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diff --git a/76885-0.txt b/76885-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..10a7481 --- /dev/null +++ b/76885-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5622 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76885 *** + + + + DEAD-SEA FRUIT. + + + VOL. I. + + + + + LONDON: + PRINTED BY J. OGDEN AND CO., + 172, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C. + + + + + DEAD-SEA FRUIT + + + A Novel + + + BY THE AUTHOR OF + + “LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” + + ETC., ETC., ETC. + + + IN THREE VOLUMES. + + + VOL. I. + + + + + LONDON + WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER + WARWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW + 1868. + + [_All rights reserved_] + + + + + LONDON: + PRINTED BY J. OGDEN AND CO., + 172, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C. + + + + + CONTENTS. + + +CHAP. PAGE + + I. QUITE ALONE 1 + + II. A RETROSPECTIVE SURVEY 18 + + III. “TAKE BACK THESE LETTERS, MEANT FOR HAPPINESS” 38 + + IV. UN MENAGE A DEUX 61 + + V. THE EDITOR OF THE “AREOPAGUS” 78 + + VI. AT BAYHAM 97 + + VII. MR. JERNINGHAM’S QUEST 123 + + VIII. GREENLANDS 144 + + IX. HOW THEY PARTED 169 + + X. THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON 192 + + XI. “J’AIME: IL FAUT QUE J’ESPERE” 209 + + XII. THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER 240 + + XIII. MISS ST. ALBANS 264 + + XIV. IN THE GREEN-ROOM 289 + + + + + DEAD-SEA FRUIT. + + + + + CHAPTER I. + + QUITE ALONE. + + +THE marble image of Hubert Van Eyck stood out against the warm blue +sky, and cast a slanting shadow across the sunlit flags. The July +afternoon was drawing to a close. Low sunlight shone golden on the +canals of Villebrumeuse, and changed every westward-looking window into +a casement of gold. Those are no common windows which look out upon +the quiet streets and lonely squares of that sleepy Belgian city. No +handiwork of modern speculative builder is visible amid that grand old +architecture--no flimsy nineteenth-century villa perks its tawdry head +among those mediæval splendours--no upstart semi-detached abominations +of spurious Gothic, picked out with rainbow-coloured brick, affright +the eye by their hideous aspect. To live in Villebrumeuse is to live +in the sixteenth century. A quiet calm, as of the past, pervades the +shady streets. Green trees reflect themselves in the still waters of +the slow canal which creeps athwart the city; and by the side of the +tranquil waters there are pleasant walks o’er-shadowed by the umbrage +of limes, and wooden benches whereon the peaceful citizens may repose +themselves in the evening dusk. In despite of its solemn tranquillity, +this Villebrumeuse is not a dreary dwelling-place. If it has drifted +from amidst the busy places of this earth--if the blustrous ocean of +modern progress has receded from its shores, leaving it far away across +a level waste of reef and sand--this quiet city has, at the worst, been +left stationary, while the noisy tide sweeps on with all its tumult of +success and failure--its prosperous ventures and forgotten wrecks. The +peace which pervades Villebrumeuse is the tranquillity of slumber, +and not the awful stillness of death. There is a jog-trot prosperity +in the place, a comfortable air, which is soothing to the world-worn +spirit; but the wrestling, and scuffling, and striving, and struggling +of modern commerce is unknown among the quiet merchants, who content +themselves with supplying the simple wants of their fellow-citizens in +the simplest fashion. And yet this city was once a mart to which the +Orient brought her richest merchandise; and in the days gone by, these +quaint old squares have been clamorous with the voices of many traders, +and bright with the holiday raiment of busy multitudes. + +A young Englishman walked slowly up and down the broad flagged +square, across which the painter’s statue cast its sombre shadow. +He was teacher of English and mathematics in a great public academy +near at hand, and his name was Eustace Thorburn. For three years he +had held his post in the Villebrumeuse academy; for three years he +had done his duty, quietly and earnestly, to the satisfaction of +every one concerned in the performance. And yet he was something of +an enthusiast, and something of a poet, and possessed many of those +attributes which are commonly supposed to constitute a letter of +license for the neglect of vulgar every-day duties. + +That was an ardent and an ambitious spirit which shone out of Eustace +Thorburn’s gray eyes; but if the fiery sword had chafed the scabbard +a little during three years of academical routine and Villebrumeuse +monotony, the young man had been patient and contented withal. There +was a public library in Villebrumeuse to which the tutor had free +entrance, and in the mediæval chambers of this institution his leisure +had been spent. That dreamy idleness amongst good books had been very +pleasant to him; his work in the academy was endurable, despite its +tedious and laborious nature; and he had a lurking tenderness for the +quaint old city, the slow canals overshadowed by green trees, the +simple people, and the old-world customs. Thus, if there were times +when the eager spirit would fain have soared to loftier and fairer +regions, the young student and teacher had not been altogether unhappy +since his destiny had brought him to this place to earn his bread +amongst strangers. + +Amongst strangers? Were the inhabitants of this Belgian city any +more strange to him than all the other inhabitants of this populous +earth--except the one man and woman who made the sum-total of his +kindred and friends? Amongst strangers? Why, if the statue of Van Eyck +could have descended from yonder pedestal, to walk in the streets of +the city, the animated effigy could scarcely have been a lonelier +creature than the young man who passed to and fro athwart the sloping +shadow on the flags this July afternoon. + +Looking backward, through the shadows of the past, how many of those +images, familiar to most men, were wanting in the mystic pictures that +memory presented to Eustace Thorburn! Memory, let him question her +never so closely, could not show him any faint tracing of a father’s +face flickering dimly athwart the half-consciousness of infancy. +Nor could he, in surveying the events of his childhood, recall so +much as one visit to a father’s grave, one accidental utterance of a +father’s name, one object, however trivial, associated with a father’s +existence--a picture, a sword, a book, a watch, a tress of hair. The +time had been when he had been wont to question his mother about this +missing father; but that was long ago. The time had come, and too +quickly in this young man’s life, when a precocious wisdom had checked +his questioning, and he had learned to refrain from all reference to +a father’s name, as the one subject, of all others, most scrupulously +to be avoided by his lips. He was twenty-three years of age, and he +had never been told his father’s name or position in the world. For +the last ten years of his life it had been a common thing for him to +lie awake in the solemn quiet of the night, thinking of that unknown +father, and wondering whether he were alive or dead. He knew that he +had no claim to the name which he bore, and that he had as good a right +to call himself a Guelph or a Plantagenet as he had to call himself +Thorburn. + +How many childless men upon this earth would have been glad to call +Eustace Thorburn son! How many of this world’s magnates, with mighty +names to transmit, would have rejoiced with unspeakable rapture, could +they have set the joy-bells ringing for the coming of age of such an +heir! As there are rare and peerless flowers that adorn inaccessible +regions where no hand can gather them, where no eye may delight in +their loveliness, so there are friendless creatures in the world who +might make the joy of empty hearts, and be the pride of desolate +households. The “something in this world amiss,” which the poet has +sung of, pervades every social relation. The plaintive wailing of the +minor mingles itself with every earthly melody; and it is only by and +by that the veil shall be lifted; it is only by and by that the mystic +enigma shall be unriddled, and the full chords of perfect harmony peal +on our ears, unmarred by that undertone of pain. + +Not often has a nobler face looked upward to the countenance of +the statue than that which looked at it with a dreamy gaze to-day. +The face of the young man was, like the face of the statue, more +beautiful by reason of, its nobility of expression than because of its +perfect regularity of feature. In Eustace Thorburn’s countenance the +intellectual radiance so far surpassed the physical beauty, that those +who looked at him for the first time were impressed chiefly by the +brightness of his expression, and were likely to take their leave of +him in complete ignorance as to the shape of his nose or the modelling +of his mouth. + +It is but a thankless task to catalogue such a face; the dark gray eyes +which pass for black; the mobile mouth which, in one moment, seems +formed to express an unbending pride and an indomitable will, and in +the next will wreathe itself into such a smile that it must needs +appear incapable of any expression but manly tenderness or playful +humour; the loosely arranged auburn hair, which gives something of a +leonine aspect to the lofty head; the complexion of almost womanly +fairness, with a rich glow that comes and goes with every changing +impulse or emotion--all these go such a little way towards the +individuality of the young Englishman, walking up and down the lonely +square during his half-hour’s respite from the monotonous duties of the +afternoon. + +This half-hour’s holiday was not Mr. Thorburn’s only privilege. He +had two hours in every day for his own studies--two hours which he +generally spent in the public library, for his ambition had shaped +itself into a palpable form, and had mapped the outline of a career. +He was to be a man of letters. If he had been a rich man, he would +have shut himself in his library and made himself a poet. But as he +was nothing but a nameless and penniless stripling, with his bread to +earn, he had no right to indulge in the luxury of verse-making. The +wide arena of literary labour lay before him, and he had no choice but +to force his way into the lists, and fight for any place that might +happen to be vacant. Fate might make of him what she would--journalist, +novelist, dramatist, magazine hack, penny-a-liner: but she must use him +very cruelly before she could quench the fire of his young ambition, or +bend the crest with which he was prepared to confront the world. + +He had selected for himself this profession of literature chiefly +because it was the only calling which demanded no capital from the +beginner, and a little because the only kinsman he had in the world +was a man who lived by his pen, and who might have prospered and won +distinction by means of that fluent pen, had he not chosen to do +otherwise. + +The half-hour’s respite expired presently, and a great clanging bell in +the academy near at hand summoned the pupils to their evening lesson. +It was a summons for the master also, and Mr. Thorburn ran across the +square and turned into the street on which one side of the academy +looked. He pushed open a little wooden door in the big gateway, and +passed under the arched entrance; but before going to his class-room, +he stopped to examine a rack in which letters addressed to the masters +were wont to be kept. He rarely omitted to look at this rack, though +he had very few correspondents, and only received about one letter in +a fortnight. To-day there was a letter. His heart turned cold as he +looked at it, for the envelope was bordered with black, and addressed +in the hand of his mother’s brother, who very seldom wrote to him. His +mother had been an invalid for a long time, and such a letter as that +could have but one fatal meaning. For months he had looked forward to +his August holiday, which would enable him to go to England and spend a +few happy weeks with that dear mother--and now the holiday would come +too late. + +He went out into one of the dismal playgrounds, a gravelled yard +surrounded by high whitewashed walls, and read his letter. + +His tears fell thick and fast upon the flimsy paper as he read. Ten +minutes ago, walking to and fro in the sunshine, he had lamented his +loneliness, remembering that he had only two friends in the world. He +knew now that the dearer of these two was lost to him. The letter told +him of his mother’s death. + +“There is no need for you to hurry back, my poor lad,” wrote his uncle. +“The funeral is to take place to-morrow, and will be over when you get +this letter. I saw your mother a fortnight before her death, and she +then told me what she could never find the courage to tell you--that +the end was very near. It came suddenly at the last, and I was out of +the way at the time; but they tell me it was a calm and holy ending. +Her last words were of you. She dwelt much on your goodness and +devotion, Mrs. Bane tells me. The last two days were spent in prayer, +poor innocent soul; and I, who stand in so much greater need of that +kind of thing, can’t bring myself to it for half an hour! Poor soul! +Bane thinks it was for you she was praying, she repeated your name +so often--sometimes in her sleep, sometimes when she was lying in a +languid state between sleeping and waking. But she did not wish you to +be sent for. ‘It is better that he should be away,’ she said; ‘I think +he knew that this day must soon come.’ + +“And now, my dear boy, try to bear up against this sorrow like a brave, +true-hearted lad, as you are. I say nothing of what I feel myself, for +there are some things which come with a bad grace from certain people. +You know that I loved my sister; though, God knows, _I_ never knew +how dearly till yesterday, when I saw the blinds down at Mrs. Bane’s, +and guessed what had happened. Remember, Eustace, that so long as I +can earn a crust, my sister Celia’s son shall be welcome to his share +of it; and though I may be a disreputable acquaintance, I can be a +faithful friend. If you are tired of that slow old Belgian city, come +back to England. We will manage your establishment here somehow. The +impracticable Daniel has a certain kind of influence; and though he +rarely cares to use it on his own account,--being so bad a lot that he +dare not give himself a decent character,--he will employ it to the +uttermost for a spotless nephew. + +“Come, then, dear boy; a kind of heart-sickness has come over me, and +I want to see the brightest face that I know in this world, and the +only face that I love. Come, even if you must needs return to the +whitewashed saloons of the Parthenée. There are letters and papers +of your poor mother’s which it might be well for you to destroy. My +profane hand shall not tamper with them.” + + +The young man thrust his kinsman’s letter in his breast, and paced the +playground slowly for some time, meditating the loss that had come +upon him. In one of the big class-rooms near at hand his pupils were +waiting for him; and there was wonderment and consternation at this +delay in the most punctual of all the masters. His tears had dropped +fast upon the letter some time ago; but his eyes were dry now. The +dull agony which filled his breast was rather a sense of desolation +than a poignant grief. He had seen and known that his mother was fading +from this troubled earth before his coming to Belgium; and poverty’s +bitterest penalty had been the necessity which had separated him from +her. The shadow of this coming sorrow had long darkened the horizon of +his young life. The sad reality had come upon him a little sooner than +he had expected it, and that was all. He bowed his head, and resigned +himself to this affliction; but there was something to which he could +not resign himself, and that was the manner of his loss. + +“Alone--in a hired lodging--with a poor, ill-paid, hard-working drudge +for her sole companion and consoler! O mother, mother, you were too +bright a creature for so sad a fate!” + +And then there arose before this young man’s eyes one of those pictures +which were continually haunting him--the picture of what his life and +his mother’s life might have been, had things been different with +them. He fancied himself the beloved and acknowledged son of a good +and honourable man; he fancied his mother a happy wife. Ah! then how +changed all would have been! Sickness and death would have come all +the same, perhaps, since there is no earthly barrier that can exclude +those dark visitors from happy households. They would have come, the +dreaded guests, but with how different an aspect! He made for himself +the picture of two death-beds. By one there knelt a group of loving +children, weeping silently for a dying mother, while a grief-stricken +husband suppressed all outward evidence of his sorrow, lest he should +trouble the departing spirit whose earthly tabernacle was supported +by his fond arms. And the other death-bed! Alas, how sad the contrast +between the two pictures! A woman lying alone in a dingy chamber, +abandoned and forgotten by every creature in the world except her son, +and even he away from her. + +“And for this, as well as for all the rest, we have to thank +_him_!” muttered the young man. His face, which until now had +been overshadowed only by a quiet despondency, darkened suddenly as he +said this. It was not the first time he had apostrophized a nameless +enemy in the same bitter spirit. He had very often abandoned himself +to vengeful thoughts about this unknown foe, to whose evil-doing he +attributed every sorrow of his own, and all those hidden griefs and +silent agonies so patiently endured by his mother. He kept a close +account of his mother’s wrongs, and of his own, and he set them all +against this person, whom he had never seen and whose name he might +never discover. + +This nameless enemy was his father. + + + + + CHAPTER II. + + A RETROSPECTIVE SURVEY. + + +FROM the mediæval tranquillity of Villebrumeuse to the dreary +desolation of Tilbury Crescent is a sorry change. Instead of the +quaint peaked roofs and grand old churches, the verdant avenues and +placid water, there are unfinished streets and terraces of raw-looking +brick, half-built railway-arches, chasm-like cuttings newly made in +the damp clay soil, and patches of rank greensward that mark the site +of desolated fields. The sulphurous odours of a brickfield pervade the +atmosphere about and around Tilbury Crescent. The din of a distant +high-road, the roar of many wheels, and the clamour of excited +costermongers, float in occasional gusts of sound upon the dismal +stillness of the neighbourhood, where the shrill voices of children, +playing hopscotch in an adjacent street, are painfully audible. + +Decent poverty has set a seal upon this little labyrinth of streets +and squares and crescents and terraces, before the builder’s men +have left the newest of the houses, while there are still roofless +skeletons at every corner, waiting till the speculator who began them +shall have raised enough money to finish them. The neighbourhood lies +northward, and the rents of those yellow-brick tenements are cheap. So +decent poverty, in all its many guises, comes hitherward for shelter. +Newly-married lawyers’ clerks take up their abode in the eight-roomed +dwellings, and you shall divine, by the fashion of blinds and curtains, +the trim propriety of doorsteps and tiny front gardens, whether the +young householders have drawn prizes in the matrimonial lottery. Small +tradesmen bring their wares to the little shops, which break out here +and there at the corners of the streets, and struggle feebly for a +livelihood. Patient young dressmakers exhibit fly-blown fashion-plates +in parlour windows, and wait hopefully or despairingly, as the case +may be, for custom and patronage. And in more windows than the chance +pedestrian would care to count hangs the pasteboard announcement of +apartments to let. + +Eustace Thorburn came to Tilbury Crescent in the blazing July noontide. +He had landed at St. Katherine’s Wharf, and had made his way to this +northern suburb on foot. He was rich enough to have ridden in an +omnibus, or to have enjoyed the luxury of a hansom, had he been so +minded; but he was an ambitious young man, and had cultivated the +nobler Spartan virtues from his earliest boyhood. The few pounds in his +possession would have to serve him until he returned to the Parthenée, +or obtained some new employment; so he had much need to be careful of +shillings, and chary even of pence. The walk through the dirty bustling +London streets seemed long and weary to him; but his thoughts were more +weary than that pedestrian journey under the meridian sun, and the +sad memories of his youth were a heavier burden than the carpet-bag he +carried slung across his shoulder. + +He knocked at the door of one of the shabbiest houses in the crescent, +and was admitted by an elderly woman, who was slipshod and slovenly, +but who had a good-natured face, which brightened as she recognized +the traveller. In the next moment she remembered the sad occasion of +his coming, and put on that conventional expression of profound sorrow +which people assume so easily for the affliction of others. + +“Ah, dear, dear, Mr. Thorburn!” she cried, “I never thought to see you +come back like this, and she not here to bid you welcome, poor sweet +lamb!” + +The young man held up his hand to stay the torrent of sympathy. +“Please, don’t talk to me about my mother,” he said, quietly; “I can’t +bear it--yet.” + +The honest woman looked at him wonderingly. She had been accustomed to +deal with people who liked to talk of their griefs, and she did not +understand this quiet way of putting aside a sorrow. The mourners whom +she had encountered had worn their sackcloth and covered themselves +with ashes in the face of the world, and here was a young man who had +not so much as a band upon his hat, and who rejected her friendly +sympathy! + +“I can have my--the old rooms, for a week or so, I suppose, Mrs. Bane?” + +“Yes, sir. I’ve took the liberty to put a bill up, thinking as perhaps +you might not return from abroad; and if it’s for a week only, perhaps +you’d allow the bill to remain? There are so many apartments about this +neighbourhood, you see, sir, and people are that pushing now-a-days, +that a poor widow-woman has scarcely a chance. It’s a hard thing to be +left alone in the world, Mr. Thorburn.” + +There was an open wound in the heart of Eustace Thorburn which ignorant +hands were always striking. + +“It’s a hard thing to be left alone in the world,” he thought, echoing +the landlady’s lamentation. “_She_ was left alone in the world +before I was born.” + +The landlady repeated her question. + +“Oh yes, you can leave the bill; but don’t let any one come to look at +the rooms to-day. I am not likely to be here more than a week. Can I go +upstairs at once?” + +Mrs. Bane plunged her hand into a capacious pocket, and, after much +searching the depths of that receptacle, produced a door-key, which she +handed to Eustace. + +“Mr. Mayfield told me to lock the door, sir, because of papers and +such-like. The bedroom door is fastened on the inside.” + +The young man nodded, and went upstairs with a brisk, rapid footstep, +and not with that ponderous, solemn tread which Mrs. Bane would have +considered appropriate to his bereaved condition. + +“And I thought he would have took on dreadful!” she ejaculated, as she +went back to her underground kitchen, where there was generally an +atmosphere laden with the steam of boiling soap-suds, or an odour of +singed ironing-blanket. + +Eustace Thorburn unlocked the door, and went into the room which +had so lately been inhabited by his mother. It was a dingy little +sitting-room, opening into a bedroom that was still smaller. It was a +lodging of the same pattern as a thousand other lodgings in newly-built +suburbs. The personalty of the woman who had left it for a still +narrower lodging would scarcely have realized twenty shillings under +the auctioneer’s hammer; and yet to Eustace Thorburn the shabby room +was eloquent of the dead. That dilapidated rosewood workbox--for which +the auctioneer would have been ashamed to propose a starting bid of a +shilling--conjured up the vision of a patient creature bending over her +work. The little stand of books--cheap editions of the poets, in worn +cloth binding--recalled _her_ sweet face, illumined by a transient +splendour, as the inspired verses of her favourites lifted her above +this earth and all her earthly sorrows. The valueless china inkstand, +and worn blotting-book, had been used by her for more than four years. +Eustace Thorburn took the things up one by one, and put them to his +lips. There was something almost passionate in the kiss which he +imprinted upon those lifeless objects--it was the kiss which he would +have pressed upon her pale lips, had he been recalled in time to bid +her farewell. He kissed the books which she had been wont to read, the +pen with which she had written, and then cast himself suddenly into the +low chair where he had so often seen her seated, and abandoned himself +to his grief. Had Mrs. Bane, the landlady, heard these convulsive +sobs, and seen the tears streaming between the fingers which the young +man clasped before his eyes, she would have had no need to complain +of Mr. Thorburn’s want of emotion. For a long time he sat in the same +attitude, still weeping. But the passionate grief wore itself out at +last. He dashed the tears from his eyes with an impatient gesture, and +rose, pale and calm, to begin the work which he had set himself to do. + +His love for his mother had been the ruling passion of his life. She +was at rest now, and he could face the future calmly. He could go forth +to meet his destiny with a spirit at once superior to hope and fear. It +was for _her_ he had hoped; it was for her he had feared. He stood +alone now; his breast was no longer a rampart to shield her from “the +slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” The arrows might come thick +and fast now; they could only wound him; and he already had suffered +the deepest wound that evil fortune could inflict upon him. He had lost +_her_. + +The bitterest sting of all lay in the knowledge that she had never +been happy. Her son had loved her with unspeakable tenderness. He had +protected her and worked for her, and admired and adored her; but he +had never been able to make her happy. That gentle, womanly heart had +been too deeply wounded in the past. Eustace Thorburn had known this; +and knowing this had been patient, because he would not trouble her +mild spirit by any show of impatience. He had known that she had been +wronged, and yet had never asked her the name of the wrong-doer. He, +her natural champion and avenger, had never sought for vengeance upon +the man whose treachery or unkindness had blighted her life. He had +held his peace, because to question her would have been to pain her; +and how could he give her pain? So he had been patient, in spite of +a passionate desire for ever smouldering in his heart--the desire to +avenge his mother’s wrongs. + +She was at rest; and the time for vengeance had arrived. The same fatal +influence which had destroyed her happiness had shortened her life. In +the prime of womanhood, before a wrinkle had lined her forehead, or a +silver thread appeared amidst her soft brown hair, she had gone to her +grave, unutterably patient to the last, but broken-hearted from the +very first. + +The young man put his grief away from him, and set himself to consider +the new business of his life. + +The one desire of his mind was that of vengeance upon his mother’s +nameless enemy; and the thought that this enemy was his own father was +powerless to soften his heart in the smallest measure, or to hinder him +for one single hour from the achievement of his purpose. + +“I want to know who he is,” he said to himself. “My first business must +be to discover his name; my next, to make him more ashamed of that name +than I am of my namelessness.” + +He went to the chimney-piece, where there was a letter waiting for +him, sealed with a sprawling black seal, and addressed to him in the +inscrutable penmanship of his uncle. + +The envelope contained only a few lines, but enclosed in it there was +a little bunch of keys, with every one of which the young man was +familiar. He took them up with a sigh, and looked at them one by one, +almost as tenderly as he had looked at the books. The commonest object +in that chamber had its association for him,--and with every such +association, the grief which he had tried so hard to put away from him +took possession of him anew. + +There was a ponderous, old-fashioned mahogany desk on a side-table, and +it was in this desk that the lonely inhabitant of the room had been +accustomed to keep her letters and papers, together with those few +valueless relics--that pitiful jetsam and flotsam from the shipwreck of +hope and happiness which are left to the most desolate creature. + +Eustace unlocked and opened the desk as softly as if his mother had +been sleeping near him. He had often seen her seated at this desk; he +had once surprised her in tears, with a little packet of letters in her +hand, but he had never seen the contents of any of those discoloured +papers, tied with faded ribbons, and disfigured by obsolete postmarks. +And now that she was gone, it was his duty to examine those papers,--or +so he considered. Yet there was a shade of compunction in his mind as +he touched the first packet, and he felt as if he had been committing a +sacrilege. + +The first packet was labelled “My Mother’s Letters,” and contained the +epistles of some good womanly creature, written to a daughter who was +away at boarding-school. They were full of allusions to a comfortable +middle-class household--a tradesman’s household, as it seemed, for +there were occasional references to events that had occurred in the +shop, and to “my dear husband’s over-exerting himself in the business,” +and to “Daniel’s unsettled ways and indisposition to take to his +father’s occupation.” + +Eustace smiled faintly as he read of poor Daniel, whose unsettled ways +had been notorious before Sir Rowland Hill’s post-office amendments, +and who remained unsettled in these latter days of electric telegraphy +and labyrinthine railway cuttings. + +The letters were very sweet, by reason of the tender motherly spirit +which pervaded every line,--more or less ill-spelt here and there, +and by no means well written, but over-flowing with affection. Again +and again the writer implored her “dearest Sissy” not to fret, and to +look forward to the holidays, which would come very soon, when Sissy +would see her dear mother and father, whose household love she pined +for in the great middle-class boarding-school, as it was evident by the +tone of maternal letters which replied to lamentations from desolate +home-sick Sissy. There were hampers for dearest Sissy, and little +presents,--a coral necklace from father, a sash from mother, and once, +a tinselled portrait of Mr. Edmund Kean in the character of Othello, +with a tunic of real crimson satin let into the paper,--a tinselled +portrait which had been poor unsettled Daniel’s labour of love in +the long winter evenings, and which the mother dwelt on with evident +pleasure. + +Eustace knew that these letters had been written by his +grandmother,--the grandmother who had never held him in her arms, +or taken pride in his baby graces. He lingered lovingly over the +old-fashioned sheets of letter-paper--he gazed fondly upon the +stiffly-formed signature, “Elizabeth Mayfield,” and he dropped some +few tears upon the worn yellow paper, which had been blotted with many +tears before to-day. It was not possible that he could think of his +mother in her innocent school-days without emotion. + +The second packet contained only three letters, addressed to dearest +Sissy at home, when she had ceased to be a school-girl, and these were +in a hand not altogether unfamiliar to Eustace. It was a youthful +modification of Daniel Mayfield’s inscrutable calligraphy; and again +Eustace Thorburn smiled with the same faint smile. The letters were +written from a lawyer’s office where the lad was articled; for Daniel +had persisted in his aversion to his father’s business, and had +declared himself unfitted for anything upon earth except the law, for +which he was assured he had a special vocation. They were pleasant, +boyish letters, and full of the slang of the day--such locutions as +“Flare up!” and “What a shocking bad hat!” and “There you go with your +eye out!” and other conversational embellishments peculiar to the +period. But through all the slang and young-mannish affectations there +was an undercurrent of genuine affection for the writer’s “dear little +dark-eyed Sissy.” He knew no end of pretty girls in London, he told +her, but not one worthy to be compared with his darling Celia. “And +when I am on the Rolls, with slap-up chambers of my own in the Fields, +and a first-rate business, you shall come and keep house for me, Sissy; +and we’ll have a little cottage at Putney, and a wherry, and I’ll row +you up the river every evening after business; and while my sentimental +little sister sits in the stern reading a novel, her faithful Daniel +will get himself into training for a sculling-match.” + +The first two letters were full of hopeful allusions to the writer’s +prospects. The young man seemed to fancy he was going to make a royal +progress through the different grades of his profession, and there +was scarcely any limit to the pleasant things which he promised his +only sister. But, in the third letter, written after an interval of +six months, all this was changed. The life of an articled clerk was a +slavery, compared to which the existence of a negro in the West Indian +sugar-plantations must be one perpetual delight. Daniel was tired of +his profession, and informed his dearest Sissy, in strict confidence, +that no power on earth would ever make a lawyer of him. + +“It isn’t me, my dear Celia,” he wrote; “your impetuous Dan is not +fashioned out of the stuff which makes an attorney. I’ve tried to take +to the law, just as I tried to take to the circulating-library and +fancy-stationery business, to please poor father and mother; but it’s +no use. You mustn’t say anything to the dear old dad, for he’d begin +to be unhappy about the money he wasted on my articles; and before he +discovers that I don’t take to the law, I shall have taken to something +which will make me a rich man, and I shall be able to give him back +his money three times over.” + +And then Daniel Mayfield went on to give a flourishing description +of a very bright and splendid castle-in-the-air which he had lately +erected. He had found a Pactolus in his inkstand, and something better +than a landed estate in a quire of foolscap. He was a genius. The +divine _afflatus_ had descended upon him, and Coke and Blackstone +might go hang. He was a poet, an essayist, an historian, a novelist, +a playwright--anything you like. He had been a scribbler from the +days of his childhood, and of late had scribbled more than ever. And +after the innumerable failures and disappointments which constitute +that Slough of Despond through which every literary aspirant must +pass, he had succeeded in getting an article inserted in one of those +coarsely-written and poorly-illustrated comic periodicals from the +ashes whereof arose that bright Phoenix, _Punch_. And the editor +of the periodical had promised to take further contributions from the +same lively pen, Daniel informed his sister. He had received two +guineas sterling coin of the realm for his lucubration, “thrown off +in half an hour,” he told dear Sissy. And thereupon he entered into a +calculation of his future income, at the rate of four guineas an hour +for all the working-hours in the day. “Messrs. Screwem and Swindleton +don’t get as much for their time, in spite of their genius for running +up the six-and-eightpences,” wrote Daniel. + +There was a mournful smile upon Eustace Thorburn’s face as he read +the letters. He knew the writer so well, and knew into what a poor, +imperfect, dilapidated habitation that air-built castle had resolved +itself. The young man had not deceived himself as to his own powers; he +had only wasted them. The talents had been his, and he had scattered +the precious gifts here and there with a reckless hand--too rich +to fear poverty, too strong to apprehend exhaustion. He had thrown +his pearls before swine, and had allowed his diamonds to be set in +worthless crowns of brass and tinsel. The flower of his youth had +faded, while he, who might have achieved greatness--and that which +seems a deal more difficult for genius to achieve, respectability--was +only Dan Mayfield, a newspaper hack, one of a modern Jacob Tonson’s +“clever hands,” a lounger in taverns, a penniless Bohemian, with +flowing hair, which time was beginning to thin, and eyes at whose +corners the crow had set the ineffaceable print of his feet. + +Eustace replaced the letters with a respectful hand. Was he not +tampering with the ashes of his mother’s youth, and was not every paper +in that desk sanctified by the tears of the dead? + +“Poor Uncle Dan!” he murmured, gently; “poor, kind, sanguine Uncle +Dan!” + + + + + CHAPTER III. + + “TAKE BACK THESE LETTERS, MEANT FOR HAPPINESS.” + + +THERE were several notes and letters in the next packet which Eustace +Thorburn examined, and over these he lingered very long--reading some +amongst them a second time, and returning to reconsider others which he +had put aside after a first perusal. These letters were written on the +thickest and finest paper, and exhaled a faint odour of millefleurs, +so faint as to be only the impalpable ghost of a departed perfume. +Notes and letters were alike dated, but the only signature to be found +amongst them was the single initial H. + +Eustace read them in the order in which they had been written. + + “The author of the book which Miss Mayfield was reading on Tuesday + afternoon has called at the library three times since that day, but + has not had the happiness of seeing her. Will Miss Mayfield be good + enough to write one line, saying _when_ she may be seen? The + writer, who feels himself unworthy of her eloquent praises, most + earnestly wishes for an interview, if only of a few minutes’ duration. + + “_The George Hotel, June 6, 1843._” + +“The author of the book?” repeated Eustace; “what book? Was this man a +writer?” + +This letter had been delivered by hand. The next bore the postmark of +Bayham, that Dorsetshire watering-place to which Daniel’s letters had +been addressed. It was directed to + + “C. M., + _The Post-Office_, + _Bayham_. + + “_To be left till called for._” + +“The seducer’s favourite address,” muttered Eustace, as he unfolded the +letter. + + +“_George Hotel, June 15, 1843._ + + “MY DEAR MISS MAYFIELD,--If you could know the time I have + wasted since Thursday week, in the vain endeavour to obtain a glimpse + of your face, between the sheets of music and coloured lithographs in + your father’s window, you would be more inclined to believe what I + told you on that day. I told you that, if I did not see you, I should + write, and I told you where I should address my letter. You forbade me + to write, and assured me that my letter would lie at the post-office + unasked for. But you, who are so sweet and gentle, could hardly adhere + to such a cruel resolve. I dare to hope that this will reach your + hands, and that you will forgive me for having disobeyed you. + + “I do so much wish to see you again--if only once more--yes, even if + only once. I am haunted day and night by the vision of that sweet face + which I first saw bending over one of my own books. Do you remember + that day?