^3- ^tlL lIBRftf?T iWnfDtSITY OF CALIFORWA mVERSlOS 7 ROUGH JUSTICE a *^:7 R°" GH JUSTICE B, >r^ t^^W^ELL^ U^ EVpR ADDON j '^^'^ Author of "LADV A UDLEV'S SECRET," " LONDON PRIDE," ETC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED London SIMPKIN,, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. Ltd. Stationers' Hall Court 1898 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PAGE "How SHOULD I GREET THEE?" ... I CHAPTER II. A Fellow-feeling 22 CHAPTER III. Alone in London 41 CONTENTS CHAPTER IV. PAGE Some one who loved him .... 6i CHAPTER V. At Number Thirteen, Dynevor Street • . 86 CHAPTER VI . John Faunce's Experiences, No. 29 105 CHAPTER VII. At Bow Street 138 CHAPTER VIII. A Death-blow ^S^ CHAPTER IX. Mr. Faunce's Record 172 CHAPTER X. Chums '95 CHAPTER XI. Other Lives 209 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER XII. PAGE Nineteenth-century Crusaders . . , 216 CHAPTER XIII. Mr. Faunce's Report continued . . . 233 CHAPTER XIV. The Boyhood of Oliver Greswold ... 243 CHAPTER XV. Mr. Faunce continues 260 CHAPTER XVI. Waiting on Fortune .279 CHAPTER XVII. For the Happiness of the Greatest Number . 284 CHAPTER XVIII. What he meant to do 302 CHAPTER XIX. The American Remembers . . . . 317 vii CONTENTS CHAPTER XX. PAGE The Man behind the Mask .... 338 CHAPTER XXL A New Development 362 CHAPTER XXJl. The Enemy and Avenger 372 -i vui CHAPTER I. " HOW SHOULD I GREET THEE ? " " Is it really, really you ? " " Really, and very really. But what in the name of all that's wonderful can have brought my little Mary to South Africa ? " They had come suddenly face to face in one of the corridors of the Saxon ; face to face amid all the hubbub and confusion of a great steamer homeward bound. They stood there in the narrow corridor, cabin doors on either side of them, spellbound in the glad surprise of meeting, and unconscious that they were an obstruction to the passage of other eager spirits tramping to and fro, looking for lost packages, all more or less frantic, disputing about cabins and berths, in an atmosphere vibrat- ing with farewells. These two forgot everything in the wonder of meeting, after an interval that to young minds seemed a great gap in life. To age it would have been only a parenthesis. He was tall, dark with sun and weather, but originally of the fair Anglo-Saxon type, as witnessed I B Rough Justice. by large, bold blue eyes and crisp, light-brown hair ; age about thirty, powerful frame, and easy movements — a man who had lived mostly in the open, and had looked the sun in the face, like the eagles. She whom he called little Mary was at least five feet seven, straight and slim as a reed, not by any means a beauty, but full of charm in her fresh youthfulness, with a smile of bewitching gaiety, and clear, dark -grey eyes ; Irish eyes, this old friend of hers had called them, in the days when she was little Mary. "You had better ask me what takes me home to England," she said, when he had repeated his question — eager, impatient, with both her hands clasped in his. The people pushing past them took them for brother and sister, or husband and wife, and thought them in the act of parting, and so were more tolerant than they might have been of this obstruction. "We are awfully in the way here," said Mary Freeland. " Shall we go outside for a few minutes ? You are not going on shore immediately, I hope ? " "I am going on shore at Southampton — not before ! " " What, are we to be fellow-passengers ? How nice ! " "Isn't it?" Looking into her fresh, frank young face, it flashed upon him that it would be still nicer if they could be fellow-passengers over the wide seas 2 " How should I greet Thee 9 " of life — a passing fancy only, which any man might have about any woman as young and gay as Mary Freeland. Arnold Wentworth and his newly found friend went out upon the upper deck, and stood watching the people thronging the narrow gangway, swarm- ing down to the quay, perturbed by the importunate ringing of a warning bell, excited to fever-point in the final parting. Some might be only friends, some mere acquaintances ; but all were moved to some touch of tragic feeling while the clustered faces looked down upon them from the bulwarks, amidst waving hands and waving handkerchiefs, above and below. At last the bell ceased its clamour, the gangway was raised, the passengers' friends and followers drifted away, and Arnold and Mary were able to look at each other and talk to each other calmly, standing side by side in a quiet corner, away from the traffic of ship's officers and passengers, the latter mostly on the war-path. Table Bay lay around them, and Cape Town gleamed whitely in the clear afternoon light, sheltered in the vast amphitheatre of rock, curtained and protected by those grey cliffs, and dark with the dense growth of pine forests that fill the valley. In the golden light of an African summer it seemed too fair a scene to leave willingly, to ex- change summer for winter, the large picturesqueness of South Africa for the fogs and narrow streets of London, and the commonplace of English rusti- city. Arnold looked at those jutting headlands Rough Justice. and Titanic peaks with something of regret in his gaze. " I am getting quite accustomed to you again," said Mary, presently; "but it was a tremendous shock to meet you." " Why ? " The monosyllable startled her. She blushed rosy red, and answered confusedly — "Well, you see, you left Mervynhall so sud- denly — and one didn't know — and people said things " "Said I had gone to the bad, no doubt." " So shameful of them — ^just because you chose to leave a humdrum little town where you were not properly appreciated." " Where I was confoundedly miserable. But it's a true bill, Polly, my dear. There is always a scamp in the family, and I suppose it was my mission to fill the part. I have heen to the dogs, Polly, but I contrived to come alive out of the kennel ; and — for the last two years — I've been doing well." " In the diamond fields } " " No ; I turned up the diamond diggings. I have been among the gold miners at Heidelberg. I tried my luck at Kimberley for a bit, but it was no go. And I drifted back to Cape Town worse off than when I landed there, for the clothes I had come in were worn to rags, and then a chap I knew at the 'Varsity, who had also had canine experience, turned up with a little bit of capital, and traded his cash against my 4 " How should I greet Thee 9 " knowledge of the mines and capacity for rough work, and the partnership answered better than such one-sided alliances generally do." "At Heidelberg?" cried Mary. "And I have been at Johannesburg, only thirty miles away. Did you never go to Johannesburg ? " " Not very often." " And did you go to the theatre when you were there ? " " Is there a theatre at Johannesburg ? " " Is there a theatre ? Why, there are two," cried Mary, with a mortified air. " How little you care for the drama ! " " Not much. I've been leading rather too rough a life to care for stage-plays." " I'm glad you and your friend prospered, at any rate." " Well, you see, we bought a block in the Nigel Reef — a very small block, the large ones are owned by companies — and we had only a small capital to work with ; but Fortune was kind, and we did well. My chum had fever more than once, and I helped him to pull through, which he called saving his life. And here I am, home- ward bound, on a flying visit to see my dear old mother, who never thought me quite the villain I appeared before the paternal high court of justice. And now for your story, little Mary, What brought you to the Cape ; and, above all, to Johannesburg ? " " I came with a company." ** A company ? " 5 Rough Justice. "A theatrical company. I'm an actress, you know." " Indeed, I know nothing of the kind. You were a kid when we last met ; a solitary orphan kid, but as bright and as happy as if you had been the centre of a jovial family. I should have thought your highly respectable aunt would have made a desperate fight against your turning actress." " So she would ; but she was too unkind, and I couldn't stand her any longer. You would never believe it " — and Mary blushed redder than before — " b\it aunt wanted me to marry Dr. Betts." " What ! Why, the man must be sixty, and he has worn a wig ever since I can remember him ! " " And it's a wig that one can't help seeing. There's hardly any make-believe about it." " And you plucked up a spirit and refused Betts ? Did he make his offer in person ? " " Not at first. He only hinted at marriage — said he wanted a nice little wife to cheer him of an evening, after a long day's round among his patients. He told me that a doctor appreciated a cheerful home more than any other professional man, and he asked me one day if I thought any nice young lady would accept him. I told him that he ought to look for some amiable person of his own age, if he wanted to be happy with his wife, since in all the novels I had ever read the young women who married old men always eloped in the second volume, and came back to die 6 ^^ How should I greet TheeV miserably in the third. No sensible man would want to begin a story of that kind, I told him. He laughed, and said that the only merit in a novel was not to resemble life, and that he should not despair of winning some nice girl's heart." " Presumptuous old idiot ! " I thought he was only talking for talking's sake — just to fill the time between the porch and the garden gate, for aunt had sent me to see him to his carriage ; but a week afterwards she told me he had proposed for me, and was willing to take me without a penny, and allow me a hundred a year, paid quarterly, to buy clothes. She told me it was a particularly generous offer — for a girl who was almost plain." " Plain ! That's an outrageous lie." " I'm so glad you think so. Of course, I know I'm not pretty ; but people have generally liked me, and one doesn't want to think one's self repulsive." "You were pretty enough to attract Dr. Betts, at any rate." "Oh, aunt said it was only his benevolence that made him propose for me. He knew that I was entirely dependent upon her, and it was out of pure kindness of heart he offered to make me Mrs. Betts, and the mistress of his beautiful house." " What rot ! what confounded rot ! '* "You know his beautiful house — a round table in the middle of his drawing-room, and a walnut suite covered with magenta rep. I think I should 7 Rough Justice. go mad if I had to live in the midst of a wahiut suite — wouldn't you ? Well, I said no, and no, and no — in spite of all aunt could urge about the house, and the silver teapots, and things, and the use of Dr. Betts's carriages when he didn't want them. I went on saying no, though aunt got more and more cantankerous, and would hardly help me to pudding. I believe she'd have locked me up in an attic and kept me on bread and water if she hadn't been afraid of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. I was only seventeen, so I suppose I should have ranked as an infant. And to make a long story short, she worried me so that at last I plucked up a spirit, and did just what you did." "Eh?" • "I ran away. Don't look shocked. No doubt it was all through your bad example." "But where did you run to, child .'' Good God ! Seventeen and friendless ! " " Not quite. I have no more aunts, and, indeed, if I had six I doubt if I should have tried another. But I happen to have an uncle— my father's youngest brother — who married an actress while he was at Oxford, and went on the stage, and offended everybody belonging to him. I had seen in the papers that he was acting at Cambridge, so I just took a third-class ticket by the first morning train, and was in time for breakfast with my uncle and his wife at Market Hill, Cambridge. It was a very early train, you see, and a very late breakfast." 