THE BECKONING HAND ETC. "•A' ..> ■ - .•»;.. STORIES BY GRANT ALLEN. STRANGE STORIES. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with a Frontispiece by George Du Maurier, 6f. ; post 8vo, illustrated boards, 35. " Mr. Grant Allen has fully established his claim to be heard henceforth as a story-teller." — ACAUEMV. "No one will be able to say that the stories are dull. The lighter stories can be read with pleasure by everybody, and the book can be dipped into anywhere without disappoint- ment. One and all, the stories are told with a delightful ease and with an abundance of lively humour." — ATHEN<*:rM. " Almost all the stories are good, coming nearer to the weird power of Poe than any that we remember to have seen." — Pall Mall Gazette. " Perhaps the best fiction of the year is ' Strange Stories.' Mr. Grant Allen certainly took his friends by surprise when he burst forth as the author of the stories which had appeared under the signature of J. Arbuthnot Wilson. He was known to us all as one of the most able of the rising men of the evolution school, his contributions to modem science being of considerable value. Few suspected him of such levity as telling light stories. The volume is distinctly good."— County Gentleman. PHILISTIA, Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3;. 6d. ; post 8■■■ PREFACE. Of the thirteen stories inchided in this volume, " The Gold Wulfric," "The Two Camegies," and "John Oann's Treasure " originally appeared in the pages of the Cornhill ; " The Third Time " and " The Search Party's Find " are from Longman's Magazine ; " Harry's Inheritance " first saw the light in the English Illustrated; and "Lucretia," "My Uncle's Will," " Olga Davidoft's Husband," " Isaline and I," " Pro- fessor Milliter's Dilemma," and " In Strict Confidence," obtained hospitable shelter between the friendly [covers of Belgravia. My title-piece, "The Beckoning iand," is practically new, having only been published lefore as the Christmas supplement of a provincial newspaper. My thanks are due to Messrs. Smith and Ider, Longmans, Macmillan, and Chatto and Windus for kind permission to reprint most of the stories lere. If anybody reads them and likes them, let me ▼< PREFACE. take this opportunity (as an unprejudiced person) of recommending to him my other vohime of " Strange Stories," whicli I consider every bit as gruesome as tliis one. Should I succeed in attaining the pious ambition of the Fat Boy, and " making your flesh creep," then, as somebody once remarked before, "this work will not have been written in vain." G. A. TiiE Nook, Doiiking, ClirMmnii Day, 188G. CONTENTS. The Beckoning Hand ... ... ... ,., ... 1 IjLCRCxIA ••• t*« ••• ••# ••• #•• o*> The Third Time ... ... ... ... ... ... 5S The Gold Wulfrio My Uncle's Will ... * ... The Two Carnegies Olga Davidoff's Husband ... John Cann's Treasure ... IsALiNE and I ... ... Professor Milliter's Dilemma ... ... ... .. IIn Strict Confidence |The Search Party's Find ... ... [arry's Inheritance 74 ... 112 128 ... 104 188 ... 225 245 ... 278 299 ... 318 ^i-f THE BECKONING HAND. FIRST met Cesarine Vivian in the stalls at the Ambigui- ties Theatre. I had promised to take Mrs. Latham and Irene to see [he French plays which were then being acted by Marie jeronx's celebrated Palais Royal company. I wasn't at |he time exactly engaged to poor Irene : it has always ken a comfort to me that I wasn't engaged to her, though knew Irene herself considered it practically equivalent an understood engagement. We had known one another itiraately from childhood upward, for the Lathams were sort of second cousins of ours, three times removed : |nd we had always called one another by om- Christian lames, and been very fond of one another in a simple jirlish and boyish fashion as long as we could either of Is remember. Still, I maintain, there was no definite Inderstanding between us ; and if Mrs. Latham thought 'had been paying Irene attentions, she must have known lat a young man of two and twenty, with a decent fortune id a nice estate down in Devonshire, was likely to look 30ut him for a while before he thought of settling down id marrying quietly. I had brought the yacht up to London Bridge, and was [ving pn board in picnic style, and running about town B 2 THE BECKONING HAND. casually, when I took Irene and her mother to see " Pans- tine," at the Ambiguities. As soon as we had got in and taken our places, Irene whispered to me, touching my hand lightly with her fan, " Just look at the very dark girl on the other side of you, Hany ! Did you ever in your life see anybody so perfectly beautiful ? " It has always been a gi*eat comfort to me, too, that Irene herself was the first person to call my attention to Cesarine Vivian's extraordinary beauty. I turned round, as if by accident, and gave a passing glance, where Irene waved her fan, at the girl beside me. She was beautiful, certainly, in a terrible, grand, statu- esque style of beauty ; and I saw at a glimpse that she had Southern blood in her veins, perhaps Negro, perhaps Moorish, perhaps only Spanish, or Italian, or Proven9al. Her features were proud and somewhat Jewish-looking ; her eyes large, dark, and haughty ; her black hair waved slightly in sinuous undulations as it passed across her high, broad forehead; her complexion, though a dusky olive in tone, was clear and rich, and daintily transparent ; and her lips were thin and very slightly curled at tins delicate corners, with a peculiarly imperious and almost scornful expression of fixed disdain. I had never before beheld anywhere such a magnificently repellent specimen of womanhood. For a second or so, as I looked, her eyes met mine with a defiant inquiry, and I was conscious that moment of some strange and weird fascination in her glance that seemed to draw me irresistibly towards her, at the same time that I hardly dared to fix my gaze steadily upon the piercing eyes that looked through and through me with their keen penetration. - =' " She's very beautiful, no doubt," I whispered back to Irene in a low undertone, " though I must confess I don't exactly like the look of her. She's a trifle too much of a tragedy queen for my taste : a Lady Macbeth, or a Beatrice Cenci, or a Clytemnestra. I prefer our simple little English THE BECKONING HAND. )rettiness to this southern splendour. It*8 more to our Inglish liking than these tall and stalely Italian enchan- tresses. Besides, I fancy the girl looks as if she had a drop )r two of black blood somewhere about her." " Oh, no," Irene cried warmly. " Impossible, Harry. [She's exquisite ; exquisite. Italian, you know, or some- I thing of that sort. Italian girls have always got that [peculiar gipsy-like type of beauty." Low as we spoke, the girl seemed to know by instinct [we were talking about her; for she drew away the ends of her light wrap coldly, in a significant fashion, and turned with her opera-glass in the opposite direction, as if on purpose to avoid looking towards us. A minute later the curtain rose, and the first act of iHalevy's "Faustinc" distracted my attention for the [moment from the beautiful stranger. Marie Leroux took the part of the great empress. She [was grand, stately, imposing, no doubt, but somehow it [seemed to me she didn't come up quite so well as usnal jthat evening to one's ideal picture of the terrible, audacious, superb Roman woman. I leant over and murmured so to Irene. " Don't you know why ? " Irene whispered back } to me with a faint movement of the play-bill toward the [beautiful stranger. " No," I answered ; " I haven't really the slightest con- Iception." " Why," she whispered, smiling ; *' just look beside you. iCould anybody bear comparison for a moment as a Faus- [tine with that splendid creature in the stall next to you ? " I stole a glance sideways as she spoke. It was quite brue. The girl by my side was the real Faustine, the exact embodiment of the dramatist's creation ; and Marie Leroux, with her stagey effects and her actress's pretences, could not in any way stand the contrast with the genuine em- press who sat there eagerly watching her. The girl saw me glance quickly from her towards the 4 THE BECKONING HAND. actress and from the actress back to her, and shi-ank aside, not with coquettish timidity, but half anjjfrily and half as if flattered and pleased at the implied compliment. " Papa," she said to the very English-looking gentleman who sat beyond her, " ce monsieur-ci ..." I couldn't catch the end of the sentence. She was French, then, not Italian or Spanish; yet a more perfect Englishman than the man she called "papa" it would be difficult to discover on a long summer's day in all London. " My dear," hor father whispered back in English, "if I were you . . ." and the rest of that sentence also was quite inaudible to me. My interest was now fully roused in the beautiful stranger, who sat evidently with her father and sister, and drank in every word of the play as it proceeded with the intensest interest. As for me, I hardly cared to look at the actors, so absorbed was I in my queenly neighbour, I made a bare pretence of watching the stage every five minutes, and saying a few words now and again to Irene or her mother; but my real attention was all the time furtively directed to the girl beside me. Not that I was taken with her; quite the contrary; she distinctly re- pelled me ; but she seemed to exercise over me for all that the same strange and indescribable fascination which is often possessed by some horrible sight that you would give worlds to avoid, and yet cannot for your life help intently gazing upon. Between the third and fourth acts Irene whispered to me again, "I can't keep my eyes off her, Harry. She's wonderfully beautiful. Confess now : aren't you over head and ears in love with her ? " I looked at Irene's sweet little peaceful English face, and I answered truthfully, "No, Irene. If I wanted to fall in love, I should find somebody " *• Nonsense, Harry," Irene cried, blushing a little, and THE BECKONING HAND. 5 holding up her fan before her nervously. " She's a thou- sand times prettier and handsomer in every way " '' Prettier ? " " Than I am." At that moment the curtain rose, and Marie Leroux came forward once more with her imperial diadem, in the very act of defying and bearding the em-aged emperor. It was a great scene. The whole theatre hung upon her words for twenty minutes. The effect was sublime. Even I myself felt my interest aroused at last in the consummate spectacle. I glanced round to observe my neighbour. She sat there, straining her gaze upon the stage, and heaving her bosom with suppressed emotion. In a second, the spell was broken again. Beside that tall, dark southern girl, in her queenly beauty, with her flash* ing eyes and quivering nostrils, intensely moved by the passion of the play, the mere actress who mouthed and gesticulated before us by the footlights was as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. My companion in the stalls was the genuine Faustine : the player on the stage was but a false pretender. As I looked a cry arose from the wings : a hushed cry at first, a buzz or hum ; rising louder and ever louder still, as a red glare burst upon the scene from the background. Then a voice from the side boxes rang out suddenly above the confused murmur and the ranting of the actors — « Fire ! Fire ! " ^ - Almost before I knew what had happened, the mob in the stalls, like the mob in the ^ Uery, was surging and swaying wildly towards the exits, in a general struggle for life of the fierce old selfish barbaric pattern. Dense clouds of smoke rolled from the stage and filled the length and breadth of the auditorium ; tongues of flame licked up the pasteboard scenes and hangings, like so much paper; women screamed, and fought, and fainted; men pushed one another aside and hustled and elbowed, in one i THE BECKONING HAND, wild effort to make for the doors at all hazards to the lives of their neighbours? Never btfore had I so vividly realized how near the savage lies to the surface in oar best and highest civilized society. I Lad to realize it still more vividly and more terribly afterwards. One person alone T observed calm and erect, resisting quietly all pushes and thrusts, and moving with slow deliberateness to the door, as if wholly unconcerned at the univeraal noise and hubbub and tumult around her. It was the dark girl from the stalls beside me. For myself, my one thought of course was for poor Irene and Mrs. Latham. Fortunately, 1 am a strong and well-built man, and by keeping the two women in front of me, and thrusting hard with my elbows on either side to keep off the crush, I managed to make a tolerably clear road for them down the central row of stalls and out on to the big external staircase. The dark girl, now separated from her father and sister by the rush, was close in front of me. By a careful side movement, I managed to include her also in our party. She looked up to me gratefully with her big eyes, and her mouth broke into a charming smile as she turned and said in perfect English, " I am much obliged to you for your kind assistance." Irene's cheek was pale as death; but through the strange young lady's olive skin the bright blood still burned and glowed amid that frantic panic as calmly as ever. We had reached the bottom of the steps, and were out into the front, when suddenly the strange lady turned around and gave a little cry of disappointment. "Mes lorgnettes ! Mes lorgnettes ! " she said. Then glancing round carelessly to me she went on in English : " I have left my opera-glasses inside on the vacant seat. I think, if you will excuse me, I'll go back and fetch them." " It's impossible," I cried, " my dear madam. Utterly impossible. They'll crush you underfoot. They'll tear you to pieces." • THE BECKONING HAND. 7 She smiled a strange hanghty smile, as if amused at the idea, but merely answered, " rethink not," and tried to pass lightly by me. I held her arm. I didn't know then she was as strong as I was. "Don't go," I said imploringly. "They will certainly kill you. It would be impossible to stem a mob like this one." She smiled again, and darted back in silence before I could stop her. Irene and Mrs. Latham were now fairly out of all danger. " Go on, Irene," I said loosing her arm. " Police- man, get these ladies safely out. I must qo back and take care of that mad woman." " Go, go quick," Irene cried. " If you don't go, she'll be killed, Harry," I rushed back wildly after her, battling as well as I was able against the frantic rush of panic-stricken fugitives, and found my companion struggling still upon the main staircase. I helped her to make her way back into the burning theatre, and she ran lightly through the dense smoke to the stall she had occupied, and took the opera- glasses from the vacant place. Then she turned to me once more with a smile of triumph. "People lose their heads so," she said, " in all these crushes. I came back on purpose to show papa I wasn't going t-o be frightened into leaving my opera-glasse^. I should have been eter- nally ashamed of myself if I had come away and left them in the theatre." "Quick," I answered, gasping for breath. "If you don't make haste, we shall be choked to death, or the roof itself will fall in upon us and crush us ! " She looked up where I pointed with a hasty glance, and then made her way back again quickly to the stair- case. As we hurried out, the timbers of the sta^e were beginning to fall in, and the engines were already playing fiercely upon the raging flames. I took her hand and almost f TUE BECKON IS G HAND. dragged her out into the open. When we reaehed the Strand, we were both wet through, and terribly blaekened with smoke and ashes. Pushing our Avay through the dense crowd, I called a hansom. She jumped in lightly. *' Thank you so mi.cb," she said, quite carelessly. " Will you kindly tell him where to drive ? Twenty-seven, Seymour Crescent " '• I'll see you home, if you'll allow me," I answered. *' Under those circunis Lances, I trust I may be permitted." •• As you like," she said, smiling enchantingly. " You are very g:od. My name is Cesarine Vivian. Papa will be very muv h obliged to you for your kind assistance." 1 drove round to the Lathams' after droppiug Miss Vivian at her father's door, to assure myself of Irene's safety, and to let them know of my own return unhurt from my perilous adventure. Irene met me on the door- step, pale ^as death still. " Thank heaven," she cried, " Harry, you're safe back again ! And that poor girl ? What has become of her ? " " I left her," I said, " at Seymour Crescent." Irene burst into a flood of tears. "Oh, Harry," she cried, " I thought she would have been killed there. It was brave of you, indeed, to help her through with it." . II. Next day, Mr. Vivian called on me at the Oxford and Cambridge, the address on the card I had given his daughter. I was in the club when he called, and I found liim a pleasant, good-natured Cornishman, with very little that was strange or romantic in any way about him. He thanked me heartily, but not too effusively, for the care I had taken of Miss Vivian over-night ; and he was not so overcome with parental emotion as not to smoke a very good Havana, or to refuse my offer of a brandy and THE BECKONING HAND. 9 seltzer. We got on very well together, and I soon gathered from what my new acquaintance said that, though he belonged to one of the best families in Corn- wall, he had been an English merchant in Haiti, and had made his money chiefly in the coffee trade. He was a widower, I learned incidentally, and his daughters had been bi*ought up for some yeai"s in England, though at their mother's request they had also passed part of their lives in convent schools in Paris and Rouen. " Mi*s. Vivian was a Haitian, you know," he said casually : " Catholic of course. The girls are Catholics. They're good girls, though they're my own daughters ; and Cesarine, your friend of last night, is supposed to be clever. I'm no judge myself : I don't know about it. Oh, by the way, Cesarine said she hadn't thanked you hsilf enough herself yesterday, and I was to be sure and bring you round this afternoon to a cup of tea with us at Seymour Crescent." In spite of the impression Mdlle. Cesarine had made upon me the night before, I somehow didn't feel at all desirous of meeting her again. I was impressed, it is true, but not favourably. There seemed to me something uncanny and weird about her which made me shrink from seeing anything more of her if I could possibly avoid it. And as it happened, I was luckily engaged that very afternoon to tea at Irene's. I made the excuse, and added somewhat pointedly — on purpose that it might be repeated to Mdlle. Cesarine — "Miss Latham is a very old and particular friend of mine — a friend whom I couldn't for worlds think of disappointing." • Mr. Vivian laughed the matter ofF. "I shall catch it from Cesarine," he said good-humouredly, "for not bring- ing her cavalier to receive her formal thanks in person. Our West-Indian born girls, you know, are very imperious. But if you can't, you can't, of course, so there's an end of it, and it's no use talking, any more about it." !• THE BECKOXING HAND. I can't say why, but at that moment, in spite of my intense desire not to meet Cesarine again, I felt I would have given whole worlds if he would have pressed me to come in spite of myself. But, as it happened, he didn't. At five o'clock, I drove round in a hansom rs aiTanged, to Irene's, having almost made up my mind, if I found her alone, to come to a definite understanding with her and call it an engagement. She wasn't alone, however. As I entered the drawing-room, I saw a tall and graceful lady sitting opposite her, holding a cup of tea, and with her back towards me. The lady rose, moved round, and bowed. To my immense surprise, I found it was Cesarine. I noted to myself at the moment, too, that in my heart, though I had seen her but once before, I thought of her already simply as Cesarine. And I was pleased to see her: fascinated: spell-bound. Cesarine smiled at my evident surprise. " Papa and I mat Miss Latham this afternoon in Bond Street," she said gaily, in answer to my mute inquiry, "and we stopped and spoke to one another, of course, about last night ; and j)apa said you couldn't come round to tea with us in the Crescent, because you were engaged already to Miss Latham. And Miss Latham very kindly asked me to drive over and take tea with her, as I was ao anxious to thank you once more for your great kindness to me yesterday." " And Miss Vivian was good enough to waive all cere- mony," Irene put in, " and come round to us as you see, without further introduction." I stopped and talked all the time I was there to Irene ; but, somehow, whatever I said, Cesarine managed to inter- cept it, and I caught myself quite guiltily looking at her from time to time, with an inexpressible attraction that I could not account for. . v By-and-by, Mr. Vivian's carriage called for Cesarine, and I was left a few minutes alone with Irene. '^::<:^'.. THE BECKONING HAND. U " Well, what do yoa think of hor ? " Irene asked me simply. I turned my eyes away : I dare not meet hers. " I think she's very handsome," I replied evasively. "Handsome! I should think so. She's wonderful. She's splendid. And doesn't she talk magnificently, too, Harry ? " " She's clever, certainly," I answered shuffling. *' But I don't know why, I mistrust her, Irene." I rose and stood by the door with my hat in my hand, hesitating and trembling. I felt as if I had something to say to Irene, and yet I was half afraid to venture npon saying it. My fingers quivered, a thing very unusual with me. At last I came closer to i -r, after a long pause, and said, " Irene." Irene started, and the colour flushed suddenly into her cheeks. " Yes, Harry," she answered tremulously. I don't know why, but I couldn't utter it. It was but to say " I love you," yet I hadn't the courage. I stood there like a fool, looking at her irresolutely, and then — The door opened suddenly, and Mrs. Latham entered and interrupted us. - > • III. I didn't speak again to Irene. The reason was that three days later I received a little note of invitation to lunch at Seymour Crescent from Cesarine Vivian. I didn't want to accept it, and yet I didn't know how to help myself. I went, determined beforehand as soon as ever lunch was over to take away the yacht to the Scotch islands, and leave Cesarine and all her enchant- ments for ever behind me. I was afraid of her, that's the fact, positively afraid of her. I couldn't look her in the face without feeling at once that she exerted a terrible influence over me. 11 THE liECKONIXO HAND. The Innch wont off quietly enonjc^h, howpvcr. We talked about Haiti and the West Indies ; about the beau- tiful foliage and the lovely flowei*s ; about the moonlight nights and the tropical sunsets ; and (n'sarine grew quite enthusiastic over them all. " You should take vour yacht out there some day, ^Ir. Tristram," she said softly. " There is no place on earth so wild and glorious as our own beau- tiful neglected Haiti." She lifted her eyes full upon me as she spoke. I stam- mered out, like one spellbound, " I must certainly go, on your recommendation, Mdlle. Cesarine." *' Why Mademoiselle ? " she asked quickly. Then, per- ceiving I misunderstood her by the start I gave, she added with a blush, "I mean, why not ' Miss Vivian* in plain English ? " " Because you aren't English," I said confusedly. " You're Haitian, in reality. Nobody could ever for a moment take you for a mere Englishwoman." ' I meant it for a compliment, but Cesarine frowned. I saw I had hurt her, and why ; but I did not apologize. Yet I was conscious of having done something very wrong, and I knew I must try my best at once to regain my lost favour with her. " You will take some coffee after lunch ? " Cesarine said, as the dishes were removed. *' Oh, cei'tainly, my dear," her father put in. " Yon must show Mr. Tristram how we make coffee in the West Indian fashion." Cesarine jsmiled, and poured it out — black coffee, very strong, and into each cup she poured a little glass of excellent pale neat cognac. It seemed to me that she poured the cognac like a conjuror's trick ; but everything about her was so strange and lurid that I took very little notice of the matter at that particular moment. It certainly was delicious coffee : I never tasted anything like it. TUE BECKON I SG HAND. ^ U After lunch, we went into the drawing-room, and thenco Ccsarine took mo ulono into the pretty conservatory. She wanted to show me some of her beautiful Haitian orchids, she said ; she had brought the orchids herself years ago from Haiti. How long we stood there I could never tell. I seemed as if intoxicated with her i)re8ence. I had for- gotten now all about my distrust of her : I had forgotten all about Irene and what 1 wished to say to her : I was conscious only of Cesarine's great dark eyes, looking through and through me with their piercing glance, aud Cesarine's figure, tall and stately, but very voluptuous, standing close beside me, and heaving regularly as we looked at the orchids. She talked to me in a low and dreamy voice ; and whether the Chateau Larose at lunch had got into my head, or whatever it might be, I felt only dimly and faintly aware of what was passing around me. 1 was unmanned with love, I suppose : but, however it may have been, I certainly moved and spoke that after- noon like a man in a trance from which he cannot by any effort of his own possibly awake himself. "Yes, yes," I overheard Cesarine saying at last, as through a mist of emotion, " you must go some day and see our beautiful mountainous Haiti. I must go myself. I long to go again. I don't care for this gloomy, dull, sunless England. A hand seems always to be beckoning me there. I shall obey it some day, for Haiti — our lovely Haiti, is too beautiful." Her voice was low and marvellously musical. "Made- moiselle Cesarine," I began timidly. She pouted and looked at me. " Mademoiselle again," she said in a pettish way. " I told you not to call me so, didn't I ? " " Well, then, Cesarine," I went on boldly. She laughed low, a little laugh of triumph, but did not correct or check me in any way. " Cesarine," I continued, lingering I know not why over 14 THE BECKONING HAND. the syllables of the name, " I will go, as you say. I shall see Haiti. Why should we not both go together ? " She looked up at me eagerly with a sudden look of hushed inquiry. "You mean it? "she asked, trembling visibly. " You mean it, Mr. Tristram ? You know what you are saying ? " " Cesarine," I answered, " I mean it. I know it. I cannot go away from you and leave you. Something seems to tie me. I am not my own master. . . . Cesarine, I love you." My head whirled as I said the words, but I meant them at the time, and heaven knows I tried ever after to live up to them. She clutched my arm convulsively for a moment. Her face was aglow with a wonderful light, and her eyes burned like a pair of diamonds. " But the other girl ! " she cried. " Her ! Miss Latham ! The one you call Irene ! You are ... in love with her ! Are you not ? Tell me ! " *' I have never proposed to Irene," I replied slowly. " I have never asked any other woman but you to marry me, C' • >> esarme. She answered me nothing, but my face was very near hers, aiii I bent forward and kissed her suddenly. To my immense surprise, instead of struggling or drawing away, she kissed me back a fervent kiss, with lips hard pressed to mine, and the tears trickled slowly down her cheeks in a strange fashion. *' You are mine," she cried. " Mine for ever. I have won you. She shall not have you. I knew you were mine the moment I looked upon you. The hand beckoned me. I knew I should get you." " Come up into my den, Mr. Tristram, and have a smoke," my host interrupted in his bluff voice, putting his head in unexpectedly at the conservatory door. " I think I can offer you a capital Manilla." The sound woke me as if from some terrible dream, and I followed him still in a sort of stupor up to the smoking I'oom. THE BECKONING HAND. 15 lY. That very evening 1 went to see Irene. Mj brain was whirling even yet, and I hardly knew what I was doing; but the cool air revived me a little, and by the time I reached the Lathams' I almost felt myself again. Irene came down to the drawing-room to see me alone. I saw what she expected, and the shame of my duplicity overcame me utterly. I took both her hands in mine and stood opposite her, ashamed to look her in the face, and with the terrible con- fession weighing me down like a burden of guilt. " Irene," I blurted out, withoiiL preface or comment, "I have just proposed to Cesarine Vivian." Irene drew back a moment and took a long breath. Then she said, with a tremor in her voice, but without a tear or a cry, " I expected it, Harry. I thought you meant it. I saw you were terribly, horribly in love with her." " Irene," I cried, passionately and remorsefully flinging myself upon the sofa in an agony of repentance, " I do not love her. I have never cared for her. I'm afraid of her, fascinated by her. I love you, Irene, you and you only. The moment I'm away from her, I hate her, I hate her. For heaven's sake, tell me what am I to do 1 I do not love her. I hate her, Irene." Irene came up to me and soothed my hair tenderly with her hand. " Don't, Harry," she said, with sisterly kindli- ness. " Don't speak so. Don't give way to it. I know what you feel. I know what you think. But I am not angry with you. You mustn't talk like that. If she has accepted you, you must go and marry her. I have nothing to reproach you with : nothing, nothing. Never say such words to me again. Let us be as we have always been, friends only." • - - ■ - •" ^ ' r" 16 THE BECKONING HAND. " Irene," I cried, lifting up my head and looking at her wildly, " it is the truth : I do not love her, except when 1 am with her : and then, some strange enchantment seems to come over me. I don't know what it is, but I can't escape it. In my heart, Irene, In my heart of hearts, I love you, and you only. I can never love her as I love you, Irene. My darling, my darling, tell me how to get myself away from her." "Hush," Irene said, laying her hand on mine persua- sively. " You're excited to-night, Harry. You are flushed and feverish. You don't know what you're saying. You mustn't talk so. If you do, you'll make me hate you and despise you. You must keep your word now, and marry Miss Vivian." V. • The next six weeks seem to me still like a vague dream : everything happened so hastily and strangely. I got a note next day from Irene. It was very short. " Dearest Harry, — Mamma and I think, under the circumstances, it would be best for us to leave London for a few weeks. I am not angry with you. With best love, ever yours afEec- tionately, Irene." I was wild when I received it. I couldn't bear to part so with Irene. I would find out where they were going and follow them immediately. I would write a note and break off my mad engagement with Cesarine. I must have been drunk or insane when I made it. I couldn't imagine what I could have been doing. On my way round to inquire at the Latham's, a carriage came suddenly upon me at a sharp corner. A lady bowed to me from it. It was Cesarine with her father. They pulled up and spoke to me. From that moment my doom was sealed. The old fascination came back at once, and THE BECKONING HAND. 17 T followed Cesarine blindly home to h.er house to luncheon, her accepted lover. In six weeks more we were really married. The first seven or eight months of our married life passed away happily enough. As soon as I was actually married to Cesarine, that strange feeling I had at first experienced about her slowly wore ofE in the closer, com- monplace, daily intercourse of married life. I almost smiled at myself for ever having felt it. Cesarine was so beautiful and so queenly a person, that when I took her down home to Devonshire, and introduced her to the old manor, I really found myself immensely proud of her. Everybody at Teignbury was delighted and struck with her; and, what was a great deal more to the point, I began to discover that I was positively in love with her myself, into the bargain. She softened and melted immensely on nearer acquaintance ; the Faustina air faded slowly away, when one saw her in her own home among her own occu- pations ; and I came to look on her as a beautiful, simple, innocent girl, delighted with all our country pleasures, fond of a breezy canter on the slopes of Dartmoor, and taking an affectionate interest in the ducks and chickens, which I could hardly ever have conceived even as possible when I first saw her in Seymour Crescent. The imperious, mysterious, ten^ible Cesarine disappeared entirely, and I found in her place, to my immense relief, that I had married a graceful, gentle, tender-hearted English girl, with just a pleasant occasional touch of southern fire and impetuosity. As winter came round again, however, Cesarine's cheeks began to look a little thinner than usual, and she had such a constant, troublesome cough, that I began to be a trifle alarmed at her strange symptoms. Cesarine herself laughed off my fears. " It's nothing, Harry," she would say ; " nothing at all, I assure you, dear. A few good rides on the moor will set me right again, It's all the result ■^■T. *}«.. 18 THE BECKONING HAND. of that horrid London. I'm a country-bom girl, and I hate big towns. I never want to live in town again, Harry." I called in oar best Exeter doctor, and he largely confirmed Cesarine's own simple view of the situation. " There's nothing organically wrong with Mrs. Tristram's constitution," he said confidently. " No weakness of the lungs or heart in any way. She has merely run down — outlived her strength a little. A winter in some warm, genial climate would set her up again, I haven't the least hesitation in saying." " Let us go to Algeria with the yacht, Reeney," I sug- gested, much reassured. " Why Algeria ? " Cesarine replied, with brightening eyes. " Oh, Harry, why not dear old Haiti ? You said once you would go there with me — you remember when, darling ; why not keep your promise now, and go there ? I want to go there, Harry : I'm longing to go there.'" And she held out her delicately moulded hand in front of her, as if beckoning me, and drawing me on to Haiti after her. " Ah, yes ; why not the West Indies ? " the Exeter doctor answered meditatively. " I think I understood you that Mrs. Tristram is West Indian bom. Quite so. Quite so. Her native air. Depend upon it, that's the best place for her. By all means, I should say, try Haiti." I don't know why, but the notion for some reason dis- pleased me immensely. There was something about Cesa- rine's eyes, somehow, when she beckoned with her hand in that strange fashion, which reminded me exactly of the weird, uncanny, indescribable impression she had made upon me when I first knew her. Still I was very fond of Cesarine, and if she and the doctor were both agreed that Haiti would be the very best place for her, it would be foolish and wrong for me to interfere with their joint wisdom. Depend upon it, a woman often knows what is THE BECKONING HAND. 19 the matter with her better than any man, even her husband, can possibly tell her. The end of it all was, that in less than a month from that day, we were out in the yacht on the broad Atlantic, with the cliffs of Falmouth and the Lizard Point fading slowly behind us in the distance, and the white spray dashing in front of us, like fingers beckoning us on to Haiti. VI. The bay of Port-au-Prince is hot and simmering, a deep basin enclosed in a ringing semicircle of mountains, with scarce a breath blowing on the harbour, and with tall cocoa-nut palnis rising unmoved into the still air above on the low sand-spits that close it in to seaward. The town itself is wretched, squalid, and hopelessly ram- shackled, a despondent collection of tumbledown wooden houses, interspersed with indescribable negro huts, mere human rabbit-hutches, where parents and children herd together, in one higgledy-piggledy, tropical confusion. I had never in my days seen anything more painfully deso- late and dreary, and I feared that Cesarine, who had not been here since she was a girl of fourteen, would be some- what depressed at the horrid actuality, after her exalted fanciful ideals of the remembered Haiti. But, to my im- mense surprise, as it turned out, Cesarine did not appear ab all shocked or taken aback at the squalor and wretched- ness all around her. On the contrary, the very air of the place seemed to inspire her from the first with fresh' vigour ; her cough disappeared at once as if by magic ; and the colour returned forthwith to her cheeks, almost as soon as we had fairly cast anchor in Haitian waters. The very first day we arrived at Port-au-Prince, Cesa- rine said to me, with more shyness than I had ever yet 20 THE BECKONING HAND. seen her exhibit, "If you wouldn't mind it, Harry, I should like to go at once, this morning — and see my grandmother." I started with astonishment. "Your grandmother, Cesarine ! " I cried incredulously. " My darling ! I didn't know you had a grandmother living." " Yes, I have," she answered, with some slight hesita- tion, "and I think if you wouldn't object to it, Harry, I'd rather go and see her alone, the first time at least, please dearest." In a moment, the obvious truth, which I had always known in a vague sort of fashion, but never thoroughly realized, flashed across my mind in its full vividness, and I merely bowed my head in silence. It was natural she should not wish me to see her meeting with her Haitian grandmother. She went alone through the streets of Port-au-Prince, without inquiry, like one who knew them familiarly of old, and I dogged her footsteps at a distance unperceived, impelled by the same strange fascination which had so often driven me to follow Cesarine wherever she led me. After a few hundred yards, she turned out of the chief business place, and down a tumbledown alley of scattered negro cottages, till she came at last to a rather better house that stood by itself in a little dusty garden of guava- trees and cocoa-nuts. A rude paling, built negro- wise of broken barrel-staves, nailed rudely together, separated the garden from the compound next to it. I slipped into the com- pound before Cesarine observed me, beckoned the lazy negro from the door of the hut, with one finger placed as a token of silence upon my lips, dropped a dollar into his open palm, and stood behind the paling, looking out into the garden beside me through a hole made by a knot in one of the barrel staves. C6sarine knocked with her hand at the door, and in a aioment was answered by an old negress, tall and bony, THE BECKONING HAND. 21 dressed in a loose sack-like gown of coarse cotton print, with a big red bandanna tied around her short grey hair, and a huge silver cross dangling carelessly upon her bare and wrinkled black neck. She wore no sleeves, and bracelets of strange beads hung loosely around her shrunken and skinny wrists. A more hideous old hag I had never in my life beheld before ; and yet I saw, without waiting to observe it, that she had Cesaiine's great dark eyes and even white teeth, and something of Cesarine's figure lin- gered still in her lithe and sinuous yet erect carriage. " Grand'mere ! " Cesarine said convulsively, flinging her arms with wild delight