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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42496 ***
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://books.google.com/books?id=nj4VAAAAQAAJ
+      (Oxford University)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            MIRACLE GOLD.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                     New Novels at the Libraries.
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+    MARVEL. By the Author of "Molly Bawn." 3 vols.
+    FOR FREEDOM. By TIGHE HOPKINS. 2 vols.
+    MOLLY'S STORY; a Family History. 3 vols.
+    AN ADVENTURESS. 2 vols.
+    LADY STELLA AND HER LOVER. 3 vols.
+    ONE MAID'S MISCHIEF. By G. M. FENN. 3 vols.
+    UNCLE BOB'S NIECE. By LESLIE KEITH. 3 vols.
+    A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. By C. FOTHERGILL. 3 vols.
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+                  WARD & DOWNEY, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            MIRACLE GOLD.
+
+
+                               A Novel.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           RICHARD DOWLING,
+
+                              AUTHOR OF
+
+            "The Mystery of Killard," "The Weird Sisters,"
+              "Tempest Driven," "Under St. Paul's," &c.
+
+
+
+
+                         _IN THREE VOLUMES_.
+
+
+                               VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+                               LONDON:
+
+                           WARD AND DOWNEY,
+
+                 12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
+
+                                1888.
+
+                       [_All rights reserved_.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              PRINTED BY
+          KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
+                       AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              CONTENTS.
+
+
+       CHAP.
+
+       XIV.--Spirit and Flesh.
+
+        XV.--A Substitute for Gold.
+
+       XVI.--Red Herrings.
+
+      XVII.--Dinner at Curzon Street.
+
+     XVIII.--In the Dark.
+
+       XIX.--Mrs. Hanbury.
+
+        XX.--John Hanbury Alone.
+
+       XXI.--Timmons's Tea and Leigh's Dinner.
+
+      XXII.--A Quarter Past Twelve.
+
+     XXIII.--An Early Visitor to Timmons.
+
+      XXIV.--Gracedieu, Derbyshire.
+
+       XXV.--Two of a Race.
+
+      XXVI.--The End of Day.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            MIRACLE GOLD.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            MIRACLE GOLD.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                          SPIRIT AND FLESH.
+
+
+The folding-doors between the back and front drawing-rooms at Mrs.
+Ashton's were thrown open, and both rooms were full that Thursday
+afternoon. Some of the visitors were standing, some sitting, and many
+ladies and gentlemen were moving about. A few had cups of tea, and all
+seemed to wish to appear pleased and pleasant. If serious matters were
+mentioned or discussed, it was in a light and desultory way It was
+impossible to plan ground for the foundation of enduring structures in
+politics, or taste, or art, or science, or polemics, when a humourist
+might come up and regard what you were saying as the suggestion for a
+burlesque opera or harlequinade. All the talk was touch-and-go, and as
+bright and witty as the speakers could make it. There was an unceasing
+clatter of tongues and ripple of laughter, which had not time to
+gather volume. Most of the people were serious and earnest, but the
+great bulk of the dialogue was artificial, designedly and deliberately
+artificial, for the purpose of affording relief to the speakers. Mrs.
+Ashton held that the most foolish way to spend life is to be always
+wise. These At homes were for recreation, not for the solemnities of
+work. People took no liberties, but all were free. Even such sacred
+subjects as the franchise, drainage, compound interest, the rights of
+the subject, and oysters, were dealt with lightly on Thursdays in
+Curzon Street.
+
+As Oscar Leigh followed John Hanbury slowly from the immediate
+vicinity of Mrs. Ashton, his ears were aware of many and various
+voices saying many and various things, but he paid no attention to
+voices or words. He was all eyes. Miss Ashton was moving away to her
+former place by the window. She was accompanied by a tall, grizzled,
+military-looking man, who, to judge by her quick glances and laughing
+replies, was amusing and interesting her very much.
+
+"That was a wild prank of yours," said Hanbury, bending over the
+little man and laying admonitory emphasis on his words. "You ought not
+to play tricks like that in a place like this. Everyone who saw and
+heard, Mrs. Ashton of course among the number, must have noticed your
+manner and the effect your words had upon----" He paused. They were
+standing in the second window-place. He did not like to say "upon me,"
+for that would be an admission he had felt alarmed or frightened; it
+would also imply a suspicion of Leigh's trustworthiness in keeping his
+word and the secret.
+
+The clockmaker did not say anything for a moment. He had no intention
+of helping Hanbury over the pause. It was his design, on the contrary,
+to embarrass the other as much as he could. He looked up with an
+innocent expression of face, and asked, "The effect of my manner on
+what, or whom?"
+
+"Well," said Hanbury, with hesitation, "upon anyone who heard. Tricks
+of that kind may be amusing, but I am afraid you did not improve your
+credit for sense with Miss Ashton by what you said and your way of
+saying it. For a moment I felt afraid she might be surprised into an
+expression that would betray all."
+
+"_You!_" cried Leigh in a low tone of wild amazement. "_You_ were
+afraid Miss Ashton might have been surprised into an expression that
+would have betrayed all?"
+
+"Yes. She was not prepared for your little sally and your subtlety,"
+said Hanbury with a frown. It was intolerable to have to speak of Dora
+Ashton, his Dora, his wife that was to be, to this mechanic, or
+mechanist, or mechanician, or whatever he happened to be. "Miss Ashton
+might have been taken off her guard."
+
+"Bah, sir! _You_ might have been surprised and taken off _your_ guard
+by what I said, but not _she!_ Hah!" He said this with a secret
+mocking laugh. "I am fairly astonished at a man of your intelligence,
+Mr. Hanbury, mistaking me for a fool. I _never_ make mistakes about
+people. I never make wrong estimates of the _men_ or _women_ I meet. I
+would trust Miss Ashton in any position of danger or difficulty, any
+situation requiring courage or tact."
+
+"I am sure if she knew your high estimate of her she would be
+enormously flattered," said Hanbury, with a sneer.
+
+"No, she would not. She is not the woman to be flattered by anything,
+and certainly not by any such trifle as my opinion of her good sense.
+_You_ ought to know as much by this time. You and she are engaged?"
+
+The cool assurance of the dwarf's manner, and the simple directness of
+the question with which he finished his speech, had the effect of
+numbing Hanbury's faculties, and confusing his purpose. "The relations
+between Miss Ashton and me are not a subject I care to speak of, and I
+beg of you to say no more of the matter," said he, with clumsiness,
+arising from disgust and annoyance, and the sense of helplessness.
+
+"Hah! I thought so. Now if you were only as clever as Miss Ashton, you
+would not allow me to find out how matters stood between you and her,
+as you have plainly done by your answer. You are a young man, and in
+life many things are against a young man. In an encounter of this kind
+his bad temper is his chief foe. Hah!"
+
+Hanbury's head was fiery hot, and his mind in a whirl. Things and
+people around him were blurred and dim to his eyes. "I have performed
+my part of the contract," he said, with impotent fury, "had we not
+better go now? This is no place for scenes or lectures, for lectures
+by even the most able and best qualified."
+
+This conversation had been conducted in suppressed voices, inaudible
+to all ears but those of the speakers, and most of it by the open
+window, Miss Ashton being at her former position in the other one
+looking into the street.
+
+"Yes, you have done your part. You have introduced me to Miss Ashton,
+or rather Mrs. Ashton has done so, and that is the same thing. I am
+perfectly satisfied so far. I do not ask you to do any more. I am not
+a levier of blackmail. I, too, have performed my part of the contract.
+So far we are quits. We are as though we had never met. If you have
+any engagement or wish that draws you away from this place I do not
+see why you should remain. If you want to go, by all means go. I shall
+stay. Hah!"
+
+"What! Mr. Leigh, you do not mean to say you intend using my
+introduction here, which I undertook in compliance with your whim, as
+the means of effecting a lodgment!"
+
+Leigh sprinkled a few drops of eau-de-cologne from his little silver
+flask into the palms of his long brown-yellow hands and sniffed it up
+noisily. "You do not use eau-de-cologne? You are wrong. It is
+refreshing--most refreshing. If you had been poring over retorts and
+crucibles until your very marrow was turned to dust, burnt-up to
+powder, you'd appreciate eau-de-cologne. It's most refreshing. It is,
+indeed. I am not going away from this place yet; but do not let me
+detain you if business or pleasure is awaiting you anywhere else. Do
+not stand on ceremony with me, my dear sir."
+
+Hanbury ground his teeth and groaned. Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea was
+pleasant company compared with this hideous monster. Go from this
+place leaving him behind! John Hanbury would sooner fling himself
+head-foremost from that window than walk down the stairs without this
+hateful incubus. He now knew Leigh too well to try and divert or win
+him from his purpose. The dwarf was one of those men who see the
+object they desire to the exclusion of all other objects, and never
+take their eyes off it until it is in their hands. Once having brought
+Leigh here, he must hold himself at his mercy until it pleased the
+creature to take himself off. How deplorably helpless and mean and
+degraded he felt! He had never been in so exasperating and humiliating
+a position before, and to feel as he felt now, and be so circumstanced
+in this house above all other houses in London! It was not to be
+borne.
+
+Then he reflected on the events which had drawn him into the
+predicament. He had gone down that atrocious Chetwynd Street at Dora's
+request, and against his own wish, conviction, instinct. They had seen
+the hateful place, and the odious people who lived there. That
+accident had befallen him, and while he was insensible Dora had given
+this man their names. He had come back to prevent their names getting
+into the newspapers, and found this man in the act of meditating a
+paragraph, with the "Post Office Directory" before him. He saw this
+man was not open to a money-bribe, but still he was open to a bribe,
+and the bribe was, to state it shortly, bringing him here, and
+introducing him to Dora. He introduced him to Mrs. Ashton, and, seeing
+that he brought Leigh to her house, she naturally thought he was a
+great friend of his! Good heavens, a great friend of his!
+
+Only for Dora nothing of this would ever have happened. It all arose
+out of her foolish interest in the class of people of whom Leigh was a
+specimen. It was poetic justice on her that Leigh should insist upon
+coming here. Would it not be turning this visit into a useful lesson
+to her if she were allowed to see more of this specimen of the people?
+The kind of mind this man had? The kind of man he was? Yes, they
+should go to Dora.
+
+During the progress of Leigh and Hanbury through the room to Mrs.
+Ashton, and on their way from her to the window, Hanbury had met a
+score of people he knew intimately, and several others with whom he
+was acquainted. He had nodded and spoken a few words of greeting right
+and left, and, when there was any likelihood of friends expecting more
+of him, had glanced at his companion to intimate that he was engaged
+and devoted to him. Whatever was to happen, it would not do to allow
+the clockmaker to break away from him, and mingle unaccompanied in the
+throng. While the two were at the window, Hanbury stood with his back
+to the room, in front of Leigh, so that he himself might not easily be
+accosted, and Leigh should be almost hidden from view.
+
+He now made a violent effort to compose his mind and his features, and
+with an assumption of whimsical good humour turned round and faced the
+room. He had in a dismal and disagreeable way made up his mind to
+brazen out this affair. Let them both go to Dora, and when he was
+alone with her after dinner he could arrange that Leigh was not to
+come here again, for apart from Leigh's general objectionableness it
+would be like living in a powder magazine with a lunatic possessing
+flint and steel to be in Ashton's house with a man who held the secret
+of Chetwynd Street or Welbeck Place, or whatever the beastly region
+was called.
+
+"I am not in the least hurry away from this, Mr. Leigh," said he,
+partly turning to the other. "It occurred to me that the place might
+be dull to you."
+
+"On the contrary, the place and the people are most interesting to me.
+I am not, as you may fancy, much of a society man. I go out but
+little. I am not greatly sought after, Mr. Hanbury; and I do not think
+you can consider it unreasonable in me to wish to see this thing out."
+He was speaking suavely and pleasantly now, and when one was not
+looking at him there appeared nothing in his tone or manner to suggest
+disagreeableness, unless the heavy thick breathing, half wheeze, half
+gasp.
+
+"But there is nothing to be seen out. There is no climax to these At
+homes. People come and chat and perhaps drink a cup of tea and go
+away. That is all. By the way, the servant has just set down some tea
+by Miss Ashton; perhaps you would like a cup."
+
+"I have had no breakfast. I have eaten nothing to-day."
+
+"I am sorry for that. I am greatly afraid they will not give you
+anything very substantial here; nothing but a cup of tea and a biscuit
+or wafery slice of bread. But let us get some. Half a loaf is better
+than no bread." He forced a smile, as pleasant a one as he could
+command.
+
+"I shall be most grateful for a cup of tea from Miss Ashton's hands,"
+said the dwarf graciously.
+
+"He can," thought Hanbury, as they moved towards the other window,
+where Miss Ashton was now standing over a tiny inlaid table on which
+rested the tea equipage, "be quite human when he likes." Aloud he
+said, "I hope you will be more guarded this time?"
+
+"I am always guarded--and armed. I shall be glad to take the useful
+olive from Pallas-Athena."
+
+"And the olive bough too, I hope," said Hanbury under an impulse of
+generosity.
+
+"It was a dove not a goddess brought the olive bough."
+
+"But the dove was only a messenger."
+
+"The olive bough was only a symbol; the olive itself was substantive
+good."
+
+"But is not the symbol of peace better than an earthly meal?"
+
+"Answer your own case out of your own mouth. I have never eaten
+to-day. I have never eaten yet in all my life. You are filled with
+divine luxuries. Go you your gait, I go mine. Tell me, Mr. Hanbury,
+would you rather have the spirit of my promise to you or the flesh of
+my promise?"
+
+"I do not know exactly what you mean."
+
+"Would you rather trust my word or see my dead body? If I were dead I
+could not speak."
+
+"Trust your word beyond all doubt," said Hanbury with a perplexed and
+uneasy smile.
+
+"Hah! I believe you believe what you say. But I am afraid your
+shoulders are not broad enough, your back is not strong enough for the
+faith you profess in me. I don't suppose you'd go to the extremity of
+murdering me, but at this moment you would not be sorry if I fell dead
+at your feet. Hah!"
+
+"Pray do not say such a horrible thing. I assure you it is not
+true. Indeed you wrong me. I do not want the miserable thing talked
+about----"
+
+"Sir, are you referring to me? I am the only miserable thing here."
+
+"You are incorrigible."
+
+"You are mistaken, sir. I am as plastic as wax; but like wax, if the
+fingers that touch me are cold I become brittle."
+
+"If you persist how are we to approach Miss Ashton?"
+
+"Thus! Follow me!"
+
+He threw back his head haughtily, and glancing with scorn from side to
+side, strode to the table over which bent the exquisite face and
+figure of Dora.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XV.
+
+                        A SUBSTITUTE FOR GOLD.
+
+
+The air of pleasant badinage which pervaded the room had no more
+effect on Oscar Leigh than on the gasalier. No one spoke to him, for
+no one knew him. Except what passed between Leigh and Hanbury all
+words were intended for any ears who might hear. Intensities of
+individuality were laid aside at the threshold. Those whose
+individuality pursued and tyrannized over them like a Frankenstein
+remained away. They did not put it to themselves in this way. They
+told themselves they found the place too mixed or too light or too
+frivolous or too distracting.
+
+Oscar Leigh was in no degree influenced by the humour or manner of the
+people present. These chattering men and women were indifferent to
+him, so long as he did not see how to put them to any use or find them
+in his way. He was not accustomed to the society of ladies and
+gentlemen, and consequently he omitted little customary observances.
+But he was not inured to any society at all, and this saved him from
+vulgarities; and then he was much used to commune with himself, which
+gave him directness and simplicity of manner.
+
+One of the things affording freshness and vitality to Leigh was that
+he did not feel the need of common-places. Common-places are the
+tribute which intelligence pays to stupidity. They are the inventions
+of a beneficent Satan in the interest of the self-respect of fools.
+
+"Miss Ashton," said Leigh bowing without emphasis or a smile, "I have
+ventured to come to beg a cup of tea of you."
+
+She looked at him with a smile and said, "You have chosen the right
+moment. I have just got a fresh supply."
+
+"This is a very fortunate day for me. It may be the most fortunate day
+of my life."
+
+"And what is the nature of the good fortune you have found to-day?"
+she asked, handing him a tiny cup, while the servant who still
+lingered near offered him some thin bread-and-butter. There were
+half-a-dozen films on an exquisite china dish. Leigh took one doubled
+it twice and ate it greedily.
+
+"You will let me have all? I have tasted no food to-day."
+
+"Oh, certainly. I am afraid all is very little. But James can get us
+more." A faint colour had come into Miss Ashton's face. James, the
+servant, who had been christened Wilfrid, passed his disengaged hand
+over his mouth to conceal a smile. Hanbury flushed purple. For a
+moment there was a pause in the talk of those within hearing.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked a very young man with a very fresh
+healthy-looking face of a chatty dowager who was looking through a
+gold-rimmed eye-glass at the dwarf.
+
+"Hanbury's friend, the dwarf, is _eating!_"
+
+"Good Heavens!" cried the young man leaning against the wall at his
+back as in dismay.
+
+Leigh went on eating.
+
+"It is excellent bread-and-butter," said he when he had finished the
+last slice. "I have never tasted better."
+
+Hanbury stooped to pick up nothing and whispered "This is not a
+restaurant," fiercely into Leigh's ear.
+
+"Eh? No. I am well aware of that," said the other in an ordinary tone
+and quite audibly. "You would not find such good bread-and-butter as
+that in any restaurant I know of. Or it may be that I was very
+hungry."
+
+"Shall I get some more?" asked Miss Ashton, who had by this time
+recovered from her surprise and was beaming with good-natured
+amusement.
+
+"You are very kind, thank you. It was enough."
+
+"I tell you what it is, Lady Forcar, that is a remarkable person,"
+said the young man with the fresh complexion, to the dowager.
+
+"If people hear of this it will become the fashion," said Lady Forcar,
+whose complexion never altered except in her dressing-room or when the
+weather was excessively hot.
+
+"What?" asked the young man. "What will become the fashion?"
+
+"Eating."
+
+"How shocking!"
+
+"If that man had only money and daring and a handsome young wife, he
+could do anything--anything. He could make pork sausages the rage.
+Have you ever eaten pork sausages, Sir Julius?"
+
+"Thousands of times. They are often the only things I can eat for
+breakfast, but not in London. One should never eat anything they can
+make in London."
+
+"Pork is a neglected animal," said Lady Forcar with a sigh. "It must
+be years since I tasted any."
+
+"You know pork isn't exactly an animal?"
+
+"No. Pork sausages are animalculæ of pork with bread and thyme and
+sweet marjoram and fennel and mint. Have you ever taken it into your
+mind, Sir Julius, to explain why it is that while a pig when alive is
+far from agreeable company, no sooner does he die than all the
+romantic herbs of the kitchen garden gather round him?"
+
+"No doubt it comes under the head of natural selection."
+
+"No doubt it does. Have you ever tried to account for the fact that
+there are no bones in pork sausages?"
+
+"I fancy it may be explained by the same theory of natural selection.
+The bones select some other place."
+
+"True. Very true. _That_ never occurred to me before. Do you know I
+have often thought of giving up my intellect and devoting the
+remainder of my days to sensualism."
+
+"Good gracious, Lady Forcar, that sounds appalling."
+
+"It does. If I had as much genius as that humpbacked little man, I'd
+do it, but I feel my deficiency; I know I haven't the afflatus."
+
+"The thing sounds very horrible as you put it. For what form of
+sensualism would you go in? climate? or soap? or chemical waters? or
+yachting?"
+
+"None of them. Simply pork. You observe that the people who are
+nearest the sensible and uncorrupted beasts worship pork. If you hear
+anyone speak well of pork, that person is a sensualist at heart. I
+sigh continually for pork. The higher order of apes, including man,
+live in trees and on fruits that grow nearer to Heaven than any other
+thing. Cows and sheep and low types of man and brutes of moderate
+grossness eat things they find on the earth, such as grass and corn,
+and hares and deer and goats, but it is only pigs and men of the
+lowest types that burrow into the ground for food. The lowest creature
+of all is the sensualist, who not only eats potatoes and turnips and
+carrots but the very pigs that root for things nature has had the
+decency to hide away from the sight of the eyes of angels and of men.
+Can you conceive anything lower in the scale of sensual joy or more
+delicious than pork and onions? I tell you, Sir Julius, if this
+humpbacked dwarf only had money, a handsome wife and courage, he could
+popularize sausages being served before the soup. He is the only man
+since Napoleon the Great who has the manner of power sufficient for
+such a reform."
+
+"Let us devoutly hope, Lady Forcar, that he may bring about the
+blessed change, that is if you wish it."
+
+"Wish it! Good Heavens, Sir Julius, you don't for a moment fancy me
+capable of trifling with such a subject! I say to you deliberately, it
+is the only thing which would now save Society from ennui and its
+present awful anxiety about the temperature of the soup."
+
+The dowager Lady Forcar was well known for her persiflage, her
+devotion to her young and plain daughter-in-law, the head now of her
+son's house, her inch-thick paint, of which she spoke freely and
+explained on the grounds of keeping in the swim, and her intense
+interest in all that affected the welfare of the rural cottager.
+
+Sir Julius Whinfield, in spite of his very fresh young face and
+affectation, was an excellent authority on Hebrew and the manufacture
+of silk, so that if he had only happened to live once upon a time he
+might have talked wisdom to Solomon and dresses with Solomon's wives.
+He was not a clever conversationalist, but when not under pressure
+could say sound things pithily. Of Lady Forcar he once declared that
+he never understood what a saint must have been like when living until
+he met her. This did not come to her ears and had nothing to do with
+her liking for the young man.
+
+The tall, military-looking man who had been speaking to Miss Ashton,
+and who was not a soldier but a composer of music, now came up and
+said:
+
+"I am in sore need of you, Lady Forcar. I am about to start a new
+crusade. I am going to try to depose the greatest tyrant of the time."
+
+"And who is that? Wagner? Bismarck? The Russian Bear? The Higher
+Culture?"
+
+"No. Soap. I am of opinion that this age can do no good so long as it
+is bound to the chariot wheels of soap. This is the age of science,
+and soap is its god. Old Q. once became impatient with the river
+Thames, and said he could see nothing in it----"
+
+"He was born too soon. In his time they had not begun to spy into the
+slums of nature. For my part I think the microscope is the tyrant of
+this age. What did old Q. say about our father Tiber?"
+
+"He said he could see nothing in it, that it always went
+flow--flow--flow, and that was all."
+
+"One must not expect too much of a river. A river is no more than
+human, after all. But what has soap been doing?"
+
+"Nothing; and in the fact that it has been doing nothing lies one of
+my chief counts against it. Of old you judged a man by the club to
+which he belonged, the number of his quarterings, the tailor who made
+his clothes, the income he had, the wife he married, the horses he
+backed, or the wine he drank. Now we classify men according to the
+soap they use. There are more soaps now than patent medicines."
+
+"Soaps are patent medicine for external use only," said Lady Forcar,
+touching her white plump wrist.
+
+"There may be some sense in a pill against the earthquake, or against
+an unlucky star, but how on earth can soap be of any use? First you
+smear a horrid compound over you, and then you wash it off as quickly
+as possible. Can anything be more childish? It is even more childish
+than the Thames. It can't even flow of itself. It is a relic of
+barbarism."
+
+"But are not we ourselves relics of barbarism? Suppose you were to
+abolish all relics of barbarism in man, you would have no man at all.
+Heads, and arms, and bodies, are relics of barbaric man. Had not
+barbaric man heads, and arms, and bodies? Are you going to abolish
+heads, and arms, and bodies?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Anstruther, the composer, "I don't know. I think they
+might be reduced. Anyway," dropping his voice, and bending over her
+ladyship, "our little friend here, whom Mr. Hanbury brought in,
+manages to hold his own, and more than hold his own, with less of such
+relics of barbarism than most of us."
+
+"I was just saying to Sir Julius when you, Mr. Anstruther, came up,
+that I consider the stranger the most remarkable man I ever met in
+this house, and quite capable of undertaking and carrying out any
+social revolution, even to the discrediting of soap. If you have been
+introduced bring him to me."
+
+"I haven't, unfortunately, but I'll tell Hanbury, who looks as black
+as thunder, that you would like to speak to him."
+
+"I have scarcely seen Miss Ashton to-day. Let us go to them. That is
+the simplest way," said Lady Forcar, rising and moving towards the
+place where Dora, Hanbury, and Leigh stood.
+
+When Leigh finished eating the bread-and-butter and drinking the tiny
+cup of tea, he said: "You wish, Miss Ashton, to know in what way I
+have been lucky to-day?"
+
+She looked in perplexity at Hanbury, and then at the dwarf. She had no
+doubt he had alluded to her when he spoke of having found a model for
+the Pallas-Athena. An average man accustomed to ordinary social
+observances would not pursue that kind of flattery any further, but
+could this man be depended on? He certainly was not an ordinary man,
+and as certainly he was not accustomed to ordinary social observances.
+If he pursued that subject it would be embarrassing. It was quite
+plain John was in very bad humour. He deserved to be punished for his
+pusillanimous selfishness to-day, but there were limits beyond which
+punishment ought not to be pressed. She would forgive John now and try
+to make the best of the situation. She felt convinced that John would
+not have brought this man here except under great pressure. Let him be
+absolved from further penalties.
+
+She said pleasantly: "One always likes to hear of good fortune coming
+to those in whom one is interested." Nothing could be more bald, or
+commonplace, or trite, yet in the heart of Leigh the words made joyous
+riot. She had implied, even if she did not mean her implication, that
+she took an interest in _him_.
+
+"I was speaking a moment ago about the figures of time in my clock. I
+had the honour of telling Mrs. Ashton that there would be thousands of
+them, and that they would be modelled, not chiefly or at all for the
+display of mechanism, but in the first place as works of art; to these
+works of art mechanism would be adapted later."
+
+"Which will make your clock the only one of the kind in the world,"
+said she, much relieved to find no pointed reference to herself.
+
+"Precisely. But I did not do myself the honour of telling Mrs. Ashton
+of what material the figures were to be composed."
+
+"No. I do not think you said what they would be made of. Wax, is it
+not?" With the loss of apprehension on her own account, she had gained
+interest in this wonderful clock.
+
+"The models will of course be made of wax, but the figures themselves,
+the figures which I intend to bequeath to posterity, will be made of
+gold."
