SIX MONTHS HENCE." BEING ' Let them have scope ; though what they do impart Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart." KING RICHARD III. IN THREE VOLujlES. *' VOL. I. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE. 1870. [The Right of Tran$lation is rr< SIX MONTHS HENCE. CHAPTEB I. ; AMID our routine -life and holiday -life, through theatre and market, stalk unsuspected crimes. Some amenable to man's law ; dark imageries, over which the cord and axe impend. And some, for Avhich there is on earth no law but the retribution of their own consciousness. Easy enough to call such things melodrame. No doubt there is melodrame enough ; the tale crowded with " startling incidents," as the phrase goes, appealing to no sense but the marvel- thirst of vulgarity or ennui. But what has this to do with the dramas of actual life, played out, as we see them, by living men and women, in every day's impression of our newspapers ; realities far too VOL. i. 1 22O3367I 2 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." intense in their action even to leave room for adven- titious excitement ? " Sensation lias had its day." Yery well ; so much the better. But emotional force Las not, and never can. Must nothing be written but the jargon of the club or ball-room ; nothing of the human hearts that have throbbed and suffered, desolated by their own choice, or hurried on by its compulsion in the grooves of a fatal necessity ? I write of one such, at any rate. I write to warn and to atone. To warn ; if it be possible, where the act and its consequences so often hold such dispro- portion. To atone ; if it be possible, where the past is so far beyond recall. I found myself at Hastings. A bright place, even then : in my judgment, more so than the Has- tings of the present. The old fishing-town, at the time of which I write, had emerged from the catacomb in which it had pleased the first settlers to iuurn themselves ; and a miniature parade, creeping out beyond the westernmost of the two hills which inclosed the original site, stretched for some distance along the beach. At a later date, St. Leonards, two " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 3 miles further on, commenced its rivalry with the stucco palaces of Brighton ; and now a continuous facade unites both places. But the transition period, of which I speak, had more character and attractive- ness. I found myself at Hastings for the first time. I was young enough, as far as years went ; and I suppose I need not ignore the fact far from ordinary looking. But I was in very ordinary attire ; and my single hair-trunk, a chattel which had shared my school-days, and bore " Maria Secretan "on a brass plate at the side, was lifted from the coach with little ceremony. I requested it might be " taken to Mrs. Armitage's." Boots looked surprised, but only for a moment : it was obvious that I might be going there to service. He thought again, and from his increased lack of observance apparently divined the less pleasant fact that I was going there as governess. " Bill, can you take this 'ere thing up ? " "Where's up?" "Why, up to Armitage's." "What, on the East Cliff? And who's it to be took for then ? " 4 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." " AYho for ? why for this 'ere young 'ooman, in course. Now, Miss, if you please ; we're a going to hack into the yard." I escaped the Jaga-Naut car, and departed with Bill, who appeared to set a sufficient value upon his thews and sinews and general support. Had "Armitage's" heen the signal-post on top of the cliff, instead of the white villa which I saw in front of me, with grounds slanting pleasantly up the hill-side, he could not have expressed more contempt for the shilling which I first tendered him, and then, with a transparent pretence of having forgotten it, supple- mented with a second. Bill touched his hat surlily, and departed. " Slanting pleasantly." It would be strange to me now so to think of it. Youth has one set of tints for its external impressions, and age another, and the contrast of the two is vivid enough, Heaven knows. But it is harder and deeper where guilt and innocence are the two painters. "Pleasantly," I should now feel. " Yes ; as the J^gean isle may have risen pleasantly to the exile of old Home : or the vine- slopes of the south may greet the consumption- stricken ! ! Pleasantly ! Well, yes, in one sense. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 5 It is shelter, food, raiment ; that for which I have bartered self. The slave's hire, for the slave's work." Ah ! but I' had no such cynicisms then ! I was shown into a drawing-room, and found my- self alone. It was a summer afternoon July and there was some entertainment in hand out of doors which had temporarily cleared the premises, not only of my legitimate lords, but also of the minor tyrannies, flunkey, parlour- maid, or whatever else they might be, which I dreaded rather the worse of the two. Otherwise, instead of being ushered into the drawing- room by the rosy-cheeked girl who opened the door in her betters' absence, I should doubtless have been passed up the back-stairs to my own regions, and awaited the "mistress's" orders. As it was, I had the drawing-room to myself. " Harcourt Villa " of course looked seaward ; Beechy Head closed in the right distance, now lying in soft haze ; the sea sparkled, studded with fishing craft ; on the lawn, joyous voices rose, and forms flitted in light drapery. " Armitages' " was clearly in no hurry to welcome the governess assuming that an avatar of such insignificance had been an- 6 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." nounced, which was more than questionable and I had leisure to study the handsome room. A very different one, certainly, from the Islington parlour of my own experiences ! It is extremely plausible to say that there is no happiness in pile carpets and ample hangings ; in gilding and ormolu, and the hundred knick-knacks which wealth accumulates. Perhaps not. But there is unhappiness in the make-shifts with which "genteel poverty" replaces them; at any rate, when one's eyes have become opened to the fact. My father, poor man, had deceased in the conviction that the craped pier-glass and faded chintzes, to the contemplation of which he daily returned from his bank-stool, were all that heart could desire. Would .that his daughter had retained the same faith ! Still left alone. I walked to the window. The amusement in hand, as I had already divined, was archery. A minor gathering, apparently ; the num- bers were not sufficient for a " toxophilite " grand day. But the scene was festal enough. Best dresses in requisition ; bright colours, and not a few pretty faces ; assiduity in the male department, and smiles and soft speeches in the female. At present there " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 7 was a general move towards a side avenue, where the shooting was to take place, that part of the garden being in shade. The lawn, on which I looked out, was now deserted. I could see the moving figures imperfectly through the foliage, and I heard the voices ; but where I stood I was quite alone. Alone, indeed. Who among that animated throng cared for me or my arrival ? Their existence was a magic circle which my foot must never hope to enter. I might gaze and admire at respectful distance ; probably be indulged, like a child, with a peep inside. But that charmed interior itself, so home- like to others, must for me have a salient angle of repulsion in every corner ! And with these thoughts came something else. There is great gloom, I have often fancied, in that broad, bright sunshine. To-day, it smote upon me with a heaviness which I could not account for. My depression was intensified. It would have relieved me to have sobbed aloud, but the feel- ing of utter dejection was too strong even for this. And then, slowly and wearily; first shaping itself out of the very substance of the light which 8 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." flooded the sky and danced on the sward in bright haze ; next, by degrees, dimming the perspective of land and sea; then, entering the room, and drooping in heavy folds from its panel-painting and lofty draperies; slowly, but very certainly, there sunk upon me that shadow which is never encountered without leaving its permanent impress upon heart and brain. Every one has read stories in which the Tempter appears in some palpable shape, and baits for his victim with this or that object of desire ; gain, revenge, be it what it may. They may be true ; I cannot tell ; 1 am not narrating anything of that kind. But I do know, I knew it at the time, that at the moment of which I write the action of my own mind became complicated with something external to itself. That, in so doing, a great change passed upon it. Let me explain in half-a-dozen lines. I shall not be further tedious about myself. But the story of my life dates from that moment. What I mean is, that, in great guilt, there is usually a definite compact, so to speak, preceding the act itself; often long preceding it. Take love, the " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 9 criminal passion. I suppose the precise point of time comes, and can be fixed afterwards, Avlien there is a distinct self-knowledge and acquiescence that the object must be attained, and it-ill be, at whatever cost. I became conscious now of a similar surrender. All my life long, far as intelligent memory could cany me, I had had one great craving. I did crave for wealth. Not for its own sake : what did I care for piled bushels of coin ? Not with the conventional accompaniments of envy, or malice, or the like deadly sins. Oh ! no ; all the world might have been rich if I had only been allowed to be so. Not, lastly, with any capacity for scheming for it. I had not a particle of the adventuress in my composition. ]\Iy moral impressions of myself at this time are that I was passably good : affectionate, unselfish, as the phrase goes, in most things. But I had this hungry, hard longing within me : I did long for this wealth ! I wanted what it would buy. Nothing which I had ever analyzed very closely : nothing specific in detail. But something, unquestionably, which was to be glorious, transcendental; a new creation ; the stalactite cavern, opened by a random stroke on the hill-side, and dazzling the discoverer 10 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." with its pomp of light, its flashing roof and corridors, and columns scintillating with gems ! And it was this which came upon me to-day. Not now for the first time ; although its visitations had hitherto been exceptional : normally, it might not have existed. Not, even now, with the faintest surmise that the vision my fancy sketched out would ever be in fact realized. But it did to-day present itself with a vividness, an intuition of its nature and my OAVD, which it had never done before. I now knew the price I was prepared to pay for the purchase of what I coveted. I knew, now, that if ever the golden chalice were lifted to my lips I must drain it, at whatever cost. If the price were to be death, I must drain it. If it were to bar the gates of Paradise against me, I must drain it. No : there was no palpable shape ; nothing to prompt credulity or point sarcasm. But there was a presence, a something external to me, which com- manded. And there was a will and mind within me which obeyed. And then the cloud lifted, and was as though it had not been. Was as though it had not been, until the day and hour which were to come did come ! , " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 11 My solitude was disturbed at last. A child's voice made itself audible in tlie hall outside. A vicious, disagreeable utterance, suggesting a spoilt boy the organ was of male calibre of some two or three years old. Its owner was apparently under- going a removal indoors; very adversely to his personal inclinations. " I do on't wa ant to. Do n't, Helen ; do o on't ! You nasty thing ; I won't come in. Get away, Helen ! Ngy a a h!" Here the whimper of the previous performance broke into a sostenuto of screaming. " But Mamma says you are to come in, Fred. You know it is your time to go to Burgess now. Come and race sister Helen along the passage. Come, Freddy dear." But Freddy dear continued obdurate, finally con- centrating himself upon a roar which brought another actor on the scene. I concluded, the Burgess of the foregoing colloquy. " For shame, Miss Helen ! to see you dragging the poor child about like that. I wonder his Mamma trusts him to you. You seem to think, you and Mr. Charles, that because he's not your Papa's own you 12 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." may do wkat you like to him. Conie to Burgess, that's a dear darling. He shan't be put upon, shall he ? " " You know, Burgess, that is not true," replied the young lady voice I had previously heard. " You know that I was not dragging Fred, as you call it. I had no wish to bring him in. I was just going to shoot when Manama sent me with him. He was naughty at leaving the ground, that was all." " I daresay, Miss, you didn't particularly like leaving it yourself. Other people can be put out when they're crossed, besides a poor babe like that. Maybe I didn't know that Mr. Fortescue was shooting there to-day. I have eyes as well as my betters, I can tell you." An indignant reply, which was evidently rising to the lips of the younger speaker, was checked before it became articulated. The shaft of impertinence had told, however. Pending the process of deporting Master Fred, still injured and resentful, into the upper regions, the door of a small room, through which I had entered the drawing-room, was opened^ hastily ; and I gathered that Helen had flung herself on the sofa, and was sobbing. Nearly at the same moment, she was called by " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 13 some one outside the house. The new comer did not see me, but was visible himself from the window ; a young face, indicating nineteen, or thereabouts, but bronzed with exercise, and, as I at once saw, more than ordinarily frank and prepossessing. At present, this fresh actor was in an excited frame of mind, and delivered himself accordingly. "Helen, where are you? They're all waiting for you to shoot. Helen ! He-len ! " "Yes, Charles, what is it?" " Oh, that's where you are ? Come quick, Leenie ; they'll none of them shoot while you're away. As if I didn't see that game of the missus's, sending you off the lawn just before your turn came. I tell you what, Helen ; it is a thundering shame the way she goes on with you. Why, you've been crying. What's the matter ? " " Nothing, Charles. I am not crying." " Oh ! ain't you though. Look, there are two great drops, one on each cheek. What's it about, Leenie ? Never mind her, although she did try to jockey you in that cool way." " Oh ! no, I didn't mind that. It's only my nonsense, Charles. Burgess said something rude, 14 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." and I was just foolish for a minute. Let us come and shoot now." " I should like to have a shot a la William Tell," said the other speaker, "with mother Burgess at twenty yards and an apple on top of her. Wouldn't I just not hit the apple ! Mrs. Armitage would not be so bad if it were not for Burgess." " For shame, Charles ; you know you should not speak of Mamma like that. And I wish you would call her Mamma sometimes, if only for dear Papa's sake." "I'll be hanged if I do then, Helen. What business had she to go marrying him, and making us all uncomfortable ? So soon, too, after our dear Mamma's death. I tell you what it is, Leenie, Papa's regularly infatuated with that woman. If he wasn't, and was only about a little more, he'd see the way she goes on with you. It was entirely her jealousy, or something of the sort, because you're so pretty, and because she sees Fortescue likes you, that she got you off the ground just now. Well, you needn't blush, you know. Then look how she's always snubbing you, and putting those brats of hers in the foreground." " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 15 " Hush, Charles, for shame ! They're like our brother and sister now." " Oh ! I don't mind Flo' and Louisa so much, considering they're her children. But I hate that Fred. Yes, I do," continued the speaker, apparently cutting short some protest of his companion. " He's just an epitome in small of Mrs. A. herself. He's passionate, and sly, and domineering, and . . . All right, Bowles. I've found her. I tell you what it is, Helen," he resumed, as they rounded a belt of trees en route for the target; " if that young shaver doesn't come to an untimely end some day ..." Mr. Charles rather dropped his voice here. And from this cause, as well as from the projection of the shrubs, which apparently screened some servants' apartments on the ground-floor, the concluding words were inaudible. Inaudible. To me, and at that time. Alas ! for the time when I eventually did hear them ! 16 tv SIX MONTHS HENCE.' CHAPTER II. HALF-A-DOZEN lines of explanation, which I would authorize the reader to skip if I saw my way to it. But I do not. The Florence, alias Flo', and Louisa of the preceding chapter, were to be my pupils. As will have been gathered, they, with the objectionable " Fred," were Mrs. Armitage's children by a previous marriage. Their father's name was Poynder ; a custom-house employe, deceased shortly after Fred's birth. His relict's union with Mr. Armitage dated about a year before my engagement at Harcourt Villa ; sufficiently close upon the death of the first Mrs. Armitage to excite some comment, which how- ever bore more heavily upon the second wife than upon the widower. Of the first Mrs. Armitage, Charles and Helen were the only surviving children ; " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 17 Helen being about my own age, eighteen. Her brother, as I have said, was a year older. Florence and Louisa were nine and seven respectively. Of the Poynder-Armitage alliance it appeared unlikely there would be any fruits. Such Avas the substance of the family history, as it evolved itself after a few days' residence at Harcourt Villa. At present, I am in my early novitiate there, and diligently employed with my two pupils. My two pupils. Well, it is not with them that my story will have much to do. Oh ! Heaven, that it might ! Would that what I have to narrate were some schoolroom chronicle, the most didactic, most trivial, most insipid of such records ; a prize book for Christmas, a proselytism, an infant primer ; anything but the fact it is ! But it may not be. The river has leapt its rock- barrier ; the whirling leaf is swept away for 'ever ! Of these children indeed I might write with some interest, were I concerned to do so. When their character showed itself, it impressed me favourably ; but for the events which followed, I should have found much to love in them. Particularly in the elder, VOL. i. 2 '7 18 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." Florence, a shy, grave child, not without good looks, and devotedly fond of Charles, while Charles, in his heart, rather relented to her. in turn, notwithstanding the mother's delinquencies. For Louisa I cared less. She was a coquette, merry and attractive enough, but with no special substance about her. I do not know indeed that either sister possessed traits amounting to a speciality. No, my story is not with them. How it has since fared with either I have no knowledge. Satis- factorily married, it may be ; useful, matronly members of society, with no feature of romance in themselves or their histories, other than their passing connection with the circumstances rfut of which my tale springs. Let them disappear as main personages from its pages, while the real actors unravel its dark skein for themselves. Our schoolroom was badly situated in one respect. It was at the foot of the main staircase, between that and the hall. One door of the room its chorography is indelibly impressed on other memories than my own opened upon this staircase. The other as immediately adjoined the hall. From the above state of facts it resulted that no one " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 19 ever thought of going upstairs without at least trying the mahogany handle of the schoolroom door on the hall-side. "While, conversely, every one who came downstairs, as instinctively attacked the brass knob which presented itself at their base. I believed that, long before Euclid demonstrated it, nature had im- planted in our breasts the theorem that two sides of any given triangle are greater than the third. But, be this as it may, the fact is that Harcourt Villa, male and female, infantile and adult, claimed an immemorial use and right of thoroughfare through the school- room. When frustrated strategically in this expec- tation by the occupants bolting both doors, the Villa ignored the fact as long as possible, and then quitted the particular mahogany or brass handle on which it had been experimenting with a loudly expressed sense of injury. If either bolt was left undrawn, the Villa, in the event of lessons being in progress, diffused itself over the room with remarks of a gene- rally patronising tendency, and was with difficulty ejected. If the room was empty, the visitors con- tented themselves with opening cupboards, turning over slates and copy-books, and rummaging in such desks, drawers, and other private receptacles as 20 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." had been rashly left unlocked. The schoolroom was not a specially attractive lounge, but it answered the purpose. And as Charles Armitage was pleased to illustrate the matter, " the worst billiard-table indoors is better than the best out." It is to Charles that my reminiscences again turn on the first day, after my establishment in the schoolroom just described, which I connect with any matter of interest. Our defences had been neglected ; and a brisk step down-stairs, with a sharp and sudden manipulation of the brass door-handle, surprised my pupils and myself in a statistical description of the interior of China. I had come to know that step, although to-day I was too late to prevent its ingress. The little girls had not heard it, and when the visitor entered, looked up at him timidly enough. Their relations with Charles amounted to little more than toleration ; nor did he affect to aim at making things otherwise. Even Florence's favour was of a negative order only. " I beg pardon, Miss Secretan ; don't let me interrupt. I am only going through to the hall. Do you mean that you do lessons on such a splendid day as this ? " " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 21 "A fact, as you see, Mr. Charles." " What a nuisance it must be teaching. I should hate it. I suppose you are immensely clever." " Oh ! immensely, of course. And now perhaps you will let us go on with the lessons." "I don't think you can be, though either," said Charles, totally ignoring 'my request, as our self- invited visitors always did. "If you were one of those clever people you would be like Miss Bask- cornbe, which you are not the least, thanks be." I was fain to inquire who the obnoxious Miss Baskcombe was. "Ah! Mademoiselle," said the two children's voices in one breath, " she was our governess before you came. She was so nasty." " And with such stony black, eyes," said Florence. "And left out all her h's, though she was so clever," said Louisa. " Except what she put in," corrected Charles. " She had a notion of fairness, Miss Secretan. There was generally the right total of aspirates, as we call them at Harrow, only they were in the wrong places. By the way, though, there was one act of injustice towards the h's which she never quite 22 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." atoned for. She came in one day, and told Mrs. Armitage ' ' " Oh ! yes, I know," interrupted Louisa, clapping her hands. " 'that 'Miss 'Elen 'ad been up on the 'ill with 'er 'at in 'er 'and and over'eated 'erself and was quite 'oarse in consequence.' I can't think where Mr. Armitage picked her up ; she was a sort of cousin of old Poynder's, I fancy. Come then, Flo', don't cry ; I didn't mean it, you know." And Charles actually stooped and kissed my elder pupil, whose tears had risen to the lids at this irreverent mention of the defunct. " Is Mr. Charles at home ? " asked a voice at the open hall-door the hell had rung, a minute before. " Here you are. Come in, Mr. Fortescue," shouted Charles, advancing to meet the new visitor, who was already in the room. Mr. Fortescue. The name was, as the reader knows, familiar to me from the day of my arrival, but I had not yet seen its owner. He had been absent from Hastings, I believe, since the archery day. Somehow, without much special reason why unless " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 23 it were Helen's alleged liking for him my fancy had been a good deal occupied with Mr. Fortescue. The result, or mental photograph, produced was, I remem- ber, of the conventional picnic and boating party type. I had depicted something ruddy, bushy-whiskered, attentive to ladies, easy-going, abhorrent of enthu- siasms. I now looked up, and saw perfect male beauty. Ever, even as to the existence of this, had I been most fastidious, nay, sceptical. But there was no doubt about it now. The figure that stood before me in the schoolroom door was slight, tall, indi- cating twenty-eight years or thereabouts ; the features faultlessly regular, but without a suspicion of weak- ness; grave, and rather pallid ; the brow stamped with intellect ; and the eyes. Such eyes ! Brown, as far as colour went, but orbs of such infinite depth and light ! Not the keen eye which looks you through and through ; or the glistening eye, which fixes and fascinates ; or the flashing eye scaring with its pride and fire ; but eyes of such intense love and tenderness ! As if the material organ were the mere vestibule, and the soul within looked palpably forth from it ! 