around that grim and withered gaunt black woman. It seemed to me she had never since our marriage embraced me with half the fervour she bestowed upon this hideous old African witch creature. " He, Cesarine, it is thee, then, my little one," the old negress cried out suddenly, in her thin high voice- and her muffled Haitian patois. " I did not expect thee so soon, my cabbage. Thou hast come early. Be the welcome one, my granddaughter." I reeled with horror as I saw the wrinkled and haggard African kissing once more my beautiful Cesarine. It seemed to me a horrible desecration. I had always known, of course, since Cesarine was a quadroon, that her grand- mother on one side must necessarily have been a full- blooded negress, but I had never yet suspected the reality could be so hideous, so terrible as this. I crouched down speechless against the paling in my disgust and astonishment, and motioned with my hand to the negro in the hut to remain perfectly quiet. The door of the house closed, and Cesarine disappeared : but I waited there, as if chained to the spot, under a hot and burning tropical sun, for fully an hour, unconscious of anything in heaven or earth, save the shock and surprise of that unexpected disclosure. ' • ' At last the door opened again, and Cesarine apparently 22 THE BECKONING HAND. came ont once more into the neighbounng garden. The gaunt negress followed her close, with one arm thrown caressingly about her beautiful neck and shoaldera. In London, Cesarine would not have permitted anybody but a great lady to take such a liberty with her ; but here in Haiti, she submitted to the old negress's horrid embraces with perfect calmness. Why should she not, indeed ! It was her own grandmother. They came close up to the spot where I was crouching in the thick drifted dust behind the low fence, and then I heard rather than saw that Cesarine had flung herself passionately down upon her knees on the ground, and was pouring forth a muttered prayer, in a tongue unknown to me, and full of harsh and uncouth gutturals. It was not Latin; it was not even the coarse Creole French, the negro patois in which I heard the people jabbering to one another loudly in the streets around me : it was some still more hideous and barbaric language, a mass of clicks and' inarticulate noises, such as I could never have believed might possibly proceed from Cesarine's thin and scomf al lips. At last she finished, and I heard her speaking again to her grandmother in the Creole dialect. " Grandmother, you will pray and get me one. You will not forget me. A boy. A pretty one ; an heir to my husband ! " It was said wistfully, with an infinite longing. I knew then why she had grown so pale and thin and haggard before we sailed away from England. . The old hag answered in the same tongue, but in her shrill withered note, " You will bring him up to the religion, my little one, will you ? " Cesarine seemed to bow her head. "I will," she said. " He shall follow the religion. Mr. Tristram shall never know anything about it." They went back once more into the house, and I crept away, afraid of being discovered, and returned to the THE BECKONING HAND. 28 yacht, sick at heart, not knowing how I should ever venture again to meet Cesarine. Bat when I got back, and had helped myself to a glass of sherry to steady my nerves, from the little flask on Cesarine's dressing-table, I thought to myself, hideous as it all seemed, it was very natural Cesarine should wish to see her grandmother. After all, was it not better, that proud and haughty as she was, she should not disown her own flesh and blood ? And yet, the memory of my beau- tiful Cesarine wrapped in that hideous old black woman's arms made the blood curdle in my very veins. As soon as Cesarine returned, however, gayer and brighter than I had ever seen her, the old fascination overcame me once more, and I determined in my heart to stifle the horror I could not possibly help feeling. And that evening, as I sat alone in the cabin with my wife, I said to her, " Cesarine, we have never spoken about the religious question before : but if it should be ordained we are ever to have any little ones of our own, I should wish them to be brought up in their mother's creed. You could make them better Catholics, I take it, than I could ever make them Christians of any sort." Cesarine answered never a word, but to my intense surprise she burst suddenly into a flood of tears, and flang herself sobbing on the cabin floor at my feet in an agony of tempestuous cries and writhings. VII. A few days later, when we had settled down for a three months' stay at a little bungalow on the green hills behind Port-au-Prince, Cesarine said to me early in the day, " I want to go away to-day, Harry, up into the mountains, to the chapel of Notre Dame de Bon Secours," I bowed my head in acquiescence. " I can guess why 24 TUE BECKONING HAND. you want to go, Reeney," I answered gently. " You want to pray there about something that's troubling you. And if I'm not mistaken, it's the same thing that made you cry the other evening when I spoke to you down yonder in the cabin." The tears rose hastily once more into Cesarine's eyes, and she cried in a low distressed voice, " Harry, Hany, don't talk to me so. You are too good to me. You will kill me. You will kill me." I lifted her head from the table, where she had buried it in her arms, and kissed her tenderly. " Reeney," I said, " I know how you feel, and I hope Notre Dame will listen to your prayers, and send you what you ask of her. But if not, you need never be afraid that I shall love you any the less than I do at present." Cesarine burst into a fresh flood of tears. " No, Harry," she said, " you don't know about it. You can't imagine it. To us, you know, who have the blood of Africa running in our veins, it is not a mere matter of fancy. It is an eternal disgrace for any woman of our race and descent not to be a mother. I cannot help it. It is the instinct of my people. We are all born so : we cannot feel other- wise." It was the only time either of us ever alluded in speak- ing with one another to the sinister half of Cesarine's pedigree. "You will let me go with you to the mountains, Reeney ? " I asked, ignoring her remark. " You mustn't go so far by yourself, darling." " No, Harry, you can't come with me. It would make my prayers ineffectual, dearest. You are a heretic, you know, Harry. You are not Catholic. Notre Dame won't listen to my prayer if I take you with me on my pilgrimage, my darling.'* I saw her mind was set upon it, and J didn't interfere. She would be away all night, she said. There was a rest- THE BECKONING HAND. 25 liouae for pilgrims attached to the chapel, and she would be back again at Maisonette (our bungalow) the morning after. That afternoon she started on her way on a mountain pony I had just bought for her, accompanied only by a negro maid. I couldn't let her go quite unattended through those lawless paths, beset by cottages of half savage Africans ; so I followed at a distance, aided by a black groom, and tracked her road along the endless hill-sides up to a fork in the way where the narrow bridle- path divided into two, one of which bore away to leftward, leading, my guide told me, to the chapel of Notre Dame de Bon Secours. At that point the guide halted. He peered with hand across his eyebrows among the tangled brake of tree-ferns with a terrified look ; then he shook his woolly black head ominously. "I can't go on, Monsieur," he said, turning to me with an unfeigned shudder. " Madame has not taken the path of Our Lady. She has gone to the left along the other road, which leads at last to the Vaudoux temple." I looked at him incredulously. I had heard before of Vaudoux. It is the hideous African canibalistic witch- craft of the relapsing half-heathen Haitian negroes. But Cesarine a Vaudoux worshipper ! It was too ridiculous. The man must be mistaken : or else Cesarine had taken the wrong road by some slight accident. Next moment, a horrible unspeakable doubt seized upon me irresistibly. What was the unknown shriue in her grandmother's garden at which Cesarine had prayed in those awful gutturals ? Whatever it was, I would probe this mystery to the very bottom. I would know the truth, come what might of it. " Go, you coward ! " I said to the negro. " I have no further need of you. I will make my way alone to the Vaudoux temple.'* ^ ^."^ '^^ 20 THE BECKONING HAND. " MoTifliear," the man cried, tremblinp: visibly in every limb, " they will tear you to piecea. If they ever dis- cover you near the temple, they will offer you up as a victim to the Vaudoux." " Pooh," I nnswered, contemptuous of the fellow's slavish terror. " Where Madame, a woman, dares to go, I, her husband, am certainly not afraid to follow her." " Monsieur," he replied, throwing himself submissively in the dust on the path before me, "Madame is Creole; she has the blood of the Vaudoux worshippers flowing in her veins. Nobody will hurt her. She is free of the craft. But Monsieur is a pure white and uninitiated. . . . If the Vaudoux people catch him at their rites, they will rend him in pieces, and offer his blood as an expiation to the Unspeakable One." " Go," I said, with a smile, turning my horse's head up the right-hand path toward the Vaudoux temple. " I am not afraid. I will come back again to Maisonette to- morroAV." I followed the path through a tortuous maze, beset with prickly cactus, agave, and fern-brake, till I came at last to a spur of the hill, where a white wooden build- ing gleamed in front of me, in the full slanting rays of tropical sunset. A skull was fastened to the lintel of the door. I knew at once it was the Vaudoux temple. I dismounted at once, and led my horse aside into the brake, though I tore his legs and my own as I went with the spines of the cactus plants ; and tying him by the bridle to a mountain cabbage palm, in a spot where the thick underbrush completely hid us from view, I lay down and waited patiently for the shades of evening. It was a moonless night, according to the Vaudoux fashion ; and I knew from what I had already read in West Indian books that the orgies would not commence till midnight. , ' , .. From time to time, I rubbed a fusee against my hand THE BECKONING UAND. 27 without lighting it, and by tho faint glimmer of the phosphoruH on my palm, I was able to read the figures of my watch dial without exciting the attention of tho neighbouring Vaudoux worshippers. Hour after hour went slowly by, and I crouched there still unseen among the agave thicket. At last, as the hands of the watch reached together the point of twelve, I heard a low but deep rumbling noise coming ominously from the Vaudoux temple. I recognized at once the familiar sound. It was the note of the bull-roarer, that mystic instrument of pointed wood, whirled by a string round the head of the hierophant, by whose aid savages in their secret rites summon to their shrines their gods and spirits. I had often made one myself for a toy when I was a boy in England. I crept out through the tangled brake, and cautiously approached the back of the building. A sentinel was standing by the door in front, a powerful negro, armed with revolver and cutlas. I skulked round noiselessly to the rear, and lifting myself by my hands to the level of the one tiny window, I peered in through a slight scratch on the white paint, with which the glass was covered internally. I only saw the sight within for a second. Then my brain reeled, and my fingers refused any longer to hold me. But in that second, I had read the whole terrible, incredible truth : I knew what sort of a woman she really was whom I had blindly taken as the wife of my bosom. Before a rude stone altar covered with stuffed alligator skins, human bones, live snakes, and hideous orts of African superstition, a tall and withered black woman ^stood erect, naked as she came from her mother's womb, one skinny arm raised aloft, and the other holding below some dark object, that writhed and struggled awfully in her hand on the slab of the altar, even as she held it. I saw in ^ 28 THE BECKONING HAND. a flash of the torches behind it was the black hag I had watched before at the Port-au-Prince cottage. Beside her, whiter of skin, and faultless of figure, stood a younger woman, beautiful to behold, imperious and haughty still, like a Greek statue, unmoved before that surging horrid backgi'ound of naked black and cringing savages. Her head was bent, and her hand pressed con- vulsively against the swollen veins in her throbbing brow ; and I saw at once it was my own wife — a Vaudoux worshipper — Cesarine Tristram. In another flash, I knew the black woman had a sharp flint knife in her uplifted hand ; and the dark object in the other hand I recognized with a thrill of unspeakable horror as a negro girl of four years old or thereabouts, gagged and bound, and lying on the altar. Before I could see the sharp flint descend upon the naked breast of the writhing victim, my fingers in mercy refused to bear me, and I fell half fainting on the ground below, too shocked and unmanned even to crawl away at once oat of reach of the awful unrealizable horror. But by the sounds within, I knew they had completed their hideous sacrifice, and that they were smearing over Cesarine — my own wife — the woman of my choice — with the warm blood of the human victim. Sick and faint, I crept away slowly through the tangled underbrush, tearing my skin as I went with the piercing cactus spines ; untied my horse from the spot where I had fastened him ; and rode him down without drawing rein, cantering round sharp angles and down horrible ledges, till he stood at last, white with foam, by the grey dawn, in front of the little piazza at Maisonette. TEE BECKONING HAND. 29 VIII. That night, the thunder roared and the lightning played with tropical fierceness round the tall hilltops away in the direction of the Vaudoux temple. The rain came down in fearful sheets, and the torrents roared and foamed in cataracts, and tore away great gaps in the rough paths on the steep hill-sides. But at eight o'clock in the morn- ing Cesarine returned, drenched with wet, and with a strange frown upon her haughty forehead. I did not know how to look at her or how to meet her. "My prayers are useless," she muttered angrily as she entered. " Some heretic must have followed me unseen to the chapel of Notre Dame de Bon Secours. The pil- grimage is a failure." "You are wet," I said, trembling. "Change your things, Cesarine." I could no*^ pretend to speak gently to her. She turned upon me with a fierce look in her big black eyes. Her instinct showed her at once I had discovered her secret. " Tell them, and hang me," she cried fiercely. It was what the law required me to do. I was other- wise the accomplice of murder and cannibalism. But I could not do it. Profoundly as I loathed her and hated her presence, now, I couldn't find it in my heart to give her up to justice, as I knew I ought to do. I turned away and answered nothing. Presently, she came out again from her bedroom, with her wet things still dripping around her. " Smoke that," she said, handing me a tiny cigarette rolled round in s^ leaf of fresh tobacco. " I will not," I answered with a vague surmise, taking it from her fingers. "I know the smell. It is manchi- neal. You cannot any longer deceive me." She went back to her bedroom once more. I eat, m THE BECKONING HAND. dazed and stupefied, in the bamboo cbair on the front piazza. What to do, I knew not, and cared not. I was tied to her for life, and there was no help for it, save by denouncing her to the rude Haitian justice. In an hour or more, our English maid came out to speak to me. " I'm afraid, sir," she said, " Mrs. Tristram is getting delirious. She seems to be in a high fever. Shall I ask one of these poor black bodies to go out and get the English doctor ? " I went into my wife's bedroom. Cesarine lay moaning piteously on the bed, in her wet clothes still ; her cheeks were hot, and her pulse was high and thin and feverish. I knew without asking what was the matter with her. It was yellow fever. The night's exposure in that terrible climate, and the ghastly scene she had gone through so intrepidly, had broken down even Cesarine's iron constitution. I sent for the doctor and had her put to bed immedi- ately. The black nurse and I undressed her between us. We found next her bosom, tied by a small red silken thread, a tiny bone, fresh and ruddy-looking. I knew what it was, and so did the negress. It was a human finger-bone — the last joint of a small child's fourth finger. The negress shuddered and hid her head. " It is Vau- doux. Monsieur ! " she said. " I have seen it on others. Madame has been paying a visit, I suppose, to her grand- mother." For six long endless days and nights I watched and nursed that doomed criminal, doing everything for her that skill could direct or care could suggest to me : yet all the time fearing and dreading that she might yet recover, and not knowing in my heart what either of our lives could ever be like if she did live through it. A merciful Providence willed it otherwise. On the sixth day, the fatal vomito negro set in — the symptom of the last incurable stage of yellow fever — and y '. . : THE BECKONING HAND. 81 I knew for certain that Cesarine would die. She had brought her own punishment upon her. At midnight that evening she died delirious. Thank God, she had left no child of mine behind her to inherit the curse her mother's blood had handed down to her! IX. On my return to London, whither I went by mail direct, leaving the yacht to follow after me, I drove straight to the Lathams' from Waterloo Station. Mrs. Latham was out, the servant said, but Miss Irene was in the drawing- room. Irene was sitting at the window by herself, working quietly at a piece of crewel work. She rose to meet me with her sweet simple little English smile. I took her hand and pressed it like a brother. " I got your telegram," she said simply. " Harry, I know she is dead ; but I know something terrible besides has happened. Tell me all. Don't be afraid to speak of it before me. I am not afraid, for my part, to listen." I sat down on the sofa beside her, and told her all, without one word of excuse or concealment, from our last parting to the day of Cesarine's death in Haiti : and she held my hand and listened all the while with breathless wonderment to my strange story. At the end I said, " Irene, it has all come and gone between us like a hideous nightmare. I cannot iigagine even now how that terrible woman, with all her power, could ever for one moment have bewitched me away from you, my beloved, my queen, my own heart's darling." Irene did not try to hush me or to stop me in any way. She merely sat and looked at me steadily, and said nothing. m THE BECKONING HAND. " It was fascination," I cried. " Infatuation, madness, delirium, enchantment." " It was worse than that, Harry," Irene answered, rising quietly. "It was poison; it was witchcraft; it was sheer African devilry." In a flash of thought, I remembered the cup of coffee at Seymour Crescent, the curious sherry at Port-au-Prince, the cigarette with the manchineal she had given me on the mountains, and I saw forthwith that Irene with her woman's quickness had divined rightly. It was more than infatuation ; it was intoxication with African charms and West Indian poisons. *' What a man does in such a woman's hands is not his own doing," Irene said slowly. " He has no more con- trol of himself in such circumstances than if she had drugged him with chloroform or opium." " Then you forgive me, Irene ? " • " I have nothing to forgive, Harry. I am grieved for you. I am frightened." Then bursting into tears, "My darling, my darling ; I love you, I love you ! " ...'>>. LUCRETIA, I WILL acknowledge that I was certainly a very young man in the year '67 ; indeed, I was only just turned of twenty, and was inordinately proud of a slight downy fringe on my upper lip, which I was pleased to speak of as my moustache. Still, I was a sturdy young fellow enough, in spite of my consumptive tendencies, and not given to groundless fears in a general way ; but I must allow that I was decidedly frightened by my adventure in the Rich- mond Hotel on the Christmas Eve of that aforesaid year of grace. It may be a foolish reminiscence, yet I dare say you won't mind listening to it. When I say the Richmond Hotel, you must not under- stand me to speak of the Star and Garter in the town of that ilk situated in the county of Surrey, England. The Richmond where I passed my uncomfortable Christmas Eve stands on the banks of the pretty St. Francis River in Lower Canada. I had gone out to the colony in the autumn of that year, to look after a small property of my mother's near Kamouraska ; and I originally intended to spend the winter in Quebec. But as November and December wore away, and the snow grew deeper and deeper upon the plains of Abraham, I became gradually aware that a Canadian winter was not the best adapted tonic in the world for a hearty young man with a slight D 34 LUCRETIA. hereditary predisposition to consumption. I bad seen enough of Arctic life in Quebec during those two initial months to give me a good idea of its pleasures and its drawbacks. I had steered by taboggan down the ice-cone at the Falls of Montmorenci ; I had driven a sleigh, tete- a-tete with a French Canadian belle, to a surprise picnic in a house at Sainte Anne ; I had skated, snow-shoed, and curled to my heart's content ; and I had caught my death of cold on the frozen St. Lawrence, not to mention such minor misfortunes as getting my nose, ears, and feet frost- bitten during a driving party up the banks of the Chau- diere. So a few days before Christmas, I determined to strike south. I would go for a tour through Virginia and the Carolinas, to escape the cold weather, waiting for the return of the summer sun to catch a glimpse of Niagara and the great lakes. For this purpose I must first go to Montreal ; and, that being the case, what could be more convenient than to spend Christmas Day itself with the rector at Richmond, to whom I had letters of introduction, his wife being in fact a first cousin of my mother's ? Richmond lies half- way on the Grand Trunk line between Quebec and Mon- treal, and it would be more pleasant, by breaking my journey there, to eat my turkey and plum-pudding in a friend's family than in that somewhat cheerless hotel, the Dominion Hall. So off I started from the Point Levy station, at four o'clock on the twenty-fourth of December, hoping to arrive at my journey's end about one o'clock on Christmas morning. Now, those were the days, just after the great American civil war, when gold was almost unknown either in the States or Canada, and everybody used greasy dollar notes of uncertain and purely local value. Hence I was com- pelled to take the money for expenses on my projected tour in the only form of specie which was available, that of solid silver. A hundred and fifty pounds in silver LUCRETIA. 35 dollars amounts to a larger bulk and a heavier weight than you would suppose ; and I thought it safer to carry the sum in my own hands, loosely bundled into a large leather reticule. Hinc illce lacrimce : — that was the real cause of my night's adventure and of the present story. When I got into the long open American railway- carriage, with its comfortable stove and warm foot-bricks, I found only one seat vacant, and that was a red velvet sofa, opposite to another occupied by a girl of singular beauty. I can remember to this day exactly how she was dressed. I dare say my lady readers will think it horribly old-fashioned at the present time, but it was the very latest and most enchanting style in the year '67. On her head was a coquettish little cheese-plate bonnet, bound round with one of those warm, soft, fleecy woollen veils or head- wraps which Canadian girls know as Nubias. Her dress was a short winter walking costume of the period, trimmed with fur, and vandyked at the bottom so as to show a glimpse of the quilted down petticoat underneath. Her little high-heeled boots, displayed by the short costume, were buttoned far above the ankle, and bound with fur to match the dress ; while a tiny tassel at the side added just a suspicion of Parisian coquetry. Her cloak was lined with sable, or what seemed so to my undiscriminating eyes ; and her rug was a splendid piece of wolverine skins. As to her eyes, her lips, her figure, I had rather not attempt them. I can manage clothes, but not goddesses. Altogether, quite a dream of Canadian beauty, not devoid of that indefinable grace which goes only with the French blood. I was not bold in '67, and I would have preferred to take any other seat rather than face this divine apparition ; but there was no help for it, since all the others were filled : so I sat down a little sheepishly, I dare say. Almost before we were well out of the station we had got into a conver- sation, and it was she who began it. 3C LVCRETIA. ^ " You are an Englishman, I think ? " she said, looking at me with a frank and pleasant smile. "Yes," I answered, colouring, though why I should have been ashamed of my nationality for that solitary moment of my life I cannot imagine, — unless, perhaps, because she was a Canadian ; " but how on earth did you discover it ? " " You would have been more warmly wrapped up if you had lived long in Canada," she replied. " In spite of our stoves and hot bricks, you'll find yourself very cold before you get to your journey's end." " Yes," I said ; " I suppose it's rather chilly late at night in these big cars." " Dreadfully ; oh, quite terribly. You ought to have a rug, you really ought. Won't you let me lend you one ? I have another under the seat here." " But you brought that for yourself," I interposed. " You will want it by-and-by, when it gets a little colder." " Oh no, I shan't. This is warm enough for me ; it's wolverine. You have a mother ? " . • What an extraordinary question, I thought, and what an unusually friendly girl ! Was she really quite as simple-minded as she seemed, or could she be the " de- signing woman " of the novels ? Yes, I admitted to her cautiously that I possessed a maternal parent, who was at that moment safely drinking her tea in a terrace at South Kensington. "J have none," she said, with an emphasis on the personal pronoun, and a sort of appealing look in her big eyes. " But you should take care of yourself, for her sake. You really must take my rug. hundreds, oh, thousands of young Englishmen come out here, and kill themselves their first winter by imprudence." Thus adjured, I accepted the rug with many thanks and apologies, and wrapped myself warmly up in the corner, with a splendid view of my vis-a-vis. LUCRETIA, tr • Exactly at that moment, the ticket collector came round upon his oflBcial tour. Now, on American and Canadian mil ways, you do not take your ticket beforehand, but pay your fare to the collector, who walks up and down through the open cars from end to end, between every station. I lifted up my bag of silver, which lay on the seat beside me, and imprudently opened it to take out a few dollars full in sight of my enchanting neighbour. I saw her look with unaffected curiosity at the heap of coin within, and I was proud at being able to give such an unequivocal proof of my high respectability — for what better guarantee of all the noblest moral qualities can any man produce all the world over than a bag of dollars ? " What a lot of money ! " she said, as the collector passed on. "What can you want with it all in coin ? " " I'm going on a tour in the Southern States," I con- fided in reply, "and I thought it better to take specie." (I was very proud ten or twelve years ago of that word specie.) "And I suppose those are your initials on the reticule ? What a pretty monogram ! Your mother gave you that for a birthday present." r " You must be a conjurer or a clairvoyant," I said, smiling. " So she did ; " and I added that the initials represented my humble patronymic and baptismal desig- nations. "My name's Lucretia," said my neighbour artlessly, as a child might have said it, without a word as to surname or qualifying circumstances ; and from that moment she became to me simply Lucretia. I think of her as Lucretia to the present day. As she spoke, she pointed to the word engraved in tiny letters on her pretty silver locket. I suppose she thought 'my confidence required a little more confidence in return, for after a slight pause she repeated once more, " My name's Lucretia, and I live at Richmond." 38 LUCRETIA. " Richmond ! " I cried. " Why, that's just where I'm going. Do you know the rector ? ♦' Mr. Pritchard ? Oh yes, intimately. He's our greatest friend. Are you going to stop with him ? " " For a day or two at least, on my way to Montreal. Mrs. Pritchard is my mother's cousin." "How delightful! Then we may consider ourselves acquaintances. But you don't mean to knock them up to-night ? They'll all be in bed long before one o'clock." " No, I haven't even written to tell them I was coming," I answered. " They gave me a general invitation, and said I might drop in whenever I pleased." " Then you must stop at the hotel to-night. I'm going there myself. My people keep the hotel." Was it possible ! I was thunderstruck. I had pictured Lucretia to myself as at least a countess of the ancien regime, a few of whom still linger on in Montreal and elsewhere. Her locket, her rugs, her eyes, her chiselled features, all of them seemed to me redolent of the old French noblesse. And here it turned out that this livinsr angel was only the daughter of an inn-keeper ! But in that primitive and pleasant Canadian society such things, I thought, can easily be. No doubt she is the petted child of the house, the one heiress of the old man's savings ; and after spending a winter holiday among the gaieties of Quebec, she is now returning to pass the Christmas season with her own family. I will not conceal the fact that I had already fallen over head and ears in love with Lucretia at first sight, and that frank avowal made me love her all the more. Besides, these Canadian hotel-keepers are often very rich ; and was not her manner perfect, and was she not an intimate friend of the rector and his wife ? All these things showed at least that she was accustomed to refined society. I caught myself already speculating as to what my mother would think of such a match. In five minutes it was all aiTanged about the hotel, and LUC RET I A. H I had got inio the midst of a swimming conversation with Lucretia. She told me about herself and her past; how she had been educated at a convent in Montreal, and loved the nuns, oh so dearly, though she was a Protestant herself, and only French on her mother's side, (This, I thought, was well, as a safeguard against parental pre- judice.) She told me all the gossip of Richmond, and whom I should meet at the rector's, and what a dull little town it was. But Quebec was delightful, and Montreal — ■ oh, if she could only live in Montreal, it would be perfect bliss. And so I thought myself, if only Lucretia would livo there with me ; but I prudently refrained from saying so, as I thought it rather premature. Or perhaps I blushed aud stammered too much to get the words out. " Had she ever been in Europe ? " No, never, but she would 80 like it. " Ah, it would be delightful to spend a month or two in Paris," I suggested, with internal pictures of a honeymoon floating through my brain. " Yes, that would be most enjoyable," she answered. Altogether, Lucretia and I kept chatting uninterruptedly the whole way io Richmond, and the other passengers must have voted us most unconscionable bores ; for they evidently could not sleep by reason of our incessant talking. We did not sleep, nor wish to sleep. And I am bound to say that a more frankly enchanting or seemingly guileless girl than Lucretia I have never met from that day to this. At last we reached Richmond Dep6t (as the Canadians call the stations), very cold and tired externally, but lively enough as regards the internal fires. We got out, and looked after our luggage. A sleepy porter promised to bring it next morning to the hotel. There were no sleighs in waiting — Richmond is too much of a country station for that — so I took my reticule in my hand, threw Lucretia's rug across her shoulders, and proceeded to walk with her to the hotel. Now, the " Depot " is in a suburb known as Melbourne, 10 LUCRETIA. •while Richmond itself lies on the other side of the river St. Fi-anciH, here crossed by a long covered bridge, a sort of rough woodeti counterpart of the famous one at Lucerne. As we passed out into the cold night, it was snowing heavily, and the frost was very bitter. Lucretia took my arm without a word of prelude, as naturally as if she were my sister, and guided me through the snow-covered path to the bridge. When we got under the shelter of the wooden covering, we had to pass through the long dark gallery, as black as night, heading only for the dim square of moonlight at the other end. But Lucretia walked and chatted on as unconcernedly as if she had always been in the habit of traversing that lonely tunnel-like bridge with a total stranger every evening of her life. I confess I was surprised. I fancied a prim English girl in a similar situation, and I began to wonder whether all this artlessness was really as genuine as it looked. At the opposite end of the bridge we emerged upon a street of wooden frame houses. In one of them only was there a light. "That's the hotel!" said Lucretia, nodding towards it, and again I suffered a thrill of dis- appointment. I had pictured to myself a great solid building like the St. Lawrence Hall at Montreal, forget- ting that Richmond was a mere country village ; and here I found a bit of a frame cottage as the whole domain of Lucretia's supposed father. It was too awful ! We reached the door and entered. Fresh surprises were in store for me. The passage led into a bar, where half-a-dozen French Canadians were sitting with, bottles and glasses, playing some game of cards. One rather rough-looking young man jumped up in astonishment as we entered, and exclaimed, "Why, Lucretia, we didn't expect you for another hour. I meant to take the sleigh for you." I could have knocked him down for calling her by her Christian name, but the conviction flashed upon me that this was Lucretia's brother. He glanced up at LUCRETIA. 4t the big Yankee clock on the mantelpiece, wliich pointed to a quarter past twelve, then pulled out his watch and whistled. " Stopped three quarters of an hour ago, by Jingo," was his comment. " Why, I forgot to wind it up. Upon my word, Lucretia, I'm awfully sorry. But who is the gentleman ? " "A friend of the Pritchards, Tom dear, who wants a bed here to-night. I couldn't imagine why the sleigh didn't come for me. It's so unlike you not to remember it." And she gave him a look to melt adamant. Tom was profuse in his apologies, and made it quite clear that his intentions at least had been most excellent ; besides, he kissed Lucretia with so much brotherly tender- ness that I relented of my desire to knock him down. Then brother and sister retired for a while, apparently to see after my bedroom, and I was left alone in the bar. I cannot say I liked the look of it. The men were drinking whiskey and playing ccarte — two bad things, I thought in my twenty-year-old propriety. My dear mother hated gambling, which hatred she had instilled into my youthful mind, and this was evidently a backwoods gam- bling-house. Moreover, I carried a bag of silver coin, quite large enough to make it well worth while to rob me. The appearances were clearly against Lucretia's home ; but surely Lucretia herself was a guarantee for anything. Presently Tom returned, and told me my room was ready. I followed him up the stairs with a beating heart and a heavy reticule. At the top of the landing Lucretia stood smiling, my candle in her hand, and showed me into the room. Tom and she looked around to see that all was comfortable, and then they both shook hands with me, which certainly seemed a curious thing for an inn-keeper and his sister. As soon as they were gone, I began to look about me and consider the situation. The room had two doors, but the key was gone from both. I opened one towards the passage, but found no key outside ; the 42 LUCRETIA. other, which probably communicated with a neighbouring bedroom, was locked from the opposite side. Moreover, there had once been a common bolt on this second door, but it had been removed. I looked close at the screw- holes, and was sure they were quite fresh. Could the bolt have been taken off while I was waiting in the bar ? All at once it flashed upon my mind that I had been impru- dently confiding in my disclosures to Lucretia. I had told her that I carried a hundred and fifty pounds in coin, an easy thing to rob and a difficult thing to identify. She had heard that nobody was aware of my presence in Rich- mond, except herself and her brother. I had not written to tell the Pritchards I was coming, and she knew that I had not told any one of my whereabouts, because I did not decide where I should go until I talked with her about the matter. No one in Canada would miss me. If these people chose to murder me for my money (and inn-keepers often murder their guests, I thought), nobody would think of inquiring or know where to inquire for me. Weeks would elapse before my mother wrote from England to ask my whereabouts, and by that time all traces might well be lost. I left Quebec only telling the people at my hotel that I was going to Montreal. Then I thought of Lucretia's eagerness to get into conversation, her obser- vation about my money, her suggestion that I ihould come to the Richmond Hotel. And how could sbe, a small inn- keeper's daughter, afford to get all those fine furs and lockets by fair means? Did she really know the Prit- chards, or was it likely, considering her position ? All these things came across me in a moment. What a fool I had been ever to think of trusting such a girl ! I got up and walked about the room. It was evidently Lucretia's own bedroom ; " part of the decoy," said I to myself sapiently. But could so beautiful a girl really hurt one ? A piece of music was lying on the dressing- table. I took it up and looked at it casually. Gracious LUCRETIA. 