8 ' of thought for three or four weary hours, sat up in his berth, turned on the electric light, and un- locked a little cash-box that stood on the table by his side. It was full of papers, and paper money, cheque- book, bank-book, private ledger ; and underneath these, at the bottom of the box, where hope should have been, Arnold found a letter which for him represented despair. "There's no good in lying awake brooding over it," he said to himself, as he took the thin letter out of the thin envelope ; " I had better read it quietly once more for the last time, and think the matter out." Enclosed in the letter there was a slip of printed paper — evidently a cutting from a newspaper. " Among the fortunate adventurers in the South African goldfields, one of the most striking per- sonalities is Captain Wildover, a sportsman and a gentleman, a fine shot at big game, and as plucky as they make 'em. Wildover and his partner are said to have netted a hundred thousand since they started in a modest way at Nigel's Reef" This was the enclosure which gave the key-note to the letter. "To think that you should have forgotten me in your riches — you, who were so good to me in our poverty! Oh, Arnold, I could not have believed that you could be prosperous and leave me to starve, even if you had formed new ties ; if you had forgotten all that we once were to each other. No, my dear, remembering what you were, 17 C Rough Justice. I cannot believe that you would be so cruel ; so I am sure you have tried to find me, and have failed, and have thought me dead, perhaps — or worse than dead, sunk in a sinful life, rich with the wages of sin. No, Arnold, I am not dead, nor fallen to that lower depth where your pity could not help me. I have lived on, waiting for happier days ; waiting for you. When you were leaving me alone with my sad — almost broken — heart, you swore that if you prospered you would come back to me, and begin a new life with me, as man and wife. We had been so friendless and alone in our poverty that there would be nobody to say hard things about our past, if fortune should smile upon the future. I believed you, and took comfort from your promises, between kisses and tears, in that dark hour of parting, when I stood beside you in the crowded steerage, and would have given ten years of my life — half my life — to be going with you, to share hardship and danger — only to be with you. You will never know what I have suffered in those four miserable years ; the bitter poverty ; the bitter degradation ; turned out of one poor lodging after another, because of arrears in a rent of a few shillings a week ; worried by the burden of debts that are counted by shillings ; hunted from pillar to post ; tramping all over London in all weathers, in search of employment ; trying my hand at anything and everything. All that you and I have suffered together was light compared with what I have gone through since I have been alone. To be alone ! Is not that i8 " How should I greet Thee ? " enough ? To be alone and almost starving. And then I seem to have grown so common, to have sunk so near the level of my surroundings. I accept favours from such common people, and am grateful. Who else is there to help me "i The woman of this house is the kindliest landlady I ever had, and I have been lucky in getting a little needlework in the house, and have stayed here longer than anywhere else. She gives me my garret for half-a-crown a week, though she might get more for it from any mechanic. She is patient when I am behindhand with my rent ; and she patronizes me and pities me, and makes me go down to her kitchen sometimes when I come in from one of my pilgrimages a little more tired than usual, and gives me tea and toast, and comforts me with the promise of better luck, and tells my fortune in the tea-leaves at the bottom of my cup. Oh, Arnold, I am so weak and wretched that my heart beats and glows with hope when she tells me there is a fair man far off who bears me a good heart. Do you bear me a good heart ? If this letter reaches you will you answer it, and promise to come to me, and send me a little help from your riches, just enough for me to keep body and soul together till you come > I have another friend in this house, one whose pitying kindness — which I try my hardest to avoid — hurts me more than Mrs. Grogan's favours. I have sunk so low as to accept pity from a woman of worse than doubtful character — a woman who paints her face, dyes her hair, and lives in a semi-detached manner 19 Rough Justice. under the protection of an elderly stock-broker ; a woman who goes to a theatre or a music-hall nearly every night, and whose hansom I hear drive up to the door in the dead, dreary hours through which I so often lie awake, waiting for the grey London light. ** I had given her a wide berth till one winter evening, when she saw me dragging myself up- stairs, feeling so faint and ill that I thought I should never get to the top of the house. She noticed my wretched state, and she put her arm round me and took me into her room. She was just going to sit down to dinner, and she put me in an easy-chair by the fire, and gave me hot wine and water, and was so tender and sweet to me — a woman living a profligate life, Arnold, a creature deliberately immoral — not an accidental sinner like me — and yet she was so gentle and so compas- sionate, and so womanly, that I wept tears of gratitude upon her breast. And after that night I could never hold my head high when I met her on the stairs, nor pretend not to see her. We have been friends in a way ; and I have sat by her fire sometimes on bitter days when my garret was fireless, and she has told me bits of her story — of the days when she lived with her father, a rich tradesman in a garrison town, and all the officers were in love with her. She must have been really beautiful in her youth ; but she is only a handsome wreck now. She has no visitors, except the highly respectable city person whom she calls her guardian ; and Mrs. Grogan says that her lodgers' 20 ''How should I greet Theef conduct out-of-doors is no business of hers. Poor wretch, I suppose she gets a better rent for her rooms from Mrs. Delamere than a spotless lodger would give. "Come back to me, Arnold. Come back, and be my husband, if you think you are bound by old promises. Consider, dear, I have led an honest life since you left me. I have lived on the edge of death for honour's sake. But if not, come back and be my comrade and friend, as in the old days. I belong to you. I have neither shame nor pride where you are concerned. I have repented of my other sins, but never of loving you. If the love is not dead in your heart, come back to me. "Lisa." The letter was addressed to — "A. Wildover, Esq., At the Gold Fields, Witwatersrand, Near Johannesburg, South Africa." 21 Rough Justice. CHAPTER II. A FELLOW-FEELING. Arnold sat staring straight before him across the narrow space of his windowless cabin. He had read Lisa's letter now for the third time, slowly, thoughtfully, realizing the full force of every word ; seeing the vision of the woman he had loved, her sufferings and deprivations, her sheep-like patience, the meek endurance of a woman whom the world had used ill. To this woman Fate had been merciless. A profligate father, a passionate, hysterical mother, a miserable childhood, the fatal gift of beauty, and, with that essentially feminine beauty, a sensitive, susceptible nature. Arnold knew the story of her temptation and her fall — how, within a year of her mother's death, she had exchanged a wretched wandering life with her father for a fool's paradise at the West End of London, under the protection of a Viennese banker, with the inevitable result of ill- usage and desertion. She had kept no humiliat- ing circumstance of that cruel story from the man A Fellow-feeling. she loved — the man who was really good to her, but who was as poor and almost as helpless as she was. They had found each other in the hour of despair, and their desolate hearts had gone out to each other in an impulse of pity and love. How well he remembered that meeting ; the sultry evening, late in August, when all the prosperous people had left London, and there was a lull in the traffic of the streets, and the lights were fewer because of closed theatres and music- halls. Oh, the stony-heartedness of London streets at this dead season to the man with empty pockets, for whom no friend cares, no hospitable door opens ! He had been roaming aimlessly about London all day — lying on the sunburnt grass in Hyde Park for an hour or two in the hottest part of the afternoon, trying to realize the French proverb that he who sleeps dines. He had not found that siesta a substitute for a beefsteak. He had spent his last copper to give himself a meal at a work- man's coffee-house, where the eggs were of doubt- ful freshness, and the tea had a second-hand flavour, as if it had been made with cast-off tea-leaves. As the evening grew towards dusk he had sauntered to Waterloo Bridge, and sat there with his back against the parapet, in the quiet of the deepening twilight, admiring the long Italian fagade of Somerset House, and wondering whether he should drown himself. 23 Rough Justice. He had carried the idea of suicide about with him for a long time ; and if it had not been for the compunction natural to every prodigal son who has a fond mother, he might have wound up his difficulties before that dreary August night. To-day, however, there had been something in the atmosphere — the dusty dryness, the odour of scorching pavements, and stale provisions, and dirty people, and old clothes, the odour of London poverty — which had depressed him below his usual low-water mark. There was nothing for it but to enlist — let himself out as a machine to carry a musket — or to kill himself ; and he thought the bottom of the river might be better than the barrack yard. He waited for darkness, and such an interval in the traffic on the bridge, and on the water below, as would allow him to get over the parapet unnoticed and drop quietly into the river ; and while he waited, sitting on one of the stone benches, a woman, who walked slowly past him, looked at him with a curious attention. There was just daylight enough left for them to see each other's faces. He noticed that hers had a faded beauty, which is always pathetic ; and even in that first look as she passed him he could see that she was not an "unfortunate." She was very poorly clad, in black, and her pale features were innocent of all embellishment. The earnest manner in which she looked at hini could hardly have been misconstrued by the dullest mind. 24 A Fellow-feeling. He watched her as she went to the end of the bridge, and in his utter loneh'ness and blank despair he felt a faint sense of regret at seeing no more of her, "The poor thing saw my sad case, and was sorry for me," he thought, watching the slim black figure as other figures passed it by at the end of the bridge. He was startled to see her turn suddenly and walk slowly back. It was as if his thought had summoned her ; and he, who called thought-trans- ference "rot," and hypnotism humbug, smiled grimly. Of course, his existence had nothing to do with her movements. She came slowly back, and seated herself at the other end of the bench on which he was sitting ; as if he had willed her to come to him, he thought, in spite of his scepticism. They sat thus in silence for about ten minutes, and then in a shy voice she made some little remark about the weather. The night was so sultry, the air so oppressive ! He answered courteously, and they talked for a few minutes of indifferent things, the dreariness of London at this season. He knew somehow that she had a purpose in talking to him, and that the serious side of her mind would show itself presently. There was an awkward silence, and then she said — " I hope you do not think badly of me " " Impossible ! " he interrupted eagerly. 