued her only as a
+friend, and had splashed into the quicksand of a proposal of
+marriage without knowing it. She thought, however, that he only
+needed a touch to make him bury himself, like a flounder, head
+over ears in a declaration of love and an offer of his hand and
+heart; so she gave him that touch softly and sweetly.
+
+'You said,' quoth she, 'with the utmost disdain, that you would as
+soon think of marrying me as my insolent niece.'
+
+'I did, I did. Can you help me to contradict it emphatically?'
+
+'I'm afraid not--dear Mr. Dempster.'
+
+'Eh?' said he. 'Thank you.'
+
+He felt dimly that there was something in the air--dimly, as
+protoplasm may feel its existence.
+
+'Ah!' he cried. 'Here's a kind of notion. I wonder if it's an
+idea. Would it do to say, in order to make you forget, just the
+opposite of what I said? You see--you understand--something like
+this, meaning--of course, you know what I mean--nothing more, you
+know--eh--ah!--suppose I say, "I would far rather marry you than
+Muriel." Is that--emphatic enough?'
+
+Miss Jane bent forward, and put her head on his left shoulder, and
+her hand on his right.
+
+'Mr. Dempster!' she said. 'Alec!' she sighed.
+
+'Eh?--eh--ah!'--and he had to hold her--to clutch her, to save
+himself from falling.
+
+'I'm the happiest woman in the world.'
+
+'I'm--I'm very glad of it.'
+
+'I never loved anybody before,' she said, so sweetly that Dempster
+wondered.
+
+Then she buried her face in his neck, she did, the stupid,
+soft-hearted creature, and whispered, 'Oh, the torture of wooing
+you for Muriel! But now I have my reward!'
+
+And she did think this as she said it, although it had never
+occurred to her before.
+
+'Yes,' said Dempster, feeling that the pause must be filled up
+somehow. 'Of course,' he added, making a half-hearted attempt to
+force her back into her chair, which she mistook for a caress, 'I
+only suggested the contradiction. I did not----'
+
+But her eyes were shut, and her brain too.
+
+'I adore your modesty,' she whispered. 'Trust me, trust me. I will
+love you till death.'
+
+'I'm completely stumped,' exclaimed Dempster.
+
+'Poor dear!' said Miss Jane, mistaking. And, indeed it was
+pardonable, Dempster's metaphors being usually marked by a
+_curiosa infelicitas_.
+
+Here the door opened briskly and Mrs. Cherry, the housekeeper,
+burst into the room.
+
+'Losh me! Miss Chartres!' she cried, as the pair scrambled to
+their feet.
+
+'Mrs. Cherry,' said Miss Jane, with great presence of mind, in
+spite of a distinct tremor in her voice, 'since you have seen, I
+may as well tell you. Mr. Dempster is going to marry me. But why
+did you come in without knocking, and what do you want?'
+
+Mrs. Cherry made a dreadful mess of her story. It will be clearer
+to the reader in a form different from that which she gave to it.
+
+The housekeeper's room was on the ground floor, and directly under
+Muriel's sitting-room. About half-past nine Mrs. Cherry's gossip,
+Mrs. Shaw, dropped in for a chat. These two good women were widows
+of fifty, and whatever their talk began with, it usually ended in
+laudation of their sainted husbands. The crack reached that stage
+about ten o'clock on the night of our story, and Mrs. Shaw's
+panegyric was soon in full blast.
+
+'Maister Shaw,' she said, twiddling her thumbs, 'wis a fine man.
+The cliverest, godliest, brawest Christian, an' a gentleman though
+he merrit me. He could write, ay, an' coont, mind ye, for a' the
+warl' as weel as ony bairn o' fourteen in thae' days when a'body's
+brats gang to the schule. An' for readin'--losh, wumman!--he would
+sit glowerin' at a pipper a nicht wi' the interestedest look in
+his een--sae dwamt-like that ye wad hae' thocht he didna' ken a
+word.'
+
+'What's that?' said Mrs. Cherry, starting in her chair.
+
+'What's what?' said Mrs. Shaw.
+
+'I thocht I heard a scart at the windy, an' somethin' gie a saft
+thump on the gravel.'
+
+'Ne'er a bit o't. Some maukin loupin' alang, or mebbe a rotten or
+a moosie clawin' in the wa' tae let us ken it's time we were
+beddit, and the hoose quate, for it tae come oot an' pike the
+crumbs on the flare, an toast its bit broon back in the ase. I
+mind fine sitting at oor ingle ae Januwar nicht wi' Maister Shaw.
+He had a pipper, an' I was knittin'. There was nae soond but the
+wag-at-the-wa' tick-tickin', like an artifeecial cricket with the
+busiest, conthiest birr, an' my wairs gaun clickaty-click, when I
+heard a cheep, cheep. Maister Shaw an' me lookit up thegither, an'
+there we saw, sittin' on the bar fornent the emp'y side--for the
+chimbley was that big we aye keepit a fire in the half o't
+only--the gauciest, birkiest, sleekest wratch o' a moose, cockin'
+its roon' pukit lugs, an' keekin' by the corners o' naethin' wi'
+its bit pints o' een. By-an'-bye it gied anither chirp, an' syne
+we heard a kin' o' a smo'ored cheepin' at the back o' the lum; an'
+in a gliffin' seeven wee bonny moosikies happit oot a hole that
+naebody wad hae' thocht o' bein' there, an' crooched in a raw,
+winkin' on their minnie. I lookit at Maister Shaw, an' he turn't
+up his een like a deid blaeck in the dumfooderdest way; an' his
+pipper gied the gentiest sough o' a rooshle; an' whan we lookit at
+the grate again we just got a glint o' the wairy tail o' the big
+moose weekin' intae its hole. But lord hae' mercy! What's that?'