43 heavens ! it was a song from " Lucrezia Borgia ! " Her very name betrayed her ! She too was a Lucretia. I walked over to the mantelpiece. A little ivory miniature hung above the centre : I gave it a glance as I passed. Incredible ! It was the Beatrice Cenci ! Talk of beautiful women ! Why, they poison one, they stab one, they burn one alive, with a smile on their lips. Lucretia must have a taste for murderesses. Evidently she is a connoisseur. At least, thought I, I shall sell my life dearly. I could not go to bed ; but I pulled the bedstead over against one of the doors — the locked one — and I laid the mattress down in front of the other. Then I lay down on the mattress, my money-bag under my head, and put the poker conveniently by my side. If they came to rob and murder me, they should at least have a broken head to account for next day. But I soon got tired of this defensive attitude, and reflected that, if I must lie awake all night, I might as well have something to read. So I went over to the little book-case and took down the first book which came to hand. It bore on the outside the title " CEuvres de Victor Hugo. Tome P' . Theatre." " This, at any rate," said I to myself, " will be light and interesting." I re- turned to my mattress, opened the volume, and began to read Le Hoi s'amuse. . , I had never before dipped into that terrible drama, and I devoured it with a hon'id avidity. I read how Triboulet bribed the gipsy to murder the king ; how the gipsy's sister beguiled him into the hut ; how the plot was matured ; and how the sack containing the corpse was delivered over to Triboulet. It was an awful play to read on such a night and in such a place, with the wind howling round the corners and the snow gathering deeply upon the win- dow-panes. I was in a considerable state of fright when I began it : I was in an agony of terror before I had got half-way through. Now and then I heard footseps on the stairs : again I could distinguish two voices, one a woman's, 44 . LUCRETIA. whispering outside the door ; a little later, the other door was very slightly opened and then pushed back again stealthily by a man's hand. Still I read on. At last, just as I reached the point where Triboulet is about to throw the corpse into the river, my candle, a mere end, began to sputter in its socket, and after a few ineffectual flickers suddenly went oat, leaving me in the dark till morning. I lay down once more, trembling but wearied out. A few minutes later the voices came again. The farther door was opened a second time, and I saw dimly a pair of eyes (not, I felt sure, Lucretia's) peering in the gloom, and reflecting the light from the snow on the window. A man's voice said huskily in an undertone, " It's all right now ; " and then there was a silence. I knew they were coming to murder me. I clutched the poker firmly, stood on guard over the dollars, and waited the assault. The moment that intervened seemed like a lifetime. A minute. Five minutes. A quarter of an hour. They are evidently trying to take me off my guard. Perhaps they saw the poker ; in any case, they niust have felt the bedstead against the door. That would show them that I expected them. I held my watch to my ear and counted the seconds, then the minutes, then the hours. When the candle went out it was three o'clock. I counted up till about half-past five. After that I must have fallen asleep from very weari- ness. My head glided back upon the reticule, and I dozed uneasily until morning. Every now and then 1 started in my sleep, but the murderers hung back. When I awoke it was eight o'clock, and the dollars were still safe under my head. I rose wearily, washed myself, and arranged the tumbled clothes in which I had slept, for my portmanteau had not yet arrived from the I)ep6t. Next, I put back the bed and mattress, and then I took the dollars and went downstairs to the bar, hardly know- ing whether to laugh at my last night's terror, or to con- LUCRETIA. 4» gratulafce myself on my lucky escape from a den of robbers. At the foot of the stairs, whom should I come across but Lucretia herself ! In a moment the doubt was gone. She was enchanting. Quite a different style oi dress, but equally lovely and suitable. A long figured gown of some fine woollen material, giving very nearly the effect of a plain neat print, and made quite simply to fit her perfect little figure. A plain linen collar, and a quiet silver brooch. Hair tied in a single broad knot above the head, instead of yester- day's chignon and cheese-plate. Altogether, a model winter morning costume for a cold climate. And as she advanced frankly, holding out her hand with a smile, I could have cut my own throat with a pocket-knife as a merited punisliment for daring to distrust her. Such is human nature at the ripe age of twenty ! " We were so afraid you didn't sleep, Tom and I," she said with a little tone of anxiety ; " we saw a light in your room till so very late, and Tom opened the door a wee bit once or twice to see if you were sleeping ; but he said you seemed to have pulled the mattress on the floor. I do hope you weren't ill." What on earth could I answer ? Dare I tell this angel how I had suspected her? Impossible! "Well," I stammered out, colouring up to my eyes, " I was rather over- tired, and couldn't get to rest, so I put the candle on a chair, took a book, and lay on the floor so as to have a light to read by. But I slept very well after the candle went out, thank you." " There were none but French books in the room, though," she said quickly : "perhaps you read French ? " " I read Le Roi s'amuse, or part of it," said I. *' Oh, what a dreadful play to read on Christmas Eve ! " cried Lucretia, with a little deprecating gesture. "But you must come and have your breakfast." I followed her into the dining-room, a pretty little 46 LUCRETIA. bright-looking room behind the bar. Frightened as I was during the night, I could not fail to notice how taste- fully the bedroom was furnished; but this little salle-d- manger was far prettier. The paper, the carpet, the furniture, were all models of what cheap and simple cottage decorations ought to be. They breathed of Lucretia. The Montreal nuns had evidently taught her what " art at home" meant. The table was laid, and the white table-cloth, with its bright silver and sprays of evergreen in the vase, looked delightfully appetising. I began to think I might manage a breakfast after all. " How pretty all your things are ! " I said to Lucretia. " Do you think so ? " she answered. " I chose them, and I laid the table." I looked surprised ; but in a moment more I was fairly overwhelmed when Lucretia left the room for a minute, and then returned carrying a tray covered with dishes. These she rapidly and dexterously placed upon the table, and then asked me to take my seat. ^''^ ' " But," said I, hesitating, " am I to understand . . . You don't mean to say . . . Are you . . . going ... to wait upon me?" ■'- ' • ' Lucretia's face was one smile of innocent amusement from her white little forehead to her chiselled little chin. " Why, yes," she answered, laughing, " of course I am. I always wait upon our guests when I'm at home. And I cooked these salmon cutlets, which I'm sure you'll find nice if you only try them while they're hot." With which recommendation she uncovered all the dishes, and dis- played a breakfast that might have tempted St. Anthony. Not being St. Anthony, I can do Lucretia's breakfast the justice to say that I ate it with unfeigned heartiness. So my princess was, after all, the domestic manager and assistant cook of a small country inn ! Not a countess, not even a murderess (which is at least romantic), but only a prosaic housekeeper ! Yet she was a princess for LUCEETIA. 4f all that. Did she not read Victor Hugo, and play " Lucrezia Borgia," and spread her own refinement over the village tavern ? In no other country could yoa find such a strange mixture of culture and simplicity ; but it was new, it was interesting, and it was piquant. Lucretia in her morning dress officiously insisting upon ofEering me the buckwheat pancakes with her own white hands was Lucretia still, and I fell deeper in love than ever. After breakfast came a serious difficulty. I must go to the Pritchards, but before I went, I must pay. Yet, how was I to ask for my bill ? I couldnH demand it of Lucretia. So I sat a while ruminating, and at last I said, " I wonder how people do when they want to leave this house." "Why," said Lucretia, promptly, " they order the sleigh," " Yes," I answered sheepishly, " no doubt. But how do they manage about paying ? " Lucretia smiled. She was so absolutely transparent, and so accustomed to her simple way of doing business, that I suppose she did not comprehend my difficulty. " They ask me, of course, and I tell them what they owe. You owe us half -a- dollar." Half-a-dollar — two shillings sterling — for a night of romance and terror, a bed and bedroom, a regal breakfast, and — Lucretia to wait upon one ! It was too ridiculous. And these were the good simple Canadian villagers whom. I had suspected of wishing to rob and murder me ! I never felt so ashamed of my own stupidity in the whole course of my life. I must pay it somehow, I supposed, but I could not bear to hand over two shilling pieces into Lucretia's out- stretched palm. It was desecration, it was sheer sacrilege. But Lucretia took the half-dollar with the utmost calm- ness, and went out to order the sleigh. I di'oye to the rector's, after saying good-bye to Lucretia, 48 LUCRETIA. with a clear determination that before I left Richmond she should have consented to become my wife. Of course there were social differences, but those would be forgotten in South Kensington, and nobody need ever know what Lucretia had been in Canada. Besides, she was fit to shine in the society of duchesses — a society into which I cannot honestly pretend that I habitually penetrate. The rector and his wife gave me a hearty welcome, and I found Mrs. Pritchard a good motherly sort of body — just the right woman for helping on a romantic love- match. So, in the course of the morning, as we walked back from church, I managed to mention to her casually that a very nice young woman had come down in the train with me from Quebec. " You don't mean Lucretia ? " cried good Mrs. Pritchard. " Lucretia," I answered in a cold sort of way, " I think that was her name. In fact, I remember she told me so." " Oh yes, everybody calls her Lucretia — indeed, she's hardly got any other name. She's the dearest creature in the world, as simple as a child, yet the most engaging and kind-hearted girl you ever met. She was brought up by some nuns at Montreal, and being a very clever girl, with a great deal of taste, she was their favourite pupil, and has turned out a most cultivated person." " Does she paint ? " I asked, thinking of the Beatrice. "Oh, beautifully. Her ivory miniatures always take prizes at the Toronto Exhibition. And she plays and sings charmingly." "Are they well off?" " Very, for Canadians. Lucretia has money of her own, and they have a good farm besides the hotel." " She said she knew you very well," I ventured to suggest. " Oh yes ; in fact, she's coming here this evening. We have an early dinner— you know our simple Canadian habits — and a few friends will drop in to high tea after LUCRETIA. id evening service. She and Tom will bo among them — ^yon met Tom, of course ? " " I had the pleasure of making Tom's acquaintance at one o'clock this morning," I answered. " But, excuse my asking it, isn't it a little odd for you to mix with pcoplr in their position ? " The rector smiled and put in his word. " This is a democratic country," he said ; "a mere farmer community, after all. We have little society in Richmond, and are very glad to know such pleasant intelligent people as Tom and Lucretia." " But then, the convenances,^' I urged, secretly desiring to have my own. position strengthened. " When I got to the hotel last night, or rather this morning, there were a lot of rough-looking hulking fellows drinking whiskey and playing cards." "Ah, I dare say. Old Picard, and young Le Patourel from Melbourne, and the Post Office people sitting over a quiet game of ecartS while they waited for the last train. The English mail was in last night. As for the whiskey, that's the custom of the country. We Canadians do nothing without whiskey. A single glass of Morton's proof does nobody any harm." And these were my robbers and gamblers ? A party of peaceable farmers and sleepy Post officials, sitting up with a sober glass of toddy and beguiling the time with ecarte for love, in expectation of Her Majesty's mails. I shall never again go to bed with a poker by my side as long as I live. About seven o'clock our friends came in. Lucretia was once more charming ; this time in a long evening dress, a peach-coloured silk with square-cut boddice, and a little lace cap on her black hair. I dare say I saw almost the full extent of her wardrobe in those three changes ; but the impression she produced upon me was still that of boundless wealth. However, as she had money of her 50 LUCIiETIA. own, I no longer wondered at the richness of her toilette, and I reflected that a comfortable little settlement might help to outweigh any possible prejudice on my mother's part. Lucretia was the soul of the evening. She talked, she flirted innocently with every man in the room (myself included), she played divinely, and she sang that very Bong from " Lucrezia Borgia " in a rich contralto voice. As she rose at last from the piano, I could contain myself no longer. I must find some opportunity of proposing to her there and then. I edged my way to the little group -where she was standing, flushed with the compliments on her song, talking to our hostess near the piano. As I approached from behind, I could hear that they were speaking about me, and I caught a few words distinctly, I paused to listen. It was very wrong, but twenty is an impulsive age. " Oh, a very nice young man indeed," Lucretia was saying; "and we had a most enjoyable journey down. He talked so simply, and seemed such an innocent boy, BO I took quite a fancy to him." (My heart beat about two hundred pulsations to the minute.) " Such a clever, intelligent talker too, full of wide English views and interests, so different from our narrow provincial Canadian lads." (Oh, Lucretia, I feel sure of you now. Love at first sight on both sides, evidently ! ) " And then he spoke to me so nicely about his mother. I was quite grieved to think he should be travelling alone on Christ- mas Eve, and so pleased when I heard he was to spend his Christmas with you, dear. I thought what I should have felt if " I listened with all my ears. What could Lucretia be going to say ? *' If one of my own dear hoys was grown up, and passing his Christmas alone in a strange land." I reeled. The room swam before me. It was too LUCRETIA. 51 awful. So all that Lucretia had ever felt was a mere motherly interest in me as a solitary English boy away from his domestic turkey on the twenty- 6fth of December ! Terrible, hideous, blighting fact ! Lucretia was married ! The rector's refreshments in the adjoining dining-room only went to the length of sponge-cake and weak claret- cup. I managed to get away from the piano without fainting, and swallowed about a quart of the intoxicating beverage by tumblerfuls. When I had recovered suffi- ciently from the shock to trust my tongue, I ventured back into the drawing-room. It struck me then that I had never yet heard Lucretia's surname. When she and her brother arrived in the early part of the evening, Mrs. Pritchard had simply introduced them to me by saying, " I think you know Tom and Lucretia already." Colonial manners are so unceremonious. I joined the fatal group once more. " Do you know," I said, addressing Lucretia with as little tremor in my voice as I could easily manage, " it's very carious, but I have never heard your surname yet." " Dear me," cried Lucretia, " I quite forgot. Our name is Arundel." " And which is Mr. Arundel ? " I continued. " I should like to make his acquaintance." • :. "Why," answered Lucretia with a puzzled expression of face, " you've met him already. Here he is ! " And she took a neighbouring young man in unimpeachable evening dress gently by the arm. He turned round. It required a moment's consideration to recognize in that tall and gentlemanly young fellow with the plain gold studs and turndown collar my rough acquaintance of last night, Tom himself ! I saw it in a flash. What a fool I had been ! I might have known they were husband and wife. Nothing but a pure piece of infatuated preconception could ever have made me take them for brother and sister. But I had so ftl LUCEETIA. fally determined in my own mind to win Lucretia for myself that the notion of any other fellow having already secured the prize had never struck me. It was all the fault of that incomprehensible Canadian society, with its foolish removal of the natural barriers between classes. My mother was quite right. I should henceforth be a high-and-dry conservative in all matters matrimonial, return home in the spring with heart com- pletely healed, and after passing correctly through a London season, marry the daughter of a general or a Warwickshire squire, with the full consent of all the high contracting parties, at St. George's, Hanover Square. With this noble and moral resolution firmly planted in my bosom, I made my excuses to the rector and his good little wife, and left Richmond for ever the very next morning, without even seeing Lucretia once again. But, somehow, 1 have never quite forgotten that journey from Quebec on Christmas Eve ; and though I have passed through several Londcn seasons since that date, and undergone increasingly active sieges from mammas and daughters, as my briefs on the Oxford Circuit grow more and more numerous, I still remain a bachelor, with soli- tary chambers in St. James's. I sometimes fancy it might have been otherwise if I could only once have met a second paragon exactly like Lucretia. THE THIRD TIME. I. If Harry Lewin had' never come to Stoke Peveril, Edie Meredith would certainly have married her cousin Evali. For Evan Meredith was the sort of man that any girl of Edi^s. temperament might very easily fall in love with. Tall, handsome, with delicate, clear-cut 'Celtic face, piercing yet pensive black Welsh eyes, and the true Cymric gifts of music and poetry, Evan Meredith had long been his pretty cousin's prime favourite among all the young men of all Herefordshire. She had danced with him over and over again at every county ball ; she had talked with him incessantly at every lawn-tennis match and garden-party ; she had whispered to him quietly on the sofa in the far comer while distinguished amateurs were hammering away conscientiously at the grand piano; and all the world of Herefordshire took it for granted that young Mr. Meredith and his second cousin were, in the delightfully vague slang of society, "almost engaged." Suddenly, like a flaming meteor across the quiet evening skies, Harry Lewin burst in all his dashing 'jsplendour upon the peaceful and limited Herefordshire horizon. He came from that laud of golden possibilities, Australia: but he was Irish by descent, and his father had sent him young to Eton and Oxford, where he picked! up the 54 THE TUIIiD TIME. acquaintance of everybody worth knowing, and a suflBcient knowledge of things in general to pass with brilliant success in English society. In his vacations, having no home of his own to go to, he had loitered about half the capitals and spas of Europe, so that Vichy and Carlsbad, Monte Carlo and Spezzia, Berlin and St. Petersburg, were almost as familiar to him as London and Scarborough. Nobody knew exactly what his father had been : some said a convict, some a gold-miner, some a bush-ranger ; but whatever he was, he was at least exceedingly rich, and money covers a multitude of sins quite as well and as effectually as charity. When Harry Lewin came into his splendid property at his father's death, and purchased the insolvent Lord Tintern's old estate at Stoke Peveril, half the girls and all the mothers in the whole of Herefordshire rose at once to a fever of anxiety in their desire to know upon which of the marriageable young women of the county the wealthy new-comer would finally bestow himself in holy matrimony. There was only one girl in the Stoke district who never appeared in the slightest degree flattered or fluttered by Harry Lewin's polite attentions, and that girl was Edie Meredith. Though she was only the country doctor's daughter — "hardly in our set at all, you know," the county people said depreciatingly — she had no desire to be the mistress of Peveril Court, and she let Harry Lewin see pretty clearly that she didn't care the least in the world for that distinguished honour. It was at a garden party at Stoke Peveril Rectory that Edie Meredith met one afternoon her cousin Evau and the rich young Irish- Australian. Harry Lewin had stood talking to her with his easy jaunty manner, so perfectly self-possessed, so full of Irish courtesy and Etonian readi- ness, when Evan Meredith, watching them half angrily out of his dark Welsh eyes from the comer by the labur- num tree, walked slowly over to interrupt their tete-a-tete THE THIRD TIME. M of sot purpose. He chose certainly an awkward moment: for his earnest serious face and figure showed to ill advantage just then and there beside the light-liearted cheery young Oxonian's. Kdie fancied as he strolled up to her that she had never seen her cousin Evan look so awkward, so countrified, and so awfully Welsh. (On the border counties, to look like a Welshman is of course almost criminal.) She wondered she had overlooked till now the fact that his was distinctly a local and rustic sort of handsomeness. He looked like a Herefordshire squireen gentleman, while Hany Lewin, with his Irish chivalry and his Oxford confidence, looked like a cosmopolitan and a man of society. As Evan came up, glancing blackly at him from under his dark eyebrows, Harry Lewin moved away carelessly, raising his hat and strolling off as if quite unconcerned, to make way for the new-comer. Evan nodded to him a distant nod, and then turned to his cousin Edie. " You've been talking a great deal with that fellow Lewin," he said sharply, almost angrily, glancing straight at her with his big black eyes. Edie was annoyed at the apparent assumption of a right to criticise her. "Mr. Lewin's a very agreeable man," she answered quietly, without taking the least notice of his angry tone. " I always like to have a chat with him, Evan. He's been everywhere and knows all about every- thing — Paris and Vienna, and I don't know where. So very different, of course, from our Stoke young men, who've never been anywhere in their whole lives beyond Bristol or Hereford." "Bristol and Hereford are much better places, I've no doubt, for a man to be brought up in than Paris or Vienna," Evan Meredith retorted hastily, the hot blood flushing up at once into his dusky cheek. " But as you seem to be so very much taken up with your new ad- mirer, Edie, I'm sure I'm very sorry I happened at such 66 ' THE TDIRD TIME. an unpropitious moment to break in upon yonr conyer- sation." " So am I," Edie answered, quietly and with empbasis. She hardly meant it, though she was vexed with Evan ; hut Evan took her immediately at her word. Without another syllable he raised his hat, turned upon his heel, and left her standing there alone, at some little distance from her mother, by the edge of the oval grass-plot. It was an awkward position for a girl to be left in — for everybody would have seen that Evan had retired in high dudgeon — had not fHarry Lewin promptly perceived it, and with quiet tact managed to return quite casually to lier side, and walk back with her to her mother's protec- tion, so as to hide at once her confusion and her blushes. As for Evan, he wandered off moodily by himself among the lilacs and arbutus bushes of the lower shrubbery. He had been pacing up and down there alone for half an hour or more, nursing his wrath and jealousy in his angry heart, when he saw between the lilac branches on the upper walk the flash of Edie's pretty white dress, followed behind at a discreet distance by the rustle of Mrs. Meredith's black satin. Edie was walking in front with Harry Lewin, and Mrs. Meredith, attempting vainly to affect a becoming interest in the rector's conversation, was doing the proprieties at twenty paces. As they passed, Evan Meredith heard Harry Lewin's voice murmuring something in a soft, gentle, persuasive How, not a word of which he could catch individually, though the general accent and intonation showed him at once that Harry was pleading earnestly with his cousin ]^]die. Evan could have written her verses — pretty enough verses, too — by the foolscap ream ; but though he had the Welsh gift of rhyme, he hadn't the Irish gift of fluency and eloquence ; and he knew in his own heart that he could never have poured forth to any woman such a steady, long, impassioned flood of earnest solicitation as s "■ THE THIRD TIME. W i ■ Harry Lewin was that moment evidently pouring forth to his cousin Edie. He held his breath in silent expectation, and waited ten whole endless seconds — a long eternity — to catch the tone of Edie's answer. Instead of the mere tone, he caught distinctly the very words of that low soft musical reply. Edie murmured after a slight pause : " No, no, Mr. Lewin, I must not — I cannot. I do not love you." Evan Meredith waited for no more. He knew partly from that short but ominous pause, and still more from the half-hearted, hesitating way in which the nominal refusal was faintly spoken, that his cousin Edie would sooner or later accept his rival. He walked away, fiercely indig- nant, and going home, sat down to his desk, and wrote at white-heat an angry letter, beginning simply " Edith Meredith,' in which he released her formally and uncon- ditionally from the engagement which both of them declared had never existed. Whether his letter expedited Harry Lewin's wooing or not, it is at least certain that in the end Evan Meredith's judgment was approved by the result ; and before the next Christmas came round [again, Edie was married to Harry Lewin, and duly installed as mistress of Peveril Court. IL The first three months of Edie Lewin's married life passed away happily and pleasantly. Harry was always kindness itself to her ; and as she saw more of him, she found in him what she had not anticipated, an unsuspected depth and earnestness of purpose. She had thought him at first a brilliant, dashing, clever Irishman ; she discovered upon nearer view that he had something more within him than mere showy external qualities. He was deeply in love with her: he respected and admired her: and in the 58 THE TniRD TIME. midst of all his manly chivalry of demeanonr towards his wife there was a certain indefinable air of self-restraint and constant watchfulness over his own actions which Edie noticed with some little wifely pride and pleasure. She had not married a mere handsome rich young fellow ; she had married a man of character and determination. About three months after their marriage, Harry Lewin was called away for the first time to leave his bride. An unexpected letter from his lawyer in London — immediate business — those bothering Australiaii shares and com- panics ! Would Edie forgive him ? He would run up for the day only, starting early and getting back late the same night. It's a long run from Stoke to London, but you can just manage it if you fit your trains with dex- terous ingenuity. So Harry went, and Edie was left alone, for the first time in her life, in the big rooms of Peveril Court for a whole day. That very afternoon Evan Meredith and his father happened to call. It was Evan's first visit to the bride, for he couldn't somehow make up his mind to see her earlier. He was subdued, silent, constrained, regretful, but he said nothing in allusion to the past — nothing but praise of the Peveril Court grounds, the beauty of the house, the charm of the surroundings, the magnificence of the old Romneys and Sir Joshuas. " You have a lovely place, Edie," he said, hesitating a second before he spoke the old familiar name, but bring- ing it out quite naturally at last. " And your husband ? I hope I may have the— the pleasure of seeing him again." Edie coloured. " He has gone up to town to-day," she answered simply. "By himself?" "By himself, Evan." Evan Meredith coughed uneasily, and looked at her with a silent look which said more plainly than words could have said it, " Already ! " THE THIRD TIME.' " 59 "He will be back this evening," Edie went on apolo- geticallj, answering aloud his unspoken thought. " I — I'm sorry he isn't here to see you, Evan." " I'm sorry too, very sorry," Evan answered with a half- stifled sigh. He didn't mean to let her see the ideas that were passing through his mind ; but his quick, irrepres- sible Celtic nature allowed the internal emotions to peep out at once through the thin cloak of that conventionally polite expression of regret. Edie knew he meant he was very son'y that Harry should have gone away so soon and left her. That evening, about ten o'clock, as Edie, sitting alone in the blue drawing-room, was beginning to wonder when Harry's dogcart would be heard rolling briskly up the front avenue, there came a sudden double rap at the front door, and the servant brought in a sealed telegram. Edie tore it open with some misgiving. It was not from Harry. She read it hastily : " From Proprietor, Norton's Hotel, Je^myn Street, London, to Mrs. Lewin, Peveril Court, Stoke Peveril, Herefordshire. Mr. Lewin unfortunately detained in town by urgent business. He will not be able to return before to-morrow." Edie laid down the telegram with a sinking heart. In itself there was nothing so very strange in Hait'y's being detained by business ; men are always being detained by business ; she knew it was a way they had, a masculine peculiarity. But why had not Harry telegraphed him- self ? Why had he left the proprietor of Norton's Hotel to telegraph for him ? Why was he at Norton's Hotel at all ? And if he really was there, why could he not have written the telegram himself? It was very mysterious, perplexing, and inexplicable. Tears came into Edie's eyes, and she sat long looking at the flimsy pink Govern- ment paper, as if the mere inspection of the hateful message would help her to make out the meaning of the enclosed mystery. ,, > 60 TEE THIRD TIME. Soon the question began to occur to her, what should she do for the night's arrangements ? Peveril Court was so big and lonely ; she hated the idea of stopping there alone. Should she have out the carriage and drive round to spend the night as of old at her mother's ? But no ; it was late, and the servants would think it so very odd of her. People would talk about it ; they would say Harry had stopped away from her unexpectedly, and that she had gone back in a pique to her own home. Young wives, she knew, are always doing those foolish things, and always regretting them afterwards when they find the whole county magnifying the molehill into a veritable mountain. Much as she dreaded it, she must spend the night alone in that big bedroom — the haunted bedroom where the last of the Peverils died. Poor little Edie ! with her simple, small, village ways, she hated that great rambling house, and all its halls and staircases and corri- dors ! But there was no help for it. She went tearf ally up to her own room, and flung herself without undressing on the great bed with the heavy crimson tapestry hangings. There she lay all night, tossing and turning, crying and wondering, dozing off at times and starting up again fit- fully, but never putting out the candles on the dressing- table, which had burned away deep in the sockets by the time morning began to peep through the grey Venetians of the east window. III. Next morning Evan Meredith heard accidentally that Harry Lewin had stopped for the night in London, and had telegraphed unexpectedly to Edie that he had been detained in town on business. Evan shook his head with an ominous look. "Po'oi* child," he said to himself pityingly; "she would marry a man who had been brought up in Paris and Vienna ! " THE THIRD TIME. Gl And when Harry came back that evening by the late train, Evan Meredith was loitering casually by the big iron gates of Peveril Court to see whether Edie's husband was really returning. There was a very grave and serious look on Harry's face that surprised and somewhat disconcerted Evan. He somehow felt that Harry's expression was not that of a careless, dissipated fellow, and he said to himself, this time a little less confidently : " Perhaps after all I may have been misjudging him." Edie was standing to welcome her husband on the big stone steps of the old manor house. He stepped from the dogcart, not lightly with a spring as was his usual wont, but slowly and almost remorsefully, like a man who has some evil tidings to break to those he loves dearest. But he kissed Edie as tenderly as ever — even more tenderly, she somehow imagined ; and he looked at her with such a genuine look of love that Edie thought it was well worth while for him to go away for the sake of such a delightful meeting. "Well, darling," she asked, as she went with him into the great dining-room, " why didn't you come back to the little wifie, as you promised yesterday ? " Harry looked her full in the face, not evasively or furtively, but with a frank, open glance, and answered in a very quiet voice, " I was detained on business, Edie." " What business ? " Edie asked, a little piqued at the indefiniteness of the answer. " Business that absolutely prevented me from returning," Harry replied, with a short air of perfect determination. Edie tried in vain to get any further detail out of him. To all her questions Harry only answered with the one set and unaltered formula, " I was detained on important business." But when she had asked him for the fiftieth time in the drawing-room that evening, he said at last, not at all 62 THE THIRD TIME. angrily, but very seriously, " It was business, Edie, closely connected with your own happiness. If I had returned last night, you would have been sorry for it, sooner or later. I stayed away for your own sake, darling. Please ask me no more about it." Edie couldn't imagine what he meant ; but he spoke so seriously, and smoothed her hand with such a tender, loving gesture, that she kissed him fervently, and brushed away the tears from her swimming eyes without letting him see them. As for Harry, he sat long looking at the embers in the smouldering fire, and holding his pretty little wife's hand tight in his without uttering a single syllable. At last, just as they were rising to go upstairs, he laid his hand upon the mantelpiece as if to steady liimself, and said very earnestly, " Edie, with God's help, I hope it shall never occur again." " What, Harry darling ? What do you mean ? What will never occur again ? " He paused a moment. " That I should be compelled to stop a night away from you unexpectedly," he answered then very slowly. And when he had said it he took up the candle from the little side table and walked away, with two tears stand- ing in his eyes, to his own dressing-room. From that day forth Edie Lewin noticed two things. First, that her husband seemed to love her even more tenderly and deeply than ever. And second, that his strange gravity and self-restraint seemed to increase daily upon him. And Evan Meredith, watching closely his cousin and her husband, thought to himself with a glow of satis- faction — for he was too generous and too true in his heart to wish ill to his rival — " After all, he loves her truly ; he is really in love with her. Edie will be rich now, and will have a good husband. What could I ever have given her compared to what Harry Lewin can give her ? It is better so. I must not regret it." THE THIRD TIME. 63 IV. For five or six months more, life passed as usual at Peveril Court, or at Harry Lewin's new town house in Curzon Street, Mayfair. The season came and went pleasantly enough, with its round of dances, theatres, and dinners ; and in the autamn Edie Lewin found herself once more back for the shooting in dear old Herefordshire. Harry was always by her side, the most attentive and inseparable of husbands ; he seemed somehow to cling to her passionately, as if he could not bear to be out of her sight for a single moment. Edie noticed it, and felt grateful for his love. Evan Meredith noticed it too, and reproached himself bitterly more than once that he should ever so unworthily have distrusted the man who had been brought up in Paris and Vienna. One day, however, Harry had ridden from Stoke to Hereford, for the exercise alone, and Edie expected him back to dinner. But at half-past seven, just as the gong in the hall was burrr-ing loudly, a telegram arrived once more for Mrs. Lewin, which Edie tore open with trembling fingers. It was almost exactly the same mystifying mes- sage over again, only this time it was sent by Harry him- self, not by an unknown hotel-keeping deputy. " I have been suddenly detained here by unexpected business. Do not expect me home before to-morrow. Shall return as early as possible. God bless you ! " Those last words, so singular in a telegram, roused and accentuated all Edie's womanly terrors. " God bless you ! " • — what on earth could Harry mean by that solemn adjura- tion under such strange and mysterious circumstances ? There was something very serious the matter, Edie felt sure ; but what it could be she could not even picture to herself. Her instinctive fears did not take that vulgarly 0i THE TmitD TIME, mistnistful form that they might have taken with many a woman of lower and more suspicious nature ; she knew and trusted Harry far too well for that ; she was too abso- lutely certain of his whole unshaken love and tenderness ; but the very vagueness and indefiniteness of the fears she felt made them all the harder and more terrible to bear. When you don't know what it is you dread, your fancy can dress up its terrors afresh every moment in some still more painful and distressing disguise. If Harry had let her know where he was stopping, she would have ordered the carriage then and there, and driven over to Hereford, not to spy him out, but to be with him in his trouble or difficulty. That, however, was clearly impossible, for Harry had merely sent his telegram as from " H. Lewin, Hereford ; " and to go about from hotel to hotel through the county town, inquiring whether her husband was staying there, would of course have been open to the most ridiculous misinterpretation. Everybody would have said she was indeed keeping a tight hand upon him ! So with many bitter tears brushed hastily away, Edie went down in solemn and solitary state to dinner, hating herself for crying so foolishly, and burning hot with the unpleasant consciousness that the butler and footman were closely observing her face and demeanour. If she could have dined quite alone in her own boudoir very furtively it wouldn't have been quite so dreadful ; but to keep up appearances with a sinking heart before those two eminently respectable and officious men-servants — it was really enough to choke one. That night again Edie Lewin never slept for more than a few troubled minutes together; and whenever she awoke, it was with a start and a scream, and a vague consciousness of some impending evil. When Harry came again next day he didn't laugh it off carelessly and lightly; he didn't soothe her fears and uneasiness with ready kisses and prompt excuses; he THE THIRD TIME. i5 didn't get angry with her and tell her not to ask him too many questions about his own business : he met her as gravely and earnestly as before, with the same tender, loving, half self-reproachful tone, and yet with the same evident desire and intention to love and cherish her more fondly than ever. Edie was relieved, but she was by no means satisfied. She knew Harry loved her tenderly, devotedly; but she knew also there was some sort of shadow or secret looming ominously between them. Another wife, supposed dead ? He would have trusted her and told her. Another love ? Oh, no : she could trust him ; it was impossible. And so the weeks wore away, and Edie wondered all to no purpose. At last, by dint of