25 Rough Justice. " For having spoken to you — a perfect stranger. You were looking so very, very miserable as I passed you, that somehow I could not go home in peace and leave you here. Your face would have haunted me all night. I should have dreamt dreadful dreams about you. This is the bridge from which people used to drown themselves — years ago." " Years ago ! Do they never do it now ? " " I think ndt. There are too many people passing now that the bridge is free." "Ah, the halfpenny toll made a solitude, I sup- pose, and any poor wretch who was-sick of his life could find time and opportunity to chuck it away." Again there was a silence — embarrassed upon her part, moody on his. He began to understand her now. She knew he meant suicide. It was shrewd of her to have read his thoughts — she, a casual passer-by. He was touched by her con- cern for him, and began to study her face as she sat at the other end of the bench, looking straight before her in the faint grey light. It was a delicate, prettily modelled face, and it was a young face, though care had written lines upon it, and hollowed the oval cheek, and given a sad down- ward droop to the mouth. " Do you live near here } " she asked presently, "and do you come here of an evening for the fresh air from the river ? " " I live nowhere just at present. I had very decisive notice to leave my lodgings last night. I was locked out." 26 A Fellow-feeling. " Poor man ! That is hard. And you have nowhere to go ? " " Yes, I have somewhere — and I am going there presently, when I have enjoyed the fresh air from the river — and your agreeable society." The defiance of his tone, the cynical sneer, and touch of brutality confirmed her in that conviction which had flashed into her mind at first sight of his face and attitude. " Oh, don't, don't give way to despair ! " she pleaded. " Think as badly of me as you like — for speaking so freely to a stranger — for troubling myself about a stranger's fate." " Think badly of you ! Not a bit. You belong to some rescue society, I dare say, and this is all in your evening's work." "It isn't kind of you to sneer at me— only because I saw a stranger in trouble and couldn't help caring. I can only beg you — if you had that dreadful intention I fancied — to put it away from you. Who can ever tell what the future may bring ? So long as one is young, and in tolerable health, racked by no cruel incurable disease, there is always a chance. You know the vulgar proverb — the longest lane ! Good night." She rose towards the end of her speech. The latter part of it was spoken standing, and with the last words she moved quickly away. But he sprang up, and darted after her, and caught her by the arm. " Don't leave me just yet ! " he said. " Do you think a despairing wretch is to be saved so easily ? 27 Rough Justice. Stop ! Your pity has touched me. Forgive me for trying to sneer it down. I didn't want to be made to feel human again, I have been feeling an angry devil — a lost spirit. I should have gone with clenched fists to meet the Great Judge — if there be one — or Anything — after the weeds in one's hair, and the river mud in one's mouth." "You won't think of that wicked act any more ? " " Not to-night, at any rate. You have humanized me. What a good soul you must be to take such heed of a stranger's trouble ! " " I once sat on this bridge for two hours, mean- ing what you meant to-night." " And some kind soul guessed .? " " No, no ; no one spoke to me, no one guessed. I sat and listened to the clocks striking, and I thought in another quarter of an hour it would be darker, and I waited and waited — and — I was a coward. I was afraid of the jump, and the plunge, so I went back to my wretched room, and let my landlady bully me, and I got some work the next day. My luck changed, and I clung to this poor life." " Ah ; it was sympathy that made you understand my case. Well, you are a Good Samaritan " " Without even twopence to offer you." "You have given me more than a million pence. You have interested me in something outside my own miserable used-up existence. Be my friend, dear girl. Tell me all about yourself. 28 A Fellow-feeling. Who knows ? This may be the turning in my dismal lane. I have need of you, kind, com- passionate creature." He was holding her ; he put his arm round her waist in the darkness, and tried to draw her to him, but she struggled away from him. "Do you think I am a bad woman because I was sorry for you .'' " she asked indignantly. *' I think you an angel of compassion and goodness." "You insult me." " Is it an insult to want your affection ; to yearn for a kiss from those gentle lips .-' You were sorry for me, and pity is akin to love. I am grateful to you, and gratitude is love." " Good night," she said again, and hurried away from him, walking very fast towards the Surrey shore. Quick as her pace was she could not escape him. He overtook her a little way from the bridge, and again he took her arm in his strong grip, not roughly, and walked at her side. "Come, let there be no nonsense between us," he said impetuously. " An hour ago I was a solitary wretch, with nothing to live for, nothing between me and the bottom of the Thames. Your pity — something else, perhaps ; something that I have never seen in any other woman — has given me back my interest in life. An hour ago I wanted to die ; and now I want to live, because of you. But if you go out of my life again, if you say we are to be strangers, well — I fall back 29 Rough Justice. upon my original intention ; and so " — after a brief pause — " good night." He released her arm as suddenly as he had seized it, lifted his hat, and walked away from her towards the bridge. This time it was she who followed him. " For God's sake don't go back," she pleaded. " Be reasonable. What can I do but pity you ? What can I — almost as poor as you are — do to make your life better ? " " Love me ! " he answered passionately. " Love me. My heart has been one great ache for the loneliness of this hideous town. You are the first woman of all I have met and passed in this stony labyrinth — since my ill luck began— th^t has gone out of her way to pity me. There were smilers enough, and challenges enough from eye and lip while I was prosperous ; but since I have been threadbare and out at elbows not a glance that meant kindness. You could stop to pity me, gentle Samaritan. Give me something more than idle pity." "You talk as you would to the women of the streets," she said in a distressed voice. "No, no, no! On my soul, no! Is there no swift sudden love except the love that is bought ? " " I am not what the world calls a good woman, but I do not belong to that class." " I know it. Such a thought never entered into my mind. Do you suppose I am such a dolt as not to comprehend purity when I meet it ? Pity, 50 A Fellow -feeling, beneficence, the qualities that make ministering angels ! " "Ah, now your praise sounds like mockery. Indeed, there is nothing for us but to shake hands and say good-bye. You will not be so wicked as to think any more of suicide. You will wait and see what Providence will do for you. And please accept this shilling — indeed, indeed, I can spare it — and get a crust of bread and a bed somewhere." He pushed away the slender hand that was trying to slip the coin into his palm. " No ; I will accept no favour from a woman who whistles me off so lightly. Tell me who you are — where you live — when I may see you again. Tell me, and then I will take half your shilling and get myself a supper, and sit in St. James's Park, and think of you till morning." She refused, but the pleading voice — a deep, strong voice that sounded like passionate music — was irresistible. If he were lonely, was she not lonely too .'' She yielded so far as to promise to meet him in Birdcage Walk at eight o'clock on the following night. She would not tell him where she lived, or her name, yet awhile. " You will not cheat me ? " he asked. ** I give you my word of honour, if I am alive to-morrow night I will be there." " I will trust you." He changed the shilling at a great gaudy public- house, and gave her one of the two sixpences. "Do you remember how Lucy Ashton and her 31 Rough Justice. lover divided a piece of gold between them as a token of lifelong fidelity ? We divide a loaf of bread." And so they parted. " Shall I ever see her again ? " he wondered, as he walked slowly westward. "Will she keep her promise ?" Could it be love, this warm interest in a woman whom he had never seen before to-night ? Was it love.'' Impossible, he told himself; but the strange circumstances of their acquaintance, her compassion, her frankness and courage, were enough to account for his keen interest in her, his longing to see her again, to make her in some wise his own. " She came to me in the hour of my despair. I am not going to let her go," he said to himself, over and over again in the summer night. He had a hearty supper of bread and cheese and porter — sixpennyworth in all, at one of the taverns that open in the small hours for the market people. He sat in a corner amidst an odour of cabbages with the dew on them, a faint sweetness of herbs and flowers, and ate and drank, thinking of the pale, worn face, and the friendly hand to which he owed the tardy meal. He thought he had never in his life enjoyed a meal so much. "That swipes was better than all the fiz I ever drank," he muttered, as he set down the empty pot. He went into the cool dawn like a giant re- freshed, and slept sweetly on a bench in St. James's 32 A Fellow-feeling: Park, under the rosy morning sky, lulled by the chirruping of London birds, and the flutter of ruffled leaves. And all next day he looked for work with an energy he had not known of late. He had gone about in a low-spirited, ill-tempered way, as if he had been seeking failure. To-day he went everywhere with a bright countenance, a happy-go-lucky air that was irresistible. Before the day was done he had succeeded in two directions. The editor of a sporting paper had promised to consider any articles upon 'Varsity athletics or 'Varsity sport which he might send in, and to pay him fairly for his " copy " if it were accepted. And, better still, the acting-manager of a second-rate music-hall engaged him as general assistant in front of the house and " chucker-out," at fifteen shillings a week, with a promise of better pay if his services proved satisfactory. "You won't have to wear a uniform like those big foreign chaps at the West End," said the manager. "We don't run to that. I suppose you've got a dress suit .'' " " I have ; but it's — at the cleaner's. You'll have to advance me a week's pay if you want me to wear it." " And how do I know I shall ever see that good- looking mug of yours again if I do .-' You look like a gentleman — but that sort is sometimes the worst." " That's your business. With your wide experi- ence of life you ought to know an honest man when you see one." 33 ^ Rough Justice. "Well, there's your money. I must risk it. I like the cut of your jib. You look like a 'Varsity man, and you're built for strength, though you're wofully out of condition." " I've been worrying myself lately." "And not eating enough, perhaps. You'd better take another five bob, and put a little beef and beer inside you before Saturday." He was to begin his new duties on Saturday night. He knew enough of such places of amuse- ment to know that his post would not be a sinecure. He was glad that the Hall was a third-rate place, on the Surrey side of the river, since he was less likely to be recognized by family friends, or the men he had known at Cambridge. He had not a large circle of acquaintance. His father was a small Suffolk squire, living quietly upon an estate that had belonged to his race for nearly three centuries, proud, as such people are proud, of names and acres, never having been ground in that great cosmopolitan mill which reduces all individualities — short of a Prime Minister, a Duke, an inventor, or a quadruple millionaire — to inconsiderable atoms. The Went- worths of Langton Park lived in the narrowest circle, and the majority of Arnold's acquaintance were the friends he had made for himself at Cambridge. These he thought were very unlikely to cross the Thames in quest of amusement, since any new light that illumined those obscure regions would, so soon as discovered by the managerial eye, be invited to blaze upon West End London. 