+
+"Gold! All those figures made of gold! Why, your clock will cost you a
+fortune."
+
+"It will not cost _me_ as much as it would cost any other man living.
+I am going to make the gold too." He drew himself up, and looked
+proudly round.
+
+At this moment Lady Forcar and Mr. Anstruther came up, and
+introductions took place. Leigh submitted to the introductions as
+though he had no interest in them beyond the interruption they caused
+in what he was saying.
+
+Miss Ashton briefly placed Lady Forcar and Mr. Anstruther in
+possession of the subject, and then Leigh went on. He no longer leant
+upon his stick. He straightened himself, threw back his head
+haughtily, and kept it back. He shifted his stout gnarled stick into
+his left hand and thrust the long, thin, sallow, hairy fingers of his
+right hand into the breast of his coat, and looked around as though
+challenging denial.
+
+"I have," he said, "invented a metal, a compound which is absolutely
+indistinguishable from gold, which is in fact gold, and of which I
+shall make my figures. Mystery gold was a clumsy juggle that one found
+out in the fire. My gold is _bonâ fide_ a miracle, and I have called
+it Miracle Gold. My gold will resist the acid, and the blow-pipe, and
+the crucible. As I live, if they provoke me, I will sell them not
+metal miracle gold, but perchloride of miracle gold. No one can doubt
+me then!"
+
+"And will you be able, Mr. Leigh, to make not only enough for your
+figures but some for sale also?" asked Mr. Anstruther.
+
+"I may be able to spare a little, but my gold cannot be sold for a
+chapman's price. It will cost me much in money and health and risk,
+and even then the yield will be small."
+
+"In health and risk?" said Miss Ashton, in a tone of concern and
+sympathy. "How in health and risk?" He seemed even now to have but
+little store of health.
+
+He lowered his head and abated the arrogance of his manner. "The steam
+of fusing metals and fumes of acids are not for men who would live
+long, Miss Ashton. They paralyse the muscles and eat into the
+wholesome flesh of those whose flesh is wholesome, while with one who
+is not fashioned fair to the four winds of attack, the end comes with
+insidious speed. Then for the risk, there are conjunctions of
+substances that, both in the dry and the wet, lead often to unexpected
+ebullitions and rancorous explosions of gas or mere forces that kill.
+There may spring out of experiments vapours more deadly than any known
+now, poisons that will slay like the sight of the angel of death."
+
+"Then, Mr. Leigh," said the girl, with eyes fixed upon him, "why need
+you make these figures of time of such costly material?"
+
+"Ah, there may be reasons too tedious to relate."
+
+"And does the good fortune you speak of concern the manufacture of
+this miracle gold?" she asked with a faint flush, and eyes shining
+with anxiety.
+
+"It does."
+
+"A discovery which perhaps will make the manufacture less dangerous?"
+
+"Which would make the manufacture unnecessary."
+
+She clasped her hands before her with delight, and cried while her
+eyes shone joyously into his, "Oh, that would be lucky indeed. And how
+will you know if your augury of good fortune will come true?"
+
+"You are interested?" He bent his head still lower, and his voice was
+neither so firm nor so harsh.
+
+"Intensely. You tell us your life may be endangered if you go on. Tell
+us you think you can avoid the risk."
+
+"I do not know yet."
+
+"When can you know?"
+
+"Would you care to hear as soon as I know?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"I shall, I think, be certain by this day week."
+
+"Then come to us again next Thursday. We shall all be here as we are
+now?"
+
+"Thank you, Miss Ashton, I will. Good day."
+
+He backed a pace and bowed to her, and then turned round, and, with
+head erect and scornful eyes flashing right and left, but seeing
+nothing, strode out of the room.
+
+"Dora," whispered Lady Forcar, "you have made another conquest. That
+little genius is in love with you."
+
+The girl laughed, but did not look up for a moment. When she did so
+her eyes were full of tears.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                            RED HERRINGS.
+
+
+Dealers in marine stores generally select quiet by-ways, back-waters
+of traffic, for the scene of their trade. In the open high roads of
+business the current is too quick for them. They buy and sell
+substantial and weighty articles; their transactions are few and far
+between. Those who come to sell may be in haste; those who come to
+buy, never. No one ever yet rushed into a marine-store dealer's, and
+hammered with his money on a second-hand copper, in lieu of a counter,
+and shouted out that he could not wait a moment for a second-hand iron
+tripod. It is extremely doubtful if a marine-store dealer ever sells
+anything. Occasionally buying of ungainly, heavy, amorphous,
+valueless-looking bundles goes on, but a sale hardly ever. Who, for
+instance, could want an object visible in the business establishment
+of John Timmons, Tunbridge Street, London Road? The most
+important-looking article was a donkey-engine without a funnel, or any
+of its taps, and with a large rusty hole bulged in its knobby boiler.
+Then there lay a little distance from the engine the broken beam of a
+large pair of scales and the huge iron scoop of another pair. After
+this, looking along the left-hand side out of the gloom towards the
+door, lay three cannon-shot, for guns of different calibres; then the
+funnel of a locomotive, flat, and making a very respectable pretence
+of having been the barrel from which the cannon-shot had dribbled,
+instead of flown, because of the barrel's senile decay. After the
+funnel came a broken anvil, around the blockless and deposed body
+of which gathered--no doubt for the sake of old lang syne--two
+sledge-hammer heads, without handles, and the nozzle of a prodigious
+forge-bellows. Next appeared a heap of chunks of leaden pipe. Next, a
+patch of mutilated cylindrical half-hundred weights, like iron
+mushrooms growing up out of the ferruginous floor. The axle-tree and
+boxes of a cart stood against the wall, like the gingham umbrella of
+an antediluvian giant, and keeping them company the pillars and trough
+of a shower-bath, plainly the stand into which the umbrella ought to
+have been placed, if the dead Titan had had any notion of tidiness.
+Then appeared the cistern of the shower-bath, like the Roundhead iron
+cap of the cyclopean owner of the umbrella. Then spread what one might
+fancy to be the mouth of a mine of coffee mills, followed by a huge
+chaotic pile of rusty and broken guns and swords, and blunderbusses
+and pistols. Beyond this chaotic patch, a ton of nuts and screws and
+bolts; and, later, a bank of washers, a wire screen, five dejected
+chimney-jacks, the stock of an anchor, broken from the flukes, several
+hundred fathoms of short chains of assorted lengths, half a bundle of
+nailrod iron, three glassless ship's lamps, a pile of brazen
+miscellanies, a pile of iron miscellanies, a pile of copper
+miscellanies, and then the doorless opening into Tunbridge Street, and
+standing on the iron-grooved threshold, into which the shutters fitted
+at night, Mr. John Timmons in person, the owner of this flourishing
+establishment.
+
+Mr. John Timmons was a tall and very thin man, of fifty years, or
+thereabouts. His face was dust-colour, with high, well-padded cheek
+bones, blue eyes and insignificant cocked nose. His hair was dark
+brown, touched here and there with grey, curly, short, thin. He wore a
+low-crowned brown felt hat and a suit of dark chocolate tweed, the
+trousers being half a span too short over his large shoes, and the
+waistcoat half a span too wide, half a span too long, and buttoned up
+to the deep-sunken hollow of his scraggy throat. His neck was
+extremely long and thin and wrinkled, and covered with sparse greyish
+hair. His ears were enormous, and stood out from his ill-shapen head
+like fins. They were iron-grey, the colour of the under surface of a
+bat's wing. The forehead was low, retreating, and creased with
+close parallel lines. The eyes were keen, furtive, suspicious. A
+hand's-breath below the sharp, large apple of his throat, and hanging
+loose upon the waistcoat, was the knot of a washed-out blue cotton
+neckerchief. He wore long mutton-chop whiskers. The rest of the face
+was covered with a short, grizzled stubble. When he was not using his
+hands, he carried them thrust down to the utmost in his trousers'
+pockets, showing a wide strip of red sinewy arm between the sleeve of
+his coat and the pocket of the trousers. No shirt was visible, and the
+neckerchief touched the long, lank neck, there being no collar or
+trace of linen. Excepting the blue patch of neckerchief on his chest,
+and his blue eyes, no positive colour appeared anywhere about the man.
+No part of the man himself or of his clothes was clean.
+
+Mr. Timmons was taking the air on his own threshold late in the
+afternoon of that last Thursday in June. It was now some hours since
+the dwarf had called and had held that conversation with him in the
+cellar. Not a human being had entered the marine store since. Mr.
+Timmons was gazing out of his watchet blue eyes in a stony and
+abstracted way at the dead brick wall opposite. He had been standing
+in this position for a good while, now shifting the weight of his body
+to one foot, now to the other. Occasionally he cleared his throat,
+which, being a supererogation, showed that he was in deep thought, for
+no man, in his waking moments, could think of clearing so long a
+throat without ample reason. The sound he made was so deep and
+sepulchral it seemed as though he had left his voice behind him in the
+cellar, and it was becoming impatient there.
+
+Although it had not yet struck six o'clock, he was thinking of closing
+his establishment. At this time of the day very few people passed
+through Tunbridge Street; often a quarter of an hour went by bringing
+no visitor. But after six the street became busier, for with the end
+of the working day came more carts and vans and barrows to rest for
+the night with their shafts thrust up in the air, after their
+particular manner of sleeping. This parking of the peaceful artillery
+of the streets Mr. Timmons looked on with dislike, for it brought many
+people about the place and no grist to his mill. He shared with poets
+and aristocrats the desire for repose and privacy.
+
+As he was about to retire for the long shutters that by night defended
+and veiled his treasure from predatory hands or prying eyes, his
+enormous left ear became aware that feet were approaching from the end
+of the street touching London Road. He turned his pale blue eyes in
+the direction of the sound and saw coming along close to the wall the
+figure of a low sized stout woman, wearing a black bonnet far off her
+forehead. She was apparently about his own age, but except in the
+matter of age there was no likeness in the appearance of the two. She
+was dressed in shabby black stuff which had long ago forgotten to what
+kind of material it belonged. Her appearance was what merciful
+newspaper reporters describe as "decent," that is, she was not old or
+in tatters, or young and attractive and gaudy in apparel; her clothes
+were black and whole, and she was sober. She looked like an humble
+monthly nurse or an ideal charwoman. She carried a fish-basket in her
+hand. Out of this basket projected the tails of half-a-dozen red
+herrings. She had, apparently, once been good-looking, and was now
+well-favoured. She had that smooth, cheesy, oily, colourless rounded
+face peculiar to well-fed women of the humbler class indigenous in
+London.
+
+Mr. Timmons' forehead wrinkled upwards as he recognised the visitor to
+Tunbridge Street. He smiled, displaying an imperfect line of long
+discoloured teeth.
+
+"Good afternoon," said John Timmons in a deep vibrating voice that
+sounded as though it had effected its escape from the cellar through a
+drum.
+
+"Afternoon," said the woman entering the store without pausing. Then
+nodding her head back in the direction whence she had come she asked:
+"Anyone?"
+
+"No," answered Timmons, after a long and careful scrutiny of the
+eastern half of Tunbridge Street. "Not a soul."
+
+"I thought I'd never get here. It's mortal hot. Are you sure there is
+no one after me?" said the woman, sitting down on a broken fire-grate,
+in the rear of the pile of shutters standing up against the wall on
+the left. She began rubbing her perspiring glistening face with a
+handkerchief of a dun colour rolled up in a damp ball. Still she held
+her fish-bag in her hand.
+
+"Certain. Which shows what bad taste the men have. Now, only for Tom I
+know you'd have one follower you could never shake off," said Timmons,
+with a gallant laugh that sounded alarmingly deeper than his speaking
+voice. Timmons was at his ease and leisure, and he made it a point to
+be always polite to ladies.
+
+"Tom's at home," said the woman, thrusting the handkerchief into her
+pocket and smiling briefly and mechanically in acknowledgment of the
+man's compliment to her charms. "I've brought you some fish for your
+tea."
+
+"Herrings," he said, bending to examine the protruding tails. "Fresh
+herrings, or red?" he asked in a hushed significant voice. He did not
+follow the woman into the store, but still stood at the threshold, so
+that he could see up and down the street.
+
+"Red," she whispered hoarsely, "and as fine as ever you saw. I thought
+you might like them for your tea."
+
+By this time a man with a cart turned into the street, and, it just
+then striking six, the door of a factory poured out a living turbid
+stream of bedraggled, frowsy girls, some of whom went up and some down
+the street, noisily talking and laughing.
+
+"Yes, There is nothing I am so fond of for my tea as red herrings," he
+said, with his face half turned to the store, half to the street. "And
+I shall like them particularly to-night."
+
+"Eh! Particularly to-night? Are you alone? Are you going to have
+company at tea, Mr. Timmons?" asked the woman in a tone and manner of
+newly-awakened interest. She now held her fish basket with both hands
+in front of her fat body and resting on her shallow lap.
+
+Timmons was standing half-a-dozen yards from her on the threshold. She
+could hear his voice quite plainly, notwithstanding the noise in the
+street and the fact that he spoke in a muffled tone. While he answered
+he kept his mouth partly open, and, because of so doing, spoke with
+some indistinctness. It was apparent he did not want people within
+sight or hearing to know he was speaking. "No; I am not expecting
+anyone to tea, and there is no one here. I am going to have my tea all
+by myself. I am very busy just now. I have had a visitor to-day--a few
+hours ago----"
+
+"Well," whispered the woman eagerly.
+
+"And _I have the kettle on the boil_, and I am going to put those red
+herrings in it for my tea." He was looking with vacant blue eyes down
+the street as he spoke. He did not lay stress upon the words, "I have
+the kettle on the boil." He uttered them in a lower tone and more
+slowly than any others. The emphasis thus given them was very great.
+It seemed to startle the woman. She rose partly as if to go to him.
+She was fluttered and agreeably fluttered.
+
+"Stay where you are," he said. He seemed to know she had attempted to
+rise without turning his eyes upon her. She was half hidden in the
+gloom of the store. No casual observer passing by would have noticed
+her. She was simply a black shapeless mass on the old fire-grate
+against a dingy dark wall in a half light. She might easily be taken
+for some of Timmons's stock.
+
+"And," she said, "he'll do it!"
+
+"He will. He's been to Birmingham and has arranged all. They'll take
+every bit they can get and pay a good price--twice as much as could be
+got otherwise--from anyone else."
+
+"Fine! Tine! You know, Mr. Timmons, how hard it is to find a bit
+now, and to get so little for it as we have been handling is very
+bad--heartbreaking. It takes all the spirit out of Tom."
+
+"Where did you buy the six herrings?"
+
+"Well," said the woman, with a smile, "I didn't exactly buy them
+herrings, though they are as good ones as ever you saw. You see, my
+little boys went to the meeting about the votes, or the Niggers, or
+the Gospel, or something or other, and they found the herrings growing
+on the trees there, ha-ha-ha."
+
+"I know. It was a meeting for trying to get some notion of
+Christianity into the heads of the African Blacks. I read about it in
+the newspaper this morning. The missionaries and ourselves are much
+beholden to the Blacks."
+
+"It was something now I remember about the Blacks. Anyway, they're six
+beauties. And can you let me have a little money, Mr. Timmons, for I
+must hurry back to Tom with the good news."
+
+"How is Tom? Is he on the drink?"
+
+"No, he isn't."
+
+"That's a bad sign. What's the matter?"
+
+"I don't know, if it isn't going to them Christian meetings about the
+Blacks. It's my belief that he'll turn Christian in the end, and you
+know, Mr. Timmons, that won't pay _him_."
+
+"Not at Tom's time of life. You must begin that kind of thing young.
+There are lots of converted--well sinners, but they don't often make
+bishops of even the best of them."
+
+"Well, am I to go? What are you going to give me, Mr. Timmons? When
+Tom isn't in a reasonable state of drink there's no standing him. Make
+it as much as you can. Say a fiver for luck on the new-found-out."
+
+"I'll give you an order on the Bank of England for a million if you
+like, but I can't give you more than ten thousand pounds in
+sovereigns, or even half sovereigns, just at this moment, even for the
+good of the unfortunate heathen Blacks. But here, anyway, take this
+just to keep you going. I haven't landed any fish myself yet."
+
+The woman rose and he handed to her money. Then followed a long,
+good-humoured dialogue in which she begged for more, and he firmly,
+but playfully, refused her. Then she went away, and Mr. John Timmons
+was left once more alone.
+
+He had taken the fish basket from the woman when giving her the money,
+and now carried it to the back of the store and descended with, it to
+the cellar. He did not remain long below, but soon came trotting up
+the ladder, humming a dull air in a deep growl. Then he set himself
+briskly to work putting up the shutters, taking them out of the pile
+in front of the old fire-grate on which the woman had sat, carrying
+each one separately to the front and running it home through the slot.
+When all were up, he opened the lower part of one, which hung on
+hinges serving as a wicket, and stepped out into the street full from
+end to end of the bright, warm evening sunlight.
+
+He rubbed his forehead with the sleeve of his coat and took a
+leisurely survey of the street. The noisy girls from the factory had
+all disappeared, and the silence of evening was falling upon the
+place. A few men busied themselves among the carts and vans and a dull
+muffled sound told of the traffic in London Road. The hum of machinery
+had ceased, and, contrasted with the noise of an hour ago, the place
+was soundless.
+
+John Timmons seemed satisfied with his inspection. He closed the
+wicket and retired into the deep gloom of the store. The only light
+now in this place entered through holes up high in two shutters. The
+holes were no more than a foot square, and were protected by
+perforated iron plates. They were intended for ventilating not
+lighting the store.
+
+Even in the thick dark air John Timmons was quite independent of
+light. He could have found any article in his stock blindfold. He was
+no sun-worshipper, nor did he pay divine honours to the moon. A good
+thick blinding London fog was his notion of reasonable weather. One
+could then do one's business, whatever it might be, without fear of
+bright and curious eyes.
+
+He had told his late visitor that he had the kettle on the fire. She
+had brought him half-a dozen red herrings and left them with him in a
+fish-basket. Now red herrings, differing in this respect from other
+kinds of fish, are seldom or never cooked in a kettle, and although
+the front of the door was closed and the only visible source of heat
+the two ventilators high up in the shutters, the air of the store was
+growing already warmer and drier, and although there was no smell of
+cooking there was an unmistakable smell of fire.
+
+The owner did not seem in any great hurry to cook and taste his
+savoury victuals. He might have meant that the kettle was for tea
+merely, and had nothing to do directly with the red herrings. He
+fastened the wicket-door very carefully, and then slowly examined the
+rear of the shutters one by one, and, holding his eye close to them
+here and there, tried if he could spy out, in order to ascertain if
+any one could spy in. Then he rested his shoulder against the middle
+shutter, leant his head against the panel and, having thrust his hands
+deeper than ever into his trousers' pockets, gave up his soul to
+listening.
+
+In the meantime the fish basket, with the tails of the six red
+herrings sticking out, was lying on the top of the old fire-grate
+which had served his visitor as a seat. It had been placed here by
+Timmons when he took it from the woman.
+
+A quarter of an hour the man remained thus without moving. Apparently
+he was satisfied at last. He stood upright upon his feet, shook
+himself, gazed confidently round the store and then walked to the old
+fire-grate. He was going to get his tea at last.
+
+He took up the basket, drew out the wooden skewer by which it was
+closed, caught the herrings in a bundle and threw them behind him on
+the gritty earthen floor.
+
+He opened the bag wide and peered into it. Holding it in his left hand
+upon his upraised thigh he thrust his right hand into it and fumbled
+about, bending his head down to look the better.
+
+He was on the point of drawing something out when he suddenly paused
+and listened motionless.
+
+There was the sound of approaching steps. Timmons stood as still as
+death.
+
+Three soft knocks sounded upon the wicket and then, after an interval
+of a few seconds, two more knocks still softer.
+
+"It's Stamer himself," cried Timmons, with an imprecation, in a
+muffled voice. Then he added: "What does he want? More money? Anyway,
+I suppose I must let him in."
+
+He turned round, caught up the scattered red herrings, thrust them
+into the bag, fixed it with the skewer, and then threw it carelessly
+on the hob of the old grate. Then he went to the wicket, opened it
+without speaking, and admitted his second visitor of that evening.
+
+When the new comer was inside the door and the bolt drawn once more,
+Timmons said, in a slow angry tone, "Well, Stamer, what do you want?
+Is a bargain a bargain? You were not to come here in daylight, and
+only in the dark when something of great consequence brought you. I
+gave your wife all I will give just now, if we are to go on working on
+the co-operative principle. What do you want?"
+
+The low sized, round shouldered man, dressed in fustian and wearing
+two gold rings on the little finger of his left hand, said in a
+whisper: "The ole 'oman gev me the coin, gov'nor. I don't want no more
+till all's right. What I did come about is of consequence, is of the
+greatest consequence, gov'nor." He glanced round with furtive eyes,
+looking apprehensively in the dim light at everything large enough to
+conceal a man.
+
+"What is it? Out with it!" said Timmons impatiently.
+
+"You're going to see this cove to-night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"At what o'clock?"
+
+"That's my affair," said Timmons savagely.
+
+"I know it is, Mr. Timmons, but still I'm a bit interested too, if I
+understand right the co-operative principle."
+
+"You! What are you interested in so long as you get the coin?"
+
+"In you. I'm powerful interested in you."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Timmons, frowning.
+
+"Tell me when you're going and I'll tell you."
+
+"Midnight."
+
+"Ah! It will be dark then!"
+
+"What news you tell us. It generally is dark at midnight."
+
+"Are you going to take much of the stuff with you--much of the red
+stuff--of the red herrings?"
+
+Timmons drew back a pace with a start and looked at Stamer
+suspiciously. "Have you come to save me the trouble? Eh? Would you
+like to take it yourself? Eh? Did you come here to rob me? I mean to
+share fair. Do you want to throw up the great co-operative principle
+and bag all?"
+
+Stamer's eyes winked quickly, and he answered in a tone of sorrow and
+reproach: "Don't talk like that, gov'nor. You know I'm a square un, I
+am. I'd die for you. Did I ever peach on you when I was in trouble,
+gov'nor? It hurts my feelings for you to talk like that! I say, don't
+do it, gov'nor. You know I'm square. Tell me how much stuff are you
+going to take with you to-night?"
+
+The words and manner of the man indicated extreme sincerity, and
+seemed to reassure Timmons. "About two pounds," he answered.
+
+"Oh!" groaned Stamer, shaking his close-cropped head dismally.
+
+"What is the matter with the man? Are you mad? You're not drunk. Your
+wife tells me you're not on the drink."
+
+"No. I'm reforming. Drink interferes dreadful with business. It spoils
+a man's nerve too. Two pounds is an awful lot."
+
+"What are you driving at, Stamer? You say you're a square man. Well,
+as far as I have had to do with you I have found you a square man----"
+
+"And honest?" said Stamer pathetically.
+
+"With me. Yes."
+
+"No man is honest in the way of business."
+
+"Well, well! What is the matter?" said Timmons impatiently; "I've got
+the kettle on and must run down. I haven't put in those herrings your
+old woman brought yet."
+
+"I know. I'm sorry, gov'nor, for bothering you. I'd give my life for
+you. Look here, gov'nor, suppose _he_ is not an honest man, like me.
+He isn't in our co-operative plan, you know. Suppose _he_ isn't
+particular about how he gets hold of a bit of stuff?"
+
+"And tried to rob me?"
+
+"That's not what I'd mind." He put his hand to the back of his
+waistband. "You know what I carry here. Suppose he carries one too?"
+
+"You mean that he may murder me first and rob me after?"
+
+Stamer nodded.
+
+"Well, I'm very much obliged to you, Stamer, indeed I am; but I'm not
+a bit afraid, not a bit. Why, he's not much over four feet, and he's a
+hunchback as well."
+
+"But hunchbacks can buy tools like this, and a man's inches don't
+matter then," moving his hand under his coat.
+
+"I'm not a bit afraid. Not a bit. If that's what you came about it's
+all right, and now I _must_ go down. The fire is low by this time, and
+I may as well run these out of likeness at once."
+
+He opened the door for Stamer, who, with a doubtful shake of the head,
+stepped over the raised threshold and went out. As Stamer sauntered
+down Tunbridge Street he muttered to himself, "I'll keep my eye on
+this affair anyway."
+
+When the wicket-door was closed Timmons took up the fish-basket, flung
+away the red herrings a second time, and descended to the cellar.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                       DINNER AT CURZON STREET.
+
+
+When Oscar Leigh left Mrs. Ashton's drawing-room abruptly that
+afternoon, Hanbury was too much annoyed and perplexed to trust himself
+to speak to Dora. It was getting late. He had promised to dine in
+Curzon Street that evening, and would have ample opportunity after
+dinner of saying to Dora anything he liked. Therefore he made an
+excuse and a hasty exit as if to overtake Leigh. He had had however
+enough of the clockmaker for that day, for all his life; so when he
+found himself on the landing and stairs and in the hall he walked
+slowly, allowing time for Leigh to get out of sight before emerging
+from the house.
+
+He took his way south and crossed Piccadilly at Hyde Park Corner. He
+had to get to his mother's house in Chester Square, to dress for
+dinner, and there was not much time to lose. His mother did not expect
+him to dine at home that day. She knew he had promised to go to Curzon
+Street, and was not in the house when he arrived.
+
+He went straight to his own room in no very amiable humour. He was not
+at all pleased with the day. He did not think Dora had acted with
+prudence in persisting on going slumming in Chelsea, he was quite
+certain she had not done prudently in giving Leigh their names. He
+considered Leigh had behaved--well, not much better than a man of his
+class might be expected to behave, and, worst of all and hardest of
+all to bear, he did not consider his own conduct had been anything
+like what it ought.
+
+If he made up his mind to go in for a popular platform, he must
+overcome, beat down this squeamishness which caused him to give way at
+unpleasant sights. Whether he did or did not adopt the popular
+platform he ought to do this. It was grotesque that his effectiveness
+in an emergency should be at the mercy of a failing which most
+school-girls would laugh at! It was too bad that Dora should be able
+to help where he became a mere encumbrance. Poor girl----but there, he
+must not allow himself to run off on a sentimental lead just now. He
+must keep his mind firm, for he must be firm with Dora this evening.
+
+What a wonderful likeness there was between that strange girl and
+Dora. Yes, Miss Grace was, if possible, lovelier in face than Dora.