24 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." "You mean that you fell in love with Mr. For- tescue at first sight ? " No, gentle reader ; I did not ; either at first sight or at any sight. At first sight, I fell into no emotion but one ; a wholly unaccountable terror. Rapid as thought ; rapid as the glance which enabled me to take in the particulars I have just sketched ; rapid as the surprise and admiration with which they filled me, came that other feeling ; that strange, vague terror ! What ; and wiry, was it ? I had no leisure then to analyze. I bowed slightly. Mr. Fortescue apologised for his intrusion, but did not at once leave the room, notwithstanding. The Villa never could prevail upon itself to do that, when it had once gained admission ; it was a crucial test, under which mere politeness and the like social virtues failed absolutely. Meanwhile, I found that Mr. Fortescue's voice struck me no less than his exterior. In other mouths the tones might have seemed wanting in force ; the utterance slow, even timid. But this was not the case here. Far from indicating a defect, the impres- sion was that of infinite tendresse ; not the mere " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 25 negation of an opposite quality, but something posi- tive, which soothed the ear and touched the emotional system like the chime of bells on a harvest noon. Soothing and touching ; and yet with an indescribable sadness about it, too. The sadness was, in fact, its most noticeable expression. But enough of all this. " You're coming to bathe to-day, are you not, Mr. Fortescue?" asked Charles. It was always " Mr. Fortescue," I noticed, in his presence; "For- tescue " only, at other times. " We've a new place, out under the East Cliff; you can get there, even at high tide, by climbing." " I don't find it so oppressively sultry, Charles." " Oh ! you'd better come. You'll only be wasting the afternoon singing duets with Helen ; at least, if that young cub Fred lets you." " Now, attend, Florence," I interposed, endeavour- ing to resume lessons. " Pekin contains, how many inhabitants by the last census ? " " Twice as many as Canton, and half as many again as Nankin. Try that, Flo'," said Charles. " Come, you didn't mind my saying that about Fred, old woman ? You know somehow he always does 26 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." contrive to be took worse just when Mr. Fortescue and Helen are singing. It's too much for his sensi- tive disposition, I suppose." "I have no doubt, Charles," said Mr. Fortescue, " you were quite as troublesome a subject yourself, before you developed into the accomplished member of society you now are. Do you not think so, Miss Secretan ? " " Certainly, as far as the schoolroom is concerned, he is very difficult to manage indeed. I do assure you, Mr. Charles, our geography lesson has been seriously hindered." " Ah ! but what does it signify, Miss Secretan ? When a fellow comes making love to our pretty Flo' here, do you think he'll ask her how many people there are in Pekin ? I am sure I hate geography ; also globes and Euclid ; and as to " " Come, Charles," interposed Mr. Fortescue ; " we really must not try Miss Secretan's patience too far. See if you can make out the geography to the drawing-room. And I don't think I shall bathe to- day." " All right, here goes. I'll tell Helen you are here." "SIX MONTHS HENCE." 27 " Pray do not trouble Miss Armitage ; I would on no account trespass upon her. At least, unless she is quite disengaged, and would like to try one or two pieces." " Ah ! she hasn't got to learn geography, thank goodness : and as to trouble, that's as people find it. I never noticed any preternatural exhaustion about Helen ; sl}e seems pretty hardy. There, I told you so." The lessons were clearly doomed for that morning. As Charles spoke, a light touch rested on our brass, or staircase, door-handle very different from his own impetuous wrench and Helen entered. Notwithstanding Charles' insinuations, she had clearly not expected to find Mr. Fortescue there ; and the flush of pleasure with which she did so was as unmistakable as the surprise. Of course the newcomer acted as became her age and sex under the circumstances. That is to say, she shook hands with Mr. Fortescue ; apologised to me ; scolded Charles for interrupting the lessons ; and stopped in the room herself. The pleased flush did not pass away by any means so rapidly as it came. It was probably some consciousness of this 28 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." which reminded Helen that what she had come into the room to fetch must be in one of the cupboards. " Oh ! don't, Helen ; those are my copy-books you're upsetting," Louisa broke out. " And don't oh ! please, Miss Secretan, Helen will get all my books wrong. Oh ! I wish she wouldn't." " Can I assist Miss Armitage ? " asked Fortescue, moving to the cupboard. " Oh ! no, thank you. It was only a German dictionary I am looking for, and I daresay it's up- stairs." " Then you had better let it stop there," said Charles, " and ask Mr. Fortescue your words. He is a walking dictionary of European tongues, not to mention Arabic and Cochin Chinese, which must be a blessed language, judging by the way their cocks crow. Is there any place in the 'abbitable globe, as Miss Baskcombe used to call it, where you haven't been, Mr. Fortescue ?" " Well, I have never been to Pekin, for instance. Or, for that matter, to Baffin's Bay either." " Bowles says you've been to Sarawak, and up Mount Ararat, and the Macaroon mountains." " Camaroon, Charles, not Macaroon," corrected " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 29 Helen. "And they're nothing to do with Mount Ararat ; they're on the west coast of Africa." "All right, I know. Out by Madagascar, and those places. Wasn't it there, Mr. Fortescue, you had that adventure with the nigger woman ? " " Oh ! Charles, do tell us," said Louisa, who was as eager for a story as Scheherazade's- husband. " I suppose I may as well, for Mr. Fortescue never would himself. He was sketching there or something, when he saw a little boy, dressed in the extreme of nigger fashion, cutting away from two Yankees. They wanted to steal him, and had no end of bowie-knives and things. However, Mr. For- tescue didn't mind, but closed with them ; and he got one of the parties down and got his knife, and then the other ran for it, and the nigger boy ran away too, to his own locations.' But there was a nest of the Yankees there, and they got Mr. Fortes- cue afterwards, when he wasn't on the look-out. They didn't care to kill him out and out, but dragged him some miles on horseback, and then tied him to a stump, and left him in the sun, with no water or feed or anything. So he thought it was all U. P. with him, and so of course it would have been, if it 30 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." hadn't been for the young nigger's mamma. She had found out by some means inscrutable to the senses what the Yankees were up to } and managed to keep them in sight all the way, making a reptile of herself in the long grass. So when their back was turned, she advances upon the stage and unties Mr. Fortescue, which there was no time to be lost, he being almost cooked. And then he got away down to some English place on the coast. Wasn't that the story, sir ? " " Something like it. But we positively must give the lessons some chance. Miss Arrnitage, will you sing ' La ci darem ' ? " Helen offered no objection, and the schoolroom was cleared. I had heard little from Mr. Fortescue beyond monosyllables; and I was vexed, for he interested and puzzled me. But when Charles took the talking upon himself, there was scant room for any one else. By-and-by, the notes of the Mozart duet reached me from the drawing-room. And the duet, as was to be expected, paved the way for various others. Helen's voice rang with a clear joyous note, like a bird's carol. Mr. Fortescue's tones, earnest and" " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 31 impassioned, wailed in contrast with it, coinciding without blending. I gathered a feeling of intense raournfulness from the distant sound. It was the child's prattling by the fatal eddies of Cocytus ; the music of the bridal, echoed in the charnel-house of widowhood and a "Antiquary," for the curvature of the space thus inclosed was very slight, and, if the tide were coming in, it would have given warning in ample time for escape round either corner. In fact, although the cliffs were here lofty and precipitous, there was a narrow line of debris at their feet, which the sea would hardly reach except in very rough weather, 160 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." and which would serve as a refuge until the tide ebbed. But although the walk was thus secure enough in itself, it was singularly desolate. Nothing ever passed there. Shrimpers always took the opposite direction. The preventive men from the nearest station preferred the beaten track over the cliff. There was no sand or chalk to quarry ; no fossil to attract geologists ; no creature, live or dead, with the slightest speciality about it. It was simply a laborious walk over sea-weed and broken rock. Where the masses of rock were too large and dis- rupted, you were driven to, the sea-weed. "Where the sea-weed became too slippery, or was interpolated with beds of oozy clay, you were driven back to the rock again. Such as the place was however, it did me good service that afternoon. The attention necessary to keep my footing occupied my mind, and gradually drew it away from the topic on which it had been more or less brooding of late. The day was not particularly fine, but the masses of cloud which drifted over the sky were lightly stratified, and now and then admitted a peep of sunshine. Altogether, " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 161 I found my spirits rising, and felt rather disposed to jest at the subject of my late reveries. "You are a ridiculous school-girl," I said to my- self. " One would think you had passed your life in a circulating library, adapting all the three volume novels to your own circumstances. Here you are a governess, and without sixpence in the world, fancy- ing that one of the most opulent men in the West Eiding is falling in love with you ! Not only fancy- ing this, but going through all kinds of moral and mental tortures in consequence. Lecturing yourself about it, actually ! Feeling guilty, and treacherous, and I know not what ! Oh ! pray spare yourself the trouble ; there is not the least risk. People in his position do not usually commit themselves so exten- sively ; even where the young lady is much better- looking and more attractive than you are. " Ah ! but you> say, you have not been embarking in any speculation of this kind. Perhaps not; so much the better. But then you have been doing what is more absurd still. Attaching undue import- ance to some look or manner which you do not quite understand ; construing it into admiration, or in- terest, or something of the sort, for yourself. VOL. i. 11 162 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." " Now, understand, Miss Maria Secretan, there is to be an end of this. No. 1. You are to go back to Fred's rooms and make yourself useful there, as and when you may be desired, and as your duty is in the capacity of upper slavey, without troubling yourself whether Mr. Fortescue looks at you or not. He doesn't want you, that's quite certain. No. 2. You are to be rather less of a Job's comforter to that poor girl upstairs. Forsooth, you feel hypocritical and tongue-tied with her ! While you are persuading her with your voice that it is all right between her and her beloved, you are feeling an inward conviction that it is all wrong ; and that you are the happy female instead. Pray don't. If you're no worse hypocrite than that all your life, there will not be much to answer for." "No, but seriously," I continued to myself, "I have been making myself uncomfortable for nothing at all. This half-holiday has come opportunely to set me right. Let me enjoy it. What splendid big rocks these are. And look, the sea has actually tunnelled out the cliff behind them. I never came so far as this before." I had now reached the farther, or easternmost " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 163 projection of tlie bay in which I Was walking. A more extensive landslip than usual had here, perhaps centuries before, displaced the upper portion of the cliff, and sent it tumbling down in huge masses, which now lay in every variety of grotesque form at its foot. The tunnel, or cave, which had caught my eye, lay in the rear of these masses, and could only be reached by climbing over them. It was an attrac- tive-looking place, opening with a dark-browed arch, and showing within a smooth floor paved with spark- ling white sand. So I decided on the climb. The sea was coming in, but it was still miles off. And the passage under the arch would take me through to the open beach beyond, from which I could quickly reach the preventive station and return over the cliff. Easy climbing enough, for some minutes. But then I came to grief, as Charles would have said : in fact, the direct route was impracticable. But there was an alternative. Turn to the right, and I should reach a low ledge or shelf in which the projecting cliff in front of the tunnel, or cave, terminated on the sea-side. Then it was an easy drop into the cave itself. All feasible enough. The blocks of fallen rock 164 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." cn route were serious, but by climbing, wriggling through crevices, and generally circumventing them, I soon reached my ledge. Or rather, not the ledge, but one of the masses of rock immediately above it. But it was a mere step on to the ledge ; too easy to think about. So easy, that I made it rather carelessly. The result was that my foot slipped on the sea-weed, and I fell : a matter of little consequence beyond a possible bruise, had I fallen on the ledge or shelf of rock itself. But I did not do this. When I recovered from the shock, I found myself in a sitting posture on the shelf, with one foot, it was the left I remember jammed into a crevice ; between the shelf and the rock from which I had just stepped. I made light enough of this disaster, and hastened to extricate myself. Somewhat difficult, however, this, I found. After various trials, and fearing to wrench my foot, I leant forward and threw one arm over a portion of the mass of rock I had just quitted. Almost as I did so, I saw that I had done wrong ; but it was too late. The portion on which I leant had become fissured, and was already nearly detached from the main block ; and the slight leverage exerted by my " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 165 arm completed the separation. Forward dropped the fragment, throwing me back on my ledge, and wedging itself into the upper end of the crevice which confined my foot ; wedging in, as I soon discovered, the foot too. I was wholly unhurt, and, in the sitting posture in which I was thus confined, could raise my knee in an upright direction about two inches above the crevice. But to raise it above the two inches, or in any other than an upright direction, was wholly out of my power ; still less, to draw out the foot itself through the narrow aper- ture now left. I almost burst out laughing ; I was in the stocks. "When I had sufficiently enjoyed the position, and had pictured to myself the amusement it would afford to Charles or any one else who might witness it, I thought it high time to let myself out of custody. The fragment was of "no size;" " easy enough to move it." But, either I had miscalculated the size, or it had become too firmly wedged in falling. Move the stone would not : it once slightly yielded, and then settled down, tighter than ever, into the crevice. After this, no effort of mine produced the least effect upon it. 166 " SIX* MONTHS HENCE. 1 ' I became frightened, and recurred to my task again and again, but wholly without result. There must have been half-an-hour, or more, of this fruit- less work. I then felt exhausted, and desisted for a time. My posture was not painful in itself, and I could lean back against the rock and rest. I con- sidered what was to be done. " It is very stupid and uncomfortable," I thought, " but there is no absolute harm beyond a few hours' detention. Some one is sure to pass ; and if they do not, I shall be missed, and several people saw me going this way : I suppose I shall be home by tea- time. It is fortunate the day is no colder. The only real mischief is this rock ; it is so wet to be sitting upon. But they say you never get cold from . . ." " Sea-water," I was about to have said. But the words choked in my throat. How was it I had not thought of that before ? The cliffs in the recess of the bay, the tide did not reach, I knew : but, how could it fail to wash the projection where I was con- fined? " Sea-water ! " Ay, there it was indeed, all round me : the sea- water of that very morning ! streaming from the dank weed ; lying in briny pools " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 167 in the flat ledge; trickling down its face on to the shingle. That morning ! Its tide had gone out ; and now there was another coming in coming in fast fast ! I snatched my watch from my sash. Three o'clock. I had started before one, and even then it was quite the wrong side of low- water ; the tide had turned. The reefs lying beyond the shingle-beach had been uncovered, it was true ; but the sea had been just outside them. I remembered noticing its ripple at their extremity. Three hours more, at the fur- thest ; and then it would be high-water ! There was one hope left. With some pain I turned partially round, and looked at the upper face of the rock against which I leant. Ah ! wet ; wet ; dripping wet ! But might not this be a landspring ? I tasted; and found it salt. About a foot above my head was a large cavity from which the moisture was oozing. I reached this with my hand, and ascertained that it was quite full ; full of that salt- water. I had between two and three hours to live ! Again I stooped, and laboured, laboured at the weary stone. Oh ! how hopelessly ! The perspira- 168 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." tion rained from my forehead, but I could not stir it a hair's breadth. Sometimes I fancied it had moved; and then, some mark or the other, some lichen or dent in the stone, would show me that it was exactly in its old place. I became frantic. " Somebody," I cried ; " oh ! somebody ! Somebody must hear me ! Is there no one ? " Alas ! how should there be ? The wind had slightly risen, and the sea was perceptibly nearer, breaking over the reefs with a din which effectually drowned my feeble cries. I became absorbed in watching that rising tide : it fascinated me like the eye of some deadly reptile. I sat gazing at it, stupefied ; motionless. Slowly, but very surely, the water gained ground. At last, between my prison ledge and the sea there was no more reef left ; only the bare shingle. Gradually this became less and less ; a quarter of it eaten out ; a third ; a half ! Wave by wave, the tide came in, retiring over the pebbles after each advance with a dull swash ; sometimes seeming stationary for a moment, and then, in the next, flooding a higher level than ever. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 169 For about three feet in front of me the shingle was flat, after which it went off in a steep slope. Yes ; yes ; quite a high embankment ; a hill. Ample, ample time yet; even the base of the slope not wetted yet : then there is its own height ; and then the six feet of my ledge. Safe for an hour or more, at least; at the very least. And somebody must pass. Was there no one ? No one Hastings way, the way I had come ; that was clear : I could see from my ledge along the whole distance. In fact, the corresponding projection at its further end could hardly have been passed now. But the opposite side ; that to the east, where the preventive station lay? I could not see this side, but surely some one must come along there. Not very likely, perhaps ; but it was possible : oh ! it was possible ! Half-an-hour more gone. The last wave that came in had risen to the level of the flat shingle below me ; had passed slightly beyond it. Some drops were blown in my face ; the spray of this wave. Or, might they not still be from the water trickling down above me ? A lull ; a pause ; and then the next wave. Oh ! 170 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." what a fierce and hungry one ! It swept to the very foot of my ledge ; it covered .the entire shingle-flat. And, this time, it did not run off again. The water that lay there was shallow, very shallow; it would not have floated a child's boat. But there it lay. Again, a white mountain of foam ; leaping and run- ning in, as it seemed, on the back of a dozen smaller waves. Then, a growl, like that of a savage beast ; a roar, a dart forward : ah ! there was no mistake as to the spray this time ! I looked at the foot of the ledge. The water was ankle-deep there now. Oh ! but this was intolerable ! To be drowned by inches, in cold blood ! My stupor was quite gone now. I shouted again frantically ; more frantically than before, for I knew now that it was quite hopeless : a volley of musketry would not have been audible ten yards from the spot. It was a maniac's cry now, and I knew it was. Suddenly a thought struck me. I had an umbrella with me, within reach : could I not make some signal ? I got at my handkerchief, and tied it to the end of the stick ; and this I thrust round the point of rock. I could not see round it, but my signal might be " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 171 visible. At the same moment, the wind fell, as suddenly as it had risen, and the waves came in with less violence. Oh ! there was still, still time. Half- an-hour more ; twenty minutes, at any rate. I waved the handkerchief to and fro, passionately. Oh ! would nobody see it ; would nobody come ; nobody ? Apparently not. I thought I heard some sound, but it ceased again. My arm ached now, and I was forced to lower the stick for a time. As I did so, my eye rested on a yacht some little distance off shore, the only vessel visible. They might see it. With a telescope ? Yes, and without ; quite easily. It was not very rough now ; if they sent in a boat, it could take me off, quite easily. I raised my wearied arm, and signalled, and waved, again. To no pur- pose. Nothing seemed stirring in the yacht. Could it be anchored ? I thought not. No, indeed : even as I looked, it tacked and went off in the opposite direction. Five minutes of the twenty gone. The water creeping up the rock stealthily. Pouring into some cranny of the stone, and then pouring out again ; only to return and work its way round into some further and higher aperture. Creeping nearer and 172 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." nearer, every minute. Scaling the citadel of life, inch by inch ! There was a piece of sea-weed below me, which I could nearly touch with the umbrella. It had been dangling above the water just now, swaying back- wards and forwards as the wind caught it ; when I again looked at it, it had a different motion : it was floating. No hope ? I could not think it : I did not dare to ! Why, even yet, I could have waded through the water beneath me, quite easily. There were no waves now ; no dashing ; the wind had quite fallen. Quite easily : if only I were free ! I Avedged my arm for support in a hollow of the stone, and again waved and shouted. Shouted, not in that wild way now, but in a high and sustained note ; one which might, possibly, be audible now, in the greater stillness. It was my last chance ; my very last ; I would not throw it away. An echo ? It could not be that ; it was a man's voice. I called again, and waved eagerly ; and again the voice answered. But where ? From the back of the ledge on which I was imprisoned the rock rose abruptly, some forty feet or " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 173 so. What was still above this, I could not see, but it seemed to slant back. I now looked up, and on the edge of the rock saw Mr. Fortescue. " Miss Secretau ? " he exclaimed. " Good heaven ! I heard cries- from the top of the cliff, and came down : there is a kind of path as far as this. But what can you be doing there ? " Five words explained the position. " I think the piece of stone might be moved," I said, " although my strength will not do it." " It shall be moved, Miss Secretan. The only question is the time. I could easily get up the cliff again, and round by the preventive station, but there is no time : you would be drowned. Good heaven ! The tide is almost on a level with you already." I looked down, shuddering. My last passionate effort had occupied more time than I had imagined. There were scarcely six inches of the rock uncovered now. My brain reeled with the swirl of the green water below me. Mr. Fortescue spoke again. He had not ceased speaking, in reality ; but fathomless measures of time and space seemed to lie between his last words and those which followed. " I must come down to you at once," he said. 174 "SIX MONTHS HENCE." As he spoke, he leant forward over the cliff, scanning its face rapidly but closely. " It is quite impossible," I cried. " There is not a projection, not a holding for hand or foot. You would be dashed to pieces on this rock. Do not attempt it, Mr. Fortescue," I continued, after a moment. " Why should two lives be sacrificed ? I must meet my end as I best may." Again he looked over the edge. " The other side is still higher," he said. " Here it must be ; and it must be at once. I may find some hold." It was palpable death ! I saw by his face that he knew it to be so ; but he persevered. He had begun to lower himself over the edge. Suddenly he started back with a brightened expression. " Quick, Miss Secretan," he said. " That water below you ; out beyond the ledge you are on ; what is the depth ? " " From five to six feet," I answered. " I saw it before the sea came up." "That will do," he said. He had before taken off his hat and coat, preparatory to his intended descent. He now clasped his hands high above his head and leant forward. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 175 " Crouch into the rock," he called out ; "I might strike you. Sit close." Something that shot before my eyes : a plash in the green pool below me ; and then Mr. Fortescue, who had struck the water obliquely so as to carry him out to some distance, was swimming in rapidly towards my place of imprisonment. The stone did give way. Not without a severe effort on the part of my rescuer, which, in spite of his wetting, beaded the perspiration heavily on his forehead. I was free. Somewhat numbed with the long confinement, but unhurt and well able to move. The water had risen over the ledge by this time, but the descent from it on to the beach on the side of the preventive station was easily effected. I stood on the shingle of the little bay to which I had so long cried vainly for succour, liberated and light of heart. My first impulse was to my deliverer. " Mr. Fortescue," I said, " you have saved me from a frightful death. I can never repay you." The tide was well in now ; and although there was abundant room for safety, we were compelled to keep up rather high, near the broken debris of the cliff. When I spoke, Mr. Fortescue stood still, and 176 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." remained for a minute or two without answering, resting his arm on one of the fragments of rock. "You have saved me, Mr. Fortescue," I said again, " chivalrously and nobly; at the instant peril of your own life. I can never possibly repay you." He still did not speak at first. When he did, it was in a low suppressed tone. " There was no chivalry, Miss Secretan ; I implore you not to think of it in that light. Any one accustomed to dive could easily have done what I did. There was absolutely no danger; and no very particular skill. I am only ashamed that it did not occur to me sooner how I could get to you." " It is easy for you to be so generous," I said. " You who are all nobility." " So generous, Miss Secretan ? You little know me ! I am about to be most ungenerous ! You spoke of yourself; you say that I saved your life. Well, I did so. By this time the water would have been high above your head ; you must have died, cruelly, miserably. As you say, I saved you. A mere hireling, a beggar, a dog, might have done the same ; still, I did it. And you say you would repay me!" " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 177 " Repay you," I answered. " Would that I knew bow ! But I never can do it." " You can," he said. " I will be the hireling, the beggar. Maria Secretan, be my wife." Impulse ! why do we denounce it ? Oh ! that I had obeyed the impulses of that moment ; had said what my heart prompted ; what my tongue all but spoke ; all but ! Could I not have done so ? I had just been snatched from the jaws of a hideous death. I had seen the realities of things as one only sees them at such a moment. There was not a guilty act in the past, a guilty hope for the future, a. shred or corner of my own heart which had not stood out in the plainest characters during the imminence of that last hour or two. Could I not have told my rescuer, even in my benediction of him, that I could not do this great evil ; that I hated it for his sake no less than my own ; that I implored him to keep his fealty to Helen, a fealty not pledged in words, but needing no words to bind it ? That she loved him, while I did not. That I would pay him any service ; yield him any sacrifice ; excepting only this of wrong-doing ? Could I not have said this ; or some portion of this? VOL. I. 12 178 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." Oh! yes; yes. The words leapt to my lips; they clamoured for utterance : they burnt within me like a quick fire. But they remained unspoken. I had stopped when Mr. Fortescue did. I stood there on the beach in front of him, trembling violently. But I stood silent. Silent ? Well ; I did begin to mutter something ; I know not what. Oh ! the words must have come : they must have come. I was not wholly, hopelessly evil. Even my pride must have come to my aid, revolting against this strange wooing. Strange indeed ! No passionate entreaties ; no supplication ; no pretence even of love ; trafficked for, soul and body, like a creature sold in the shambles ! True, this was not quite all. Brief and commonplace as Mr. Fortescue's question had been, he was terribly in earnest about it ; I could see that : his emotion was even greater than my own. But still, what girl ever yielded herself on such terms ? what had he seen in me, to think that I should do it ? Oh ! I should, I should have spoken ; should have saved myself; have saved, to all whom it in- volved, the miserable future ! I know I should. But, " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 179 even while I delayed, the moment of salvation, of right choice, passed away from me for ever. The strain had been too great ; and I fell to the ground in a swoon. It was of no long duration. "When I recovered, I found that I had been carefully placed in a reclining posture against one of the rocks. Mr. Fortescue was kneeling by me, and sprinkling some drops of water ' in my face. Even then, there was nothing of the lover in his solicitude. No lips pressed to mine, no caress, no eager inquiries. He tended me carefully and gently ; watched me with a profound interest ; but made no nearer demonstration. I was soon able to stand again. " I have treated you cruelly," Mr. Fortescue then said. " Agitated and disturbed you, when you were wholly unequal to it. I will not be so selfish again. Could you walk now with my support ? " I was quite equal to this. And, when we reached the preventive station, I declined his offer of send- ing to the town for a conveyance. "I would return with him over the cliff," I said; "it was not far, and would save much time." Somehow, I did not care to have my accident known at the Villa. 180 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." It had left no perceptible results ; and if I reached home by dusk, my absence would be ascribed only to a more extended walk than usual. Our return over the cliff took place almost wholly in silence ; and, wholly, without reference to the question Mr. Fortescue had so abruptly asked me. At the Villa gate, he stopped and shook hands with me. " You are none the worse ? " he said. " In noway," I answered. " Somewhat fatigued, that is all. I shall sleep it off." "I trust so. And now one word more. I will not further agitate you to-night or inquire how far I may interpret your silence favourably. I am not without hopes that I may. To-morrow, if you will, you shall tell me. It is Sunday ; and I know that at the house you go to evening service ; the afternoon will be your own. If your strength is equal to it, I will receive your answer then ; in the same spot where I asked the question. Good-night." " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 181 CHAPTEK XII. " GOOD-NIGHT." " Sleep it off." That was not very likely. There was more to sleep off than a fatiguing confinement, or even a drowning man's horror. The innocent might sleep that off well enough. But I and innocence were to be strangers henceforth. I went to bed, no doubt. I did not set myself down, with wraps and candle and studied preparation, to answer that question. I did not even contemplate lying awake to think of it. But I did lie awake, and did think of it. It seemed to me that all that night the matter went through a kind of judiciary process in my mind. I was the judge. I was seated in due form, calm and deliberate ; hearing the arguments on both sides. " Maria Secretan ; will you be my wife ?" Yes. Or no. 182 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." The noes were heard first. There were a great number of them ; crowding together, and edging forward to make themselves audible. Conscience. Ah ! that spoke a very loud " no." But then it had done that before. What could it say, except the old story? "It is a great sin ; a sin against God and man. It is a sin to marry where you do not love. It is a still worse one, if possible, to marry a man who has induced another to love him, and then throws her up for you. You too, whom he does not even pretend to care for ! It will be an accursed marriage. Dare you do it ? Do it, with your eyes open ? Do it, at the very moment when your life was forfeited, but for a special and most merciful Providence; when you have had the future face to face with you ? Dare you do it ? " No doubt, no doubt, Conscience ; but we have heard all this already. There may be another way of looking at the matter. Things may not be quite so serious as you make out. Stand aside, Conscience. Any one further ? Oh yes : several. Helen, I think, came next. Came as I had seen her on that morning four da} r s before. The sweet young face clouded with grief: " SIX MONTHS HENCE.'' 183 hiding the face on my sisterly heart : coming to me for comfort, and I comforting her. The court was a good deal touched by this. Especially, when the grief in the young face first changed to an expression of intense wonder, and then deepened into a look which in another face would have been scorn, but in her was divine piety. She did not trouble us long then. She fled from sight and hearing of me ; anywhere, so it was out of my contact. And the court then gradually recovered itself. Any one else ? Well. Society had a good deal to say. It used some strong language ; unparliamentary, as Charles would have called it. " Treacherous ; false ; base ; cunning ; heartless ; mercenary." " A thoroughly bad girl; thoroughly bad." "Never much liked her ; always something sly and underhand about her." " Got round Fortescue's weak side." "Hope he'll like her; I shouldn't." "Picked her up somewhere ; quite common-looking, and, I don't think, pretty." Society became so personal here that the court was compelled to request its with- drawal. It sketched out for us two or three little pictures as it left. A tea-table ; spinsters and I 184 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." know not what ; animated conversation, replaced by dead silence as I entered the room. The bow- window of a club ; men with eye-glasses, staring at me impertinently as I passed. A race-course ; carriage and liveries and myself, all alone up in a corner. Everyone standing aloof, excepting the questionables who had come for a champagne lunch. What ; still one more ? The last, happily, although a somewhat pertinacious one. It was a young, motherless girl ; very weak, and erring, and undisciplined ; shuddering on the brink of a terrible pitfall, and yet resolute to plunge into it. It was myself. Not the real, innermost self ; the entity of entities. But the self in relation to its prospects and temporalities : the self of prudence, and circum- spection, and the like. " Pause," it said, for my sake. Be heartless and treacherous if you will ; I am not here to discuss that. But do at least con- sider me. What do you know of this man, this Mr. Fortescue ? He possesses, you say, what you have set your whole heart upon ; affluence, position. Well, we will grant all this ; although, be it observed, you only know it by hearsay. However, there is probably little doubt of it. But what else do you " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 185 know of him ? He is brave, gentle-hearted, refined, you tell me. Yes ; but he has not made you love him. Love him ? has not nature taught you, almost by a special instinct, that you never could love him ? Be superstitious, if nothing better : think of that singular feeling you have experienced on merely meeting him; think of his own warning, that antipathies thus implanted in our nature can never be really conquered ; that they are not ideas but facts, integral conditions of our being. Will you in the face of this sell yourself into this stranger's hands ; be bound to him hand and foot ; pass your days and nights with him ? But perhaps he loves you ? why, he does not even pretend it. He has deserted the girl whom he did seem to care for ; cut her adrift with- out remorse ; and what will he do to you ? He may leave you starving and penniless, and go roving over half the globe ; as you know he has been doing. And better that perhaps than your home-life as it may be : death in life, as it may be, for all you know to the contrary. How do you know that he is not a drunkard ; a gambler ; a miserly tyrant, who will beat you, haggle and starve the very soul out of you ? Not likely, you say. You 186 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." can't tell. More unlikely things than that have happened." But this last speaker was hardly heard out. The reply began, short enough, hut the more vehemently from having been so long pent back. The reply dexterous, consummate advocacy. " Conscience '? Oh ! really ! One cannot act on those overstrained notions now-a-days ; the world would stand still. The future will take care of itself well enough, no doubt. If you have no worse sins than that to answer for, you will not do badly. Besides, what does any one mean by calling it a sin ? Did not Helen herself say that she thought you the better suited of the two to Mr. Fortescue ? And it is pretty clear, I suppose, what he thinks. Not very lover- like, perhaps ; but you can see that he is entirely in earnest. Sin, indeed ! In my humble opinion you would be acting much more wrongly to refuse him. You might mar the happiness of his life. Your deliverer, too ; one who, whatever he may say, incurred a very serious risk to save you. You are bound to accept him. " Then as to society. No need to trouble our- selves much about that, I think. A few hard words ; "SIX MONTHS HEXCE." 187 a sneer or two ; very little to set off against a mag- nificent future at our disposal. Better to be envied than pitied. A London season and a few entertain- ments at Dalemain will bring things round fast enough. As to prudential considerations, prudence has cut the throat of her own argument. Actually, the only tangible objection she has to allege is that we have some superstition, it is her own term about Mr. Fortescuo.; some terror, or palpitations, or some- thing. I don't think we can give up 20,OOOL a year, or whatever it is, for that ; can we, Miss Secretan ? And the rest is all gratuitous talk. ' May be this,' 'may be that.' He 'may be the wandering Jew, at that rate. I am sure all we have seen of him has been noble and generous in the extreme. "As to the poor young lady, of course it is a great disappointment to her. But still " Here however the court intimated that it was satisfied. This remaining topic need not be argued. Why so ? From shame ; from compassion ; from some unextinguished embers of love my old love for Helen ; our pleasant hours together ; the twining arms, the sisterhood of thought meeting thought, and heart throbbing against heart ? Love ? A likely 188 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." matter, indeed. I hated Helen. I knew which way the court would decide before the first voice spoke. .It had only listened to confirm a foregone conclu- sion. I knew well enough that I should marry Mr. Fortescue. And the moment I knew that, I hated Helen. Does the reader marvel why ? If he does, he knows little of himself ; little of others. Has traced but surface-deep the pathology of wrong-doing ; its corrosion of heart and brain ; its necessities of speaking itself fair, and casting blame elsewhere ; its suppressed pain and stifled conscience, misliking interference, dreading to be called into activity ; shrinking from all that threatens to do so ; misliking and dreading, most of all, the victim of its own ill-deed : for in that presence conscience will speak out, and the pain will make itself felt. Of course I knew that I should accept Mr. For- tescue. It was a fait accompli, as far as intention and will went. No need to discuss it further : I might be allowed to sleep now. No possible need for further debate of any kind. And yet, yet, did I not know also, even when I was saying this, that there was something else " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 189 svliicli ought to have been heard ? Something very deep down in my heart ? Something which I had, this night above all, shut down under the hatches, refusing it egress, refusing it liberty of speech ; for- bidding it almost to breathe ? Something, which, if it might and could have spoken, would have told me that I was shipwrecking, not only Helen's love but my own ; not only Mr. Fortescue's life, but my own ? Something which was the only good and true thing still left about me ; which though it might have met with no return, might have required to be kept as a sealed water all my life : was yet a charmed water, a well-spring from the gates of Paradise ? Something, which had it spoken, would have shivered into atoms my base cravings for wealth, my lies and sophistries ; would have compelled me to say " no," instead of "yes?" And which for that very reason I had thrust back into the darkness, and would not let it speak? Ah ! I have told my tale but ill if the reader does not know what this was ! It dated from the very first hour of my arrival at Harcourt Villa. It was maidenly, reticent, self-abashed : scantly acknow- ledged even to myself ; for so beseemed it. It would 190 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." doubtless lead to no result, for there was disparity, great disparity, in outward circumstances, between that young life and my own. It was a trembling, fluttering, half-fledged thing; nothing remarkable about it in any way ; only the old, old story, that which has been from the creation, and will be to the end of all things. But such as it was, there it was. My heart's one solitary treasure. My love. And, next to my heart; very often, in fact, and ever, ever until now in recollection, was some- thing else. Something which was that love's symbol and outward emblem ; its visible, tangible, material presence to me. A thing, commonplace and simple as the love itself. A stolen thing : stolen from him, the owner, at unawares ; at a place and time when we had shared a common interest, already recorded in these pages ; when it had been left behind, over- looked. A thing valueless in itself; representing and conveying nothing from him ; how should it, when there was nothing to be conveyed ? But to me, the thief, how inexpressibly dear at all times ; all times, till now ! Xay, but no more of this at present ; it is too terrible; I cannot bear it yet. It will tell its own " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 191 tale soon enough; that blameless, that most fatal theft ! Ah ! me, my woe, my woe ! Long-sufferance of the Eternal, forbear with me ! Redemption of earth's blood-guiltiness, assoil my sin ! 192 " SIX MONTHS HENCE.' CHAPTER XIII. ACCEPTED ? Yes. Engaged ? Yes. Mr. Fortescue left Hastings the day following. It was his wish that the engagement should not be spoken of. It was unquestionably my own. This was now October, drawing on towards the end of the month. Early in December he would return, and claim me as his bride. For the present, I had better remain at the Villa, where I should hear from him very shortly. The details of the marriage should be arranged in all respects as I thought best. London would probably be most convenient for the purpose.. It could not be at Hastings ; which of course it would be desirable for me to leave on the engagement being announced, and London would be better than Yorkshire. I was to spare no expense in my preparations that would in any way give me " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 193 pleasure ; compatibly, that was, with the reticence thus arranged for the time being. Six weeks ; seven at the latest ; and then my reward would come : that for which I had bartered myself. Notwithstanding Mr. Fortescue's liberality, I should not have much taste of it beforehand. For dress, and mere personal adornments, as such, I had no special instincts. They were not my craving ; and, if they had been, there would have been no opportunity for gratifying it at Hastings, in my present chrysalis state of governess. So I pursued our stated round of occupation ; did lessons ; walked and supervised ; attended Fred when required. Kept up my loving intimacy with Helen. Oh ! dear me, yes ! How things become easy to us ! I was not pre- cisely the " shorn lamb ; " but I certainly had looked forward to my intercourse in that quarter, during the present probationary period, as a very keen and searching atmosphere. But it was "tempered" to me marvellously. Was there not that Aladdin's palace in the future, glittering with golden imageries, piled with fruits that were emeralds and rubies ? I had learnt a vast deal about myself since my be- VOL. i. 13 194 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." trothal. I used to think I daresay I may have said so in these pages that the price for which I knew I was ready to sell soul and body for which I had now done so charmed me by its beauty only. Ah ! I knew better now. I knew now that it was just the old-fashioned story ; the old vulgar motives display, luxury, life, enjoyment. I had some trouble at admitting this ; but, the ad- mission once made, what a field for anticipation ! No dreamy, semi-poetical vision now, but definite, tangible realities ! The country mansion crowded with guests ; the town-house ; the opera ; the parks ; Mrs. Fortescue's receptions in the daily papers; horses and carriages ; ormolu, and footmen six foot high. Sheet by sheet I spread out the gay picture before me, and hungered for it all to begin : I had no shame with myself now. And yet, they may have been real enough, those old day-dreams ! Who knows not how the fairest fancy, once actuated in wrong-doing, changes, in that very act, from the hues of beauty to deformity and shame ? Who shall say that the real poetry of human emotion there may be a spurious secondary growth ever survives its innocence ? " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 195 But, once more, enough of this. From the mental tumult of this transition period, from the throbbing, passionate excitement within, covered externally by the hard crust of dissimulation and routine, emerge two or three landmarks of recol- lection. Not recollected as being of any special moment in themselves, or in any way. It is simply that these in fact have, and that other matters in fact have not rested on my mind. Let me note them down as they occurred, and then at once pass to the close of this intermediate period. The fifth of November. This is the first day after my engagement on which I retain a distinct memory of anything which passed. " Gunpowder plot " had no ecclesiastical status in Hastings. The two old churches observed "Wed- nesdays and Fridays, but they observed nothing else. St. Mary's sub castle would probably have been glad enough, in the abstract, to countenance the state-service of the day, as containing some smart reflections upon Popery, together with an apotheosis of the Dutchman whom Lord Macaulay considers the founder of English liberty. But then, St. Mary's made a rule of never opening its doors on any week- 196 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." day ; it was a strictly sabbatical institution. And the principle was too important to be departed from, even for the satisfaction of" praying at " one's Popish neighbours. But if the Church was negligent, the Protestant cause was vigorously upheld by the Hastings laity ; at any rate, by the more youthful portion of it. Guy Fawkes at Hastings was quite a work of art. A very fastidious critic might have objected that the "blood- thirstiness" and "hellish malice" so strongly handled by the state- service were hardly in character with the ruddy and somewhat jovial face assigned to the arch- conspirator in this effigy, and which seemed to have been tinted in from the landlord of the " Three Farmers." In fact, as far as looks went, one would have been inclined to refer Guy to the class conven- tionally known as nobody's enemies but their own. In other respects however, Guy was a well-appointed ruffian enough. And when