34 A Fellow-feeling. He accepted the engagement, therefore, without compunction ; saw no degradation in being hired to keep order among roughs, to show people to their seats, to help the over-worked waiters even, on occasion, and serve drinks. To a man who has been face to face with starvation and death, no honest employment need seem degrading. Fifteen shillings a week ! He could get a clean attic on the Surrey side for four shillings, spend a shilling a day on food, and have four shillings a week for shoe-leather and laundress. But twelve shillings out of the pound he had just received would go to the pawnbroker, who had custody of his dress suit, and he would have to maintain himself for a week — or perhaps a fortnight — upon eight shillings — a problem in economics, assuredly. But he had other resources. There was a cricket match on at the Oval that afternoon, so when he had found the room he wanted in a tidy street near the Lambeth Road, and had washed and furbished himself, with much brushing of threadbare tweed and well-blacked boots, so that he might not sink with shame at encountering an acquaintance, he paid his sixpence and watched the heroic struggle of a weak Sussex against a strong Surrey, and joined in the clamour and excitement of the scene, and forgot that he had eaten nothing but a penny roll since two o'clock in the morning. Luck favoured him so far that the only acquaint- ance he saw was in the Surrey team, and uncon- scious of his existence. He stayed till the close 35 Rough Justice. of play, took a meal of tea and cold meat in a coffee-shop at Vauxhall, and then strolled through the summer evening to St. James's Park. " Would she keep her promise ? " He thought she would — thought that her loneli- ness was little less than his own, that she had almost as bitter need of sympathy. She would not have so felt for his woes if they had not been like her own. He remembered the opium eater's gentle friend — that story of love in poverty. Was not their situation much the same — friendless and poor in the lap of the stony-hearted stepmother, London, the inj'usta noverca to poverty, the sycophant and the ministering slave to wealth ? She was sitting on a bench in a little bit of ornamental ground opposite Queen Anne's Gate, waiting meekly, very neat and prim in her thread- bare black frock, and black straw hat. Last night she had been gloveless ; to-night she wore gloves that were in themselves a history, so carefully mended, so old and thin. She blushed at his coming, like a girl at the sight of a first lover. The man who could con- found her with the vicious classes must have been indeed a thick-skinned brute. They sat and talked together, and walked about the park together in the summer darkness, till ten o'clock. He told her the history of his day. " You are my Mascotte, perhaps," he said. " I have had better luck to-day — have got something to do that will just keep me from starving." 36 A Fellow-feeling And then he told her about the engagement at the Comet Music Hall ; but instead of being pleased, she was shocked at the idea. " I know you are a gentleman, and have never mixed with such people," she said. " It seems dreadful you should sink so low." " Oh, I am something of a Radical. I think nothing low that isn't felonious. I don't suppose I shall quite like giving the waiters a helping hand when the Hall's full, but I shall enjoy the chucking out. It will remind me of my happiest days." " Why not go back to your friends ? " she asked. "I know you must belong to nice people — some- where." " I belong to no one but myself, my dear. Besides you I have but one friend in the world — my mother — and she was too weak to shield me from my father's tyranny. He and I could not live in the same house after I was a man. My manhood rose against domestic despotism. I turned my back upon a home that was a wasp's nest of petty irritations, and everybody belonging to me cried out upon my villainy. No, dear little friend, for me there is no going back. I have to make my own life, and to find happiness where I can. When the Horse Guards' clock struck ten she stopped in the midst of their talk, and bade him good-night. He wanted her to stay later, but she said her landlady would be horrified if she was not indoors 37 Rough Justice. before eleven, and then he wanted to walk home with her, but she was obdurate, and would not even let him know where she lived. The next night was Saturday, and his engage- ment at the Comet was to begin. There could be no evening walk in the park. She promised to meet him in Kennington Park on Sunday afternoon. " It will be nearer where you live," he said artfully. He put her into a Brixton omnibus at Charing Cross, and then walked to his Lambeth lodging, and sat down to write a criticism on Surrey cricket. He was not literary by any means, had failed to get his degree, and had brought down the paternal wrath upon himself for that and other failures — failure to live upon his allowance, for instance. But he was no dunce, and could write plain English with a good swing in it ; and in writing of cricket, football, or athletics, he was writing about what he knew. The editor praised his "copy," and paid him half a sovereign for it on the nail. " Do you want to sign the article with y-our own name ? " he asked. " I have no name." " Oh, then you'd better take a nom-de-plumey^ said the editor. "We like names. You seem pretty knowledgable. Suppose we call you ' The Man who Knows ' t " The paper was a new one, called itself In the Know, and aimed at being as modern and as slangy as sporting papers are made. It was 38 A Fellow-feeling. printed on yellow paper, and aspired to become popular as the "yaller 'un." They met in Kennington Park on more than one afternoon in the sultry August. He took her to see a match at the Oval, and they had tea together at a little Swiss shop in the Kennington Road. They were fast friends, and yet he knew only her Christian name. For him she was only Lisa, and for her he was Arnold. And so this gentle friendship continued for nearly a month, the bond strengthening day by day, though she hardly knew how strong it was growing. And then, one Sunday night; — his only free night — they walked longer and later than usual. She forgot her landlady's hours, and the possibility of being scolded — forgot the passage of time, as she walked to and fro in the deep shadow of the trees in the most secluded part of Hyde Park, listening to Arnold's pleading. He was asking for more than her friendship — he wanted her love, he wanted her. Why should she withhold herself from him } He knew she loved him. She had saved him from an ignominious death. He be- longed to her, and she to him. He pleaded in such plain, strenuous language as a working man might have used to his sweetheart. And she accepted him — lover or husband. There were reasons in her own mind which withheld her from even asking what the tie was to be. She gave herself to him unconditionally, having loved him from the night of their first meeting, having 39 Rough Justice. melted at his voice, and trembled at his touch in all the time she had maintained an almost severe reserve. The clocks struck twelve while they were talking. " What will Mrs. Marmian say to me ? She has such a dreadful temper ! " "She shall have no chance of saying anything to-night. My home is your home now you have promised to trust yourself to me." They went home together. His landlady was of the easy-going type — sat up late herself, and wasn't shocked at late hours in a lodger, and was not averse to the offer of a glass of whisky. " I've brought my wife home, Mrs. Barwick," Arnold said coolly. "You didn't know I was married, did you ? She has just come from her friends in the country, and her train was late. Her luggage will be here to-morrow." 40 Alone m London. CHAPTER III. ALONE IN LONDON. Their new lives began in perfect harmony and happiness. There was no question of marriage. If she had possessed that steadfast strength, that power to resist tender impulses, and that lofty- self-esteem which make high principle in woman, she could have made her own terms with him. But she was by nature submissive and unexacting, and she had been crushed under the grinding wheel of poverty, and had suffered the world's contempt. From the first she was his slave — devoted to him, esteeming herself happy if she could but make his life a little happier. She was the daughter of an adventurer, and had led the casual, shifty life of the out-at-elbows and the homeless ever since she could remember ; and in this chequered existence had learnt many small arts. She could cook a dinner, or trim a hat, was an artist with her needle, and so was able to eke out Arnold's small earnings, and to keep the wolf from the door, even when things were worst ; but there were intervals when bt ' tJie 41 Rough Justice. Know was using a good deal of Arnold's "copy," and then they lived merrily. They had been living thus for a year, and a child had been born to them ; a child that lived only a week, and whose death had a terrible effect upon the mother. She had a long and dangerous illness, through which Arnold nursed her day and night, giving up his engagement at the Music Hall for that purpose, hoping to maintain her and himself by the use of his pen. As "The Man who Knows" he had become a feature on the yellow paper, and as long as the paper and his popularity lasted he was sure of three pounds a week. It was in the beginning of her convalescence, and while she was still light-headed at night, that Lisa told her lover the secret of her past. " I dare say you think me worse than I am, because I never asked you to marry me," she said, brokenly, "not even when our baby was coming. If I had been a good woman I should have wanted to be your wife. But you never asked me what my youth had been, and I felt I had no right to ask you to give me your name, unless I could tell you that I was worthy " "Dear girl, you are worthy. Tell me nothing. I want to know nothing about the past. I know you. Surely that's enough. It is the woman, and not the history, that counts. You have been true and dear, and have loved me as no one ever loved me before you. Make haste and get well, and I will marry you as soon as you are strong 42 Alone in London. enough to stand up in a church or a registrar's office." "You won't say that, when you know all," she sobbed. And then she told him her pitiful story. The daughter of an unprincipled man — steeped in debt and difficulty ; shifting his quarters from city to city ; clever enough to live where a duller rascal would have starved ; utterly neglectful of wife and daughter ; unmoved when the broken-hearted wife succumbed to the misery of her existence, and letting his seventeen-year-old daughter tramp the streets of the wickedest city in Europe, and fetch and carry for him. Young, pretty, ill-clad, with that low standard of self-respect which is the natural result of a childhood steeped in poverty and debt, the motherless waif was an easy prey for a scoundrel. The first man's voice that had ever spoken tenderly to her was the voice of the seducer. " I was so unhappy, so tired and ill, when he first spoke to me ; and I thought it was only for pity that he took notice of me. He was old enough to be my father. I had no fear of him. I looked up to him as a superior being — my friend, my benefactor. He promised to find employment for my father ; to make our lives happier. I used to see him every day as I went about our poor little marketing — or went to the pawnbroker's for my father — and one day " Convulsive sobs stopped the pitiful story. Arnold urged her to tell him no more — the past 43 Rough Justice. was past. She was no less dear to him because of her unhappy girlhood. " No, no, no ; you must know all — all — and then if you still think I am fit to be your wife " He tried hard to stop her, but she insisted ; and in broken sentences, interrupted by hysterical sobbing, she told him how she had been left in London, and how she had starved and struggled, and kept herself out of the lowest depth to which lost women go down. She had been as near suicide as he had. She had lived on a few pence a day ; had put her hand to anything that she could find to do ; had lived for a week on a West End dressmaker's pay for one day's work. "Tell me no more, dear, except the name of the man who wronged you. I should like to know, so that I may have a name to hate him by." " What does his name matter ? He is a great man in Vienna. Everybody looks up to him there, as I did before I knew what he was. If you were to tell people how he treated me they would not believe you. I hate myself for having listened to him — and loved him. I did love him, Arnold ; not as I love you, but with the love of an ignorant girl who had never been praised or tenderly treated. He was kind to me — generous, indulgent — while his whim lasted ; and then he left me without an hour's warning. His valet brought me a letter — good-bye — and a twenty- pound note. His master was starting for Vienna at eight o'clock that evening. And then I knew what it was to be alone in London." 