+
+'I tell't ye!' quoth Mrs. Cherry.
+
+'Gosh me! There it's again!'
+
+Twice a sound similar to that which had first startled Mrs. Cherry
+was repeated--a slight swish past the window, and a flop on the
+gravel.
+
+The two old ladies sat with their hands clasped and their mouths
+open. Neither of them had the courage to pull up the blind, and
+watch if on a third repetition the sound should be accompanied by
+any sight. In a few seconds a louder, harder thud, preceded by no
+rubbing on the window, and followed by a noise as of some one
+running on the gravel, appalled the two old dames. Screaming, they
+flew to the kitchen, where Mrs. Cherry left her friend, and
+hurrying to the dining-room, in her fright threw open the door
+without announcing herself, and interrupted so interesting a
+_tete-a-tete_.
+
+Miss Jane, by dint of interrogation and remorseless interruption,
+which sometimes failed in its object--that of restoring to Mrs.
+Cherry the thread of her story--at length understood, discarding a
+vast quantity of irrelevant information, that the two women had
+been frightened by strange noises at the window of the
+housekeeper's room. Shrewdly guessing as to its cause, she was
+proceeding with Dempster to institute a formal investigation into
+the mystery, when a much more incomprehensible affair met her in
+the hall.
+
+This is what she saw: Lee and Briscoe carrying the body of a
+man--who might be dead or unconscious, and whose face was covered
+with a handkerchief--and followed by a tall comely woman, sobbing
+bitterly. They passed upstairs. Miss Jane, Dempster, and the
+housekeeper were still standing at the door of the dining-room,
+amazed and silent, when Lee came down.
+
+'You must allow this to pass unquestioned at present,' he said
+loftily. 'It is a very serious and sorrowful matter, and I would
+prefer to explain it to-morrow.'
+
+'Very well, Henry,' said Miss Jane, even more loftily, 'you know
+your own affairs best. By-the-bye,' she added, as if it were a
+matter of course, 'from what Mrs. Cherry tells me, I think Muriel
+has jumped out of the window.'
+
+'By Jove! Where should she go?'
+
+'To the north wall, of course.'
+
+'To be sure.'
+
+Snatching a riding-whip from a rack, he strode to the door, but
+turned and said, 'This must be left entirely to me--entirely,' he
+repeated as Miss Jane began to remonstrate.
+
+She was much huffed, but withdrew into the dining-room with
+Dempster, and the housekeeper returned to her room.
+
+Lee had received his first check. Hitherto everybody and
+everything had obeyed him; but now Briscoe had spoiled part of his
+plan. Briscoe's courage had soon ebbed in the coolness of the
+night-air, and, instead of allowing the scene to take place which
+Lee wished in order to justify him in having Chartres bound and
+gagged as a madman, he had made the latter insensible the moment
+he stepped out of the cab which had driven him and Caroline from
+Greenock. This was done with chloroform, a bottle of which he had
+found while rummaging through the bedroom assigned to him.
+Caroline he had quieted by assuring her that if she said one word
+of betrayal he would at once put an end to Chartres' life--a
+threat, which, having regard to what had already taken place, she
+did not care to brave.
+
+In this way Briscoe had taken the lead, reducing Lee to the
+necessity of acting along with him for the nonce.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE NIGHT BREEZE
+
+
+Frank sat on the north wall watching the moon through the leaves.
+Her light was faint, for the skirts of the day still swept the
+west. He had watched her for half an hour--the pale crescent,
+which even in that short time had seemed to wane, as her light
+waxed and her horns grew keener on the night's front--the high
+forlorn hope of heaven's host that could not all that month drive
+out the day. He sat under the close silence of the elm, among
+whose leaves there crept the faint, veiled murmur of the seaboard,
+fingered by the brooding surges as they beat out their slow,
+uncertain, soft-swelling music. Now and again there came, twining
+among the mellow notes of the water, from some far field the
+corncrake's brazen call, and made the gold ring stronger. These
+sounds, the pale moonlight, the night, and the idea of Muriel,
+possessed him to the exclusion of thought. Passion rendered him
+impassive, and he waited without impatience. Slowly pealing from
+the tower in Gourock, ten strokes told the hour. A crackling twig,
+a footstep, a rustle, and Muriel was beside him.
+
+Nothing was said till she had recovered her breath; then her
+voice, timed unconsciously to the rippling accompaniment of the
+waves, whispered clear, 'When you had gone, my father locked me in
+my room. The thought of waiting-and-waiting here all night would
+soon have made me mad, so I got out by the window. I threw out a
+cushion, and then I was frightened. But after a little my courage
+came back again, and then I threw over two more, and dropped down
+quite soft. I don't know whether any one saw or heard me; but you
+wanted me, and I'm here. See, I tore my dress.'
+
+He kissed her dress.
+
+'You must not enter your father's house again,' he said.
+
+Her breath came quick; she took his arm, and looked at him
+intently.
+
+'Do you know your father?' he asked.
+
+'He is difficult; but I am beginning to.'