constant wondering, she almost wore out the faculty of wonder, and half ceased to think about it any longer. But she noticed that from day to day the old bright, brilliant Irish character was slowly fading out of Harry's nature, and that in its place there was growing up a settled, noble, not unbecoming earnestness. He seemed perhaps a trifle less striking and attractive than formerly, but a great deal worthier of any true woman's enduring love and admiration. Evan Meredith noticed the change as well. He and Harry had grown now into real friends. Harry saw and recognized the genuine depth of Evan's nature. Evan had made amends and apologies to Harry for a single passing rudeness or two. Both liked the other better for the momentary rivalry and for the way he had soon for- gotten it. " He's a good fellow," Evan said to his father often, " and Edie, with her quiet, simple English nature, has made quite another man of him — given him the ballast and the even steadiness he once wanted." F THE THIRD TIME. V. Spring came, and then summer ; and with summer, the annual visitation of garden parties. The Trenches at Malbury Manor were going to give a garden party, and Harry and Edie drove across to it. Edie took her hus- band over in the pony-carriage with the two little greys she loved so well to drive herself : the very prettiest and best-matched ponies, everybody said, in the whole county of Hereford. As they walked about on the lawn together, they met Edie's father and mother. Somehow, Edie happened to fasten herself accidentally upon her mother, while Harry strolled away alone, and stood talking with something of his old brilliancy to one group or another of loungers independently. For awhile, Edie missed him ; he had gone off to look at the conservatories or something. Then, she saw him chatting with Canon Wilmington and his daughters over by one of the refreshment tables, and handing them champagne cup and ices, while he talked with unusual volubility and laughter. Presently he came up to her again, and to her great surprise said, with a ya^vn, "Edie, this is getting dreadfully slow. I can't stand it any longer. I think I shall just slip away quietly and walk home ; you can come after me whenever you like with the ponies ! Good-bye till dinner. God bless you, darling ! " It wasn't a usual form of address with him, and Edie vaguely noted it in passing, but thought nothing more about the matter after the first moment. "Good-bye, Harry," she said laughingly. "Perhaps Evan will see me home. Good-bye." Harry smiled rather sadly. " Evan has ridden over on one of my cobs," he answered quietly, " and so I suppose he'll have to ride back again." THE THIRD TIME. 67 "He's tbe best fellow that ever lived," Evan said, as Harry turned away with a friendly nod. " Upon my word, I'm quite ashamed of the use I make of your husband's stables, Edie." "Nonsense, Evan; we're always both delighted when you will use anything of ours as if it were your own." At six o'clock the ponies were stopping the way, and Edie prepared to drive home alone. She took the bye- road at the back of the grounds in preference to the turn- pike, because it wouldn't be so crowded or so dusty for her to drive upon. They had gone about a mile from the house, and had passed the Beehive, where a group of half -tipsy fellows was loitering upon the road outside the tavern, when a few hundred yards further Edie suddenly checked the greys for no immediately apparent reason. " Got a stone in his hoof, ma'am ? " the groom asked, looking down curiously at the ofF horse, and preparing to alight for the expected emergency. " No," Edie answered with a sudden shake of her head. " Look there, William ! On the road in front of us ! What a disgusting brute. I nearly ran over him." The groom looked in the direction where Edie pointed with her whip, and saw lying on the ground, straight before the horses' heads, a drunken man, asleep and help- less, with a small pocket flask clasped in his hand, quite empty. " Pick him up ! " Edie said in a tone of disgust. " Carry him over and lay him on the side of the road there, will you, William ? " The man went off to do as he was directed. At that moment, Evan Meredith, coming up from behind on Harry's cob, called out lightly, " Can I help you, Edie ? What's the matter ? Ho ! One of those beastly fellows from the Beehive yonder. Hold a minute, William, you've got a regular job there — more than an armful. Drunken ^ THE THIRD TIME. men aro heavy to carry. Wait a bit, and I'll come and help you." Ho rode forward to the groom's side just as the groom raised in his arms the drunkard's head and exposed to view his down-turned face. Then, with a sudden cry of horror and pity, Evan Meredith, not faltering for a moment, drove his heel into his horse's flank, and rode off, speechless with conflicting emotions, leaving Edie there alone, face to face with her fallen husband. It was Harry Lewin. Apoplexy ? Epilepsy ? An accident ? A sunstroke ? No, no. Edie could comfort herself with none of those instantaneous flashes of conjecture, for his face and his breath would alone have told the whole story, even if the empty flask in his drunken hand had not at once con- firmed the truth of her first apprehension. She sat down beside him on the green roadside, buried her poor face in her trembling hands, and cried silently, silently, silently, for twenty minutes. The groom, standing motionless officially beside her, let her tears have free vent, and knew not what to say or do under such extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances. One thing only Edie thought once or twice in the midst of that awful blinding discovery. Thank God that Evan Meredith had not stopped there to see her misery and degradation. An Englishman might have remained like a fool, with the clumsy notion of assisting her in her ti-ouble, and getting him safely home to Peveril Court for her. Evan, with his quick Welsh perception, had seen in a second that the only possible thing for her own equals to do on such an occasion was to leave her alone with her unspeakable wretchedness. After a while, she came-to a little, by dint of crying and pure exhaustion, and began to think that something must at least be done to hide this terrible disgrace from the prjing eyes of all Herefordshii'e, THE TniJiD TIME. C9 She rose mechanically, without a word, and motioninpf the gi'oom to take the feet, she lifted Harry's head — her own husband's head — that drunken wretch's head — great heavens, which was it ? and helped to lay him silently on the floor of the pony carriage. He was helpless and motionless as a baby. Her eyes were dry now, and she hardly even shuddered. She got into the carriage again, covered over the breathing mass of insensible humanity at the bottom with her light woollen wi*apper, and drove on in perfect silence till she reached Peveril Court. As she drew up in front of the door, the evening was beginning to close in rapidly. The groom, still silent, jumped from the carriage, and ran up the steps with his usual drilled accuracy to ring the bell. Edie beckoned to him im- periously with her hand to stop and come back to her. He paused, and turned down the steps again to hear what she wished. Edie's lips were dry ; she couldn't utter a word : but she pointed mutely to her husband's prostrate form, and the groom understood at once that she wished him to lift Harry out of the carriage. Hastily and fur- tively they carried him in at the library door — the first room inside the house — and there they laid him out upon the sofa, Edie putting one white finger passionately on her lip to enjoin silence. As soon as that was done, she sat down to the table with marvellous resolution, and wrote out a cheque for twenty pounds from her own cheque- book. Then at last she found speech with difficulty. " William," she said, her dry husky throat almost choking with the effort, " take that, instead of notice. Go away at once — I'll drive you to the station — go to London, and never say a single word of this to any one." William touched his hat in silence, and walked back slowly to the carriage. Edie, now flushed and. feverish, but dry of lips and erect of mien, turned the key haughtily in the door, and stalked out to the greys once more. Silently still she drove to the station, and saw William take the 70 THE THIED TIME. London train. "You shall have a character," she said, very quietly ; " write to me for it. But never say a word of this for your life to anybody." William touched his hat once more, and went away, meaning conscientiously in his own soul to keep this strange and unexpected compact. Then Edie drove herself back to Peveril Court, feeling that only Evan Meredith knew besides ; and she could surely count at least on Evan's honour. But to-morrow ! to-morrow ! what could she ever do to-morrow ?" Hot and tearless still, she rang the drawing-room bell. " Mr. Lewin will not be home to-night," she said, with no further word of explanation. " I shall not dine. Tell Watkins to bring me a cup of tea in my own bedroom." The maid brought it, and Edie drank it. It moistened her lips and broke the fever. Then she flung herself passionately upcm the bed, and cried, and cried, and cried, wildly, till late in the evening. Eleven o'clock came. Twelve o'clock. One. She heard them tolling out from the old clock-tower, clanging loudly from the church steeple, clinking and tinkling from all the timepieces in all the rooms of Peveril Court. But still she lay there, and weptj and sobbed, and thought of nothing. She didn't even figure it or picture it to her- self ; her grief and shame and utter abasement were too profound for mind to fathom. She only felt in a dim, vague, half-unconscious fashion that Harry — the Harry she had laved and worshipped — was gone from her for ever and ever. In his place, there had come that irrational, speechless, helpless Thing that lay below, breathing heavily in its drunken sleep, down on the library sofa. THE THIRD TIME. 71 VI. By half-past one the lights had long been out in all the rooms, and perfect silence reigned throughout the house- hold. Impelled by a wild desire to see him once more, even though she loathed him, Edie took a bedroom candle in her hand, and stole slowly down the big staircase. Loathed him ? Loved him — ay, loved him even so. Loved him, and the more she loved him, the more utterly loathed him. If it had been any lesser or lower man, she might have forgiven him. But him — Harry — it was too unspeakable. Creeping along the passage to the library door, she paused and listened. Inside, there was a noise of foot- steps, pacing up and down the room hurriedly. He had come to himself, then ! He had slept off his drunken helplessness ! She paused and listened again to hear further. Harry was stalking to c«nd fro across the floor with fiery eagerness, sobbing bitterly to himself, and pausing every now and then with a sort of sudden spasmodic hesitation. From time to time she heard him mutter aloud, " She must have seen me ! She must have seen me ! They will tell her, they will tell her ! Oh, God ! they will tell her ! " Should she unlock the door, and fling herself wildly into his arms ? Her instinct told her to do it, but she faltered and hesitated. A drunkard ! a drunkard ! Oh no ! she could not. The evil genius conquered the good, and she checked the impulse that alone could have saved her. She crept up again, with heart standing still and failing within her, and flung herself once more upon her own bed. Two o'clock. Three. Half -past three. A quarter to four. 72 THE THIRD TIME. How long the night seems when you are watching and weeping ! Suddenly, at the quarter-hour just gone, a sharp ring at a bell disturbed her lethargy — a ring two or three times repeated, which waked the butler from his sound slumber. Edie walked out cautiously to the top of the stairs and listened. The butler stood at the library door and knocked in vain. Edie heard a letter pushed under the door, and in a muffled voice heard Harry saying, " Give that letter to your mistress, Hardy — to-morrow morning." A vague foreboding of evil overcame her. She stole down the stairs in the blank dark and took the letter without a word from the half -dressed and wondering butler. Then she glided back to her own room, sat down eagerly by the dressing-table, and began to read it. " Edie, " This is the third time, and I determined with myself that the third time should be the last one. Once in London ; once at Hereford ; once now. I can stand it no longer. My father died a drunkard. My mother died a drunkard. I cannot resist the temptation. It is better I should not stop here. I have tried hard, but I am beaten in the struggle. I loved you dearly : I love you still far too much to burden your life by my miserable presence. I have left you everything. Evan will make you happier than I could. Forgive me. « Harry." She dropped the letter with a scream, and almost would have fainted. But even before the faintness could wholly overcome her, another sound rang out sharper and clearer far from the room below her. It brought her back to herself im- mediately. It was the report of a pistol. THE THIRD TIME. 78 Edie and the butler hurried back in breathless suspense to the library door. It was locked still. Edie took the key from her pocket and turned it quickly. When they entered, the candles on the mantelpiece were burning brightly, and Harry Lewin's body, shot through the heart, lay in a pool of gurgling blood right across the spattered hearthrug. THE GOLD WULFRia PART I. I. There are only two gold coins of Wulfric of Mercia in existence anywhere. One of them is in the British Museum, and the other one is in my possession. The most terrible incident in the whole course of my career is intimately connected with my first discovery of that gold Wulfric. It is not too much to say that my entire life has been deeply coloured by it, and I shall make no apology therefore for narrating the story in some little detail. I was stopping down at Lichfield for my summer holiday in July, 1879, when I happened one day accident- ally to meet an old ploughman who told me he had get a lot of coins at home that he had ploughed up on wha^j he called the " field of battle," a place I had already recogrized as the site of the Mercian kings' wooden palace. I went home with him at once in h'gh glee, for I have been a collector of old English gold and silver coinage for several years, and I was in hopes that my friendly plough- man's find might contain something good in the way of Anglo-Saxon pennies or shillings, considering the very promising place in which he had unearthed it. As it turned out, I was not mistaken. The little hoard, concealed within a rude piece of Anglo-Saxon pottery THE GOLD WULFBIC. 75 (now No. 127 in case LIX. at the South Kensington Museum), comprised a large number of common Frankish Merovingian coins (I beg Mr. Freeman's pardon for not calling them Merwings), together with two or three Kentish pennies of some rarity from the mints of Ethelbert at Canterbury and Dover. Amongst these minor treasures, however, my eye at once fell upon a single gold piece, obviously imitated from the imperial Roman aureus of the pretender Carausius, v^rhich I saw immediately must be an almost unique bit of money of the very greatest numis- matic interest. I took it up and examined it carefully. A minute's inspection fully satisfied me that it was indeed a genuine mintage of Wulfrio of Mercia, the like of which I had never before to my knowledge set eyes upon. I immediately offered the old man five pounds down for the whole collection. He closed with the offer forthwith in the most contented fashion, and I bought them and paid for them all upon the spot without further parley. When I go': back to my lodgings that evening I could do nothing bi t look at my gold Wulfric. I was charmed and delighted >"t the actual possession of so great a trea- sure, and was L'lrning to take it up at once to the British Museum to see whether even in the national collection they had got another like it. So being by nature of an enthusiastic and impulsive disposition, I determined to go up to town the very next day, and try to track down the history of my Wulfric. " It'll be a good opportunity," I said to myself, " to kill two birds with one stone. Emily's people haven't gone out of town yet. I can call there in the morning, arrange to go to the theatre with them at night, and then drive at once to the Museum and see how much my find is worth." Next morning I was off to town by an early ti-ain, and before one o'clock I had got to Emily's. " Why. Harold," she cried, running down to meet me and kiss me in the passage (for sLe had seen me get out of my 76 THE GOLD WULFRIG. hansom from the drawing-room window), " how on earth is it that you're up in town to-day ? I thought you were down at Lichfield still with your Oxford reading party." " So I am," I answered, " officially at Lichfield ; but I've come up to-day partly to see you, and partly on a piece of business about a new coin I've just got hold of." " A coin ! " Emily answered, pretending to pout. " Me and a coin ! That's how you link us together mentally, is it ? I declare, Harold, I shall be getting jealous of those coins of yours some day, I'm certain. You can't even come up to see me for a day, it seems, unless you've got some matter of a coin as well to bring you to London. Moral : never get engaged to a man with a fancy for collecting coins and medals." " Oh, but this is really such a beauty, Emily," I cried enthusiastically. " Just look at it, now. Isn't it lovely ? Do you notice the inscription — ' Wulfric Rex ! ' I've never yet seen one anywhere else at all like it." Emily took it in her hands carelessly. " I don't see any points about that coin in particular," she answered in her bantering fashion, " more than, about any other old coin. that you'd pick up anywhere." That was all we said then about the matter. Subse- quent events engrained the very words of that short con- versation into the inmost substance of my brain with indelible fidelity. I shall never forget them to my dying moment. 1 stopped about an hour altogether at Emily's, had lunch, and arranged that she and her mother should ac- company me that evening to the Lyceum. Then I drove off to the British Museum, and asked for leave to examine the Anglo-Saxon coins of the Mercian period. The superintendent, who knew me well enougl by sight and repute as a responsible amateur collector, readily gave me permission to look at a drawerful of the earliest Mer- cian gold and silver coinage. I had brought one or two THE GOLD WULFRIC. 71 numismatic books with me, and I sat down to have a good look at those delightful cases. After thoroughly examining the entire series and tho documentary evidence, I came to the conclusion that there was just one other gold Wulfric in existence besides the one I kept in my pocket, and that was the beautiful and well-preserved example in the case before me. It was described in the last edition of Sir Theophilus Wraxton's "Northumbrian and Mercian Numismatist" aS an abso- lutely unique gold coin of Wulfric of Mercia, in imitation of the well-known aureus of the false emperor Carausius. • I turned to the catalogue to see the price at which it had been purchnsed by the nation. To my intense surprise I saw it entered at a hundred and fifty pounds. I was perfectly delighted at my magnificent acquisition. On comparing the two examples, however, I observed that, though both struck from the same die and apparently at the same mint (to judge by the letter), they differed slightly from one another in two minute accidental par- ticulars. My coin, being of course merely stamped with a hammer and then out to shape, after the fashion of the time, was rather more closely clipped round the edge than the Museum specimen ; and it had also a slight dent on the obverse side, just below the W of Wulfric. In all other respects the two examples were of necessity absolutely identical. I stood for a long time gazing at the case and examining the two duplicates with the deepest interest, while the Museum keeper (a man of the name of Mactavish, whom I had often seen before on previous visits) walked about within sight, as is the rule on all such occasions, and kept a sharp look-out that I did not attempt to meddle with any of the remaining coins or cases. Unfortunately, as it turned out, I had not mentioned to the superintendent my own possession of a duplicate Wulfric; nor had I called Mactavish's attention to the 78 THE GOLD WULFRIC. fact that I had pulled a coin of my own for purposes of comparison out of my waistcoat pocket. To say the truth, I was inclined to be a little secretive as yet about my gold Wulfric, because until I had found out all that was known about it I did not want anybody else to be told of my discovery. At last I had fully satisfied all my curiosity, and was just about to return the Museum Wulfric to its little round compartment in the neat case (having already re- placed my own duplicate in my waistcoat pocket), when all at once, I can't say how, I gave a sudden start, and dropped the coin with a jerk unexpectedly upon the floor of the museum. It rolled away out of sight in a second, and I stood appalled in an agony of distress and terror in the midst of the gallery. Next moment I had hastily called Mactavish to my side, and got him to lock up the open drawer while we two went down on hands and knees and hunted through, the length and breadth of the gallery for the lost Wulfric. It was absolutely hopeless. Plain sailing as the thing seemed, we could see no trace of the missing coin from one end of the room to the other. At last I leaned in a cold perspiration against the edge of one of the glass cabinets, and gave it up in despair with a sinking heart. " It's no use, Mactavish," I mur- mured desperately; "the thing's lost, and we shall never find it." Mactavish looked me quietly in the face. "In that case, sir,*' he answered firmly, " by the rules of the Museum I must call the superintendent." He put his hand, with no undue violence, but in a strictly official manner, upon my right shoulder. Then he blew a whistle. " I'm sorry to be rude to you, t^ir," he went on, apologetically, "but by the rules of the Museum I can't take my hand off you till the superintendent gives me leave to release you." THE GOLD WULFETC. 79 Another keeper answered the whistle. " Send the super- intendent," Mactavish said quietly. " A coin missing." In a minute the superintendent was upon the spot. When Mactavish told him I had dropped the gold Wulfric of Mercia he shook his head very ominously. " This is a bad business, Mr. Tait," he said gloomily. " A unique coin, as you know, and one of the most valuable in the whole of our large Anglo-Saxon collection." " Is there a mouse-hole anywhere," I cried in agony ; " any place where it might have rolled down and got mislaid or concealed for the moment ? " The superintendent went down instantly on his own hands and knees, pulled up every piece of the cocoa-nut matting with minute deliberation, searched the whole place thoroughly from end to end, but found nothing. He spent nearly an hour on that thorough search ; meanwhile Mac- tavish never for a moment relaxed his hold upon me. At last the superintendent desisted from the search as quite hopeless, and approached me very politely. " I'm extremely sorry, Mr, Tait," he said in the most courteous possible manner, " but by the rules of the Museum I am absolutely compelled either to search you for the coin or to give you into custody. It may, you know, have got caught somewhere about your person. No doubt you would prefer, of the two, that I should look in all your pockets and the folds of your clothing." The position was terrible. I could stand it no longer. " Mr. Harbourne," I said, breaking out once more from head to foot into a cold sweat, " I must tell you the truth. I have brought a duplicate gold Wulfric here to-day to compare with the Museum specimen, and I have got' it this very moment in my waistcoat pocket." The superintendent gazed back at me with a mingled look of incredulity and pity. "My dear sir," he answered very gently, "this is alto- gether a most unfortjnate business, but I'm afraid I 80 THE GOLD WULFBIC, must ask you to let mo look at tho duplicate you speak of." I took it, trembling, out of my waistcoat pocket and handed it across to him Avithout a word. The superin- tendent gazed at it for a moment in silence ; then, in a tone of the profoundest commiseration, he said slowly, " Mr. Tait, I grieve to be obliged to contradict you. This is our own specimen of the gold Wulfric ! " The whole Museum whirled round me violently, and before I knew anything more I fainted. II. When I came to I found myself seated in the superin- tendent's room, with a policeman standing quietly in the background. As soon as I had fully recovered consciousness, the superintendent motioned the policeman out of the room for a while, and then gently forced me to swallow a brandy and soda. " Mr. Tait," he said compassionately, after an awkward pause, " you are a very young man indeed, and, I believe, hitherto of blameless character. Now, I should be very sorry to have to proceed to extremities against you. I know to what lengths, in a moment of weakness, the desire to possess a rare coin will often lead a connoisseur, under stress of exceptional temptation. I have not the slightest doubt in my own mind that you did really acci- dentally drop this coin; that you went down on your knees honestly intending to find it ; that the accident suggested to you the ease with which you might pick it up and proceed to pocket it ; that you yielded temporarily to that unfortunate impulse ; and that by the time I arrived upon the scene you were already overcome with remorse and horror. I saw as much immediately in your very countenance. Nevertheless, I determined to give TEE GOLD WULFRIC. 81 you tbe benefit of the doubt, and I searched over the whole place in the most thorough and conscientious manner. . . . As you know, I found nothing. . . . Mr. Tait, I cannot bear to have to deal harshly with you. I recognize the temptation and the agony of repentance that instantly followed it. Sir, I give you one chance. If you will retract the obvious.'y false story that you just now told me, and confess that the coin I found in your pocket was in fact, as I know it to be, the Museum specimen, I will forthwith dismiss the constable, and will never say another word to any one about the whole matter. I don't want to ruin you, but I can't, of course, be put off with a false- hood. Think the matter carefully over with yourself. Do you or do you not still adhere to that very improbable and incredible story ? " Horrified and terror-stricken as I was, I couldn't avoid feeling grateful to the superintendent for the evident kindness with which he was treating me. The tears rose at once into my eyes. "Mr. Harbourne," I cried passionately, "you are very good, very generous. But you quite mistake the whole position. The story I told you was true, every word of it. I bought that gold Wulfric from a ploughman at Lich- field, and it is not absolutely identical with the Museum specimen which I dropped upon the floor. It is closer clipped round the edges, and it has a distinct dent upon the obverse side, just below the W of Wulfric." The superintendent paused a second, and scanned my face very closely. " Have you a knife or a file in your pocket ? " he asked in a much sterner and more oflBcial tone. " No," I replied, " neither — neither." " You are sure ? " " Certain." " Shall I search you myself, or shall I give you in custody?" G 82 THE GOLD WULFBIC. " Search me yourself," I answered confidently. He put his hand quietly into my left-hand breast pocket, and to my utter horror and dismay drew forth, what I had up to that moment utterly forgotten, a pair of folding pocket nail-scissors, in a leather case, of course with a little file on either side. My heart stood still within me. "That is quite sufficient, Mr. Tait," the superintendent went on, severely. " Had you alleged that the Museum coin was smaller than your own imaginary one you might have been able to put in the facts as good evidence. But J see the exact contrary is the case. You have stooped to a disgraceful and unworthy subterfuge. This base decep- tion aggravates your guilt. You have deliberately de- faced a valuable specimen in order if possible to destroy its identity." : ' . . k a, t. v What could I say in return ? I stammered and hesi- tated. ' ' lyuy-iK*) " Mr. Harbourne," I cried piteously, " the circumstances seem to look terribly against me. But, nevertheless, you are quite mistaken. The missing Wulfric will come to light sooner or later and prove me innocent." He walked up and down the room once or twice irre- solutely, and then he turned round to me with a very fixed and determined aspect which fairly terrified me. " Mr. Tait," he said, " I am straining every point pos- sible to save you, but you make it very difficult for me by your continued falsehood. I am doing quite wrong in being so lenient to you ; I am proposing, in short, to com- pound a felony. But I cannot bear, without netting you have just one more chance, to give you in charge for u common robbery. I will let you have ten minutes to con- sider the matter ; and I beseech you, I beg of you, I im- plore you to retract this absurd and despicable lie before it is too late for ever. Just consider that if you refuse I shall have to hand you over to the constable out there. THE GOLD WULFBIC. 8t » and that the whole truth must come out in court, and must be blazoned forth to the entire world in every news- paper. The policeman is standing here by the door. I will leave you alone with your own thoughts for ten minutes." As he spoke he walked out gravely, and shut the door solemnly behind him. The clock on the chimney-piece pointed with its hands to twenty minutes past three. It was an awful dilemma. I hardly knew how to act under it. On the one hand, if I admitted for the moment that I had tried to steal the coin, I could avoid all imme- diate unpleasant circumstances ; and as it would be sure Ut turn up again in cleaning the Museum, I should be able at last to prove my innocence to Mr. Harboume's com- plete satisfaction. But, on the other hand, the lie — for it was a lie — stuck in my throat ; I could not humble myself to say I had committed a mean and dirty action which I loathed with all the force and energy of my nature. No, no I come what would of it, I must stick by the truth, and trast to that to clear up everything. But if the superintendent really insisted on giving me in charge, how very awkward to have to telegraph about it to Emily ! Fancy saying to the girl you are in love with, " I can't go with you to the theatre this evening, because I have been taken off to gaol on a charge of steal- ing a valuable coin from the British Museum." It was too terrible ! Yet, after all, I thought to myself, if the worst comes to the worst, Emily will have faith enough in me to know it is ridiculous ; and, indeed, the imputation could in any case only be temporary. As soon as the thing gets into court I could bring up the Lichfield ploughman to prove my possession of a gold Wulfric ; and I could bring up Emily to prove that I had shown it to her that very morn- ing. How lucky that I had happened to take it out and let her look at it ! My case was, happily, as plain as a 84 THE GOLD WULFRIC. pikestaff. It was only momentarily that tbe weight of the evidence seemed so perversely to go against me. Turning over all these various considerations in my mind with anxious hesitancy, the ten minutes managed to pass away almost before I had thoroughly realized the deep gravity of the situation. As the clock on the chimney-piece pointed to the half- hour, the door opened once more, and the superintendent entered solemnly. " Well, Mr. Tait," he said in an anxious voice, " have you 'made up your mind to make a clean breast of it ? Do you now admit, after full deliberation, that you have endeavoured to steal and clip the gold Wulfric?" "No," I answered firmly, "I do not admit it; and I will willingly go before a jury of my countrymen to prove ray innocence." ,„ , _ " Then God help you, poor boy," the superintendent cried despondently. *' I have done my best to save you, and you will not let me. Policeman, this is your prisoner. I give him in custody on a charge of stealing a gold coin, the property of the trustees of this Museum, valued at a hundred and seventy-five pounds sterling." The policeman laid his hand upon my wrist. " You will have to go along with me to the station, sir," he said quietly. Terrified and stunned as I was by the awf ulness of the accusation, I could not forget or overlook the superin- tendent's evident relucjtance and kindness. " Mr. Har- bourne," I cried, "you have tried to do your best for me. I am grateful to you for it, in spite of your terrible mistake, and I shall yet be able to show you that I am innocent." He shook his head gloomily. " I have done my duty," he said with a shudder. " I have never before had a more painful one. Policeman, I must ask you now to do yours." THE GOLD WULFBia 85 The police are always considerate to respectable-looking prisoners, and I had no difficaltj in getting the sergeant in charge of the lock-up to telegraph for me to Emily, to say that I was detained by important business, which would prevent me taking her and her mother to the theatre that evening. But when I explained to him that my detention was merely temporary, and that I should be able to disprove the whole story as soon as I went before the magistrates, he winked most unpleasantly at the con- stable who had brought me in, and observed in a tone of vulgar sarcasm, " We have a good many gentlemen here who says the same, sir — don't we, Jim ? but they don't always find it so easy as they expected when they stands up afore the beak to prove their statements." I began to reflect that even a temporary prison is far from being a pleasant place for a man to stop in. Next morning they took me up before the magistrate; and as the Museum authorities of course proved a prima facto case against me, and as my solicitor advised me to reserve my defence, owing to the difl&culty of getting up my w^itness from Lichfield in reasonable time, I was duly committed for trial at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court. I had often read before that people had been committed for trial, but till that moment I had no idea what a very unpleasant sensation it really is. However, as I was a person of hitherto unblemished character, and wore a good coat made by a fashionable tailor, the magistrate decided to admit me to bail, if two sureties in five hundred pounds each were promptly forth- coming for the purpose. Luckily, I had no difficulty in finding friends who believed in my story ; and as I felt sure the lost Wulfric would soou be found in cleaning 8C THE GOLD WULFRIC. • tl»e niuscam, I suffered perhaps a little less acutely than 1 might otherwise have done, owing to my profound confidence in the final triumph of the truth. Nevertheless, as the case would be fully reported next morning in all the papers, I saw at once that I must go straight off and explain the matter without delay to Emily. I will not dwell upon that painful interview. I will only say that Emily behaved as I of course knew she would behave. She was horrified and indignant at the dreadful accusation ; and, woman like, she was very angry with the supeiintendent. " He ought to have taken your word for it, naturally, Harold,*' she cried through her tears. " But what a good thing, anyhow, that you hap- pened to show the coin to me. I should recognize it any- where among ten thousand." • " That's well, darling," I said, trying to kiss away her tears and cheer her up a little. " I haven't the slightest doubt that when the trial comes we shall be able trium- phantly to vindicate me from this terrible, groundless accusation." 3 1 IV. When the trial did actually come on, the Museum authorities began by proving their case against me in what seemed the most horribly damning fashion. The superintendent proved that on such and such a day, in such and such a case, he had seen a gold coin of Wulfric of Mercia, the property of the Museum. He and Mac- tavish detailed the circumstances under which the coin was lost. The superintendent explained how he had asked me to submit to a search, and how, to avoid that indignity, I had myself produced from my waistcoat- pocket a gold coin of Wulfric of Mercia, which I asserted to be a duplicate specimen, and my own property. The THE GOLD WULFRIC. 87 connsel for the Crown proceeded thus with the examin- ation : — " Do you recognize the coin I. now hand you ? " " I do." "What is it?" " The unique gold coin of Wulfrio of Mercia, belonging to the Museuni." " You have absolutely no doubt as to its identity ? " " Absolutely none whatsoever." - '* Does it differ in any respect from the same coin as you previously saw it ? " ; , "Yes. It has been clipped round the edge with a sharp instrument, and a slight dent has been made by pressure on the obverse side, just below the W of Wulfric." "Did you suspect the prisoner at the bar of having mutilated it ? " " I did, and I asked him whether he had a knife in his possession. He answered no. I then asked him whether he would submit to be searched for a knife. He consented, and on my looking in his pocket I found the pair of nail- scissors I now produce, with a small file on either side." " Do you believe the coin might have been clipped with those scissors ? " "I do. The gold is very soft, having little alloy in its composition ; and it could easily be cut by a strong- wristed man with a knife or scissors." As I listened, I didn't wonder that the jnry looked as if they already considered me guilty : but I smiled to myself when I thought how utterly Emily's and the ploughman's evidence would rebut this unworthy suspicion. The next witness was the Museum cleaner. His evi- dence at first produced nothing fresh, but just at last, counsel set before him a paper, containing a few scraps of yellow metal, and asked him triumphantly whether he recognized them. He answered yes. $$ THE GOLD WULFBIC. There was a profound silence. The court was interested and curious. I couldn't quite understand it all, but I felt a terrible sinking. " What are they ? " asked the hostile barrister. " They are some fragments of gold which I found in shaking the cocoa-nut matting on the floor of gallery 27 the Saturday after the attempted theft." I felt as if a mine had unexpectedly been sprung beneath me. How on earth those fragments of soft gold could ever have got there I couldn't imagine ; but I saw the damaging nature of this extraordinary and inexpli- cable coincidence in h. if a second. My counsel cross-examined all the witnesses for the prosecution, but failed to elicit anything of any value from any one of them. On the contrary, his questions put to the metallurgist of the Mint, who was called to prove the quality of the gold, only brought out a very strong opinion to the effect that the clippings were essen- tially similar in character to the metal composing the clipped Wulfric. No wonder the jury seemed to think the case was going decidedly against me. Then my counsel called his witnesses. I listened in the profoundest suspense and expectation. • '■'■■'■•^ ^ The first witness was the ploughman from Lichfield. He was a well-meaning but very puzzle-headed old man, and he was evidently frightened at being confronted by so many clever wig- wearing barristers. Nevertheless, my counsel managed to get the true story out of him at last with infinite patience, ' dexterity, and skill. The old man told us finally how he had found the coins and sold them to me for five pounds ; and how one of them was of gold, with a queer head and goggle eyes pointed full face upon its surface. When he had finished, the counsel for the Crown began his cross-examination. He handed the ploughman a gold THE GOLD WULFRIC. 