he exploded in the even- ing, which came off with entire success upon the Castle hill, there could be no doubt of his satanic tendencies, or of those of the Roman Catholic faith generally. At the Villa, too, we were quite Protestants enougl " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 197 to have an extra half-holiday. And this is how I come to " remember, remember, the fifth of Novem- ber," as runs the time-honoured stave, which Charles uplifted at the top of his voice on his way down to lunch that afternoon. A pleasant, musical voice it was ; one, at least, that I had ever thought so. But something in it cut me to the heart then, as I sat in the dining-room waiting for Mrs. Armitage to enter : cut me to the heart, notwithstanding a day-dream in which I had the moment before been indulging of an unspeakably attractive fortnight in the height of the Paris season. For I had heard from Mr. Fortescue meanwhile, more than once. If our marriage took place, as it might, about the middle of December, he proposed, if agree- able to me, that the honeymoon should be spent in the French capital. Oh ! it was agreeable enough ! So agreeable, that in its contemplation I totally over- looked the circumstance that its satisfactions would be shared by another person besides myself : that I should be Mr. Fortescue' s wife then ! Meanwhile, mine were not the only ears which had been regaled by Charles's distich. As he entered the dining-room, another door opened ; that of the 198 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." library, which communicated with it. I expected Mrs. Armitage ; but the person who in fact appeared was one whom I more rarely saw ; her husband. This was only the fourth time, or thereabouts, that I had set eyes upon the master of the house since my residence in it. "What I did now see of him shocked and pained me ; and for two reasons. There was an evident increase of suffering in the face since it had last met my eye ; as well as of feebleness in the frame gene- rally. Now and then, as the extreme end approaches, nature stamps on the features an unmistakeable hue, the prevision, rarely fallacious, of a darker shadow : something which at once says, " This is doomed," deepening the furrows of the cheeks, and loading the brow with a corpse-like pallor. Much as a statuary might shape out some scarcely defined outline to serve for the cast of his future work ! And something else there was which shocked me. It was the father's manner and voice to Charles ; for it was him the invalid had come in quest of. Again I was reminded of the sort of possession of which I have before spoken. The person and voice were those of Mr. Armitage ; courtly, dignified as ever. But the " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 199 utterances were his wife's. Even quantitatively, their force was in startling contrast to the bloodless lips from which they issued; her force, not his. Not, indeed, in actual words ; she worked by inuendo and suggestion, while Mr. Armitage's present bearing was ^that of angry resentment. But the anger was, so to speak, counterfeit ; acting the obedience to a higher behest. Mrs. Armitage, as I knew, was seated in the library from which her husband had just entered; was within ear- shot, and probably, where she sat, within sight of him. I could fancy that, from time to time, he cast an uneasy glance back into that room behind him; like one who has been drilled in his part, and is going through it under the tutor's eye. And yet, so well acted was it, that no one but those who, like myself, were behind the scenes, could possibly have suspected the prompter's presence ! " What does this mean, Charles ?" said his father. (I had taken in the look and manner I have described in one glance, although it has occupied some time in the telling.) " Have we not enough of these absurdi- ties in the streets that you must shout them thus all over our own house ? You care little for my wishes, I dare say; but you might consider my state of 200 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." health, as well as that of the poor little child in the room opposite." " I'm awfully sorry, Papa," said Charles ; " I am indeed. Papa, why do you speak and look at me like that ? " he continued, after a minute's pause. " You know I do care for you. I and Helen would sit with you, and read to you, and do your writing; do anything and everything for you if you would only let us." " You do not show much of your dutifulness, Charles," replied his father. " How can we, Papa ? You never send for us to- the study ; and you know you would not like us to come without. I'm sure I'd cut my head off sooner than make a row or disturb you in any way, if I only thought of it." " That thoughtlessness is just what I deplore, Charles. It makes me wretched. So very wretched ; so very wretched," repeated the sick man, helplessly, I saw in an instant what was happening. The counterfeit resentment was dying out ; and there was some risk of 4he real utterances making themselves heard. He was losing his cue / The next minute showed me that my supposi- " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 201 tion was correct. The prompter came on the stage now. " The fact is, Charles," said Mrs. Armitage, moving forward to the doorway, " that your father is deeply offended by your conduct to him during these past months. You know the gentleness of his dis- position, and how very much it would take to make him feel hardly to any one, especially to his own children. But you have effectually succeeded in doing it." " Indeed, Ma'am," said Charles, " I do not know what I have done." " It is of course very difficult for me to speak of it, Charles," replied the lady. " Nothing should in- duce me to do so were it not that I saw the grief it is causing your father. Oh ! Mr. Armitage, why did you press so for our union ? I could not but admire one so good ; but I was contented in my solitary lot, and you were happy with your children here. Now it is all changed. I am the barrier between you. They grudge you my poor affection, spontaneous as it is. Oh ! why did I ever come to this" house ? I cannot bear it, Mr. Armitage ; I cannot indeed." And here the crocodile produced some really respect- 202 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." ably-sized drops, which had been composing during the latter part of this oration. " Calm yourself, my dear," said the husband. Under which suggestion, the lady of course sobbed more violently than ever. " Clara, dearest," said Mr. Armitage again, " pray do not agitate yourself in this way. I am glad that you have spoken ; it is high time we should have some understanding about this. As Mrs. Armi- tage says, Charles," continued the poor gentleman, who was now effectively wound up and set going again, " I have been deeply pained by your conduct to her. I suppose you consider, sir, that I was not at liberty to marry ? No doubt, you and Helen would greatly have preferred that I should have continued to lead the solitary life I was doing. As long as you had the house to yourselves, you would not have minded any deprivation I might undergo. I am much obliged to you both ; but you see I have decided for myself, old and ill as I am. I have met with a most kind and estimable partner ; one who contributes largely to such comfort as my wretched health admits of, and whom I am determined you shall respect accordingly : if not for my sake, at any rate for your own." " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 203 " I have not shown Mrs. Armitage any disrespect, sir," said Charles. " Oh ! Mr. Armitage," interposed the lady, " pray do not be angry with Charles on my account. I should never have complained if you had not first mentioned it ; I should not indeed. Certainly, Charles's manner has pained and wounded me very much. I did expect that when he saw me devoting my whole life, as I am sure I try to do, to your happiness, he would at least behave to me with common civility. But I can quite put up with it; I can quite forgive him." " You shall not be required to do so, Clara," replied the husband. " Charles, you will understand, once for all, that this does not occur again. You may succeed in driving- me into my grave, you and Helen ; but perhaps you will find that you are neither of you the better for it." " I hardly understand you, sir," said Charles. "As to Mrs. Armitage, I defy her to say that I have ever done or said anything rude to her." " I know pretty well, Charles," said the lady, " what's said and done behind my back, if not to my face. I do not ask for affection ; that I am aware I 204 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." have no claim to. But it is very painful to me to feel that the poor children and myself are per- petually being jeered at and abused, as if we were interlopers. You will think me very foolish, Robert ; but it does wound me to the quick that he should always speak of me as 'Mrs. Armitage.' Just as if I was some stranger here, and not your wife." And then the sobs began again, more irrepressibly than ever. I saw the game in an instant. This matter of the name had been selected, either by previous design or on the spur of the moment, as the battle-field by which Charles and his fortunes were to stand or fall. It was a hazardous game ; very hazardous. But it was entirely successful. " That shall be put right at any rate," said the husband. " Now, Charles, you will understand me if you please. That you have behaved shamefully to the lady, whom I have brought here as my wife and the head of my house, I have no doubt. I can see it by the evident pain she has in speaking of your conduct, even while her kind and generous nature prompts her to suppress the worst features. But there must be a total alteration for the future. And " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 205 the proof of your compliance will be that you hence- forth address my wife, as she very properly wishes, and as you most unquestionably should do, by the corresponding term to myself. You will speak of, and to her, as ' Mamma,' in future : not as ' Mrs. Armitage.' " " I cannot, sir," said Charles, in a low voice. " Oh, Papa," he continued, " do not ask this. Think of our own dear, dear mother ! how could I ever bear to call a stranger by the same name ? Indeed I will do all that you wish, excepting this. Neither you nor Mrs. Armitage shall have the least complaint to make of any want of respect in future. But I cannot do this ; I cannot indeed : it would be like tearing our real mother out of our heart. Papa ! do not ask this ! " " That is to say, Charles," replied his father, " you will comply with my wishes as far as it is agreeable to yourself, but no farther. As to ' asking,' I was not aware that a father and son were on that footing ; at any rate, we are not. Command is the word, if you please, in this matter ; not ask. If you choose to obey, well and good ; if not, you must take the consequences. You will find them pretty heavy. 206 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." You seem to forget that my property is absolutely at my own disposal." Charles's brow flushed to a dark crimson. He looked his father full in the face. "If I cannot obey you for the sake of your own wishes, sir," he .said, "I shall certainly not be driven to do so for the sake of any fortune you may leave me. I must disobey you, Papa ; I cannot do this thing : my tongue would not say the word. Oh! Papa, how can you ask me ? " Without seeming to observe the old man, I had in fact done so, closely and narrowly. It was piteous enough. Deep down, under this counterfeited harsh- ness, I saw, as I had already noticed more than once, the traces of a deep wretchedness ; the unfor- gotten loves of the past rising up in rebellion against the cruel servitude now imposed upon them. Very far back, in the hollow of the sunken eyes I saw the gathering of a large hot tear. Mrs. Armitage had seen it also. " Do not stay here to agitate yourself, Mr. Armi- tage," she said. " I arn grieved that Charles is so wilful : deeply grieved. The matter itself is nothing ; I could easily overlook his persistent slight to me. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 207 But the more trivial it is, the worse it makes his undutifulness in not complying with your wish. Let me give you my arm to the study, Mr. Armitage." And the unfortunate performer, having played out his part, was walked off the stage accordingly without further ceremony. Charles dashed out of the . room, and did not appear again until dinner-time. During the interval, two strangers had paid the Villa a somewhat lengthened visit. They were received by Mrs. Armitage on entering ; and then ushered into Mr. Armitage's study, where they remained closeted with him for some hours. They were Mr. Rigwell, the principal solicitor in Hastings, and his managing clerk. The occurrence just mentioned took place, as I have said, on the fifth of November. The second of the three recollections connected with this closing period of my Hastings' life dates a few days later ; the exact day I have forgotten. It was nothing of special moment ; only a conversation with Mr. Latrobe, who joined my pupils and myself on the esplanade, where we were taking a short stroll. The weather had become too unsettled for long walks. " Have you seen anything of Charles this after- 208 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." noon," asked the curate, after the preliminary cour- tesies of our meeting. "I am afraid he has not been well lately. He has come for his work with me every day, but I have not got hold of him at other times, as I generally do. Even at his work he seemed out of sorts." " I have not heard of his being ill," I said. " But I have hardly seen him myself since the fifth." " He seems to me moody," continued Mr. La- trobe ; " a wholly unusual phase with him. Ailing in mind and body both. Perhaps he misses his friend Mr. Fortescue, who, I find, has left Hastings. Have you heard whether he intends to return ? " " I suppose so," I answered, somewhat confused. It was one of the petty scrapes that my personated life was getting me into twenty times a day : and I had not yet made much progress in dissimulation. The real truth ; the secret ; seemed to me of such paramount magnitude that it gave undue proportions to anything bearing upon it. So that even very simple questions perplexed me. " Mr. Fortescue's seems a purposeless life at present," continued the curate. "It is a thousand " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 209 pities. He has all the nobility of a high-class nature : ' first-chop,' as the Chinese would call it ; and, grave and reserved as he is, it is impossible not to feel interested in him. I suppose the mar- riage will be soon," Mr. Latrobe added, after a short pause, during which he was digging out a pebble from the gravel- walk with his stick. The marriage ! The very thing that was upper- most in my own thoughts, night and day ! " Early next month, I hope," was on my lips to answer. But I saved myself by a spasmodic effort of memory, which showed me that I was being " pumped," and, at the same time, explained why the gravel-walk had been victimized. "The marriage?" I said. "Is Mr. Fortescue going to be married?" " Oh ! I only repeat the on dits," answered the curate. " The Hastings' people seem quite to have arranged matters between him and the young lady." Too indifferent by half, my friend, I thought to myself. Even if I did not know your secret, which I do, I should have guessed it now. That's not your natural tone ; nor is it the least natural to your Irish blood to be fidgeting and looking sheepish in that VOL. i. 14 210 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." way. However, you shall have a little comfort ; a ray of hope let in upon you. " I suppose you mean Miss Armitage ? " I said. " Of course. But mind, I am not to be quoted, Miss Secretan. I am only following the gossips." " The gossips are mistaken sometimes," I said. " So far from Miss Helen's marriage being immi- nent, I am not aware that she is even engaged. Are you ? " " Well, yes ; that is, you know," he answered, stammeringly enough, " I took it for granted. It seemed a settled thing, two or three months since. They were constantly together, and she seemed . . . that is, I suppose Miss Armitage liked him very much. Did she not ? " "Oh! you mustn't ask me," I said. "I am blind as a beetle An such matters. Besides, young ladies do not always know their own minds ; or gen- tlemen either, for that matter. He may not have liked her." " Then he's a scoundrel," said the curate, indig- nantly. " Why they were always together, singing Italian music and I don't know what. What busi- ness had he to lead her on in that way, if he meant " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 211 nothing ? I know that he has won her love, well enough; and if he was only trifling with her, and amusing himself with a passing flirtation, he's a base-hearted villain." " Not such a type of nobility then, after all," I said. " But you must not be so vehement, Mr. Latrobe. I only said that there might have been a want of liking on the gentleman's side. As to being together, they have not seen much of each other since Fred's accident. Mr. Fortescue has been almost constantly in the sick room. By the way," I added, " have you heard how much better the little boy is ? " " No ; really ? I am exceedingly glad." " A fortnight ago he seemed rapidly sinking ; but his constitution has rallied, and there now seems little doubt of his recovery. I suppose it is the good nursing he has had. I claim some share in it, for I have been most assiduous. But see, here is Mr. Charles coming. He seems in sufficiently good spirits." Charles had, in fact, brightened up to-day, and- joined us with something of his old manner. Some- thing, only ; the life and buoyancy of it were still sadly wanting. 212 " SIX MONTHS HEXCE." "You need not speak to him about home matters," I whispered to Mr. Latrobe as he came up. " There has been a little unpleasantness there." " Ah ! yes, I understand,", said the curate. "Well, Charles, how do you intend employing your- self this afternoon ? There is not much to be done out of doors. You will be reduced to billiards." "I don't care for -the table down here. I wish our own was in order. Not that it is of much conse- quence, for there is no one to play with, now For- tescue is gone. I think I shall walk out by the Martello towers, and try for a shot at some gulls." " You are always committing murder, Mr. Charles," I said. " How so, Miss Secretan ? " " Why, the last time we had a walk together, you wanted to kill a poor reptile who was doing no harm to any one by living, and would be of no good to any one when dead; and now you are determined not to let these birds live : and equally without reason." " Quite useless trying to excuse yourself, Charles," said Mr. Latrobe. " You had better retort upon Miss Secretan, and tell her that she is always com- "SIX MONTHS HENCE." 213 mitting murder too. Her victims during the last twa or three months have been counted by scores, I make no doubt." " You see, sir, I have not your Irish genius for a compliment. By the way, Mr. Latrobe, how do you come to be an Irishman ? " " I suppose the same way that a man comes to be a Grim Tartar. I could not help myself." " No, but I mean how is it you are not a French- man ? " " Well, I suppose for the same reason that I have not two heads. Nature made me so. Why should I be a Frenchman ? " "Your name is French, Christian and surname. And the latter, at any rate, must have been your father's." " Ah ! I see your difficulty. My father was a refugic, Mr. Charles ; that is the explanation of it. He settled in Ireland, and fell in love there with and married my mother, who must have been a beautiful creature, by her pictures. I have no recollection of her. My father I do remember, although he too died when I was quite young. I was taken charge of by my mother's family, who lived near Limerick, and 214 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." brought me up there ; thus producing the accom- plished member of society you see." " Do you ever pay them a visit now ? " I asked. " I am going over there the first thing after Christmas. I shall get six or seven weeks before Lent begins. I must be back for that, as we have additional services. Poor Mrs. Graves ! she says her idea of Lent is perpetually going to church in an east wind." " What happens to the ' Curate's lodgings ' while you are away, sir," asked Charles. " "Why ? Have you any thought of engaging them ? You are quite welcome ! Oh ! they get locked up, or something : I don't know. I know that if I happen to leave any papers or books about, they have always been ' put into their places ' by the time I return ; which means, put into odd shelves and cupboards according to a Gravesian theory of the eternal fitness of things, highly ingenious in itself, but wholly incomprehensible to the rest of mankind. It takes me a month or two sometimes to re-collect the ' disjecta membra.' " "Can you not indoctrinate the housemaid?" I asked. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 215 "No; the old lady always does it herself. How- ever, I suspect these revolutionary proceedings are generally completed the first day or two after my departure ; and after that the rooms are left pretty much unentered until my impending return is announced. Once or twice, when I have come back unexpectedly, I have found an upper stratum of dust on which Mr. Car stairs might teach his pupils writing. Between ourselves," continued the curate, " I have rather a suspicion that Mrs. Graves considers the rooms not quite canny, and would not care to go there except in the broadest sunlight. They are an immense distance from the rest of the premises ; and I might have a supper-party there, or kill pigs there, or indulge in any other satisfactions of the kind, however noisy, without the household in general being a bit the wiser." "I wonder, sir," said Charles, "that you are not afraid of your rooms being robbed, leaving them so unprotected during your absence." " You ought to recollect your Juvenal better than that, Charles. ' Cantabit vacuus,' you know. The most valuable thing the thieves could take would be my Origen ; and I doubt even then whether the 216 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." results would pay them for carting away eleven thick folios. There is no melting-pot for Divinity, fortu- nately. To tell the very real honest truth, Miss Secretan," added the curate, " there is not even a lock to the place." " Not even a lock ! " I said. "Nothing deserving the name. The door of my actual sitting-room never had any ; and the one on the outside door, that of the separate staircase, you know, won't act. That is to say, you turn the key all right, and something goes on with the bolt ; but for any practical purposes you might have saved yourself the trouble. Any one who happened to know about it might walk in and occupy the rooms at any hour of the day or night." " I am afraid you must be considered a very care- less housekeeper, Mr. Latrobe," I said. " "Well, yes. I suppose it's my Irish blood again. We don't trouble bars and bolts much there, unless you're a proscribed man. Even then they wouldn't rob you ; they'd only put a couple of slugs into your thorax. But mind, Miss Secretan, please ; and you, Charles, this is a profound secret from my landlady." "By the way," I said, "I hope your explorations " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 217 underground have not been detected. You remember this is the second secret you have entrusted us with." " Nothing discovered, I am happy to say. Mrs. Graves was very ' warm ' the other day, as we used to say in hide and seek. She was dusting near the place, and certainly seemed struck by the peculiar character of the carpentering there ; and no wonder, for I never could drive a nail in properly in my life. However, I started some topic which took the worthy lady straight into the memory of her poor departed saint, as she usually terms the late Mr. Graves I have no doubt he was an excellent man and this made her forget all about the board, and saved my pocket. So I trust the danger has blown over. I shall never trouble the ' csecae fores ' again. I was a mass of cobwebs after them ; and from the look of the place, I should say neither Mrs. Graves nor any other human being knew of its existence : it must have been closed up for years. So if fortune befriends me, I trust to remain undetected to the end of the chapter. But come, Charles," the curate added, "if you are really going after the gulls you may give me your arm down the street. I have a call to make at the further 218 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." end. Good afternoon, Miss Secretan ; good-bye, little people." And with a kiss apiece to my pupils, our genial curate took his leave. And so ends my second reminiscence of these, my last days at Hastings. One more ; and then events begin their forward march again. This last memory fixes itself at the villa, once more ; in Helen's room. It must have been a fort- night after the chance talk with Mr. Latrobe just narrated; a gloomy day at the fag-end of November, moaning with wind and rain, and darkening the sky with auguries of the coming winter. At first, after my secret engagement to Mr. Fortescue, I had shunned Helen's society. It seemed impossible - that I could face her. And the more I felt this, the stronger grew my dislike for the inno- cent cause of the uneasiness I thus suffered. Dislike ! why do I shrink from the true word ; hatred ! I have already called it so. But gradually this brought its own cure. As I grew harder in other ways, I felt less pain in these meetings ; I even began to feel a wicked pleasure in them. There was one dark spot, one only, on my now bright future ; and that was identified with the " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 219 unconscious girl I had wronged. "Why was I to suffer without retaliation ? What was her love- sickness to rne ? I rather enjoyed watching it now. Not indeed that the subject was often brought forward. Never assuredly, when I could help it. I should have quite a long enough reckoning for the dissimulation of these weeks, quite uncomfortableness enough to bear when the truth did come out in December, with- out purposely adding to it. As for Helen, she also usually avoided any reference to the past. After her agony of grief at our last talk together/ the poor child's maidenly feeling seemed to forbid her dwelling, even in recollection, upon the love-episode which had troubled that young life. Wrench it from her heart she could not, and would not ; but I could see that it was watchfully shut out from speech and thought. This day however Helen herself referred to the topic. ." Maria, dear," she said, " I was so needing your love and counsel ; needing them both so very sorely. I am so frightened at myself, Maria. Such terrible thoughts do come to me now ; I can hardly bear them. Oh ! dearest, I hope my reason is not leaving me ; I am really afraid of it sometimes." 