+
+'Then you will understand why his house is not for you.'
+
+She had only a look with which to answer, and he did not think it
+satisfactory.
+
+'Tell me,' he said, 'do you understand?'
+
+'No; I do not. My father wants me to marry a stranger, but he
+cannot make me.'
+
+'Then you do not know him. He has no scruples; he will do
+anything.'
+
+'What can he have said to impress you so?'
+
+'He said enough to show me he has no conscience, and that he looks
+on you as a mere puppet.'
+
+Muriel felt as if the world were breaking up on all sides. What
+strange new things the day had brought forth; and, to crown them,
+flight from home seemed imminent! She pressed to her side Frank's
+arm, and with her disengaged hand smoothed the collar of his coat
+and fastened the top button, all the while looking wistfully at
+his set face. The ears of both were ringing with their own blood,
+or they would have heard a movement among the branches; for at
+that moment Lee reached the elm. His intention was to interrupt at
+once, and get back to the ravelled skein in the house; but the
+vision of the two lovers solaced his artistic sense; he was so
+near that he could hear their whispers. Shall not an artist take
+delight in his own work? Chance would help him, as it had done,
+manfully. He would watch this scene out. Surely he held the
+strings; and these, his daintiest puppets, he must see them play
+their best.
+
+'You must come away with me,' said Frank hoarsely. 'See, I would
+have you what is called elope, and I am scrupulous. I do not know
+if such an action can be justified by our position even to
+ourselves. Your father has no scruples. Conceive what he will do.'
+
+Two incidents flashed into Muriel's mind; the elopement of one
+former schoolmate, and the forced marriage of another; both ending
+in death by heartbreak of the young wives. She was angry at
+herself that these should have occurred to her. Frank and
+she!--they were apart from the world. Yet she whispered, 'You
+surely exaggerate.'
+
+'No; I do not,' he said. 'Come with me, just now. We are in
+Scotland. I will marry you to-night--regularly, to-morrow. You
+needn't fear; I have plenty of money.'
+
+'Frank!' she cried reproachfully, 'if I thought my marrying you
+depended on running off just now, I would go although you hadn't a
+penny.'
+
+'It does, it does. Step on the wall, and I will help you down.'
+
+This command, and the action which accompanied it, roused her. She
+had not fully realised the purpose that made his pleading so
+earnest, until he seized her quickly, and lifted her towards the
+wall.
+
+Lee grasped his whip tightly, and was ready for a spring.
+
+'Put me down,' said Muriel.
+
+Frank hesitated for a moment. It came into his brain to profess a
+misunderstanding of her meaning, and lift her over; but looking in
+her eyes he blushed with shame at the imagination of such a
+deceit. When she was free she seated herself at the root of the
+tree, and clasped her knees, gazing at vacancy. She sat for a full
+minute. He did not interrupt her meditation. He scarcely thought
+that she had divined his momentary impulse. Nevertheless, he felt
+as if she had, and punished himself by remaining silent and apart.
+He watched her face. It was a sweet perplexity. He chafed to think
+that he could not resolve her difficulty.
+
+At length her brow cleared. She rose and went to the wall. She
+looked up and down the road and over her shoulder enchantingly.
+Then she lifted her skirts over the wall and sat with her back to
+Frank. In a second she turned round, and dropped with a little
+laugh into the road. He sprang after her, and seized her hand. Lee
+approached the wall, but still kept himself concealed.
+
+'Muriel!' Frank whispered breathlessly.
+
+'Frank,' she said, giving him her hand, 'I will do what you think
+right. That's what I meant by coming over the wall--I am in your
+hands. But first I will tell you what I think. My father wishes me
+to marry his friend. That is all we know at present. If the time
+should come when I must either obey my father or fly with you, you
+know what I would do. But I do not see that that time can ever
+come.'
+
+'Yes,' said he. 'But if your father should give you this
+alternative--either to marry his friend or remain single?'
+
+'I was coming to that, although it seems too ridiculous to be
+likely. Well, we would elope.'
+
+There was silence for several seconds. Unwittingly they had to
+accustom themselves to the changed environment, although the
+difference was slight. Their natures were so quickened, so
+responsive, that soon a perfect accord existed between them and
+the latticeless moonbeams, the wide, open night, and the
+undeadened music of the surges. They crossed the road in order to
+be wholly free of the shade of the elm, not thinking why they did
+so. Lee, on his knees behind the wall, watched them with glowing
+eyes.
+
+At length Frank said, 'You are here; you are beautiful; you are
+hopeful; and you make me hopeful too. I have dreamt so long of
+having you that I cannot, with you beside me, imagine our not
+being married. But I force myself to remember your father's
+determined tone, his cold-blooded sophistries. I heard the worst,
+most insolent, most foul, most damnable----'
+
+'Frank!'
+
+'Most foolish talk fall from your father's lips about you, Muriel.
+It is horrible to talk to you in this way; but I tremble when I
+think of your being left to your father's tender mercies. Listen.
+I have challenged him to keep you from me, and he has accepted the
+challenge. I regret it now. He said that he would use every means;
+that he was always armed to the teeth; so I resolved at once to
+run away with you, and dared him. I have been rash--or should I
+save you in spite of yourself?'