89 coin. " Did you ever see that before ? " he asked quietly. "To be sure I did," the man answered, looking at it open-moathed. " What is it ? " " It's the bit I sold Mr. Tait there— the bit as I got out o' the old basin." Counsel turned triumphantly to the judge. " My lord," he said, " this thing to which the witness swears is a gold piece of Ethel wulf of Wessex, by far the commonest and cheapest gold coin of the whole Anglo-Saxon period." It was handed to the jury side by side with the Wulfric of Mercia ; and the difference, as I knew myself, was in fact extremely noticeable. All that the old man could have observed in common between them must have been merely the archaic Anglo-Saxon character of the coinage. As I heard that, I began to feel that it was really all over. My counsel tried on the re-examination to shake the old man's faith in his identification, and to make him transfer his story to the Wulfric which he had actually sold me. But it was all in vain. The ploughman had clearly the dread of perjury for ever before his eyes, and wouldn't go back for any consideration upon his firat sworn statement. "No, no, mister," he said over and over again in reply to my counsel's bland suggestion, " you ain't going to make me forswear myself for ell your cleverness." The next witness was Emily. She went into the box pale and red-eyed, but very confident. My counsel ex- amined her admirably; and she stuck to her point with womanly persistence, that she had herself seen the clipped Wulfric, and no other coin, on the morning of the supposed theft. She knew it was so, because she distinctly re- membered the inscription, " Wulfric Rex," and the pecu- to THE GOLD WULFRIC. liar way the Btaring open eyes were represented with barbaric puerility. Counsel for the Crown would only trouble the young lady with two questions. The first was a painful one, but it must bo asked in the interests of justice. Were she and the prisoner at the bar engaged to be married to one another? • : The answer came, slowly and timidly, " Yes." Counsel drew a long breath, and looked her hard in ihe face. Could she read the inscription on that coin now produced ? — handing her the Ethelwv.lf. , ,: Great heavens ! I saw at once the plot to disconcert her, but was utterly powerless to warn her against it. Emily looked at it long and steadily. " No," she said at last, growing deadly pale and grasping the woodwork of the witness-box convulsively ; " I don't know the character in which it is written." Of course not : for the inscription was in the peculiar semi-runic Anglo-Saxon letters ! She had never read the words " Wulfric Rex " either. I had read them to her, and she had carried them away vaguely in her mind, imagining no doubt that she herself had actually deciphered them. There was a slight pause, and I felt my blood growing cold within me. Then the counsel for the Crown handed her again the genuine Wulfric, and asked her whether the letters upon it which she professed to have read were or were not similar to those of the Ethelwulf. Instead of answering, Emily bent down her head be- tween her hands, and burst suddenly into tears. I was so much distressed at her terrible agitation that I forgot altogether for the moment my own perilous posi- tion, and I cried aloud, " My lord, my lord, will you 2 ot interpose to spare her any further questions ? " " I think," the judge said to the counsel for the Crown, " you might now permit the witness to stand down." THE GOLD WVLFRIC. 01 "I wish to re-examine, mj lord," my counsel put in hastily. " No," I said in his ear, " no. Whatever comes of it, not another question. I had far rather go to prison than let her suffer this inexpressible torture for a single minute longer." Emily was led down, still crying bitterly, into the body of the court, and the rest of the proceedings went on uninterrupted. The theory of the prosecution was a simple and plau- sible one. I had bought a common Anglo-Saxon coin, probably an Ethelwulf, valued at about twenty-two shil- lings, from the old Lichfield ploughman. I had thereupon ox>nceived the fraudulent idea of pretending that I had a duplicate of the rare Wulfric. I had shown the Ethel- wulf, clipped in a particular fashion, to the lady whom I was engaged to marry. I had then defaced and altered the genuine Wulfric at the Museum into the same shape with the aid of my pocket nail-scissors. And I had finally made believe to drop the coin accidentally upon the floor, while I had really secreted it in my waistcoat pocket. The theory for the defence had broken down utterly. And then there was the damning fact of the gold scrapings found in the cocoa-nut matting of the British Museum, which was to me the one great inexplicable mystery in the whole otherwise comprehensible mystification. I felt myself that the case did indeed look very black against me. But would a jury venture to convict me on such very doubtful evidence ? The jury retired to consider their verdict. I stood in suspense in the dock, with my heart loudly beating. Emily remained in the body of the court below, looking up at me tearfully and penitently. After twenty minutes the jury retired. " Guilty or not guilty ? " The foreman answered aloud, " Guilty." 92 THE GOLD WULFItlC. There wfts a piercing cry in the body of the court, and in a moment Emily was caiTied out half fainting and half hysterical. The judge then calmly proceeded to pass sentence. He dwelt upon the enormity of my crime in one so well con- nected and so far removed from the dangers of mere vulgar temptations. He dwelt also upon the vandalism of which I had been guilty — myself a collector — in clip- ping and defacing a valuable and unique memorial of antiquity, the property of the nation. He did not wish to be severe upon a young man of hitherto blameless character; but the national collection must be secured against such a peculiarly insidious and cunning form of depredation. The sentence of the court was that I should be kept in — * n on Five years' penal servitude. .no Cnished and annihilated as I was, I had still strength to utter a single final word. "My lord," I cried, "the missing Wnlfric will yet be found, and will hereafter prove my perfect innocence." " Remove the prisoner," said the jndge, coldly. They took me down to the courtyard unresisting, where the prison van was standing in waiting. On the steps I saw Emily and her mother, both crying bitterly. They had been told the sentence already, and were waiting to take a last farewell of me. " Oh, Harold ! " Emily cried, flinging her arms around me wildly, " it's all my fault I It's my fault only ! By my foolish stupidity I've lost your case. I've sent you to prison. Oh, Harold, I can never forgive myself. I've sent you to prison. I've sent you to prison." " Dearest," I said, " it won't be for long. I shall soon be free again. They'll find the W.ulfric sooner or later, and then of course they'll let me out again." "Harold," she cried, "oh, Harold, Harold, don't you see ? Don't you understand ? This is a plot against you. THE GOLD WULFRIC. It isn't lost. It isn't lost. That would be nothing. It'f* stolen ; it's stolen ! " A light burst in upon me suddenly, and I saw in a moment the full depth of the peril that surrounded me. PART II. I. It was some time before I could sufficiently accustom myself to my new life in the Isle of Portland to be able to think clearly and distinctly about the terrible blow that had fallen upon me. In the midst of all the petty troubles and discomforts of prison existence, I had no leisure at first fully to realize the fact that I was a convicted felon with scarcely a hope — not of release ; for that I cared little — but of rehabilitation. Slowly, however, I began to grow habituated to the new hard life imposed upon me, and to think in my cell of the web of circumstance which had woven itself so irresistibly around me. I had only one hope. Emily know I was innocent. Emily suspected, like me, that the Wulfric had been stolen. Emily would do her best, I felt certain, to heap together fresh evidence, and unravel this mystery to its very bottom. Meanwhile, I thanked Heaven for the hard mechanical daily toil of cutting stone in Portland prison. I was a strong athletic young fellow enough. I was glad now that I had always loved the river at Oxford; my arms were stout and muscular. I was able to take my part in the regular work of the gang to which I belonged. Had it been otherwise — had I been set down to some quiet sedentary occupation, as first-class misdemeanants often are, I should have worn my heart out soon with thinking perpetually of poor Emily's terrible trouble. 94 THE GOLD WULFRIC. When I first came, the Deputy- Governor, knowing my case well (had there not been leaders about me in all the papers?), very kindly aSked me whether I would wish to be given work in the book-keeping department, where many educated convicts were employed as clerks and assistants. But I begged particularly to be put into an outdoor gang, where I might have to use my limbs constantly, and so keep my mind from eating itself up with perpetual think- ing. The Deputy-Governor immediately consented, and gave me work in a quarrying gang, at the west end of tho island, near Deadman's Bay on the edge of the Chesil. For three months I worked hard at learning the tiado of a quarryman, and succeeded far better than any of the other new hands who were set to learn at the same time with me. Their heart was not in it ; mine was. Anything to e-scape that gnawing agony. The other men in the gang were not agreeable or con- genial companions. They taught me their established modes of intercommunication, and told me several facts about themselves, which did not tend to endear them to me. One of them, 1247, was put in for the manslaughter of his wife by kicking; he was a low-browed, brutal London drayman, and he occupied the next cell to mine, where he disturbed me much in my sleepless nights by his loud snoring. Another, a much slighter and more intel- ligent-looking man, was a skilled burglar, sentenced to fourteen years for " cracking a crib " in the neighbourhood of Hampstead. A third was a sailor, convicted of gross cruelty to a defenceless Lascar. They lall told me the nature of their crimes with a brutal frankness which fairly surprised me; but when I explained to them in return that I had been put in upon a false accusation, they .treated my remarks w'*^^ a galling contempt that was absolutely unsupportable. ;ter a short time I ceased to communicate vath my fellow-prisoners in any way, and remained shut up with my own thoughts in utter isolation. THE GOLD WULFBIC. 95 By-and-by I found that the other men in the same ganj^ were beginniog to dislike me strongly, and that some among them actually whispered to one another — what they seemed to consider a very strong point indeed against me — that I must really have been convicted by mistake, and that I was a regular stuck-up sneaking Methodist. They complained that I worked a great deal too hard, and so made the other felons seem lazy by comparison ; and they also objected to my prompt obedience to our warder's commands, as tending to set up an exaggerated and im- possible standard of discipline. Between this warder and myself, on the other hand, there soon sprang up a feeling which I might almost de- scribe as one of friendship. Though by the rules of the establishment we could not communicate with one another except upon matters of business, I liked him for his uuifoMn courtesy, kindliness, and forbearance ; while I could easily see that he liked me in return, by contrast with the other men who were under his charge. He was one of those persons whom some experience of prisons then and since has led me to believe less rare than most people would imagine — men in whom the dreary life of a prison warder, instead of engendering hardness of heart and cold unsympathetic sternness, has engendered a cer- tain profound tenderness and melancholy of spirit. I grew quite fond of that one honest warder, among so many coarse and criminal faces ; and I found, on the other hand, that my fellow-prisoners hated me all the more because, as they expressed it in their own disgusting jai'gon, I was sucking up to that confounded dog of a barker. It happened once, when I was left for a few minutes alone with the warder, that he made an attempt for a moment, contrary to regulations, to hold a little private conversation with me. " 1430," he said in a low voice, hardly moving his lips, for fear of being overlooked, " what is your outside name ? " 96 TUE GOLD WULFRIC. I answered quietly, without turning to look at him, " Harold Tait." He gave a little involuntary stnrt. " What ! " he cried. *' Not him that took a coin from the British Museum ? " I bridled up angrily. ** I did not take it," I cried with all my soul. " I am innocent, and have been put in here by some terrible error." He was silent for half a second. Then he said musingly, " Sir, I believe you. You are speaking the truth. I will do all I can to make things easy for you." . > That was all he said then. But from that day forth he always spoke to me in private as *' Sir," and never again as "1430." An incident arose at last out of this condition of things which had a very important effect upon my future position. One day, about three months after I was committed to prison, we were all told off as usual to work in a small quarry on the cliff-side overhanging the long expanse of pebbly beach known as the Chesil. I had reason to believe afterwards that a large open fishing boat lying upon the beach below at the moment had been placed there as part of a concerted scheme by the friends of the Hampstead burglar; and that it contained ordinary clothing for all the men in our gang, except myself only. The idea was evidently that the gang should overpower the warder, seize the boat, change their clothes instantly, taking turns about meanwhile with the navigation, and make straight off for the shore at Lulworth, where they could easily disperse without much chance of being re- captured. But of all this I was of course quite ignorant at the time, for they had not thought well to intrust their secret to the ears of the sneaking virtuous Methodist. A few minutes after we arrived at the quarry, I was working with two other men at putting a blast in, when I happened to look round quite accidentally, and to my great THE GOLD WULFBia 97 horror, saw 1247, the brutal wife-kicker, standing behind with a huge block of stone in his hands, poised just above the warder's head , in a threatening attitude. The other men stood around waiting and watching. I had only just time to cry out in a tone of alarm, " Take care, warder, he'll murder you ! " when the stone descended upon the warder's head, and he fell at once, bleeding and half senseless, ?ipon the ground beside me. In a second, while he shrieked and struggled, the whole gang was pressing savagely and angrily around him. There was no time to think or hesitate. Before I knew almost what 1 was doing, I had seized his gnn and ammunition, and, standing over his prostrate body, I held the men at bay for a single moment. Then 1247 advanced threateningly, and tried to put his foot upon the fallen warder. I didn't wait or reflect one solitary second. I drew the trigger, and fired full upon him. The bang sounded fiercely in my ears, and for a moment I could see nothing through the smoke of the rifle. With a terrible shriek he fell in front of me, not dead, but seriously wounded. " The boat, the boat," the others cried loudly. " Knock him down ! Kill him ! Take the boat, all of you." At that moment the report of my shot had brought another warder hastily to the top of the quarry. " Help, help ! " I cried. " Come quick, and save us. These brutes are trying to murder our warder ! " The man rushed back to call for aid ; but the way down the zigzag path was steep and tortuous, and it was some time before they could manage to get down and succour us. Meanwhile the other convicts pressed savagely around us, trying to jump upon the warder's body and force their way past to the beach beneath us. I fired again, for the rifle was double-barrelled ; but it was impossible to reload H 08 THE GOLD WULFRIC. in Fiich a tumult, so, after the next shot, which hit no one, I laid about mo fiercely with the butt end of the gun, and succeeded in knocking down four of the savages, one aftei- another. By that time the warders from above had safely reached us, and formed a circle of fixed bayonets around the rebellious prisoners. " Thank God ! " I cried, flinging down the rifle, and rushing up to the prostrate warder. " He is still alive. He is breathing ! He is breathing ! " " Yes," he murmured in a faint voice, " I am alive, and I thank you for it. But for you, sir, these fellows here would certainly have murdered me." " You are badly wounded yourself, 1430," one of the other warders said to me, as the rebels were rapidly secured and marched off sullenly back to prison. " Look, your own arm is bleeding fiercely." Then for the first time I was aware that I was one mass of wounds from head to foot, and that I was growing faint from loss of blood. In defending the fallen warder I had got punched and pummelled on every side, just the same as one used to get long ago in a bully at football when I was a boy at Rugby, only much more seriously. The warders brought down seven stretchers : one for me ; one for the wounded warier ; one for 1247, whom I had shot ; and four for the convicts whom I had knocked over with the butt end of the rifle. They carried us up on them, strongly guarded, in a long procession. At the door of the infirmary the Governor met us. "14o()," he said to me, in a very kind voice, "you have behaved most admirably. I saw you myself quite dis- tinctly from my drawing-room windows. Your bravery and intrepidity are well deserving of the highest recog- nition." "Sir," I answered, "I have only tried to do my duty. I couldn't stand by and see an innocent man murdered by such a pack of bloodthirsty ruffians." THE GOLD WULFRIC M The Governor turned aside a little surprised. " Who is 1430 ? " he asked quietly. A subordinate, consulting a book, whispered my name and supposed crime to hira confidentially. The Governor nodded twice, and seemed to be satisfied. " Sir," the wounded warder said faintly from his stretcher, " 1430 is an innocent man unjustly con- demned, if ever there was one." II. On the Thursday week following", when my wounds were all getting well, the whole body of convicts was duly paraded at half-past eleven in front of the Governor's house. The Governor came out, holding an official-looking paper in his right hand. " No. 1430," he said in a loud voice, " stand forward." And I stood forward. " No. 1430, I have the pleasant duty of informing you, in face of all your fellow-prisoners, that your heroism and self-devotion in saving the life of Warder James Woolla- cott, when he was attacked and almost overpowered on the twentieth of this month by a gang of rebellions convicts, has been reported to Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department ; and that on his recommendation Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to grant you a Free Pardon for the remainder of the time during which you were sentenced to penal servitude." For a moment I felt quite stum 1 and speechless. I reeled on my feet so much that two of the warders jumped forward to support me. It was a great thing to have at least one's freedom. But in another minute the real meaning of the thing came clearer upon me, and I recoiled from the bare sound of those horrid words, a free pardon. I didn't want to be pardoned like a convicted felon : I wanted to have my innocence proved before the eyes of all 100 THE GOLD WULFRIC. England. For my own sake, and still more for Emily's sake, rohabilitation was all I cared for. " Sir," I said, touching my cap respectfully, and saluting the Governor according to our wonted prison discipline, " I am very greatly obliged ':o you for your kindness in having made this representation to the Home Secretary ; but I feel compelled to say I cannot accept a free pardon. 1 am wholly guiltless of the crime of which I have been convicted ; and I wish that instead of pardoning mo the Home Secretary would give instructions to the detective police to make a thorough investigation of the case, with the object of proving my complete innocence. Till that is clone, I prefer to remain an inmate of Portland Prison. What I wish is not pardon, but to be restored as an honest man to the society of my equals." The Governor paused for a moment, and consulted quietly in an undertone with one or two of his subordi- nates. Then he turned to me with great kindness, and said in a loud voice, "No. 1430, I have no power any longer to detain you in this prison, even if I wished to do so, after you have once obtained Her Majesty's free pardon. My duty is to dismiss you at once, in accordance with the terms of this document. However, I will communicate the substance of your request to the Home Secretary, with whom such a petition, so made, will doubtless have the full weight that may rightly attach to it. You must now go with these warders, who will restore you your own clothes, and then formally set you at liberty. But if there is anything further you would wish to speak to me about, you can do so afterward in your private capacity as a free man at two o'clock in my own office." I thanked him quietly and then withdrew. At two o'clock I duly presented myself in ordinary clothes at the Governor's office. ..^.^, We had a long and confidential interview, in the course of which I was able to narrate to the Governor at full THE GOLD WULFIilC. 101 length all the facts of my strange stoiy exactly as I have here detailed them. He listened to me with the greatest interest, checking and confirming my statements at length by reference to the file of papers brought to him by a clerk. When I had finished my whole story, he said to me quite simply, " Mr. Tait, it may be imprudent of me in my position and under such peculiar circumstances to say so, but I fully and unreservedly believe your state- ment. If anything that I can say or do can be of any assistance to you in proving your innocence, I shall be very happy indeed to exert all my influence in your favour." I thanked him warmly with tears in my eyes. " And there is one point in your story," he went on, " to which I, who have seen a good deal of such doubtful cases, attach the very highest importance. You say that gold clippings, pronounced to be similar in character to the gold Wulfric, were found shortly after by a cleaner at the Museum on the cocoa-nut matting of the floor where the coin was examined by you ? " I nodded, blushing crimson. " That," I said, "seems to me the strangest and most damning circumstance against me in the whole story." ' " Precisely," the Governor answered quietly. "And if what you say is the truth (as I believe it to be), it is also the circumstance which best gives us a cue to use against the real culprit. The person who stole the coin was too clever by half, or else not quite clever enough for his own protection. In manufacturing that last fatal piece of evidence against you he was also giving you a certain clue to his own identity." " How so ? " I asked, breathless. " Why, don't you see ? The thief must in all pro- bability have been somebody connected with the Museum. He must have seen you comparing the Wulfric with your own coin. He must have picked it up and carried it of£ 102 . THE GOLD WULFRIC. secretly at the moment you dropped it. He must have clipped the coin to manufacture further hostile evidence. And ho must have dropped the clippings afterwards on the cocoa-nut matting in the same gallery on purpose in order to heighten the suspicion against you." " You are right," I cried, brightening up at the luminous suggestion — "you are right, obviously. And there is only- one man who could have seen and heard enough to carry out this abominable plot — Mactavish ! " "Well, find him out and prove the case against him, Mr. Tait," the Governor said warmly, " and if you send him here to us I can promise you that he will bo well taken care of," I bowed and thanked him, and was about to withdraw, but he held out his hand to me with perfect frankness. " Mr. Tait," ho said, " I can't let you go away so. Let me have your hand in token that you bear us no grudge for the way we have treated you during yotir unfortunate imprisonment, and that I, for my part, am absolutely satisfied of the truth of your statement." III. The moment I arrived in London I drove straight off without delay to Emily's. I had telegraphed beforehand that I had been granted a free pardon, but had not stopped to tell her why or under what conditions. Emily met me in tears in the passage. " Harold ! Harold ! " she cried, flinging her arms wildly around me. " Oh, my darling ! my darling ! how can I ever say it to you ? Mamma says she won't allow me to see you here any longer." It was a temble blow, but I was not unprepared for it. How could I expect that poor, conventional, commonplace old lady to have any faith in me after all she had read about me in the newspapers ? '^ TnE GOLD WULFRIC. 103 *' Emily," I said, kissing her over and over again tenderly, '*you must come out with mo, then, this very minute, for I want to talk with you over matters of importance. Whether your mother wishes it or not, you must come out with me this very minute." Emily put on her bonnet hastily and walked out with me into the streets of London. It was growing dark, and the neighbourhood was a very quiet one ; or else perhaps even my own Emily would have felt a little ashamed of walking about the streets of London with a man whose hair was still cropped short around his head like a common felon's. I told her all the story of ray release, and Emily listened to it in profound silence. "Harold! " she cried, "my darling Harold! " (when I told her the tale of my desperate battle over the fallen warder), "you are the bravest and best of men. I knew you would vindicate yourself sooner or later. What we have to do now is to show that Mactavish stole the Wulfric. I know he stole it; T read it at the trial in his clean-shaven villain's face. I shall prove it still, and then you will be justified in the eyes of everybody," " But how can we manage to communicate meanwhile, darling ? " I cried eagerly. " If your mother won't allow you to see me, how are we ever to meet and consult about it ? " " There's only one way, Harold — only one way ; and as things now stand you mustn't think it strange of me to propose it. Harold, you must marry me immediately, whether mamma will let us or not 1 " " Emily ! " I cried, " my own darling ! your confidence and trust in me makes me I can't tell you how proud and happy. That you should be willing to marry me even while I am under such a cloud as this gives me a greater proof of your love than anything else you could possibly do for me. But, darling, I am too proud to take you at fOi THE GOLD WULFIIIC. your word. For your sake, Emily, I will norcr marry you until all tho world has been compelled unreservedly to admit my innocence." Emily blushed and cried a little. " As you will, Harold, dearest," she anwcred, trembling, "I can afford to wait for you. I know that in tho end the truth will be estab- lished." rv. A week or two later I was astonished one morning at receiving a visit in my London lodgings from the warder Woollacott, whose life I had been happily instrumental in saving at Portland Prison. "Well, sir," he said, grasping my hand warmly and gratefully, "you see I haven't yet entirely recovered from that terrible morning. I shall bear the marks of it about me for the remainder of my lifetime. The Governor says I shall never again be fit for duty, so they've pensioned me off very honourable." I told him how pleased I was that he should have been liberally treated, and then we fell into conversation about myself and the means of re-establishing my perfect innocence. " Sir," said he, " I shall have plenty of leisure, and shall be comfortably off now. If there's anything that I can do to be of service to you in the matter, I shall gladly do it. My time is entirely at your disposal." " I thanked him warmly, but told him that the affair was already in the hands of the regular detectives, who had been set to work upon it by the Governor's influence with the Home Secretary. By-and-by I happened to mention confidentially to him my suspicions of the man Mactavish. An idea seemed to occur to the warder suddenly ; but he said not a word to me about it at the time. A few days later, however, he THE GOLD WULFRIC. 105 came back to mo quietly and said, in a confidential tone of voice, " Well, sir, I think we may Htill manage to squara him." " Square who, Mr. Woollacott ? I don't understand you." "Why, Mactavish, sir. I found out he had a small house near the Museum, and his wife lets a lodging there for a single man. I've gone and taken the lodging, and I shall see whether in the course of time something or other doesn't come out of it." I smiled and thanked him for his enthusiasm in my •cause; but I confess I didn't see how anything on earth of any use to me was likely to arise from this strange proceeding on his part. It was that same week, I believe, that I received two other unexpected visitors. They came together. One of them was the Superintendent of Coins at the British Museum ; the other was the well-known antiquary and great authority upon the Anglo-Saxon coinage, Sir Theo- philus Wraxton. " Mr. Tait," the supenntendent began, not without some touch of natural shamefacedness in his voice and manner, " I have reason to believe that I may possibly have been mistaken in my positive identification of the coin you showed me that day at the Museum as our own specimen of the gold Wulfric. If I was mistaken, then I have unintentionally done you a most grievous wrong ; and for that wrong, should my suspicions turn out ill-founded, I shall owe you the deepest and most heartfelt apologies. But the only reparation I can possibly make you is the one I am doing to-day by bringing here my friend Sir Theophilus Wraxton. He has a communicatioti of some importance to make to you ; and if he is right, I can only beg your 106 THE GOLD WVLFIITC. • panli)n most }»nrnl»ly for tlio error I have committed in what I believed to be the discharj^e of my duties." " Sir," I answered, " I saw at the time you were the victim of a mistake, as I was the victim of a most unfor- tunate concurrence of circumstances; and I bear you no f^rudr,'e whatsoever for the part you bore in subjectinjif me to what is really in itself a most unjust and unfounded suspicion. You only did what you believed to be your plain duty; and you did it with marked reluctance, and with every desire to leave me every possible loophole of escape from what you conceived as a momentary yielding to a vile temptation. But what is it that Sir Theophilus Wraxton wishes to tell me ? " " Well, my dear sir," the old f^entleman began, warmly, " I haven't the slightest doubt in the world myself that you have been quite unwarrantably disbelieved about a plain matter of fact that ought at once to have been im- mediately apparent to anybody who knew anything in the world about the gold Anglo-Saxon coinage. No reflec- tion in the world upon you, Harbourne, my dear friend — no reflection in the world upon you in the matter ; but you must admit that you've been pig-headedly hasty in jumping to a conclusion, and ignorantly determined in sticking to it against better evidence. My dear sir, I Iiaven't the very slightest doubt in the world that the coin now in the British Museum is not the one which I have seen there previously, and which I have figured in the third volume of my ' Early Northumbrian and Mer- cian Numismatist ! ' Quite otherwise ; quite otherwise, I assure vou." » , - . " How do you recognize that it is different, sir ? " I cried excitedly. " The two coins were struck at just the same mint from the same die, and I examined them closely together, and saw absolutely no difference between them, except the dent and the amount of the clipping." " Quite true, quite true," the old gentleman replied THE GOLD WCLFIilC. 107 with Rrcnt dellbcrntion. " But look hove, sir. Hci-c is the drawing I took of the Musoiim Wulfric fourteon years ago, for the third volume of my ' Northumbrian Numismatist.' That drawing was made with the aid of careful measurements, which you will find detailed in the text at page 230. Now, here again is the duplicate Wul- fric — permit mo to call it yonr Wulfric; and if you will compare the two you'll find, I think, that though your Wulfric is a great deal smaller than the original one, taken as a whole, yet on one diameter, the diameter from the letter U in Wulfric to the letter II in Rex, it is nearly an eighth of an inch broader than the specimen I have there figured. Well, sir, you may cut as much as you like off a coin, and make it smaller ; but hang me if by cutting away at it for all your lifetime you can make it an eighth of an inch broader anyhow, in any direction." I looked immediately at the coin, the drawing, and the measurements in the book, and saw at a glance that Sir Theophilus was right. *' How on earth did you find it out ? " I asked the bland old gentleman, breathlessly. " Why, my dear sir, I remembered the old coin per- fectly, having been so very particular in my drawing and iii«. asurement ; and the moment I clapped eyes on the other one yesterday, I said to my good friend Harbourne, here: 'Harbourne,' said I, 'somebody's been changing your Wulfric in the case over yonder for another speci- men.' ' Changing it ! ' said Harbourne : ' not a bit of it ; clipping it, you mean.* ' No, no, my good fellow,' said I : ' do you suppose I don't know the same coin again when I see it, and at my time of life too ? This is another coin, not the same one clipped. It's bigger across than the old one from there to there.' 'No, it isn't,' says he. ' But it is,' I answer. ' Just you look in my " Northumbrian and Mercian " and see if it isn't so.' ' You must be mistaken,' says Harbourne. ' If I am, I'll eat my head,' says I, 108 THE GOLD WULFEIC. Well, we get down the ' Numismatist' from the bookshelf then and there ; and sure enough, it turns out just as I told him. Harbourne turned as white as a ghost, I can tell you, as soon as he discovered it. ' Why,' says he, ' I've sent a poor young fellow off to Portland Prison, only three or four months ago, for stealing that very Wulfric' And then he told me all the story. 'Very well,' said I, ' then the only thing you've got to do is just to go and call on him to-morrow, and let him know that you've had it proved to you, fairly proved to you, that this is not the original Wulfric' " "Sir Theophilus," I said, "I'm much obliged to you. What you point out is by far the most important piece of evidence I've yet had to offer. Mr. Harbourne, have you kept the gold clippings that were found that morning on the cocoa-nut matting ? " " I have, Mr. Tait," the superintendent answered anxiously. "And Sir Theophilus and I have been trying to lit them upon the coin in the Museum shelves ; and I am bound to admit I quite agree with him that they must have been cut off a specimen decidedly larger in one diameter and smaller in another than the existing one — in short, tha^ they do not fit the clipped Wulfric now in the Museum.'* VI. It was just a fortnight later that I received quite unex- pectedly a telegram from Rome directed to me at my London lodgings. I tore it open hastily ; it was signed by Emily, and contained only these few words : " We have found the Museum Wulfric. The superintendent is coming over to identify and reclaim it. Can you manage to run across immediately with him ? " For a moment I was lost in astonishment, delight, and fear. How and why had Emily gone over to Rome ? TEE GOLD WULFBia 109 Who Could she have with her to take care of her and assist her ? How on earth had she tracked the missing coin to its distant hiding-place ? It was all a profound mystery to me; and after my first outburst of joy and gratitude, I began to be afraid that Emily might have been misled by her eagerness and anxiety into following up the traces of the wrong coin. However, I had no choice but to go to Rome and see the matter ended ; and I went alone, wearing out my soul through that long journey with suspense and fear ; for I had not managed to hit upon the superintendent, who, through his telegram being delivered a little the sooner, had caught a train six hours earlier than the one I went by. As I arrived at the Central Station at Rome, I was met, to my surprise, by a perfect crowd of familiar faces. First, Emily herself rushed to me, kissed me, and assured 9ie a hundred times over that it was all right, and that the missing coin was undoubtedly recovered. Then, the superintendent, more shamefaced than ever, and very grave, but with a certain moisture in his eyes, confirmed her statement by saying that he had got the real Museum Wulf ric undoubtedly in his pocket. Then Sir Theophilus, who had actually come across with Lady Wraxton on purpose to take care of Emily, added his assurances and congratulations. Last of all, Woollacott, the warder, stepped up to me and said simply, " I'm glad, sir, that it was through me as it all came out so right and even." " Tell me how it all happened," I cried, almost faint with joy, and still wondering whether my innocence had really been proved beyond all fear of cavil. Then. Woollacott began, and told me briefly the whole story. He had consulted with the superintendent and Sir Theophilus, without saying a word to me about it, and had kept a close watch upon all the letters that came for Mac- tavish. A rare Anglo-Saxon coin is not a chattel that 110 TEE GOLD WULFRIC. one can easily get rid of every day ; and Woollacott shrewdly gathered from what Sir Theophilus had told him that Mactavish (or whoever else had stolen the coin) would be likely to try to dispose of it as far away from England as possible, especially after all the comments that had been made on this particular Wulfric in the Eng- lish newspapers. So he took every opportunity of inter- cepting the postman at the front door, and looking out for envelopes w^ith foreign postage stamps. At last one day a letter arrived for Mactavish with an Italian stamp and a cardinal's red hat stamped like a crest on the flap of the envelope. Woollacott was certain that things of that sort didn't come to Mactavish every day about his ordinary business. Braving the penalties for appropriating a letter, he took the liberty to open this suspicious communication, and found it was a note from Cardinal Trevelyan, the Pope's Chamberlain, and a well-known collector of antiqui- ties referring to early Church history in England, and that it was in reply to an offer of Mactavish's to send the Cardinal for inspection a rare gold coin not otherwise specified. The Cardinal expressed his readiness to see the coin, and to pay a hundred and fifty pounds for it, if it proved to be rare and genuine as described. Woollacott felt certain that this communication must refer to the gold Wulfric. He therefore handed the letter to Mrs. Mac- tavish when ^the postman next came his rounds, and waited to see whether Mactavish any day afterwards went to the post to register a small box or packet. Meanwhile he communicated with Emily and the superintendent, being unwilling to buoy me up with a doubtful hope until he was quite sure that their plan had succeeded. The superintendent wrote immediately to the Cardinal, men- tioning his suspicions, and received a reply to the effect that he expected a coin of Wulfric to be sent him shortly. Sir Theophilus, who had been greatly interested in the question of the coin, kindly offered to take Emily over THE GOLD WULFItW. Ill to Rome, in order to get the criniinating piece, as soon as it arrived, from Cardinal Trevelyan. That was, in turn, the story that they all told me, piece by piece, in the Cen- tral Station at Rome that eventful morning. *' And Mactavish ? " I asked of the superintendent eagerly. " Is in custody in London already," he answered some- what sternly. " I had a warrant out against him before I left town on this journey." At the trial the whole case was very clearly proved against him, and my innocence was fully established before the face of all my fellow-countrymen. A fortnight later my wife and I were among the rocks and woods at Ambleside ; and when I returned to London, it was to take a place in the department of coins at the British Museum, which the superintendent begged of me to accept as some further proof in the eyes of everybody that the suspicion he had formed in the matter of the Wulfric was a most unfounded and wholly erroneous one. The coin itself I kept as a memento of a terrible ex- perience ; but I have given up collecting on my own account entirely, and am quite content nowadays to bear my share in guarding the national collection from other depredators of the class of Mactavish. 