44 Alone in London. He was tender with her, and seemed full of pity, yet her story chilled him. He had guessed that there was a history ; that some deeper woe than poverty had clouded her girlhood ; that her soul had gone down into deep waters. But this story of a middle-aged lover — a street acquaintance — was wanting in every element of romance. She had been fond of her seducer — fond of the man who praised her, and lavished gifts upon her. She regretted him even now, perhaps ; looked back and sighed for the luxury of Brompton lodgings, a brougham, and fine clothes ; looked back from their shabby second floor in Margaretta Street, Lambeth. She saw no change in him yet ; but the slow, day-by-day death of a worn-out love had begun. His love was dying by inches, though he hardly knew it. He thought he was tired of this wretched London life — this stony labyrinth, and smoke- darkened sky — not of her. Things were going badly with them. She was weak after her illness — too weak for an occasional day's dressmaking at the West End, and so one element of earning was gone. He had been pre- cipitate in giving up the music-hall, for he found the In the Know people were becoming bad paymasters. He had to call three or four times at the office for the few pounds owing to him. Life was harder than it had been. The rent of the shabby lodging was in arrear, and the easy-going landlady looked at him gloomily in the shadow of the narrow passage as he went out or came in. 45 Rough Justice. " If you find seven shillings a week too much to pay, you'd better manage with one room," she said ; and Arnold agreed that in his present cir- cumstances one room must do. He had taken the extra room when Lisa and he joined fortunes. Oh, the misery of that one room, where there was room for nothing ! The Pembroke table at which he wrote, screwed into a corner where his elbows were cramped by the walls, while Lisa did some bit of fine laundrywork, or prepared their composite meal, at another table — the squalor of it to a man reared amongst ample spaces and pleasant surroundings, and in the clear air of Suffolk fields and woods ! An invincible longing to escape from those four walls seized him. He almost regretted the music-hall, the vulgar songs, and stamping dances, the dust and glare, the riot and noise. At least there were movement and life at the music-hall. Here, there was a deadly quiet. Lisa was dull and depressed for want of change of air after her illness ; and she had a nervous monosyllabic cough that tortured him by its measured recurrence. There was a loud Dutch clock on the landing, and he knew almost to a moment how many seconds it ticked off between Lisa's coughs. When he was writing for his paper — trying to be bright and lively, to adorn his record of boat-race or cricket match with the highest top-sparkle of Cockney humour — that recurrent cough, slight as it was, made him grind his teeth in nervous agony. Life would have 46 Alone in London. been tolerable if he had had a den, he thought, a mere closet, where he could shut himself in, and not hear every movement of his poor companion, and not smell the sausages or the bloaters that she was frying for the tea-dinner, and not be painfully conscious of every detail of this squalid existence. They were soon to sink into a deeper misery. He had not thrown up his situation at the Comet three months, when that other — and, as he once thought, better — source of income dried up altogether. In tlic Know died the mute, inglorious death of newspapers that fail. There were no convulsions of the parting spirit. Nobody knew it was passing. The yellow periodical simply ceased to be. Its slang, its stupendous up-to-dateishness, its yellow paper, had not served to keep life in it for two little years. Nobody had ever been induced to call it "The yaller 'un." It died and made no sign. Arnold only knew of his bereavement when he went to the office in quest of a business manager who had been very difficult of access of late, though the editor had been unusually eager for " copy " from "The Man who Knows." The office — a ground floor in a shabby street between the Strand and Long Acre — was shut, and a bill in one of the windows announced that these eligible premises were to let ; for further particulars apply to Messrs. Barnard and Badger, Auctioneers and Estate Agents, Queen Street. Arnold did not trouble Barnard and Badger. 47 Rough Justice. What good could further particulars do him ? He had seen impending ruin in the conduct of editor and proprietor, in the shuffling avoidance of his claim for payment ; in the pacifying him with an occasional sovereign on account, instead of a cheque in full. The yellow newspaper was dead, and that meant starvation. There were other papers, of course, which treat of athletics, and of manly sports, such as he loved to share in, to witness, or even to write about ; but all the old-established paying papers had their staff, and would hardly desire contributions from an outsider — an outsider in the worst sense of the word, Arnold thought with a pang of self-contempt. He walked homeward by St. George's Circus, and looked in at the Comet. No, there was no berth for him there. They had found an Aberdeen railway porter of six feet four, and proportionate bulk, whom they had put in a uniform, plastered with gold lace, and who gave the hall an air which Arnold's threadbare dress suit could never impart. No, his services were no longer worth bread and cheese at the Comet. Now came the wretched wearing hand-to-mouth existence, the daily fight for the day's food and shelter. How could love live in such an atmo- sphere .'' It did live, for one of the two. The woman went on loving with that love of woman or dog which is deathless. The man sickened of the struggle, and hated his life so much that 48 Alone in London. he began to be afraid of hating his life's com- panion. They were good and tender to each other through it all. When she was ill — and she was often ill — he nursed her. On those rare occasions when his strong frame sunk under his burden, and the sickness of exhaustion fell upon him, she nursed him, and fed him, somehow, with the earnings of her day's toil. He never knew that at these times she sometimes did half a day's charing for a shilling to buy his dinner. It was the year that the diamond fever raged fiercest at Kimberley, and men in England who knew nothing of the restrictions or the difficulties of the mining district, thought that wealth was waiting for them out yonder, beside the Orange River. One of the contributors to the defunct sporting paper, the man who had written the turf articles, met Arnold walking the Strand, gaunt and shabby, and took him into an oyster shop, and gave him a lunch. This gentleman had been luckier in backing the winners in the great autumn races than those readers who had believed in his prophecies when he wrote for In the Know. He had won a few hundreds, and had heard of that Tom Tiddler's Ground in South Africa ; and, being of a sanguine disposition, was ready to back his luck there. He looked up to Arnold as a man of better education, and better thews and sinews than him- self, and offered to take him to the diamond mines. He was not going to Kimberley, but to Barkly 49 E Rough Justice. West, twenty miles off the centre of the River Diggings, where a man with a small capital might have a chance of luck, if he worked hard enough. The River Diggings were the poor man's diggings. "You shall have twenty per cent, of all we make," he told Arnold. " I'm a social bird, and hate the idea of going alone. And if you haven't got the oof for the passage, why, I'll pay your fare — steerage." "You're very good, but that isn't enough," Arnold answered, his face flushing and his eye brightening at the thought of escape. " I can't leave — a friend — to starve. I should want a ten- pound note to leave behind me." The reprobate was good-natured. He lent — or gave — Arnold ten pounds over and above his passage money, and this — a large sum when measured by their late deprivations — Arnold gave to Lisa. " I am no good to you," he said ; " for the last three months you have been the only breadwinner — except for a casual quid once in a blue moon. You have been keeping me, toiling for me, Lisa. Be sure you will do better alone." " Better ! " The anguish in the voice, the white despair in sunken cheek and quivering lips, smote him with a sense of shame. Pie knew that she was heart- broken, and that he was glad to get away from her ; from the four walls ; the London sky ; the cramped, wretched life. Those were the things he 50 Alone in London. was so glad to leave. And for her? Well, her existence was linked with them. All that was generous in his nature was aroused by her sorrow. All that man could say to comfort woman those lips of his spoke to her, as she clung to him, and sobbed upon his breast, in that un- speakable agony of parting. " Dearest, if I live and prosper, I will come back — come back to marry you and make a lady of you. I swear it. Come, love, be brave. Who knows ? I may do well at the Mines. There are men who began there with the clothes they stood in, as I shall, and who are triple millionaires to- day. I mean to make my fortune, for your sake, Lisa. I shall come back a rich man, and you shall share my good luck, as you have shared my penury." "No, Arnold, no — you will never come back. You have been too miserable with me." "Ah, but I have been happy, too. You are the only woman I ever really loved ; and if I prosper you shall prosper too." And so they parted — on her side with despair- ing tears, on his with kisses and promises. The remembrance of the words he had spoken then smote him now, as he sat in his berth, in the night loneliness, with her letter in his hand. " If you think you are bound by those promises," she wrote. "If!" He knew that he was bound by them. Honour and conscience declared those 51 Rough Justice. vows binding. He had given his promise un- solicited, since she had been ever unselfish and unexacting. And even in reminding him of what he had promised she absolved him in advance, if he wanted to break his word. She urged him only to go back to her ; to be again her protector and her friend ; to love her as he loved her of old. Alas ! that could not be. He might go back, and redeem his promise, and marry her. But the love born of despair, the sudden sympathy between two solitary creatures, desolate in a crowded world, was in Arnold's heart and mind only a memory of something that had once been sweet and dear. He could never think