+More quiet and still mannered. She absolutely looked more of an
+aristocrat than Dora. It would be curious to see if her mind was like
+Dora's too; if, for example, she had active, vivid, democratic
+sympathies.
+
+Every one who knew him told him he had a brilliant future before him.
+Before he got married (about which there was no great hurry as they
+were both young) it would be necessary for him to take up a definite
+position in politics. He felt he had the stuff in him out of which to
+make an orator, and an orator meant a statesman, and a statesman meant
+power, what he pleased, a coronet later in life if he and Dora cared
+for one. But he must select his career before marriage.
+
+It would be very interesting to see if those two girls, so
+marvellously alike in appearance, were similar in aspirations. How
+extraordinarily alike they were. The likeness was as that man had
+said, stranger than his own fabulous miracle gold.
+
+Ashton and his wife got on very well together, although they did not
+take the same view of public affairs. But then in this case things
+were different from what they would be in his. Mrs. Ashton was an
+ardent politician, her husband none at all. For a politician to enter
+upon his public career with a young wife opposed to him would be most
+unwise, the beginning of disagreement at home. At first, when he met
+Dora, he was attracted towards her by the enthusiasm of her spirit. He
+had never before met so young a woman, a mere girl, with such settled
+faith. At that time he was not very sure how he himself thought on
+many of the questions which divided men. She knew no doubt or
+hesitancy, and she was very lovely and bright and fresh. He had
+thought--What a helpmate for a busy man! And then, before he had time
+to think much more, he had made up his mind he could not get on
+without Dora.
+
+There were many cases in which wives had been the best aids and
+friends of illustrious politicians. It would never do for a man to
+have a wife who would continually throw cold water on her husband's
+public ardours; or, worse still, who would be actively opposed to him.
+Such a state could not be borne.
+
+Dora had clearer views and more resolute convictions than he. Women
+always saw more quickly and sharply than men. If he threw himself into
+the arms of the people she would be with him heart and soul, and he
+should attain a wide popularity at all events.
+
+How on earth did that man Leigh become acquainted with that exquisite
+creature, Miss Grace? No wonder he called her miracle gold.
+
+Well, it was time for him to be getting back to Curzon Street. There
+was to be no one at dinner but the family and himself. There would,
+therefore, neither before nor after be any politics. What a relief it
+was to forget the worry, and heat and dust of politics now and then
+for a while, for a little while even!
+
+Grimsby Street was an awful place for a girl like Miss Grace to live
+in. Why did she live in such horrible street? Poverty, no doubt.
+Poverty. What a shame! She looked as if it would suit her better to
+live in a better place. By heavens, what a lovely, exquisite girl she
+was. Could that poor misshapen clockmaker be in love with her? He in
+love? Monstrous!
+
+Ten minutes past eight! Not a moment to be lost.
+
+"Hansom! Curzon Street."
+
+John Hanbury reached Ashton's as dinner was announced. The host
+greeted him with effusion. He was always glad to have some guest, and
+he particularly liked Hanbury. He was by no means hen-pecked, but
+there was between him and his wife when alone the consciousness of a
+truce, not the assurance of peace. Each felt the other was armed, she
+with many convictions, he with only one, namely, that all convictions
+were troublesome and more or less fraudulent. They lived together in
+the greatest amity. They did not agree to disagree, but they agreed
+not to disagree, which is a much better thing. Ashton of course
+guessed there was something between Dora and Hanbury, but he had no
+official cognizance of it yet, and therefore treated Hanbury merely as
+a very acceptable visitor. He liked the young man, and his position
+and prospects were satisfactory.
+
+Towards the end of dinner, he said: "They tell me, Hanbury, that you
+brought a very remarkable character with you to-day, a sorcerer, or an
+astrologer, or alchemist. I thought men of that class had all turned
+into farriers by this time."
+
+"I don't think Leigh has anything to do with hooves, unless hooves of
+the cloven kind," said Hanbury with a laugh. "If a ravenous appetite
+for bread confirms the graminivorous characteristic of the hoof I am
+afraid it is all up with poor Leigh in Mrs. Ashton's opinion."
+
+"I found him very interesting I am sure," said Mrs. Ashton, "and I am
+only sorry I had not more opportunity of hearing about his wonderful
+clock."
+
+"Clock? Oh, he is a clockmaker, is he," said the host, "Then I did not
+make such a bad shot after all. He has something to do with metal?"
+
+"I told you, Jerry, he makes _gold_, miracle gold," said Mrs. Ashton
+vivaciously.
+
+"So you did, my dear. So you did. My penetration then in taking him
+for an alchemist does not seem to have been very great. I should be a
+first-rate man to discover America now. But I fancy if I had been born
+before Columbus I should not have taken the bread out of his mouth."
+
+"Mr. Leigh told us he was not sure he would go on making this miracle
+gold," said Dora.
+
+"Not go on making gold!" cried the father in astonishment, "was there
+ever yet a man who of his own free will gave up making gold? Why is he
+thinking of abandoning the mine, Dora?"
+
+"There is so much difficulty and danger, he says, father."
+
+"Difficulty and danger! Of course there is always difficulty in making
+gold; but danger--what is the danger?"
+
+"He is liable to be blown up."
+
+"Good heavens! for making gold? Why, what are you talking of, child?
+Ah! I see," with a heavy, affected sigh, "he is a bachelor. If he were
+a married man he would stand in danger of being blown up for _not_
+making gold. Well, Josephine, my dear," to his wife, "you do get some
+very original people around you. I must say I should like to see this
+timid alchemist."
+
+"If Mr. Ashton will honour his own house with his presence this day
+week, he will have an excellent opportunity of meeting Mr. Leigh,"
+said Mrs. Ashton with a bow.
+
+"My dearest Josephine, your friend, Mr. Ashton, will do nothing of the
+kind. He will not add another to your collection of monsters."
+
+"That's a very heartless and rude speech, father."
+
+"And I look on it as distinctly personal," said Hanbury, "for I attend
+regularly."
+
+"I have really very little to do with the matter," said Mrs. Ashton.
+"Mr. Leigh is Dora's thrall."
+
+The girl coloured and looked reproachfully at her mother, and uneasily
+at Hanbury. It would be much more pleasant if the conversation shifted
+away from Leigh.
+
+"He is going to model her for Pallas-Athena."
+
+"Mother, the poor man did not say that."
+
+"No; he did not _say_ it, but he meant it, Dora."
+
+"Oh, he is a sculptor, too!" cried Mr. Ashton with a laugh. "Is there
+any end to this prodigy's perfections and accomplishments? But, I say,
+Dora, seriously, I won't have any folly of that kind. I won't have you
+give sittings to any one."
+
+"Oh, father! indeed, you must not mind mother. She is joking. Mr.
+Leigh never said or meant anything of the kind." She had grown red and
+very uncomfortable.
+
+Her father sat back in his chair and said in a bantering tone, under
+which the note of seriousness could be heard:
+
+"You know I am not a bigot. But I will have no professional-beauty
+nonsense, for three reasons: First, because professional beauties are
+played out; they are no longer the rage--that reason would be
+sufficient with average people. Second, and more important, it isn't,
+and wasn't, and never can be good form to be a professional beauty;
+and third," he hesitated and looked fondly at his daughter, "and
+third--confound it, my girl is too good-looking to be mentioned in the
+same breath as any of these popular beauties."
+
+"Bravo, sir," said Hanbury, as he got up to open the door for Mrs.
+Ashton and Dora, who had risen to leave the room.
+
+When the two men were left alone, Mr. Ashton said:
+
+"This Leigh is, I assume, one of the people?"
+
+"Yes," said Hanbury, who wished Leigh and all about him at the bottom
+of the Red Sea. "But, he is not, you know, one of the horny-handed
+sons of toil. He is a man of some reading, and intelligence, and
+education, but rather vulgar all the same."
+
+"All right. I'm sure if he is your friend he must be an excellent
+fellow, my dear Hanbury; and if you put him up for this constituency,
+I'll vote for him, no matter what his principles are. That is," he
+added thoughtfully, "if I have a vote. But, for the present, my
+dear fellow, I'll tell you what we'll do with him--we'll let him
+alone--that is, if you don't mind doing so."
+
+"I shall do so with great pleasure. I have had quite enough of him for
+to-day," said the other, greatly relieved.
+
+"All right. Hanbury, I shall let you into a secret. I don't care for
+people who aren't nice. I prefer nice people. I like people like my
+wife and Dora, and your mother and yourself."
+
+"I am sure, sir, you are very good to include me in your list."
+
+"And I don't care at all for people who aren't nice, you know. I don't
+care at all for the poor. When they aren't objectionable they are an
+awful bore. For the life of me I can't make out what reasonable men
+and women see in the people. I don't object to them. I suppose they
+are necessary, and have their uses and functions, and all that; but if
+they have, why interfere with them? Lots of fellows I know go in for
+the poor partly out of fun, and for a change, and partly to catch
+votes. All right. But these fellows don't emigrate from the West and
+live in the East End. If they did, they'd go mad, my boy--they'd go
+mad. Anyway, I should. You know, I hate politics, and never talk
+politics. If I were a very rich man, I'd buy the whole of the Isle of
+Wight and banish all the poor from it, and live there the whole of my
+life, and drown any of the poor that dared to land on it. I wouldn't
+tell this to any soul in the world except you. I know I can trust you
+to keep my secret. Mind, I don't object to my wife and Dora doing what
+they like in such affairs; in fact, I rather like it, for it keeps
+matters smooth for me. This is, I know, a horribly wicked profession
+of faith; but I make it to you alone. I know that, according to poetic
+justice, I ought to be killed on my way to the club by a coster's
+run-away ass or the horse in a pauper's hearse, but I don't think I
+shall oblige poetic justice by falling into or under such a scheme--_I
+am always very careful at crossings_. If you are _very_ careful at
+crossings, I don't see how poetic justice is to get at you. There, let
+us drop this ghastly subject now."
+
+The conversation then wandered off into general ways, and lost its
+particular and personal character.
+
+Hanbury had never heard from any other man so cynical a speech as
+Ashton's, and he was considerably shocked and pained by it. His own
+convictions were few. He was himself in that condition of aimless
+aspiring enthusiasm proper to ardent youth, when youth has just begun
+to think conscientiously with a view to action. He could see nothing
+very clearly, but everything he did see shone fiercely in splendid
+clouds. This low view of life, this mere animal craving for peace and
+comfort, for nice things and nice people, was abhorrent to him. If in
+the early part of that day he had spoken slightingly of the people, it
+was out of no cynical indifference, but from the pain and worry caused
+to himself in his own mind by his opinions not being ascertained and
+fixed.
+
+If he hesitated to throw his fortunes into the scale with the more
+advanced politicians, it was from no mean or sordid motive. He could
+not decide within himself which class had the more worthy moral
+sanction. If the present rate of progress was too slow, then those who
+sought to retard it were villains; if too quick, those who tried to
+accelerate it were fools. Whatever else he might be, he was not
+corrupt.
+
+What Mr. Ashton said had a great influence on young Hanbury. It
+aroused his suspicions. Could it be that most of those who sought to
+check the car of progress harboured such vile and unmanly sentiments
+as his host had uttered in confidence? Could it be that Ashton was
+more courageous because he had nothing tangible to lose by candour?
+Could it be that if he himself espoused the side of the slower movers,
+it would be assumed he harboured opinions such as those Ashton had
+just uttered? The mere supposition was an outrage. It was a suspicion
+under which he would not willingly consent to rest one hour. This
+cold-blooded declaration of Ashton's had done more towards the making
+up of his mind than all he had heard and read since he turned his
+attention to public affairs.
+
+Yes, he would decide to throw himself body and soul among the more
+progressive party. He would espouse the principles of the extreme
+Liberals. Then there would be no more wavering or doubt, and no
+question of discord in politics would arise between Dora and himself.
+They would have but the one creed in public affairs. Their opinions
+would not merely resemble the principles of one another--they would be
+identical.
+
+Mr. Ashton and his guest did not remain long in the dining-room.
+Hanbury was not treated with ceremony in that house, so Mr. Ashton
+merely looked into the drawing-room for a few minutes, and then went
+off to his club. Mrs. Ashton had letters to write, and retired shortly
+after him to the study, leaving Dora alone with John Hanbury.
+
+He thought that in order to keep a good understanding there was
+nothing like establishing a clear understanding. In order to ensure
+complete pleasantness in the future, all things that might lead to
+unpleasantness ought to be removed from the past and present. The best
+way of treating a nettle, when you have to touch it, is to seize it
+boldly.
+
+He was in love with Dora, and he was resolved to marry her. That very
+evening he was going to ask her if she did not think the best thing
+they could do would be to get married soon, at once. He had made up
+his mind to adopt the popular platform, and then, of course, his way
+would be clear. Up to this he had been regarded as almost committed to
+the more cautious side, to the Conservative party, the Democratic
+Conservative party. By declaring himself now for the advanced party,
+he should be greeted by it as a convert, and no doubt he could find a
+willing constituency at the next general election.
+
+That was all settled, all plain sailing. He was a young man, and in
+love; but it must be observed he was not also a fool. He would show
+all who knew him he was no fool. The life he now saw before him was
+simple, straightforward, pleasant. Dora was beautiful, and good, and
+clever, and in his part of popular politician would be an ornament by
+his side, and, perhaps, a help to him in his career. She was a dear
+girl, and would adorn any position to which he might aspire, to which
+he might climb.
+
+Yes, he was a young man, he was in love, but he was no fool, and he
+knew that Dora would think less of him, would think nothing at all of
+him, if she believed him to be a fool. Between lovers there ought to
+be confidence, freedom of speech. She would esteem him all the more
+for being candid and plain with her. What was this he had to say to
+her? Oh, yes, he recollected----
+
+Dora and he were sitting close to one another in the window-place
+where Leigh and he had found her earlier. The long June day had faded
+into luminous night; the blinds had not been lowered, or the lamps in
+the room lit. The long, soft, cool, blue midsummer twilight was still
+and delicious for any people, but especially for lovers.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+                             IN THE DARK.
+
+
+"Well, Dora," he began, "this has been an exciting day."
+
+"Yes," she said softly, and added with tender anxiety, "I hope
+you have quite recovered? I hope you do not feel any bad effects
+of--of--of--what happened to you, Jack?" She did not know how he would
+take even this solicitous reference to his fainting.
+
+"I feel quite well, dearest. Do not let us talk of that affair again.
+That cabman brought you quite safe?"
+
+"Oh, quite safe," she said gently. "Tell me what happened after you
+left me?" It gratified her that he thought of her. She had accused him
+of selfishness, now he was showing that his first thought was of her.
+With the self-sacrificing spirit of her sex she was satisfied with a
+little sympathy on her own account. She wanted to give him all her
+sympathy now. "Of course, I know you found Mr. Leigh. What an
+extraordinary man. Is he a little mad, do you think?"
+
+"A good deal mad, I fancy, with conceit," he said impatiently. Leigh,
+personally, had been a misfortune, and now the memory of him was
+exasperating and a bore.
+
+The ungentleness of the answer jarred upon the girl's heart. Leigh had
+suffered such miserable wrongs at the hand of fate, that surely he was
+deserving of all consideration and compassion. His bodily disabilities
+made him more helpless and piteous than a lonely, deserted child.
+"Tell me all," she said. "It was so good of you to bring him here. I
+felt quite proud of you when I saw you coming with him. Many men would
+have been afraid to trust so uncouth a man with so unpleasant a secret
+into this room of a Thursday." She spoke to encourage Hanbury, by
+anticipating in part his account of the generous thing she fancied he
+had done.
+
+He twisted and turned uneasily on his chair. Whatever Dora or anyone
+else might think of him, he was not going to pose in plumes that were
+not his by right. It was very gratifying in one sense that she should
+give him credit for such extravagant, such Quixotic good nature; but
+she must not be allowed to run away with the story.
+
+"The fact is, Dora," said he in a tone of deliberation and
+dissatisfaction, "I did not bring him here of my own free will.
+Indeed, I do not know how you could imagine I would invite such a man.
+I found him contemplating a paragraph for the papers, and he promised
+he would say nothing about what had occurred if I would introduce him
+to you. He seems to have conceived a romantic interest in you, because
+of your likeness to some one he knows." Later this evening he should
+tell her all about this "some one."
+
+"I see," she said, her spirits declining. It was not out of good
+nature or generosity, but cowardice, moral cowardice, Jack had brought
+Leigh. The principle which had made Jack flee from Welbeck Place after
+sending Leigh for the cab, and then made him fly back there again when
+he learned that the little man knew their names, had forced him
+against his will to bring Leigh to her mother's At home. She was in
+the most indulgent and forgiving of humours, but--but--but--"Oh, Jack,
+I am so sorry!" was all she could think of saying. She was sorry for
+him, for John Hanbury, who either was not, or would not be, too big to
+be troubled by such paltry fears, and irritated by such paltry
+annoyances.
+
+"Sorry! Sorry for what?" he cried. He gathered from her tone and
+manner that she was not speaking out fully. He could not guess what
+was in her mind. He had a little lecture or exhortation prepared to
+deliver her, and in addition to the unpleasantness of not knowing
+exactly what she meant when she said she was sorry, he had the
+confusing and exasperating sense of repression, of not being able to
+get on the ground he intended occupying.
+
+She did not speak for a while. She was looking out into the dark blue
+air of the street. She had formed a high ideal of what he, her hero,
+ought to be, nearly was. But now and then, often, he did not reach the
+standard she had raised. Her ideal was the man of noble thought
+certainly, but he should still more be the man of noble action. She
+would have laid down her life freely in what she believed to be a good
+cause, and to her mind the noblest cause in which a woman could die
+would be for a noble man whom she loved. She believed the place of
+woman was by the side of man, not independent of man. She held that in
+all matters man and wife should be, to use words that had been
+employed in acts, to think of which rent her heart with agony, one and
+undivisible. She regarded strong-minded women as wrong-minded women.
+Strength and magnanimity were the attributes of men; love and
+gentleness of women. She wanted this man beside her to shine bright in
+the eyes of men by reason of his great and rare gifts. No one doubted
+his abilities as a man; she wanted him to treat his abilities as only
+the foundation of his character. She wanted not only to know that he
+possessed great gifts and precious powers, but to feel as well that he
+was fit to be a god. She yearned to pass her life by the side of a man
+who could force the world to listen to his words, and fill the one
+pedestal in her earthly temple. She wanted him to be a hero and a
+conqueror in the face of the world, and she wanted to give him the
+whole loyal worship of her woman's heart, that she might live always
+in the only attitude which rests a woman's spirit, the attitude of
+giving service of the hand and largess of the heart, and homage of the
+soul. She wanted to give this man all her heart and soul unceasingly.
+To give him everything that was hers to give, under Heaven.
+
+It was necessary to make some reply, and she had none ready. In the
+pause she had not been thinking. She had been seeing visions, dreaming
+dreams, from which occupations thought is always absent.
+
+He became still more uneasy. Her hand was in his. He pressed it
+slightly, to recall her attention to him, "What are you sorry for,
+Dora? What are you thinking of, dear? Are you angry with me still?"
+
+She started without turning her eyes away from the blue duskness of
+the street, and in a tone of wonderful tenderness and sadness, said:
+
+"I don't know exactly what I was thinking of, Jack. The evening is so
+fresh and still it is not necessary for one to think. Angry with you,
+dear! Oh, no! Oh, no! Angry with you for what?"
+
+"About the harsh words I said of Leigh. It seems to me your manner
+changed the moment I mentioned his name. Let us not speak of him any
+more this evening."
+
+He pressed her hand, and stole his arm round her waist. She returned
+the pressure of his hand, but did not turn her eyes inward from the
+still street.
+
+"But why should we not speak of him, Jack?"
+
+"Because, dear, we are here together, and we are much more interesting
+to one another than he can be to either."
+
+"Yes, dear, in a way more interesting to one another than all the
+world besides; but in another way not nearly so interesting as this
+poor clockmaker," she said slowly, in a dreamy voice.
+
+"I own," he said testily, "I do not see the matter as you put it. How
+can he, a mere stranger, and a mere stranger who might have done us
+harm, be more interesting in any light than we are to one another?" He
+was a man, and thought as the average man thinks, of getting not
+giving. He was here alone with this beautiful girl who was to be his
+wife one day, and his chief concern was to get the most pleasure out
+of her presence by his side, the sound of her voice, the assurance of
+her love, the contemplation of their future happiness, the sense that
+she was his very own, that she would be bound to render him obedience
+which would, of course, never be exacted, and that he was about to lay
+before her his views of what her conduct ought to be, of where she had
+declined to accept his advice with regard to their walk of that day,
+and above all of his determination as to his future course, and the
+desirableness of their early marriage. He wanted in fact to get her
+disapproval of the expedition which had led to the unpleasantness of
+that day, her disapproval of her venturesome overruling of his
+judgment and her approval of all his plans for the future. He did not
+state his position thus. He simply wanted certain things, and never
+thought of referring his wants to any principle.
+
+"In this way," she answered softly, "all about us is happy and
+assured. For ourselves we have everything that is necessary not only
+for mere life, but for enjoyment. The things we lack are only
+luxuries----"
+
+"Luxuries!" he cried. "Do you consider the ardours of a public life
+luxuries? Do you not yet know me better than to believe I would lead
+an existence of idle pleasure? Why, a public man now-a-days works
+harder than a blacksmith, and generally without necessity or reward!"
+He spoke indignantly. She had attacked his class, she was showing
+indifference to the usefulness and disinterestedness of his order.
+
+Neither his words nor his manner roused her. "I am not at all
+forgetting what you speak of. I am thinking, Jack dear, of things more
+common and essential than fame or the reputation of a benefactor to
+man. You know I hold that the first sphere of woman is her home.
+People like us are rarely grateful for food or shelter, or even
+health, and no people of any kind are grateful for the air they
+breathe." She paused and sighed. She did not finish her thought in
+words.
+
+"Well," said he, withdrawing his arm from her waist and taking a chair
+opposite her in the window-place, "how does this apply? Of course,
+when you realize the fact that you could not live without air, you are
+grateful for it. I don't see what you are driving at."
+
+"I cannot help thinking of the man and pitying him. He will go into
+his grave having missed nearly everything in the world."
+
+"Why, the man has enough conceit to make a battalion of Guards happy.
+He is a greater man in his own opinion than the Premier, the Lord
+Chancellor and the Commander-in-Chief rolled into one."
+
+"But even if he is, Jack, that is not all. The Premier and the Lord
+Chancellor and the Commander-in-Chief, over and above their great
+successes and fame, have the comforts ordinary men enjoy as well. They
+are not afflicted in their forms as he is. You say he is interested in
+me because I remind him of some one. How must it be with an ordinary
+human heart beating in such a body? Would it not be better for such a
+man to be born blind than to find his Pallas-Athena, as he calls her?"
+
+The eyes of the girl could not be seen in the darkness of the room;
+they were full of tears and there were tears in her voice.
+
+Hanbury started, he could not tell why. He exclaimed: "Good Heavens,
+Dora! you do not mean to tell me that you feel seriously concerned in
+the love affairs, if there are such things, of this man?"
+
+"No, dear, but I am saddened when I think of them. However absurd it
+may seem, I cannot help believing this finding of his ideal must be a
+dreadful misfortune to him."
+
+"Even if you yourself were the ideal, Dora?"
+
+"Even so. But you tell me he had found it before he came here. Of
+course, dear, my mind is influenced only for the moment by the thought
+of him and his affairs; but ever since I heard him speak, grotesque as
+it may seem, my heart has been feeling for him with his poor deformed
+body and his elaborate gallantry of manner and his Pallas-Athena."
+
+Now was the time to tell Dora of this Miss Grace, but it seemed to him
+the story was too long for so late an hour, and that it could be told
+with pleasanter effect when Dora was less exercised about the dwarf.
+The conversation was too sentimental for him. He had matters of
+practical moment to speak about, and this subject obstinately blocked
+the way. The best thing for him to do was to give the matter an
+every-day aspect at once. "Well, Dora, in any case, Leigh isn't in the
+first glory of youth, and if he ever does fall in love and marry, it
+will, I am sure, be no Pallas-Athena, but a barmaid, with practical
+views, and a notion of keeping an hotel, or something of that kind."
+
+"But how do you think a man with his imagination, his Pallas-Athena,
+and his incomparable clock and his miracle gold----?"
+
+"Which is nonsense, of course. You don't mean that you believe in
+transmutation in this end of the nineteenth century?" he said
+impatiently.
+
+"I do not know. I am not scientific. I suppose more wonderful things
+have been done. If there ever was a time for making gold it is now.
+All the wonders that poets dreamed of long ago are coming true in
+prose to-day. Why not the great dream of the alchemists too? At all
+events, the fancies are bad for him. Suppose there is to be no
+Pallas-Athena or wonderful clock or miracle gold in his life, what is
+there left to him? It seems to me he is all the poorer for his
+delusions. Jack, I will not try to disguise it. I am intensely
+interested in this poor clockmaker, this mad visionary, if you prefer
+to call him that."
+
+This was not at all the kind of preface Hanbury wanted to the
+communications he had to make to her. He felt disconcerted, clumsy,
+petulant. "I have been so unfortunate as to introduce the cause of all
+this anxiety to you. It would have been much better for every sake I
+had not gone back and met the man the second time, much better I
+should cut a ridiculous figure before all the town to-morrow!" He was
+growing angry as his speech went on. His own words were inflaming his
+mind by the implication of his wrongs.
+
+She placed her hand gently on his, and said in a reproachful voice, a
+voice quite different from the meditative tones in which she had been
+speaking, "Jack, I did not mean that. You know I did not mean that.
+Why do you reproach me with thoughts you ought to know I could not
+harbour?" She had turned in from the window, and was looking at him
+opposite her in the dim darkness. She was now fully alive to his
+presence and everything around her.
+
+"No doubt," he said bitterly, "I am ungenerous to you. I am unjust. I
+am afraid, Dora, I am but an ill-conditioned beast----"
+
+"Jack, that is the most unjust thing you could possibly say to me. In
+saying it you seem to use words you fancy I would like to use, only I
+am not brave enough."
+
+"I know you are brave enough for anything. I know it is I who am the
+coward."
+
+"Jack! Oh, Jack!"
+
+"You told me so yourself to-day. You cannot say I am putting that word
+into your mouth." He was taking fire.
+
+"Have you no mercy for me, Jack; my Jack?"