--only three weeks ago; and yet it seems to me as if a new + existence began for me upon that day, and as if I were older by half + a lifetime since then. Sweet tender face, with the dark eyes and + wild-rose bloom, shall I ever learn to forget it? Will it ever cease + to come between me and my books? I was trying to read a grand old + tragedy last night: but you would not let me. You were Electra, and I + saw you bending over your brother’s funereal urn, as I had seen you + bending over the silly volume which you praised so sweetly. The Greek + tragedy reminded me of that doctrine of fatality which we laugh at in + these modern days. And yet surely Destiny has her hand in the fashion + of our lives. I had been writing letters on the day on which I first + saw you, and the people here had given me such wretched pens and paper + that I sallied out to seek better for myself. If they had given me + decent writing materials, I might never have seen you. There are three + other places in the town at which I might have sought what I wanted; + but Destiny laid her hand on my coat-collar, and conducted me to your + father’s library. I went in quietly, with all my thoughts two hundred + miles away from Bayham. I saw you sitting behind the counter, with a + book in your lap; and all my thoughts came back to Bayham, to take up + their abode with you for ever. You were so absorbed in your book, that + you did not hear my modest request for a quire of letter-paper, until + it had been three times enunciated; and I meanwhile had time to read + the title of the book which interested you. I suppose every writer can + read the title of his _own_ book upside-down. You looked up at + last, with such a pretty, shy, innocent look, and the wild-rose bloom + came into your cheeks. And then I asked you what you thought of the + book; and you praised it with such bewitching eloquence, and wondered + who the writer could be. I had heard the book lauded by a great many + people, and abused by more; but I had never until that moment felt + the smallest temptation to reveal myself as the author of it. I + had, indeed, taken great trouble to conceal my identity. But when + _you_ praised my work, I flung prudence to the winds. It was so + delightful to see your bright blush, your bewitching confusion, when I + told you that it was my happiness to have pleased you. O Celia, if you + like my book so well, why is it that you distrust and avoid me? Let me + see you, dear, I implore--anywhere--at any time--under any conditions + you may choose to impose upon me. I wait in this dull town, day after + day, in the hope of seeing you. A hundred duties call me away! and yet + I wait. I shall wait for a week after having posted this letter; and + if I receive no sign from you during that time, I shall leave Bayham, + never again to venture within its fatal precincts. + + “Ever and ever faithfully yours, + “H.” + +There was an interval of six weeks between the dates of the second and +third letters; and there was a considerable alteration in the tone of +the writer. He no longer pleaded for an interview with the stationer’s +daughter. It was evident that he had seen her very often during the +interval; and his letter was full of allusions to past meetings. + + “MY OWN SWEET LOVE,” he began,--(ah, what a change in six + short weeks from “My dear Miss Mayfield!”)--“my ever dearest, there + is _no_ gulf between us, or no gulf so wide that love cannot + bridge it over. Why are you so cruel as to doubt and avoid me? You + know that I love you. You told me that you believed in my love last + night when we stood by the sea in that sweet twilight, and when there + was such a solemn quiet all around us that it would have been easy to + fancy ourselves cast away upon some desert island. You talk to me of + your humble birth,--as if the birth of an angel or a goddess could be + humble,--and you implore me to go back to the world and its slavery, + and to forget this bright glimpse of something better than the world. + I am only five-and-twenty, Celia; and yet I fancied I had outlived + the possibility of such love as that which I feel for you. + + “You told me on Saturday that your father’s anger would be something + terrible if he discovered our acquaintance. I should put an end to all + your fears, dearest, by going straight to Mr. Mayfield and demanding + the right to call you my own for ever, if I were not fettered hand and + foot by social difficulties. You have some cause to doubt me, Celia; + and if you were not the most generous of women, I should fear to speak + frankly. Whenever we are married, our marriage must be kept secret + until my father’s death releases me from bondage. You will think me a + coward, perhaps, when I confess to you that I dare not openly defy my + father; but you can scarcely imagine how complete the slavery of a son + may be when he is an only son, and his father cherishes grand views + for his advancement. I write about these wretched obstacles to our + happiness, my sweet one, because when you are with me I _cannot_ + speak of the difficulties which beset us. My troubles take flight + when those dear eyes look up at me. I forget this work-a-day world and + all its ills; and I could fancy this earth still the home of the gods, + and foolish Pandora’s casket unopened. When I am away from you, all is + changed, and hope only remains. + + “So I shall make no allusion to this letter when we meet, dearest. We + will be children, and fancy this world young again. We will wander + arm-in-arm on that delicious stretch of golden sand beyond the curve + of the bay, and far away from the bustle of the town. We will forget + all our commonplace difficulties and troubles, and that the gods have + abandoned the earth. Ah! if we had only lived in those mythic ages, + when Eros himself might have taken compassion upon our sorrows, and + transported us to some enchanted isle, where our youth and love should + be immortal as his own divinity! + + “Let me see you at seven, dear love. I shall await your coming at + the old spot, and you will easily shake off your confidante and + companion, Miss K. Can you suggest any feminine prettiness which Miss + K. would care to possess? I should like to offer her some testimony + of my respectful admiration; she has been so very indulgent to us, in + her own prim fashion. Let me know whether it is to be a necklace, or + a bracelet, or a pair of ear-rings, and I will see what the Bayham + jeweller can do for us. And now, dearest and loveliest, adieu for a + few hours; and may Phaethon whip his horses to the West, and bring the + sweet sunset hour and the rosy light upon our favourite stretch of + sand. + + “Ever and ever yours, + “H.” + +There were many more letters--less playful and more passionate--the +dates extending over six or seven weeks; and then there was a +considerable interval, and then two letters written in the January of +the following year. The writer had won his dearest Celia’s consent to +a clandestine marriage. She was to leave her home secretly, and was +to go with him to London, where all arrangements had been made. It was +very evident that her consent to this step had not been won without +great difficulty. The letters were full of protestations and promises. +The writer was always repeating how his heart had been wrung by the +sight of her tears, how the thought of her sorrow was almost more than +he could bear. But he had borne it, nevertheless, and had persisted +in his own designs, whatever they might be, for the last letter +contained all necessary directions for the girl’s flight. She was to +meet her lover at the coach-office after dark; and they were to travel +the first stage of the journey by the night-mail, and then take post +across country and get to London by a different road; so that any one +following them, or making inquiries about them on the direct road from +Bayham, would be completely baffled. + +This was all--and yet more than enough for the young man, who sat +brooding over the last letter with a gloomy face. It was such a common +story, and so easily put together: the poor, weak, provincial beauty, +who is lured away from her quiet home under the pretence of a secret +marriage, a marriage which is never solemnized, and was never intended +to be solemnized; then the brief dream of happiness, the noontide +holiday in a new garden of Eden, with the fatal serpent, which is +called Remorse, always in hiding beneath the flowers; and the speedy +close to that fever-dream of bliss--utter despair and bitterness. +This was the hackneyed romance which Eustace Thorburn wove out of the +packet of letters signed with the initial H.; and it was so cruel and +humiliating a story that the young man suffered his weary head to sink +upon the little heaps of paper, and wept aloud. + +He had recovered in some measure from this passion of grief, and was +employed in arranging the letters, when the door was opened, and a man +came into the room. The man was somewhere between forty and fifty, and +was a very remarkable-looking person. He had once been handsome--of +that there was no doubt, but the flower of his youth had faded in some +pernicious atmosphere, and the chilling blasts of a premature autumn +had blighted him while he should have been still in all the glory of +his midsummer prime. He had a fiery red nose, and fiery black eyes, and +dark hair, which he wore longer than was authorized by the fashion of +the day. There were gray hairs amongst those straggling dark locks, and +the man’s moustache had that tinge of Tyrian purple in its blackness +which betrays the handiwork of the chemist. He was a man of imposing +presence, tall and stalwart; and although he lacked the conventional +graces of a modern gentleman, he was not without a certain style and +dash of his own. To-day he wore mourning, and there was an unwonted +softness in his manner. This was Daniel Mayfield; a man whose genius +had been of much use to other people, but of little benefit to himself, +and a man who contemplated the visage of his deadliest foe whenever he +looked in the glass. + +Yes, the only enemy Mr. Mayfield had made was himself. Everybody +liked him. He was your true Bohemian, your genuine Arab of the great +desert of London. Money ran between his fingers like water. He had +been more successful, and had worked harder, than men whose industry +had won for them houses and lands, horses and carriages, plate and +linen and Sèvres china. His acquaintance were always calculating his +income, and wondering what he did with it. Did he gamble? Did he +speculate on the Stock Exchange? Did he consume fifteen hundred a +year in tavern-parlours? Daniel himself could not have answered these +questions. He wondered as much as any one about this mysterious enigma. +He had never known how he spent his money. It went, somehow, and there +came an end to it. Jack borrowed a few pounds; and there was a night’s +card-playing, through which the luck went against poor Dan; and there +was a Greenwich dinner on Tom’s birthday; and he took a fancy to a rare +old copy of the _Diable Boiteux_, on large paper, sold at Willis +and Sotheran’s; and then there were occasional periods of famine, +during which Dan had recourse to a friendly usurer, for whose succour +he ultimately paid something like a hundred and fifty per cent. So the +money went. Daniel was the last person to trouble himself as to the +manner of its departure. When his pockets were empty, he called for +pen, ink, and paper, and set himself to fill them. + +To-day this reckless genius was something less than his accustomed +self. The fierce black eyes were shadowed by a settled sadness of +expression, and the rollicking swagger of the Bohemian was changed to +an unwonted quietness of gait and gesture. He stood for a few moments +near the doorway, contemplating his nephew. The young man looked up +suddenly and stretched out his hands. + +“Dear Uncle Dan!” he cried, grasping the outstretched hands of his +visitor. The fierce grip of his uncle’s muscular fingers was the only +direct expression of sympathy which he received from that gentleman. +The men understood each other too well for there to be need of many +words between them. + +Daniel looked at the open desk. + +“You have been examining your mother’s papers,” he said, in a low +voice. “Have you discovered anything?” + +“More than enough, and yet not half what I must know, sooner or later. +I have never asked you any questions, Uncle Dan. I couldn’t bring +myself to do it. But now--now that she is gone----” + +“I understand you, dear boy. I know little enough myself (for I never +could find it in my heart to question her, God bless her!), but you +have a right to know that little; and if you can put the story together +out of anything you have found there--” said Daniel, pointing to the +desk. + +“I understand the story--I want to know the name of the man!” cried +Eustace, passionately. + +“I have wanted to know that for the last twenty years,” answered +Daniel. + +“Then you can tell me nothing?” + +“I can tell you very little. When I left home to be articled to a brace +of London lawyers, I left the brightest and loveliest creature that +ever a man was proud to call his sister. We were the two only children +of comfortable tradespeople in a quiet little watering-place, you know, +Eustace. We lived in a square, brick-built house, facing the sea. My +father kept a circulating-library and reading-room, and my mother did +something in the millinery line. Between them both they made a very +comfortable income. Bayham was a sleepy, out-of-the-world place, in +which a tradesman who once manages to establish himself generally +enjoys a snug monopoly. I know that we were very well off, and that we +were people of importance in our way. My sister was the prettiest girl +in Bayham. She faded so early, became so complete a wreck, that you can +scarcely imagine what a lovely creature she was in those days. She was +ashamed of the notice her beauty drew upon her, and she had a pretty, +childish shyness of manner which made her all the more charming. A +great, hulking hobbledehoy of eighteen seldom knows what beauty is; +but I knew that my sister was lovely, and I admired and loved her. I +used to boast of her to my fellow-clerks, I remember, and made myself +obnoxious by turning up my uncultivated nose at their sisters. I was so +proud of our little Cely.” + +He stopped and shaded his eyes with his hands for some minutes, while +Eustace waited impatiently. + +“To make a long story short,” continued Daniel, “there came a letter +from my father, written in a very shaky style and almost incoherent +in its wording, to tell me that they were in great trouble at home, +and that I was to go back to them immediately. Of course I thought of +money troubles--we are such sordid creatures by nature, I suppose--and +I fancied there was commercial ruin at home, and thought remorsefully +of all the money I had cost my father, and the little good I had ever +been to him. When I got to Bayham, I found that there was something +worse than want of money in the grief-stricken household. Celia had +disappeared, leaving a letter for my father, in which she told him +that she was going away to be married; but there were reasons why her +marriage and the name of her husband should be kept a secret for some +time; but that he had promised to bring her back to Bayham directly he +was free to reveal his name and position. Of course we all knew what +this meant; and my father and I set out to seek our poor cheated girl, +with as gloomy a despair at our hearts as if we had gone to seek her in +the realms of Pluto.” + +“And you failed?” + +“Yes, lad, we failed ignominiously. There were neither electric +telegraphs nor private detectives in those days; and after following +several false scents, and spending a great deal of money, we went back +to Bayham--my father looking ten years older for his wasted labour. He +died three years after that, and my mother followed him very quickly, +for they were one of those old-fashioned couples who cling to each +other so fondly through life that they must needs sink together into +the grave. They died; and the poor girl, whom they had forgiven from +the very first hour of her offending, was not permitted to comfort +their last hours. They had been dead more than twelve months when I +saw a woman’s faded face flit past me in the most crowded part of the +Strand. I walked on a few paces, with a strange, sudden pain at my +heart, and then I turned and hurried after the woman, for I knew that I +had seen my sister.” + +There was another brief pause--broken only by the short, eager +breathing of Eustace, and one profound sigh from Daniel. + +“Well, boy, she had been living in London for more than three years, +hidden in the same big jungle which sheltered me, and Providence +had never sent me across her path. She had been living as many such +lonely creatures do live in London; managing to exist somehow--now by +means of one starvation work, now another. I went home with her, and +we gathered her few pitiful possessions together, and carried them +and you away with us in a cab, and--you know the rest. She lived with +me until you were old enough to be in danger of suffering from a bad +example; and then she made some excuse for leaving me--poor innocent +soul, she was afraid lest dissolute Daniel should contaminate her +pet-lamb. In all the time that we were together, I forbore to question +her; I always believed that she would confide in me sooner or later, +and I waited patiently in that hope. She told me once that she had made +two journeys to Bayham--the first while her father and mother were +still alive, and that she had waited and watched, under cover of the +winter evening darkness, until she had contrived to see them both; the +second when they were lying in the parish churchyard. This was all she +ever told me. I asked her one day if she would tell me the name of your +father. But she looked at me with a sad, frightened face, poor child, +and said No, she could never tell me that; he was away from England--at +the other end of the world, she believed. This was the only attempt I +ever made to penetrate the secret of your birth.” + +“The letters--the man’s letters--are full of allusions to an intended +marriage. Do you think there was no marriage?” + +“I am sure there was none.” + +Eustace groaned aloud. For a long time he had suspected as much as +this; but to hear his suspicions confirmed by the opinion of another +was none the less bitter. + +“You have some reason for saying as much, Uncle Dan?” he asked, +presently. + +“I have this reason, Eustace: if my sister could have come back to +Bayham, she would have come. The sorrow must have been a very bitter +one which kept her away from her father and mother.” + +The young man made no reply to his uncle. He walked to the window, and +looked out at the dreary street, where the perpetual organ-grinder, +who seems to grind all our sorrows in a musical mill, was grinding on +at the usual pace. For the common world the thing which he played was +an Ethiopian melody; but Eustace never afterwards heard the simple air +without recalling this miserable hour, and the story of his mother’s +luckless life. + +He came back to his kinsman. Heaven pity him, the law denied him even +this human tie, and it was only by courtesy he could call this man +his uncle. He came away from the window, and flung himself on honest +Daniel’s breast and sobbed aloud. + +“And now take me to my mother’s grave,” he said presently. + + + + + CHAPTER IV. + + UN MENAGE A DEUX. + + +HAROLD JERNINGHAM lived in Park Lane. To say this, and to say in +addition to this that it was his privilege to inhabit a snug little +bachelor dwelling, with bay-windows from the roof to the basement, is +to say that he was one of those favoured beings for whom this world +must needs be a terrestrial paradise. There are mansions in Park +Lane, stately and gigantic--mansions with lofty picture-galleries, +and staircases of polished marble, and conservatories which roof-in +small forests of tropical verdure: but the glory of this western +Eden lies not in them. Are there not mansions in Belgravia and +Tyburnia, in Piccadilly and Mayfair? Palaces are common enough in +this western hemisphere, and the roturier may find one ready for +his occupation, seek it when he will. But it is only in Park Lane +that those delicious little bachelor snuggeries are to be found, +those enchanting toy-houses, “too small to live in, and too big to +hang at your watch-chain,” as Lord Hervey said of the Duke’s cottage +at Chiswick--those irregular little edifices, with bow-windows, +and balconies, and miniature conservatories breaking out in every +direction, and with a perfume of the country still about them. + +The house which Harold Jerningham occupied when he favoured the +metropolis by his presence was one of the most enchanting of these +enviable habitations. The house had been a pretty old-fashioned cottage +with bow-windows, when Mr. Jerningham took it in hand, but in his +possession it had undergone considerable change. He had transformed the +rustic bows into deep roomy bays, and had thrown out balconies of iron +scroll-work, whereon there flourished bright masses of flowers, and +ferns, and mosses, amidst which no eye save that of the nurseryman’s +minions ever beheld a faded leaf. He had built mysterious and spacious +chambers at the back of the small dwelling, on ground that had once +been a garden; and beyond these chambers you came suddenly upon a shady +quadrangle roofed-in with glass, where there was a wonderful tesselated +pavement, which had been transported bodily from a chamber in Pompeii, +and where there were ferns and cool grasses, and a porphyry basin of +water-lilies, and the perpetual plashing of a fountain. + +Mr. Jerningham had furnished his house after his own fashion, without +regard to the styles that were “in,” or the styles that were “out.” +One rich carpet of dark crimson velvet-pile lined the house from the +hall to the attics, like a jewel-casket; and the same warm and yet +sombre tint pervaded the window-hangings and the walls. The ordinary +visitor found very little to admire in Mr. Jerningham’s drawing-room. +Thin-legged tables and chairs adorned with goats’ heads and festoons +of flowers; a shabby little writing-table, considerably the worse for +wear, but enlivened by patches of china, whereon rosy little Cupids +frisked and tumbled against a background of deep azure; a generally +untidy effect of scattered bronzes and intaglios, gold-and-enamel +snuff-boxes and bonbonnières, Chelsea tea-cups, and antique miniatures; +and on the walls some tapestry, just a little faded, with the eternal +shepherds and shepherdesses of the Watteau school. The connoisseur +only could have told that the spindle-legged chairs and tables were +in the purest style of the Louis-Seize period; that the shabby little +writing-table with the _plaques_ of old Sèvres had belonged to +Marie Antoinette, and had been sold for something over a thousand +pounds; that the bronzes and intaglios, the miniatures and bonbonnières +were the representatives of a fortune; and that the somewhat faded +tapestry was the choicest work of the Gobelins, after designs by +Boucher. + +Harold Jerningham was fifty years of age, and one of the richest men +in London. The poorer members of the world in which he lived talked +of him as “a lucky fellow, by Jove, and a man who ought to consider +himself uncommonly fortunate never to have known what it was to be +hard-up, or to have a pack of extravagant sons sucking his blood, +like so many modern vampires, confound ’em!” Harold Jerningham had +neither sons nor daughters, and lived in a bachelor’s snuggery. But +Harold Jerningham was not a bachelor. He had married a very beautiful +young first cousin some seven years before, and the union had not +been a happy one. It had only endured for two years, at the end of +which time the husband and wife had separated, without open scandal +of any kind whatsoever. Mr. Jerningham had chosen that occasion for a +long-postponed journey to the East, and Mrs. Jerningham had quietly +withdrawn herself from the toy-house in Park Lane to another toy-house +on the banks of the Thames, within two or three hundred yards of +Wolsey’s old palace at Hampton. But let man and wife arrange their +affairs never so quietly, the world will have its own ideas, and +make its own theories on the subject. The world--that is to say, Mr. +Jerningham’s world, which was bounded on the south by Great George +Street, Westminster, and on the north by Bryanstone Square--told +several different stories of Mr. Jerningham’s marriage. The beautiful +young cousin had possessed the real Jerningham pride, which was the +pride of the Miltonic Lucifer himself, wherefore the peaceful union +of two Jerninghams was an impossibility, said one faction. But the +majority were inclined to believe Mr. Jerningham in some manner guilty. +Neither his youth nor his middle age had been spotless. Too proud and +too refined to affect coarse vices or common dissipations, he had done +more mischief and had been infinitely more dangerous than the common +sinner. The master of a ruined household had cursed the name of Harold +Jerningham, and innocent children had grown up to blush at the mention +of that fatal name. For three-and-forty years of his life he had been +a bachelor, and had laughed at the men who bartered their liberty +for the sake of a wife’s monotonous companionship and the prattle of +tiresome children. He had not been a deliberate sinner--indeed, the +deliberate sinners seem to be a very small minority, and even the +man who poisons his wife with minim doses of aconite will tell the +gaol-chaplain that he was a poor, weak creature, led away from time to +time by the impulse of the moment. The Tempter took him by the hand, +and drew him on, foot by foot, to his destruction. There is a thick and +blinding fog for ever hanging over that fatally easy slope which leads +to Avernus, whereby the traveller cannot perceive what progress he has +made upon the dreadful downward road. + +Mr. Jerningham had not been a deliberate sinner. He was not +altogether vile and wicked. He was too selfish a man not to wish for +the approbation of his fellow-man; he was too much of a poet and +an artist not to perceive the loveliness of virtue. He was not an +honourable man, but he knew that honour was a very beautiful thing +in the abstract, and he had a vague sense of discomfort when he acted +dishonourably--just such an unpleasant sensation as he would have felt +if he had worn an ill-fitting coat or an ill-made boot. He was not +without benevolence, and could even be generous on occasion; but in +all his useless life he had never sacrificed his own enjoyment for the +good of another. He had taken his pleasure--all was told in those few +words--and if pleasure was only to be had at the cost of evil-doing, +he had shrugged his shoulders regretfully, and paid the price. He +had gathered his roses, and other people had been inconvenienced by +the thorns. The roses were still blooming about his pathway, but Mr. +Jerningham no longer cared to pluck them. A man may grow tired even +of roses. His marriage had been the result of one of those generous +impulses which redeemed his character from utter worthlessness. A +kinsman had died in Paris, in the extreme depths of patrician poverty, +leaving behind him a very lovely daughter, and a letter addressed to +Harold Jerningham. The lovely daughter came to London, unattended, +to deliver the letter, which she presented with her own hands to the +elegant bachelor of three-and-forty. If she had not been a Jerningham, +there is no knowing what story of sin and folly this interview might +have inaugurated. But she was the daughter of Philip Jerningham, and +the direct descendant of a Plantagenet prince; so, after a brief +acquaintance, she became the wife of the eldest representative of her +family, and the mistress of that delicious little house in Park Lane, +to say nothing of parks and mansions, farms and forests, in three of +the fairest counties in England. + +She ought to have considered herself the most fortunate of women, said +the western world. Whether she did so consider herself or not, it +speedily transpired that she was not a happy woman. For a few months +the world had the pleasure of beholding Mr. Jerningham in frequent +attendance on his wife. He handed her in and out of carriages, he went +out to dinner with her, he stood behind her chair at the Opera, he was +even seen occasionally to drive her in his unapproachable mail-phaeton; +and this seemed the perfection of domestic felicity. Then there came an +interregnum, during which the Jerninghams were rarely seen together. +They led an erratic existence, the rule of which seemed to be that Mr. +Jerningham should be at Spa when his wife was in London, and that Mrs. +Jerningham should be on her way to one of the country houses whenever +her lord came to town. Then all at once arose the awful rumour that +the Jerninghams had parted from each other for ever. Elegant gossips +discussed the subject at feminine assemblies, and men talked about it +in the clubs. Why had the Jerninghams separated? Was he to blame? Was +she? Had Jerningham, the irresistible, dropped in for it at last? Or +had he been playing his old trick, and had the little woman plucked up +a spirit, and cut him? It is to be observed that Mrs. Jerningham was +amongst the tallest of her sex; but your genuine club-lounger would +call Juno herself a little woman. + +It became generally understood before long that Harold Jerningham had +himself alone to thank for the failure of his matrimonial venture. He +made his name somewhat notorious just at this time in conjunction with +that of a French opera-dancer; so Mrs. Grundy shrugged her shoulders +deprecatingly, and pitied Mrs. Jerningham. “A superb creature, my dear; +the very model of propriety; and a thousand times too good for that +dissipated wretch, Harold Jerningham,” exclaimed the sagacious Mrs. +Grundy. + +While the world made itself busy with the story of her brief married +life, Emily Jerningham endured her wrongs and sorrows very quietly in +the toy-villa at Hampton. She had an ample income settled on her by +her husband; and as she had been steeped in poverty to the very lips +before her marriage, it is scarcely strange, perhaps, if she forbore +to complain of Mr. Jerningham’s conduct, and elected to talk about +him--whenever intrusive people compelled her to mention his name--as +her friend and benefactor. The world lauded her generosity, but +considered itself injured by her reticence. + +For the first twelve months after the separation, Mrs. Jerningham +secluded herself from all society except that of a few chosen friends, +and devoted herself to the cultivation of orchids at the toy-villa. +She started with the intention of passing the remainder of her days +amongst the chosen friends and the orchids; but she was young and +handsome, rich and accomplished, and society had chosen to exalt her +into a social martyr. So people penetrated the depths of her suburban +retreat, and beguiled her to return to the world, of which she had seen +so little. She went into society, tolerably secured from the hazard +of meeting her husband, who had his own particular circle, and that +a very narrow one. Emily Jerningham was liked and admired. She was +a beauty of the Juno type, and the Jerningham pride became her. It +was not by any means an intolerable pride, never parading itself on +unnecessary occasions--pride defensive, and not pride aggressive; the +pride of a prince who will be hand-and-glove with his dear Brummell, +but who will order Mr. Brummell’s carriage when the beau is insolent. +Mrs. Jerningham was very popular. She had all the charm of widowhood +without its danger. There was even the faintest flavour of Bohemianism +about her position, spotless though her reputation might be. She was +a saint and martyr who gave nice little dinners, and drove the most +perfectly appointed of pony-phaetons. It was only by an indescribable +something--a tranquil grace of bearing, a subdued ease of manner, +a pervading harmony in every detail of her surroundings, from the +unobtrusive colouring of her costume to the irreproachable livery +of her servants--that strangers could distinguish her from other +unprotected women of a very different class. + +Young men were ready to worship and adore her. “If the gurls a fellah +meets were like Mrs. Jerningham, a fellah might make up his mind to go +in for the domestic,” said young Tyburnia to young Belgravia. “S’pose +the odds are against Jerningham going off the hooks between this and +the first spring-meeting, so as to give a party a chance with Mrs. J. +herself,” speculates young Belgravia, dreamily. + +Mrs. Jerningham had enjoyed her quasi-widowhood some two years, when +Mrs. Grundy’s attention was called to a new phenomenon in connection +with that lady. + +It was observed that whoever was bidden to the nice little +dinner-parties at the toy villa, there was one gentleman whose presence +was a certainty. It was observed that whenever Mrs. Jerningham dropped +in for an hour or two at any fashionable assembly, this gentleman was +sure to drop in at the same hour, and to depart, listless and weary, +as soon as he had handed that lady to her carriage. He was not one of +the butterflies, but had been admitted amongst those gorgeous creatures +on account of certain gifts and qualities which the butterflies +were able to appreciate. He was a powerful satirist, something of a +poet, and the editor of a fashionable semi-political, semi-literary +periodical, entitled “The Areopagus.” He was five-and-thirty years +of age, as handsome as an intellectual man can venture to be, and as +elegant as a Lauzun or a Hervey. He had chambers in the Temple, a +hunting-box in Berkshire, the _entrée_ to all the best houses in +London, and a hundred country houses always open to him. The Bohemians +of the press watched his career with envious eyes, and would have +rejoiced infinitely to catch him tripping on the difficult editorial +pathway, so that they might band themselves together to rend him in +pieces. The first time these watchful enemies obtained any advantage +over him was when the western world began to whisper that he had +fallen in love with Mrs. Jerningham. Then the literary Bohemians, the +“Cherokees” and “Night-birds,” and all the little clubs and cliques in +London, set up their malicious chatter; and men who had never beheld +Emily Jerningham’s face speculated upon her conduct and gloated over +the anticipation of some tremendous scandal which should terminate in +Laurence Desmond’s expulsion from the Eden of fashion. + +The clubs and cliques were doomed to disappointment. No tremendous +scandal ever arose. After a little discussion, the world agreed to +accept this Platonic attachment between the lady and the editor as the +most delightful of social romances. Mrs. Jerningham had taken care +to provide herself with a perfect dragon in the way of an elderly +widowed aunt, whose husband had been in the Church--and, sheltered +thus, she was free to bestow her friendship on whom she pleased. Time, +which sanctifies all things, gave a kind of legality to the Platonic +attachment; and in due course it became an understood thing that Mr. +Desmond would never marry until Harold Jerningham’s death should set +Emily free. + +If any rumour of this romantic friendship reached Mr. Jerningham’s +ears, he received the tidings very quietly. No _preux chevalier_ +ever spoke of his liege lady in a more reverential spirit than that +in which Harold Jerningham spoke of his wife. It seemed as if these +two people had agreed to sound each other’s praises. Emily declared +her husband to be the most noble and generous of men; Harold lauded +his wife as the purest and most honourable of women. Malicious people +shrugged their shoulders and hinted at hypocrisy. + +“Jerningham was always a Jesuit,” said one; “he is the Talleyrand of +social life. And if you want to arrive at what he means, you must take +the reverse of what he says.” + +“If they are both such delightful creatures, what a pity it is they +couldn’t live peaceably together!” said another. + + + + + CHAPTER V. + + THE EDITOR OF THE “AREOPAGUS.” + + +AMONGST the contributors to the literary periodical of which Mr. +Desmond was the editor, Daniel Mayfield occupied no insignificant +position. The most genial and good-natured of men was at the same