of Lisa Rayner without tender- ness ; but he had long ceased to love her. The years in which they had been parted were the long years of eventful manhood. He had lived a new life ; he felt himself a new man. That larger life of an adventurer among many adven- turers, of the strong man among strong men, had moulded mind and body, and had put a new mark upon him. He had lived in a world where all was young and fresh, eager, courageous, hopeful. How could he expect happiness if he were to ally himself with that broken life he had left behind, the faded, saddened woman, whose mind was shadowed and dulled by bitterest memories, upon whose face care had drawn such cruel lines ? And, worst of all, as he recalled that faded face another face shone out beside it, so fair, so fresh, so radiant with youth and hope, that the contrast 52 Alone in London. between the two was wide as the difference between Hght and shadow. Oh, happy face, in its frank outlook, its innocent fearlessness — the sign and token of an unsullied life ! Sweet face which he had been watching and studying in the idle days over that wintry sea, and which had made December bright as June ! "Sweet Mary, it is not for beauty I love you," he said to himself, musing sadly, with Lisa's letter still in his hand. " I have seen prettier faces — but never a face so radiant with youth and hope. My merry Mary, my joyous light-hearted girl ! " He looked back wonderingly at those old days in Suffolk, when Mary had been, in some way or other, his almost daily companion. His mother had compassionated her loneliness in the maiden aunt's prim household ; and Mary had been given the run of the schoolroom and garden, and had been accepted as Beatrice Wentworth's companion and playfellow. Beatrice was Arnold's only sister, his junior by five years, and two years older than little Mary. Mary was still little Mary when Arnold left home, still a child, a tall slip of a thing that had just passed its twelfth birthday, and was boastful of being in its teens. '■ *' I am in my teens, you know," she used to say reprovingly, when Arnold teased her. "You'll have to leave off pulling my hair." "Then you'll have to leave off having such a preposterous mop. The temptation is too strong for me," Arnold would reply. 53 Rough Justice. He was very fond of little Mary — his Molly, his Polly, his flippety witchet. He had all kinds of foolish names with which to tease her, but in talking about her she was always "the kid." He teased her, and played with her — tennis, cricket, football ; tobogganing in a wheelless barrow down a grassy slope in the garden ; blackberrying and nutting in the woods and on the commons ; skat- ing, billiards, archery. Mary wanted to do every- thing that anybody else in the world could do. Why not billiards } She was sure she could play if they would let her. " Cut the cloth, should I ? " cried she. " Oh, how nasty of you ! " Mary tried everything, and if she didn't actually adorn everything she touched, she was at least quicker with brain and hand and foot than most girls of her age. She was the kind of child " who feels her life in every limb " — a frank, fearless creature. "Mary Frceland's high spirits are a little bois- terous, but she is thoroughly nice," Mrs. Wentworth said ; " and she is a capital companion for Bee, who is much too fond of sitting over a book. And it is a real kindness to have her here. It must be so wofully dull for her at home ; and her aunt is very pleasant about it, and likes the child to be here." Happily for the little Mary of those days, her aunt. Miss Farmiloe, was a strong-minded person with ample resources, who was bored by juvenile society, and was grateful to the chief lady of the neighbourhood for taking her niece off her hands during the greater part of the day. 54 Alone in London. Punctually every evening, at seven o'clock in summer, or at five in winter, Miss Farmiloe's highly respectable parlour-maid — or in bad weather the gardener — called at Langton House for Miss Mary ; and punctually at ten o'clock every morn- ing, except Sundays, Mary appeared, fresh and beaming, at the schoolroom door, ready to share Beatrice's lessons. Beatrice had taken ever so much more interest in her work since she had had a companion, the governess told Mrs. Wentworth ; and indeed Mary's gay temper gave a zest to the schoolroom drudgery ; and all those kings and queens in the Primers and Histories who had been such pale abstractions came to life, and were worth reading about. Mary had been allowed to grow wild till she was ten years old, in accordance with a theory of Miss Farmiloe's, and she was much behind Beatrice when she began to share her studies ; but she soon reached her companion's level, and it required con- siderable management upon the governess's part to keep the humble friend from outstripping the young lady of the house. As a child — a graceful, lively, winning child — and only as a child, Arnold had remembered his little friend. Looking back at the past, and see- ing that graceful childish figure in the picture of his vanished home, it had never occurred to him that the child was growing into a woman — or, indeed, it had never occurred to him that there was in that human Will-o'-the-wisp the germ of the future woman ; or that the passing years must 55 Rough Justice. change the character of their friendship should they ever meet again. They had met, and after the first shock of find- ing her tall and strong, and womanly in form and aspect, he had treated her as if she were little Mary still — with the old frankness and freedom ; teasing her, and laughing at her, as in the old times, and spending most of those idle hours in her society. What was there to do at sea but to talk to a girl one liked .-' There were the children, too, who were perfect limpets in their attachment to him and to Mary, and who would not let them be apart. They were both indispensable in every kind of recreation. The other passengers noted the merry group clustered on the hurricane deck, with wind-blown hair and frocks, Mary as childish in her mirth as the children ; and most people took it for granted that Mary and Arnold were engaged lovers, going home to be married. " I suppose you'll be dreadfully busy about your trousseau directly you land," observed one in- quisitive spinster, who had been troubled in mind about Mary's chaperonless condition from the beginning of the voyage ; and Mary blushed furiously as she explained that she had no trousseau to buy— only a mourning frock or two. " I ought to be in mourning for my aunt," she said. "And Mr. Wildover is not yov^ fiancif How odd ! We all took you for engaged people," " How silly of you ! ]\Ir. Wildover is an old, old 56 Alone in London. friend, who used to be a kind of playfellow when I was little. He would no more think of being in love with me than he would with you," concluded Mary, casting about for an example of the im- probable. She was angry at the spinster's impertinence, and even more angry with herself for blushing so hotly. "I hate the ladies' saloon," she told Arnold, afterwards. " It reeks with old maids." When they were within a few days of arrival at Southampton, Mary was hurt at perceiving a change in Arnold's conduct. He left off playing with her and the children — or only joined in their games occasionally, when they were too persistent to be denied. " Perhaps he is beginning to be ashamed of me because I have no chaperon," Mary said to herself, after crying a little, as she sat alone in her cabin, trying to read an instructive book out of the ship's library — the biography of some one she had never heard of, written by some one equally unknown. "No chaperon! How I shall always hate that word ! As if any girl with a grain of sense wanted an old woman to take care of her! One can understand an old woman wanting a girl — to help her over the crossings, and to put her cap straight. But a girl wanting an old woman is too absurd." Mary Freeland's African and theatrical ex- periences had inclined her to protest against the restraints and restrictions of conventionality. 57 Rough Justice. At Southampton Arnold bade her good-bye, after having seen her seated in the boat ex- press that was to take her to Waterloo, whence she was going straight to Liverpool Street, and Suffolk. There would have been no word said of any future meeting if Mary had not spoken it. "You will be coming to Mervynhall to see Mrs. Wentworth," she said ; " so I dare say we shall meet before long." " Yes, I dare say," he answered, not very cordially. And then, with a sudden change of manner, which was like a flash of sunshine, " Yes, yes, I must see you again — ^just once more before I go back to the Cape." " You mean to go back, then ? " " Oh dear, yes. What is there for me to do in England .-* I only came home to see my mother, and to look about me a little bit." " Oh," said Mary, " I thought you were going to settle down as a respectable member of society." " No, Mary," he sighed, " I fear that isn't in me — unless — unless Well, it's no good thinking about possibilities. I may not go back for half a year or so, perhaps. Good-bye." The train moved as he pressed the slender hand which lay so willingly in his ; he had only time to lift his hat and answer Mary's smile with a smile — so much less happy than hers — before she was carried out of his sight. " The kid has grown into the sweetest woman I ever met," he muttered to himself, as he walked 5S Alone in London. away, and tried to lose himself for an hour or so in Southampton. He had refrained from travelling in the train that was taking Mary and most of her fellow- passengers, because he had made up his mind that her company was not good for him. There was a train at three that would get him to London at five. He had a letter in his pocket that lay upon his heart like lead. Poor Lisa — poor soul — sad companion of saddest days. He looked back and wondered if he was the man who endured that old life, and tramped the shabby quarters of the town in shabby boots, with tired brain and languid limbs ; he, whose step was now so elastic, whose frame seemed strung with steel. " If she will be kind and release me," he mused. He had drifted from the station into the slums of the town — the busy back streets, crowded with a curiously mixed population, foreign and oriental faces among seafaring natives, a crowd that sug- gested Ratcliffe Highway. It was Christmas Eve. The shop windows were heaped with food of all kinds, and gaudy with Christmas emblems ; and pork-butchers and grocers were vying with each other in the brilliancy of their display — there a prize pig garlanded with holly and coloured paper, here gin bottles blazing with gilt labels, mountains of plums and currants crowned with rocky ridges of candied peel. 59 Rough Justice. "Christmas — the rallying time of love and friendship," mused Arnold, "and except Lisa — • and, perhaps, little Mary — and, I suppose, my mother, I doubt if there's a creature in this country who cares whether I'm alive or dead." Co Some One wJw loved Him. CHAPTER IV. SOME ONE WHO LOVED HIM. For people who like their scenery flat the neigh- bourhood of Mervynhall might rank as beautiful. Even for the stranger, and the scoffer at Suffolk landscapes, the river, flowing deep and narrow and straight as a canal through fertile meadows, past old water-mills, and millers' gabled houses, the pine woods on either side the long level roads, have a certain charm. It is a formal, low-toned beauty, no doubt, the homely charm of broad cornfields, and rich pastures ; but then the cottages are old and picturesque, the cottage gardens are neatly kept, and the streets of the little town are broad and clean. The market-place is quaint and odd, and the parish church rises above those modest streets, and prim, square houses, in all the grandeur of Norman Gothic, almost a cathedral. Arnold Wentworth — alias Wildover — loved the little town for old sake's sake, albeit he would have eaten his heart