+
+"You told me with your own lips I had no thought but of my miserable
+self in the miserable thing that happened."
+
+"Jack, have you no pity. My Jack, have you no pity for your own Dora."
+She seized his hands with both her own. There were no tears in her
+voice now, there was the blood of her heart.
+
+"Ay, and when I, yielding to my cowardly heart----"
+
+"Oh God!" She took her hands away from his and covered her face with
+them.
+
+"--And brought that man here as the price of his silence, you--knowing
+the chicken-livered creature I am--absolutely asked him to come next
+week. To come here where his presence is to cure me of my cowardice or
+accustom me to the peril of ridicule which you know I hate worse than
+death!" He was blazing now.
+
+"Good night."
+
+"After this, how can I be sure that you may not consider it salutary
+to betray me yourself?" He was mad.
+
+"Good bye, Jack. Oh God, my heart is broken!"
+
+"I tell you----" He turned around. He was alone.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX.
+
+                            MRS. HANBURY.
+
+
+John Hanbury had reached the end of the street before he knew where he
+was. He had no memory of how he got out of the house. No doubt he had
+behaved like a madman, and he had been temporarily insane. He must
+have snatched his hat in the hall, but he was without his overcoat.
+
+His heart was beating violently, and his head was burning hot. He must
+have run down the street. There was no one in view. He had only a
+whirling and flashing memory of the last few minutes with Dora. His
+temper had completely mastered him, and he must have spoken and
+behaved like a maniac. He must have behaved like a maniac in her
+presence--to her!
+
+Now and then, in the heat of public speaking, he had been carried
+beyond himself, beyond the power of memory afterwards, but never in
+his life had impetuosity betrayed him in private life until now. What
+sort of a lunatic must he have been to sin for the first time before
+the only woman he ever cared for? The woman he had asked to be his
+wife?
+
+The excitement of the day had been too much for him, and he had broken
+down in the end. He had taken only one glass of wine at dinner, and
+only coffee after. Something must have gone wrong with his brain.
+Could it be this fainting which had overtaken him to-day, and twice
+before, indicated some flaw or weakness in the brain? It would have
+been better he had died in that accursed slum than come back to
+consciousness and done this. Then he had fainted like a woman, and
+behaved like a coward. Now he had acted like a cad! He had abused,
+reviled the woman he professed to love, and who he knew loved him! He
+dared say he had not struck her! It was, perhaps, a pity he had not
+struck her, for if he had he should be either now in the hands of the
+police, or shot by her father! It was a good job the girl had a father
+to shoot him. If he was called out he should fire in the air, and if
+Ashton demanded another shot and missed him, he should reserve his
+fire and blow his own brains out. When a man did a thing like this,
+there was only one reflection that could ease his intolerable agony of
+reproach--he could blow out his brains and rid the world of a cowardly
+cad.
+
+From the moment he found himself at the end of Curzon Street until he
+reached his mother's house in Chester Square, he walked rapidly,
+mechanically, and without design. When he saw the door before him he
+was staggered for a moment.
+
+"How did I come here?" he asked himself, as he opened it with a
+latch-key. He could not answer the question. He saw in a dim way that
+it would be interesting to imagine how a man in possession of his
+faculties walked a whole mile without knowing why he walked or
+remembering anything by the way. But at present--Pooh! pooh!
+
+"Mrs. Hanbury wishes to see you, sir, in her own room, if you please,"
+said a servant, who had heard him come in and appeared while he was
+hanging up his hat.
+
+"Very well. Tell her I shall be with her in a few minutes."
+
+His mother's room adjoined her sleeping chamber, and was opposite his
+own bed-room on the second floor.
+
+He turned into the long dining-room to his right. There was here a dim
+light burning, the windows were wide open, the place cool and still.
+
+He shut the door behind him and began pacing quickly up and down. It
+was necessary in some way to collect his mind before meeting his
+mother.
+
+He shut his fists hard against his chest and breathed hard as he
+walked. By his breathing he judged he must have run part of the way
+from Curzon Street.
+
+The perspiration was trickling down his forehead. He held his head up
+high; he felt as though there was a tight hand round his throat. He
+thrust his fingers inside his collar and tried to ease his neck.
+
+"This is absurd," he said aloud at last. But what it was that he felt
+to be absurd he did not know.
+
+"The heat is suffocating one!" he said in a short time, and tore again
+at his shirt, loosing his necktie and rumpling his collar.
+
+"I am choking for air!" he cried, and tried to fling the windows
+higher up, but they were both as high as they could go.
+
+"My throat is cracking!" he cried huskily, and looking round with
+blazing eyes through the dim room saw a caraffa on the side-board. He
+poured out a glass of water and swallowed the water at a draught. "Oh,
+that is much better," he said with a smile, and resumed his walk up
+and down the long room at a lessened rate. "Let me think," he said;
+"let me think if I can."
+
+He clasped his hands behind his back and leaned his head on one side,
+his attitude when designing the plan of a speech or musing upon the
+parts of it.
+
+The water he had swallowed and the slackened pace and the posture of
+reflection, tended to cool him and bring his mind into condition for
+harmonious working.
+
+"Let me treat the matter," he whispered, "as though I were only a
+friend, and had come here to state my case and implore advice. How
+does the matter stand exactly? Let us look at the facts, the simple
+facts first."
+
+His pace became slower and slower. His face ceased to work, and lost
+the flushed and wild appearance. Gradually his head rose erect and
+stood back upon his neck. His eyes lit up with the flashes of reason.
+They no longer blazed with the flame of chaotic despair. He unclasped
+his hands and began to gesticulate. He ceased to be the self-convicted
+culprit, and became the argumentative contender before the court. He
+had ceased to do his worst against the accused and was exercising all
+his faculties to compel an acquittal.
+
+Presently his manner changed. He had adduced all his reasons and knit
+them together in his argument. Now he was beginning to appeal to the
+feelings of the man on the bench and the men in the box. His head was
+no longer erect, his gestures no longer combative. He was asking them
+to remember the circumstances of the case. He was painting a picture
+of himself. He appealed to their finer natures, and begged them not to
+contemn this young man, who by the nature of the great art, the noble
+art of oratory, to which he had devoted much study and in which he had
+had some successful practice, lived always in a state of exalted
+sentiment and sensations. This young man was more likely than others
+of his years to be overborne and carried away by emotions which would
+not disturb the equanimity of another man. His nature was excitable,
+and he had the ready, in this case the fatally ready, command of words
+belonging to men who had trained themselves for public speaking.
+
+Here the scene became so real to his mind that unknown to himself he
+broke out into speech:
+
+"Gentlemen, I know he, may not be excused wholly. I will not ask you
+to say he is not to blame. I will not dare to say I think he behaved
+as a considerate and thoughtful man. But, gentlemen, though you
+cannot approve his conduct, you will not, oh, I pray you, do not take
+away from him the reputation he holds dearer than life, the reputation
+of being a sincere man and a gentleman. Amerce him in any penalty
+you please short of denying him the reputation of being earnest and
+high-minded and----" He paused. Tears for the spectacle of himself
+were in his eyes. His voice was shaken by the intensity of his pity
+for himself.
+
+"John," said a soft voice behind him.
+
+He turned quickly round. A tall, slender woman, with calm, clear face
+and snow-white hair, was standing in the room.
+
+"Mother! I did not hear you come in."
+
+"I hope I did not break in disastrously. It is late. I wanted to see
+you for a few minutes before I went to bed. I did not like to speak
+until you stopped."
+
+He had gone to her and put his arm round her waist and kissed her
+smooth white hair above her smooth, pure forehead. "Mother," he said,
+in a low, soft, musical and infinitely tender voice, "I am sorry I
+kept you waiting for me. I was going to you in a moment, dear."
+
+There was none of the art of the orator in these words, or in the
+exquisitely tender flexions of the voice. But the heart of the man was
+in the tones of his voice for his mother.
+
+She looked at him in the dim light and saw his disordered collar and
+tie, but put that down to excitement caused by his rehearsal.
+
+He led her gently to a chair and took one in front of her by the side
+of the dining-table. He took her thin, white hand in both his own and
+looked into her calm, beautiful face, radiant with that tranquil light
+of maternal love justified and fulfilled.
+
+"You have something to tell me, mother? Something pleasant, I hope,
+about yourself." He had never spoken in a voice of such unreckoning
+love to Dora in all their meetings and partings. It was the broad,
+rich, even sound of a river that is always flowing in one direction
+and always full, not the tinkle of a capricious fountain or the
+tempestuous rush of a torrent at the mercy of exhaustion or drought.
+
+"I have, my son. It does not concern me, or if it does, but
+indirectly. Indeed, I do not know. It has to do with you, dear." They,
+like sweethearts, called one another "dear," because they were
+inexpressibly dear to one another.
+
+"With me, mother? And how?" John Hanbury was not a handsome man, but
+when he smiled at his slender, grey-haired mother, and patted her
+delicate white thin hands with his own large and brown, there was more
+than physical beauty in his looks, there was a subjugating, an
+intoxicating radiance, and all-completed prostration of his soul
+before the mother he worshipped.
+
+"I do not know exactly, John. Your father gave me in trust for you, as
+you know, a paper, which I was not to give to you except at some great
+crisis of your life. If no harm of any particular moment threatened
+you until you were thirty, you were never to see this paper."
+
+"I know," he said. "I was only seventeen then--not launched in the
+world--and he thought I might, when I came of age, and got my two
+thousand a-year, plunge into dissipation, and take to racing or
+backing horses, or cards, or something of that kind. Well, mother, I
+hope you are not uneasy about me on those scores? This paper is no
+doubt one of extremely good advice from an excellent father to a young
+son. I am sure I will read the paper with all the respect I owe to any
+words he may have left for my guidance. You do not think, mother, I am
+now likely to give way to any of those temptations?"
+
+She shook her small head gravely.
+
+"I do not fear you will give way to the ordinary temptations of youth,
+John. I know you too well to dread anything of the kind. I don't think
+the paper your father left me for you refers to the ordinary danger in
+a young man's path."
+
+"Then you must believe it has to do with unusual dangers, and you must
+believe I am now threatened by some unusual dangers?" said he with a
+start. He had been threatened by a very uncommon danger that day, the
+danger of being made a laughing stock for the whole town, but such a
+misfortune could never have been contemplated by his father. Compared
+with the importance of a message from his dead father, how poor and
+insignificant seemed his fears of the early part Of this day.
+
+"I do not know. I am not sure. Something out of the common must be in
+your case, my dear child." What a luxury of pride and delight to think
+the tall, powerful, stalwart, clever man, was her child, had been a
+little helpless baby lying in her lap, pressed close to her heart!
+"When your father died you were in his opinion too young, I dare say,
+to be taken into his confidence. He often told me he would leave a
+paper for you, and that I was not to give it you until you were
+between twenty one and thirty (if I lived), and that I was only to
+give it to you in case you showed any very strong leaning towards
+politics or a public life."
+
+The son smiled, and threw himself back in his chair. He felt greatly
+relieved. He knew his father had always shown a morbid horror of
+politics, and had always tried to impress upon him the emptiness of
+public honours and distinctions. Why, his father never said. The son
+distinctly remembered how tremulously excited the old and ailing man
+had been at every rumour of ambitious scheming abroad, particularly
+how he garrulously condemned the ceaseless scheming for the throne of
+France then perplexing the political world. He had often pointed out
+to his young son the folly of the Legitimists and the Orleanists and
+the Napoleons, until once John had said, "Why, sir, you are as
+emphatic to me in this matter as if I myself were a pretender!" Upon
+which his father had said, "Hush! Hush! my boy. You must not jest
+about such matters. Idle, the idlest, pretensions of the kind have
+often caused oceans of bloodshed." Upon which John had smiled in
+secret to note how his father's cherished horror had carried him so
+far as to caution him, John Hanbury, member of a simple English
+household, against aspiring to the kingly or imperial throne of the
+Tuileries!
+
+"You do not think, mother," he said gaily, "that I am going to buy a
+tame eagle, and hire a fishing boat and take France?"
+
+She smiled sadly, remembering her husband's dread of lofty aspirants.
+"No," she said, "I think, if your father were alive now, he would see
+as little need of cautioning you against becoming a pretender to the
+throne of France as of keeping out of dissipation. But he told me if
+ever you showed signs of plunging into politics I was to give you the
+paper. I left it in my room, thinking we might both sit there, not
+fancying we should have our chat here. I shall give it to you as you
+go to your room."
+
+"And you have no clue to what the paper contains?" he asked
+pleasantly.
+
+"No," she answered with hesitancy and a thoughtful lowering of her
+eyes. "You remember, at that time--I mean as a boy and lad--you were a
+fierce Radical."
+
+"Oh, more than that! I was a Republican, a Socialist, a Nihilist, I
+think. A regular out-and-out Fire-eater, Iconoclast, Destructionist, I
+think," the young man laughed, throwing himself back in his chair and
+enjoying the memory of his youthful thoroughness.
+
+"And your father took no part whatever in politics, seemed to dread
+the mention of them. He was at heart, I think, an aristocrat."
+
+"And married the daughter of Sir Ralph Preston, whose family goes back
+centuries before the Plantagenets, and to whom a baronetcy is like a
+mere Brummagem medal on the breast of a Pharoah."
+
+Mrs. Hanbury shook her head deprecatingly and smiled. "I am afraid you
+are as ardent in your estimate of my family pretensions to lineage as
+you were long ago in your hatred of kings and princes."
+
+"But I have always been true to you, mother!" he said in that
+wonderful, irresistible, meltingly affectionate voice; he took her
+hand and kissed it reverentially.
+
+"Yes, my son. Always." As his head was bent over her hand she laid her
+hand on his thick dark curly hair.
+
+"My mother," he murmured, when he felt her touch.
+
+Her eyes filled and shone with tears. She made an effort, commanded
+herself, and as her son sat back on his chair, went on: "You know when
+your father went into business there was no necessity of a money kind
+for his doing so. The Hanburys have had plenty of money always, never
+lands, as far as I know, but money always. They were not a very old
+family as far as I have heard. This was a point on which your father
+was reticent. At all events he went into business in the City, as you
+are aware, and there made a second fortune."
+
+"Well, mother, I am not at all ashamed of our connection with business
+or the City," said the young man pleasantly.
+
+"Nor am I, John, as you know. When I married your father, none of my
+people said, at all events to me, that I disgraced my family or
+degraded my blood. Your father was in business in Fenchurch Street
+then. My family had known your father all his life. Our marriage was
+one purely of inclination, and was most happy. Your father was a
+simple, intelligent, kind-hearted gentleman, John, and as good a
+husband and father as ever breathed."
+
+"Indeed, mother, I am quite sure of that. I still feel raw and cold
+without him," said the young man gravely.
+
+"And I shall never get over his loss. I never forget it for one hour
+of any day. But I am growing talkative in my age like all old people,"
+she said, drawing herself up and laughing faintly. "I am sure I have
+no reason for saying it, but I fancy the paper your father left with
+me for you, is in some way connected with the business, or the reason
+which made him go into business. He gave it to me a few days before he
+died, and when he knew he was dying. He gave it to me after saying a
+great deal to me about business, after arranging his other business
+affairs. He said he did not like you to take so much interest in
+politics, but that he supposed he must not try to foretell your
+future. That there was such a thing as going too far in any cause, and
+that if ever you showed any disposition to put your extreme views in
+practice, I was to give you this paper. 'In fact, Amy,' said he, 'if
+our dear boy goes into public life at the popular side, give him this
+paper; it may be the means of moderating his ardour; but do not give
+it to him until he is over twenty-one. He will have, I think, no need
+of it if he keeps quiet until he is thirty. If his mind takes the
+other bend and he shows any sympathy with any reactionary party in
+Europe, any party that wants to unsettle things as they now are,
+destroy this on your peril. If you think he is devoted only to English
+Radicalism, give him the paper; if he mixes himself up with any
+Republican party on the Continent, give him the paper. But if he shows
+sympathy with any pretender on the Continent, _burn the paper, Amy, as
+you love your boy, and bury the ashes of it too_.' Those were his very
+words. What they mean or refer to I do not know." Her face had grown
+paler.
+
+"And you never read the paper?"
+
+"No. Nor have I the least clue to its contents. I only know that your
+father was a sensible man, and attached great importance to it. If you
+come I will give it to you now."
+
+They both rose and left the dining-room together. As they went
+up-stairs she said:
+
+"I am aware for some time you have not been quite certain as to the
+side you would throw in your lot with. I don't think your father ever
+contemplated such a situation, and it seems to me that if this paper
+is to be of any use to you it must be of most use when you are
+wavering."
+
+"But I am no longer wavering. I have decided to throw in my lot with
+the advanced party."
+
+"When did you make up your mind?"
+
+"To-day."
+
+"Oh, you dined at Curzon Street. And have you arranged about your
+marriage with dear Dora? No new daughter was ever so welcome as she
+will be to me. Has the time been fixed?"
+
+He started. "No, not exactly, mother." He had forgotten for the past
+quarter of an hour all about the quarrel or scene with Dora. He
+flushed crimson, and then grew dusky white. He seized the balustrade
+for a moment to steady himself. His mother was walking in front, and
+could not see the signs of his agitation.
+
+He recovered himself instantly.
+
+She judged by his tone that her question had not been well timed. With
+the intention of getting away as far as possible from the thought of
+Dora, or marriage, she said, turning round upon him with a smile as
+she opened her boudoir door, "By the way, who was that admirable
+paragon whose panegyric you were pronouncing in the dining-room when I
+came in?"
+
+He laughed uneasily and did not meet her eyes. "An acquaintance of
+mine, a poor devil who has got himself into serious trouble."
+
+"A friend of yours, John, in serious trouble."
+
+"Not a friend, mother, an acquaintance of mine."
+
+"Do I know him, John?"
+
+"No, mother. Not in the least. I should be very sorry you did. I hope
+you may never know him."
+
+For the second time in a minute Mrs. Hanbury felt that she had asked
+an ill-timed question.
+
+She handed him the paper of which she had spoken. He said good-night
+to her, and as the clock on the lower lobby was striking midnight he
+entered his own room.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XX.
+
+                         JOHN HANBURY ALONE.
+
+
+When John Hanbury closed and locked the door of his own room and threw
+himself into an old easy chair, he felt first an overwhelming sense of
+relief. A day of many exciting and unpleasant events was over, and he
+was encompassed by the security of his home and environed closely by
+the privacy of his own sleeping chamber. No one uninvited would enter
+by the outer door of the house; no one could enter this room without
+his absolute permission. He was secure against the annoyance or
+intrusion of people. Here he could rest and be safe. Here he was
+protected against even himself, for he could not make himself
+ridiculous or commit himself when alone. All trials of great agony
+spring from what we conceive to be our relations with others. Beyond
+physical pains and pleasures, which are few and unimportant in life,
+we owe all our joys and sorrows to what others think or say of us.
+Even in the most abstracted spiritual natures the anger of Heaven is
+more intolerable to anticipate than the torture of Hell.
+
+John Hanbury's room was in the back of the house. Here, as in the
+dining-room, the window was wide open. The stars were dull in the
+misty midsummer sky. Now and then came the muffled rattle of a distant
+cab, now and then the banging of doors, now and then the sounds of
+shooting locks and bolts as servants fastened up the rears of houses
+for the night. Beyond these sounds there was none, and these came so
+seldom and so dulled by distance, and with intervals so increasing in
+length that they seemed like the drowsy muttering of the vast city as
+it moved heavily seeking ease and sleep.
+
+For a while Hanbury sat without stirring. He still held in his hand
+the paper his mother had given him. He knew he had not escaped the
+battle. He was merely reposing between the fights. He sat with his
+head drooped low upon his chest, his arms lying listlessly by his
+side, his legs stretched out. This was the first rest of body or mind
+he had had that day, but, as in a sleep obtained from narcotics, while
+it gave him physical relief his mind was gaining no freshness.
+
+At length Hanbury shook himself, shuddered, and rose. The light was
+not fully up. He left his window open from the bottom all night. He
+went to it, pulled up the blind and sat down on the low window-frame.
+He put his hand on the stone window sill, and leaning forward looked
+below.
+
+Here the silence was not so deep or monotonous as in the room with the
+blind down. There arose sounds, faint sounds of music from the backs
+of houses where entertainments were being given, now and then voices
+and laughter could be heard indistinctly. In many of the windows shone
+lights. No suggestion of tumult or trouble came from any side or from
+the sky above. On earth spread a peaceful heaven of man's making and
+man's keeping; above a peaceful heaven of God's will.
+
+Here was the largest, and richest, and most powerful, and most
+civilized city of all time, lying round the feet of a stupendous
+goddess of liberty, whose statue had been reared by wisdom borrowed
+from all the ages of the history of man. This was the heart of the
+colossal nation whose vital blood flowed in every clime.
+
+Here were powers capable of beneficent application lying ready to the
+hand of every strength. To be here and able was to have the key-board
+of the most gigantic organ ever devised by human mind open to one's
+touch.
+
+Here all creeds were free, all thoughts were free, all words were
+free, all men were free. There was no slavery of the soul or the
+person. Here, the leader of the people was the ruler of the state. The
+people made the laws, and the King saw that the laws were obeyed.
+
+Each man of the people was a monarch who deputed his regal powers to
+the King.
+
+An hereditary sovereign was the best, better a thousand times than
+elected King.
+
+In this country were no plots and schemings about succession. Here the
+King's son came to the throne under the will of the people. This
+country was never disturbed by struggles to get a good ruler. This
+country always had a good ruler, that is the will of the people.
+
+What a miserable spectacle France, great France, chivalric France
+presented now! How many pretenders were there to the throne?--to the
+presidential chair? There were the Legitimists, and the Orleanists,
+and the Napoleons, two branches of Napoleons, and a dozen aspirants to
+the presidency! How miserable! What waste of vigour and dignity.
+
+Yes, he was glad he had made up his mind. He would devote himself,
+body and soul, to the sovereign people under the constitutional
+sovereign.
+
+He would be as advanced as any man short of revolution, short of
+violence. His motto should be All things for the people under the
+people's King.
+
+No doubt his mother's talk to him in the dining-room had set him off
+on such currents of thought. His mother's talk in the dining-room--by
+the way, he had not yet looked at the paper she had given him.
+
+He pulled down the blind, turned up the lights over the mantel, and
+standing with his back to the chimney-piece, examined the packet in
+his hand.
+
+It was a large envelope, tied in a very elaborate manner, and the
+string was sealed in three places at the back. On the front, under the
+string, he read his own name in his father's well-known large legible
+writing. He cut the string and the envelope, and drew out of the
+latter a long narrow parcel. This he opened, and found to consist of
+half-a-dozen sheets of brief-paper closely covered on both sides with
+the large legible writing of his father. The paper was secured at the
+left hand corner by a loop of red tape. He saw at a glance that the
+document took the form of a letter to him. It began, "My dear and only
+son, John," and finished with "Your most affectionate and anxious
+father, William Hanbury." The young man turned over the sheets slowly,
+glancing at each in turn. This long letter was not, from first to
+finish, broken in any way. There were no general heading, or divisions
+into sections, or even paragraphs. From beginning to end no break
+appeared. The wide margin bore not a single scratch. There was no mark
+from the address to the signature to attract attention.
+
+He glanced at the opening words of this long letter. From them it was
+plain his father meant him to read them quietly and deliberately in
+the sequence in which they ran. The first sentence was this:
+
+
+"It is of the greatest importance to the object I have in view that
+the facts I am about to disclose to you should reach your mind in the
+order I have here put them; otherwise the main fact in the revelation
+might have a pernicious effect upon you, my son."
+
+
+The young man lowered the manuscript and mused a moment. It was
+obvious to him that no matter what he should think of the contents of
+this document his father had considered them of first-rate importance,
+and likely to influence his own mind and actions in no ordinary way.
+His father's sense and judgment! had never been called in question by
+any of his father's oldest and closest friends, and those who knew him
+most intimately never saw reason to account him liable to exaggerated
+estimates of the influence of ideas, except in his morbid
+sensitiveness to anything like popular revolutions or dynastic
+intrigues.
+
+John Hanbury raised the document and recommenced where he had left
+off. That first sentence was cautionary: the second sentence took away
+the breath of the young man, by reason of the large field it opened to
+view, and the strange and intense personal interest it at once
+aroused. It ran thus:
+
+
+"About the middle of the last century, when George the Second sat on
+the throne of England, and the usurper, Elizabeth, daughter of Peter
+the Great, on the throne of Russia, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams was
+appointed our ambassador to Russia. To Sir Charles Hanbury Williams
+you and I owe our name, although a drop of his blood does not flow in
+our veins, nor are we in any way that I know of related to him or
+his."
+
+
+Again the young man lowered the manuscript from before his eyes. His
+face suddenly flushed, his eyes contracted, he thrust his head forward
+as though listening intently. What could be coming? He strained his
+hearing to catch sounds and voices muttering and mumbling on the
+limits of his thoughts. He was at sea, gazing with wild eagerness into
+the haze ahead, trying to determine whether what he saw was sea-smoke
+or cloud or land. Why these great chords in the prelude? What meant
+these muffled trumpets, telling of ambassadors and courts and kingdoms
+and empires? What concords were these preluding? What stately themes
+and regal confluences of harmony? Were these words the first taps of
+the kettle drums in his march upon some soul-expanding knowledge? What
+should he now see with his eyes and hear with his ears and touch with
+his hands? Upon what marvellous scenes of the undisclosed past was the
+curtain about to rise? Were some mighty engines that had wrought in
+the world's history about to be exhibited to his eyes? What mysteries
+of councils and of courts was he destined to witness and understand?
+Who was he? Of whom was he? Whence was he? Hanbury and yet no Hanbury.
+How came it he owned the middle and not the final name of the
+diplomatist and poet of the days of George the Second?
+
+God of Heaven, could it be there was the blood of a shameful woman in
+his veins?
+
+His face suddenly blanched. The thick dark veins of his temples and
+forehead lay down flat and then sank hollow. His swarthy rough skin
+shrank and puckered. His lips drew backward thinned and livid. His
+clenched white teeth shone out, and his breath came though them with a
+hissing noise. He drew himself up to his full height, and for a moment
+looked round defiantly.
+
+All at once the blood flew back to his cheeks, his forehead, his neck.