time +the most ferocious and acrimonious of critics. When an innocent lamb +was to be led to the slaughter, it was Daniel who assumed the butcher’s +apron and armed himself with the deadly knife. When a wretched +scribbler was, in vulgar phraseology, to be “jumped upon,” honest +Daniel put on his hobnailed boots, and went at the savage operation +with a will. The days were past in which the Edinburgh reviewer +apologized with a gentle courtesy before he ventured to express his +dissent from the opinions of a lady historian. Criticism of to-day +must be racy, at any price. Daniel’s strong arm smote right and left, +cleaving friend and foe indiscriminately asunder; and if it was on a +woman’s head that the blow descended, so much the better. The woman +should have been at home studying her cookery-book, or working that +domestic treadmill, the sewing-machine, instead of jostling her betters +in the literary arena. “Hark forward, tantivy!” cried Daniel the +critic; “run her down, trample her in the mud, make an end of her! She +would quote Greek, would she? Why, the creature can barely spell plain +English! She would prate of gods and goddesses, whose name she picks +haphazard from a cheap abridgment of Lemprière. She would discourse +of fashion and splendour, forsooth, who was “born in a garret, in a +kitchen bred.” Daniel the man was tender and courteous in his treatment +of all womankind; but Daniel the racy essayist knew no mercy. + +Daniel the pitiless was one of Mr. Desmond’s most valued coadjutors, +and had received many offers of kindly service from that gentleman; but +the literary Bohemian had refused all. + +“A government appointment for me!” he cried, when the popular editor +offered to use his influence with a Cabinet minister in Daniel’s +favour; “why, I should languish in the trammels of an official life. +Regular hours and a regular salary would be the death of me in less +than six months. I was born a dweller in tents, my dear Desmond, and +my instincts are naturally disreputable. I can work seven hours at a +stretch, and produce more copy in a given time than any man in London. +I have been locked up in a room with a wet towel, a bottle of Scotch +whiskey, and half a ream of paper, and have written five-and-thirty +pages of a popular magazine between sunset and sunrise. But I must take +it out in vagabondage afterwards. I am of the stuff which makes your +Savages and your Morlands, and I shall die in a sponging-house when my +time comes, I have no doubt. Nevertheless, I will ask a favour of you +some day, Desmond; but it shall be for somebody better worth serving +than I am.” + + +Within a week of Eustace Thorburn’s return, Daniel Mayfield presented +himself at the editor’s chambers. He had done no work for the +_Areopagus_ for some little time, and Mr. Desmond was glad to bid +him welcome. + +“I’ve been thinking of looking you up for the last three weeks, Dan,” +said the editor, striking his pen across half a page of proof. “What +second-hand twaddle this man writes! We want the sterling metal of your +stylus, old fellow.” + +“Any new victim to be flayed alive?” asked Daniel. “I’ve been rather +seedy for the last week or two, and perhaps a little of the old work +will set me right again.” + +“You’ll find plenty of material there,” answered Mr. Desmond, pointing +to a heap of cloth-covered volumes. “What have you been doing with +yourself since I saw you last? No good, I suppose,” he added, without +looking up from the proofs on which he was operating. + +“Well, no, not much good. It’s a business I shouldn’t care about +repeating; but it’s a business that must be done--it must be done, +Desmond, sooner or later, in every man’s life, I suppose.” + +The unwonted gravity of Daniel Mayfield’s tone surprised his friend. +Laurence Desmond looked up from his desk, and for the first time +perceived the change in his erratic contributor’s costume. + +“In mourning, Dan! I’m sorry to see that,” he said, gently. + +“Yes; I have buried the dearest friend I ever had--my only sister. God +bless her! The _Freethinker’s Quarterly_ people won’t get me to +do any more deistical articles for them, Laurence. I’m a bad fellow +myself, with no opinions in particular about anything in heaven or +earth. How should I have opinions? I’ve sold ’em too often to other +people to have any left for myself. But I like to think that _she_ +is in heaven, and I’ll never write a ‘rational’ essay again as long as +I live.” + +The two men shook hands upon this, _without_ effusion--as it is +the habit of Englishmen to do. + +“And now to business,” said Daniel. “You once offered to get me a +government appointment, and I told you I wasn’t fit for one. I haven’t +forgotten your offer, or the kindness that prompted it. My sister +has left a son--a lad of three-and-twenty. He is clever, honourable, +ambitious, and indefatigable; but, except myself, he has neither friend +nor relative in the world. He has been a tutor in a great Belgian +academy, and the principal will certify his merits. If you can serve +him, Desmond, you will do me treble service.” + +“What kind of thing do you want for him?” + +“A private tutorship, or the post of secretary to a man worth serving. +The lad is a fair classical scholar, and a good linguist. He is a great +deal more than this into the bargain; but I am so fond of the fellow +that I am afraid of praising him too much.” + +“Bring him here to dine to-morrow night,” said Mr. Desmond; “I’ll think +the matter over in the meantime. I dare say I shall hit upon something +to suit him. Why doesn’t he take to this sort of thing?” + +The editor of the _Areopagus_ laid his hand upon the proofs. + +Daniel Mayfield shook his head sadly. + +“Anything but that, Desmond. I don’t want him to be a publisher’s +hack. I don’t want him to put my worn-out old shoes on his brave young +feet, and tread the miry road along which I have travelled. I don’t +want him to make merchandise of his best and purest feelings while the +stock lasts him, and deal in sham sentiments and spurious emotions +when the real ones are worn out. I don’t want him to weep maudlin +tears over philanthropic leaders, or work himself into an unreal fury +over the denunciation of a political measure he has barely had leisure +to consider. I don’t want him to sell his convictions to the highest +bidder--to be Conservative one day, Liberal the next, and Radical the +day after. He’s too good for my work, Desmond, and he’s too good for +my company. When he was old enough to be injured by a bad example, his +poor mother took him away from me--though I was sorry enough to part +with the little rascal, and it went to her heart to give me sorrow. She +is gone now, Desmond, and it is my duty to see that the boy comes to no +harm.” + +“Has he any of your talent, Dan?” + +“He has something better than my talent, sir,” answered Mayfield, +gravely. “The lad has the soul of a poet, and is destined to be one. +There is real genius there, sir--not the marketable trash I deal in. He +has written verses which have brought the tears into my eyes; consider +that, sir--tears from such a hardened wretch as your Daniel should +count for something. I want some quiet, comfortable position for him, +in which he will have a little leisure to think his own thoughts. I +want him to bide his time; and some day, when his intellect has ripened +and mellowed, the divine breath will inflate his nostrils, and we +shall have a new poet.” + +“I think I can get him exactly the sort of thing you want,” answered +Laurence Desmond; “but I must first make sure he is fit for it. Bring +him at half-past seven to-morrow, and let me see if he is worthy of +your praises. You’ll take those books, and send me copy to-morrow, eh?” + +Daniel nodded, took the books under his arm, shook hands with his +friend, and departed--departed, with peace and goodwill and all +Christian feelings in his big, generous heart, to annihilate the +luckless wretch who had written a stupid novel. + + +Daniel and Eustace dined in the Temple the next evening, and sat late +over their wine in the summer twilight. Laurence Desmond was delighted +with the young man. He led him on to talk freely on his own sentiments +and opinions, while Daniel listened with a fond smile to his nephew’s +eloquent discourse. It was pleasant to Mr. Desmond, whose lot had +been cast in that serene and exalted sphere in which there was no +such thing as emotion--it was very pleasant to the popular editor to +come in contact with this fresh, young nature, and to discover that, +even in this age of high-pressure, a man may retain youthfulness of +spirit, faith in his fellow-creatures, pure and poetic aspirations, and +childlike simplicity of feeling, after his twenty-third birthday. + +“The young men I know have been used up at nineteen,” thought Laurence; +“and there are hardened wretches of five-and-twenty more _blasé_ +than Philip of Orleans at forty-eight.” + +From talking of his opinions, Laurence Desmond led Eustace on to talk +of himself and his own experiences; and before Daniel and his nephew +departed, the young man’s future was in some measure provided for. + +“A very old and dear friend of mine,” said Mr. Desmond, “has for some +time been in want of a secretary and amanuensis to assist him in the +completion and publication of a great work to which he has devoted +many years of his life--a work which he calls the _History of +Superstition_, and which, I believe, is as dear to him as his only +child. I have been trying to find him the kind of person he wants, but +have hitherto failed most completely. There are plenty of shallow, +flippant young fellows who would like the position well enough, for +the salary will be a decent one, and my friend is the best and kindest +of men; but, until now, I have met no one capable of giving him the +assistance he wants. Your knowledge of languages and your Villebrumeuse +reading--which seems to have been very wisely chosen,--exactly fit you +for the position. If you can tolerate a quiet life in the heart of the +country, I can offer you the situation, Mr. Thorburn, and may conclude +all arrangements with you, on my own responsibility.” + +“If your friend is a gentleman, I say ‘Done!’” cried Daniel Mayfield, +heartily; “nothing could be better suited to this boy.” + +He laid his hand caressingly on the young man’s shoulder as he spoke. + +“And you’ll be safe out of my way, lad,” he murmured, softly, “and I +shall lose my bright-faced boy--so much the better for him, so much the +worse for me!” + +“My friend is something more than a gentleman,” answered Laurence +Desmond. “He is a _preux chevalier_. He is the descendant of a +noble old Spanish family--a Frenchman by birth and education, and half +an Englishman by long residence in England. He lives in a picturesque +old house near Windsor, and on the banks of the Thames; such a spot as +one scarcely expects to see out of Creswick’s pictures. I don’t see +much of him, for my life is too busy for friendship; and--and there +are other reasons that keep us asunder,” added Mr. Desmond, with some +slight embarrassment of manner. + +“Can you exist in the country, Mr. Thorburn?” he asked presently. + +“I love the country so well that I can scarcely exist in London, +except for the sake of my uncle’s society.” + +“Which is about the worst thing you can have!” growled Daniel. + +“Ah! you are a poet, and a poet should live amongst lonely woods and +sylvan streams. Well, you will be delighted with my friend, Theodore +de Bergerac, and still more delighted with the place he lives in. I’ll +write to him to-morrow, and tell him I’ve found the blue diamond of the +nineteenth century, a young man who does not affect to be old. Can you +go to him immediately?” + +“M. de Bergerac will no doubt wish to hear from my late employer, the +principal of the Parthenée,” Eustace answered, after some hesitation. + +“Not at all. I will be responsible for the character and qualifications +of my old friend’s nephew. There need be no delay on that account,” +said Laurence. + +“There need be no delay on any account, then,” exclaimed Daniel; “the +boy is ready to leave London to-morrow, if necessary.” + +“I beg your pardon, Uncle Dan. Unless M. de Bergerac really wants me +immediately, I should be glad of a week’s delay,” said Eustace, with +considerable embarrassment. “I have some business to do before I leave +London.” + +“Business!” cried Daniel; “what business?” + +“I will tell you all about it by and by, Uncle Dan.” + +“My friend has waited six months, and he can afford to wait another +week,” said Laurence, good-naturedly. “Come and see me when your +business is finished, Mr. Thorburn.” + +“Good-night, and thank you, Desmond,” said Daniel, wringing his +friend’s hand with muscular heartiness. “I told you that a favour to +him is thrice a favour to me; and if ever I have a chance of proving +that I meant what I said, I won’t let the opportunity slip.” + +When the two men had left the Temple, and were walking homewards +through quiet back-streets, Daniel Mayfield turned sharply upon his +nephew. + +“What the deuce is to keep you in London for a week, Eustace?” he asked. + +“I want to go to Bayham, Uncle Dan, to make some inquires that may help +me.” + +Daniel laid his hand on the young man’s arm. + +“Drop that, lad,” he said, earnestly. “I’ve thought about it for +twenty years to no end. No good will ever come of it--nothing but +disappointment and vexation, shame and sorrow. Forget the past, and +start fair; the world is all before you. You have got your chance now. +Desmond is a friend worth having; and this man De Bergerac may be a +good friend too, if you serve him well. Wipe out the memory of that +old story, my lad. Your father has chosen to ignore you; ignore him, +and cry quits. The day may come when he’ll hear your name, and regret +that he has forfeited the right to call you his son. Don’t waste your +thoughts upon him, Eustace. The man may be dead and gone for aught we +know. Let him rest.” + +“And my mother’s wrongs--are they to be forgotten? Do you remember +the other evening in Highgate Cemetery, Uncle Dan? You thought I was +praying, perhaps, when I knelt by my mother’s grave; but I was not +praying. On my knees beside that newly laid turf I swore to be revenged +on the man who blighted the life of her who lies beneath it. I must +find that man, Uncle Daniel, and you must help me to find him.” + +“Was there no clue to his identity to be found in those letters?” asked +Daniel, after a pause. + +“Only one, and that a very slight one. He had written a book,--a book +which seems to have been popular, and which my poor mother was reading +when first he saw her. Can you remember any particular book which +attracted attention in ’43?” + +“No, my lad; my memory is not good enough for that. There are people +who might be able to remember, and there are literary papers that might +help you. But scarcely a year goes by in which there are not a dozen +books that make some slight sensation. This must have been a woman’s +book, though,--a poem or a novel, or something of that kind,--or your +mother would scarcely have been reading it.” + +“The book was published either anonymously or under some _nom de +plume_,” said Eustace; “and even if I discover the right book, I may +not be able to identify it with the writer. So you see the clue is a +very poor one. I shall go to Bayham, Uncle Dan. Accident may help me to +some better clue than the letters afford. The man was staying at the +George Hotel; I may make some discovery there. He speaks of a Miss K., +a friend and confidante of my mother. Can you tell me who she was?” + +“Sarah Kimber!” cried Daniel,--“undoubtedly Sarah Kimber, a girl whose +father kept a linendraper’s shop, and who went to school with Celia. My +poor sister and she were fast friends; but I never could endure her. +She was a lank, lantern-jawed, whitey-brown girl, and I always thought +her deceitful. Good God! how the old time comes back as you talk to me! +I can see the little parlour at Bayham, and those two girls seated side +by side on an old-fashioned chintz-covered sofa, with an open window +and a green trellis-work of honeysuckle and jasmine behind them. I +can see it all, Eustace, as fresh and vivid as a picture at a private +view--Celia so bright and lovely; that Kimber girl an unconscious foil +to her beauty.” + +“Do you know if this Miss Kimber is still alive?” + +“No, lad. Bayham may lie fathoms deep beneath the sea, like the mystic +city of Lyonesse, for anything I know. I have never been there since +the day of my mother’s funeral.” + +“I shall try to find Miss Kimber, Uncle Dan. She may be able to tell me +a great deal.” + +“As you will, dear boy. If you took poor old Dan’s advice, you would +let the story rest. But youth is fiery and impetuous, and must take its +own course. If ever you do find _that man_, Eustace, let me know +his name, for he and I have a heavy reckoning to settle.” + + + + + CHAPTER VI. + + AT BAYHAM. + + +EUSTACE THORBURN went to Bayham, and took up his quarters at the George +Hotel. The Dorsetshire watering-place had once been fashionable; but +its fashion had departed, and an atmosphere of decay pervaded the +grandeurs of that bygone day. Happily, the departure of fashion, +which had never had any hand in the loveliness of the bay and the +broad yellow sands, had robbed the Bayham shore of no grace or charm. +The changing opal waters retained their brightest hues, though only +west-country gentry came to look upon them. The golden sands were +golden still, though the crystal chandeliers and sconces which had once +adorned the assembly-room had been sold by auction, and the room itself +converted into a Baptist chapel. + +There had been many changes at the George within the last twenty years. +That once popular establishment had been superseded by a gigantic, +stuccoed railway-hotel--itself a dismal failure--and the last two +proprietors had been insolvent. Eustace Thorburn sought in vain for a +visitors’ book dated ’43. All such books had been sold for waste paper +years ago, and the only creature to be found in the hotel who had +belonged to the same establishment in the year ’43 was a semi-idiotic +ostler. Eustace abandoned all hope of information in this quarter, and +went out into the little seaside town to look for the house in which +his mother’s childhood had been spent. + +He found the place easily enough. It was still a circulating-library +and reading-room, and as he lingered before the gaily decorated window, +Eustace Thorburn could fancy that nameless stranger, who dated his +letters from the George, peering between the lithographs and sheets of +music in the hope of seeing Celia Mayfield’s fair young face. + +“Why could not an honest man have fallen in love with her?” he asked +himself, savagely. “Why must it needs be a villain who was first to +discover the charm of her innocent beauty?” + +He went into the shop. There was a girl sitting behind the counter, +half hidden by a high desk, and busy with some shred of needlework. The +young man pictured his mother sitting in the same spot, and all of a +sudden the face and figure of the girl grew dim and blurred before his +eyes. He was fain to look about him for a few moments, as if seeking +some special object, before he could trust himself to speak. Then he +asked for some stationery, and contrived to occupy the girl for a +considerable time, while he selected what he wanted, and questioned her +about the townsfolk. + +“Was there any person of the name of Kimber still living in Bayham?” he +asked. The girl told him that there were several Kimbers: Mr. Kimber, +the plumber, in New Street; Mr. Kimber, the house-agent, at the corner +of the Parade; and Kimber and Willows, the drapers, in High Street. + +“The person I wish to find is, or was, a Miss Kimber--Sarah Kimber,” +said Eustace; “and I believe her father was a draper.” + +“Ah!” exclaimed the damsel; “then that is the Miss Kimber who married +Mr. Willows. Mr. Willows was head-assistant to old Mr. Kimber, who +died five years ago. He left all his money and his business to Miss +Kimber--being his only daughter, you see, sir; and as soon as she left +off her mourning, she married Mr. Willows. He is a very handsome man, +Mr. Willows, and nearly ten years younger than Miss Kimber that was, +and they do say Mr. and Mrs. Willows do not live happily together.” + +Eustace went straight from the library to the establishment of Messrs. +Kimber and Willows. It was a big, glaring shop, with a great deal of +plate-glass and gilding, and a gaudy display of dresses and ribbons, +bonnets and parasols. A smirking young man pounced immediately upon +the stranger, asking what he might please to want; and by him Eustace +was conducted to Mrs. Willows, who sat at a desk at the end of the +shop, in a perfect bower of ribbons and millinery. She was attended +by a bevy of damsels, who were busied in the construction of caps +and bonnets, and whom she addressed with extreme acidity of tone and +manner. She was not a pleasant-looking person; and if old Mr. Kimber’s +money had changed into withered leaves on her inheritance of it, she +could scarcely have seemed to have profited less by the dead man’s +wealth, so pinched and hungry was her aspect. + +She favoured Eustace with the nearest approach to a smile of which her +thin lips were capable, but regarded him with evident suspicion when +she heard that he wished for a private interview. + +“If you are travelling in the drapery line you needn’t trouble yourself +to show your patterns,” she said, decisively; “we have dealt with +Grossam and Grinder for the last twenty years, and we never take +goods from strangers. There are some new people on the other side of +the way who may wish to deal with you, if you’ll give them long credit +and take their bill for your goods, I dare say; but I don’t recommend +you to trust them. When people come into a town without sixpence of +capital, and try to undersell an old-established house, they have only +themselves to blame if they get into the _Gazette_. However, +_I_ say nothing; it’s no affair of _mine_. The increase of +our business is wearing me to the grave, and I should be the last +to begrudge new people a chance, however unfair _their_ way of +proceeding may be.” + +Eustace had been quite unable to stay this torrent of indignation +against the people on the other side of the street; but when Mrs. +Willows paused to take breath, he informed her that he was not a +commercial traveller, and that he had nothing to do with drapery, +either wholesale or retail. + +“I very much wish to obtain a few minutes’ conversation with you in +private,” he said, glancing towards the young milliners, who had +honoured him with a furtive scrutiny while Mrs. Willows was not looking +at them, and had returned to their work with an exaggerated appearance +of industry directly they felt her cold gray eyes upon them. + +That important personage hesitated. It was rather an agreeable +sensation to have a handsome young man pleading for a private +interview, and she looked towards the other end of the shop, where her +husband was displaying cotton prints to an elderly customer of the +housekeeper class, with the faint hope of awakening in that gentleman’s +breast some twinge of the jealousy which so often racked her own. + +“If you will step upstairs to the drawing-room,” she said to Eustace, +“you can explain your business without interruption.” + +Eustace followed Mrs. Willows to an apartment on the first floor, an +apartment which was made splendid by a great deal of bead-work, and by +occasional glimpses of a very gaudy Brussels carpet; but the splendour +whereof was somewhat subdued by chaste coverings of brown holland and +crochet-work. + +The linendraperess seated herself in one of the holland-covered +arm-chairs, and arranged the rustling folds of her stiff silk dress. +Having settled herself deliberately thus, she sat looking at Eustace +with her hard gray eyes, waiting for him to speak. + +And this had been his mother’s friend, this hard, prosperous, vulgar +woman! they had been girls together, and had shared all manner of +simple, girlish pleasures! Eustace looked at the woman sadly, thinking +how wide a difference there must needs have been between the two girls, +and how little real sympathy or womanly tenderness could have ever +softened the heart of Mrs. Willows. + +“I have to apologize for this intrusion,” he said, after a pause; “for +the business that brings me to Bayham is a personal matter, which can +have very little interest for you. I am anxious to obtain all possible +information respecting a family of the name of Mayfield, and more +especially Miss Mayfield, the only daughter of a librarian in this +town, who, I am given to understand, was very intimate with you some +four-and-twenty years ago.” + +The lady’s mouth, tight and hard at the best of times, tightened and +hardened itself to an abnormal degree as Eustace said this. A pale fire +kindled in the cold, gray eyes, and the stiff shoulders and elbows +adjusted themselves anew with increased stiffness. + +“Yes,” said Mrs. Willows, “I knew Celia Mayfield.” + +“You and she were friends, I believe?” + +“We were _companions_,” replied Mrs. Willows, with spiteful +promptitude. “Even at this distance of time I should blush to own that +Celia Mayfield and I were ever friends.” + +The whitey-brown complexion of the draper’s wife seemed incapable of +anything approaching a blush; but Eustace’s face glowed with an angry +crimson as the woman said this. + +“May I inquire _why_ you would be ashamed to confess your +friendship for Miss Mayfield?” he asked, his voice tremulous with +suppressed passion. It was so difficult to sit quietly by while a +spiteful woman belied his mother’s name; it was so difficult to refrain +from crying out: “I am her son, and am ready to uphold her as the best +and purest of women!” And to own himself her son, would have been to +betray the sad secret of her hapless life. + +“May I ask what reason you have to be ashamed of your girlish +friendship?” he repeated, in steadier tones, when he had waited some +moments for Mrs. Willows’ reply. + +“Because Celia Mayfield’s conduct was shameful,” answered the woman; +“though, goodness knows, it’s not much wonder that a girl who had been +spoiled, and petted, and flattered, until she didn’t know whether she +stood on her head or her heels, _did_ turn out badly. Mr. and Mrs. +Mayfield made a fool of their daughter. _I_ was an only daughter, +and an only child, too, for the matter of that; but my father was a +sensible man, and _I_ was never brought up to read novels and +think myself a beauty. I kept house for my poor pa when I was fourteen +years of age; and if there was a halfpenny wrong in my accounts, he +didn’t hesitate to box my ears. And I feel the benefit of it now,” +added Mrs. Willows, triumphantly. “This business would not be what it +is if my father’s property had been left to a frivolous person.” + +“And you considered Miss Mayfield a frivolous person?” + +“Frivolous to a degree that makes me wonder I could ever waste my time +in her company.” + +“Will you do me the favour to tell me all you know of the circumstances +under which Miss Mayfield left her home?” said Eustace. “I can assure +you that my motive for making these inquiries is no idle or unworthy +one. You will be doing me a great service if you will give me what +information you can in relation to this subject.” + +“If you put it in that manner, I will tell you all I know,” answered +Mrs. Willows, “though it is not a pleasant subject--especially to me, +who might have suffered by Celia Mayfield’s conduct. Goodness knows +what people might have said of _me_ if my pa’s position in Bayham +hadn’t been what it was.” + +There was a pause, during which the woman rearranged her silk dress, +and then she began her friend’s story with a stony face, and extreme +deliberation of manner. + +“I suppose you are aware that Celia Mayfield ran away from her home +with a gentleman called Hardwick, or at least calling himself Hardwick, +who was staying at the George Hotel when he became acquainted with +her, and who it was easy to see was very much above her in station. +Indeed, how she could ever bring herself to think that he would marry +her, would be a mystery to me if I did not know how her vanity had +been fostered and her looks praised by people who ought to have known +better. She did think so; and when I warned her of the danger her +imprudent conduct might lead her into, she persuaded me to think +the same. ‘Very well, Celia,’ I said; ‘you know best; but it isn’t +often that a gentleman whose pa is in parliament marries the daughter +of a stationer.’ He had let it slip that his father was a member of +parliament, and he had let many things slip which proved that he +belonged to rich people and to high people.” + +“He was a young man, I believe?” + +“Five-and-twenty at most, and very handsome.” + +As Mrs. Willows pronounced these words, her gaze became suddenly fixed, +and she sat staring at her visitor with an expression of extreme +astonishment. + +“Perhaps you are related to him?” she said, interrogatively. + +“I never saw him in my life. But why do you ask the question?” + +“Because you are like him. I didn’t notice the resemblance until just +now; for it’s so long since I saw him that I’d almost forgotten what he +was like. But as I spoke to you his face came back to me. Yes, you are +very like him. And you are really not related?” + +“I tell you again, Mrs. Willows, that I never saw this man in my life. +It is the Mayfield family in which I am interested. Pray go on with +your story.” + +The beating of his heart quickened as he spoke. He had discovered +something at least from this woman. It was something to know that he +resembled the nameless father who had abandoned him. + +“The likeness between us is a birthright of which he could not rob me,” +thought the young man; “or he would have deprived me of that, as well +as of the rest.” + +“I believe the gentleman had written a book,” resumed Mrs. Willows: +“a story, or a novel, or something of that kind. Celia went on about +it in her childish way. It was the most beautiful story that ever +was written, and so on, she said. My poor pa forbade me reading +novels, and I had to give my solemn promise that no book from the +circulating-library should ever enter this house, before he would +allow me to walk out with Celia Mayfield. When she began to read the +book, she didn’t know anything about the author; but while she was +reading it, he happened to go into the shop, and she went on about +the story to him as she had gone on about it to me; and I suppose his +vanity was flattered by her childish talk, for there never was such a +childish creature about books and flowers and birds. He told her that +he had written the book; and then he wrote to her, first a note, which +was delivered by his servant, who hung about the library until he got +the opportunity of giving it to Celia unknown to any one; and then +letters, which were addressed to the post-office: and she showed me the +letters. I said, ‘Celia, these are not letters which a prudent young +woman ought to receive.’ But it was no use talking to her. The first +letter that was sent to the post-office lay there nearly a fortnight +before she went to fetch it; and all that time she went on about it +to me when we were out walking; for he had told her he should write, +and address his letter to the post-office. Should she fetch it, or +shouldn’t she? I said, ‘If you take my advice, Celia, you will have +nothing to do with it. People who mean honourably don’t send their +letters to post-offices.’ But one evening, when we were coming home +from a walk, we passed through the street where the office is; and she +let go my arm all of a sudden, ran into the shop, and came out with a +letter in her hand. As soon as we turned the corner into a bye-lane, +where there was nobody about, she kissed the letter, and went on like a +mad thing, and then she read it to me; and she was as proud and happy +as if a king had written to her.” + +“God help her, poor innocent soul!” murmured Eustace, tenderly. + +“I don’t know what you call _innocence_,” exclaimed the matron, +with severity; “but if you consider _that_ the conduct of a +prudent young woman, I do not. The end of the story proved that I was +right. Celia and I had been in the habit of walking on the sands in a +sheltered place beyond the bay, where there was very little company, +and where two young women could walk together without being followed +or stared at. We walked there almost every evening when it was fine, +and the gentleman at the George used to meet us there, and talk to +Celia. I told her that I disapproved of these meetings; but she had a +way of talking people over, and she talked me over, and made me believe +what she believed. If the gentleman really wanted to marry her, there +could be no harm in her meeting him in the company of a young female +friend. Things went on like this for some time, and then, when the +summer season was quite over, the gentleman went away. Celia fretted a +great deal; but she told me he was coming back in the winter to see her +father and to explain everything, and there’d be an end to all secresy. +I said, ‘Celia, don’t build upon his coming back. It’s not my wish to +make you unhappy; but, if you take _my_ advice, you’ll forget all +about him.’” + +“But he did return?” + +“I suppose he did, though I never saw him after the summer. I gave +Celia Mayfield good advice, and she wasn’t pleased to hear it. We had +some words upon the subject; and as my pa’s position was very superior +to Mr. Mayfield’s, it was not likely I should suffer myself to be put +upon by his daughter. When Celia wanted to make friends with me, I +declined; and from that time we never spoke. I sat under Mr. Slowcome, +at the Baptist chapel in Walham Lane, and Celia Mayfield attended the +parish-church; so we didn’t often meet. When we did meet, Celia used +to look at me in her childish way, as if she wanted to be friends; but +I made a point of looking straight before me. I heard nothing more of +the Mayfields until one morning in the winter, when a young person came +into our shop and told me that Celia had run away from home.” + +“Was the manner of her leaving generally known?” + +“It was not. The Mayfields kept things very close. There was a great +deal of talk, as you may suppose, and people had their opinions; but +nothing was ever known for certain; and from that time to this I have +never set eyes on Celia Mayfield.” + +“And you never will,” said Eustace, solemnly. “She is dead.” + +Mrs. Willows murmured an expression of surprise. Her hard, grim face +softened a little, and when she spoke again, her tone was less severe. + +“I am sorry to hear that,” she said. “I never expected to meet Celia +Mayfield again; but I am sorry to hear that she is dead.” + +Even for this hard nature the sanctity of the grave had some softening +influence. The linendraper’s wife could afford to think a little more +indulgently of the spoiled and petted beauty whose loveliness had +been so bitter to her, now that she knew her rival had passed into +those shadowy regions where earthly charms count for so little. Some +faint touch of tenderness, some memory of her own youth--when Bayham +was gayer and more pleasant, and even the sands and the sea had +seemed brighter to her than now--came back to the grim, purse-proud +tradeswoman, and one solitary tear glittered in her stern, gray eye. +She brushed it away quickly, ashamed of the human emotion. + +“You can tell me nothing more respecting the man who lured your friend +from her home?” + +“Nothing. Celia told me that the name by which we knew him was an +assumed one, but she never told me his real name. I don’t believe that +even she knew it. She told me that he was very grand and very rich; and +it was easy for any one to discover from his conversation that he was a +gentleman, and had travelled half over the world.” + +“Do you remember the title of the book that he had written?” + +Mrs. Willows shook her head. + +“In one or more volumes?” + +“In one volume. I have seen it in Celia’s hand. Mr. Hardwick gave her a +copy of it, bound in green morocco.” + +“Had Miss Mayfield any other friend than yourself?” Eustace asked, +after a brief pause. “Was there any one else in whom she would have +been likely to confide?” + +“No one else. Society in Bayham is very limited. Mr. Mayfield was so +wrapped up in his daughter, and had such high ideas, on account of +being the son of a clergyman, that he scarcely thought any one good +enough to associate with her. I was Celia’s only female friend.” + +“I hope you will think more tenderly of her in future,” said Eustace, +gently; “she is now beyond all human praise or blame, and the turf +will lie none the less lightly above her grave, let the world judge +her never so harshly. But I, who knew her and loved her, would like to +think that the companion of her youth remembered her kindly.” + +A second solitary tear bedewed the eye of Mrs. Willows. + +“I’m sure I bear no malice,” she said, in an injured tone. “If Celia +and I were at variance for some months before she left, it was more +her fault than mine, for I gave her the best advice, and gave it with +the best intentions. But I am quite willing to forget all that. Do you +know if the gentleman who called himself Mr. Hardwick really did marry +her? People in Bayham concluded, by her not coming back, that she was +altogether deceived and deluded by his fine promises; and it was said +her father’s heart was broken by her conduct. He died very soon after, +as you may be aware; and his wife did not long survive him.” + +“I know very little of your friend’s sad story,” answered Eustace; “but +I know that her life for twenty years was as pure as the life of an +angel--as self-denying as that of a saint.” + +There was no more to be said. Eustace thanked Mrs. Willows for her +compliance with his wishes, and took his departure. He went out into +the High Street of Bayham very little wiser than when he had entered +the prosperous emporium of Kimber and Willows. He walked slowly along +the quiet street, and found himself by and by on the outskirts of the +town, strolling onward in an objectless manner, and meditating upon his +mother’s broken story. + +When he paused for the