220 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." Again, in my wickedness, I caressed the trem- bling, girlish form, which I had once loved so tenderly. But Helen was not weeping now. Her eye had deep trouble in it : the feverish look caused by sleepless nights, and by the overstrain which the mind undergoes when it has been dwelling unduly on one subject. " It is very hard and bitter for you, Helen," I said ; " but you must try and forget it. I mustn't tell you that I think it will come all right now, for this absence of his is ... is, of course, unaccountable. But you may forget the past. Some other prospect may open out for you ; as bright, or brighter." " Yes. But it is not that only, Maria dear. I do try to forget ; to forget him, hard as it is : so very hard. You have never loved yet ; you do not know how the old times force themselves back upon one. If it was only music, and walks, and reading, and things like that, I should not care so much ; I could keep them out of sight. But I cannot help seeing all the common things about ; and he is associated with every one of them : the commoner they are, the more they remind me of him. I see where he stood ; where he sat ; the things he " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 221 handled; if the door opens, if there is a voice or step in the hall, it all recalls him." " I pity you with all my heart," I said. Quite naturally and pleasantly to myself; no pricking any- where : no choking. I was getting on ! "I know you pity me, dearest," resumed Helen. " Not that I deserve it, for I ought not even to think about that time. But I will try not to ; I did not mean to have spoken of it now. It is those other feelings I told you of. Ahout Fred. You would hate me if you knew how they still haunt me. And they are so much worse now." "About Fred!" Ah! I had forgotten that matter in the pressure of other concerns, since my last talk with Helen. It occurred to me now that it might be of use. It would divert the conversation from Mr. Fortescue, at any rate. " I fancied that was a very passing trouble," I said. "I know you mentioned it some weeks ago, but I had no idea it had taken any hold of you." " Oh ! such a hold, Maria. That is what frightens me. Do what I will, and hate them as I am sure I do, I cannot keep these shameful feelings away from me. On the contrary, they seem to get worse every 222 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." day. Eesist them I know I always shall ; it is no struggle to do that. I should die if I thought my own heart and will had anything to do with them. But they whirl through my brain until ;t almost reels again. I am quite afraid to tell you, Maria," continued the poor girl, shuddering. " Actually the other day, when I first heard that Fred would recover, the most wicked idea flashed across me. A sort of feeling that I had been wronged ; cheated out of my revenge ! that he ought to have gone on and died ! I have hardly been able to bear myself since. Why, Maria, it is being a murderess even to have had such a thought pass through one's mind." " My dear Helen," I said, " you would make a tom-cat laugh : I beg your pardon for being so vulgar. If Fred does not get put out of the world until you do it, he will not have had a bad innings, as Charles would say. I quite agree with you that our youthful friend is objectionable : at least, he used to be ; and now that he is getting better, I have no doubt he will re-appear in his own character. But, as you say, he has done you no harm. And I don't think it at all probable that you will do him any. In fact, I doubt whether you could, even if you tried. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 223 Listen to the young rascal out on the lawn there. He is getting his lungs and legs again, and would be a match for you, any day." I had pointed towards the window ; but Helen turned away from it with a gesture of terror which did a little frighten me. Could it be possible that her disappointment had preyed upon her sufficiently to give the " morbid ideas " she had spoken of some hold upon the brain, utterly alien as they were to everything in her real mind and character ? At any rate, things had gone far enough. " Don't be angry with me for laughing at you, dear," I said. " It was better for you than seeming to accept your excited feelings as fact. You have been too much alone ; have been brooding too much over the past. I will be better company for you in future, and we will try and forget these old troubles together. Ah ! there is the lunch-bell. Now you will have to appear ; and I am told Fred is to come in for the first time to-day : so comport yourself civilly, and don't be looking too. feloniously at the carving-knives. If you must put somebody out of the way, please operate on Burgess. Fred is an angel to her, at any rate. There, we feel happier in our 224 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." minds now, do we not? And we won't have any more of these foolish fancies ? " Helen kissed me gratefully, and with something of a smile; but I could see that the snake was scotched, not killed. However, a little excitement and distraught demeanour on the part of this girl, as I now called her to myself, would not come amiss during the next two or three weeks. It might divert some measures of public attention from myself upon the final discovery being made. As made it must now so soon be ! " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 225 CHAPTER XIV. " EVENTS begin their forward march again," I said in the last chapter. Ay, truly they do. It was the fifth of December. I woke in the morning, counting the days that must yet elapse before the crowning day of my whole life. Counting them, as the bride does in tremulous happiness, half incredulous of the mines of love opening out for her ? No, indeed. My computation was that of the greedy heir, measuring out the sands still to run in some palsied and death- stricken exist- ence ! I waited, as Tarpeia may have done when she stood with the Capitol gates unlocked ; waiting for the Sabine warriors who were to crush her with the self-chosen meed of her night's work ! The days were getting few enough now : only ten more ! The programme for our marriage had been slightly varied. It was to take place in London, as VOL. i. 15 226 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." before ; Hastings would have been out of the ques- tion, with the commotion that was certain to ensue on the announcement of a fact so unexpected. Besides, I was under age ; and a licence for Hastings could only have been obtained by Mr. Fortescue's residence there for some time previously. London therefore it was still to be. But in his last letter Mr. Fortescue had decided that he would not return himself to escort me there. He had engaged an attendant for me, he said ; an elderly person, highly recommended, whom I could retain as lady's maid afterwards if I thought fit, and who would, at any rate, post up with me to town ; where the marriage could take place on the following morning. He proposed that I should leave Hastings on the fifteenth, the maid arriving over night, and the matter being then broken to Mrs. Arrnitage ; by letter or otherwise as I might judge best. Our schoolroom holidays began on that day, which would smooth over some superficial difficulties. In London, my attendant and myself were to drive to a first-class hotel at the West End, which Mr. Fortescue named, and where he would engage rooms for us. He would himself meet us on our arrival, and arrange for the next morning. " SIX MONTHS HEXCE." 227 These plans suited me well enough. Strange and abrupt as the whole matter had been, I entertained no doubt of Mr. Fortescue's entire good faith : it would have been absurd to have done so. Whatever risks prudence hinted might be in store for me, I was convinced they did not include any common- place deception on his part. As to his not coming himself to Hastings, I quite agreed with him that it was best so. His presence would only have added to the embarrassment of the inevitable scene which must ensue. For myself, as may be supposed, these matters had been food enough for excitement and interest during the last week or two. But to the rest of the house- hold the time had passed quietly enough. Charles and Helen still brooded over their respective sources of discomfort, but without much outward mark of doing so. Mr. Armitage was secluded as usual. His wife divided her time between him and house- hold cares. The two little girls pursued their lessons - Fred continued his progress towards convalescence. Somewhat to my surprise if I may pursue this recapitulation for a few sentences further the child did not verify my prophecy as to his future. He 228 " SIX MONTHS HEXCE." seemed permanently changed since bis illness ; made noise enough, and was as objectionable about the premises as boys generally are ; but his old petulance, or rather, ferocity of character, was quite gone. He was really now, for his age and sex, rather an en- gaging little fellow ; frank, obliging, sociable, and so on. Mr. Fortescue's memory he cherished with never- failing regard. " When Mr. Forcoo comeback ? " he would ask Helen or me ; of course procuring little satisfaction from either of us. " Fed want Mr. Forcoo tell him 'tories ; tell him about taverns and tattaooms and bears and lions." But Fred's intel- lectual cravings had to remain unappeased. Meanwhile, he had his own way on another point ; the only one on which the child evinced something of his former obstinacy. Nothing would induce him to return to the nursery he had occupied before his broken arm. No ; he must needs stop where he had lain so long, in the ci-devant schoolroom : the ground-floor room adjoining the hall which has been described in a former chapter, and to which, as also above narrated, he had been carried on the day of his accident. Whether he connected this room with Mr. Fortescue ; or whether his pertinacity on the " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 229 subject was merely some unexorcised portion of the former self, I cannot say. So it was ; and he was indulged accordingly. After the holidays, it was hoped his tastes might alter, or things otherwise get restored to their normal condition. These matters, and others, I lay pondering over for some time after being called on the morning I have mentioned ; the fifth of December. Not setting myself to think of them, or of anything else in parti- cular ; but letting them, as it were, ripple into my mind and out of it : ripple in and out, in the leisurely, half-dozing way one does when getting up is not so immediately the final cause of one's being called as to involve any great dispatch about it. And, governess though I was, our morning hours at the Villa sat lightly on me. The half-dozing must have deviated into a whole doze; for I became conscious of going through a second waking process. And, this time, with an uneasy sensation of something wrong somewhere. I raised myself on my elbow, and soon discovered that the house was in an unusual state of commotion. Steps were hurrying up and down the stairs ; doors slamming; voices whispering in corners and 230 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." passages. A few minutes afterwards came a violent ring at the front door. Ten minutes later, a second. Then, a third, almost immediately on the back of the second. I soon learnt the cause. Mr. Armitage had been found dead in his bed that morning. Mrs. Armitage, who occupied a room apart from the invalid, had discovered what had happened on paying her usual early visit to the latter. Silently, and without eye-witness, had the long- flickering flame of life thus expired in the socket. Each of the three medical men who arrived at the Villa in such rapid succession that morning, endorsed the verdict of his colleagues. " A heart seizure. Nothing to be done. Life quite extinct." But it was evident enough without the doctors. Mrs. Armitage was quite equal to the emergency ; and there was no special matter for me to see to. I aided in such arrangements as were necessary ; and administered such consolations, whether necessary or not, as seemed to meet the requirements of the case. Perhaps even that frailest of ties had not snapped without making itself felt in some remote shape. No one was ever yet quite bad ; quite callous. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 231 No one, I think ; excepting one. It seems to me that by this time my heart had completely closed itself. Closed against all ruth ; all love ; every- thing, except its own self- worship ! As regards the day of which I write, at any rate, I cannot recall that I had the vestige of a thought or interest excepting for myself. How would this occurrence affect me? would it interfere with the arrangements for my marriage ? would it lengthen the time in any way ; that time for which I hungered like a child for its new toy ? I could have cursed the poor corpse downstairs if I had thought so ! But apparently not. The funeral was fixed for a somewhat early day ; the eleventh. The attendant Mr. Fortescue had hired for me was to come on the fourteenth. This would leave two clear days for preparation. The announcement to Mrs. Arnritage I had now finally decided should be made by letter, to be placed in her hands as soon as I had left. This could c of course be done as if the death had not occurred. Darkness and solitude. The six days appointed waiting. The vestibule of the tomb, gloomy with shadows, trodden with hushed foot-fall and bated breath ! 232 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." And then at the vestibule's end, the chamber of last rest itself ; opened for one brief hour, and forth- with closed hermetically for ever. A scant and small result that for such bulk of preparation ! A narrow receptacle for what has so toiled and suffered ; for the head that has planned, and the hand that has executed, and the heart that has beat so passionately ! After the funeral, the family assembled in the drawing-room to hear the will of the deceased read over. I was admitted in right of my pupils. The will was of some length, but sufficiently clear ; even my untutored ear took in its provisions. It bore date exactly a month before the death ; the fifth of November. After revoking all previous wills, the testator bequeathed a legacy of 5,OOOZ. to Helen if she attained 21 years ; the income in the meantime to be applied for her use. My pupils had 2,OOOL each on the same terms. Charles was left a legacy of Wl. " in token," the will said, "of the testator's displeasure at his undutiful conduct, and his refusal to comply with his father's express and reiterated request." Deducting these legacies, the entire income of the property, land and money, was given to Mrs. Armitage during her life. At her " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 233 death, both properties'were to devolve to the testator's step-son ; " Frederick Poynder, the son of my dear wife, provided he attains the age of 21 years" Mr. Kigwell, the solicitor, who had had charge of the will, and was reading it by request of all parties, paused here for a moment's breath ; and Mrs. Armi- tage seemed about to make some remark. But the solicitor politely checked her. " Pardon me, Madam," he said ; " I shall answer any question with the greatest pleasure when we have concluded. But I think it will be best that the docu- ment should be read through in the first instance." This was acquiesced in, and Mrs. Armitage forbore further interruption. Charles, who was standing by the fire, remained perfectly silent, and apparently impassive throughout. The remaining clauses of the will were then read. They were however merely formal, containing direc- tions for the application and accumulation of the income during Fred's minority, in the event of his surviving his mother ; with other clauses and powers incident to the dispositions of the will. Mrs- Armitage was appointed sole executrix. Mr. Eigwell was polite enough, but he made no 234 "SIX MONTHS HENCE." pretence of being cordial. Neither he, nor any one present, offered any congratulation to Mrs. Armitage on the ample succession thus secured to Fred and herself. Whether because she was nettled at this, or from some other feeling, the lady now spoke with some asperity. " I have certainly," she said, " no complaint to make of Mr. Armitage's liberality to me and the dear children. His dispositions have been as generous as I could have wished, and as his never- failing kindness to us prompted. But it appears to me, Mr. Rigwell, that my husband's intentions have not been carried out in one particular. I will not affect to deny that he had made me acquainted beforehand with the general nature of the arrangements he intended to make ; but I have no recollection of the gift to my little boy being made conditional on his attaining his majority. As I understood Mr. Armi- tage, it was to be a gift to him out-and-out." " It is impossible for me, Madam," said the solicitor, " to enter into any question of what may have passed between the testator and yourself. The actual instructions were given to me by Mr. Armitage himself, and the will was drawn up from them on the " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 235 spot, and signed before niy clerk and myself left the house, so that any mistake was out of the question. As to the particular point you refer to, the condition of the child's attaining twenty-one was inserted from Mr. Armitage's own mouth. In fact, his attention was particularly called to it, as I suggested to him whether the will should not contain what we call ' a gift over of the property,' in the event of your son's death occurring under that age. But he thought it unnecessary to make any change. His words were, * If so, let it go where the law takes it. ' ' "May I inquire, sir, where that will be?" asked the lady. " Unquestionably you may, Madam. In that event, the land, which forms the great bulk of the property, will descend to the rightful .... I mean to Mr. Charles Armitage, as his father's only son. The personality will be divisible in thirds ; of which you woulfl yourself take one, and the two others would be shared between Miss Armitage and Mr. Charles." " Very well, sir," answered Mrs. Armitage, stiffly. " I suppose I must be satisfied. You state that there was another person present besides yourself the whole time." 236 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." " Certainly, Mrs. Armitage. My clerk was with me throughout, and wrote out the will. Pray make any inquiry you may think fit of him, as you seem hardly disposed to accept my statement. As to being satisfied with the will, I think I should be so, if I were you, Mrs. Armitage. If you will take my advice, you will raise as little question about that matter as possible. Good morning, Madam." And Air. Kigwell, who was a more plain-spoken man than he should have been at times, for his own interest, bowed himself out of the room. * * * * " My dear Miss Secretan," said Mrs. Armitage to me, the same evening, " the terrible burden of these new anxieties ! To feel that I am entrusted with the disposal of such a large income is a most serious responsibility ; do you not think so, Miss Secretan ? And then, there is the anxiety about Fred. His fortune will now, through my poor husband's munificence, be so very considerable. As to the condition of his attaining twenty-one, with which Mr. Rigwell has saddled the gift, I don't know how my husband came to overlook it ; I am convinced it was entirely the lawyer's own doing, whatever he may "SIX MONTHS HENCE." 237 say. However, Fred will disappoint them all, I fancy. A few weeks ago it might have been different. But there is no reason now, I am thankful to say, why the poor child should not live to enjoy his own, in spite of all they may say and do. Have you seen anything of Charles since the morning, Miss Secre- tan ? He did not appear at dinner-time, and the servant told me he was not in his room." " I think I heard him go up-stairs half-an-hour since," I said. " Ah ! possibly. He seems to me in a very un- satisfactory state. I hardly know what to do about him. It was very painful for his father to be com- pelled to pass him over in the will ; but there was no help for it. Mr. Arrnitage was most justly incensed at his disobedience." I delivered myself of some semi-articulations ; and the lady continued, "It is so difficult to decide now about his profession. Of course, he has no strict claim upon me, and I cannot say that his behaviour to the children and myself has made me feel much interest in him. Still, for my poor husband's sake, I should like to do what was best. You see that, through his own wilfulness, he will have so little to 238 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." support him now ; nothing but his share in his mother's property, which is wholly insufficient to keep him at college. Perhaps I may get him placed in some counting-house in London, or as a Govern- ment clerk somewhere. For the present, I suppose he must remain here, at least as long as we do our- selves. By the way, Miss Secretan," the lady con- tinued, " that was one of the reasons I asked you to be kind enough to come and speak to me. I ought to let you at once know that there may be some little uncertainty as to our movements. My own health has suffered greatly from my attendance on Mr. Armi- tage, followed by this sad shock ; and I may possibly go to the continent to recruit in the beginning of next year, which is now so close upon us. It would be a great advantage too for the dear children, as they would learn the languages, and get such excellent masters. So that, if you please, you will consider that our engagement terminates this day next month." " Certainly, Madam," I replied. "The only difficulty," continued the widow, "is about the holidays. You see they would begin on the fifteenth ; and it would be hardly fair to us that your salary should be going on from that day to the " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 239 end of the notice, when you would in fact be doing nothing for it. We will arrange, therefore, if you please, that you shall stop here until the end of December : say a fortnight from to-day. I am wholly unequal to have the children with me at present ; and it would be much better for them to have some occupation while things are so unsettled." I could have laughed at the miserliness of the woman, grudging her governess a scant fraction of pay, because it would represent some week or two without equivalent. She might have retained those paltry pounds, whether entitled to them or not, and welcome ! But I was startled at her proposition of my " staying on." A day, an hour, after the fifteenth, the consummation of so many hopes ! I would not have it ! My heart had been throbbing with excite- ment to think that the event was so near ; it was a wicked thing, an outrage, a sacrilege, to move it further by a hair's breadth ! And so my secret leapt from my mouth. Had I reflected, it would have been perfectly easy to forfeit the notice, and decline Mrs. Armitage's proposition, without assigning any reason for it. But I was too excited for this. 240 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." " I cannot consent to anything of the kind," I said, trembling violently. " My inaid comes here on the fourteenth, and I must leave Hastings the first thing on the morning following." " Your inaid, Miss Secretan ! Are you in your senses ? " " Perfectly in my senses, Mrs. Armitage. I repeat, my maid will be here on the fourteenth ; and, on the next day, we shall post up to London, where Mr. Fortescue will meet me." " Meet you ? Mr. Fortescue ? "What do you mean?" " Simply, Madam, that I am about to be married to him. We have been engaged for some weeks past." I fear they do not use very good language in the Custom-house ; and that, at that moment, some expletive derived from the late Mr. Poynder fled half-way through the barrier of his relict's teeth, as Homer says. That is, unless Charles used to mis- quote him. " Good heavens, Miss Secretan," exclaimed the widow ; substituting an ejaculation of less question- able piety. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 241 "I am sorry to have startled you, Mrs. Armitage," I said, " but so the fact is." The mischief was done, and I thought I might as well try and make the best of it. " Engaged ! Married ! Mr. Fortescue ! Bnt he is paying his addresses to Miss Armitage ! " " Such matters," I said, " are frequently open to misconstruction. Too much importance may have been attached to circumstances which did not warrant the inference. At any rate, the fact is as I have told you. The marriage will take place on the sixteenth. If my remaining here for the next three days will be attended with any inconvenience to you, I shall be happy to dispose of myself elsewhere." Even as I spoke, I saw the wicked gleam of exultation come into the step-mother's eye. Even I, felt a momentary pity for Helen, as I thought of this added sting in the news she must now hear; the Judas-kisses, the inuendoes, the feigned condolence ! I felt almost terrified. " Will the mind, disturbed and excited as it already is, survive this ? " I thought. Mrs. Armitage replied to me coldly, but not with- out civility. As often before, Helen had been the scape-goat between us. Besides, Dalernain and ,20,000 a year inspired some deference. VOL. i. 16 242 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." " You have certainly taken us by surprise, Miss Secretan," she said ; " but I suppose I must congra- tulate you. I hope you are acting prudently. You go to London, you say, on leaving this ; have you any friends there ? Where will the marriage take place ? " " From the hotel," I said. " Friends or kindred I have absolutely none. I lived in London formerly, but there is no one there now to take me in. But it will only be for one night. Mr. Fortescue has engaged rooms for me at a first-class family hotel ; one which I know well, at the West End : and I shall have my maid there with me. The ceremony will be performed next day, of course quite quietly, at a church in the neighbourhood ; which I also know well by sight. I must really apologise, Mrs. Arrnitage," I added, seeing how far the ruffled feathers were smoothing down, " for having kept you in ignorance of the step I contemplated. But Mr. Fortescue's arrangements could not be completed earlier ; and there were obvious reasons why the engagement should not be spoken of meanwhile." " Certainly," said Mrs. Armitage. " Poor Helen, I am afraid this will be a serious disappointment to " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 243 her. But really, she has mainly herself to thank for it. I always disapproved of her allowing Mr. Fortes- cue to be on such intimate terms with her, unless there was a positive engagement. He never did say anything to Helen, I believe, Miss Secretan?" "Nothing whatever. They were intimate, that was all." " Ah ! to be sure. So exceedingly imprudent in a young woman ! I often felt inclined to speak, but I should not have been listened to; Helen and Charles have always had their own way far too much for that : and now we see the consequences. How- ever I will not detain you. By all means continue here until your maid arrives ; in fact, until you leave Hastings. I am very pleased to be able to give you the accommodation. Good evening." Did not I know why the conversation was broken off ? The step-mother was thirsting to communicate her news to the heart it would wound so deeply. The viper-tongues of malice, jealousy, and old rankling hate, were darting forth, eager to fasten on their prey! I retreated, half- frightened, to my own room. Undo the past ; forfeit the future ? No, indeed. I 244 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." could not do it, even if I would : and, if I could, most certainly I would not. But I did shudder at the scene that had to be enacted that night. The stah the cruel, cruel, treacherous stab ; so unlocked for, so piercing, so aggravated; and, all of it my handiwork ! I buried my head deep under the clothes. I feared that I might hear something : some outcry, something dreadful, I knew not what. Sleep surprised me, shutting out the unknown terror from sight and sound ; and yet, with every nerve strained, watching for it ! For the remaining three days of my stay at Hastings I did not quit the schoolroom, except in passing from it to my own room. Mrs. Arniitage, at my request, sent me there what I required. I saw at a glance that every soul in the house knew what had occurred. Almost every meal was brought up by a different servant. They came in, each impatient to satisfy her curiosity ; staring at me with eager wonder, as if I were a wild beast, or a criminal, or a lunatic : as if I might be expected then and there, to perpetrate some act of horror and frenzy ! The little girls came in for their lessons. I had " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 245 particularly desired this ; it would serve to pass the time : it would calm down my mind, throbbing alternately between that spectre-like dread in the present, and the delirious joy of the future. They came in to me as if I were a naughty child, locked upstairs for some offence. Florence, shyly and timidly, but with a grave look on her face ; a kind of fear and shrinking from me, which cut me to the heart. Louisa was simply inquisitive ; inclined, if I would have let her, to open up the whole subject, and ask a hundred curious questions. But this I effectually nipped in the bud. And then, on one of these three days, in passing between the two rooms, I met Charles. Oh ! the look he gave me ! It is cut into my memory like the engraving of a seal ; its deep, deep scorn ! Why did he look at me like that ? Did he not know that I loved him ? oh ! I knew now how dearly ; with my whole heart and soul : I could have kissed the ground he trod upon ; could have died for him ; have done eveiything, except give up the golden future for which I had bartered my own self ! Might I not even do that ? Ah ! the thought did cross me. Somewhere in my heart there did 246 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." open out, a very little -way, the door of that late repentance. But it was dashed out of my hand, even as I stood grasping it. As if the gust of a hurricane had passed by and torn it from me. " What, repent ? Alter all now ? Be the byword of the whole town ? And for what good, too ? Can Helen marry Mr. Fortescue now, even if you do not ? Will Charles make up to you ? Childishness ! " And then I fled back to my room, and buried my face in my hands, sobbing : sobbing, first for bitter grief; and then in petulance and anger. " Why did he look at me like that?" I repeated. " Where was the use of it ? Had I not thought it all over, and was it not palpable that it must go on now ? It was unkind, unjust of him ! " Which day this meeting occurred I have forgotten. But the last day of my Hastings sojourn lives freshly in my recollection. It brought me two visitors. The first was one whom I had very little expected, Mr. Latrobe. He asked to see me in the schoolroom, just as the morning lessons were finished, and the girls sent to their play. The last lessons now ! Mr. Latrobe looked grave, and I was prepared to resent his visit accordingly : at least, if it had any " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 247 reference to my engagement. But it was hardly possible that it should. What had he to do with it ? " Miss Secretan," he said, " I will not affect to disguise what I have come ahout. It is only indeed to ask one question ; and, although I am taking some- thing of a liberty in doing so, it is not a wholly unpardonable one under the circumstances. But I must not say another word without your permission. Do you grant it ? " Grave although Mr. Latrobe's manner was, he spoke gently and even kindly. My heart was bleed- ing and bruised, and craved for some sympathy. I could not refuse him. " My reason for trespassing upon you then, Miss Secretan," said the curate, " is simply this. I found Charles Armitage yesterday in great trouble. He has been so indeed ever since his father's death, aggra- vated as it was by that cruel will. But yesterday I saw there was something superadded. I then found it was on Miss Armitage's account. It was what she had been told in reference to yourself and Mr. Fortes- cue : to an engagement between you." I was about to speak, but Mr. Latrobe gently held up his hand. " I feared I should offend you, 248 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." Miss Secretan," he said; "but I shall not trespass on you long. The question I wish to ask is a very short and simple one. Only, whether the account we have thus heard is true ? You see it came from a suspicious quarter. Mrs. Armitage, I am sorry to say, is a person whom it is impossible to trust ; and, at present, the fact rests upon her authority only." " No other is needed," I said, my resentment beginning to get tbe upper hand again. " It is the fact that I leave Hastings to-morrow, and my mar- riage with Mr. Fortescue is arranged to take place the day after. I presume I am mistress of my own actions." " Certainly, Madam," said the curate, rising. " I will not intrude upon you further. Good morn- ing." But he came back again from the door. " Miss Secretan," he said, " we have been some- thing of friends during your residence here ; do not let us part in unkindness. I am aware my inquiry must have seemed strange; but you would pardon me if you knew all. You probably do not know " and here a deep flush passed over bis face " that I was myself once a suitor for Miss Armitage's hand. A rejected suitor. Mr. Fortescue was preferred." " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 249 " I had heard of this," I said. I had always liked Mr. Latrobe, and the kindness of his manner again disarmed me. " If so," he said, " you will understand me better. When my fate was announced, I made no complaint. I sealed up my love for her, for Helen, deep in my own heart, and believed I had subdued it. I should have learnt to do so as a Christian man, had the engagement taken place. Yesterday, I heard for the first time, this final and absolute reason why it should not do so. Let me now make a confession, Miss Secretan," the curate continued. " My first impulse, when I heard this, was, I grieve to say, that of pas- sionate joy. Helen then was free ! I had at least a chance, a possibility ; it was not henceforth quite hopeless. In my utter selfishness I thought, at first, nothing of her ; of her sorrow. But, in the evening, I did. On the few occasions when I had seen her and Mr. Fortescue together since my own rejection, I had watched her evident love for him with bitter jealousy. I could not bear it. But now I began to think what she must be suffering in the recollections of this past time. I forced myself to forget my own interest in the matter ; the renewed hope there might 250 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." thus be for myself. I questioned whether there might not be some for her; whether the account - might not be erroneous ; some mis-statement, wilful or unintentional, of Mrs. Armitage's. And I accord- ingly came here, trespassing upon you in this way, just to ask the question ; neither she nor Charles knowing of my coming here. Miss Secretan," he added, " I give you my honour as a man that your answer has pained me to the soul. It has raised the cup, possibly to my lips ; but it has dashed it for ever from hers, poor child. I believe I could have purchased with my life's blood that it should have been the other way : that I should have borne the sorrow ; not her. Can you pardon me now ? " " There is nothing to pardon," I said. " You are as generous in this as in all else. Mr. Latrobe," I added timidly, after a moment's pause, " you are a clergyman, a minister of religion. Do you blame me like all the rest? Have I been so very, very wicked ? " "You startle me, Miss Secretan," he said. "I do not blame you ; I do not presume to do so. I have been too erring myself, and too recently, to judge you. Besides, I know little of what has been " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 251 going on. Certainly, your engagement has greatly surprised me. On Mr. Fortescue's part I have no hesitation in saying that it is a most dishonourable act. As to your share in it, the world, I warn you, will not Jbe over-lenient : how far your own heart and conscience will acquit you, I cannot tell. I hope they may. But, Miss Secretan," he continued, " should there be, as you say, any ' tvickedness ' in the marriage itself: I do not see how there can be, whatever may be thought of the engagement; but, should there be such ; or, should anything, at the last moment, warn you that it is an ominous and ill-advised marriage, then, in Heaven's name, thrust it from you. There is certainly something I do not quite understand about the matter: something strange and unaccountable. Look well before you take any irre- vocable step in it. Do not let it wreck your happi- ness, as well as Helen's. Do not let it make two victims. And now farewell." The day passed ; and I retired to rest with a troubled heart and aching brow. And then came my laet visitor. But not to my waking self. Mr. Latrobe's last words had greatly disturbed me. Once more, and this time very prominently, 252 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." the singular circumstances of my engagement rose to my recollection. It was a strange union ! Letters had passed between Mr. Fortescue and myself during the last few weeks ; several letters. And yet no- word of love: no pretence or mimicry. of it even. I was to be carried to Dalemain like the bride of an Eastern monarch ; wedded without wooing ; wedded to I knew not what ; gorgeously tricked out like a victim for the sacrificial rite. The curate's last words rung in my ear still. I was filled with a terrible foreboding ; the renewal of the feeling which had so often, and so unaccountably seized upon me in Mr. Fortescue's company. And now, the companionship was to be for life ! Could I not retract ? Oh ! could I not, even at this supreme hour ? No. I could not. I was bound hand and foot : hurried along in the grooves of a stern necessity. The teraphim I had set up to worship were now my gods. I must do their bidding, follow where they pointed : I could not, even for a moment's conference with myself, escape from their stony gaze. Wearied out, I fell asleep : not into a sound sleep, but one fitful and disturbed ; and in which I " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 253 became from time to time aware of some unusual sound close at hand. Apparently, it was the sup- pressed breathing of some one outside the door. I was too tired to rouse myself for this, or even to recognise it distinctly as existing; but, whatever it was, the sound must have gone on for two or three hours. I then became wholly unconscious, and slept till morning. When I awoke and looked round me, I saw that my dressing-table was not as I had left it overnight. The articles of toilet had been slightly displaced; and a paper now lay there, with a small gold trinket beside it. The latter I at once recognized ; it was a present I had given Helen on her birthday in the autumn. The paper, which was not folded, had a few lines written upon it. Helen's writing, as I at once saw ; although the manuscript was much blurred, and in parts hardly legible : very different to her usual fair neat hand. The paper ran thus. " I have heard all. Your gift is restored with this. My forgiveness I will try to give' you. I dare not withhold it ; I, who have myself so much to be forgiven. But I cannot write the word yet. I 254 " SIX MONTHS. HENCE." cannot write much of anything; my heart seems crushed out of me. Oh ! will no one pity me ? will not you, Maria ? No ; no ; you are quite pitiless : quite without remorse ! Maria, how could you look at me, and speak to me, and take me in your arms, knowing all : knowing all, all the time ? How could you do it ? " And this scroll the poor girl had watched to place on my table. Watched through those long chill hours of the December night. Watched at my door. Listening furtively until I should sleep, and then stealing in, in secrecy and silence. Dreading, lest by some accident I might wake. Dreading, lest she might ever again hear the voice, ever again meet the eye which she had taken to her girl's heart so con- fidingly ; which she had bound up with her own life and love, only that they might pierce both so traitor- ously ! " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 255 CHAPTER XV. TOTALLY altered was the aspect of affairs as I drove away from Hastings next day. It was a bright, genial morning for the time of year ; and very bright and genial I felt also. Those past troubles, the emotions and impressions of the last few days, of the night previous ; why, they had rolled away as the night itself had. It was all sunshine now. Every mile as we drove along the road the cottages looked trimmer ; the berries in the hedge-rows more ruddy ; the labourers more cheery at their work. I admired the dingles, where the warm-tinted leaves had hardly yet fallen from the boughs ; the curling smoke and ivy-twined church-porches ; the distant glimpses of blue sea. I was very happy ; as happy as Moore's Peri could have been. The gates of Paradise ; were they not unclosing, very perceptibly, now? And, 256 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." to-morrow they would be wide open, and I should enter. "Joy! Joy!" The maid whom Mr. Fortescue had engaged for me had arrived in due course the day before, and I at once saw that the selection had been made with studious regard for my convenience. She was a somewhat elderly person, aufait in the requirements of her work, observantly respectful, and wholly devoid of inquisitiveness or comment as to the somewhat unusual journey we were to make together ; so that all difficulties were smoothed on this score. With Mrs. Armitage I had parted on wholly amicable terms. She had come to my room in the morning, before I started, and, without any reference to the past, or speciality of any kind, had wished me a safe journey and happiness in my new career. She added an inquiry as to the hour at which the carriage was to be at the door. " It may be pleasanter for you," she said, " to leave the house without meeting any one ; and I will arrange that servants and others shall be disposed of out of your way." All which duly came to pass. What listening at doors, or peeping from windows there may have been, I cannot say. No doubt, the suspicion and " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 257 curiosity of the last few days culminated when the urnquhile governess drove off from the door with pos- tilion and lady's maid, and a handsome "imperial" strapped on the roof. No doubt, some other feelings then culminated too : feelings far enough removed from imperials and ladies' maids ; the anguish of a betrayed trust, the desolation of a heart, sore and stricken unto death ! Psha ! What did I care ? Within ten minutes after the post-chaise drew up, I had turned my back on Harcourt Villa and its occupants. Their grief and their joy; their emo- tions, and utterances, and surmises, were henceforth to be all at an end, for me : thrown aside like lumber; perished as if they had belonged to a pre- historic race ! Five minutes more took me beyond the last houses of the town. Painfully the long hill on the London road was climbed ; more rapidly we drove by Ore Church. Once again, two or three miles on, I caught sight of the old Castle ; the East Hill ; the fishing-smacks. Then, woods intervened. Then, at Battle, even the names on the milestones changed ; and, in all human belief and likelihood, Hastings was to me a thing of the past, for ever ! VOL. i. 17 258 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." We reached London without misadventure. Mr. Fortescue was at the hotel to receive us. He met me, neither with embarrassment nor warmth ; but with a singular gentleness of manner. His manner indeed had always this quality ; one in striking contrast with the daring he could exhibit when required : but it had it now more markedly than ever ; not a mere Quaker-like placidity ; I do not mean that ; but a kindness and consideration for me in act and word, an anxiety to spare me annoyance or alarm of any kind, which struck me as infinitely touching. Hard as I had now become, my heart still vibrated to this chord. I was lonely and unpro- tected : I felt it now : relying solely on the honour of a comparative stranger; and this reception of me, so entirely in harmony with the position, at once pleased and softened me. Far more so than a more demonstrative meeting would have done. As there are some subdued utterances which rivet our atten- tion more than impassioned speech ; as the romance may interest us, not from its being sensational, to use a modern cant phrase, but from the emotional force in it, without which narrative is certainly not worth the perusal; so Mr. Fortescue's manner at " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 259 this meeting impressed me with a feeling of deep pathos. He watched over me and cared for me, as he would have done for something unbefriended or suffering. As he had done for Fred, I now remem- hered. Psha ! what was I thinking of ? My memory had no business at Hastings now ! Mr. Fortescue saw us ushered to the handsome drawing-room he had engaged, but would not join me there himself. He entered into the necessary detail for the arrangements for the following morning, and then left me to repose. I was tired. I had not rested well the night before. I slept long and sound. Slept far into the struggling light of the December morning; of my wedding-day ! Half-past ten was the hour Mr. Fortescue had fixed. He would meet us at the church-door. He trusted that would give me time enough for my pre- parations ; it was rather early, but another marriage had already been arranged to follow. Time enough ! Oh ! yes, and to spare, notwith- standing my late rising. I had no eager eyes to feast themselves on my dress, beautiful as it was : no contingent of doubtful guests to come in, late but 260 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." welcome, on the wedding-morning; no sisters or friends to give the toilette its finishing touches ; no last words to be spoken ; no tears to shed, or to be shed for me. Besides, was I not impatient ? Had not the dawn of promise broken, the resurrection - life of my obscure past, the avenue of untold happi- ness? I only feared being late: feared some acci- dent, some contretemps ! By ten o'clock I was seated quite ready; that costly fabric of millinery upon me ; those pearls in niy hair ; that veil thrown over my head. No, there would be nothing wrong : how could there be, now ? Soon after ten, a superb bouquet was handed into the room, fresh from the hot-house. Mr. Fortescue's own servant had brought it; and brought another gift with it : a jewel-case; priceless, radiant. ''The family diamonds," Mr. Fortescue told me in a short note. " He had had them reset, and kept them as a surprise for that morning." A surprise ! Well, they were that : Aladdin was surprised enough at the gems which glittered in the vaults all round him. But they were something else too. They were the earnest of future satisfactions ; " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 261 the vouchers which Aladdin felt he was transferring from the brazen coffers to his own keeping. Oh ! no, no : there could be nothing wrong now. The sound of wheels, too, now ! The carriage, my maid told me : it had just driven up to the hotel door. Through the file of respectfully admiring servants I was beautiful that morning ; my glass told me so, and I knew it instinctively Avithout telling through their bowing ranks ; past the knots ot visitors to the hotel, whom curiosity had attracted to the hall ; past the gaping and jostling crowd out- side ; into the exquisite travelling-carriage, chosen with such perfect taste, fitted with such appliances of ease and luxury ! All certain now ! Ay, indeed ! Was I happy ? why, they were fools and dotards who had ever used the word before ! And was there then no warning; no last hand stretched out to save me ; no signal-light to scare me off at the very last, moment : at the very last ? Did I drift, without star or beacon, on that iron-ribbed headland, that pitiless surf, those seething breakers ? Yes, indeed, there was. A circumstance incon- venient and ominous enough. 