+He covered his face with his bent arm and sank into a chair, crying:
+"Not that! Oh God, not that! Anything but that!"
+
+He remained for a long time motionless, with his face covered by his
+arm, and the hand of that arm holding the paper against his shoulder.
+At first no thoughts passed through his mind. He was no longer trying
+to see or hear or divine. He felt overwhelmed, and if he had the power
+to do it he would there and then have ceased to think, have
+annihilated the power of thought for ever. To his sensitive and
+highly-wrought mind, base blood of even four or five generations back
+would have forbidden him any part in public life, and, worse than that
+a thousand times, have destroyed his personal interest and pride in
+himself for ever.
+
+"I would rather," he moaned, when his mind became more orderly, "carry
+the hump upon the withered, distorted legs of that man, Oscar Leigh,
+than a bend sinister. A noble woman may fall, but no noble woman who
+has fallen would take money for her sin. It is not the sin that would
+hurt me, but the hire of the sin, the notion that I had the blood of
+shame in my veins, and the price of shame in my pocket. Bah! I would
+die of fever if it were so. My blood, the blood in my veins would
+ferment and stew my flesh. I should rot from within."
+
+He dropped his arm and looked around him. The sight of the familiar
+room and well-known objects allayed the agony of despair. He drew a
+deep breath and sat up.
+
+"I have been terrifying myself with shadows, with less than shadows,
+with absolute blanks; nay, I have been terrifying myself with less
+than nothing! I have been trying to change the absolute and manifest,
+and vouched sunlight into gloom and the people of gloom, phantoms. The
+only evidence before me is evidence against my fears. Instead of an
+intangible horror, there is an affirmed and ponderable assurance that
+although my name is Hanbury, and I got that name from Sir Hanbury
+Williams, not a drop of his blood is in my veins! Why, I am more like
+a girl with her first love-letter, trying to guess its contents from
+the outside, than a man with a business document in his hand! Let me
+read this thing through now as I discussed another matter awhile ago,
+as if it were a brief put into my hands as a counsel. It is exactly,
+or almost exactly like a brief." He tossed the sheets carelessly in
+his hand. "Let us see what the case is."
+
+He sat himself back deliberately in his chair, thrust out his legs
+before him, and holding the manuscript in both hands began it again.
+
+With contracted brows and face of stern attention he read on. He
+betrayed no more excitement than if he held in his hand a bluebook
+which he desired to master for some routine speech. Now and then he
+cleared his throat softly, imperfectly, indifferent to the result; for
+all other sound he made he might have been fashioned of marble. Now
+and then he turned the leaves and moved slightly from side to side;
+for all other motion he made he might have been dead.
+
+At last he came to the final line, to his father's signature. He read
+all and then allowing the manuscript to fall from his hands and his
+arms to drop to his side, sat in the chair motionless, staring into
+vacancy.
+
+For an hour he remained thus. Beyond the heaving of his chest and his
+calm regular respiration, he was perfectly still. At length he sighed
+profoundly, not from sadness, but deep musing, shook himself,
+shuddered, looked round him as though he had just waked from sleeping
+in a strange place.
+
+He rose slowly and going to the window drew up the blind.
+
+No lights were now to be seen in the rear of any of the houses, and
+complete silence filled the windless air.
+
+"How peaceful," he whispered, "how calm. All the loyal subjects of Her
+Majesty Queen Victoria are now sleeping in calm security. What a
+contrast! Here the person of the subject is as sacred as the person
+of the sovereign. Good heavens, what a contrast! Gracedieu in
+Derbyshire. I seem to have heard of that place before, but I cannot
+recollect, when or where. Gracedieu must be a very small place,
+for my father says it is near the village of Castleton. I don't know
+where Castleton is, beyond the fact that it is in Derbyshire.
+Gracedieu--Gracedieu--Gracedieu. The name seems familiar enough, but
+joined with what or whom I cannot think. It is a common name. There
+must be many places of the name in England. My memory of it must be
+connected with some circumstance or people, for I am sure I have never
+been in the place myself or in Castleton either; or in Derbyshire at
+all, for the matter of that, except passing through. I don't think I
+can be familiar with the name in connection with the Peak. My only
+knowledge of the Peak and its neighbourhood is from some written
+description, and my only memory of the name Gracedieu is one of the
+ear, not of the eye.
+
+"I am sure my memory of it is of the ear, and that it is a pleasant
+memory too! but I can get no further now. To-morrow I shall go and see
+the place for myself. This whole history is astounding. I am too much
+stunned by it to think about it yet.
+
+"There's two o'clock striking. I must not wake my mother to tell her.
+I feel as if my reason were a little disturbed. I feel choked and
+smothered up--as if I could not breathe. I am worn out and weak. The
+day has been too much for me. I will go to bed. I am sure I shall
+sleep. I am half asleep as it is."
+
+He drew back from the window and stretched up his hand for the cord.
+
+"The Queen of England sleeps secure, with all her subjects secure
+around her--and I----" He did not finish the sentence. He shook his
+head and pulled down the blind.
+
+Suddenly he struck his thigh with his clenched fist, calling out in a
+whisper: "Of course, I now remember where I heard of Gracedieu. What a
+stupid fool I have been not to recall it at once! It's the place that
+beautiful girl the dwarf introduced me to comes from! My head must be
+dull not to remember that! His Pallas-Athena, and I----"
+
+He turned out the lights, and began undressing in the dim twilight;
+there were already faint blue premonitions of dawn upon the blind.
+
+"I wonder," he muttered in the twilight, "will his figures of time
+include Cophetua and the Beggar Maid! Ha--ha--ha. I am half asleep.
+
+"That old story I read this night was not unlike Cophetua and the
+Beggar Maid, only--I must not think of it now, I am too dazed and
+stunned and stupid."
+
+He was in bed, and in a few minutes was asleep. On a sudden he woke up
+at the sound of his own voice, crying out loud in the profound peace
+of the early dawn:--
+
+"Thieves! Thieves! Kosciusko to the rescue. The king is on your side!"
+
+He found himself standing up in the bed gesticulating wildly. The
+sweat was pouring down from his forehead and he was trembling
+violently in all his limbs.
+
+He stood listening awhile to ascertain if his shout had wakened the
+household, but unbroken silence followed his cry. Then he lay down and
+soon fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+                  TIMMONS'S TEA AND LEIGH'S DINNER.
+
+
+Mr. John Timmons's tea was a very long and unsociable meal. It took
+hours, and not even the half-dozen red-herrings brought to him by Mrs.
+Stamer in the fish-basket were allowed to assist at it. They lay in
+dense obscurity on the floor of the marine-store. Tunbridge Street was
+now as silent as the grave.
+
+It was after eleven o'clock and John Timmons had not yet emerged from
+his cellar. All the while he had been below a strong pungent smell of
+burning, the dry sulphurous smell of burning coke, had ascended from
+below, with now and then noise of a hand-bellows blowing a fire, but no
+steam or sound or savour of cooking. Now and again there was the noise
+of stirring a fire, and now and again the noise of a tongs gripping
+and loosing and slipping on what a listener might, in conjunction with
+other evidence, take to be pieces of coke. From time to time the man
+below might be heard to breathe heavily and sigh. Otherwise he uttered
+no sound. If the subterranean stoker desired secrecy he had his wish,
+for there was no one in or near the place listening.
+
+But if no one was listening to the stoker some one was watching
+the exterior of the marine-store in Tunbridge Street. A short time
+before eleven o'clock a man dressed in seedy black cloth, with short
+iron-grey, whiskers and beard, and long iron-grey hair and wearing
+blue spectacles, turned into the street, and sat down in a crouching
+position on the axle-tree of a cart, whose shafts, like a pair of
+slender telescopes, pointed to the dim summer stars, or taken together
+the cart and man looked like a huge flying beetle, the body of the
+cart being the wings, the wheels the high elbowed legs, the man the
+body of the insect and the two long shafts the antennae thrust upwards
+in alarm.
+
+When it was about a quarter past eleven John Timmons emerged from the
+cellar, carrying in one hand a dark lantern, with the slide closed.
+When he found himself in his upper, or ground-floor chamber, or shop,
+or store, he drew himself to his full height, and, with head advanced
+sideways, listened awhile.
+
+There was no sound. He nodded his head with satisfaction. Then he went
+cautiously to the wicket, and with a trowel began digging up the earth
+of the floor, which was here dark and friable and dry. It was, old
+sand from a foundry, and could be moved and replaced without showing
+the least trace of disturbance. Timmons did not use the lamp. He had
+placed it beside him on the ground with the slide closed.
+
+After digging down about a foot he came upon a small, old,
+courier-bag, which he lifted out, and which contained something heavy.
+The bag had been all rubbed over with grease and to the grease the
+dark sand stuck thickly. Out of this bag he took a small, heavy,
+cylindrical bundle of chamois leather. Then he restored the bag to the
+hole, shovelled back the sand and smoothed the floor, rose and stood a
+minute hearkening, with the cylinder of chamois rolled-up leather in
+his hand.
+
+This hiding-place had been selected and contrived with great
+acuteness. It was so close to the foot of the shutters that no one
+looking in through the ventilators at any angle could catch sight of
+it. The presence of the moulder's sand at the threshold was explained
+by the fact that no other substance was so good for canting heavy
+metal objects upon. Superficial disturbances were to be expected in
+such a floor, and it was impossible to tell superficial disturbances
+from deep ones. Once the sand was re-levelled with a broom-handle,
+used as a striker is used in measuring corn, it was impossible to
+guess whether any disturbance had recently taken place. In concealing
+and recovering anything here the operator's ear was within two inches
+of the street, and he could hear the faintest sound outside. The
+threshold was not a likely place to challenge examination in case of
+search.
+
+Timmons now walked softly over his noiseless floor, carrying his
+lantern in one hand and the roll of leather in the other, until he got
+behind the old boiler of the donkey engine. Here he slid back the
+slide of the lantern and unrolled the leather. The latter proved to be
+a belt about a palm deep, and consisting of little bags or pockets of
+chamois leather, clumsily but securely sewn to a band of double
+chamois.
+
+There were a dozen of those little pockets in all; six of them
+contained some heavy substance. Each one closed with a piece of string
+tied at the mouth. Timmons undid one and rolled out on his hand a
+thick lump of yellow metal about the size of the large buttons worn as
+ornaments on the coats of coachmen. It was not, however, flat, but
+slightly convex at one side and almost semi-spherical on the other.
+
+He smiled a well-satisfied smile at the gold ingot, and weighed it
+affectionately in his black, grimy palm, where the gold shone like a
+yellow unchanging flame. Timmons gave the ingot a loving polish with
+his sleeve, dropped it back into its bag, and re-tied the string. Then
+out of each of his trousers' pockets he took a similar ingot or
+button, weighed each, and looked at each with affectionate approval,
+and secured each in one of the half-dozen vacant leather bags.
+
+"Two pounds two ounces all together," he whispered. "I have never been
+able to get more than fifteen shillings an ounce for it, taking it all
+round at fifteen carats. His offer is as good as thirty shillings an
+ounce, which leaves a margin for a man to get a living out of it, if
+the dwarf is safe. If I had had only one deal with him, I'd feel he's
+safe, but he has done nothing but talk grand and nonsense up to this,
+and----" Timmons paused and shook his head ominously. He did not
+finish the sentence, but as he stood weighing the belt up and down in
+his hand, assumed suddenly a more pleasant look, and whispered with a
+smile exhibiting his long yellow teeth: "But after this deal to-night
+he can't draw back or betray me. That's certain, anyhow."
+
+He unbuttoned his waistcoat, strapped the belt round his lank, hollow
+waist, blew out the lantern, and walking briskly, crossed the store,
+opened the wicket and stepped into the deserted street. He closed and
+locked the door behind him, and turning to his left walked rapidly
+among the carts and vans to London Road.
+
+Before he disappeared, the elderly man with grizzled hair and
+whiskers, dressed in seedy black cloth, emerged from the shadow
+of the cart and kept stealthily and noiselessly in the rear of the
+marine-store dealer. John Timmons was on his way to keep his important
+business appointment with Leigh in Chetwynd Street, Chelsea, and the
+low-sized man with blue spectacles was following, shadowing Timmons.
+
+When Leigh left Curzon Street that evening, he made his way into
+Piccadilly first, and thence westward in a leisurely way, with his
+head held high and a look of arrogant impudence and exultation on his
+face. He turned to the left down Grosvenor Place. He was bound to
+Chetwynd Street, but he was in no humour for short cuts or dingy
+streets.
+
+He was elated. He walked with his head among the stars. All the men he
+met were mud and dross compared with him. Whatever difficulty he set
+himself before melted into nothingness at his glance. If it had suited
+him to set his purpose to do what other men counted impossible, that
+thing should be done by him. No political party he led should ever be
+out-voted, no army he commanded defeated, no cause he advocated
+extinguished. These creatures around him were made of clay, he of pure
+spirit, that saw clearly where the eyes of mere men were filled with
+dust and rheum.
+
+This clock upon which he was engaged would be the eighth wonder of the
+world when completed. He had not yet done all the things he spoke of,
+had not yet introduced all the movements and marvels he had described
+to the groundlings. But the clock was not finished. Why it was not
+well begun. By and by he would set about those figures of time. They
+would require a new and vastly complicated movement and great
+additional power, but to a man of genius what was all this but a
+bagatelle, a paltry thing he could devise in an hour and execute by
+and by?
+
+Already the clock was enormously complicated, and although it seemed
+simple enough, as simple as playing cats-cradle when he was near it,
+when he could see the cause and application of all its parts and
+instantly put any defect to rights, still when he was away from it for
+a long time, part of it seemed to stop and sometimes the whole of it,
+and--this was distracting, maddening--the power seemed to originate at
+the escapements, and the whole machine would work backward against his
+will until the enormous weights in the chimney, out of which he got
+his power, were wound up tight against the beams, until the chains
+seemed bursting and the beams tearing and the wheels splitting and
+dashing asunder. And all the while the escapements went flying in
+reverse so fast as to dazzle him and make him giddy, and then, when
+all seemed lost and the end at hand, some merciful change would occur
+and the accursed reversed movement would die away and cease, and after
+a pause of unspeakable joy the machine would start in its natural and
+blessed way again and he would cry out and weep for happiness at the
+merciful deliverance.
+
+Hah! He felt in thinking of these sufferings about the clock as though
+the movement were going to be reversed now.
+
+Leigh paused for a moment, and looked around him to bring himself back
+to the actual world.
+
+"Hah!" he whispered. "I know why I feel so queer. It's the want of
+food. I have had no food to-day--for the body any way--except what she
+gave me. What food she gave me for the soul! My soul was never full
+fed until to-day."
+
+He resumed his course, and, without formulating his destination,
+directed his steps instinctively towards the restaurant where he
+usually dined.
+
+"But this alchemy?" his thoughts went on, "this miracle gold? What of
+it?" He dropped his chin upon his chest and lapsed into deep thought.
+The boastful and confident air vanished from his eyes and manner. He
+was deep sunk in careful and elaborate thought.
+
+The position looks simple if regarded in one way. Here this man
+Timmons calls on him and says:--
+
+I am a marine store dealer, and all kinds of old metal come into my
+hands. I buy articles of iron and copper and lead and brass and tin
+and zinc. I buy old battered silver electro-plate and melt it down for
+the silver. Silver is not worth the attention of a great chemist like
+you. But sometimes I come across gold. It may reach my hands in one
+way or several ways. It may turn up in something I am melting. It may
+be gilding on old iron I buy. You are not to know all the secrets of
+my trade as a marine store dealer, which is a highly respectable if
+not an exalted trade. Now gold, no matter how or where it may be, is
+worth any man's consideration. The gold that comes my way is never
+pure. It averages half or little more than half alloy. You are a great
+chemist. I cannot afford time to separate the gold from the alloy. I
+cannot spare time to go about and sell it. Every man to his trade; I
+am a marine-store dealer, you are a great chemist. What will you give
+me for ingots fifteen carats fine?
+
+The value of gold of fifteen carats to sell is two pounds thirteen
+shillings and a penny. Gold is the only thing that never changes its
+price. Any one who wants pure gold must give four pounds four
+shillings and eleven pence halfpenny for it. Fifteen twenty-fourths!
+The value of fifteen twenty-fourths of that sum is two pounds thirteen
+and a penny. The alloy counts as dross and fetches nothing----
+
+"Hah! Yes," thought Leigh interrupting his retrospect with a start as
+he found himself at the door of the restaurant where he proposed
+dining, "I must have food for the body. Food for the soul, if taken
+too largely or alone, kills the body, no matter how strong and shapely
+and lithe it may be. I shall think this matter out when I have eaten.
+I shall think it out over a cigar and coffee."
+
+He ordered a simple meal and ate it slowly, taking great comfort and
+refreshment out of the rest and meat. He had a little box all to
+himself. He was in no humour for company, and it was long past the
+dinner time in this place, so that the room was comparatively
+deserted.
+
+When he had finished eating he ordered coffee and a cigar, and putting
+his legs up on the seat, rested his elbow on the table, lit his cigar
+and resumed his cogitations in a more vigorous and vocal manner, using
+words in his mind now instead of pictures.
+
+"Let me see. Where was I? Oh, I recollect. Timmons can't spare time
+for chemistry or metallurgy and doesn't care to deal with so valuable
+a metal as gold, even if he had the time. I understand all about
+metals and chemistry and so on. I entertain the suggestion placed
+before me and turn it round in my mind to see what I can make of it. I
+get hold of a superb idea.
+
+"Of course, after extracting the metal from the alloy, when I had the
+virgin gold in my hand I should have to find a market for it, to sell
+it. The time has not yet come for absolutely forming my figures of
+time in metal. Wax will do even after I begin the mere drudgery of the
+modelling.
+
+"Well, if I were to offer considerable quantities of gold for sale in
+the ordinary way, I should have to mention all about John Timmons, and
+that would be troublesome and derogatory to my dignity, for then it
+would seem as though I were doing no more than performing cupelling
+work for this man Timmons.
+
+"The whole volume of science is open to me. I am a profound chemist. I
+am theoretically and practically acquainted with the whole science
+from the earliest records of alchemy down to to-day. I agree with
+Lockyer, that according to the solar spectrum some of the substances
+we call elements have been decomposed in the enormous furnaces of the
+sun. I hold instead of their being seventy elements there is but one,
+in countless modifications, owing to countless contingencies. What we
+call different elements are only different arrangements of one
+individual element, the one element of nature, the irreducible unit of
+the creation, the primal atom. This is a well-known theory, but no one
+has proved it yet.
+
+"I stand forth to prove it, and how better can I prove it than by
+realizing the dream of the old transmuters of metals. Alikser is not a
+substance. The philosopher's stone is not a thing you can carry in
+your pocket. It is no more than a re-arrangement of primal atoms. What
+we call gold is, let us say, nothing more than crystallized
+electricity, and I have found the secret of so bringing the atoms of
+electricity together that they fall into crystals of pure gold. Up to
+this the heat of the strongest furnaces have not been able to
+volatilize one grain of metallic gold: all you have to do to make
+metallic gold is to solidify it out of its vapourous condition, say
+electricity or hydrogen, what you please.
+
+"How this is done is my great discovery, my inviolate secret. The
+process of manufacture is extremely expensive, I cannot share the
+secret with anyone, lest I should lose all the advantage and profit of
+my discovery, for no patent that all the government of earth could
+make with brass and steel would keep people from making gold if they
+could read how it may be done.
+
+"Pure gold is value for a halfpenny less than four pounds five
+shillings an ounce Troy. I will sell you pure gold, none of your
+childish mystery gold with its copper, and silver, and platinum
+clumsiness that will not stand the fire, but pure gold that will defy
+any test wet or dry, or cupel, for four pounds the ounce. Come, will
+you buy my Miracle Gold at four pounds the ounce Troy?"
+
+Leigh struck the table triumphantly with his hand, and uttered the
+question aloud. His excitement had carried him away from the table,
+and the restaurant. He was nowhere he could name. He was in the clouds
+challenging no one he could name to refuse so good an offer. He was
+simply in the lists of immortality, throwing down the gage to
+universal man.
+
+No one was present to accept or decline his offer. No one caught the
+words he uttered. But the sound of the blow of his fist upon the table
+brought a waiter to the end of the box. Leigh ordered more coffee and
+another cigar. When they had been brought and he was once more alone,
+his mind ran on:--
+
+"That is one view of it, that is the view I should offer to my
+customers and to the world of my position. But what kept me so from
+closing with this Timmons was the consideration that everyone who
+heard my version of the matter might not accept it.
+
+"The clock is out-growing me, and often I feel giddy and in a maze
+with it. A clock cannot fill all my life and satisfy all a man's
+heart. At the time I began it years ago I fancied it would suffice. I
+fancied it would keep my heart from preying on itself. But now the
+mechanism is often too much for me when it is not before my eyes. It
+wears, and wears, and wears the mind, as it wears, and wears, and
+wears itself.
+
+"When this man Timmons came to me first, I thought of putting the
+clock to a use I never contemplated when I started making it. Since I
+began to think of making the clock of use in my dealings with this
+Miracle Gold, I have seen her; I have seen this Edith Grace, who
+staggered me in my pursuit of Miracle Gold and filled my veins with
+fire I never knew before. What fools we men are! And I who have not
+the proportions of a man, what a fool ten thousand times multiplied!
+She shrank from me as though I were a leper, I who am only a monster!
+I would give all the gold that ever blazed before the eye-balls of men
+to have a man's fair inches and straight back! I! I! I! What am I that
+I should have feelings? Why, I am worse than the vilest lepers that
+rotted without the city gate. _They_, even _they_, had had their days
+of wholesomeness and strength before the plague fell upon them. I was
+predestined from birth to stand in odious and grotesque blackness
+against the sun, to seem in the eyes of all women a goblin spewed out
+of the maw of hell!"
+
+He paused. The clock struck. He sprang to his feet.
+
+"Ten!" he said aloud. He said to himself: "Ten o'clock, and I have a
+good deal to do before Timmons comes at midnight."
+
+Suddenly he paused on his way to the door of the restaurant, and stood
+in deep thought. Then he resumed his way to the door and when he got
+out into the street, said half aloud:
+
+"Strange that I should have forgotten all about that. Have I much to
+do before midnight? I told her--the other, the more wonderful and more
+beautiful one of the same mould, the one with the heart, the lady of
+the two--that I should decide about the gold between the time I was
+speaking to her and the same time next week. She did not shrink from
+me as if I were a leper, this second one of the two. Stop, I have no
+time to think this matter out now. I have a week. I will take all
+steps as though I had not seen her in that room. What a pitiful, mean
+cad that Hanbury is! Why, he's lower than a leper! He's more
+contemptible than even I!"
+
+He cleared his mind of all doubts and concentrated it upon what he had
+to do before meeting John Timmons. He hurried along and in a few
+minutes let himself into his house with his latch-key.
+
+There was no voice or even light to greet him in his home. As he
+ascended the stairs he thought: "If tombs were only as roomy as this
+house I shouldn't mind being done with daylight and the world, and
+covered up. Now, I'd give all I own in this world to have a
+comfortable mind like Williams, my friend the publican, over the way.
+Ha-ha-ha!" His hideous laugh, now shrill like the squeal of grating
+metal, now soft and flabby and gelatinous like the flapping of a wet
+cloth, echoed in the impenetrable darkness around him.
+
+"If Hanbury were only here now and had a knife--in ten minutes I'd
+know more than any living man. Ha-ha-ha!"
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXII.
+
+                        A QUARTER PAST TWELVE.
+
+
+Oscar Leigh sat in the dark on the last step but one of the stairs of
+his house, awaiting the arrival of John Timmons. It was close to the
+appointed hour. He had spent the interval in his workshop with the
+clock. He had one of his knees drawn up close to his body, his elbow
+rested on his knee, his long bearded chin in the palm of that hand. It
+was pitch dark. Nothing could be seen, absolutely nothing. For all the
+human eye could learn an inch from it might be a plate of iron or
+blind space.
+
+"My mother cannot live for ever," whispered the dwarf--like many
+people who live much in the solitude of cities he had the habit of
+communing with himself aloud--"and then all will be blank, all will be
+dark as this place round me. Where shall I turn then? Whom shall I
+speak my heart to? I designed my clock to be a companion, a friend, a
+confidant, a solace, a triumph; it is becoming a tyrant and a scourge.
+It is cruel that my mother should grow old. Why should not things stop
+as they are now? But we are all on our way to death. We are all on our
+way out of the world to make room for those who are coming in. No
+sooner do we grow to full years and strive to form our hearts than we
+discover we are only lodgers in this world and that those we like are
+leaving our neighbourhood very soon, and that while we cannot go with
+them we cannot remain either.
+
+"A man must have something to think of besides himself; a deformed
+dwarf must never think of himself at all, unless he thinks great
+things of himself. I am depressed to-night. I have been living too
+fast all day. What a long day it has been. I told that young whelp,
+Hanbury, I should show him something more wonderful than Miracle Gold.
+I took him with me to Grimsby Street, and the marvellous likeness
+between those two girls took the sight out of his eyes and the speech
+out of his mouth, and the little brains he has out of his head. Then I
+go with him to see _her_ who is the other, only with glory added to
+beauty. She is better and more wonderful than Miracle Gold, better and
+more wonderful than the substance of the ruby flash in the flame of
+the diamond. If the devil had but let me grow up as other men, she
+might have made me try to carry myself and act like a god. I am of
+Satan's crew now--it would hardly pay to apostatize. Here's Timmons."
+
+The knock agreed upon sounded on the door and reverberated through the
+hollow darkness. Leigh rose, and sliding his left foot and supporting
+his body on the stick, held close in under his ribs, went to the door
+and opened it.
+
+"Twelve to the minute," said Timmons, holding up his hand and waving
+it in the direction whence came the sound of a church clock striking
+midnight.
+
+"Let us go for a walk," said Leigh, turning west, away from Welbeck
+Place and the Hanover, and shutting the door behind him.
+
+"But I have the stuff with me," said Timmons, in a tone of annoyance
+and protest.
+
+"Let us go for a walk, I say," cried Leigh imperiously, striking his
+thick twisted stick fiercely on the flags as he spoke.
+
+The two men turned to the left, and went on a few paces in silence.
+Timmons was sulky. A nice thing surely for a creature to ask a man to
+call on business at his private residence with valuable property at
+midnight and then slam the door in his face and coolly ask him to go
+out for a walk! It was a downright insult, but a man couldn't resent
+an insult from such a creature. That was the worst of it.