first time to look about him he was face to face +with the sea. Behind him a terrace of white houses reflected the full +blaze of the southern sun. Before him lay the bay--a wide expanse of +tawny sand, with pools of sunlit water glimmering here and there. + +The tide was low, and the sandy amphitheatre lay open to the foot of +the pedestrian. On one side of the bay rose a tall cliff; on the other +a stretch of sand lay beyond the jutting line of rocks. Eustace crossed +the bay in this direction. He wanted to see the place in which Celia +Mayfield had walked with her false lover, and he knew that this lonely +stretch of sand beyond the rocks must be the spot alluded to in his +father’s letters, and mentioned that day by Mrs. Willows. + +It was a fit spot for a lovers’ trysting-place--remote from the voices +of the little town, and yet within the sound of church-bells, which +took a silvery tone as they floated hitherward across the rippling +water. Summer visitors to Bayham rarely penetrated beyond the screen of +rocks which sheltered the bay, and this smooth stretch of sand was not +often invaded by the spades and barrows of noisy children or the feet +of idle damsels. It was an enchanted cove, which might have been sacred +to the sea-nymphs, so seldom did human creatures disturb its poetic +calm. + +Here Eustace lingered for some time, still meditating the story of his +mother’s youth, and with strangely intermingled feelings of tenderness +and anger in his heart. How could he ever think of _her_ with +sufficient love and pity? How could he ever think of her destroyer +without considering how he should avenge her wrongs? + +“So trusting, so childlike, and deceived so cruelly! What a villain he +must have been! what an unutterable villain!” thought Celia’s son, +as he contemplated the scene of his mother’s love-story. It should +have been such a sweet idyll--a modern fairy tale of rustic beauty and +princely truth and chivalry--and it had been instead so dark a history +of falsehood and shame. + +The sun was low in the west when Eustace left that lonely sea-shore. He +had been walking there for hours, indifferent alike to the progress of +time and to the fact that he had eaten nothing since nine o’clock that +morning. And after leaving the sands he did not return immediately to +his hotel, but made his way to the parish churchyard, guided by the old +Norman tower, which stood out in sombre relief against a rosy evening +sky. There was just light enough to serve him in his search amongst +the tombstones; nor was he long finding that which he sought--a tall, +white head-stone, standing near the low wall which bounded the crowded +burial-place. The churchyard stood on rising ground; and the irregular +roofs and chimneys of the town, with here and there a glimpse of +foliage, and the broad purple sea for a background, made no unlovely +picture in the soft evening light. + +Eustace knelt upon the grass beside the simple grave, and in that pious +attitude read the inscription on the head-stone: + + Sacred to the Memory + OF + EUSTACE THORNBURN MAYFIELD, + YOUNGEST SON OF THE LATE SAMUEL MAYFIELD, CURATE OF + ASHE, IN THIS COUNTY, + Obiit April 3, 1846, ætat. 52; + AND OF + MARY CELIA, + HIS WIDOW, SECOND DAUGHTER OF THE LATE MR. JAMES + HOWDEN, FARMER, + Obiit February 1, 1847, ætat. 49. + This stone is erected by their affectionate children. + +“Have I any right to think of them as my grandfather and my +grandmother?” the young man asked himself. “The law would tell me no. +But I take my stand upon a higher law than that made by political +economists, and claim the right to call these my kindred, and to avenge +their injuries.” + + + + + CHAPTER VII. + + MR. JERNINGHAM’S GUEST. + + +THEODORE DE BERGERAC and Harold Jerningham were friends of thirty +years’ standing. There was some distant relationship between them--some +remote cousinship arising from the marriage of an exiled Jerningham +of Jacobite principles with a De Bergerac, in the reign of George +the Second. But this inscrutable cousinship had nothing to do with +the friendship between the two men. _That_ was a sincere and +spontaneous affection, such as exists now and then between two people +as different from each other as it is possible for creatures of the +same species to be. Harold was ten years younger than his friend in +actual years, and his senior by a century in all qualities of heart and +mind. The elder man retained the freshness and simplicity of a child +at sixty years of age; the younger had parted with every attribute +of youth before the advent of his twenty-fifth birthday. Both were +highly gifted: but one had scattered the treasures of intellect on +every road, and wasted the powers of his brain in a hundred ignoble +pursuits; while the other had enriched his mind unconsciously in the +calm seclusion of a scholar’s retreat. An angel might have read the +innermost secrets of Theodore de Bergerac’s heart, and would have +found therein no taint of earthly grossness; but there had been times +when devils might have rejoiced in the thoughts of Harold Jerningham. +And yet the two men were friends, and had preserved an unbroken +friendship for nearly thirty years. A Philip of Orleans, steeped to +the very lips in the poisonous teaching of a Dubois, will in the hour +of his deepest degradation respect the purity of childhood. Before +the stainless robes of perfect innocence the most hardened profligate +bows his head and covers his face, ashamed of the vices he is wont to +be proud of--softened, melted, vanquished by that invincible purity. +Thus it had been with Harold Jerningham. For this world-weary, hardened +sinner the simple-minded scholar was sacred as a child. De Bergerac +knew nothing of that Jerningham of the bachelor’s house in Park Lane: +Jerningham the irresistible, the man who was an exile from the houses +of careful fathers and devoted husbands; the man whose life would have +furnished subject-matter for half a dozen romances and more than one +tragedy. When Harold Jerningham entered his friend’s house he put away +the baser half of himself. A little cynical, a little bitter, a little +hard and worldly he must needs be, even in that innocent society; but +Jerningham the free-thinker and the profligate melted into thin air on +the threshold of Theodore de Bergerac’s dwelling. + +The two friends did not meet very often, though the house which +Theodore de Bergerac had occupied ever since his first coming to +England stood on the border of Mr. Jerningham’s park in Berkshire,--a +grand old park, in the midst of which there was a great house that +had once been splendid, but about which there was now a certain air +of shabbiness and decay. How should a mansion preserve its warmth +and grandeur when the master crossed its threshold so rarely, and +during his brief visits preferred a couple of dingy chambers on the +ground-floor to that spacious suite of apartments, with panelled walls +and painted ceilings, in which his forefathers had held their state? + +M. de Bergerac was a warm partizan of the Orleans family, and in the +revolution of ’48 had turned his back upon his father’s country. He had +come straight to England, where he had found a fair young English wife +in the person of a Berkshire curate’s eldest daughter, and had accepted +the hospitality of his friend, Mr. Jerningham, so far as to occupy an +old-fashioned farm-house on the borders of the park--a house which had +been built for a bailiff in the days of some departed Jerningham, but +which had long fallen into disuse. Harold would fain have persuaded the +exile to take up his quarters in the big house, with all the lazy, +over-fed retainers at his disposal; but De Bergerac ridiculed his +friend’s offer. + +“What should I do with your thirty bedchambers,” he wrote in answer to +Harold’s letter of invitation, “and your great corridors, along which +one could drive a coach-and-pair, and your housekeeper in a stiff silk +gown, and all your grooms and hangers-on? I would as soon live in +the palace of Versailles. Even kings and queens grow tired of their +palaces, you will perceive; and the man who has sunk millions in the +creation of a Versailles must needs seek domestic comfort at Marly. +You cannot endure your howling wilderness yourself,--you, who have +been accustomed to splendid habitations,--and yet ask me to take up my +abode in your thirty bedchambers, and abandon myself to the tyranny +of your awful housekeeper. No, my dear Jerningham; give me the little +Trianon--that tumble-down old farm-house you showed me last year, in +the midst of a quaint Dutch flower-garden--and I shall be happy. All I +want is a room big enough and dry enough to hold my books, and I will +not envy your gracious Queen her pompous château of Windsor.” + +So the scholar and lover of books came to the farm-house, which Harold +Jerningham had taken care to make weather-tight and snug before the +exile’s arrival. De Bergerac recognized the handiwork of his friend in +the arrangement of this comfortable English hermitage. There were a few +rare old Dutch pictures, a small head by Holbein, a highly-finished +little bit by Canaletti, hanging in the oak-panelled parlour, which +no farm-bailiff had been privileged to gaze upon. There were quaint +little inlaid cabinets between the windows, with that delightful +shabbiness of aspect and mellow depth of tint which distinguishes the +treasures of Christie and Manson’s saleroom from the glaring freshness +of modern marqueterie. And on the cabinets were fragile odds and ends +of Derby and Worcester, Chelsea and Battersea, intermingled with those +dingy-looking bronzes and intaglios which the soul of the collector +loveth. And the biggest room in the old farm-house, once a kitchen, had +been lined from floor to ceiling with carved oaken shelves, for the +reception of the newcomer’s library; while the great yawning fireplace, +in which hinds and shepherds had supped their evening ale, and roasted +their sturdy legs, in the days that were gone, was now lined with +encaustic tiles, and furnished with a modern-antique grate of black +iron-work and glittering steel. When Harold Jerningham was pleased to +be generous, he obeyed his impulses in a princely fashion. He was not +a good man; but his vices and virtues were alike of the _vieille +roche_, and were instinct with a kind of dignity. Let Lucifer fall +never so low, he is the prince of devils still, and will show himself +grander in his debasement than fiends of meaner rank. + +The country-people in the neighbourhood of Greenlands were ready to +receive M. de Bergerac with open arms: but he did not often avail +himself of their friendly hospitality. He was serenely happy among his +books and manuscripts, in the chamber which his friend had beautified +for him, and had no thought of seeking any other kind of happiness. The +great scheme of his life, the very beginning and end of his existence, +was the completion of a book which was to supply an existing void in +the world of books. To this achievement he devoted his days and nights, +choosing all his reading with reference to his one great scheme. The +subject possessed unfailing fascination for the mind of the scholar. +It was an inexhaustible quarry, rich with gems of purest water; and +De Bergerac dug patiently for the precious jewels, content to let the +years slip past him unmarked, save by the slow growth of his mighty +treatise. When the work seemed ripening, and the hour of its completion +near at hand, the scholar trembled, for he remembered Gibbon’s walk in +the moonlit garden at Lausanne, and the desolation which came down upon +the worker when he felt that his task was finished. Happily, the hour +of completion, which De Bergerac dreaded, was very slow to come. There +was an end to the history of ancient Rome; but it appeared, at times, +as if there could be no end to the history of superstition. + +The exile had passed his fortieth birthday, and had been but six +months in England, when he married a fair young English girl--in a +fit of absence of mind, said the ignorant, who tried to account for +this unexpected alliance. But Harold Jerningham fathomed the secret of +his friend’s marriage. The girl was the daughter of a curate, an old +Orientalist, of whose reading De Bergerac had gladly availed himself +for his beloved work, and in whose pleasant cottage he had therefore +been a constant visitor. The curate’s daughter had been charmed out of +the dullness of her life by the society of the courteous exile; and +from looking up to him with reverential tenderness as a mentor and +friend, she had unconsciously grown to regard him with a deeper and +more tender feeling than that gentle, womanly friendship. A tone, a +look, an imperceptible something not to be defined by words, revealed +this feeling to De Bergerac before the girl was fully aware of it +herself; and could he be less than grateful, this exile of forty? could +his own heart fail to yield to so insidious and innocent an attack? +Hence arose this marriage, which was so great a wonder to those who had +only a superficial knowledge of the Frenchman’s character. + +It was a union of perfect happiness. M. de Bergerac’s modest income +was more than enough for the Arcadian existence which he and his +young wife led in the Berkshire farm-house. The curate’s daughter was +country-bred, and was a fitting mistress for such an establishment. She +brought the garden to the rarest perfection of floricultural beauty, +and she distinguished herself by the administration of a wonderful +poultry-yard. She was as happy as the summer day was long among her +simple duties; while he, who in her eyes appeared the greatest of human +scholars and the most adorable of men, sat alone in the sacred chamber, +which she entered always with subdued footsteps, as if it had been a +religious temple. It was her pride and delight to be useful to the man +she loved. She worked for him, and managed for him, and hoarded for +him; and he found himself all the richer, even in the matter of sordid +cash, for her sweet companionship. The student, looking up from his +books and manuscripts, beheld cows grazing in the rich meadow before +his window, and was told that the cows were his, and that the produce +of those stupid creatures could be transformed into money, with which +rare old black-letter volumes and manuscripts of unspeakable value +could be bought in London sale-rooms. + +For seven years Theodore de Bergerac tasted the perfection of calm +domestic happiness, and then the cup was snatched away from him. The +bright face faded; the indefatigable housewife was fain to rest from +her beloved labours. Little by little the bitter truth--which at first +seemed almost an impossibility--came home to the stricken heart of the +husband, and he knew that he was doomed to survive his young wife. +The dreaded hour came, and she left him--very lonely without her, +but, happily, not quite alone. She left one little girl--a fairer and +brighter likeness of herself; and upon this young life the widower set +his hopes of earthly happiness. + +It was only natural that his unfinished book should become so much the +dearer to him by reason of this great human sorrow. The stricken heart +refused all comfort, but the agonized mind sought to beguile itself +into forgetfulness of pain. The student went back to his books, and +buried himself more deeply than of old amidst the ruins and ashes of +the past. His days were spent at his desk. His soul, sorely stricken +in this lower world of hard realities, wandered away and lost itself +in the infinite regions of mythic poetry. As the years crept past him +unawares, and his daughter blossomed into early womanhood, and the same +bright face peeped in again at his window which had shone upon him in +the brief happiness of his married life, it almost seemed to him as if +that terrible anguish, that desolating loss, had been no more than a +dreadful dream. + +To this man’s quiet home Harold Jerningham came sometimes as to a haven +of shelter. He was wont to drop in upon the modest Berkshire household +unexpectedly, with the bronze of an Oriental sun still upon his face, +or a fur coat, in which he had travelled from St. Petersburgh, hanging +loosely on his arm. He came hither for rest, for a brief interval of +repose from “the fever called living;” and it was here, in the house +that had been built for his great-grandfather’s bailiff, that the owner +of three country-seats and an almost inexhaustible revenue found the +nearest approach to happiness which he had experienced during the last +twenty years. + + +Eustace Thorburn’s arrangements for beginning his new life were of the +simplest order. He found a letter from M. de Bergerac waiting for him +on his return to London--such a letter as only a gentleman can write--a +letter which placed the secretary at once on the footing of a friend, +and gave him promise of friendly welcome. + +The young man spent the last night of his stay in London with Daniel +Mayfield. The uncle and nephew dined together at one of those snug +little haunts which the literary Bohemian affected, and Daniel’s soul +expanded under the influence of Chambertin at nine shillings a bottle. +He had received a cheque in payment of his latest Massacre of the +Innocents in the way of reviewing, and it was in vain that Eustace +tried to arrest his extravagant orders. + +“The best you can do for us in the shape of dinner, Tom,” he +said to the waiter, with whom he was on the familiar terms of an +_habitué_; “and--let me see the wine-card: yes, Dancer sticks to +his old prices, I perceive. What nethermost circle can that man expect +to inhabit in the under world, I wonder? Johannisberg with the oysters, +Tom: if you were well up in your Charles de Bernard, you would be aware +that Chablis is the mistake of the half-educated diner. After the +soup you may give us a bottle of the old Madeira--_the_ Madeira, +remember--no modern French concoction, flavoured with burnt-sugar. +We will not go into sparkling, Tom--sparkling is the luxury of the +vulgar; wines that leap and bubble are the pet delusion of the _oi +polloi_; we will therefore confine ourselves to the borders of the +Rhine. If your still Moselle is worthy of a gentleman’s attention, you +may bring us a bottle. The Chambertin I know to be tolerable; so after +dinner we will stick to _that_.” + +Never before had Daniel Mayfield introduced his sister’s son to any of +the haunts in which the best hours of his own careless life had been +wasted. The young man was as temperate as a girl, and the dinner-giver +had his carefully chosen wines to himself. But as Mayfield grew gay and +eloquent with the warming influence of the Burgundian hillside, Eustace +Thorburn’s spirits rose in sympathy with his companion. For there is a +subtle influence in wine which communicates itself to the man who does +not drink as well as to the man who does; and he must be slow and dull +of soul who can sit amongst the worshippers of Bacchus and not feel the +fiery presence of the god, let his own beverage be no stronger than +water. + +“I have never brought you here before, and I should not have brought +you here to-night, Eustace,” said Daniel, and he passed his newly +filled glass of Burgundy beneath his nostrils, with the gesture of a +connoisseur; “I should not have brought you here to-night, my lad, +pleasant though it is to me to see your bright face across the rosy +vapour of the South, if you and I were not going to part company. +This is Bohemia, Eustace--the land in which jolly good fellows go to +the dogs in their own jolly way--and I’m not quite certain that it’s +the worst way a man can travel to his ruin. We spend our money, and +we live in fear of sheriff’s officers, and we die in sponging-houses; +but, after all, we escape many of the heartburnings which your very +respectable people suffer. We are no shams--we live our own lives; +and are ourselves alone--no phantasmal simulacra of other men. We +take existence lightly--share our own good fortune with our needy +brothers--and envy no man his luck. But if you have poetic aspirations +and noble ambitions, if you want to be a great and a good man, keep +clear of us--no great man ever issued from our ranks. We have talent, +we have sometimes even genius; but we never achieve. Jones is of the +stuff that makes a noble historian; but Jones must have his night in +his pet tavern, and a five-pound note at the service of the Pythias of +the hour; so he writes showy essays for the magazines. Smith turns his +unfinished picture to the wall, in the hour when he was budding into +a Rubens, to paint pot-boilers for the fashionable dealers--a young +man and woman in a boat off Twickenham, with spinachy foliage and a +flimsy blue sky, spotted with little ragged dabs of the palette-knife; +or a girl in a striped petticoat playing croquet against a background +in which you may count the threads of the canvas. Browne might write +a comedy which would remind the critics of Sheridan; but he cannot +afford to polish the graceful turns of his dialogue or study the unity +of his design, so he does a bad adaptation of a bad French vaudeville, +and gets twenty pounds down on the nail for his labour. We possess +the elements of greatness; but we can’t wait--we want ready money. +The man with a wife and seven children may struggle out of poverty +into greatness; but for the jolly good-fellow, with half a dozen +boon-companions, enduring success is an impossibility.” + +Eustace had never before heard his uncle speak so seriously of himself +and his own set. + +“You may do great things yet, Uncle Dan,” he said, earnestly; “let me +give up this Berkshire engagement, and stop in town to work with you. +Cut all the boon-companions, and let us go in earnestly for honest hard +work. I want to see your name allied to some perfect book; your talent +gets frittered away upon anonymous reviews and essays. Oliver Goldsmith +wrote the _Vicar of Wakefield_, and you know he was something of +a Bohemian.” + +“He was a Bohemian, who lived among such men as Johnson and Burke and +Reynolds,” answered Daniel; “Bohemia has degenerated since those days. +And how many more stories, as perfect as the _Vicar of Wakefield_, +might _not_ simple-hearted Noll have written if he had not been +something of a Bohemian! Your great workers are jog-trot stay-at-home +creatures. William Shakespeare was a respectable citizen, who saved +money, and settled himself comfortably in his native town before he was +my age, and sued his friend for a trifling debt, and made a will in +which his domestic carefulness reveals itself by allusions to bedsteads +and such-like household furniture; whereby you may perceive the +legendary character of all popular records of the poet’s youth, for the +man who began life by stealing deer and holding horses would never have +developed into the bequeather of bedsteads. So no more, lad; I shall +hide my light in anonymous essays and reviews as long as I live, for I +shall always be in want of ready money.” + +“Unless I can make a fortune big enough for us both, Uncle Dan,” said +the young man, hopefully. At three-and-twenty one fancies it such an +easy thing to make a fortune. All the high-roads to the temple of fame +radiate before the feet of youth, and it seems a mere matter of choice +whether one is to be Shakespeare or Bacon. + +“If you made the fortune of a Rothschild or a Pereira, you would never +make me a rich man,” cried Daniel. “Turn the waters of the Pactolus +into my pocket to-day, and before a month is out there will not be left +one vestige of the golden river. If I were a second Midas, endowed with +the power of changing vulgar wooden chairs and tables into so much +solid gold, my friends and companions and the tavern-keepers would take +the chairs and tables, and leave me a pauper. I must go my own way, +dear boy; and the further my road lies from yours the better for you. +Let me hear from you sometimes; and even if your letters are left +unanswered, think that they are carried in the pocket nearest your +Daniel’s heart, and that they are his consolation when the world goes +ill with him.” + + + + + CHAPTER VIII. + + GREENLANDS. + + +IT was the drowsiest hour of a drowsy August afternoon when Eustace +Thorburn made his way on foot from the Windsor terminus to the +bailiff’s house at Greenlands. He had put his luggage into a great +lumbering fly, which was to crawl after him to his destination; and +he went on foot through the rich pastoral country, with the grandest +castle in the world looming upon him at every turn, in all its proud +array of battlemented tower and terrace, keep and chapel. He went to +begin his new life, and the country through which he went seemed to +him more beautiful than his dreams of Paradise. Remember that he had +newly come from the sandy flats of Flemish Flanders, and that the +fairest landscape he had beheld of late was a row of lindens sheltering +a sluggish canal, and a herd of cattle browsing upon sun-burnt +table-lands. The shadow of a bitter grief was about and around him, +and all the sunlight and beauty of the outer world seemed very dim and +remote to him--something fair and beautiful in which he had no actual +part, like a picture seen from afar off. But the influence of all this +outward loveliness penetrated to his poor desolate heart, and warmed +and melted it. His thoughts amidst these woods and pastures could +never be so bitter, it seemed to him, as they had been in the stony +quadrangle at Villebrumeuse. He thought of his mother as he walked +slowly along the quiet roads and byways; but he no longer brooded +gloomily upon her wrongs on earth as he had been wont to brood. He +fancied her happy in heaven. + +His way to Greenlands led him by the low meads athwart which the +Thames winds like a silver ribbon, for the great neglected park of +which Harold Jerningham was owner lay on the border of that delicious +river. The way was very lonely, and somewhat intricate. Eustace had +occasion to stop at more than one cottage-door, and to ask his way of +more than one rosy-faced rustic matron, who came from her wash-tub to +answer his inquiries, sometimes accompanied by a toddling child, that +peered curiously at the stranger from between the lattice-work of a +garden-gate. The way was long and lonely; but at last, when the sun was +low, the pedestrian came to a gate in a stout oak fence, and knew that +he was on the threshold of Harold Jerningham’s domain. The gate was +unlocked, as the country people had told Eustace that it would be. The +gate opened into the wildest region of the park; but at the end of a +deep glade the traveller saw the great red-brick mansion, massive and +stately, on the summit of a grassy slope. + +“A noble domain,” he thought, as he stopped to contemplate the scene +before him. “Perhaps the heir to it is a young man with a father who is +prouder of him than of lands or houses, or wealth or name. I can fancy +the festivities and rejoicings when _he_ came of age. There were +great tents on the lawn yonder, I dare say, and oxen roasted whole, and +monster casks of ale set running.” + +Eustace Thorburn’s imagination filled in all the details of that +possible picture. He could see that imaginary heir walking slowly +through a joyous crowd, with his arm linked in his father’s. It was +upon the image of that father the young man’s mind dwelt with a strange +melancholy yearning, half sorrow, half bitterness. How the proud face +softened into tenderness, and the eyes grew dim with tears, as the +father listened to the shouts and clamour of an admiring throng! This +fatherless young man could so vividly imagine the love which must exist +between a father and his son. Perhaps he imagined some more exalted +feeling than ever did exist in human breasts. Perhaps he exaggerated +the joys of such an affection; as the parched traveller in the desert +may imagine unutterable deliciousness in a draught of the water that is +spilt and wasted by heedless hands at the public fountain of a city. + +As the traveller drew near to the red-brick mansion the vision of the +possible festivity melted away, for he saw that no festival could have +been celebrated in that place for many a year gone by. The palace of +the Sleeping Beauty, buried deep in the innermost recesses of a forest, +and forgotten by waking mankind, could have scarcely been more lonely +or neglected of aspect than this old Berkshire mansion. The rabbits +frisked across the young man’s pathway as he went through the shadowy +arcades, and the golden plumage of a pheasant glimmered here and there +among the fern and underwood. Everywhere there was neglect and decay. +The grass grew long and rank, and even in the gardens, where the +handiwork of the gardener was visible, and where Eustace saw two feeble +old men mowing the grass, it was evident that the work was only half +done. + +The path which Eustace had been directed to take led him past the +gardens, which were only divided by an invisible fence from the park. +He could have gone to the bailiff’s house by the high-road had he +chosen; but this short-cut across the park saved him nearly a mile, +and was a pleasanter way. To Eustace it was unspeakably delightful. +The solemn quiet of the place imparted a new charm to its natural +loveliness. A turn in the path brought him presently upon a wide +expanse of smooth turf, shadowed here and there by great oaks and +beeches, and across this wooded lawn he saw the river, gleaming +bright and blue, athwart a fringe of trembling rushes. He paused for +a few moments, transfixed by the tranquil loveliness of this English +landscape, steeped in the rosy light of a summer evening. + +“I suppose the owner of the place is a poor man, who cannot afford to +occupy it,” he thought; whereby it may be seen how a stranger, who +judges by appearances, is likely to form a false conclusion. + +Eustace Thorburn was ready to bestow his compassion upon the man +who was lord of this enchanting domain, and yet unable to enjoy its +loveliness. + +The gray walls and red-tiled roof of the bailiff’s house appeared +between two masses of foliage as he drew near the border of the park. +It was a house with many gables and great stacks of rickety-looking +chimneys. Such a house as inspires contempt in the mind of a practical +modern architect, by reason of the space that is frittered away on +unnecessary passages, and little bits of rooms too small and dark +for any civilized inhabitant, and ghastly cupboards in unsuspected +places. It was a house in whose ample cellarage a gang of burglars +might have lain perdu for a week, without the family being made aware +of their presence. It was a house in which one could hardly retire to +rest without expecting to see a pair of appalling Eyes staring at one +through a crevice in the panelling, or two dreadful Boots emerging from +beneath the drapery of the bed. If furniture of the commonest fashion, +and fresh from the upholsterer, takes to itself awful voices after +midnight, and creaks and groans with dismal significance in a modern +London habitation, as it will--witness universal experience--what might +not be expected from old oak bureaus and Elizabethan arm-chairs in this +gabled dwelling? The out-buildings and disused chambers had that damp, +earthy odour, which is known to every imaginative mind as the smell of +ghosts; and that ubiquitous and nameless suicide, who seems to have +hung himself or cut his throat at some remote date in every old house, +had hung himself here, and made himself obnoxious to simple Berkshire +maid-servants by those Cock-lane-like scrapings and tappings and +rushings which the sternly commonplace mind is apt to attribute to rats. + +This was the place to which Eustace Thorburn came in the rosy summer +evening to begin his new life. The garden, which he entered by a low +wooden gate, was the growth of a hundred and fifty years, and was as +securely walled in by thick and high hedges of holly and yew as it +could have been by the work of any mortal builder. The air was odorous +with the perfume of bright English flowers; and as the stranger drew +near the house he was greeted with such a burst of honest woodland +music from the throats of blackbirds and thrushes, larks and linnets, +as he never remembered to have heard in all his life before. + +They were caged birds that sang so blithely, and their cages hung +in the roomy wooden porch with a thatched roof, over which there +was spread a curtain of flowering clematis and rich crimson-veined +honeysuckle. Out of this dusky porch a great Newfoundland dog sprang at +the intruder, awakening distant echoes by his deep-toned thunder. But +a woman’s voice, very sweet and melodious, as the young man thought, +called from the cottage, “Down, Hephæstus!