262 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." The church where the ceremony was to take place was at a few streets' distance from the hotel. The carriage drove rapidly, and we had turned into one of these thoroughfares before discovering that it was already otherwise occupied. The long cortege of a funeral had taken possession of the street, and was marching down it in gloomy pomp; and the pace at which we had rounded the corner brought us into the very heart of this, almost sending our pole into the back of one of the mourning coaches. The postilions tried to turn, but it was impossible ; we had become hopelessly involved with the procession, and must move forward with it. A long, straight, narrow street ; no outlet, no chance of escape, before the bottom ! Ah ! it was ominous enough ! How sick at heart I felt with the sudden change from our previous brisk pace to that monstrous tar- diness, that deliberate, lethargic motion ! How I shuddered even at the carriage before me, its grim draperies, its mutes, its conductor ! And in what fascination of horror did I lower the window, and look at the hearse which headed the procession, its nodding plumes, its tawdry imageries of death ! " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 263 Should we never emerge from this hateful pre- sence ? At last ! we did. And the warning passed from me as it had come. Ominous was it ? What did I care ? Here we were at the church-door ! I had told Mrs. Armitage that I knew that church. I did. Nine-tenths of the " distinguished marriages " in London were celebrated in that building. Often, in my old obscure life, had I paused on the opposite side, watching with jealous curiosity the entry or egress of some brilliant train. Some bride perhaps, far less young and pretty than I had been ; ay, withered, toothless ; a hideous mummy of a bride. Some bravely-decked bride- groom, whom all the world knew to be a miser, or a ruffian, or a brainless fool. And yet, theirs would be the " marriage in high life ; " half a column in the daily papers about it ! And I had stood envying them : envying with the envy of utter hope- lessness ! And now it was not hopeless. My turn had come now. I was the envied bride. Yes. And, was there not the bridegroom, handsome, well- appointed, of a stately presence, waiting on the 264 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." steps to receive me ? Who was it who said I was not marrying for love ? I was : Mr. Fortescue was a husband whom any girl would be proud to marry ? Who had any right to object to what I was doing ? Led forward ; placed at the altar-rail. Mr, Fortescue kneeling by me, at my side. Hearing something, but not much. Saying something, as I was prompted by a voice in front ; but not audibly, even to myself. More utterances. A troth-plighting " for better, for worse ; for richer, for poorer ; " I remember thinking that alternative needless; "to love, cherish, and obey." Vaguely conscious of a gazing and restless multitude behind me, crowding the pews, leaning forward over the galleries. Stealing one timorous glance round, and scared by the mass of faces which looked wan and spectral as the December daylight struggled through the draperies and heavy oak-panelling of the church ; seeming to mope and mow at me, as if they had risen from the grave-yard outside : as if they were the realities of the place, and I an intruder and counterfeit. Feeling, with a shudder, something drawn over my finger ; closely-fitting, manacle-like; a fatalism that bound me to my new life. More words, more forms ;. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 265 psalms and prayers ; things that I heard not, that I never shall hear till the eternal doom. Led back from the altar, between that sea of faces. Married ! In the vestry I signed my new name, Maria Forte scue. And my husband gently stooped over me, and kissed my forehead. It was the only salute he had ever given me. Not a lover's or a husband's kiss, even now. A kiss which had in it no passion, no gratified hope, no pride ; nothing but an intense and half-mournful reverence. A kiss which the wonder-working image might receive from its votary ; or with which a being of lower order and intelligence might greet some hierarch-life above ! 266 " SIX MONTHS HENCE.' CHAPTER XVI. DALEMAIN ! Actually there, at last. My very own home ; our "country seat." The very thing I had dreamed of so often, in such impossible, hopeless clay-dreams ! What a glorious place to call one's own ! A glorious place to have come to, even in this January weather ! The Paris life had been as charming as I had anticipated. The season there nearly at its height ; galleries, theatres, churches ; brilliant equipages. Bois de Boulogne and the Boulevards ; soirees at the embassy ; balls and concerts. A dazzling exist- ence enough for the raw school-girl that I still was ! Ah ! let it pass, that charmed life. No need to describe it for the reader's sake ; Paris groans in print already. No need to describe it for my own sake ; I have plenty to tell without it. After all, it " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 2G7 was only the prelude ; the first draught of the en- chanted cup. Why dwell upon it ? there was far more for me in store than that, I hoped. As for my husband, I laughed at the mys- terious terrors with which I had invested him in those old Hastings days. What a fool I should have been to have let that deter me from accepting him ! That, or anything else. He was undemon- strative, no doubt ; had nothing whatever of the lover about him. Well, so much the better ; it saved me the fatigue of simulation. But he was uniformly kind and considerate ; gentle, that was still the word ; still with that earnest reverential manner ; if possible, more than ever careful for me, and watchful to spare me pain and inconvenience. And I suppose he was satisfied in turn. I was in the best of tempers, the highest of spirits ; pro- fessed nothing, but enjoyed myself extremely. If I was ice and granite within, as I began to think I was now, in the few moments when I ever thought about anything I could not see that it signified. Not, apparently, to Mr. Fortescue. Not, certainly, to myself. Dalemain ! 268 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." Well, I could be tedious about that. I thought my happiness had culminated as our carriage met us at the county town, from which the Castle was five miles distant, and to which we had posted by easy stages from Dover. The weather at Paris had been exceptionally beautiful ; warm and bright as October. So throughout our journey. So on this day of my triumphal entry to my new home. For was it not a triumph ? Surely yes, I thought, as my husband handed me into a luxurious chariot, in the sunshine of the early afternoon. Surely yes, as the militia band played, the bells pealed, and the crowd cheered, welcoming home the representative of one of the oldest families in the Riding. Surely yes, as we dashed along those pleasant five miles ; sighted the little village, above which Dalemain rose in feudal state ; and saw the horses taken out, and the carriage drawn for the rest of the way by the tenantry, many a well-to-do yeoman lending a willing hand and shoulder for the purpose. Surely yes, as we passed, with our human team, beneath the battle- mented gateway in which the main street of the village terminated ; skirted under the Castle, by an oak avenue still in full leaf ; and then, following the " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 269 gravel sweep up the hill, drew up at the arched tower which formed the main entrance ! And other triumphs too ! To hear the parting cheer of the tenantry as they dispersed. To walk between the two files of lacqueys and other domestics. To pass, leaning, not without real need on my husband's arm, up the magnificent oak staircase, black as ebony, and gleaming as a mirror. To seat myself on the luxurious couch of my boudoir ; placed so as to overlook hill and dale, green meadowland, belts of wood and reaches of bright water ; miles and leagues of wealth and beauty ; all, as Mr. For- tescue told me, his ; all mine. Ah ! yes. This was something worth living for : well, worth sinning for, if you must have it. Ah ! yes ! Very tedious, if I allowed myself, could I be about those hills and streams ; that park with its acres of aboriginal timber, its deer and black-cattle ; that grand old castle, looking as if it had stepped out of a picture : grouped in the most bizarre and at the same time most picturesque of outlines ; satisfying the eye and charming the fancy with tower and terrace, the massive repose of form, the ever-varying play of colour. Tedious and weariful could I be, 270 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." to all but myself, over tlie interior; hall, picture- gallery, chapel ; rooms modernized in faultless taste ; antiquity without its drawbacks, comfort sestheticised into beauty ! Ah ! but it skills not thinking of it. I spare the reader's time. I spare myself the Nemesis of those short-lived joys of recollection ! In one respect I felt some disappointment. The Castle and its surroundings were little to me unless I could exhibit myself as their mistress. For one hour indeed or was it so much ? the west sun, which my boudoir faced, had declined, but little in the interval for one half-hour, perhaps ; perhaps for the half of that again I felt perfectly, and entirely con- tent. Then I began to crave something further. These beauties, this grandeur, must not only gratify me, but be for my glorification. I must be seen ; and known ; and envied. Well ! no doubt I should be, in time. As soon as usage permitted, there would be callers in abun- dance. This Mr. Fortescue seemed to assume as of course ; nor did I doubt it now, re-assured by his thus taking it for granted. "Society" need not have been so cynical in its view of my social avatar at " SIX MONTHS HENCE." . 271 Dalemain, on that night when it remonstrated against my acceptance of Mr. Fortescue ! My husband was a man of the world, quite possessed of the data for forming a correct judgment, and he evidently had no mistrust on this score. Governess as I was, or had been, I should step up on to his platform ; rank with the best blood and longest rent-rolls in the county ! No ; I had no fears of this kind now. What did somewhat disturb and disappoint me was that my enjoyment of these satisfactions had to be de- ferred. Even the ceremonial of morning calls, the mere husk of the golden fruit which I so longed to taste, could not begin until the bride and bridegroom had appeared in public ; which would naturally have been on the Sunday following ; the third day after our arrival. This, however, was not to be. While still in Paris, Mr. Fortescue had told me that, after installing me at Dalemain, he should be obliged to leave it himself, on urgent business ; connected, he said, with the management of an estate in Cumber- laud, which he owned in addition to his Yorkshire property. He had accordingly intended that our arrival should be private ; and the demonstration in the post-town and village had taken him entirely by 272 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." surprise. But it was of no moment, be now told me. It would be mentioned in tbe county paper that be was unavoidably absent for a sbort time on business ; and on bis return tilings would proceed in due routine. He trusted I sbould not be very triste meanwbile. He would curtail tbe matter as niucb as possible ; at tbe outside, it would not occupy above a week. All tbis was disagreeable. I was becoming used now to bave my ligbtest impulse gratified on tbe moment. And bere was a satisfaction for wbicb I was hungering, postponed ; not indefinitely indeed, but for some week or ten days later tban it need bave been ! I chafed internally, and felt that I was un- justly used. However, there was no alternative. I had the sense to make a merit of necessity, and acquiesced with a good grace ; adding only some wife-like remonstrances as to a separation so soon after our union. Mr. Fortescue seemed pleased with this, and repeatedly expressed his wish that the journey could have been deferred : which however, he said, was impossible. He accordingly left Dalemaiu early the following morning ; before I was up. The weather, hitherto so genial, now experienced " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 273 one of those capricious changes familiar in our climate. The wind shifted to the east, and became gusty and piercingly cold, shredding the oak-leaves from the park, and demolishing the annuals which, in defiance of the almanac, had still been allowed to linger in the Italian garden on the south terrace of the Castle. A sunless, cheerless, bitter day, that on which Mr. Fortescue started. Still more cheerless and bitter the one which followed it. I shivered in furs by_ the fire in the large drawing-room ; and finally, as I was secure from visitors, abandoned all sitting in state, and retreated to the boudoir, which I had coaxed into something like warmth. Here a letter from my husband was brought me ; written from Penrith, a market-town of Cumberland, the day after he had left Dalemain. It was an affectionate, and, considering the usual gravity of the writer, rather a playful letter. No news, beyond that of his safe arrival ; but a sheet or two of pleasant chit-chat. " Had I discovered his theft ? " he asked, amongst other things. "As he was starting, he found that he had no handkerchief with him. Time pressed, as he had to catch the mail at the post-town, and they were late already. He had accordingly run VOL. i. 18 274 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." upstairs, and taken the first article of the kind which offered; one lying folded on my dressing-table ; a somewhat large one, by the way, he noticed ; less of a sham than the mouchoirs which ladies usually patronise. Would I pardon the larceny ? " Very willingly, I thought. Arid the matter passed from my mind, as it well might. Who ever yet noted the trifles on which a destiny hinges ? I read the letter twice, pleased with its tone, and feeling that Mr. Fortescue had retained a grateful recollection of our parting interview. " We shall do very well," I thought once more ; " very well. I mean to, at any rate. Mr. Fortescue seems to have secured all that he cares for ; and as I have certainty done the same, we shall go on with mutual satisfac- tion in our bargain. Should some extra affection be called for now and then, it can be supplied to order. A very little seems to go a long way." So I dismissed the subject of my conjugal rela- tions, and set myself to fence out the cold, and pass away the time as I best might in this frightful weather. Frightful indeed ! A third day, worse than either of its predecessors. The wind howling louder than " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 275 ever ; the sky blacker. Coal and yule-log had lost their power ; the keen air searched out every pore that was not actually scorched, and seemed to freeze the very blood before it could circulate. And then came the relief. The last sight that met my eye as the curtains were drawn before the boudoir window that afternoon was that of a few light flakes, drifting for a moment against the panes, and then whirled away by the wind which was storming outside. When I looked out on the following morning the surroundings were different : the park was sheeted from end to end with snow. Not deep snow as yet. But that came in the course of the day : a blinding tourmente, leaving neither sky nor earth visible ; nothing visible but itself. Then, as the wind sank, the fall became steadier, and settled down thick and heavily. A stealthy, noiseless snow, ill-faring for man and beast ; cloaking the trees and church-towers from summit to base ; choking up the hollows ; obliterating all tracks, and rendered doubly perilous by the drifts which had taken place while the wind lasted. From first to last, there were thirty-six hours of 276 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." this. Then the clouds broke, and we had bright sunshine, with a clear cold atmosphere. Pleasanter overhead, no doubt ; but very little mending matters for locomotion. The post was hopelessly stopped. After several hours' struggle, the old carrier with the Dalemain letter-bags made his way into the Castle, only to report that there had been nothing to put inside them. Our post-town was without mails, north or south, east or west ; and the post-master was not much disposed to expect any for a day or two at least. I became uneasy about Mr. Fortescue's return. Well, perhaps about Mr. Fortescue himself, to some extent: what was the good of analyzing? "Love and cherish." Ah ! yes ; but one could not press that too closely. Most likely I was as affectionate as other wives ; besides, we were quits, for that matter. No need of going into that. But, I was unquestionably uneasy about his return. For that was the beginning of the end ; the passport into the bright world which I saw opening before me, but which this journey of his had so tantalizingly deferred. And here now, upon the very back of it, came the snow ! And he was in " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 277 Cumberland too ; mountainous country, impractic- able roads, and so on. Why, he might be detained for days and days after the time he had fixed ! Who could tell ? I had heard nothing since that Penrith letter ; and conjured up all feasibilities of hindrance with a greedy self-torturing anxiety. Not lessened, certainly, as two more days wore on, bringing us to the tether of the postmaster's apprehensions ; and bringing no mail. Very seri- ously increased, as two further days supervened upon these, and the mail was still nowhere. Twice a day, one of the grooms went in to the town with inquiries, picking his way at first afoot through the deep drifts, and then, as the snow got hardened in one part of the road, and cut and trenched in another, venturing to take one of the horses. But, on horse or afoot, still with the same negative result. The same result, until the fifth day. And then indeed the Castle letter-bag had something in it. Not very much, even then, it seemed. Three letters, apparently on business, for Mr. Fortescue ; and a copy of the " Times " of the day previous. The intermediate issues put in appearances at capricious intervals during the two or three weeks following. 278 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." I was horribly disconcerted at receiving no letter from Cumberland. My worst fears seemed confirmed. Evidently, the fall had been excessive there ; no communication nor travelling of any kind. Might be none for days yet. For the frost, with us at any rate, still held its own ; and the snow, beyond a little surface-thawing at noon, refused to yield an inch except to main force. I turned to the " Times " to see how far my surmises were correct. "The snow-storm." All full of "the snow- storm," and its effects. Column after column, still the same topic. General over England. Most severe in the north ; but still, even in London and the southern and western counties, a fall which had not been experienced for years. Cumberland ? any- thing about that ? No ; nothing special ; as impass- able as Westmoreland, and both of them in the same category as Yorkshire. What else? General news? As I have said, very little. Nothing sufficient, either in quantity or quality, to divert my attention from the topic which so unpleasantly engrossed it. Nothing. Until, just as I was about to drop the paper in sheer weariness, my eye was caught by a " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 279 paragraph in one corner. It was in ordinary type, just under some shipping news. It was by the merest accident I saw it. A fortunate accident enough ; for it effectually diverted my thoughts for the time being from the snow, Mr. Fortescue, and all other personal matters. The paragraph ran as follows. " HASTINGS, Jan. . . . Great uneasiness is felt in this town and the neighbourhood in consequence of the disappearance of a child of Mrs. Armitage, a highly respected resident in this place. The child, a boy of two or three years of age, has been missing ever since the heavy fall of snow two days since. The particulars are imperfectly known at present ; but it is thought that, during the storm, he may have strayed away from the grounds of Harcourt Villa, the house occupied by his mother, and got lost in the snow. At the same time, this seems improbable, as the child is stated to have only recently recovered from a severe illness, and would have been wholly unlikely to be allowed out of doors in such weather. Altogether, the matter is involved in some degree of mystery. In fact, if one account we have received be correct, the occurrence is still more inexplicable. 280 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." According to this version, it would appear that, on the day of the storm, the little boy was undoubtedly indoors as late as six o'clock, before which time the house had been closed for the night, according to the usual practice of the family. In the hurry of going to press, we are precluded from sifting the truth of this and other reports. It is to be hoped there may be some mistake, and that the anxiety which has been felt may be speedily relieved by the child's re-appearance." Sussex Express. Yes. But there was another local paper, pub- lished the day following the "Express," which would doubtless contain a further account. I wrote at once to order this from the London agent ; hoping also that the "Times" might enlighten me in the interval. I felt unaccountably excited about this matter. In the latter hope I was disappointed. But in due course I received the other local paper I had written for ; the " Cinque Ports Chronicle, and Weald of Kent Gazette." Mr. Fortescue, I should add, returned the same evening. But nay satisfac- tion at this, great as it was, was almost forgotten for the moment in the interest excited by the more full report contained in the journal of later date. This " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 281 article, which we discussed together the same even- ing, ran as follows. " HASTINGS. THE OCCURRENCE AT HARCOURT VILLA. We are enabled to present our readers with the full particulars of this painful matter, as far as they can be at present ascertained. The child, whose loss has caused so much excitement, is the son, by a previous marriage, of a lady of the name of Armitage, occupying the marine residence above mentioned, and the sudden death of whose second husband we recorded only last month. The little boy, who is between two and three years of age, has been missing ever since the snow-storm four days since, of which our readers will probably long retain the memory. The circumstances connected with this disappearance are most singular. It appears that on the day in question the child was with his Mamma in the drawing-room until half-past five o'clock, when the latter retired to dress for dinner. According to rule, the child should then have gone to his nurse, with whom he would have remained during dinner-time, and would then have come in to dessert afterwards. On the present occasion however, the little boy was amusing himself with some toys, and begged hard to 282 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." play with them for a few minutes longer, promising then to go to the nursery. This was allowed, and he was left alone in the drawing-room. He has never been seen since ! " On returning to the room, Mrs. Armitage found her son absent, and, of course, had no doubt he had gone to his nurse. This however was not the case. The nurse, a person of the name of Burgess, had waited some minutes for him to come to her as usual ; and then, finding he did not appear, concluded on her part that his mother had taken him up with her to her dressing-room, as she occasionally did ; and that she would keep him with her, as was also sometimes the case, during the family dinner. The woman there- fore felt no surprise and went to her tea, which she was in the habit of taking separately from the other servants. "It was only when Burgess, some considerable time afterwards, received a message to bring the child into the dining-room for dessert, that he was discovered to be missing. By this time it was nearly seven o'clock. The greatest consternation at once prevailed in the house, and search was made for the little boy in every direction, but without discover- " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 283 ing any trace of him. That he could have left the house is simply out of the question. It would have been wholly unlikely for a child of that age to stray out of doors in such weather; besides which, the house had been closed for the night before his mother left him, and w T as found exactly in the same state when he was first missed. The late Mr. Armi- tage was a confirmed invalid, and exceedingly timid ; and the villa has been invariably shut up at dusk. On the evening in question, the servants are positive that this was done at five o'clock, or earlier, the whole of the doors and windows on the ground floor being secured with strong fastenings ; all of which, even if a child could have undone them, were found precisely as they had been left. " So strongly was this felt by the family, that the search during that night was exclusively confined to the house itself, the police not being even informed of what had occurred until the following morning. We. regret to state however that, neither during the night, nor up to the time of our going to press, has any vestige of the little fellow been discovered. The nursery, to which he would naturally have gone on leaving the drawing-room, is not, we understand, 284 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." properly such ; its use for that purpose having dated from some three months past, when the boy broke his arm by a fall. On being carried home, he was placed in the room in question, which is on the ground floor, immediately