out had he been forced to spend his life there, in that respectable isolation from everything else in the world which the 6i Rough Justice. inhabitants considered a dignified seclusion. The sight of meadows and river, bridge and church, touched him with a sense of pain on this Christmas afternoon, as he walked to the inn, from the modest terminus of a little branch line from Cambridge. There were no Sunday trains upon this respectable line ; but the necessities of the lower classes had urged and secured a train in and a train out on Christmas Day. The train by which Arnold travelled was due at four, and the dusk of evening was thickening to darkness as he approached the town. It was half a dozen years since he had crossed the bridge, and heard that solemn sound of St. Michael's chimes, as he heard it now, telling the quarter after four from a tower that rose dim in the dusk. There were lighted windows shining in a house whose garden dipped towards the river, on his left, as he crossed the bridge — a house to which he looked instinctively, for it was Mary's house now, and he wondered if she was keeping Christmas there, and with whom. He would have liked to find out for himself; but he had another mission at Mervynhall. There were two highly respectable hotels in the town, both of which seemed somewhat over capacious for the requirements of a place that had once bristled with mail-coaches and post-chaises, but which now depended on a branch line, with three trains a day, and had in somewise lost touch with the outside world, save in the shooting season, when the lords of the soil summoned their kindred 62 Some One who loved Him, and friends for big shoots, and when Mervynhall awoke and bestirred itself. Arnold went to neither Antelope nor Crown Hotel, preferring the more secluded accommodation of an old inn outside the town, a straggling old house, with an archway entrance, and no expectation of a staying guest on Christmas Day. He came here to avoid recognition, which would have been likely at cither hotel, in spite of bronzed complexion, bearded chin, and the passage of time. Could he have a bedroom and private sitting- room } Yes, He was shown into a large panelled room next the archway, and a maid-servant, in her Sunday gown, knelt down to light the fire. What would he like for dinner, and at what time would he please to dine ? " Oh, anything you can give me ; but not till eight o'clock. I want a letter taken to Langton Park. Have you any messenger who can be trusted to do exactly what I tell him — a sharp, sensible person ? " The girl stared at him wonderingly. " We've got the ostler," she said. " The ostler ? Christmas Day ? I dare say he's been drunk for the last two hours." " Oh no, sir. The ostler's my father, and he's a very sober man. He don't often take a drop too much." " Not often — but Christmas ? This would be the very day, perhaps," hesitated Arnold, with a letter in his hand. " No, sir ; I can answer for father. He's been Rough Justice. busy all the morning with the fly — driving people out visiting. He haven't begun to enjoy hisself yet." "Ask him to come here, then, please." The girl went to fetch her , father from the untidy purlieus of the stable, which savoured of pigs, and was more agricultural than it had been in the days when the Bear was a coaching house. The man came slouching in, dressed in a kind of compromise between stable fustian and Sunday broadcloth ; and to him Arnold entrusted a letter which he had written in the waiting-room at Cambridge, having found himself with an hour to waste at that unbeautiful station. " You know Langton House ? " "Yes, sir." " Do you know the servants ? " " The butler, he know me, sir " — as if there were a vast difference. "Well, then, you can ask him to let you see Mrs. Wcntworth's maid — Mrs. Green — remember. You are to give this letter to her — to no one else — and you are to wait for an answer." The ostler's eye twinkled. Waiting for an answer in any decent household meant a mug of beer. It might even run to bread and cheese, or to a glass of spirits, at this festive season. Langton House bore a good reputation for kitchen and cellar. " If I can't see Mrs. Green, sir ? " " Bring that letter back." "Yes, sir." 64 Some Oiie who loved Him. Langton House was within half a mile of the Bear. A handsome house with an Italian portico, and the rest of the front as flat as the soil it stood upon ; a house standing a good way from the road, in fifty acres of meadow land, which had been promoted to a park by a little extra planting and the removal of two or three hedges, and behind which stretched the woods and farmlands that made up Mr. Wentworth's estate. The river ran through the grounds, at the back of the house, and made a picturesque boundary line between the formal gardens and the park-like pasture. The Wentworths stood well among the smaller gentry of the neighbourhood ; very small fry com- pared with the Earl of Milbank and the Marquis of Cliftonville, who were large landed proprietors ; but entitled to respect by long possession of the soil, and a name that had never been challenged. The present squire was not an agreeable man. He was haughty and arrogant, a quarrelsome neighbour, a very Draco among magistrates ; but he was looked up to for certain qualities that made his neighbours afraid of him ; and he was said to give the best dinners that were given outside the gates of Lord Milbank or Lord Cliftonville. He could not boast a chef, promoted from a West End Club to noble service ; but he had the best woman cook that sixty pounds a year could buy, and he was the most exacting master she had ever served. Arnold knew from his youth's experience what 65 F Rough Justice. this day would be like at Langton House. There would be no Christmas festivities, no Christmas decorations. The day would be a duller Sunday — duller because an additional Sunday inflicted on the dulness of the week. There would be no relaxation in the duties of cook and kitchen-maid, and no high jinks in the servants' hall ; and Mr. Wentworth would be a little more difficult about his dinner than usual because of that extra dulness, the gap in postal deliveries, the hopeless vacuity of London papers which told only of Christmas entertainments and Christmas excursion trains. Oh, how well Arnold remembered the dreariness of a home Christmas, which had made him long for Cambridge and its free and easy life, even if not a man in the whole University remained "up." How he had pitied his mother, who had to sit and meekly listen to his father's complainings about agents, servants, finances, everything ; and he had pitied his sister for missing the pleasures that Christmas brings to happier schoolrooms. Beatrice Wentworth would have found Christmas duller without "the kid." Arnold looked back and recalled the bright image of a twelve-year- old tomboy. The streaming hair, the gay young face, the lissom figure, slim ankles, long black legs, racing in the frosty garden, tearing across the wintry park ; the riotous games of hide-and- seek, in which he had been made to assist ; the afternoons by the schoolroom fire when he had been coaxed to tell ghost stories ; all the most frightening stories that he had read in all the 66 Some One who loved Hhn, - • ■ Christmas annuals of the year. He mixed plots and characters a little sometimes, and was laughed at for incompetence as a story-teller. " If you have read the story yourself you oughtn't to make me tell it he," retorted some- times. "Oh, but we like to hear how you tell it. You're such fun when you mix the white woman in the Lady's Pictorial with the grey Duchess in the Qtceen," protested Mary, or something to that effect. Poor Mary! She had drawn down Mr, Went- worth's wrath upon her girlish head more than once, by some noisy outbreak in the corridors or on the staircase, and had narrowly escaped perpetual banishment from Langton House, And now Arnold thought of his sister as grown up, still unmarried, though two or three years older than Mary Freeland, Who would come wooing to Langton Park, where the selfish exclusiveness of the master frightened away everybody except his own particular allies and contemporaries, who were allowed to shoot his pheasants, and eat his dinners, and praise his wine ^ Poor Beatrice ! he thought of her with infinite pity. Yet she doubtless had been taught to pity him, and to think his lot far worse than hers, feeding upon husks among the swine. He thought of his mother with still deeper pity. Poor soul ! she was so miserable, yet scarcely knew her misery. She was one of those weakly amiable wives who hug their chains ; who, from a long 6/ Rough Justice. submission to marital tyranny, and from the knowledge of their own inability to grapple with domestic difficulties, grow to believe in a husband as a heaven-born administrator, to accept his opin- ions and judgments as infallible, to revere the law that crushes them. "Will she come to me — dare all — and come to see the reprobate ? " he wondered. He had chosen his hour with judgment. His father was as methodical as a machine, and arranged his days with automatic precision. The interval between tea and dinner was the time in which he wrote his letters. The post-bag was taken to him at seven o'clock to be filled and locked by his own hands. At half-past seven he went upstairs to dress. His movements might vary once in a way by two or three minutes, but even that irregularity was rare. Clocks were scarcely needed at Langton House ; Mr. Went- worth's habits, regulated by Mr. Wentworth's watch, would have sufficed to mark the passage of time. From half-past five to half-past seven Mrs. Wentworth was her own mistress, unless she wanted cheques for tradesmen ; in which case she was called up before the household judge, and subjected to an exhaustive interrogation as to the particulars of each account, every item of which Mr. Wentworth ticked with his ov/n hand, guiding his own massive gold pencil-case. There never was anything in those accounts for which a house- mother need blush ; yet Mrs. Wentworth always 68 Some One who loved Him. felt like a malefactor during that cheque-writing ordeal. To-night there would be no cheque-writing, and those hours of darkness before dinner would be her own. Arnold had urged her to come to him at the Bear, if possible. The ostler would walk with her, and she would find her son on the road waiting for her. He went out soon after his messenger, and strolled along the broad, level road, of which he knew every feature. The old farmhouse and great thatched barns on his right ; the cottages — the tiny village post-office on his left — the Vicarage — the mill. The cross roads, with a modest house or two hidden in shrubberies of laurel and arbutus — the bridge. Beyond the bridge, the pine woods spread wide over one-half the landscape, and gave it all that it had of the picturesque, testifying to the happy inspiration which had prompted a certain Sir Felix Vanbury to plant these sandy flats in the beginning of the century. Half-way between the inn and his father's gates Arnold saw two figures approaching through the darkness, and quickened his pace almost to a run, very sure that the female figure was his mother. Yes, it was she. He clasped her in his arms, breathless, agitated, clinging to him, and kissing him tenderly. "Oh, my dear Arnold, what happiness! My dear, dear boy ! So long away — so lost to us — except for a poor little letter now and then. Oh, my dear, dear son ! " 69 Rough Justice. " Dear mother, how sweet that you should be glad to see me — reprobate as I am ! " " No, no, dear ; don't call yourself that. I'm sure you would never do anything really wicked — although you were so unhappy as not to get on with your father." " I should have been a good deal unhappier if I had got on with him. Oh, my dear mother, forgive me. I know you don't like to hear a word said against your ty — your husband." " No, Arnold, for he is a good husband, a good father, a good