--quiet, boy; quiet!” Eustace +wondered what kind of woman this could be who lived in the student’s +cottage, and called her dog Hephæstus. + +The Newfoundland crouched at the stranger’s feet, obedient to the +sound of that familiar voice; and then a man’s footstep sounded in +the porch, and Theodore de Bergerac came out to meet his secretary. +Eustace had been too much occupied by bitter and sorrowful thoughts +within the last week to puzzle himself by speculative ideas about his +new employer; but of course he had some vague notion--unconsciously +conceived--of what M. de Bergerac would be like, and the real M. +de Bergerac was the very reverse of that shadowy creature of his +imagining. There had been in his mind some faint picture of a little +wizen old man, with a weird face and a black-velvet skull-cap. Why a +black-velvet skull-cap he could not have said; but possibly that kind +of head-gear is in a manner allied with the idea of extreme erudition +and much consumption of midnight oil. He had fancied a frail, wasted +creature, with long, straggling white hair falling in unkempt locks +upon the greasy collar of a dressing-gown; and lo! the man who came to +greet him was tall and stalwart, with a bright, frank face, which had +once been very handsome, and was handsome still, and iron-gray hair +arranged with scrupulous neatness. He walked rather lame, and carried +a cane with a head of oxidized silver, exquisitely modelled--a gem in +its way, like all the surroundings of its possessor, who had the taste +of a Bernard or a Bohn. + +This was Theodore de Bergerac, the man who at sixty years of age +retained the freshness and gaiety of six-and-twenty. The lameness from +which he suffered had afflicted him for the last thirty years, for it +was the result of a musket-wound received at the siege of Antwerp. The +student had been a soldier in those days, and had done good service +under the brave leader he loved so well. + +M. de Bergerac greeted Eustace with friendly courtesy. He spoke the +English language perfectly; and it was only by a certain delicate +precision of pronunciation--a somewhat measured accent--and by an +occasional Gallic locution that strangers discovered his nationality. + +“Welcome to Greenlands, Mr. Thorburn. If you are fond of the country, +I think you will love Berkshire. It has all the richness of southern +France, and all the home-like comfort of Normandy. If we were a little +nearer the sea, and could catch the breath of the ocean now and then +from the summit of our hills, we should be in Paradise. But a man +cannot expect to be _quite_ in Paradise; and I suppose this is as +near an approach to Eden as we can hope for upon earth. Have you dined? +We live as people lived in French provincial towns when I was a boy; +and our hours are as early as those of the country-people round about +us. I suppose in London the world is beginning to dress for dinner. +We dined half a dozen hours ago; but I can promise you an excellent +supper. My little _ménagère_ has made arrangements for a perfect +banquet in your honour.” + +Eustace wondered whether the little _ménagère_ and the lady who +called to the dog were one and the same person. It was very foolish of +him to wish that it might be so, and to imagine that the person must +needs be young and beautiful. But then poetical three-and-twenty is +subject to such foolish wishes and imaginings. + +Theodore de Bergerac and his secretary went into the house, where +lights began to glimmer here and there in the dusk. The room into +which the Frenchman led Eustace had that sweet rustic charm peculiar +to country drawing-rooms; but the stranger fancied it had a certain +harmonious beauty which he had never beheld in any other apartment. +_Every_ thing in it was beautiful. There were no false forms, +no discordant tones lurking here and there to mar the harmony of the +general effect. No pert young Cupid in Parian folded his mis-shapen +wings, or uplifted his insolent pug nose before the outraged +beholder--no hideous form of modern vase or flower-pot--no gaudy +abomination of cheap Bohemian glass offended the eye; no impossible +roses and lilies in Berlin-wool and bead-work offered themselves as a +flowery couch for the visitor’s repose. A subdued harmony of form and +colour pervaded every object. The valuable books scattered lavishly +in every direction made no parade of their costliness. The rare old +china needed examination before its beauty revealed itself. Everything +was fresh and pure and delicate. There was a perfume of many flowers +mingled with the subtle aroma of Russia-leather bindings, very pleasant +to the stranger’s nostrils. New though the place was to him, he had +no sense of strangeness; he felt rather as if he had come home to +some delicious and familiar resting-place for which he had long been +yearning. Perhaps this feeling may have been a vague foreshadowing of +his fate. Perhaps he had a faint semi-consciousness of the fact that +perfect happiness was to come to him in that house. + +The two men sat for some little time in the dimly-lighted room--lighted +only by a pair of small wax candles in antique bronze candle-sticks. +They talked of many things, gliding imperceptibly from one subject to +another without either jerks or pauses in the smooth current of talk. +De Bergerac was a delightful talker--playful and serious, gay and +earnest by turns--now childishly emphatic about trifles, now touching +the profoundest subjects with a graceful lightness. Eustace was charmed +by his new employer, and began to think that his lines had fallen in +pleasant places. + +He may have been still more inclined to think so a few minutes later, +when a trim little maid-servant announced that supper was ready, and M. +de Bergerac led him into the dining-room. + +The dining-room was only an old-fashioned oak-panelled chamber, like +the drawing-room; but the hands which had beautified the one had +imparted the same air of grace and refinement to the other. There +were more pictures and books and china, more fresh flowers in vases +of dark-blue Wedgwood: and, above all, there was that sweet home-like +aspect, which has a deeper charm than is to be imparted by the choicest +treasures of art or the fairest gifts of nature. A small round table +was laid for supper; and the bright colouring of a lobster, the +tender green of a salad, the varied hues of some fruit piled high in a +basket-shaped china dish, to say nothing of all the glitter and sparkle +of rare old-fashioned glass and silver, or the amber and ruby of wines, +made no uninviting picture under the mellow light of the lamp. + +But there was a fairer picture to be seen in that chamber, which +distracted the stranger’s gaze from the hospitable preparations that +had been made for him--the picture of a girl standing by a ponderous +old easy-chair, with her white hands loosely folded on the cushion, and +with the great black Newfoundland dog at her feet. + +In the course of his eventless life Eustace Thorburn had not seen +many beautiful women, so it is a small thing to say that the girl he +saw to-night seemed to him the loveliest creature he had ever beheld. +The dark beauties of Villebrumeuse, rich in the southern graces of +their Spanish ancestors, had flashed their black eyes upon the young +Englishman sometimes, as he paced the quiet streets of their city, +but had gone by unnoticed by him. It may have been that to-night his +imagination was unusually exalted, his mind peculiarly prone to receive +impressions, for it seemed to him as if he had passed out of the dull, +beaten tracks of every-day life into an enchanted region, a kind of +Arcadian fairy-land, of which this beauteous creature was a fitting +queen. + +She was an honest English beauty, and the brightness of her complexion +had ripened under an English sun. Her dark-blue eyes seemed darker and +bluer by reason of the rosy bloom of her cheeks and the crimson of +her perfect mouth. The dusky gold of her hair was no fictitious charm +derived from the costly washes of a court perfumer. She was no spurious +Venetian beauty, with locks of tawny red; but a fair English girl, +fresh and bright as a woodland summer morning, pure as a flower with +the dew upon its opening petals. Her white muslin dress was unrelieved +by a trinket or a ribbon; but what need had she of colour or jewels, +whose eyes were more brilliant than the rarest sapphires, whose lips +were more precious than Neapolitan coral, and in whose innocent young +beauty there was a brightness surpassing the radiance of earthly gems? + +“My daughter,” said M. de Bergerac; “my daughter Helen--Mr. Thorburn.” +Whereupon this enchanting creature greeted the stranger with a bright +smile and some indistinct murmur of welcome. They seated themselves +at the little supper-table presently, and this divine Helen looked on +admiringly while her father carved a fore-quarter of lamb. It was a +long time since Eustace had taken a hasty snack of luncheon with his +uncle, before starting for Windsor, yet he had little appetite for +that innocent Berkshire lamb. His gaze wandered from the contents of +his plate to Helen de Bergerac’s fair young face; and if he had been +sharing the Barmecide’s shadowy feast, he could scarcely have been more +unconscious of the flavour of the viands or the aroma of the wines. + +“Help yourself to some of that Medoc, Mr. Thorburn,” said his host; +“and be sure you do justice to my daughter’s salad. Helen is a +salad-maker whom Brillat Savarin might have approved. The salad is the +_chef-d’œuvre_ of amateur art. No hired cook ever yet excelled in +the composition of a salad. The task is too delicate for a hand that +has been soiled by wages.” + +Eustace blushed. Three-and-twenty is so painfully sensitive. Was he +not going to take wages in that house? He stole a look at his host’s +daughter, and wondered whether she felt a patrician contempt for her +father’s secretary. She had the blood of Spanish grandees in her veins, +despite her English beauty. Heaven knows what haughty hidalgo might +have infused his pride into those azure veins. + +“She is aptly named,” thought the young man; “Helen, the destroyer of +ships and of men. Helen, the daughter of Jupiter and Nemesis--for I +will never believe that poor Leda was any more than the nurse of that +fatal creature. Helen, the daughter of Nemesis--let me remember her +parentage, and beware of her.” + +He discovered one fact in relation to Mademoiselle de Bergerac before +the evening was over, though he could only watch her furtively now and +then while her father was talking. He discovered that the damsel’s +heart was already engaged, and that he who came to lay siege to it +would have need of patience and constancy. She was in love with her +father. She watched him with tender, reverential eyes, and listened to +him as to the voice of an oracle. Once, when his hand lay on the arm of +his chair, she lifted it gently to her lips. And in all this there was +no taint of affectation. No dryad of those Berkshire woods could have +been more innocently natural than this descendant of Spanish hidalgos. +No consciousness of her loveliness and fascination disturbed her sweet +serenity as she talked to her father’s secretary. She talked to him +of pastoral pleasures and pursuits, and he divined from her talk that +her country life was very dear to her. Her father went to London very +often, she told Eustace in the course of the evening, to buy books; and +sometimes, but very rarely, took her with him. + +“And then I see the SHOPS,” she said; and by the tone of +subdued ecstacy with which she pronounced this word, Eustace discovered +for the first time that she was mortal. “I am afraid you will despise +me very much for liking to see the shops. Papa does. He thinks it is +the most foolish thing in the world to be fond of standing on a crowded +pavement to look at dresses and bonnets that one is never likely to +have.” + +“Or to want,” interposed M. de Bergerac, looking proudly at the girl’s +animated face. “What could a little girl who makes butter do with fine +silk dresses; and she is able to make butter for Windsor market, this +young lady, as well as she is able to read Greek,” added the father, +fondly. + +Eustace watched the two faces with a pensive admiration. Here was that +ideal father of whom he had dreamed so often; here was that pure and +perfect love which he had fancied. + +It was late before the little party separated, for M. de Bergerac had +a student’s attachment to the quiet of midnight, and an absent-minded +man’s unconsciousness of the flight of time. The clock of some +village church-tower, hidden away somewhere beyond the beeches and +oaks of Greenlands, struck twelve half an hour before the Frenchman +conducted Eustace to the room that had been prepared for him. It was +only a rustic chamber, with lattice casements set deep in a wall of +old-fashioned solidity. The white draperies were faintly perfumed with +that odour of rose-leaves and lavender which is as the very breath of +the country. The lattice was open, and there was a vase of flowers +on the broad window-ledge. Eustace wondered who had arranged those +flowers. Not the trim little maid-servant surely. _She_ would have +squeezed the tender blossoms into a tightly-packed circular bunch; +while these were only a few loose half-budding roses nestling among +cool green leaves. + +The lattice was open, and the harvest-moon shone full and bright above +the woods of which Harold Jerningham was master. Eustace stood at the +open casement for some time after his host had left him. He stood there +in the solemn stillness, looking out across those sombre masses of +foliage towards the moonlit river--so difficult to believe in by this +light as an earthly river, navigable by coal-barges, and instrumental +in the turning of paper-mills. He looked out upon that landscape of +semi-divine beauty, and thought with a half-contemptuous pity of +the man who owned it. Theodore de Bergerac had talked of his friend +during the varied course of that evening’s conversation, and Eustace +had discovered that the lord of Greenlands was a lonely and childless +wanderer--a wanderer in first-class carriages, and a dweller in the +most expensive caravanseries; but not the less homeless, and joyless, +and purposeless--not the less a standing example of the worthlessness +of earthly prosperity. + +Eustace Thorburn, the nameless and fatherless, pitied this childless +man. It was scarcely strange if he let the underwood grow wild in his +park, and foul weeds lie thick upon his lake. For whom should he be +careful, for whom should he adorn and beautify, for whose sake should +he plant young trees, or cut new avenues in the woodland? For what +purpose should he heap up riches, who knew not what strange hand was +destined to gather them? + +But the secretary did not brood long on the sorrowful fate of that +unknown Harold Jerningham. A fairer image came between him and the +moonlit park, and it bore the likeness of Helen de Bergerac. + +“I waste my thoughts upon a girl’s lovely face, when I ought to be +thinking of the work that lies before me,” the young man said to +himself, in angry scorn of his weakness. “Let me remember why I am +here, and keep my brain clear of my employer’s daughter, in order that +I may be able to help him honestly with his book.” + +He slept soundly and sweetly, lulled by the faint rustling of the +foliage and the far-away murmur of the river. But his slumbers were not +dreamless. He thought he saw the old red-brick mansion all ablaze with +light. Long rows of windows shone on the darkness of the night, joyous +music was wafted from the open lattices, and an indistinguishable some +one in a crowd, that seemed all confusion and clamour, told him the +heir of Greenlands had come of age. + +He woke to see the sunshine in his room, and to hear Helen de Bergerac +singing a waltz of Verdi’s; while the song-birds in the porch strained +their melodious throats to the uttermost, in the endeavour to drown +their mistress’s music. + + + + + CHAPTER IX. + + HOW THEY PARTED. + + +IN the earlier years of her loneliness, Mrs. Jerningham’s efforts in +the way of little dinners were generally crowned with success. Women +liked to dine at the toy-villa, because they knew the most eligible +men were to be met there. Men were pleased to accept Mrs. Jerningham’s +invitations, sure that at her house they would encounter none but +handsome or agreeable women. She displayed a delightful tact in the +selection of her society. She would invite a lovely inanity to sit at +her table, as a beautiful object for the contemplation of her guests; +but she would take care to balance her soulless divinity by some +decent-looking woman with brains. If the Household-Brigade element +threatened to preponderate, and there was reason to dread that the +whole talk at dinner would be about the wonderful things “fellows” +present, and other fellows absent, who were the intimate friends of +those fellows, had done in the way of deer-stalking in the Trossachs, +or salmon-fishing in Norway, during the last autumn, Mrs. Jerningham +took care to leaven it, and would despatch an invitation to some +popular littérateur or fashionable actor, some clever amateur, well up +in all the art-gossip, or a gentlemanly young explorer, lately returned +from Africa with the last ideas about the source of the Nile, and +delightful serio-comic anecdotes about encounters with crocodiles and +Abyssinian damsels. + +The mistress of River Lawn made her parties pleasant at any cost of +trouble to herself. Even the dragon that guarded the enchanted garden, +in the shape of an elderly aunt, was a pleasant dragon, who dressed +well, and could talk cleverly on occasion. And then the dinners were +not those shadowy repasts which are wont to be served in mansions +where a lady reigns unassisted by masculine counsel. Mrs. Colton, the +elderly aunt, had entertained archbishops in her day, and knew how to +compose a _menu_. The wines that sparkled into brightness under +the light of beauty’s eye at Mrs. Jerningham’s table were supplied by +Mr. Jerningham’s own wine-merchant, who would not have dared to impose +on the lady’s possible innocence. + +The house was very agreeable. That slight accident of Mr. Desmond’s +perpetual presence was only an additional advantage for people who +wanted to beg favours from the fashionable editor--a good word for a +new book, or a new play, or a new picture. It had become an established +fact, that wherever Mrs. Jerningham appeared, Laurence Desmond was to +appear also. His chosen friends gathered round her, like the knightly +circle about a queen in the days when there was chivalry in the land, +and a queen was a sacred creature. It was he who had brought that +agreeable circle to River Lawn; how could a poor lonely woman have +beguiled the shining lights of the crack London clubs to illuminate her +dinner-table? It was Desmond who kept a strict account of her feminine +acquaintance, watchful lest the faintest shadow in the reputation of a +friend should be reflected on her. The editor of the _Areopagus_ +knew everything and everybody. The inner mysteries of Belgravia and +Tyburnia, which outsiders discussed in solemn whispers and with +awful shrugs, were stale and hackneyed facts for him. He knew that +Emily Jerningham paid a certain price for his friendship--pure and +chivalrous though that friendship might be--and that she must continue +to pay it to the end. She had been very friendless immediately after +her separation from her husband; and when the tide of public opinion +was at its flood, ready to turn either way, it was Laurence’s subtle +influence which had set it flowing pleasantly for her. But he knew +that his friendship cost her a price, notwithstanding. There was the +savour of patronage in the friendliness of the people he had won to +be her intimates. Spotless dowagers visited her and received her; but +they were apt to affect a sort of pitying kindness when they spoke of +her to other intimates. She was “that poor Mrs. Jerningham, who is +separated from her husband, you know, my dear--Harold Jerningham, a +dreadful person, I believe, though very nice in society. She lives with +a widowed aunt, at the sweetest place, near Hampton, and gives charming +parties; highly correct and proper in every way; and, you know, I +think it a kind of duty to take notice of a woman in that position, +when nothing can be said to her prejudice;” and so on, and so on, with +inexhaustible variations on the perpetual theme. Laurence Desmond had +heard the stereotyped talk a hundred times, and the recollection of it +stung him to the very quick, when he thought of it in relation to the +woman whom he could remember a girl of seventeen, dressed in white, and +walking by his side in a little garden at Passy. + +Yes, he had known Emily Jerningham before she became the wife of +her wealthy kinsman; he had known her in the days of her genteel +poverty--the patient daughter of a peevish valetudinarian. He had been +allied with this poorer branch of the Jerningham family by friendships +and associations of many years’ standing, and had never spent a week +in Paris without paying more than one visit to the shabby, little +furnished-house at Passy, in which Philip Jerningham dragged out the +tiresome remnant of his useless existence with Emily for his companion +and nurse, his secretary, butler, and steward. He had come at first +prompted by a kindly feeling for the friend of his dead father; he came +afterwards for his own pleasure; and those flying visits to Paris, +which had been wont to occur two or three times in the year, began to +repeat themselves at very short intervals. + +He had fallen in love with Emily Jerningham, and he had sufficient +reason for believing that his love was returned. Those evenings in the +little flower-garden at Passy were the happiest hours of his busy +life. The paradise was very prim and dusty and arid, and all the roar +and clamour of Paris thundered a hoarse chorus in the distance; but it +was Eden, nevertheless; and when, a few years afterwards, he wasted +an idle hour by going to look at the old place, he was surprised to +discover what a shabby scene it was, now that the glamour had departed +from it. + +He was a proud man, and it was his misfortune to live in a world in +which the splendour and luxuries of the million were accounted the +necessities of existence. The women he met were women who would have +been panic-stricken if they had found themselves on foot and alone in +a crowded London street. They were women who, if suddenly reduced to +the depths of poverty, would have thought the delf-plates and mugs +of destitution a greater hardship than its bread and water. They +were delicate creatures--“not too bright or good for human nature’s +daily food,” but quite unable to cope with human nature’s pecuniary +embarrassments. They were creatures who thought that a cheque-book +went on for ever, like the Laureate’s brook: and that so long as there +were any of those nice oblong slips of paper left in the world, papas +and husbands and brothers had nothing to do but to sign their names at +the bottom of them. + +Laurence Desmond intended to ask Miss Jerningham to be his wife, but +he was determined not to marry until he was secure of something like +fifteen hundred a year. He reckoned his future expenditure sometimes as +he meditated by his bachelor hearth, with a cigar between his lips. Two +hundred a year for a house somewhere within reasonable distance of the +Park; a hundred for his wife’s dress, fifty for his own; a miniature +brougham would be rather a tight squeeze at a hundred and fifty; his +own expenses, cigars, diplomatic dinners given at his club, cab-hire, +books and newspapers, say two hundred more; and the remaining eight +hundred for the vulgar necessities of every-day existence. Mr. Desmond +mapped out his future very pleasantly for himself and the woman he +loved; but in those days he was yet very far from the possession of +the indispensable fifteen hundred. So he held his peace in the little +flower-garden at Passy, and was content to talk agreeable nonsense to +Emily Jerningham, while the poor little fountain trickled and dripped +in the sunshine, and the gaudy red geraniums in the plaster vases on +the wall made patches of vivid colour against the hot blue sky, and +that hoarse chorus of Paris sounded its perpetual accompaniment--the +roar of wheels and the rattle of vehicles, the tinkling of bells, +the jingling of spoons and glasses on the pavement outside the +coffee-houses, and the voices of the excited million, all blended into +one indistinguishable clamour, rising and falling like the waves of a +distant sea. + +Mr. Desmond waited, satisfied with his prospects, content to abide +the ripening of his fortunes, and convinced that good feeling and +policy alike were involved in patience. Unhappily, the man who plans +his own life is like a chess-player in London matched against a +chess-player in Paris, and with _no_ telegraphic communications +of his adversary’s moves. His theory of the game is perfect. His +plan of action is decided upon with the cool deliberation of an +accomplished strategist. He sees his way to the very end of the +encounter: his castle there, his bishop here, his queen in the centre +of the board, and--lo, his enemy is checkmated! But that hidden +player in Paris adopts unimaginable tactics; and suddenly, after +one never-to-be-expected move, the player in London finds himself +ignominiously beaten. + +While Laurence Desmond was dreaming lazily of the future, lingering +over his midnight cigar in Temple chambers--nearer the chimney pots +than the handsome rooms he afterwards occupied--Philip Jerningham +took it into his head to die suddenly, and Emily came to London with +a letter to her cousin ever-so-many-times-removed, the irresistible +Harold. By one of those insignificant accidents which make the links +in the great chain of destiny, it happened that the announcement +of Philip Jerningham’s death escaped the eye of Emily’s undeclared +admirer. It was not to be expected that a bereaved daughter, who was +left very desolate and helpless, could write ceremonious notes to all +her late father’s masculine acquaintance; and Emily had the Jerningham +pride, and, for some unknown reason, was peculiarly inclined to be +resentful of small offences where Laurence Desmond was concerned. So +the editor went on smoking his midnight cigars, and pushing on steadily +towards the achievement of the indispensable income; deferring week +after week and month after month the Parisian holiday which he was +always promising himself. + +The time drifted by him with that imperceptible progress which is so +peculiar to time when a man is always wrestling with the arrears of his +labour, and trying to get seventy minutes out of an hour. Time puts on +a special pair of wings for the slave who fills a waste-paper basket +and uses half-a-crown’s worth of postage-stamps every day of his life +except Sunday, and who sits under a popular preacher on that day, +weighed down by the consciousness of a hundred unanswered letters, and +the knowledge that a hundred offended correspondents are swelling with +indignation because of his neglect. + +Mr. Desmond was roughly awakened from his pleasant day-dreams one +morning on reading the announcement of Harold Jerningham’s marriage. +The blow was a severe one, and for some days the writer’s arguments +were rather weak and inconsequential, and the editor’s eye unusually +careless of flaws and blemishes in the work of his contributors. Only +now that Emily was lost to him did he know how very dear she had been; +but even more bitter to Laurence Desmond than the thought of his loss +was the idea of his folly. + +“I fancy myself a man of the world,” he said to himself, “and yet I +am the dupe of masculine fatuity which would be contemptible in a +stripling newly escaped from the university. I thought she loved me; +I thought her love was as entirely my own as if I had received the +assurance of it in the plainest words that were ever spoken.” + +The idea that he had been duped by his own vanity stung him to the +quick. He studiously avoided the places in which he was likely to +encounter Emily Jerningham, and it was not until a year after her +marriage that he met her. He came upon her suddenly one bright autumn +day in an obscure foreign picture-gallery. For years after that day he +was able to recall the scene of their unexpected meeting--the quaint +old chamber in the courtyard of an hospital, the grim pre-Raphaelite +pictures of unpleasant martyrdoms, the dusty motes dancing in the +sunlight, and the listless grace of a woman who stood with her back +towards him, leaning on the top rail of a chair, with an open catalogue +held loosely in her hand. There was no one but this woman in the +gallery. The door banged behind Mr. Desmond as he went in, and startled +by the noise, she turned and looked at him. + +This is how he met Emily Jerningham. The white change in her face +told him that he had not been the dupe of a delusion when he fancied +himself beloved. He felt that he must be something more than a +common acquaintance to the woman who looked at him with that pale, +terror-stricken face. For a moment he feared that Mrs. Jerningham would +faint; but the fear was groundless. She belonged to a class in which +the women have some touch of the Roman’s grandeur mingled with the +sensuous softness of the Greek. The colour came back to her cheeks and +lips in a few moments, and she held out her hand to her dead father’s +friend. + +“How do you do, Mr. Desmond?” she said. “I did not know that you were +in Germany.” + +“No. I am taking a brief holiday. Is Mr. Jerningham with you?” + +“Yes; he had letters to write this morning, and sent me to explore this +curious old hospital by myself. Do you stay long here?” + +“I go on to Vienna this evening.” + +The beautiful face grew pale again. Mrs. Jerningham looked at her +catalogue. + +“I think I have seen all the pictures,” she said. “My guide has gone +to look for the key of some mysterious chamber; I must go in search of +him. Good-morning, Mr. Desmond. Oh, here is my husband!” + +Mr. Jerningham sauntered into the gallery. + +“I couldn’t stand any more letter-writing, so I came to see your +pictures, Emily,” he said. “Ah, Desmond, how do you do? What brings you +to this queer old place, so completely out of the beaten track--almost +beyond the ken of _Murray_? You know my wife? Ah, I remember; your +father and her father were great cronies. How is it you never told me +you knew Desmond, Emily?” + +Mrs. Jerningham’s reply was only a vague murmur; but her husband was +not one of those men who hang upon the utterances or watch the looks +of their wives. He allowed the woman he had chosen ample liberty, only +requiring that her toilette should be perfect, her voice harmonious, +her movements graceful, and her reputation spotless. For it is an +understood thing, that whatever character Cæsar himself may bear, there +must be no possibility of suspicion with regard to Cæsar’s wife. + +Harold Jerningham and Laurence Desmond had met very often before +to-day. It happened that the Jerninghams were also on their way +to Vienna, and had made their arrangements for travelling by the +same train as that chosen by Laurence. They met at the station, +and travelled together, Mr. Jerningham being very well pleased to +find the tedium of the journey beguiled by masculine companionship. +Mrs. Jerningham sat in a corner of the carriage, very silent and +impenetrable, but beautiful to look upon in the fitful glare of the +railway lamp, or in occasional glimpses of moonlight. + +That night-journey was the beginning of a closer acquaintanceship +between Harold Jerningham and Laurence Desmond. During the ensuing +London season the younger man was a frequent visitor at the house of +the elder. The Jerninghams met Mr. Desmond at parties. They met him +in the following winter at a country house; sat round the same fire at +Christmas time, and shuddered at the same ghost-stories; danced in the +same condescending quadrille at a ball of servants and tenantry, and +plucked costly trinkets from the same Christmas-tree--Harold always +more or less distinguished by the tone of a being who had endured a +previous existence in every star in the planetary system, and was +wearily “doing” his last world before final extinction. + +Mrs. Jerningham had learned by this time to meet her old friend without +sudden pallor or sudden blushes. If she met him very often, she met him +by favour of that chain of accidents which links together the lives of +some men and women. She happened to be buying hyacinths in the Pantheon +during the hour which the hard-working editor snatched from the cares +of journalism in the sweet cause of friendship, bringing to bear all +the forces of his mighty intellect on the selection of a squirrel, +intended for a birthday-gift to a fellow-worker’s little girl. If the +purchase of the hyacinths and the squirrel occupied a longer time than +is usually devoted to such small transactions, it must be remembered +that there is great room for the exercise of taste and discretion in +the choice of flowers which are to fill a jardinière of the real old +_bleu de roi_ Sèvres, and an animal which is to twirl perpetually +for the delight of one’s friend. Nor was there anything extraordinary +in the fact that Mr. Jerningham and his wife encountered Laurence +Desmond ever and anon at the Opera, at the Botanical and Zoological +Gardens, and at other places of public resort. The circle in which +decent people revolve is such a narrow one that there must needs be +these accidental encounters at every turn in the crowded ring. + +“I fancy we meet Mr. Desmond a little more frequently than other +people,” Harold Jerningham said one day to his wife; and this was the +only occasion on which he made any special mention of the editor’s +name. + +It was about a week after Mr. Jerningham made this remark, that Emily +found a letter awaiting her on the table of her morning-room. The +letter was addressed in her husband’s hand, sealed with her husband’s +arms and cipher. It was his habit to write her little notes informing +her of his movements when the pressing business of their useless +existence separated them for a day or so; but he did not usually seal +his letters. This letter was sealed: and there must have been something +in the appearance of the document which startled Mrs. Jerningham, for +she grew very pale, and her hand trembled as it tore open the envelope. + +The length of the letter was not calculated to alarm a woman who +expected a marital lecture. + + “MY DEAR EMILY,--The tulip-wood cabinet in which I keep + coins is exactly the same as that which you use for your letters. The + keys are duplicates. I opened yours instead of my own this morning, + in a fit of absence of mind, and saw some letters. I did not read + them. The fact of their existence, their number, and the address they + bear--which is not to any house of mine, is sufficiently suggestive. + Be good enough to remain at home to-morrow. Mr. Halfont will call upon + you in the course of the morning.--Truly yours, + + “H. J.” + +This was all. Mr. Halfont was the family lawyer, a person whose name +was generally heard in connection with leases. Mrs. Jerningham looked +at the two cabinets, one on each side of the fireplace. Yes, they were +exactly alike. She had known that always, and might have guessed that +the locks and keys were the same. But she had never thought on the +subject; the apartment was so entirely her own sanctum; and Harold +Jerningham possessed so many cabinets filled with coins and medallions, +cameos and intaglios, which he never looked at, and which, after the +feverish delight of bidding for them at Christie’s, were supremely +indifferent to him. How, then, should she have foreseen the possibility +of the accident that had happened? + +Was it altogether an accident? + +Emily took a key from a little casket on the table, and went to one of +the cabinets--her own. She opened it, and seated herself in the chair +before it--the chair in which Harold Jerningham had sat an hour ago, +no doubt. The piece of furniture was half-cabinet, half-secrétaire; +and it was here that Mrs. Jerningham was wont to fill in the blanks in +those lithographed protestations of rapture or expressions of regret +wherewith she accepted or declined the invitations of her acquaintance. +It was here she wrote her letters, and it was here she kept the MSS. of +those correspondents whose letters were worthy of preservation. They +were in a row of pigeon-holes; and amongst those in the pigeon-hole +marked D there was a packet tied with ribbon. That tendency to render +a bundle of dangerous letters conspicuous by a circle of bright-hued +ribbon is one of womanhood’s fatal weaknesses. + +Mrs. Jerningham took out the packet and contemplated it thoughtfully. + +“I wish he had read the letters,” she said to herself; “it would have +been much better for both of us if he had read them.” + +She looked at the address upon the topmost envelope: + + “E. J., + _Post Office_, + _Vigo Street_.” + +“It was very wrong to have them directed to a post-office,” she thought +to herself. + +She packed the letters in a sheet of paper, and directed the packet +to her husband, with a brief note, the composition of which cost her +much trouble. She shed some few tears while she was writing this +note; but she took care that they should not fall on the paper. There +was a certain firmness and decision in her manner which was scarcely +compatible with the feelings of an utterly guilty woman. + +Mrs. Jerningham had a long interview with her husband’s lawyer on the +following day, an interview which had in it none of the unpleasant +elements of a “scene.” After this the house in Park Lane was abandoned +by both master and mistress. Mr. Jerningham was abroad; Mrs. Jerningham +at one of the country houses. It was not till the following season +that the world in which the Jerninghams lived became aware that the +Jerninghams had parted. So small an amount of union is necessary to +constitute marriage in this upper world that the fact of the separation +only became patent on the establishment of the toy-villa at Hampton. + + + + + CHAPTER X. + + THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. + + +IN this bright summer-time the gardens of the toy-villa were a paradise +of roses. The lawns were dotted by great clumps and mounds of blossom; +red and white damask and maiden’s-blush jostling one another in rich +profusion. Tall standard-roses climbed skyward on iron rods, rustic +baskets brimmed over with the precious flowers; and there were so many +creeping tendrils entwining thin iron-work arches and airy colonnades, +that the visitor who approached Mrs. Jerningham made his way to her +presence beneath a gentle shower of perfumed petals. + +Under the falling rose-petals went the editor of the _Areopagus_ +one sultry morning. He had come from London by rail, and the dust of +the journey was white upon his dark-blue coat. He looked a little wan +and jaded in the searching July sunshine, a little the worse for late +hours and perennial anxieties; and he sighed ever so faintly as a warm +gust of summer wind flung a spray of blossom against his face. + +The river lay before him, deeply blue under the cloudless sky; and on +his left, half hidden amongst guelder-roses and the dark foliage of +myrtle and magnolia, there was the villa, a fantastical edifice, in +which the Tudor, the Moorish, the Italian, and the mediæval Norman +forms of architecture had struggled for preeminence; a house which +seemed all windows, and in which every window was of a different +type--the house of all others to be dear to the heart of a woman. + +The garden of roses, the river, and the fantastical villa made +altogether a very charming picture--a picture which Mr. Desmond +contemplated with a half-regretful sigh. + +“Surely one ought to find happiness in such a place!” he said to +himself. + +He had entered by a little gate that was rarely locked; and he went +across the lawn towards an open drawing-room window, with the air of a +man who has no need of ceremonial announcement. Mrs. Jerningham came +out of the window as he approached. + +“Good morning, Mr. Desmond,” she said, as they shook hands. “Have you +come by rail--on such a warm day too? That is very good of you. I think +a noonday ride in a railway carriage at this time of year is a species +of martyrdom. One thinks of the iron coffin and the Piombi at Venice, +and that kind of thing.” + +Mr. Desmond looked at the speaker, doubtfully. This was evidently not +exactly the reception he was accustomed to receive from Mrs. Jerningham. + +“If you are going to talk to me like a stage-widow, Emily, I had better +go back to town,” said he, gravely. + +“How should I talk to you? I see you so seldom now, that I lose +the habit of adapting my conversation to your taste. I think +stage-widows are very charming people. At any rate, they always find +_something_ to say, and that is an important consideration.” + +“I have been very much occupied lately.” + +“It seems to me that you are always very much occupied. I saw your +name, by the bye, amongst the names of the people at the breakfast at +Pembury.” + +“I was obliged to go to Pembury.” + +“And you were at Marble Hill on Tuesday.” + +“I had particular business with Lord Chorlton.” + +“And you chose the occasion of an archery fête for your business.” + +“I was glad to seize any opportunity. Chorlton is not easily to be got +at.” + +“Oh, please don’t speak of him as if he were a jockey,” exclaimed the +lady, with an air of irrepressible irritation. + +“What has happened to annoy you this morning, Mrs. Jerningham?” + +“Nothing--this morning.” + +“But something _has_ annoyed you.” + +“Yes, I am tired of my life; that is all that ails me, Mr. Desmond. +I am tired of my life. Of course you will tell me that it is very +wicked to be tired of one’s life, and that there are people starving in +those dreadful London alleys who would be very glad to come and live +here, and stare at the river, and wonder whether the swans are tired +of _their_ lives, as I do hour after hour in all the long, long +days of the long, long summer. But, you see, that doesn’t make my case +any better. I am very sorry for the poor people; and if it were not so +impossible to imagine them in conjunction with amber-silk furniture, I +am sure they would be very welcome to come here. I have made a feeble +attempt to do some good in my neighbourhood; but I find that other +people can do that kind of thing much better than I, and that my money +is all that is really necessary. My life passes, and the time, which +is so long as it crawls by, leaves no mark behind it. And then, when I +look forward to the future, I see--a blank.” + +Her tone and manner had become more serious as she went on. They +had walked away from the house, and by this time were in a sheltered +pathway that bordered the river. + +“Yet the future may not be altogether blank, Emily,” answered Laurence. +“There may come a time when----” + +“Yes; I know what you mean. There may come a time when I shall be as +free as you were before you met me in the hospital at Bundersbad. I +sometimes fancy that, if you or I ever see that day, it will come too +late. There are sacrifices which cost too much, and the sacrifice which +you have made for me is one of them.” + +“The greater sacrifice has been on your side,” said the editor, very +gravely. + +“I do not know that, Laurence. I sometimes think that your bondage must +be harder to bear than mine. For nine years you have patiently endured +all the complaints and caprices of a discontented woman, when you might +have had a bright home, and a happy wife to bid you welcome in it, but +for me.” + +“The bright home and the happy wife may be mine yet, Emily.” + +“If they ever are yours, they will come to you too late. A home is one +of the blessings which must not be waited for. A man loses the habit +of home-life. I have seen something of this, you know, in my father’s +life. He did not marry till he was between forty and fifty; and when +he married, he had lost the capability of being happy at home. It will +be the same with you, Laurence, if you do not marry soon. The hard, +worldly way of thinking, and the self-contained feelings of a bachelor, +are growing stronger with you day by day, and even a wife whom you +loved would hardly be able to make home agreeable to you. And this is +all my fault, Laurence--my fault!” + +“This is not fair, Emily,” said Mr. Desmond, almost sternly. “When +I lament the restraints of my position, it will be time for you to +reproach yourself on my account, and not till then. Pray let us be +reasonable. When you and Harold Jerningham parted for ever, it was +agreed between us that we should be friends, and friends only, so +long as your husband’s life should last. He is so many years our +senior, that it is not possible for us to ignore the fact that in all +likelihood the day will come when you and I can be united by a sweeter +tie than that of friendship. If there be a sin involved in looking +forward to that day hopefully, but not impatiently--I have been guilty +of that sin; but I have been guilty of no other wrong against the man +who bears your name. God knows, and you know, that I have been true +to our compact. I have been your friend, and nothing but your friend. +No shadow of a lover’s caprice, no touch of a lover’s jealousy, has +ever clouded our friendship. It has been the one bright oasis in the +desert of an anxious and laborious life. And if you think that the +treasure is unvalued by me because I do not spend three days a week +in the delicious idleness of this garden, or because I do not waste +all my evenings in your drawing-room, you are only a new example of +the ignorance which obtains among your class with regard to the +necessities of a working life.” + +Mrs. Jerningham’s face brightened considerably while Mr. Desmond was +speaking. It was a fine patrician face, with the bloom of youth still +upon it, in spite of the lady’s nine-and-twenty years’ residence in +this planet. She turned to Mr. Desmond with a smile, and held out her +hand. + +“Shake hands, Laurence, and forgive me,” she said, gently. It was part +of their covenant that they should be at liberty to address each other +by their Christian names, but that none of the epithets sacred to the +use of lovers should ever obtain currency between them. + +“And you are really not tired of your position?” said Mrs. Jerningham, +with a pleading smile. + +“Have I ever hinted a complaint?” + +“No, Laurence. But then you are not the kind of person to complain. +You would be like that dreadful Spartan boy one never hears the last +of: you would hide the animal--why do some people call it a wolf, +and others a fox, by the bye?