+
+She looked at the ground, working with both hands at the buttons
+of her dress. He had described her mental condition as well as his
+own. His presence had cast into the shade the recollection of her
+talk with Lee. The threat contained in what Lee had said about
+'coming to the point and never returning to it' now assumed
+portentous shape in her fancy, quickened by Frank's forebodings;
+and the happy, trustful, resolved expression which her face had
+worn when she climbed over the wall gave place to one of wretched
+doubt.
+
+Frank, watching her closely, would not take advantage of her
+wavering mood, and refrained from word or action. His whole
+endeavour had been to overcome her repugnance to an elopement; yet
+when it was shaken, he made no attempt to improve the occasion. He
+felt that to do so would be like striking a man when he is down.
+What he aimed at was to make her throw him the reins and be
+passive. This she had seemed to do when she went over the wall,
+but the surrender had not been absolute.
+
+'I am puzzled,' she said hastily, knitting her brows at the moon.
+'I cannot decide. I shall tell you how I am thinking, and then,
+perhaps, I shall find out what it is right to think. It is clearer
+to think aloud. Elopement! It is a bad, vulgar thing. It would be
+in all the papers--forgive me, love! I am thinking that way. I
+can't help it. People would joke about it as long as we lived. My
+father would never forgive me. Frank--Frank Hay! I love him, and
+he loves me. My father doesn't love me. Frank wants me to elope.
+What would it matter about newspapers and society when we were
+married? I am a foolish girl. It always comes round to this: would
+it be right just now? Could it ever be right? Here I am in the
+road. You must decide.'
+
+This was spoken with extraordinary emphasis, and at a great rate
+of speed; and when it was done the trouble passed off her face. It
+settled on his. He pushed his hat from his forehead, thrust his
+hands into his pockets, confronting her, and said, 'I hoped for
+this, and intended to carry you off in triumph. Whatever withholds
+me, I cannot.'
+
+Vacillation is not always the sign of a weak nature. The wind
+veers round the compass, and then the gale sets in steadily. Frank
+had never been on such a high sea of moral difficulty before. He
+had some crew of principles; but they were not able-bodied, having
+slept for the most part through the plain sailing of his life.
+When the storm came the drowsy helmsman, Conscience, started up
+rubbing his blinking eyes; and Will, the captain, had no order to
+give.
+
+He climbed the wall, and held down his hands to Muriel. She put
+one foot in a little hole; he pulled her up; and they were again
+under the elm, Lee barely escaping discovery.
+
+Now, just at the instant Frank gave Muriel his hands, and she
+clambered up the wall with the grace of a wild thing and the
+necessary free movements; just when her panting body was in his
+arms, and her breath upon his face, there came out of the south
+one long, gentle, trembling, warm sigh, bearing a burden of subtle
+odour from the half-reaped hay fields, and making the trees shiver
+with delight through all their happy branches, and the sap swell
+and trickle to the very tips of the downiest twigs. It was Summer
+kissing Nature in the night. Frank and Muriel were caught in the
+contagion. Passion whirled round their hearts that had been held
+by consciences alike inexperienced, and the poor helmsmen were
+overset. Their blood rattled along their veins like uncontrolled
+rudder-chains. He lifted her over; and, taking her in his arms
+again when he joined her in the road, started to carry her. They
+would be married that night.
+
+A long shadow thrown suddenly across the road arrested him, and
+immediately a tall figure stood up in the moonlight. He set Muriel
+on her feet behind him, and faced Lee.
+
+'Mr. Chartres!' he exclaimed hoarsely.
+
+'You wished,' said Lee, handing him the riding whip, 'for an
+opportunity to horsewhip me.'
+
+'Villain!' cried Frank savagely, seizing the whip. He raised it to
+strike. His rage was simply that of a foiled animal.
+
+'Haven't you got over that bad habit of calling names yet?' said
+Lee with a smile, as he caught the hand that held the descending
+whip. Frank shifted it to the other hand, which Lee grasped as
+quickly. Thus Lee held by the wrist a hand of Frank's in each of
+his.
+
+Muriel uttered a little scream and fell on her knees. She kept her
+eyes fixed on the whip. It jerked about overhead for a few seconds
+and fell to the ground. Then she looked at the men. Their arms
+were locked round each other. They staggered about and knocked
+against the wall. She heard them breathing hard. She held her own
+breath. She had scarcely begun to think what would be the upshot
+when Frank fell with a thud on his back, and Lee stood over him
+whip in hand.
+
+'You have killed him!' she screamed, starting to her feet, and
+rushing to her prostrate lover.
+
+'Hardly,' said Lee, throwing the whip away, rather ostentatiously,
+as he stepped aside to let Frank rise. He got up looking very
+unheroic; indeed, decidedly sheepish. Lee folded his arms, paler,
+if anything, than the other, and said, 'I won't ask you to try
+another fall. I think I am just twice as strong as you. I mean
+this to be a lesson. If you are wise, you will not attempt to
+struggle with me in anything.'
+
+Frank stood with his eyes fixed on the ground; his self-esteem had
+fallen with his body; Muriel had seen him beaten.
+
+Lee, resting a hand on Muriel's shoulder, and forcing her to stand
+beside him when she shrank away, said gaily, 'She is really a
+splendid girl, this daughter of mine. How handsome she looks just
+now! You must be chagrined horribly when you think that you almost
+had her. My dear boy, I pity you sincerely. I don't know exactly
+what course you should follow. It would be very striking,
+certainly, if you were to go off and drown yourself at once; but I
+don't think you'll do that. For myself I would prefer that you
+shouldn't. I like you too well, and hope that you will continue to
+play a part in our story. Perhaps you might take to drink.