'mA- MY UNCLE'S WILL. I. " My dear Mr. Payne," said my deceased uncle's lawyer with an emphatic wag of his forefinger, " I assure you there's no help for it. The language of the will is per- fectly simple and explicit. Either you must do as your late uncle desired, or you must let the property go to the representative of his deceased wife's family." " But surely, Blenkinsopp," I said deprecatingly, " we might get the Court of Chancery to set it aside, as being contrary to public policy, or something of that sort. I know you can get the Court of Chancery to affirm almost anything you ask them, especially if it's something a little abstruse and out of the common ; it gratifies the Court's opinion of its own acumen. Now, clearly, it's contrary to public policy that a man should go and make his own nephew ridiculous by his last will and testament, isn't it ? " Mr. Blenkinsopp shook his head vigorously. " Bless my soul, Mr. Payne," he answered, helping himself to a comprehensive pinch from his snuff-box (an odious habit, confined, I believe, at the present day to family solicitors), " bless my soul, my dear sir, the thing's simply impossible Here's your uncle, the late Anthony Aikin, Esquire, de- ceased, a person of sound mind and an adult male above the age of twenty-one years — to be quite accurate, cetatis MY UNCLE'S WILL. 113 suae, seventy-eigbt — makes his will, and duly attests the same in the presence of two witnesses ; everything quite in order : not a single point open to exception in any way. Well, he gives and bequeaths to his nephew, Theodore Payne, gentleman — that's you — after a few unimportant legacies, the bulk of his real and personal estate, provided only that you adopt the surname of Aikin, prefixed before and in addition to your own surname of Payne. But, — and this is very important, — if yon don't choose to adopt and use the said surname of Aikin, in the manner herein- before recited, then and in that case, my dear sir — why, then and in that case, as clear as currant jelly, the whole said residue of his real and personal estate is to go to the heir or heirs-at-law of the late Amelia Maria Susannah Aikin, wife of the said Anthony Aikin, Esquire, deceased. Nothing could be simpler or plainer in any way, and there's really nothing on earth for you to do except to choose be- tween the two alternatives so clearly set before you by your deceased uncle." ' ■ - ' " But look here, you know, Blenkinsopp," I said appeal- ingly, " no fellow can really be expected to go and call himself Aikin-Payne, now can he ? It's positively too ridiculous. Mightn't I stick the Payne before the Aikin, and call myself Payne- Aikin, eh ? That wouldn't be quite so absurdly suggestive of a perpetual toothache. But Aikin-Payne ! Why, the comic papers would take it up immediately. Every footman in London would grin audibly when he announced me. I fancy I hear the fellows this very moment : flinging open the door with a violent attempt at seriousness, and shouting out, ' Mr. Haching- Pain, ha, ha, ha ! * with a loud guffaw behind the lintel. It would be simply unendurable ! " " My dear sir," answered the unsympathetic Blenkinsopp (most unsympathetic profession, an attorney's, really), " the law doesn't take into consideration the question of the probable conduct of footmen. It must be Aikin-Payne X 114 MY UNCLE'S WILL. or nothing. I admit the collocation does sound a little ridiculous, to be sure ; but your uncle's will is perfectly unequivocal upon the subject — in fact, ahem ! I drew it up myself, to say the truth ; and unless you call yourself Aikin-Payne, 'in the manner hereinbefore recited,' then and in that case, observe (there's no deception), then and in that case the heir or heirs-at-law of the late Amelia Maria Susannah aforesaid will be entitled to benefit under the will as fully in every respect as if the property was bequeathed directly to him, her, or them, by name, and to no other person." " And who the dickens are these heirs-at-law, Blenkin- sopp ? " I ventured to ask after a moment's pause, during which the lawyer had refreshed himself with another pro- digious sniff from his snuff-box. " Who the dickens are they, Mr. Payne ? I should say Mr. Aikin-Payne, ahem — why, how the dickens should I know, sir ? You don't suppose I keep a genealogical table and full pedigree of all the second cousins of all my clients hung up conspicuously in some spare corner of my brain, do you, eh ? Upon my soul I really haven't the slightest notion. All I know about them is that the late Mrs. Amelia Maria Susannah Aikin, deceased, had one sister, who married somebody or other somewhere, against Mr. Anthony Aikin's wishes, and that he never had anything further to say to her at any time. * But where she's gone and how she fares, nobody knows and nobody cares,' sir, as the poet justly remarks." I was not previously acquainted with the poet's striking observation on this matter, but I didn't stop to ask Mr. Blenkinsopp in what author's work these stirring lines had originally appeared. I was too much occupied with other thoughts at that moment to pursue my investiga- tions into their authorship and authenticity. " Upon my word, Blenkinsopp," I said, " I've really half a mind to shy the thing up and go on with my schoolmastering." MY UNCLE'S WILL. 115 Mr. Blenkinsopp shrugged his shoulders. " Believe me, ray dear young friend," he said sententiously, " twelve hundred a year is not to be sneezed at. Without inquir- ing too precisely into the exact state of your existing finances, I should be inclined to say your present engage- ment can't be worth to you more than three hundred a year." I nodded acquiescence. " The exact figure," I mur- mured. " And your private means are ? " '• Non-existent," I answered frankly. " Then, my dear sir, excuse such plainness of speech in a man of my profession ; but if you throw it up you will be a perfect fool, sir ; a perfect fool, I assure you." " But perhaps, Blenkinsopp, the next-of-kin won't step in to claim it 1 " " Doesn't matter a bit, my dear fellow. Executors are bound to satisfy themselves before paying you over your legacy that you have assumed and will use the name of Aikin before and in addition to your own name of Payne, in the [manner hereinbefore recited. There's no getting over that in any way." I sighed aloud. " Twelve hundred a year is certainly very comfortable," I said. " But it's a confounded bore that one should have a condition tacked on to it which will make one a laughing-stock for life to all the buffoons and idiots of one's acquaintance." Blenkinsopp nodded in modified assent. '' After all," he answered, " I wouldn't mind taking it on the same terms myself." " Well," said I, " che sara sara. If it must be, it must be; and you may put an advertisement into the Times accordingly. Tell the executors that I accept the con- dition." 116 MY UNCLE'S WILL. II. " I won't stop in town," said I to myself, " to be chaffed by all the fellows at the club and in the master's room at St. Martin's. I'll run over on the Continent until the wags (confound them) have forgotten all about it. I'm a sensitive man, and if there's anything on earth I hate it's cheap and easy joking and punning on a name or a personal peculiarity which lays itself open obviously to stupid buffoonery. Of course I shall chuck up the schoolmaster- ing now ; — it's an odious trade at any time — and I may as well take a pleasant holiday while I'm about it. Let me see — Nice or Cannes or Florence would be the best thing at this time of year. Escape the November fogs and January frosts. Let's make it Cannes, then, and try the first effect of my new name upon the corpus vile of the Cannois." So I packed up my portmanteau hurriedly, took the 7.45 to Paris, and that same evening found myself com- fortably ensconced in a wagon lit, making my way as fast as the Lyons line would carry me en route for the blue Mediterranean. The Hotel du Paradis at Cannes is a very pleasant and well managed place, where I succeeded in making myself perfectly at home. I gave my full name to the concierge boldly. " Thank Heaven," I thought, " Aikin-Payne will sound to her just as good a label to one's back as Howard or Cholmondely. She won't see the absurdity of the combination." She was a fat Vaudoise Swiss by origin, and she took it without moving a muscle. But she answered me in very tolerable English — me, who thought my Parisian accent unimpeachable ! " Vary well, sirr, your lettares shall be sent to your apartments." I saw" there was the faintest twinkle of a smile about the corner of her mouth, and I felt that even she, a mere foreigner, MY UNCLE'S WILL. 117 a Swiss concierge, perceived at once the incongruity of the two surnames. Incongruity ! that's the worst of it ! Would that they were incongruous ! But it's their fatal and obvious congruity with one another that makes their juxtaposition so ridiculous. Call a man Payne, and I venture to say, though I was to the manner born, and it's me that says it as oughtn't to say it, you couldn't find a neater or more respectable surname in all England : call him plain Aikin, and though that perhaps is less aristocratic, it's redeemed by all the associations of child- hood with the earliest literature we imbibed through the innocuous pages of " Evenings at Home : " but join the two together, in the order of alphabetical precedence, and you get an Aikin-Payne, which is a thing to make a sensitive man, compelled to bear it for a lifetime, turn permanently red like a boiled lobster. My uncle must have done it on purpose, in order to inflict a deadly blow on what he would doubtless have called my confounded self-conceit ! However, I changed my tourist suit for a black cutaway, and made my way down to the salle-d-manger. The dinner was good in itself, and was enlivened for me by the presence of an extremely pretty girl of, say nineteen, who sat just opposite, and whose natural protector I soon managed to draw casually into a general conversation. I say her natural protector, because, though I took him at the time for her father, I discovered afterwards that he was really her uncle. Experience has taught me that when you sit opposite a pretty girl at an hotel, you ought not to open fire by directing your observations to herself in person ; you should begin diplomatically by gaining the confidence of her male relations through the wisdom or the orthodoxy of your political and social opinions. -Mr. Shackleford — that, I found afterwards, was the uncle's name — happened to be a fiery Tory, while I have the personal misfortune to be an equally rabid Radical : but 118 MY UNCLE'S WILL. on this occaHion I successfully dissembled, acquiescing with vague generality in his denunciation of my dearest private convictions ; and by the end of dinner we had struck up quite an acquaintance with one another. *' Ruby," said the aunt to the pretty girl, as soon as dinner was over, "shall we take a stroll out in the gardens ? " Ruby ! what a charming name really. I wonder, now, what is her surname ? And what a beautiful graceful figure, as she rises from the table, and throws her little pale blue Indian silk scarf around her pretty shoulders ! Clearly, Ruby is a person whose acquaintance I ought to cultivate. "Uncle won't come, of course," said Ruby, with a pleasant smile (what teeth !). " The evening air would be too much for him." You know," she added, looking across to me, "almost everybody at Cannes is in the invalid line, and mustn't stir out after sunset. Aunt and I are unfashionable enough to be quite strong, and to go in for a stroll by moonlight." "1 happen to be equally out of the Cannes fashion," I said, directing my observation, with great strategic skill, rather to the aunt than to Miss Ruby in person ; " and if you will allow me I should be very glad to accompany you." So we turned out on the terrace of the Paradis, and walked among the date-palms and prickly pears that fill the pretty tropical garden. It was a lovely moonlight evening in October ; and October is still almost a summer month in the Riviera. The feathery branches of the palms stood out in clear-cut outline against the pale moon- lit sky; the white houses of Cannes gleamed with that peculiarly soft greenish Mediterranean tint in the middle distance ; and the sea reflected the tremulous shimmer in the background, between the jagged sierra of the craggy Esterel and the long low outline of the He Ste. MY UNCLE'S WILL. 119 Marguerite. Altogether, it was an ideal poet's evening, the very evening to stroll for the first time with a beau- tiful girl through the charmed alleys of a Proven9al garden ! Ruby Estcourt — she gave me her name before long — was quite as pleasant to talk to as she was beautiful and graceful to behold. Fortunately, her aunt was not one of the race of talkative old ladies, and she left the mass of the conversation entirely to Ruby and myself. In the course of half an hour or so spent in pacing up and down that lovely terrace, I had picked out, bit by bit, all that I most wanted to know about Ruby Estcourt. She was an orphan, without brothers or sisters, and evidently without any large share of this world's goods ; and she lived with her aunt and uncle, who were childless people, and who usually spent the summer in Switzerland, retiring to the Riviera every winter for the benefit of Mr. Shackle- ford's remaining lung. Quite simple and nnaffected Ruby seemed, though she had passed most of her lifetime in the too-knowing atmosphere of Continental hotels, among that cosmopolitan public which is so very sharp-sighted that it fancies it can see entirely through such arrant humbug as honour in men and maidenly reserve in women. Still, from that world Ruby Estcourt had somehow managed to keep herself quite unspotted ; and a simpler, prettier, more natural little fairy you. wouldn't find any- where in the English villages of half a dozen counties. It was all so fresh and delightful to me — the palms, the Mediterranean, the balmy evening air, the gleaming white town, and pretty Ruby Estcourt — that I walked up and down on the terrace as long as they would let me ; and I was really sorry when good Mrs. Shackleford at last suggested that it was surely getting time for uncle's game of cribbage. As they turned to go. Ruby said good evening, and then, hesitating for a moment as to my name, said quite simply and naturally, " Why, you haven't yet told us who you are, have you ? *' 120 MY UNCLE'S WILL. I coloured a little — happily inviniblc by moonlight — as I an8\veroii, " That was an oniiHsion on my part, cer- tainly. When you told me you were Miss Esteourt, 1 ought to have mentioned in return that my own name was Aikin-Payno, Theodore Aikin-Payne, if you pleaHe: may 1 j^ive you a card ? " " Aching Pain ! " Ruby Raid, with a smile. " Did T hoar you right ? Aching Pain, iw it r* Oh, what a very funny name ! " I drew myself up as stiffly as T was able. " Not Aching Pain." I said, with a doleful misgiving in my heart — it was clear everybody would put that odd misinterpretation upon it for the rest of my days. " Not Aching Pain, but Aikin-Payne, Miss Estcourt. A-i-k-i-n, Aikin, the Aikins of Staffordshire; P-a-y-n-e, Payne, the Paynes of Surrey. My original surname was Payne, a surname that I venture to say I*m a little proud of ; but my uncle, Mr. Aikin, from whom I inherit property," I thought that was rather a good way of putting it, " wished mo to adopt his family name in addition to my own — in fact, made it a condition, sine qua non, of my receiving the property." ^ " Payne — Aikin," Ruby said, turning the* names over to herself slowly. "Ah, yes, I see. Excuse ray misap- prehension, Mr. — Mr. Aikin-Payne. It was very foolish of me; but really, you know, it does sound so very ludicrous, doesn't it now ? " • , a I bit my lip, and tried to smile back again. Absurd that a man should be made miserable about such a trifle ; and yet I will freely confess that at that moment, in spite of my uncle's twelve hundred a year, I felt utterly wretched. I bowed to pretty little Ruby as well as I was able, and took a couple more turns by myself hurriedly around the terrace. Was it only fancy, or did I really detect, as Ruby Estcourt said the two names over to herself just now, that she seemed to find the combination a familiar one ? %K MY UNCLE'S WILL. lit T really didn't feel sure about it; but it certainly did sound a8 if she had onco known nomcthing about the Paynes or the Aiitins. Ah, well ! there are lotHof Payneg and Aikins in the world, no doubt ; but alas ! there is only one of them doomed to go tlirough life with the absurd label of an Aikin- Payne fastened upon his unwilling shoulders. III. •' Good morning, Mr. — Mr. Aikin-Payne," said Ruby Estcourt, stumbling timidly over tlio name, as we met in the salle-h-manger at breakfast next day. " 1 hope you don't feel any the worse for the chilly air last evening." I bowed slightly. " You seem to have some difficulty in remembering my full name, Miss Estcourt," I said suggestively. " Suppose you call me simply Mr. Payne. I've been accustomed to it till quite lately, and to tell yon the truth, I don't altogether relish tlie new addition." " I should think not, indeed," Ruby answered frankly. " I never heard such a ridiculous combination in all my life before. I'm sure your uncle must have been a poi-fect old bear to impose it upon you." " It was certainly rather cruel of him," I replied, as carelessly as I could, " or at least rather thoughtless. I dare say, though, the absurdity of the two names put together never struck him. What are you going to do with yourselves to-day, Mr. Shackleford ? Everybody at Cann(;s has nothing to do but to amuse themselves, I suppose ? " Mr. Shackleford answered that they were going to drive over in the morning to Vallauiis, and that if I cared to share a carriage with them, he would be happy to let me accompany his party. Nothing could have suited my book better. I was alone, I wanted society and amuse- ment, and I had never seen a prettier girl than Ruby 122 Ifr UNCLE'S WILL. Estcoart. Here was the very thing I needed, ready cut out to my hand by propitious fortune. I found out as time went on that Mr. Shackleford, being a person of limited income, and a bad walker, had only one desire in life, which was to get somebody else to pay half his carriage fares for him by arrangement. We went to a great many places together, and he always divided the expenses equally between us, although I ought only to have paid a quarter, as his party consisted of three people, while I was one solitary bachelor. This apparent anomaly he got over on the ingenious ground that if I had taken a carriage by myself it would have cost me just twice as much.. However, as I was already decidedly anxious for pretty little Ruby Estcourt's society, this question of financial detail did not weigh heavily upon me. Besides, a man who has just come into twelve hundred a year can afford to be generous in the matter of hackney carriages. We had a delightful drive along the shore of that beau- tiful blue gulf to Vallauris, and another delightful drive back again over the hills to the Paradis. True, old Mr. Shackleford proved rather a bore through his anxiety to instruct me in the history and technical nature of keramio ware in general, and of the Vallauris pottery in particular, when I wanted rather to be admiring the glimpses of Bordighera and the Cap St. Martin and the snow-clad summits of the Maritime Alps with Kuby Estcourt. But in spite of all drawbacks — and old Mr, Shackleford with his universal information really was a serious drawback — I thoroughly enjoyed that first morning by the lovely Mediterranean. Ruby herself was absolutely charming. Such a light, bright, fairy-like little person, moving among the priceless vases and tazzas at Clement Massier's as if s^ic were an embodied zephyr, too gentle even to knock them over with a whiff of her little Rampoor shawl — but there, I can't describe her, and I won't attempt it. Ruby, looking over my shoulder at this moment, says I MY UNCLE'S WILL, 123 always was an old stupid : so that, you see, closes the question. An old stupid I certainly was for tlie next fortnight. Old Mr. Shackleford, only too glad to have got hold of a willing victim in the carriage-sharing fraud, dragged me about the country to every available point of view or object of curiosity within ten miles of the Square Brougham. Ruby nsually accompanied us; and as the two old people naturally occupied the seat of honour at the back of the carriage, why, of course Ruby and I had to sit together with our backs to the horses — a mode of pro- gression which I had never before known to be so agree- able. Every evening. Ruby and I walked out on the terrace in the moonlight ; and I need hardly say that the moon, in spite of her pretended coldness, is really the most romantic and sentimental satellite in the whole solar system. To cut a long story short, by the end of the fortnight I was very distinctly in love with Ruby; and if you won't think the avowal a conceited one, I venture to judge by the sequel that Ruby was almost equally in love with me. One afternoon, towards the close of my second week at Cannes, Ruby and I were sitting together on the retired seat in the grounds beside the pond with the gold- fish. It was a delicious sunny afternoon, with the last touch of southern summer in the air, and Ruby was looking even prettier than usual, in her brocade pattern print dress, and her little straw hat with the scarlet poppies. (Ruby always dressed — I may say dresses — in the very simplest yet most charming fashion). There was something in the time and place that moved me to make a confession I had for some time be'en meditating ; so I looked straight in her face, and not being given to long speeches, I said to her just this, "Ruby, you are th© sweetest girl I ever saw in my life. Will you marry me?" .v'^-. .:.,:• ^.'-. 124 MY UNCLE'S WILL. Ruby only looked at me with a face fall of merriment, and burst out laughing. "Why, Mr. Payne," she said (she had dropped that hideous prefix long ago), "you've hardly known me yet a fortnight, and here you come to me with a regular declaration. How can I have had time to think about my answer to such a point-blank question ? " " If you like. Ruby," I answered, " we can leave it open for a little ; but it occurs to me you might as well say ' yes ' at once : for if we leave it open, common sense teaches me that you probably mean to say yes in the long- run." And to clench the matter outright, I thought it best to stoop across and kiss Ruby just once, by way of earnest. Ruby took the kiss calmly and sedately; so then I knew the matter was practically settled. "But there's one thing, Mr. Payne, I must really insist upon," Ruby said very quietly; "and that is that I mustn't be called Mrs. Aikin- Payne. If I marry you at all, I must marry you as plain Mr. Payne without any Aikin. So that's clearly understood between us." Here was a terrible condition indeed ! I reasoned with Ruby, I explained to Ruby, I told Ruby that if she posi- tively insisted upon it I must go back to my three hundred a year and my paltry schoolmastership, and must give up my uncle Aikin's money. Ruby would hear of no refusal. • "You have always the alternative of marrying some- body else, you know, Mr. Payne," she said with her most provoking and bewitching smile ; " but if you really do want to marry me, you know the conditions." • ^^^ "But, Ruby, you would never care to live upon a miserable pittance of three hundred a year ! I hate the name as much as you do, but I think I should try to bear it for the sake of twelve hundred a year and perfect comfort." . , . ; ■ i'i;ji!X^ . No, Ruby was inexorable. " Take me or leave me," she said with provoking calmness, " but if you take me, MY UNCLE'S WILL, HI give np your nncle's ridiculous suggestion. You can have three days to make your mind up. Till then, let us hear no more about the subject." IV. During those three days I kept up a brisk fire of tele- grams with old Blenkinsopp in Chancery Lane; and at the end of them I came mournfully to the conclusion that I must either give up Ruby or give up the twelve hundred a year. If I had been a hero of romance I should have had no difficulty at all in deciding the matter: I would have nobly refused the money off-hand, counting it as mere dross compared with the loving heart of a beautiful maiden. But unfortunately I am not a hero of romance ; I am only an ordinary graduate of an English university. Under these circumstances, it did seem to me very hard that I must throw away twelve hundred a year for a mere sentimental fancy. And yet, on the other hand, not only did I hate the name myself, but I couldn't bear to impose it on Ruby ; and as to telling Ruby that I wouldn't have her, because I preferred the money, that was clearly quite impossible. The more I looked the thing in the face, the more certain it appeared that I must relinquish my dream of wealth and go back (with Ruby) to my schoolmastering and my paltry three hundred. After all, lots of other fellows marry on that sum; and to say the truth, I positively shrank myself from going through life under the ridiculous guise of an Aikin- Payne. The upshot of it all was that at the end of the three days, I took Ruby a little walk alone among the olive gardens behind the shrubbery. "Ruby," I said to her, falteringly, "you're the most fantastic, self-willed, im- perious little person I ever met with, and I want to make just one more appeal to you. Won't you reconsider your decision, and take me in spite of the surname ? " 126 3fr UNCLE'S WILL. Ruby grubbed up a little weed with the point of her parasol, and looked away from toe steadfastly as she answered with her immovable and annoying calmness, " No, Mr. Payne, I really can't reconsider the matter in any way. It was you who took three days to make your mind up. Have you made it up yet or not, pray ? " " I have made it up. Ruby." " And you mean ? " she said interrogatively, with a faint little tremor in her voice which I had never before noticed, and which thrilled through me with the ecstasy of a first discovery. "And I mean," I answered, "to marry you. Ruby, if you will condescend to take me, and let my Uncle Aikin's money go to Halifax. Can you manage. Ruby, to be happy, as a poor schoolmaster's wife in a very tiny cot- tage ? " To my joy and surprise, Ruby suddenly seized both my hands in hers, kissed me twice of her own accord, and began to cry as if nothing could stop her. " Then you do really and truly love me," she said through her tears, holding fast to my hands all the time ; " then you're really willing to make this great sacrifice for me ! " " Ruby," I said, " my darling, don't excite youAelf so. And indeed it isn't a very great sacrifice either, for I hate the name so much I hardly know whether I could ever have endured to bear it." " You shan't bear it," Ruby cried, eagerly, now laughing and clapping her hands above me. " You shan't bear it, and yet you shall have your Uncle Aikin's money all the same for all that." " Why, what on earth do you mean, Ruby ? " I asked in amazement. " Surely, my darling, you can't under- stand how strict the terms of the will actually are. I'm afraid you have been deluding yourself into a belief in some impossible compromise. But you must make your mind up to one thing at once, that unless I call myself ■^ife.V,/', MY UNCLE'8 WILL. 127 Aikin-Payne, you'll have to live the rest of your life as a poor schoolmaster's wife. The next-of-kin will be sharp enough in coming down upon the money." Ruby looked at me and laughed and clapped her hands again. " But what would you say, Mr. Payne," she said with a smile that dried up all her tears, " what would you say if you heard that the next-of-kin was — who do you think ? — why me, sir, me, Raby Estcourt ? " I could hardly believe my ears. " You, Ruby ? " I cried in my astonishment. " You ! How do you know ? Are you really sure of it ? " Ruby put a lawyer's letter into my hand, signed by a famous firm in the city. " Read that," she said simply. I read it through, and saw in a moment that what Ruby said was the plain truth of it. " So you want to do your future husband out of the twelve hundred a year ! " I said, smiling and kissing her. " No," Ruby answered, as she pressed my hand gently. " It shall be settled on you, since I know you were ready to give it up for my sake. And there shall be no more Aikin- Paynes henceforth and for ever." There was never a prettier or more blushing bride than dear little Ruby that day six weeks. >! THE TWO CARNEGIES. "Harold," said Ernest Carnegie to his twin-brother at breakfast one morning, " have you got a tooth aching slightly to-day ? " " Yes, by Jove, I have ! " Harold answered, laying down the Times^ and looking across the table with interest to his brother ; " which one was yours ? " " The third from the canine on the upper left side," Ernest replied quickly. " And yours ? " ^ • " Let me see. This is the canine, isn't it ? One, two, three; yes. The same, of course. It's really a very singular coincidence. How about the time ? Was that as usual ? " :■:■■.• „,,, ^„->,:;3; " I'll tell you in a minute. Mine came on the day of the Guthries' hop. I was down at Brighton that morning. What date? Let me think; why, the 9th, I'm certain. To-day's what, mother ? " ; ,;?i:; • " The 23rd," said Harold, glancing for confirmation at the paper. " The law works itself out once more as regularly as if by machinery. I'm just a fortnight later than you, Ernest, as always." Ernest drummed upon the table with his finger for a minute. " I'm afraid you'll have it rather badly to-day, Harold," he said, after a pause. " Mine got unbearable THE TWO CAllNEGIES. 129 towards midday, and if I hadn't had it looked to in the afternoon, I couldn't have danced a single dance to save my life that evening. I advise you to go round to the dentist's immediately, and try to get it stopped before it goes any further." Harold finished his cup of coffee, and looked out of the window blankly at the fog outside. "It's an awful thought," he said at last, " this living, as we two do, by clockwork ! Everybody else lives exactly the same way, but they don't have their attention called to it, as we do. Just to think that from the day you and I were bom, Ernest, it was written in the very fabric of our constitu- tions that when we were twenty-three years and five months old, the third molar in our upper left jaws should begin to fail us ! It's really appalling in its unanswerable physical fatalism, when ones comes to think upon it." " So I said to myself at the Guthries', the morning it began to give me a twinge," said Ernest, in the self-same tone. "It seemed to me such a terrible idea that in a fortnight's time, as certain as the sun, the very same tooth in your head would begin to go, as the one that was going in mine. It's too appalling, really." " But do you actually mean to say," asked pretty little Nellie Holt, the visitor, newly come the day before from Cheshire, " that whenever one of you gets a toothache, the other one gets a toothache in the same tooth a fort- night later ? " " Not a toothache only," Ernest answered — he was study- ing for his degree as a physician, and took this department upon himself as by right — "but every other rlisease or ailment whatsoever. We're like two clocks wr nd up to strike at fixed moments ; only, we're not wound up to strike exactly together. I'm fourteen days in advance of Harold, so to speak, and whatever happens to me to-day will happen to him, in all probability, exactly a fort- night later." 130 < THE TWO CARNEGIES. " How very extraordinary ! " said Nellie, looking quickly from one handsome clear-cut face to its exact counterpart in the other. " And yet not so extraordinary, after all, when one comes to think how very much alike you both are." -■'• " Ah, that's not all," said Ernest, slowly ; " it's some- thing that goes a good deal deeper than that. Miss Holt. Consider that every one of us is born with a certain fixed and recognizable constitution, which we inherit from our fathers and mothers. In us, from our birth upward, are the seeds of certain diseases, the possibilities of certain actions and achievements. One man is born with herdi- tary consumption ; another man with hereditary scrofula ; a third with hereditary genius or hereditary drunkenness, each equally innate in the very threads and strands of his system. And it's all bound to come out, sooner or later, in its own due and appointed time. Here's a fellow whose father had gout at forty : he's born with such a constitution that, as the hands on his life-dial reach forty, out comes the gout in his feet, wherever he may be, as certain as fate. It's horrible to think of, but it's the truth, and there's no good in disguising it." Nellie Holt shuddered slightly. "What a dreadful materialistic creed, Mr. Carnegie," she said, looking at him with a half-frightened air. "It's almost as bad as Mohammedan fatalism." " No, not so bad as that," Ernest Carnegie answered ; " not nearly so bad as that. The Oriental belief holds that powers above you compel your life against your will : we modern scientific thinkers only hold that your own inborn constitution determines your whole life for you, will included. But whether we like it or dislike it. Miss Holt, there are the facts, and nobody can deny them. If you'd lived with a twin-sister, as Harold and I have lived together for twenty-three years, you'd see that the clocks go as they are set, with fixed and predestined regularity. •* THE TWO CARNEQIE8. 131 Twins, you know, are almost exactly alike in all things, and in the absolute coincidence of their constitutions you can see the inexorable march of disease, and the inexor- able unfolding of the predetermined life-history far better than in any other conceivable case. I'm a scientific man myself, you see, and I have such an opportunity of watch- ing it all as no other man ever yet had before me." " My dear," said Mrs. Carnegie, the mother, from the head of the table, " you've no idea how curiously their two lives have always resembled one other. When they were babies, they were so much alike that we had to tie red and blue ribbons round their necks to distinguish them. Ernest was red and Harold blue — no, Ernest was blue and Harold red : at least, I'm not quite certain which way it was, but I know we have a note of it in the family Bible, for Mr. Carnegie made it at the time for fear we should get confused between them when we were bathing them. So we put the ribbons on the moment they were christened, and never took them both off together for a second, even to bathe them, so as to prevent accidents. Well^ do you know, dear, from the time they were babies, they were always alike in everything; but Ernest was always a fortnight before Harold. He said " Mamma " one day, and just a fortnight later Harold said the very same word. Then Ernest said " sugar," and so did Harold in another fortnight. Ernest began to toddle a fort- night the earliest. They took the whooping cough and the measles in the same order ; and they cut all their teeth so, too, the same teeth first on each side, and just at a fortnight's distance from one another. It's really quite an extraordinary coincidence." " The real difficulty would be," said Harold, " to find anything in which we didn't exactly resemble one another. Well, now I must be off to this horrid office with the Pater. Are you ready, Pater ? I'll call in at Estwood's in the course of the morning, Ernest, and tell Iiim to look 132 THE TWO CAIINEGIES. after my teeth. I don't want to miss the Balfours' partj' this evening. Curious that we should be going to a party this evening too. That isn't fated in our constitutions, anyhow, is it, Ernest ? Good morning. Miss Holt ; the first waltz, remember. Come along, Pater." And he went out, followed immediately by his father. " T must be going too," said Ernest, looking at hia watch ; " I have an appointment with Dowson at Guy's at half-past ten — a very interesting case: hereditary cataract ; three brothers, all of them get it, each as he reaches twelve years old, and Dowson has performed the operation on two, and is going to perform it on the other this very day. Good morning. Miss Holt; the second waltz for me ; you won't forget, will you ? " • i ir;^ " How awfully alike they really are, Mrs. Carnegie," said Nellie, as they were left alone. " I'm sure I shall never be able to tell them apart. I don't even know their names yet. The one that has just gone out, the one that's going to be a doctor — that's Mr. Harold, isn't it ? " -m .i\ i " Oh no, dear," Mrs. Carnegie answered, putting her arm round Nellie's waist affectionately, " that's Ernest, Harold's the lawyer. You'll soon learn the difference between them. You can tell Ernest easily, because he usually wears a horrid thing for a scarf-pin, an ivory skull and cross-bones : he wears it, he says, just to distinguish him professionally from Harold. Indeed, that was partly why Mr. Carnegie was so anxious that Harold should go into his own office ; so as to make a distinction of profession between them. If Harold had followed his own bent, he would have been a doctor too ; they're both full of what they call physiological ideas — dreadful things, I think them. But Mr. Carnegie thought as they were so very much alike already we ought to do something to give them some individuality, as he says : for if they were both to be doctors or both solicitors, you know, there'd really be no knowing them apart, even for ourselves; and I assure THE TWO CARNEQIES. 