--under your waistcoat, and go about the +world smiling the smile of martyrdom. I am so afraid of doing you a +great wrong. Poets and novelists are always preaching about a woman’s +unselfishness; but I really think that is one of the formulas of +their art. Have I not shown myself very selfish, Laurence? I allowed +my foolish eyes to be dazzled by that Dead-Sea fruit which the world +calls a splendid marriage; and having bitten the apple and found the +bitterness of its core, I share the ashes with you.” + +“I am very well content with the ashes.” + +“Some day you will be tired of your bondage.” + +“When that day comes, I will ask you for my freedom.” + +“Will you promise me that, Laurence?” + +“With all my heart.” + +“In that case I am quite happy,” answered the lady, eagerly. “And you +really do not wish to claim your freedom immediately, Laurence?” + +“Neither immediately nor in the remote future. If Mr. Jerningham +should live to be a hundred years of age, at which period I should be +eighty, the bachelor habits which you reprobate may perhaps have taken +complete possession of me; but as Mr. Jerningham is not the kind of man +whose life would be taken on the most reasonable terms by the Norwich +Union or the European, I can afford to place my faith in time.” + +“Laurence, there is something so horrible in this calculation.” + +“I do not calculate; I wait. And now let us talk of something else. You +have not asked me any of your usual questions about the toilettes at +Marble Hill.” + +“I don’t want to know anything about them,” replied Mrs. Jerningham, +frigidly. + +Mr. Desmond winced. A man’s intellect, however acute, is rarely +equal to the exigences of feminine society. The châtelaine of Marble +Hill happened to be one of those matrons who cannot bring themselves +to think well of any woman living apart from her husband. Emily +Jerningham’s name had been wont to figure in the lady’s visiting-list, +and had vanished therefrom immediately after the establishment of the +villa at Hampton. + +“The fête was rather a dull affair,” said Mr. Desmond, presently, with +that clumsy hypocrisy which is the male creature’s best substitute for +tact. + +“What did Lady Laura Paunceford wear?” asked Mrs. Jerningham, with +feminine inconsistency. + +“Oh, some wonderful costume of blue, very cloudy and voluminous, like +the dress of a goddess in one of Sir Godfrey Kneller’s ceilings. I +believe she wore something that was intended for a bonnet--a blue gauze +butterfly, skewered to her head by silver arrows.” + +“Did she look well?” + +“By no means; she is not a daylight beauty.” + +“And Miss Fitzormond?” + +“Miss Fitzormond’s dress was absolutely dowdy. A new style, Mrs. +Castlemaine told me; the last rage in Paris; and supposed to have been +developed from the fair Eugénie’s inner consciousness. It is rather +hard upon the Empress that she should be accredited with every atrocity +invented by the enterprising milliners of the Fauburg St. Honoré.” + +“What was the dress?” Mrs. Jerningham demanded, languidly. + +“Something mauve, festooned with steel chains and spikes; Miss +Fitzormond looked like a mauve prisoner escaped from Newgate.” + +“Were there many pretty women at the fête? No; you needn’t answer me. +Of course you will declare that you found yourself amidst an assemblage +of Gorgons. Men are so fearful of wounding a woman’s vanity, that they +rarely remember she may by some possibility possess a grain or two of +common-sense. Let us go to the dining-room. It is time for luncheon, +and I dare say my aunt has been sending skirmishers out to look for me.” + +“There is a parcel of books and music at the station. Will you send for +it?” + +“With delight. How good of you to bring me more new books!” + +“Are you prepared to stand a competitive examination in the last I +brought you?” + +“Better than you in the works of the authors you have lately +annihilated, Mr. Editor and Reviewer.” + +On this they went back to the house, where they were received by the +most amiable of dragons, dressed in dove-coloured silk, and a pale-blue +morning-cap, which made middle age a state for youth to envy. The +luncheon, in common with all the surroundings of Harold Jerningham’s +wife, was perfection. The spirit of the elegant Harold himself pervaded +this house, across the threshold whereof his foot had never passed. +It was Mr. Jerningham’s pet architect who had restored the miniature +mansion, and Mr. Jerningham’s favourite upholsterer who had decorated +and furnished the interior. When Mrs. Jerningham wanted a new servant, +it was Mr. Jerningham’s steward who supplied the vacancy in her +well-organized establishment. Life had been made very easy for her +since her separation from her husband--a little too easy, perhaps; for +a woman who has none of the ordinary cares of her sex is apt to create +troubles of her own. + +People who wondered and speculated about the separation were often +surprised to hear Mr. Jerningham say: “I have bought that picture for +my wife;” or, “I am looking for a safe pony-phaeton for my wife;” or, +“I want to find a good binder for some books of my wife’s.” He took +pains to let the world know that he was on excellent terms with the +lady in the toy-villa; and this certificate of character had served +Emily Jerningham in good stead. Her husband’s diplomacy might have kept +even the sacred portals of such houses as Marble Hill open to her, if +Mr. Desmond had not been quite so frequent a visitor at her house. But +the world is slow to believe in a Platonic attachment, and it is not +to be denied that the friendship of Laurence Desmond had cost Mrs. +Jerningham a certain price. + +Nor was that friendship altogether pleasant to her. The conversation +of this morning was only a variation upon a very familiar theme. Again +and again Mr. Desmond had been called upon to listen to the same +complaints, and to dispel the same doubts. There were times when he +was very conscious of the pain and weariness involved in this state of +things. There were times when a still, small voice within him echoed +Emily Jerningham’s wish that they had never met in the hospital at +Bundersbad, never renewed the friendship so near akin to love, never +interchanged those foolish, sentimental letters which had caused the +separation of Harold and his wife. It seemed such a weak, frivolous, +despicable piece of wrong-doing, now that it was done, and had +exercised a lifelong influence upon the destinies of three people. + +If Mrs. Jerningham was doubtful and suspicious of Mr. Desmond, he, on +his part, was not entirely at his ease about her. Was she happy? He +asked himself that question very often, and the answer was not always +pleasant to him. + +“No real happiness ever came of wrong-doing,” he said to himself; “we +did wrong, and we are paying the price of our folly.” + +It was only to himself that Mr. Desmond ever said so much as this. To +Emily Jerningham he was always the same--an attentive and respectful +friend--patient, chivalrous, and self-sacrificing as a social Bayard; +but not to be beguiled from the duties of his professional position, +even by the claims of friendship. + + + + + CHAPTER XI. + + “J’AIME: IL FAUT QUE J’ESPERE.” + + +EUSTACE THORBURN found existence altogether a new kind of thing at the +old house amongst the Berkshire woods. His sorrow for the death of his +mother was no transient shadow, to be dispelled by the first bright +glimpse of sunlight that fell across his pathway. It was a deep and +enduring sorrow; but it was a grief which held a fixed place in his +mind, apart from the common joys and vexations of life. All through +those bright summer days the young man showed himself a cheerful +companion, an enthusiastic student, a willing and devoted worker; and +it was only by his mourning dress that those amongst whom he lived +were reminded of his recent loss. But every night, in the stillness of +his own room, the familiar agony came back to his breast; memory and +imagination travelled again upon the beaten track; and he thought of +his mother’s joyless womanhood and lonely death with a pain as bitter +as that which he had felt when he stood beside her newly made grave. + +Such things as these are not to be forgotten. Are they not the +“pathetic minor” which underlies all the harmonies of earth, heard more +or less distinctly, but silent never? + +The one clue which his mother’s letter afforded had been sedulously +followed up by Eustace. The stranger calling himself Hardwick was the +writer of a book first published in the year ’43; and a book of some +repute, as the young man gathered from the letters of his unknown +father. Eustace had Mrs. Willows’ authority for the fact that the book +was some kind of novel or romance; and acting upon this information, +he devoted himself for three consecutive days to an examination of the +critical magazines and periodicals of that year in the reading-room of +the British Museum. + +The result of his labours was not particularly satisfactory. So many +romances published within the year were spoken of as the best novels +of the season, or as works bearing the seal of genius, or as the +promise of greater things from the matured mind of the writer, that +it needed much sifting of all this chaff before the amount of genuine +wheat contained therein could be fairly estimated. But at last, after a +careful study of the _Literary Gazette_ and _Athenæum_, the +quarterlies and monthlies, Eustace Thorburn selected, from a long list +of brilliant successes and best novels of the season, three books, each +of which seemed to bear upon it the stamp of something greater than +amiable mediocrity. + +These are the titles of the three books which Eustace Thorburn +selected, after having read them carefully and thoughtfully: + +1. _Dion_: a Confession. + +2. _Latimer’s Sister_: a Story. By Marcus Anderton. + +3. _The Spectre of Walden_: a Romance. By G. G. G. + +Of these three, _Dion_ was the most singular; _Latimer’s +Sister_ the most tender; _The Spectre_ the most poetical. Any +one of these books might have exercised a powerful effect upon the mind +of a sentimental woman. That they were all three written by men, and +by young men, Eustace entertained no doubt. He did not, indeed, trust +entirely to his own judgment; for he enlisted the services of his Uncle +Dan, and induced that practised reviewer to read the three books. + +“All masculine work!” cried Mr. Mayfield. “No woman could have written +_Latimer’s Sister_ without telling us when the young lady who +figures as the heroine wore blue silk, or how lovely she looked in +pink tarlatane. _The Spectre_ is a translation from the German. +No Englishman would have been as simple and true to nature in his +peasant-life; and I recognize untranslatable German compounds in my +friend’s phraseology. The book which indicates power, and even genius, +is _Dion_. I have a sort of hazy recollection of hearing that +book talked about when I was a young man, and of hearing that it was +written by some sprig of quality. In my opinion, Eustace, that story of +_Dion_ is the kind of book to fascinate a girl.” + +“It is so morbid, so gloomy.” + +“Gloom is the very thing a girl loves, especially when it is the gloom +of the storm-cloud--passion, and anguish, and so on. Depend upon it, my +dear lad, _Dion_ is the book that man wrote--the book your mother +was reading in the unlucky hour in which he first saw her face.” + +“I am inclined to believe that you are right, Uncle Dan,” Eustace +answered, thoughtfully. “It is evidently the work of a scholar.” + +“Yes, but of a very young scholar. The learning is there, but in +a crude, half-digested state. The pages bristle with fragments of +old-world wisdom. The wisdom does not underlie the whole, it is not +interwoven with the very fabric of the book, as in the work of a mature +mind. There is passion and poetry,--a hazy kind of poetry, but with a +certain fascination and grace of its own,--the poetry of a man who has +never written for bread, or been troubled by uncertainties about his +dinner. That parting with the girl Una is very pretty; and the dream +in the ruined manor-house has a weird power. One almost feels the cold +winds blowing through the windows that will not shut; one almost sees +the midnight shadows of ash and poplar lying black on the moss-grown +flags of the quadrangle, and all the nakedness and desolation of the +place. Yes, Eustace, there is the glamour of youth and poetry upon +_Dion_; I should not wonder if the man who wrote that book were +the man who won your mother’s heart.” + +Daniel Mayfield spoke with an air of conviction that had considerable +influence upon his nephew. He went back to the reviews of _Dion_, +in the hope of finding some clue to the writer in the opinions and +speculations of the reviewers. + +In this he was disappointed. The reviewers told him no more than his +Uncle Dan had told him. They judged the writer as Mr. Mayfield had +judged him, from the evidence of the book; they had evidently no +knowledge outside the book. The mystery of anonymous publication had +been religiously preserved, and as the book had created some sensation +at the time of its appearance, there had been considerable speculation +as to the individuality of the writer. + +The result of all this speculation was limited to the following +deductions: + +1st. The writer of the book was a young man who had gone through the +usual curriculum of a university education. + +2nd. The style and manner of thinking were eminently Oxonian. + +3rd. The writer was well acquainted with Continental life. + +4th. He was as familiar with German literature as with the classics. + +5th. His proclivities were aristocratic; his contempt for the masses +supreme and undisguised. + +6th. His philosophy was Epicurean; his gods the graceful divinities +of Greece; his nature sensuous, selfish, but not altogether base. He +was an ardent worshipper of the beautiful. He thirsted for woman’s +love,--the pure, the true; but it was the purity and truth of earth’s +primæval freedom for which he languished, rather than the divine +sentiment allowed by Christian rule. + +Upon these points the reviewers were strong, and they had +sufficient justification for their opinion. The book was pervaded +by the personality of the writer. It was indeed a confession, an +autobiographical record, in which the events and circumstances of +actual life were doubtless altered and disguised, but a record which +laid bare the heart and mind of the man. + +Eustace read the book at the British Museum, and persuaded his uncle to +read it at the same place. He tried to obtain a copy of the story; but +_Dion_ had long been out of print. The booksellers had only the +faintest recollection of a book of that name, and of the fact that it +had created some slight stir during the brief season of its popularity. + +“I’ll get you a copy of the book, sooner or later, if your heart is +set upon it, lad,” said Daniel Mayfield. “You know what a habitual +book-stall lounger I am, and how many times I have had my pocket +picked while I have been dipping into one of the Neo-Platonists, or +an Amsterdam edition of Hysminias and Hysmine, before a second-hand +bookseller’s emporium. _Dion_ is just the sort of book to figure +in a bookseller’s box of odd volumes--‘All these at twopence,’--and, +depend upon it, I shall meet with the gentleman some day. I know a man +who is very clever at picking up any out-of-the-way book I happen to +want; and if you wish it, I’ll set him to work.” + +“I shall be very glad if you do; I would willingly give a guinea for +that book.” + +“I’ll get it you for half the money; but I wish to heaven you would +abandon all speculations about this man, who, after all, may not be the +author of _Dion_.” + +“That I shall never do while my brain has power to speculate; so let us +say no more about that, Uncle Dan.” + +It was rather late in the autumn when Eustace Thorburn made his +researches at the British Museum. He obtained a few days’ holiday from +his employer, and shared his Uncle Daniel’s lodgings in Great Ormond +Street,--big rooms that had once been very grand and noble, and which, +even now, had a pleasant airy aspect, and some remains of old-world +splendour. + +The “few days” stretched themselves into a week before the young +man had completed his studies, but at the end of the week he bade +his kinsman good-bye, and went back to Berkshire, in no wise sorry +to return to the park and forest, the winding river and odorous +flower-garden of his new home. + +In no wise sorry? Could there be gladness more complete than that which +filled his breast as he returned to the house he had learned to think +of as a home? + +“M. de Bergerac’s book will be finished by and by, and he will have +no further need of my services,” thought the returning traveller, as +the sober goddess of common-sense projected her dark shadow athwart +the sunlit realms of fancy. “I shall have to bid farewell to these new +friends, and begin the world once more among strangers. I suppose that +will be the story of my life. I may find friends; I may attach myself +to a stranger’s house, until I almost fancy I have kindred and a home, +like the rest of mankind; and then, just when I am happiest, my foolish +dream will end all at once, and I shall have to begin life again. Oh, +let me be patient when the trial comes! My life can never be so sad and +dreary as _hers_ was.” + +Further reflection developed consoling ideas that brought back a happy +smile to the traveller’s lips. + +“The _History of Superstition_ will not be finished for many a +long year at its present rate of progress,” he said to himself. “I +could wish for nothing better than to live for ever at the bailiff’s +cottage, working for the kindest of employers.” + +He could not, indeed, imagine any state of happiness more perfect +than that which he enjoyed in Theodore de Bergerac’s quiet home, after +all due reservation had been made for that secret sorrow which was not +altogether to be put away from his mind, even when his surroundings +were brightest. + +Life at Greenlands was very quiet. The scholar and his daughter were +a modern Prospero and Miranda, with trim maid-servants to wait upon +them instead of Caliban; and the new Miranda’s life was not much less +lonely than that of her prototype on the enchanted isle. Mademoiselle +de Bergerac had very few friends and no acquaintance. She had never +been to school, and she had scarcely heard the names of those pleasures +and excitements which are the necessities of fashionable damsels. To +take tea with the curate’s daughters, under the walnut-trees in the +prettiest corner of the lawn, was a delightful festivity; to picnic +at Burnham Beeches with her father and two or three chosen friends +was a matter of almost bewildering excitement; to creep along by the +willowy margin of the river in her own light skiff, while her father +sat in the stern reciting some of Victor Hugo’s noblest verses for her +edification, was a quiet rapture above and beyond all those unknown +pleasures of whose existence she was vaguely conscious. + +Never was maiden better pleased with her own life and her own +surroundings than Helen de Bergerac. She had the Gallic vivacity of +disposition, the sanguine, romantic temperament of the Celt. She adored +her father, and adored the fair English country, and the river, and her +dog, and Greenlands; and it was only sometimes, in a tender reverie, +that she pictured to herself sunnier lands,--the vineyards of Provence, +the towers and steeples of Norman cities, the broad blue waters of the +Seine, broken by islets of tender green, and curving like a silver bow, +by valley and woodland, chalky cliff and quaint nestling town, gray +rock and mediæval castle, half-fortress, half-château. + +Mademoiselle de Bergerac thought of this romantic land sometimes, and +sighed for a state of things that might bring about her father’s +return to his native country. For the exiled family she entertained +a sentiment that was akin to adoration, confounding all distinction +between _famille aînée_ and _famille cadette_; and beholding +in the quiet country gentlemen of Twickenham and Bushey the direct +descendants of that bold warrior whose white plume flashed like a star +athwart the serried ranks at Fontenoy. + +But second only to her affection for that country whereof she knew so +little, and which must always be more or less a dreamland for her, was +Mademoiselle de Bergerac’s affection for Berkshire, the land of her +birth, the pastoral scene amidst which there was one corner, one quiet +grave in a village churchyard--a grave above which there bloomed roses +more beautiful than common flowers growing in common gardens--that +must for ever make this one spot holier in her eyes than all other +regions of this lower world. To keep her father’s house, to supply in +some measure the place of that dear companion who was lost to him, +to sustain the student’s ambition, and to watch the scholar’s health, +meting out the midnight oil, and restraining the too eager spirit in +the interests of the ill-used flesh,--in these things was comprised the +desire of Helen de Bergerac’s heart and mind. + +She received her father’s secretary with a most delightful cordiality, +accepting this new member of the family with a grace as easy as if he +had been some long-absent brother or cousin come from beyond seas to +take his place in the household. Prudery and affectation were unknown +to this sylvan damsel. She found it rather agreeable than otherwise to +have a well-bred, well-informed young man in attendance upon her when +she inspected her garden, or supervised the arrangement of a rustic +banquet under the chestnuts on the lawn. She found it agreeable to +be assisted in her reading by some one whose time was less occupied, +and whose erudition was less alarming than her father’s. She found +it pleasant to have a friend who went to the extremest lengths in +the worship of Beethoven and Weber,--a friend who could discourse +most eloquently of Hugo and Shakespeare, Bulwer and Göthe, Balzac +and Thackeray, while her father dozed in the quiet summer twilights, +wearied out by his long day’s labour,--a friend who seemed, strange +to say, always intensely interested in every subject that happened +to interest her, a knight-errant who, living perchance in a prosaic +century, was fain to demonstrate his devotion by the clipping of faded +rose-leaves, and the hunting out of recondite islands and promontories +in the classic atlas,--a friend who, by some unerring instinct, +contrived always to do and say precisely what she wished,--a friend who +was always the right man in the right place. + +“I don’t know how it is, but it seems to me that I am always right,” +remarked the young Duchess of Burgundy with charming _naïveté_; +and Mademoiselle de Bergerac on more than one occasion gave utterance +to observations quite as _naïf_ on the subject of her new +acquaintance. + +“I really cannot tell how it is Mr. Thorburn always contrives to make +himself so agreeable, papa,” she said. + +The simple-hearted book-worm was no less blind than his daughter. + +“I am glad you like him, my love,” he replied, carelessly. “I was +rather afraid you might object to a third person in the house. He is a +most admirable young man. For hunting out a reference or a quotation, +he is, I think, unrivalled. I only hope I shall be able to keep him +till my book is finished; but that will be a long time, Helen, a very +long time--if I live to finish it at all.” + +“Dear, dear father,” murmured the girl, tenderly; and then she +continued, with some appearance of alarm, “Do you think Mr. Thorburn +wishes to leave us?” + +“No, my dear, I have no reason to think that. But he is very young, you +know; and this must be a dull kind of life for a young man.” + +“And yet I am sure Mr. Thorburn is not unhappy. He had only just lost +his mother, you know, when he came to us; and of course the memory of +that loss makes him thoughtful and melancholy sometimes. But I am sure +he is quite content to lead our quiet life, papa, and that he takes +a very deep interest in your book. He told me the other day that he +cannot venture to look forward to the end of that book; it seems to him +like looking forward to the end of his life.” + +“It is, indeed, an interesting subject, my love,” replied M. de +Bergerac, with complacency, “and an almost inexhaustible one--the +history of superstition: a mighty record, a vast survey, embracing +the length and breadth of this earth, from the monstrous temples of +the East to the classic shrines of the West--from the altar of the +Carthaginian Æsculapius to the funeral pyre of the Scandinavian Balder. +I am much pleased to think the young man likes his work. He is very +clever.” + +“Is he not clever, papa? He wrote a little poem the other day, and he +asked my opinion of it. As if _my_ opinion could be worth having! +It was charming. I do not think your favourite Catullus, whom you +praise so much, and yet will not allow me to read, could have written +anything more graceful. It is full of that mournful langour that there +is in some of Victor Hugo’s minor poems, and in Longfellow’s--a sweet, +calm sadness that pierces one’s heart.” + +“I am glad he distracts himself by the composition of verses,” said +the scholar. “There are some who consider such a course of reading as +he is now engaged in dry and laborious; but to my mind there can be no +better nurture for a poet. I trust Mr. Thorburn may achieve some kind +of success in the future.” + +“I think he writes or studies a good deal at night, after you have done +with him.” + +“How do you know that, my dear?” + +“Through Susan, papa. She is always complaining about the candles. +You know how economical she is; and I assure you Mr. Thorburn’s +consumption of candles is quite an affliction to her. I wonder whether +the Grecian _ménagères_ were angry when their lords consumed the +midnight oil. Perhaps that was one of Xantippe’s grievances. I don’t +think Socrates could have been a _very_ agreeable husband.” + +“That point is open to discussion,” said the scholar, slyly. “We +possess the sage’s opinion of Xantippe, but we do not possess +Xantippe’s opinion of the sage.” + + +The weeks and months slipped by, and the fern was sear and brown in +Windsor Great Park and Forest, and all the woodlands of Berkshire were +leafless; but Eustace Thorburn showed no signs of distaste for his +labours as secretary and amanuensis, collator and collaborateur. He +languished for no change, he pined for no pleasure. His considerate +employer had borrowed an extra horse from the stables of the great +house, where there was still the remnant of a noble stud; and at his +suggestion the young man took long rides in the early morning, before +the day’s studious drudgery began. It was very pleasant to come home +to breakfast in the snug old-fashioned parlour, and to be welcomed by +Mademoiselle de Bergerac, whose bright eyes grew brighter at sight +of some sprig of rare comb-bearing fern. Life at Greenlands seemed, +indeed, to be altogether an existence of perfect and serene delight, +only overshadowed now and then by the vague consciousness that it was +too sweet to last. + +“The time will come when I shall have to pack my portmanteau and bid +her good-bye,” the young man said to himself, in moments of sober +meditation at night, when he sat alone in his pleasant room, and some +break, some stagnation in the course of his composition brought him to +a stand-still; “or some one will come and see her, and learn to love +her as dearly as I love her even; and he will be in a position to say +the sweet words I dare not say to her; and I shall hear the jangling +village-bells some misty summer morning, and she will come in her white +bridal dress to bid me farewell. Men have to bear such pain as that, +and to bear it quietly.” + +By these reflections it will be seen that Eustace Thorburn, without +fortune, friends, or name, and with the ever-present consciousness of +the bar-sinister on his escutcheon, had presumed to fall in love with +the only child of his employer. Could he have done otherwise? “Lives +there a wretch with soul so dead” as to be able to inhabit the same +dwelling with a Helen de Bergerac for six months and not own himself +her worshipper and slave ere the sixth month is ended? Eustace Thorburn +had surrendered himself an unresisting victim to the pitiless goddess +who sways the weak souls of men, as her kinswoman Artemis rules the +tides of ocean. He had allowed himself to be cradled in the shadowy +arms of Fancy, rocked to the sweetest sleep that was ever broken by +bitter waking. + +“I know that it must end in misery,” he said to himself; “but it is so +sweet--while it lasts.” + +He loved her, and he feared that his love was hopeless. Simple as M. +de Bergerac’s life might be, he bore upon him the stamp of the old +_noblesse_. He was of that nation whose _dernière grand dame_ +died with Queen Marie-Amélie; and it was not to be supposed there was +no latent pride of birth beneath that graceful humility of manner which +rendered the exile so dear to the cottagers and peasant children about +Greenlands. + +“I think he would give his daughter to a poor man,” thought Eustace, +when he meditated this vital question; “for his soul seems to me so +pure and noble as to be above all consideration of worldly wealth; and +then Helen’s simple habits fit her for a poor man’s wife. But I cannot +think that he would consent to an alliance with a man of low origin, or +of unknown origin, which to that proud and pure mind would seem worse +than the lowest, since it must bear the stigma of shame.” + +There were times when a hope--vague but exquisite--awoke in the young +man’s breast as he pondered on the future. If he was nameless to-day, +must he needs go nameless to the grave? Might he not win for himself a +renown that would give grace and lustre to that simple family name of +Thorburn, which he had seen on his grandfather’s tombstone? Was it only +a foolish presumption, the besotted vanity of a young pedant, which +buoyed him up and supported him in his hours of depression? Was that +word _Parvenir_, which he had taken for himself as his motto, and +cherished in secret as the watch-word of his life, only the formula of +a braggart? Was that pleasant land of dreams, in which he was wont to +take refuge when the world of realities seemed dark and dreary, only a +fool’s paradise? + +Insomuch as poetic dreams and aspirations can make a man a poet, +Eustace Thorburn was a member of that glorious brotherhood which began +with Homer; but it yet remained to be shown whether he were gifted with +something more than the vague yearnings and lofty imaginings of the +dreamer who would fain admit the world within the mystic portals of +his fair shadowland. To think high thoughts, to dream delicious dreams, +is one thing; but to be able to translate thought and dream into the +eloquent verse of a Byron, or the polished syllables of a Tennyson, +is another thing. To how many eyes the Coliseum and the Adriatic, +the Drachenfels and the quiet field that lies beyond Ardennes, may +have seemed as fair as they appeared to the eyes of that one lonely +traveller who has recorded his wanderings in words that can never die! +How many brains must have been crowded by grand imaginings, how many +hearts must have beat high with the dreamer’s enthusiasm, as the youth +of England have trodden the ground that is hallowed by the footsteps of +heroes and demigods! and yet, of all the youth of England, there has +been but one whose poetic record of his emotions has reached a second +edition, and held a place in the memory of mankind. Of all the men +who read the rugged legends of Macbeth and Lear, the Italian story of +Othello’s passion and Iago’s cunning, there was only one man who could +give to the crude unshapely records life and form, immortal as his own +genius! + +Whether Eustace Thorburn possessed that subtle and wondrous power of +expression, that mystic sympathy with the minds of his fellowmen, that +marvellous perception which is a kind of clairvoyance, time alone could +show. He had his moments of proud hope, his hours of abject depression; +but he worked on patiently, steadily, devoting more than one quiet +hour of every night to the composition of a narrative poem--dramatic, +philosophical, passionate, and perhaps just a little tainted with the +egotism which is so common in the work of youthful genius. + +Eustace Thorburn had no suspicion that the hero of his poetic fiction +was a shadow of himself, a projection of his own brain; but he knew +that the heroine was an airy sister of Helen de Bergerac, and that the +love of his Egbert for his Amy was very near akin to his own love for +Helen. + +There was no odour of the midnight oil in the poet’s verses. They +breathed the freshness of youth, the perfume of woods and groves; the +harmonious lines were musical with the ripple of cool waters, the low +sound of leafy branches swaying gently in the summer wind. The life +which Eustace Thorburn led at Greenlands was the ideal existence for +which the poet sighs, for which he yearns with fond imaginings, pent +up in the darksome city counting-house, chained to the cruel wheel of +distasteful labour. Nor was the young man ungrateful to Providence, or +to the kindly kinsman who had procured for him so pleasant a position. +He thanked God for his easy existence, his congenial labours; and he +wrote sweet, playful letters, full of affection and gratitude, to Uncle +Dan, who treasured those effusions, and was pleased to favour his +friends and boon-companions with the recital of eloquent little bits in +those delightful epistles. + +“What would you give to be able to write like that, Tom Granger?” he +said to one of his associates. “You write uncommonly well, you know, +dear boy, and so does John Harrington, and Ted Rochester, and Frank +Dorset; and there’s plenty of _chic_ in all you do. You all write +uncommonly well, Tom; you can all describe the things you see every +day, _from the outside_, with a certain amount of smartness; but +there is no more evidence of thought in your compositions than if you +were so many copying-machines; and you all write so like one another, +that if Frank wrote page one, and Ted page two, and John page three, +no one but themselves and the compositors who set-up their copy would +be any the wiser. You have all got the slang of the day, and you all +write for the current market, and you are all wise in your generation. +But the day will come when this boy here will show you that a writer +may have something more than ‘a knack,’ and be something better than a +publisher’s ‘clever hand.’” + +“I wouldn’t mind giving you long odds against that immaculate nephew +of yours ever writing a book that will sell,” replied the incredulous +Tom, in no wise put out of countenance by his friend’s exordium. “They +all begin in the same style, these young uns. Epic poem about King +Arthur, or King Alfred, or King Athelstane, that is to be the Iliad +of future generations,--high-falutin sentiment, pure aspirations, and +so on. And they write their epic poems, and pass them on from one +publisher’s office to another, till the poor valueless manuscripts +are limp and dirty; and then they learn to adapt themselves to the +requirements of their