+
+"I have been in telegraphic communication with Birmingham since I saw
+you," said Leigh, stopping under a lamp-post, pouring out a few drops
+of eau-de-cologne into his palm and inhaling the spirit noisily.
+
+"Oh?" said Timmons interrogatively, as he looked contemptuously at the
+dwarf.
+
+"Hah! That's very refreshing. Most refreshing. May I offer you a
+little eau-de-cologne, Mr. Timmons?" said the little man with
+elaborate suavity.
+
+"No, thanks," said Timmons gruffly. "I don't like it." Timmons's
+private opinion was that a man who used perfume of any kind must be an
+effeminate fool. It was not pleasant to think this man, with whom he
+was about to have very important business transactions, should be an
+effeminate fool. Perhaps it indicated that he was only a new kind of
+villain; that would be much better.
+
+"Hah!" said Leigh, as they re-commenced their walk, "I am sorry for
+that, for it is refreshing, most refreshing. I was saying that since I
+had the pleasure of visiting your emporium--I suppose it is an
+emporium, Mr. Timmons?" he asked, with a pleasant smile.
+
+"It may be, or it may be an alligator, or a bird-show, or anything
+else you like to call it," said Timmons in exasperation. "But you were
+saying you had a message from Birmingham since I saw you."
+
+"I had not only a message, but several messages. I went straight from
+your emporium to King's Cross, so as to be near Birmingham and save
+delay in wiring. I know where I can usually get a clear wire there--a
+great thing when one is in a hurry--the mere signalling of the message
+is, as you know, instantaneous."
+
+"Ay," said Timmons scornfully, with an impatient serpentine movement
+running up his body and almost shaking his head off its long,
+stalk-like neck. "Well, is the fool off the job?" asked he coarsely,
+savagely, in slang, with a view to showing how cheap he held such
+unprincipled circumlocution.
+
+The dwarf stopped and looked up with blank amazement on his face and
+an ugly flash in his eyes. "Is what fool off the job, Mr. Timmons? Am
+I to understand that you are tired of these delays?"
+
+Timmons snorted in disdainful rage. The implication that he was the
+only fool connected with the matter lay in the tone rather than the
+words, but it was unmistakable. The dwarf meant to insult him grossly,
+and he could not strike him, for it would be unmanly to hit such a
+creature, and he could not strangle him, for there were people about
+the street. By a prodigious effort he swallowed down his rage, spread
+his long thin legs out wide, as if to prevent the flight of Leigh, and
+said in a hoarse, threatening, sepulchral voice: "Look here, Mr.
+Leigh. I've come on business. What have you to say to me? I have
+twenty-six ounces that will average fifteen carats. Are you going to
+act square and stump up?"
+
+"Hah! I see," said Leigh, smiling blandly, as though rejoicing on
+dismissing the injurious suspicion that Timmons wanted to back out of
+the bargain. "I own I am relieved. The fact, my dear sir, is, that on
+leaving you I telegraphed to my correspondent in Birmingham for----"
+
+"No more gammon," said the other, menacingly. They were in front of a
+church, of the church whose clock they had heard strike midnight
+before they left Leigh's doorstep. Here there was a quiet space suited
+to their talk. The church and churchyard interrupted the line of
+houses, and fewer people passed on that side of the way than on the
+other. There were no shops in this street. Still it was lightsome, and
+never quite free from the sound of footsteps or the presence of some
+one at a distance. Stamer had hinted that Leigh might try to murder
+Timmons for plunder, and now Timmons was almost in the humour to
+murder Leigh for rage.
+
+Leigh made a gesture of gracious deprecation with his left hand and
+bowed. "This, Mr. Timmons, is a matter of business, and I never allow
+anything so odious as fiction to touch even the robe of sacred
+business." He lifted his hat, raised his eyes to the top of the spire
+of the church and then bowed low his uncovered head. "For, Mr.
+Timmons, business is the deity every one of our fellow-countrymen
+worship."
+
+"What are you going to do; that's what I want to know?" said the other
+fiercely.
+
+"Precisely. Well, sir, I shall tell you my position in two words. I
+suspect my Birmingham correspondent." Leigh threw back his head and
+smiled engagingly, as though he had ended an amusing anecdote.
+
+"By ----, you don't say that?" cried Timmons, fairly startled and
+drawing back a pace.
+
+"I do."
+
+"What does he know?"
+
+"About what, my dear sir? What does he know about what? Are you
+curious to learn his educational equipments? Surely you cannot be
+curious on such a point?" He looked troubled because of Timmons's idle
+curiosity.
+
+"Don't let us have any more rot. You say you suspect this man?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"What does he know of the stuff?"
+
+"Of the stuff, as you call it, he knows from me absolutely nothing."
+
+"How can you suspect him if he doesn't know? How can he peach if you
+haven't let him into the secret?"
+
+"I didn't say I suspected him of betraying the secret of my
+manufacture."
+
+"Then what _do_ you suspect him of--speak plain?" Timmons's voice and
+manner were heavy with threat.
+
+"Of something much worse than treachery."
+
+"There is nothing worse than treachery in our business."
+
+"I suspect this man of something that is worse than treachery in any
+business."
+
+"It has no name?"
+
+"It has a name. I suspect this man of not having much money."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Is not that bad? Is not that worse than treachery?"
+
+Timmons did not heed these questions. They were too abstract for his
+mind.
+
+"And you think this villain might cheat, might swindle us after all
+our trouble?"
+
+"I think this villain capable of trying to get the best of us, in the
+way of not paying promptly or the full price agreed upon, or perhaps
+not being able to pay at all."
+
+"And, Mr. Leigh, when did you begin to suspect this unprincipled
+scoundrel?" Timmons's language was losing the horrible element of
+slang as the virtuous side of his nature began to assert itself.
+
+"Only to-day; only since I saw you in Tunbridge Street."
+
+"Mr. Leigh, I hope, sir, you'll forgive my hot words of a while ago. I
+know I have a bad temper. I humbly ask your pardon, Mr. Leigh."
+Timmons was quite humble now.
+
+"Certainly, freely. We are to work, as you suggested, on the
+co-operative principle. If through my haste or inefficiency the money
+had been lost, we should all be the poorer."
+
+"I have advanced about twenty pounds of my own money on the bit I have
+on me. My own money, without allowing anything for work and labour
+done in the way of melting down, or for anxiety of mind, or for
+profit. If that little bit of yellow stuff could keep me awake of
+nights, I often wonder how the people that own the Bank of England can
+sleep at all."
+
+"They hire a guard of soldiers to sleep for them in the Bank every
+night."
+
+"Eh, sir?"
+
+"Hah! Nothing. Now you understand why I did not ask you into my place
+and take the alloy. We must wait a little yet. We must wait until I
+can light upon an honest man to work up the result of our great
+chemical discovery. I hope by this day week to be able to give you
+good and final news. In the meantime the ore is safe with you."
+
+"I'm sure I'm truly grateful to you, sir."
+
+"What greater delight can a person have than helping an honest man to
+protect himself against business wretches who are little better than
+thieves?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Hah! Nothing. Give me a week. This day week at the same hour and at
+the same place."
+
+"Very good. I shall be there."
+
+An empty hansom was passing. Leigh whistled and held up his hand to
+the driver.
+
+Suddenly both he and Timmons started, a long clang came from the other
+side of the railings.
+
+"'Tisn't the last Trumpet for the tenants of these holdings," said
+Leigh, pointing his long, skinny, yellow, hairy hand at the graves.
+"It's the clock striking the quarter-past twelve. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," said Timmons, in a tone of reserve and suspicion. He was
+far from clear as to what he thought of the little man now bowling
+along down the road in the hansom.
+
+Yes, this man was quite beyond him. Whether the whole thing was a
+solemn farce or not he could not determine. This man talked fifty to
+the dozen, at least fifty to the dozen.
+
+Timmons touched his belt. Ay, the gold was there sure enough. That was
+a consolation anyway, but----
+
+He shook his head, and set out to walk the whole way back to the dim,
+dingy street off the Borough Road, where he had a bed-room in which he
+spent no part of his time but the hours of sleep.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+                     AN EARLY VISITOR TO TIMMONS.
+
+
+Men in Mr. Timmons's business never look fresher at one period of the
+day than another. They seem no brighter for sleep, and, to judge by
+their appearance, either soap and water has no effect on them, or they
+seek no effect of soap and water. Lawyers put aside their wigs and
+gowns, and professors their gowns and mortar-boards, and butchers
+their aprons, and cooks their caps, before they leave the scene of
+their labours, but dealers in marine-stores never lay aside their
+grime. They cannot. The signs and tokens of their calling are ground
+into their flesh, and would resist any attempt at removal. Mr. Timmons
+was no exception to his class. On Thursday morning he was in every
+outward seeming the same as on Wednesday night. He was the same as on
+all other mornings, except that he came a little earlier than usual to
+his place in Tunbridge Street. He had private business to transact
+before throwing open the front of his store to the eyes of the few
+stragglers who passed through that gloomy haunt of discarded and
+disabled vehicles of the humbler kind.
+
+He went in through the wicket, locked the wicket after him, and
+without loss of time dug up the old canvas-bag from under the sand,
+rolled up the chamois belt, and, having placed the belt in the bag,
+re-buried the latter in its old hiding place. Then he rose and
+stretched himself and yawned, more like a man whose day's work was
+over than about to begin.
+
+He sat down on the old fire-grate where Mrs. Stamer had rested the
+night before, yawned again, leaned his head against the wall and fell
+fast asleep. The fact is he had slept little or nothing the night
+before. Oscar Leigh's strange conduct had set him thinking and
+fearing, and the knowledge that for the first time his chamois-belt
+was away from its home made him restless and kept him awake.
+
+John Timmons had no regular time for throwing his bazaar open to the
+public. The shutters were never taken down before eight o'clock and
+never remained up after ten. He had come that morning at seven, and
+sat down to rest and doze before eight. At a little after nine he
+jumped up with a start and looked round with terror. A knock on the
+outside of the shutters had aroused him. He had often been at the
+store as early as seven, but never until now had he heard a demand for
+admittance at so early an hour. Could it be he had slept long into the
+day, or were the police after him?
+
+He looked round hastily, wildly, out of his pale blue eyes. He threw
+up his arms on high, and shook them, indicating that all was lost.
+Then he composed himself, pulled his hat straight over his forehead,
+drew down his waistcoat and coat-sleeves, arranged his blue tie, and
+clearing his throat with a deep loud sound, stepped quickly to the
+wicket, where for a moment he moved his feet rapidly about to give the
+newly-levelled sand an appearance of ordinary use.
+
+With great noise and indications of effort he unlocked the door and
+opened it.
+
+A low-sized man, with grizzled hair and mutton-chop whiskers and blue
+spectacles, dressed in seedy black, and looking like a schoolmaster
+broken in health and purse, stood in the doorway.
+
+Timmons stared at the man in amazement first, anger next, and lastly
+rage.
+
+"Well?" he bellowed fiercely; "who are you? What do you want?"
+
+The man did not speak. He coolly stepped over the bar of the wicket
+and stood close to Timmons in the dimly-lighted store.
+
+The dealer was staggered. Was this a policeman come to arrest him? If
+he was, and if he had come alone, so much the worse for him!
+
+Timmons put his hand on the man's shoulder, drew the man quickly clear
+of the wicket, shut the door and locked it. Then turning menacingly on
+the intruder, who had taken a couple of paces into the store, he said
+ferociously, "Now, sir! What is it?"
+
+Quick as lightning the man drew a revolver from his waist-band under
+his coat and presented it at Timmons's head.
+
+The latter fell back against the shutters with an oath and a shout of
+dismay.
+
+Swift as thought the man dropped the weapon and thrust it back into
+its place in his waist-band under his coat, saying as he did so:
+
+"You always said you should know me if I was boiled. What do you say
+now?"
+
+"Stamer!" yelled Timmons, with another oath.
+
+The other laughed. "And not even boiled either."
+
+"By ----, I'll have it out of you for this trick yet," said Timmons in
+a whisper. "What a fright you gave me! and what a shout I made!
+Someone may have heard me. You should not play such tricks as that,
+Stamer. It's no joke. I thought you were a copper." And he began
+walking up and down rapidly to calm himself.
+
+"If you'll excuse me, Mr. Timmons," said the man, humbly and with an
+apologetic cough, "but I think your nerves want looking after."
+
+"You scoundrel!"
+
+"They do indeed, sir; you ought to get your doctor to put them right."
+
+"You cursed blackguard!" hissed Timmons as he strode up and down the
+dark store, wiping the sweat off his streaked forehead with the ball
+of his hand.
+
+"In an anxious business like ours, sir, a man can't be too careful.
+That's my reason again' the drink. Attendin' them temperance meetin's
+has done me a deal of good. I never get flustered now, Mr. Timmons,
+since I gave up the drink. I know, sir, you're next door to a
+teetotaller. It may be too much studyin', sir, with you. I have heard,
+sir, that too much studyin' on the brain and such like is worse than
+gin. If you could get away to the sea-side for a bit, sir, I'm certain
+'twould do you a deal of good. You know I speak for your good, Mr.
+Timmons."
+
+"You fool, hold your tongue! First I took you for a policeman----"
+
+"I haven't come to that yet, sir," said the man in a tone of injury,
+and raising his shoulders to his ears as if to protect them from the
+pollution of hearing the word.
+
+"And then I took you for a thief."
+
+"Mr. Timmons!" cried the man pathetically. "Couldn't you see who I
+was? I never came here on business, sir. I came for the pleasure of
+seeing you, and to try if you would do a favour for me."
+
+"Hold your tongue!" cried Timmons. "Hold your tongue, you fool."
+
+The man said no more, but leaning his back against the wall, looked up
+blankly at the unceiled rafters and boards of the floor above.
+
+The manner of Mr. John Timmons gradually became less volcanic. He
+arranged his necktie and thrust his hands deep into his trousers'
+pockets instead of swinging them round him, or running his fingers
+through his grizzled hair and whiskers. Suddenly he stopped before his
+visitor, and said grimly in a low voice, "Stamer, aren't you surprised
+you are alive?"
+
+Stamer stood up on his feet away from the wall and said in a tone of
+expostulation, "Now, Mr. Timmons, it isn't so bad as that with me yet.
+I may have let one or two people see the barrel, you know, just to
+help business; but I never pulled trigger yet, sir. Indeed, I didn't."
+
+"I mean, you fool, aren't you surprised I didn't kill you?" he asked
+heavily.
+
+"You kill me, sir! For what?" cried the man in astonishment.
+
+"For coming here at this time of the morning in the disgraceful state
+you are now in," he said, pointing scornfully at the other.
+
+"Disgraceful state, Mr. Timmons, sir! You don't mean to say you think
+I'm in liquor?" said Stamer in an injured tone.
+
+"In liquor, no. But worse. You are in masquerade, sir. In masquerade."
+
+"Indeed, I'm not, sir. Why, I couldn't be! I don't even as much as
+know what it is."
+
+"I mean, sir (and you know very well what I mean), that you are not
+here in your own clothes. What do you mean in coming here with your
+tomfoolery?" said Timmons severely. He was now quite recovered from
+his fright, and wanted to say nothing of his recent abject condition.
+The best way of taking a man's mind off you is to make an attack on
+him.
+
+"Not in my own clothes! I hope you don't think I'm such a born loony
+as to walk about the streets in togs that I came by in the course of
+business. If you think that of me, sir, you put me down very low. I'm
+a general hand, as you ought to know, sir, and when there isn't
+anything to be done in the crib line, I'm not above turning my hand to
+anything that may be handy, such as tickers in a crowd. I use the duds
+I have on when I go to hear about the African Blacks. I change about,
+asking questions for information, and writin' down all the gentlemen
+tell me in my note-book, and I wind up my questions by asking not what
+o'clock it is, which would be suspicious, but how long the meeting
+will last, and no man, sir, that I ever saw can answer that question
+without hauling out his ticker, and then I can see whether it is all
+right, or pewter, or a Waterbury. Mr. Timmons, Waterburys is growing
+that common that men who have to make a living are starving. It's a
+downright shame and imposition for respectable English gentlemen to
+give their time to tryin' to improve the condition of the African
+Black, and do nothing to encourage the English watch-maker. What's to
+become of the English watch-maker, Mr. Timmons? I feel for him, sir!"
+
+"You have a great deal too much talk for a man in your position. Why
+did you come here at this hour and in this outlandish get-up?"
+
+"Well, sir," said Stamer, answering the latter question first, "you
+see I was here yesterday in fustian, and I didn't like to come here
+to-day in the same rags. It might look suspicious, for a man in my
+line can't be too careful. Of course, Mr. Timmons, you and I know,
+sir, that I come here on the square; but bad-minded people are horrid
+suspicious, and sometimes them new hands in the coppers make the
+cruellest and most unjust mistakes, sir. So I hope you'll forgive me
+coming here as an honest man. It won't occur again, sir. Indeed it
+won't."
+
+"You have a great deal too much talk for a man in your position,"
+repeated Timmons, who by this time had regained his ordinary
+composure. "You know I treat you as men in your position are never
+treated by men in mine. I not only give you a fair price for your
+goods, but now, when the chance comes, I am going to admit you to the
+advantages of the co-operative system."
+
+"It's very, very kind of you, sir, and I'm truly thankful, sir; and I
+need only say that, barring thick and thin uns, I bring you
+everything, notes included, that come my way. The thick and thin uns,
+sir, are the only perquisites of the business I look for."
+
+"Stamer, hold your tongue. Tell me in two words, what brought you
+here?"
+
+"Well, sir, I was anxious to know how you got on last night? You know
+how anxious I was about you, because of your carrying so much stuff
+with you down a bad locality like Chelsea. I know you got there safe.
+I hope you'll excuse me, Mr. Timmons, for the liberty I took, but I
+thought two of us would be safer than one."
+
+"You know I got there! Two of us safer than one! What do you mean? You
+are full of talk and can't talk straight. Out with it, man! Out with
+it!" cried Timmons, shaking his fist in Stamer's face.
+
+"I took the liberty of followin' you, sir, at a respectful distance
+and I saw you safe to Mr. Leigh's door----"
+
+"You infernal, prying ruffian----"
+
+"No, sir. I was not curious. I was only uneasy about you, and I only
+saw you at his door all right; then I knew I could be of no more use,
+for, of course, you'd leave the stuff with him, and if anyone got wind
+of it there would be no use in followin' you after, and I could do
+nothing while you was in the house."
+
+"Ah!" cried Timmons sharply, as though Stamer had convicted himself of
+lying. "If you came away when you saw me go into the house how did you
+find out the man's name? _I_ never told you. That's one question I
+want to ask you; now here's another. What o'clock was it when you saw
+me go into the house?"
+
+"Twelve to the minute."
+
+"How do you know? Had you a red herring in your pocket? Eh?" asked
+Timmons derisively, shaking his forefinger in Stamer's face.
+
+"I heard the clock, a church clock strike."
+
+Timmons paused and drew back. He recollected his holding up his hand
+to Leigh, as the latter opened the door, and drawing attention to his
+own punctuality.
+
+"But then what did you mean by going peeping and prying about there.
+Did you think I was deceiving you?" The dealer scowled at his visitor
+as he put the question.
+
+Stamer made a gesture of humility and protest:
+
+"Oh, no, sir! It was this way. When I saw you safe into the house----"
+
+"Oh--ha-ha-ha! So you saw me safe into the house, did you?
+Ha-ha-ha--ho-ho-ho!" laughed Timmons in an appallingly deep voice.
+
+"Well, no," answered Stamer in mild protest. "I didn't exactly see you
+go into the house. You know, for the moment I forgot I had these duds
+on, and I thought you might turn round and look back and see me and be
+wild with me for followin' you, so the minute you stopped at the door
+and knocked I slipped into a public that's at the corner, to be out of
+sight in case you should turn around, as most people do, to have a
+good look before going into a strange house--anyway I always do----"
+
+"Very likely. Very likely you do have a good look round both before
+and after too. Well, and when you got into the public-house--although
+you're not on the drink--you began making your inquiries, I dare say?"
+said Timmons in withering reproach. "Or, may be you didn't bother to
+ask questions, but told all you knew right off to the potman or the
+barmaid. Eh?"
+
+"Mr. Timmons, you're too hard," said Stamer in an injured tone, and
+with a touch of outraged dignity. "If you don't want to hear what
+happened, or won't believe what I say, I'll stop."
+
+"Well, go on, but don't take all day."
+
+"There isn't much to tell. I got into the private bar at the end of a
+passage and, just as I got in, the landlord was sayin' how Mr. Leigh,
+the little gentleman over the way, with the hump on him, had been in
+that day, and had told him wonderful things he was going to do with
+the skeleton of Moses, or somethin' of that kind, which had been found
+at the bottom of the Nile, or somewhere. This mention of a little man
+with a hump made me take an interest, for I remembered what you told
+me last evenin'. And, as the landlord was talking quite free and open
+for all to hear, I asked for a tuppenny smoke and a small lemon--for
+I'm off the drink----"
+
+"Go on, or you'll drive me to it," said Timmons impatiently.
+
+"I couldn't understand what the landlord was sayin' about the Prince
+being as dry as snuff, but anyway, after a minute he said: 'There he
+is, winding up his wonderful clock,' and all the men in the bar looked
+up, and I did too, and there was the little man with the hump on his
+back pulling at something back and forward like the rods in a railway
+signal-box."
+
+"You saw him?"
+
+"Yes, and all the men in the bar saw him."
+
+"How many men were there in the private bar?"
+
+"Half-a-dozen or eight."
+
+"You were drunk last night, Stamer."
+
+"I was as sober as I am now."
+
+"What o'clock was it then?"
+
+"Well, I cannot say exactly, between twelve and half-past."
+
+"How long did you stay in that public-house?"
+
+"Until closing time."
+
+"And how soon after you went in did you see the little man working the
+handle, or whatever it was?"
+
+"A minute after I went in. As I went in the landlord was speakin', and
+before he finished what he had to say he pointed, and I looked up and
+saw Mr. Leigh."
+
+"The next time you dog me, and tell a lie to get out of blame, tell a
+good lie."
+
+"Mr. Timmons, what I tell you is as true as that there's daylight at
+noon."
+
+"Tell a better lie next time, Stamer," said Timmons, shaking his
+minatory finger at the other.
+
+"Strike me dead if it isn't true."
+
+"Why, the man, Mr. Leigh, did not go back into the house at all last
+night. He and I went for a walk, and were more than half-a-mile away
+when a quarter past twelve struck."
+
+"Has your Mr. Leigh a twin brother?"
+
+"Pooh! as though a twin brother would have a hump! Stamer, I don't
+know what your object is, but you are lying to me."
+
+"Then the man's neighbours does not know him. All the men in the bar,
+except two or three, knew the hump-backed Leigh, and they saw the
+man's face plain enough, for at twenty minutes past twelve by the
+clock in the bar he stopped working at the handle and turned round and
+nodded to the landlord, who nodded back and waved his hand and said,
+'There he his a noddin' at me now.' The publican is a chatty man. And
+then Mr. Leigh nodded back again, and after that turned round and went
+on working at the handle again."
+
+"I tell you, at a quarter past twelve last night, I was standing under
+the church clock you heard, talking to Mr. Leigh, and as they keep all
+public-house clocks five minutes fast, that's the time you say you saw
+him. I never found you out in a lie to me, Stamer. I'll tell you what
+happened. You got beastly drunk and dreamed the whole thing."
+
+"What, got drunk in half-an-hour? 'Tain't in the power of liquor to do
+it. Mr. Timmons, I swear to you I had nothing to drink all yesterday
+but that small lemon. I swear it to you, so help me----, and I swear
+to you, so help me, that all I say is true, and that all I say I saw I
+saw with my eyes, as I see you now, with my wakin' eyes and in my
+sober senses. If you won't take my word for it, go down to Chelsea and
+ask the landlord of the Hanover--that's the name of the house I was
+in."
+
+The manner of the man was earnest and sincere, and Timmons could not
+imagine any reason for his inventing such a story. The dealer could
+make nothing of the thing, except that Stamer was labouring under some
+extraordinary delusion. Timmons had never been to Leigh's place before
+and never in the Hanover. If he had not been with Leigh during the
+very minutes Stamer was so sure he had seen Leigh working at his
+clock, he would have had no hesitation whatever in believing what the
+other had told him. But here was Stamer, or rather the hearsay
+evidence of the landlord of the public house, that Leigh was visibly
+working at his clock and in Chetwynd Street at the very moment the
+dwarf was talking to himself in the open air half-a-mile away. Of
+course five minutes in this case might make all the difference in the
+world, and there is often more than five minutes' difference in the
+time of clocks in public places; but then Stamer said Leigh was
+together the whole quarter-hour from midnight to a quarter past
+twelve!
+
+There was something hideous, unearthly, ghastly, about this deformed
+dwarf. The chemist or clockmaker, in the few interviews which had
+taken place between them, had talked of mysteries and mysterious power
+and faculties which placed him above other men. There was something
+creepy in the look of the man, and something horrible in the touch of
+his long, lean, sallow, dark-haired, monkeylike fingers. The man or
+monster was unnatural, no doubt--was he more or less than mortal? Did
+he really know things hidden from other men? To make up for his
+deformities and deficiencies had powers and faculties denied to other
+men been given to him?
+
+John Timmons did not believe in ghosts, but he did believe in devils,
+and he was not sure that devils might not even now assume human form,
+or that Oscar Leigh was not one of them, habilitated in flesh for evil
+purposes among men.
+
+Stamer held no such faith. He did not believe in devils. He believed
+in man, and man was the only being he felt afraid of. He thought
+it no more than reasonable that Timmons should lie to him. He had
+the most implicit faith in the material honesty of Timmons in the
+dealings between the two of them; but lying was a consideration of
+spiritual faith, and he had no spiritual faith himself. But he was
+liberal-minded and generous, and did not resent spiritual faith in
+others. It was nothing to him. Timmons was the only man he had ever
+met who was absolutely honest in the matter of money dealings with
+him, and Stamer had elevated Timmons into the position of an idol to
+which he paid divine honours. He would not have lied to Timmons, for
+it would have done no good. He brought the fruits of his precarious
+and dangerous trade as a thief and burglar to Timmons, and he acted as
+agent for other men of his trade and class, and Timmons was the first
+fence he had met who treated him honourably, considerately. He had
+conceived a profound admiration and dog-like affection for this man.