+That's a good idea. Go in for dissipation; there's nothing like it
+for the cure of romance. Unworldly diseases need worldly remedies.
+And yet that's too common, especially with lady novelists. I
+believe you'll hit on some bright course of your own, for you're a
+capital collaborateur. I must thank you and Muriel for this scene.
+I've witnessed it all. Oh, you needn't be ashamed!' for Frank shut
+his eyes tightly, and Muriel hid her face in her hands. 'You're
+most delightful young people. The way you answered at once to that
+soft, warm gust charmed me, charmed me. I understand it all
+perfectly. I also am at one with nature. Well, good night. Come,
+Muriel.'
+
+Taking her hand he moved toward the wall. She looked over her
+shoulder to catch a glance from Frank, but his eyes were still
+fixed on the ground, and he stood motionless. Quick as a fawn she
+leapt from Lee's side, and throwing her arms round Frank's neck,
+cried out loud in a tone mingled of anguish and pity and passion,
+'I love you!' and he, reanimated by that shout, whispered as Lee
+snatched her away, 'I'll watch here all night.' That gave her new
+hope too. She would come to him by some means or other; and she
+felt so contented as Lee helped her over the wall, and led her in
+silence to the house, that she wondered at herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock. Lee, Briscoe, Miss Jane, Dempster
+and Muriel were all in the dining-room, and Dempster was making a
+speech. It will possibly never be known whether Miss Jane put him
+up to it or not; if she did she regretted it before he was half
+done.
+
+'Ladies and gentlemen,' he began, with turgid tongue and
+desiccated throat, 'you are surprised that I should wish at this
+late hour to detain you with anything in the shape of a formal
+speech, however informal it may be.' The introductory sentence had
+been prepared. 'But,' he continued, staunching a wriggle, 'I--I
+have something to say. Mr. Chartres, I am neither a Communist nor
+a Nihilist'--this was to have been a side flourish, but out it
+came first--'still I would like to remark, in reference to a talk
+we had this afternoon, that I am of opinion that, if fortunes were
+things to be inherited by everybody, it might on the whole be
+better--eh--ah--or worse for society, taking into consideration
+the fact that wealth produces idleness, and idleness folly,
+and--eh--ah--sin, it might be better that most people should have
+to make their fortunes. Eh--ah--I am overwhelmed with a feeling
+such as one experiences when one gets something one didn't expect.
+Comfort, Mr. Chartres, is the greatest necessity of existence--I
+mean that to be comfortable is always of the greatest consequence,
+indeed, I may say, the very backbone--eh--ah--of comfort.'
+
+Now there is never the remotest necessity for speech-making, at
+least in private, although it is daily perpetrated, and
+unfailingly by wholly incompetent parties. It is like singing in
+this respect; only those who cannot care to perform. Human nature
+will never get past it; for there is a law which ordains that
+whatever one is unfit for must be attempted, especially out of
+season. What one can't do is the all-important thing. So Dempster
+reeled on, undeterred by the blank looks of his auditors, and an
+ominous sparkle in Miss Jane's eye--his body a mere thoroughfare
+of uninterrupted transmigration for the spirits of all things that
+crawl and squirm and twist and wriggle.
+
+'And I am now, I am happy to say, exceedingly comfortable. After
+Muriel refused me I was like a ship in a storm, and so I put into
+the first port--eh--ah--I mean that I have found a comfortable
+haven, and I am sure Jane will make a very good wife.'
+
+Amazement stared from every eye, including Miss Jane's. She tried
+to simper in a dignified manner--but what was the man saying?
+
+'She is like old wine--eh--ah'--he felt Miss Jane's eyes scorching
+him like burning-glasses. 'The difference between our
+ages--eh--ah----' He was now perspiring freely. 'The disadvantage
+of marrying a girl like Muriel is, that when she grows old'--he
+made a little halt here, but he was too far gone to draw back;
+over he went, head first--'when she grows old one would miss her
+beauty. The great advantage is that one can never miss what has
+never been there, and--I'll not be interrupted!' mopping his head,
+and gyrating fiercely; but not daring to meet again Miss Jane's
+eye, one full glance of which had been more than enough.
+
+'There's nobody interrupting you, my dear Mr. Dempster,' said Lee.
+'But is it true that you are going to marry my sister?'
+
+'It is--I am!' defiantly, as if he were challenging himself to take
+so much as one step in an opposite direction.
+
+'I'm very glad. An episode of this kind is refreshing. So unlikely
+too! One daren't have introduced it into written fiction; but here
+it has cropped up most beautifully in our little creation. Really,
+I am much obliged to you both. Now you must allow me to go
+upstairs and attend to the matters there.'
+
+As soon as Lee had reached the house with Muriel he had gone
+straight to the room in which Henry Chartres lay; but when he was
+about to enter, a swift descending step on the stair caught his
+ear, and drew him away just in time to intercept Briscoe, who had
+finally determined that, wherever he might go, he must leave Snell
+House that night. Lee peremptorily bade him stay, or he would
+accuse him of robbery, and send in pursuit; and Briscoe was forced
+to submit. Lee had been about to ascend the stair again, when
+Dempster importunately demanded his presence in the dining-room.