generation, and turn into ‘clever hands’ like +you and me, Dan. They must all go through the same apprenticeship, and +‘learn in suffering what they teach in song,’--that is to say, learn in +Whitecross Street what they teach in the monthly magazines, unless they +happen to be careful souls, with snug little incomes: in which case +they hug their sweet delusions to the last, and publish their epics at +their own expense. Epic poems, forsooth! Do you think the Greeks would +have read Homer if they had possessed periodical literature?” + +“I look upon periodical literature as the sworn foe to learning.” + +“You are not the first of dirty birds, Daniel Mayfield,” cried his +friend, sternly; “and now for the divine Louisa.” + +The “divine Louisa” was Mr. Granger’s playful name for unlimited loo, a +pastime which cost Daniel Mayfield many a five-pound note in the course +of the year, but which he had not the moral courage to forswear. He +had his reputation as a Bohemian, and he was too old to hope for a new +reputation amongst the ranks of the respectable; so he was fain to be +true to the brotherhood in which he had some _status_. + +“Better to be a prince among the nomad tribes than a nobody among the +Philistines,” he said to himself. “One might submit to that, if the +Philistines were a perfect race; but when a man sees how much malice +and selfishness there may be in the Pharisees and Sadducees, he is apt +to prefer the society of publicans and sinners.” + +These were the arguments with which Daniel Mayfield was wont to stifle +the upbraidings of conscience; for the sinner can forgive himself all +his other sins more easily than the one sin of a wasted life. Mr. +Mayfield had his hours of depression, his moments of savage bitterness; +and to escape from these, he fled to the scenes he liked and the +friends he loved--the friends who in some sort loved him. + + + + + CHAPTER XII. + + THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. + + +MRS. JERNINGHAM spent her autumn at Spa, where Mrs. Colton, the +amiable dragon, drank the waters with the patient regularity of a +valetudinarian, and wondered at the Continental toilettes with the +pious wonder of a well-bred provincial Englishwoman, to whom these +daring eccentricities of custom--these _bottes à mi-jambe, en cuir +de Russie_, these dainty braided jackets _à la Rigolboche_, +these robes _à queue-sans-fin_, and _chapeaux à l’infiniment +petit_--were all so much confusion, the climax of horror and infamy +foreshadowed by the Prophet, the abomination of desolation sitting in +the high places. + +For Emily Jerningham, life at Spa seemed a very dull business. She +had no pet ailment to be subjugated by the mineral waters. The +pine-woods and stately avenues were very beautiful on fine summer +mornings, or beneath the broad glory of the harvest moon; but she had +seen them before. It seemed to her as if she knew every pine on the +steep hillside, every branch of the lofty oaks in the valley, every +hard, worldly face that was to be seen in the Kursaal. Was there not +something wanting in her life, a something for lack of which she must +needs be lonely and purposeless wherever she went? + +All the pleasures and luxuries that wealth can buy; all the +consideration that a good old name can exact; all the respect that a +reputation which, despite an occasional shrug from some Rochefoucauld +of this generation, may fairly be called stainless, can command--were +at the disposal of this fortunate lady, and yet she was not happy. She +had too much, and too little. If she had been an utterly selfish and +narrow-minded woman, she might have found the perfection of bliss in +splendid toilettes and well-appointed equipages, an elegant house and +distinguished acquaintance; but something more than these was necessary +to complete the sum of Mrs. Jerningham’s happiness. + +“Of what use am I in the world?” she asked herself, wearily, as she +drove her graceful pony-carriage through the crowd which admired and +envied her. “I am an expense to my husband; a burden and a restraint +for Laurence, who no doubt would have married before this, if it were +not for me; and a weariness to myself.” + +Perhaps this unspoken lament might have been translated thus; + +“I have been here a month, and Mr. Desmond has not found time to come +to me. He writes me a hurried letter once in ten days, in which, under +an unlimited amount of respect, I perceive the lurking poison of +indifference; and I am too proud to tell him how intensely I wish to +see him, too proud to confess even to myself the pain I suffer because +of his absence.” + +In bidding adieu to Mrs. Jerningham and her companion at the London +Bridge station on the morning of their departure, the editor of the +_Areopagus_ had declared that, if he could give himself a holiday, +he would take that holiday at Spa; and the eyes of the younger lady had +said “Do!” and the proud line of her lips had softened into a grateful +smile. + +“We shall expect to see you, Mr. Desmond,” she said, at the very last, +when he had brought her _Punch_ and a damp copy of the newly +issued _Areopagus_. Ah, how many a youthful scribbler’s ardour has +been damped by those cold clammy papers, deadly chill as the skin of +the cobra, and venomous as his sting! + +“We shall expect to see you--soon,” repeated the lady, with that pretty +air of insistence which is so charming in an elegant woman. + +“But, my dear Mrs. Jerningham, I did not say I would come. I said, I +will come, if I can get a holiday.” + +“As if any one could refuse you a holiday! But I will not allow the +arrangement to be left in that vague manner. Shall we see you in a +week?” + +“I fear not.” + +“In a fortnight?” + +“I scarcely like to promise anything till this month is over. There are +so many rows on the political _tapis_; and we are bound to go in +for an analysis of all the rows. And there is Cumberland’s fourteenth +volume of “Catharine II.;” that is a book I am pledged to review +myself.” + +“Pledged to the author?” + +“No; to the publisher. Do you think anyone on the _Areopagus_ ever +writes a review to oblige an author? I think, in three weeks, I may be +free; and if----” + +“Oh, pray do not imperil the fortunes of the _Areopagus_ for +any caprice of mine! I am sure I should be immensely distressed if +my pleasure interfered with the prompt notice of Mr. Cumberland’s +‘Catharine,’” cried Mrs. Jerningham, with supreme hauteur, and with +the injured air of a woman who thinks your regard for her must be very +small, if at her behest you refuse to jeopardize a paltry newspaper +which cost only twenty thousand pounds or so to establish, or the +reputation of a trumpery author, who has only given the labour of a +lifetime to his absurd book. + +The Dover express moved away before Mr. Desmond could reply to the +lady’s angry speech, and left him standing on the platform, with a +smile, that was half-sad, half-cynical, upon his face. + +“They are all alike,” he said to himself; “beautiful, delightful, +unreasonable, and profoundly selfish. How well that tone of _grande +dame_ becomes her! How lovely she looked just now, with that +crimson flush of wounded pride, and that angry light in her eyes! What +a pity it is that a woman cannot believe in the regard of a man who +is not ready to behave like an idiot in all the affairs of life for +her pleasure! ‘You pretend that you love me,’ cries offended Beauty, +‘and yet you won’t forfeit a colonelcy in the Life Guards in order +to attend me to a garden-party at Miss Burdett Coutts’s! You declare +that you adore me, and yet refuse to make a bonfire of your father’s +family-seat for my amusement!’” + +Mr. Desmond’s mind was not altogether in his work that day, and more +than once the remorseless pen of the editor lay idle in his hand, while +he pondered on a subject which within the last year had become the +unanswerable enigma of his existence. It was much easier for him to +soothe Emily’s doubts with pretty, reassuring speeches than to satisfy +the perplexities of his own mind. + +Was this lukewarm friendship an alliance that good men and pure-minded +women could approve--this friendship which must needs be continually +measured by the thermometer of the proprieties, lest it should become +a degree or so warmer than society could warrant? Was it a fair and +honourable thing, this tacit engagement, the fulfilment whereof was +contingent on the death of a man whose hand Laurence had taken in +friendship many times in the past, whom he might meet with friendly +greeting to-morrow? No, a thousand times no! Laurence Desmond was well +aware that he occupied one of those false positions into which men +sometimes slip unawares, and from which extrication is so difficult. + +Could he bring himself to tell Emily Jerningham that this friendship +was wrong, and that it lacked even the charm that sweetens some +wrong-doing? Could he do this, could he inflict pain upon her, when his +own conscience told him that the keen sense of the dishonour involved +in his position had only arisen in his mind since the position itself +had become wearisome to him? + +Yes, this was the _mot de l’énigme_. He had loved her very dearly; +but he loved her no longer. He looked backward to the days in which +he had walked with her in the little garden at Passy, and thought how +happy they might both have been if he had been less prudent, if he had +obeyed the impulses of his heart, instead of the hard axioms of the +worldly-wise. The time and the opportunity were past and gone, and he +felt that some part of his own youth and hope had gone with them. + +He made his appearance at Spa when Mrs. Jerningham and Mrs. Colton had +been at that pleasant watering-place for more than a month, and he was +received somewhat coldly by the younger lady, who could not forgive +him for doing his duty as editor of the _Areopagus_. But she soon +melted. It was not possible that she should long conceal the delight +she felt in his presence. + +“I am angry with myself for being so glad to see you,” she cried at +last; “but, oh, you cannot imagine how dull and hopeless my life has +been in this place! My poor aunt likes the humdrum gaiety, and the +nauseous waters, and the dawdling drives, and the Tauchnitz novels; and +I have stayed to please her. But more than once I have been tempted to +take the train for Liége, and offer myself as a novice at the first +convent I came to after leaving the station. Why should I not go into a +convent, or at least a béguinage? What use am I in the world?” + +Hereupon Mr. Desmond had to reiterate the old protestations, to the +effect that the lady’s friendship was the pride and happiness of +his life, and that to him, at least, she was a person of supreme +importance--the very pole-star, or guiding influence, of his life; and +then, after speaking to her with great warmth and kindness, he began to +lecture her a little upon the emptiness of her existence. + +“You would not be so foolish as to imagine these things, if you were +more employed, Emily,” he said. + +“How shall I employ myself?” asked the lady, with an incredulous +laugh. “Shall I tat? The tatting of our great-grandmothers has come +into fashion. I have tried it, and for a little while it seemed really +delightful; but there is a time when one gets tired even of that. I +have worked screens in Berlin wool with beads--or have begun them; +my aunt has a knack of finishing my work. I paint ever so little in +water-colours; but after sitting in a damp meadow for two or three +hours, exposed to a midsummer sun, the result is only that I hate +myself because I am not Creswick. And with music it is the same. The +morning-concerts spoil one for amateur music. I devoted last summer +to the harmonium--I suppose because there is such a rage for it; +but it was like the tatting--there came a stage at which it seemed +all weariness. If it were not for my orchids, I think I should go +melancholy mad; but for the cultivator of orchids there can be no such +thing as satiety until all the forests on the shores of the Amazon have +been rifled by exploring botanists.” + +“Don’t you think it just possible you might find a better source of +interest even than orchids?” suggested the editor, gravely. “Your +fellow-creatures, for instance--a little sympathy for them might not be +thrown away.” + +“You mean that I should turn district-visitor, and go about with +tracts and packets of tea and sugar,” replied the lady, listlessly. +“My aunt does all that. She is a clergyman’s widow, you know, and that +kind of thing is very easy to her. My maid goes with her sometimes, +and tells me dreadful things about the poor people, as she brushes my +hair--the St. Anthony’s fires and St. Vitus’s dances, and wens and +whitlows, and frightful complaints that they suffer from; and really +there seems a particular class of diseases that poor people have +entirely to themselves, just as if they have a copyright in them, you +know. I am sure I am very sorry for the poor creatures; and when there +is anything out of the common way, we send money; besides which, our +rector knows that my cheque-book is at his service in any emergency. I +cannot see that I should do any particular good by walking about in the +hot sun with tracts.” + +“I dare say, so far as your own parish goes, you and your aunt are +ministering angels, my dear Emily; but you see that is a very narrow +sphere, and there are people of a higher class than those you help who +may have more need of your sympathy.” + +“If you are going to ask me to be philanthropic, I warn you at once +that it is useless,” exclaimed the lady, with a little cry of alarm. “I +have not the elements of the philanthropist. I do not care the least +in the world for woman’s rights; and if I had the privilege of an +electress to-morrow, I should--what do you call it?--plump unblushingly +for the man who could offer me a new orchid. I do not care about female +printers or female doctors. I think it very sad that poor seamstresses +should work in stuffy rooms until they fade and die; but I can only +pity them, and send money to the newspapers for them, or for their +survivors. I have not strength of mind enough to be of any practical +use to them.” + +Mr. Desmond sighed. He saw no remedy for the weariness of spirit from +which Mrs. Jerningham suffered. Did not Madame de Maintenon complain of +a like weariness when she was the envied of all French men and women, +thereby drawing upon herself a trenchant and somewhat impious remark +from her brother D’Aubigné? She was happier, perhaps, in the old days, +before Scarron pitied and married her--the days in which she did or did +not share the chamber of Ninon de l’Enclos. + +“I do not ask you to take up the human race,” said Mr. Desmond, after a +pause; “but I think your life is too--pardon me if I say egotistical. +If you had more friends--I don’t mean visitors; you have plenty of +them, but intimate acquaintance--intimate enough to fly to you in their +perplexities, to consult you in their social arrangements, and to--” + +“They would only bore me.” + +“Perhaps; but they would occupy you, they would take you out of +yourself; and even when they were dullest and most obnoxious, they +would give a keener zest to your hours of solitude. Depend upon it, +one must consent to be bored now and then, in order to appreciate the +rapture of not being bored. I am sure, Emily, you would be happier if +you took a little more interest in the affairs of your neighbours, or +if you had more people dependent on your kindness.” + +“You may be right,” returned the lady, listlessly; “but I do not care +for my neighbours. I cannot bring myself to sympathize with their +serio-comic woes about recalcitrant butlers and flaunting housemaids. +Nor have I any dependents whom my kindness could benefit. My father and +I were the only poor members of the family, and there is no one who +would care to profit by my prosperity.” + +What could be said after this? Laurence Desmond felt that this lonely +lady’s life wanted a something that gives form and purpose to the +lives of other women. Existence for Emily Jerningham had been made too +easy, and, extremes meeting in this as in all other cases, it was fast +becoming difficult. She was like some dowager sultana, weaned of palace +and gardens, fountains and slaves, peacocks and birds of paradise. All +the ease and luxury of her life palled on her, and that most fatal of +moral diseases, discontent, was fast gaining a hold upon her mind. +That old story of the greedy apprentice in the pastrycook’s shop is a +fable of wide application. The boy fancies he can never be weary of +an existence that is all raspberry-tarts and bath-buns; and being let +loose in his master’s shop, makes himself bilious in a week, and hates +the sight of a raspberry-tart ever afterwards. + +There had been a time when Miss Jerningham, sadly restricted in all the +aspirations of young-ladyhood, had believed that an open account with +a West-end milliner, a perfectly appointed barouche for the Park, and +a miniature brougham for shopping, must constitute the supreme good of +earthly existence; but after half a dozen years’ enjoyment of these +blessings, she discovered that the most accomplished of milliners, +and the most perfect of establishments, cannot give happiness. The +toy-villa at Hampton was a place to dream of; but its mistress found +the hours intolerably long in those Paradisaic gardens, the evenings +unutterably weary in that fairy drawing-room, the drives by Bushey and +Richmond, Kingston and Chertsey, very little gayer than the prisoner’s +tramp in the grim gaol-yard, under surveillance of a hard-visaged +warder. + +The lady had nothing to do. If she read a volume of a novel, and paid +a few visits, or received a few callers, to-day, she could only look +forward to another volume, and another visit, or visitor, to-morrow. +The days were all alike, and they left no mark behind them. When a year +came to an end, Mrs. Jerningham told herself that she was twelve months +older than when it began, and that was the sole effect the passage of +time could exercise upon her fate. + +“It is all very well for Laurence to be happy and active,” she said to +herself. “He has that odious _Areopagus_ to interest him, and the +hope of going into parliament by and by. He is getting rich, and has +had the excitement of earning his money. He has his social triumphs +and his literary successes, the friendship of great men. It is always +the same story. _They_ have ‘the court, camp, church; the vessel +and the mart; sword, gown, gain, glory;’ and we have only the London +Library and Jaques’s croquet.” + +Mr. Desmond stayed a fortnight at Spa, and then hurried back to the +British Isles, being “due” at a ducal palace in the Highlands--a grand +old château, romantic as a picture by Gustave Doré. To say that he +assured Mrs. Jerningham he had not the faintest expectation of deriving +pleasure from this visit, and that he went to Scotland simply because +the political interests of the _Areopagus_ obliged him to stalk +the duke’s deer and shoot the duke’s grouse, is only to say that he was +a _man_. + +Within a week from his departure Mrs. Jerningham and her companion +also turned their backs upon the romantic Belgian valley. Emily would +have liked much to make the return journey under the escort of the +editor; but this would have just a little outstepped the bounds of this +carefully regulated friendship, and Mr. Desmond was too profoundly +versed in the philosophy of his own world to suggest the measure. He +knew exactly how much would be permitted to himself and the woman +he--had loved, and still hoped to marry; and he adhered closely to the +letter of that unwritten law which is Society’s Koran. + +When autumn was fast fading into the chill gray of early winter, Mr. +Desmond came back to town, and resumed his visits at the Hampton villa, +where his pleasure and his caprices were studied with affectionate +solicitude, but where a good deal was exacted from him in return for +this solicitude. If Mrs. Jerningham for her part paid a certain price +for Laurence Desmond’s friendship, so surely did he for his part pay +somewhat heavily for the honour and privilege of the lady’s regard. + +In plain English, she was jealous. The agony which neither “mandragora +nor all the drowsy syrups of the East” can lull to rest was the agony +that racked the soul of Emily Jerningham. Little wonder that the +pleasures and luxuries of her life palled upon her. There was a poison +in her cup which flavoured every joy and embittered every pleasure. All +the petty doubts and frivolous misgivings of the jealous mind harassed +this lady’s quiet days, and tormented her through the slow hours of +her wakeful nights. She was miserable when Laurence Desmond was away +from her; she was restless and anxious when he was with her. If he were +grave, she fancied him bored by her society; if he were especially +gay, her demon-familiar suggested that his gaiety might be assumed. +She tortured him by her eager curiosity about the manner in which his +life was spent when he was away from her. She insulted him by the air +of incredulity with which she received his answers. The mention of some +beautiful or distinguished woman whom he had met in society sufficed to +fan the flame that was always burning. + +“Why do you pretend not to admire Laura Courtenay, and why do you +give your shoulders that depreciating shrug when you talk of Lady +Sylvester?” she would exclaim, with suppressed anger. “Do you think I +am deceived by that kind of thing? You dined at the Sylvesters’ four +times last season; and you are always dancing attendance upon those +Courtenay girls, though you make quite a favour of coming here once +a week. I shall ask Laura and Julia Courtenay to stay with me next +summer, and then perhaps I shall be honoured by your society.” + +Of course Mr. Desmond did his uttermost to satisfy the lady’s doubts +and cheer her spirits; but he found it not a little wearisome to repeat +the same protestations, the same assurances, week after week, to very +small effect. + +“If I could see Emily contented and happy,” he said to himself, “I +should be the last to count the cost of our friendship; but her tears, +and misgivings, and accusations harass and worry me almost beyond +endurance.” + +Nor did Mr. Desmond feel thus without justification. The lady’s +jealousy might, indeed, be the strongest possible evidence of her +affection, but it was an evidence which Laurence Desmond could have +gladly dispensed with. + +“Surely there must be within the limits of possibility a love that +means peace, trust, unselfishness. Is every woman like Emily, exacting, +suspicious, insatiable of devotion and protestation, for ever on the +watch to discover falsehood and hypocrisy in the man who loves her? +Poor girl! I am hard and cruel perhaps, when I blame her. These doubts +and suspicions may be some of the penalties of our position. There can +be no true union of hearts where there is a separation of existences. +It is all very well to talk sentimental balderdash about the union +of souls, the sympathy of minds that think alike, the sighs that are +wafted from Indus to the Pole; but, in spite of poetry and metaphysics, +real union means the family breakfast-table, the daily dinner, the +constitutional walk, the drowsy home-evening when there are no +visitors, the summer trip to Switzerland, the quiet, half-tearful talk +in the big, darkened bedroom when first the faint squeal of babyhood +is heard in the family mansion. Out upon Platonic friendship between +men and women who have once knelt together at the shrine of Venus! It +is a delusion, a mockery, a lie! There is no union except marriage.” + +This was the shape which Mr. Desmond’s reflections were wont to assume +after a painful interview with Emily Jerningham. She loved him, and she +would fain have believed in his love, but her familiar demon would not +allow her so much peace, such pure delight. If Laurence succeeded in +convincing her of his truth and devotion to-night, and left her at the +gate of her pretty garden, smiling and happy, after a cordial pressure +of her soft white hand, it was as likely as not that an hour’s solitary +promenade and contemplation in the same pretty garden would enable the +lady to develop new doubts and misgivings from her inner consciousness, +which would result in a melancholy letter of five or six pages, written +that night, and delivered next morning at Mr. Desmond’s late breakfast. + +Those who knew the editor of the _Areopagus_, and knew or guessed +his position _auprès de_ Mrs. Jerningham, envied and hated him as +the most fortunate of literary highflyers. What more could he desire? +Had he not the regard of one of the handsomest and best-bred women in +London, who would in all probability come in for a princely fortune +whenever Jerningham should go off the hooks? Mr. Desmond was the last +of men to admit the pinching of the shoe which he wore with so good +a grace. No one among his intimates ventured the impertinence of a +congratulation; but it was a generally understood thing that he was +supremely happy, and that Mrs. Jerningham’s friendship was a blessing +which he would not have bartered for a kingdom. And while his friends +were permitted to suppose this, Laurence Desmond was profoundly +miserable. + +“How will it end?” he asked himself sometimes; “and will it ever end?” + + + + + CHAPTER XIII. + + MISS ST. ALBANS. + + +AS an individual who, by arduous and unremitting labour--by the sweat +of his brow and the ceaseless working of his brain--had contrived +to secure for himself a decent income in the present and a moderate +provision for the future, Mr. Desmond was of course a fitting mark +for the arrows of that free-lance of modern civilization--the +begging-letter writer. Men and women whose faces he had never seen +wrote him pitiful letters, or impudent letters, as the case might +be, urging requests which, if all or even half of them had been +granted, would speedily have left him penniless. That he should have +those of his own kith or kin--that he should have personal friends, +or benefactors of the past with powerful claims upon him in the +present--that he should have obligations to discharge, or debts to pay, +or artistic tastes to gratify, never entered the heads of these poor +needy people. His name and address were in the Directory, and he was +supposed to be tolerably well off; so there was no more to do but to +procure a sheet of paper and a penny stamp, and entreat of him the loan +or donation of any given number of pounds, from five to a hundred. + +These applications were as painful to Mr. Desmond as such applications +must always be to a man who has power to feel the extent of human want +and wretchedness around and about him, without the power to relieve it. +He read the piteous letters with a sigh, and passed them over to his +sub-editor, who answered every appeal with the same polite formula. +Laurence Desmond was not a hard man, however, and to an appeal that +came from an old friend or fellow-worker he never turned a deaf ear. + +Such an appeal came to him one dull, wintry morning after his return +from the ducal château in Scotland. Among his letters there was a very +painful one from Mrs. Jerningham, with the usual jealous murmurs, the +oft-repeated complaints of neglect. This he read with a thoughtful +brow, and laid aside with a sigh so heavy as to be almost a groan. + +“I am tired of protestation and justification,” he said to himself; +“there must be an end of these letters. If she doubts my truth because +I spend half a dozen days without going to her, she can have little +power to appreciate the unselfishness of my regard in the three long +years in which I have made myself her slave. There must come an end to +a bondage that is intolerable to me, and only a source of unhappiness +to her.” + +The rest of Mr. Desmond’s letters, with one exception, were on business +connected with his journal. This one exception was a letter addressed +in a hand that was very familiar to him. + +“My old coach, Tristram Alford!” he cried, as he tore open the +envelope. “I wonder how the poor fellow has been getting on since the +old days at Henley, when Max Waldon, Frank Lawsley, and I were there +with our boat, reading for ‘Greats.’ I suppose he has been writing a +book, or doing a translation of a Greek tragedy, and wants me to give +him a lift. It’s a long time since I’ve heard anything of him.” + +This was the tutor’s letter:-- + + “MY DEAR DESMOND,--If I had not already tested and proved + the goodness of your heart when I appealed to you some three or four + years since for a loan,--which I then hoped would have been of a + temporary character, but which, I regret to remember, has not yet been + liquidated,--I should not now venture to address you as a suppliant. + + “The favour which I am now about to ask is not of a pecuniary kind, + and it is a favour which will be very easy for you to grant. You + remember my little girl Lucy, who was so fond of your dogs and boats, + and who used to sit listening with open eyes and mouth when we were + construing _Sophocles_. The little rogue had an innate love of + the drama, and performed the part of Electra with a metal tea-pot in a + most affecting manner. Well, my dear boy, that inborn dramatic taste, + which showed itself when the child was in pinafores, has grown with + her growth; and when old enough to consider the question of getting + her own living,--the generous-minded child being sensitively averse to + remaining a burden to me,--she decided on becoming an actress. + + “I need scarcely inform you, my dear Desmond, that such an idea was to + me, at the first blush, absolute HORROR; but when my sweet + girl urged her predilection for the drama, and reminded me of the + handsome fortunes realized by Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, Miss O’Neill, and + other professors of that classic art, I relented, and allowed Lucy + to have her own way. The dear girl had educated herself and reared + herself, as it were, with so little help from me, that it would have + seemed ill in me to frustrate her hopes by my cold reasoning or timid + doubts. Nor had I any very agreeable alternative to offer her. My + circumstances have year by year become more embarrassed since that + pleasant summer we spent together at Henley, and the home which I can + provide for my only child is of the poorest. Was I, then, to stand in + the way of her advancement? + + “To make a long story short, I yielded, and have since that time + devoted my best energies to my dear girl’s service. She is but + nineteen, and has already appeared at the Theatres Royal, Stony + Stratford, Market Deeping, Oswestry, and Stamford, with considerable + success. Her sympathies are with the buskin, rather than with the + sock; but at Oswestry she performed the part of Lady Teazle, and + received much applause from an appreciative, although somewhat + limited, audience. + + “We have now essayed a bolder venture. My Lucy has obtained, with + inordinate difficulty, a London engagement. I had, in my ignorance + of the dramatic world, fondly imagined that a young person of + unmistakeable genius had only to apply to the manager of one of the + patent theatres, in order to be placed at once upon the boards that + Siddons trod. But I find, alas! that in most cases it is only after + years of patient and ill-paid drudgery in small provincial towns + the dramatic aspirant works his or her way to the metropolis,--nay, + indeed, there are many who never reach that splendid goal, but who + journey through life as the favourite actor of the Theatre Royal, + Market Deeping or Oswestry, and who are not ill-pleased with their + renown. + + “But to return. My daughter’s engagement will be a brief one; but she + is to appear in a wide range of the drama, in conjunction with Mr. + Henry de Mortemar, a gentleman of some local celebrity, though as yet + unknown to the metropolitan critics. The theatre is an obscure one, + and Lucy must speedily return to the drudgery of a provincial stage + unless some powerful and friendly hand shall be interposed in her + behalf. Yours, my good friend, is the influence which I would solicit + for my dear child. A word from you would doubtless immediately secure + a profitable engagement at one of the West-end theatres. I beseech + you, for the sake of ‘auld lang syne,’ to say that all-powerful word, + and to confer a lasting obligation on your poor old friend and tutor, + + “TRISTRAM ALFORD. + + “_Paul’s Terrace, Islington, Nov. 14, 186--_” + +“Poor Alford!” murmured the editor, somewhat touched by the earnestness +of this appeal. “So he has allowed his daughter to go on the stage, +and cherishes the fond delusion that she must needs be a Siddons or an +O’Neill, because she has a childish fancy for gas-lamps and spangled +petticoats. Yes, I remember the little girl--an angular chit in brown +holland; a nice little girl, I think she was, with pretty, dreamy, +blue eyes, and shy, childish ways, but an embryo blue-stocking, +nevertheless. I have a faint recollection of her playing at Electra +with the tea-pot one night, when she did not know that Waldon and I +were looking at her. Well, I’ll do all I can. The West-end managers are +_tant soit peu difficile_ now-a-days; but as the _Areopagus_ +comes down rather savagely upon the modern drama and its professors +now and then, they may strain a point to oblige me. I suppose the most +friendly way of going to work would be to call on poor Alford.” + +When his morning’s work was over, Mr. Desmond took a hansom from the +nearest stand, and rattled up to the topmost heights of Islington, +where, after considerable difficulty and aggravating waste of time, the +cabman found Paul’s Terrace, a shabby little row of newly built houses, +on the road to Ball’s Pond. The tutor, whom Mr. Desmond remembered the +occupant of a pretty cottage near Henley, must indeed have fallen upon +evil fortunes. + +“Mr. Halford ’ave just stepped hout,” said a grimy-looking servant-girl +who opened the door; “but he won’t be gone long, sir; which Miss Sent +Halbans is in the parlour. P’r’aps you’d like to wait?” + +“Well, yes, I think I had better wait,” replied the editor, disinclined +to sacrifice his afternoon without benefit to his old friend. + +The girl opened a door, and admitted Mr. Desmond into a very small +parlour, powerfully perfumed with stale tobacco, and occupied by a +young lady, who was standing by the window, with a little book in her +hand. + +This must of course be the Miss St. Albans of whom the servant had +spoken,--a visitor or hanger-on of the old tutor, perhaps. Laurence +Desmond wondered how Mr. Alford came to burden himself with a visitor, +and how the visitor came by so fine a name. + +Miss St. Albans was a fair-haired young lady, with a slight, girlish +figure, and one of those faces which some people call “sweetly pretty,” +and some only “interesting,”--a tender, winning countenance, with soft +blue eyes and lovely mouth, but without the splendour of complexion +and feature which attract universal admiration and secure immediate +attention. Nor was this young lady’s appearance rendered striking +by the art of milliner or mantua-maker. Upon her person, as upon the +room she occupied, poverty had set its stamp. She wore a brown merino +dress that had seen much service, and her head-dress was of the most +unsophisticated order, consisting only of a small forest of curl-papers. + +Mr. Desmond wondered to behold this exploded style of head-gear, and +wondered still more at the manner of the young person, who started and +blushed at sight of him, and then came towards him, with a certain +hesitation and timidity that were not unpleasing. + +“Mr. Desmond, I think?” she faltered. + +“Yes, my name is Desmond.” + +“Ah,” murmured the damsel in curl-papers, somewhat regretfully, “I see +you have quite forgotten me.” + +“Forgotten you! I don’t think that could have been possible, if I had +ever had the honour to know you, Miss St. Albans,” replied the editor, +smiling very kindly; for there was something in the girl’s candid +and yet modest demeanour which pleased this _blasé habitué_ of +West-end drawing-rooms. + +“_If_ you had ever known me!” cried the young lady, reproachfully. +“Then you have quite forgotten Henley, and our boat, and Champion, the +Scotch terrier, and----” + +“Not at all. I have a lively recollection of Henley and of Champion; +but I cannot recall the name of St. Albans.” + +“Ah, no, I forgot that the name is strange to you. But I must be +very much altered since those happy days, or you would scarcely have +forgotten Lucy.” + +“Lucy--Lucy Alford!” + +“Yes, Mr. Desmond. The Lucy to whom you used to be so kind.” + +“Was I kind? You are very good to think so. And you are really Miss +Alford, my dear old tutor’s daughter? Let me shake hands in token of +our renewed friendship. Yes, I have a vague recollection of a very nice +little girl, who had the prettiest blue eyes, and wore the cleanest +holland pinafores in Christendom; and I am quite charmed to behold the +same young lady, now she has outgrown the pinafores, but not the eyes.” + +“You have only a vague recollection of me; yet I knew you directly you +stepped out of the cab,” said the girl, in a tone of disappointment. + +“Yes, but you are more changed than I, Miss Alford. You must consider +what a gulf there is between seven and nineteen; while there is +not much outward difference between twenty-three and thirty-five. +Thirty-five is only so much dustier, and grayer, and shabbier; like a +garment that has been worn and faded by continued hard wear.” + +“Indeed you do not look worn and faded,” said the tutor’s daughter, +with an involuntary glance at the hot-house flower in the fashionable +editor’s faultless overcoat. + +“I received a letter from your father this morning, Miss Alford; and I +thought my best course would be to answer it in person. I am all the +more happy to attend to my old friend’s request because your interests +are involved in it.” + +Lucy blushed again--not the blush of self-consciousness or coquetry, +but the honest red of innocent gratitude and impulsive feeling. + +“It was very, very kind of you to come,” she said. “Papa has told me +how valuable your time is, and what a high position you hold on the +press. He had no idea that you would respond so quickly to his appeal; +and--and I am sure I ought to apologize for receiving you in these +horrible curl-papers. They are for Pauline.” + +“For Pauline!” + +“Yes, I play Pauline to-night in the _Lady of Lyons_, you know; +and she is always played in ringlets--I don’t exactly know why.” + +“Pray do not apologize for the curl-papers. I know there is a prejudice +against them; but I really think them becoming in your case. And so you +play Pauline to-night? I remember seeing Helen----” + +“Oh, please don’t!” cried the girl, with a pretty look of piteous +supplication; “every one says that. ‘My dear,’ the ladies at the +theatre say to me, ‘I have seen Miss Faucit in that character; and, +without wishing to wound your feelings, I am bound to tell you that if +you knew how _she_ played the cottage-scene, you would go home and +cut your throat.’ At least that’s what Mrs. M’Grudder, who plays old +women on the Oswestry circuit, said to me after--after I came off, so +pleased at having been applauded.” + +“The old harridan! I suppose she is a very great actress herself, this +Mrs. M’Grudder.” + +“Oh, no; she speaks the broadest, broadest Scotch; and in Lady Macbeth +the boys in the gallery laugh at her dreadfully.” + +“Then I do not think you need be made unhappy by that lady’s sneers. +Are you very fond of acting?” + +“I love it dearly, and I hope some day to get on, for papa’s sake. But +I find the life of an actress much harder than I thought, and it is +very difficult to get on. And I am so nervous.” + +“You are afraid of your audience?” + +“Oh, no, I don’t so much mind them; it is of the other actors and +actresses I am most afraid.” + +“Indeed.” + +“Yes; they come to the wings and watch me; and then they tell me what +they think; and they give me advice; and somehow they always contrive +to make me miserable. I am sure sometimes, when I have been playing +Ophelia, and have been quite carried away by the part, fancying that +I have loved a prince and been forsaken by him, and that my father +has been killed, and I am mad, I have happened to look towards the +prompt entrance and see Mrs. M’Grudder standing there staring at me in +her dreadful stony way, and have heard her say, ‘St--st--st!’ quite +loud, and it has made me break down directly. You see, most actors and +actresses have been a long time in the profession, and they have a kind +of prejudice against amateurs and novices, and try to put them down. +Mrs. M’Grudder had two daughters in the theatre, who both wanted to +play the juveniles, and I suppose that’s what made her so unkind to me.” + +“But I suppose you have done with Mrs. M’Grudder now you have come to +London?” + +“Oh, no, I fear not. My engagement at the Oxford-road Theatre is only +for a fortnight. Mr. Mortemar has taken the house at his own risk, you +know, in order to introduce himself to a London public; and when the +season is over, I must go back to the country--and most likely to the +Oswestry circuit--unless I can get a permanent engagement in town.” + +She glanced at Mr. Desmond when she said this, as much as to say, “You +are the all-powerful benefactor who can procure for me that inestimable +boon.” + +Laurence Desmond understood the meaning of that look, and replied to +its appeal. + +“If any influence of mine can get you the engagement you want, you +shall not be long without it,” he said, kindly. “I don’t think you’ll +find any Mrs. M’Grudders at the Pall Mall or the Terence.” + +Mr. Alford came in while Laurence was saying this. He was an elderly +man, and he looked older than he was, by reason of the whiteness of his +straggling locks, and the stooping attitude which had become habitual +to his tall frame. He was a man who bore upon him the unmistakeable +stamp of gentle blood--a man whose good breeding no shabbiness of +attire could disguise; and it must be confessed that he was very shabby. + +“My dear Desmond,” he cried, delighted to recognize his old pupil, +“this is more than kind! I expected kindness from you, but not such +promptitude as this.” + +“I should be very ungrateful if I were otherwise than prompt, when I +remember how well you pulled me through when I was reading for ‘Greats’ +twelve years ago,” answered Laurence, heartily. “Miss Alford and I have +renewed our old acquaintance, and have become very confidential. I have +pledged myself to do my uttermost on her behalf, and if a West-end +engagement is her supreme desire, I think I can promise to gratify her +wishes through my kind friend Hartstone, of the Theatre Royal, Pall +Mall. But I cannot promise to secure her such characters as Pauline or +Ophelia. Hartstone is one of the best fellows in Christendom, but he +will think he does a good deal for friendship if he gives Miss Lucy +some pretty little young-ladylike part in a _lever du rideau_.” + +And hereupon Miss Alford murmured that to appear at the Pall Mall would +be the honour and delight of her existence, however insignificant the +character she might be permitted to perform. After this Mr. Desmond +and his old tutor entered upon a very pleasant conversation about the +coaching days at Henley, and the three jolly young fellows who had +boated and read with Laurence at the Henley villa. + +“Poor Max Waldon was ploughed,” said the editor. “He was asked who Saul +was. ‘Which Saul?’ asked Max, in that sweetly calm way of his; ‘Saul of +Tarsus?’ ‘No, sir; King Saul,’ replied the examiner, sternly. ‘Oh,’ +said Max, ‘he was not a bad sort of fellow, only he had a nasty trick +of throwing javelins at one.’ And they ploughed him; but he is doing +wonders at the Equity bar, notwithstanding. Lawsley died at Pau the +year after he took his degree; and I fear the ’Varsity training and +pedestrianism had something to do with the decline that carried him +off.” + +The reminiscences of the Long Vacation seemed by no means unpleasant to +Lucy Alford. She took up her work--it was Pauline’s bridal veil that +she was patching and darning for the evening’s performance--and sat +quietly by while her father and his pupil talked; but every now and +then her face kindled, and she looked up with a smile that meant, “I +too remember that.” + +Mr. Desmond had been sitting in the shabby little lodging-house parlour +a long time, when he stole a look at his watch, and was surprised to +discover the lateness of the hour. + +“I should like to see you play Pauline to-night, Miss Alford,” he +said, as he shook hands with his tutor’s daughter. + +Lucy blushed, and looked at her father. + +“The _Market Deeping Examiner_ compared her to Helen Faucit, +Desmond, and I doubt if any lady except Miss Faucit could touch Lucy’s +Pauline.” + +“Papa, how can you say such things!” cried the girl. “Please do not +laugh at him, Mr. Desmond. I like the part of Pauline so much, and--and +I should like you to be in the theatre to-night, only I know you will +make me nervous.” + +“What! do you place me in the same category as Mrs. M’Grudder?” + +“O no, no, no! Only----” + +“Only what?” + +“I should be so anxious to please you; and the more I wished to please +you, the more nervous I should be.” + +“I suppose that is the penalty I am to pay for my editorial position. +Very well, Miss Alford, I shall not say whether I am coming to the +theatre to-night; but look out for the _Areopagus_ next Saturday +morning, and----” + +“And expect a washing,” cried the old tutor, rejoicing in the ’Varsity +slang. + +“Good-bye, Miss Lucy,” said Laurence, lingering over these adieux just +a little more than was necessary. “Oh, by the way, I have not had the +pleasure of seeing your friend Miss St. Albans after all. Is she too a +member of the dramatic profession?” + +Mr. Alford and his daughter laughed heartily at this question. + +“The girl has one requisite for comedy if she can laugh like that on +the stage,” thought the editor. + +“I am Miss St. Albans,” said Lucy; “St. Albans is my stage name, you +know. I really thought you understood that just now.” + +“Not at all; I fully believed in Miss St. Albans as a separate entity. +And so that is your _nom de théâtre_!--rather a high-sounding +name, is it not?” + +Mr. Alford blushed. + +“Well, my dear boy, they like fine names, you see,” he explained, “the +managers and the public. In point of fact, they will have something +that looks well in the play-bills. St. Albans--De Mortemar: of course +the more enlightened public are aware that those are not real names; +but they go down, my dear Desmond, they go down.” + +“I can only hope that the happiness of Miss Alford may be promoted +by the success of Miss St. Albans,” said the editor of the +_Areopagus_, as he made his farewell bow to the young lady in +curl-papers. + +Mr. Alford accompanied him to the street-door, and apologized for his +inability to invite his old pupil to dinner. + +“The world has not used me too well, Desmond, as you must perceive,” +he said; “and yet I have worked my hardest. I have a couple of +tragedies in my desk that might conduce to the revival of original +dramatic literature in this country; but the ignorance and prejudice of +theatrical managers are not easily overcome. I look to my daughter’s +genius to elevate the English stage. She is a star, my dear Desmond--a +newly-risen star; but one that will shine far and wide before long, if +she has a chance. Go and see her to-night at the Oxford, and you will +find that her poor old father does not exaggerate her merits.” + +“Yes, I will go,” answered Laurence, smiling at the old man’s +enthusiasm. “You must let me give you this, Alford, to--to make things +a little pleasanter while you stay in town, for ‘auld lang syne.’” + +It was a cheque for twenty pounds in his friend’s favour, which Mr. +Desmond contrived to crush into the old man’s hand as he said this. +He was gone before Tristram Alford could find time to thank him or +remonstrate with him; but the help thus offered by friendship was too +sweet to be rejected by pride, nor was Tristram Alford a man who had +ever cherished that particular sin amongst the deadly seven. There were +tears--grateful tears--in the old man’s eyes when he went back to his +daughter. + +“That noble-hearted fellow has given me twenty pounds, Lucy,” he said; +“we can rub on comfortably for the next six weeks.” + +To “rub on comfortably” had been Mr. Alford’s highest notion of +financial prosperity for the last thirty years. He was a man upon whom +the burden of youthful debts, the penalties of juvenile indiscretion, +had pressed so heavily as to frustrate every attempt at progress in the +race of life. Poor at school, poor at college, poor in youth, and poor +in middle age, Tristram Alford had come at last to accept Poverty as a +fellow-traveller, whose companionship must needs be endured to the end +of the troublesome journey. The utmost he asked of Providence was a +brief interval of rest and refreshment at some wayside inn, while his +companion of the chain waited for him at the door. + + + + + CHAPTER XIV. + + IN THE GREEN-ROOM. + + +IT happened that the day on which Mr. Desmond paid his visit to Paul’s +Terrace, Islington, was a day unmarked by any particular engagement. +There had been a time when he was only too glad to snatch such a day +for a quiet afternoon at the Hampton villa; but he no longer felt the +same alacrity when the occasion offered itself. He was still fully +alive to the fact that Mrs. Jerningham was one of the handsomest and +most elegant women he had ever seen, and that to be preferred by her +was an honour; but to be submitted to the slow torture of the domestic +inquisition is none the less painful because the inquisitor-in-chief is +a beautiful woman, from whose fair lips the victim had hoped to hear +sweet words instead of captious questionings and ungenerous reproaches. + +Thus did it come to pass that Mr. Desmond, having no imperative claim +on his leisure, found himself at the doors of the Oxford Road Theatre, +within two or three hours of his visit to Mr. Alford’s lodging. He +had eaten a hurried dinner at his club, and had driven thence to the +Oxford, which house of entertainment was to be found amidst a labyrinth +of streets northward of Cumberland Gate. + +It is not a fashionable theatre, but amongst the inhabitants of the +immediate district it is at times a very popular resort; while there +are other times in which this temple of the drama fades and languishes +for lack of public patronage, in common with more brilliant temples of +the same order. It is a theatre whose normal splendour is ever and anon +brightened by the extra brilliancy of some wandering star, whose name, +all renowned though it may be in the district, is comparatively unknown +to the ears of fashionable playgoers, or known only as a bye-word and +a reproach. + +The great T. N. Buffboote, better known to his admirers as Brayvo +Buffboote, is a favourite at the Oxford. Miss Marian Fitz-Kemble, the +celebrated lady Lear, here performs her round of tragedy, from Macbeth +to Julius Cæsar, with much satisfaction to herself and her friends. +Here has the famous Transatlantic equestrian, best known to fame as +the divine Miss Godiva Jones, pranced and galloped in her celebrated +performances of Dick Turpin and Timour the Tartar. Here in the summer +months, when the closing of West-end theatres affords a brief respite +to manager and company, there come occasionally actors and actresses of +higher repute, eager to gather new laurels in these untrodden regions, +and not ill pleased to find themselves received with noisy rapture and +outspoken admiration by the ruder gods and homelier goddesses of a +threepenny gallery. + +But while stars may come and stars may go at the Oxford Road Theatre, +there is a regular company which goes on for ever, glad to be tragical +with Miss Fitz-Kemble, melodramatic with the great Buffboote, or +equestrian with the divine Godiva, as the case may be--a company which +takes life as it comes, and asks no more from existence than that its +swift-recurring Saturday shall witness the payment of every man’s +salary. + +Urged by the promptings of a fiery and ambitious soul, Mr. de +Mortemar had been induced to take the Oxford Road Theatre at the +very deadest and dullest time of the year--that dreary pause in +the theatrical season which precedes the glory of Boxing-day--that +fag-end of the year, during which the combined forces of a Macready +and a Charles Mathews would scarcely suffice to illumine the profound +darkness that foreshadows the rising of that brilliant luminary, +the genuine face-distorting, policeman-overturning, baby-squashing, +redhot-poker-brandishing, parcel-snatching, crinoline-flourishing +Christmas clown--that wonder of wit and humour, who convulses his +audience by asking them what they had for dinner the day after +to-morrow, or by some sarcastic inquiry about a missing fourpenny-piece. + +Mr. de Mortemar had a soul above such small considerations as good +or bad seasons. He had that within him which whispered that wherever +the English language was spoken there must be an audience able to +comprehend and admire his rendering of Hamlet and Romeo, Master Walter +and Claude Melnotte, Alfred Evelyn, Charles Surface, John Mildmay, +Citizen Sangfroid, Miles na Coppaleen, Sir Charles Coldstream, and Paul +Pry. + +In _these_ few characters Mr. de Mortemar (_né_ Morris) felt +himself unapproachable. Other provincial stars might pretend to a wider +range of character; the modest De Mortemar only sought to surpass a +Kean in Hamlet, a Gustavus Brooke in Master Walter, a Macready in Lear, +a Charles Mathews in Coldstream, a Wigan in John Mildmay, a Boucicault +in the faithful Miles, and a Wright in the inquisitive Paul. This much +he felt that he could do, and he had no greedy desire to outstep the +limit which liberal Nature had set upon his genius. + +“I played a burlesque character of Robson’s for my benefit at Market +Deeping last year,” Mr. de Mortemar remarked to a friend at the little +tavern next door to the Oxford Road Theatre; “and the _Deeping +Examiner_ said that if it were possible I could excel in anything +where all was excellence, I did excel in burlesque. But I don’t care +to make my mark in London as a burlesque actor. A man can’t help it if +Nature made him versatile, you see, Tommy; but there’s some kind of +principle in these things, and what Edmund Kean wouldn’t have done, I +won’t do. That’s my principle, and I mean to stick to it.” + +“And so I would, Morty, if I was you. Whatever Teddy Kean could do, you +can do,” replied the humble Pylades. “And I’ll take another glass of +bitter, if you’ll stand Sam.” + +“I _have_ played clown for my ben,” murmured the great De +Mortemar; “but, though I drew an enormous house, I felt the injury to +my self-respect was poorly paid for by a clear half.” + +“There ain’t nothing you can’t do, Morty, from Shylock to a flipflap. +That ale’s uncommon hard; I think a six of brandy-and-water warm would +do you more good, and wouldn’t hurt _me_.” + +And thus the simple De Mortemar discoursed of the greatness that was in +him, while the scantily furnished benches of pit and gallery attested +the badness of the season. + +“They haven’t heard of me yet,” said the star, serene even in the +hour of disappointment. “London is a large place, and a man can’t get +a reputation in a week. The metropolitan papers are slow, sir--very +slow--to a man who has been accustomed to see a column and a half of +criticism written upon every new character performed by him; but they +can’t afford to leave me unnoticed much longer; and when they do speak, +they’ll speak out, depend upon it. I look upon the Oxford Road Theatre +as a stepping-stone to Drury Lane, and it was with that view I took +it.” + +Mr. de Mortemar had engaged Miss St. Albans for the heroines of those +dramas and comedies in which he intended to shine, not because he +believed in her talent--for in plain truth this great man believed in +the existence of no talent except his own--but because she was very +young and inexperienced, and he could do as he liked with her; which +means, in a dramatic sense, that he could keep her with her back to the +audience, in an ignominious corner of the stage, through the greater +part of a scene, while he shouted and ranted at her from the centre of +the boards; and that he could take her up so sharply at the end of her +most telling speeches as to deprive her of that just meed of applause +an approving audience might naturally have bestowed upon her, and in +bestowing which they would have divided that coronal of glory Mr. de +Mortemar desired to obtain for himself alone. + +Mr. Desmond found that portion of the boxes playfully entitled the +dress-circle in occupation of two young women in scarlet Garibaldi +jackets and black velvet head-dresses; one fat elderly lady, in a cap +which offered to the eye of the observer a small museum of natural +and artistic curiosities in the way of shells, feathers, beads, +butterflies, and berries; three warm-looking young men, sprawling and +lounging and giggling and whispering amongst themselves in a corner +box; and a scanty sprinkling of that class of spectators who come with +free admissions, and rarely come prepared for the removal of their +bonnets, which removal being rigorously exacted, leaves them wild and +haggard of aspect and soured in temper. + +Amongst this audience the editor of the _Areopagus_ meekly took +his place, and prepared to await the rising of the curtain, while a +subdued crunching of apples and sucking of oranges, mingled with a +chorus of sibilant whisperings, went on round and about him. + +Why, in a poorly-filled house, there should always be dispiriting and +aggravating delays between the falling and the rising of the act-drop, +unknown to a well-attended theatre, is one of the enigmas of theatrical +existence only to be solved by the masters of the craft; but it is +indisputable that a scanty audience, naturally disposed to be captious +and low-spirited, is always rendered more dismal and more captious by +heart-sickening intervals of waiting, that would spoil the pleasure +of an evening with Edmund Kean, or Charles Mathews, but which, when +endured for the sake of a De Mortemar, are exasperating in the highest +degree. + +During such an interval, Laurence Desmond waited with tolerable +patience, entertained by the most hackneyed of waltzes and polkas, +performed by a feeble orchestra, before the curtain rose for the +third act of the _Lady of Lyons_. The flabby act-drop, with its +faded picture, did at last ascend, and, after a little preliminary +skirmishing, Miss St. Albans appeared, conducted by the great De +Mortemar, who wore a long black cloak, and looked unutterable things at +the gallery with his solemn eyes, the darkness whereof was intensified +by very palpable half-circles of Indian ink. Miss St. Albans had very +little to do in this scene. She had only to appear bewildered, and a +little alarmed by the grinning landlord and servants, and very much in +love with her prince. If she had any difficulty in giving expression to +such simple sentiments, Mr. De Mortemar saved her from the exhibition +of her incompetency, for he contrived to keep her back to the audience +throughout the scene, and so stifled and smothered her against his +manly breast, that all Mr. Desmond could see of his tutor’s daughter +was a slender girlish figure robed in white, and a fair head half +concealed by the stiff curve of Mr. de Mortemar’s encircling arm. + +The first scene was short and unimportant; and after it came the +cottage-scene--the great scene for Pauline--in which the merchant’s +haughty daughter finds that her Italian prince is only a self-educated +gardener’s son, with a mother in a white apron. + +Mr. Desmond set himself to watch this scene with a critical eye, for +he wished to discover what hope of dramatic success there might be for +his old friend’s daughter. Well, she was a very pretty, winning girl, +and she spoke her lines in a low soft voice, and with a gentle accent +which stamped her as of different breeding from the people who acted +with her, but--but she was not a genius; or if in her soul there was +by chance some spark of the divine fire, it was choked and obscured by +the smoke of her surroundings, and had yet to kindle into flame. She +spoke her pretty poetical speeches, and wept, and trembled, and covered +her face at the right moment; but she was only a timid young actress +trying to act. She was not the Demoiselle Deschapelles--proud, loving, +passionate, and maddened by the cheat that had been put upon her. The +supreme exaltation of mind, the positive intoxication of the intellect, +which constitutes great acting, had not yet come to her. She was timid, +self-conscious, nervously anxious to please her audience, and secure +the reward of a little hand-clapping and feet-stamping from pit and +gallery, when she should have been stung almost to madness by the sense +of outraged faith and love abused, as unconscious of spectators as +Ariadne at Naxos, or Dido on her funeral pyre. + +But if Miss St. Albans was not yet an actress, it is to be remembered +that she was only nineteen years of age, and had had little more than a +twelvemonth’s experience or practice of an art which is perhaps amongst +the most difficult and exacting of all arts, and which has no formulæ +whereby the student may arrive at some comprehension of its mysteries. +It is an art that is rarely taught well, and very often taught badly; +an art which demands from its professors a moral courage, and an +expenditure of physical energy, intellectual power, and emotional +feeling demanded by no other art; and when a man happens to be endowed +with those many gifts necessary to perfection in this art, he is spoken +of in a patronizing tone as “only an actor;” and it is somewhat a +matter of wonder that he should be “received in society.” + +“She is very young,” thought Mr. Desmond, when the act-drop had fallen +on Pauline’s passion and Claude’s remorse, and when the star had been +recalled by three particular friends in the pit, and one shrill boy in +the gallery. “She is very young, and she is pretty and interesting, and +might learn to be a good actress, if there were any school in which she +could be taught. But to act with such a conventional ranter and tearer +as this De Mortemar, would be destruction to an embryo Siddons. This +girl seems eminently sympathetic, and is of the stuff that makes our +Faucits and Herberts; but where is she to get the right training?--that +is the question.” + +Mr. Desmond kept his place patiently throughout the third and fourth +acts of the drama, though the dreary blank between the two acts was +a sharp test of man’s capacity for suffering. He saw Pauline come +downstairs to breakfast, in her smart bridal-dress of lace and satin, +to go through all those phases of pride and anger, tenderness and +yielding love, which form the crucial test of the young tragédienne’s +power and genius; and after the curtain had fallen upon Pauline, the +subjugated and devoted, Laurence Desmond left the apple-munchers, and +whisperers, and gigglers of the dress-boxes to their own devices, and +departed, with the intention of penetrating to those mysterious regions +which lie behind the boundary-line of the footlights. + +To an ordinary individual the stage-door of the Oxford Road +Theatre might have been an impassable barrier; but the name of the +_Areopagus_ was an “open sesame,” against which no stage-door +keeper could afford to shut his eyes. The stage-door keeper was not +a reader of the popular literary journal, but he had a vague notion +that the _Areopagus_ was a paper affected by swells, and that it +sometimes came down heavily upon the great ones of the dramatic world, +whose genius no meaner organ dared gainsay. To the editor of such a +periodical, Mr. de Mortemar would, of course, desire to be civil; and +the door-keeper admitted Mr. Desmond, after having submitted him to a +sharp scrutiny, or, in his own phraseology, “taken stock of him, to +make sure as he was none of them milingtary coves a-tryin’ it on to +git behind, and hang about the place a-talking to Mamsell Pasdebasque, +which she ought to know better.” + +Mr. Desmond had never before been behind the scenes of the Oxford Road +Theatre, but he had run the gauntlet of the West-end houses; and except +that the passages and stairs in the Oxford Road Theatre were a shade +or so darker, and dingier, and dirtier, and a little more eminently +adapted for the spraining of ankles and the breaking of necks, the +Oxford Road was as other theatres. + +After some groping and stumbling in the wrong passages and on the +wrong stairs, the Editor made his way to the green-room. He could +scarcely have told himself why he took this trouble in order to say +a few kind words to his old tutor’s daughter, or whether the saying +of kind words was at all required from him. It may be that, having +given up his evening to this visit to the Oxford Road Theatre, he +came behind the scenes merely because he could no longer endure the +dreary misery of the boxes; or it may be that he wanted to observe +the manners and customs of actors of a different class from those he +had been accustomed to meet. Mr. Desmond, however, did not trouble +himself with any consideration of his motive. He came to the green-room +to see Miss Alford, or Miss St. Albans, because it was the humour of +the moment to come. He had given himself an evening’s holiday from +the ever-alternating labours of literary and social life, and he was +not sorry to lose the sense of his own cares and perplexities amongst +strange surroundings. + +The green-room was a long narrow slip of a room underground, furnished +with a few shabby chairs and benches, some flaring gas-lamps, and +a cheval-glass, before which the actors and actresses contemplated +themselves afresh after every change of costume, more or less pleased +with the result of their scrutiny. + +Mr. Desmond found his friend’s daughter standing before this glass, +arranging the scanty festoons of a black tulle ball-dress, dotted about +with little bunches of violets--a dress that Mademoiselle Deschapelles +could by no possibility have worn at any period of her existence, but +which poor Lucy Alford fondly believed was the exact thing for the last +act. + +“How do you do, once more, Miss--St. Albans?” said the editor, going up +to the glass. + +“How do you do, Mr. Desmond?” the girl said, startled, and blushing +brightly beneath the artificial pallor which marked the mental agonies +of Pauline. “I--I didn’t think you’d come behind; it’s not generally +allowed, you know; but of course with you it’s different. I saw you in +the dress-circle. How kind of you to come! But it made me so nervous.” + +“Yes, I could see that you were nervous.” + +“You could see it! I am sorry for that!” said Lucy, just a little +mortified. + +“My dear young lady, if you were not nervous, you would not be of the +sensitive stuff that makes an artist. + +“You--you were not displeased with me?” + +What could he say when she asked this question?--in faltering, pleading +tones, that seemed to say, “Oh! for pity’s sake, give me a word of +praise, or I shall die at your feet.” What could he say, when the soft +blue eyes looked up to him with such a beseeching expression? Could he +be candid, and reply, “You are at present the kind of actress whom the +coarse-minded critic calls ‘a stick;’ your idea of Pauline Deschapelles +is a schoolgirl’s notion, without force, or depth, or passion; but when +you are ten years older, and have thought, and suffered, and studied, +and have lost all the youthful beauty which now enables you to look the +part, you may possibly be able to act it?” + +Instead of this, Mr. Desmond fenced the question with diplomatic art. + +“It gave me great pleasure to see you act,” he said; “and you looked +charming. I think fortune is a great deal too kind to Claude in giving +him such a lovely and devoted wife after his shabby conduct.” + +“Do you like Mr. de Mortemar?” asked Lucy, delighted by the small meed +of praise conveyed in this artful speech. + +“Well, not very much,” replied Laurence, smiling; “he is not exactly my +style.” + +“And yet he was such an enormous favourite at Market Deeping,” said +Lucy, opening her eyes to their widest extent. “But, to tell you the +real truth, I do not very much admire him myself; only I wouldn’t say +so to any one except you for the world, as it was so very good of him +to give me a London engagement.” + +“It is not very good of him to keep you in a corner of the stage all +through your best scenes.” + +“Yes, that is a disagreeable way he has; but I don’t think he knows +when he does it.” + +“Oh yes, my dear Miss St. Albans, depend upon it he knows very well. +Ah, here he is.” + +Mr. de Mortemar entered the green-room with his grandest tragedy stalk. +He had been informed of Mr. Desmond’s visit. + +“They have heard of me already,” he said to himself. “Perhaps the +_Areopagus_ will be the first to speak out. I knew they couldn’t +afford to continue their vile attempt to crush me by silence. They have +been paid--bribed by some London actors whose names I could mention--to +keep my fame from the public. But there must come a time when they +will find it dangerous for their own reputation to play that game any +longer. They attempted to crush Kean, and they are attempting to crush +me. But they will find it even harder work to destroy me than they +found it to destroy poor little Ted.” + +This is what Mr. De Mortemar told his friends, whom he rarely +entertained with any other topic than his own triumphs, past, present, +and future; and this is what he told himself. Impressed with this +conviction, he approached Mr. Desmond, and introduced himself to that +gentleman with the air of a man who confers a favour, and who is fully +aware of the fact. + +“I saw you in the boxes during the third and fourth acts,” he said, in +his grand, high-tragedy manner. “You could scarcely have chosen your +time better for forming a fair judgment of my Claude. I do not consider +it one of my _great_ parts, though my friends are pleased to tell +me that I have left William Charles Macready some distance behind in my +rendering of that character. You were, no doubt, struck by some points +which are not only new to the stage, but which go a step or two beyond +the original meaning of the author. As, for instance, at the close of +the third act, where, instead of the ordinary, ‘Ho, my mother!’--a mere +commonplace summons to a parent who is desired to come downstairs--I +have adopted the heavy sigh of despair: ‘Oh, my mother!’--expressive of +Claude’s remorseful consciousness that he has disregarded the widow’s +very sensible advice in the first act. This reading opens up--if I +may be permitted to say so--long vistas of thought, and also gives an +importance and an elevation to the character of the Widow Melnotte, +for which the lady performing that part can scarcely be sufficiently +grateful. ‘Oh, my mother! Oh, my second self, my guide, my counsellor, +by whose sustaining wisdom I might have escaped my present degradation +and despair!’ All that, I flatter myself, is implied in the sigh and +the gesture which I introduce at this point. Subtle, is it not?” + +“Extremely subtle,” said Laurence; “you must have studied the German +critics, Mr. de Mortemar? There is a profundity in your ideas that +reminds me of Schlegel.” + +“No, sir; I have studied _this_,” replied the tragedian, thumping +the breast of his green-cloth coat, whereon glittered the tin-foil +crosses and spangled stars which the soldier of the Republic was +supposed to have won for himself in Italy. “I have drawn my inspiration +from my own heart, sir; and I am the less surprised when I find that +the fire that burns _here_ is quick to kindle an electric spark +in the breasts of other men. The people of Market Deeping will tell +you who and what I am, sir, if you can take the trouble to interrogate +them. There are some there, sir, who know what good acting is, and +who know how to appreciate a great actor. In London, you seem not to +want great actors. The age of your Garricks and your Kembles is past; +and when new Garricks and Kembles arise, you shut the doors of your +principal theatres in their faces, and do your best to ignore them, or +to write them down in your newspapers. But this kind of thing cannot +last for ever, sir. The voice of the mighty British public is clamorous +for a great actor; and you, sir, garble and misrepresent the truth as +you may, cannot long interpose yourself between that mighty public and +that great actor. I am, of course, understood to speak in a broad and +general sense, sir, and to mean no offence to you in person.” + +“Of course not. I shall accept all you say in a strictly parliamentary +sense, as the Pickwickians did upon a memorable occasion. And believe +me, Mr. de Mortemar, when Garrick _redivivus_ appears, mine shall +not be the pen to dispute his genius. In the meantime the public must +be content with--ah, you are called, I see, Mr. de Mortemar.” + +A grimy-faced boy summoned the hero of the night, and the great De +Mortemar was compelled to depart before he had extorted from the editor +of the _Areopagus_ the smallest modicum of that praise for which +his soul hungered. + +Mr. Desmond did not find himself alone with Miss St. Albans on the +departure of Mr. De Mortemar. An elderly and bloated individual, in a +very shabby gray suit of the Georgian era, hovered near, and surveyed +the stranger ever and anon with an observant eye--an eye in which there +was that watery lustre, by some physiologists supposed to betoken a +partiality for strong drinks. Mr. Desmond remembered this gentleman +as the parent of Pauline, and perceived in his shabby and faded +appearance the decadence of the wealthy merchant of Lyons. + +“That’s rather a strong case of coals, a’nt it?” inquired this +individual, indicating by a turn of his head that the departing De +Mortemar was the subject of his discourse. + +“A case of coals?” repeated Laurence, doubtfully. + +“Yes, coals--nuts--barcelonas. The gorger’s awful coally on his own +slumming, eh?” + +“I really am at a loss--” faltered the bewildered Laurence. + +“Don’t understand our patter, I suppose,” said M. Deschapelles, with +an affable smile. “I mean to say that our friend the manager is rather +sweet upon his own acting.” + +“Well, yes; Mr. De Mortemar appears to have considerable confidence in +his own powers.” + +“Rather! Bless your heart, they’re always coming up to London like +that, thinking they’re going to set the town in a blaze. There was +William Harford--Howling Billy, they used to call him on the Northern +Circuit--he came to London thinking he was going to put Macready’s +nose out of joint--and didn’t. He was a wicked actor, he was. Satan +will have him some day. A man can’t go on murdering Shakespeare as +Howling Billy did without coming to Satan at last. + +“P’line! Deechappells!--Miss St. Albans! Mr. Jackson!--last scene!” +roared the grimy-faced boy at this juncture, and Mr. Desmond was fain +to bid his tutor’s daughter a brief good-night. + +He did not return to the front of the house. He had seen enough of Miss +Alford’s acting to enable him to judge very fairly what she could do in +the present, and what she might achieve in the future. + +“I will try my best to get her out of this wretched school,” he said +to himself. “I will try to get her away from Mr. de Mortemar and +that curious, good-tempered-looking old man, who talked about Satan +and Howling Billy. I dare say I can get Hartstone to engage her for +the Pall Mall. He wants pretty, lady-like girls for his farces, and +gives very liberal salaries; and though she won’t get the experience +that makes a Helen Faucit, she will at any rate get away from the De +Mortemar school. I should like to put her in the right path, for poor +old Alford’s sake.” + + + END OF VOL. I. + + + J. Ogden and Co., Printers, 172, St. John Street, E.C. + + + + + =TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES= + +Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced +quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and +otherwise left unbalanced. + +Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a +predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they +were not changed. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76885 *** |