+He would have laid down his life for him freely. He would have
+defended him with the last drop of his blood against his own
+confederates and associates. He would not have cheated him of a penny;
+but he would have lied to him freely if there was any good in lying,
+but as far as he could see there wasn't, and why should he bother to
+lie?
+
+He was anxious about the fate of the twenty-six ounces of gold. If
+Timmons got the enhanced price promised by the dwarf, some more money,
+a good deal more money, was promised to him by Timmons, and he knew as
+surely as fate that if Timmons succeeded the money would be paid to
+himself. But he was afraid of the craft of this Oscar Leigh who was
+not shaped as other men, whom other men suspected of possessing
+strange powers, and who, according to his own statement, had been
+fishing up the corpses of prophets, or something of that kind, out of
+the bottom of the Nile.
+
+A long silence had fallen on the two men. Timmons had resumed his walk
+up and down the store, but this time his eyes were cast down, his
+steps slow. He had no reason to distrust Stamer beyond the ordinary
+distrustfulness with which he regarded all sons of Adam. He had many
+reasons for relying on Stamer more than on nine-tenths of the men he
+met and had dealings with. He was puzzled, sorely puzzled, and he
+would much prefer to be alone. He was confounded, but it would not do
+to admit this, even in manner, to Stamer, and he felt conscious that
+his manner was betraying him. He stopped suddenly before his visitor
+and said sharply "Now that you have been here half-an-hour and upwards
+can't you say what you want. Money?"
+
+"No, sir. Not money to-day. I called partly to know if you was safe,
+and partly to know if you had arranged. I hope you will excuse my
+bein' a little interested and glad to see you all right." Stamer never
+used slang to Timmons. He paid this tribute to the honesty of the
+dealer.
+
+"Yes. Of course, it would be bad for you if I was knifed or shot.
+You'd fall into the hands of a rogue again. Well, you may make your
+mind easy for the present. I am alive, as you see. He did not come to
+any final arrangement last night. I brought the stuff back again with
+me safe and sound, and I am to meet him again at the same place in a
+week. Are you satisfied now?"
+
+"No!" Stamer moved towards the door.
+
+"Why?"
+
+Stamer shook his head. "Have nothing to do with that man."
+
+"What maggot have you got in your head now, Stamer?"
+
+"He'll sell the pass. It is not clear in my mind now that he has not
+sold the pass already, that he has not rounded on you. If you meet him
+there again in a week it isn't clear to me that you won't find more
+company than you care for."
+
+"What do you mean? Shall you be there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Who then?"
+
+"The police."
+
+Stamer hurried through the wicket and was gone.
+
+Timmons shut the door once more, and leaning his back against it
+plunged into a sea of troubled thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+                        GRACEDIEU, DERBYSHIRE.
+
+
+When Edith Grace came into the little sitting-room in Grimsby Street,
+the morning after her flight from Eltham House, she found her
+grandmother had not yet appeared. She went to Mrs. Grace's door and
+asked if she might bring the old woman her breakfast. To her question
+she received a blithe answer that Mrs. Grace would be ready in a
+minute. The girl came back to the room where the breakfast was laid
+and sat down to wait. The old woman always presided, and sat with her
+face to the window. She liked to see as much sunlight and cheerfulness
+as came into Grimsby Street. On the table were two plates, two cups,
+eggs, rashers, and a loaf of bread. By the side of Mrs. Grace's plate
+a letter. It was a frugal-looking breakfast for middle-class people,
+but much, more elegantly appointed than one would expect to find in a
+Grimsby Street lodging-house. The cutlery, linen, silver and china
+were bright and clean and excellent. There were no delicacies or
+luxuries on the table, but the adjuncts of the viands were such as no
+lady need take exception to.
+
+Edith was dressed in a perfectly plain black gown, one she had got for
+her duties as companion. She had a trace of colour at the best of
+times. This morning she looked pale and listless. She had slept little
+during the night. She had lain awake, alternately reviewing the
+extraordinary events of the day before, and trying to discover some
+means by which in her future search of employment she might insure
+herself against repeating her recent experience.
+
+Up to this she knew little or nothing of the world. Her father, a
+barrister, had died when she was young. Her mother had been dead since
+her childhood. She had spent seven years at a boarding school, during
+which time she had come home for the holidays to find her
+grandmother's position gradually declining, until from a fine house in
+Bloomsbury the old woman was reduced to poor lodgings in Grimsby
+Street, where the two had lived together since Edith left school,
+three years ago. The money left her by her father had been more than
+enough to pay the fees of the "select seminary for young ladies" where
+she had spent those seven years.
+
+While at school she had kept much apart from the other boarders, and
+had made no friends, for she knew all the girls she met at Miss
+Graham's had homes much better than she could hope to possess after
+her grandmother had been compelled to leave Russell Square.
+
+Edith did not care to take any of her school-fellows into the secret
+of their decaying fortunes. She was too proud to pretend to be their
+equal in wealth, and too sensitive to allow them to know how poor she
+was. She was the quietest, most silent, most reserved girl in all the
+school. The majority of those around her were the daughters of City
+men. Her father had been a barrister. He had never soiled his fingers
+with business. He had been a gentleman by the consecration of
+generations of forefathers who had never chaffered across a counter,
+never been in trade; and she was a lady. She did not despise those
+around her for their wealth or unfortunate origin. She simply kept
+herself to herself, and made no friends. She was kind and considerate
+to all, and polite almost to painfulness, but she would let no one
+near her. Her school-fellows said Edith Grace would be perfect, simply
+perfect, if she only had a heart.
+
+But, alas! the girl had a heart, and what is worse still, a heart very
+hard to possess in seeming peace in a young breast confronted with a
+decaying fortunes.
+
+Her school-fellows said she ought to be a queen. By this they meant
+that she was, by her appearance and manners, suited to statelinesses,
+and splendours, and pageants. They conceived a queen to be above the
+common nature of our kind. To be free from the aches and pains of
+feeling. To be superior to the bemeaning littlenesses of life. To be
+incapable of joy or suffering which does not involve the triumph or
+the ruin of a state.
+
+From the moment of her father's death she knew she must expect to be
+poor, poor far below any depth she would have been likely to know, if
+he had lived a dozen years longer. Young as she then was, she felt
+within herself a love of all the beautiful things that money can buy.
+She loved rich and exquisite flowers, and dainty fabrics, and
+sparkling stones, and gleaming metals, and fine odours, and stately
+pictures, and glories of lamps and melody. As she grew older, her love
+of these things would, she told herself, increase. To what purpose? To
+the torture of desire denied; for with such splendour she could hold
+no converse. She was poor, and she should always be poor. What was to
+be done? Beat down, stamp out these tastes, teach herself to rise
+above them. Deny herself.
+
+In time she should leave school and be a woman. She should, when she
+left school, be a young woman, and a young woman of no ordinary
+personal attractions. She knew this as fully as she knew that the
+perfume of the tuberose is sweet, by the evidence of one of her
+senses. How should it be with her, then? All these other girls around
+her would marry, she never. For who would come wooing her? Some other
+lodger in Grimsby Street! A City clerk, or a prosperous hairdresser,
+or a furniture dealer, or a man who contracted for the supply of
+suppers, or a man who beat carpets, or a baker in a white cap, or the
+son and heir of a tailor! She had no moderation of power to
+discriminate between any of these. They were all preposterously
+impossible lovers, and there were no others left! No thing was
+degrading even to fancy. There was only one way of meeting this aspect
+of her poverty--she should never marry. That was easy enough. Nothing
+could be easier than to keep all men at as great a distance as she
+kept the cabman, or the young man who sold her the double elephant
+paper for drawing, or the telegraph clerk. No man should, to her dying
+day, ever say anything to her beyond the mere business words necessary
+to their meeting. Thus she should be as strong in this way as she was
+now in her indifference to diamonds or the opera. People said girls
+were weak, but girls could be as strong as men, stronger than men, if
+they only made up their minds not to long for pretty, or fine, or
+interesting objects.
+
+In the latter class Edith supposed lovers would find their place.
+
+She should be strong because she should be self-contained. She should
+be content because she should be undesiring. She should be independent
+because she should form no ties of any kind. Her position should be
+completely unassailable.
+
+So she did not allow herself to display any particular affection for
+any one of her schoolmates. She was uniformly kind, and gentle, and
+polite. But she was too poor to love anyone, for it would rend her
+heart to be separated from one she loved, and she could run no risk of
+breaking her heart about her poverty when her poverty did not step in
+to separate her from one on whom she settled her affections.
+
+So for the three years she had lived at home with her grandmother she
+comported herself with strict exclusiveness. No young man out of the
+formidable list of possible suitors she had allowed to a young girl
+with her means had approached her to tell a tale of love, and towards
+all whom she met she sought to pass for a retiring shadow.
+
+But her first advent into the world had brought an alarming, a
+horrible awakening.
+
+The discipline of denial to which she had inured herself prepared her
+for the loss of her modest competency. Up to the time of leaving
+school, she had regarded her income as sure as the coming of the
+planets into the constellations. Soon after leaving Miss Graham's
+doubts began to arise in her mind. When at length the blow came, and
+she learned she was penniless, no giant despair crushed her. She
+simply bowed to the inevitable, without going to the trouble of even
+affecting indifference. The money or income had been hers, and was
+gone. To lose an income was an unmixed evil, but it ought to affect
+her less than others, for had she not cultivated self-abnegation? Was
+she not used to desire little or nothing, and was not the step between
+asking for little next to that of working for the necessaries of life,
+for the things indispensable? She should now have to go forth and earn
+her bread, for she could not think of encroaching on the little left
+to her grandmother. She was young, and healthy, and accomplished, as
+far as Miss Graham's select seminary for young ladies at Streatham
+could make a receptive pupil accomplished.
+
+Up to this she had allowed herself only one luxury, a deep, and quiet,
+and romantic love, the love for her kind-hearted old grandmother. That
+need not even now be put away, could not, indeed, be put away, but it
+might and must be dissimulated. Or, anyway, it might and must remain
+undemonstrative, for to show much affection to her grandmother would
+be to enhance the pain of the old woman at the parting.
+
+Hence she steeled herself, and prepared for the separation with
+seeming indifference, which only made the desolation seem to Mrs.
+Grace more complete, more like death, and freed it from the torture of
+struggling with a living and cruel force.
+
+When Edith Grace saw Oscar Leigh, and arranged to go as companion to
+his mother, although she shrank naturally from his objectionable
+manner and unhappy appearance, she was better pleased than if he had
+belonged to the ordinary mould of man. His deformities made him seem a
+being proper to a new condition of life, a condition of life in which
+his very unusualness would enable her to preserve and even increase
+the feeling of reserve, and being apart from the world, cultivated by
+her with such success at Miss Graham's and at home. He was so much out
+of the common, he need not be taken into account at all. His
+unhandsome appearance would be no more to her than the unhandsomeness
+of this street in which she, who dreamed of parks and palaces, and the
+Alhambra of Granada, lived. No doubt to look at him was to feel
+unpleasant, but the endurance of unpleasant sights was not very much
+harder, if so hard, as doing without pleasing sights, and she had
+taught herself to abstain from longing after gratifying the eyes. The
+system of self-denial which she had imposed upon herself with so much
+success needed only a little extension to cover endurance of the
+undesirable. She was strong, fortified at every point. This system of
+hers was the whole secret of getting through life scatheless. It
+afforded an armour nothing could pierce. It made her superior to
+fate--absolutely superior to fate.
+
+She had built for herself a tower of strength. She lived in a virgin
+fortress.
+
+In thinking over at Miss Graham's the possible suitors a young lady
+who lodged in Grimsby Street might have, she had allowed as likely a
+City clerk, or a prosperous hairdresser, or a man who contracted for
+the supply of suppers, or a man who beat carpets, or a baker in a
+white cap, or the son and heir of a tailor. With such, she had some
+kind of acquaintance, either personal or by strong hearsay. Often in
+amused reverie, she passed these candidates for the hand of an
+imaginary young lady before her view. The young men were invariably in
+their Sunday best when they came a-wooing. There was a dandified air,
+an air of coxcombry, about them which amused her. They were, of
+course, dandies only after their kind; not like Lord Byron in his
+Childe Harold days, or the dandy officers for whom the great Duke of
+Wellington prayed so devoutly. They wore gloves of a sort, and flowers
+in their button-holes. They carried canes in genteel imitation of the
+beaux of old. Their hair was arranged with much precision and nicety.
+Their figures were good. They were stalwart and valorous, not, indeed,
+in the grand way, but as of their kind. They made displays, as
+displays may be made in reasonable conduct, of their physical graces
+and alertness. They carried themselves with the heroic air, without
+the inartistic stiffness of soldiers of the rank and file. Their
+features were well proportioned and agreeable, and they wore smiles of
+bland confidence and alluring archness. They looked their approbation
+of this imaginary young lady, but their good manners, their awe, never
+allowed them to do anything more than strut like harmless peacocks
+before the object of their admiration.
+
+When the girl was alone and in good spirits, she often laughed aloud
+at these phantom suitors of this imaginary young lady lodger in
+Grimsby Street. She did not look on them with the pity of disdain. She
+regarded them as actors in a play. She summoned them for her amusement
+and dismissed them without emotion, without even thanks for the
+entertainment which they had afforded her.
+
+On stepping out of the world of dreams into the world of reality what
+had happened?
+
+This man, this deformed, odious little man, whose bread she was to eat
+for hire and whose money she was to take for services under his roof,
+had paid her attentions! forced his hateful attentions upon her!
+attempted to kiss her after an acquaintance of a few hours!
+
+Good Heavens! Had she, Edith Grace, lived to see that day? Had it come
+to this with her? Had she fallen so low? Had she suffered such
+degradation and lived?
+
+It was not the young lady lodger in Grimsby Street of her imagination,
+who had been compelled to listen to the ridiculous suits of the clerk,
+and the caterer, and the carpet-beater, and the baker, and the tailor
+of her fancy, but she herself, Edith Grace, who had had love offered
+to her by this miserable creature who was her master also!
+
+Yet she had lived through it, and the house, Eltham House, had not
+fallen down on them, nor had the ground opened and swallowed them, and
+neither her grandmother herself nor Leigh seemed to realise the
+enormity of the crime!
+
+Even if she had been the young lady of her imagination, and the young
+men of her fancy had taken flesh and done this thing, it would be
+unendurable degradation. What had occurred had been endured, although
+to reason a thing infinitely less seemed unendurable! In pity's name,
+had all that had taken place happened to her, Edith Grace?
+
+Thoughts in part such as these had haunted the dark hours and early
+morning of the young girl. What wonder she was wakeful. Then she had
+to consider the future. Turn which way she might, the prospect was not
+cheerful. The necessity for her seeking her own living was as
+imperative as ever. She could not live at home in idleness without
+absolutely depriving her grandmother of the comforts of life. All her
+own money had vanished into thin air, and so much of Mrs. Grace's that
+there would be barely enough for her mere comfort. When Edith arranged
+to go to Eltham House Mrs. Grace had given the landlady notice that
+she should no longer require the second bed-room. It was doubtful if
+even the sitting-room could be retained, and if the old woman had to
+content herself with a bed-room and the "use" of a sitting-room (which
+no lodger ever used except to eat in), the poor old woman would mope
+and pine and, in all likelihood, sicken and break down. This
+consideration, being one not of her own, Edith allowed to trouble her
+deeply. For herself she had no pity, but she could not forbear weeping
+in the security of her own room when she thought of her grandmother
+suffering absolute poverty in old age. No wonder the girl looked pale
+and worn.
+
+She was standing at the window absorbed in thought, when Mrs. Grace
+glided into the room and took the girl in her arms before Edith was
+aware of her presence.
+
+"Thank God, you are here once more, my darling. To see you makes even
+this place look like home. Oh, what a miserable time it was to me
+while my child was away. It seemed an age. Short as it was, it seemed
+an age, darling. Of one thing, Edy, I am quite certain, that no matter
+what is to become of us we shall never be separated again, never,
+darling, never. That is, if you are not too proud or too nice to be
+satisfied with what will satisfy your old grandmother."
+
+It was only in moments of great emotion that Mrs. Grace called her
+grand-daughter by the affectionate pet name, Edy. The girl's name was
+Edith, and she looked all Edith could mean, and deserved the full
+stateliness of the name. But this morning the old woman's heart was
+overflowing upon the lost one who had returned. The heart of the
+blameless prodigal was so disturbed and softened that it became human,
+and all Edith could say or do was to fall upon the bosom of the old
+woman, and with her young, soft, moist lips, kiss the dry lips of the
+other and cry out:
+
+"Oh, mother! oh, mother!" and burst into tears.
+
+Mrs. Grace calling the young girl Edy was not by any means common, but
+Edith's weeping in a scene was without any parallel. It frightened the
+grandmother. What she, the passionless, the collected, the just Edith
+in tears! This was very serious, very serious indeed. The affair of
+Eltham House must have had a much greater effect upon the child than
+anything which had hitherto occurred, for Mrs. Grace could remember no
+other manifestation exactly so sudden and so vehement.
+
+"There child, there!" cried the old woman, caressing the bent,
+shapely, smooth head against her breast. She durst not say any more.
+She was afraid of checking this outburst of feeling, afraid of saying
+something which would not be in harmony with the feelings of this
+troubled young heart.
+
+So the girl sobbed her long-pent torrent of chaotic feeling away, the
+old woman stroking softly the dark glossy hair with one hand and
+pressing the head to her bosom with the other.
+
+In a little while Edith recovered her composure, and stealing out of
+her grandmother's arms, turned towards the window to conceal her red
+and tear-stained face. The old woman went and busied herself at the
+table, re-arranging what was quite in order, and making changes that
+were no improvement. At last she sat down and saw the letter awaiting
+her close to her plate. She took it up anxiously, hoping it might
+prove the means of introducing some new subject between them.
+
+Mrs. Grace was no slave to that foolish modern habit of tearing and
+rending a letter open the minute one sees it, as though it were a
+long-lost enemy. Most of the few letters she received were pleasant.
+She liked to savour the good things that came by the post before she
+bolted them. To one who knows how to enjoy this self-denial of delay,
+the few moments before a letter addressed in unknown or partly
+remembered handwriting are more precious than the coarse pleasures of
+realization. While the seal is unbroken one holds the key of an
+intensely provoking mystery. Once the envelope is removed the mystery
+is explained, and no mystery ever yet improved upon explanation. The
+writing of this letter was unknown to Mrs. Grace. She could make
+nothing of it. She turned the back, she could make nothing of that
+either. She was expecting a letter from her solicitor, Mr. James
+Burrows. This was not from him. He had the bad taste to print his name
+on the back of the envelope, a vandalism which paralyzed all power of
+speculation at once, and was more coldly and brutally disenchanting
+than the habit of writing the name of the sender on the left-hand
+corner of the face, for this external signature had often the merit of
+being illegible. The writing on the face of this was in a business,
+clerkly hand. The thing was a circular, no doubt.
+
+"Edy," she said, "here is a letter. I have not my glasses with me.
+Will you read it to me, dear?"
+
+The girl turned round, took the letter and went back to the
+window--for a better light.
+
+"From whom is it?" asked Mrs. Grace, when she saw Edith break the
+envelope.
+
+"It is signed Bernard Coutch," answered the girl in a low voice.
+
+"Bernard Coutch--Bernard Coutch. I do not know anyone of that name.
+Are you quite sure the address is right?"
+
+"Quite sure, mother. 'Mrs. Grace, 28, Grimsby Street.'"
+
+"Well, go on, child. Let us hear what this Mr. Coutch has to say.
+Breakfast must wait. Nothing grows cold in such lovely weather. I hope
+this Mr. Coutch has good news."
+
+
+"Dear Madam,
+
+"Mr. James Burrows, solicitor, of Lincoln's Inn, wrote me a few weeks
+ago, with a view to ascertaining some facts regarding the Graces of
+Gracedieu----"
+
+"Stop," said Mrs. Grace, "where is the letter dated from?"
+
+"Castleton, Derbyshire," answered the girl with some awakening of
+interest in her voice and manner.
+
+"Wait a minute, Edith." The old woman rose excitedly and came to the
+window. "I must tell you, dear, that when first Mr. Burrows wrote me
+to say the bank had failed, and that your money and mine were gone, I
+went to him, as you know, and got no hope of ever saving anything out
+of the bank. But I did not tell you then, for I was ashamed of being
+so weak as to mention the matter to Mr. Burrows, that I told him all I
+knew of the history of the Graces of Gracedieu, and of the old story
+of mysterious money going to the runaway Kate Grace, of a hundred and
+twenty or thirty years ago. I asked him to make what inquiry he could,
+and let me know any news he might pick up. I was foolish enough to
+imagine, dear, that something might come to you out of the property of
+the rich Graces if we only knew where they are, if there are any. Now
+go on, dear."
+
+Edith re-commenced the letter:--
+
+
+"Dear Madam,
+
+"Mr. James Burrows, solicitor, of Lincoln's Inn, wrote me a few weeks
+ago, with a view to ascertaining some facts regarding the Graces of
+Gracedieu, near this place. He requested, with a view to saving time,
+that I should forward you the result of my inquiries.
+
+"I regret to say that I have not been able to find out much. Gracedieu
+is a small residence about a couple of miles from this. No property of
+any extent is or was, as far as I can ascertain, attached to the
+place. In the middle of the last century the Graces lived in this
+town, and dealt, I believe, in wool. The family were in comfortable
+circumstances, and one of the daughters, a lady of great beauty,
+attracted the attention of all who lived in the town, or saw her in
+passing through. She disappeared and was, so the story goes, never
+afterwards heard of here. It was rumoured she married a very handsome
+and rich young foreign nobleman who had been on a visit in the
+neighbourhood, but nothing is known for certain of her fate.
+
+"Some years after the disappearance of the young lady, Mr. Grace
+seemed to come suddenly into a large amount of money; for he gave up
+the wool business, bought a few acres of land, and built a house for
+himself a couple of miles out of the town, and called his place
+Gracedieu. From the name of the house it was assumed the gentleman the
+young Miss Grace had married was a French nobleman. Why this was
+supposed from the name is not clear, except that the name is French.
+It is, however, a common name enough in England. I know two other
+Gracedieus. About a hundred years ago the Graces left Gracedieu for
+ever, and went to reside, it is believed, in London. Absolutely
+nothing else is known of them in this neighbourhood, and even this
+much would not be remembered only for the romantic disappearance of
+Miss Kate Grace, the rumour she was married, and the sudden influx of
+wealth upon the family.
+
+"The land attached to Gracedieu in the time of the builder of the
+house was about five acres. The family, as far as is known, never held
+any other property here.
+
+"If you desire it, search, involving considerable expense, can be made
+in the records of the town and parish and county, but I understand
+from Mr. Burrows that no expense is to be incurred without hearing
+further from you or him.
+
+                           "Yours faithfully,
+
+                                  "Bernard Coutch."
+
+
+The girl turned away from the window, dropped the letter to the floor,
+and said in a listless voice, looking, with eyes that did not see
+external things, at the old woman, "Mother you ought to be glad you
+are not one of the family of Grace."
+
+"Why, child, why?"
+
+"We are an accursed race."
+
+"My child! my child, what folly you talk. There is no disgrace in
+marriage, no disgrace in this. There was no shame in this, and who
+knows but the mysterious man who ran away with the beautiful Kate long
+ago, and married her, may now be a great man in France. He was a
+nobleman then and honours are things that grow, dear. If we could only
+find out the title he had. I suppose we could if we tried."
+
+The girl shook her head. "Where there is no disgrace, mother, there is
+no secrecy about such things. I thought the Graces went further back
+than that."
+
+"What! Do you want them to go back to Noah or Adam? Why this is four
+or five generations! How many of the best titled houses in England go
+back so far? Nonsense, child, I wish we knew what the French title
+is."
+
+"So there really was no family of Grace of Gracedieu after all. That
+is if this account is true. And there was no estate, mother, and there
+can be no money. I am very, very sorry for you, mother."
+
+"For me, child! Why for me? I don't want anything, pet. I have enough
+for my darling and myself, more than enough. I did not make these
+inquiries on my own account, but it was on yours that I asked Mr.
+Burrows to find out for me. Anyway, dear, no harm has been done. Come
+pet, breakfast must be getting cold even this warm morning. How
+delightful it is to be able to breakfast with the window open. Tea is
+such a luxury this warm weather."
+
+It was the only luxury on that table tasted by either woman that
+morning. The food went away untouched.
+
+When the landlady saw the unbroken food, she said to her daughter, "I
+know the poor ladies are sorely troubled by their losses in that
+shameful bank. There's one thing I can't make out about our corrupt
+nature. The people who are troubled by something wrong with their
+bodies eat and drink more than is good for them by way of trying to
+coax themselves to break their fast, and them that are troubled in
+their minds don't eat anything at all. The matter seems upside down
+somehow."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                            TWO OF A RACE.
+
+
+That day had not opened pleasantly or auspiciously for Mrs. Grace and
+her granddaughter. As soon as the pretence of breakfast was disposed
+of, Edith went to her room and the old woman took her work and sat in
+the open window.
+
+Edith was too unnerved to think of doing anything that day towards
+getting a new place. Disappointment and despair seemed to hedge her in
+on all sides; but she was resolved to persevere in getting a situation
+as soon as she recovered from the effects of her late discomfiture and
+shock. The need for immediate employment was all the greater now, for
+her outfit and expedition to Eltham House had not only absorbed the
+money she had by her, but all her grandmother could command as well,
+and there would be little or nothing coming in now.
+
+For herself she did not care, because she had schooled herself to
+regard herself and her feelings as of no consequence. Until that
+morning she had enjoyed the sustaining power of family pride. If what
+this attorney of Castleton said were true, she no longer could count
+on that support. What were three or four or five generations to one
+who had believed her name and race had come with the blood-making
+William? She had no blood in her veins worth speaking about. She was
+at most fifth in line from an humble dealer in wool, in an obscure
+provincial town. She who had regarded half-a-dozen of the great ducal
+houses as new people! She! who was she or what was she? After all
+perhaps it might be better that one who had to earn her bread by
+rendering service should not have too far back reaching a lineage.