master. But you see, dear, it was not your fault. People say nowadays that heredity accounts for everything ; and you always took after my people. You have the Torrington temper — flaming up at nothing, and over in a minute. And it wasn't to be expected that you could get on well with a man of your father's calm and thouditful character." " It doesn't matter, mother dear, as long as you can get on with him — quite comfortably." " Oh, my dear Arnold, my life would be a very happy life, if it were not for losing you ; for, you see, with Philip so well married and living in Yorkshire on his wife's property, and with you quite, quite away, I seem to have no son." "But you have Beatrice, mother. I hope she is good to you." " She is the best of daughters. We visit a great deal " " Why, that's a change from old habits." "Among the poor people, dear. Your father 70 Some One who loved Him, doesn't like company at home, and he doesn't hke Beatrice to go out much — gadding, he calls it — for you know how he has always looked down upon our neighbours here. But we go to Lady Clifton ville's garden-party, and to Lady Milbank's two Mondays in August, and those are delightful afternoons." " Three afternoons in a year ? Poor mother I Poor Beatrice ! " " It is rather dull — for Beatrice. And some of the people your father thinks not good enough would be so nice for poor Bee, if he would only let us know them." " Poor Bee, indeed ! She must be as drowsy as a humble-bee by this time." " She had a surprise at church this morning that almost upset her. I was afraid she would have cried out in the middle of the psalms when she saw her." " When she saw her ? " " Mary Freeland ! Mary P'reeland, grown so tall and so nice-looking, dressed in black, in the Roffeys' pew." " Mary Freeland "i Ah, she. didn't lose any time, then. She only arrived in England yesterday morning." " How did you know that ? " "Because I came from Africa in the same steamer with her." "Mary Freeland in Africa! Arnold, what can you mean ? " " Don't be frightened, mother dear. We weren't 71 Rough Justice. in Africa together. We met most unexpectedly on the steamer." "But Mary Freeland ! What could she be doing in Africa ? " " That's her story. She'll tell you her adventures, no doubt, by the schoolroom fire, at tea and toast time." " If your father will let us know her," Mrs, Wentworth murmured, despondently ; " but perhaps he won't, now she's grown up." "Oh, stuff! He couldn't be sucli a beast as to boycott little Mary." " Arnold ! " murmured his mother, reproachfully ; and then in an awe-stricken whisper, " They say she has been on the stage." " And so she has ; earning her own living, like a plucky girl who wouldn't be badgered into marrying an old fool in a wig for the sake of a home. I admire her pluck, and so ought every- body else. And she was in the charge of an uncle and aunt all through her stage career. There's no room for scandal." " Still, people are shocked, dear. And every one was tremendously surprised at old Miss Farmiloe having left her so well provided for, after all. But tell me about yourself, Arnold, and your own life in Africa. That is what I want to hear. And time is so short," " Oh, but we have plenty of time. You don't dine till eight. You are coming to the Bear with me, and we are going to sit by the fire for an hour or so, and talk to our hearts' content. And 72 So7ne One who loved Him. then I am going to take you quietly home in time to dress for dinner." They were within five minutes' walk of the inn when Mrs. Wentworth came to a dead stop. " I couldn't possibly go to the Bear, Arnold. It would be all over Mervynhall to-morrow — and it would come to your father's ears, and he would be horrified to think that I could go to a public-house — to meet my son — surreptitiously." " If he had not made his son's home intolerable there would have been no need of surreptitious meetings. But are you really afraid to come and sit by the fire at the old inn } The Bear seemed as quiet as the grave just now — except for a sound of voices from the tap-room across the yard." " Oh, I know the kind of people who go to the tap-room. Our gardeners and grooms, and the sexton, and the men from the mill — lots of people who know me. I daren't be seen there, Arnold." "Well, then we can only talk here — walking up and down the road. But you will catch cold." " No, no ; I am quite warm in this sealskin coat." " Happy thought ! I saw lights at the Briery ; Mary must be keeping Christmas there. Shall we go and look her up ? " "My dear Arnold, that would be worse. She will have the Rofifeys with her ! " " It must be the road, then ; and you mustn't walk here a minute longer than you like." "I should like to walk with you for hours, 71 Rough Justice. dearest. I should not know if I were tired, till afterwards." They turned back and walked the other way, and Arnold told his mother much about his lucky years at Witwatersrand, but not a word of those years of trouble in London. He had written to her even when things were at their worst ; for he would not have her tortured by the thought that he might be dead. Four times a year — wherever he might be — he wrote briefly, under cover to his mother's faithful maid, Anne Green, to report him- self alive and well. And now her heart throbbed with gladness as he told her of his good fortune, and that his future life might be smooth and prosperous, if he were prudent enough to stick to the money he had made, and Hve upon the interest of his capital. "I shall have four or five hundred a year," he said, " and if I were to marry a nice girl with three or four hundred of her own, we could live some- where in the country — and we might keep two or three hunters, and some shooting dogs ; for we shouldn't want luxuries or finery, both being used to rough it." "Both! Do you mean that you are engaged, Arnold .'' " his mother interrupted excitedly. His sunburnt face reddened in the darkness. " No, no, mother, not engaged ! " with a deep sigh. " I was talking nonsense, that's all." "Oh, Arnold, I should love you to marry and settle near us. If you were doing well, and had 74 Some One who loved Him. married a nice girl, I'm sure your father would forgive you." " Would he, do you think ? Forgive me for outrunning my allowance at the 'Varsity by a few hundreds, and never costing him a shilling after- wards," Arnold said scornfully. " It wasn't the money he felt, dear. It was the disappointment. Oh, Arnold, my dear son, you have made me so proud and so happy to-night — so proud to think you were able to make your fortune without a friend to help you." " You're wrong- there. I had a friend — a college friend ; one of the friends I won for myself while I was spending those extra hundreds. From a purely commercial point of view that one friend was worth all the money, for it was his capital that started me in Africa." " How sweet of him ! What a dear fellow he must be ! How I should love to know him." "I doubt that, mother. He's as good as gold, but he swears like a trooper, and — and never goes to church." " How sad ! And I was thinking that he would make such a nice husband for Bee." "Ah, mother, simple and sanguine as of old. Years have not changed you. I wish I could see your dear face. I think I must light a match and look at you." " Don't, dearest ; you would see how old and careworn I have grown." " Careworn ! Ah, poor mother ! And you pre- tend your life is happy." 75 Rough Justice. "There are always cares for the mistress of a house, Arnold, in the happiest life. English cooks are so stupid — and — and — I have never denied that your father is a little exacting. But how can I remember trifling worries now you have come home, and have done so well for yourself } You will never go back to Africa, will you, dear ? Promise me that ! " "No, no, mother dear, I can't. That would be to promise away my life — to make lifelong fetters with words. I hope to stop in England. If I can be happy here I will stop. And if I can live near you, I will. But if I find I can't be happy in England I shall go back to the mines, and make some more money." His mother pleaded with him, and he answered her with all affection and gentleness, and told her that he meant to make himself a home within easy reach of her, if his hopes could be realized. He would not tell her what those hopes were, though she urged him to confide in her ; and at the lodge gate they parted, with words of affection on both sides, and Mrs. Wentworth walked slowly along the avenue to the big white house, shedding a few tears as she went. " It is so sad that he cannot get on with his father," she sighed, "and that we must sit down to our Christmas dinner without him." Arnold was in no hurry to go back to the Bear and to a solitary meal in the panelled parlour, which smelt of wormeaten wood and rotten rose leaves. He walked past his inn, and on to 76 Some One ivho loved Him, Mervynhall, and loitered on the bridge for the space of a pipe of tobacco, looking at the lighted windows of the Briery. How cheerily the warm lamplight shone across the garden by the river. She was there, his little Mary, in the prim drawing-room he remembered in old Miss Farmiloe's lifetime ; a room whose threshold he had crossed with awe, never knowing what he ought to say to that severe spinster. He pictured Mary playing hostess to some of the Rofifey family, elated with the sense of possession and independence, a young woman with a com- fortable income, youth, health, good looks, high spirits, and able to dispose of her life as she pleased. He would have liked to walk in among them and surprise her ; but he was doubtful how he would be received by the Roffey brood. He had left Mervynhall under a cloud, as a son who had been idle and extravagant at the University, and whom his father had cast off. He would be looked upon as a profligate adventurer, no doubt, by those serious church-going Roffeys ; more especially as Roffey was his father's solicitor, and afifected a profound veneration for the sage of Langton Park. No, it would not do to call upon Miss Freeland at eight o'clock in the evening. He went back to the Bear, dined on tough beef, and felt inex- pressibly dreary as he sat by a sullen fire, thinking, not of Mary Freeland, but of another woman whose face haunted him, and would not be 77 Rough Justice. banished, although he tried his hardest to shut it out of his thoughts. "What is the use of regretting things that are inevitable ? " he muttered to himself, as he bent over the smoky fire, and knocked about the coals savagely. He lighted pipe after pipe, smoked till the room was cloudy with tobacco, sat long after everybody else at the Bear had gone to bed, tired but dreading sleeplessness in the bedroom above, and knowing that he should not be able to sleep. He came downstairs late next morning, looking haggard and unhappy, and at twelve o'clock he went to the Briery and asked to see Miss Free- land. Mary came singing out of the parlour, while he was talking to the maid. She flushed and brightened at seeing him, and came to him with outstretched hand. "I thought you wouldn't leave Mervynhall without calling upon me," she said. " I was just going into the garden to look round ray domain. Will you come with me ? " "Of course I will come. When last I was in your orchard you were being scolded for having picked an apple ; and now the trees and the orchard are yours." " Poor old auntie ! Wasn't it sweet of her to relent, and not leave her fortune to the other idiots? Everybody is so kind. People made quite a fuss about me after church yesterday — ' So surprised ' — ' So glad ' to see mc. Mr. and 7^ Some One who loved Him. Mrs. Roffey are staying with me to make things comfortable and correct for me while I am at the Briery ; and they have lent me a parlour-maid to help our old cook, who has been in charge of everything since my aunt's death. It seems wonderful to be well off, and for people to be so prim and particular about me, after running