+The latter having made his remarkable communication, Lee intended
+to arrange with Briscoe some definite plan of action; but another
+delay took place.
+
+On opening the door of the dining-room, Lee was met by Clacher,
+whom everybody had forgotten.
+
+'Good evening,' said Clacher, doing it 'Englified,' and walking
+into the room. His face was streaming with perspiration; his eyes
+were wild with drink and insanity; his hair hung in wisps about
+his face.
+
+'Ladies and gentlemen, I am Robert Chartres,' he said. He had
+remembered what he wanted to do 'Englified.'
+
+'I am bonnie Prince Charlie too,' he added, after a pause. 'I
+don't understand it. I'm afraid I'm mad but I'm not a fool. I am
+Robert Chartres.'
+
+Everybody looked at Lee.
+
+He said, 'I don't remember being so intensely interested in my
+life. How can you possibly hope to succeed in this imposture,
+Clacher?'
+
+'You're an imposture,' cried Clacher fiercely, staggering a
+little. 'I'm mad, but I'm no jist a fule, an' naebody daur harm
+me. Ach!' he hissed, grinding his teeth and shaking his wild hair,
+enraged at himself for failing to do it 'Englified.' 'I am Robert
+Chartres,' he shouted, throwing back his head. 'The estate's
+entailed, and it's mine. I'm bonnie Prince Charlie, too,' he
+added, more quietly.
+
+'Take a seat,' said Lee. 'Let us all sit down again.'
+
+Clacher stumbled into a chair. Miss Jane forgave Dempster with her
+eyes, and they sat on a couch together. Muriel stood beside a
+window with one hand wrapped in the curtain. Briscoe sat opposite
+Lee, who threw himself back on a large chair on one side of the
+fireplace. Clacher's chair was against the wall, not far from the
+door.
+
+'Jane,' said Lee, 'I find no resemblance between this gentleman
+and Robert. Do you?'
+
+'Not the slightest,' said Miss Jane.
+
+'Do yon, Muriel?'
+
+'None.'
+
+'Well, friend,' said Lee, turning to Clacher. 'What have you to
+say, now?'
+
+'I am Robert Chartres.'
+
+'But none of us recognise you. Recall yourself to our memories in
+some way.'
+
+'Oh, I'm bonnie Prince Charlie too.'
+
+'That only indicates that you are mad; and a very ordinary madness
+it is. I am sure there are two or three bonnie Prince Charlies in
+every lunatic asylum in Scotland.'
+
+'I'm mad, an' naebody daur harm me,' growled Clacher.
+
+'You remember Robert's escapade when he was a boy, Henry?' said
+Miss Jane.
+
+'To which do you refer? There were so many,' said Lee.
+
+'Oh, not so very many,' said Miss Jane. 'I mean the Inverkip Glen
+affair.'
+
+'I can't say I do remember it.'
+
+'Oh, you must. You weren't here at the time; but you knew all
+about it.'
+
+Lee sat up, and swiftly changed his look of anxiety into a
+far-reaching glance at the past.
+
+'Ah, yes!' he said, dropping back in his chair again.
+
+'Clacher must have heard about it,' said Miss Jane.
+
+'I shouldn't wonder,' said Lee. 'Clacher, do you know about the
+Inverkip Glen affair?'
+
+'Of course. I'm Robert Chartres. I'm Clacher too, and Bonnie
+Prince Charlie. I don't know how.'
+
+'Then,' said Lee, 'just tell us about it. Your acquaintance with
+it may be evidence of your identity.'
+
+'The Inverkip Glen business?' said Clacher. 'A'body kens that.
+Damn!' he growled at the Scotch.
+
+'Let us see, now,' said Lee. 'Have you any details that could only
+be known to Robert and his family?'
+
+'Inverkip Glen,' said Clacher. 'When I was fourteen or
+thereabouts, I went away wi' a wheen laddies an' hid in it for
+twa-three days. I ca'ed mysel' Prince Charlie, an' the ithers wis
+cheeftans--Lochiel an' Glengarry, ye ken. We fought the servants
+that wis sent tae bring us hame, an' they had tae send the polis
+tae fetch us.'
+
+This was spoken very haltingly, and ended with a savage oath at
+his own inability to speak correctly.
+
+'He could have learned all that in the village,' said Miss Jane.
+
+Lee rose, leant gracefully against the mantelpiece, and addressed
+Clacher.
+
+'Clacher,' he said, 'you have unwittingly undertaken a work of
+art, and for that you deserve high commendation. You have aspired;
+you have done your best. That is sufficient. Success is the only
+failure. A compassable aim is an inferior one. Ideals cease to be
+when realised. Better succeed in a constant endeavour after the
+highest, than fail in aspiration to achieve a result as splendid
+as any which history records. These platitudes are not by any
+means beside the question, although you don't understand them.'
+
+Here Lee shifted from his easy pose, and stood firmly on his feet.
+
+'Whatever besides madness,' he continued, 'may have led you to
+attempt this imposture, is no concern of mine. I am only sorry for
+your sake and my own that you cannot continue it further. Variety,
+if not the soul, is certainly the body of fiction. I hope that,
+although you must go out of our story shortly, at least in your
+present capacity, you, or some one else in your sphere of life,
+may be enmeshed in this web of circumstance which I help fate to
+weave. My brother Robert is at present upstairs. He arrived here
+this evening.'
+
+Lee looked at all his auditors severally, thoroughly enjoying the
+effect of this extraordinary news.