133 yon, my dear, as it is now even they're exactly like one person." " Are they as alike in character, then, as they are in face ? " asked Nellie. " Alike in character ! My dear, they're absolutely identical. Whatever the one thinks, or says, or does, the other thinks, says, and does at the same time, indtv pendently. Why, once Ernest went over to Paris for a week's holiday, while Harold went on some law business of his father's to Brussels. Would you believe it, when they came back they'd each got a present for the other. Ernest had seen a particular Indian silver cigar-case in a shop on the Boulevards, and he brought it home as a surprise for Harold. Well, Harold had bought an exactly similar one in the Montague de la Cour, and brought it home as a surprise for Ernest. And what was odder still, each of them had had the other's initials engraved upon the back in some sort of heathenish Oriental characters " w" How very queer," said Nellie. " And yet they seem very fond of one another. As a rule, one's always told that people who are exactly alike in character somehow don't get on together." " My dear child, they're absolutely inseparable. Their devotion to one another's quite unlimited. You see they've been brought up together, played together, sympathized with one another in all their troubles and ailments, and are sure of a response from each other about everything. It was the greatest trouble of their lives when Mr. Car- negie decided that Harold must become a solicitor for the sake of the practice. They couldn't bear at first to be separated all day ; and when they got home in the evening, Ernest from the hospital and Harold from the office, they met almost like a pair of lovers. They've talked together about their work so much that Harold knows almost as much medicine now as Ernest, while Ernest's quite at 134 TUE TWO CARSEOIES. home, his father declares, in * Benjamin on Sales,' and ' Chitty on Contract.' It's quite delightful to see how fond they are of one another." At five o'clock Ernest Carnegie returned from his hospital. He brought two little bunches of flowers with him — some lilies of the valley and a carnation — and he handed them with a smile, one to his sister and one to pretty little Nellie. " I thought you'd like them for this evening, Miss Holt," he said. "I chose a carnation on purpose, because I fancied it would suit your hair." " Oh, Ernest," said his sister, " you ought to have got a red camelia. That's the proper thing for a brunette like Nellie." " Nonsense, Edie," Ernest answered, " I hate camelias. Ugliest flowers out : so stiff and artificial. One might as well wear a starchy gauze thing from the milliner's." " I'm so glad you brought Nellie Holt a flower. She's a sweet girl, Ernest, isn't she?" said Mrs. Carnegie a minute or two later, as Edie and Nelly ran upstairs. " I wish either of you two boys could take a fancy to a nice girl like her, now." " My dear mother," Ernest answered, turning up his eyes appealingly. " A little empty-headed, pink-and- white thing like that ! I don't know what Harold thinks, but she'd never do for me, at any rate. Very pretty to look at, very timid to talk to, very nice and shrinking, and all that kind of thing, I grant you; but nothing in her. Whenever I marry, I shall marry a real live woman, not a dainty piece of delicate empty drapery." At six o'clock, Mr. Carnegie and Harold came in from the oflBce. Harold carried in his hand two little button- hole bouquets, of a few white lilies and a carnation. " Miss Holt," he said, as he entered the drawing-room, "I've brought you and Edie a flower to wear at the Balfours' this evening. This is for you, Edie, with the pale pink ; the dark will suit Miss Holt's hair best." '« THE TWO CARNEGIES. 135 Edie looked at Ernest, and smiled significantly. " Why didn't you get us camelias, Harold ? " she asked, with a faint touch of mischief in her tone. *' Camelias ! My dear girl, what a question ! I gave Miss Holt credit for better taste than liking camelias. Beastly things, as stiff and conventional as (fahlias or sun- flowers. You might just as well have a wax rose from an artificial flower-maker while you are about it." Edie laughed and looked at Nellie. *' See here," she said, taking up Ernest's bunches from the little specimen vases where she had put them to keep them fresh in water, " somebody else has thought of the flowers already." Harold laughed, too, a little uneasily. " Aha," ho said, " I see Ernest has been beforehand with me as usual. I'm always a day too late. It seems to me I'm the Esau of this duet, and Ernest's the Jacob. Well, Miss Holt, you must take the will for the deed ; and after all, one will do for your dress and the other for your hair, won't they ? " " Harold," said his father, as they went upstairs together to dress for dinner, " Nellie Holt'a a very nice girl, and I've reason to believe — you know I uon't jadge these matters without documentary evidence — I have reason to believe that she'll come into the greater part of old Stanley Holt's money. She's his favourite niece, and she benefits largely, as I happen to know, under his will. Verhum sap.f my dear boy; she's a pretty girl, and has sweet manners. In my opinion, she'd make " " My dear Pater," Harold exclaimed, interrupting him, " for Heaven's sake don't say so. Pretty enough, I grant vou ; and no doubt old Stanley Holt's money would be a very nice thing in its way ; but just seriously consider now, if you were a young man yourself, what on earth could you see in Nellie Holt to attract your love or admi- ration ? Why, she shrinks and blushes every time she speaks to you. No, no, whenever I marry I should like to marry a girl of some presence and some character." 136 THE TWO CAItNEGIES. " Well, well," said his father, pausing a second at his bedroom door, "perhaps if she don't suit you, Harold, she'll suit Ernest." " I should have thought, Pater, you knew us two better than that by this time." "But, my dear Harold, you can't both marry the same woman ! " " No, we can't, Pater, but it's my opinion we shall both fall unanimously in love with her, at any rate, whenever we happen to see her." II. The Balfours were very rich people — city people; "some- thing in the stockbroking or bankruptcy line, I believe," Ernest Carnegie told Nelly Holt succinctly as they drove round in the brougham with his sister ; and their dance was of the finest modern moneyed fashion. " Positively reeks with Peruvian bonds and Deferred Egyptians, doesn't it ? " said Harold, as they went up the big open staircase and through the choice exotic flowers on the landing. " Old Balfour has so much money, they say, that if he tries his hardest he can't spend his day's income in the twenty-four hours. He had a good hard try at it once. Prince of Wales or somebody caaie to a concert for some sort of public purpose — hospit^i,!, or something — and old B. got the whole thing up on the tallest possible scale of expenditure. Spent a week in pr-^paration. Had in dozens of powdered footmen ; ordered palms and orange- trees in boxes from Nice ; hung electric lights all over the drawing-room ; offered Pattalini and Goldoni three times as much for their services as the total receipts for the charity were worth ; and at the end of it all he called in a crack accountant to reckon up the cost of the entertain- ment. Well, he found, with all his efforts, he'd positively lived fifty pounds within his week's income. Extra- ordinary, isn't it ? " ' ,,Hh«^i THE TWO CARNEGIES. 137 " Very extraordinary indeed," said Nellie, " if it's quite true, you know." " You owe me the first waltz," Harold said, without noticing the reservation. "Don't forget it, please. Miss Holt." " I say, Balfour," Ernest Carnegie observed to the son of the house, shortly after they had entered the ballroom, "who's that beautiful tall dark girl over there? No, not the pink one, that other girl behind her in the deep red satin." " She ? oh, she's nothing in particular," Harry Balfour answered carelessly (the girl in .pink was worth eighty thousand, and her figure cast into the shade all her neigh- boars in Harry Balfour's arithmetical eyes). " Her name's Walters, Isabel Walters, daughter of a lawyer fellow — no offence meant to your profession, Carnegie. Let me see : you are the lawyer, aren't you ? No knowing you two fellows apart, you know, especially when you've got white ties on." . •:,;; v^ " No, I'm not the lawyer fellow," Ernest answered quietly ; " I'm the doctor fellow. But it doesn't at ail matter; we're used to it. Would you mind introducing me to Miss Walters ? " " Certainly not. Come along. I believe she's a very nice girl in her way, you know, and dances capitally ; but not exactly in our set, you see ; not exactly in our set." "I should have guessed as much to look at her," Ernest answered, with a faint undertone of sarcasm in his voice that was quite thrown away upon Harry Balfour. And he walked across the room after bis host to ask Isabel Walters for the first waltz. " Tall," he thought to himself as he looked at her : " dark, fine face, beautiful figare, large eyes ; makes her own dresses ; strange sort of person to meet at the Balfours' 'dances." • ■ Isabel Walters danced admirably. Isabel Walters talked 138 THE TWO CARNEGIES. cleverly. Isabel Walters had a character and an indi- viduality of her own. In five minutes she had told Ernest Carnegie that she was the Poor Relation, and in that quality she was asked once yearly to one of the Balfours' Less Distinguished dances. "This is a Less Distin- guished," she said quickly; "but I suppose you go to the More Distinguished too ? " " On the contrary," Ernest answered, laughing ; "though I didn't know the nature of the difFerence before, I've no doubt that I have to thank the fact of my being Less Distinguished myself for the pleasure of meeting you here this evening." Isabel smiled quietly. " It's a family distinction only," she said. " Of course the Balfours wouldn't like the people they ask to know it. But we always notice the difEerence ourselves. My mother, you know, was the first Mrs. Balfour's half-sister. But in those days, I need hardly tell you, Mr. Balfour hadn't begun to do great things in Grand Trunk Preferences. Do you know any- thing about Grand Trunk Preferences ? " ■ -^^ " Absolutely nothing," Ernest replied. " But, to come down to a more practical question : Are you engaged for the next Lancers ? " " A square dance. Oh, why a square dance ? I hate square dances." " I like them," said Ernest. " You can talk better." " And yet you waltz capitally. As a rule, I notice the men who like square dances are the sticks who can't waltz without upsetting one. No, I'm not engaged for the next Lancers. Yes, with pleasure." Ernest went off to claim little Nellie Holt from his brother. " By Jove, Ernest," Harold said, as he met him again a little later in the evening, " that's a lovely girl you were dancing with just now. Who is she ? " -f: "^^^^^ ' " A Miss Walters," Ernest answered drily. ' 'ff ^iil THE TWO CARNEGIE8. 18ft " I'll go and get introduced to her," Harold went on, looking at his brother with a searching glance. *' She's the finest girl in the room, and I should like to dance with her." " You think so ? " said Ernest. And he turned away a little coldly to join a group of loungers by the doorway. " This is not our Lancers yet, Mr. Carnegie," Isabel said, as Harold stalked up to her with her cousin by his side. " Ours is number seven." " I'm not the same Mr. Carnegie," Harold said, smiling, " though I see I need no introduction now. I'm number seven's brother, and I've come to ask whether I may have the pleasure of dancing number six with you." Isabel looked up at him in doubt. " You are joking, surely," she said. " You danced with me just now, the first waltz." jT " You see my brother over by the door," Harold an- swered. " But we're quite accustomed to be taken for one another. Pray don't apologize; we're used to it." Before the end of the evening Isabel Walters had danced three times with Ernest Carnegie, and twice with Harold. Before the end of the evening, too, Ernest and Harold were both at once deeply in love with her. She was not perhaps what most men would call a lovable girl ; but she was handsome, clever, dashing, and decidedly original. Now, to both the Carnegies alike, there was no quality in a woman so admirable as individuality. Perhaps it was their own absolute identity of tastes and emotions that made them prize the possession of a distinct personality by others so highly ; but in any case, there was no denying the fact that they were both head over ears in love with Isabel Walters. „ " She's a splendid girl, Edie," said Harold, as he went down with his sister to the cab in which he was to take her home ; " a splendid girl ; just the sort of girl I should like to marry." ;. :,. HO THE TWO CARNEGIES. " Not so nice by half as Nellie Holt," said Edie simply. " But there, brothers never do marry the girls their sisters want them to." " Very unreasonable of the brothers, no doubt," Harold replied, with a slight curl of his lip : *' but possibly expli- cable upon the ground that a man prefers choosing a wife who'll suit himself to choosing one who'll suit his sisters." "Mother," said Ernest, as he took her down to the brougham, with little Nellie Holt on his other arm, "that's a splendid girl, that Isabel Walters. I haven't met such a nice girl as that for a long time." " I know a great many nicer," his mother answered, glancing half unconsciously towards Nellie, " but bojs never do marry as their parents would wish them." " They do not, mother dear," said Ernest quietly. " It's a strange fact, but I dare say it's partly dependent upon the general principle that a man is more anxious to live happily with his own wife than to provide a model daughter-in-law for his father and mother." Mtr> " Isabel," Mrs. Walters said to her daughter, as they took their seats in the cab that was waiting for them at the door, " what on earth did you mean by dancing five times in one evening with that young man with the light moustache ? And who on earth is he, tell me ? " " He's two people, mamma," Isabel answered seriously ; " and I danced three times with one of him, and twice with the other, I believe ; at least so he told me. His name's Carnegie, and half of him's called Ernest and the other half Harold, though which I danced with which time I'm sure I can't tell you. He's a pair of twins, in fact, one a doctor and one a lawyer ; and he talks just the same sort of talk in either case, and is an extremely nice young man altogether. I really like him immensely." ^ " Carnegie ! " said Mrs. Walters, turning the name over carefully. " Two young Carnegies ! How very remark- able ! I remember somebody was speaking to me about •s> THE TWO CARNEGIES. 141 them, and saying they were absolutely indistinguishable. Not sons of Mr. Carnegie, your uncle's solicitor, are tbev ? " " Yes ; so Harry Balfour told me." " Then, Isabel, they're very well off, I understand. I hope people won't think you danced five times in the even- ing with only one of them. They ought to wear some distinctive coat or something to prevent misapprehensions. Which do you like best, the lawyer or the doctor ? " " I like them both exactly the same, mamma. There isn't any difference at all between them, to like one of them better than the other for. They both seem very pleasant and very clever. And as I haven't yet discovered which is which, and didn't know from one time to an- other which I was dancing with, I can't possibly tell you which I prefer of two identicals. And as to coats, mamma, you know you couldn't expect one of them to wear a grey tweed suit in a ballroom, just to show he isn't the other one. In the passage at the Carn^gies', Ernest and Harold stopped one moment, candle in hand, to compare notes with one another before turning into their bedrooms. There was an odd constraint about their manner to each other that they had never felt before during their twenty- three years of life together. " Well ? " said Ernest, inquiringly, looking in a hesitat- ing way at his brother. "Well ? " Harold echoed, in the same tone. : . " What did you think of it all, Harold ? " " I think, Ernest, I shall propose to Miss Walters." There was a moment's silence, and a black look gathered slowly on Ernest Carnegie's brow. Then he said very (lelibeirately, " You are in a great hurry coming to conclu- sions, Harold. You've seen very little of her yet ; and remember, it was I who first discovered her ! " Harold glanced at him angrily and half contemptaously. I# THE TWO CARNEGIES. " You discovered her first ! " he said. " Yes, and you are always beforehand with me ; but you shall not be before- hand with me this time. I shall propose to her at once, to prevent your anticipating me. So now you know my intentions plainly, and you can govern yourself accord- ingly." Ernest looked back at him with a long look from head to foot. " It is war then," he said, " Harold ; Avar, you will have it ? We are rivals ? " " Yes, rivals," Harold answered ; " and war to the knife if so you wish it." "War?" "War!" ' % " Good night, Harold." . ,,Jtk.- • *^ Good night, Ernest." "^w -:)ir»3 ■ And they turHted in to thA* bedrooms, in anger with one another, for 0l& first time since they had quarrelled in boyish fashion ovet tops and marbles years ago together. III. * J- Zi'-t 'f That night the two Carnegies slept very little. They were both in love, very seriously in love ; and anybody who has ever been in the same condition must have noticed that the symptoms, which may have been very moderate or undecided during the course of the evening, become rapidly more pronounced and violent as you lie awake in the solitude of your chaiiibera^hroagh the night watches. But more than that, they h^ both begun to feel simul- taneously the stab of jealouwp. Each of them had been very much taken indeed |iy Isabel Walters ; still, if they had seen no chance df -e rival looming in the distance."^ lit' C3 7 they might have been content to wait a little, to see a little' more of her, to make quite sure of their ownif** affection before plunging headlong into a declaration. THE TWO CAItNEGIES. 143 After all, it's very absurd to ask a girl to be your com- panion for life on the strength of an acquaintanceship which has extended over the time occupied by three dances in a single evening. But then, thought each, there was the chance of Ernest's proposing to her, or of Harold's proposing to her, before I do. That idea made precipitancy positively imperative ; and by the next morn- ing each of the young men had fully made up his mind to take the first opportunity of asking Isabella Walters to be his wife. Breakfast passed off very silently, neither of the twins speaking much to one another ; but nobody noticed their reticence much ; for the morning after the occasional orgy oi^ance is apt to prove a very limp affair indeed in pro- fessional homes, wbji^ dances are not of nightly occur- rence. After breal^rat, Harold went off quickly to the office, and Ernest, having bespoken a* holiday at the hospital, joined his sister and Nellie Holfc4n the library. " Do you know, Ernest," Edie said to liim, mindful of her last night's conversation with her other brother, " I really believe Harold has fallen desperately in love at first sight with that tall Miss Walters." " I can easily believe it," Ernest answered testily ; " she's very handsome and very clever." Edie raised her eyebrows a little. "But it's awfully foolish, Ernest, to fall in love blindfold in that way, isn't it now ? " she said, with a searching look at her brother " He can't possibly know what, sort of a girl she really is from half an hour's conversatii^ ift a ballroom." " For my part, I don't at a^agree with you, Edie," said Ernest, in his coldest manner.^ " I don't believe there's any •right way of falling in love exqept at first sight. H a girl is going to please you, she oug^t to please you instan- taneously and instinctively ; at least, so I think. It isn't a thing to be thought about and reasoned about, but a thing to be felt and apprehended mtuitively. I couldn't 4^ & 144 THE TWO CARNEGIES. reason myself into marrying a girl, and what's more, I don't want to." He sat down to the table, took out a sheet or two oE initialed notepaper, and began writing a couple of letters. One of them, which he marked " Private " in the corner, ran as follows : — "Mv DEAR Miss Walters, " Perhaps you will think it very odd of me to venture upon writing to you on the strength of such a very brief and casual acquaintance as that begun last night ; but I have a particular reason for doing so, which I think I can justify to you when I see you. You mentioned to me that you were &,sked to the Montagus' steam-launch expedition up the river from Surbiton to-morrow; but 1 understood you to say you did not intend to accept the invitation. I write now to beg of you to be there, as I am going, and I am particularly anxious to meet you and have a little conversation with you on a subject of importance. I know you are not a very conventional person, and therefore I think you will excuse me for asking this favour of you. Please don't take the trouble to write in reply ; but answer by going to the Montagus', and I shall then be able to explain this very queer letter. In haste, " Yours very truly, "Ernest Carnegie." He read this note two or three times over to himself, looking not very well satisfied with its contents ; and then at last, with the air of a man who determines to plunge and stake all upon a single venture, he folded it up and put it in its envelope. " It'll mystify her a little, no doubt," he thought to himself; "and being a woman, she'll be naturally anxious to unravel the mystery. But of course she'll know I mean to make her an offer, and k;^' - ;■■-/ ■,■■ *'; THE TWO CARNEGIES. 145 perhaps she'll think me a perfect idiot for not doing it outright, instead of beating about the bush in this incom- prehensible fashion. However, it's too cold-blooded, pro- posing to a girl on paper ; I verj much prefer the vivd voce system. It's only till to-morrow ; and I doubt if Harold will manage to be beforehand with me in that time. He'll be deep in business all morning, and have no leisure to think about her. A-nyhow, all's fair in lov and war; he said it should be war; and I'll try to steal a march upon him, for all his lawyer's quibbles and quiddits." He took another sheet from his blotting-book, and wrote a second note, much more rapidly than the first one. It ran after this fashion — " Dear Mrs. Montagu, — " Will you think it very rude of me if I ask you to let me be one of your party on your expedition up the river to-morrow ? I heard of it from your son Algernon last night at the Balfours', and I happen to be very anxious to meet one of the ladies you have invited. Now, I know you're kindness itself to all your young friends in all these little matters, and I^ sure you won't be angry with me for so coolly inviting myself. If I hadn't felt perfect confidence in your invariable goodness, I wouldn't have ventured to do so. Please don't answer unless you've no room for me, but expect me to turn up at half-past two. " Yours very sincerely, ' - - ■ ' " Ernest Carnegie. - "P.S. — We might call at Lady Portlebury's lawn, and look over the conservatories." * ' " Now, that's bold, but judicious," Ernest said to him- self, admiringly, as he held the letter at arm's-length, after blotting it. " She might have been angry at my inviting myself, though I don't think she would he; but I'm sure L 14G THE TWO CARNEGIES. sho'll be only too delighted if I offer to take her guests over Aunt Portlebury's conservatories. The postscript's a stroke of genius. What a fuss these people will make, even over the widow of a stupid old cavalry officer, because her husband happens to have been knighted. It's all the better that she's a widow, indeed. The delicious vague- ness of the title ' Lady ' is certainly one of its chief recommendations. Sir Antony being out of the way, Mrs. Montagu's guests can't really tell but that poor dear old Aunt Portlebury may be a real live Countess." And he folded his second letter up with the full satisfaction of an approving conscience. When Isabel Walters received Ernest Carnegie's mys- terious note, she was certainly mystified by it as he had expected, and also not a little gratified. He meant to propose to her, that was certain ; and there was never a woman in the whole world who was not flattered by a handsome young man's marked attentions. It was a very queer letter, no doubt; but it had been written skilfully enough to suit the particular personality of Isabel Walters : for Ernest Carnegie was a keen judge of character, and he flattered himself that he knew how to adapt his corre- spondence to the particular temperament of the persons he happened to be addressing. And though Isabel had no very distinct idea of what the two Caruegies were seve- rally like (it could hardly have been much more distinct if she had known thera. both intimately), she felt they were two very good-looking, agreeable young men, and she was nob particularly averse to the attentions of either. After all, upon what straws we all usually hang our love- making ! We see one another once or twice under excep- tionally deceptive circumstances ; we are struck at first sight with something that attracts us on either side ; we find the attraction is mutual ; we flounder at once into a declaration of undying attachment ; we get married, and on the whole we generally find we were right after all, in THE TWO CARXEGIES. 147 spite of oar precipitancy, and we live happily ever after- wards. So it was not really very surprising that Isabel Walters, getting such a note from one of the two hand- some young Mr. Carnogies, shoiiM have been in some doubt which of the two identicals it actually was, and yet should have felt indefinitely pleased and flattered at the implied attention. Which was Ernest and which Harold could only mean to her, when she came to think on it, which was the one she danced with first last night, and which the one she danced with second. She decided in her own mind that it would be better for her to go to the Montagus' picnic to-morrow, but to say nothing about it to her mother. "Mamma wouldn't understand the letter," she said to herself complacently; "she's so con- ventional ; and when T come back to-morrow I can tell her one of the young Carnegies was there, and that he proposed to me. She need never knovv there was any appointment." .- .-I ■' . At six o'clock, Harold Carnegie returned from the office. He, too, had been thinking all day of Isabel Walters, and the moment he got home he went into the library to write a short note to her, before Ernest had, as usual, forestalled him. As he did so he happened to see a few words dimly transferred to the paper in the blotting- book. They were in Ernest's handwriting, and he was quite sure the four first words read, " My dear Miss Walters." Then Ernest had already been beforehand with him, after all ! But not by a fortnight : that was one good point ; not this time by a fortnight ! He would be even with him yet ; he would catch up this anticipatory twin-brother of his, by force or fraud, rather than let him steal away Isabel Walters from him once and for ever. " All's fair in love and war," he muttered to himself, taking up the blotting- 148 THE TWO CARNEGIES. book carefully, and tcarinjif out tl)o tell-talo leaf in a furtive fashion. " Thank lleaven, Ernest writes a thick black hand, the same as I do ; and I shall probably be able to read it by holdiiific it up to the light." In his own soul Harold Carnegie loathed himself for such an act of petty meanness ; but he did it ; with love and jealousy goading him on, and the fear of his own twin-brother stinging him madly, he did it; remorsefully and shamefacedly, but still did it. He took the page up to his own bedroom, and held it up to the window-pane. Blurred and indistinct, the words nevertheless came out legibly in patches here and there, so that with a little patient deciphering Harold could spell out the sense of both letters, though they crossed one another obliquely at a slight angle. " Very brief and casual acquaintance . . . Montagus' steam- launch expedition up the river from Surbiton to-morrow . . . am going and am particularly anxious to meet you . . . this favour of you . . ." " So that's his plan, is it ? " Harold said to himself. " Softly, softly, Mr. Ernest, I think I can checkmate you ! What's this in the one to Mrs. Montagu ? ' Expect me io turn up at half-past two.' Aha, I thought so ! Checkmate, Mr. Ernest, check- njate : a scholar's mate for you ! He'll be at the hospital till half-past one ; then he'll take the train to Clapham Junction, expecting to catch the South-Western at 2.10. But to-morrow's the first of the month ; the new time- tables come into force ; I've got one and looked it out already. The South-Western now leaves -at 2.4, three minutes before Mr. Ernest's train arrives at Clapham Junction. I have him now, I have him now, depend upon it. I'll go down instead of him. I'll get the party under way at once. I'll monopolize Isabel, pretty Isabel. I'll find my opportunity at Aunt Portlebury's, and Ernest won't get down to Surbiton till the 2.50 train. Then he'll find his bird flown already. Aha ! that'll make him angry. THE TWO CARNEGIES. ' 140 Cliockmaie, my youni^ friend, chockraato. You said it should bo war, and war you shall have it. I thank thee, frioud, for teaching me that word. Rivals now, you said ; yes, rivals. ' Dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat ? * Why, that comes out of the passage about Androgeos ! An omen, a good omen. There's nothing like war for quickening the intelligence. I haven't looked at a Virgil since I was in the sixth form ; and yet the line comes back to me now, after five years, as pat as the Catechism." Chuckling: to himself at the fraud to stifle conscience (for he had a conscience), Harold Carnegie dressed hastily for dinner, and went down quickly in a state of feverish excitement. Dinner passed off grimly enough. He knew Ernest had written to Isabel ; and Ernest guessed from the other's excited, triumphant manner (though he tried hard to dissemble the note of triumph in it) that Harold must have written too — perhaps forestalling him by a direct proposal. In a dim way Mrs. Carnegie guessed vaguely that some coldness had arisen between her two boys, the first time for many years ; and so she held her peace for the most part, or talked in asides to Nellie Holt and her daughter. The conversation was therefore chiefly delegated to Mr. Carnegie himself, who discoursed with much animation about the iniquitous nature of the new act for reducing costs in actions for the recovery of small debts — a subject calculated to arouse the keenest interest in the minds of Nellie and Edie. Next morning, Harold Carnegie started for the office with prospective victory elate in his very step, and yet with the consciousness of his own mean action grinding him down to the pavement as he walked along it. What a dirty, petty, dishonourable subterfuge ! and still he would go through with it. What a self-degrading bit of treachery ! and yet he would carry it out. " Pater," he said, as he walked along, " I mean to take a holiday this afternoon. I'm going to the Montagus' water-party." 'si--'' 150 THE TWO CAENEGIES. " Very inconvenient, Harold, my boy ; ' Wilkins versus the Great Northern Railway Company ' coming on for hearing; and, besides, Ernest's going there too. They won't want a pair of you, will they ? " " Can't help it, Pater," Harold answered. " I have particular business at Surbiton, much more important to me than ' Wilkins versus the Great Northern Railway Company.' " His father looked at him keenly. " Ha ! " he said, " a lady in the case, is there ? Very well, my boy, if yon must you must, and that's the end of it. A young man in love never does make an efficient lawyer. Get it over (juickly, pray ; get it over quickly, that's all I beg of you." " I shall get it over, I promise you," Harold answered, " this very afternoon.'' The father whistled. "Whew," he said, "that's sharp work, too, Harold, isn't it ? You haven't even told me her name yet. This is really very sudden." But as Harold volunteered no further information, Mr. Carnegie, who was a shrewd man of the world, held it good policy to ask hira nothing more about it for the present ; and so they walked on the rest of the way to the father's office in unbroken silence. At one o'clock, Harold shut up his desk at the office and ran down to Surbiton. At Clapham Junction he kept a sharp look-out for Ernest, but Ernest was not there. Clearly, as Harold anticipated, he hadn't learnt the altei-a- tion in the time-tables, and wouldn't reach Clapham Junc- tion till the train for Surbiton had started. At Surbiton, Harold pushed on arrangements as quickly as possible, and managed to get the party off before Ernest arrived upon the scene. Mrs. Montagu, seeing "one of ^he young Carnegies " duly to hand, and never having attempted to discriminate between them in any way, was perfectly happy at the prospect of getting landed at Lady THE TWO CARNEGIES. 151 Portlebury's without any minute investigation of the in- tricate question of Christian names. The Montagus were nouveaux riches in the very act of pushing themselves into fashionable society ; and a chance of invading the Portle- bury lawn was extremely welcome to them upon any terms whatsoever. Isabel Walters was looking charming. A light morning dress became her even better than the dark red satin of the night before last; and she smiled at Harold with the smile of a mutual confidence when she took his hand, in a way that made his heart throb fast within him. From that moment forward, he forgot Ernest and the unworthy trick he was playing, and thought wholly and solely of Isabel Walters. What a handsome young man he was, really, and how cleverly and brilliantly he talked all the way up to Portle- bury Lodge ! Everybody listened to him ; he was the life and soul of the party. Isabel felt more flattered than ever at his marked attention. He was the doctor, wasn't he ? N.o, the lawyer. Well, really, how impossible it was to distinguish and remember them. And so well connected, too. If he were to propose to her, now, she could afford to be so condescending to Amy Balfour. At Lady Portlebury's lawn the steam-launch halted, and Harold managed to get Isabel alone among the walks, while his aunt escorted the main body of visitors thus thrust upon her hands over the conservatories. Eager and hasty, now, he lost no time in making the best of the situation. " I guessed as much, of course, from your letter, Mr. Carnegie," Isabel said, playing with her fan with down- cast eyes, as he pressed his offer upon her ; " and I really didn't know whether it was right of me to come here with- out showing it to mamma and asking her advice about it. But I'm quite sure I oughtn't to give you an answer at once, because I've seen so very little of you. Let us leave 152 TEE TWO CARNEGIES. the question open for a little. It's asking so much to ask one for a definite reply on such a very short acquaintance." " No, no, Miss Walters," Harold said quickly. " For Heaven's sake, give me an answer now, I beg of you — I implore you. Imust have an answer at once, immediately. If you can't love me at first sight, for my own sake — as I loved you the moment I saw you — you can never, never, never love me ! Doubt and hesitation are impossible in true love. Now, or refuse me for ever ! Surely you must know in your own heart whether you can love me or not ; if your heart tells you that you can, then trust it — trust it — don't argue and reason with it, but say at once you will make me happy for ever." "Mr. Carnegie," Isabel said, lifting her eyes for a moment, "I do think, perhaps — I don't know — but perhaps, after a little while, I could love you. I like you very much ; won't that do for the present ? Why are you in such a hurry for an answer ? Why can't you srive me a week or two to decide in ? " " Because," said Harold, desperately, " if I give you a week my brother will ask you, and perhaps you will marry him instead of me. He's always before me in everything, and I'm afraid he'll be before me in this. Say you'll have me. Miss Walters — oh, do say you'll have me, and save me from the misery of a week's suspense ! " "But, Mr. Carnegie, how can I say anything when I haven't yet made up my own mind about it ? Why, I hardly know you yet from your brother." "Ah, that's just it," Harold cried, in a voice of» positive pain. "You won't find any difference at all between us, if you come to know^ us; and then perhaps you'll be induced to marry my brother. But you know this much already, that here am I, begging and pleading before you this very minute, and surely you won't send me away with my prayer unanswered ! " There was such a look of genuine anguish and passion THE TWO CABNEGJES. 