+There was less derogation in earning money by service when one came of
+a race of humble dealers in wool than if one had come of an historic
+house.
+
+But the discovery had a depressing effect nevertheless. Her
+grandmother didn't feel the matter, of course, so much as she felt it;
+for the old woman had none of the Grace blood in her veins. Never had
+she, while at school, committed the vulgar folly of boasting of her
+family. How fortunate that was, in face of the fact disclosed this
+morning. Why, her people had started as small shopkeepers, come by
+money and affected therefrom the airs of their betters, and the
+consequence of illustrious race. The claims of the Grace family were
+nothing more than a piece of pretentious bombast, if not, at the
+outset, deliberate lying. No doubt her father had believed he was
+well-bred and of gentle birth, but his father before him, or, anyway,
+his father before him again, must have known better.
+
+No doubt the house of Leeds could show no higher origin, but then she
+had had nothing but contempt for the house of Leeds. She would rather
+have come of an undistinguished soldier of William's, one who never in
+himself, or any descendant of his, challenged fame or bore a title,
+than owe origin to a City source. She had believed the Graces had the
+undiluted blood of Hastings, and now she found they could trace back
+no further than the common puddle of an obscure country town. The
+romantic past and mysterious background of an old race, no longer
+modified the banalities of her position. If she were to choose a
+suitor of her peers she should have to take one of the bourgeois
+tribe, and one in poor circumstances, too, to suit her own condition!
+
+Why, if ever she thought of marriage, the fit mate for her was to be
+found in that line of vulgar admirers she had paraded for her
+amusement, her laughter, her scorn!
+
+After the discovery of that morning, she, Edith Grace, could lift her
+head no more.
+
+The hours of the weary, empty day went by slowly for the girl. The
+blaze of sunlight was unbroken by a cloud. The sun stood up so high in
+heaven it cast scant shadows. Grimbsy Street was always quiet, but
+after the morning efflux of men towards the places of their daily
+work, the street was almost empty until the home-returning of the men
+in the late afternoon and early morning. In the white and flawless air
+there was nothing to mark the passage of time.
+
+A sense of oppression and desolation fell upon Edith. In the old days,
+that were only a few hours of time gone by, she could always wrap
+herself from the touch of adversity in the rich brocaded cloak of
+noble, if undistinguished, ancestry. Now she was cold and bare, and
+full in the vulgar light of day, among the common herd of people. No
+better than the very landlady whose rooms they occupied, and whom a
+day back she looked on as a separate and but dimly understood
+creation.
+
+In the middle of the day there was a light lunch, at which Mrs. Grace
+made nothing of the disappointment of the morning, and Edith passed
+the subject almost silently. Then the afternoon dragged on through all
+the inexhaustible sunlight to dinner, and each woman felt a great
+sense of relief when the meal arrived, for it marked the close of that
+black, blank day, and all the time between dinner and bed-time is but
+the twilight dawn of another day.
+
+An after-dinner custom of the two ladies was that Mrs. Grace should
+sit in her easy chair at one side of the window in summer, and Edith
+at the other, while the girl read an evening paper aloud until the
+light failed or the old woman fell asleep.
+
+It was eight o'clock, and still the unwearying light pursued and
+enveloped the hours pertinaciously. The great reflux of men had long
+since set in and died down low. Now and then a brisk footstep passed
+the window with sharp beating sound; now and then a long and echoing
+footfall lingered from end to end of the opposite flagway; now and
+then an empty four-wheeled cab lumbered sleepily by.
+
+The fresh, low voice of the girl bodied forth the words clearly, but
+with no emotion or aid of inflection beyond the markings of the
+punctuation on the page. She had been accustomed to read certain parts
+of the paper in a particular order, and she began in this order and
+went on. The words she read and uttered conveyed no meaning to her own
+mind, and if at any moment she had been stopped and asked what was the
+subject of the article, she would have been obliged to wait and trust
+to the unconsciously-recording memory of her ear for the words her
+voice had uttered.
+
+The old woman's eyes were open. She was broad awake, but not listening
+to a word that Edith read. The girl's voice had a pleasing soothing
+effect, and she was sadly fancying how they two could manage to live
+on the narrow means now adjudged to her by fate.
+
+Suddenly there was a sharper, brisker sound than usual in the street.
+The old woman awoke to observation. The sound approached rapidly, and
+suddenly stopped close at hand with the harsh tearing noise of a
+wheel-tire grating along the curbstone. Mrs. Grace leaned forward and
+looked out of the window. A hansom cab had drawn up at the door, and a
+man was alighting.
+
+"There's the gentleman who was here yesterday with Mr. Leigh," said
+Mrs. Grace drawing back from the window.
+
+Edith paused a moment, and then went on reading aloud in the same
+mechanical voice as before.
+
+"I wonder could he have forgotten his gloves or his cane yesterday?"
+said Mrs. Grace, whose curiosity was slightly aroused. Any excitement,
+however slight, would be welcome now.
+
+"I don't know, mother. If he forgot anything he must have left it
+downstairs. I saw nothing here, and I heard of nothing."
+
+"If you please, Mrs. Grace, Mr. Hanbury has called and wishes to see
+you," said the landlady's daughter from the door of the room.
+
+"Mr. Hanbury wants to see me!" said the old lady in astonishment.
+"Will you kindly ask him to walk up? Don't stir, darling," she said as
+Edith rose to go. "No doubt he brings some message from Mr. Leigh."
+
+With a listless sigh the young girl sank back upon her chair in the
+window-place.
+
+"Mr. Hanbury, ma'am," said the landlady's daughter from the door, as
+the young man looking hot and excited, stepped into the room, drew up,
+and bowed to the two ladies.
+
+"I feel," said the young man, as the door was closed behind him, "that
+this is a most unreasonable hour for a visit of one you saw for the
+first time, yesterday, Mrs. Grace; but last night I made a most
+astounding discovery about myself, and to-day I made a very surprising
+discovery about you."
+
+"Pray, sit down," said the old lady graciously, "and tell us what
+these discoveries are. But discovery or no discovery I am glad to see
+you. A visit from the distinguished Mr. Hanbury would be an honour to
+any house in London."
+
+The young man bowed and sat down. In manner he was restless and
+excited. He glanced from one of the women to the other quickly, and
+with flashing eyes.
+
+Edith leaned back on her chair, and looked at the visitor. He was
+sitting between the two a little back from the window, so that the
+full light of eight o'clock in midsummer fell upon him. The girl could
+in no way imagine what discovery of this impetuous, stalwart, gifted
+young man could interest them.
+
+"You see, Mrs. Grace," he said, looking rapidly again from one to the
+other, "I have just come back from the country where I had to go on an
+affair of my own. An hour or two ago I got back to London, and after
+seeing my mother and speaking to her awhile I came on here to you."
+
+"Are all men impudent," thought Edith, "like Leigh and this one. What
+have we to do with him or his mother, or his visit to the country?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Mrs. Grace. "I know. I understand. You've been to Millway
+and Eltham House with Mr. Leigh, and you have been kind enough to
+bring us news of my grand-daughter's luggage."
+
+"Eh? What?" He looked in astonishment from one to the other.
+
+"Are all men," thought Edith indignantly, "so pushing, and impudent,
+and interfering? What insolence of this man to call at such an hour
+about my luggage!"
+
+"Eltham House? Millway? Miss Grace's luggage? Believe me, I do not
+understand." Again his eyes wandered in confused amazement from one to
+the other.
+
+"My grand-daughter left Mr. Leigh's house early yesterday morning and
+did not bring her luggage with her," said the old woman severely. "If
+you have not called on behalf of Mr. Leigh about the luggage, may I
+ask to what you are referring when you say you have been to the
+country and found out something of interest to me?"
+
+"But I have not said I have been to Mr. Leigh's place in the country.
+May I ask you where it is?"
+
+"Near Millway, on the south coast; Sussex, I think."
+
+"I don't know where Millway is. I have never been there; I have not
+come from the south. I have been in the Midlands since I had the
+pleasure of seeing you yesterday."
+
+"The Midlands? The Midlands?" said the old woman, leaning forward and
+looking at him keenly.
+
+Edith's face changed almost imperceptibly. She showed a faint trace of
+interest.
+
+"Yes; I have just come back from Derbyshire. You are interested in
+Derbyshire, aren't you?"
+
+"Go on," said the old woman eagerly. She was now trembling, and caught
+the arms of her easy chair to steady her hands.
+
+"In Derbyshire I had occasion to visit Castleton, and there I met a
+Mr. Coutch, who said he had been in communication with you respecting
+your family--the Graces of Gracedieu, in the neighbourhood of
+Castleton."
+
+"Yes, yes," said the old woman impatiently. "That is quite right. I
+had a letter from Mr. Coutch this morning, saying the Graces had left
+the place long ago, and owned no property in the place. Have you any
+other--any better news?"
+
+"Not respecting the Graces and Gracedieu, as far as your questions
+go."
+
+"Oh," said the old woman, and with a sigh she sank back in the chair,
+her interest gone. "The Graces are a Derbyshire family, and as my
+grand-daughter has just lost all her little fortune, I was anxious to
+know if there were any traces of her people in Derbyshire still."
+
+The eyes of the man moved to the girl and rested on her.
+
+"I am sorry to hear Miss Grace has lost her fortune," he said softly.
+"Very sorry indeed."
+
+"It was not very much," said the old woman, becoming garrulous and
+taking it for granted Hanbury was an intimate friend of Leigh's and
+knew all the dwarf's affairs, "and the loss of it was what made my
+granddaughter accept the companionship to old Mrs. Leigh down at
+Eltham House, near Millway. Miss Grace could not endure Mr. Leigh, and
+left, without her luggage, a few hours after arriving there. That was
+why I thought you came about Miss Grace's luggage."
+
+"Miss Grace a companion to Mr. Leigh's mother?" cried the young man in
+a tone of indignant protest. "What!" he thought. "This lovely creature
+mewed up in the same 'house with that little, unsightly creature?"
+
+"Yes. But she stayed only a few hours. In fact she ran away, as no
+doubt your friend told you."
+
+"Mr. Leigh told me absolutely nothing of the affair; and may I beg of
+you not to call him my friend? He told you I was a friend of his, but
+I never met him till yesterday, and I have no desire to meet him
+again. When he had the impudence to bring me here I did not know where
+I was coming, or whom I was coming to see. I beg of you, let me
+impress upon you, Mr. Leigh is no friend of mine, and let me ask you
+to leave him out of your mind for a little while. The matter that
+brings me here now has nothing to do with him. I have come this time
+to talk about the Grace family, and I hope you will not think my visit
+impertinent, though the hour is late for a call."
+
+"Certainly not impertinent. I am glad to see you again, Mr. Hanbury,
+particularly as you tell me that odious man is no friend of yours."
+
+"You are very kind," said the young man, with no expression on his
+face corresponding with the words. "Mr. Coutch, the attorney of
+Castleton, told me that a few weeks ago you caused inquiries to be
+made in his neighbourhood respecting the Grace family. Now it so
+happened that this morning, before London was awake, I started for
+Castleton to make inquiries about the Grace family."
+
+"What, you, Mr. Hanbury! Are you interested in the Grace family?"
+enquired the old woman vivaciously.
+
+"Intensely," he answered, moving uneasily on his chair. He dreaded
+another interruption.
+
+Edith Grace saw now that Hanbury was greatly excited. She put out her
+hand gently and laid it soothingly on her grandmother's hand as it
+rested on the arm of the chair. This young man was not nearly so
+objectionable as the other man, and he had almost as much as said he
+hated Leigh, a thing in itself to commend him to her good opinion. It
+was best to hear in quiet whatever he had to tell.
+
+"Yes, my child," said Mrs. Grace, responding to the touch of the
+girl's hand, "I am most anxious to hear Mr. Hanbury."
+
+"When I had the pleasure of seeing you yesterday I did not take more
+interest in Castleton than any other out-of-the-way English town of
+which I knew nothing, and my only interest in your family was confined
+to the two ladies in this room. Last night a document was given me by
+my mother, and upon reading it, I conceived the most intense interest
+in Castleton and Gracedieu and the family which gave that place a
+name."
+
+He was very elaborate, and seemed resolved upon telling his story in a
+way he had arranged, for his eyes were not so much concerned with Mrs.
+Grace and Edith as with an internal scroll from which he was reading
+slowly and carefully.
+
+"I went to Derbyshire this morning to see Gracedieu and to make
+inquiries as to a branch of the Grace family."
+
+"And you, like me, have found out that there is no trace of the other
+branch," said the widow sadly. "You found out from Mr. Coutch that
+there were my granddaughter and myself and no clue to anyone else."
+
+"Pardon me. I found out all I wanted."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Grace, sitting up in her chair and becoming
+once more intensely interested. "You found out about the other
+branch?"
+
+"Yes, I found out all about the other branch."
+
+"And where--where are they? Who are they? What is the name?" cried the
+old woman in tremulous excitement.
+
+"The other branch is represented by Miss Grace, here," said Hanbury,
+softly laying his hand on the girl's hand as it rested on the old
+woman's.
+
+"What? What? I don't understand you! We are the Graces of Gracedieu,
+or rather my husband and son were, and my grand-daughter is. There was
+no difficulty in finding out us. The difficulty was to find out the
+descendants of Kate Grace, who married a French nobleman in the middle
+of the last century."
+
+He rose, and bending over the girl's hand raised it to his lips and
+kissed it, saying in a low voice, deeply shaken: "I am the only
+descendant of Kate Grace, who, in the middle of the last century,
+married Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, called Stanislaus the Second,
+King of Poland."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+                           THE END OF DAY.
+
+
+Edith sprang from her chair trembling, abashed, overwhelmed. Mrs.
+Grace fell back and stared at Hanbury. It was not a moment for
+coherent thought or reasonable words. Even John Hanbury was as much
+overcome as though the discovery came upon him then for the first
+time. He felt more inclined for action than for words, and thought was
+out of the question. He would have liked to jump upon a horse and ride
+anywhere for life. He would have liked to plunge into a tumultuous
+river and battle with the flood. The sight of lives imperilled by
+fire, and rescue possible through him alone, would have afforded a
+quieting relief in desperate and daring effort.
+
+In his own room, the night before, when he came upon this astounding
+news in his father's letter, the discovery brought only dreams and
+visions, echoing voices of the past, and marvellous views of glories
+and pageantries, splendours and infamies, a feeble ancestor and a
+despoiled nation.
+
+Now, here was the first effect of declaring his awful kinship to the
+outside world. His mother's was he, and what was his glory, or infamy
+of name, was hers; although she was not of the blood. He knew that
+whatever he was, she was that also, body and soul. But here were two
+women, one of whom was allied to his race, though stranger to his
+blood; and the other of whom was remotely his cousin, whose ancestor
+had been the sister of a king's wife, and he, the descendant of that
+king. This young girl was kin, though not kind, they were of the
+half-blood. Revealing his parentage to these two women, was as though
+he assumed the shadowy crown of kingship in a council of his kinsfolk,
+conferring and receiving homage.
+
+A king! Descended from a king!
+
+How had his mind shifted and wavered, uncertain. How had his
+aspirations now fixed on one peak, now on another, until he felt in
+doubt as to whether there were any stable principle in his whole
+nature. How had his spirit now sympathised with the stern splendours
+of war, and now with the ennobling glories of peace. How had he
+trembled for the rights of the savage, and weighed the consideration
+that civilization, not mere man, was the only thing to be counted of
+value. How had he felt his pulses throb at the thought of the lofty
+and etherealizing privileges of the upper classes, and sworn that
+Christ's theory of charity to the poor, and fellowship with the simple
+and humble, was the only way of tasting heaven, and acting God's will
+while on earth. Had all these mutations, these dizzying and
+distracting vacillations, been only the stirring of the kingly
+principle in his veins?
+
+After many meaningless exclamations and wide questions by Mrs. Grace,
+and a few replies from Hanbury, the latter said, "I think the best
+thing I can do is to tell you all I know, as briefly as possible."
+
+"That will be the best," said Mrs. Grace. "But if the man who married
+Kate Grace was a Pole, how did they come to call him a Frenchman?"
+
+"No doubt he used French here in England, as being the most convenient
+language for one who did not know English. Remember, he was a private
+gentleman then."
+
+"I thought you said he was a count?"
+
+"Well, yes, of course he was a count; but I meant, he had no public
+position such as he afterwards held, nor had he any hopes of being
+more than plain Count Poniatowski."
+
+"Oh, I see. Then may we hear the story?" She settled herself back in
+her chair, taking the hand of her grand-daughter into the safe keeping
+and affectionate clasp of both her hands.
+
+"Towards the end of the first half of the eighteenth century, Count
+Poniatowski, son of a Lituanian nobleman, came to England. He was a
+man of great personal beauty and accomplishments. While he was in this
+country he made the acquaintance of Sir Hanbury Williams, and became a
+favourite with that poet and diplomatist. When Sir Hanbury went as
+Ambassador to St. Petersburg, he took the young nobleman with him. In
+the Russian capital, he attracted the attention of the Grand Duchess
+Catherine. When she came to the Russian throne--when King Augustus
+III. of Poland died, in 1764--Catherine, now Empress--used her
+influence to such effect, that Stanislaus was elected King of Poland.
+He was then thirty-two years of age. It was under this unfortunate
+king that the infamous partition of Poland took place, and the kingdom
+was abolished. Russia, Austria and Germany now own the country over
+which Stanislaus once reigned."
+
+"And how about Kate Grace?" asked the widow in a low voice.
+
+"I am coming to that, as you may imagine, but I wanted first to tell
+you who this man was. Well, Stanislaus spent a good while in England,
+and among other places that he went to was Derbyshire, and there,
+while staying in the neighbourhood with a gentleman, a friend of Sir
+Hanbury Williams, he saw and fell in love with Kate Grace, the beauty
+of the place in those times. He made love to her, and she ran away
+with him, and was married to him in the name of Augustus Hanbury, in
+the town of Derby, as the parish Register, my father says, shows to
+this day. Subsequently she came to London and lived with him as his
+wife, but under the name of Hanbury. He sent a substantial sum of
+money to his father-in-law, and an assurance that Kate had been
+legally married, but that, for family reasons, he could not
+acknowledge his wife just then, but would later. Subsequently he went
+to Russia in the train of his friend, Sir Hanbury Williams, leaving
+behind him his wife and infant son comfortably provided for. He had
+not been long in St. Petersburg when his King, Augustus III of Poland,
+recalled him to that kingdom. Meanwhile, his wife, Kate Grace that had
+been, died; they said of a broken heart. Young Stanislaus Hanbury, the
+son of this marriage, was taken charge of by one of the Williams
+family, and when Stanislaus became King of Poland, he sent further
+moneys to the Graces, and to provide for his son, Stanislaus. But the
+Graces never knew exactly the man their daughter had married. They
+were quite sure she was legally married, and had no difficulty in
+taking the money Stanislaus sent them. They were under the impression
+their daughter had gone to France, that she died early, and that she
+left no child."
+
+"It is a most wonderful and romantic history," said the old woman in a
+dazed way. The story had seemed to recede from her and hers, and to be
+no more to her than a record of things done in China a thousand years
+ago. The remote contact of her grand-daughter with the robes of a
+crowned King, had for the time numbed her faculties. It seemed as
+though the girl, upon the mere recital, must have suffered a change,
+and that it would be necessary to readjust the relations between them.
+
+Edith did not say anything. She merely pressed the under one of the
+two hands that held hers.
+
+"A very romantic history," said the visitor. "I have now told you whom
+Kate Grace married. She married a man who, after her death, sat thirty
+years on the throne of Poland, and was alive when that kingdom ceased
+to exist. What this man was I will not say. It is not my place, as a
+descendant of his, to tell his story. It has been told by many. I know
+little of it, but what I know is far from creditable to him. Remember,
+I never had my attention particularly directed to Stanislaus the
+Second, or Poland, until last night, and since then I have been
+enquiring after the living, and not unearthing the records of the
+dead."
+
+"And you never even suspected anything of this until last night?" said
+Mrs. Grace, who now began slowly to recover the use of the ordinary
+faculties of the mind.
+
+"Never. Nor did my mother. In the long paper my father left in charge
+of my mother he says he only heard the facts from some descendant of
+Sir Hanbury Williams. When he found out who he really was he seemed to
+have been seized with a positive horror of the blood in his veins, not
+because of what it had done in the past, but of what it might do in
+the future. He was a careful, timid man. He thought the best way to
+kill the seed of ambition in the veins of a Hanbury would be to reduce
+the position of the family from that of people of independent means to
+that of traders. Hence he went into business in the City; although he
+had no need of more money, he made a second fortune. He says his
+theory was that, in these days, no man who ever made up parcels of
+tea, or offered hides for sale, could aspire to a throne, and that no
+man of business who was doing well at home, ever became a conspirator
+abroad. When he saw I was taking a great interest in the struggles of
+parties in France, he thought the best thing he could do would be to
+let me know who I was, and leave me his opinion as to the folly of
+risking anything in a foreign cause, when one could find ample
+opportunity of employing one's public spirit usefully in England, for
+notwithstanding his foreign blood, my father was an Englishman with
+Englishmen against all the world. His instructions to my mother were,
+that if, at any time, I showed signs of abandoning myself to excess in
+politics, I was to get the paper, for if I leaned too much to the
+people the knowledge that I had the blood of a King in me might modify
+my ardour; and if I seemed likely to adopt the cause of any foreign
+ruler or pretender, I might be restrained by a knowledge that, as far
+as the experience of one of my ancestors went, unwelcome rulers meant
+personal misery and national ruin."
+
+"And, Mr. Hanbury, what do you purpose doing? Do you intend changing
+your name and claiming your rights?"
+
+"The only rights I have are those common to every Englishman. The name
+I have worn I shall continue to wear. Though my great grandfather's
+grandfather was for more than thirty years a king, there is not now a
+rood of ground for his descendants to lord it over. This marriage of
+Stanislaus Poniatowski with Kate Grace has been kept secret up to
+this. Now I wish to bind you and Miss Grace to secrecy for the future.
+I have told you the history of the past in order, not to glorify the
+past and magnify the Hanburys, but in order to establish between you
+two, and my mother and myself, the friendly relations which ought to
+exist between kith and kin. You are the last left of your line and we
+of ours. To divulge to the public what I have told you now would be to
+expose us to ridicule. I came here yesterday in the design of saving
+myself from ridicule a thousand times less than would follow if any
+one said I set up claims to be descended from a king. I will tell you
+the story of yesterday another time. Anyway, I hope I have made out
+this evening that we are related. I know, if you will allow it, we
+shall become friends. As earnest of our friendship will you give me
+your hands?"
+
+The old woman held out hers with the young girl's in it and Hanbury
+stood up and bent and kissed the two hands.
+
+Then Mrs. Grace began to cry and sob. It was strange to meet a kinsman
+of her dead husband, and her son, and her son's child, so late in her
+life, and it comforted her beyond containing herself, so she sobbed on
+in gratitude.
+
+"My mother, who is the greatest-hearted woman alive, will come to see
+you both tomorrow. Fortunately all the Stanislaus or Grace, or
+Hanbury, money was not in rotten banks, and as long as English Consols
+hold their own there will be no need to seek a fortune in Millway or
+any other part of Sussex. Edith, my cousin, I may call you Edith?" he
+asked, gently taking her hand.
+
+"If it pleases you," she said, speaking for the first time. She had
+felt inclined to say "Sir," or "My Lord," or even "Sire." She had been
+looking in mute astonishment at the being before her. She, who had
+more respect for birth than for power, or wealth, or genius, had sat
+there listening to the speech of this man as he referred to his origin
+in an old nobility, and related the spreading splendours of his
+forefathers blossoming into kingly honours, regal state! There,
+sitting before her, at the close of this dull day of disenchantment
+and sordid cares, was set a man who was heir not only to an ancient
+title in Poland, but to the man who had sat, the last man who had sat,
+in the royal chair of that historic land. Her heart swelled with a
+rapture that was above pride, for it was unselfish. It was the
+intoxicating joy one has in knowledge of something outside and beyond
+one's self, as in the magnitude of space, the immensities of the
+innumerable suns of the heavens, the ineffable tribute of the flowery
+earth to the sun of summer. Her spirit rose to respect, veneration,
+awe. What were the tinsel glories she had until that morning
+attributed to her own house, compared with the imperial, solid, golden
+magnificence of his race? Nothing. No better than the obscure shadows
+of the forgotten moon compared with the present and insistent
+effulgence of the zenith sun.
+
+And, intolerable thought! the blood of this man had been allied with
+the humble stream flowing in her veins, and he was calling her cousin,
+and kissing her hand, he standing while she sat! instead of her
+kneeling to kiss his hand and render him homage!
+
+"My lord and my king," she thought. "Yes, my king. After a joy such as
+this, the rest of life must seem a desert. After this night I shall
+desire to live no more. I, who thought myself noble because I came of
+an untitled soldier of the Conqueror's, am claimed as cousin by the
+son of one who ruled in his country as William himself ruled in
+England, from the throne!"
+
+"And we shall be good friends," Hanbury said, smiling upon her.
+
+"Yes," she said, having no hope or desire for better acquaintance with
+the king in her heart, for who could be friends with her king, even
+though there were remote ties of blood between them?
+
+He caught the tone of doubt in the voice, and misconstrued it. "You
+will not be so unkind, so unjust, as to visit my intrusion of
+yesterday upon me?"
+
+"No." How should one speak to a king when one could not use the common
+titles or forms?
+
+"You must know that the man I came with yesterday told me if I
+accompanied him he would show me something more wonderful than miracle
+gold."
+
+"Yes," she said, for he paused, and her answer by some word or note
+was necessary to show she was hearkening.
+
+"And I came and saw you, Edith, but did not then know you were my
+cousin, nor did you dream it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You are the only relative I have living, except my mother, and you
+will try and not be distant and cold with me?"
+
+"Yes, I will try." But in the tone there was more than doubt.
+
+"And you will call me John or Jack?"
+
+"Oh!--no--no--no!" She slipped from her chair and knelt close to where
+he stood.
+
+"Are you faint?" he cried, bending over her anxiously.
+
+"I am better now," she said, rising.
+
+Unknown to him she had stooped and kissed his hand.
+
+
+
+
+                          END OF VOLUME II.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Miracle Gold (Vol. 2 of 3), by Richard Dowling
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42496 ***