+
+'O dear! dear!' cried Clacher weakly, tedding his hair and
+fidgeting on his seat. 'Naebody daur harm me, I'm mad.'
+
+'Set your mind at rest, Clacher. Nobody will attempt to harm you.'
+
+'Jane,' he continued, 'it was our unfortunate brother whom we
+carried upstairs this evening. The woman was his wife.'
+
+Briscoe gasped; but the practical novelist proceeded, smiling, and
+proud of his ingenuity.
+
+'He has been going by the name of Lee, Maxwell Lee,' he said,
+staring down Briscoe; 'and makes a scanty living by his pen. His
+wife is a noble woman, and will not admit his madness; but that he
+is mad no one else can have any doubt, because the poor fellow
+imagines that he is me. I will tell you his whole history
+tomorrow, as far as I know it. I hadn't the remotest idea he was
+in Scotland until he appeared to-night----'
+
+The droning of a bagpipe not far off, a strange sound at that time
+of night and in the neighbourhood, interrupted him. A very
+unskilful attempt at a pibroch succeeded, and as the playing grew
+more distinct it was evident that the performer approached the
+house. Muriel raised the window-sash, and the tuneless screaming
+ceased. Hesitating steps on the gravel were then heard. They
+stopped opposite the window, and a high, cracked male voice
+quavered out the first verse of Glen's pathetic ballad, 'Wae's me
+for Prince Charlie':--
+
+     'A wee bird cam tae oor ha' door,
+     He warbl't sweet an' clearly;
+     An' aye the o'ercome o' his sang
+     Was "Wae's me for Prince Charlie."
+     O! when I heard the bonnie, bonnie bird,
+     The tears came drappin' rarely;
+     I took my bonnet off my head,
+     For well I lo'ed Prince Charlie!'
+
+The voice broke entirely at the last line. Said Lee, 'We'll bring
+this minstrel in,' and left the room. In a few seconds he returned
+accompanied by a strange figure. It was that of an old man dressed
+in a ragged Highland costume. His kilt was of the Stuart tartan.
+His black jacket had been garnished with brass buttons; but of
+them only a few hung here and there, withered and mouldy; and
+numerous little tufts of thread on pocket-lids and cuffs and
+breast showed whence their companions had been shed. His sporran
+was half-denuded of hair. His hose were holed, and the uppers were
+parting company with the soles of his shoes. A black feather
+adorned in a very broken-backed manner his Glengarry bonnet. His
+pipes he had left in the hall.
+
+There was nothing remarkable in the dress. Such are to be seen any
+day in the Trongate of Glasgow, the Canongate of Edinburgh, at
+fairs, or wherever the wandering piper may turn a penny. It was
+the bearing of the wearer and the cast of his countenance which
+commanded attention. As he entered the room he threw back his
+head, inclining it a little to the left side; his dim grey eyes
+lightened fitfully, and his gait had something of majesty. He
+advanced slowly, but without hesitation, and took the seat Lee had
+vacated.
+
+Of all those in the room Clacher's face indicated the greatest
+interest.
+
+'Friends,' said the newcomer, keeping on his bonnet, and shaking
+back his long grey hair, which hung almost to his shoulders, 'I
+can trust you. "Nowhere beats the heart so kindly as beneath the
+tartan plaid." You haven't the tartans on, and that is right, for
+they might betray you. There's a law against the tartan. I wear it
+in defiance of the law.'
+
+'Wha are ye, man?' cried Clacher, his face undergoing a sudden
+illumination.
+
+'Do you not know me?' said the stranger. 'You will be true. It is
+a great sum. Ten thousand pounds. All my own friends have
+forgotten me. It is strange, strange. I am changed, I know. I am
+Bonnie Prince Charlie.'
+
+'Ha, ha!' screamed Clacher, 'ha, ha, ha!'
+
+'Two of them,' whispered Dempster to himself, rigid with
+amazement.
+
+'You astonish me,' said Lee with perfect composure.
+
+'It is sad, I know. I sleep in the woods, and visit the towns at
+night. My home is in the bracken. I remember I lived here in
+'forty-five. I thought I would revisit the old place to-night. Is
+not this Scone Palace?'
+
+'No; this is Snell House.'
+
+'Ah! I lived there too, once. But can you tell me this. Why do
+they accuse me of unfaithfulness? "Flora, when thou wert beside
+me!" Oh, her eyes were warm and mild like the summer, and her
+voice made me weep. It is shameful what they say about me. I never
+loved another.'
+
+Clacher, looking absolutely hideous in his excitement, rushed from
+his chair, oversetting a small table, and planting himself firmly
+before the wondering piper, shouted, 'You are Bonnie Prince
+Charlie?'
+
+'I am. Do me no harm.'
+
+'Then you are Robert Chartres, and you did not commit suicide.'
+
+'I am hungry,' said the Prince.
+
+Clacher pulled from his breast-pocket the crumpled letter he had
+studied so devoutly in the library, and handing it to Miss Jane,
+cried: 'It's a' up noo'. I took that letter frae Maister Willum
+Chartres's pooch whan I fand his corp'. Read it, an' ye'll ken my
+plot. Gosh, it was a mad yin! Oh, I'm no jist a fule! Naebody daur
+harm me. An' you, ye scoon'erel,' he screamed, springing behind
+Lee, and pinning his arms to his body with a hug like a bear's,
+'ye're mad, ye're mad. I've turn't the tables on ye, I'm
+thinking.'