153 ^ in his face that Isabel Walters, already strongly prepos- sessed in his favour, could resist no longer. She bent her head a little, and whispered very softly, "I will promise, Mr. Carnegie ; I will promise." Harold seized her hand eagerly, and covered it with kisses. "Isabel," he cried in a fever of joy, "you. have promised. You are mine — mine — mine. You are mine, now and for ever ! " Isabel bowed her head, and felt a tear standing dimly in her eye, though she brushed it away hastily. " Yes." she said gently ; " I will be yours. I think — I think — I feel sure I can love you." Harold took her ungloved hand tenderly in his, and drew a ring off her finger. " Before I give you mine," he said, " you will let me take this one ? I want it for a keepsake and a memorial." Isabel whispered, " Yes." Harold drew another ring from his pocket and slipped it softly on her third finger. Isabel saw by the glitter that there was a diamond in it. Harold had bought it the day before for that very purpose. Then he took from a small box a plain gold locket, with the letter H raised on it. " I want you to wear this," he said, " as a keepsake for me." " But why H ? " Isabel asked him, looking a little puzzled. "Your name's Ernest, isn't it ? " Harold smiled as well as he was able. " How absurd it is ! " he said, with an effort at gaiety. " This ridicu- lous similarity pursues us everywhere. No, my name's Harold." Isabel stood for a moment surprised and hesitating. She really hardly knew for the second which brother she ought to consider herself engaged to. " Then it wasn't you who wrote to me P " she said, with a tone of some surprise and a little start of astonishment. " No, I certainly didn't write to you ; but I came here 154 THE TWO CAUNEGIES. to-day expecting to see you, and meaning to ask you to 1)6 my wife. I learned from my brother ("there can be no falsehood in putting it that way," he thought vainly to himself) that you were to be here; and I determined to seize the opportunity. Ernest meant to have come, too, but I believe he must have lost the train at Clapham Junction." That was all literally true, and yet it sounded simple and plausible enough. Isabel looked at him with a puzzled look, and felt almost compelled to laugh, the situation was so supremely ridiculous. It took a moment to think it all out ration- ally. Yet, after all, though the letter came from the other brother, Ernest, it was this particular brother, Harold, sbe had been talking to and admiring all the day ; it was this particular brother, Harold, who had gained her consent, and whom she had promised to love and to marry. And at that moment it would have been doing Isabel Walters an injustice not to admit that in her own soul she did then and there really love Harold Carnegie. " Harold," she said slowly, as she took the locket and hung it round her neck, " Harold. Yes, now I know. Then, Harold Carnegie, I shall take your locket and wear it always as a keepsake from you." And she looked up at him with a smile in which there was something more than mere passing coquettish fancy. You see, he was really terribly in earnest ; and the very fact that he should have been so anxious to anticipate his brother, and should have anticipated him successfully, made her woman's heart go forth toward him instinctively. As Harold himself said, he was there bodily present before her; while Ernest, the writer of the mysterious letter, was nothing more to her in reality than a name and a shadow. Harold had asked her, and won her ; and she was ready to love and cleave to Harold from that day forth for that very reason. What woman of them all has a better reason to give in the last resort for.the faith that is in her ? THE TWO CARNEGIES. U5 \ V. Meanwhile, at Clapham Junction, Ernest Carnegie had arrived three minutes too late for the Surbiton train, and had been forced to wait for the 2.40. Of that he thought little : they would wait for him, he knew, if they waited an hour ; for Mrs. Montagu would not for worlds have missed the chance of showing her guests round Lady Portlebury's gardens. So he settled himself down com- fortably in the snug comer of his first-class carriage, and ran down by the later train in perfect confidence that he would find the steam launch waiting. "No, sir, they've gone up the river in the launch, sir," said the man who opened the door for him ; " and, I beg pardon, sir, but I thought you were one of the party." In a moment Ernest's fancy, quickened by his jealousy, jumped instinctively at the true meaning of the man's mistake. " What," he said, " was there a gentleman very like me, in a grey coat and straw hat — same ribbon as this one ? " "Yes, sir. Exactly, sir. Well, indeed, I should have said it was yourself, sir ; but I suppose it was the other Mr. Carnegie." "It was!" Ernest answered between his clenched teeth, almost inarticulate with anger. " It was he. Not a doubt of it. Harold ! I see it all. The treachery — the base treachery ! How long have they been gone, I say ? How long, eh ? " "About half an hour, sir; they went up towards Henley, sir." • Ernest Carnegie turned aside, reeling with wrath and indignation. That his brother, his own familiar twin- brother, should have played him this abominable, dis- graceful trick ! The meanness of it ! The deceit of it ! The petty spying and letter- opening of it ! For somehow l.-iO TEE TWO CARNEGIES. or other— Inconceivable how — Harold must have opened his brother's letters. And then, quick as lightning, for those two brains jumped together, the thought of the blotting-book flashed across Ernest's mind. Why, he had noticed this morning that a page was gone out of it. He must have read the letters. And then the trains ! Harold always got a time-table on the first of each month, with his cursed methodical lawyer ways. And he had never told him about the change of service. The dirty low trick ! The mean trick ! Even to think of it made Ernest Carnegie sick at heart and bitterly indignant. In a minute he saw it all and thought it all out. Why did he — how did he ? Why, he knew as clearly as if he could read Harold's thoughts, exactly how the whole vile plot had first risen upon him, and worked itself out within his traitorous brain. How ? Ah, how ? That was the bitterest, the most horrible, the deadliest part of it all. Ernest Carnegie knew, because he felt in his own inmost soul that, had he been put in the same circumstances, he would himself have done exactly as Harold had done. Yes, exactly in every respect. Harold must have seen the words in the blotting-book, " My dear Miss Walters " — Ernest remembered how thickly and blackly he had written — must have seen those words ; and in their present condition, either of the twins, jealous, angry, suspicious, half driven by envy of one another out of their moral senses, would have torn out the page then and there and read it all. He, too, would have kept silence about the train ; he would have gone down to Surbiton ; he would have proposed to Isabel Walters ; he would have done in ^everything exactly as he knew Harold must have done it ; but that did not make his anger and loathing for his brother any the weaker. On the contrary, it only made them all the more terrible. His consciousness of his own equal potential meanness roused his rage against Harold to a white heat. He would have done the same himself, TEE TWO CARXEGIES. 157 no doubt ; yes ; but Harold, the mean, successful, actually accomplishing villain — Harold had really gone down and done it all in positive fact and reality. Flushing scarlet and blanching white alternately with the fierceness of his anger, Ernest Carnegie turned down, all on fire, to the river's edge. Should he take a boat and row^ up after them to prevent the supplanter at least from proposing to Isabel unopposed ? That would at any rate give him something to do — muscular work for his arms, if nothing else, to counteract the fire within him ; but on second thoughts, no, it would be quite useless. The steam launch had had a good start of him, and no oarsman could catch up with it now by any possibility. So he walked about up and down near the river, chafing in soul and nursing his wrath against Harold for three long weary hours. And all that time Harold, false-hearted, fair- spoken, mean-spirited Harold, was enjoying himself and playing the gallant to Isabel Walters ! Minute by minute the hours wore away, and with every minute Ernest's indignation grew deeper and deeper. At last he heard the snort of the steam-launch ploughing its way lustily down the river, and he stood on the bank waiting for the guilty Harold to disembark. As Harold stepped from the launch, and gave his hand to Isabel, he saw the white and bloodless face of his brother looking up at him contemptuously and coldly from beside the landing. Harold passed ashore and close by him, but Ernest never spoke a word. He only looked a moment at Isabel, and said to her with enforced calmness, "You got my letter. Miss Walters ? " Isabel, hardly comprehending the real solemnity of the occasion, answered with a light smile, " I did, Mr. Carnegie, but you didn't keep your appointment. Your brother came, and he has been befoi'ehand with you." And she touched his hand lightly and went on to join her hostess. 158 THE TWO CAItNEGIES, Still Ernest Carnegie said nothing, but walked on, as black as night, beside his brother. Neither spoke a word ; but after the shaking of hands and farewells were over, both turned together to the railway station. The carriage was crowded, and so Ernest still held his tongue. At last, when they reached home and stood in the passage together, Ernest looked at his brother with a look of withering scorn, and, livid with anger, found his voice at last. " Harold Carnegie," he said, in a low husky tone, " you are a mean intercepter of other men's letters ; a sneaking supplanter of other men's appointments ; a cur and a traitor whom I don't wish any longer to associate with. I know what you have done, and I know how you have done it. You have kept my engagement with Isabel Walters by reading the impression of my notes on the blotting-book. You are unfit for a gentleman to speak to, and I cast you off, now and for ever." Harold looked at him defiantly, but said never a word. " Harold Carnegie," Ernest said again, " I could hardly believe your treachery until it was forced upon me. This is the last time I shall ever speak to you." Harold looked at him again, this time perhaps with a tinge of remorse in his expression, and said nothing but, " Oh, Ernest." Ernest made a gesture with his hands as though he would repel him. " Don't come near me," he said ; " Harold Carnegie, don't touch me ! Don't call me by my name ! I will have nothing more to say or do with you." Harold turned away in dead silence, and went to his own room, trembling with conscious humiliation and self- reproach. But he did not attempt to make the on' ' atonement in his power by: giving up Isabel Walters. That would have been too much for human nature. - /- THE TWO CARNECrTES. 159 VI. \ When Harold Carnegie was finally married to Isabel Walters, Ernest stopped away from the wedding, and ■would have nothing whatever to say either to bride or bridegroom. Ho would leave his unnatural brother, he said, solely and entirely to the punishment of his own guilty conscience. Still, he couldn't rest quiet in his father's house after Harold was gone, so he took himself small rooms near the hospital, and there ho lived his lonely life entirely by himself, a solitary man, brooding miserably over his own wrongs and Harold's treachery. There was only one single woman in the world, he said, with whom he could ever have been really happy — Isabel Walters : and Harold had stolen Isabel Walters away from him by the basest treason. Once he could have loved Isabel, and her only ; now, because she was Harold's wife, he bitterly hated her. Yes, hated her ! With a deadly hatred he hated both of them. Months went by slowly for Ernest Carnegie, in the dull drudgery of his hopeless professional life, for he cared nothing now for ambition or advancement ; he lived wholly in the past, nursing his wrath, and devouring his own soul in angry regretfulness. Months went by, and at last Harold's wife gave birth to a baby — a boy, the exact image of his father and his uncle. Harold looked at the child in the nurse's arms, and said remorsefully, *' We will call him Ernest. It is all we can do now, Isabel. We will call him Ernest, after my dear lost brother." So they called him Ernest, in the faint hope that his uncle's heart might relent a little ; and Harold wrote a letter full of deep and bitter penitence to his brother, piteously begging his forgiveness for the grievous wrong he had wickedly and deliberately done him. But Ernest still nursed his righteous wrath silently in his 1(50 TIIIC TWO CARNEGIES. own bosom, and tore up the letter into a thousand frag- ments, unanswered. Wlien the baby was five months old, Edie Carnegie (jame round hurriedly one morning to Ernest's lodgings near the hospital. " Ernest, Ernest," she cried, running up the stairs in great haste, '* we want you to come round and see Harold. We're afraid he's very ill. Don't say you won't come and see him ! " Ernest Carnegie listened and smiled grimly. " Very ill," he muttered, with a dreadful gleam in his eyes. " Very ill, is he ? and I have had nothing the matter with me ! How curious ! Very ill ! I ought to have had the same illness a fortnight ago. Ha, ha ! The cycle is broken ! The clocks have ceased to strike to- gether ! His marriage has altered the run of his con- stitution — mine remains the same steady striker as ever. I thought it would ! I thought it would ! Perhaps he'll die, now, the mean, miserable traitor ! " Edie Carnegie looked at him in undisguised horror. *' Oh, Ernest," she cried, with the utmost dismay ; '* your own brother ! Your own brother ! Surely you'll come and see him, and tell us what's the matter." "Yes, I'll come and see him," Ernest answered, un- moved, taking up his hat. " I'll come and see him, and find out what's the matter." But there was an awful air of malicious triumph in his tone, which perfectly horrified his trembling sister. "When Ernest reached his brother's house, he went at once to Harold's bedside, and without a word of introduc- tion or recognition he began inquiring into the nature of his symptoms, exactly as he would have done with any unknown and ordinary patient. Harold told him them all, simply and straightforwardly, without any more pre- face than he would have used with any other doctor. When Ernest had finished his diagnosis, he leaned back carelessly in his easy chair, folded his arms sternly, and TnE TWO CAENEGTES. IGl said in a perfectly cold, clear, remorseless voice, " Ah, 1 thought so ; yes, yes, 1 thought so. It's a serious func- tional disorder of the heart ; and there's very little hope indeed that you'll ever recover from it. No hope at all, I may say ; no hope at all, I'm certain. The thing has been creeping upon you, creeping upon you, evidently, for a year past, and it has gone too far now to leave the faintest hope of ultimate recovery." Isabel burst into tears at tlie words — calmly spoken as though they were perfectly indifferent to both speaker and hearers; but Harold only rose up fiercely in the bed, and cried in a tone of the most imploring agony, " Oh, Ernest, Ernest, if I must die, for Heaven's sake, before I die, say you forgive me, do say, do say yon forgive me. Oh, Ernest, dear Ernest, dear brother Ernest, for the sake of our long, happy friendship, for the sake of the days when we loved one another with a love passing the love of women, do, do say you will at last forgive me." Ernest rose and fumbled nervously for a second with the edge of his hat. "Harold Carnegie," he said at last, in a voice trembling with excitement, " I can never for- give you. You acted a mean, dirty part, and T can never forgive you. Heaven may, perhaps it will; but as for me, I can never, never, never forgive you ! " Harold fell back feebly and wearily upon the pillows. "Ernest, Ernest," he cried, gasping, "you might forgive me ! you ought to forgive me ! you must forgive me ! and I'll tell you why. I didn't want to say it, but now you force me. I know it as well as if I'd seen you do it. In my place, I know to a certainty, Ernest, you'd have done exactly as I did. Ernest Carnegie, you can't look me straight in the face and tell me that you wouldn't have acted exactly as I did." That terrible unspoken truth, long known, but never confessed, even to himself, struck like a knife on Ernest's heart. He raised his hat blindly, and walked with un- M 162 THE TWO CARNEGIES. steady stops out of tho sick-room. At that moment, his own conscience smote him with awful vividness. Looking into the inmost recesses of his anj^-ry heart, he felt with a shudder that HaroUi had spoken the simple truth, and ho dared not lie by contradicting him. In Harold's place he would have done exactly as Harold did ! And that was just what made his deathless anger burn all tho more fiercely and fervidly against his brother! Groping his way down the stairs alone in a stunned and dazzled fashion, Ernest Carnegie went home in his agony to his lonely lodgings, and sat there solitary with his own tempestuous thoughts for the next eight-and-forty hours. He did not undress or lie down to sleep, though he dozed a little at times uneasily in his big arm-chair ; he did not eat or drink much ; he merely paced up and down his room feverishly, and sent his boy round at intervals of an hour or two to know how the doctor thought Mr. Harold Carnegie was getting on. The boy returned every time with uniformly worse and worse reports. Ernest rubbed his hands in horrid exultation: "Ah," he said to himself, eagerly, " he will die ! he will die ! he will pay the penalty of his dirty treachery ! He has brought it all upon himself by marrying that wicked woman ! He deserves it every bit for his mean conduct." On the third morning, Edie came round again, this time with her mother. Both had tears in their eyes, and they implored Ernest with sobs and entreaties to come round and see Harold once more before he died. Harold was raving and crying Tor him in ]iis weakness and delirium. But Ernest was like adamant. He would not go to see him, he said, not if they went down bodily on their knees before him. At midday, the boy went again, and stayed a little longer than usual. When he returned, he brought back word that Mr. Harold Carnegie had died just as the clock was striking the hour. Ernest listened with a look of terror and dismay, and then broke down into a terrible fit THE TWO CAItyFGTES. 168 of sobbini? and weeping. When EcUe came ronnd a little later to toll hira that all was over, she found him crjini? like a child in bis own easy chair, and muttorinfi^ to him- self in a broken fashion how dearly he and Harold bad loved one anotber years ago, when they were both happy children top^etber. Edie took bim round to bis brother's bouse, and there, over the deaf and blind face that lay cold upon the pillows, he cried the cry that he would not cry over his living, im- ploring brotber. " Ob, Harold, Harold," he groaned in bis broken agony, " I forgive you, I forgive you. I too sinned as you did. What you would do, I would do. It was bound up in botb our natures. In your place I would have done as you did. But now the curse of Cain is upon me ! A worse curse than Cain's is upon me ! I have more tban killed my brother ! " For a day or two Ernest went back, heart-broken, to his father's bouse, and slept once more in the old room where be used to sleep so long, next door to Harold's. At the end of three days, be woke once from one of bis short snatches of sleep with a strange fluttering feeling in his left side. He knew in a moment what it was. It was the same disease that Harold had died of. " Thank Heaven ! " he said to himself eagerly, " thank Heaven, thank Heaven for that ! Then I didn't wholly kill him ! His blood isn't all upon my poor unhappy head. After all, his marriage didn't quite upset the har- mony of the two clocks ; it only made the slower one catch up for a while and pass the faster. I'm a fortnight later in striking tban Harold this time ; that's all. In three days more the clock will run down, and I shall die as be did." And, true to time, in three days more, as the clock struck twelve, Ernest Carnegie died as his brotber Harold bad done before him, with the agonized cry for forgive- ness trembling on his fevered lips — who knows whether answered or unanswered ? . . ,_ ^„^ OLGA DAVID OFF' S HUSBAND, I Tobolsk, though a Siberian metropolis, is really a very- pleasant place to pass a winter in. Like the western American cities, where everybody has made his money easily and spends it easily, it positively babbles over with bad champagne, cheap culture, advanced thought, French romances, and all the other most recent products of human industry and ingenuity. Everybody eats jpdte de foie gras, quotes Hartmann and Herbert Spencer, uses el..;tric bells, believes in woman's rights, possesses profound views about the future of Asia, and had a grandfather who was a savage Samoyede or an ignorant Buriat. Society is extremely cultivated, and if you scratch it ever so little, you see the Tartar. Nevertheless, it considers itself the only really polite and enlightened community on the whole face of this evolving terrestrial planet. The Davidoffs, however, who belonged to the most advanced section of mercantile society in all Tobolsk, were not originally Siberians, or even Russians, by birth or nationality. Old Mr. Davidoff, the grandfather, who founded the fortunes of the family in St. Petersburg, was a Welsh Davids ; and he had altered his name by the timelv addition of a Slavonic suffix in order to conciliate t the n.otional susceptibilities of Orthodox Russia. His 4**- 0L(7A DAVIDOFF'S HUSBAND. 105 son, Dimitri, whom for the same rcaf?on ho had christened in honour of a Russian saint, removed the Russian branch of tbe house to Tobolsk (they were in the Siberian fur- trade), and there marrying a German lady of the name of Freytag, had one daughter and heiress, Olga Davidoif, the acknowledged belle of Tobolskan society. It was generally understood in Tobolsk that the Davidoffs were descended from Welsh princes (as may very likely have been the case — though one would really like to know what has become of all the descendants of Welsh subjects), if indeed they were not even remotely connected with the Prince of Wales himself in person. The winter of 1873 (as everybody will remember) was a very cold one throughout Siberia. The rivers froze unusually early, and troikas had entirely superseded torosses on all the roads as early as the very beginning of October. Still, Tobolsk was exceedingly gay for all that ; in the warm houses of the great merchants, with their tropical plants kept at summer heat by stoves and flues all the year round, nobody noticed the exceptional rigour of that severe season. Balls and dances followed one another in qul",k succession, and Olga DavidofP, jusb twenty, enjoyed herself as she had never before done in all her lifetime. It was such a change to come to the concentrated gaities and delights of Tobolsk after six years of old IJiss Waterlow's Establishment for Young Ladies, at The Laurels, Clapham. That winter, for the first time, Baron Niaz, the Buriat, came to Tobolsk. Exquisitely polished in manners, and very handsome in face and bearing, there "was nothing of the Tartar any- where visible about Baron Niaz, He had been brought up in Paris, at a fashionable Lyceo, and he spoke French with perfect fluency, as well as with some native sjiarkle and genuine cleverness. His taste in music was unim- peachable : even Madame Davidoff, nee Freytag, candidly 16G OLGA DAVIDOFF'S HUSBAND. admitted that his performances upon the violin were singularly brilliant, profound, and appreciative. More- over, though a Buriat chief, he was a most undoubted nobleman : at the Governor's parties he took rank, by j)atent of the Emperor Nicholas, as a real Russian baron of the first water. To be sure, he was nominally a Tartar ; but what of that ? His mother and his grandmother, he declared, had both been Russian ladies ; and yon had only to look at him to see that there was scarcely a drop of Tartar blood still remaining anywhere in him. If the half-caste negro is a brown mulatto, the quarter-caste a light quadroon, and the next remove a practically white octoroon, surely Baron Niaz, in spite of his remote Buriat great-grandfathers, might well pass for an ordinary every- day civilized Russian. Olga Davidoff was fairly fascinated by the accomplished young baron. She met him everywhere, and he paid her always the most marked and flattering attention. He was a Buriat, to be sure : but at Tobolsk, you know . Well, one mustn't be too particular about these little questions of origin in an Asiatic city. It was at the Governor's dance, just before Christmas, that the Baron got his first good chance of talking with her for ten minutes alone among the fan palms and yuccas in the big conservatory. There was a seat in the far corner beside the flowering oleander, where the Baron led her after the fourth waltz, and leant over her respectfully as she played with her Chinese fan, half trembling at the declaration she knew he was on the point of making to her. "Mademoiselle Davidoff," the Baron began in French, Avith a lingering cadence as he pronounced her name, and a faint tremor in his voice that thrilled responsively through her inmost being; "Mademoiselle Davidoff, I have been waiting 1 ig for this opportunity of speakincr to you alone, because I have something of some importance — to me at least, mademoiselle — about which I wish to OLGA DAVIDOFF'S HUSBAND. 167 confer with you. Mademoiselle, will you do me tlie honour to listen to me patiently a minute or two ? The matter about which I wish to speak to you is one that may concern yourself, too, more closely than you at first imagine." What a funny way to begin proposing to one ! Olga Davidoff's heart beat violently as she answered as uncon- cernedly as possible, " I shall be glad, M. le Baron, I'm sure, to listen to any communication that you may wish to make to me." " Mademoiselle," the young man went on rlmost timidly — how handsome he looked as he stood there bend- ing over her in his semi-barbaric Tartar uniform ! — " mademoiselle, the village where I live in our own country is a lonely one among the high mountains. You do not know the Buriat country — it is wild, savage, rugged, pine-clad, snow-clad, solitary, inaccessible, but very beautiful. Even the Russians do not love it ; but we love it, we others, who are to the manner born. We breathe there the air of liberty, and we prefer our own brawling streams and sheer precipices to all the artificial stifling civilization of Paris and St. Petersburg." Olga looked at him and smiled quietly. She saw at once how he wished to break it to her, and held her peace like a wise maiden. "Yes, mademoiselle," the young man went on, flooding her each moment with the flashing light from his great luminous eyes ; " my village in the Buriat country lies high up beside the eternal snows. But though we live alone there, so far from civilization that we seldom see even a passing traveller, our life is not devoid of its own delights and its own interests. I have my own people all around me ; I live in my village as a little prince among his own subjects. My people are few, but they are very faithful. Mademoiselle has been educated in England, I believe H " " Yes," Olga answered. "In London, M. le Baron. I 168 OLGA DAVIDOFF'S HUSBAND. am of English parentage, and my father sent me there to keep up the connection with his old fatherland, where one branch of our House is still established." " '!'"hen, mademoiselle, you will doubtless have read the tales of Walter Scott ? " Olga smiled curiously. "Yes," she said, amused at his naivete, " I have certainly read them." She began to think that after all the handsome young Buriat couldn't mean really to propose to her. " Well, you know, in that case, what was the life of a Highland chieftain in Scotland, when the Highland chieftains were still practically all but independent. That, mademoiselle, is exactly the life of a modern Buriat nobleman under the Russian empire. He has his own little territory and his own little people ; he lives among them in his own little antiquated fortress ; he acknowledges nominally the sovereignty of the most orthodox Czar, and even perhaps exchanges for a Russian title the Tartar chieftainship handed down to him in unbroken succession from his earliest forefathers. But in all the rest he still remains essentially independent. He rules over a little principality of his own, and cares not a fig in his own heart for czar, or governor, or general, or minister." " This is rather treasonable talk for the Governor's palace," Olga put in, smiling quietly. " If ve were not .already in Tobolsk we might both, perhaps, imagine we should be sent to Siberia." The Baron laughed, and showed his two rows of pearly white teeth to the best advantage. " They might send me to the mines," he said " for aught I care, mademoiselle. I could get away easily enough from village to village to my own country ; and once there, it would be easier for the Czar to take Constantinople and Bagdad and Calcutta than to track and dislodge Alexander Niaz in his mountain fortress." OLGA DAVIDOFF'S HUSBAND. 109 Alexander Niaz ! Olga noted the name to herself hurriedly. He was converted then ! he was an orthodox Christian ! That at least was a good thing, for so many of these Buriats are still nothing more than tho most degfraded Schamanlsts and heathens ! " But, mademoiselle," the young man went on again, playing more nervously now than ever with the jewelled hilt of his dress sword, " there is one thing still Avanting to my happiness among our beautiful Siberian mountains. I have no lovely chatelaine to help me guard my little feudal castle. Mademoiselle, the Buriat women are not fit allies for a man who has been brought up among the civihzation and the learning of the great Western cities. He needs a companion who can sympathize with his higher tastes : who can speak with him of books, of life, of art, of music. Our Buriat women are mere household drudges ; to marry one of them would be utterly impos- sible. Mademoiselle, my father and my grandfather came away from their native wilds to seek a lady who would condescend to love them, in the polite society of Tobolsk. I have gone farther afield : I have sought in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg. But I saw no lady to whose heart my heart responded, till I came back once more to old Tobolsk. There, mademoiselle, there I saw one whom I recognized at once as fashioned for me by heaven. Mademoiselle E'avidoff, — I tremble to ask you, but — 1 love you, — will you share my exile ? " Olga looked at the handsome young man with uncon- cealed joy and admiration. " Youi exile ! " she murmured softly, to gain time for a moment. " And why your exile, M. le Baron ? " " Mademoiselle," the young Buriat continued very earnestly, " I do not wish to woo or wed you under false pretences. Before you give me an answer, you must understand to what sort of life it is that I venture to invite you. Our mountains are very lonely : to live there 170 OLGA DAVIDOFF'S HUSBAND. would be Indeed an exile to you, accustomed to tlie gaieties and the vortex of London." (Olga smiled quietly to her- self, as she thought for a second of the little drawing- room at The Laurels, Clapham.) "But if you can consent to live in it with me, I will do my best to make it as easy for you as possible. You shall have music, books, papers, amusements — but not society — during the six months of summer which Ave must necessarily pass at my mountain village ; you shall visit Tobolsk, Moscow, Petersburg, London — which you will — during the six months of holi- day in winter ; above all, you shall have the undying lo\ c and devotion of one who has never loved another woman — Alexander Niaz. . . . Mademoiselle, you see the condi- tions. Can you accept them ? Can you condescend of your goodness to love me — to marry me ? " Olga Davidoff lifted her fan with an effort and answered laintly, " M. le Baron, you are very flattering. I — I will try my best to deserve your goodness." Niaz took her pretty little hand in his with old-fashioned politeness, and raised it chivalrously to his trembling lips. " Mademoiselle," he said, " you have made me eternally happy. My life shall be passed in trying to prove my gratitude to you for this condescension." " I think," Olga answered, shaking from head to foot, " I think, M. le Baron, you had better take me back into the next room to my mother." II. Olga Davidoff's wedding was one of the most brilliant social successes of that Tobolsk season. Davidoff pere surpassed himself in the costliness of his exotics, the magnificence of his presents, the reckless abundance of his Veuve Clicquot. Madame D. 'idoff successfully caught the Governor and the General, and the English traveller from India via the Himalayas. The Baron OLGA DAVIDOFF'S HUSBAND. 171 looked as gorgeous as he was handsome in his half Rus- sian, half Tartar uniform and his Oriental tlisplay of pearls and diamonds. Olga herself was the prettiest and most blushing bride ever seen in Tobolsk, a simple Eng- lish girl, fresh from the proprieties of The Laurels at Clapham, among all that curious mixed cosmopolitan society of semi-civilized Siberians, Catholic Poles, and orthodox Russians. As soon as the wedding was fairly over, the bride and bridegroom started off by toross to make their way across the southern plateau to the Baron's village. It was a long and dreary drive, that wedding tour, in a jolting carriage over Siberian roads, resting at wayside posting-houses, bad enough while they were still on the main line of the Imperial mails, but degenerating into true Central- Asian caravanserais when once they had got off the beaten track into the Avild neighbourhood of the Baron's village. Nevertheless, Olga Davidoft' bore up against the troubles and discomforts of the journey with a brave heart, for was not the Baron always by her side ? and who could be kinder, or gentler, or more thoughtful than her Buriat husband ? Yes, it was a long and hard journey, up among those border mountains of the Chinese and Tibetan frontier ; but Olga felt at home at last when, after thi-ee weeks of incessant jolting, they arrived at the Buriat mountain stronghold, under cover of the night ; and Niaz led her straightway to her own pretty little European boudoir, which he had prepared for her before- hand at immense expense and trouble in his upland village. The moment they entered, Olga saw a pretty little room, papered and carpeted in English fashion, with a small piano over in the corner, a lamp bui'ning brightly on the tiny side-table, and a roaring fire of logs blazing and crackling upon the simple stone hearth, A book or two lay upon the shelf at the side : she glanced casually 172 OLGA DAVIDOFF'S HUSBAND. at thefr titles as slic passed, and saw tliat tliey were some of Tourgoiiieff's latest novels, a paper-covered Zola fresh from Paris, a volume each of Tennyson, Browning;, Car- lyle, and Swinbarne, a Deraidoff, an Emile Aiij^ier, a Jlevue des Deux Mondes, and a late number of an Englisli magazine. She valued tliese things at once for their own sakes, but still more because she felt instinctively that Niaz had taken the trouble to get them there for her beforehand in this remote and uncivilized corner. She turned to the piano : a light piece by Sullivan lay open before her, and a number of airs from Chopin, Schubert, , and Mendelssohn were scattered loosely on the top one above the other. Her heart was too full to utter a word, but she went straight up to her husband, threw her arms tenderly around his neck, and kissed him with the utmost fervour. Niaz smoothed her wavy fair hair gently with his hand, and his eyes sparkled with conscious pleasure as he returned her caress and kissed her forehead. After a while, they went into the next room to dinner — a small hall, somewhat barbaric in type, but not ill- furnished ; and Olga noticed that the two or three servants were very fierce and savage-looking Buriats of the most pronounced Tartar type. The dinner was a plain one, plainly served, of rough country hospitality ; but the appointments were all European, and, though simple, good and sufficient. Niaz had said so much to her of the dis- comforts of his mountain stronghold that Olga was quite delighted to find things on the whole so comparatively civilized, clean, and European. A few days' sojourn in the fort — it was rather that than a castle or a village — showed Ulga pretty clearly what sort of life she was henceforth to expect. Her husband's sub- jects numbered about a hundred and fifty (with as many more women and children) ; they rendered him the most implicit obedience, and they evidently looked upon him entirely tiS a superiorbeing. Tliey were trained to a mili- OLGA DAVIDOFF'S nVSBAXD, 173 tiivy discipline, and regularly di'illed every morning' by Niaz in the queer old semi-Cliinese courtyard of the mouldering castle. Olga was so accustomed to a Russian military regime that this circumstance never struck her as being anything extraordinary ; she regarded it only as part of the Baron's ancestral habits as a practically inde- pendent Tartar chieftain. Week after week rolled away at the fort, and though Olga had absolutely no one to whom she could speak except her own husband (for the Bnriats knew no Rus- sian save the word of command), she didn't find time hang heavily on her hands in the quaint, old-fashioned village. The walks and rides about were really delight- ful ; the scenery was grand and beautiful to the last degree ; the Chinese-looking houses and Tartar dress were odd and picturesque, like a scene in a theatre. It was all so absurdly romantic. After all, Olga said to herself with a smile more than once, it isn't half bad being married to a Tartar chieftain up in the border mountains, when you actually come to try it. Only, she confessed in her own heart that she would probably always be very glad when the winter came again, and she got back from these mountain solitudes to the congenial gaiety of Tobolsk or Petersburg. And Niaz — well, Niaz loved her distractedly. No hus- band on earth could possibly love a woman better. Still, Olga could never understand why he sometimes had to leave her for three or four days together, and why (luring his absence, when she was left all alone at night in the solitary fort with those dreadful Buriats, they kept watch and ward so carefully all the time, and seemed so I'elieved when Niaz came back again. But v/hencver she asked him about it, Niaz only looked grave and anxious, and replied with a would-be careless wave of the hand that part of his duty was to guard the frontier, and that the Czar had not conferred a title and an order apon him for 174 OLGA DAVIDOFF'S UUSBAND. nothing. Olga felt frightened and disquieted on all sneh occasions, but somehow fait, from Niaz's manner, that she must not (]uestion him further upon the matter. One tlay, after one of these occasional excursions, Niaz came back in high spirits, and kissed her more tenderly and affectionately than ever. After dinner, he read to her out of a book of French poems a grand piece of Victor Hugo's, and then made her sit down to the piano and play him his favourite air from JJer Frelschiltz twice over. When she had finished, he leant back in his chair ami murmured quietly in French (which they always spoke together), " And this is in the mountains of Tartary ! One would say a soiree of St. Petersburg or of Paris." Olga turned and looked at him softly. " What is the time, dearest Niaz ? " she said with a smile. " Shall I be able to play you still that dance of Pinsuti's ? " Niaz pulled out his watch and answered quickly, " Only ten o'clock, darling. You have plenty of time still." Something in the look of the watch he held in his hand struck Olga as queer and unfamiliar. She glanced at it sideways, and noticed hurriedly that Niaz was trying to replace it unobserved in his waistcoat pocket. " I haven't seen that watch before," she said suddenly ; " let me look at it, dear, will you ? " Niaz drew it out and handed it to her with affected nonchalance ; but in the undercurrent of his expression Olga caught a glimpse of a hang-dog look she had never before observed in it. She turned over the watch and looked on the back. To her immense surprise, it bore the initials " F. de K." engraved upon the cover. " These letters don't belong to you, Niaz," she said, scanning it curiously. Niaz moved uneasily in his chair. " No," he answered, " not to me, Olga. It's — it's an old family relic — an heir- loom, in fact. It belonged to my mother's mother. She OLGA DAVIDOFF'S IIVSDAND. 17:. was — a Mademoisello do Kurouac, I believe, from Morbi- han, in Brittany." Olga's eyes looked him throuufh and throiin^h with a strange new-born suspicion. What could it all moan ? She knew he was telling her a falsehood. Had the watch belonged — to some other lady ? What was the moaniii