adjoining the hall, into which it opens. The accident seems to have been a severe one, and was followed by a tedious illness, during the whole of which the room continued to be occupied as the nursery ; and, although now conva- lescent, it is understood that the young gentleman had shown so much partiality for the apartment that he was allowed to stay there with Burgess. " Neither in this room however, nor in the passage between it and the drawing-room was there anything to indicate that he had been there, or what had since become of him. The drawing-room, is at some dis- tance from this temporary nursery, but the passage between them is well lighted, and the child was constantly in the habit of running from one room to the other. "Altogether the occurrence is a complete puzzle. In addition to the most minute further scrutiny indoors, the police, on receiving information next day, examined in detail the whole of the grounds, " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 285 as well as the great portion of East Cliff, on which the Villa is situated ; but, as was to be expected, without results of any kind. Had it been possible for the boy to have quitted the house, it is of course intelligible that he might have fallen into some drift or hollow, and that, when the snow melts, some painful tragedy may still have to be revealed. But, for the reasons above stated, any supposition of the kind seems untenable. Whatever the mystery is, it is one which lies wholly within doors. It is hardly necessary for us to express our sincere commiseration for the family who have experienced such an addition to their recent heavy loss." Thus far the " Gazette." Our next intelligence was from the "Times" again, in the copy which reached Dalemain the day following. It was short enough; not quoted, as before, from the county paper, but in the journal's own words. " THE MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE AT HASTINGS. We regret to learn that no trace of the missing child has yet been discovered. The details given by the local press make it impossible that the loss can have been accidental. At the same time, it is very diffi- 286 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." cult to understand how any one could have entered or left the premises undetected ; or what motive there could have been for carrying off a child under circumstances of such unusual difficulty. The most searching scrutiny is obviously required into the whole matter." Two days later, the " Times " was followed by the " Sussex Express " again. After giving the particulars to the same effect as its competitor, this journal proceeded : " The inquiries set afoot are still, we lament to say, unsuccessful. The rapid thaw which set in here last night has allowed of a more complete and effec- tual search than before ; and we believe we may say that every inch of ground in the town and neigh- bourhood to which the little boy could possibly have strayed has now been explored. So that any sur- mise of that kind, if it could ever have been enter- tained, must now be dismissed. " On the other hand, no clue whatever has been obtained as to the parties who may have been con- cerned in the abstraction, if such it was, or their pos- sible object. The servants at Harcourt Villa have been repeatedly and strictly questioned, but they all " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 287 concur in the same account. The Villa, they state, was secured in the usual way at dusk, and was so found when the child was discovered to be missing, and no stranger of any kind was in the house, or, to their knowledge, about the grounds during the whole day. In fact, owing to the violence of the storm, very few, even of the ordinary tradespeople, had called that day. We should add that, on the loss becoming known to the police, they carefully searched for footprints outside the house ; but the deep snow which fell throughout the night must have obliterated every trace of the kind as soon as made. " In concluding, it becomes our duty to advert to the painful, and we may add, highly improper surmises which, during the last day or two have been mooted in some quarters in reference to this matter, but which we certainly do not intend to particularize. Such suggestions are no less wicked than absurd, and we only give them this degree of prominence in consequence of the currency which they have obtained, and in order to express our sympathy with the highly respectable family whose domestic circumstances have thus needlessly been made the subject of public discussion." 288 " SIX MONTHS HEXCE." Twenty-four hours more elapsed. And then, the post came again, and the " Times " Avith it. This time with news sufficiently startling. There were two paragraphs headed " HASTINGS," in the day's impression. The first consisted of two lines only, merely stating that nothing had yet been discovered. The second was contained in a portion of the leading journal reserved for intelligence re- ceived on the eve of publication. As before, it con- tained an extract from one of the local papers : the " Sussex Express " again : a supplement, printed off hurriedly at a later hour on the day of the issue from which the paragraph last quoted was taken, and for- warded to the " Times " office by special despatch. The extract ran as follows : " Since our going to press this morning, a dis- covery has been made of a most painful and exciting character. The body of the missing child, Frederick Poynder, has been found under circumstances which add greatly to the mystery in which the whole matter is involved. "It seems that, owing probably to the severity of the late frost, followed by the rapid thaw we have experienced, and the loosening and melting of large " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 289 masses of snow in consequence, a kind -of landslip took place yesterday on the side of the ' Castle Hill ' opposite to the town. The place where it occurred will be familiar to some of our readers, as it was in a sand-pit, or quarry, a short distance from the Ore lane, which forms a favourite walk for visitors. The pit is now disused, but is conspicuously seen from the road. The landslip which thus took place was of considerable extent, and, in fact, carried away nearly the entire front of the quarry ; the latter having been cut, as is the usual practice, in a smooth scarp on the side of the hill. Some portion of the field above was also included in the subsidence. Beyond this there was nothing to call for special notice in the occurrence itself. "At an early hour this morning, however, the attention of some labourers passing along the road was attracted by the violent barking of a dog in the quarry. There was no one there at the time, and nothing perceptible to account for the animal's excitement, which was of the most unusual kind, and which finally induced the labourers to enter the sand-pit. They then found, that since the larger landslip of the day before, a small additional fall had VOL. i. 19 290 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." taken place, probably during the night ; leaving exposed, behind the debris thus formed, what seemed like the commencement of an artificial opening, or vault. The men made their way into this with some little difficulty; and then at once surmised, as the fact was, that they had entered a passage commu- nicating with the Castle Hill " cavern," probably well known to our readers, but the regular entrance to which is on the town side. They now sent for a light, with the object of making their way through to the reverse side of the hill ; but before this could be brought, the discovery to which we have referred had been already made. Upon an opening being effected, the dog ran forward into the vault or passage within, and there remained, still barking violently. When the labourers had made sufficient headway to follow him, and had recovered from their first surprise, they ascertained the cause of this. The animal had stopped a few yards within the vault ; and here, to their horror, the men found lying a human body which, from the description, there can be no doubt is that of the missing child. It was quite stiff and cold ; in fact, some days had evidently passed since life was instinct ; although the extreme cold of the " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 291 last week, coupled with the dryness of the atmosphere in these sandstone excavations, had arrested ihw pro- cess of decomposition. The body was lying on the floor of the place, and seemed to have been placed there with the utmost care, and even reverence. It was dressed in an ordinary child's frock and other clothing : probably what the little boy had worn when taken from his home. The frock was neatly smoothed out and arranged, and the hands crossed over the breast ; a support having been contrived for the head on a kind of low ledge which runs round one side of the vault. " Information of this discovery was at once given to the police, and the body removed to the mother's residence, where an inquest will be held forthwith. At present, the whole matter is inscrutable. The proprietor of the caverns alleges his absolute ignor- ance, which there seems no reason to doubt, either of the body being where it was found, or of any mode in which it could have been conveyed there. The sole entrance to these subterranean chambers is that in the West Hill, adjoining the proprietor's own residence ; and they are never opened excepting for the " illuminations," when the public are admitted 292 "SIX MONTHS HENCE." on making a trifling payment. The last time how- ever that the place was thus illuminated was on New Year's Eve, when the poor little fellow was safe in his own home. And scarcely less difficult is it to understand the motive for this act of violence, as the post-mortem examination will doubtless show it to be. That it could not have been cupidity is certain ; obviously there was nothing to tempt it under the circumstances. "We shall watch with the utmost anxiety for the progress of inquiry in this matter. The excitement and painful feeling in the town are intense ; being increased, if possible, by the singular mode in which the discovery has been effected. The place where the body was deposited was at the extreme end of the Castle Hill caverns ; in a vault detached from the main excavation, and forming one of a series which it was not the practice to illuminate with the rest ; partly, no doubt, to save expense, and also from some idea which seems to have prevailed of the superstructure there being as unsafe as it has now proved itself to be. So little visited, indeed, was this portion of the caverns, that the proprietor, Mr. Jameson, states that he cannot remember to have been there more than once during nearly forty " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 293 years which he has been in occupation ; and, even then, he recollects losing his way. Of course, since the fatal discovery now made, these portions of the excavation have been thoroughly searched with the rest, but nothing has been found to throw any light upon the tragedy. As regards the perpetrator, his object in selecting this spot. was of course clear. Its distance from the main body of the caverns, as well as its unfrequented character, which he may have known previously, or would readily have surmised, clearly pointed it out as the locality where his crime might remain for the longest period unde- tected. And he was not aware that, in penetrating thus far, he had in fact passed completely under the Castle Hill, and reached within a few yards of the surface on its reverse, or west, face ; a cir- cumstance which, coupled with the landslip above described, has alone led to the discovery of the body. But for this, it might have lain there for years. " We should add that, besides searching the caverns, the police commenced the removal of the mass of earth deposited by the landslip, and which now blocks up one side of the vault in which the 294 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." body was found. It was palpable, however, after proceeding for a short distance, that no further dis- covery was to be made in this direction ; and as the soil overhead is still in a dangerous state, the work has been discontinued, the opening to the sand-pit being closed by a hoarding of rough boards. " P.S. Since the above was in type, we have been informed in a reliable quarter that a small trinket usually worn by the deceased child, and which he is known to have had with him on the evening of his disappearance, is now missing from the body. This ornament was a small cross, wrought in Berlin steel, which the boy's father, Mr. Poynder, had for several years worn in memory of a deceased relative, by whom it was presented to him. During Mr. Poynder's last illness, he desired that this should be given to the child who has now met with so tragical an end, to be worn by him as it had been by himself ; and this was accordingly done, the trinket being suspended by a black ribbon round the boy's neck, and carried by him under his dress. This cross and ribbon have been abstracted ; and the labourers who made the discovery are unanimous in stating that there was nothing of the kind on the body when they first found "SIX MONTHS HENCE." 295 it ; a statement which there seems no reason to doubt. The ornament above described was too trifling in value, and too unattractive in every way, to tempt their cupidity, or, in fact, that of any other person. So that, although it may possibly give some eventual clue to the perpetrator of the crime, it leaves its motive still wholly unexplained." 296 " SIX MONTHS HENCE.' CHAPTER XVII. I MUST condense in the concluding chapter of this volume the newspaper accounts of the inquest, which was held on the evening of the day when poor Frederick's body was discovered. In the interval, the body had been examined by Mr. Sims, whom I have mentioned as the medical attendant at Harcourt Villa. The results of this examination formed the first evidence taken by the coroner, after the preliminary inquiries had been disposed of, and were listened to with breathless interest by every one in the room. Divested of technical details, they ran as follows. On removing the child's clothes, Mr. Sims stated, the cause of death had become at once apparent. The heart had been pierced, probably with a fine lancet, or some other delicate instru- ment, as the wound, although clearly visible, was of the slightest possible description. In fact, " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 297 Mr. Sims added, if the perpetrator was not a pro- fessional man, he must have been well acquainted with anatomy ; the instrument having heen inserted, not only in the direction in which it would be certainly fatal, but with exactly such an amount of force, and no more, as would suffice to cause death, without further lacerating the parts. The precision and skill employed were, in short, those of a scientific operator. The blood, too, had been care- fully staunched as it flowed, and no traces of it appeared, either on the child's frock, or round the trifling incision still visible on the surface of the skin. Altogether, the murder must have been com- mitted by some person acting with entire delibera- tion and coolness, and with ample time at his disposal. And the degree of skill and knowledge the subject involved rendered the motive for the com- mission of such a crime more than ever inscrutable. Who then was this person ? This was of course the next inquiry after the medical evidence was com- pleted. The person ? Or, was not the crime one in which more than one must have been implicated ? The presumptions in favour of this seemed over- 298 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." powering. How could one person, unaided, have got the child, living or dead, out of the house, and through the town, effected an entrance into the " caverns," then disposed of the body in a spot care- fully and elaborately selected, and then retreated, without alarm or observation of any kind ? But, on the other hand, admitting, as the fact proved, that one person could be found capable of committing a crime at once so atrocious and so objectless, where was the likelihood that two would concur in it ? Difficult of solution this question. And still more difficult, whether this would be settled in favour of one or more than one, to form any guess as to who he or they were. The local paper had stated quite correctly, that on the day when the child was missing, and presumably, there- fore, on the day when he met with his violent end, no stranger had been seen anywhere about Harcourt Villa. As there stated, the snow-storm had been so severe, that very few persons had been to the Villa at all that day ; most certainly, no one to excite suspicion of any kind. One witness only, an under housemaid, on being closely questioned by the coroner, mentioned a cir- " SIX MONTHS HENCI." '299 " Were that you ? " she ^ for a moment's specu- " ^W the deartn of anything like real evidence. this, when sifted, was little enough ; apparently, a mere mistake. It appeared that, about five o'clock on the after- noon of the day in question, just as it began to draw towards dusk, the girl had slipped round to a side- door of the Villa, to meet "a friend of hers ; " "the grocer's young man," it soon transpired, who had come upon an errand from the town. The door was not the servants' entrance, but one leading into the garden near the ground-floor rooms lately occupied by the deceased Mr. Armitage, and which was always kept locked ; the key, however, hanging up inside in the passage near it. Of course, the " grocer's young man " had no business there, nor the girl either ; and as the rules and constitutions of Harcourt Villa were peremptory against " followers," her previous reticence on the subject was easily accounted for. If, however, the meeting itself was contra bonos mores, the love-making at it seemed to have been innocent enough ; rather edifying in fact. Besides the sugars and salt butter, the " friend " had an ulte- rior mission. He was a preacher : a preacher on 300 ' T x MONTHS HENCE." Sundays at the snug i* person, unaided, have got erected in the town ; and a preauutx in sti se an( j out of season, on all days, Sundays or working-uu^ -, and at all hours and places when he could find any one to listen to him. Whence it came to pass, that on this occasion, as the girl said, " he and she had been talking serious." How far the matters thus propounded were interpolated with any lighter pas- sages, the coroner forbore to inquire. It appeared, however, that they occupied some time ; so much time, that the young lady, hearing the housekeeper's bell ring, and having the fear of detection visibly before her eyes, dispatched her sedate Lothario, then and there, and shut the door in his face. As she turned away from it, she heard what sounded like a groan outside. She had been too abrupt, then, had she ? It did seem rather hard to him ; but then the bell had frightened her so. It hadn't rung again, however, and she felt she would like to be assured that he " didn't really mind it." Yielding to which suggestions, the witness stated that she opened the door again, and called to " Mr. Rumbold," who was already some distance down the carriage road, pounding through the deep snow. " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 801 " Were that you ? " she asked. " Were what me ? " was Mr. Kumbold's reply, as also given in the girl's evidence. " Why as groaned like that ? " " I didn't groan, Dinah, nor I didn't hear any one as did. I don't see though that you need have gone and pushed me out of the house like that." And therewith Mr. Rumbold pursued his onward course. What resulted was elicited from the witness with great difficulty. At length, however, it transpired that, " seeing he was rather put out, and wishing to part friends, she had gone a few steps down the path, and called to him again." The lover's heart suc- cumbed to this second appeal ; and, retracing his steps, he came up to where the witness stood, and " shook hands with her," " quite pleasant like." In which account of this transaction, if Dinah told any- thing less than the truth and the whole truth, it is to be hoped the error may have passed under the general category of human frailties. The coroner, at any rate, discreetly let that part of the matter alone. But he pressed the witness closely as to the time which this shaking hands had occupied. " Was it a 302 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." minute ? " Oh ! no ; nothing like a minute. " Was the witness quite sure ? She must remember this was a most important matter ; could she state on oath that it was not a minute ? " Well ; it might have been a minute perhaps. " No more ? Still, on oath, no more ? Not two minutes ? " Thus pressed, the witness admitted two minutes ; after which, and under the same process, successive possibilities loomed into sight of three, four, and even five minutes. But here Dinah took her stand : that was the outside limit of all things. In fact, it was enough for the inquiry. "All this time 'then," continued the coroner, " whatever the time was, you were standing at some distance from the side-door you have men- tioned ? " " No distance, Sir ; only just down the gravel- walk. At least, it weren't gravel then ; it were deep in snow, over my ankles." "Well, some yards off, at any rate. And how were you standing ; had you your face to the door, or your back towards it ? " Witness couldn't say; didn't recollect. Well, she supposed she was standing the same way she " SIX MONTHS HENCE." 303 caine out ; looking down the path. " She didn't see the door, at any rate." " And you had left it open ? " " Yes ; the door was open." " So that a person from the outside might have entered the house while you were talking to your friend ? I mean, the last time ; when you shook hands with him, as you say ? " " Oh ! no. Quite impossible ; nobody ever could have come in : she should never have thought of such a thing. Why, who was there to come ? " " But, if there had been any one, and they had come in, could you have seen them ? " Oh ! to be sure, yes. Well, not perhaps seen them, like, just the half-minute she was saying good- bye to " him " ! But, of course, they couldn't have come in then. At least, of course they could. But then, as she had previously observed, there weren't nobody. " Very well. Now, what happened when you had done shaking hands ? " Witness had run back to the house directly., locked the door, and hung up the key in its usual place. 304 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." "Where was that?" " Just inside the garden-door. There was a nail to hang it on, between that and the door of master's room." " Oh ! there is another door inside, close to the garden -door, is there ? " " Yes, master's room. It isn't used now, since he died." " Was the door of that room fastened ? " Not as witness knew of. No, she knew it was not fastened. She had gone through it, as it was shorter, when she went to meet Mr. Eumbold. She had not gone through it in returning, hut kept along the passage. If any one had got into the house, they might have hid there, of course. But oh ! it weren't likely. " You saw no other footsteps in the snow when you were coming back to the garden-door ; none besides what you had made yourself in going out ? " Certainly not ; none whatever. Witness had not seen her own, for that matter. " It was 'most too dark to see anything." " Just so." This last witness was about to leave the room, "SIX MONTHS HENCE." 305 but was recalled by the Coroner, who put a few additional questions. " About this groan, which you say you heard ; it was not Mr. Kumbold ? " No, it was not him. Dinah had only thought it was, in the first instance. " And why was it not ? " " Oh ! he was too far down the road. Besides, I could see when he said so that it was not him." " You are certain it was a groan ? might it not have been the wind, or some other sound ? " No ; witness was quite sure it was a groan. " But why ? You see you were mistaken as to its being Mr. Rumbold ; might you not have been mistaken as to the sound itself! Was it at all like any voice you have ever heard ? " Witness could not say it was. At least, she thought not. Well, it was very curious. She had never thought of it before, but now that the gentle- man asked her about it, it certainly was like some voice she had heard. " Whose voice was that ? " Witness could not possibly say; had no idea whatever. VOL. I. 20 306 " SIX MONTHS HENCE." " Was it a man's or a woman's ? " " Oh ! a man's, of course. At least, it might have been a woman's too, when you came to think of it. But it was more like a man's. It was a very * sad voice.' " " How do you mean ? Any groan is sad." "Yes; but I don't know: it was a very p,ad voice." And this was the ultimatum that could be ex- tracted from Dinah ; always the same phrase; "A sad voice ; a very sad voice." The main particulars of her evidence on other points were afterwards cor- roborated by Mr. Eumbold. And with this apocryphal groan of Dinah's, and the remote and shadowy possibility that a person concealed outside might have entered while she and Mr. Rumbold were exchanging farewells, the prac- tical results elicited by the inquest began and ended. The verdict was in accordance with the surgical evi- dence : "Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown." END OF VOL. I. A 000130320 5