+
+Lee struggled strongly; but Briscoe came to Clacher's help.
+
+'Peter!' exclaimed Lee.
+
+'It's all up, as Clacher says. Every man for himself,' muttered
+Briscoe. But he wouldn't look Lee in the face.
+
+'You've spoiled a great scene, Peter,' was all Lee said.
+
+'And who is the man upstairs?' asked Muriel, advancing from the
+window.
+
+'You'll get the key of the bedroom in which he is in this pocket,'
+said Briscoe, indicating by an uncouth gesture a pocket in his
+coat, as he did not wish to release his hold on Lee.
+
+Muriel took the key and left the room.
+
+Miss Jane read and re-read the letter given her by Clacher, and
+was still considering it when Muriel returned with her father. He
+was not long awake, and had to be supported by his daughter. Miss
+Jane recognised him at once and kissed his cheek. There was no
+exclaiming. When they came out of it they would know from their
+exhaustion how excited they had been. The tears stood in Muriel's
+eyes, and her face was very pale, but serenity marked every
+lineament.
+
+'Where is Mrs. Lee?' asked Henry Chartres when he had got seated.
+
+At that moment Caroline entered the room. She had remained in the
+bedroom Lee had appropriated, afraid lest her interference might
+precipitate some rash act on the part of her husband or her
+brother; but the bagpipes, the singing, the opening and shutting
+of doors, and the loud voices downstairs intimated a crisis of
+some kind, and she had concluded at last to have a share in it,
+hoping to prevent disaster to her husband, as she judged from the
+noise that his control of circumstances had come to an end. As
+Caroline entered, the two gardeners and the coachman appeared at
+the door, Muriel having sent for them at her father's request.
+
+Muriel looked at Mrs. Lee for a second or two as if debating some
+question with herself, and then noiselessly left the room. She
+couldn't keep Frank waiting any longer.
+
+'Maxwell Lee,' said Henry Chartres, 'for your wife's sake you go
+scot free. She has told me all about you. As for you, Peter
+Briscoe, your present action shows what you are. Take him and duck
+him well in the horse-pond.'
+
+The coachman and the gardeners, nothing loath, approached Briscoe;
+but Lee, having regained his liberty, put himself before his
+brother-in-law in an attitude of defence.
+
+'I beg you, sir, not to insist on this,' he said in a passion of
+intercession; 'it is mere revenge. I entreat you.'
+
+'But he betrayed you,' said Chartres.
+
+'Well, I suppose the world puts it that way. But he merely acted
+independently and without due consideration. That has been the
+fault of this work all along: the principal collaborateurs have
+been too frequently out of harmony. Since he has chosen to bring
+our story to a sudden end in this way, I have no right to
+complain. Do not damage your character for magnanimity which these
+events have developed so remarkably--a result very gratifying to
+me--by a petty revenge on my brother-in-law.'
+
+Chartres signed to the servants to retire. 'You are a strange
+man,' he said.
+
+'Miss Chartres,' said Lee, 'in token that you cherish no
+deep-rooted feeling against me, will you oblige me by reading that
+letter?'
+
+Miss Jane looked at her brother; he assented, and she read:--
+
+'My dear William,--You will be astonished, not very agreeably, I
+am afraid, to learn that I am still in the land of the living. I
+have been in a state of abject poverty for years. I will not
+trouble you with the particulars of my wretched career. I have
+burnt up my stomach with drink. Insanity has addled my brain. I am
+a beggar, and go about the country--I am ashamed to say it for
+your sake--playing the bagpipes. In my mad fits I have repeatedly
+tried to commit suicide. At present I am quite sane; the only
+difficulty I have is to reconcile my being Robert Chartres with
+the fact that I am also Bonnie Prince Charlie. I write this in
+London; and I am going to start at once and at last to try and
+come to you. It would be better to kill myself; but I am too great
+a coward when I am sane. I want to enjoy comfort once more before
+I die. If I do not reach you within a month after this letter, I
+think you may conclude that I am dead.
+
+     'I am, your brother,
+
+          'Robert Chartres.'
+
+All eyes turned on the writer of the letter. He was fast asleep in
+his chair, smiling like a child.
+
+'Briscoe,' said Lee, you recognised and submitted to the _deus ex
+machina_ at once. I would have fought longer, and might yet have
+conquered. I am sorry the conclusion is so inartistic, so
+improbable. There is nothing more absurd than reality. Clacher, my
+fine fellow, you played a bold game; as the attempt of a mad
+rascal it was very fair. What a lot of mad people there are! How
+small the world is! Ah!' he cried, as Frank and Muriel entered,
+'my good lovers! I believe you are even now thanking me for my
+opposition.'
+
+'Who is this young gentleman?' asked Mr. Chartres.
+
+'Oh! I found him at the north wall; I knew he would be there,'
+said Muriel, radiant, and scarcely knowing what she said.
+
+'Do you frequently find young gentlemen and bring them here in
+this way?'
+
+'Oh, papa! His name is Frank Hay, and we are going to be married.'
+
+'I have never seen your like, Muriel,' said Lee, leaving the room.
+Briscoe followed him, bestowing a surly nod on Dempster. But
+Caroline before she went timidly kissed the hand of the injured
+man.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Practical Novelist, by John Davidson
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